Catskills mummy wins awards

A big shout-out to the Sullivan County Dramatic Workshop of South Fallsburg, NY and to the talented individuals who took home TANYS (Theatre Association of New York State) Awards for their recent production of How I Met Your Mummy.

Kristopher Rosengrant received a Meritorious Achievement in Acting for his performance as that knee-knocking, lily-livered security guard Melvin (see above).

Harold Tighe and Jim Schmidt received a Meritorious Achievement in Set Design and Construction  for their colorful, artistic take on the O. Howe Dulle Museum.

And Dawn Perneszi and Jenny Silverman received a Meritorious Achievement in Costume Design and Construction for their simple yet pitch-perfect costumes.

Congratulations, everyone!

Set ideas for How I Met Your Mummy

A while ago, I posted photos from Rumpelstiltskin, Private Eye showing some of the costumes that were designed for the two main characters. My thought was that other performing groups would get ideas from those designs--or be inspired to go off in their own direction.

Well, that post was so popular I decided to do it again, only this time I wanted to focus on set ideas. And what better play to use than my museum play, How I Met Your Mummy,

When I wrote the play, I purposely kept the set requirements to a minimum. There are no doors or windows and only two entrances, making it perfect for schools and community theaters with limited space. Here's how the script describes it:

The exhibit consists of a single room dominated by a sarcophagus lying horizontally on a platform CENTER. A work table is STAGE RIGHT with a yardstick, rope, and other miscellaneous tools as well as a folding chair just LEFT of it. There are two exits, one STAGE LEFT and one STAGE RIGHT. These lead to other exhibit rooms and should be open archways. The STAGE LEFT exit also leads to the restrooms.

It's what you do with that space that counts. Some groups went all out, constructing pillars, statues and an elaborate sarcophagus covered with hieroglyphics and Egyptian-style art. Others kept things simple, using just a hand-painted paper backdrop and a plan wooden box to set the scene.

Well, I think it's all great! No matter what size budget you have or how experienced your crew is, I'm sure you can find inspiration in these awesome sets:

Free monologues and scenes are now available

Have you ever scoured the internet looking for scenes or monologues only to be put off by complicated licensing arrangements or inappropriate subject matter? Do you wish you could find a dependable source of clean, funny material? Well, I'd like to help.

I've posted a collection of my favorite scenes from my plays--some before they're available in publication. And all are free for educational use.

Whether you need a monologue for an audition or a two- or three- (or nine!) person scene for theatre class, I've got a wide selection to choose from.

Just bop over to my Free Monologues or Free Scenes tabs to see what's available. Each scene can be downloaded, printed, emailed or shared as much and as many times as you want.

Why am I doing this? Well, the obvious answer is that I'm hoping to get greater exposure for my work. But more importantly,  I owe my career to school drama programs and the dedicated teachers that run them and I'd like to give something back.

So check out the scripts. I hope you find something you'll like.

Wicked Is As Wicked Does is now available

Just in time for the new school year, Pioneer Drama Service has published my eleventh play, Wicked Is As Wicked Does.

This large-cast comedy brings back all of your favorite characters from the fairy tales but turns those tales on their heads. Here those four nasty ladies who caused so much mischief become the heroes as they try to foil a fiendish plot to banish them to an icy wasteland.

Here's the synopsis:

Think all those fairy tales really ended with “happily ever after?”  Well, think again!  In this hilarious follow-up, Snow White has taken the throne and is about to marry her prince, who actually is quite intolerable.  He is trying to outlaw magic and has sentenced the four Wickeds — Snow White’s Wicked Queen, Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother, Sleeping Beauty’s Wicked Fairy and the Frog Prince’s Wicked Witch — to nine million hours of community service.  But even that’s not enough for Prince Intolerable.  He vows that as soon as he marries Queen Snow, he’ll send the Wickeds to Grimstad, where they’ll never be heard from again.  Really, though, the Wickeds aren’t so bad anymore, so there’s only one way to foil his plans:  stop the wedding!  But the Wickeds are a little rusty in the magic department.  Can they make their old spells work in time?  What if they get caught?  And why did the seven dwarfs turn into wombats?  Find out in this zany comedy that proves there’s a little good in everyone...  though sometimes, very little. 

It's always a challenge to make bad guys not only good, but likable. And these baddies seem especially repulsive. I mean, what kind of person (or fairy) would put a girl in a 100-year coma just because she was snubbed for the girl's christening?

Writing guru Blake Snyder would tell you it's simple. Just have the baddies save a cat.

Well, that seemed completely out of character for them. So I took the opposite tack. Instead of having them do something nice, I made them targets of prejudice as the evil prince plots to kick them out of the kingdom without trial or just cause.

