One of my favourite research-informed theatre pieces is The Laramie Project a docudrama written and performed by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Company in 2000. The Laramie Project tells the story of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old, in Laramie, Wyoming (US). Ten years after the murder, the Tectonic Theatre Company returned to Laramie to conduct new interviews with the subjects from the first play. The interviews focus on how Laramie has changed politically, socially, religiously, educationally and have been used to create a follow-up play to The Laramie Project called The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later.
On Oct. 12, 2009, theatres throughout all 50 of the United States of America presented a reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. My friend and colleague Jeanne Haggard from Spalding University directed the stage reading at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, where she is a doctoral student in the Fine Arts program. In her own blog entries about her experience directing Ten Years Later, Jeanne writes, “It was so humbling to know that we were reading the script at the same time Tectonic was reading it in New York, and [that] other theatres, universities, and high schools were also reading it all across the world. We were connected to the live pre-show feed from NY and saw Glenn Close, Judy Shepard, and Moisés Kaufman. Then everyone did their reading and hooked back up with NY after for the post-show discussion. All in all it was very exciting to be a part of theatre history because Tectonic accomplished something that had never been done in live theatre before. There were 150 locations participating in this event. It still gives me chills thinking about it - we rocked!”
In my next blog I will write about my own research-informed theatre project Zero Tolerance, which will be performed as a rehearsed reading at the University of Toronto in February. More entries on other research-informed theatre projects will appear regularly on my blog site.
All the best,
Tara
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A playwriting group from Michigan (USA)
In my last blog, I began writing on the topic of writing groups. Playwright Ann Eskridge, a colleague of mine from the MFA Playwriting program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky is founding member of a new playwriting group in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. “The Extra-Mile Playwrights Group”. Ann’s group meets regularly and in each session the members of the group take turns reading from the latest work and receive feedback from the rest of the group. The group members take turns facilitating the feedback sessions. Recently, taking its lead from award-winning playwright and Spalding faculty member Sheila Callaghan’s group 13P “The Extra-Mile Playwrights’ Group decided to develop staged readings and performances of their own works. You can follow “The Extra-Mile Playwrights Group” on Facebook.
All the best,
Tara
All the best,
Tara
Monday, November 23, 2009
Generating new writing
One of the most difficult things I face as a playwright is finding time to write each week. Having a submission deadline helps as does having an ongoing writing project to return to or a reading/production deadline. Generating new writing is particularly challenging. Last May, I joined a “writing practice” group in Toronto called The Moving Pen.
The group meets weekly and is run by writer Sharon Singer. Each week, Sharon provides the group with a prompt and we write to the prompt for a designated period of time, keeping our pens moving. Then, without editing our work, we read our writing to one another. Sharon believes that the process of writing, reading, listening, and being heard creates a “powerful alchemy” that supports both the creative process of writing and personal growth. The process allows us to uncover our uncensored inner voices, away from the restrictive demands of ego.
Sometimes my writing produces an interesting phrase or idea or dialogue that I can use in a piece I am currently writing. Sometimes it produces the beginnings of a new story or a new character or tells me something new about a character I’m developing. Sometimes my writing allows me to write out something that is bothering me, freeing up more psychic and emotional space for creative writing. Most importantly, writing each week with my Moving Pen group keeps me writing weekly. No matter what else I’m able to accomplish or not accomplish in a given week, I know that I’ve spent some time that week writing. For more information on Sharon Singer’s Moving Pen groups see www.sharonsinger.ca
In my next blog, I’ll continue writing on the topic of writing groups and tell you about my colleague Ann Eskridge’s playwriting group.
The group meets weekly and is run by writer Sharon Singer. Each week, Sharon provides the group with a prompt and we write to the prompt for a designated period of time, keeping our pens moving. Then, without editing our work, we read our writing to one another. Sharon believes that the process of writing, reading, listening, and being heard creates a “powerful alchemy” that supports both the creative process of writing and personal growth. The process allows us to uncover our uncensored inner voices, away from the restrictive demands of ego.
Sometimes my writing produces an interesting phrase or idea or dialogue that I can use in a piece I am currently writing. Sometimes it produces the beginnings of a new story or a new character or tells me something new about a character I’m developing. Sometimes my writing allows me to write out something that is bothering me, freeing up more psychic and emotional space for creative writing. Most importantly, writing each week with my Moving Pen group keeps me writing weekly. No matter what else I’m able to accomplish or not accomplish in a given week, I know that I’ve spent some time that week writing. For more information on Sharon Singer’s Moving Pen groups see www.sharonsinger.ca
In my next blog, I’ll continue writing on the topic of writing groups and tell you about my colleague Ann Eskridge’s playwriting group.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The International Centre for Women Playwrights: A Resource
While I was at the International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai at the beginning of November (see past blog entries for more information on the conference), I found out about a “virtual centre” for women playwrights that links playwrights to resources, professional development opportunities and publishing opportunities. The virtual centre is called the International Women Playwrights Centre (ICWP) and it can be visited at: www.womenplaywrights.org.
