Hell was sitting on Lane Savadove’s bookshelf for years.

Savadove, artistic director of Philadelphia’s EgoPo Classic Theatre, has adapted, with EgoPo actor Ross Beschler, the Henri Barbusse 1908 novel Hell. The play will have its world premiere at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, opening April 27 at the German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, running through May 15.  Tickets are $15-$30.

“Hell, the novel, was actually handed to me years ago by an associate, just a friend who thought it fit my interests,” Savadove said. “It sat on my bookshelf for close to 8 years.”

Barbusse’s novel caused a great sensation when it was first published: reviewers debated (and still debate) whether it is a novel about voyeurism or solipsism. In the novel, a young man moves into a Parisian boardinghouse, and through a hole in the wall observes the lives of his fellow boarders: as he watches them give birth and die, fall in love, commit adultery, perpetrate and become victims of cruelty, he becomes obsessed with what is going on in the next room.

“A man who peeps through a hole in his room: very theatrical, very much about the process of watching theater even,” Savadove said. “I met with the guy who is playing the lead (Beschler), whom I’ve worked with before, and we had talked about doing an adaptation or a new piece, so we decided to work on Hell.”

EgoPo, which focuses on building a repertory of classic theater and adaptations, chooses themes in classic theater for each season, and they had already chosen  ‘theater of cruelty’ influences on and from Antonin Artaud, and were planning a season of shows adapted from Artaud’s work.

“I found that Barbusse was a big influence on him,” Savadove said. “And realized as I got into it, that it helped give birth to the French Avant Garde movement. We knew this would be a very intense theater piece.”

Just before he caught Hell, Savadove met with PIFA, which was in the planning stages of the festival, and developing ideas with Philadelphia theater companies, PIFA’s focus on Paris in the early part of the 20th century meshed with EgoPo’s season.

“I knew the season would fit PIFA potentially,” Savadove said. “So I found the book again, and said I hope I like this thing…I’d read about it, but not read it, and when I did, I realized, oh my God it’s great!”

EgoPo has been working on the piece for about 9 months. Savadove described the process as, in the early stage “going page by page…we know the whole novel. Ross and I would sit for 4 hours at a shot together, 3 or 4 times a week, and try to convert each page into a theater piece. And we would sort of have a very similar sense of what language tends to pop onstage, so it was a very easy process, done together, out loud. And then we would read chunks of the novel, and meticulously begin adapting it.”

As they worked, they tried to figure out how big a cast they’d need: how many actors, how many characters each they could play. About halfway through first draft, they’d figured out the size of their cast.

“Once we finished the rough draft, we brought cast in, starting to stage it, and doing table work,” Savadove said. At that point the cast became incredibly active. About 2-1/2 months ago, we had a 2 week development process with the cast, to really finish the script. Then we took a break before beginning rehearsals, but even then, every scene, the script is open to changes and tweaks, and cast is very participatory.”

During a show’s development, Savadove starts thinking about the light and sound needed, and brings in designers early: set design; music, even the possibility of video is part of the conversation through the whole process.

EgoPo tries to book its casts for the season: building and playing in repertory. Savadove says that on any given show, about half the company are regulars who have done multiple shows with them. The company works to create shows that can continue to live after their initial run; pieces that can tour, return to the rep, go into different venues. The process of creating Hell took about nine months, about six months longer, Savadove estimated, than the company usually spends on a new piece.

While they may have spent nine months in Hell, EgoPo has spent longer than that in limbo and purgatory. Founded 20 years ago in San Francisco, EgoPo later moved to NYC.

“We were there for awhile,” Savadove said, until they moved to New Orleans. “New Orleans was really sort of the perfect dream; a city that was very affordable, and NYC had gotten very frustrating…” he said in a voice many companies know all too well. “In New Orleans, we got a long-term lease on a space and built our theater…we just didn’t know the hurricane would hit.”

When Katrina devastated New Orleans, EgoPo was on tour—in Philadelphia, Savadove, a Philly native, had never performed a show in his home town, and “I was dying to take a show to Philly,” he said.

So the EgoPo troupe watched in horror on TV as their home was destroyed…and the news media watched them watching the destruction, an act of voyeurism (or solipsism) not unlike the protagonist of Hell.

“Our theater in New Orleans was completely destroyed,” Savadove said. “The roof blown off, most of us lost our homes, it just didn’t really make sense to stay there anymore.” So the company stayed in Philadelphia. “It was the time to come home basically.”

In EgoPo’s production, Savadove has placed the audience in a position similar to the voyeur: “I think part of the process is that they take the perspective of the peeper’s room, the audience is literally sitting in, they share his view of the world,” he said. “They are implicated in the process. And it’s really fun on that side.

In addition to Ross Beschler, the cast includes Mary Lee Bednarik, Allan Radway, Sean Lally, Sarah Howard, Ed Swidey, Cindy Spitko and Sarah Schol.   Set Design is by Tony Hostetter, Light and Original Score by Matt Sharp, Video by Ren Manley, and Costumes by Janus Stefanowicz.

Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

First the important question: does being an artist in residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia involve actually staying in the two 1865 townhouses where the collection resides? Because that would be very cool.

Joseph Hallman agrees. When he was chosen to be Composer-in-Residence at the Rosenbach, Hallman says he thought: “if only this were a residency residency! They told me they were considering it for the future.” And he told them he’d come back for that.

Hallman didn’t get to stay overnight, but he did have complete access and help from the archivist and librarian to delve into the documents of Mercedes de Acosta, poet, playwright…lover. The result is the song cycle “Raving Beauty,” inspired by de Acosta, which will have its world premiere through the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts this Saturday, April 9 at 2pm at the Rosenbach. Tickets are $5-$10.

Hallman, a Philadelphia born and educated composer, has worked with some of today's most talented musicians and artists. His recently completed series of chamber concerti were composed for members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra. Hallman has also worked in the downtown New York music scene with the improv/experimental group ThingNY. He’s an adjunct faculty member at Drexel University, and Composer-in-Residence and Assistant Director of Festivals for the Traverse Arts Project.

