DG National Report: Boston by Mary Conroy
Happy New Year! Feliz Ano Novo! Sehe Bokmanee Bateuse! Gelukkig nieuwjaar! Language is beautiful, donchya think? For those of you (like me) without the capacity for multi-languages, in their respective order, all of the above wish you a Happy New Year in English, Portuguese, Korean, and German.
This New Year offers an eclectic mix of theatre in and around Boston. At the Shubert Theatre, Love Letters by A.R. Gurney will be performed with Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal; at the Huntington, Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play; and at the Stoneham Theatre, the New England premiere of Sorry by Richard Nelson.
If you are looking for something different and fun, put on your radar the New Works Festival at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, MA. The New Works Festival is an enjoyable festival consisting of two full-length plays and fourteen ten-minute short plays. The performances will occur on January 21 & 22 and January 29 & 30. For more information go to: www.firehouse.org
And finally, February 4-28, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents Back the Night by Melinda Lopez, directed by Daniela Varon.
Back the Night - With violence on campus rising to epidemic proportions, Em will have none of it. But when her best friend Cassie gets assaulted, Em makes some unexpected discoveries. Sometimes you do the wrong thing for the right reason.
If you haven’t heard of Melinda Lopez, let me introduce you. Melinda is a prolific writer, actor and educator. She is also a generous mentor. I had the pleasure of asking Melinda a few questions about her journey in writing Back the Night.
MC: What was your process for writing Back the Night?
ML: Totally different that my usual process, which is obsess, research, sweat, dream, panic, write a few good scenes and then agonize. And repeat. Back the Night came all at once in a fury. I had been revisiting an experience from my past for several years now, and then one day, walking the dog, the play just arrived with a bang. I talked into my phone recorder so I wouldn’t forget and then I ran home and put it all down on flashcards. “This happens, then this happens– ” I wrote the actual text of the play over that week. Never has happened before– but it was pretty awesome.
MC: Where did this story originate (a thought, a vision, a question)?
ML: A memory. A question. An unanswered annoying question.
I knew the play was really fast, really really intense, without rest or reflective moments. I knew it felt like a fist to the gut.
MC: What have you learned from writing this play or any play in particular?
ML: This play scares me. So did the last one. So did the one before that.
MC: As an educator, what is the biggest lesson a student of the craft can learn?
ML: The play reveals the form. Not the other way around. Every play is different and you have to listen and learn every single freaking time. All you can do as a student is practice feeling unprepared for the experience. That’s it. It never goes away. Although you do get used to it. A little bit. (a pause) I guess you can also see a lot of plays, read a lot of plays and talk to a lot of playwrights. That’s more proactive, right? And you build up a reserve of knowledge that can help you maintain your faith– that your voice matters. And that no one has ever written the play that you are working on right now.
Melinda Lopez is a playwright, actress, and educator. She is the inaugural playwright-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre Company and a past Huntington Playwriting Fellow. She is among the first cohort to receive three-year-playwright-in-residency grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a “promising new voice in American Theatre.”
Please feel free to contact me at mconroy@dramatistsguild.com or join the Dramatists Guild – Massachusetts page on Facebook where you can post up-to-date information about your work and/or organizations benefitting the playwriting community of New England.
mconroy@dramatistsguild.com