I've been busy with work this week, thank goodness (and thank ctan!), so I haven't had much of a chance to post, but I can't tell you how excited I am about my Bare Bones tomorrow night.  Working on this play has been such a joy; we've all had fun doing research on the characters and literary references and historical era, and every rehearsal someone has something new and exciting to share.  I've never worked on a show before where everyone was eager to do so much work, in addition to the internal work of really exploring the characters and making them as full and rich and real as possible.  We had the best rehearsal last night, when we were finally at the point where I could put down my script and just sit back and watch them and listen.  They made me laugh harder than ever, and there were even a few tears at one point.  I'm looking forward to the dress rehearsal tonight and getting to see it onstage, and I'm twitching with anticipation for tomorrow night, when a full audience gets to enjoy it.  Yay!

It's official -- 84 Charing Cross Road has been selected for the next Bare Bones!  My blurb:

In 1949, a struggling young New York playwright sent a letter inquiring about second-hand books to an antiquarian book store in London. So began a 20-year friendship between Helene Hanff and the booksellers at 84, Charing Cross Road. Taken from their actual letters, this story will amuse you, charm you, and send you running to your nearest library.

It's a really sweet and funny show, and I can't wait to see it brought to life in front of an audience.

Auditions are on March 15, and the show will be one night only, Thursday April 19, so mark your calendars now, or better yet, go sign up to audition!

 I posted this to facebook, but since some of the Margaret Ghost principals aren't on there:

An upcoming event that might interest you:
Edgar Allan Poe and Margaret Fuller: A Conversation

You've probably seen this in someone else's LJ by now, but given that it is only one night, I'd hate for you to miss it, so...

Come see my show! Staged reading of A Language of Their Own by Chay Yew, directed by Judy Yen. Tonight only! 8pm, Unity Church of God, right off College Ave in Davis Square.

dpolicar has put it better than I can:

 Also, I'm performing in a play!

Theatre@First has started a program of staged readings called Bare Bones, and I'll be playing Robert in A Language of Their Own.

Ming is a young, twenty-something assimilated Asian-American who lives with his lover Oscar, a somewhat older Asian man. When Oscar tests positive for HIV, he tells his lover of four years to leave. Both men move on to new partners, Oscar with a younger Asian man, Daniel, and Ming with a Caucasian man, Robert. The play chronicles the four men's struggles in their relationships, highlighting the nature of love, desire, sexuality and self-identity in a series of interconnected stories. Performance pending agreement with playwright's representatives.

It's a great play with some really fabulous language, and it's not a part I'd ever get to play in a full staged production, so I'm thrilled to be in it now.  Hope you can come check it out!

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Thursday, August 26th at 8pm
Unity Church of God, 6 William Street, Somerville, MA 02144
Suggested Donation $5 - No reservations required

Saturday night was the last performance of Festival@First.

Yesterday morning I got back to work on the graphics for The Lady's Not for Burning.

Last night was a read-through for a new Red Shift episode, to be recorded this weekend.

Tonight was the first read-through for Bare Bones: A Language of Their Own.  (Which, holy shit.  Powerful play.  Delicious language.  Great characters.  And my castmates are desireearmfeldt , dpolicar , and ladrescher, with the fabulous Judy Yen [who has an LJ but I'm forgetting what it is, sorry] directing us, so this is going to be a wonderful experience for both us and the audience.)

And it looks like I'm going to direct one of the plays for PMRP's The Big Broadcast of 1946 at the Somerville Theatre this fall, assuming we can find a way to work around the fact that I can't be there for auditions.

So, um, yeah... I may be a little busy for the next few months...

Festival@First: Shaken Up Shakespeare opens tonight! This evening's show is already sold out, so go reserve your tickets for the rest of the run now.

Meanwhile, you can check out a photo gallery online at the Somerville Journal. Sadly, the reporter had to leave before the intermission at dress rehearsal to make their deadline so you don't see most of the shows, but that just leaves more of a surprise!

It's still probably cheaper to buy a copy at the show if you can, but I just got this offer and figured I'd share in case anyone planned to order a copy online.



The Margaret Ghost
Price: $15.00
Discount: $- 1.50
Discounted Price: $13.50

Disclaimer: Use coupon code SUMMERREAD305 at checkout and receive 10% off The Margaret Ghost. Maximum savings with this promotion is $10. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. Sorry, self-purchases (buying books that you’ve published) aren’t eligible. This great offer ends on June 30, 2010 at 11:59 PM so try not to procrastinate! While very unlikely we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so.

muffyjo suggested I write something for The Margaret Ghost blog about the process of updating the art for the new production -- I'm posting it here as well for your convenience.

When I first designed the art for Theatre@First’s 2006 production of The Margaret Ghost, we were still a very young theatre company, and all of our materials were photocopied at someone’s office. All of our promotional art at the time had to be in black and white, to copy clearly. We’ve since graduated to printing in color, so I welcomed the chance to revisit the design and expand on it for this new production.

For the 2006 materials, the director and I had long talks about the play. We decided that the important things to emphasize were the humanity of the piece, including the fact that Margaret was a real woman, and her writing, which was such an important facet of her self-expression. We went through a number of rounds of possible fonts and quills, as you can see in the image on the side, before settling on the font Archive Petite Script, which brings to mind weathered writing from a quill pen, and a simple and less literal calligraphic flourish of a quill, positioned as if writing the title.


When it came time to update the art, I wanted to keep some consistency with the original, but add more depth and texture. To add to the sense of history, I decided to keep to literal physical objects. I looked through dozens of stock art photos of pens before finding a pen and ink set that grabbed me -- something utilitarian but with a sense of personality, and even a dash of femininity. We wanted to show a picure of the real-life Margaret, so I found an antique frame image to put it in, as if it were a miniature sitting on a desk.

For the background, I had hoped to find a sample of Margaret’s own writing to scan and use as a texture. When that failed, I took an excerpt from one of her books and typeset it in a vintage handwriting font, blurred it enough to not be distracting, and added some vintage paper behind it.

I decided to use a dark sepia brown for the type, and toned the pen set and frame to a dark bronze to match and create a more unified whole.


And there you have it! Same play, same message, but a very different look.

--Gilly Rosenthol, RosentholDesign.com

A book is an inherently satisfying object to hold in your hands, at least to me.  But to be holding a book that I actually designed myself -- well, believe it or not, it's actually even more exciting than holding one that I was published in.  (Of course, they misspelled my name that time; at least this time, I can make sure it's right!)

This is my first book, and it's a bound copy of the script for The Margaret Ghost, so the fact that it's a T@F project makes it even more special.  The ever-patient lillibet and I have spent a more hours than I care to count going over and over and over it, eleven rounds of revisions at last count, but I think it's really paid off -- it looks, well, professional!  I wish I could do more books, but sadly, breaking into publishing is really tough.  Still, having a sample to show off is a good start.

This is just the sample copy, the test pancake so to speak, so I have a few tweaks to make, but by the time the show rolls around, if not before, we should have copies for sale.  I can't wait for everyone to see them!  And the contents are pretty great, too; in addition to the script, the book contains an introduction and postscript by lillibet , and a paper by the playwright.  I think we're planning to sell them for $15, so bring money to the show! :)  And we'll probably also be selling them directly through lulu.com, although that will add some shipping costs.