Kate Mulley

One of the problems with being a writer is the inevitable feeling of “what next?” when you’ve finished something. When Sezze Sun ended I felt like I had accomplished something monumental, but was also ready for a break. And then I had a 4 month writers’ block. I could not come up with a single original idea to write about. Until I was sitting on my couch reading an unpublished manuscript for a job that I didn’t get and came up with a title for a new play: “The Reluctant Lesbian“. And then I got excited and I started planning and scheming and figuring out what that play should be. In the past 6 months I’ve written some of it, I’ve researched a little, but mostly it has sat in my back pocket.

In the meantime, I started the NyLon Fusion Writers Collective and began writing my new play The Tutor. After last night’s reading, I realized that it’s not actually a one-act play, that it needs to be longer and much more fleshed out. I’m not sure I’m capable of writing a one act play, they always seem to be shadows of what they could be, rather than fully formed short pieces.

And then there are my dreams of renting a cottage somewhere with no internet or 3G network and banging out the witty romantic comedy I’ve been throwing around for a year or so.

So maybe ideas are like men and buses. You wait and wait and wait and then 3 arrive at once (the latter part of this analogy usually only rings true in London).

As promised, I’m posting information about the the new reading series for the writers’ collective that I started back in March. Please come on by to support new writing and a host of theatrical talent! No admission, donations welcome!

Nylon Fusion Collective is pleased to announce its first Reading Series, featuring eight new plays currently being workshopped by the Nylon Fusion Writers Collective. The plays will be presented as staged readings at 8pm on Monday and Tuesday evenings (June 21, 22, 28, 29) during the three-week run of the company’s summer production of Fuente Ovejuna at the Flamboyan Theatre at CSV Cultural Centre.

Monday June 21
In the Center of the Fire
by Alisha Silver

A Hasidic man falls in love with a drag queen as his son is finding out just how far you have to go to outrun your family connections. A story about seeking and searching and watching and finding and loosing.

Uh Fairy Tale
by Joseph Wright

In Uh Fairy Tale Jack is pulled from his lackluster life into Grimms’ Fairy Tale where he is needed to wake the Princess from her 100-year slumber. Unfortunately, Princesses aren’t really his thing.

Tuesday June 22
Sleeping with Strangers
by Jack Karp

In this absurdist comedy, two lovers find out that we don’t fall in love with another person as much as we fall in love with what we make up about them in our imagination.

Cake Light
by Courtney Brooke Lauria

A play about people’s connection to one another. A play about people’s connection to theater. A play about people’s connection to electronics. All lit by the glow of birthday candles (kinda).

Monday June 28
E = (mc)^3
by Calla Videt

1905. Einstein discovers relativity. 2029. Mrs. E is born. 2055. We await the results of a new scientific experiment. A surreal meditation on time, science, measurement and medicine, E = (mc)^3 delves inside several incarnations of one of the world’s most celebrated minds.

The First Settlers
by Kelly Davis

Reverend Julius Blevins and his wife Oletta move to 1960′s Queens and secure themselves as part of a newly-formed black middle class shortly before new gender and racial norms begin to tear their solid marriage apart. Oletta must decide if she wants to keep the vestige of her perfect life or venture into 1970’s New York armed only with women’s intuition and a possibly false sense of independence.

Tuesday June 29
Slouch
by B. Walker Sampson

Skye, Summer, and Ritter are trying to do things from their to do lists: learn the violin, go to the supermarket, stop slouching, and somehow stop comparing their lives to Larry’s.

The Tutor
by Kate Mulley

Meredith doesn’t turn tricks, she teaches them and Greg wants a girlfriend as badly as he wants a perfect score on the SATs. A play about the commerce of sex and intellect and the fine line between the two.

Complete bios for the writers can be found at:http://www.nylonfusion.org/writerscollective.html.

NyLon Fusion Collective is a New York and London based Theatre Company dedicated to inspiring the community and its collective of artists through the exploration of classical and contemporary works and seeking to shed new light on the artistic process.

Life and its many responsibilities have gotten in the way of actually posting anything here for almost a month, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been seeing plenty of shows that I have opinions about.  Brief notes follow:

Restoration: I thought this play was completely lovely. A clever, poignant story about redemption and Italy and art. Anything about Michelangelo totally captivates me, ever since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy in high school.

Oliver Parker: Something about Oliver Parker rubbed me the wrong way (see Behanding, actually, I think the reasons are similar). I laughed, I got why it was relevant, what the “drama” was, but I think it got stuck in a place where no pay-off could be satisfying. And it’s messiness did not serve me as an audience member, which is odd, because I usually like a bit of messiness.

Metal Children: A fine example of why I never want to direct my own work. Theatre is about collaboration. And the things you learn from having other people work with you on your script. This play started out with a great premise (it’s about a children’s author whose book is banned in a Midwestern town), but devolved into confusion and too many scene changes. But Billy Crudup was pretty excellent, so all was not lost.

Red: I think I would have preferred this play in London. The Broadway audiences laughed a bit too broadly for my tastes and I love the Donmar’s intimate space. But it’s a well-crafted play about art and mentorship and the changing of the guard, artistically speaking. Some stunning performances and one exhilarating painting scene.

The Libertine: This play was perfect for my role as dramaturg of an upcoming production of The Country Wife. It was a really ambitious off-off production with a high production value, a consistently good cast, creative use of a funny space (it used to be a courtroom) and lots of bawdy humor.

A Behanding in Spokane: Despite the bad reviews, and accusations of racism. I had to see this show. Martin McDonagh has consistently been my favorite playwright since I saw The Pillowman in 2005 and the buzz around the book shop has been pretty positive. So while I enjoyed it, I found it pretty inconsistent, stuck in one place and more of a vehicle for Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell than a play. Which is too bad. I definitely laughed, but I think that McDonagh’s humor is much more striking when it’s not trying to make itself American. And I noticed inconsistencies with BrE/AmE that threw me off (and could have easily been changed by one of the four American cast members). I’m glad I saw it, but it hasn’t been seared into my brain in the way his other plays have.

As for things that I’m working on… I’m dramaturging two plays this summer. Fuente Ovejuna opens on June 17th, The Country Wife opens on July 10. More info on those will follow.

There will also be a reading of my new play The Tutor on June 29 at CSV. I just need to finish writing it first.

And I’ve made a list of the 36 plays I should read before the end of the summer. Am in the middle of David Lindsey-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole to kick it off.