This idea of investment versus result came up again during a conversation with Atlanta-based playwright Vynnie Meli, who was one of those selected from more than 300 applicants to bring her new musical Plagued—A Love Story to the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival. She and composer Casey L. Filiaci watched their script come alive for seven performances at TBG Theater in October. The coveted audience members included prospective producers, artistic directors, and the press. This is a dream come true for any playwright with only one real caveat (other than the realization that in this hyper-collaborative genre, “writing a musical is rewriting a musical”): Meli had to raise $25,000 to pay for production fees. She’s put her money where her mouth is, and now that she’s had a taste of how things can be, she definitely wants more. Fortunately, Plagued got a very positive response from those on both sides of the footlights, so it should just be the beginning for this story of Cinderella and Prince Charming twenty years after the glass slipper incident.

In talking about all of this to a group of fellow playwrights who had been privy to the play during its development, Meli broached the subject of “success.” She’s had professional productions of three of her plays, the first one in NYC in 2003, and she was wondering about what point in a career a playwright could use the “S” word. Margaret Baldwin, with several professional productions of her own (and one scheduled for the 2011 Horizon Theatre season), suggested that each playwright has to “define what success means to you,” as there isn’t necessarily the same marker on every writer’s path or even a consistent marker for anyone. Baldwin mentioned that getting the opening “right” for the play promised to Horizon is going to feel like success for her and that when she despairs about not doing enough, there is a tough-love friend who says, “A production a year for the last five isn’t enough?” Baldwin admitted that she has to fight the urge to discount any work done at (even a stellar) college theatre.

Playwright Ray Fast brought up his recent selection as a resident artist at the famous Hambidge retreat as a personal sign of success. Both his work and his potential were recognized, and “the experience, at least in the eyes of some people, has raised my credibility,” he says. Fast’s investment was the two weeks of precious vacation time he is allowed each year from his day job, and he doesn’t yet know if the “unbelievable amount of writing I got done” will lead anywhere, but he considers it a fair return. With the attention he’s getting lately, I agree. Coming out of this conversation, I remembered that teaching is also an investment and began to fantasize about some former students jumping on a hot tip about this fab new musical.

Pamela Turner
pturner@dramatistsguild.com

With all of the excitement of the DG group hug, I was in the mood to indulge in another fun event. After taking on the huge job of producing Working Title Playwrights’ First Annual 24-Hour Play Project in July, local wonder (playwright, novelist, syndicated columnist) Topher Payne treated sell-out audiences to The Medicine Showdown, co-written with Adam Koplan, and produced by their The Flying Carpet Theatre. This New York and Atlanta-based company bills itself as fusing vaudeville-style entertainment with the nurturing of “new bold voices”. Medicine featured a provocative story of commerce versus public safety set during the 1918 flu epidemic and sandwiched it between the layers of some ferocious tap dancing and darn compelling sales pitches. I’m glad I didn’t wait to catch this out of town.

pturner@dramatistsguild.com

A very nice thing happened on the way to the forum (did I mention you have to be a gladiator to survive Atlanta traffic?). A local DG member wrote to ask that I mention a recent event (March 17) in this column, one, he said, “…that many felt was the premier single theatre and literary event in the country…” He was talking about Fundamental Sounds: The Early Letters of Samuel Beckett, a performance reading hosted by Emory University, that was a capstone to the Beckett Project which began in 1990. The performance script was adapted, arranged, and directed by Atlanta Actor-Director Brenda Bynum, who joined luminaries Edward Albee and Salman Rushdie on stage along with Irish actor and local teacher Robert Shaw-Smith.  The presentation received a standing ovation from the 1000+ audience members, and was colored by comments from Albee and Rushdie, among others, that Beckett had greatly influenced their work. My lovely DG “deep throat” also reminded me that “Atlanta is one of very few cities in the western hemisphere to have produced the entire Beckett canon of plays…over about 25 years…” Bynum has been a major player in this effort, directing or appearing in many of them, and both Push-Push Theatre and 7 Stages Theatre have also been instrumental in making Atlanta a Becket-friendly town. I have to confess that after reveling in the fact that “he reads me”, my initial response to his request was to say that I focused on new plays and emerging playwrights because (my quote) “they (we) struggle mightily for even one small acknowledgment of their work.” Then I realized that we have to celebrate the ones who gave us legs right along with those still at the climbing stage. And if one of my regional members cares enough to ask, well, that’s what I’m here for. Following on the heels of this event, another one also using real-life material is shaping up. Synchronicity Performance Group is updating their exciting collaborative piece Woman + War, and after an in-house run next winter, will be touring the show in two versions, one of which provides a demonstration of how to create such a piece. The play is based on stories collected from “nearly 50 women soldiers, refugees, defense contractors, missionaries, and activists”, and through a “tapestry of text, movement, and striking visuals” explores the unique experiences of women who are touched by war. The project began in 2004, led by Synchronicity Artistic Director Rachel May and choreographer Celeste Miller. 24 multidisciplinary female artists collaborated on the project, including a team of writers who wrote a script out of the interviews and generated performance materials. Commended by former President Jimmy Carter among many others, this project serves as testimony along with the Beckett reading that playwrights and their friends are more powerful than even a hoard of gladiators.

pturner@dramatistsguild.com

Community theatre is often treated by theatre professionals the same way the Hell’s Angels disdain those who trade in their suits for a weekend on the ole’ Harley. But guess what, while we were all busy sending our precious work to the “real” theatres, there was some change taking place beneath our delicately raised nostrils. One deserving example is right here in River City (read Atlanta) in a suburb that in January 2009, officially became the City of Dunwoody. Stage Door Players was founded in 1974 as a Community Improvement Project of the Dunwoody Woman’s Club. Stage Door got its first paid staff member and a permanent home in 1988, when it moved to the North Dekalb Cultural Center. As the current, full-time (read paid) Producing Artistic Director Robert Egizio characterizes it, they have moved gradually from a theatre group performing with volunteer artists to a fully professional company that he still calls “Community,” but in a different sense. That is because the theatre is fully supported and grounded by both residents and business owners in Dunwoody who consider it their own crown jewel. They give money and they attend the shows. (The new mayor just donated his first-year salary—I’m not kidding.) Since Egizio came on board five years ago from a dual life in the corporate world and as a director/choreographer/actor for several local professional theatres, he has made Stage Door Players an organization that pays all its artists, employs full production values, has three paid staff members, and has a full season of plays including several regional premieres. One that is coming up is Mitch Albom’s latest play, And the Winner Is. A recent world premiere, Spreading It Around by well-known Canadian writer Londos D’Arrigo, came about after the playwright contacted the theatre and also agreed to a short residency with the performance team. To sweeten the pot, Egizio has also initiated a program titled “Work in Progress Wednesdays” that presents staged readings of six new plays with the intention of producing one of them each season starting next year. Since this last program began, he has received at least a script a week from playwrights and agents around the nation. Now Egizio is trying to cultivate more local playwrights to submit work. It would seem that some attitudes die hard, but Atlanta writers better get on the stick or they’re only going to see the glow of Stage Door’s distant tailpipe.

pturner@dramatistsguild.com