2nd Annual Global Playwrighting Contest

Opportunity Info
This contest is for a groundbreaking new play that addresses the theme of `Presence/Absence’ (Whenever one is present somewhere, he/she is absent everywhere else. When does one’s absence become more significant that one’s presence?). The play should offer each director and cast in the various locations a unique opportunity to work on the development of a provocative and engaging text through the lenses of audiences around the world. This play should speak both on a personal and universal level. It should be ambitious and stretch the boundaries of what is theatrical. Though the characters can be few and the location specific, we are looking for big ideas and challenging questions. This is not only an opportunity to have a text exposed to different audiences, but a chance to engage in a cross-cultural exchange that fosters a collaboration with multiple directors around the world who will each have a personal vision of the play.

DETAILS

Submission Guidelines

The Submission Form is Required and Available Online. Please click here to download the form.

1. Playwright may only submit one full-length script.

2. The play submission must be in English (either original or translation).

3. The play must not have had a fully mounted production.

4. Electronic form (Word or PDF) copy of full script.

5. The playwright must fill out the online submission form that includes:

a. Name, address, phone number, email address and how you heard about the contest

b. Cover letter introducing yourself and explaining how your play addresses the mission of the contest. (500 word limit)

c. Bio (300 word limit)

d. Synopsis and Character Breakdown (300 word limit) Deadline

The deadline for submissions is Midnight EST on Friday 13 January 2012. Finalists will be notified by mid-March. The final round of selection will include an interview.

Contact:

Electronic Script Submissions should be sent to: submissions@theinternationalists.org You will receive a confirmation of receipt.

Call for UJ SA short scripts

During 2012, UJ Arts and Culture will premier “SA Shorts” directed by Alby Michaels at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown.

Established, emerging and new playwrights are invited to submit previously unpublished and unproduced ten-minute plays for possible inclusion in the production. 

“I see SA Shorts as quickies for a microwave generation. It is also an opportunity for UJ Arts & Culture to start playing a leading role in the development of a new style of theatre,” says Michaels who recently pulled together the ground-breaking season of “Reading Gay”. 

“Following on the success and building on the format of Far Off Off-Broadway (FOOB) which was presented the UJ Drama Company earlier this year, “SA Shorts” will effectively be a collection of short plays performed by one company of actors,” he explains. 

Submissions must be made via e-mail to uj.sa.shorts@gmail.com as a single Word document including a 50 word narrative biography of the playwright and contact details. Playwrights may submit a maximum of 2 entries. All genres, except musicals and children’s plays, will be accepted. Characters must be able to be played convincingly by younger actors as the production will be performed with a corps of UJ student performers. Technical and staging requirements must be simple. The deadline for entries is 31 January 2011. Please note that only successful playwrights will be contacted.

BBC Radio 4: Opening Lines

Thank you as always, BBC Writersroom, for drawing my attention to this:

The BBC Radio Drama Readings Unit welcomes unsolicited submissions from writers new to radio for their annual series, Opening Lines which is broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

As well as broadcasting the three strongest stories in the summer of 2012 they will be publishing transcripts of the shortlisted stories on a new Opening Lines webpage.

The next window for sending in material is October 17th – December 2nd, 2011. Stories submitted outside this time-frame will be returned unread. Your story will be read and responded to within three months of the submission deadline.

Content and format: They are looking for original short stories which work being read out loud i.e. with a strong emphasis on narrative and avoiding too much dialogue, character description and digression. Pay particular attention to how the story opens and closes. They’ll be looking to see whether the beginning of a story successfully links to how it ends. The Readings Unit are interested in seeing stories which cover a broad range of subject-matter but material which explores particularly dark, harrowing themes is not best suited to Opening Lines. The BBC has a rigorous taste and decency policy and cannot accept stories of a sexist or racist nature, or those which use the stronger swear words. The time allotted for each story is around 14 minutes, which means stories must be between 1,900 and 2,000 words in length. Submissions must be typed and double-spaced on A4 paper and it is important to put your name and address on the script itself. Please do not send a recording of the text.

