BookTalk, Synapse Theatre This Weekend at TWC

A BIG thank you to Synapse Theatre for graciously allowing us to move our BookTalk event on Sunday--with Alice McDermott & Round House Theatre's Blake Robison--into our theatre. Synapse, who'd rented the space, will now have their performance start at 2:30 on this one day only. To learn more about this play, read below. The play is directed by Kathe Park and written by a rising star in UK theatre: Graham Farrow. As an added bonus, Farrow will be leading a workshop at TWC on playwriting called "Fundamentals of Playwriting."


Theatre Performances at The Writer’s Center
Synapse Theatre's Mid-Atlantic Premiere of:
Talk About the Passion
Play by Graham Farrow
Directed by Kathe Park

If your only child, a six year old boy is brutally murdered and the killer produces a best selling autobiography, how do you react? If the public turns on you and blames you because you let go of his hand at the crucial moment, what does that do to you? How do you behave when you confront the killers editor who has made a fortune and a name from your misery? Starring Angel Brown and Craig Miller
Starring Angel Brown and Craig Miller
Performance Dates & Times:

February 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, and 27
Friday and Saturdays @ 7:30 and Sundays @ 2:00pm

Ticket prices are $20.00 for adults/$15.00 for students, seniors, military, and Actors Center members with ID. Groups of 10 or more: $10 per person, children 12 years or under: $7.50 per child, persons with disabilities: $12.50 per person.

For more information, visit the Synapse Web site: Synapse Theatre.

Sunday, 1:00 P.M. to 2:00 P.M. at The Writer's Center
BookTalk: A Community Reads (A FREE event)

The Writer’s Center will host a discussion about Charming Billy, Alice McDermott’s National Book Award-winning novel. At the event, McDermott will join Round House Theatre’s producing Artistic Director, Blake Robison (who wrote and directed RHT’s world premiere version of the play). The event is part of BookTalk: A Community Reads. A new program at The Writer’s Center—one for which The Writer’s Center received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts—BookTalk brings readers and writers together in conversation on a single book, much like a reading group. McDermott and Robison will discuss their involvement with the book and field questions from the audience.

Charming Billy at Round House Theatre

After the BookTalk event on February 20th, attend the play at Round House, followed by a panel discussion on adaptation. The World Premiere of Charming Billy will run at Round House from February 2-20, just a few blocks from TWC. These are ticketed shows. To purchase your tickets, visit their Web site.


TWC podcast with Alice McDermott

Our inaugural podcast is up! Click here to listen as Alice McDermott reads from her novel, Charming Billy, a National Book Award winner, and Shannon O'Neill discusses the novel with her.

Round House's "Charming Billy"

All this month--and with a whole week of shows added recently--Round House Theatre is putting on its production of "Charming Billy."

Zach and I made it down to the show on Monday. Gotta say: love it. For those of you who're familiar with the book, Blake Robison, RHT's Artistic Director and the play's adaptor, does a great job of putting it onto the stage. Of particular note, for me at least, was how the "narrator" of the book is presented on the stage. This isn't actually going to be a review of the play because, unfortunately, I wasn't able to take notes (no pen). BUT, I will say it's well worth a trip to RHT. Instead, take a look at The Gazette's description of the show in this week's issue. Or the Post preview here.

The only thing I'll add is that there is no intermission to the show, so plan accordingly!

If you see the play, don't forget that on February 20, TWC is hosting Alice McDermott & Blake Robison at the Center as part of our BookTalk: A Community Reads event, which rec'd funding this year from the National Endowment for the Arts.

And then, of course, we have our first ever podcast, this time featuring workshop leader and literary agent Shannon O'Neill (whose How2 Find a Literary Agent workshop you can find here) interviewing who else but Alice McDermott.

