Blogging Bloodworks: March / Link

As I get older, I find myself needing many reminders.

Today I had my phone remind me to pay my credit car. Later it will remind me what I'm doing this weekend of if I need to bring something with me. None of this is new information. I simply need to start reminding myself of things I already know.

Christmas in Queens is such a reminder.

For example, before I started working with Eric, I had basically forgotten that I lived in Queens for awhile. The first apartment Olivia and I shared was right on the border of Astoria and Long Island City.  In fact, it was in Queens that Olivia helped me edit an application for a group called Youngblood about five years ago.

In my Youngblood application essay, or at least some draft of it, I wrote about how I had grown up doing plays, starting with a sprite in A Christmas Carol. I hadn't really thought about this for some time either. Not until I started working with Eric did I realize I was in a production of A Christmas Carol every year from 1992 until 1998, starting as a sprite and working my way up to a Cratchit child and eventually Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come--the best part of all. Years went by. Never thought about it or the fact that growing up there was almost no distinction between doing plays and celebrating Christmas.

So those are two things I knew, but needed to be reminded of. But here's the biggest one of all.

If somebody asked me what the best part of writing plays is, muscle memory might have me say something like collaboration. But now after writing my second musical with Eric, I'm totally reminded that this is absolutely true. Collaboration is the best part of writing plays. Don't think I can remind myself of that enough.

Christmas in Queens

a new musical

Music & Lyrics by Eric March

Book by Patrick Link

Directed by RJ Tolan*

with Matthew Baldiga, Helen Coxe*, Dylan Dawson, Alex Herrald, Todd Alan Johnson, Aaron Phillips, Eugene Oh, Rachel Resheff, Megan Stern

9pm at Ma-Yi Studio

260 West 35th Street, Suite #203

*member of Ensemble Studio Theatre

Blogging Bloodworks: Blaisdell

Sometimes folks ask me where the impulse for a script originates. Most of the time, I shrug and mumble because I don’t really have an answer. But for once, with this play, I do. Ready gang? Specific catalysts include: a weekend trip to Sonoma that I took this past fall with my best bud; a Contemporary Civilization's essay I wrote on MacKinnon, Williams, and Woolf; a half-memory of watching a friend play Agaue in the Columbia Classics Department production of The Bacchae, performed in Ancient Greek; and my mentor's continuous admonishment to write what terrifies you.

Oh, and of course strange internet articles like this minor religious sect that worships Vladimir Putin and coverage of contemporary feminist fringe groups.

In conclusion, if you're around tomorrow night at 7 PM, please do come & hear this play. The cast is terrific and if you don't like it, you can punch me in the arm.

Directed by Larissa Lury

With Bradley Anderson, Helen Coxe, Darcy Fowler, Abigail Gampel, Megan Hill, Zachary Marten, Eugene Oh, Jessica Lauren-Howell, Britt Lower, Socorro Santiago, and Will Turner

Seven ladies. Three dudes. 
A hunter, a bunny, and a pomegranate.
A rite to remember.

June 12th @ 7 PM
Ma-Yi Theater Space
260 West 35th Street, Suite 203 (between 7th and 8th Avenue)

(then stick around for a Patrick Link & Eric March musical at 9 PM)

Blogging Bloodworks: Borinsky

As my friend Eamon points out, it's easy to up your compensation if you're both CEO and chairman of the board.

Similarly, it's easy to up the glamour of your life if you're both living it and authoring your autobiography.

I guess the tricky question is, what happens when someone sets out to write your autobiography for you?

What's the analogy for that?

This play is for Ryan. Really.

It's made out of spit, music, and papier mache. And a lotta heart. And it's definitely not too big to fail.

Come by at 7 for Chris Sullivan's wonderful wookie play, and stick around for this one at 9!

Lloyd Blankfein will be there.* As will Eamon.**

The Autobiography of Ryan Dowler
(part spectacle, part confession)
by Alex Borinsky
directed by Colleen Sullivan
music by Adam Horowitz
additional text by Molly Hagan and Ryan Dowler

with Ryan Dowler, Darcy Fowler, Adam Horowitz, Ethan Hova, Mikéah Ernest Jennings, Britt Lower, Eamon Murphy, and Eugene Oh

June 5 @ 9
Ma-Yi Theater Space
260 West 35th Street, Suite 203

ps. Here's the secret history of the play:

I've been trying to write something for someone. Not, like, for one actor to perform. But for one person. To receive. I know it seems kind of pointless or ridiculous to do, but I'm doing it because of love, and also sort of because of capitalism. Maybe. The hope, I guess, is that someone, some one person, will uncover, will - crack - the code - just so - and it will open, and spill all of my secrets.