“The Rosenbachs chose the archive,” Hallman said. “I think they wanted to highlight the archive, since a few years ago they got the Garbo estate documents. She is a really interesting historical figure. They picked it, and then I was totally into it; it’s a great story, a sad story, but it’s a good story.”

De Acosta’s life and times were shaped by the theme of the festival: the artistic experimentation and uninhibited creativity of Paris in the early part of the 20th century. She was a lover of women at a time when such things were not spoken of, and she had an eye for talented artists and women of great beauty: her lovers included Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Eva le Gallienne, Isadora Duncan, among many others.

As he went to work, Hallman spent about 4 months in the archives, working with the research librarian and archivist, going through documents: de Acosta’s letters, her books, her plays, and sort of ephemera that she had collected and sold to the Rosenbachs before she died.

“The way I approached it, was that I would I wanted the pieces not to be entirely specific. I wanted them to be representative of a more of an ambient or emotive kind of quality: first with Greta; then with her sister, Rita Lydig; and the third with Isadora Duncan.”

de Acosta’s older sister was famous in her own right for her beauty and influence on fashion and design, as well as her several marriages.

“Her sister was old enough that Mercedes looked up to her a lot, and wanted to be like her,” Hallman said. “She was a fashion icon; she was famous in her own way for being a socialite and they had a falling out, and it’s a sad thing, you can tell she aspired to be much like her sister.”

Hallman describes de Acosta’s relationship with Garbo as “the puppydog relationship, where Mercedes was sort of hounding her, and Garbo reciprocated at times, but not all the time, and not publicly.”

Hallman also noted that de Acosta “had her own way of telling things…you never know what the truth was. I think she had a way of accentuating the things that would make her look good, or make a situation look more dramatic. She was hyperbolic and self-aggrandizing, and I think that affected a lot of what she put out.”

This, of course, can be a boon to a biographer or adapter, as larger-than-life characters can leap most readily to artistic life.

Hallman finished with three songs, each with a different emotional theme.

“There’s the unrequited lover, that one was the hardest to write,” he said. “It’s got a series of episodes, and each of the episodes represents an emotional state that one might be in, frustrated longing, one where you’re the supplicant, submissive to the person’s will and whim, and no matter what, you’ll sing their praise. The second one is the one with the relationship with the sister; and the third is more stable relationship with Isadora Duncan. I wanted to create universal emotional tropes, more than a specific moment or person. Of course it’s about her, and you know these are based on her life, but I wanted to create these universal emotional themes I think anybody who’s ever been in love can relate to, can see or feel these things.”

As Hallman collected his research on the three central relationships, he decided that there would be a representative voice of Mercedes, sung by one singer. He passed along his research to his collaborator, Jessica Hornik, who created poems that Hallman would set to music.

“Most of the poems are in first person, and they’re not specific to any situation,” he explained. “They’re nostalgic and memory-laden, and they’re really beautiful on their own. Jessica is really a wonderful, wonderful poet. She’s done every vocal piece I’ve done except one. She’s a muse of mine. I’d send her recordings, clippings, pictures, all kinds of things, and she would send me stuff back.”

Hallman said that Hornik told him the last poem was the hardest for her. It was meant to be a love poem from a woman to a woman, and his collaborator said she wasn’t sure if she could write a lesbian love poem. Hallman, who is gay, said he didn’t know if he could either, but he wanted the piece to focus on a love relationship.

“The lesbian element is so there,” he said. “You have to think about these relationships happening at this time. And they had to be so secretive. You think of these things as being taboo, and not at all feasible, but they had them of course, and they happened under different guises, and it’s just amazing to see. It’s a great part of gay history to know about this. But at the same time, I didn’t want it to be ghettoized as a gay project alone. I wanted people to feel: these are two women in love, but it was bigger than them being two women. I wanted to do both of those things, be celebratory of gay history, but universal so that anybody could feel like: wow, I feel that, or I can understand those emotions.”

Hallman composed the pieces for the flute, cello, and harp of the Dolce Suono ensemble (flautist Mimi Stillman, cellist Yumi Kendall, and harpist Coline-Marie Orliac.  Soprano Abigail Haynes Lennox will sing the songs.

Hallman says in composing the music, he was “influenced by music of that time, of the ‘20s, the sort of impressionist chanson and French art songs.”

In terms of the emotional qualities, Hallman described what he was going for: “The first movement has got so much in it, it is full of pathos and every conceivable emotion when you love someone more than you could ever love you. There’s unbridled joy at moments, unbearable depression at others.”

Hallman’s time in the archive will spark other work, he knows. “I had such a great time working in the archive: it’s like overload. You don’t know how to process it. I wrote a 20 minute piece and tried to talk about 60 years of a woman’s life and her love. It’s funny to think of these things and that was what was cool about it for me, seeing the people as living, breathing things, rather than someone sort of having written about them. Seeing their lives through their eyes was phenomenal.”

He hopes for the piece to continue to be performed and developed after its PIFA premiere.

“Every composer’s dream and desire is to have their piece performed more than once,” he said. “It’s frustrating to realize you may only get one performance; I don’t think that will be the case with this piece. It’s a strong piece and a strong group, and I think it has a good message.”

Ed note: Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to John Wanamaker’s department store in downtown Philadelphia. It was a special treat to go down and see the great bronze eagle in the lobby, to eat at the Crystal Tearoom, and to stop by the founder’s office…left exactly as it was the day John Wanamaker died, behind a wall of glass, the day of his death outlined in red on the office calendar. To me, Wanamaker’s was one of the things that made Philadelphia a great city. A great city should have a fine department store, a world-class symphony orchestra, beautiful art museums, and a mediocre team in the National League.

To Rogelio Martinez, “Wanamaker” was the name of a famous mile. That is, The Wanamaker Mile, a race for star runners in the annual Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. Martinez ran track, and he knew that the Irish did well in it, especially Eamonn Coghlin, “Chairman of the Boards.”