ICWP has members in: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, England, Iran, Israel, Germany, Mongolia, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Romania, Scotland, Serbia & Montenegro, South Africa, Uruguay and the USA. Playwrights interested in finding out what women around the world are writing about can use the link “find a playwright” and access biographies of over 500 women playwrights.
The Centre’s homepage includes information on its 2009 face-to-face retreat in Ohio (the USA); a list of ICWP members’ current productions and a call for submissions for 2010 publication of an anthology entitled "Scenes from a Diverse World” (the deadline for submissions is November 30, 2009).
After reading the call, I submitted three scenes from my play Harriet’s House to the call. “Scenes from a Diverse World" will be published by ICWP in 2010 and marketed to an audience of teenage and adult student actors. Proceeds of the publication will go to ICWP, but feature playwrights will receive a complimentary hard copy of the anthology.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about my writing group, Moving Pen.
All the best,
Tara
ICWP has members in: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, England, Iran, Israel, Germany, Mongolia, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Romania, Scotland, Serbia & Montenegro, South Africa, Uruguay and the USA. Playwrights interested in finding out what women around the world are writing about can use the link “find a playwright” and access biographies of over 500 women playwrights.
The Centre’s homepage includes information on its 2009 face-to-face retreat in Ohio (the USA); a list of ICWP members’ current productions and a call for submissions for 2010 publication of an anthology entitled "Scenes from a Diverse World” (the deadline for submissions is November 30, 2009).
After reading the call, I submitted three scenes from my play Harriet’s House to the call. “Scenes from a Diverse World" will be published by ICWP in 2010 and marketed to an audience of teenage and adult student actors. Proceeds of the publication will go to ICWP, but feature playwrights will receive a complimentary hard copy of the anthology.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about my writing group, Moving Pen.
All the best,
Tara
Monday, November 16, 2009
Producing Harriet’s House: Episode 1
Harriet’s House, a play which Gailey Road plans to produce in June 2010 during the Toronto Pride Festival, is a contemporary drama that tells the story of two internationally adopted girls growing up in a same-sex family.
Synopsis of the play
Harriet has given her 17-year old adopted daughter Luísa permission to return to the orphanage where she spent three years of her childhood so that she can find out what happened to her birth mother. While Luísa works in the orphanage in Bogotá, back in Toronto Harriet comes out as a lesbian and introduces her new partner Marty to her two other daughters: 14-year old Ana who was also adopted from Colombia and 7-year old Clare who is Harriet’s birth daughter. Afraid that Luísa will reject her, Harriet doesn’t tell Luísa about Marty until Luísa returns home from Colombia to go to university. Heartbroken that she still hasn’t found out what happened to her birth mother, and angry that Harriet didn’t tell her about Marty, Luísa returns to Bogotá to continue her search. When Harriet falls seriously ill, however, she decides to take Marty, Ana and Clare to Bogotá to bring Luísa home. A meditation on mothering and daughtering, Harriet’s House examines how a mother and her three daughters negotiate the challenges and politics of international adoption.
Beginnings
Harriet’s House grew out of a series of 10-minute plays I wrote dramatizing moments or snapshots in the lives of two North American families who have adopted children from Colombia. The series is called Global Family and it spans a period of 7 years. The series portrays the challenges the two families face as they negotiate three family worlds: the world of their “Global Family” in North America, the world of the children’s birth country, Colombia, and the gay and lesbian worlds of two family members.
While each of the 10-minute plays explores an interesting moment in the world of transnational adoption in both straight and queer families, I decided that I wanted to explore some the themes that had emerged in the 10-minute play series more deeply than the genre of 10-minute playwriting allows. Using the language of the visual arts, I saw my 10-minute play series as set of sketches that were now able to inform a bigger painting I wanted to create. The sketches gave me a set of characters I could bring to life in a full-length play.
In August 2008, my partner Margot and I spent a week in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was the week after Family Week and there were still lots of same-sex families in town. Lots of these same-sex families were also mixed race families. White American parents were walking up and down Commercial Street with children who were adopted from Central America, Asia, or who were African-American or mixed-raced children. Most parents spoke English with their kids but once, while we were at the public library standing in line waiting for the bathroom, a mother with a daughter adopted from Central America asks us if she could go to the front of the line because it was “an emergency”. When we say yes, the mother spoke to the little girl in Spanish.