Submission details at the WritersRoom site.

Rocking the popularity contest

I'm going to admit two things upfront: this post has very little to do with theatre or writing, it is firmly in the 'and stuff' category; and this post is undeniably a rant - not an attempt at a well-constructed argument.


So, if you're still with me, here goes. I have gone from being bewildered to being pissed off about this whole "vote 4 Table Mountain" business.

Here’s a quick trip down memory lane. The original “Seven Wonders of the World” was a marketing campaign to Hellenic tourists traveling around the Meditteranean. They chose seven because it was considered a lucky number. There were several different lists, but consensus seems to have the seven wonders as: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

During the Middle Ages people made more lists. Lots of lists. One thing these lists all have in common, is that they were lists of Things Humans Made. We were expressing our wonderment at our own skill, essentially. Such a very human thing to do.

It comes as no wonder then that modern minds have sought to exploit this idea. There are even more lists of wonders now, ranging from the opinions of individuals to the contest currently underway.

So. Let’s assume, for a second, that it’s worth making another list of wonders. I can accept that – most of the ancient wonders don’t exist, why should we trust the Greeks, tastes change, new things have come to be, people are traveling more and more widely now than then.

We then have to assume that none of the current lists are good enough. That’s a pretty large slap in the face to the people who curate them, but we can understand the human urge to “do it better”.

And let’s go with the callous disregard for the fact that Wonder with a capital W is defined as a human made marvel, regarded with awe. Let’s ditch all that, keep the name, and make an entirely new list. Because, clearly, your list is going to be the one that makes people leap out of their seats and scream “I was going to go to Paris, but now that it’s number five on the list I’m going to honeymoon at the Dead Sea instead!”

I’ll take those as read. Now, here are my questions:

1. WHY THE POPULARITY CONTEST? I know people whine about this for shows like Idols, but at least an argument can be made that part of being a popstar (the clue is in the name) is being popular. When did it become part of the job description of a mountain to be popular? And Table Mountain is just the tip of the iceberg. Can we take  a second to marvel at the conceptual complexity of the campaign currently underway called “Vote Dead Sea!”?

2. WHY ALL THE EXPENSE? Where is all the money going? Why the emphasis on voting via sms? Why did the organisers have to come and physically see the mountain? And then there is this article, detailing the millions spent and the millions potentially still to be spent on this lunacy. Do we need to be spending so much on this? Honestly, Table Mountain is already fairly famous. Since they openly admit that their contest is completely non-scientific, I non-scientifcally asked a bunch of people on Twitter and they’d all heard of Table Mountain.

3. Why is Cape Town so all over this? As @tarrynsaunders pointed out, we could be using all those R2s towards making the mountain safer for people who visit there. Or putting it into an environmental trust, maybe? What would it actually MEAN to us? What difference would it actually make? Really?

4. Why, WHY, do we have to vote “4″ Table Mountain? You’re too lazy to type THREE DAMN LETTERS? Yeah, that’s how much you care.

5. Please, let’s not nominate Cape Town for the New7Wonders Cities contest. Please.

So here it is folks. One of the most iconic pieces of rock in the world. The mountain my kids call “ours”. The mountain by which I navigate. The mountain which marks out home. And no. I am not voting for it.

Tags: Table Mountain

Yes, I am a reality TV junkie

“I won’t do it,” I told myself. “I won’t mention the Kardashian divorce.”

And for a while, I held firm. I thought I could do it (after all, I managed to get all the way through August without berating the concept of Women’s Month).  But then the comments started getting nasty about Ryan Seacrest, and I knew I could remain silent no longer. Seacrest is, you see, rather a hero of mine, someone who works incredibly hard to achieve what they want, and is jolly successful at it.

