@dramatistsguild @LaurieFlanigan

This month’s report features two fierce Twin Cities artists who faced cancer head-on, onstage, in pieces they wrote and performed: Ball: A Musical Tribute To My Lost Testicle by Max Wojtanowicz (with original music by Andrew Cooke, Michael Gruber and Jason Hansen) and Final Round, written and performed by Katie Ka Vang. Let’s get right to it.

Laurie Flanigan Hegge:  At what point did you decide to write about your cancer diagnosis?

Max Wojtanowicz:  The idea to write the show came out of a conversation I had with Nikki Swoboda (my director and co-founder of The Catalysts) early in my diagnosis about how to process what was happening. I wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea at first; I wasn’t sure if I would be out of the woods or have enough hindsight when the time came to perform it. But I had already planned a solo cabaret, and once I put that together, it felt like a reachable goal to add storytelling to the cabaret setup.

Katie Ka Vang:  As a theatre artist I knew I was going to create a show borrowing from this experience, much like I do with the rest of my work, I just didn’t know what it would look like or when I’d do it. It helps that my style of solo work comes from an extremely autobiographical aesthetic—literally, on stage I play Katie Ka Vang. It’s important to me that my solo work reflects my truth. It’s my way of contributing to a larger social justice movement. Change starts from within and at home first. I make work to get closer to myself and understand the histrionics of the culture(s) I was born into. I believe once one is self-aware, only then can one genuinely contribute to social change.

LFH:  What was your writing process like and how did it impact your healing?

KKV:  I’m actually still healing, but it forced me to carve out time to just be, to learn to let go of things that don’t serve me anymore, and be aware of habits that were harming me. It gave me something to look forward to, like I was going somewhere and being purposeful, which is extremely helpful in combating depression (a thing transplant patients go through). I had an allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) (actually my second BMT). During the transplant process you are admitted into the hospital for at least two weeks, and during this time they prime your body by giving you high doses of chemo and immunosuppressant pills—they basically take your body levels down as close as they can to mortality without actually killing you—and then they give you some new cells and wait for them to engraft. When they send you home you are in quarantine. I had to stay away from anything that could give me an infection, because my immune system was extremely compromised. And so I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for 100 days, except to my daily clinic visits, for blood work. When I started to meet with my director, Zaraawar Mistry, I hadn’t yet hit my post-100 days milestone, so we started rehearsals over FaceTime. We had the attitude that we didn’t know what was going to happen, or how my health would be in three months, so we’d just take it day-by-day, and that’s how we created. It’s quite freeing working in this way. It was the most easygoing process thus far in all of my history in making theatre.

MW:  I was free-writing during treatment, and updating my Caring Bridge journal, so I had that to draw from once I started writing in earnest after treatments were over. By the time I finished chemo and started structuring the show and filling in gaps, it had written some of itself. Writing the words down and saying them aloud, especially admitting my darkest fears and embarrassments, was incredibly therapeutic. That’s actually a part of the takeaway of my show, I hope: we are confronted with huge, scary challenges in our lives, and there is a medium through which to process them. That medium for every person is different; mine is this show. I’m a big sharer—my first musical [Fruit Fly]was about my coming out journey and the parallel lives of my straight best friend and I—so for me, that worked. It felt like I had an obligation to say things out loud so an audience could hear them. Nobody wants to talk about cancer, but we do want to talk about how to heal and how to move forward.

KKV:  I have no issues being publicly vulnerable or sharing the details of my experience with cancer. (That may be because I was schooled by Laurie Carlos, whom we also recently lost to cancer.) But from the very beginning I was vocal about it, and have been extremely blessed by a whole theatre/art community having my back. I feel like every culture has their own beliefs about illness. In some Asian cultures, serious illnesses and diseases still carry a stigma, so when I created Final Round I was hoping it would open a dialogue around these issues in my community. And it did. I’ve already seen projects from several Hmong artists using my concept of art as a tool to dismantle and talk about stigmas, and it’s flattering.

LFH:  What did you find empowering?

KKV:  I got funding from the Knight Arts Challenge and Jerome Foundation. The work would’ve still happened, but I was able to pay myself, and my team, to create art, and getting paid to make art is empowering.

MW:  Creating Ball was a great reminder for me of the power of telling your own story, of opening yourself up to an audience. I made a connection to my father’s cancer journey—he had terminal cancer with no chance of survival. I had a type of cancer where I was already in remission five months after diagnosis. I make a point in the show that I didn’t like it when people would use the word “brave” describing me, because my dad had so little chance of hope and still had to walk around and live for three years. That’s bravery. I was glad to make a connection with him, and to find courage and strength in his journey.

