About the Paper

To the right is the proposed abstract.  The paper was presented at the 2009 Mid-American Theatre Conference in Chicago, IL.

The paper is available for download.

Projects

[2010] 
Visual Display of the Re-writing Process [read]

Conferences

[2009 MATC]
On the Weekly Execution and Generation of New Plays at Ohio University

On the Weekly Execution and Generation of
New Plays at Ohio University:
A five-step model for creating a lasting, failure-oriented play lab

Sixty to seventy college students, waiting in line for thirty minutes to see new theatre. Ten are turned away, and a week later the line is even longer. They wait for a weekly lab called ‘Midnight Madness’. This paper breaks down the function, purpose, implementation, strengths, and weaknesses of Ohio Universities’ ‘Midnight Madness’ in order to start a conversation about how it could be transferred/changed to fit into other schools and theaters.

‘Midnight Madness’, a popular Ohio University class, is a weekly new works festival produced by the graduate playwrights where fresh work is presented to a packed audience every Friday night. All graduate playwriting students are given a prompt at the beginning of the week, write a 4-6 minute play from it, find actors, rehearse, and then present it at the end of the same week.

The plays presented need to be moving, concise, clear, theatrical, and worth five minutes of life if the audience is to return. It is a great way for writers to explore what they’ve ‘learned’, actors to experiment, directors to gain valuable experience, producers to advertise their season/theaters/talent, and audiences to develop a thirst for exciting, new theatre.

I’ve been writing and producing it for almost two years, and will use my and others’ experiences, pictures, and scripts as a basis to frame the lecture.
The paper is available for download.