I detest writing bios for myself, but one thing that I always tend to add is that I’m a reality TV junkie.  Of all the things I’ve ever said in my bios, this has garnered the most comments. People are scathing, or condescending, or guiltily admit to liking reality TV too. Reality TV is like the You magazine of the television milieu, no one ever admits to buying it, yet everyone seems to have read articles in it, and everyone and their aunt has an opinion about it.

Here, then, are some ideas about reality TV – and the fans thereof – that I’d like to debunk:

1. Just because I like reality TV doesn’t mean I like every single reality TV show that exists. Saying “I like wine” doesn’t make one an indiscriminate nana, who will happily chug down the chemical tasting red along with the finely aged merlot. Reality TV runs the gamut from the talent related (my all-time favourites Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance, and Ru Paul’s Drag U) to the pseudo celebrity (Girls of the Playboy Mansion) to the ordinary folks in extraordinary circumstances (Survivor, Amazing Race) to the utterly mundane (Big Brother) to the rather horrific (Toddlers and Tiaras, Bridalplasty) to the endearing (Cake Boss) to the have a good old weep into your tissues (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition). Then there are all the niche special interest shows like Pimp my Ride and Masterchef. A plethora of tasty choices, and a couple of nasty flavours thrown in.
2. Liking reality TV does not preclude the watching and appreciation of other shows, let alone the watching of films, the reading of books, swimming, or indeed any other activity. Saying “I like wine” doesn’t mean you only ever drink wine and you never eat and all you do is lie about in bed all day drinking wine (except in some cases). I am not a realitytvaholic.
3. There is nothing “guilty” about entertainment. Fascinatingly, after a day of work and parenting and driving about and, you know, LIFE, I crave some entertainment. Sometimes intelligent entertainment, sometimes good old fashioned mindless entertainment. This does not make me a mindless individual; it makes me an ordinary person in want of a little distraction, a little escapism, a little, oh what was that word again: ENTERTAINMENT.
4. Voyeurism is a natural human tendency.  There is nothing sinister about being fascinated by gossip. We like to observe the foibles of others. We like to commiserate. We like to gloat. We like to relate. So we’ve moved on from leaning over neighbours’ fences or people gazing at pavement cafes. The good thing about reality TV is that everyone involved has chosen to be there.  Kim Kardashian, bless her cotton socks, decided to put her whole “life” on show. Which brings me neatly to point 5…
5. Reality TV is some of the best scripted stuff on television. Any of you labouring under the illusion that anything is ‘real’ need, well, a reality check. From the psychological profiling of participants to the careful manufacturing of circumstances to the detailed editing, there is nothing real about these shows. This is what makes reality TV more entertaining than most documentaries. This is what makes reality TV more entertaining than most people’s realities. As a writer, I am fascinated by the creation of tension, dramatic twists, the explorations of people’s psyches under extreme circumstances. Season 22 of Survivor aka Boston Rob’s superlative and award-worthy trouncing of the opposition in a flawless game is one of the clearest demonstrations of how an antihero can make a story a success.

There are other things I love about reality TV – that it has a clear beginning middle and end, for instance. That it provides an opportunity for narcissistic twats to reveal their true colours. That it gives us non sporty types things to get worked up about. That it sometimes truly does have the power to make someone’s dreams come true. There are other things I hate about it, but I’ll leave the hating to the many, many people out there who are so good at it.

Returning to Ms (safest title) Kardashian, and Mr Seacrest. Arguments about how the money would be better spent building schools or saving the planet are, to my mind, rather specious. Spending large sums of money on the making of these shows (and in this case, apparently, a faux wedding) doesn’t automatically mean that the people involved don’t give any money to charity, or do any good deeds. Or that they had an either or option, and chose MAKING MONEY MWAHAHAHAHA. And as they are private entities, what they do with their money is really no one else’s business. Unlike, you know, Greece, for example.

