Kern: TRUE FACTS

The First Law of Thermodynamics is energy and matter can be transformed, changed from one form to another, but it can neither be created nor destroyed.The Second Law of Thermodynamics is NO FATTIES.

Clark: VICTORY BRUNCH Blogging

Eliza Clark, who's writing for May's VICTORY BRUNCH:

Victory makes me think of movies about sports teams where everyone is a misfit. Like The Mighty Ducks or The Big Green or D2: The Mighty Ducks. There’s always one fat kid, one smelly kid, one kid with glasses, one girl kid, one bully, one exchange student, and one teeny tiny kid who blows snot bubbles out of his nose. And they all learn from someone like Emilio Estevez who’s in some kind of bad place in his life (and probably hates children), but he pulls it together enough to lead the kids and learn about himself. First they lose a bunch of times in a really humiliating way until they learn more about teamwork and how to use their unique and completely non-athletic talents to their advantage. Then they start winning. And then they win the championship.

This is what I really wanted to write about for the brunch. But I wanted those kids, and I wanted there to be fifteen of them and I wanted them to be ten years old. That seemed like a little too much for a brunch – though you should look for it as a complex full-length that I hope to present on ice (it will most likely not be about a hockey team – it will be about a lacrosse or badminton team…just on ice). I thought for a few minutes about the prospect of having adults play children, but then you really miss out on the creepiness of the Emilio Estevez character spending all of his time with ten-year-olds even though he’s just been released from a DUI program.

Also, I thought a little bit about how that misfit sports team play might be the kind of play the Wayans Brothers would write if they were in Youngblood and Graeme and RJ asked them to write for the Brunch. Like, "Hey let's write Misfit Sports Team Ten-Minute Play!" That made me feel a little bad about myself.

So I wrote about lifeguards.

Kern: TRUE FACTS

Hotel brand Comfort Inn was originally named Comfort Women Inn because that's where Japanese soldiers kept their captured Chinese concubines during World War II. The word "Women" was later dropped from the name when Comfort Inn stopped being an international chain of brothels.

Conkel: VICTORY BRUNCH Blogging

Joshua Conkel: "I have to admit I was a little annoyed by "Victory" as a brunch theme for the first few minutes I ruminated on it. It read "sports" to me for some reason, and I hate sports and would never, ever choose to write about something so dull. Then I realized the word has much broader implications in the idea of winning and losing. Winning and losing at sports, yes. but also at life itself. I thought, I can write about winning and losing at life!

The word "victory" made me think of an old episode of Stranger With Candy in which Jerri Blank tries out for the cheer leading squad and the cruel cheerleaders (having discovered that Jerri is illiterate) ask her, "Jerri, what does v-i-c-t-o-r-y spell?"

That's when I decided to write about what happens to cheerleaders when they age and how a person goes from being a winner to being a loser over time. But, you know... funny. I've also been obsessed with grizzly crimes in which women steal other women's babies right from their bodies, which I keep discovering more and more of, so I may try to work that in as well.

God, this play sounds so gross and depressing, but I promise it won't be! I plan to start writing today if I can.

I have a show opening tomorrow, a ten-minute play for Horse Trade Theater Group's new company of actors, The Drafts (which was due this week), and a workshop production of my newest play in Chicago next weekend (for which another draft is due).

All of this and I threw my back out on Saturday moving an enormous set piece like I was some kind of she hulk. "Youngblood" indeed. If I was so young I wouldn't have an Icy Hot patch on my lower back."

News: May's VICTORY BRUNCH

Sunday, May 3rd marks the final YOUNGBLOOD BRUNCH of the season--The VICTORY Brunch (details to follow!). RJ & Graeme challenged YB to explore 'What happens when we win?'

Watch for blog entries from the five YBers (Robert Askins, Eliza Clark, Joshua Conkel, Jon Kern & Michael Lew), who, I'm willing to wager, are drafting their short plays right now!

Saleh: Blogging BLOODWORKS

My Bloodworks play (which is, for now, untitled) is a new piece that grew out of my short play “Home Games” that I wrote for the April Youngblood hometown brunch. I’m tempted to say that this untitled piece is a departure from my usual style, but really, every time I write something new I’m tempted to say this. Which I suppose means that I do not have a “usual style” or that my style is constantly evolving developing shifting… The point is, that this untitled play is unlike anything I’ve tried before, namely it is the most traditional/realist/kitchensinky thing I’ve let myself write.

