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Our 11th FORUM reading playwright is no stranger to fans of StrangeDog. Theatre Company, a small group of award-winning young theater artists intent on developing and performing original, diverse work in a variety of genres and mediums, drawing new audiences throughout the New Jersey and New York areas.
THE BLAIRSBURG FAMILY PICNIC by Ben Clawson will be presented on Thursday, December 8, at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Dreyfuss Theatre, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ. The reading will begin at 7:00pm. Click here for directions. Click here for a printable map of the campus (the Dreyfuss Theatre is located in Building 9).
Ben Clawson received his B.F.A. in Theater from Montclair State University, NJ in May of 2007. He is the author of numerous full length and one act plays that have had professional productions, readings and workshops in New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C. and New Orleans. He has been an evening winner and finalist in the Samuel French Short Play festival, finalist for the Princess Grace Award in playwriting, and recipient of the Kennedy Center's David Mark Cohen award. He is a founding member of the StrangeDog. Theater Company, with whom he has produced many of his plays.
1. What inspired you to write Blairsburg Family Picnic?
The town of Blairsburg depicted in the play is very loosely based on where my grandparents live in Western Pennsylvania. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, so that area has a very particular and unique feeling for me. It seemed the match well with the story of the play.
2. You are a founding member of StrangeDog.Theatre Company. What are the advantages/disadvantages of working with friends and fellow Montclair State University graduates?
The advantage is that we've really grown to having a specific style of how we work together, and everyone trusts in each other very much. It's of course a lot of of fun to go to work with your friends, and when you make as little money as we do at StrangeDog it's important to be having fun. While I wouldn't quite call it a disadvantage, it's also nice to have opportunies to branch out and work with other people and theatre companies, to keep everything fresh.
3. What is your favorite play or book and why?
That's a tough one. No way I could name a single play. I really like American Buffalo by David Mamet. And Becket's Godot. And the plays of Martin McDonagh, Jez Butterworth. Tennessee Williams. And the book Jurassic Park is awesome.
4. What advice would you give to young playwrights?
Uh. Write. Write, write, write, write, write. Once you do it enough you start to figure out what exactly that means to you and how you want to go about it.
5. What is the App that you wish you could invent?
I can sometimes be a bit of a Luddite, so by "app" I'm going to choose that you mean appetizer. And I'd like to invent an appetizer that kind of combined buffalo wings and jalapeno poppers. Maybe the jalapeno popper is inside the buffalo wing? Could some one work that out? Or french fries filled with mashed potatoes and gravy. That'd be pretty brilliant too.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see BLAIRSBURG FAMILY PICNIC at at FDU.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
The 10th reading in the FORUM reading series is DESPERATE LOVE by Richard Reiss.
This reading will be held at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Dreyfuss Theatre, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ on Wednesday, December 7 at 7:00pm. Click here for directions. Click here for a printable map of the campus (the Dreyfuss Theatre is located in Building 9).
Richard Reiss is the Senior Vice President for University Advancement at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His writing has been published in the New York Times, ADDitude Magazine, Perigee Literary Journal, and in the anthology, Upstart Crows II: True Stories, published by Wide Array Press. In 2008 Reiss collaborated with director and lyricist, Martin Charnin, to create the musical revue Love is Love. In the 1990’s his column, Reiss’s Pieces, for Forbes Newspapers, was recognized by the New Jersey Press Association. Desperate Love, the play, is based on the memoir of the same name and will be published by Serving House Books in fall 2011.
1. What inspired you to write Desperate Love?
I wanted to tell my story so that people could understand what it was like to live with an oppositionally defiant child. And I wanted the parents of a child like mine to know that they are not alone. As parents we struggle as much as our children. We confront love and faith and God, and there isn’t always an answer or even resolution. It’s a subject that’s not really talked about a lot, and I wanted to confront it head on.
2. You collaborated with director and lyricist, Martin, Charnin, to create the musical review Love is Love, can you tell us a little about how that collaboration process worked?
Martin had seen a piece I had written in the Modern Love column of the New York Times about my son called Sending a Lost Boy to the Wilderness to Find Himself. He approached several writers of his favorite Modern Love columns and asked some of us to write new pieces for a new musical revue he was creating. I was in the middle of working on my memoir and sent him some chapters that I thought might work once he described the concept of the show to me, which was a combination of songs and soliloquies about different aspects of love. So we edited one of the chapters I had written from the memoir and it became a very moving soliloquy in the show, paired with a very beautiful song.
