*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

Frigid NY Holiday Spirits seeks 10-minute plays
Run time should be around 10 minutes and no longer than 15 minutes
Feature 2-4 actors (no monologues)
Be a full piece, not an excerpt from a larger whole.
Be written in either English or Spanish
The piece should in some way connect with the theme described below.

The selected writers will receive an $80 stipend.

***

Theatre Noir Blanc is a new theatre company based in the city of Dallas, Texas. Our mission is to create, develop, and produce original works that explore the gay interracial experience–pushing boundaries, taking creative risks, and fostering an inclusive community that inspires a future generation of theatre-makers.

We are launching our inaugural season in 2026 and preparing for the 2027 season. Our goal is to produce four original unproduced full-length plays each season that explore our mission statement. The vision of Theatre Noir Blanc is to elevate these bold, untold narratives by national and international playwrights that reflect the richness and complexity of a diverse world.

***

The Decameron Project – Hollywood is seeking One-Minute Play submissions
The plays will be produced as a theatrical production in the Spring of 2026 in Los Angeles.
Please submit up to 5 plays.
We are encouraging first-time writers to submit works in standard play format.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** ROCKY HORROR AT 50 ***

It’s been 50 years since The Rocky Horror Show first did the Time Warp (again).

While the mind flip of a musical remains searingly relevant in today’s cultural landscape, its journey from a 60-seat theatre in London to more cinema screens than could ever possibly be tallied hasn’t exactly been A to B to C. Now, for the first time, that journey has been preserved in the form of an endearingly personal documentary.

Titled Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, the 89-minute doc is directed by Linus O’Brien (son of Rocky Horror’s originating supernova Richard O'Brien), and features intimate archival recordings from Rocky Horror history, from its earliest whispers to its most raucous fan events. Interspersed are interviews with many of the stage show (and the Rocky Horror Picture Show) stars, including Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, and of course, Richard O’Brien.

“You know, it's strange,” Linus O’Brien laughs. Born in 1972, Linus was less than a year old when his father’s creation took the world by storm. He knows no life without it on the periphery. “It pops into my life at different moments. I’ve seen various stage productions since I was four. People ask me what it was like, but honestly? My dad was my dad and Rocky was Rocky. They're two very separate things. I knew my dad had this incredible job, but it was all very normal for me. Now, to revisit all of it and examine the history of Rocky 50 years on, and see it all with new eyes… It's a real, real privilege, is what it is. And I'm very, very grateful for the opportunity to understand it in a new way, now.”

More...
https://playbill.com/article/give-a-voice-to-the-voiceless-richard-obrien-on-50-years-of-the-rocky-horror-show-and-its-impact-on-the-queer-community

***

Fifty years have passed, but the actor Tim Curry isn’t sure he has ever forgiven the reception that “The Rocky Horror Show” received in its original Broadway production, which was also his Broadway debut.

“I try not to think about it,” he said the other day by phone from Los Angeles. “There’s not much point in paddling through old failures.”

Curry was back on Broadway the fall after “Rocky Horror,” in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties.” But, wanting not to be reminded, he has never returned to the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, where the musical spoof that would soon become a cult-film phenomenon started previews on March 7, 1975, opened on March 10 and lasted just a month.

On the heels of the show’s successes in London, where it began in 1973 in the tiny upstairs theater at the Royal Court, and then in Los Angeles, at the Roxy nightclub, it was the kind of Broadway fizzle that seems baffling in retrospect — not least because some of its cast overlapped with the movie’s.

More...
https://archive.ph/B4tMl

***

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was an absolute flop when it premiered in 1975.

The iconic, campy horror musical garnered horrible reviews from critics, and maybe rightfully so. Its plot makes little sense and is just plain weird. The film is an acquired taste, with dramatic musical numbers mixed with oddly-placed violence and other horrific content.

But years after it first hit the stage, fans still attend midnight showings in costume, where they yell the callbacks everyone seems to know by heart at the screen as if reading from a script. I personally love asking Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry, “Clue”) who his favorite “Star Trek” character is when he pronounces the word “spark” like “Spock.” Audience responses like these that play on the phrases characters say — in the film and accompanying shadow cast production — are my favorites. Whether you’re rocking a maid costume and frizzy red hair or a sparkly rainbow outfit and tap shoes, there is a place in the theater for everyone in the “Rocky Horror” community, and I’m ecstatic to be a part of it.