Later that night, Jennie McNulty, a lesbian comic from Los Angeles made the following joke: “There are a lot of Asians in Provincetown this week. They’re looking for their children.” The crowd was surprised. A few people laughed quietly, but most were silent, stunned that Jennie would go there. One man yelled out, “Oh, nasty.”
The politics of race and language and sexuality embodied in the mixed-race, same-sex families vacationing in Provincetown that week were alive and in our face. It was at this moment that I decided to write a full-length play about a same-sex, mixed-race family. That play became Harriet’s House.
Workshopping
About a year later, after a first draft of the play was completed, Gailey Road produced a four-day workshop that allowed me to explore the characters, themes and politics of Harriet’s House. The workshop was facilitated by Toronto Director Jocelyn Wickett, stage managed by Gillian Lewis, and archived by Amy Gullage. Collaborating Toronto artists were: Lara Arabian, Clair Alcott, Sochi Fried, Jorie Morrow and Sora Olah.
International feedback
As described in my blog entry on Thursday, November, 12, 2009, I had the opportunity to read several scenes from my play Harriet’s House at the International Women’s Playwright Conference in Mumbai, India. The feedback I received from my colleagues inspired a new set of revisions of the play.
Next steps
The next steps in producing the play involve finding a venue. The story of this step of the process will appear in Producing Harriet’s House: Episode 2.
All the best,
Tara
Synopsis of the play
Harriet has given her 17-year old adopted daughter Luísa permission to return to the orphanage where she spent three years of her childhood so that she can find out what happened to her birth mother. While Luísa works in the orphanage in Bogotá, back in Toronto Harriet comes out as a lesbian and introduces her new partner Marty to her two other daughters: 14-year old Ana who was also adopted from Colombia and 7-year old Clare who is Harriet’s birth daughter. Afraid that Luísa will reject her, Harriet doesn’t tell Luísa about Marty until Luísa returns home from Colombia to go to university. Heartbroken that she still hasn’t found out what happened to her birth mother, and angry that Harriet didn’t tell her about Marty, Luísa returns to Bogotá to continue her search. When Harriet falls seriously ill, however, she decides to take Marty, Ana and Clare to Bogotá to bring Luísa home. A meditation on mothering and daughtering, Harriet’s House examines how a mother and her three daughters negotiate the challenges and politics of international adoption.
Beginnings
Harriet’s House grew out of a series of 10-minute plays I wrote dramatizing moments or snapshots in the lives of two North American families who have adopted children from Colombia. The series is called Global Family and it spans a period of 7 years. The series portrays the challenges the two families face as they negotiate three family worlds: the world of their “Global Family” in North America, the world of the children’s birth country, Colombia, and the gay and lesbian worlds of two family members.
While each of the 10-minute plays explores an interesting moment in the world of transnational adoption in both straight and queer families, I decided that I wanted to explore some the themes that had emerged in the 10-minute play series more deeply than the genre of 10-minute playwriting allows. Using the language of the visual arts, I saw my 10-minute play series as set of sketches that were now able to inform a bigger painting I wanted to create. The sketches gave me a set of characters I could bring to life in a full-length play.
In August 2008, my partner Margot and I spent a week in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was the week after Family Week and there were still lots of same-sex families in town. Lots of these same-sex families were also mixed race families. White American parents were walking up and down Commercial Street with children who were adopted from Central America, Asia, or who were African-American or mixed-raced children. Most parents spoke English with their kids but once, while we were at the public library standing in line waiting for the bathroom, a mother with a daughter adopted from Central America asks us if she could go to the front of the line because it was “an emergency”. When we say yes, the mother spoke to the little girl in Spanish.
Later that night, Jennie McNulty, a lesbian comic from Los Angeles made the following joke: “There are a lot of Asians in Provincetown this week. They’re looking for their children.” The crowd was surprised. A few people laughed quietly, but most were silent, stunned that Jennie would go there. One man yelled out, “Oh, nasty.”
The politics of race and language and sexuality embodied in the mixed-race, same-sex families vacationing in Provincetown that week were alive and in our face. It was at this moment that I decided to write a full-length play about a same-sex, mixed-race family. That play became Harriet’s House.
Workshopping
About a year later, after a first draft of the play was completed, Gailey Road produced a four-day workshop that allowed me to explore the characters, themes and politics of Harriet’s House. The workshop was facilitated by Toronto Director Jocelyn Wickett, stage managed by Gillian Lewis, and archived by Amy Gullage. Collaborating Toronto artists were: Lara Arabian, Clair Alcott, Sochi Fried, Jorie Morrow and Sora Olah.
