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Category: Blog

Fellows Spotlight: Elliah Heifetz

Posted on February 14, 2020 by Hannah Kloepfer

The Fellows Spotlight series continues with Elliah Heifetz!

Earlier this month, we introduced you to Jessica Kahkoska; in January we featured Paulo K Tiról, and over the year, we’ll be hearing from all 2019-2020 Fellows: Andrew Rincón, Andy Roninson, Avi Amon, Kate Douglas, Kyoung H. Park, Melis Aker, Nikhil Mahapatra, and Nolan Doran.

About Fellows Spotlight: each month we’ll feature a new Fellow and invite you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our program. (applications for the 2020-2021 class of Fellows are open now!)

Each of these writers were asked the same series of questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

Without further ado, we’re so pleased to put the spotlight on DGF Fellow Elliah Heifetz!

What was your first experience with theater?

When I was 5 or 6 years old at summer camp, my best friend left the arts and crafts barn to go audition for the musical, and on a complete whim I followed him there. I ended up playing the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. I still really identify with that song, “If I Only Had a Brain.”

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

My dad is a musician and composer, and so was his dad, and so was his dad, and so on for centuries. I come from a long, long line of Jewish folk musicians (klezmers)—but after my parents came to the States in 1990, they raised my sister and I with the idea that we could be/do anything we wanted and not necessarily follow in those footsteps.

Still, the truth is that I’ve always loved music more than anything in the world, as long as I can remember. So deciding to become a writer was just a series of “I’ve been kidding myself” moments, the first of which was realizing that I was happier writing and playing with my college pop band than I was pursuing whatever the hell it was I told myself I ought to be pursuing. No matter what else I tried, making music (which had only ever been a hobby) remained the only thing that completely, from my toes to my head, made everything full and perfect. That realization was when I was 20, and I started actually working towards a career in music for the first time at 21.

In terms of other writers or shows, seeing “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” at the Public really blew my mind, same with “Passing Strange.” Concept albums like Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city” and Willie Nelson’s “Red Headed Stranger” made me so excited about writing musicals.

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

I’ve been pigeonholed as a folk/country composer before, which is funny to me as I’m the son of Soviet political refugees born and raised in the mid-Atlantic. If I’m being honest, I do really love writing in those genres and finding exciting ways to tell theatrical stories with them. But I’ve written and am working on several musicals that have nothing to do with folk or country—a punk/hardcore-infused ’50s period piece, a Coachella-inspired song cycle, among others—so I’d more generally say that I like writing in popular idioms. More than that, I’m not really attracted to the genre that is “contemporary musical theatre” (no hate, it’s just not my cup of tea!), so the lack of those tropes/sounds probably sets my work apart at least a bit.

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

The Death of Desert Rose is a revisionist Western set in 1890’s Colorado about a female bounty hunter trying to stop her rival/former lover from committing a murderous train heist. I’m really excited to use folk, country, and country-rock music to bring the Western genre to life. It’s fun to imagine an outlaw gang as the 19th century embodiment of “bro country,” or write a contemporary “Jolene” with more of a murderous bent. This show is giving me the chance to write some of my favorite kind of non-theatrical music and find new ways to weave it into a musical without suppressing its twang or edge.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

Spending a full day alone in a room with no one around me writing music.

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Fellows Spotlight: Jessica Kahkoska

Posted on February 11, 2020 by Hannah Kloepfer

Welcome back to the February edition of Fellows Spotlight!

For those catching up, each month we’ll feature a new Fellow and invite you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our program. (applications for the 2020-2021 class of Fellows are open now!)

Last month we introduced you to Paulo K Tiról, and we’ll be hearing from all other 2019-2020 Fellows: Andrew Rincón, Andy Roninson, Avi Amon, Elliah Heifetz, Jessica Kahkoska, Kate Douglas, Kyoung H. Park, Melis Aker, Nikhil Mahapatra, and Nolan Doran.

Each of these writers were asked the same series of questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

Allow us to introduce you to Jessica Kahkoska!

 

What was your first experience with theater?

I grew up in Colorado, so my very first encounters with theater were through visiting national tours and a particularly influential kindergarten production of The Ugly Duckling.

As a teenager, I was lucky to participate in a training program called the Youth Repertory Theatre at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Youth Rep is one of those amazing, comprehensive camps where young people have the chance to act in the show, build the sets, work on the program… and being someone who is so broadly interested in theatre, it was all very exciting to me. Later in high school, I also attended Interlochen Arts Camp for two summers in the musical theatre program.

I think these early experiences with summer theatre programs influenced me more than I realized at the time, because now I have SUCH a soft spot for summer theatre. I just love everything about it! I love the bugs, the rain, rehearsing with the windows open, all the weird things that inevitably go wrong… and a lot of my favorite professional jobs share qualities with these early summers at Youth Rep or Interlochen. I guess I feel like if we’re going to be tired and stressed at some point in the theatre process, at least we should do that in beautiful, sunny places with lots of trees.

