One Piece

Donald Sterling is banned for life. The NBA has taken a stand. Everybody cheers and goes back to business as usual. I have conflicting feelings about this news. First, I don't really think the NBA is concerned about social justice or civil rights. If they were half the owners in the league would be banned (hello Cavs owner who ripped off middle-class families with mortgages and the Nets owner who is a Russian oligarch involved in all sorts of atrocities). Furthermore Sterling's racism and sexism have been known for decades including actual housing discrimination which directly hurt black and Latino families. The NBA was silent throughout all this court evidence and documentation. I think the lifetime ban was for business purposes. The threats of a player boycotting of just one playoff day would have cost the NBA ridiculously large amounts of millions (TV, ticket reimbursement, paying players, suing them, lawyers). All teams would be hurt and could spin off into NBA players blac...

After the first 10 minutes of "Bullets Over Broadway" my heart was filled with dread. The jokes were stale, the timing was slow, the joints of the play creaked. I started plotting my intermission escape. And then something miraculous happened: this broadway musical became fun. The actors picked up the pace, the jokes started landing, the choreography began flowing. By the time Olive sings a hilariously on-the-nose sexual bit about wanting a big hot (in a joke that gets bigger and raunchier at every chorus refrain), everything had changed. The audience was won over, I was won over. This was funny, silly. At the end of the show I looked back on my initial escape and how quickly my mind switched into 'mission abort' mode. It made me wonder if I have become so jaded about theatre that if the first 10 minutes aren't a smash then I'm already planning my 'intermission migraine?' When I first came to NYC I saw so many bad plays, SO many awful heinous pieces of...

It's Easter: I'm at The Cripple of Inishmaan. 1st row. Broadway premiere. In a moment of reflection I laughed: I'm not supposed to be here!! I grew up in South Florida, no theatre ed, nobody in the arts, no summer camps, no artist mentors or examples. I read and re-read encyclopedia volumes for fun on the weekend, used my teddy bears to stage political debates on my bedroom floor, and only watched 2 plays until I was freshman at Northwestern: a community college production of "Dreamgirls" my parents took me to when I was 6, and a traveling show of "Midsummer Night's Dream" our school drove my 3rd grade class to one afternoon. I was forced to write fiction to pass a radio production class. It was a joke to me. I penned the script in studio, played most of the voices, edited it together, grabbed my Outkast "Aquemini" CD and slapped in some music. I amused  myself in blending hip hop with a comedic soap opera, along with a faux radio commercia...

"Oh look, it must be somebody's birthday party.' A black SUV hummed at a red light on Amsterdam Avenue. A swaddled net of a dozen white and blue helium balloons was strung to the back of vehicle, along with several other metallic ones with cartoon faces that pullulated the dark tint windows. I had no comment so my friend continued. "I remember when I was a child my parents put some balloons in the car on the way back from a birthday party. When we got home from the party, they opened the door and the balloons flew out and up into the sky. I was so mad. But as a child I was always scared of the sky.' "Wait, you were scared of the sky?" "Well, maybe not scared but unnerved." "Why?" "Cause the sky is so huge and endless. And I always thought I was going to fall into it. And when my balloons flew up into it, it was like they were swallowed up by this abyss. That's why I never liked high altitude, because there's so much sky....

***NOTE: This is still a work-in-progress list, but I didn't want to delay things so I'm putting it up here while I continue to add on to it.*** 1. Shakespeare’s Sister  Deadline: July 1st The Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for a female playwright to be supported by three extraordinary institutions over the course of a year while she writes and develops a new play. In addition to a cash prize of $10,000, the playwright will receive residencies at three geographically distinct institutions— AROHO , Hedgebrook , and the Lark Play Development Center —each one providing a different kind of support at successive stages in the playwright’s process. The fellowship seeks to make possible for the playwright a breakthrough into the kind of new work she would not have had the freedom or the resources to create otherwise. In order to be eligible, the applicant must be a woman playwright (no age limit) who has written at least one full-length play.  (A first ...