3. What compelled you to become a playwright?
It was actually Martin Charnin, who had read an early draft of my memoir of the same name, that suggested I write a play. I told him I knew nothing about play writing, and he told me that I should just start writing and he would help me with the structure. I floated a lot by Martin once I conceptualized the play in my head. I really enjoyed writing the play. Everything in the book is 100% true, but the play is a fictionalized version of events so I could play with the characters and the dialogue. And, of course, I learned that prose does not always or easily translate into interesting dialog. I’m still learning.
4. What was your column about in the Piscataway Dunellen Review?
The Piscataway Dunellen Review was a small town newspaper owned by Forbes. At the time, Forbes owned more than twenty local newspapers in New Jersey. I don’t believe that’s still the case. I wrote a humor column called Reiss’s Pieces. It often appeared in all of the papers so after a while I had a nice following in Central New Jersey. It was a great experience and taught me how to be disciplined as a writer. It not so easy writing a 750 word humor column every week.
5. What is the best play or musical you have ever seen?
I still love West Side Story. I think I was ten when I first saw it. If only all gangs could sing and dance?
Click here to purchase a ticket to see DESPERATE LOVE at at FDU.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
The 9th reading in our FORUM series is LSD by Carrie Louise Nutt which will be presented on Tuesday, December 6, beginning at 7:00pm at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Dreyfuss Theatre in Madison, NJ.
Carrie Louise Nutt’s play Agua was a 2010 O’Neill semi-finalist. It was developed during her NNPN Emerging Playwright Residency at PNTJ. When Gods Walk the Earth was part of the Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayLabs, received Tulsa University’s “Best New Works for Young Women” award, and was recently produced at Manhattan Rep. Carrie is published in One on One: The Best Men’s Monologues for the 21st Century by Applause. She is a member of DGA and PWC. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Rutgers. Recently, she received a new play commission from MCTVS. http://web.me.com/carrienutt/Site/About_Me.html
1. What inspired you to write LSD?
I became interested in government drug experimentation while I was researching for a different play. I ended up stumbling across two stories in particular that jumped out at me. One was centered around a young scientist who died under unclear circumstances and the other story was about a patient admitted to a psychiatric hospital who reported being experimented on. I began to get a picture of a time where Cold War paranoia drove people to do things to others that they should not have. It set up a dynamic where anything was permissible for the greater good. I felt that had resonance for us today.
2. Can you tell us a little about your new play commission from MCTVS?
MCTVS has commissioned me to write a one-act play for their theatre students. I was asked to come onboard for this school year as a Guest Artist. I will teach as well as put together a play for the students to perform. This play will go up in March alongside several other commissions and a handful of student plays in a festival that MCTVS is producing.
3. What is your favorite play or book and why?
My favorite book is Blindness because Jose Saramago understand the difference between civility and savagery. The only difference between the civilized and the uncivilized is the availability of resources. You take that away and it is surprising what people will do.
4. How long have you been writing?
Since I was in elementary school. I used to read Nancy Drew, and then stay up late writing my own mystery novels.
5. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
The Hunger Games. It's a great trilogy. It's total pop culture, adrenaline junkie trash, but I love it for how well it wraps the reader into the action and the love triangle.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see LSD at FDU.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
THEATRE FOR YOUR MOTHER: THE LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD SHOW is appropriate for the entire family.
This FORUM reading will be held at The Growing Stage on Sunday, December 4 at 1:00pm and later that day at 7:00pm at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Russell Davis' plays have been produced at various theatres, including People's Light & Theatre, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Yale Repertory, Long Wharf and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. He was resident playwright at People's Light for the Theatre Residency Program of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group. He was a recipient of a 2008-10 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and has received playwright fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Council on the Arts and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He is also a juggler.
1. What inspired you to write Theatre For Your Mother: The Little Red Riding Hood Show?
People's Light & Theatre Company produced an English Pantomime some years ago and I loved how the actors talked and argued with the audience. This seemed to fit nicely with the Little Red Riding Hood story, where the Wolf, Little Red, the Mother and Grandmother could all have contesting versions of the same story. It seemed an excellent opportunity to tell a tale for children and also to question it as an adult.
2. Can you tell our audience what it means to be a resident playwright?
It means that rehearsal space is available when I need it as a playwright or juggler. It means that once in awhile they'll produce a play of mine, or certainly think about it. It's a tremendous resource actually in terms of having folks, such as actors, designers, directors, to talk with about the various projects we're each working on.