 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

I was initially more focused on performing, but after a couple years in New York, I actually had some health issues that changed my interest in both performing and living in the city. I ended up spending a couple years outside New York, working at various regional theatres in Colorado, Western New York, Michigan, and Maine.

While out of the city, I also had a chance to reflect on some of the badges of success I had initially assumed I needed to claim a life in the arts: namely a New York address and a singular focus of working on commercial musicals. Obviously none of these are destructive in the slightest (or have any deeper meaning!), but I think that as a young person out of school, I had internalized this singular, unchecked narrative about what success in theatre entailed, and at that moment, it wasn’t really serving my creativity, interests, or health.

As I was chewing on all that (and also starting to feel better), I started rethinking a lot of things that I wanted to be true about my own life and creative practice. I’ve always loved using theatre to make new connections and bridges, and I realized that whether as a dramaturg, writer, or administrator, I’m deeply interested in work driven by community, research, and incorporating new types of collaboration.

So I never had a moment where I dropped everything and became a writer, but it was this interest in re-configuring the creative process and broadening my own life and theatre practice that led me to writing. Now, I do live in New York again (among other places) and also work on commercial musicals (among other projects), but feel a lot more aligned with theatre spaces that feel exciting and nourishing to me.

 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

I definitely gravitate towards projects that have a weird factor. I love an unconventional process, mixing genres, and starting with a big, huge “okay, what if we….?” question.

Because my work is driven by an impulse to examine process and incorporate research, I feel like my actual projects are pretty eclectic. I am currently working on an all female/TGNC, punk-rock investigative concert-play with Preston Max Allen, an oral history-driven magical realism play (happening this month at the Colorado New Play Summit at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts), a multi-composer song cycle exploring American history with director Michael Bello and a 19 incredible composers (many of whom are DGF Fellow alums!), a community-responsive project with Notch Theatre Company documenting the experiences of rural communities impacted by oil and gas leasing….

So there’s not a ton of overlap in genre or style, but my hope would be that that they’re all created with a sense of care for the topic, needs of the piece, and collaborators in the room.

 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

YES! I’m collaborating with composer/lyricist and fellow fellow (….been waiting to use that for months) Elliah Heifetz on a new musical called The Death of Desert Rose, which is a female-driven, revisionist Western. Our musical takes place in 1890’s Colorado, where notorious bounty hunter “Desert Rose” Ramsey is well-known for her vigilante justice and a good-faith alliance with the local sheriff. However, everything changes when Rose receives an order hat she must hunt her arch-nemesis— “Betty Britches” McBain—in her most personal bounty yet. Unbeknownst to most, Betty and Rose ran in an outlaw company together when they were young… but when Betty killed the outlaw gang’s leader, donned his clothing, and took control of his men, Rose decided to walk away. Betty let her go with a promise (“The next time I see you, I will kill you)…

So over the course of the show, we follow this epic game of cat-and-mouse between Rose and Betty, but also learn about their childhood, romance, and what they each consider to be freedom and happiness. The story is basically grappling with destiny, forgiveness, and when/how we get to start over (and at what cost). But it’s also a big huge Western, and explores all these questions through bank robberies and train heists and dime novel culture. The sheer scope of the world is so much fun to dream and write into.

A revisionist impulse is also an exciting starting place because Elliah and I get the opportunity to explore our own complicated relationships to the Western genre, a canon that is obviously rife with problematic assumptions and erasure on many, many levels. In exploring what an updated Western would look, feel, and sound like, it’s been a privilege to have a cohort and mentors through the DGF Fellowship to support this process of interrogation and expansion, and above all, help us stay true and accountable to our vision.

 

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

Well, for one, I love how many amazing opportunities there are for writers to develop work at various summer theatres or through summer programs…

BUT during the rest of the year, I really appreciate how the writing process makes space for community– it’s rewarding to see the little communities that spring up and grow around a piece as it develops, and meaningful to cultivate that through developmental steps like readings, workshops and productions.

I think, to be honest, that there are so many times that our larger theatre community or culture fails us in delivering on the empathy and accountability it heralds, but as writers, and emerging ones, we have a unique opportunity in our own processes to model the values that we’re interested in seeing implemented on a larger scale. For example, it feels important to me to prioritize my health and the health of my collaborators, and I think when I’m the writer of project, I’m able to articulate and make space for that in a more impactful and resonant way.

———-

Upcoming work!

Jessica has a reading of her play “In Her Bones” at the Colorado New Play Summit at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts! You can find more information about the show and tickets here.

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In Conversation: Sean Patrick Flahaven and Andrew Lippa

Posted on January 9, 2020 by Hannah Kloepfer

At the 2019 DGF Gala we honored President of Concord Theatricals, Sean Patrick Flahaven, TodayTix Founders, Brian Fenty and Merritt Baer, and Tony Award-winners, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty(Ragtime, Once On This Island).

