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Austin Script Works is an organization that supports Central Texas playwrights by providing opportunities at all stages in the writing process, from inception through production with a variety of programming.

MAY SALON

GILLIAN'S (W)HOLE by Tracie Gardner
Sunday, May 18th at 6:30pm
State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave.

Gillian's (W)hole
During a stay in a hospital emergency room after accidentally almost killing herself, beleaguered single mother Gillian Banks is startled to learn that her hope has fallen out of her- quite literally, in the form of a woman named Ara. Despite doubts about her own sanity, Gillian grudgingly accepts Ara's strange presence, and the two are dropped back into Gillian's anguish-laden life. Guilt, despair, and outrage over gender stereotypes and an inadequate justice system flood in on a tide of embittered humor as Ara slides ever closer to extinction in the grip of Gillian's vicious nightmares. Gillian's only hope for her "hope" breathes in the dead, their influence tethered along a curious lifeline strung from the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Tracie Gardner, a transplant from Detroit by way of San Jose, has completed her first full-length project with the play, Gillian's (W)hole. She holds a degree in English from a small, private university in the Midwest, did significant post-bacc coursework in science, and has taught science and math as a middle school teacher in Texas now for three years, the last two here in Austin. Next year she will specialize in working with high-functioning autistic-spectrum students. She is fortunate to have three fabulous children who amuse her regularly.

THE TRICKY MIDDLE
Getting to the heart of your play
A workshop taught by Colin Denby Swanson

Wednesdays, May 7, 14, 21 and 28, 7-9 PM

Zachary Scott Theatre Center Conference Room
1510 Toomey Rd.

All four sessions: $100 ASW/ $150 General
Drop-in rate: $30 ASW/ $40 General (Payable by check only)

Info & Reservations: 512.454.9727; christi@scriptworks.org

You have a great idea for a full length play. You like the beginning. You even possibly like the end. It's the middle that gets you. The middle where the meat of the play is. The middle that should be lean and efficient, the heart of the conflict. Frankly, it stinks. We'll approach the tricky, tricky middle of your play from different perspectives, comparing the tricky middles of published plays, including John Patrick Shanley's DOUBT, with shorter works. (Participants should read or see DOUBT prior to the May 14th meeting.)

ABOUT COLIN DENBY SWANSON
C. Denby Swanson is a graduate of Smith College, the National Theatre Institute, and the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers. She is a former William Inge Playwright in Residence, Jerome Fellow and McKnight Advancement Grant recipient. Her work has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater; featured in the Southern Playwrights Festival, the Women Playwrights Project, the Estro-Genius Festival, the Lark Theater's Playwrights Week, PlayLabs 2002, New York Stage & Film (through P73), Culture Project's IMPACT Festival, and the Icicle Creek Theater Festival; and produced by Salvage Vanguard Theater, The Drilling Company, and 15 Head a Theater Lab. She is published by Smith & Kraus, Heinemann, Accompany Publishing, and Playscripts, Inc. THE POTATO FEAST received a Susan Smith Blackburn Houston Special Prize in honor of the award's 30th anniversary in 2008. She is a Core member of The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, a former Artistic Director of Austin Script Works, and on the faculty at Southwestern University. Currently, she is the NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence at Zachary Scott Theatre Center, working on a new play about Austin blues club owner Clifford Antone.

3 Short Works by ASW Members
Sunday, April 27th @ 6:30pm
State Theatre, 719 Congress. Ave.

Ballet for Dog and Red-Haired Girl by Hank Schwemmer
What would YOU do with a broken clock, a three-legged dog, and 2000 jigsaw puzzles? Can you tell nirvana from a fire escape? It's 4:33 AM, the day of John Cage's death. The window's open, and it's a long way down.

The Alcoholic Drama by Tommy LeVrier

U-Screen by Mahani Zubedy
A comedy about maximum exposure and a 40% higher retention rate.

