Racey Plays Reading Series Next Up: GOODNESS on 8/15

Our Racey Plays Reading Series has been unbelievably successful so far.
Each reading has had its own unique location, cast of new and old PY actors, and
adoring audience to applaud and share a drink afterwards.

NEXT UP:

We're looking forward to this month's reading of "goodness" by Sean Christopher Lewis.
He has a very impressive bio for such a young guy, and we are proud be able to share this Philly guy with NYC.     SEAN CHRISTOPHER LEWIS’ plays have won the Kennedy Center’s Rosa Parks Award, the 2010 National New Play Network’s Smith Prize, a Barrymore Award from the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, a Central Ohio Critic’s Circle Citation, a National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant, the William Inge Fellowship and more. He served as National New Play Network Emerging Playwright in Residence at Interact Theatre in Philly and as Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Arts Center in Independence, Kansas. He can also be heard on the radio as a contributor to NPR'S This American Life.

goodness, by Sean Christopher Lewis

Alex is a photographer known for taking her subjects back through the tragedies they lived in their past. Prisons and war are her subjects secrets and her style is one of re-living. When she meets a former child soldier now living in Maryland her ethics and safety are brought into question as her artistic style is met with a trauma she may not be ready for... Goodness is a play about what happens when we try to save people.

AUGUST 15th at 7pm

Hourglass Tavern on 46th between 8th and 9th ave

Did we mention that its FREE??!!

Winners Announced: Site/Sight Specific Video Monologue Contest

Here are the Winners of Project Y's Site/Sight Specific Video Monologue Contest....

Project Y's Top 5 Monologues are:

South Ferry, by Bara Swain

Guggenheim, by Catherine Weingarten

No Drama, by Benjamin Adair Murphy

Columbus Circle, by Leah Benavides

The Bird, Mike Mariano

Congratulations to the winners and BIG THANKS to everyone who submitted a monologue.

We will be shooting these five monologues soon, and will let you know
when they are up and running on YouTube.com

Check out last year's Confessionals Videos on the Project Y YouTube page.

Talkback with Racey Plays playwright: Jessica Dickey

We were lucky enough to have a reading of YELLOW by the very fabulous, Jessica Dickey, on June 6th.  The private room at Ryan's Daughters pub was a snug fit for our 25 audience members and 5 cast members.  The reading was the perfect blend of an informal social experience (geez, I had so many awesome friends come!) and theatre, as we heard the most recent version of this beautiful play, I play I fell in love with over a year ago before I had even met Ms. Dickey....

I caught up with Jessica to touch base on the reading and all things YELLOW and JD:

MB:  What stage are you in the writing process of YELLOW?  Is this place in the process familiar territory for you? 

JD:  YELLOW is an interesting play for me.  It's taught me so many lessons already!  It's affirmed for me that each play really is a new land, and I have to begin my work in each one with the confidence that I've explored new lands before, but WITHOUT the assumption that that necessarily means that this land will be the same process as the others.  Does that make sense?  It's like I'm beginning to understand that all I can do is trust that I've hewn a sensitive compass within myself-- to find the North of the story and the characters-- and the rest I have to just take as it comes.  

Which is a complicated, abstract way of saying that YELLOW is a very challenging piece for me because of its narrative structure and the personal nature of the subject.  Right now I feel very lost in the woods-- lol!  But I'm trying to stay in the spirit of adventure and enjoy the trek.  

MB:  What if anything surprised you in the reading - either worked or didn't work?

JD:  I was very surprised and pleased that the audience and the actors found so much humor in the play.  I thought it was pretty funny (in my head), but I was really delighted to discover it's so.  I was also struck with how obvious something is out loud.  I mean, I know that to be true when I'm reading something as an actor-- you can usually sniff out "overtelling" in the writing, if you know what I mean... But as the playwright, it's hard to trust that what you're trying to connect for the audience will automatically be connected by them.  Theatre audiences of 2011 have many centuries of theatre under our belts!  We know what's happening as soon as you give us a clue, which is both a blessing and a curse.  I love the way THE AMISH PROJECT zooms forward and just trusts the audience to keep up (and they do!  In spades!), and I'd like to find that same subtlety and clarity with YELLOW.  

MB:  You're also an actor and theatre artiste in other realms than writing - What's up next for you on any and all fronts?