I'm hoping this will be just as effective in winning audiences' sympathy. After all, these gals have already paid the penalty for their crimes (Wicked Fairy, for example, traveled the kingdom placing warning labels on all the spindles).

And besides, you'll be laughing so much at their crazy antics, you'll forget they were ever bad to begin with.

Wicked Is As Wicked Does has a cast of 28 (7M, 12F and 9 roles that can be either) and runs about 60 minutes. To read a sample or order a script for perusal, click here.

The Enchanted Bookshop is now available!

My tenth play has just been published by Pioneer Drama Service. The Enchanted Bookshop is my love letter to classic literature and the power of reading. Also spitwads. Spitwads can be powerful too.

To read an excerpt, watch video clips or order your own copy of the script, please visit the play's web page. Here's the synopsis:

During the day, A Likely Story may look like any other used bookstore.  But at night, it’s a place where magic happens.  That’s when the characters inside the books come alive.  Six of those characters — Dorothy Gale, Robin Hood, Pollyanna, Sherlock Holmes, Heidi, and Tom Sawyer — long to help Margie, the scatterbrained owner, save her struggling store.  But they’re not allowed to leave the building or be seen by human eyes.  So when a pair of smugglers comes looking for a stolen necklace hidden inside one of the books, the characters are torn.  Should they warn Margie and risk disappearing forever?  Or can they find a way to defeat the crooks without being seen?  Featuring additional appearances by such beloved literary characters as the Queen of Hearts, Long John Silver, and Doctor Dolittle, this charming comedy celebrates the joy of reading in a fresh, fun-filled way. 

You might wonder how I chose those main characters. Well, it's a little complicated.

First off, I had to decide on the number of major characters, the ones that would drive the plot. After some thought, I realized six just seems right. Four wouldn't give enough opportunity for interaction. Eight would be unwieldy.

Next was the gender. Although I've been striving to include more female roles in my plays, for this one, I wanted an even number of male and females among the main parts. (Don't worry. I include more females for the secondary roles.)

So who to choose? A legal argument can be made that I have a right to use copyrighted characters (Jon Scieszka did so in his hilarious middle-grade novel Summer Reading Is Killing Me!), but not all lawyers may see it that way. Wanting to stay far away from any courtroom, I decided to limit my choices to those in the public domain.

I also wanted characters who would be easily recognized by audience members as soon as they appear on stage. And I was aiming for a variety of ages, nationalities and personalities.

The guys were easy. Sherlock Holmes would provide the brains, Robin Hood the brawn and Tom Sawyer the spunk.

The girls were a little tougher. I would have loved to include Pippi Longstocking, but she's still under copyright protection. So is Laura Ingalls.

Peter Pan's Wendy and Wonderland's Alice are in the public domain, but I've never found them to be particularly strong. In their books, they let things happen to them rather than the other way round.

Anne Shirley (of Green Gables fame) is a strong character, but audience members might have difficulty recognizing her. The same goes for Caddie Woodlawn, Sara Crewe (A Little Princess) and Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden).

Fortunately, Dorothy Gale--one of the all-time great children's book characters--recently came into the public domain. Clever and brave, she serves as the real hero among the book characters.

I cheated a little bit with Pollyanna. People would recognize her more from the old Disney movie than the book, but what a personality she's got! What could I do but make her the ever peppy cheerleader for the team?

For the last one, I decided on Heidi. As portrayed in the books, she doesn't have a particularly strong personality, but I decided to play up her melodramatic side (or am I thinking of Shirley Temple?). And I can't wait to hear that accent onstage. I've had French, Italians and Russians in my plays. Why not a German-speaking Swiss girl?

The Enchanted Bookshop has a cast of 23 (8M/9F and 6 roles that can be either) and runs about 60 minutes. To learn more, click here.

Send me your videos

I recently heard from a young actress named Maxine who's playing Daisy in a local production of The Stinky Feet Gang and wanted to know why I haven't posted anything from that play on my Video page.

The answer is quite simple. I haven't found one yet. The videos I post on this website all come from YouTube, and if no one has posted a video there, then I can't post a link to it here.

But I'm thinking there are a lot more videos out there than what you can find on the Tube. After all, my publisher allows audience members to videotape their productions (most publishers don't) and every time I go to one of my shows, I see a few parents taping away. So if you have a video and you'd like to share it with me, I would love to post it here. Just email me the file or a link by clicking here.

The same goes for photos. I can usually find quite a few scouring Facebook, but I know a lot of you have your own. If you'd like to see them posted here, please send them my way!

So you want to promote your play

A recent post on The Official Playwrights of Facebook got me thinking. In it, a member of the often raucous group asked how he could promote his self-produced play.