Creating Visual Metaphor with Sherry Kramer

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 @ 7:00 PM
Daugherty Arts Center, Conference Room B
1110 Barton Springs Rd.
$15 ASW/ $25 General

Information and reservations at:
info@scriptworks.org or 454-9727

How do we make the ordinary into the extraordinary? How do we create something that can carry meaning across the stage, into the audience and then out of the theatre, all the way home, and into the lives of these strangers who come, to sit together in the dark? How do we generate a magical object on stage?

A two hour workshop about making a magical object on stage.

Participants should come to the workshop prepared to discuss August Wilson's THE PIANO LESSON, and to write.

About Sherry Kramer:

Sherry Kramer's work has been seen at theaters across the country and abroad, including the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, InterAct Theatre, Yale Repertory Theater, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theater, New York's Second Stage, The Woolly Mammoth, The Tokyo International Arts Festival, and The Theater of the First Amendment. She is a recipient of N E A, New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships, the Weissberger Playwriting Award and a New York Drama League Award (WHAT A MAN WEIGHS), the L A Women in Theater New Play Award (THE WALL OF WATER), and the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (DAVID'S REDHAIRED DEATH), and a commission from A.S.K (THE MAD MASTER.) Other plays include: WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS, THINGS THAT BREAK, ABOUT SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, NAPOLEON'S CHINA (music theatre piece with Ann Haskell and Rebecca Newton), THE MASTER AND MARGARITA (music theatre adaptation with composer Margaret Pine), THE RELEASE OF A LIVE PERFORMANCE, PARTIAL OBJECTS, THE WORLD AT ABSOLUTE ZERO, HOLD FOR THREE, BEFORE AND AFTER, NANO AND NICKI IN BOCA RATON, THE LONG ARMS OF JUPITER, THE RULING PASSION, THE END OF RADIO, THE LAW MAKES EVENING FALL, and THE BAY OF FUNDY: An Adaptation of One Line of the Mayor of Casterbridge. She was the first national member of New Dramatists, and teaches playwriting at Bennington College, and in the MFA programs of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin.

DYNAMO FROM DALLAS by Michael Michaelian
Sunday March 30, 2008 @ 6:30 PM
Featuring Babs George

^^^^^^^NOTE CHANGE IN LOCATION^^^^^^^^
The Austin Center for Religious Science
4701 Westgate Blvd, Ste A-103
Austin, TX 78745
The Center is located across the street from the Westgate Theaters in the white stone office buildings (Westgate Professional Center) around the corner from Central Market South in South Austin.

Detailed directions and map available on the website: www.austincrs.net.

ABOUT THE PLAY:

Dynamo From Dallas is a one woman play celebrating the life of Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Dallas, Texas. Hers is the story of a woman who was underestimated by everyone but herself. Yet the list of her major accomplishments is a staggering series of firsts: the first woman state judge in the South (at a time women weren't allowed to serve on juries) - 1935, at age 38; the first woman to be placed in nomination for Vice-President -1952; the first woman appointed a Federal District Court judge -1961; the first woman to swear in a President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson -1963. She won her against-the-odds victories by the strength and determination of her personality, on the merits of her skills and professionalism, and by her fearlessness. The reading features Babs George as Judge Hughes.

ABOUT MICHAEL MICHAELIAN:
Michael Michaelian has been a screenwriter and playwright for 35 years. His career began with multiple episodes of "Kung Fu" in 1973 and continued with hour episodes of such TV series as "Barnaby Jones", "Hawaii 5-0", "Charlie's Angels", "Fantasy Island", "Dukes of Hazzard", and "Star Trek: The Next Generation", just to name a few. He also wrote and co-produced the miniseries, "Roughnecks", which starred Harry Morgan and Vera Miles; adapted Paul Gallico's "Miracle in the Wilderness" for TNT, which starred Kris Kristofferson and Kim Cattrall; and wrote "The Black Fox" for CBS, which starred Christopher Reeve. As a playwright, his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's "A Single Man" opened at the Greenwich Theatre in London in June of 1990 and starred Alec McCowen. His comedy "Fertility Rights" was produced by the Arizona Theatre Company in both Tucson and Phoenix in 1993. "Dynamo from Dallas" is his third full length play.