*He won't be there.
**He will be, playing Ryan's war-buddy, John -- the guy who taught Ryan what it meant to love.

Blogging Bloodworks: Snider

My Bloodworks is tonight! The actors and director are solid. Please come if you're able. At 7pm we have the fantastic "SCHOOL PLAY" by Tony Meneses. I've heard portions and highly recommend. We follow them at 9. Join us both for a crazy night of Bloodworks followed by the usual Youngblood fun.

HOW TO USE A KNIFE
by Will Snider
Directed by Jessie Mills
Featuring Tim Cain, Hanna Cheek, Ethan Hova, Jack Moore, Luis Moreno, Paul Pontrelli, Scott Sowers

A newly sober chef with a brain full of bad memories befriends a disciplined African porter who helps him stay clean. But the porter has demons of his own.

9pm
260 West 35th Street, Suite 203
btw 7th and 8th
Admission FREE 

The above information is all you need, but if you have one of those jobs where you can just, like, read the internet all day and maybe keep a few work tabs open if the boss comes around, please read my disorganized thoughts on the play after the jump.

Blogging Bloodworks: When are you coming to shore?

It's not very hard to come up with an idea for a play.

1. You need to be a person of about my age who spent a lot of time in front of the television while this commercial was airing.

Who was this Awan Buhh, you must wonder, idly, while licking marshmallow fluff off of gummy fruit snacks. Will I ever learn about him, in school? (No.)

2. You need to be a person whose family goes on vacation to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Roughly once a year for most of your childhood. For many of these years you will stay in a house that has a framed map labeled GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC. Right next to the television, that map. You should probably also visit The Lost Colony. And love it.

3. You need to be a person who decides, one day, that she has a crush on Alexander Hamilton. You don't even need to know anything about the guy, just, in roughly the year 2000, when the $10 bill is finally switched to the large-portrait format, you need to notice that this Hamilton guy was kind of a fox.

4. You need to be a person who spots a flyer in your local public library that is advertising a Birthday Party for Alexander Hamilton. You need to be so stunned by the absolute perfection of this idea that you need to go to this Birthday Party, which in the year that you noticed this flyer is held at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York City. You will drag your friend to this party, and the two of you will marvel at such things as: the Alexander Hamilton historical re-enactor! The fact that the Morris-Jumel house even exists at all! The fact that the Morris-Jumel house was actually super-briefly the residence of Aaron Burr, the guy you are fairly sure was the guy who shot your historic crush object (cf. that Got Milk? commercial, right?).

5. You need to be a person whose friend alerts her to the fact that Aaron Burr had a daughter named Theodosia, who died mysteriously in a shipwreck. Your friend will email you about this and you will respond with ALL CAPS ENTHUSIASM. Within hours (hours; I have receipts) you will have purchased two books about Theodosia.

It is at this point that you will start to suspect that you have an idea for a play. But what. Is it. What...IS IT. Is it a play about Aaron Burr, or Theodosia Burr, Alexander Hamilton, or shipwrecks, or duels, or milk? Is it seriously maybe a play about milk? (Okay, it is not a play about milk.)

I knew for years that I wanted to write about Theodosia but I did not know exactly how. Maybe I could connect it to this thing, or this other thing, or this other thing, or...! Last summer I read two books at the same time, one of them was a biography of Aaron Burr and the other one was Moby-Dick. And if I learned anything from the first one it was that eventually everyone gets a sympathetic biographer and if I learned anything from the second one it was that you must be patient with your white whale. Chase at your peril. Eventually the damn thing will surface and then, oh then, you had better be ready.

This is a play about a woman who disappeared at sea. It's about making a new home for yourself, about what it means to live a great life, about what family requires, about love. There is some history in it, and some magic. It's been tough to write but I like that. I like a hard-fought. The play is still very much in progress and this reading is part of the writing. If you come on Wednesday, you are also a part of the writing.

Ashore
by Meghan Deans
Directed by Colette Robert

With Tina Benko, Megan Tusing, and Jonathan Silver
Plus Darcy Fowler on stage directions

Wednesday, May 30
9:00pm
Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 W. 52nd Street (btw. 10/11), 2nd Floor
$free

Strongly Recommended: That you arrive at 7pm to see Erica Saleh's The Morning After.

A blog post about The Morning After. Written the morning before its reading...

