Academic Criticism on Armstrong

Not long ago, I received an email asking me if I'd written a play about Delia Bacon. The person had heard about it through the website Academia.edu.

It turns out, an academic scholar had published a paper analyzing my play The True Author... Revealed. Natalia Vysotska, a professor at Kyiv National Linguistic University, wrote a paper called "'I Am Not a Freak!' Delia Bacon as a Dramatis Persona" that appeared in American and European Studies 2017, which is published by Minsk State Linguistic University.

The paper cites this blog, as well as my play, which appears in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2010. Katherine Harte-DeCoux has appeared in the one-act play at a couple of different venues in New York, and the piece also had a student production in Ottawa. It portrays Delia Bacon giving an imagined lecture at the U.S. Consulate in Liverpool, arguing that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by Sir Francis Bacon.

Vysotska correctly writes that the aim of the play is "not to take part in the long-lasting authorship debate" concerning the plays of Shakespeare. Rather, the piece "urges us to see the Bacon phenomenon not merely as a historical curiosity, still another 'mad woman in the attic', but as a dramatic figure at the intersection of cultural, gender, and power relations in the mid-19th c. USA going through crucial transformations."

It's gratifying to see my play analyzed in an academic paper, particularly one that also cites Nathanial Hawthorne and the renowned Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro. If you'd like to read the play, you can order a copy of the collection it appears in here.

Book Release One Week From Today!

Next Wednesday, December 3rd, Applause Books will be celebrating the release of Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays. Come out at 6:00 to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe for readings of some of the monologues, including a selection from my own play The True Author... Revealed.

Ken Kaissar directed The True Author... Revealed back in 2009 starring Katherine Harte-DeCoux. Applause subsequently anthologized it in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2009. It is inspired by the life of the nineteenth-century scholar, author, and complete basket case Delia Bacon.

Unfortunately, Kate won't be able to perform the monologue next week, but Alex Sunderhaus, who was recently seen in my play The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams, will be on hand to do the honors. Rumor has it that Maja Wampuszyc, fresh from her successful run in pool (no water) will be reading a monologue as well.

Some of the other authors whose work will be presented include Liliana Almendarez, Dano Madden, and Pamela Sneed. Admission is $5, but you'll get in for free if you order a copy of the anthology here:

Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays

It should be a good time, and hopefully we'll pack the house!

Book Launch in December!

Mark December 3rd on your calendar... because that's when Applause will be having a launch party for the first two volumes of Best Monologues from the Best American Short Plays.

Volume one includes my short play with a long title The True Author of the Plays Formerly Attributed to Mister William Shakespeare Revealed to the World for the First Time by Miss Delia Bacon. Katherine Harte-DeCoux has performed the piece on multiple occasions in New York City, and is always brilliant.

The launch party will be held at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe from 6-9 pm. That's at 236 E. 3rd Street, between Avenues A and B. There is a small admission fee, but it's waived for anyone who wants to buy a book.

In addition to my piece, volume one also includes monologues written by Liliana Almendarez, Julia Jarcho, Adam Kraar, Neil LaBute, and many others.

Hope you can come! If not, you can always get the book from Amazon here:

Best Monologues from the Best American Short Plays

Last Chance to See OVER HERE

Last night, I saw Mortal Folly's production of Over Here  at the New York International Fringe Festival. This wonderful play by Meron Langsner only has one more performance, this Sunday at 2:15. If you haven't seen it yet, go! It is not to be missed.

The play starts out like a bad joke: So an Israeli and a Palestinian are working together at a construction site just after 9/11.... Yet from that beginning comes a story that is by turns terrifying, beautiful, and at times very, very funny. (As one character quips, "If we can't joke about deep-seated ethnic hatred, what can we joke about?")

Mohit Gautam plays Issam, a Palestinian-American who grew up in New Jersey and watched the Twin Towers fall. While others want to destroy, he wants to build something, to create something new. But when Issam finds out his cousin was a suicide bomber who killed people in Israel, he finds himself unable to completely condemn a member of his own family who seems to have snapped after years of putting up with oppression.

Naren Weiss plays Gilad, a former Israeli soldier with a Greencard and a study-abroad opportunity at NYU. He is all jokes and laughter, and claims he only took the job so he could get some sun. Yet when Issam asks him if he ever killed anyone in the army, we know the answer without Gilad having to say it. In spite of the confidence he expresses, Gilad is haunted by his own demons.