In the weeks surrounding this exciting event, our President, Andrew Lippa sat down with honoree Sean Patrick Flahaven to discuss the creative gifts and challenges of being a creative multi-hyphenate, a parent, a partner, and a leader.

We’re proud to share this interview with you and hope that it inspires you to reflect on the ways in which you nurture your own work, support the work of other writers, and show gratitude to all those around you that make theatre possible.

Andrew Lippa: You’ve been incredibly supportive of DGF over the years, and you also support a number of initiatives that help protect the value and interests of writers. Why is that so important to you? What do you wish people knew about the work of writers?

Sean Patrick Flahaven: The DGF has been a priority for giving for me, personally and professionally, for many years. No one but writers and composers start with a blank page and nothing else. No one else works for no compensation until the show is done, most of the time, which means no one takes bigger artistic and financial risks with their careers. Every show, every song we all love starts with writers and composers. My career and my business have always been in service of them.

AL: You’ve had so many different titles and worked many different jobs. You’re obviously President of Concord, but you’re also a writer, composer, orchestrator, conductor, producer, and were even a journalist for many years. I’m curious, how does that diversity of experience inform your work and life?

SPF: I learned early on in life that having developing multiple interests and cultivating multiple skills made me a happier person. It also allowed me to make a living, especially as a freelancer earlier in my career. Perhaps more importantly, it helped me develop an appreciation for all of the collaborators in a production, and respect everyone’s contributions: artistic, entrepreneurial, and administrative.

AL: How have you maintained a creative life and career in the midst of such a challenging management role? The ability to balance both at your level is astounding to me. 

SPF: It’s certainly not easy to balance creativity, running a large business, and a personal life, including fatherhood. I had wonderful models in my parents and extended family, as well as very supportive friends, colleagues, and employers. It’s involved a great deal of careful scheduling and constant mindfulness of what’s important. While my creative outlets have shifted, I genuinely find satisfaction in the managerial work as well. My partner and kids appreciate that my passion became my work.

AL: Technology, social media, and film and television have changed quite significantly over the past few years, and they are constantly in conversation with the world of theater. In your opinion, has the role of the writer changed over the past decade in light of these other changes? Are writers being better respected? What are the new challenges for writers?  

SPF: I think the Dramatists Guild has certainly helped to improve respect for writers in the theatre, and the success of writer-driven theatre and television projects in particular has raised general awareness in the public. That said, writers and composers still face a steep uphill climb, and the DGF is necessary to sustain their education, growth, and safety net to make things just a little bit easier.

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Fellows Spotlight: Paulo K Tiról

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Hannah Kloepfer

Happy New Year!

We’re kicking off 2020 with a fresh batch of Fellows Spotlights featuring the 2019-2020 DGF Fellows!

Each month we’ll feature a new fellow and invite you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2019-2020 Fellows: Andrew Rincón, Andy Roninson, Avi Amon, Elliah Heifetz, Jessica Kahkoska, Kate Douglas, Kyoung H. Park, Melis Aker, Nikhil Mahapatra, Nolan Doran, and Paulo K Tiról. 

Each of these writers were asked the same series of questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

We’re thrilled to introduce you to Paulo K Tiról. 

 

What was your first experience with theater?

There wasn’t a lot of musical theatre in Manila, where I grew up; but when I was four or five, my parents were determined to expose me to it. They relentlessly played original cast recordings and rented movie adaptations of the great classics, and brought me to what few productions of western musical theatre were being staged. And I resisted it. I dismissed it as “boring, old people music” — even falling asleep during a local production of “My Fair Lady”. (The one exception was the movie version of “Annie”, which, to my brother’s dismay, I watched repeatedly on video and sang non-stop, word for word, from memory.)

Things changed with “Miss Saigon”. Like many Filipinos living in Manila during the late 80’s, I was enthralled by news features about Lea Salonga and the many other Filipinos who were headed somewhere called “The West End”, and the sweeping, melodramatic selections that played over and over on mainstream radio. I was hooked. There still wasn’t a lot of musical theatre in Manila, but I consumed all I could. I got season tickets to the the local theatre company that staged western work; bought every cast recording I could find in Manila and on trips to Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States; and even ordered bootleg reproductions of cast recordings and filmed-from-stage videos from a shady little store which has since closed.

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

I’ve been writing all my life: short stories, journalistic news and features, essays, and eventually, songs. But even when I started writing songs, it wasn’t for musical theatre: it was choral inspirational / liturgical music for a semi-professional group I was with in Manila. Musical theatre writing never even crossed my mind; being a self-taught musician, I wasn’t confident in my composing ability, and with the Manila’s relatively small, resource-constrained theatre scene in the 90s and 2000s, new work wasn’t a thing. (Interestingly, people would remark at the theatricality and drama of my inspirational-liturgical writing.)

