May 2007 Archives

Dramatis Personae Workshop

DANCING IN CYBERSPACE: The basic principles of creating performances in the digital world
with Clay Nichols

Weds. June 6, 7-10pm
State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave.

We will cover some of the basics: staking out your digital real estate, creating digital content (includes basic digital filmmaking), posting or "performing," aggregating an audience (or what used to called online marketing), and monetizing your work (or what used to be called making money).

They say that on the web "content is king," and writers are the kings of content, so why aren't you the king of the internet? Or Queen. Whatever. Simple applications now exist to allow to broadcast your writing and performance to an audience of potentially unlimited size. You can even make (a little) money at it.

Clay Nichols is a nationally produced playwright, co-author of "Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts" and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, the video website for fathers. He is also an ASW Core Alum and president of the ASW board.

$15 ASW members/ $25 general pulbic
Email christi@scriptworks.org or call 512-454-9727 to reserve a slot.

Sunday, May 20 at 6:30 pm
The State Theatre
719 Congress Ave.

A Perfect Circle
by Tom Cointer

In A Perfect Circle, a small boy with a mesmerizing power is endangered by the adults around him and their confidence that they will be able to protect him, no matter what.

Tom Coiner is a playwright and actor hailing originally from Marlborough, Massachusetts. But please don't hold that against him, he's also lived in Gambier, Ohio where he attended Kenyon College, and he spent a year in Louisville, Kentucky as an apprentice at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Since planting his feet in Texas he has enjoyed performing in his own play, Parachute, at the FronteraFest Short Fringe, as well as in Teatro Vivo's Boiler Room, ASW's Hybrid, and several of Dan Dietz's plays in Shrewd's Trash Anthems. A Perfect Circle is Tom's first ScriptWork's reading.

Linda Ramsey was named first winner of the Wasserstein Prize, an honor for emerging writers established in memory of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died last year. Ramsey, who has had plays produced at the University of Texas at Austin, was recognized for her script, This Feather House. The prize includes a $15,000 cash award, funded by the Educational Foundation of America, where Wasserstein was a member of the board.

In This Feather House (alternatively called Momma, Crazy!), an aura counselor's daughter struggles to succeed as an assistant at a cheese factory, but her mother believes that finding a man would bring her more happiness than the life of an executive woman ever could. Nobody can say she still doesn't do everything she can to ensure her daughter's success: blessing her hair extensions with holy salt, shopping for men online, and performing express exorcisms on their old car when they can't get it to start. But when is a mother's love too much? Or too crazy?

Linda is a senior English major at UT and previously attended the University of Puget Sound before wandering down south. Her play, Ink, was produced by the Broccoli Project at UT last March and her essays and poetry have been published in the Aurora Review and The Strange Fruit, a literary magazine based out of Seattle.

ASW is proud to announce that current Artistic Director Colin Denby Swanson and former Artistic Director Dan Dietz are two of the eleven national recipients of the 2007 NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights. The program, developed and administered by Theatre Communications Group (TCG) in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and supported in part by the Ford Foundation, was created to afford playwrights the opportunity to create new work while in residence at a host theatre and to become part of the theatre's artistic life and community activities.

Dietz will be in residence at Salvage Vanguard Theater. He will develop a play called The Difference Engine, exploring the relationship between the brilliant 19th century engineer Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, mathematical visionary, and drug addict. Dan will also develop a series of playwriting workshops that focus specifically on using drama to excite students about math, science and history.

Swanson will develop Blue Monday, based on the life of the late Clifford Antone, a fascinating figure in the Austin music scene, in residence at Zachary Scott Theatre Center where she will also lead an extended writing workshop with student writers from ZACH's Performing Arts School, writers and dramaturges from Austin Script Works and musicians from the Austin Music Foundation.

Each playwright receives $25,000 and each theatre $4,500 to enhance support for the residencies. Austin, Chicago and San Francisco are the only cities to receive two residencies; further evidence of our growing reputation as a hotbed for creative new work. Congratulations Colin and Dan!