I had asked to write for the April brunch before knowing what the theme was, and when I found out that it was the hometown brunch I panicked a little. I had never written about where I come from and I was not interested in doing so. I played around with ideas to get around it- I considered writing a silent film play (my hometown, Dryden, lies just outside of Ithaca which had a brief moment in the sun as the nexus of silent film), I considered adapting a John Dryden play (for whom the town of Dryden was named), I considered lying about where I’m from. I did not consider that a two stop light farm town in the middle of New York state could make for good drama. In the end, I printed out a John Dryden comedy “Marriage a la Mode” and went to work to turn this five act 17th century romantic comedy into a ten minute brunch piece. Awesome idea, I know. But as I read Dryden’s play, places and people from the Dryden I grew up in started to take over, started to talk to me. And so I stopped trying to get around where I came from and decided to jump into it. Writing “Home Games” was fast and fun and at the end of the ten pages I felt like I was just getting started with the characters. My Bloodworks play takes the characters and central relationship from “Home Games” and spins them out into a full length drama. The fun of the short version was how many questions it brought up, and the full length attempts to answer some of these questions. I’ve been having a lot of fun writing this play, and I’m hoping this means it will be a fun play to watch. And if not, I’ll rewrite it as a five act silent 17th century romantic comedy. Obvi.

Xo,
Erica

Kern: TRUE FACTS

Want to know how to tell the difference between a Spaniard and a Portuguese? Just check their mouths! Spaniards have pointy teeth, while Portuguese filter in krill using baleen.

Alibar: NOTES FROM THE ROAD

Lucy Alibar has been MIA from Youngblood & NYC lately... Here she is, filling us in:

I am adapting a play that I wrote into a movie for the Sundance Film Lab, which will be in June, in Utah. We spent a part of January developing it at the screenwriter's lab...they pair you up with mentors who can steer you through the specific problem spots of your script. Since ours deals a lot with magic, and myth, and ferocious aurochs, Michael Goldenberg was an amazing help. He wrote the last Harry Potter movie, and he has really helped us maintain those very delicate, nuanced relationships in the backdrop of all the apocolypse craziness.

…[T]his go-around [in June] is about bringing the whole thing together, from the script to the music to the cinematography. My director, Benh Zeitlin, and I will be developing the script with actors, workshopping and shooting scenes, and also working on music with the Composers Lab. It's gonna be more fun than a tub of puppies!

Benh's last movie, "Glory at Sea", (it's the myth of Orpheus set in New Orleans) got a lot of well-deserved press and awards. I cry every time I watch that movie, it's totally brilliant. And the music, which Benh also composed, got picked up by the Obama campaign for several of their ads. So Sundance contacted him about developing his first feature under their guidance--because that's what they're so great about, is giving you all of these brilliant people and resources so that your work can be the most fully realized.

The movie is called "Beasts of the Southern Wild," and it's a coming-of-age story about a little girl in Louisiana. There are other things going on--namely, a global apocalypse--but that's essentially the story.

It's based on a play I wrote that's based on my own family in sweet home Lower Alabama, but Benh, my director, is obsessed with this community on Isle de Jean Charles, in southern Louisiana, which is literally sinking because of coastal erosion and global warming. It's this gorgeous, very unique community that will not be here in fifty years. And we were both so compelled by that, and we wanted that to be this little girl's community.

Isle de Jean Charles, in southern Louisiana that is literally sinking , the setting of Lucy's screenplay, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

I will be back in the city on Wednesday, and have two more deadlines after that, for the casting people and then the final deadline for the lab. And then in May I'm sharing an evening with Erin Markey, Erin Searche-Welles, and Paige Collette at University Settlement, where I'll be a playwright again, and then I go to Utah.

Gibson: Blogging Bloodworks

Mira Gibson’s DADDY SODA (directed by Kel Haney) will kick of Bloodworks on May 6th at 7 PM (check the Youngblood Website for details to come!)…

DADDY SODA is a dramatic play about Mary, a teenaged daughter who realizes that her quest to find her missing mother opposes her preexisting commitment to protect her younger sister from “drinking with Dad” and all the dark implications that surround it. In a town where God’s busy with people cleaner than you, this broken family discovers that rising out of the gutter may not lead to a better place.

