Latest news with #playwriting
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Letters from Max review – rich reflections on life, death and nothingness from a poet who died at 25
Sarah Ruhl first knew Max Ritvo as a student of her playwriting class at Yale. He was a 20-year-old poet who had lived through paediatric cancer, Ewing's sarcoma. The cancer came back and he died five years later but in that time Ruhl and Ritvo wrote letters to each other with thoughts on life, death, God, faith and nothingness. That became the basis of a book published in 2018, two years after Ritvo's death. Now adapted for the stage, they form a kind of modern-day Aristotelian dialogue, written by Ruhl (who previously wrote the epistolary play, Dear Elizabeth). Under the direction of Blanche McIntyre, Max (Eric Sirakian) and Sarah (Sirine Saba) variously become teacher and student for each other, and of life rather than merely playwriting. They walk past or around each other, not touching but sometimes in close proximity. The intimacies are in their words. It is an aural experience above all else. You see the beauty and richness of these words and thoughts on the page. Rather than becoming emotionally devastating, it is a contained and cerebral piece. The poise has grace – but also emotional distance. Dick Bird's set design manifests the spiritual idea of looking through a glass darkly; there is a mirrored screen in the middle of the stage and the traverse seating arrangement sets up the same division. Sometimes, you see two versions of Max – the real and the mirror reflection. It builds visual metaphors on the abstruseness of life and death, albeit rather effortfully. Saba is a compelling and solid presence on stage, deliberately holding back emotion as Max slides further into serious illness. Sirakian is initially playful and already slightly other-worldly. The programme tells us that Sirakian knew Ritvo at Yale – he was a fellow student in Ruhl's class – which gives his performance an added layer. Stunning cello accompaniment, composed by Laura Moody, acquires its own voice amid the spoken dialogue. There is a magnificent solo recreation of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, and a thrillingly atmospheric sequence of rainfall tapped on the wood of the cello to accompany a poem about rain. While it certainly captures a sense of expressing the ineffable on stage, you do not get the mess of Ritvo's emotions and his closest relationships (he suddenly announced that he is getting married out of the blue). There is something rather curated in this withholding. In a race against death, he is in a rush to get his poetry out, rather like John Keats in the face of TB (who also died at 25). You hear he is scared, as one strand of thought, and that he's bitter, as another, but the play quickly returns to its intellectual topics, as if ballast against dangerously uncontained emotion. There is a singular moment of eruption, when he shouts 'I DON'T HAVE TIME' and this stands out. It is startling, angry, real and felt. At Hampstead theatre, London, until 28 June
BBC News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Professionals to perform young Shrewsbury writer's first play
A young writer is set to see her name in lights as the first play she has ever written will be performed on stage by professional actors. Meg Vaughan, 25, from Shrewsbury, said she had very little theatre experience before she set pen to paper as part of a six-month script-writing course run by the South Shropshire theatre company, rural performance group offers training to a selection of young writers aged 16 to 30 years old, who are based in the West Midlands or Shropshire, every year, with the end of the course culminating in a live production of their work. Ms Vaughan said it was going to be "amazing" to see her words brought to life. She had previously written long-form fiction in the hope of "writing a book one day", she said, but had decided to "branch out" when she heard about the company's course. "It's a really rare thing to get someone to put on your play," she added. With her limited theatre experience, Ms Vaughan decided to do some research by attending live performances, which included National Theatre part of the Pentabus course, Ms Vaughan took part in workshops to learn how to build tension and create characters. She said she was still working on her script but described the play as "an old man walks into a bar type of scenario". "He has a mysterious side to him, and the bartender is quite bored, so it all unravels from there." 'It's hard to only rely on dialogue' "It was difficult to condense all my thoughts down into dialogue," Ms Vaughan said "In my previous work I have been able to rely on descriptions."She added that the play must only be 10 minutes, and the time restraint had offered an additional challenge. However, she described the first read-through with professional actors as a "game-changer". "You hear it aloud for the first time, and you can then see what people bring to it and see how what you have written is brought to life."Her play will be performed alongside the work of eight other young playwrights on 9 and 10 July at the Assembly Rooms in Ludlow. Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Globe and Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Canadian playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Jordan Tannahill stay true to their roots despite U.S. success