There’s no particular writer, show, or piece of writing that I can cite as influential; but I can attribute my entry into musical theatre writing to a professor I had, Michael Wartofsky. In 2012, after over 12 years as a corporate professional and choral composer, I left Manila and moved to Boston to get my first formal music education at Berklee. I enrolled for songwriting courses and was horribly insecure about being a church musician in a school of insanely talented pop, rock, R&B and jazz kids. But my professors made me believe I had what it took, most influential among whom was Michael Wartofsky, with whom I studied musical theatre writing for two semesters before he helped me get a slot and a full scholarship to the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU Tisch. 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

I write Filipino-American stories and characters in a way that I hope speaks to audiences of all backgrounds, by exploring themes that are universal through a frame that just happens to be Filipino-American.

I believe two things set me apart. First, as one of very few Filipino-American musical theater writers in the United States, I’m one of very few telling stories of this community. Second, I came to musical theatre writing relatively late (in my mid 30s), from a non-music, non-theatre background. My first bachelor’s degree was in Communication; I worked in Manila’s corporate sector for over 12 years; I was never in the theatre scene; I was largely a self-taught musician; and my songwriting for 17 years was liturgical and choral. Even when I left corporate life behind and started on a second bachelor’s degree at Berklee in my early 30s, my major was music therapy. As a result of my being self-taught, my music is more intuitive than theoretical; my liturgical music background gives my writing an honesty and earnestness, even a spirituality; my corporate past gives me a certain work ethic and attention to detail; and the time I spent outside of theatre lets me to bring into it a “real world” view.

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

I’m working on the book, music and lyrics for “Called”, an original musical set in a Manila-based call center of an American credit card company, where Filipino call center agents pretend to have American names, speak with American accents, work at an American address, and function in an American time zone, as they pretend to happily serve American callers. At the center of the show is Carmela, the ambitious, overachieving star agent on the verge of achieving her long-time dream of moving to the United States; and her relationship with Nelson, an elderly widower calling from North Dakota who threatens Carmela’s plans when he realizes she’s Filipino and asks her to be his friend. Over five days, Carmela navigates the rules of the call center to comply with Nelson’s request; but in doing so, also confronts isolation, identity, and all that she has given up to achieve her American dream. 

I started writing “Called” in 2015, and for a long time was afraid it would be too foreign and specific for it to speak to American audiences. But with the positive reception I got at a presentation of an excerpt in Musical Theatre Factory’s 4X15 series in 2018, and my admission into the DGF Fellows program through “Called” and the response I’ve gotten to it in the program so far, I’m encouraged that this is a story worth telling. I’m proud and grateful to be a Filipino telling Filipino stories in a program as prestigious as DGF Fellows.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

I have two favorite moments as a musical theatre writer. 

The first is when I put my writing into the hands of my collaborators — actors, directors, music directors, choreographers, designers. This step in the process used to be absolutely terrifying — who knows if my work makes sense, what if they don’t like it? — but I’ve learned to look forward to the way artists from other theatre disciplines interpret and add to the work, including letting me know it’s not quite working and giving me a sense of how to make it better. What a thrill now when the work ceases to feel like something that’s my own, but rather, something which has been nurtured and grown by a whole family. It helps that I’ve been gifted with collaborators I deeply respect, who believe in creating exceptional art and building a joyous, supportive community at the same time. 

The second is when I know my work has made an impact on an audience member’s life. It’s been edifying for Filipino immigrants and first generation Filipino-Americans to come up to me after my shows and say with gratitude and astonishment: “These are our stories!” It’s the power of representation in theatre made very real. And on the other hand, I’ve had non-Filipino immigrants, and individuals who’s families have been in the United States for generation — tell me they’ve been moved by the broader, more universal themes that I write into my stories and characters.

Do you have any upcoming work you’d like to share?

YES! On February 3 and 4, Prospect Theater Co. is producing a concert staging of “On This Side of the World” as part of its IGNITE concert series. “On This Side of the World” is a song cycle I wrote inspired by the Filipino immigrant experience in the United States, and we’re so excited to be reuniting the phenomenal cast we had at our sold-out two-week workshop production in May 2019. Tickets are available here!

Follow @DGFound on Twitter for further announcements regarding this exciting new work!

 

 

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Ella’s Music Hall Highlights II

Posted on December 20, 2019 by Hannah Kloepfer

Happy Holidays, DGF Family!

Ella here, the DGF Music Hall Mascot! I’m delighted to be taking over the blog again to celebrate some more Music Hall Highlights.

Every day we have artists at work in our beautiful space, and we are so proud to provide this resource, so writers may feel supported, inspired, and safe. To learn more about the Music Hall or to support the space and the writers within it, click here! 

I wanted to show you some of the ways our community of writers use the Music Hall in their work. Be it readings, rehearsals, or reflections, no two bookings are ever the same within these walls. 