When I arrived at the University of Michigan, I had only the perspective of a small Episcopal high school with little Queer or gender non-conforming representation. About a year into my college experience, I chopped off my hair. I tried out new pronouns. A new name. And I realized that there is so much more to who I am than the person I pretended to be for so long. “Rocky Horror” was a formative part of that realization.

More...
https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/b-side/from-flop-to-the-top-the-community-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/#google_vignette

***

If you're going to The Rocky Horror Show in the park, it's not the time to sit there quietly and mind your manners. You MUST participate! Of course, you're not a Rocky Horror virgin. (And if you are, keep it to yourself, trust us.) But if you need a refresher on what to pack in your prop bag and when to use it, here's a guide. American Stage will do some of the work for you, selling several of these items in participation kits for $5 at the concession stand. (An asterisk denotes what's included in kit.)

Remember! Try not to throw things at the stage or people around you. Toss up.

Rice To throw at newlyweds Ralph Hapschatt and Betty Munroe at the beginning of the show. Many fans will bring rice, though there is concern it will harm birds that eat it (snopes.com says it won't, but you decide). It also can be slick onstage. American Stage's kit includes a bubblemaker instead.

Confetti or bubbles At the end of the I Can Make You a Man (the Charles Atlas song) reprise, the Transylvanians throw confetti as Rocky and Frank head toward the bedroom. Or you could blow bubbles instead — easier to clean up.

Newspaper* When Brad and Janet are caught in the storm, Janet covers her head with a newspaper, and you should do the same. Oh look, you have a good one in your hands. Take it!

More...
https://www.tampabay.com/features/performingarts/the-rocky-horror-show-a-guide-to-props-and-participation/1224353/

***

New York Times March 11, 1975
Stage: A Flashy ‘Rocky Horror Show’
by Clive Barnes

...The cast, apart from Tim Curry as the dire transexual villain from Transylvania, Frank 'n' Furter. and Mr. O'Brien himself, is different from the London cast. The show stopped on the way in Los Angeles, and this was almost certainly a mistake.
It is smarter, now, but nothing like so crazy or, if one were in a mildly tolerant mood, so endearing. It now looks flashy, expensive and overstaged. The cast is better, the lights are brighter, the noise is more loudly ampli-field. But jokes-sick jokes, silly jokes, or even dirty jokes-are rarely improved by shouting them' down a megaphone. More is often less-
Mr. O'Brien's original idea of a modest spoof was both sophomoric and ingenious, It was just a romp, but there was some nice fantasy in its solemn Vincent Pricc-style narrator solemnly turning the pages of a dusty volumne and in sepulchral tones telling of the fate and future of the young hero and heroine Janet and Brad, when one rainspet night their car breaks down and they ring the broken bell of an awfully gothic castle.

The idea of Frankenstein as a bisexual transvestite, with a baritone voice, fish-net tights and black lipstick, was also perversely attractive. One forgave the music that was bright but not especially original - hard-rock candy, bublbe-gum and popcorn - and the performances that were camp and dreadful.

More...
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/11/archives/stage-a-flashy-rocky-horror-show.html

***

Spring 2026

The legendary rock-‘n’-roll musical takes on new life as a guaranteed party at the legendary Studio 54, staged by Tony Award®-winning Oh, Mary! director Sam Pinkleton. With 51 years of continuous productions, seen by over 35 million people around the world, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show features some of the most iconic musical show stopping classics of all time, including “Dammit Janet,” “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a Touch Me,” “Hot Patootie” and of course, “Time Warp,” the party floor-filler.

The Rocky Horror Show is the story of two squeaky clean college kids—Brad and his fiancée, Janet—on their way to visit their former college professor when by a twist of fate, their car breaks down outside a mansion. They meet the charismatic Dr. Frank-n-Furter, Riff Raff, Columbia, Magenta, Eddie, and Rocky. It is an adventure they would remember, for a very long time. Filled with fun, frolics and frocks, this is the show the Daily Telegraph calls “fresh. Subversive, and essential.”

More...
https://www.roundabouttheatre.org/get-tickets/2025-2026-season/rocky-horror

***

October 10 – November 2
The Bucks County Playhouse’s October tradition returns! “Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show!” A musical that inspired the 1975 classic cult film, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” follows innocent couple Brad and Janet as they seek shelter at a mysterious old castle on a dark and stormy night, where they encounter transvestite Dr. Frank ‘N’ Furter, his “perfect” creation Rocky, and an assortment of other crazy creatures.