Want to get a coffee with Canadian playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Jordan Tannahill? Good luck. Both writers are, to say the least, a little busy. Moscovitch's play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes runs until June 18 on Broadway – starring Hugh Jackman, no less. She's also a writer and executive producer on AMC's Interview with the Vampire. Her play Red Like Fruit is playing in Toronto now as part of Luminato Festival, and travels to the Edinburgh Fringe later this summer. And Sophia's Forest, the opera for which Moscovitch, 46, wrote the libretto, is in the midst of a four-day run with City Opera Vancouver. She also has a film in the works, a psychological thriller called Child's Play set to star Sandra Oh. Tannahill, 37, has a ton on the go, too: His play Prince Faggot is now in previews and will run until July 6 off-Broadway. (His friend and mentor, fellow audacious playwright Jeremy O. Harris, is a producer on the show.) He has a film in the pipeline, as well – a medieval horror flick called Rapture, set to star Will Poulter, Kit Connor and Manu Ríos. In addition to stacked Google calendars, the pair have other things in common, too: Both had childhoods in suburban Ottawa, and both found early success as playwrights in Toronto. The Globe and Mail facilitated a Zoom chat between the writers on a rare day off from rehearsals and writing. Hannah Moscovitch (HM): Jordan, why did you want to expand your artistic practice beyond playwriting? I feel like you've always been curious about other mediums. Jordan Tannahill (JT): That was one of the great gifts of growing up in a city like Toronto, which is perhaps less driven by capitalism than London or New York. There was room to follow my curiosity – I felt really flexible in that way. But, Hannah, the craft and intelligence of your stage work – I'm excited to see you bring that into the TV and film space. Has that been satisfying? HM: Working in U.S. television is so satisfying. The people I work with are astonishingly good. Once you can pull internationally because you have those American dollars, what you can make is just so extraordinary. I came up through Canada, where you hone your abilities and then by the time the Americans or Brits notice you, you've already got everything figured out – when I ended up on Interview with the Vampire, they were like, 'Oh, we got a really good deal.' And I've learned so much from working with [Interview with the Vampire showrunner] Rolin Jones. He holds himself to such high standards. In the writers' room, he's told us to go away and write a scene that's better than Breaking Bad. JT: Wow. At Cannes, a reckoning with an impossible mission Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch is drawn to the dark side – and Hollywood Jordan, do you remember when you and Hannah met? JT: I remember I was a fan before I met you, Hannah. I was aware of your work and had seen it – but I got to work with [Christian Barry, husband to Moscovitch and co-founder of 2b Theatre] on my very first play. HM: Which was gorgeous, by the way. You were so obviously so good in that, Jordan. I came up quite quickly – everyone got to watch my failures. JT: [Laughing] I don't remember you having failures, Hannah. HM: But you were so fully formed so quickly. You were so good, and such a peer, immediately. JT: I don't feel that way at all, but that's very generous. I sort of feel the inverse way to you, actually – I got to teach myself publicly how to make theatre. There were so many opportunities for young creators, development programs and festivals. I owe such a debt to those initiatives, those artists who mentored me. I saw Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes last week, by the way, and I loved it. It was one of the strongest things I've seen so far in the spring, and I think it's so exciting to see a Canadian work take its place amongst a very strong season of Tony Award contenders. HM: Thank you. I made changes for this production from the version that premiered at Tarragon in 2020, but they were minimal. I had never workshopped it before. So we spent a lot of time trying to make sure it would work in an American context – I feel like I'm saying terrible things. I'm admitting that American contexts are different from Canadian ones. And are they? Do you feel like you've changed how you think about your work since leaving Canada? HM: Yeah. I wonder often, now, how honest I want to be. I'm constantly being told by my American colleagues, 'I don't know what the hell you're trying to say, but just say it.' They're always mad that I'm trying to do things carefully. JT: I'd argue, too, that neither of us have really left Canada – Hannah, in your case, you're very much still a Halifax-based artist. I think we've always had artists whose trajectories will be international. That's a healthy thing to happen within a national arts ecosystem – I know that I still consider myself a Canadian artist, developing work in Canada. HM: Me too. JT: Sometimes you're fortunate enough to begin working internationally, and hopefully, your