This morning I was on the phone with my mom and she asked me if I had written a blog post about my bloodworks. "Shit" I said. "I totally forgot. I'll do that today." Sigh. "Except I don't know what to write. Everything I want to say feels like a spoiler."
And then she offered to write it for me.
I laughed it off. Which was probably a mistake.
I probably should have taken her up on it because here I am trying to say something about this play that I wrote and not knowing what to say or where to start.
 I'm also very interested in what she would say having not read the play. Probably she would say something very sweet about me, her daughter, about how proud she is of me and how she can't wait to hear this play. Which. Oh gosh. I hope she still feels that way after hearing it.
I am very proud of this play. It's a play I've wanted to write for a long time. It's a play about women and feminism and relationships and language and basically everything I care about.
It's also a first draft. It's also a work in progress. It's also a play that I'm not sure I totally have a hold of yet. It also might be the kind of play that worries the mother of the playwright a little.
We'll see. Maybe I'll have my mom guest write a post letting us all know how she feels.

Anyway. It happens tomorrow night: Wednesday, June 30. 7:00 PM
It's directed by Tamara Fisch and has a killer cast: Aimee Cucchiaro, Bjorn DuPaty, Christine Farrell, Diana Ruppe, and Chris Thorn

It's followed at 9:00 by Meghan Deans's fantastic play "Ashore", which you would be doing yourself a disservice not to stick around for. 

Going Out and Coming Back

So first I saw this, and thought it was just a cool pattern

until I leaned in, and saw that it was full of actual people, and that the people were in a marching band

and I fantasized about an epic play with a cast of hundreds about all the little lives in a marching band. 

And then, later, after I'd been listening to a bunch of marching band music, someone sent me this

and I peed a little, and realized that if this sedentary majorette could do all that from her chair I didn't need a cast of hundreds to do what I wanted to do. And maybe I just wanted a play that was a big ol' construction paper heart with a doily trim magic marker dedication to John Philip Sousa. 

And that's the back story, pretty much.

Obviously, this all happened during summer. So there was a beach in the picture. And fireflies. 

And so I wrote this weird little play. About brass instruments, and patriotic music, and what can happen when nothing is happening. 

Two summers. A women's trombone ensemble. Fourth of July. The Mid-Atlantic Sousa Festival. 

Spoiler alert:

They go pick blueberries! Someone loses a sandal!

I hope you can make it.

The director is nice, the cast are well-groomed, and the stage directions have a beautiful moustache. The play itself will not overstay its welcome (75 minutes), and will write you a thank-you note afterwards, on tasteful stationery with a patriotic stamp.

Bring sparklers and watermelon.

Going Out and Coming Back

by Alex Borinsky

directed by Colleen Sullivan

with Clare Barron, Kathryn Dickinson, Paola Irun, Deb Margolin, Mary Neufeld, Danielle Slavick, and Stephanie Wright Thompson

stage directions by Justin Perkins

Wednesday, May 23rd @ 9

6th Floor Theater, EST

(The marching band art above is by Bruce Davenport, Jr., btw.)

Oh -- so, THIS is Bloodworks. Cool!

Can I confess?  I've never done this before.  Not just Bloodworks, but written on a blog before.  Except for that interview.  But that was different.  And Tony was there for that one.  And Patrick ended up posting it because I couldn't figure it out.  But this is just me.  I'm a little out of my depth.  Does this look right?  Is anyone reading this? 

I'll try to keep this brief.  

This year was my first in Youngblood.  I had a lot of fun.  I made friends.  I went on 'retreats.'  I climbed thousands of stairs.  And I wrote a play.  Called Nights In Late December.  Which.  I don't know.  I'm not good with titles.  It kind of sounds like a Nicholas Sparks book, but.  Whatever.  I might change the title.  The point is -- oh, and I don't have the rights to the picture above.  So.  If you took it, I apologize.  I just thought it was a nice image.  I've spent many nights walking around the Central Park Reservoir, and.  Never mind. 

My play is being read next week.  On Tuesday May 22nd at 7pm, to be exact.   It's (for now) called Nights In Late December.  It's going to be in the 6th floor theater at EST (549 West 52nd Street).  My recommendation, if you'd like come, is to take the elevator when you get there.  It's one door over from the main entrance, and it's probably one of the coolest elevators in NYC.

ANYway, I have some really great actors reading.  Like, really great.  Cathy Curtin, Kristen Harlow & Jonathan Silver.  All of whom intimidate the hell out of me with their talents.  Which, I'm pretty sure, is a good thing.  Alec Strum is directing.  I've known Alec for almost eight years.  He's my flotation device.  And a good egg. 