Please enjoy some of my favorite moments from this season (and hold your appaws until the end!) 

 


“The Dramatists Guild Foundation is the most remarkable resource for writers in NYC.  With a beautiful space for rehearsals and performances with a grand grand piano offered at no cost, they make mounting a reading a fraction of the price.  Thanks to DGF, I was able to produce a reading of my musical Love Quirks, and by some miracle enough potential producers and investors attended. We are very optimistic that we will open the show off-Broadway in 2020, and it is truly all thanks to DGF.  Thank you DGF!”

– Seth Bisen-Hersh, Composer/Lyricist/Author/Accompanist/Vocal Coach/Cabaret Producer

 

Write Out Loud

Taylor Louderman, Jason Gotay, Jared Johnson, and Ben Rauhala at rehearsal for Write Out Loud in the Music Hall.

Write Out Loud is a celebration of new musical theatre writers. Taylor Louderman (Mean Girls, Bring it On), Ben Rauhala (Broadway Princess Party), and Matt Rodin held a song-writing contest for emerging musical theatre writers. After receiving over 500 submissions, 5 winners were selected, receiving a fully produced music video and recording of their song by Warner Music Group.

When the team decided to grow the project from contest to concert featuring not only contest winners — Kailey Marshall, Joriah Fleming, India Angel, Brandon Michael Lowden, and Mackenzie Szabo– but also 8 other finalists and a cast of Broadway’s finest talents, they brought rehearsals to the Music Hall, facilitating meaningful work sessions between the performers and composers.

Write Out Loud  is directed and hosted by Taylor Louderman and produced by Hannah Kloepfer with musical direction by Ben Rauhala. Submissions for Write Out Loud 2020 open on January 1st! We look forward to hearing this year’s new batch of talent!

 

Fail Better

Fail Better brought “Quiet Time” to the Music Hall. As the event description says, “haven’t found time to finish that script? Still need to memorize your lines? Want to catch up on your reading? Or maybe you just want to escape the noise of the city. WELL, COME ON DOWN TO (shh!)…*whispers* come on down to Fail Better Quiet Time.”

These were the rules of the day:

Upon entering, please observe the following: 

-Allow silence.

-Enjoy your music at a low volume.

-Enter & exit as you please.

This exercise in collective quiet is such a unique take on community and accountability that so many creators need. We hope to see you again soon!

 

Athena Writes

Athena Theatre hosted their annual Playwriting Fellowship, Athena Writes, at the Music Hall earlier this month. They selected seven playwrights assembled for a one-year exploration of the theme: “A Deafening Silence” and centered on Athena Theatre’s commitment to supporting new work which pushes at the boundaries of live theatre.

The evening featured excerpts from all Athena Writes playwrights’ full-length plays written in residence.

Congratulations to writers Kate Thomas, Jenny Lyn Bader, Jared Michael Delaney, Luis Roberto Herrera, Yasmine Lever, Joey Massa, and JD Stewart on this end of year celebration of your hard work.

 

 

I was so impressed by the many ways you used the Music Hall. Who knows what will come in (our out!) of the space next! Just remember, whatever you’re working on, you’re in the right space. We support you in all stages, as you create the future of American theater.

If you’re interested in using the Music Hall for your work, click here! And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for more regular updates on all of the work being created. 

Have a happy and healthy holiday!

Until next time, 

Ella

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Your help has impact

Posted on November 27, 2019 by ethan

As we gather with loved ones this holiday season, we share stories to strengthen the bonds between us, reminding us of the power of human connection. Plays and musicals have the power to do this on a massive scale, healing our divisions and uniting our entire human family. But in this season of celebration, many of the writers who shape our world for the better are in jeopardy.

DGF’s Emergency Grants give financial support to writers who find themselves in severe circumstances. These writers face challenges that make creative expression impossible – unexpected medical crises, childcare emergencies, domestic violence, natural disasters, and more. On this day of universal philanthropy, please support DGF with a gift so we can provide Emergency Grants to every writer in need. Gifts of $250 or more entitle you to membership with exclusive benefits in The Write Stuff Society, DGF’s giving community.

Read on to meet some of our recipients and see how your contributions provide much needed relief for writers, composers, and lyricists in distress.

“In January of this year my rent department notified me that they’d miscalculated my rents for September, October, November, and December 2018. They also informed me that unless I paid the back rents IMMEDIATELY I would be evicted. And indeed, I received four such notices. Unfortunately, my income doesn’t allow for a financial crisis of that kind. Also the threat of eviction with a life-partner in the final stages of COPD ended my ability to write for five months. Fortunately for us, Dramatists Guild Foundation Emergency Grants intervened and paid my building most of what they’d suddenly decided I owed. The relief provided was not only financial. I am again writing and have completed a new script. Thank you Dramatists Guild Foundation for your Emergency Grants!”