 

Dirty Tango

I always write my best work when I have a soundtrack playing in my head. In fact, I once wrote a play listening only to Jack Johnson, and despite my never mentioning this to the director of its first production, she chose Jack Johnson as the soundtrack. The music oozes into the words, somehow.

I have found the soundtrack to my next play. I found it in a 14o year old theatre in Stockholm, and it is Dirty Argentine Tango music. This is music that rips your heart out, slaps you around the face with it, and screams “ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION YET?”

This is the Orquesta Tipica Fernandez Fierro, and I am in love with them. It’s not so much the bad boy dreadlocked drama queen accordion player who is incapable of sitting still, or the violinist with Jesus hair who holds his violin up above his head after a good song, or the sunglassed cellist and bassist who aren’t shy to use their instruments for percussion, or the pianist who looks like he’s been living in a cave for a few years, or even the lead singer who had more costume changes than Lady Gaga, including singing two songs with his hoodie and shades fully on and another entirely offstage, and even made use of a microphone. It’s not the fact that these guys in their grungy jeans and t shirts look like they could just as easily be a skateboarding crew. It wasn’t the crazy insane stage lighting which threw in every colour of the rainbow, as much backlighting as the theatre could handle, and the occasional strobe.

What it is, is that these men are committed to their music and their performance with every cell in their body, every atom of their soul, and every breath they take. This is live performance. This is art. This is passion. They loved what they were doing so much the audience were incapable of not loving it too.

And this is tango like I’ve never heard it. I’ll admit I’ve probably had cliched, clean, romanticised notions of tango. This was dark, and passionate, and alive, and it wept stories of lust and devastation and elation and suffering and succor.

This is the soundtrack to my next play.

An Ode to Poetry

It’s Poetry Day, and that makes me happy. Poetry is one of those things, like marmite, that you either love or hate.  For me, a good poem can light up a whole day. This is one of my favourites, mostly because of how much it seems to enjoy itself.

 

THE LONELY BILTONG – author unkown

 The sun shone out of the heavens,

The birds they were all still,

And only the song of the koppies

And the donga’s bark so shrill

Broke the silence and heat of the noonday;

While under the summer sun

Two little mosbolletjies wandered

And laughed in childish fun.

Still were the tall maasbankers

And even the wild konfyt

Slept in the shade of the voorslags

Although the hour was late.

Herds of beautiful voetsaks

Ate the succulent short green kloof;

While a couple of drunken disselbooms

Slept on the farmhouse roof.

Krantzes and veldskoens in hundreds

Scented the summer air;

The spruits were laden with berries,

Truly the world looked fair.

Over the gravelled naartjies,

A lonely biltong ran.

I gazed at it all in wonder,

And murmured “Ag, sis tog man!”

Opp: The page is your stage: Can you write a winning tiny play?

Ever dreamed of having a play produced by a professional theatre company? ‘The Irish Times’ is supporting an exciting initiative aimed at broadening the range of voices in Irish theatre. JIM CULLETON , artistic director of Fishamble: The New Play Company, has some tips if you’d like to enter the Tiny Plays for Ireland competition, and, to act as inspiration, we have two examples of what can be done

FISHAMBLE IS LOOKING for tiny plays that explore contemporary life in Ireland. We want to create a discussion, through theatre, about our country, so we are inviting new, emerging and established writers of any age – in other words, you – to submit plays that capture moments and offer glimpses of Irish life. Fishamble choose the winners and pay each selected writer a fee of €250. We will work with you on the development of the commissioned plays and produce them in March 2012 at Project Arts Centre, in Dublin. A selection will be published in The Irish Times leading up to the production. If you’d like to enter, here’s what to remember.

1 Write about what you know or feel passionate about. Don’t be afraid to state the obvious, if you think the obvious needs to be stated, or to take us somewhere unexpected, if you think something needs to be made public.

2 If in doubt, keep it simple: a tiny play can have a big resonance but can also be confusing if it is crammed with thoughts. The play need not deal with a big issue: write something that benefits from the 600-word limit rather than squeezing a bigger play into too tight a timeframe. Simple encounters that might capture a turning point in one of the characters’ lives, or during which a character is changed by the experience, can work well.