The play is about a family.  As most plays seem to be.  But.  We all have one.  So.  Moving on, the play is about a family.  From the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Mom and Dad have been divorced a number of years.  Big sister lives in San Francisco.  Little brother lives with Mom.  He spends a lot of time on the internet.  In fact, no one really talks to each other.  Except now it's Christmas.  And as per tradition, big sister is coming home.  But damn it, this year is gonna be different.  Because Dad wants to apologize.  But Mom and little brother would rather he go f*ck himself.  So big sister has to negotiate.  And appraise.  What reconciliation is even worth.  If it means drudging up their ugly past.

Should be about an hour long.  Which will be nice, I think.  Because that way we can all get a drink before Patrick Link's reading at 9.

Hope you can make it.   

(Deans, I did it!)

Blogging Bloodworks - Link

Do you have a white whale? An elusive beast that rises to the surface ever so briefly, exposing its sleek, oily head to taunt you?

I have such a whale, my friends. And it is scheduled to reach the surface again on Tuesday, 5/22 at 9pm. I'll need your help to catch it. 

The play is called The Majestic Players Storm Kansas City. It's a blend of Noises Off and Dog Day Afternoon. It's about a group of traveling theater players that is really a gang of robbers. They go from city to city doing their plays and mid-way through each performance they stop the show, take out weapons, and rob the audience. 

I've had this idea since I was a small child. I remember seeing a magician on stage once who asked for a volunteer and then took the volunteer's wallet. He didn't give it back. He just took it! I think this was at Six Flags. I must have been six. I remember thinking about what his life must be like: living in a trailer full of wallets with a pet possum and a trunk of magic tricks. A sad life. But also a life where he gets to perform everyday before hundreds of people, which ain't nothing. 

Also, there was one day in 5th grade where my school had some kind of Renaissance festival and there was a a man in a court jester costume going around juggling. He had these tight, tight leggings of purple and gold. He was a plump fellow of 50. He was not a parent. He was not a volunteer. He was a professional jester and these were his threads. It was traumatizingly sad. Nobody wanted to be near him. Some kids laughed at him, but most knew to just look away. 

At the end of the day I saw him getting into his volvo. It was full of boxes. And then a kid came out and hugged him. His kid was in the car and had been waiting all day, watching his dad in this awful costume (probably the only one watching his dad in that costume). I can still hear the sound of my heartbreaking. The thought of being a bad court jester at a 5th grade ren festival and having somebody still love you at the end of the day...that makes me weep even now. 

I can't say exactly how these memories have made their way into my play, but they're there somewhere and will hopefully raise their heads to the surface from time to time. Please come and help me catch them. Because when I say I'm after a white whale, I'm not talking about a play. I'm talking about the reason I write them. 

The Majestic Players Storm Kansas City

Tuesday, May 22 at 9pm

Ensemble Studio Theatre, 6th Floor

Directed by Colette Robert

Featuring the amazing talents of Steven Boyer, Scott Sowers, Denny Dale Bess, Richmond Hoxie, Amy Staats, Pepper Binkley, Joshua Conkel, Jason Liebman, Kelli-Lynn Harrison, Diana Ruppe, and Eric Dufault. 

Bloodworks 2012: The Schedule: Of What Is Ahead

Sound the alarm: Bloodworks is back. Youngblood's end-of-the-season reading series will begin on Wednesday, May 16 and continue all the way through Monday, June 25. All of the readings are free and all will take place at Ensemble Studio Theatre (549 West 52nd Street, 2nd Floor).

Bloodworks is an exciting time of year, an Advent calendar of awesome and your chance to get a look at what the group has been working on all year. (Not to mention a chance to see the next-big-thing-in-progress: Hand to God, Year of the Rooster, and In Memory of Julie Simmons were all part of Bloodworks, back in the day.) So here we go. Here's the schedule. Mark your calendar. Bring your friends.

Wed 5/16
7pm: Chiara Atik
9pm: Eric Dufault

Tuesday 5/22
7pm: Willie Orbison
9pm: Patrick Link

Wed 5/23
7pm: Darcy Fowler
9pm: Alex Borinsky

Wed 5/30
7pm: Erica Saleh
9pm: Meghan Deans

Mon 6/4
7pm: Lucy Gillespie
9pm: Leah Nanako Winkler

Wed 6/6
7pm: Ryan Dowler
9pm: Chris Sullivan

Mon 6/11
7pm: Lydia Blaisdell
9pm: Tony Meneses

Wed 6/13
7pm: Emily Chadick Weiss
9pm: Jen Silverman

Mon 6/18
7pm: Mary Hamilton

Wed 6/20
7pm: Eric March
9pm: Angela Hanks

Mon 6/25
7pm: Clare Barron
9pm: Dylan Dawson
11pm: BLOODWORKS Closing Party

See you out there. & keep an eye on the Youngblog for more on what we've all got planned for Bloodworks 2012.