Mira Gibson’s thoughts on writing DADDY SODA:

I was struck with the idea to write DADDY SODA last October when I became interested in “the nature of resentment”, particularly resentment born of a contradicting nature: to protect. When it comes to family and siblings, I think we all have the inherent instinct to protect, but at what point does this instinct pervert and turn against that which we are inclined to protect; at what point does active protection emotionally twist into passive resentment, and more interestingly, down what path is resentment capable of dragging us? For Mary, her instinct to protect her younger sister, Candice from their alcoholic father and his habits of “connecting” with his daughters through drinking beer, the notion of becoming resentful towards Candice is merely a kernel of Mary’s emotional drive. However my initial interest in these opposing natures, I found, had its place in the hearts of each of my characters, and became a guiding factor in the deepest levels of the story. For Mary, her resentment is hiding inside of a tightly calibrated need to escape into a fantasy that answers the question: where is Mom? Her commitment to finding Mom becomes so strong, in fact a desperate attempt, that Mary finds herself willing to drift away from Candice in order to become Mom, no matter that this choice puts Candice in a great deal of danger. Suddenly, what began as an effort to protect Candice becomes the cause of the greatest risk to Candice. Despite learning that Mom is not glowing in the Kingdom of Heaven as the daughters had envisioned, but rather writhing in the pits of Hell, Mary still continues to become Mom. This led me to another exploration in this story: what is the human capacity “to miss” and what are we willing to do in order to regain what we have lost?

Beckwith: Blogging BLOODWORKS

The vast majority of Youngblood will be presenting new work in Bloodworks, a reading series from May-July of new, full-length plays they are developing (check back for details!). We’re trying to document the process, in some way, shape or form, via the blog.

As of 3/31, Nikole Beckwith shared…

"Imagine My Sadness will be my second full length play; which is like finding out the shoe fits, so now you have to walk in it. I'm finding that working on the second play is more intimidating than working on the first because you have set a standard for yourself, but also less maddening because you have a better sense of yourself. At this moment I am on page 53. If I was to describe to you where I am in my process I would say it's like the beginning of a new relationship; when you go over to each others apartments and watch a movie together but you never actually make it through the movie. So many dvd's go half-watched during the unfolding period of getting to know someone. Well, right now I am at the first time you see the movie all the way through. Good in it's own way but you have to adjust. Recalibrate your expectation. Head over heels is amazing but, you don't know what you're made of until you find your footing. Which is amazing too. Just slower. I imagine that by page 88 we'll be finishing each others sentences."

Kern: TRUE FACTS

Jon Kern will be educating us periodically with his TRUE FACTS...

Dingos are curiously allergic to 1980s synth pop. It is strenuously recommend that, if you ever go hiking in the Australian Outback, you carry Flock of Seagull's "Flock of Seagulls" to protect yourself against dingo attacks.

Fortenberry & Conkel: CAITLIN AND THE SWAN Interview

Two Youngblood playwrights, Dorothy Fortenberry and Joshua Conkel, are currently collaborating on CAITLIN AND THE SWAN, starting performances this Thursday. Dorothy wrote the piece and Joshua is directing—it’s being produced by The Management, where Joshua serves as Artistic Director. Since the collaboration grew out of Youngblood, I asked them to do a virtual interview with me… ~Kel

KH: Can you pinpoint what drew you to one another as collaborators?

JC: Dorothy and I didn't know each other prior to Youngblood and I have to admit I was a little intimidated by Dorothy's pedigree. She seemed so easy in herself and confident to me, so at first I probably thought she was way out of my league as a collaborator. I hate to admit that when I e-mailed Dorothy about producing the play a part of me expected a "thank, but no thanks" response. (Maybe I have self-esteem issues?) Luckily, Dorothy is an incredibly generous and patient person and writer and this all turned out for the best. There isn't a pretentious bone in her whole body, which is one the most important things to me in terms of collaborating with somebody.

DF: The first thing I remember about Josh was his piece in Asking for Trouble - Up With (Some) People. It was hilarious and polished and surprising, and I thought,"Wow, Joshua Conkel, he's really good at this. He's probably been in Youngblood for forever." And then I Iearned that he was a newbie just like me. As for what drew us together as collaborators, saying "I like your play and want to produce it" is a pretty solid way to get me to think that you're a genius. I didn't know Josh's work as a director, but by then I knew several of his plays and was sure he had a strong sense of the theatrical, the funny, and then strange - so I felt I would be in good hands (and I am!)

