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!
The Ugly Princess at StageStruck!
Tag: ugly princess
Happy New Year from Jasper!
Not directly – I got back home today.
I wanted to do something utterly different, because, once again, I was on my own for New Year’s. So I cashed in the travel points on my credit card and got a room FREE for two nights at the Jasper Park Lodge. And then I splurged on the spa and marvellous food and just wandered around the lake and read a book. I don’t DO that anymore.
It was amazing. Not only the BEST massage of my LIFE, but the whole setting is just utterly beautiful. Everything was decorated for Christmas, it felt like a proper VIKING house, with enormous fireplaces, and big squishy chairs. And the resort was full to bursting – it’s a pricey place, but it’s obviously hugely popular with families, I think because you can get a completely separate cabin if you want, and there’s skiing, snowboarding, skating, tobogganing. AND you can bring your PETS. It was full of dogs! I loved it!
I hope this bodes well for 2015. Rehearsals for Ugly Princess begin this Saturday, so that should be a sign.
Oh yes. Photos.
Open Auditions for a Prince!
Actor required for the world premiere of The Ugly Princess by Heather Morrow, to be performed at StageStruck!, the Edmonton Regional One-Act Festival, 27-28 February 2015.
Auditions on 28 November 2014, from 7 to 9 pm, at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre, 11516 103 Street, for the role of Prince Eric, 20s or 30s.
Oogam is the crown princess of the rich, tiny kingdom of Halla, but she is also genuinely ugly. Her father, King Harald, has been declared insane. The king, the ugly princess, and her cousin the duchess have been shut away in a remote castle with only one smarmy servant. And when the proverbial handsome prince Eric insists on visiting Halla’s royal family, he brings an unexpected storybook ending.
If you’re interested in auditioning for this show, monologues are welcome but not necessary: sides will be provided. This is an amateur festival, unpaid. We cannot see Equity or ACTRA members.
the Ugly Princess cometh!
I actually have PLAY NEWS.
The play I wrote at APN’s Writeathon, which I’ve been babbling about since last September, will get its first, full, public reading!
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s The Ugly Princess!!
It’ll be at Script Salon, put on by APN and PGC:
Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 10037 84 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB
Google Map
7:30 pm on Sunday, 3 August.
AND HERE’S THE CAST
I’m a wee bit excited.
The Ugly Princess….revealed! In August.
At last, I have a smidgen of theatre news to share: my play The Ugly Princess will have a public reading as part of Script Salon, a new reading series starting in April!
The Salon is the brainchild of David Belke, and will take place the first Sunday of every month, 7:30 pm, at Holy Trinity Anglican Church.
The Ugly Princess will have her day on 3 August 2014…so it will be ever-so-slightly in the Fringe after all.
“So you want to be a writer?”
For various reasons, I haven’t been writing lately. I have a new(ish) day job, which I go in to early and sometimes stay late at…and occasionally, it’s going into the weekends. I’m enjoying it. It’s a lot of responsibility, and at 39, I’m beginning to feel like an… adult. I’ve rearranged a number of other things in my life, and that’s making me feel more adult as well (Note: NOT “grownup”). I have been genuinely busy, and when I get home, I’m content to have dinner and do laundry and go to bed. All of this has kept me off Twitter, and the web…and from going to shows recently. And…I’m finding I don’t miss any of those things.
Yet I’m also feeling very cut off.
I’ve signed up for the upcoming Playwrights Circle myself, to work on The Ugly Princess, and I’m entering Marathon/Sprint (from Skirts Afire last year) into the Act One program of APN. It seems odd to me that I feel I need to force myself to make time to write – after all, if I need to do that, maybe I don’t want to. I do want to, however, but I had another scary moment this week…the thought entered my head: “what’s the point?”
My wonderful Take a Bite director Amy had agreed to direct The Ugly Princess at the Edmonton Fringe this year…should we get in, which we didn’t. I (briefly) entertained the idea of doing a BYOV anyway – which I swore I would never do again – because the idea of going a year without a show was galling. But in the end it just didn’t pan out. I think “what’s the point?” snowballed from “not enough audience cares for what you write – no one is interested in doing your shows themselves…if people aren’t interested in what you do… you can’t force them.”
I convinced myself I don’t have time to write just now anyway – which I don’t. But it makes me feel hollow that I don’t. Even if no one watches, even if no one else wants to produce my work…I still have ideas and I still want to write them.
Right before I left for Scotland ten (yikes) years ago, I ran across a book of Charles Bukowski’s poetry, Sifting Through the Madness for the Word the Line the Way. The very first poem was titled: “So you want to be a writer?” It was harsh. And honest. Even though I was leaving the country with only a backpack, I spent $40 on that book and brought it with me for that one poem. The basic idea I got from it was: “will you do it anyway? If no one listens, if you’re never published, if you die with this never being heard, will you write anyway?”
Yes. So, I am still a writer. Just writing that makes me feel a bit less hollow.
Limbo
I didn’t get in.
I didn’t get home in time to catch the start of the Edmonton Fringe livestream of the 2014 lottery draw, and things were happening too fast for Twitter to handle, so I completely missed the TYA draw. However, a friend who was there immediately texted me: “Hey, 3 on the waiting list has potenital 🙂 ” That’s for The Ugly Princess. Then came the final draw…and The Book of Anne didn’t even make the waiting list.
I’m so sorry everybody…I feel a bit stuck. I don’t know if the show everyone went to bat for during the Writeathon this past weekend will happen or not. I certainly can’t pull off the TYA waiting list – 3 is too close not to hang on. But it means hoping that three shows ahead of me pull out instead. How likely is that? And how do I promote and fundraise for a show that MAY be in the Fringe? Probably? The question of a Bring-Your-Own-Venue will, I know, come up. I genuinely believe you should try (almost) everything once; I tried a BYOV once. It wasn’t for me.
So…limbo. Well, there’s a long time between now and next August, isn’t there?
Who’d like to pick a name that will live FOREVER??
Mwa ha ha.
The Writeathon is in T minus 2 hours. I’ve been tasked with keeping YOU glued to the internet for the duration, so here’s my carrot:
I will be auctioning off the FOLLOWING NAMES of characters and places IN MY PLAY, The Ugly Princess, as I write it. Click HERE to donate.
For $50, you could pick the name of —
The mad king
The handsome prince
The smarmy manservant
The pretty – but mean villianess.
For $100, you could pick the name of —
The country the ugly princess rules, or
The country the handsome prince is from.
I’ll announce the names, and the donors who’ve picked them, as they come up. The ugly princess herself has already been named, thanks to a donation from Dale Lee Kwong! But I’m keeping that under wraps until just before the Writeathon ends, tomorrow at 7pm!
T minus 48 Hours to Writeathon madness.
As I write it is exactly two days until Alberta Playwrights Network’s first ever Writeathon begins. You’ll note we’ve long surpassed our original goal of $10,000, so we’re very stoked.
In their infinte wisdom, by fellow APN members have made me one of the managers of our Facebook page for the Writeathon’s duration. Feel free to follow along as the caffeine and sleep deprivation take hold.
Oh, and I have entered both The Ugly Princess yet-to-be AND The Book of Anne into the Edmonton Fringe lottery. (Just to clarify I’m not using the word “madness” lightly.)