“I associated the Wanamaker name with Madison Square Garden,” Martinez said. “Only when I started to spend time in Philadelphia did I say to Terry (Arden Theatre artistic director Terrence J. Nolen): ‘tell me a little bit about the Eagle.’ That’s sort of how I arrived at it…via a long, circuitous route.”

Martinez, a NYC-based playwright, has had Philadelphia on his mind a lot lately as the author of “Wanamaker’s Pursuit,” a new play being presented at the Arcadia Stage by the Arden Theatre, directed by Terrence Nolen, as part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, currently in previews, and opening April 7, running until May 22.

The title character in Martinez’s play is Nathan Wanamaker (played by Jürgen Hooper), a fictional character inspired by John Wanamaker’s grandson, John Wanamaker, Jr. Wanamaker Sr.’s son Rodman, actually did spend a great deal of time in Paris in the late 19th century.

“When Rodman dies, the store gets passed to a trust,” Martinez recounted. “I was always interested in why it doesn’t go to the children. Oftentimes, third generations lose some interest in the family business.” Rodman Wanamaker took over the family business after his father’s death, but did not pass it on to his children (Wikipedia hints that Rodman’s only son, John, had “personal problems” which prevented his taking over the family business.) John, Jr. was known as “Captain John” after his service on General Pershing’s staff in World War I. Captain John died at the age of 45, in 1935.

Martinez originally intended to write “a little bit” about John, imagining what the young man might have seen, who he would have met in Belle Epoque Paris.

“I started writing a story about a young man going to Paris, learning to be a buyer,” the playwright said. “But what I was really writing about was Paris in 1911 (the heart of the time that gives PIFA its theme), with people like Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso.” This is when Stein and Picasso and other artists in their circle were becoming themselves, and before they became as visible to a wide range of people as they later did. “If you write about them at that time, we get to know who they are as they begin have an idea of who they are. This is the moment when their egos are beginning to blossom. By the time you get to the 1920s, their egos are in full bloom.”

Among the relationships that he follows is that of Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein, which was beginning to fall apart, and it would eventually completely collapse. “I wanted to explore that aspect of it, a brother and sister coming to the end of their relationship,” Martinez explained. “And breaking up, in a sense. It was a sad breakup.”

Martinez spent six or seven months doing the historical research on the piece, then another 3 months writing the play, and did rewrites over the course of another year. The play was commissioned as part of the Arden’s Independence Foundation New Play Showcase, and received additional support with an Edgerton Grant from the Theatre Communications Group, which allowed the production 2 additional weeks of rehearsal.

So Martinez had the opportunity to bring his Nathan Wanamaker to Paris to meet and mingle with great artists on the verge. One of the major characters in the play is Paul Poiret (played by Wilbur Edwin Henry), a French designer whose influence on fashion made him one of the most important figures of his time; now he is more of a supporting character, not as well known, in today’s histories.

“The idea is that this man was a name that’s now forgotten. It’s really interesting who history decides to remember and who it decides to forget. Leo Stein, as far as culturally, as far as being responsible for curating this art, is as powerful a force as Gertrude Stein,” Martinez said. “He wasn’t the artist that his sister was, but as far as having an eye for art, he was. But we’ve forgotten Leo. The Metropolitan Museum recently did a show on Paul Poiret’s fashions, so it’s not like we’ve forgotten him, but he’s not a name like Coco Chanel, who came in the 1920s, and knocked him off the map. Yet, in 1911, he was a rock star. He was it. He brought fashion into the modern era. So it’s interesting for me to see, and for audiences to see, who history chooses to remember and why.”

“Why have we chosen to remember the Mona Lisa, when so much art was created in that period?” Martinez asked. (The theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 is part of “Wanamaker’s Pursuit” and the subject of another PIFA play, “Art Lover” by Jules Tasca). “I don’t quite have an answer for that, and I don’t expect audiences to have an answer, but it’s interesting to contemplate the question, and at least each of the main characters has a different response to the paining that makes it personal to them. That’s what the Mona Lisa does…when we see it, we have a personal reaction to it, different from any other.”

 “Wanamaker’s Pursuit” also features Geneviève Perrier as Denise Poiret, Catharine K. Slusar as Gertrude Stein, David Bardeen as Leo Stein and Shawn Fagan in a variety of roles including Pablo Picasso.

It's playing at the Arcadia Stage at the Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2nd St. Tickets are $20-$39 (student and senior discounts may be available).

I was asked by Rachel Kramer Bussel to read at the annual Rainbow Book Fair at The Center today.

I love doing readings because I am a big old ham, and wondered what I could pick to fit the bill (a very SHORT bill: 5 minutes per reader).

I have no problem with short readings: I've written a 1-minute play, done a 2-minute reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, had a 5-minute play produced in Oregon, have written innumerable 10-minute plays, and my own reading series has a 15-minutes-tops limit.

The question was how best to create a literary amuse bouche (that would also sell books).

While I am not a poet, I have read and heard enough poetry that I can fake it (which I once did at Cheryl B's "Poetry vs. Comedy" series).

So I decided to make a found poem out of all the stories in BLE.

(Later, when I was talking to poet Guillermo Castro, who will read at Drunken! Careening! Writers! in April for National Poetry Month, he told me there is a form called a "cento," that is, a poem created solely from lines by other poets.)

So here's the cento for Best Lesbian Erotica 2011:
Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 (abridged)
I picked up a twentysomething-year-old Jewish straight girl when I went out for Chinese with my manager last Saturday night.

Van didn’t mind Julia being a stripper, as long as she didn’t have to go and watch her lover being watched.

“Why not? We girls do that all the time. I was a runner-up in my village in the boobs and butts contest.”
 
There is something very raw and very queer about playing with this kind of power.

“Okay, well, it goes both ways then. If I share, you have to, too.”

Aryn closed her eyes, sliding her hands around the muscled back and holding the dancer’s smooth body close, the hard nipple still hot against her tongue, and then Phera pulled back with a whispered laugh and took her body away.