KH: Am I right to assume Dorothy shared CAITLIN AND THE SWAN in Youngblood Playwrights Group?

DF: Yes, and because I didn't do an Asking for Trouble piece it was the first thing I ever shared with Youngblood. I remember thinking, "Well, they're either going to love it or hate it . . ." and I think folks did both.

JC: Dorothy brought Caitlin and the Swan to be read at Youngblood's winter retreat in the Poconos and I completely flipped out by its conceits and cheeky way of dealing with heavy subject matter, which is something that The Management likes in a play... a lot. When i got back to the city I met up with the girls from The Management and completely geeked out. "Oh my god, you have to hear this play about women who fuck animals!" They of course looked at me like I was a crazy person... until they read it. Dorothy submitted the play to our reading series but it just so happened we hadn't picked out a mainstage show for the Spring even though we already had the space booked. It was all a matter of timing, I suppose.

KH: Dorothy, could you give us a little background on the piece itself?

DF: The play was written as part of a bake-off workshop with Paula Vogel and the Yale School of Drama playwrights. We were given the theme of "Leda and the Swan," and a bunch of Swan-related art (Elizabeth Egloff's play "The Swan," the Yeats poem, paintings . . .) I started writing it in July, and the biggest theme in its development was surprise. I kept being shocked by what characters did -- all the way up to the end, I was thinking "Really? They're going to do THAT?" Sometimes when I write a play I have a clear sense of where I think it's going, and this one really blew my mind. Much more recently, I realized that this play is actually kind of a continuation of a play I wrote many years ago called All of the Above. That's a play about a group of women roommates on the night before they graduate from a very fancy, very competitive university. I wrote that play when I was 23, and all I could think about was the end of school. Although the characters are different in the two plays, in some ways Caitlin and the Swan picks up the story five years later and asks, "So what happens to these girls? Did they get what they wanted?"

KH: Josh, what drew you to the piece as Artistic Director of The Management?

JC:I was drawn to the play immediately. I'd been wanting The Management to do a play about gender and sexuality for a long time and just couldn't find anything that grabbed me. As a queer person the issues that Caitlin and the Swan deals in are my every day. I wake up with them and go to sleep with them, so sometimes it bothers me that nobody is really writing about them in new ways. Particularly in new ways that are actually, you know... entertaining… [A]s the Artistic Director of The Management, I helped develop the mission statement that seeks to present contemporary plays that explore life in America and are accessible, theatrical, and not pretentious. Caitlin and the Swan is a natural fit.

KH: Josh, I'm curious about your collaborative process as a director of a new piece--how is it affected by being a playwright yourself?

JC: My process as a director is incredibly collaborative. I take everybody's input, and I mean everybody's. I think this is how people learn to create art when there are very limited resources available to them. I'm willing to try anything and if it doesn't work, I just toss it and try something else. In fact, the whole reason I began directing was because there was nobody to direct the plays I was writing. I come from a very, very DIY place as an artist and at this point, ten years into theater making, directing and writing are two sides of the same coin for me. I hate it when people say playwrights shouldn't direct their own work. I don't always have to direct my stuff, but it just so happens I'm really good at it because at some point I had to be.

KH: Dorothy, can you talk a little about your experience having the director of CAITLIN AND THE SWAN as a playwrighting peer in Youngblood?

DF: It has been really fun and easy working with a member of Youngblood. I think Josh is either very good at switching the writer hat and the director hat, or, for him, they're not two different hats. And I have to say that everyone at the Management (Josh and Kelsi and Marguerite and Jenny) have all been very down-to-earth and focused on doing whatever needs doing to get the show up. Even if that's throwing a porno bingo fund-raiser.

KH: Can you two talk a bit about the casting? Have either of you worked with any of the actors before?

JC: Casting the play nearly gave me an ulcer. I hate, hate, hate auditioning actors and avoid it at all costs. In fact, this was the first time we've held auditions in years because I prefer to cast or in many cases write roles specifically for actors I know. I know that auditions are a part of professional theater, but a big part of me still feels like I'm a little kid at the pet store. I want to take them all home with me! That said, Marguerite French (Caitlin) is a member of The Management. Jake Aron and Teresa Stephenson came to us through Ensemble Studio Theatre. Brian Robert Burns (Doug) went to Yale with Dorothy and Shetal Shah (Priya) and I have many, many mutual friends. Elliott Reiland (Pig/Swan) was really hard to find because we needed a beautiful male dancer type and I had zero dance connections except for one: our choreographer Croft Vaughn, who totally delivered. Thanks, Croft!