Third party websites may be selling tickets to “The Rocky Horror Show” that are NOT valid and will not guarantee admission to the show. The only authorized vendor for Bucks County Playhouse tickets is through our website. If anyone offers you tickets to the Playhouse at any price in social media, please reach out to the Box Office so we can investigate properly.

More...
https://bcptheater.org/shows/the-rocky-horror-show/

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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 *** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble (GTE) is excited to invite all playwrights to participate in its 2026 Festival 10 event. This is GTE’s fourth such festival. It will feature a variety of 10-minute plays, both published and unpublished, that are written, directed and performed by Bay Area thespians. You may submit up to three plays. Plays should meet the 10-minute length requirement and be able to be performed in a small stage setting.

***

The Bite Sized Theatrical Spooktacular 2025

We are looking for original short plays (or other theatrical pieces) that are 10 minutes or less. This production is on Halloween, and we encourage any submissions that may resonate thematically, whether they directly relate to Halloween or not.

While we will consider anything and everything, we especially want to see submissions that are comedic or spooky, as this fits best with the tone of the evening!

***

Playwrights First open for full-length plays

Overall, we look for:
magination and originality in both style and subject or point of view.
Characters that intrigue and move us.
A compelling action revealing the human condition.
Theatricality inherent in the above.​

Rules:
One, single full-length play per playwright in English from anywhere in the world.
Not produced full-scale prior to submission. Readings, workshops, and college productions are acceptable.
No joint authorships, adaptations, translations, musicals, or shorts.​

​Award: $1,000 first place.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** PROOF ***

Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle will make their Broadway debuts next spring as a father and daughter united by math as well as mental health struggles in a revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Proof.”

The play, by David Auburn, previously ran on Broadway from October 2000 to January 2003 — an unusually long run for a serious drama. In 2001 it won not only the Pulitzer but also the Tony Award for best play.

Set in Chicago, “Proof” is about a young woman whose father, a well-known mathematician, has died; she is juggling complex relationships with her sister and with one of her father’s former students. And those relationships are upended by the discovery of a mathematical proof of uncertain authorship in her father’s office. Reviewing an Off Broadway production in 2000, the critic Bruce Weber, writing in The New York Times, deemed it “an exhilarating and assured new play” and said that it “turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story.”

More...
https://archive.ph/iTroL

***

‘Proof’ was captivating and thought provoking, a triumph of the writing (David Auburn), direction (Joseph Houston) and an impeccable lead (Lucy Jane Dixon). ‘Proof’ is the story of a woman who took care of her genius mathematician father (David Keller) for years, as he deteriorated due to mental illness. When he dies Catherine (Lucy Jane Dixon) is left wondering if she has inherited her father’s illness along with his academic prowess. She must deal with her returning older sister Clare (Angela Costello) who wants her to leave the family home and a pushy past student of her father’s, Hal (Samuel Holland) wanting to go through her father’s work.

Auburn’s writing is clever and fast pace, creating moments of wit, hilarity and pain with equal impact. His work is astonishing in its ability to create comedic and heart wrenching moments that feel realistic and not at all staged.

More...
https://mancunion.com/2018/11/30/review-proof-by-david-auburn/

***

London theatre has a thing about prime numbers at the moment. They feature prominently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and they also pop up in this revival of David Auburn's Broadway play, first seen in London in 2002 in a production starring Gwyneth Paltrow – a role she reprised on screen.

Here, Mariah Gale plays Catherine, a spiky and fragile 25-year-old who has abandoned her university course to care for her ailing father, Robert (Matthew Marsh), a maths genius who revolutionised his field before he was 25, but has suffered severe mental breakdowns since. The action begins on the night before her father's funeral, when Catherine's bossy, competent sister, Claire (Emma Cunniffe) – a currency analyst who's been paying the bills while Catherine provides the care – flies in from New York.

At base, this is a hokey family drama, and the fact that it won the Pulitzer in 2001 makes you think it was a quiet year. Auburn clearly wants this to be a story in which mathematical and emotional equations, intellect and feeling, collide. So he throws everything at it: ghosts, flashbacks, sibling rivalry, guilt, even an ambitious grad student, Hal (Jamie Parker), who knows that if he can find something startling in Robert's notebooks his own career will be made.