I should be faster, this should be just three thrusts and it’s over, we’re in public, for goodness’ sake, in a room full of people, barely concealed by shadow.

In front of me stood a concrete hut, long abandoned, covered in DANGER OF DEATH signs.

Bella stood there, naked and blue.

Were I to describe my image of perfection, my ideal woman, I would list every one of her stunning features.

What I’d like would probably embarrass you, I thought.

“Just keep your mind on business, Ace, and let me do my work here,” I said.

“Do you want to see my tit?” Trish asks, just like she was asking “Do you want to see my puppy?”

Chen picked up my hand and examined my fingernails, which had black polish but were cut short.

I was all tangled up in my harness and I could barely move, so she could have been bright blue with tentacles and I would have been overjoyed to see her.

I felt a surge of irritation and slapped her with all my strength.

“Be good and you’ll get more,” Frankie promised.

There, in a dingy midafternoon bar, she ordered two double whiskies for herself and another to go with my coffee.

That’s how we ended up in this big abandoned room, with nice cushy chairs around a huge conference table.

So I had to be content to look at her and admire her from afar.

She crawls over me and doesn’t make a sound as she pushes my thighs apart.

The front wall of the Verizon Hall on the Commonwealth Plaza at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia is 90 feet tall; it would be a great, huge stage…if only it were horizontal. And yet, that’s not a problem for Grounded Aerial, a Brooklyn-based troupe which will perform “Chance Encounters” as part of the opening gala of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts on April 7.

Using carefully rigged harnesses, performers who are trained dancers and aerialists will scurry and fly up and down walls, both ignoring and using the law of gravity to create their work. “Chance Encounters” is a site-specific piece created specifically for PIFA by Grounded Aerial founder and Artistic Director Karen Fuhrman.

Fuhrman was teaching a workshop at the Philadelphia Circus School of the Arts, (which is also presenting a show, The Green Fairy Cabaret at PIFA), and Executive Director Shana Kennedy put her in touch with the festival, and the collaboration began.

“I went in there and I saw the space, and thought: this is perfect as far as aerial land. It’s tall, with points everywhere,” Furhman said. The festival’s theme: artistic experimentation and uninhibited creativity that Paris 1910 – 1920 gave Fuhrman some ideas to start playing around with. 

One of the things that Furhman kept coming back to was the idea that the period was a time when people and things sped up: they left where they were from and traveled by train, and moved from one place to the other, for reasons ranging from and including love and war. The idea of people passing, meeting, deciding to engage, or not, gave rise to the name and theme Grounded Aerial chose for the piece “Chance Encounters.”

“Chance encounters are timeless in the sense of then happening all the time; they are a human trait,” said Fuhrman. “But I’m putting it in this time and place: the French, early 20th century, time period. And still, there’s a timelessness, to it, whether you’re walking through the airport or the subway, wherever you happen to be. Catch the eye of a stranger…that’s what I’m exploring.”

Grounded Aerial works out of a studio in Williamsburg, where the wall is 16 feet high; available 90-foot walls are pretty hard to come by in Brooklyn or Philadelphia, so Fuhrman and her company are working the piece out in sections.

“With my studio, our wall is a whopping 16 feet high, which is nice to get down the gist and the very general blocking,” she said. Fuhrman is creating the piece for six professional dancer/aerialists, and six dancers from the Philadelphia University of the Arts, giving the student artists an experience working with a professional company.

“My dancer/aerialists are veterans,” Furhman explained. “We’ve all been in different aerial shows:  De La Guarda,  Fuerza Bruta.” Their combined many years of experience is what they’re using to estimate what the finished piece will look like, and how to get used to the space once they get on (or up on) it.

And, as the gala approaches, the company will essentially give everyone who’s passing by a good look at an open rehearsal. They’ll be up on the wall at Verizon Hall from April 4-6 for several hours a day, finishing their blocking and rehearsing and teching the piece.

Aaron Verdery is the technical director of Grounded Aerial, and the man who makes the dancers fly. Verdery was in on the project from its inception, and he’s met with the technical staff of the Kimmel Center to work out every detail of a system that will keep the aerialists safe and able to do their work.

Furhman is proud of her company’s record.

“Our history involves extensive safety training and aerial background that has been instilled in us for years. We’re trained aerialists as well as dancers: we’re not only dancers that happen to be in the air.”

The piece is choreographed and teched down to the second, Furhman explained, from the ground up. The six aerialists become 3 couples, with ensemble choreography, and a duet for one couple in the middle of the piece.

“We show how they’re meeting, and their nuances and it’s like a commentary on couples, fear involved, apprehension of developing their romance, and like a quick, then the 2 other couples on either side come back down, continue and with the remaining of the piece,” Furhman said. “It starts with a really grand ‘Moulin Rougey’ kind of waltz, then an adagio, guitar section, then after that the duet, then back to the waltz, and then the piece ends.”  The company has been working on the piece, which should check in at about 12 minutes, in 3-times-a-week rehearsals for the last three months.

In addition, Grounded Aerial is doing a show closer to their home ground (or wall) at the Brooklyn Lyceum. It’s is called Insectinside, and it’s a dance/theater piece in which the 14 performers play insects. Furhman plays a Luna Moth. She’s been developing the piece for the last six years, and it just so happens that her leading man is a Spider.

(Insert “Turn Off the Dark” joke here). Or, for $15, you can buy a ticket to a show where nobody gets hurt.
This interview is brought to you with the support of PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).  If you liked the interview above and want to help ensure that PIFA becomes an annual event please Like their Facebook Page and Follow them on Twitter !

I’m very excited that the city of my birth, that is, the City of Brotherly Love, that is, where the Phillies play, is having an excellent international arts festival, and I’ve been invited to write about it. I’m certainly planning on grabbing one o’those cheap buses with the free Wi-Fi and making my way 99 miles south for some of the events. I had a chance to see a sneak preview here in NYC a few weeks ago, and have been going over the festival brochure and marking it up with “got to see” and “this looks good!”