JD:  Well speaking of AMISH-- this week I go to Amsterdam to perform THE AMISH PROJECT at a Peace and Reconciliation conference there.  I won't be doing the entire production, it'll be more like concert readings or something, and then there will be a lot of talkbacks with community leaders in the Mennonite/Amish world.  It should be extremely interesting and I am really honored to be included.  Then I'm doing a workshop (as an actor) of Epic Theatre Co's collaborative piece called WATER, directed by Daniella Topol and written by Sheila Calaghan.  And in August Rattlestick will be reading my new play CHARLES IVES TAKE ME HOME in their Fucking Great Plays Series.  And around all that I'll just be auditioning and rewriting and trying to enjoy the summer and my friends and family.  :)

MB:  What  is the next step for YELLOW?

JD:  This recent Project Y reading with Michole was probably the most useful for me in terms of YELLOW's evolution.  I've had readings of YELLOW before, but it was my first time hearing the play with an audience, and Michole and I had a very clear, helpful conversation about it afterward; the combination has made me feel that I have a plan for two drafts I'd like to do next with YELLOW... I'd like to explore two different structures for the play, as I think I've discovered that the play is perhaps floating between two structural ideas, just to see what works and what doesn't.  Then I have to make some decisions about what story I am most trying to tell and which structure will tell that story most effectively!  That may have been too much information-- maybe I should have just said "Rewrites"!  :)  But clearly I have a shit-ton of work to do on YELLOW!  :)  But I do feel heartened by the reading and I'm looking forward to it.  Huge thanks to Michole and Project Y for their consistent fun-loving support and honesty.

MB:  Huge Thanks right back at you, Jessica!  Project Y is excited to support your work and we are honored to have been able to have your play as part of our RACEY PLAYS reading series.

Next up......  goodness, by Sean Christopher Llewis (Killadelphia)

Staged Reading of Yellow by Jessica Dickey

Yellow, written by Jessica Dickey, is the story of Anna, a young American woman who befriends Ylbere, a young Muslim man who recently survived the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Set against The Yellow Wallpaper, the Victorian short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yellow is an exploration of intimacy and violence.

This play will be presented as part of our Racey Plays Reading Series. Directed by Michole Biancosino, this reading features the fine work of Megan Byrne, Jessica Rothenberg, Josh Barrett, and Alfredo Narciso.

Looking forward to sharing this amazing play with you.  

RSVP on our Facebook Fan page.  

See you there!

Announcing: 2nd Annual Video Monologue Contest

Sight/Site Specific Video Monologues:  NYC

We are looking for 60 second monologues about incredible sights at incredible sites in New York City.

Were you recently chilling on the Great Lawn in Central Park with a friend and ended up witnessing a mugging? 
While waiting on the subway platform for the F train did you get flashed by a woman in a trench coat? 

Were you sipping coffee in a café near the GW Bridge when you looked up to meet your future fiance? Write about it!

We want your 60 second submission about amazing sights at amazing locations – sight/site specific monologues about incredible events at specific spots in NYC.

Your monologue should be:

“Sight specific” – about an event you witnessed/experienced and “site specific” – set in a specific NYC location andaround 60 seconds in length

(hint: that’s way less than a page in length).

Submissions should be sent to michole@projectytheatre.org IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL no later than May 20, 2011.

NO ATTACHMENTS WILL BE OPENED.

We will choose our top 5 choices to be announced on our blog and website June 25, 2011.  The 5 winning monologues will be cast, shot, and fully produced by Project Y and released on our website and YouTube.

Talkback with Racey Plays playwright: Antu Yacob

Mourning Sun by Antu Yacob at ART NY on April 18, 2011

Our April 18th reading of MOURNING SUN was a huge success.
We had a standing-room only crowd of 55 audience at ART NY's Bruce Mitchell Room.
And when the reading was over, nobody wanted to leave - everyone wanted to talk about
the play!  That's exactly what this series is all about.
Thank you to everyone who was able to come out and support this amazing
play and playwright.

Antu and I had a chance to catch up and reflect on the reading. Here's our
online discussion:

MB: What was different/surprising/new in this reading as compared to other readings of the play?

 AY: The difference in this reading in comparison to others I've had was that I really heard the piece because I wasn't in the reading. Through the listening and great acting/directing, I was able to hear the cuts that needed to be made as well as recognize what worked for the story.

MB: Why did you write MOURNING SUN? why is this story important to you as a person/as an artist?

AY:  I wrote Mourning Sun because my sister is a medical student and was fortunate enough to volunteer at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital a few years ago as part of her studies.  The stories she told me of the women she met unsettled and stirred my spirit in a way that altered me forever.  All I could think of was that any one of those girls could have been me.  It incensed me that this thing is 100% preventable. The information my sister shared with me compelled me to further research  fistula and find what customs, what were my own people doing to our own girls and women to create and continually contribute to this epidemic. The script is the result of my research and my way of educating others about what my sisters are going through.