International feedback
As described in my blog entry on Thursday, November, 12, 2009, I had the opportunity to read several scenes from my play Harriet’s House at the International Women’s Playwright Conference in Mumbai, India. The feedback I received from my colleagues inspired a new set of revisions of the play.
Next steps
The next steps in producing the play involve finding a venue. The story of this step of the process will appear in Producing Harriet’s House: Episode 2.
All the best,
Tara
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Highlights from the International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai
I’ve just returned from the IWP conference in Mumbai, India, where I had the opportunity to read several scenes from my play Harriet’s House. Harriet’s House, which Gailey Road is planning to produce in June 2010, is still a work in progress and the reading in Mumbai gave me the opportunity to solicit feedback from women playwrights working in Norway (Kristin Bjorn), India (Hina Siddiqui), New Zealand (Denise Walsh), Australia (Fiona Wheeler), the United States (Vanessa Adams-Harris), as well as Canada (Beverly Cooper, Marcia Johnson, Gaily Nyoka, Sally Stubbs, Margot Huycke).
Inspired by what I learned about my characters and my story from the feedback I got from reading, I’ve begun revisions of the play and look forward to developing the work further when it goes into rehearsal for its production in June. An on-going, report of my journey of producing Harriet’s House for the Toronto Pride Festival will begin on this blog next week.
Here are some of the highlights I experienced at the IWP Conference in Mumbai:
• Meeting the other Canadian delegates, reading the plays they brought to the conference, and hearing about their latest projects. See the list of the “Productions I’m Following” and the “Plays I’m Reading” for more information on some of the terrific work being done by Canadian women playwrights.
• Meeting other women playwrights who are also running their own theatre companies. I spent several breakfasts talking to Anne Bertram who is the Managing Director of Theatre Unbound in St. Paul, Minnesota (www.theatreunbound.com). I also spent some time during dinner talking to Suzy Messerole, who along with Amir Siddiqui, is running Exposed Brick Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota (www.exposedbricktheatre@yahoo.com).
• Meeting women playwrights from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Phillipines and hearing about the ways that they have integrated their work as playwrights and theatre artists with their activism to improve the lives of women their communities. The panel discussions on “Theatre of Social Change” and “The Pain and Pleasure of Women Directors” were particularly rich.
• Finding out about an organization called the International Centre of Women Playwrights (ICWP) (www.womenplaywrights.org) which is a social and professional network and support group for women playwrights around the world.
• Hearing Katherine Thomson’s keynote entitled “Politics in Theatre” in which she discussed the way she embeds political issues into her plays by focusing on the creation of characters that have freewill and can provide multiple sides of a political arguments. A “dramatist first, and activist second”, Katherine spoke about wanting to write great roles for great actors. “With the right actor, we get more than we can ever imagine.”
In my next posting I will begin the first of an ongoing set of postings on the journey of producing Harriet’s House.
All the best,
Tara
Inspired by what I learned about my characters and my story from the feedback I got from reading, I’ve begun revisions of the play and look forward to developing the work further when it goes into rehearsal for its production in June. An on-going, report of my journey of producing Harriet’s House for the Toronto Pride Festival will begin on this blog next week.
Here are some of the highlights I experienced at the IWP Conference in Mumbai:
• Meeting the other Canadian delegates, reading the plays they brought to the conference, and hearing about their latest projects. See the list of the “Productions I’m Following” and the “Plays I’m Reading” for more information on some of the terrific work being done by Canadian women playwrights.
• Meeting other women playwrights who are also running their own theatre companies. I spent several breakfasts talking to Anne Bertram who is the Managing Director of Theatre Unbound in St. Paul, Minnesota (www.theatreunbound.com). I also spent some time during dinner talking to Suzy Messerole, who along with Amir Siddiqui, is running Exposed Brick Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota (www.exposedbricktheatre@yahoo.com).
• Meeting women playwrights from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Phillipines and hearing about the ways that they have integrated their work as playwrights and theatre artists with their activism to improve the lives of women their communities. The panel discussions on “Theatre of Social Change” and “The Pain and Pleasure of Women Directors” were particularly rich.
• Finding out about an organization called the International Centre of Women Playwrights (ICWP) (www.womenplaywrights.org) which is a social and professional network and support group for women playwrights around the world.
• Hearing Katherine Thomson’s keynote entitled “Politics in Theatre” in which she discussed the way she embeds political issues into her plays by focusing on the creation of characters that have freewill and can provide multiple sides of a political arguments. A “dramatist first, and activist second”, Katherine spoke about wanting to write great roles for great actors. “With the right actor, we get more than we can ever imagine.”
In my next posting I will begin the first of an ongoing set of postings on the journey of producing Harriet’s House.
All the best,
Tara
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