work will take you out of the country at different times. But it's a dialogue – and I feel very much still part of the conversation in Canada. HM: Agreed. It was never my desire to leave – I was living in Nova Scotia and then started to work in American television, mostly because people there had found my plays and then started to ask me to join them. But there's been some revelation for me in leaving, which I wasn't necessarily expecting. Both Canada as a country and theatre as a medium are marginal – to be outside of that for a little while, to be part of a larger conversation that is more central, has its appeal. I have things I want to say that are important to me, and I want to be able to say them in a broad context. That doesn't mean I don't love theatre or appreciate its liveness. I do. But I don't see any reason why I can't do both. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘None of this should have worked': David Adjmi on how Led Zeppelin sparked Broadway smash Stereophonic
In 2013, I was desperately looking for a way to quit writing plays. I'd had a terrible, scarring artistic collaboration a couple of years prior, and it broke me. And on top of that, I was actually broke, financially. So I decided to give up playwriting, move to Los Angeles and make some money writing for film and television. But just as I'd made that decision, I received a three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation. It came with a significant chunk of money, so I was thrilled. Only it also came with conditions: one of which was that I needed to write a new play. 'Fine,' I thought. 'I'll write a very short one-act to fulfil the requirements of the grant and then be done with theatre for ever.' Months later, I was on an aeroplane listening to in-flight radio when Led Zeppelin's cover of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You came on. I knew the haunting opening chords because when I was little my brother used to play them over and over to teach himself guitar. Until that moment, though, I don't think I'd heard the actual song. What struck me most was the absolutely searing, raw vocals of Robert Plant. He was threatening a breakup, but the threat was delivered partly as a seduction, partly as a nervous breakdown. Underneath the 'I'm gonna leave you' was the opposite: 'I can never ever leave you and don't you dare leave me!' Listening to his hypnotising vocals, I began to imagine what it must have felt like in that studio, the strange intimacy amid the technical weirdness of an analogue recording studio. I instantly knew it was the setting for a play. The song was a little like a Freudian rebus: it glittered cryptically with my fraught emotions about the theatre, and my brother, and past relationships. But on that flight the only things I consciously knew were: 1. I would write a play about a band making a record; 2. It would be set in a music studio in the 1970s; and 3. The set would function almost like an art installation, with soundproofing, mics and speakers part of the theatrical apparatus to tell the story. I wanted this play to be different from anything I'd ever written, and I wanted to find a new way of working, so I decided to write it in concentrated bursts that would culminate in brief workshops I would organise a few times every year. And I wanted to build my creative team in advance, before writing a word, just based on a premise. I first approached Daniel Aukin to direct. He roped in musical director Justin Craig and Ryan Rumery, our sound designer. I had been trying to work with David Zinn for years, and he agreed to do the set. And then a friend introduced me to Arcade Fire's Will Butler; he had no idea who I was, but for whatever reason agreed to write the music for these snippets of songs we would hear over the course of the play. My problem at the outset was that I knew nothing about the recording process. I mean nothing. I watched lots of documentaries and took notes and wrote down technical-sounding phrases such as 'I like the tremolo effect' and 'put more EQ on the amp' (which I later learned didn't really mean anything). I constructed a few loose scenes and in 2014 did a very rough workshop, which Daniel directed. The 'band' was a bunch of actor friends who played toy instruments. What I knew at this point was there were five members of this fictional Anglo-American band: Simon, the drummer; Peter, the exacting lead guitarist; Diana, the self-deprecating lead singer, who is also Peter's girlfriend; Holly, who plays keys; and Reg, Holly's substance-addled husband, who plays bass. The band has just started recording their sophomore LP when their first album unexpectedly climbs back up the charts, and the pressures of this new, imminent fame cause fractures in their personal and professional relationships. Halfway through the first day I said to Daniel, 'Shouldn't there be more people in the studio?' Daniel then said that I had forgotten to put in an engineer. So in 2015, I added Grover, the engineer character, and took my increasingly bigger jumble of pages to John Kilgore, who had engineered for people such as Philip Glass in the analogue 1970s. John agreed to advise us. Daniel and I sat in his studio one afternoon as he pored through the rough draft page by page and