Blogging Bloodworks: Link/March Pt. 1

People often tell me that they can't imagine me as a child.

I don't really know what this means, but more than one person has said it to me. In fact, even I have trouble remembering myself as a young boy. But I know I didn't always speak in the baritone that I do now. I was once a child. And while I'll never be one again, I briefly felt like one while writing The Bone Wars.

I didn't have many toys growing up, but I did have dinosaurs--an awesome T-Rex and a pretty sweet Brontosaurus. I think there was a Triceratops in the mix too. Boy, did we have some crazy adventures! I even had an awesome book called Patrick's Dinosaurs--how frickin' cool! I couldn't believe there was a book that not only had my name as part of the title, but was ALSO about dinosaurs. Life was complete.

Yet, I grew up too quickly. Hollywood was calling, or at least the local community theatre was, and I had myself some musicals to be in. That's right. When I was nine I was a triple threat. I acted, I danced (4 years tap--oh yes!), and I believed that I could sing. While Jordan was winning NBA Championships, Link was making a name for himself in local musical theatre. And I was very, very serious about it.

But, again, I grew up too quicky. When I was 15, I "didn't want to pretend anymore." So I put these musicals away in the dark closet of my soul, right next to Patrick's Dinosaurs. I locked the key. Never to return.

Until I started writing a musical about dinosaurs with Eric March and Jeff Bienstock--a musical you can experience for the first time ever on Wednesday, June 22 at 8:30pm on the 2nd floor of EST. The Bone Wars is a musical adventure about two leading paleontolgists of the 1880s and their conflicting ambitions. It's also about fame, survival, and science!

But for me (and maybe just me) it's about other things, too. Like finding fossils not just in the ground, but in the caverns of your mind; fossils that form the child you once were--a strange distant creature that once ruled the earth.

The Bone Wars

Music and Lyrics by Eric March and Jeff Bienstock

Book by Patrick Link

Wednesday, June 22 at 8:30PM

Directed by RJ Tolan

Featuring Chris Hoch, Anthony Holds, Sarah Corey, Joel Rooks, Catherine Jones, Josh Davidson, Lance Rubin, Aaron Phillips, Steven Boyer, John Bennett, Shawn Randall, Matthew Baldiga, and Nate Weida.

FREE

I Wanna Destroy You

There's a reading of my new old play on Tuesday, June 14th. I say new old play, because I wrote it rather quickly a few years ago for my very first Bloodworks reading.

And it kind of sucked.

Sure, the idea was great. I wanted to write a play about the trope of the gay sidekick- something I hate with a burning passion. Why is it we only get to be around so long as we're decorating an apartment or saying something sassy or doling out sex advice to straight girls? I suppose it is better than it was. When I was a kid people only wanted to see representations of gay men who were dying. In that respect, I suppose Stanford from Sex and the City is a step forward. Still, when I hear Kathy Griffin or whoever talking about "their gays" it makes me want to go to sleep forever.

So I wanted to write a comedy about a gay man surrounded by glamorous women who is struggling to be the star of his own life. And... I kind of failed. I wrote it really quickly and couldn't really handle all the themes that were jumping out.

That said, I recently dug the play out and completely gutted it and reworked it. And you know what? I really like it. I think it's funny and sweet and less angry than a lot of my other work. It actually turned out to be a sort of romantic comedy, which surprised the hell out of me. It wants to be an adorable little indie film starring, like, Joseph Gordon-Levitt or some shit. So if you don't like my play The Sluts of Sutton Drive or MilkMilkLemonade, maybe you will like this one.

Here's the other thing. This is my last Youngblood event ever. So you should come celebrate with me. If there's one thing I've learned from I Wanna Destroy You, it's this: I'm a better writer at 30 than I was at 27. And it's all because of Youngblood. And that is something to celebrate.

I Wanna Destroy You
by Joshua Conkel

A staged reading at Ensemble Studio Theatre.
549 W 52nd St., Second Floor

Tuesday, June 14th
8:30 pm

Free!

Blogging Bloodworks: Deans Edition

So I love cozy mysteries. The ones with near-puns in the titles, like, it'll be called MURDER TAKES A MOUTHFUL and the protaganist is a plucky young middle-aged woman who runs a bakery in a small town and someone she knows, a little distantly but she still has a connection to him, that person gets murdered and she accidentally on purpose solves the crime, bewildering the local sheriff who is also now in love with her. Did I say I love them? Maybe that's a strong word. I mostly love them. I love them when I'm burnt out and it's either, we're going to watch an entire season of America's Next Top Model or we're going to go outside and read something. These are the somethings I pick. A good cozy is wonderfully comforting, despite the murders.