KH: Josh, could you fill us in a bit on The Management?

JC: Our mission: The Management creates a haven for a community of artists and patrons to experience relevant, moving, unpretentious, aesthetically and financially accessible theater. We are known for our dark whimsy and critical exposés on American culture, while building rock-solid, visceral entertainment. I went to Cornish College of the Arts with Courtney Sale, a founding member and my Co-Artistic Director. I joined The Management on their second show, Naomi Iizuka's Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, in which I took a rare acting turn. I played Myrna, a passive aggressive female school teacher who doles out pearls of wisdom. Type casting, obviously! I directed a show and then when Courtney Sale left town for a year I became The Artistic Director pretty much out of necessity. When she came back we became Co- Artistic Directors. Caitlin and the Swan is our third show as a Resident Company of Horse Trade, and we feel so very lucky. Erez Ziv and the rest of the staff are incredibly nurturing and manage an incredible workload juggling the companies. I heart them.

CAITLIN AND THE SWAN runs April 16th-May 2nd @ UNDER St. Mark’s (Thursdays-Saturdays @ 8 PM). Click here for more details and to order tickets.

Fortenberry/Saleh Hometown Brunch

Here's a little background on a couple of the Hometown Brunch Playwrights:

Dorothy Fortenberry, hailing from Washington, D.C. set HOME RULE in the local eatery, Ben’s Chili Bowl, where President Obama infamously made an appearance on January 10th & ordered a ‘chili half smoke’(see the YouTube footage). To further explore Obama's newfound prescence in Washington, D.C, check out this NY Times article, which Dorothy read while drafting the piece.

Dorothy, in front of the Washington Monument


Erica Saleh 's HOME GAMES focuses on former high school sweethearts in the small town of Dyden, in upstate New York. A chance hearing of Bon Jovi's "She Don't Know Me" sparks a revisiting the decisions they made surrounding Homecoming '88. Here are a couple of pictures of Erica, as 'a small town kid, doing small town kid things,' circa 1988 (left: Erica, at some sort of autumnal event; right: Erica in a parade (and sticking her tongue out!)

HOMETOWN Brunch

Six Youngblood Playwrights accepted the challenge to revisit a place where, let’s be honest, most of us avoid at least fifty weeks of the year…

The literal field trip wasn’t actually necessary, but for the April 5th, penultimate YB Brunch of the season, their personal hometowns inspired short plays by Courtney Brooke Lauria & Sharyn Rothstein (IN THE VALLEY - Avon, CT), Erica Saleh (HOME GAMES - Dryden, NY), Jesse Cameron Alick (OUTER FOCUS - Missoula, MT), Dorothy Fortenberry (HOME RULE - Washington, DC) & Mira Gibson (MASTER OF NONE - Sanbornton, NH).

ColumBrunch: TRIUMPHANT

from l to r: Jihan Crowther, Erica Saleh, Patrick Link (back row), Helen Highfield (front row), Jacob Murphy, Chelsey Donn (front row), Mira Gibson (back row), Ian White (middle), Clare Barron (front), Daria Polatin, Paul Coffey (middle), Caroline Tamas (front), Matt Farrell, Jake Aron, Sharyn Rothstein (back), Maya MacDonald, Eli Clark, Graeme Gillis, Jane Pfitsch, Dorothy Fortenberry, R.J. Tolan

The ColumBrunch was a huge success - the Youngblood crew and a small but game audience enjoyed pancake dinner from Spinelli's Deli, and put up new plays by Eliza Clark, Dorothy Fortenberry, Erica Saleh, Patrick Link, Mira Gibson and Jesse Cameron Alick.

We read through in the vans on the overnight drive, worked all day Saturday - spread out through the empty triplex condo we had been loaned for the trip (thank you, Milligans!), ran lines while waiting on the statehouse lawn to watch the Obama speech Sunday, and stuck our landing Sunday night. Thanks to everyone who made it possible, including the Columbus Performing Arts Center, the Milligans, the Boyers, Matt Slaybaugh and Acacia Duncan of Available Light, Kaizaad Kotwal, Michael Grossberg, and the incredibly dedicated cast who jumped in with both feet.