News
(Summer 2010)
Need To Contact
If you know how to get in touch with Billy Crystal, please let me know by emailing me. I'd like to get Hardball in his hands. Thanks.
Productions/Readings/Awards
Reviews at offoffonline.com
- Two to three reviews per month -- check 'em out!
Upcoming
New To The Site
- A new full-length. In Shea Man, an anthropologist plants the bones of the "missing link" on his family's farm to generate hype and cash. But when the "evidence" falls into the hands of a P.T. Barnum-style promoter who sees gold in gullibility, all goes awry.
- A Flash presentation of my short play Equal. Separate., which can also be found on YouTube.
- A Flash presentation of Macbeth's Children, which can also be found on YouTube.
- Two short plays. In Frankie Is Dead, Gina has to suffer the bullying of Frankie because the adult world will not give her the protection she needs. She has only has one avenue left to end the torment: to wish for his unequivocal death. In Still Small Voice, the Swiss writer Robert Walser comes to the end of his latest literary production.
- A one-act play titled Samaritan. Based on two biblical stories -- the parable of the Samaritan [Luke, chapter 10, verses 25-37] and the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well [John, chapter 4, verses 4-42] -- the play examines answers to the main question of the parable: "And who is my neighbor?"
- A full-length play titled Seven Ladies Macbeth. What happened before and after Lady Macbeth became Lady Macbeth? (Inspired by Howard Barker's Seven Lears.)
- New essays recently posted at Scene4: Outrageous Fortune and Sita Sings The Copyright.
Of Recent Vintage
- An Affair of State, directed by Elfin Vogel, Turtle Shell Production's 8 Minute Madness Festival, April 1 - 18, 2010.
- A reading on March 4, 2010, of A Round of Slaughter for Reverie Production's Wet Ink Festival.
- On October 7, 2009, my full-length play Ain't Ethiopia, received a superb reading in the Multistages 2009 New Works Contest.
- Turtle Shell Productions reprised its successful "Summer Shorties" festival as "Summer Shorts/Fall Briefs," which included my children's play, Brain Drain, from September 25 to October 11, 2009
- Boston Actors Theatre presented my short play Rooted as part of their SLAMBoston Festival, a one-night presentation/competition on Wednesday, September 16, at 7:30 PM at Boston Playwrights' Theatre.
- I had a play, The Alamo, in the last edition of The Metropolitan Playhouse's East Village Chronicles, which ran August 3 - 23, 2009.
- April 24 to May 16, 2009: I worked as the dramaturg on a production of Turtleshell Production's adaptation of Bernard Malamud's The Assistant. The adaptation was done by Martin Zuckerman and directed by Elfin Vogel.
- April 9-11, 2009: Undress Me was presented in a suite of short plays by Love Creek Productions/Brief Acts. It ran at The Parker Theatre at the Algonquin Theatre, 123 East 24th Street (between Park and Lexington).
- March 13, 2009: A reading of Let Down The Rains, as part of the Dramatists Guild "Friday Night Footlights" series, with Kendall Zwillman and Charles Stransky.
- March 2009: A production of Courier Mercury, as part of Turtleshell Production's "Eight-Minute Madness" festival.
- January 2009: A production of Ishamel and Ahab Mon Amour in Melvillepalooza, produced by The Metropolitan Playhouse. Directed by Christian Ely.
- November 10, 2008: A reading of Hardball, directed by Jonathan Adam Ross, with Matt Walters (Henry Kaner), John Blaylock (Rafael Kaner/Barney Peltey), Alyson Reim Friedman (Bayla Kaner), Timothy Case (David Kaner), John Lavelle (Morrie Cohen), Deanna Neil (Rosie Davis), and Wendy Allegaert (Loula Parsons). Melanie Morgan, Stage Manager.
- September 11-28, 2008: A production of Dancing at the Revolution by Thunder + Lightning Ensemble in Chicago. Directed by D.B. Schroeder. Read the reviews.
- June 5 - June 22, 2008: The Famine Church, a new short play, written with Elfin Vogel, in the East Village Chronicles, Vol. 5, produced by The Metropolitan Playhouse. Directed by Melissa Maxwell.
- May 30-June 15, 2008: Premiere of Hardball by Playwrights Forum of Memphis, TN. Directed by Jonathan Adam Ross.
- March 27-April 12, 2008: Biog, a new short play in Buffalo Quickies, produced by Alleyway Theatre.
- January 14-27, 2008: A production of "Making Light: The Found Letters of Hester Prynne", as part of The Metropolitan Playhouse's Hawthornucopia. Directed by Elfin Vogel, with Gail Winar, Nora Brown, Olivia Stephens, and Ghita Tazi. Musical accompaniment by Elfin Vogel.
- April 13-16, 2007: A production by the New Hampshire Theatre Project's Junior Repertory Company of Macbeth's Children.
- January 2007: An adaptation of Mark Twain's The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg as part of the Metropolitan Theatre's "Twainathon."
Columnist
I write a monthly on-line column for the theatre magazine Scene4. (The link will open a new window.) Some noteworthy columns:
Check These Out
- Five full-length screenplays, eight short screenplays -- see the descriptions page.
- Under short plays check out Only The Dead Know Brooklyn, The Adulterous Woman (based on the story by Albert Camus), Location: Highway. Time: Near Dusk (when Adam finds the seventh dead deer on the highway), If Cleanliness (which blends water, St. Brigid, and Emma Goldman into one fluid 20-minute piece), and The Bête Goes Noire (in which Charon the Boatman has found a new occupation.
- Two full-length plays: In The Name Of (about an America just past the present day, when all proposals for terrorist prevention contained in the USA-Patriot Act and Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 have become standard practice), and Esquina (concerning the death of 17-year old Jose Ives).
- Two one-act plays: The First Day of the Seventh Month (in which a man who has given himself six months to live wakes up on the morning of the first day of the seventh month) and Let Down the Rains (where a youngish talk-show therapist falls for a geezer cab driver - really!)
- In the Children's section is No More Prisons. Clique (a.k.a. Cassandra), a young woman, is on a quest. She has been tagging every available surface with the phrase "No More Prisons." On one of her "outings," she is found by QT, a counselor working with at-risk youth, who has been looking for her to ask her questions about what she is doing and to offer her help. Clique's story unfolds the life of her sister, Johanna, imprisoned for a murder she committed at the age of seventeen.