When I started writing The Hooks, I thought I'd just write a cozy. I made a list of all of the things that my favorite cozies had in common. I wrote myself a plucky heroine, I gave her an oddball shop. I gave her a best friend. I gave her a mystery. I gave her someone to fall in love with. Then a weird kind of thing happened. I fell in love with getting my plucky young heroine to fall in love. Like, real deal. All of a sudden, The Hooks was also a love story.



'Cause that's the funny thing about cozies. Lots of them have romances. If it's a multi-book series, that's a thread for your reader, but also, if it's a multi-book series, things can't move too fast. So lots of those plucky heroines push back against the romance. I wanted to write into that instinct, the push-back instinct. I wanted to figure out why there might be more fear in love than there was fear in figuring out who'd stabbed whom. So I grabbed my magnifying glass and I called up my trusty sidekick and...no, no, I didn't. No magnifying glass. But I did write a play. And you can see a reading of it. Tonight! THE DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOWs!

A man is found dead in the local historical society, stabbed in the back with a(n historical) hook. The town's local sleuth is a little in love with the sheriff's lead suspect. And then there's this matter of some buried treasure...?

The Hooks is a love story, with murder.

Written by Meghan Deans
Directed by Dylan McCullough

With the considerable acting talents of Robert Askins, Pepper Binkley, Steven Boyer, Kristen Harlow, and Brian Morvant; plus the lovely Dana Chehansky on stage directions.

Monday, June 6th
8:30pm
New Location! IRT Theater
154 Christopher Street (at Washington)
3rd floor (buzzer 3B)
$Free

Saleh

Today's Quotation of the Day from the New York Times:

"In effect, Saleh is dragging the country into civil war."

-Abdulghani Al-Eryani, a political analyst in Sana, on In Memory of Julie Simmons, a new play by Youngblood playwright Erica Saleh*

Don't miss it!

In Memory of Julie Simmons
by Erica Saleh
Tuesday, 6/7 at 6:30 PM - Ensemble Studio Theatre

*Although this isn't actually what Mr. Al-Eryani was saying, this play does indeed have the strength to destroy nations.

Youngblood Credited with Death of Osama Bin Laden

Late Sunday night President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and the most wanted man in the world, by American Special Forces and the Youngblood group for Emerging Writers.

"If it weren't for the brave work done by the military and young playwrights, the face of global terror and extremism would still exist today." The president said last night as crowds gathered outside the White House, Times Square, Ground Zero, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre to celebrate.

The historic day started late last summer, when an intelligence report surfaced that the terrorist leader may be hiding in a compound in Pakistan, while Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan sifted through applications for new membership to Youngblood. Over the past few months, the president held several meetings with his National Security Council while Youngblood held several high level, successful brunches, a retreat, and it's "Asking For Trouble" series in what was a coordinated effort to take down the head of the organization which killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001 as well as thousands of others around the world the past two decades, and spurred two American wars in the Middle East.

The operation is widely credited to Youngblood's Bloowdworks fundraiser party this past Friday, a huge success in which none of the guests reportedly knew that the hosts of the party were actually in the midst of one of the largest Special Forces operations of our time. "I was just dancing, getting crazy drunk, grinding up on Eric Dufault," said one member of the party, who wanted to remain anonymous for walk of shame reasons, "I thought maybe when I was getting raffle tickets for that dream date dude something weird might be up...but not like that!"

Many playwrights had suspiciously left the party early before clean up, presumably to coordinate operations with CIA Director Leon Panetta, though some analysts assume they were just too drunk and had rehearsal in the morning. The weekend continued culminating in the second to last brunch of the year, the Confessional Brunch. Shortly before Lydia Brunner's play went on stage, which featured sexual acts by puppets, she was on the phone with the State Department making sure a coordinated communications response was in place for the next day.

As the world celebrates and discusses the world post Osama Bin Laden, the United States military operations continue against Al Queda and Youngblood continues to write and produce new American Theater. This continues the next two months at the South Street Sea Port Monday nights for the Bloodworks reading series.

Rumors have surfaced following the death of Bin Laden, Youngblood member Patrick Link may be looking at a 2012 run for president.

Tonight

You may or may not know that Youngblood has been having kick ass dance parties after our shows for a couple of years now. Well, tonight we invite you to sing and dance and be merry. AND YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO WATCH A PLAY FIRST. *

We're having a party tonight! Better brush up on your moves!

