Beckett’s Babies

Literary Manager (and fellow Iowa alumn) Jenni Page-White joins us on this episode to share her experiences as both a dramaturg and literary manager. This is a great episode for our listeners who are interested in dramaturgy and have been thinking about literary management as a profession! Jenni gives us some thoughtful insight into the world. We hope you'll enjoy it!

Jenni Page-White is the literary manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she curates and develops new work for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Her dramaturgy credits at Actors Theatre include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Angels in America (Parts One and Two), and the world premieres of We’ve Come to Believe, by Kara Lee Corthron, Emily Feldman, and Matthew Paul Olmos; Dave Harris’s Everybody Black; Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s Do You Feel Anger?; Susan Soon He Stanton’s we, the invisibles ; Basil Kreimendahl’s We’re Gonna Be Okay; Tasha Gordon-Solmon’s I Now Pronounce; Brendan Pelsue’s Wellesley Girl; and Steven Dietz’s This Random World. Prior to working at Actors Theatre, she was the literary associate at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she helped select and develop new plays for First Look and coordinated post-show discussion programming. As a freelance dramaturg, she has worked with WildWind Performance Lab, American Theater Company, Sideshow Theatre Company and LiveWire Chicago Theatre, and she has evaluated work for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Playwrights’ Center, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and The New Harmony Project. She is the co-editor, with Amy Wegener, of several volumes of Humana Festival play anthologies. She holds a B.F.A. from the University of Oklahoma and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

To learn more about Jenni and her work at Actors Theater of Louisville, visit the website: https://www.actorstheatre.org/bios/jenni-page-white/

Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies

And as always, we would love to hear from you!

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

Let's talk money! In this episode, Sam and Sarah discuss how playwrights can earn a living writing plays and what is really out there for a playwright. We could only pack so much and we feel this conversation is ongoing so we'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well!

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting or the subject of the episode and we might discuss it on our next episode. We'd love to hear from you!

Related Links:

Amazing Resource: Open Source Document showing salaries across a range of theater jobs by Jenna Clark Embrey

What's it like to rehearse a new play? Sam and Sarah share their own personal experiences with rehearsals and its pros and cons when rewriting a new play. How do you feel about rehearsals?

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode. We'd love to hear from you!

Playwright, Ph.D. candidate and Artistic Director of The Navigators Theater Company, Bella Poynton, brilliantly shares with us her knowledge and love of theater on this week's episode of Beckett's Babies. Learn how Bella’s love for science fiction and search for truth lead her to not only seek a Ph.D. degree but to create her own theater company with her fellow collaborators.

BELLA is a playwright, director, and instructor of theatre studies. Her playwriting often focuses on science fiction of speculative themes. Bella’s plays have been produced and developed at the Great Plains Theater Festival, New Perspectives Theater, The Science Fiction Theater Company, Otherworld Theatre, the Pittsburgh New Play Festival, The Alleyway Theatre, The Antaeus Company, Madlab, Road Less Traveled Productions, Quantum Dragon Theatre and many more. Bella has been a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, the Heideman Prize, The Christopher Brian Wolk Award, and the Samuel French OOB Festival. She has been a regional playwriting resident at Road Less Traveled Productions, and a teaching artist at Shea's Buffalo, The Just Buffalo Literary Center, Syracuse Stage, Horizon Theatre Company, and many others. Bella is also the Artistic Director of The Navigators Theatre Company, producing feminist science fiction stories for the stage. The company currently has a residency with Access Theatre in New York City. 

In addition to her playwriting, Bella is also a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies at the University at Buffalo. Her ongoing research project explores robots and A.I. in performance from 1920 to the present. Other research interests include mixed reality performance, the historical avant-garde, and female playwrights. Bella holds a BFA in Acting from Boston University, an MA in Theatre from the University at Buffalo, and an MFA in Playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights' Workshop.

To learn more about Bella and her work, visit her website at www.bellapoynton.com

The episode was recorded on June 9, 2020.

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Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

Do you ever feel stuck and want to write something new but don't know where to even begin? How could one even start generating ideas? Have no fear! Sam and Sarah look to news headlines of the week to brainstorm possible stories for a new play. Try it out yourself and tell us what you thought about the exercise!

LINKS

New York Times - “My Daughter Was a Preschool Biter”

Los Angeles Times - “A 102-year-old woman faces eviction so the landlords’ daughter can move in. It’s completely legal”

USA Today - “Trump, first lady have tea with Prince Charles”

Entertainment Weekly - “Anderson Cooper forgot to tell his mom he was coming out: 'You could've given me a heads up!

Washington Post - “He asked the FBI to analyze ‘Bigfoot’ hair 40 years ago and never heard back. Until now.” 

The Atlantic -  “When Your Final Exam is Surviving The Wilderness” 

Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

In this episode, Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter Monica Trausch shares insight into her life in New York, writing her play "The ABCs", and why she writes. We also play a fun game called "Premises" and you won't want to miss what Sam and Monica have to say.

To learn more about Monica Trausch, visit her website www.monicatrausch.com and follow her on social @monicatrausch

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Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies

And as always, we would love to hear from you! 

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

Email: [email protected]

For more info, visit our website: www.beckettsbabies.com

For the days when we don't feel like writing, we look to others to inspire us. In this episode, we share words of wisdom from other writers.

FAVE ESSAYS, BOOKS, ARTICLES, CONVERSATIONS ABOUT WRITING

“Pitching and Moaning”

SLP Elements of Style

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (book)

On Writing by Stephen King (book)

Octavia Butler’s notes to herself

“Draft No. 4” and “On Structure” by John Mcphee

“Communicating with Theatres” - Mary Sue Price

A conversation with Paula Vogel

Jose Rivera’s 36 Assumptions on Writing Plays

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Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies

And as always, we would love to hear from you!

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

Email: [email protected]

Every play has an ending and in this episode, we try to understand what makes an ending work and memorable.

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Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies

And as always, we would love to hear from you!

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

Email: [email protected]

In this episode,  Columbus-based playwright and director Chris Leyva (also a fellow Iowa Playwrights Alum!) joins our show to share what his life has been like after graduate school and his journey into writing theater for young audiences. As playwrights, we were able to relate to so much of Chris' experiences including working day jobs, finding the time to write,  handling rejections, and the journey we all take to find our voice as writers. Listeners, you don't want to miss this episode!

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Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies

And as always, we would love to hear from you! 

Send us your questions or thoughts on playwriting and we might discuss it on our next episode.

Email: [email protected]

For more info, visit our website: www.beckettsbabies.com

In this episode, we discuss the beginning of a play. What do you think is considered a beginning? How long should the beginning be? What makes the beginning of a play memorable? We share our thoughts on this very important and serious episode. 

GLISTENS:

Sam's - "Running Out of Children, a South Korea School Enrolls Illiterate Grandmothers" by Choe Sang-Hun (NY Times)

Sarah's - "Wedding planning is taking over my life and I can't deal."

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Please support Beckett's Babies by reviewing, sharing an episode to your friends, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @beckettsbabies