austin script works

Our monthly Salon reading series is on hiatus for June and July. We will reconvene on August 30th for our Annual Meet N Greet event. Check back here for details. In the meantime, our summer focus is on our 30/60/90 daily writing program. Full details are available on the “Programs” page.

30/60/90 for 2009 will start on June 1st. This daily writing program provides a creative jumping-off place for your writing. Complete details are available here or you can also get there by first visiting our Programs page.

DUTY TO WARN by Teresa Stankiewicz
Sunday, May 31st @ 6:30 PM
State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave.

Life is crazy as usual for Melinda who is a type A personality with a
thriving veterinarian business. She juggles animal patients and their
owners along with her dysfunctional family with authority and aplomb. Her sister
Loretta, is a young mother with bipolar disorder who is struggling to be
heard. The police, the hospital and others all make their required calls as
Loretta spirals out of control. Melinda learns a tragic lesson when the
authorities call her in their duty to warn.

Teresa Stankiewicz is a second year graduate student in playwriting at Texas State University. She has an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois. Her
ten minute play, The Pink Bathtub Murders was produced in the summer of 2008
by the Vestige Group in Austin, Texas. A short version of Duty to Warn was
part of the 2009 FronteraFest Short Fringe. Teresa is a writer, director,
actor, choreographer and is currently the choreographer/producer for Stop
the World I Want To Get Off for the Wimberley Players this summer.

BUILDING CHARACTER (without the bother of adversity)
A four week workshop with Colin Denby Swanson

Wednesdays, May 6, 13, 20, and 27, 7:00-9:30 pm
The State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave.
All four sessions: $100 ASW members; $150 General
Drop-in rate: $30 ASW/ $40 General

INFO/RESERVATIONS: 512.454.9727; info@scriptworks.org

Your dad told you that cutting the lawn with clipping shears would build character. Maybe there’s an easier way. In this four-meeting workshop, we’ll experiment with ways to express, engage, and fortify the characters in your work. The adventure will include exercises on dialogue, objective, secrets, lies, non-verbal moments, and the power of focused (but intensive) revision.

Participants should see or read Caryl Churchill’s play A NUMBER (playing at Different Stages through May 10) before the May 7th meeting.

ABOUT COLIN DENBY SWANSON
C. Denby Swanson is a graduate of Smith College, the National Theatre Institute, and the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers. She is a former William Inge Playwright in Residence, Jerome Fellow and McKnight Advancement Grant recipient, and a former Artistic Director of Austin Script Works. She has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater; featured in the Lark Theater’s Playwrights Week, PlayLabs 2002, New York Stage & Film (through P73), Culture Project’s IMPACT Festival, the Icicle Creek Theater Festival, and JAW: A Playwrights Festival at Portland Center Stage; and premiered by Salvage Vanguard Theater, The Drilling Company, and 15 Head a Theater Lab. She is published by Smith & Kraus, Heinemann, and Playscripts, Inc. She was the 2007/2008 Playwright in Residence at ZACH Theatre Center as part of the NEA/TCG National Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, and is developing a play about Austin blues club owner Clifford Antone. An excerpt of her play A BRIEF NARRATIVE OF AN EXTRAORDINARY BIRTH OF RABBITS will be featured in the WPA Festival at SVT, May 23. Currently she is on the faculty at Southwestern University.

Sunday, April 26, 6:30 PM
State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave.

A Midsummer Night’s Conversation and A Midwinter Night’s Conversation are two short plays, each about a critical moment in the relationships of two different gay couples. Though different, each play intimately echoes the other. And, in each, one of the characters is an actor.

Allan Baker has written eight plays, including three produced as part of FronterFest. His 2006 production, Five Minutes, was a FronteraFest “Best of the Fest” and was produced for the Emerging Artists Theatre’s fall festival of short plays in Nov. of 2006 and as part of the Samuel French Festival of Off Off-Broadway One Act Plays in June of 2007.

Unfortunately the workshop with Gary Garrison, Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild of America, which was scheduled for April 1st has been cancelled. Check back here for news of our next workshop.

Sunday,  March 29, 2009 @ 6:30 PM
State Theatre, 719 Congress Ave.

“Homegrown Tomatoes” by Micah McCoy

Fundamentalist seminary student Evan Beech can find no other shelter in all of Austin, TX but a shared living cooperative run by a “nest of backyard-pooping hippies.” When Evan’s famous televangelist father is caught up in a sex scandal, Evan and his new roommates are forced to face head-on the complexities and absurdities at both extremes of America’s ‘culture war.’

Micah McCoy is an Austin based freelance writer, playwright, and activist, recently returned from a year in Nairobi, Kenya where he worked as the communications officer for a non-profit relief and development organization. This is Micah’s first play.

Flashbacks, maternal admonitions, and all kinds of dances promenade through Time Steps, the 11th annual Out of Ink ten-minute play showcase. Eight plays were selected from submissions created during a 48-hour writing retreat, called the Weekend Fling. During the Fling, writers are given three “ingredients” and two days to write their hearts out and create a ten-minute play.

This year’s ingredients were:

1. The play must go backward, from beginning to end
2. Include a sudden dance break that causes a shift in the action
3. Include three things your mother told you not to do

At the end of the Fling, the plays were read in an ASW Salon at the State Theater. A selection committee picked eight of the plays to produce in the Out of Ink Festival. The selection committee included Michael John Garces, Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles, Natalie George, local producer and lighting designer, and Emily Fordyce, ASW board member.

The Time Steps scripts were written by:
Katherine Catmull,  Aimée Gonzalez, Meg Haley, Max Langert, Marshall Maresca, Susan McMath Platt, Sarah Saltwick and Timothy Thomas.  The plays will be performed by an ensemble of actors including Kelli Bland, Kenneth Bradley, David Dubose, Kathleen Fletcher, David Gallagher, Anne Hulsman, Michelle Keffer, Rhonda Kulhanek, Christopher Loveless, Nicole Marosis, and Zeb L. West. They’ll be directed by  T.J. Gonzales, Heather Huggins, Ellie McBride, and Christina J. Moore .

Tickets: $12 general admission, $10 students/seniors/ASW/ACoT
March 26 is a Pay-What-You-Wish preview

NEW: Check out interviews with the writers at austinist.com and decider.com

Connections
A workshop with Arlene Hutton, writer of The Nibroc Trilogy
Monday, February 23, 2009 7:00-9:30PM
Daugherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Rd.
ASW $20 / General $35

INFO/RESERVATIONS: 512-454-9727, christi-at-scriptworks.org

Playwright Arlene Hutton, award-winning author of The Nibroc Trilogy, will take participants through a series of in-class writing exercises, provide new inroads to the wonders and revelations of the unconscious mind, and celebrate the thrill of creative writing.

Arlene Hutton is the author of LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC, which received a New York Drama League nomination for Best Play 2000. She is a six-time finalist for the Heideman Award and a three-time Samuel French Short Play Festival winner. Her full-length plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and have been performed worldwide. A former actress, she trained in improvisation with Theatre Sports New York and teachers from Second City. Her popular writing workshop, Connections, has been presented by Last Frontier Theatre Conference, KC/ACTF, Northwest Writers, Orlando Playfest and at universities around the country.