One of the highlights of the NYC preview was a monologue from Seth Rozin’s chamber musical “A Passing Wind.” Seth Rozin is also Artistic Director of InterAct Theater, one of the many vibrant indie theater companies in Philly, and one that is close to my heart because they have paid me for my work not once, but twice! (Stories I wrote were featured in their late, lamented series, “Writers Aloud.”) If you’re an American playwright, you know (or should know) that since 1988, InterAct’s mission has been to support the creation of new plays, and one which uses “theatre as a tool to foster positive social change in the school, the workplace and the community.”

InterAct is currently in the midst of a 20-year (!) program, begun in 2007 that offers development awards and commissions for new plays each year. The playwrights who have received these awards/commissions thus far are some veteran folk (Lee Blessing) and outstanding new voices (Kara Lee Corthron) who now have a chance to create new plays with the support of a working theater. In Philadelphia.

The monologue I saw from “A Passing Wind” featured actor Tim Moyer as Sigmund Freud; Freud narrates the play, but he’s not the character the title refers to, rather, that character is a man whose talents were a bit lower down.

Once, Paris stood enthralled before (or behind) the man they called “Le Petomane” or “The Fartiste.” Joseph Pujol (1857-1945) was a man with a peculiar talent: he could suck water or air into his butt, and release it with precision control. As a performer, he usually did this with air, as I’m sure the water would have been quite messy. Pujol left his trade as a baker in Marseilles to take to the stage in 1887. With an air of confidence, he moved on to the big city (Paris), where he made it to the Show: The Moulin Rouge.

Wikipedia notes that: “Some of the highlights of his stage act involved sound effects of cannon fire and thunderstorms, as well as playing "'O Sole Mio" and "La Marseillaise" on an ocarina through a rubber tube in his anus.  He could also blow out a candle from several yards away. His audience included Edward, Prince of Wales, King Leopold II of the Belgians and Sigmund Freud.” (And from such entries as this are ideas for plays born…in fact, my friend & fellow playwright Charlie Schulman is working on an off-Broadway musical, a hit at NY Fringe a couple years back, called “The Fartiste” also about Pujol. But surely there is room in the American theatre for two plays about a man who took the advice “blow it out your ass” literally).

There’s a YouTube video of Le Petomaine (which I've linked below) from a film made in the 1880s (which of course, sadly, doesn’t have a soundtrack).

Along with the grossly wonderful premise of a man who made his living by farting, is the reality that The War to End All Wars (WW I, not the sequel), drove Pujol from the stage. He found that the horror of war “left unprecedented physical and psychological devastation in its wake,” according to the description of the play. And THAT’s where plays are born.

Written and directed by Rozin, the production will feature Damon Kirsche, Ian Bedford, Maureen Torsney-Weir, Jered McLenigan, Peter Schmitz, Tim Moyer, Leah Walton and Laura Catlaw. Music direction and sound design by Daniel Perelstein; set and lighting design by Peter Whinnery; costume design by Anna Frangiosa; choreography by Karen Getz.

It premieres April 7, running through April 16, at the Innovation Studio of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, 300 S. Broad Street. Tickets are $15-$29, and available here.

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I had on two of my many hats yesterday: both writer (in submission mode) and editor (the dom, of course).

As an editor, I’m organizing the receiving, logging and reviewing of the submissions for Best Lesbian Erotica 2012. As a writer, I’m in marketing mode, trying to get my work out to the venues that will be the best matches for it. I’ve been keeping a fairly comprehensive tracking chart of the work I submit (both plays and fiction, as well as the occasional non-fiction or essay, applications for grants and residencies), since the early/mid 2000s. I’ve been submitting work a lot longer than that, but wasn’t nearly as conscientious about tracking it.

By my figures, I’ve sent out approximately 750 submissions to approximately 545 venues since 2005. If you count the lost years, I’ve sent out hmm…I’d say well over 1,000 submissions to 600-800 theaters, magazines, book publishers, websites, newspapers, anthology editors, contests…you name it. (And if you think that’s a lot, I know people who have been more prolific…and guess what: they’ve been published/produced a LOT.)

When I sit down to figure out what I’m sending out to whom, this is how I start: going over the available opps to see what THEY want, not what I want to send them; going through my work to find out what fits their needs, and in some cases deciding NOT to submit to a particular theater, contest, or festival when I don’t think it would be a good match (saves us all a waste of time).

If I have a piece that fits the theme of a festival, but it’s already been produced, and they want unproduced, I don’t submit it. Their loss. (And who needs a "world premiere" of a 10-minute play that hasn't been done within 1000 miles? These are the things I ask myself...as I move on).

I don’t try to wedge a piece (say, a play about a fireman) into a theme that’s not the same (“plays about cowboys”), by saying “well firemen are like cowboys” or trying to change the fireman to a cowboy.

I comb the ‘net for submission opportunities, and subscribe to several email lists I can cull them from. When I’m updating the En Avant Playwrights board (my OCD/hobby), I make note of the opportunities that might be a good match for me, and what the deadline is. (And sometimes life gets in the way, and I miss some deadlines I’d like to make).

We’re not perfect here. Last night, I sent out a selection of short plays to a theatre company via email, and this morning had a polite response that they needed a certain number of people in the cast. I’d misread/not seen that stipulation. Fortunately, I had a couple other plays with the right number of actors to send them. (A fellow playwright once complained about the weirdness/specificity of the themes out there, and said he was just waiting for a call for plays about Evil Clowns in Saloons).

I try to give my work every chance to be seen for what it is (not what’s missing). This group wants a bio; that festival wants a production resume; the other wants a synopsis; those guys want a blind copy. Theatre A wants 3 hard copies; Theatre B wants online submissions only; Theatre C would like you to upload a file and fill out a form on their website. Grant D wants six copies of your first 10 pages and the meaning of life.

It’s like dressing a child for school on a snowy day: do you have your earmuffs? Your mittens? Your permission slip? Your change of clothes in case you have an accident? Don’t forget your tissues!

And here’s where I segue into Editor mode.