LFH:  What did it feel like to perform with your cancer journey still unfolding?

MW:  It was bizarre! My hair was starting to grow back, but it was still pretty short, and you can still see my portacath scar, which I showed the audience. I’ll be curious to see how audiences respond as I go forward with the show, the further away I get from it.

KKV:  It was a balancing act—literally—because my health wasn’t fully up to par. But I’m learning that life in general is just that—a big balancing act.

LFH:  What made you laugh?

KKV:  I love playing different characters, and in Final Round there’s a character who’s of an older generation but has horrible manners, based on my mom’s friend. I had a great time playing her.

MW:  I brought a gentleman up on stage with me every night for a seduction song (pretending he’s my boyfriend). I sang about how grateful I am that he stood by and supported me, turned on by my surgical scars while I pole-danced around the IV.

LFH:  Did anything anger you?

KKV:  Nothing angered me, because anger comes from fear, and whenever I was scared I expressed it through tears. I got acquainted with fear very quickly and told it that it can be a part of this caravan, but it ain’t driving or sitting shotgun.

MW:  The only thing that kept me up at night was making sure my ending played well, when I talked about my dad. I knew my family would be in the audience, and I was afraid that bringing him up would seem exploitative to them. So I spent a lot of energy fretting about that, but ultimately I found a way to honor him and gain perspective from his life.

LFH:  How was it received?

MW:  I got many letters from people who were going through cancer or who knew someone who was (that’s just about everybody, right?). One particularly meaningful letter was from a friend of mine who had lost both parents to cancer as a teenager. She admitted she was hesitant to see the show because she assumed it would be another cancer narrative that lifted up the “strong” people who survived and forgot about the “weak” people who lost their battles. She was surprised and gratified by the connection with my dad—that I could pull strength from my dad’s ultimate failure to beat his cancer—and she said that was very meaningful to her. I also performed the show once for a family who told me after the show that they had lost their mother that afternoon to cancer. “Now when we think about today, it won’t be all bad memories,” they said. I lost it.

KKV:  It was received extremely well. One of the perks of performing in a smaller theatre is that you get to talk to everyone in the audience and exchange stories, whether they be about healing, grieving, or thriving.

LFH:  What’s next for you?

KKV:  There is a part two to Final Round, and it’s a performance installation based on the 100 days post-transplant protocol. I’m hoping to premiere it in the summer. And with this piece, I’ll be working with an ensemble.

MW:  I was awarded an Artists Initiative grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board to create a musical for young people based on a Chilean folktale. I’m currently hard at work on that with composer Michael Gruber and director Nikki Swoboda. Ball has toured around the State of Minnesota. We’re hoping to bring it to oncologists’ conferences, since many doctors who have seen the show have commented that they thought it could serve as an educational tool about the doctor-patient relationship and a study in patient empathy.

You may have seen Katie’s testimony from the DG Fund’s end-of-year appeal about how an emergency grant from helped her during her transplant period. If you have the means, consider supporting the Fund. And last but not least, if you’ve got balls, Max reminds you to fondle them.

lflaniganhegge@dramatistsguild.com

Katie Ka Vang in  Final Round

  Max Wojtanowicz in Musical Tribute To My Lost Testicle

The Business Issue of #TheDramatist is shipping now from @dramatistsguild

@dramatistsguild @anita8119

The state of Michigan covers more than 96,000 square miles of territory and over 50 major metropolitan areas. Bringing playwrights together across this geographic space is a wonderful challenge. On October 26, 2016, I organized a first Dramatists Guild meet and greet at the University of Michigan. Members converged at the Walgreen Drama Center in Ann Arbor to talk about new opportunities for playwrights within the state. Participants included students and Guild members from as far away as the Upper Peninsula. Kudos to Patrick Grasiewicz, who drove 328 miles from Engadine, MI to attend the event.

The meet and greet began with a panel featuring two artistic directors, Lynn Lammers of Kickshaw Theatre (http://www.kickshawtheatre.org) and Carla Milarch of Theatre Nova (http://www.theatrenova.org). Joining them was DG playwright Jose Casas, a new Assistant Professor and playwriting teacher at the University of Michigan. Both Kickshaw Theatre and Theatre Nova produce and develop new work. Kickshaw Theatre, a theatre company fairly new to the region. They present cutting-edge, socially-engaged drama and devised professional theatre. Carla Milarch, a second panel member, has produced new theatrical work in Ann Arbor for decades, first at the no longer active Performance Network, and currently at her new company Theatre Nova which is located in the Yellow Barn on Huron Street. The third panel member, Jose Casas is a Los Angeles native, who comes to Ann Arbor with a passion for youth theatre and Latinx stories. He is the former literary manager of CASA0101 (http://www.casa0101.org) and a board member and multicultural/diversity director for the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE).