  • Lanie Robertson, Playwright (The Insanity of Mary Girard, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill)

“I’m writing to say thank you. Not only did your care and generosity rescue me financially, the sense of security it provided served as a wellspring for an artistic, educational, and compassion-based project, QUEER, ILL + OKAY.”

  • Joseph Varisco, Program Director, QUEER, ILL + OKAY

“I really appreciate that the Dramatists Guild Foundation considered my proposal and the conferral of the Emergency Grant. Puerto Rico was significantly damaged by Hurricane Maria. Most of my work is voluntary and is meant for marginalized communities. I have access to these communities through creative writing workshops and dramatic art programs that have become an outlet for individual and collective sorrow. We have developed stronger communities able to express their inner voices through the arts and have given them tools to deconstruct their past and construct a brighter future. I really appreciate this opportunity and feel blessed to know that artists in the world are supporting each other.”

  • María Teresa Marichal Lugo, Playwright
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Fellows Spotlight: Zack Zadek

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Hannah Kloepfer

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

Enjoy the final edition of the 2018/2019 Fellows Spotlight series, as we present Zack Zadek!

 

What was your first experience with theater?

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with two VHS tapes: The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins (I was also  with a cassette tape of the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Fiddler on The Roof).  I started getting in trouble around first or second grade for singing disruptively during the school day (not kidding), so my parents and teachers had a conference to figure out a musical outlet to address the problem.  That led to me auditioning for the local JCC production of The Wizard of Oz (I played a munchkin, naturally) and the lifelong love affair with musical theatre was solidified.

I should mention that I really became a “theatre kid” for the rest of my childhood/teenage years – I spent hours my library organizing cast recordings, went to theatre camp, played through the scores of all of my favorite musicals on the piano.  I was that guy in my school who was like, the hardcore theatre kid amongst the just normal theatre kids.

 

When did you decide to become a writer?

I was always making up my own stories as a kid, and wrote a bunch of terrible short stories growing up.  I also wrote a bunch of slightly less terrible songs instead of practicing classical piano, which was what my very strict teacher wanted from me.   Sometime before high school, it clicked that Guys and Dolls and Fiddler didn’t just descend from the heavens, that they were written by actual people – and from that moment on, I knew I had to be a musical theatre writer.  Sometime after that, my friends and I staged an evening of my work in someones backyard during the summer.  It poured and all the equipment got ruined.  I was hooked.

 

Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

I would say there were a few pieces of writing that were that formative for me.

The first would probably be Spring Awakening – I remember seeing it right after it opened on Broadway which was at the very beginning of my own adolescence , and I had this electric sensation in seeing a show that felt so immediately relatable to my own life in a theatre like that.  And the bigger takeaway was that music that felt so deeply contemporary in a true sense of the word could be used to tell an emotional story in a theatre.  Not like faux-contemporary.  This was music that was f**cking cool.  I went back several times.

The work of Jason Robert Brown was very influential for me, as it was/is for many writers of my generation – I was a pianist first growing up, so the way that he approached the piano definitely changed how I thought about my own instrument.  And I effectively did a “close reading” of his work over those early years – so as I grew in my own understanding of craft, it rewarded that with layers of hyper-specific character writing in the lyrics, and just as powerfully, a deep sense of dramaturgy in the music.

But bar none, the most important piece of writing for me was LOST (yes, the TV show).  I started watching LOST sort of casually at the recommendation of a friend, and it quickly became not casual at all.  I would listen to a podcast with the showrunners religiously after every episode, dissecting the latest turns – and by the time I caught up to Season Three, I realized this was the exact kind of storytelling I wanted to do.  All of Damon Lindelof’s work has become that impactful for me, but LOST is very much a reason I’m a writer.

Also Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

In general, I think I’m really interested in exploring the “big questions” in my work- Why are we here?  What does it mean to be alive?  How do we figure out our place in the Universe?  It sounds pretentious, but those are very much the things (and fears) I’m interested in exploring in my writing.  More specifically, I often use high concept worlds as a lens against very small character beats to look at some of those aspects of the human condition.

Musically I am a strong proponent of the idea that “musical theatre” is a medium and not a genre, and I always want the scores of my shows to have a unified sound, to be in conversation with the music of our time, and to be hooky.

I want to write musicals that a person walking off the street who thinks musicals all sound lame might think is cool (but also, screw that guy).

 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

I, regrettably, cannot.  It’s kind of secret.  All I’ll share is that it’s a commission for Ars Nova and Jill Furman, and that I’m ridiculously excited about it.

 

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

I get to tell stories in a medium that is the ultimate synthesis of so many disparate forms  – I get to engage with music on a deep level, and story structure, and character writing, and lyric craft – all while writing about the ideas and interests that would preoccupy me all day anyway.