I just started the database for Best Lesbian Erotica 2012. I’ve been getting submissions since summertime, but between now and April 1, they will start coming in faster, and I’d best have my recording/reviewing process in place. I’ve been tinkering with the guidelines, trying to make them both more user-friendly and more efficient for me. I’ve got them up on my website, and sent them to Cleis, and have been posting them around, and did a mailing to my own list of writers/teachers. So I’ve been getting some manuscripts at my PO Box, and some e-mail queries from writers wanting to clarify points in the guidelines.

Some of these are the kind of queries I expect from professional writers: asking me about whether/when prior publication might make a piece ineligible, about how much I pay, things like that. There was more than one query asking me if I’ll consider one-act plays. I look at my guidelines: “Submit short stories, self-contained novel excerpts, other prose.” (Firemen are not cowboys). I’ll stretch a little (I sent a long narrative poem to the judge in ’11), but work with me here.

What started me off on the thought-chain that led to this post was an email I got from a writer who has written THREE short stories and had been told they were “very captivating,” and would like to get a “professional’s” opinion on whether they were publishable.

Honey, don’t send your child out into the blizzard naked.

But rather than laughing at baby writers’ blunders (which, admittedly is fun), I decided to figure out a way to explain to her (without sounding too bitchy about it) how to break down the process that makes up the beginning of the journey. Maybe if I break it down, give her specific steps, she might sign up for a workshop, read everything she can get her hands on, start writing every day. (Who am I kidding? I don’t write every day…)

Or…take a look at the video below.

I have run into folks like the little bear (that’s a bear, isn’t it?) in the striped shirt. I’ve also seen people go from “Wow! I’ve always wanted to WRITE,” to acquiring a craft and getting published. Tristan Taormino, the founder of the BLE series, had a mandate to include new writers, and I’ve kept it. BLE 11 has four writers with their first published story, as well as stories from writers whose work taught me lessons about craft.

I remember the newbie who sent a letter to a writer on a TV show (picking a name off the credits) asking how to break into sitcoms. The screenwriter sent a detailed, encouraging reply, copies of scripts, and best wishes to the rookie. That aspiring artist was Pearl S. Buck. No, it was me.

When I am frittering around on the Internet, trying to avoid writing, I sometimes come upon articles or discussions that get me…at least thinking about writing something.

On one of the boards I frequent, there was a discussion of cursive writing, or “joined up” writing, as Gilderoy Lockhart called it. I went to a Catholic school as a child, where the nuns and other teachers (who were, contrary to stereotype, very kind and never would have raised a hand to a child) made sure we learned the Palmer Method of Penmanship.

I noted that I still write in cursive (which is apparently becoming a lost art), especially when I send “thank you” notes. I had to go to the store yesterday to buy more when I ran out, and have noted (ha!) that it’s getting harder and harder to find them, with the exception of small pre-printed packets that pertain to babies or weddings.

Since I have had/am planning neither, I have to take whatever too-small glossy pink or green thing in a barely-suitable font is hanging in a packet of 8 on the endcap at the drugstore. Condoms come in more sizes. I’m also sorry to see that there are fewer beautiful blank cards. (Well, except for things with kittens on them, and I’m just not sending a card with a kitten on it. Shades of Dolores Umbridge!)

But getting back to both penmanship and thank you notes, I’ve dropped a steady pile of hand-addressed envelopes in the mailbox across the street in the last few days. If no one dumps snow or a suspicious package in the blue box, the cards will be headed to their destinations Monday. It’s not instantaneous, it’s not convenient, but it’s nice. People appreciate hand-written notes, usually with a level of positive response that more than covers the minimal effort to write them.

It’s a personal style that makes sense to carry over into a professional style: everyone appreciates a thank you, an apology, a “nice job,” whether the person who’s getting it is your sister or the director of your new play.

I’ve been working on a book about marketing for playwrights with Patrick Gabridge, a guy who knows a lot about these things, and as we put together the outline, I suggested we include a section on the importance of saying “thank you.” Each morning, when I’m planning my day, I make a note of anyone who needs to be thanked. Did a colleague create a really cool map on deadline? Did a fellow writer give good critique at Playwrights Circle? Did someone read a beautiful piece at Drunken! Careening! Writers!? (interrobang!)

So a line or two of thanks is in order, more if it was a big project. Detail is always appropriate: as in “your comments helped me figure out the first act” or “the character in your short story is someone I will think about for a long time,” or “I really, really liked the chocolate-covered bacon.”

And at the end of the year, along with totting up things like how many books I’ve edited, how many plays and stories I’ve submitted, how many readings I’ve curated, how many manuscripts I’ve screened, how many plays and novels I have unfinished, and how many birthdays I’ve forgotten, I try to remember if I’ve thanked everyone. (That’s  one of the things that keeps me up at night, or wakes me up, along with scary dreams of giant animals attacking my pets. No, I don’t know what that means.)

There were many people to thank in 2010, especially because there some unpleasant surprises where people stepped up and stepped in, both personally and professionally.

As a playwright, I have to thank the folks at Upstart Productions in Colorado, the Universal Theatre in Provincetown, PlaySlam in Boston, Twenty Percent Theatre in Minneapolis, and The Women’s International Theatre Festival (also in Provincetown),  Working Theatre Collecective in Portland (OR), Playwrights for Pets in NYC, and Vanguard Rep in Los Angeles, along with my alma mater, UMBC, for putting on/giving staged readings of my plays (and thank you, Dramatists Guild for representing my interests!) 

Thank you Smith & Kraus, Applause, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing and United Stages for publishing and keeping many of my plays, scenes and monologues in print. And of course, I must thank my home theaters EAT and TOSOS for making it possible for me to help put on a benefit for the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival last March (and all the artists who gave of their time and donated to the raffle), and for giving me a platform to hear my work read, and presenting staged readings by playwrights whose work I LOVE and often producing it.

Team Wombat (aka the team that put on the TOSOS production of The Five Lesbian Brothers’ “The Secretaries” at the NY Fringe and Fringe Extension) deserve “not over yet” thanks for one of the productions I’m most proud to have been part of  in my career.

