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Our night of one-act plays on December 11, 2011, includes a new play from Nicky Glossman. His play DEVIL, the 16th in our FORUM reading series, will be held 7pm at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Dreyfuss Theatre in Madison, NJ.
Nicky Glossman’s first full-length play, What About Waldorf?, was performed in workshop at Luna Stage, as was his play The Professional, with casts including Edward Asner & Jay O. Sanders; Legion, about a high-school student organization in crisis, will be performed at Luna in March 2012. He recently co-wrote his first film, and appeared as Tim in Eric Bogosian’s SubUrbia. He appeared at Playwrights in a reading of Orwell in Utica opposite Tony-award-winner Len Cariou. Devil won First Place in Samuel French Inc’s national young playwriting competition, and will be published this fall by Baker’s Plays, a division of Samuel French.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see DEVIL 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 (if you are going to attend at least 3 readings in the series---this is the best deal)
On Sunday, December 11, 2011, we will have an evening of one-act plays. Two of those plays will be by Yasmine Rana. The 14th play in our FORUM reading series is HOW I THOUGHT THE MILONGA WOULD SAVE ME and the 15th is BLASPHEME. These plays will be presented on Sunday, December 11, 7:00pm, at Fairleigh Dickinson, Dreyfuss Theatre in Madison, NJ.
Yasmine's book The War Zone is My Bed and Other Plays was published this year by Seagull Books and University of Chicago Press. Other publications include Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, and TDR The Drama Review. The title play of the book, The War Zone is My Bed was recently produced in Los Angeles at Write Act Repertory Theater.
1. What inspired you to write How I Thought the Milonga Would Save Me & Blaspheme?
I studied Argentinian tango several years ago, enjoyed it, but later quit due to the time constraints life presents. Last year, I returned to tango with what I hoped would be a deeper commitment to learning this dance. I would attend milongas to practice and met many interesting partners, dance partners of course. The experience began to resemble personal relationships, particularly the idea of revealing a different side of oneself for a different partner; some preferred the close embrace while others the open one, though the close embracers were the majority of dance partners I had. Sadly, I have quit tango again and have now taken up boxing, perhaps as a result of tangoing. Maybe my next play will be about a boxer who also does the tango.
I wrote Blaspheme after Milonga. Though I do love the comedy discovered in romantic entanglements, my home base as a writer is human rights issues. I wanted to explore an interrogation and was intrigued by the notion of single word as the source of a blasphemous charge.
On further reflection I saw both plays as a dance: the former a dance of pleasure and a quest in seeking the "ideal" partner, and the latter being a dance for survival.
2. Can you tell us a little about your job as a registered drama therapist?
In addition to being a creative arts therapist, I am an English as a Second Language teacher, and it's been wonderful incorporating creative drama into language learning. The joy has been hearing my students respond to a piece of literature we read in class; there's a sense of gratitude in having read a particular work that is now part of their history as learners. As a writer, I've meditated on the meaning of gratitude and how it is a part of my craft and being: I am grateful to theater companies, directors, actors, publishers, and audience members for having given me their time and sometimes their trust.
3. How has working with refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Georgia and Switzerland played a role in your writing?
Although it's been twelve years since my time in Sarajevo, I know my experience practicing drama therapy in that environment is embedded in my writing. What I took away from that journey was a profound respect for resiliency and for the desire to uphold human dignity even in the most calamitous circumstances.
4. What do you enjoy most about being a playwright?
What I enjoy most about being a playwright is hearing and seeing the different interpretations of my work. I've heard actors and directors from the United States and Europe present my plays and each production or reading is a bit of an epiphany for me
5. If you could have a superpower what would it be and why?
I have just finished teaching my high school ESL students Ernest J. Gaines' quiet masterpiece A Lesson Before Dying. To me, Gaines' work is a meditation on equality and justice, with basic humanity at the core of everything. If I possessed superpowers I would eradicate injustice.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see HOW I THOUGHT THE MILONGA WOULD SAVE ME and BLASPHEME 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 (if you are going to attend at least 3 readings in the series---this is the best deal)
The 13th reading in the FORUM series is THE GRASSHOPPER WAY by Judah Skoff. The reading will take place on Saturday, December 10, 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).
Judah Skoff graduated from Brown University where he studied English and playwriting. He won the National Playwriting Competition, two New Jersey Governor's Awards in the Arts, the New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest, and has been a finalist in numerous competitions. His plays have been performed at theatres and festivals around the country, including Playwright's Theatre of New Jersey, the Abingdon Theatre, the State Theatre of New Jersey, the Salon, the Theatre-Studio, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, New York University, and Pace University. Judah's writing has been published in Red Ochre Lit and Red River Review.
1. What inspired you to write The Grasshopper Way?
The Grasshopper Way is about the abyss which opens up when loved ones leave. It begins after a mother, Lily, has inexplicably abandoned her young adult daughters. They must decide whether to look for her and try to repair their family, or move off on their own. But it’s also about the occult and the forbidden allure of ancient ritual. It features a rabbi who has lost his faith and a young woman who has psychic visions. Ultimately it’s about spiritual anxiety and the choices we must make in a cold and indifferent world.
