October 2006 Archives
ASW Weekend Fling
WHAT CAN YOU MAKE IN 48 HOURS?
The AUSTIN SCRIPT WORKS WEEKEND FLING PLAYWRITING AND DORKBOT CHALLENGE
NOVEMBER 17-19, 2006
Austin Script Works, the regional advocate for playwright and new play development, and Dorkbot-Austin, a community of artists and inventors doing strange things with electricity, hereby issue an unprecedented challenge:
Dork This.
Starting Friday, November 17, at 6 PM, Austin Script Works members and area techno-artists will have 48 hours to write a 10 minute play or prototype a new dork creation. No matter who they are or what they make, they will somehow incorporate three "ingredients" that will be announced that day. On Sunday, November 19 at 5:30 PM, they will arrive at the Vortex Theater to show off their sizzling new projects.
Playwrights. Dorks. It's a techno-theatrical, Franken-Gertrude Stein-ian, melding of the minds collaboration. And totally Austin.
"Every year, Austin Script Works offers a program called the Weekend Fling to member playwrights," explains Artistic Director C. Denby Swanson. "They start on a Friday night and have 48 hours to write a 10 minute play in response to a list of three special 'ingredients', which are usually provided by guest artists from around the country. Last year, we wrote 5-minute radio plays, which we produced with live foley sound during FronteraFest 2006. This year, we decided that it would be fun to make the same program as local and new and fresh as possible. And we decided to partner with other folks who make stuff."
David Nunez, one of the instigators behind Dorkbot-Austin, agrees that this event will drive amazing work, "Dorkbot is all about what happens when people choose to tear their stuff apart and put it back together in new and beautifully strange ways. We're mad, renegade makers that sometimes have so many wildly divergent ideas that we struggle to get stuff done and out of our garage studios. Constraints, like deadlines or being forced to use a specific set of ingredients, create a focusing energy that fires up our engines of ingenuity. Creating alongside the playwrights during the Weekend Fling is exactly in that spirit of collaboration - we find those unique, untried combinations, add heat, and stand back as we plug in our creations. We want to be cheering as our robots and plays all come alive."
Each short play and each dork invention has to somehow include the three "ingredients", which will be announced on November 17 at a kickoff happy hour at Cafe Mundi. There are no other requirements for subject matter or theme - and playwrights and makers are encouraged to be as imaginative and expressive as possible, and to use the ingredients in unexpected ways. A show and tell will happen during the regular monthly Austin Script Works Salon, Sunday November 19 at the Vortex Theater, 5:30 PM. Playwrights should bring copies of their script; Dorks should bring prototypes of their interactive or kinetic art, machines, and robots.
In March 2007, Austin Script Works and Dorkbot-Austin will produce 8-10 of the short plays in a festival of new work called Out of Ink, which will also feature the inventions, potentially as set pieces or strange characters or installations. "We expect that these new plays and dork creations will be presented together in some thrilling and electrifying and Austin-tatious combination", says Swanson.
Friday, November 17
6-8 PM
Cafe Mundi
1704 E 5th Street
ASW/Dorkbot Happy Hour
Ingredients Announced
Sunday, November 19
5:30 PM
Vortex Theater
2307 Manor Rd
ASW Salon
FREE Admission
Wine, beer, sodas and snacks available for purchase
The events are free and open to the general public. However, playwrights must be members of Austin Script Works to participate in this event by writing a new play. New members can join at www.scriptworks.org.
Makers need to register through Dorkbot at www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotaustin.
ABOUT AUSTIN SCRIPT WORKS
Austin Script Works is a playwright-driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and protect the writer's integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. ASW is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and individual donors. For more information about Austin Script Works call 512-454-9727 or email: info@scriptworks.org
ABOUT DORKBOT
dorkbot is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), hackers, designers, engineers, students and other interested parties who are involved in the creation of electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term). Dorkbot was started in New York in 2000 by douglas irving repetto and has since spread to over 40 cities. The Austin chapter is one of the largest in the world. Events are held on the second Thursday of every month at various venues in Austin. For more information visit their website at http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotaustin or email: dorkbotaustin@dorkbot.org
Primer Paso, A Festival de Latino Plays
Austin Script Works and Teatro Vivo combine forces for phase one of a three-phase commitment to new work by Latino writers
Austin Script Works, the regional advocate for playwright and new play development, and Teatro Vivo, the leading Latino production company in the area, are teaming up to present a festival weekend of new play readings, community involvement, workshops, mentorship, and celebration.
Primer Paso is the culmination of the first phase of the Latino Playwrights Initiative. In the spring, ASW and Teatro Vivo put out a call for new short plays by Latino playwrights. Playwrights from all over the country submitted work. Six plays were selected by a committee that included theater professionals from Texas and California. These plays will receive a professional, public reading with Austin actors and directors, as well as the advice and mentorship of guest artists Michael John Garcès, a playwright and director and the Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater in Los Angeles, and Kristoffer Diaz, a playwright and educator with Cleveland Playhouse. The festival will include a playwriting workshop and a party.
The festival includes new works by Austin playwrights Monika Bustamante, Amparo Garcia-Crow, and Zach Gonzales; Lakeway writer Guillermo de Leon; and California writers Paco Jose Madden (Los Angeles), and Marisela Trevino Orto (San Francisco), both of whom will be in town for the festival.
"Every playwright needs opportunity, inspiration, mentorship, and connection," says C. Denby Swanson, Artistic Director of Austin Script Works. "Our Latino Playwrights Initiative will develop new voices and bring their work to the attention of theaters all over the region. When the community of writers grows, every playwright, every artist, every audience member benefits. That writers are willing to fly in from California for this opportunity speaks to the giant need for this kind of festival. Moreover, ASW has already been fielding phone calls from national theater companies who want to produce works by Latino writers and are looking to Austin for names and introductions."
Rupert Reyes, Artistic Director of Teatro Vivo, says, "El Primer Paso marks the beginning of our journey toward creating a new home for the development of new plays by Latino playwrights. Austin is known as the Music Capital of the World. The Latino Playwright Initiative will stake our claim as the Teatro Capital del Mundo. This is a fantastic beginning, thanks to all those who submitted their work and to Script Works for their support of Latino playwrights."
Each of the short plays had to somehow include three "ingredients" provided by theater luminaries Caridad Svich, whose new play THRUSH is being premiered by Salvage Vanguard Theater this fall; Elaine Romero, a Los Angeles-based playwright and television writer, whose play for youth ALICIA was commissioned in 2005 by Zachary Scott Theatre; and Michael John Garcès. There were no other requirements for subject matter or theme.
"The festival will be a place where artists and audience can talk about identity and art, politics and production, language and liberty," says Swanson.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
October 6 - 8 PM
Keynote Event with Michael John Garcès
FREE
October 7 - 2 PM
Playwriting Workshop with Kristoffer Diaz
$15 for ASW members, seniors & students / $25 for general public
October 7 - 8 PM
Public readings of six new plays by local and national Latino writers
$5 for ASW members, seniors & students / $8 for general public
October 7 - 10 PM
PARTY!
Catered, with beer & sangria
All events take place at the Vortex Theater,
2307 Manor Road (1/2 mile East of I-35, between Chestnut and Maple)
On bus route #20. Free Parking. Wheelchair accessible
Reservations can be made emailing christi-at-scriptworks.org or by calling 454-9727.
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