Writers // Current

BitTorrent May Kill Zombieland Sequel, Writer Claims

Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese was shocked when he discovered more than a million... more

atomiclegion
added this
3 days ago
|
43 comments

Interview with Author Ryan Dawson on his new book for children, “Journey of Oktavius”

Ryan Dawson is the author of a new children’s book titled, “Journey of... more

LeahMcNeirArt
added this
5 days ago
|
0 comments

50 Must-Read Novels from the 20th Century

Literature, as with all forms of creative expression, is a highly subjective art. This... more

eva2
added this
10 days ago
|
0 comments

100 Inspiring, Educational Videos for Writers

You can find inspiration and instruction to help you overcome your biggest obstacles... more

sunnyspeaks
added this
13 days ago
|
0 comments

vonnegutSTYLE

Here's a little pointer for writing enthusiast, by a Master.

quanta
added this
15 days ago
|
2 comments

Signallers Club of Canada - Signals Links

This is a short clip/picture of Colin-Christopher Bonse. The picture was taken on a... more

Gilbert_Schramm
added this
29 days ago
|
2 comments

David Anthony Durham on perceived differences between "literary" and "genre" fiction

This is part of an upcoming interview. "I believe that literary fiction by its... more

booksellergirl
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Turkey condemns Pamuk

Turkey would like to enter in Europe but it's not able to heal the past wounds. So, it... more

bibabiba
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

TriggerSreet Is a Great Place For Writers To Share

Writers and Film Makers that have not heard about TriggerStreet.com really should take... more

slarabee
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Common Sense Intro

This is something you can think about

bhstwo
added this
1 month ago
|
1 comment

Websites for writers

Invaluable for writers

franksalot
added this
1 month ago
|
1 comment

Does David Mamet still matter?

No. Er, sorry, here's the essay...

"A decade ago, the critic John Heilpern, who recently left his post at the New York Observer, published a collection of theatrical reviews and musings entitled "How Good Is David Mamet Anyway?" In the titular essay, Heilpern concluded: "The dramatist of early superior plays such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross has long since settled for dramatically less. Mr Mamet now merely prefers to provoke." A new play, Race, will make its Broadway debut in November. Mamet has remained typically tight-lipped about its plot, but theatre gossip doyen Michael Riedel has ferreted out a script and called it "Speed-the-Plow in blackface". It apparently concerns two male lawyers – one black, one white – and their female legal assistant, who take on a racially charged rape case.

It would be foolish to argue against Mamet's genius. I first read him at university and I remember feeling amazed and even a little appalled at his dialogue: funny, fast, pitiless, often profane. (I also recall feeling upset that he penned so few roles for women.) Watching my classmates perform scenes from his work proved equally surprising. Mamet's writing was lively on the page, but it was revelatory when spoken aloud – even by student actors. In performance, those rapid, rancid exchanges somehow uncovered a remarkable and unsettling depth of character. Those depths weren't pretty – they were grasping and craven and cruel – but, to my cynical 17-year-old soul, they seemed very true.

Last year, the Village Voice published an essay by Mamet entitled "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'," in which he claimed that he now repudiated his former beliefs that "the government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart". I won't deny Mamet's conversion experience, but if he has ever believed that "people are generally good at heart," it has gone unremarked in his plays. His distrust of human decency remains one of his most distinctive writerly characteristics.

So, people are not good. Here's the question: are Mamet's recent plays? The ones written since Heilpern published his essay do seem dramatically less significant and not even particularly provocative. I will admit to having enjoyed Mamet's adaptation of Harley Granville-Barker's The Voysey Inheritance, but feeling unsatisfied with Boston Marriage, a trifle about gilded-age lesbians.

As for his most recent plays, November and Romance, I read the scripts and elected not to attend. The political satire November is amusing, but shallow and innocuous. Much less funny was the courtroom-set Romance – a melee of gay jokes, Jew jokes, and an elderly ecdysiast. In a damning review, the New York Times depicted the frantic farce as positively soporific.

Perhaps Heilpern and the New York Times will hail Race as a return to form. We shall see. Only one thing's for certain – Mamet himself is unlikely to care (at least publicly). Near the close of Keep Your Pantheon, the troupe's leading actor contemplates his own mortality. Death can't be all bad, he reasons, if it involves a voyage to "that happy land … where there are no more critics".No. Er, sorry, here's the essay... "A decade ago, the critic John Heilpern, who... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Making Movies for SERIOUS PEOPLE

Do you want to make Feature Films? I have made several. This is a group designed... more

Ron_Becks
added this
1 month ago
|
1 comment

Unleashing the Devil in Ms. Cody: A Personalities Interview with Diablo Cody on 'Jennifer's Body'

With “Jennifer’s Body” writer Diablo Cody unleashes the comedy and horror of... more

MediaJor
added this
1 month ago
|
1 comment

Jim Carroll, 1949-2009

The poet, punk rocker and writer passed away in his Manhattan home from a heart attack... more

cwhite
added this
2 months ago
|
17 comments

TURKISH AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS / with: DEEP GOVERNMENT CONNECTIONS:

. Former FBI Language Specialist Sibel Edmonds finally gets to testify under oath,... more

gerardange
added this
3 months ago
|
5 comments

In Search Of New Playwrights' Theatre's Old Scripts

"Harry M. Bagdasian hopes memories are long and attics full among theater folk in Washington and beyond. He's on the hunt for scripts of plays that premiered in the 1970s and '80s at the long-defunct New Playwrights' Theatre in Washington, which, as a determined 23-year-old, he co-founded.

He remembers thinking, " 'Wow. No one's doing new plays in Washington, the capital of our country. Why don't we have a theater here working with American playwrights?' We only had about two cents, but we started anyway."

New Playwrights' presented new work on a shoestring from 1972 to 1988, for most of that time in what is now the Church Street Theater. Bagdasian left the company in 1984 "kind of burned out," he says. On his Web site (http://www.hbagdasian.com) he writes, "I left NPT in the incapable hands of a Board of Trustees that eventually let the place go bankrupt."

Some of the scripts he's seeking are: "And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson" by James Leonard Jr.; "Rats," a musical spoof of "Cats," by Tim Grundmann; "Canticle" by Michael Champagne and William Penn, based on Dante's "Inferno"; and a 45-minute musical "Hamlet!," which featured a very young J. Fred Shiffman, now a busy Washington actor.

Perusal of Bagdasian's Web site shows youthful shots of such soon-to-be Washington theater luminaries as Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, and Fred Strother, another busy actor. Stage and film actress Marcia Gay Harden worked there, as did Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, and James C. Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop. (Lloyd Rose, who was chief drama critic at The Washington Post, was New Playwrights' dramaturge.) A play by Washington-based writer Ernest Joselovitz, "Hagar's Children," was picked up by the Public Theater's Joe Papp and produced off-Broadway in 1977.

Aside from nostalgia, Bagdasian has other reasons to create a formal archive of his New Playwrights' treasures. "Being the eternal optimist, I would like to see some of this material rediscovered and revisited by this new generation of producers and artistic directors, because there's a lot of fun material. There's a lot of engaging drama that did not get published and is worth rediscovery," he says.""Harry M. Bagdasian hopes memories are long and attics full among theater folk in... more