He got a fair number of responses, but most of these fell into the category of "same old same old": posters and Facebook.

Now both of these tools can help, but they're far from the whole story. If you want to promote your own show, there are a lot more powerful tools you can use.

When I plan the promotion of one of my plays, one of the things I consider is what marketers call "stickiness". This is the ability of a particular promotional tool to stick with someone after they've been exposed to it. And the problem with posters is that they're not very sticky.

Think about it. A person is out and about when they see one of your posters. They think, "That sounds good. I might like to see that." They run to the bank. They pick up some Fun-Yuns. And by the time they get home, they've forgotten all about it. A poster doesn't offer people anything to take home.

Plus, there's the old problem of where do you put them? Libraries used to be a good place to post arts-related posters, but around here at least, a lot of them have gotten the idea that any event that charges is money s "for profit" and so they won't allow them. Starbucks too has cut way back on the type of posters they accept (although that's up to the individual store manager, so it doesn't hurt to ask).

This is why I don't use posters anymore. But let me offer some other ideas that are more powerful--and often a lot cheaper.

Postcards

This has been one of my most successful promotional tools. They're like posters in that they catch people's eye with a colorful image and can include all the deets on your event. But unlike posters, postcards let you make that personal connection that's so important.

I would give 50 to 100 postcards to each of my actors so they could give them to their friends. Trust me, no one is going to be a better salesman for your show than an actor who's appearing in it. And the nice thing is people tend to take postcards home and stick them on their bulletin board or fridge so they end up looking at them several times a day.

Vistaprint is a great source for postcards and dozens of other promo items (coffee cups, anyone?). Their prices are cheap and they offer a great online tool for designing the cards.

If you do use postcards, make sure to include the website where they can buy tickets. You always want to convert that exposure to an actual purchase.

Facebook

Of course you'll want to post an event with Mr. Zuckerberg and invite all of your friends. Just make sure you keep the mindless cheerleading to a minimum ("this is my first play and it would mean a lot to me if you can all come!"). That can turn people off and doesn't really set your play apart from the hundreds of other entertainment options people are bombarded with every day. Instead, hook your potential audience with a brief but punchy description of what your play is about.

Programs

Advertising your play in the program for other shows requires some advance planning (theaters tend to print them up weeks ahead of time). But this is likely to be the most effective tool in your whole promotional toolbelt. That's because you're getting your play's name in front of people who already love theater and are often looking for the next great play to see.

Rates for this type of advertising are usually pretty low and the money goes to help other theater companies. That's a big win-win in my book.

Radio

Buying radio ads can be very expensive and often isn't very effective. When I ran a children's theatre company, I spent $400 on a weekend's worth of commercials and ended up getting only one new student out of the deal (but he was a great student, so in this case, it was worth the investment!).

There are cheaper alternatives. Look at the AM talk radio and public radio stations in your area. Do any of them have arts-related interview shows? If so, you can usually snag a spot by emailing the host.

And don't be shy. I noticed that one local radio station never promoted high school shows. When I talked to them, I found out they had an equal opportunity policy. They put everyone on their show  who asked. It's just that high schools never asked.

I love doing radio shows because it's a great way to involve the actors in your show. One show even allowed us to perform a whole scene on the air. Not only was it a lot of fun, but it gave listeners a great taste of what the play was like.

Newspapers

Newspapers can also be an expensive place to advertise, and with dwindling subscriber bases, they ain't what they used to be. But here too, you might get some free exposure by convincing someone to do an article or review. Of course, this is a long shot, but it doesn't cost you anything to try.

Just let me give you one piece of advice. Don't send a press release. As a theatre reviewer, I was on the receiving end of these and 98% were deadly boring: paragraph after endless paragraph of cast member names and the history of the play and who knows what else (I never read that far to find out).

Instead, find out the names of the local arts editor and all of the arts reporters (their names should be in the newspaper's masthead). Then send them a brief, personal email inviting them to your show. As with Facebook and pretty much every other promotional tool mentioned here, the most important item is the hook. What makes your play unique? What will make it a compelling experience for audience members?

Oh, and don't forget those local event listings at the back of the newspaper. Those are usually free to get onto.

Email Lists

Of course, you should send an email blast to your own personal list of family, friends and people who've bought tickets from you before. But try thinking outside the box. Is there an arts other mass email list you can get on?

Colorado Springs had a great arts group called the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region. Each week, they'd email a list of local arts events to thousands of arts lovers in the areas. It was easy to get my plays included in the list and I found it to be way more effective than my own email campaigns because it came with the approbation of an independent and highly respected arts group. And if you're lucky, they might even make you pick of the week.