Tag: one-act

Posted on by — Leave a comment

I’m one of the Best!

So says the Alberta caucus of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, anyway.

The weekend of May 29 to 31, 2015, the annual PGC Conference will be held here in Edmonton.  And on the very first night, ten short plays by Edmonton writers will have public readings at the latest Script Salon.  A brand new snippet of mine, My Boyfriend’s Cat, will be one of them.

It’s only occurred to me now that this is a national event, and other theatre folk from all over Canada will be here and may be hearing my work.  So.  Cool.

photo

Posted on by — Leave a comment

What goes into a show? OR, how much is a free wedding dress worth?

Regarding set, props, and costumes for The Ugly Princess.  Over the last few weeks, I have been picking up, transporting, or even storing in my car, the following:

  • a green velvet Renaissance dress
  • 6 wooden boxes, custom built by Doug Verdin for A Hate Story in 2012
  • “gold” tableware – goblets, cutlery and dishes
  • one rubber chicken
  • fake feathers (black and white)
  • 2 collapsible tables, different types
  • one blue satin dress
  • one fluttery white blouse
  • one production manager/designer/builder/life-saver
  • a wedding dress

Here’s how the last one came about.

With this play, I threw caution to the wind.  It’s a relatively big cast (5 actors), it’s meant to take place in a dilapidated, but still-royal residence, the characters are wearing fairy-tale-like costumes, and ONE character is a vain, selfish clothes-horse — she has TWO costume changes in a one-act show.  The green dress is mine.  Our actress Mandy loves costumes and has no issue acquiring new items, so she found the blue dress and blouse at Value Village.  But — SPOILER ALERT — the script (and I wrote it, so yes, it’s my own doing) calls for the character to appear in a wedding dress at one point.  Even with scouring thrift shops and the web, anything I could find which was remotely appropriate was running into the hundreds of dollars.  Oh, I’m also producing the show. That is:  I’m the money.  Ha ha.

Then lightning struck: I found a wedding gown on Kijiji, being given away – FREE.  It was the right size, and it wasn’t hideous!  I told my co-workers, who speculated about why someone would just give away a wedding dress.  Hey, I’m a writer, but in this case I don’t care WHAT the story is.

As always though, there was an ever-so-slight catch. As with most things Kijiji, I would have to pick up the dress myself. I had also arranged to fetch the boxes from director Maria that night.  Here, in text messages with my production manager Adam, is how the evening went:

unnamed

Here, I drove to the south end of town, which took about 30 minutes.

unnamed-1

HE DID NOT CALL 911.  He told me later he called the complaints line!

unnamed-2

unnamed-3

Moral: every girl should have a stage manager who will flip out if she goes AWOL. But beware, he WILL flip out!

 

 

 

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

The Ugly Princess at StageStruck!

The Ugly Princess will open the 2015 StageStruck! one-act festival at:

7 pm

27 February 2015

La Cite Francophone, 8627 Rue Marie-Anne Gaboury Northwest, Edmonton.

Tickets are on sale NOW!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

I’ve got Banff-playwright squidgies

I don’t know how else to describe it.

Oh, there’s been a lack of time, certainly. Partly it’s procrastination – never had I felt a stronger need to wash and sanitize my rubbish bins and change my cat’s litter than this past weekend.

But the greatest enemy is SELF-DOUBT. Never doubt that. And it took a large Second Cup holiday tea, nanaimo bar and 4 HOURS to conquer it enough to get out my scene for Playworks Ink.

You see, besides seeing Mr Christopher Plummer (I can’t stop thinking that), Playworks is also going to have workshops. Classes. Classes which mundane me gets to take, from people who really, REALLY know what they’re doing. Chris Craddock is doing Solo Creation. If your life’s being is meant to be alone, onstage, JUST YOU, this is the man you need to show you how. He’s amazing. Classes with Sharon Pollock, who is among the best playwrights in Canada ever, and planet earth, and wrote Doc one of the plays which made me think “Oh God, let me write something 10 per cent as good as that one day…” I once met her, at another APN event, years ago. I hope she’s forgotten, because on hearing her name I squealed. Dignified.

I myself am taking Facing the Rewrite, with a playwright named Robert O’Hara, from New. York. City. Who has won an Obie Award. These facts would be enough to make my brain melt, but I’m also going to be taking a session with him called Don’t F*ck up my Play! This makes me weep with happiness.

Until this past weekend, on realizing, f*ck, I had to write something new, to rewrite during Facing the Rewrite, with an Obie-winning-playwright from NYC at the BANFF CENTRE. I knew exactly the scene from the new play I wanted to write…it just wouldn’t come out.

In this situation, it doesn’t work to say – “I’ve already paid, they’re not going to NOT let me in.” I’m going because I want to learn and I want to be GOOD because it’s Banff and this writer is good, and I can’t bring…mediocre.

It’s hard to explain the relief, when it did come out. It frightens me a bit that it took so long, that it felt so hard to start…and how relieved I am that once I got going, it was fine.

So. I’m excited again. I’ve heard today there is still a bit of room left in both Facing the Rewrite and Sharon’s course The Playwright as Storyteller. Really, you should sign up. Soon. Because…Don’t F*ck up my Play is full. (And Christopher Plummer is coming.)

Posted on by — Leave a comment

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“?

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Take a Bite for yourself!

I have just had my Critter-nominated play Take a Bite listed on Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Ready to Stage site. $10 and it’s immediately yours. Have a look!

Liana Shannon as Vera, Isaac Andrew as Dion. Photo by Heather Morrow
Liana Shannon as Vera, Isaac Andrew as Dion. TAKE A BITE, 2011. Directed by Amy DeFelice. Photo by Heather Morrow
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Still writing…

I can’t believe I haven’t talked at all about the readings at Peep Show this past Sunday. Simply amazing. The number of people who told me, after hearing the first ten minutes of Marathon/Sprint…”That is MY mother…oh my God!” Hee hee hee! The actors loved doing it, the audience loved hearing it, ALL of the plays read were terrific, a great day!

Skirts Afire as a whole did wonderfully. I look forward to being part of it next year too!

So; more writing to be done. I follow a group called New York Neo-Futurists on Twitter, and have participated almost every week in their Twitterplays for a while now. You get a prompt, and you write a play — it can only be tweet-length, and that has to include the hashtag so the world knows you’ve written it! We’re now on Twitterplay number 204 (#tp204). This week, probably by dumb luck — submitted first? — my tweet of a play appears on the NY Neo Tumblr first! All the tweet-plays are always fascinating. I really recommend keeping up on them.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

It’s awesome when people love what you do…

So here are the awards for the ADFA 2013 One-Act Festival, or StageStruck!

You’ll note that Maria Colonescu, the director of It Started With an Allergy, received Honourable Mention, as did playwright Heather Morrow for her performance.

Yay US.

The feedback and delight from everyone who saw the show was amazing, the most common theme being how brave the show was. And plenty of those who couldn’t make the Friday night show, on hearing about it, kept saying “I wish I’d seen it! Are you doing it again?”

When we do, details will be here.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Tonight’s the night for an Allergy!

So, tonight, and tonight only, playwright and sometime-actor Heather will be performing It Started With an Allergy. Tickets are available at Tix on the Square or at the door, of the Walterdale Playhouse, 10322 83 Ave NW, Edmonton.

What else can I say? Come see ME!

Legs

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Tickets for StageStruck!

Here they are, available now at Tix on the Square!

Reminder: It Started With an Allergy is on Friday, February 22, 2013. StageStruck is over two days, that Friday, and the following Saturday afternoon and evening. Check out everything!