*Let it be known: we really like plays.

Blogging Bloodworks: Link Edition

This play is a tribute to the old school. An ode to the drawing room play, to the Dickensian magistrates and potentates of yesteryear. To the servants, cobblers, and haberdashery boys. To the crinolines, bustles, and bonnets that made me--as a mere youth--first love the theatre.

I'm also fascinated by the world before photography. Hard to imagine, almost. Isn't it? Even when I close my eyes, I'm inundated with imagery--products, celebrities, facebook friends. Any image I want is only a click and a search away. But what if the only way to get an image was to have somebody draw it? What would you have drawn for you? If you could have anything. Really think about it. I did and I wrote a play about it.

Sweet Forgotten Flavor is about a portrait painter. He's a man of little means, but exceptional talent. A wealthy lawyer commissions our painter to do a portrait, but during their first painting session a careless proposal releases an unstoppable spring of sin, scandal, and sensuality.

How's Tuesday sound?

SWEET FORGOTTEN FLAVOR
by Patrick Link
Directed by Kel Haney

featuring Janet Zarish, James Murtaugh, Diana Ruppe, and Haskell King

Tuesday, June 15 at 7:00 PM

Pace University
41 Park Row, 10th Floor
Schaerberle Studio Theater

FREE! FREE! FREE!

Blogging Bloodworks: Deans Edition

My Bloodworks play is called Internet Famous. Guess what! It is about the Internet. This is good for you, because probably you know something about the Internet, because you are on the Internet right now. Unless someone has printed this post out for you. Or unless it is the future and the Internet is obsolete and you are not even reading this, it's just so far in the future that you're just licking this up with your mind-tongue.

Gross. What the hell is a mind-tongue. Also what were we talking about?

So it's about the Internet, but more specifically it's about people who write and share fanfic on the Internet. What is fanfic! You might ask, and I would say, you know how sometimes you have a favorite television show and something happens on it and YOU HATE IT or you love it but you think it would be better if more of the characters were making out? Fanfic is the place to do that. Though fanfic existed pre-Internet, the Internet has given people a place to quickly share work and to form tightly-knit communities. These communities can be wonderful, supportive, creative places. They can also be mean, nasty places, full of politics and dramatic social stratifications. Sounds like a good thing to write a play about, right guys? RIGHT?



I've been in and around my share of Internet-based fan communities -- pro tip: call 'em "fandoms"! -- for about half my life. As a li'l Meghan, I was a devoted X-Files fan. My nerdery found a home at alt.tv.x-files, a Usenet newsgroup where folks shouted at each other about whether or not Mulder was really dead this time. (He never was.) I made friends, learned life lessons ("RTFM" has served me well in office culture), and yeah: I wrote some fanfic. Just a little. The first fic I wrote was a really terrible X-Files/ER crossover that got kinda meta at the end, with David Duchovny waking up from a near-death experience as Mulder at County General...only to find that he's at a charity softball match and he passed out after Noah Wyle hit him on the head with a softball! I don't think on purpose. But if there's enough demand maybe I could write a sequel.



"Imagine. Going through your whole life looking like that."

Anyway, most fanfic is better than mine was. Some of it is even really good, and very little of it involves Noah Wyle (sorry Noah. get yourself a cult scifi series and we'll talk.). And while it's still trendy to portray fandom communities as being full of headcases and nutjobs, a lot of completely sane, brilliant people participate in fandom. Also, a lot of headcases and nutjobs participate in fandom. Internet Famous is about the brilliant ones, and also it is about the nutjobs, and it is most of all what happens when they all get together in a room and drink.

I hope you come see it. I'd like that a lot. Here are some details.

Internet Famous
a reading of a play
by Meghan Deans

Directed by Ashley Kelly-Tata
Featuring Kate Hamill, Kristen Harlow, Polly Lee, and also more folks.

Friday, June 11th
7pm
Schaeberle Studio Theater @ Pace University
41 Park Row, 10th Floor
$0.00

Blogging Bloodworks: Conkel Edition

My play, The Sluts of Sutton Drive, is a dark comedy about a working mom who enrolls in a stripper-cise class only to realize that she hates men. A lifetime of awful sexual experiences come to a head in explosive ways when she becomes addicted to drinking household cleaning products and finds herself involved in a grisly crime.

I'm crazy, coo coo, insane right now doing the rewrites, and to be honest I'd like to take a break from thinking about it directly. I thought for this blog entry I'd share some of my inspiration points with you in a tidy list. I'm a man with exquisite tastes!