3. How does your juggling help your playwriting process?
I would not be a functioning playwright if I had not learned to juggle. It sounds silly but juggling taught me how to be disciplined. It taught me how to work on something, and to keep at it over and over. You can't kid, or lie to, yourself as a juggler. Either you're learning and progressing or you're not and, either way, it's plainly visible.
4. What do you love most about being a playwright?
I love how never ending it is. The more you think you know the more you realize actually you don't know.
5. Which do you prefer chips or pretzels?
Neither, actually. But if I were in prison and had to choose, I'd choose pretzels.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see THEATRE FOR YOUR MOTHER: THE LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD SHOW at The Growing Stage.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see THEATRE FOR YOUR MOTHER: THE LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD SHOW at FDU.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
Children attend free (with a paying adult) to the December 4 reading at Fairleigh Dickinson.
THEATRE FOR YOUR MOTHER: THE LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD SHOW is appropriate for the entire family.
The family friendly FORUM series of readings continues with Anne Negri's WITH TWO WINGS.
This reading will be held at The Growing Stage in Netcong, NJ on Saturday, December 3 at 1:00pm and again on that same day at 7:00pm at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Anne Negri is currently living in Evanston, Illinois working as a full-time drama teacher in the Evanston/Skokie School District 65, teaching 4th-8th grade students. She is a graduate of Arizona State University’s M.F.A. Theatre for Youth program. With Two Wings is her first full-length play, but other works include The Dancing Dog! and Faithful Adaptation. In addition to teaching and playwriting, Anne is a dramaturg, film buff, and puppet enthusiast.
1. What inspired you to write With Two Wings?
The original idea for With Two Wings came from realistic relationships in my immediate family. However, the world of the play, with humans who have wings and the ability to fly, came to me in a dream. I remember waking up and running to find a piece of paper to write down the ideas. I was also inspired by one of my favorite Greek myths, Icarus and Daedalus.
2. What do you love most about being a playwright?
There are two things that I really love about being a playwright. The first is that I love writing creatively, thinking of new stories that have never been told before. Second, I love collaborating with a creative team who have a passionate vision of how my plays can come to life.
3. What advice would you give to young playwrights?
Don’t stop writing creatively! At a certain point in high school and college, I was writing so many academic papers that I completely lost sight of the creative writer in me until my late 20s. My advice is to embrace and share your creative stories with others and to seek out local organization that might support your work.
4. What is your favorite play or book and why?
This is a really difficult question because I have so many favorites. One of my favorite books is The Little Prince. I’ve read, studied, and taught it in English and in French. I love the Prince as our protagonist and the strange journey he embarks upon. I think the story appeals to both adults and children in equal measure.
5. Given the choice between cake, cookies or candy, which would you choose?
Unfortunately for my teeth, I love candy. I love chocolate, licorice, caramel, and Lemonheads most of all!
Click here to purchase a ticket to see WITH TWO WINGS at The Growing Stage.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see WITH TWO WINGS at FDU.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
Children attend free (with a paying adult) to the December 3 reading at Fairleigh Dickinson.
WITH TWO WINGS is appropriate for the entire family.
Our FORUM series this year features three plays which are appropriate for the entire family. Joan Cushing's LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY kicks it off.
You can catch the reading of this play at The Growing Stage in Netcong, NJ, at 7:00pm on Thursday, December 1 or at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Dreyfuss Theatre in Madison, NJ at 7:00pm on Friday, December 2.
Joan Cushing is best known for writing and performing political satire in Wash, DC, more recently Cushing is adapting children's books as musicals, receiving over 350 productions. Works include Miss Nelson Is Missing! (winner, Nat’l Children’s Theatre Festival), Field Day, Junie B. Jones, Petite Rouge (NY Musical Theatre Festival), George and Martha, all commissioned by Imagination Stage, and Diary of a Worm, A Spider & a Fly, commissioned by Oregon Children’s Theatre. Others: The Christmas Doll, Nat’l Youth Theatre Award for Outstanding New Musical, Tussaud, based on Madame Tussaud’s bloody pursuit of art, and Breast In Show, a brand new musical about breast cancer. Representation by The Susan Gurman Agency. See http://www.joancushing.com/.
1. What inspired you to write Lizzie Bright And The Buckminster Boy?
The book had a really interesting title, it had won several prizes, and the synopsis was intriguing, including the fact that it was based on a true event. At the time, I was adapting “hot” children’s books as musicals for young kids. I was also raising a son and we listened to tons of audio books in the car. The books for young adults were the ones that grabbed us the most. After reading this book, I couldn’t get the story out of my head. At first, I didn’t see the book as a candidate for the musical stage. How would I capture the gorgeous descriptive language? And the main characters didn’t seem to me like characters who would sing. But over several months, I decided to try my hand at adapting it as a play.
