Reawakening into Spring
From the Artistic Director…
Technically, it’s somehow supposed to be Spring - I would argue that our Seattle weather doesn’t agree with this statement since I ran a race on Sunday in sporadic snow! - but nevertheless Spring is coming.
Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal and the sprouting of new things. In the case of The Shattered Glass Project, we are holding auditions for the three remarkable new plays written and directed by the Incubator/Mentor Cohort for our 2024 New Works Festival: New Voices, New Narratives. Many of the cohort members attended and participated in the Theatre Puget Sound Unified General Auditions and callbacks for the Festival will be this coming weekend! Casting a play is a bit like putting seeds into the fresh earth in the garden - you have seeds, you roughly know what the plant will look like when it grows, but you must add the actors to actually move onto the sprouting and growing part. I’m super excited to find out who the actors will be in each one of the shows.
I’m thrilled to announce that TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE (https://www.shatteredglassproject.org/ticketsales) for the 2024 New Works Festival. Please! Buy your tickets today! Let us know how excited you are to see our new works sprout and grow!
Lastly, GiveBIG will be coming soon! This is another fine way to show your support for the work being done by The Shattered Glass Project and our unique theatremakers. Please help us kickstart our fundraising goal of $8000 for GiveBIG by making your gift today. Click here to donate!
Warmth and sunshine!
Rebecca O’Neil, artistic director, TSGP
From the Cohort
Christie Zhao - director, 2023-24 Cohort:
What new thoughts, ideas, projects, space-learnings (etc) are you cultivating for the future?
I am thinking of directing something from Brecht with Yun's ensemble! Maybe Fear and Misery in the Third Reich, maybe The Exception and the Rule. I am thinking about translating it to Mandarin and presenting the show in Mandarin with English subtitles. I think it would work very well for the alienation effect and people can watch it and think and reflect on their lives in this chaotic and turbulent capitalistic world. I also crave ENSEMBLE.
Rachel Atkins - playwriting mentor, 2023-24 Cohort:
What new work is coming up for you?
I'm doing 14/48 next weekend, March 8-9 2024, as well as State of the Students at Seattle Rep, including these upcoming performances:
More information is available here.
Mariah Lee Squires, Playwright, 2023-24 Cohort
What are the ways you have been “reborn” as an artist in the past or recently?
I was “reborn” as a theatre artist when I became a playwright in 2020. Playwriting had been no part of my artistic life, even academically, before I jumped right in and began writing almost 3 1/2 years ago.
Through the Window Journal Update
by Carolynne Wilcox - SGP Associate Artist
It never ceases to amaze me, as a playwright, how things invariably always seem to come together as you slowly plug away at them. This project has thankfully been no different!
We all have our own process and ways of working…I know many playwrights who scoff at anyone who doesn’t use an outline, for example, and I’m COMPLETELY the contrary. I often like to write in what I call a “collage-y” process: if I have an idea about something that is kind of fuzzy in many parts, I’ll start writing the scenes I know about, no matter what part of the story they’re in. Much of the time, I like the characters to do the talking…I just open up a blank document and see what they might have to say to each other, and more often than not, they reveal things to me that maybe I didn’t know before. Of course, they talk a lot of nonsense in between, as we figure out the story together, but the beauty of editing is, you can cut, paste, and condense this nonsense later, if it doesn’t serve the script, and stick with the revealed golden nuggets that do.
Miriam and I met in West Seattle at C&P coffee in late February to share and reflect upon our developing scripts. At this point, Miriam had written one first draft and completely scrapped it (it took place in winter, and this project will be performed in the summer, so she didn’t want actors to have to sweat in heavy coats!), then brought something new to our meeting. I continued to write and refine what I started at our previous meeting. Was excited for the meeting, as the characters had finally revealed to me what was at the center of their BIG BEEF!
It's always fun to come together and share/discuss, because invariably, we end up with many weird similarities, which we can then choose to lean into even more (or not). We both left feeling inspired and energized with new ideas and directions to go in for further development. I was able to finish a first draft of my piece, and am excited to share it tomorrow at our next meeting. It is definitely a first draft, though...things still need to be tweaked and refined, ideas and metaphors need to marry more closely together, but again: it never ceases to amaze me how a thing that was born from the ether with a deadline will come together as readily as something you’ve got more time on...probably even faster and more succinctly, because of that deadline!
We’re getting excited to share these with the SGP community later on this year. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to develop these playlets!
Coming Soon
14/48 is this weekend, boasting several SGP-associated artists past and present - it’s the toast of the town, so go check it out!
More info/tix available here.
Playwrights! There’s still time to submit to Driftwood Players’ (Edmonds, WA) Festival of Shorts - March 17 is the deadline!
More info/guidelines available here.