Most of the panel session focused on local and national opportunities for submitting plays. Many of the attendees were interested in creating networks for nurturing writers, networks which could include developing writing skills through the establishment of writing exchange groups. Panel members offered expertise about best practices for contacting producers and workshopping ideas. A few of the attendees were novices, playwriting students from Jose Casa’s writing class interested in meeting writing professionals. Many who came to the event were unfamiliar with the Dramatists Guild and its diverse mentorship and networking opportunities. After the panel, participants shared descriptions of their current writing projects with one another over food and drink in the lobby of the Arthur Miller Theatre. There were plenty of ideas for future sessions, including an upcoming director/dramatist mixer at Theatre Nova in Spring 2017.

I’m committed to expanding the Michigan membership and educating local writers about how the Dramatists Guild can support their work. My sense is that the Michigan community welcomes an opportunity for more activities, so contact me with your ideas and suggestions.

I’ll keep you posted.

agonzalez@dramatistsguild.com

Guild members at the meet and greet at the University of Michigan

@dramatistsguild

Southern California is brimming with brilliant writers who succeed on vibrant smaller stages yet seldom make the jump to LORT.

But a new Los Angeles playwrights’ collective, “The Temblors” (their very name a synonym for earthquake), seeks to rock that landscape by producing mid-sized Equity world premieres of local writers, bridging the gap between the area’s intimate, 99-seat stages and larger regional venues.

“I am quite literally a child of LA’s intimate theatre community, which has always done daring work, much of which unfortunately goes unnoticed nationally,” said Temblor Kemp Powers, whose plays include One Night in Miami… and Little Black Shadows.

“There is a perception that most playwrights living in Los Angeles are only here to work in film and television,” said Powers. “We’re hoping this initiative helps to establish a new understanding that there are many locally-groomed writers who are just as committed to writing for the stage.

The Temblors’ mission, in part, is to underscore how amazing and diverse LA theatre can be and to provide a platform for the professional development of local writers.

“The name ties us to Los Angeles in a way that I think is really beautiful,” said Temblor Meghan Brown, author of The Pliant Girls. “We’re looking to make seismic shifts with our own pieces. We have encouraged each other to write the piece we’ve been dying to write, without being limited by cast-size or subject matter, or any of the other concerns that can creep in while trying to make a script producible.”

 Inspired by other playwright collectives, such as The Welders of Washington, D.C., and New York’s now-defunct 13P, The Temblors’ inaugural cohort of seven members will work as a team: each will write one play for production, then serve variously as producer, dramaturg and/or fundraiser for their fellows’ productions.

“I think there’s incredible value in knowing how the sausage is made,” said Powers, “and by having hands-on experience at every level of the theatrical food chain.”

Fellow Temblor t. tara turk-haynes agrees.

“Putting on so many hats gives you an opportunity to see how you can expand yourself for the good of the art,” said turk-haynes, whose play The Mic Picks Up Everything is among the collective’s upcoming offerings. “I love producing, so I’m happy to say I can do more than just write for the stage. I can speak to every part of what it takes to make a piece exist.” 

The Temblors’ goal is to produce seven new plays (at the rate of roughly two per year), over a four-year period, then select seven literary successors who will launch an entirely new cycle.

The Temblors’ LA playwrights’ initiative will work in partnership with the Latino Theater Company at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC), the multi-cultural theatre complex located on Spring Street, in the city’s historic core. LATC features five performance spaces, ranging from thrust to classic proscenium, and from 99 to 500 seats.

All of The Temblors’ shows, said Kemp, will be produced under AEA’s Small Professional Theatre (SPT) contract, governing theatres with 349 seats or fewer outside of New York and Chicago.

“This is a time of big change, in our business as well as in the nation as a whole,” said Oliver Mayer, author of Blade to the Heat and Blood Match. “To be able to produce original work at the mid-size level is no small feat. We mean to break new ground, not only for ourselves but for the next generation of Temblors.”

The Temblors’ first production, slated for March/April 2017, will be Temblor John Pollono’s Rules of Seconds. Set in 1855, the play – with a cast of ten and various locations – explores the Code of Dueling and its impact on a family caught in a deadly blood feud.