2. What is your process for adapting children’s books as musicals?
In the early days, we worked by the seat of our pants. I just wrote the show, with some help from the theatre, in terms of plot synopsis, character development, the journey of the characters, cast size, and what we wanted to accomplish. Now I am commissioned two years out, and we always do a 4 to 5 day workshop a year in advance. That way we can work out the problems and make every line work. I develop most of my scripts with Imagination Stage. Janet Stanford (art. dir/playwright) and Kate Bryer (assoc. prod. dir.) are masters of development.
3. You have written and performed political satire in Washington, DC,do you prefer one over the other?
I never meant to stop writing satire, but my director (of 13 years) died and I was commissioned by Imagination Stage to write my first children’s musical, based on a popular children’s book, Miss Nelson Is Missing. To my great surprise, it was a huge hit. Then I adapted Junie B. Jones, which was an even bigger hit. Since then I have had nonstop commissons to write new musicals, but mostly for young kids. I keep meaning to get back to the satire, and occasionally perform, but mostly political roasts.
4. Tell us a little about your new musical about breast cancer?
A local woman interviewed 200 hundred breast cancer survivors and asked a playwright to write a script from the material, and me to write music and lyrics. Several months into the project, my husband Paul was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I dropped everything to take care him. The producer put off the project for a year to keep me on board, and after my husband died – 4 months later – I had something to say. I brought in Kate Bryer from Imagination Stage to direct and dramaturg. We mounted an initial production with sets, costumes, and orchestra for 2 nights. It got an overwhelming response, and requests for productions are multiplying. It was very healing for me, as I was able to take my husband’s death and turn it into something positive which will touch a lot of people.
5. Do you prefer coffee, tea or soda for your caffeine fix?
I go to Starbucks every day and order a tall skim no water chai. No coffee for me.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY at The Growing Stage.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY at FDU.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
Children attend free (with a paying adult) to the December 2 reading at Fairleigh Dickinson
LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY is appropriate for the entire family.
As we gear up for the FORUM Roundtable Reading Series (November 29 - December 18, 2011), we asked our playwrights five questions to get to know them and the readings that will be presented a little better.
R. N. Sandberg's play CONVIVENCIA will be presented on Tuesday, November 29, 7:00pm at Fairleigh Dickinson, Dreyfuss Theatre in Madison, NJ and on Wednesday, November 30, 7:00pm at The Growing Stage, Netcong, NJ.
Sandberg’s plays have been seen in Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Panama, South Korea and throughout the U.S. He’s been commissioned by, among others, McCarter, Seattle Rep and Seattle Children’s Theatre. Current work includes IRL for George Street Playhouse, What Can’t Be Seen, developed at Passage Theater and Provincetown Playhouse, and Judgment of Bett, at Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices. His plays are published by Playscripts and Dramatic Publishing. He teaches playwriting, acting and dramatic literature at Princeton University.
1. What inspired you to write CONVIVENCIA?
I'd been interested in Spanish history since I started studying Spanish as a teenager. A number of years ago, I was talking to a theater about writing a piece focused on the conflict in the Middle East when I came across a book entitled Convivencia. I was fascinated reading about the interactions among the cultures and religions in medieval Spain. It seemed an exciting way to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict from a different point of view.
2. How many full length plays have you written? How many one-acts?
About 25 full lengths and 20 short pieces.
3. What do you believe is the most valuable attribute you bring to the students you teach?
I set high standards but give them tons of support. But really you should ask them.
4. You've had plays produced outside of the USA, what is the major difference in production values that you experienced?
Unfortunately, I haven't seen almost any of the productions I've had overseas.
5. Do you have a favorite ice cream flavor?
No. If it's ice cream, I love it and I'll eat as much as you'll give me.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see CONVIVENCIA at FDU.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see CONVIVENCIA at The Growing Stage.
You can also find additional information on our website about the entire FORUM reading series.
$10 per reading
$25 for a FORUM pass (attend all 23 readings in the series)
Children attend free (with a paying adult) to the November 29 reading at Fairleigh Dickinson.
CONVIVENCIA is appropriate for teen audiences.
Our 11th FORUM reading playwright is no stranger to fans of StrangeDog. Theatre Company, a small group of award-winning young theater artists intent on developing and performing original, diverse work in a variety of genres and mediums, drawing new audiences throughout the New Jersey and New York areas.