• Gossip. I was obsessed with riot grrl when I was fifteen and have been rediscovering it lately thanks to Gossip. I grew up in Washington State and all the cool, tough, brassy girls and arty gay boys (re: my people) were listening to bands like Bikini Kill, Seven Year Bitch, L7 etc. I'd all but given up on ever having bands this empowering and tough in the age of Miley Cyrus, but then there was Gossip. Portly lead singer Beth Ditto TURNS. IT. OUT. Their album, "Music for Men" is basically all I listened to while writing this. If you ever get the chance to see them live, RUN DON'T WALK.

• This is kind of vague but I don't know how else to say it: banal lady things. Shit that gets sold to women. Stupid shit that women actually buy. Like yogurt commercials, Sex and the City, Cathy comics, and women who pretend to be addicted to shoes. I hate and love these things so, so much. I was once presented as the only dude writer in a feminist theater festival. I was so saddened to find that all of the plays were basically about, like, weddings and yoga and babies and shitty things like that.
  

• The S.C.U.M. Manifesto by Valerie Solanas.
• All my friends are sick of me talking about Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, the 1970's sitcom/soap opera hybrid that I'm obsessed with. I'll just say this: it is amazing. The set is gorgeous in its ugliness, the lights are way too bright, and the all the actors are covered in pancake make-up. Plus, a sitcom with no laughter? Sign me up. It also doesn't hurt that the actors and writing are both brilliant. In a perfect world my play would look exactly this. So what if it doesn't take place in the 70s?

• This is going to seem really weird, but I read the complete works of Sarah Kane while I wrote this. That was probably influential. I hope people don't take this the wrong way, but am I crazy for thinking that Blasted is a little campy?
• The brilliant Roseanne Barr/Meryl Streep movie She-Devil.

• Your mom. Obviously.

Directed by Lila Neugebauer

Featuring Megan Hill, Nicole Beerman, Frank Harts, Paco Tolson and Curran Connor.

Thursday, May 20th
7:00 PM

Pace University
41 Park Row, 10th Floor
Schaeberle Studio Theater

FREE! FREE! FREE!

Blogging Bloodworks: Moench edition

Well. It's that time of year again. The Reckoning.

Every spring we come to the nasty realization that we were supposed to be writing plays all year, so we sign up for Bloodworks reading slots, hoping that a deadline will force us to get off our asses (or sit on them for hours on end, staring into computer screens) and pull something together.

In an uncharacteristic display of volunteerism the likes of which would probably have gotten me bayoneted at Gettysburg, I will be going first. My play is called IN QUIETNESS, and it is takes place in the Homemaking House at a Southern Baptist seminary.

A little background info: A few years ago, a certain seminary began offering a B.A. in Homemaking, open only to women. This came on the heels of the seminary president's decision to fire a female professor of Biblical languages (despite her tenure-track status), because he interprets that the Bible prohibits women from teaching men theology. This president also happens to be the president of the whole Southern Baptist Convention, and since his tenure began in the '90s the SBC has banned women from the ministry. These days the SBC actively promotes the concept of complementarianism—the idea that God created men and women as "equal but different." Men have been created by God to lead, and women to follow and support.

Now, I'm a feminist. I'm the daughter of two scientists. I’m also the granddaughter of a pastor and an organist. I grew up going to church every Sunday, coming home, and pushing a dozen lab coats out of the way to hang up my jacket in the hall closet. By age 5 I could tell you about Noah's journey on the Ark, pause for a breath, and then tell you about Charles Darwin's journey on the HMS Beagle. My dad can use a drillpress and thread a sewing machine, and so can I.

As a kid I never thought of these things—science/religion, power tools/cleaning solvents—as contradictions. It's probably no surprise, then, that I take issue with complementarianism. But that, me taking issue with that, that's not what this play is about.

A basic force that drives me to write is the desire to become a more compassionate person. The most wonderful moments I've had in life or art are those when suddenly I realize what a closed-minded, judgmental douchebag I am. And every time it happens it's kind of upsetting and kind of horrifying and kind of a gloriously enormous relief that I realized it while there's still time to do better. So for me, that's what writing this play has been about. Trying really hard to understand where the people I vehemently disagree with are coming from, trying to see the value in a system I have always viewed as outdated, ignorant, and unethical. Looking really hard at the grey areas and trying to have enough humility to admit that maybe, maybe, I could possibly be a little bit wrong. Maybe.

...Um. We'll see.

IN QUIETNESS

by Anna Moench

Wednesday, May 19 at 7pm

Schaerberle Studio Theatre at Pace University

41 Park Row, 10th floor