“Many of us cut our teeth in Equity-waiver theatre, and like me, plan on continuing to produce in that space,” said Pollono, a founding member of LA’s Rogue Machine Theatre and author of Small Engine Repair. (That play had an award-winning run at Rogue Machine in 2011, then, in 2013, moved to NYC’s MCC Theater, where it also was a smash.)

But until The Temblors, said Pollono, he had never had his work produced locally in a medium/large theatre.

“I wrote a play that demands a bigger stage and a bigger house.” And, he added, “The vibe of a 200-plus audience is unmistakable.”

“I love intimate spaces,” said turk-haynes. “I also love the flexibility of not being limited just to intimate spaces. I’m excited to write something for a space I don’t normally have access to, since budgeting and finances tend to make the decision about the space over anything else.”

More than any other aspect of production, its finances – and specifically, fundraising – that individual Temblors find most daunting.

“I am particularly bad at self-promotion, and my comfort-zone is self-effacement,” said Temblor Nate Rufus Edelman, whose play The Whores – set in the nineteenth-century mining town of Silverton, CO – the collective will produce. “However, I deeply admire my fellow playwrights in The Temblors and feel genuinely blessed to be part of the group. It is a lot easier to promote the work of writers I very much like.”

“Fundraising is always challenging,” said turk-haynes. “As the world progresses, I worry that many people won’t understand the importance of keeping the arts alive through their support. As artists, we must constantly challenge ourselves to convey the importance of that support in ways that land.”

Visit The Temblors at thetemblors.org.

jgershick@dramatistsguild.com

John Pollono 

Kemp Powers 

Meghan Brown

Nate Rufus Edelman

Oliver Mayer

t tara turk-haynes

@dramatistsguild @nancygall

I’m always thrilled to find Kentuckians who have joined the Guild on Facebook, so I can welcome them and invite them to join our Dramatists Guild-Kentucky Facebook page. Imagine my surprise upon discovering that one of our newest members, Albert Joseph DeGiacomo, is a Roman Catholic priest.

Father Al, as he is now known, may be the only dramatist-cleric among our 7,000 members! We met in Harrodsburg, KY, 90 minutes southeast of Louisville, where he serves as pastor of St. Andrew Catholic Church.

Born in Cambridge, MA, he remembers the exact day his father took him and his mother to see The Music Man at the Shubert Theatre in Boston. Albert was ten years old and “mesmerized.”

His father continued to take his son to the theatre and to share stories about celebrities like Robert Preston, Rex Harrison, and Yul Brynner, who dined at Locke-Ober, the five-star Boston restaurant where Albert’s father worked as “dean of waiters” for 50 years.

Despite seeing many successful artists, Albert’s father made sure his son understood that making a living in the theatre is not assured. Even Irving Berlin “shook like a leaf” before the premiere of Call Me Madam, in its pre-Broadway tryout, Albert’s father told him, motivating his son to become a teacher.

He earned a doctorate in Drama from Tufts University in 1993, specializing in Irish Dramatic Literature and Theatre History. Syracuse University Press published his doctoral thesis as T.C. Murray, Dramatist, Voice of Rural Ireland.

After completing his work at Tufts, Dr. DeGiacomo accepted a position at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, PA, where he scheduled a production of Edith Stein, Arthur Giron’s play memorializing a Jewish philosopher (1881-1942) who, after becoming Catholic, joined a Carmelite nunnery and was murdered at Auschwitz. Hoping to rent Nazi uniforms for the show, Dr. DeGiacomo called the Pittsburgh Public Theater where the play had been staged previously.

A staff technician at the theatre alerted Giron to the production, and shortly thereafter Giron left a voice mail: “You must contact me.” A friendship began, and Giron, who headed the graduate playwriting program at Carnegie-Mellon University for fourteen years, became a mentor and enthusiastic supporter of Dr. DeGiacomo’s work.

Giron urged his friend to write about his seven years with the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), a religious order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a sixteenth century Spanish priest. Dr. DeGiacomo soon began writing his first play, In All Things. He chose the title because the “hallmark of Ignatian spirituality is finding God in all things.”

Saint Ignatius is known to theatre practitioners because of his Spiritual Exercises, a collection of meditations and mental exercises intended to deepen one’s relationship with God. The “composition of place” exercise provided a model for Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “magic if” and other exercises.