In the hands of a playwright such as Tom Stoppard, this might have been a fascinating and multi-layered piece. But the questions it poses (is the lack of prominent women in maths down to gender or prejudice? Are genius and madness really aligned?) never entirely add up, and most often it simply skims over the issues. Hidebound by its form and without much intellectual daring, Auburn's play lacks elegance, unlike the maths proofs it describes.

More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/mar/21/proof-review

***

John Madden’s “Proof” is an extraordinary thriller about matters of scholarship and the heart, about the true authorship of a mathematical proof and the passions that coil around it. It is a rare movie that gets the tone of a university campus exactly right, and at the same time communicates so easily that you don’t need to know the slightest thing about math to understand it. Take it from me.

The film centers on two remarkable performances, by Gwyneth Paltrow and Hope Davis, as Catherine and Claire, the daughters of a mathematician so brilliant that his work transformed the field and has not yet been surpassed. But his work was done years ago, and at the age of 26 or 27, he began to “get sick,” is the way the family puts it. This man, named Robert and played by Anthony Hopkins, still has occasional moments of lucidity, but he lives mostly in delusion, filling up one notebook after another with meaningless scribbles. Yet he remains on the University of Chicago faculty, where he has already made a lifetime’s contribution; his presence and rare remissions are inspiring. Recently he had a year when he was “better.”

More...
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/proof-2005

***

''Proof,'' an exhilarating and assured new play by David Auburn, turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story. The play is fundamentally a mystery about the authorship of a particularly important proof, a mystery that is solved in the end; it is also, however, about the unravelable enigma of genius, and the toll it can take on those who are beset with it, aspire to it or merely live in its vicinity.

In that service, the play takes great pains to depict the study of mathematics as a painful joy, not as the geek-making obsession of stereotype but as human labor, both ennobling and humbling, and in so doing makes the argument that mathematics is a business for the common heart as well as the uncommon brain.

As directed by Daniel Sullivan and performed by an exemplary cast, ''Proof'' has the pace of a psychological thriller, and if its resolution tilts toward the sentimental, the characters deserve to be hopeful.

More...
https://archive.ph/e5pIV

***

David Auburn's ''Proof'' at the Manhattan Theater Club is a family play of ideas. With intricate twists and turns, it takes a dramatic and comic ride through the lives of a brilliant, deranged mathematician and his two daughters, one of whom has devoted herself to taking care of her father.

Although this is not Mr. Auburn's first play, it is his first major production and it has been a heady experience for the 30-year-old playwright. ''Proof'' opened last week starring Mary-Louise Parker and directed by Daniel Sullivan. For the author, the sequence of events was quick and stunning: from page to stage in less than two years, and then surrounded by praise from critics and theatergoers.

In his first extended interview, Mr. Auburn spoke modestly about his accomplishment. He said that he had written the first draft of the play very quickly and, accepting suggestions from his agent and friends, he painstakingly revised it. Then he submitted it to the Manhattan Theater Club. Last April the company had a reading with Ms. Parker playing the central role.
''She nailed it,'' he said. ''With no prompting and no direction, she surpassed all my expectations and was unafraid to be scary'' and to stress the critical edginess of her character.

More...
https://archive.ph/l05t8

***

PROOF Audiobook
10-minute preview - Anne Heche, Robert Foxworth,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_n7B7QLfuE

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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

The Richard Rodgers Awards were created and endowed in 1978 by composer and member Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) for the development of new works of musical theater. These awards, created and endowed by Richard Rodgers in 1978 for the development of the musical theater, subsidize full productions, studio productions, and staged readings by nonprofit theaters in New York City of works by composers and writers who are not already established in this field. The winners are selected by a jury of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

***

Women’s Work Project open for submissions
WOMEN'S WORK is an award-winning program comprised of two separate, dramaturgically-driven Labs: 1) The Short Play LAB (SPL) selects 6 emerging women playwrights each year and leads them through a rigorous, step-by-step process to create original 15-30 minute scripts in six-months, written to an assigned theme. The plays are then produced in an annual festival; 2) the Full-Length LAB is for selected alumnae of the SPL to develop longer works over an extended period, with the same guidance and production goals.