MB: I love love love the way Michael Jackson is so enmeshed in this play - it's the most unique and yet universal thing about the play, I think. Do you love Michael too? Whats your relationship to MJ?

AY: I do love Michael Jackson!!!! My mother cried for a long time when she heard of his passing. His music is so moving, physically and emotionally. When we came to the States, I was 5 years old and I remember him being the only musical artist my mom would let me listen to in the house, he was the first musician I remember listening to. With Mourning Sun I wanted to capture the international phenomenon that he was, still is. I'm not sure if those of us in the States really understand how Michael and his music left a stamp on our planet. I don't think there's a single Ethiopian out there that doesn't love Michael. Ok you get it right, I love Michael LOL.

MB:  What's next for the play? What's your ultimate goal long term for this story?

AY:  I would really like to get this story on its feet, in a theatrical production running in New York, with some of the proceeds donated to the Fistula Foundation.  A long-term goal I have for MOURNING SUN is for it to be turned into a film so that the story can reach even more people.  I think you and I should talk about the theatrical production and see what we can come up with.

Thank you to everyone who was able to come out and support this amazing
play and playwright.  Sign up for our email list to keep informed of the next steps
in MOURNING SUN's development as Antu Yacob tries to get it up and on its
feet in NYC.


MB

Racey Plays Reading Series: Mourning Sun

We are excited to announce Mourning Sun by Antu Yacob to be the second play to be presented as part of our Racey Plays Reading Series.

About the play:

When Biftu, a bright and upbeat girl from the Bahr Dar region of Ethiopia, turns fourteen she suddenly becomes the focus of her mother's ambition. Caught in a tug of war between cultural traditions and her own desires, Biftu dreams about the world beyond village life. "Mourning Sun" unearths the everyday violence lurking under the name "tradition" in Africa.

About the playwright:

Antu Yacob was born in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia and raised from the steep hills of San Francisco to the translucent lakes of Minnesota. She received her MFA in Acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She was last seen on stage as Velma in The Theater Project's production of Crowns. Regional theatre credits include Primary Stages national tour of In the Continuum , Pillsbury House Theatre's The House that Crack Built, A Jew on Ethiopia Street at Mixed Blood Theatre, Pangae World Theatre's No Longer At Ease and The Gilded Six-Bits with Word-for-Word Theater Company. Film & television credits include Law & Order:SVU and Inspiration. She is founder of Shaggae's Song Peforming Arts Collective, an nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and producing new works about international women's issues as well as providing performing arts training to students grades 4-12.

Currently she teaches a song as monologue acting course to high school students at Somerset County Vocational & Technical School in New Jersey. Although writing poetry & short stories have long been a passion of hers, Mourning Sun is Antu's first script.

Join us for a staged reading of this play on Monday, April 18th at 7:30pm in the Bruce Mitchell Room at ART/NY, 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor.

We're looking forward to sharing this new work with you...

Racey Plays follow-up: a chat with Kevin R. Free

Playwright, Actor, and Theatre Artist Extraordinaire:
KEVIN R FREE and I have a post-mortem discussion of his RACEY PLAY reading

"A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People"



In our reading, the stage directions were really important to the audience experience of the play. In thinking of staging the play, do you feel that your stage directions have their own voice?
My stage directions do have their own voice... Thank God. I like to see myself as a "Negro Intellectual," someone who says a lot of things before he gets to a point. I'd like my stage directions to read that way: long-winded often, funny at times, self-important always. I am not sure that any of my plays make sense to the reader without some form of my Negro Intellectual to hold hands and usher the reader to the danger (or comedy) of the next scene. I think it's my way of saying, "I'm only angry and edgy in my plays; I'm more charming in real life. Read on (bitches)." I was happy to have David Carl read the stage directions and shocked and delighted that he became such a funny part of the reading.

The main character in "A Raisin in the Salad: BPFWP" is KevinRFree. I know that I was excited to have the REAL Kevin R Free play the role. Moving forward, do you want to play yourself in the play?