In 1998, Dr. DeGiacomo left Mount Aloysius College to teach English and Theatre at Berea College in Berea, KY. The chair of Berea’s Theatre Department, Guild member Shan Ayers, credits Dr. DeGiacomo with “regenerating the college’s playwriting program.” He was popular with students and increased visibility of student plays when he arranged for Arthur Giron to teach his Grandparents Project as a visiting artist.

After eight years at Berea, Dr. DeGiacomo left to become a priest. He earned his Master of Divinity at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, WI, and was ordained in 2008 in Lexington, KY, when he was 58 years old.

Now “Father Al,” he had two posts in Lexington before moving to Harrodsburg: vicar at Cathedral of Christ the King for a year and pastor at the Newman Center at the University of Kentucky for six years.

Father Al has written seven plays, all of which have religious themes and deal with historic figures, including the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Jesuit priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. For more information about his plays, email him at adegiacomo@cdlex.org.

ngallclayton@dramatistsguild.com

Reverend Albert J. DeGiacomo

@dramatistsguild @joshbhartwell

As playwrights, we really can’t get too much exposure. Is it not one of our biggest struggles? How can my work be seen? Who will champion this play? Thankfully, now Colorado’s own Vintage Theatre—located in the Aurora Arts District—is taking measures to be one of those champions. Yes, to present new work and give local writers that exposure we need.  

A classy little theatre company that was formed as a group of friends were sipping martinis, Vintage has presented both classic and newer plays for nearly fifteen years. Craig Bond, co-founder and one of those mentioned martini-sippers is looking forward to Vintage’s New Play Festival in August of 2017.  

 "We do believe in newer work and in Colorado-based playwrights,“ Bond said. "The festival will give Vintage a chance to read through several works and see if there is a way for new work to be presented.”

 Colorado playwrights are being encouraged to submit—in PDF format—a one-page cover letter (with synopsis, cast size, and potential technical requirements), a bio or resume, and the development history of the play by May 1, 2017.

 Spearheading this project is Vintage Board Member Lorraine Scott, who has co-produced three similar conferences at other venues. Scott has attracted up to 25 directors and 150 actors for each conference. Scott produced stage readings with the Rocky Mountain Theatre Association, and continues to produce and direct ten minute plays for One Night Stand. But this August will be the first year with Vintage’s new festival.

“The idea has been in the works for about a year,” Scott said. “Since it is so early in the stages, I’m not sure how it will be different—other than to offer the playwright the gift of discovering what works and what doesn’t … There are many wonderful, talented playwrights here in Colorado and we wish to provide the playwrights with an opportunity to get feedback from the audience. There will be a talkback afterwards with author and cast.”

For the selection process, three evaluators from Vintage’s board and from throughout the theatre community will read each script. A different group of evaluators will select the final scripts, culminating in the Festival, which will take place at the theatre August 4-13, 2017. The main purpose of the festival is to bring in new work and see how audiences respond to the words and themes presented, helping the playwrights advance and improve their stories.

So what types of plays will those martini-sippers at Vintage pay close attention to?

“We are always looking for full-length dramatic or comedic plays that are smaller in cast size,” Bond said. “One or two scenic locations … We like themes that feature diverse casting and can speak to multiple generations … so that the attendees can experience works that make them ponder their own beliefs.”

For more information, visit Vintage’s web site at http://www.vintagetheatre.com/

cdonaghy@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @BrentEnglar

I began writing this column on November 9, 2016, for two reasons. The more important—selfishly—I’ll save for last. The other reason is that Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States.

I have no idea how many Trump supporters are in my region. Indeed, one of the most unsettling things about this election is how it has revealed the opacity of my personal bubble. How certain I was we’d be celebrating the future instead of fearing it. But I don’t want to fear the future. I want to make it better, using the skills I know best. To that end, I’ve asked my fellow members for ideas on how to use our artistry, our craft, to advance social justice and, if possible, narrow the rifts between us. Below is a sampling; you can read the complete list at www.brentenglar.com. And please, keep sending them. I will post as I receive them.

Amy Bernstein: The new reality is an opportunity to ramp up artistic collaborations to create multimedia works that draw on and reflect social, political, and psychological disruption. I’m envisioning artists and writers coming together like an ad-hoc Works Progress Administration. This also means doing more place-based art—work that is performed in nontraditional venues and open to nontraditional audiences.

Rich Espey: I decided several years ago that ALL my plays would be about social justice, and particularly about racial justice. As a white person fiercely determined to participate in the dismantling of institutionalized racism, I am also keenly aware of the perspective I lack, and I am trying to be thoughtful about writing from a place of authenticity.