In this respect I wanted to write a horror play, which is very hard to do. But it is not horror in the exploitative sense. Rather, I hope it has more in common with classic writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, where the overwhelming feeling a reader walks away with is unspecifiable dread, along with fear and awe towards the vast, sometimes cruel unknown.
2. You are a former New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest winner, what was your play about that you entered into the contest?
Having won the New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest, sponsored by Playwrights Theatre, and now all these years later coming full circle by having my third play performed at FORUM, is tremendously gratifying. I have to thank my great friend and mentor, Playwrights Theatre’s artistic director John Pietrowski, for that unique opportunity.
My winning play, a one-act called Two Boxes, was an absurdist piece about a man guarding an undefined space (for reasons he can’t remember), from another man who seeks to cross that space (for reasons he does not know). It was heavily influenced by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, two writers I read compulsively during high school. They were a kind of religion for me, and I studied their work as a rabbi studies the Talmud.
The play I am currently working on is called The Man From Box. It is an expansion and development of the themes and story of Two Boxes. It is set in the suburban house of a young couple. One day a stranger knocks on the door, claiming to have lived in their home and seeking to stay with them. I hope to bring The Man From Box to Playwrights Theatre when it is complete. I think that would really bring us full circle!
3. How many full length plays have you written? How many one-acts?
I have written four full-length plays and am about halfway through a fifth (the above noted The Man From Box). I’m pleased to say that three of the four have had (or will have) readings at Playwrights Theatre. Without anyone looking, Playwrights Theatre has become my artistic home. This is something that every playwright hopes to find. It’s a testament to how encouraging Playwrights Theatre is to new writers.
I can’t remember how many one-acts I’ve written, since I began writing them at age fifteen. But it was my success with one-act plays---their winning contests and getting produced at various theatres---that gave me the encouragement and confidence to continue playwriting.
4. What do you enjoy most about playwriting?
Enjoy is not a word I generally use to describe playwriting, but seeing a play up on stage in front of an audience is most satisfying.
5. What is the last book that you read?
I can’t name only one when so many recent books are still buzzing in my head. I’m a longtime student of theology, and so I recently read Rabbi Arthur Green’s marvelously heterodoxical Radical Judaism. Although I disagree with many of Green’s conclusions, his learned and insightful book is a powerful argument for religion in the scientific, modern world. It also has the best description of “religious experience” I’ve ever read. I also just finished Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Count me among those who believe this book to be, perhaps, the finest English-language novel of the last twenty-five years. I am currently reading British playwright Mark Ravenill’s Collected Plays: Volume 2. Ravenhill came to prominence in the middle nineties amidst an explosion and revitalization of British theatre. This second collection of plays cements his reputation and supports the argument that he is filling the theatrical void left by Pinter. What can I say? He is, quite simply, one of the best.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see THE GRASSHOPPER WAY 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 (if you are going to attend at least 3 readings in the series---this is the best deal)
The 12th reading in our FORUM series is ROOM 30 by Dania Ramos who has worked with Playwrights Theatre as a teaching artist, an actor and a director in the Madison Young Playwrights Festival and New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival.
The reading will take place on Friday, December 9, 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).
Dania’s plays have been featured in the Rose City Project at PTNJ, the Playwrights Summer Institute at NJCU and Luna Stage's On the Road educational series. She’s a current participant in the NJ Emerging Women’s Playwriting Project at PTNJ. Dania received a 2003 NJSCA Playwriting Fellowship and a 2011 Norman Mailer Center Young Adult Fiction Workshop Scholarship. She’s a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and Actors Equity Association. Dania holds an MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University and a BFA in Theatre Performance from Montclair State University.
1. What inspired you to write Room 30?
I’ve stayed at several old-fashioned inns and I’ve always felt as if each guestroom held stories of others who had spent time there. I started picturing unexpected characters in these quaint settings—desperate misfits seeking refuge for various reasons. Eventually three connected storylines emerged, each set in a different decade, with characters reaching across time to affect one another.
2. Being a teaching artist, what do you think is the most valuable attribute you bring to the students that you teach?
Validation of their creativity. I find it fascinating to see where their imaginations lead them—often my students are surprised at how excited I get about some wild idea or a wacky character they’ve created.
3. You also direct and act. Do you think when you are writing that you come at it from a writer’s perspective, an actor’s or a director’s?
I think having a background in other areas of theatre informs my writing but I don’t deliberately approach playwriting with an actor’s or director’s perspective. I’ve found that being concerned with interpretation and production elements too early in the process can hinder the development of a play. When I’m drafting a script, the story and characters rule.
4. What is the worst advice you ever received?
Just wing it.
5. When you were 10, what did you want to be?
Olympic gold-medalist in gymnastics and an astronaut.
Click here to purchase a ticket to see ROOM 30 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)
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)
Our night of one-act plays on December 11, 2011, includes a new play from Nicky Glossman. His play DEVIL, the 16th in our FORUM reading series, will be held 7pm at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Dreyfuss Theatre in Madison, NJ.