I don't think I want to play myself in this play (unless, of course, it is a requirement of the theatre who produces it). The play is about a specific moment in my career and I felt at the reading that I was tied to what I wrote, when I really wanted to say other things. Hmm. Now that I am writing this, I suppose if I had more rehearsal time and were directed by someone else, I would have found a way to make it work - even write newer material for the Kevin R. Free character. There's also a moment in the show - "Black Plays FOUR White People" - in which Kevin R Free reveals the (very bad) beginnings of a solo show. That scene was really hard for me to play straight, without giving a wink and a nod about how I know how bad it is... Maybe that's a good reason for me to play myself - because I'd be playing myself in the past, playing the me who doesn't really see his own humanity in the same moments that others see it. I have colleagues who tell me that I MUST play myself. Perhaps they want to see the guts & gore associated with this play firsthand. Hmmm. I'm still thinking about it.

Although since this reading, I have FINALLY seen "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" by the New York Neo-Futurists, this reading was my first introduction to seeing that kind of work done.
Does the play work as a neo-futurist piece?

It DOES make sense as a neo-futurist piece, but a neo-futurist would have to direct it. I think it could either way. One of the facets of neo-futurism that most excites me is that, as performers, we don't have to "get" why we do the things we do in our plays. If someone gives us a task, we have to do it. The task gives us our objectives. Emotions are organic, because they are real - we react to how it feels to do the task, or whether we succeed or fail to do the task. Further, we acknowledge that we cannot SEE what a scene looks like, so we trust that while we are doing the scene, doing our tasks, that the audience is "getting" what we often do not. It's kind of freeing as a performer not to have to do anything more than what our director tells us. It is to me, at least. I don't think that actors are robots, but I think - at least with this play - what we do can be simplified.

As part of the rewriting process, how do you streamline the action of the play?

I cut a couple of scenes and combined a couple of others, and I couldn't be happier about it. There's one more moment I'd like to add for now, and I think the play is now short enough for me to add it. I think the play needs a short moment to acknowledge the struggles of other people of color. I won't go into what I think will happen, but it will definitely have an edge (and add to the number of people in the cast for that moment).


Thanks so much, Kevin, for being the first playwright to kickoff this series
for Project Y!

MB

Racey Plays Reading Series Kick Off! A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People by Kevin R. Free

We are excited to kick off our Racey Plays Reading Series with A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People written by the illustrious Kevin R. Free.

A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People is a dangerous comedy that looks at popular culture and artistic and racial marginalization. In 20 short parodies of plays, films, and various pop culture events, A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People, tells the story of one artist who, dogged by his conscience, is ready to leave behind his life’s work.

Kevin R. Free, the creator of Black Plays for White People, wants OUT. He announces to his adoring public that he will move on to creating work that is more in line with his sociopolitical beliefs. But his creations – Whitelady, Blackboy, Blackgirl, Whiteboy, Whitegirl (the stars of his Black Plays for White People) – frightened that they may never again see the lights of the stage, revolt. They perform the roles they were meant to play, taking the words already written for them to create new plays, thus trapping Kevin R. Free in his own artistic identity prison.

Why do a reading series about Racey Plays you might ask?

The idea for the "Racey Plays" reading series comes from my own interest in and fascination with race and racism - and more specifically how race effects the way we see other people and ourselves.

My world got shaken up the first time I traveled to India with my boyfriend to meet his family and travel. It was the most foreign sensation to be looked at as foreign. Everywhere I went, people stared at me. In the streets, beggars and merchants swarmed around me. That's normal. I was obviously a tourist and that's who gets goods hawked to them. But I got more attention that just for being a tourist. I was stared at by EVERYONE. EVERYWHERE. I had never felt all those eyes on me before. Mostly they were looks of interest, but it still felt so strange to be looked at because I was so glaringly different. When I mentioned this to my boyfriend, he laughed and said - more or less - "Welcome to my world! That's what its like for me every day at home. This is the only time I'm not stared at like that." That really floored me. I mean, to suddenly feel what it is like for someone considered a "minority" in America to be in a room, a street, a city, a country, where you stand out is an intense sensation that makes you become self-aware and self-conscious. This feeling stayed with me forever after that.

Since then, I've had many experiences of feeling "outside" the racial majority. The more countries I experienced, the more I was able to again confront the feeling that race, the color of one's skin, plays a huge role not only in how people perceive an individual, but in how that individual begins to perceive herself. I became keenly interested in race - in trying to figure out all the implications. I even wrote a one woman show about it.

Now I am looking to share the voices of others artists who are trying to explore the intricacies of race and culture in their work. Ultimately, these are plays about identity, about what it means to be a human being living in a skin, a culture, an ethnicity, or a language that just doesn't quite fit the majority mold.

We hope you can join us for the kick off to the series with Kevin's play, it will no doubt be an incredible night of theater.