In early December, I'll be participating in the Out of the Hat Festival, produced by my good friends over at The Workshop Theater! The way it works is pretty epic: the company selects 31 playwrights and pairs them each with two actors. Based on a prompt (this year, it's the word "fire"), the playwrights create a new short play for their respective performers, and the whole shebang goes up over two weeks.
I was paired with the wonderful Karen Marulanda and Michael Ortiz, both of the Fled Collective and elsewhere. We've got a spooky and (we hope!) darkly funny playlet coming your way called "Autumn Mix". It goes up at AMT Theater (354 W 45th St), alongside four other short plays. You can check out all of the plays on various nights between November 28th and December 7th. The shows are all at 7 p.m. Get your tickets here for just $10 and learn more about the other artists involved. It's always great to collaborate with The Workshop Theater, and I appreciate them having me. Come check us out!
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After four years of development and workshops at various theatre companies, my play The Amphibians is finally getting its world premiere at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah!
I've never been to Utah, and am lucky enough to fly out there for the show and teach a playwriting workshop to students during tech week. We're already in production meetings, and it looks like the creative team is truly cooking up something very special and visually thrilling. The show runs February 23rd through March 2nd. Click here for more info, and stay tuned for ticket links and other exciting announcements. Utah, I'll see you soon! River Watchers—our immersive play on a moving 14-person canoe in Newtown Creek—was one of the most rewarding artistic experiences of my life. We enjoyed a completely sold-out run in October, and will hopefully remount it sometime in the future. In the meantime, here's some of the press we got, as well as some incredible action shots from show photographer Kate Baranovskaya. Enjoy! – Review in Greenpointers – Feature in All Arts – Feature in Broadway World – Feature in The New York Post I'm beyond excited to announce that I was chosen to be part of The Civilians' R&D Group! Now in its 13th year, the R&D Group puts together a cohort of writers, composers, and directors to each work on a project that relies on creative investigation. I'll be toiling away at my play The Tusk Hunters, which I've previously developed through The Workshop Theater, UT Austin, and elsewhere. Here's a synopsis:
Two men in the Alaskan tundra search for woolly mammoth tusks as an alternative to elephant ivory. But their most recent discovery causes their employer to pivot from the ivory trade to a project straight out of science fiction as a means of combatting climate change. Inspired by the real-life founding of Colossal Biosciences, The Tusk Hunters explores the morality of de-extinction and the toll that scientifically revolutionary ideas take on those who execute them. I've been chipping away at The Tusk Hunters for quite some time, and I'm hoping to come out of the R&D Group next year with a new research-driven draft that compellingly presents the play's scientific ideas while still being narratively satisfying. We'll all be presenting our work in a public reading series called Findings in June, so keep a lookout for that. You can read more about all the brilliant artists in the R&D Group on the Civilians website, as well as in Playbill and American Theatre. Thanks so much to The Civilians for taking a chance on me and my work. Can't wait to get started!
This week, Dina Vovsi, Jens Rasmussen, and I guested on Stage Whisper, a podcast dedicated to showcasing all things theatre in New York! We spoke in detail about the creation of our new play on the water, River Watchers, in addition to sharing theatre memories and some of our favorite practitioners working in the field today.
Check out the episode below in advance of our opening this week (we're very sold out, but you can sign up for the waitlist here). Big thanks to host Andrew Cortes for such a warm and inviting conversation, and for supporting new work! I'm honored to be a Finalist in The Next Forever, an initiative created by The Civilians and Princeton University's High Meadows Environmental Institute to create dramatic works that address the climate crisis. Director/co-creator Dina Vovsi and I made it to the final round with River Watchers (called Canoe Play back when she pitched it), which you can of course check out this week through its production at Newtown Creek with The Motor Company.
My play about woolly mammoths and de-extinction, The Tusk Hunters, also advanced as a Semi-Finalist. I'll have some more exciting news to share about that project very soon. Thanks so much to The Civilians and Princeton for considering my work, and huge congrats to Next Forever winners AriDy Nox and Kareem Fahmy! That's right! During the last two weekends in October, you can venture to the waterfront of Newtown Creek in Greenpoint for River Watchers, a new play on a boat that I co-created with director Dina Vovsi and adventurer/actor Jens Rasmussen. It also features the wonderful Amanda Bruton, with stage management and other roles from Emma Sonricker.
Set in a 29-foot Langley canoe, River Watchers sends 14 audience members on a mission to rehabilitate the creek after more than a century of constant pollution. Keep a lookout for marine life, and be ready to paddle and persevere. River Watchers is produced by The Motor Company, with additional support from the Brooklyn Arts Council, North Brooklyn Community Boathouse, and The Puffin Foundation. Our run is currently sold out, but you can reserve a spot on our waitlist. I'm so grateful to be part of this unique project and can't wait for everyone to see what we've come up with. Check out the evocative and ethereal poster design below from Lauren Matrka. See you on the water!
It's October, which means it's officially the start of Spooky Season (though to be fair, I start celebrating in September). And what better way to kick things off than with some book/film/TV coverage on a handful of the best horror podcasts around?
You can of course find me over at the Bloody Disgusting network for my main gigs--The Losers' Club: A Stephen King Podcast and Halloweenies: A Horror Franchise Podcast. Some of my colleagues at the former are wrapping up coverage on King's 2010 novella collection, Full Dark, No Stars. And at Halloweenies, we're finishing our season on Child's Play with our upcoming episode on the Chucky TV series and the 2019 remake. But I often guest on other podcasts as well, including Horror 101 with Dr. AC. About a week ago, I sat down with the doctor himself, my good friend and collaborator Darren Callahan, and an esteemed panel featuring horror experts Jon Kitley (or Kitley's Krypt) and fiction writer Eli LaChance. We discussed The Fly (the 1958 original) and its curious sequels Return of the Fly and Curse of the Fly. Check out our discussion at the link below and check out the other pods throughout the month for more exciting episodes! My short play "Duckass" is getting its fifth production, this time at George Washington University down in Washington, D.C.! 'Tis the season for a spooky little playlet, and I really wish I could see what director Conor Doremus and his team are doing with it.
"Duckass" runs as part of the university's Welcome Back One Acts festival, September 28th–30th. Click here for tickets via the school's student theatre program, 14th Grade Players. Big thanks to Conor and GWU for producing my work!
Joel Brown recently had me on his most excellent Halloween podcast Talking Shape, where we had an in-depth discussion about one of my favorite entries in the series, Halloween Ends.
Talking Shape is proving to be one of my favorite horror pods around, with recent guests including Sandy Johnson (the original Judith Myers), Chris Durand (Michael Myers in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later), and Daniel Farrands (screenwriter of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers). Big thanks to Joel for a great conversation. Click here to listen or stream below! |
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