***

Go Try Play Write August 2025
There will be one winner each month. Scripts will be submitted to the judges anonymously. Winners will receive $100 and a subscription to Bamboo Ridge Press. The prompt for August 2025 is:
A Pinocchio prompt. Write a ten-page maximum scene or an eight-page maximum monologue of a public figure who lies and whose body part either grows or shrinks with each lie. This is an ideal world where all lies are obvious to the public. Go big with your scenes… or small.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** PLAYWRITING AS THERAPY ***

Steve noted that AA, therapy, novels, and plays all break down isolation and enhance connections with others. In important ways, for both of us, our work in all arenas is largely about breaking down isolation. But the ways that therapists aim to do this seems to me to contrast in important respects to the ways that playwrights and novelists do. To begin with, whether individual therapists like it or not, psychotherapy operates in a context of pathologizing, focusing on which individuals are "sick" and need to be "fixed."

Most therapists can tell you that no matter how much they try to persuade the client that they do not consider them mentally ill, it is extremely hard to succeed in that effort. That, of course, does not arise for the reader of a novel or an audience member at a play. Too often these days, there is a chasm between therapist and patient because of the emphasis on classifying the latter's alleged pathology and focusing on that, on how the therapist presumably differs from the patient rather than on the commonalities between them. Some therapists even today consider a therapist who cares much about a patient or sees their commonalities to be inadequately professional, to have "countertransference" that is inappropriate or dangerous, to have "weak ego boundaries."

Related to this, therapy as too often practiced is not much focused on breaking down isolation and enhancing human connections, because in this culture, emotional maturity is likely to be defined as involving independence, autonomy, and separation without an equally important emphasis on connection. And then if, as is increasingly the case, the "therapy" consists primarily of psychiatric drugs, most people who take them will describe them as blunting emotions and making them feel more distant from others than before. Novels and plays are usually aimed to connect with readers/theatergoers; otherwise, it's too easy to put down the book or leave the theatre.

More...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-isnt-golden/201106/why-psychotherapists-write-novels-and-plays

***

The songs I was writing thematically overlapped with Why I Can’t Get Work. So I started working with a director friend to put those songs into the monologue. The monologue turned into a one-man show called Fast Food Town. I performed the show for a small audience at Ars Nova, a venue featuring new talent in New York City, in 2006 or 2007. Maybe twenty people showed up; two people walked out. I was still a stage ant. I kept picking the piece up and putting it down over the years. Sometimes the show got better, and sometimes it got worse. Life happened. I had a racist sexual encounter with a white man in Inwood. I got rejected by a Black man in Inwood. I saw a Craigslist M4M ad that read, “Inwood Daddy sucking cock all Saturday morning,” and set it to music on the spot. I worked horrible day jobs, including ushering on Broadway. My mother had a series of serious health events. I started doing Gestalt therapy. After several months I had a breakthrough in which I realized that despite my many years of self-loathing, nothing was wrong with me. Every week my therapist would have me beat a rhythm on various chakras on my body and declare that I “completely and totally accept myself ” despite whatever problems were plaguing me. She would also make me identify where I tended to hold my emotions when feeling stress. Through this process I was able to recognize my body as a container for thoughts that were capable of changing, and as a result I could stop punishing myself so much.

That personal shift also turned into an artistic one: suddenly I knew what the protagonist of A Strange Loop wanted. He wanted to change. He wanted to change the same way I had always wanted to change, because I thought something was wrong with me. Because I thought I was an unlovable fat Black gay boy. Because I felt as though even if I wasn’t going to be killed by the police, I was still just a stage ant consigned by fate to carry objects from one side of the stage to the other until I died, when in truth my only real obstacle was myself. I realized that no matter what was going in the world, it was my own perceptions of reality that would hold me back or propel me forward. It was the way that I met my tangible or perceived obstacles that made me who I was.

More...
https://yalereview.org/article/michael-jackson-becoming-playwright-storytelling

***

Graduate students in drama therapy may participate in one or more productions in our therapeutic theatre series. Therapeutic theatre is the intentional use of performance to address psychological, physical, and social concerns and promote health and wellbeing. It is one approach used by drama therapists to support goals such as reminiscence, recovery, rehabilitation, and advocacy.  Every year, we collaborate with community organizations and mental health clinics who want to bring their stories to the stage. We co-create theatre with real people about their real lives.