LitArtlantic: A Three-Day Arts Extravaganza, May 20-22

Over the past couple months I've talked a little about LitArtlantic. I've thrown the word around here and there, and maybe you wondered what it's all about. So just what is LitArtlantic? It's a three-day arts extravaganza AT The Writer's Center, and it's FREE (though a $5 donation is suggested per family per day of attendance). The festival kicks off on May 20 with The Writer's Center's own Story/Stereo event and ends Saturday, May 22 at 4:00 p.m. In between you'll find some seriously great stuff. Our co-sponsors (see list below) have been instrumental in bringing in great artists and perfomers for each session. Read on!

photo below: Margot MacDonald

Credit: Veronika Lukasova

The Writer’s Center and five leading local arts organizations are pleased to announce the creation of LitArtlantic, a multi-day, multi-discipline festival loosely organized around the four main “storytelling” arts: literature, songwriting, theatre, and film. Headliners include 9:30 Club founder Bill Warrell (featured this week in Washington Post Magazine), producer Askia Muhammad, documentary filmmakers David A. Taylor, Adele Schmidt, and José Zegarra Holder, and musicians/performers Christylez Bacon and Margot MacDonald. And many more.

(Note: During the next few weeks I'll highlight, here at First Person Plural, these and others who'll be part of LitArtlantic. We have a LitArtlantic Fan Page on Facebook, of course, which is just getting started. To get updates on the event or to just get involved in the talk, please click here and "like" it. And, as always, feel free to spread this around!)

Growing out of The Writer’s Center’s former “small press fair,” LitArtlantic now features—over three consecutive days—readings, concerts, workshops, panels, screenings, and performances, as well as The Hive @LitArtlantic, a resource fair attended by local and regional organizations whose work supports artists and the art of storytelling: small presses, record labels, funding organizations, and arts education organizations. Organizations already registered for The Hive include the Maryland State Arts Council, Furniture Press, Baltimore Review, and the National Writers’ Union. Organizations interested in participating in The Hive should contact Janel Carpenter at janel.carpenter@writer.org

Christylez Bacon. Credit: Veronika Lukasova
Please click here for the full slate of LitArtlantic Schedule of Events.

To learn more about selected artists at LitArtlantic, please click on the live links above.


Our partners for LitArtlantic (in alphabetical order): American Independent Writers, Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Docs in Progress, Round House Theatre, Songwriters' Association of Washington.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Just got through reading Art Taylor's post on his blog, Art & Literature, about Round House Theatre's production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Since he noted that I would be posting something, I now have no choice but to put something down. Read his post when you're done here. Let me start by saying to anyone who has not attended a performance of any kind at Round House: You should. The "mission" of Round House is "Great Books. Unbound." For readers of our blogs, literary types, it's a great way to see the books you know and love.

What struck me about the play was the comedy in it, and it reminded me of the stark difference between watching a film, where through editing miracles can happen (writers should read Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday's terrific piece from this past Sunday about film editing), and a live performance of a play. In a film, of course, you can cut and recut scenes again and again, slice, dice, mangle, and put it together again (in a way not too dissimilar from writing a novel). But in a play, obviously, you don't have that luxury. You have to get it right the first time, and since it's a live performance, you also have to entertain.

Which is why I think there was more comedy in the performance. Unfortunately, I don't have my program, so I cannot put names to the characters. It was one character in particular, Martini, who struck me as a comic foil designed to make the audience laugh. He would run on stage stiffly, crazily, leap over chairs, run through doors and back again. Naturally, the audience laughed (it was funny).

But you don't see this in the film. You can't. It's a different medium with different needs. But one thing the performance did really well--and here, though I recognize Art's point about simplification--I'd like to say that the Jerry Whiddon directed play DID capture the spirit of the film. Yes, it has everything to do with the time period in which Kesey wrote his novel, as Art pointed out. But as a theatre-goer I have zero problem with that. Take a look at The Crucible or Long Day's Journey Into Night or even, I think, Krapp's Last Tape. It's been a while since I've seen those plays, but I remember them precisely because they condensed their "messages" into the compacted format of the theatre.

That's not to say I favor simplicity. At the core of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a simplified message. But say what you will about Steinbeck--and he seems to be taking a beating of late--it's still a powerful novel.

And Cuckoo's message is very powerful, and in fact it's still true to this day. Mostly. There's a little too much blame being leveled on the women in the play-- the mothers, the wives, Nurse Ratched--for me to really accept it. That seems totally dated now, and for good reason. That kind of simplification is different than, say, a governmental force imposing its blunt and brutal will on an entire people (as represented by the big Indian Bromley). Haven't we seen this fairly recently on the real world stage?

All in all, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a nicely-directed, wonderfully acted (and cast) play. You may recognize the book, you may recognize the movie, but you will not leave the theatre without being moved. I promise you that.