D. W. Gregory: If our democracy is to survive, we must all commit fully to this principle: There are such things as facts, and they can be verified. We each need to make a personal commitment to finding them out, vetting what we read and hear, refusing to jump to conclusions, calmly weighing the evidence. One way to go about it is to work subversively, to draw from the past in order to reflect on our present. The parable and the analogy have never been more potent. Theatre has the power to bring these stories forward, not to comfort the audience but to energize it.

Murray Horwitz: I’ve noticed some theaters popping up (Forum Theatre in Silver Spring is an example) that are trying to do shows very immediately responsive to current events and headlines. The theatrical form of “living newspaper” has never really gone away, but maybe it’s time to redouble our efforts in that regard. And don’t forget theater for young audiences. If we’re out to change the nation and the world, we have to start with the very young.

Juanita Rockwell: I wonder if a Write-in could be useful? No other goal but being together in a supportive space and writing for a couple of hours. Also, I saw a terrific posting by a local director calling for training sessions in Augusto Boal’s techniques for people to use for interventions. [I emailed the director, Lola Pierson, who explained, “It’s hard to stand up if you haven’t had practice, and that’s something that theatre makers could provide. One example would be having participants practice intervening in situations where someone is behaving unkindly toward a person from a traditionally marginalized group.”]

Jerry Slaff: We have to protect each other and watch out for each other more closely now, but we also need to join hands…and laugh. Loudly. Not satire, not sarcasm, but big otherworldly laughs.

Rosemary Frisino Toohey: We are fortunate to be members of the arts community, the crowd that thinks outside the box, but I’m not quite sure how my theatre pieces can advance social justice—although I’m open to ideas. Meanwhile, I’ve signed up to volunteer at Esperanza Center in Fells Point because I have heard that many immigrants are filled with anxiety right now … for obvious reasons.

As for me (Brent again), I have been in conversations to begin a Writing Wrongs program in Baltimore. (Faye Sholiton, former DG rep for Northern Ohio, wrote about this initiative in the March/April 2014 issue of The Dramatist.) Stay tuned for more information.

Ah yes, my other reason for writing this column now, when it’s not due for another month. I expect to be blissfully busy by then. On December 22, my wife, Sarah, is due to give birth to our first child: Beatrix Rae Englar-Green. This column, these next four years and beyond, are for her.

benglar@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild

If you aren’t yet familiar with the name and work of playwright Allison Gregory, get ready for her brilliance. It’s showing up everywhere. Our Region is fortunate to claim her. She lives and writes in Austin.

Raised in California, Allison claims she took the scenic route to playwright-dom. She began as a dancer in high school and college, doing summer stock musicals at Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, which led to acting roles in LA. But it was while doing a play at Denver Center, it hit her: not all playwrights were dead. Eventually, while at South Coast Rep (SCR), she took a playwriting workshop because all the acting workshops were full. That first play Allison wrote won her an award and a commission from SCR. Allison acknowledges her ignited writing powers - musicality, movement, character, relationship - all provided by her dancing and acting background, are “points of heat that fueled my work then and power it now.”

Allison powered through 2016 and 2017 is already booking solid. Highlights include: the National New Play Network (NNPN) Rolling World Premieres of Not Medea, at B Street, Perseverance, and Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Allison feels “that NNPN is a fantastic organization and three productions, one on the heels of another, was simply one of the best opportunities ever to get a play right.” But there’s much more…

Her Junie B. Is Not A Crook premiered this year. Allison shared, “It was great fun, but also deeply meaningful to me. I miss Barbara Park (author of the Junie B. Jones series) like crazy. Adapting another of her smart, hilarious, subversive books for the stage gave me boundless joy and pleasure.”

Allison had Ronia, The Robber’s Daughter premiere in Poland. And Lou Tyrrell premiered her Uncertain Terms at ArtGarage in FL, which garnered a Carbonell nomination for Best New Play. There were also development opportunities for Motherland – The New Harmony Project, Orlando Shakespeare’s Playfest, Amphibian Stage Productions, National New Play Network Showcase, Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble In-Depth Series, Lou Tyrrell’s Theatre Lab @Florida Atlantic University workshop, The Road Theatre’s Summer Playwrights Festival.

Allison admits, “The list is long and there are so many generous, passionate people responsible for creating these opportunities and getting me where I am. Gratitude is not a long enough word. It’s more like grateappreciativefulthankitudinalrecognitionable.”

