So. StageStruck, the Edmonton Regional One-Act festival happened this past weekend. I stopped posting a while ago about how The Ugly Princess was going, because things very nearly went…pear-shaped, as they would say in Scotland. (That’s one of my favourite UK expressions, after “mingin’ ” – stinky – and “bollocks” – self-explanatory). BUT, everyone pulled together, I ended up playing the title role in my own play…and I won an award for Outstanding Actor. I’m still gobsmacked. To everyone who donated to the Writeathon to get me writing this play, and to everyone who saw it and wants to see again, THANK YOU. AND. My play Crushed will be getting two performances shortly – one at a high school in Lac La Biche, Alberta, and the other at a university in Kingston-Upon-Thames. And I’m getting paid for them. :O
Tag: crushed
Buy my plays and I go to FRINGE!
So today I entered my BYOV (Bring Your Own Venue) form, for my solo show It Started with an Allergy, into the Edmonton Fringe.
SO: from here on, all the proceeds from the online sales of my plays will go directly to putting on Allergy.
HERE is Crushed, which has now been produced in Edmonton and Fredericton in Canada, as well as in Florida, and soon Kingston-upon-Thames, UK. It has sold 40 copies to date (I’m told that’s unheard of for a less-known play in the great sea of the internet!) My goal is at least 50. Reviews here.
And HERE is Take a Bite, veteran of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, nominated for Best New Play of 2012 by the Calgary Critics Association. Chew on the reviews here.
I’ve also got a fancy-pants DONATE button on my new FRINGE 2015 page, just because.
Yes, despite the winter, August is COMING…
Photographic memory.
Two members of Walterdale Playhouse have done something mad and amazing.
Now online are the production photos from every show ever performed at Walterdale. Since 1958.
This includes the premiere of Crushed, in 1997.
Why I dislike being a “woman writer”.
Besides the fact that “woman” in this case is used as an adjective when it’s a NOUN. I HATE THAT.
This post may seem like I’m looking the gift horse in the mouth, and I genuinely don’t know why this occurred to me today, but it has, so here we go:
This morning, I received an e-mail saying “I’m pleased to inform you that Crushed has made a sale.” I get that same e-mail about every six weeks or so.
I wrote Crushed in 1997. It had its premiere at the Walterdale Playhouse, during their Evening of One-Acts program — it’s now called Cradle to Stage (now accepting submissions…do it!). This program did — and does — get some heavyweight dramaturges to assist the playwrights. Mine was Vern Thiessen. And here it is, my little two-hander one-act, doing quite well in the fledgling world of online publishing. And a sliver of me wonders why.
It’s very short, 18 pages, though its playing time has always been not less than 30 minutes. It’s about two sisters…the younger is an abusive relationship, and she in turn is rather abusive to her older sister. It’s a very, VERY cheerful story.
Does it still have legs because there are still too few really good scripts out there for actresses? Is it because I happened to get it right — how an abused woman thinks, and how she might in turn end up hurting the people around her? Because — very unfortunately — domestic abuse is happening?
I’ve been very lucky. I have never been physically abused by a man — I wouldn’t stand for it. I have never been turned down for a job because I’m female. But maybe it’s because I’m older, and still on my own, or because there does appear to be a true movement to belittle women lately, that I’m pondering how little progress we’re actually making. I’d like to believe there are more men like these in my own sphere, who not only don’t believe I’m lesser, but would step up when another man says I am. I wish Suzanne Moore of The Guardian wasn’t right…but she is.
I hate being a “woman writer” because that implies what I’ve written about couldn’t possibly matter to anyone but other women. So I put it out there, brothers: if your sister is being beaten up by her boyfriend, isn’t that your problem? What about your daughter, or niece, or your best friend’s daughter? If that boyfriend said “She was asking for it,” would you really say “Yeah man. Women“?