And then when it’s all said and done, I get to stop being all alone in it – and pass it off to a whole group of talented artists who start bringing it to life, and teaching me about a thing that I made, and create a communal experience – that we hopefully get to share with an audience of actual human beings.

Could there be anything better?

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Fellows Spotlight: Charles Gershman

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Hannah Kloepfer

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

We are thrilled to present Charles Gershman!

What was your first experience with theater?

When I was young, my parents regularly took me and my siblings to The Muny, a huge open-air theater in Forest Park, the big city park in St. Louis. I remember seeing Peter Pan, Gypsy, and South Pacific. It was so exciting seeing Peter Pan fly! And I can still vividly see Gypsy Rose Lee’s boobs being lit up with electric lights and it felt so naughty and wrong and great, and I think that was the closest I’ve ever come to being straight.

 

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

A few years ago Tina Howe invited me to join her MFA playwriting class at Hunter College. She had us read Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Facesand Carl Jung’s autobiography and Diana Son’s extraordinary Stop Kiss. She took us to see plays and introduced us to people like John Patrick Shanley and Chuck Mee. I remember sitting alone with her in her apartment going over a new first draft I’d written. She told me to rewrite almost the whole thing. I was keeping my characters on too tight a leash. “Write in bold primary colors!” I finished that year understanding that being a playwright would take a lot of work and commitment. It’s because of her that I made the commitment.

 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

A number of my plays are queer-themed. I wrote a play last year called Free & Proud, which is a spare two-hander that captures the entirety of a relationship between two men, a white American and a black Nigerian. It was published by Oberon Books in concert with a UK production, and it recently won the Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award. But my work varies a lot. I’m also working on a monologue-based solo piece called IvankaPlay, which imagines Ivanka Trump breaking the pattern and acting on her better impulses, and exploring what it would take for her to actually become heroic.

 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

I’ve been working on a play called Stopover, about a gay married couple who take in a foster teen. The two dads come from different backgrounds and parenting cultures, and the play looks at why we become parents and what we’re really in it for. I wrote this play because I am terrified atthe idea of being a parent and wanted to explore that fear. It’s been a challenging and gratifying play to write.

 

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

There are some really rewarding solitary moments—when you suddenly break through some wall in the story that’s been a source of agony, or when some new thrilling idea hits you and it feels like a flash of brilliance and you can only see the good in it. But the most rewarding moments are when the work speaks to people—and they tell me so. That says to me that there’s maybe something universal in the story, that it’s many people’s story, that maybe it has a good reason for being told.

         

 

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Writing for the theater as self-care

Posted on September 25, 2019 by ethan

According to Nisha Sajnani, associate professor at NYU Steinhardt and Director of the school’s Drama Therapy Program, deeply stressful experiences— poverty, assault, environmental disasters, even the dissolution of relationships — can disrupt our sense of identity and role within our personal social networks. “These ruptures can contribute to anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation,” Sajnani says, which can precipitate social isolation, aggression, or other harmful coping behaviors. 

Self-care, from private psychotherapy sessions to physical exercise, is vital to ameliorating and reconciling with our own trauma. But writing — and specifically, playwriting — offers us a unique opportunity to both merge therapeutic exercise with the creative process and transmute our pain into something positive. Here’s why writing plays helps us make sense of ourselves in the world:

 

Playwriting allows us to distance ourselves from our emotions by putting them on the page.

Negative thoughts or experiences often occur in repetitive loops, reentering our stream of conscience and hampering our focus and productivity until we finally address them. Forcing ourselves to put those images or words onto a page, whether in exposition or dialogue, not only cuts that loop by giving those thoughts a place to escape, but also proves we have agency over them. What’s more, looking at a visual representation of our feelings (in this case, words) provides the necessary distance from them to gain full insight into why they bother us, and the closure to finally let them go.

Playwriting allows us to place ourselves as the hero of our own narrative.

Playwriting provides us with the opportunity to put into writing that we are not victims of a tragedy, but survivors looking to persevere. The authorial voice in descriptions, dialogue, and stage directions gives us full agency to discuss negative experiences in our own terms, and serve as visual reminders that we own our pain, and not vice-versa.

The group aspect of playwriting divides the burden of trauma.

Hearing others perform the dialogue we’ve written provides important insight into how those involved in our circumstances processed the events; it fosters empathy with the other players in our personal narrative. Externalizing a narrative onto a character allows us to look at the situation with a rational and compassionate eye simultaneously. Additionally, when other play participants — actors, stage managers, etc. — work through our personal narrative, it almost divides the emotional weight among them. Working through pain with a group provides us with a web of social support, reducing feelings of isolation.

Playwriting provides a voice to those generally neglected by society.