I asked Allison if she’d felt ready or prepared for the current success she’s having. Her response was gold: “Last New Year’s Eve, my husband declared, loudly and with conviction, that 2016 would be The Year of Allison. I was like, ‘Wait! I don’t know if I can make good on that!’ The fear, the false modesty, it is habit and defense, shaped from years of rejection and disregard, and it shows up like a first responder at the scene of an accident. But unlike earlier stages in my life and career, I was ready and I knew it. I knew my work—not just a few cool plays, but a body of work—was singular and relevant and compelling. I knew that I had labored in obscurity longer than most sane people would consider reasonable. I knew those meager years had given me skill and craft and grit, and holy hell I was gonna own it. So I grabbed the mantel and embraced it.”

There’s much to admire about this Sister Playwright who balances her writing with raising two children and sustaining a beautiful marriage (oh, did I mention that Allison’s married to the remarkable Steven Dietz?) and she keeps right on going. She has two new plays (Wild Horses and The Mitford Sisters) in development. Of her process, Allison notices that her best writing comes when she’s trying to entertain herself. And she believes you’ve got to work harder than you think you need to. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint; the avid doing is the thing.

“Lower your expectations and raise your qualifications.” — from Motherland        

srinear@dramatistsguild.com

Ben Chase and Joey Parsons

Allison Gregory by annieworks

Shelley Virginia and Enrique Bravo

@dramatistsguild

Four days after Christmas, Atlanta playwright/director Patricia Henritze sat down in my living room to talk about lying. That wasn’t how I meant to start but she’d piqued my interest with the opening of her 2009 Orlando Prize winner (Creative Non-fiction) Learning to Talk: “My father never uttered three honest words in a row…He taught me to parcel out truth in the smallest increments—grains of truth, layered between lies to confound the listener and make them doubt themselves.”

She and I seemed to share the tendency to hide many aspects of ourselves, not the least in our writing. Henritze admitted that sometimes it was “so painful to put words on paper because it’s so revealing.” Although she kept journals from 1990-2003, she’d thought journaling “was stupid.” Even so, it was a place to “tell the truth” and it allowed her to write and not “have to be good—it was a place to practice writing” until she could finally do it. Writing about her father and their relationship had been a means for opening the gate a little and allowing some personal vulnerability to peek through. “I was very surprised to win that [award] since I’d never written a memoir before…if gave me the idea that maybe being a writer was possible.”  

Describing herself as shyer than “people think,” she has nonetheless worked for several years on a performance project called Proximity with choreographer/theatre artist Nicole Livieratos where she also acted “reluctantly…but I enjoyed it.” Though she says that “being an actor is not for me anymore,” it has added to her directing skills with the Georgia Innocence Project’s piece Life Sentence where she has helped to shape the performance and music elements of what she calls the “masterful storytelling” of Clarence Harrison, who was exonerated by the GIP after eighteen years in prison.

When I asked how politics inform her work, Henritze responds in part that “My social justice work isn’t so much a calling…it’s just part of what interests me in the world…Plus, I love to work with non-actors and non-theater people. It keeps me from being isolated in a world of just artists. And people are interesting.” Not surprisingly, then, her most recent projects focus on the lives of “real” people, both historical and very much still living. Her play The Bitch of Balaclava (2016 O’Neill finalist) illuminates the experiences of Florence Nightingale on the battlefields of the Crimean War. As is often the case, she began with an image, that of Nightingale standing in a sea of injured men. Also true to her tendency to “slide around between forms,” the script is “cross-genre” and “has an ensemble feel to it with monologues, moving around in time, and also has [both] Expressionistic and Realistic scenes.”

Ready to hear about her “living person” project, I was reminded of a comment she’d made earlier about how she finds and chooses working partners. “Usually we find each other, recognize kindred spirits. I guess the biggest thing is to have the same work ethic…[also] a sense of humor is mandatory.” This is especially relevant to the solo play Idi Amin, America and a Bar of Soap that Henritze has written for Derreck Kayongo, who survived a childhood under Amin’s brutal regime, became a refuge in Kenya, and finally immigrated to the U.S. where he is now a citizen and the CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. What is powerful about this piece, says Henritze, is “not the success, but the human element…[it] tells what it’s like to have this childhood, how people survive when terrible things happen… and also provides a reminder of what America can be for a refugee.”

