Hunting & Gathering and Finding "Alice"

There might be folks out there who think Pittsburgh is some kinda wasteland of culture.  They may think of soot and smoke stacks and a city covered in grime and smog, dirty, smelly and grey.  

But they’d be wrong.  Oh, sorely wrong.

Other than the fact that the city has been written up by Forbes as one of the best cities to live in the country, it also has several theaters and museums of note (and for a boy who grew up in Reno which is a city that definitely has a cultural deficit), I surely appreciate it.

Tonight I’ll be heading to Bricolage yet again (I know, but I like their stuff, what can I say!) for the opening of Hunter Gatherers by Peter Sin Natchtreib.  I’ve seen a production of this before out in Seattle, so am curious to see what Jeffrey Carpenter, also Artistic Director, will do to it.  True to their aesthetic, the play is a brutal satire, but also darkly funny.  

This video by Matt Hildebrand might scare you or entice you, but gives you an idea of what's in store.

Hunter Gatherers - Actors from Matt Hildebrand on Vimeo.

Will there be a different sensibility and aesthetic between da ‘burgh and the Pacific northwest? I'm curious.

Speaking of curious.

"Curiouser and curiouser..." as one young lady said...

"The Alice Project"
(photo: Louis Stein)

Opening this week is “The Alice Project” at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama.  

Developed as a collaborative piece over the past year by director Marianne Weems with designers, dramatic writing student and technicians, this multi-media performance tears apart the Alice character from Lewis Carroll and examines identity through a prism of technology.  This is just what you’d expect from such an innovative research university that houses such diverse programs in performing arts, the fine arts, computer science, robotics and media arts.  

Read more about it here.

"The Alice Project" also marks the CMU directing debut of Marianne Weems, co-founder of The Builders Association (which has been compared to The Wooster Group but only with even more technology).

Of course, this is how I spend my days off, when I’m NOT rehearsing…more about that process later.

B.U.S. Begins Tonight!

I'll be heading downtown (or dahntawn if yinz from da burgh) to the Bricolage HQ to get my schedule for the bus ride that will inspire the new 10-minute play I'm about to write.

Nervous anticipation is in my belly right now, which will be promptly replaced with a grande latte and maybe a red bull later.

After my bus ride, I'll get a preview of our acting pool and choose the actors for the play I want to write.  And then off I go.

More later.

Getting ready to ride the B.U.S.

The B.U.S. is coming!

B.U.S. (otherwise known as the Bricolage Urban Scrawl) is a 24 hour play festival extravaganza put on by Bricolage Theater in downtown Pittsburgh.  This is its sixth year running and I am fortunate (or unlucky) enough to be invited to participate as a playwright.

Last night I ran into Tami Dixon and Jeffrey Carpenter, the dynamic duo that run the theater company and I told her I was psyching myself up for it and getting into training.

Cue Rocky Theme Music and workout montage now.

Okay, the thing with this 24 hour play festival, as with others, is that you can’t really do any prep work.  They give you a theme on Friday night.  You go ride a bus and observe people.  You don’t even know who your actors or director is yet.  Then you have twelve hours to write a ten minute play.  The beautiful thing about this is that you will probably end up riding a bus through a new neighborhood, seeing different people and literally getting of your comfort zone.

But just because I can’t do any prep work for the festival, doesn’t mean I can’t get myself ready.  

Ballet dancers do physical drills.  Musicians practice their scales.  Actors do voice, movement training and work on their monologues.  We playwrights and screenwriters should be exercising our creative skills in the same way. 

B.U.S. is like one giant writing exercise—like a test.  Here are your parameters and limitations—make something out of it and oh by the way, the clock is ticking.  This is not just a fun whimsical idea, but a task that can develop real world writing skills.  It prepares you for on-the-spot rehearsal rewrites or trying to polish up a script before sending it off for a commission. 

You don't have to do the madness of B.U.S. to workout your writing muscles, though. There are plenty of exercises you can do, even if all you have is a spare fifteen minutes.

For instance, my favorite has and always will be the six-line play.  The rules are easy.  Write a play using only six lines.  You can have two characters or six, but the goal is to create a real situation, real characters, with a story that has a beginning, middle and end.

A great book, chock full of playwriting exercises on various techniques is Playwriting in Process by Michael Wright.  

For you more advanced playwrights, check out New Playwriting Strategies by Paul Castagno.

Or just make up some of your own.  Like any workout, it should be fun, right?  

B.U.S. is coming! (What the heckfire is B.U.S.?)

B.U.S. stands for Bricolage Urban Scrawl and it's Bricolage Theater's most fun event of the year, a 24 hour play festival that kicks off with putting playwrights on a random bus ride through the streets of steel city.

On February 25, I will be among many other local playwrights along for the ride.

Any other questions?

Surely, this video will explain it all for you.