Rounding out the play is veteran actor Micky Ryan as the racist foreman, who in spite of the obnoxious and offensive things he says, manages to be sympathetic. He helped build the World Trade Center and knew people who died when it was attacked. While the part could come off as a caricature, Ryan makes him all too human for us to hate him, in spite of some of the seemingly unforgivable things he says and does over the course of the play.

Director Katherine Harte-DeCoux's staging is impeccable, aided by projections by OMTA and original music provided by Brook Pridemore. The fight choreography, done by Nathan DeCoux is highly realistic, which makes the sometimes questionable choices made by the characters seem motivated. The sense of fear is palpable, even as the characters strive to find ways to trust and accept one another.

Over Here  is playing at 64 E 4 Mainstage. Check it out!

Best Monologues

I recently received in the mail my contributor's copy of Best Monologues From the Best American Short Plays, which is part of the Applause Acting Series. Volume One includes my one-woman play The True Author of the Plays Formerly Attributed to Mister William Shakespeare Revealed to the World for the First Time by Miss Delia Bacon.

Dawn Cardinale produced the play in New York in 2009 starring Katherine Harte-DeCoux as Delia Bacon. Ken Kaissar directed the piece. More recently, Kate reprised her role at the Looking Glass Theatre as part of the evening of short work Broadside!

I was very fortunate to have the piece included in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2009, and last year William Demastes, who currently edits the series, asked me if he could include it in the Best Monologues book. You can imagine how long I took to think about that one. (What do you call a tenth of a nanosecond again?)

The play tells the story of Delia Bacon, a Connecticut woman who was the first to popularize the idea that Shakespeare's plays were written by someone other than that man from Stratford. (For the record, I do not share Miss Bacon's opinions.) She gained the attention of a number of prominent intellectuals, including the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who at the time was American consul to the city of Liverpool. I condense a great deal of Miss Bacon's life, to show her excited research, frenzied revelations, and slow descent into madness all in one speech at the American consulate.

In reality, it took a lot longer than that for her to go insane, but sadly she did end up in an institution writing sheer jibberish. (Not that her initial writings were the most coherent, anyway.)

Needless to say, I'm honored to be included in the monologue anthology, which also has pieces by Adam Kraar, Julia Jarcho, Liliana Almendarez, and Neil LaBute. If you're interested in buying it, here's the link on Amazon:

Best Monologues From the Best American Short Plays

http://www.amazon.com/Monologues-American-Volume-Applause-Acting/dp/1480331554

Around the World in 80 Days

Last night, I saw the wonderful steampunk version of Around the World in 80 Days currently running off-Broadway at The New Theater at 45th Street. First of all... wow.

This is the quick-change adaptation penned by Mark Brown, in which five actors portray approximately three zillion characters. I saw it when Irish Rep did the play five or six years ago. I enjoyed that production, but was surprised that it was being revived so soon afterward. I wasn't sure I wanted to see a play (even a good one) that I had just seen a few years ago. On the other hand... steampunk.

The costumes are wonderful, and the set magnificent. Plus, the production deftly uses projections, showing clocks, maps, and various stylized images to help tell the story. Ten years ago, you had to go to Broadway to see projections of this level of quality, or at least a major off-Broadway house. It's wonderful that the technology has come down to more intimate venues as well.

And what is that venue? Well, The New Theater at 45th Street is the latest name for the building across from my old apartment on 45th Street near 9th Avenue. It's where I saw my first play reading in New York (a piece by N. Richard Nash). It's also where there was a staged reading of my play The Metric System and workshop productions of Maggie the Pirate, a musical I wrote with Joshua H. Cohen, and The True Author... Revealed, a one-woman show I wrote starring Katherine Harte-DeCoux.

Of course, when I worked in that building, it was a dump. Producer Cedric Yau should get a medal from the block association for transforming it into one of the classier places you can go now to see intimate theater. Not only is the lobby cleaned up and inviting, but the theater itself is decorated with a steampunk mural that blends into the set, bringing the audience right into the action. Yau also shelled out money to provide much-needed new seats and carpeting (which actually match the set and mural!) for the venerable old venue.

In order for the piece to work, however, you have to have good actors, and this production delivers. Not only is the cast hysterical, but they keep up the energy throughout the show, conveying a sense of urgency as Fogg and his retinue strive to make each leg of the journey on time and circle the world in the titular 80 days. I found myself cheering for them with increasing intensity throughout the second act, and I was on the edge of my seat, in spite of knowing all of the plot twists beforehand.

Below is a publicity photo I grabbed from the show's website. If you get a chance, check it out!