There is so much more to tell about Henritze, including her collaboration on an “extreme” Shakespeare adaptation with only four characters titled Anthony and Cleopatra UNDONE and her work with Hungarian artists to create “Who’s There” for the Budapest Fringe Festival. Plus she has received a Lipkin Playwriting prize, an Alliance Theatre Reiser Award (for Idi Amin), and an Idea Capital Grant among many other honors. But it seems most appropriate to end with the small “reveal,” that if not a writer, Henritze would be a baker. “I used to work at Flying Biscuit café…baking bread, muffins and cakes…I never got tired of watching the dough rise in the early hours of the day.” I asked if that was anything like writing or directing a play. She smiled. “Yeah, when everything comes together—but of course sometimes things just don’t rise.”

pturner@dramatistsguild.com

Playwright Patricia Henritze 

A reading of The Nightingale Rose or The Bitch of Balaclava by Patricia Henritze

Derrick Kayongo in a showcase of Idi Amin, America, and a Bar of Soap by Patricia Henritze

@dramatistsguild

“Curtis was so ugly I had to get drunk to enjoy myself. End up letting this fool knock me up and my Daddy made us get married…when I found out he was cheating after fifteen years, I asked him what took him so long.”—Never Been Home by Shawn Whitsell

Shawn Whitsell describes himself professionally as a playwright, poet, activist, teaching artist, producer, actor, and founder of Destiny Theatre Experience and Focused Dreams Films. He does more in a day than most people do in a month. Maybe it’s because he’s incredibly talented and ambitious. Maybe it’s because he focuses on supporting at-risk kids. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because of a strong woman named Wanda.

Shawn was living in Madisonville, KY, near his grandparents, aunts and uncles when, as a boy, his dad left without much warning. Although his mother was grieving, Wanda concentrated fully on her children. Shawn remembers her unshakable faith and consistent presence in his life. “She was my rock,” he smiles.

Both Shawn’s grandmothers were indelible influences as well. In particular his paternal grandmother, Willie Dee, was a no-nonsense woman who everyone in the neighborhood knew but “nobody wanted to mess with.” Shawn wrote a play called Holidays at Mama Dee’s exploring and combining his maternal and paternal grandmothers into one character. Writing this play helped him understand how Willie Dee intentionally held a sacred space for his father, becoming a conduit in his dad’s absence so Shawn and his siblings would feel their father’s presence even though he lived thousands of miles away. Although both grandmothers are deceased, their imprints remain on Shawn’s writing because he draws from his life, like many playwrights do.

Unlike some playwrights however, Shawn isn’t deterred by rejection because he enjoys producing, directing and acting in his own plays. Additionally, he channels discouraging news into a ten-year plan that includes writing for television, authoring a book, and having a family of his own. If his tomorrow is anything like his today, there’s no doubt he’ll accomplish all that and then some.

Moreover, Shawn says he isn’t intimidated by the amount of work it takes to get what he wants because he genuinely likes staying busy. This may explain his relentless perseverance and how he’s written fourteen full-length plays and numerous short and ten minute ones. It might explain why his work has been seen from New York City to New Orleans and almost everywhere in between. This quality probably also determines how, in addition to writing, he’s able to teach six hours daily at practically elementary school and college in Nashville, volunteer for three outreach programs for young people, teach writing at the men’s prison, mentor a theatre class at Vanderbilt’s psychiatric hospital, and sit on the board of several not-for-profit creative arts programs.

It’s clear he enjoys staying busy. But Shawn’s also very intentional about giving of himself. Shawn learned to be generous from his mom who always opened her home, her cupboards, and her heart to anyone in need. “One time my mom brought home a family of six to live with us because they had nowhere to go. My mom would literally give someone her last dime if they needed it,” he says explaining his passion for compassion.

Yet what’s most important to him is his admiration for and his writing about courageous women. In his play, Un-Sheltered, Shawn exposes the damage women experience after being violently abused and what it takes for them to heal. Shawn has seen up close what it takes for a woman to stand strong and he’s unafraid to write about it.

Shawn’s production company, The Destiny Theatre Experience, reminds him of another woman who’s vital to his life. His company is named after his young daughter, Destiny. Shawn is a present and engaged father, an ambition more important to him than all the rest.

Shawn’s empowered and inspired by women on every side and he’s quick to say he draws his strength from them. Yet he becomes most deeply thoughtful when he speaks of his mother and how she gave him the emotional, spiritual and creative tools to build his extraordinary life. “I would not be doing any of this if she wasn’t for her.”

Shawn Whitsell may be new to the Dramatists Guild but chances are he will fast become an influential one.

For more on Shawn Whitsell check out his Facebook page: The Destiny Theatre Experience.

alandis@dramatistsguild.com

Shawn Whitsell