3 Write a fully formed play. Even though it is short, it should not seem like a sketch or an excerpt from a longer play. Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw are both credited with saying “I’m sorry to have written such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.” Whoever said it, it is a good reminder of the unique challenge a short play poses. Your tiny play should feel satisfying and complete.

4 Don’t stretch the play to fill the word quota. Plays do not need to be as long as 600 words – and need have no words at all.

5 Read other short plays and stories, not so you can copy another writer but to consider what is possible within the genre. Fishamble has already commissioned a small number of tiny plays for this project; two of them are published here.

6 Think theatrically. A play is not just about words: it is about how the actors and audience connect, so consider this relationship. Think of yourself as the first audience of your play. There will be many tiny plays in the production, so staging will be simple, but plays can be set anywhere, and there are lots of ways to create environments on stage through the design of set, lighting, sound, costume, projection and so on. So think as imaginatively as you wish – and don’t be afraid to break the rules. A lot of great short plays do not necessarily follow the suggestions I’ve made here

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Go to fishamble.com for an online conversation between Jim Culleton and Fishamble’s literary manager, Gavin Kostick, about the project

Tiny plays: The rules

Plays must be original to the writer and run for no more than four minutes – as a guide, no more than 600 words, including stage directions.

Plays should be performable by a cast of no more than three actors.

Plays must be in English or Irish – or, as long as the writer is based in Ireland, in another language.

Monologues are accepted, but dialogue plays are preferred.

Plays should have a title and should be submitted with your name to fishambletinyplays @irishtimes.com by November 11th, 2011.

If you are under 18, please include your age.

No more than two plays per person will be accepted.

Winners will be announced in The Irish Times and on fishamble.com.

The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

 

Things Fall Apart (c)

I liked the story of Achebe refusing to allow 50 Cent to buy “Things Fall Apart” , because it showed a clashing of egos, and drew attention to a truly great novel. Like when the Beckhams brought Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” back to popularity (now the most popular book in the UK), it’s good when we’re reminded of books every now and then. Good publicity all round, and a slight embarrassment of an arrogant star. All good.

Then a lot of people started asking how, when the title comes from a line of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” , Achebe had copyrighted it in the first place. Or pondered what Achebe would have done if Yeats had denied him the right. There are numerous instances of writers taking titles from lines of poetry, and I would hate for this to become a highly litigious field (I was astonished to learn yesterday that even the quoting of poetry in reviews is apparently a taboo ).

More importantly though, someone (the intelligent @datadivajf) mentioned to me on Twitter that one can’t copyright a title. Being no expert, I consulted the Great Google (oh, and a copyright lawyer), and came up with the short answer of: no, you can’t. And it makes sense, really. “Things fall apart” is a fairly common phrase, and applies in numerous situations. It’s highly unlikely that 50 Cent’s movie would in any way confuse audiences, or draw audiences away from Achebe.

Whatever you do, don’t tell Achebe – perhaps he should have taken that million after all. Now, I’m sure that his (and Fiddy’s) lawyers know a great deal more than me, but it does strike me as odd that this title debacle didn’t extend to the Roots’ album “Things Fall Apart” . Or Zomby’s “Things Fall Apart” . In fact, both “The West Wing”  and “Ugly Betty”  had episodes entitled “Things Fall Apart”

Curiouser and curiouser. I hope someone with more understanding of the legalities involved will set me straight.