painstakingly noted everything I'd gotten wrong. John also felt my engineer would need an assistant – a note which really opened up the play for me. Grover and Charlie, the two engineers, become a sort of comically beleaguered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – a way in for the audience. John walked me through all the phases of recording: laying down tracks, overdubbing vocals, adding in harmonies, mixing and so on. I started to realise that if I wanted to show how an album gets made in a painstaking, granular way that subverts how rock bands are traditionally depicted in dramatic works, then this was not going to be a slim one-act. The play grew to two acts, then three and then four. I knew the length and technical demands would probably make it un-producible, but I put on my playwright blinders (deny reality and pretend everything you write is viable until further notice!) and kept going. We continued like this for the next few years, developing the play one workshop at a time. My creative team became trusted advisers and, in some cases, my dramaturgs. I spent an entire afternoon grilling Ryan on how one might fix a drum sound, and how that fix would make the sound worse, and how one might try to fix that, and how that fix would make it even worse, and so on. From this conversation, I built a sequence that became the opening of the second act. I dictated whole scenes to my assistant, Julia, and had her read back what I'd extemporised in character; we'd then finesse those lines for hours, and with her help I'd score everything out on the page. David made us a little model for the set and cardboard figures we could move around between the sound and control rooms to figure out who was in what room when, as the logistics were starting to make us crazy. In the spring of 2019, four and a half years after he agreed to be part of this crazy experiment, I finally had a draft to show Will. He and I met Justin, Ryan and Daniel, and we all read the play aloud. At this point I knew precisely how many songs I needed, what they were meant to feel like, when they would recur in new arrangements and so on. Will now had something concrete to respond to, so he went away for a bit to do what he called his 'Stanislavski work' (which I thought was so cute). The process of getting the music we needed was not so easy or immediate, but Will was very invested in getting it right. His Stanislavski thing involved getting into the minds and histories of the characters as written, and imagining where their heads were at in the summer of 1976, and who their musical influences might be from the 50s and 60s. He then sent a batch of songs to Daniel and me – two of which, Masquerade and Seven Roads, made the cut. There was a great song for Holly we couldn't use called In Your Arms but Will later ended up recording it for the cast album. Another song in that first batch was meant to be Diana's big number in act one, but I thought the lyrics felt too angry and punishing. I loved the melody, but wanted the lyrics to have more of a feeling of uncanniness – like something is starting to surface to awareness but she's not there yet. Somehow this led to Will speeding up the song and turning it to something akin to a moody Giorgio Moroder synth thing. I really loved it, but I knew it wouldn't fit Diana's arc dramaturgically. So we ended up giving that song to Holly, and Will had to write a new song for Diana, which turned out to be Bright. It wasn't merely character stuff Will had to deal with; there were carefully constructed problems centring on the creation of the songs themselves – though when I wrote the draft the songs didn't exist, so Will had to reverse-engineer everything. For instance, characters in act two argue over a bass riff, one that would be debated repeatedly over the course of the play. Will's task was to make each version of the riff make not only musical sense, but dramatic sense in a way that built the stakes. In act two, Simon can't get a drum to sound the way Peter wants it, and I wrote detailed descriptions of Peter's complaint (around a drum part that didn't yet exist) in the dialogue. So Will took the details around that complaint as written and wrote a song that did all the drum stuff Peter demanded in that moment. Justin worked his magic in a similar way, figuring out orchestrations to Will's songs which, according to the story, are meant to go from pretty good to great in real time, sometimes over the course of a single scene. The process of collaboration was enigmatic, and none of this should have worked: I was asking too much of everyone, and I required a degree of expertise from my collaborators in areas that weren't really anyone's areas of expertise. But everyone loved what we were making and they rose to the challenge. Stereophonic is a play about artistic collaboration that was born from a soul-crushing collaborative process – but our collaborative process was heaven on earth. I just happened to fall in with a group of crazy geniuses who were mavericks and up for anything. I got very, very lucky. Stereophonic is at the Duke of York's theatre, London, 24 May-11 October
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Win a golden ticket to the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland.