More...
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/programs/drama-therapy/student-experience

***

The ancient Greeks used drama for catharsis. As anyone who has acted knows, theater can tap into emotions, build self esteem, and reduce feelings of isolation.

But drama therapy takes those emotional gains to another level. It uses drama and theater processes intentionally  to achieve therapeutic goals. These can include symptom relief, emotional and physical integration, improvement of interpersonal skills and relationships, and personal growth.

According to the National Association of Drama Therapy (NADT), the modality is active and experiential. It provides a context for participants to tell their stories, set goals, solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. The NADT was incorporated in 1979 to establish and uphold standards of professional competence for drama therapists and set requirements for qualifying as a Registered Drama Therapist (RDT).

 With older adults, for example, drama therapy can maximize cognitive and communication skills, build community, and strengthen self-esteem. With addicted clients, this creative arts modality helps them express emotions more openly and envision a drug-free future. Because it’s active, drama therapy allows clients to act out negative behaviors—without consequence—while facing them directly and truthfully.

More...
https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/practice/Theater_Processes_Therapeutic_in_Drama_Therapy/

***

It was a crisp December day in New York City. Nancy Hasty, who had written an off-Broadway play that was soon to be produced in London, sat at a long, oblong table in the posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel and related how she had come to write plays.

Some 30 psychoanalysts sat around the table, rapt. They had come there to better understand how the creative mind, especially the mind of a playwright, ticks. In fact, three other playwrights besides Hasty had been invited for this brain-picking session, which was part of the December 2000 meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Indeed, one of the major revelations to emerge from the session was that playwrights view the world in a singular way. Another major disclosure was that their urge to document their observations in writing starts early in life.

Eric Nuetzel, M.D., believes that analysts and playwrights have many common characteristics. For instance, Hasty reported, she had been a quiet child, curious, a peeping Tom, an eavesdropper, if you will. And when people walked into the room she found them larger than life, fascinating. She also came from a Southern family that told a lot of stories connected with the past, and she remembers thinking as a child, “I too am a storyteller and I too want to preserve what I see and hear!”

David Lindsay-Abaire, another playwright invited to participate in the session, reported that for him, too, certain people had made a gargantuan impression on him when he was young. He said that this especially happened after he, the son of a Boston factory worker, got a scholarship to “a tony prep school in the suburbs.” So many of the new people he met seemed larger than life. He felt as if he was an outsider, looking in. And like Hasty, he too wanted to record what he observed. In fact, he had already written some plays as a youth.

More...
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.36.3.0019

***

“Grief is so specific: I wanted to write something that contained a wide spectrum of experiences, so audience members could hopefully find something to connect with,” says Feraud. The characters are dealing with the pain of loss in different ways. Thom is mourning the wife he deeply adored and he has also began to date. Evelyn was devastated by her mother’s death, even though her mother abused her. Lily doesn’t want to go on living without her mom, who she worshiped. “Grief isn't one-size fits all,” says Feraud of the characters who try to take a measuring stick to their pain and out-grieve each other. “And that's something I very much wanted to explore with this play.”

Also, having Someone Spectacular exist in a group therapy session was a unique way to mine from the characters as they remain in one place. Then add to that not having the anchor of the therapist to set the rules.

“Group therapy without the therapist felt particularly dangerous, exciting and theatrical,” says Feraud. “It raises the stakes of this particular session, and strips the characters of any politeness they might otherwise possess. Without a referee, things quickly become messy, and that was especially intriguing to me here because grief is messy. These characters are waiting for someone who is never going to come, and in some ways, isn't that what grief is?”

More...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerylbrunner/2024/08/30/she-found-her-power-writing-a-play-about-grief-loss-and-someone-spectacular/


***

It was not easily recognizable as therapy, these two women screaming at each other, their faces inches apart, during a rehearsal in a basement space in Greenwich Village.

The patient, a blond woman with spiky hair and spiky heels: Jill Powell, 49, an actress who had fallen on hard times. The other woman, more reserved in dress and demeanor, was Cecilia Dintino, 56, a clinical psychologist.

But this particular scene had a twist; Ms. Dintino is an actual psychologist and Ms. Powell is one of her actual patients.

The therapist and the patient were rehearsing a show called “Borderline,” which features the two women playing themselves and dealing with Ms. Powell’s lifelong struggle with borderline personality disorder.

More...
https://archive.ph/wkt8i

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