(incidentally it would seem no one’s told IMDB yet that the movie changed its name )

Of Kerkorrel, the freedom of words, and singing out

When I was an impressionable eighteen year old, working at Grahamstown Festival on probably my first “grown up” solo adventure, I had the profound privilege of doing the lights – and on one memorable occasion, the sound – for Johannes Kerkorrel. Or, as I came to know him, Ralf. He stands out as one of the gentlest, kindest, most humble people I’ve ever worked with. At the same festival was an exhibition, “unbanned”, documenting all the music that had been banned under apartheid rule, including the letters people wrote in to request the banning. Albums like Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, Stevie Wonder, the Beatles – as well as albums and albums full of local music, most of which, sadly, has been buried in history books. I spoke to Ralf about one album of his on which every song was banned except one about seagulls in Sea Point, and when he did radio interviews that had to play that song, over and over, until it became a form of protest in and of itself.

I was travelling, a few years later, when I learned of Ralf’s death. The sad futile death of a genius, misunderstood. The sad, lonely death of a fragile human. I cried for him, but I cried for our loss. The loss of an artist willing to challenge the way we think. I remembered the rooms in Grahamstown filled with people, who embraced the gentle mockery Kerkorrel offered them, the very people he was mocking. Who were quiet when the more serious moments came.  I remember watching him work his magic on them. I remember him working his magic on me.

Art should – amongst a myriad other things – make people uncomfortable. “Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.” – Finley Dunne. Every time we get riled up over a Zapiro cartoon, or “De La Rey”, or “Mshini Wam”, we are thinking. We are talking about issues we normally don’t engage with on public platforms. We reassess – and either reaffirm, or slightly shift – our perspective. No artist believes that a single piece can change people’s minds, but a hundred pieces, and maybe a tiny shift could occur.

You’d be surprised what other songs and books were banned, in their day. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is a blatant attack on Cromwell’s banning of plum pudding – “we won’t go until we get some”. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, “Alice in Wonderland”, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”, The Kinks’ “Lola”, Joe Brown and the Bruwers’ “My Little Ukelele”…from the sublime to the ridiculous, we’ve tried to legislate against the arts.

Yesterday and today on my twitter timeline a number of ideas collided and coalesced. Michael Moran was questioning whether we’d had any “meaningful” top ten hits since “Do they know it’s Christmas”, Amanda Palmer was blogging about how 9/11 influenced her song “Truce”.  Should we be horrified by Darren Scott saying kaffir? About Gareth Cliff’s alleged sexist remarks? About Mogoeng?About Russell Kane’s alleged sexist remarks? – what should we be expending our wrath upon? And then, above it all: Malema was found guilty of hate speech for singing “Dubul’ibhunu”. (Read Nomalanga Mkhize’s powerful piece on how this should not be transliterated to “Kill the Boer”)

Banning a song? Here, now, in 2011, South Africa is trying to ban a song. Because if Malema is not allowed to sing it, then presumably no one else is. If there is anything history has taught us, it’s that voices shall not be silenced. That banning things, particularly songs, gives them power. It also disturbs me profoundly when a government believes it can start to legislate our culture. Culture belongs to people. Culture is a living thing. The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines culture as “integrated patterns of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that are both a result of and integral to the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Culture thus consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and symbols”.

We cannot legislate people’s thoughts. We cannot legislate people’s emotions. Attempting to deny them the right to express those thoughts and emotions is dangerous. And artists need to speak. We need to cry out when our right to free speech is challenged. As soon as we start picking and choosing which elements of speech are free, none of it is. Words, like people, cannot be free unles they all are. As Voltaire almost said, “I do not approve of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

I hope the wave of anger and upset over this breach of the right to free speech doesn’t become a trickle. I hope South Africa’s artists will be loud and tuneful in their call for every South African to have the right to sing any tune they feel like singing. I frequently quote Lawrence Lessig’s “Who owns Culture”. I’m going to do it again now: “How is art made? Tell us. Tell us how to use the tools of law to regulate you. Because unless you start showing us, you artists, you authors, you creators, unless you start showing us how you create and have always created…the only way to end this extraordinarily destructive rhetoric, is for artists to sing to us in a way that distracts us from the craziness.”

(You can listen to Kerkorrel’s Hillbrow here. RIP Ralf)