Thanks to all the talented writers who participated in Drunken! Careening! Writers!, and to KGB Bar, which continues to host the series for an eighth consecutive year. And thanks also to the hot writers (and guest judge Lea DeLaria) who made editing Best Lesbian Erotica a sweaty joy (and all the people at Cleis, who continue to back this series!)

Huge, great thanks to all the bloggers (and the Extra Criticum blog, where I endeavor to blog on occasion!), journalists, photographers, editors, artistic directors, directors of marketing and publicity, and fellow travelers who list the events I host and plays I have produced, and books I edit, and give of their time, talent, knowledge and wisdom.

Thanks as always to mentors and friends from Tina Howe to Kaylie Jones to Doric Wilson, Mark Finley, Paul Adams, Carol Rosenfeld, PENolan and so many others. And  if I haven’t thanked you this particular time, expect to hear from me soon & often.

I’ve just ordered some new thank you notes from Vistaprint, which are much nicer than the ones at the drugstore.

Oh, and before I close, I should tell that you can say “thank you” in an infinite variety of ways. The only constant is that when you say it, you have to mean it.

Thank you.

Kathleen W.

I’m very busy figuring out ways to market and publicize Best Lesbian Erotica 2011, of which I’m the series editor. The part I like best about being editor is sending word to the people whose stories have been chosen that they are in the book…particularly if I know the person who wrote the story.

What’s not as much fun, but is also necessary, is to notify the people who didn’t get in this year.

I don’t like doing it, and I don’t like getting those notes myself (particularly if I know the person sending it).

The first time I sent out a short story, I was 14 or 15, and I think the magazine was American Girl. I typed up my cover letter, and put my story in the envelope. (I believe it was called “The President’s Papergirl.”) I debated with myself on whether to send a return envelope: I hated to waste the postage, because I was sure I’d be getting an acceptance by return mail. Surprisingly, American Girl did not publish my story! I think it was eventually published in a newspaper carriers’ newsletter. (I delivered the evening paper, The Columbia Record, which I later wrote for. Now it’s gone to newspaper heaven).

The lesson I learned early is that even if one publication has the temerity not to accept your work, surely there’s another one out there that will like it, if you keep sending it out.

Before the internet, when phones still plugged into walls and postal carriers delivered “letters,” it required a bit more effort to find submission opportunities and you had to wait a lot longer to get word of your rejection. Prose writers combed “Writer’s Market” for magazines, contests and anthologies, and playwrights picked up The Dramatists Sourcebook. When I sent out my first full-length play, every time I got a rejection letter, I put it in a folder, and vowed not to look at them until I got a production…and when the fine folks at Trustus finally produced my play, I looked: 35 rejections. These days, that’s minuscule. Now we can Google our way to instant rejection hundreds more times! This is progress?

I don’t know that you have to be a better writer than people were in decades past to get your work published or produced these days, but you certainly have to have a stronger stomach for it. (And in a weird corollary to the instant contact of the ‘net, I’ve noticed that the percentage of people who don’t reply has gone up. I used to be able to count on a letter after a certain number of months or even years; now, I’d say at least one-third of my submissions, which are mostly done by email these days, go unanswered).

I did get a response last night from a festival I was hoping to get into; my play was not selected for production this year. And for a moment, I was 15 again: what do you MEAN my perfectly lovely work didn’t get in? Well that just sucks. I’m going to sulk about it for awhile…awhile being about five minutes. At most. (And, well, maybe a little bit today.)

By admitting that, I’m actually breaking a self-imposed rule that I have never to mention rejections in public. I might grouse to a fellow writer about them (after checking to make sure the fellow-writer didn’t have anything to do with the rejection). But other than that, nada. It goes on the spreadsheet, in the “responses received” email folder, and it’s on to the next thing.

As a writer, I’m sure this has saved my sanity many times over. I think, over the years, about some writers I know who are very good, but who have essentially dropped out of it, or haven’t been able to share their great talent with the world because of rejection, or fear of it, more than anything else. Other people I know who are not geniuses, but solid, focused pros (or maybe their genius lies in stubbornness), have made careers for themselves because they can steel themselves to go on to the next submission, the next production, the next CHANCE for acceptance (though more likely rejection).

How do they do it? The hell if I know…

In my case, I stay active in writers’ workshops or peer groups. There’s nothing like a deadline to make me produce pages (a habit I picked up working in newspapers). And as for submitting…well, I started the En Avant board out of enlightened self-interest: if I could find and catalog the opportunities to submit my work, then I might actually do it myself. I’m also part of the regular Playwrights Binge Yahoo group, founded by Pat Gabridge, who has honed his submission process to a (quantifiable) science, and from whom I’ve borrowed some of his techniques to track my own submissions.

All of which leads to, the occasional production or publication…and more rejection.

From a writer’s point of view, I’m not sure which is worse: the form rejection which tells you how many submissions there were (with the occasional attached personal comment, like: “keep trying!” or “almost!”; the personal rejection from someone you know, or from an especially kind editor/screener, which says you ALMOST made it; or that special hell: getting accepted to a festival, anthology, or magazine, and having them go bust before they can publish or produce your work. 

From an editor’s point of view, I can tell you that a followup note from the writer can be a good thing, or more likely a bad thing.When I receive a note thanking me for my time and attention, I am grateful that the person understands how it went down; that’s a good note to send, building relationships with artistic directors, literary managers and editors is part of our job as writers.

On the other hand…I’ve been, and friends of mine who screen, edit and judge, have been the recipients of vicious tongue-lashings from writers who are very, very angry that their work was not selected. We are clearly stupid, idiotic, lying hacks and cheats, who do not know our jobs, are log-rolling for our friends, and deserve to be sued or publicly chastised, lose our funding, and have mean things posted about us on the Internet.

