Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish …
Ian Finley explains the typical structure of a play in simple terms. Ian holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of Performing Arts. In addition to teaching for 19 years, seven of which have been at Research Triangle High School, he is a professional actor and playwright, named the NC Piedmont Laureate in Playwriting in 2012. Photo of an Amish …
I’m in the middle of taking a workshop about setting up a routine. It’s been difficult for me to adjust to quarantine, and setting up a regular routine would be helpful, I think. The technique on offer is one developed by Nick Kemp, founder of Provocative Changeworks. It’s practiced with a partner. The best I can say is that it …
The fact that statues are falling all across the US and the UK is invigorating and inspiring to me. I wrote about a Confederate monument being toppled in my comedy “Bamboozled.” In that play, it’s a figure of Nathan Bedford Forrest, failed Confederate soldier, murderer, and KKK Grand Dragon. The state of Tennessee wrote and enforced laws that de facto …
by William Carlos Williams As the cat climbed over the top of the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the pit of the empty flower pot Photo: William Carlos Williams with kittens
I’m enjoying the book, “There Must Be Happy Endings,” by Megan Sandberg-Zakian. It is described as her “personal odyssey through the American theater landscape.” Happy endings are a conundrum because they so often seem to defy real life. For example, “Hairspray” seems to conclude with an upbeat celebration that racism is ended. While there is something to celebrate – a …
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is a book-length poem about race and the imagination. Rankine has called it an attempt to “pull the lyric back into its realities.” Those realities include the acts of everyday racism—remarks, glances, implied judgments—that are allowed to flourish in an environment where more explicit acts of discrimination are outre. In responding to these …
a poem by Garous Abdolmalekian There are characters in mewho do not talk to each otherwho fill each other with griefwho have never dined at the same table In me there are characterswho write their own poetry with my handswho flip through stacks of bills with my handswho make fists of my handswho place my hands on the sofa edgeand …
“I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and …
I was struck by this gorgeous and powerful photo of two black ballerinas en pointe, protesting on a defaced Confederate monument. It seems to me a juxtaposition of an old and corrupted order and a new order, full of hope and opportunity. A contrast of white racist ugliness and black excellence and beauty. We are all standing on tiptoe. “Ballerinas …