Bay Area Playwrights Festival

I spent the last two weeks of July at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival as a PA on Dominic Orlando's Danny Casolaro Died for You, directed by Kip Fagan. I got to direct two short pieces with half an hour of rehearsal each: Prom Queen by Erin Phillips and The Waiting Room by Elijah Guo, and I saw two readings: Safe House by Geetha Reddy and every tongue must confess by Marcus Gardley.

I met some wonderful people in the process. Kip Fagan is a wonderful director and really nice guy, and Dominic is wonderful. As is his girlfriend Julie, who is an incredible actress. She played the young girl in Safe House, this crazy play about an extremely paranoid family from Menlo Park, which I absolutely loved. Amy Mueller did a fantastic job of staging it as well- I didn't need any more than what she gave us in the reading for a full production. For The Waiting Room I got to work with Bex White, an actress from New York who comes home to the Bay Area for the summer, and I really hope I get to work with her again because she's ridiculously talented. I also got to see her in every tongue must confess.

I am also going to be reading scripts for Berkeley Rep! Need to make it up there sometime this week to pick them up. The literary intern just graduated from Brown and we talked for several hours at the party on Sunday night.

Danny Casolaro Died for You is a crazy play because all of the people and events in the play are real- all the conversations actually happened, and I've been convinced to accept all of this government conspiracy stuff that seems just ridiculous but at the same time is totally believable. So in that sense the experience and the play did their job... :-) The actors, particularly Kevin Karrick and Lance Gardner, were great. Six men... someone in the audience the first week brought up having an issue with it being all men, but it's such a male thing- the whole government conspiracy shebang, especially in the 80s... and Danny's relentless pursual of the story, it seemed necessary. Lance Gardner is playing the lead in Yellowjackets at Berkeley Rep, so I'm excited to see him there.

I might be stage managing Jonathan Spector's show, Current Nobody, from October-December. I just need to hear back from the Public first... tomorrow I'm going to e-mail or call them and see when they're looking to hire someone by.

And that was the Bay Area Playwrights Festival! Woohoo! On to Ashland...