The National Theatre of Stories - a celebration of epic Irish storytelling is at the heart of the Abbey Theatre's artistic programme for 2025. The National Theatre of Ireland will feature the best of new Irish playwriting, with six world premieres from playwrights Kevin Barry, Barbara Bergin, Marina Carr, Carys D. Coburn, Caitríona Daly and Jimmy McAleavey set for the Abbey and Peacock Stages. The six playwrights represent an assortment of the most thrilling voices in Irish playwriting today. The six plays are: The Cave , written by Kevin Barry and directed by Caitríona McLaughlin: June 6th to July 18th on the Abbey Stage. Static , written by Jimmy McAleavey and directed by John King: June 20th to July 18th on the Peacock Stage. The Lunch Punch Power Hour in Conference Room 4 , written by Caitríona Daly and directed by Raymond Keane: July 31st to September 6th on the Peacock Stage. The Boy , written by Marina Carr and directed by Caitríona McLaughlin: September 15th to November 1st on the Abbey Stage. BÁN , written by Carys D. Coburn and directed by Claire O'Reilly: September 30th to November 8th on the Peacock Stage. Dublin Gothic , written by Barbara Bergin and directed by Caroline Byrne: November 21st to January 31st, 2025 on the Abbey Stage. Learn more about these six plays and see what else is on at your national theatre here . For your chance to win, simply fill in the form below. Good luck! Terms & Condition The promotion is open to residents of Ireland aged 18 years or over except employees of the Promoter, their families, agents or anyone professionally connected with the promotion. A valid entry consists of a correct answer entered in the form above, accompanied by the entrant's name, email address and a phone number. No applications from agents, third parties, organised groups or applications automatically generated by computer will be accepted. No incomplete, illegible, or corrupted entries will be accepted. No entries not in accordance with the entry instructions will be accepted. The Promotion will run from 23/05/2025 to midnight on 08/06/2025 inclusive. All entries must be received by the Promoter by no later than midnight on the Closing Date. All competition entries received after the Closing Date are automatically disqualified. Promotion limited to one entry per person. No entrant will win more than one prize. By submitting an entry to the Promoter, you are agreeing to be bound by these terms and conditions. It is the responsibility of You, the entrant, to provide correct, up-to-date details when entering the promotion and on acceptance of the prize. The Promoter cannot be held responsible for winners failing to supply accurate information which affects prize acceptance or delivery of their prize Responsibility will not be accepted for entries lost, damaged, delayed or prevented as a result of any event beyond the Promoter's control including, but not limited to, user error and any network, computer, hardware or software failures of any kind.. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt. Entries will become the property of the Promoter. The prize is two tickets to each Abbey Theatre world premiere production scheduled for 2025 including: The Cave by Kevin Barry, Static by Jimmy McAleavey, The Lunch Punch Power Hour in Conference Room 4 by Caitríona Daly, The Boy by Marina Carr, Bán by Carys D. Coburn and Dublin Gothic by Barbara Bergin. There will be one winner. All prizes will be subject to any additional terms and conditions of the supplier of the prize to the Promoter. This prize is valid for 12 months from date of issue, is subject to availability and cannot be refunded or redeemed for cash. The Promoter shall not be liable for any loss, including, without limitation, indirect, special or consequential loss, or loss of profits, damage or consequential damage of any nature in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise caused by the acceptance of the terms and conditions or in connection with the prize, save for any liability which cannot be excluded by law. In the event of unforeseen circumstances the Promoter reserves the right to substitute the prize for an alternative of equal or greater value. The winners will be notified by email. The winner must claim the prize within 30 days of the notification. If the prize is unclaimed after this time, it will lapse and the Promoter reserves the right to offer the unclaimed prize to a substitute winner selected in accordance with the Promotion rules. Where a winner has successfully claimed the prize, the Promoter shall dispatch, or arrange to dispatch, the prize to the winner at the earliest opportunity. Nothing in these Terms and Conditions shall be interpreted as placing an obligation on the Promoter to dispatch, or arrange to dispatch, the prize within a specified period of time. The Promoters' decision is final and binding in all matters and no correspondence will be entered into. The winners' details (name and county) will be made available on The Irish Times website. The winner may be required to participate in unpaid publicity arising from this promotion. The Promoter will only process your personal information as set out in and as set out in these terms and conditions. Prizes are non transferrable and cannot be exchanged for cash. These terms and conditions shall be governed by Irish law and the Courts of the Republic of Ireland shall have exclusive jurisdiction. Promoter and Data Controller: The Irish Times DAC, The Irish Times Building, P.O. Box 74, 24 - 28 Tara Street, Dublin 2. The Promoter reserves the right to hold void, suspend, cancel or amend the Promotion where it becomes necessary to do so.