Consuming stories that authentically reflect our experiences can help untangle and diminish personal trauma. However, finding stories that reflect those experiences can be difficult: Artistic mirrors may not exist, or worse, provide warped, inaccurate reflections of ourselves. Playwriting allows us to build our own mirrors, ensuring that our stories are told as authentically and effectively as we see fit. What’s more, sharing that mirror with others builds a community through which we can further distill trauma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fellows Spotlight: Erika Dickerson-Despenza

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Hannah Kloepfer

Fellows Spotlight is our blog series that invites you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our Fellows program.

We’ll be hearing from all our 2018-2019 Fellows: Jay Adana, Rae Binstock, Zeniba Britt, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Mathilde Dratwa, Aryanna Garber, Charles Gershman, Nambi E. Kelley, Melissa Li, Benjamin Velez, Kit Yan, and Zack Zadek.

Each of the Fellows/teams were asked the same 5 questions, exploring where these writers have been, are now, and are journeying towards. Our Fellows took this gentle structure and ran, each submitting responses as unique and creative as they are.

This week, meet Erika Dickerson-Despenza!

What was your first experience with theater?

I cannot remember exactly, if we’re talking about theater in the traditional sense. The most accurate answer, however, is my Black Baptist church on the westside of Chicago, five blocks from Fred Hampton’s home (where he was murdered by CPD). This was the sociopolitical backdrop of the folk sermons emphatically delivered behind the sacred pulpit-turned-stage. I was enthralled by the deeply rooted Black liturgies, the stained-glass windows, holy ghost choreography and pentecostal breathing–the theatricality of that which was holy ground. 

The first time I remember seeing Black people in a professional production was sophomore year of high school at Goodman Theater’s production of Radio Gold by August Wilson. My American Literature class took a field trip to see the production after reading the play. I remember being amazed and wanting more of Mame Wilks, because Black women’s stories were more complex and under-explored, even then. 

 

When did you decide to become a writer? Is there a writer, show, or piece of writing that was particularly influential on your path?

I was always a writer. Language was the most natural and challenging way to undermine systems of oppression. I was trying to understand the world I was in and write my way into something else, something freer. In middle school, I encountered Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” and was enthralled by the speaker’s brash celebration of herself. I went to the library and checked out every book Giovanni had published at the time. I read them from cover to cover, but found myself most drawn to Black Feeling, Black Talk/ Black Judgement. Giovanni was unapologetically Black and female, fierce in her language and her critique of our political landscape. If Giovanni could do that just with words, I wanted to wield, wound and revive words like that. Then I was introduced to my literary mother, Ntozake Shange, and I quickly learned the importance of rupturing language and bending it to my will. I was a poet first. I studied Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Nikky Finney, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, Krista Franklin and way too many white women poets (whom I won’t name because their names are overstated and I want to give deliberate space to the Black women who are the reason I am possible). And when poems proved too small a form for the stories I wanted to tell, I (re)turned to the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Toni Cade Bambara, Saidiya Hartman and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. But I wanted to create experiences about Black women with audiences in a live environment. So I looked back to Shange, early Suzan-Lori Parks and Katori Hall. Because my people’s work & resistance have never been safely historical, theatre serves as a literary and live documentation of how Blk womyn practice sci-fi living. t’s is intimate, unflinchingly honest (when done right), and real time immediacy calls us to create a moment together; to witness and be witnessed.

 

How do you describe your work overall? What sets your work apart?

As an interdisciplinary theatremaker, my work converges literary, visual and musical worlds. I investigate, dismantle, critique and reconstruct mass media images of iconic, commonplace and invisibilized figures within the African Diaspora. My thematic obsessions deliberately center Black women’s land legacies, stored body knowledge of ancestral memory, girlhood trauma, maternal bonds, ritual, religion and distinct experiences of environmental racism. These themes point toward my central fixation: Black women’s literal and figurative dismemberment and corporeal restitution as a means of belonging–to ourselves, our families, dominant culture and our world. Afrosurrealism, magic realism, narrative re/memory and emergent strategy are conceptual preoccupations of my work. Through my artistic practice, I aim to resist Black feminine erasure and endeavor to re/imagine a world where a kaleidoscope of Black womanhood is lavishly welcomed and affirmed. Currently, the body of work I’m creating requires casts exclusively Black women and Black women directors. 

 

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you’ve been developing as a Fellow?

During my time as DGF Fellow, I’ve been working on shadow/land and [hieroglyph]. These plays are the first two works in my 10-play Katrina Cycle, focused on the effects of Hurricane Katrina & its state-sanctioned man-made disaster. Taking up epic space, these plays traverse the Black Katrina diaspora in an examination of the ongoing effects of displacement rippling in & beyond New Orleans. Together, the ten works underscore colonialism, environmental racism & the erasure of Black land legacies through the distress of disaster, evacuation, displacement & urban renewal.

 

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a writer?

I am most grateful for how my writing operates as cultural work. I get to practice the notion of sci-fi living: using my radical imagination to do what has never been done before in theatre as a means of advancing a more just and compassionate world and write toward a future in which Black people exist and are free. 

 

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