If you want to burn a bridge, go right ahead. Sometimes you have to, if a group, producer, or editor is just an idiot. But mostly they aren’t, and a poisonous screed, or even a long, public, moan of self-pity just identifies you as someone NOT to work with. And while it might feel very good (for a moment) to get all that off your chest, in the long run, it’s bad for you, because if you really begin to believe that everyone is Out to Get You, and No One Understands You & Your Genius, that’s a train of thought that can lead to all kinds of bad endings.

Rejection is personal, because it’s YOUR work that’s being rejected. Depending on how you handle it, you can keep it from ruining your vision, and let it focus that vision on how to get your work to people who just might get you.

Or, and I recommend this to all the writers who have the stamina for it, you can take your vision and make it happen yourself: produce your own work, publish your own prose, create a scene when you can’t find one that has room for you. It’s a HUGE amount of work, but it can be done.

Even if you only do it once, it’ll teach you things you might never have learned if you’d left the power to publish or produce you in others’ hands. Or, you might find that you’re actually good at it, and like doing it, and the rest of us have one more place that might accept our work.

If you do end up editing an anthology, starting a magazine, or a theater festival, please let me know, and I’ll send you something. And I promise not to yell at you if you don’t take my work.

While I meant to blog more frequently than this,  the kinds of things I could blog about are also the kind of things that keep me too damn busy to blog. (And the rent is too damn high).

By “the kind of things I do,” I mean: writing plays, producing plays, helping develop other peoples’ plays, attending plays, curating a reading series, keeping up an online bulletin board with opportunities for playwrights, editing an annual fiction anthology, and by day, editing books that make your domestic and international trips more interesting and easier. (Not to mention supporting six guinea pigs, four turtles and a dragon.)

But this weekend’s Internet storm about the Wendy Wasserstein Prize (or more specifically, the choice NOT to give a Wasserstein Prize this year) reminded me that sometimes I blog.

From Michael Lew’s eloquent letter about the lack of a winner this year, to the pollination of the post across the rest of the ‘net, the start of a petition to TDF (which administers the award), to arts bloggers and journalists checking in, I’d bet the majority of the folks who work in the American theater (particularly the playwrights) know about this issue.

“Huh…that’s dumb,” was my initial thought about the committee’s decision (because I am an eloquent writer person).

And as I am also an editor, I queried the writer as to why she thought it was dumb, and who the decision would affect, how my playwright colleagues might react and if it would make any difference at all in the way business is done with this particular award.

I knew the award was out there, but didn’t pay much attention to it. When I’m looking for productions or applying for awards, I categorize opportunities as “open” and “closed.” The Wasserstein is closed: you can’t apply for it. You have to hope someone you know nominates you (if you are a woman playwright under 32, which is long past for me, so yeah, this one disappeared in my rear view mirror ages ago). It’s like the Whiting and Kesselring awards: it’s a nice chunk o’change and some good publicity if you get it, but those who do move in circles that don’t often overlap with mine in the Venn diagram of the theater, so I try not to be bitter and move along.

(I said “try,” I didn’t say “succeed.”)

So, should I care about this, since it involves a class within the American theater of which I’m not a member (the “Usual Suspects” in my not-bitter shorthand)? Should I care about this on more than a theoretical basis, because I have plays to write and sometimes produce myself? Should I just worry about that rather than what’s going on up on Mt. Olympus? Maybe sacrifice a sheep or two? (I like lamb).

OF COURSE I should, and do, care! Can’t even try NOT to. What a fucking bullshit shoot-yourself-in-the-foot decision. And in the name of Wendy Wasserstein, no less…I grew up in the theater loving her work, reading her plays over and over. Once, a friend played me a long answering machine message to her from Wendy, who sent love, sang a song, and told a story about her mother, just like “Isn’t It Romantic!” From every account, Wendy was someone who represented the best of reaching out and encouraging others to make and love the theater. She gave of her time, money, and opened doors for people, made connections, gave a leg up.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with some people who did that for me (Tina Howe! Doric Wilson! Sabra Jones! among many others), and most importantly, they taught me it’s my obligation to do the same. In fact, when I’m yelling “CHARGE!” in the face of sexism, racism, homophobia, saying “send your work to so-and-so,” or pulling someone aside and saying “you ought to know this person…”  it’s much easier not to be bitter. (And better for the soul.)

So if I could address the committee, sitting like a dragon (not my kind of dragon…the MEAN kind of dragon) on its gold/award, I’d say something like: “Way to go, ya morons (well, maybe I wouldn’t call them morons). Way to keep the perception that WOMEN AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH PLAYWRIGHTS going! Way to reinforce the belief that if women were just GOOD ENOUGH there’d be parity in the number of plays produced by women. Way not to HELP the people you’ve been charged to support by someone who spent her life doing just that.” (Sound of playwright spinning in her grave).

This is a fight that must still be fought (and won). Damn straight I take it personally, because it is personal. I recently ended a friendship with someone who expressed the opinion that there really doesn’t NEED to be gay theater, because if the writers are good enough, their work will get produced; that gay theater was kind of a ghetto for the not-good-enough. The Wasserstein Prize decision implies the same thing about women playwrights.

I have no doubt that the Women’s Kick-Ass Committee (as I call the members of the Dramatists Guild Council who spring into action at times like these) will take up the challenge, as will the 50/50 in 2020 group, and other people who speak up for women in theater, and there will be some kind of positive change. They’ve got my back, and I’ve got theirs. I’ll show up. I’ll celebrate women playwrights. I’ll write good plays.

I have no doubt their actions will change the way the Wasserstein Award is given. In the mean time, I have plays to write and read, helpful and specific critique to give, some Drunken! Careening! Writers! to curate (Thursday, Nov. 18, 7pm, KGB Bar! This month’s readers: three women playwrights), and during the day, I must speak French to restaurants and hotels. (And there are those guinea pigs to be kept in timothy hay).

I want the women playwrights who were not recognized to keep the faith in their own work, and will encourage them any way I can.
I believe that my colleagues and I, who sweat blood onto our computer screens each day, will continue to find and make our own opportunities to keep making a difference.

And I’ll really try to blog more.