Thursday, June 24, 2010

Meet your 2010 Festival Playwrights, week five! Meet local playwright Elizabeth Gjelten!

Each week we will be sharing an interview with a playwright featured in this year's 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. PF sat down with SF-based playwright Elizabeth Gjelten, who will be developing her play Hunter’s Point in the Festival on Saturday, July 24 and Saturday, July 31.

1.   How long have you been writing for the theatre?  What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

I started as a solo writer and performer about 20 years ago. After years of writing poetry in my room, it was the love of being on stage that got me going -- until I didn't need that impetus anymore, and found myself wanting to sit back and watch actors make discoveries in the words that came through me.

2.   What inspired the creation of your play, Hunter's Point?  Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

First it was a voice that came to me in some freewriting. I knew who she was as soon as she appeared, but it took several tries and dead-ends before I found the form for her story. The play also came from my feelings of helplessness and guilt in the face of a loved one who lived on the streets for many years, as well as my own struggles with my unruly mind.

3.   What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?
I'm mostly hoping to work with some structural questions I have about the play -- I want to simplify and pare it down.

4.   After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

See this puppy into production next spring. And work on two other plays that have been germinating and growing.

5.   Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Gertrude Stein, Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights
Brecht, Mother Courage
Suzan Lori-Parks, Death of the Last Black Man...
Caryl Churchill, Far Away
Tony Kushner, Angels In America
 
For more information on Elizabeth Gjelten and Hunter’s Point, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/

The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Meet Your 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week Four! Hello, SHEILA CALLAGHAN

Each week we will be sharing an interview with a playwright featured in this year's 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. We're thrilled to invite back Sheila Callaghan, whose play Lascivious Something finished its run in New York on June 6th.  This summer, we present her new play Port Out, Starboard Home.

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

Been writing plays for 15 years. There was no spark for me really-- I loved making theatre and loved writing, and couldn't see a future without both in my life.

2. What inspired the creation of your play Port Out, Starboard Home? Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

foolsFURY went on a three day cruise and brought back material for me! I've been sculpting text based on their experiences and improv sessions with the gang since then.


3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

I hope to have a text in decent shape and a cohesive performance vocabulary for when we go into production in the fall.


4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

I'm still in the writer's room for my TV show, so I'm going back to that.


5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Erik Ehn, Beginner
Edward Albee, The Zoo Story
Caryl Churchill, Mad Forest
Suzan Lori-Parks, Imperceptibilities of the Third Kingdom
Sam Beckett, Waiting For Godot

For more information on Sheila Callaghan and the play, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/
The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Meet Our 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week Three!: Say hello to....Cory Hinkle


Cory Hinkle, a Brown MFA graduate, is the author of Ciper, Little Eyes, Phosphorescence, and SadGrrl13.  We were blown away by the In the Rough reading The Killing of Michael X, a New Film by Celia Wallace, and are thrilled to be developing this exciting piece even further in the Festival this summer.


1.  How long have you been writing for the theatre?  What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

I’ve been writing for about 9 years.  At first I wanted to be an actor, but I hated the actor’s life (I liked acting, but not headshots, auditions and all the other stuff).  While I spent a couple of years becoming disillusioned with all that, I was writing a scene or a monologue here and there, but didn’t take it seriously until I finished my first full-length.  As soon as I finished that first play, I knew it was what I wanted to do – even before I heard it aloud.  For me, the creative spark has always been people – the way they talk, interact and why they do what they do and I think my acting background still comes through in my writing – in terms of the language and the richness of the characters.

2.   What inspired the creation of your play, The Killing of Michael X: A New Film by Celia Wallace?  Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

I wanted to explore the subject of grief and what it means to lose someone close to you, but I didn’t want to deal directly with my own personal experience, which would have been too difficult.  So, the character of Celia Wallace came to me.  She’s a young Midwestern girl obsessed with the loss of her brother and in love with the movies he shared with her before he died. I’ve always been a movie fanatic. When I was a teenager I did my own survey of old movies with my own brother – we watched noirs and French New Wave and the great American films from the seventies.  That personal experience was the real inspiration for the character.

The play came to me quickly.  I wrote the first half at MacDowell in about two weeks and I finished it six months later in two more weeks.  The main character and her experience really popped for me, probably because of the emotional connection I have to her.

3.   What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

The play is at different times fantasy, a film and a dream.  Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all three, so I want to make sure I clarify all of that. Also, I want to keep working on the end.  It’s always that way though, isn’t it?  Either the end or the beginning needs more work.

4.   After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

A week after BAPF I’m going up to Northern Minnesota to the Tofte Lake Center to create a new show with a group of collaborators. We received a grant from the Jerome foundation to create a new theater piece based on the real-life story of the kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa.  It’s going to be a fantastic process building a play from the very beginning with everyone in the room – director (Jeremy Wilhelm), two writers and three of the best actors in the Twin Cities.

And this coming season, my play Little Eyes will be produced in a Workhaus Collective production at the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio.  We’ve assembled a great cast of actors some of whom have been workshopping the play at the Playwrights’ Center for a couple of years now, so that’s very exciting.

5.   Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, American Notes, Godot, Aunt Dan and Lemon.


For more information on Cory Hinkle and the play, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: www.playwrightsfoundation.org


The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Meet Our 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week Two!: JEANNE DRENNAN



We're thrilled to welcome to San Francisco this summer Pittsburgh-based playwright Jeanne Drennan, whose play Atlas of Longing will be developed as part of the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. More about Jeanne...

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

I've been doing this for about twenty years, if we don't count the plays written, produced, and directed by me for the neighborhood when I was about 10 or 11. An 8th-grade production of "HMS Pinafore," which I saw sitting on my father's shoulders when I was about 4, first drew me to the theatre. I can still see Little Buttercup's yellow gown and bonnet. But there's no one "creative spark" for me, just a need to tap into the stories in my head.


2. What inspired the creation of your play, Atlas of Longing. Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

The immediate impulse came from a border crossing, a return to the US from Canada. The play ultimately took a very different trajectory and I'm not sure why. Characters and lines of development come to me largely unbidden and I have to pursue them, but I know they owe their existence to my being somewhat addicted to "The Economist," which has opened up new worlds for me. Ultimately, I'm sure I'll get back to that border crossing, but it will be a different play.

3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

I'm always hoping for that "Aha!" moment when the silver bullet that will make everything come right in the play presents itself. In reality, discoveries tend to be small but sometimes far-reaching. What they'll be, I don't know yet, but I'm hoping for lots of them.

4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

Composer David Berlin and I are aimed toward a workshop this fall of our new musical, "Dear Boy." Everyone should please say a prayer that the funding comes through.

5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

In no particular order:

Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard"
August Wilson, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone"
Tom Stoppard, "Arcadia"
Caryl Churchill, "Mad Forest"
Shakespeare, "King Lear"

Bio:
Jeanne Drennan is inordinately happy to be in the Bay Area working on Atlas of Longing. Other full-length plays include Asparagus, Limoges, Medea at Athens, Wrong Side Out, 12 Dogs, and Waxworks, mostly produced and/or developed in the east. Besides Atlas, current projects include a chamber musical with composer David Berlin, called Dear Boy, and the more embryonic Left Luggage which she recently spent time researching in central Europe. She has been the grateful recipient of seven fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in support of her writing and also has a sideline in teaching and dramaturgy for young playwrights through City Theatre in Pittsburgh, her adopted hometown.

For more information on Jeanne Drennan and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: www.playwrightsfoundation.org


The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.