Kate Mulley

In addition to my Fringe play, I have two other projects coming up in the near and far future. The first is a further incarnation of Strange Bare Facts, my play that premiered at the NYU Forum for Theatre and Public Health. I’m expanding it for a reading at the beginning of July at the New London Barn Playhouse in New London, NH. Much of the cast from the reading at NYU will be involved and I’m excited to get to spend some time up north doing theater.  I did some research in London last week and look forward to incorporating it into the play.

Later in the year, in November, the NyLon Fusion Writers Collective will premiere its new devised piece tentatively titled Spoken For. We’ll be casting in the next month or so and will work with actors to develop a metatheatrical piece about expatriates in London. We’ve been in the planning stages for a while now, so it’s nice to have something concrete to really push us forward.

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.

Last night, NyLon Fusion Collective had a benefit, hosted by Paul Haggis, with music by Wynton Marsalis and friends. It was quite a surreal experience to sit about 5 feet away from the trio, sipping sangria and occasionally taking pictures on my iPhone.

I was also expected to say a few words about the writers group that we’ve started and I thought I would share it on my website today. I was not nearly as eloquent in real life as I hope to be (probably because I did not take my friend’s advice of taking beta blockers beforehand and hadn’t had time to actually memorize it), but I’d like to think that I got the message across. We’ve even promised Paul and John Patrick Shanley spots in next year’s group (I suppose we’ll have to change the description from “emerging writers” to “award-winning writers”).

One of the most important needs for writers, specifically playwrights, is a friendly yet critical sounding board. When I studied playwriting in London, my classmates and I had the perfect mix of camaraderie and criticism. Afternoons in class blended seamlessly into evenings at the pub and 3 years later we are still one another’s best dramaturgs. When I returned to New York after three years in London, I became involved with Nylon and pitched to Elliot and Ivette that I create a similar group for writers in New York. They took me up on my offer and the Nylon Fusion Writers Collective was inaugurated in early March.

The writers collective is comprised of eight emerging writers with a diverse range of experiences, styles and influences. My criteria for selecting the writers included commitment to a life in the theatre, a genuine interest in self-producing and, most importantly, a sense of humor and groundedness. I wanted to create a group of writers who could be critical in their feedback, but also become friends with one another. Three sessions into the collective, I can happily report that so far we’ve spent productive time discussing our new play ideas, reading and critiquing the first pages of these new plays and engaging in a healthy amount of theatrical gossip.

We will be holding readings of the plays during dark nights of Fuente Ovejuna and later on in the summer are planning a festival of full productions of the play and we’re incredibly lucky to have a talented pool of Nylon Ensemble actors to work with when we start rehearsing. We all agree that getting the plays on their feet, rather than subjecting them to a long development process is the best way to grow as writers.

Creating a theatrical community where risk is rewarded is intrinsic to fostering emerging talent and my goal as literary manager of Nylon is to give emerging writers that opportunity. I’d like to thank Ivette and Elliot for giving me free rein to do so and also you for supporting our mission.

That all said, I encourage you, my readers to consider making a donation to NyLon Fusion for our summer season. We’re producing Fuente Ovejuna this June-July and while last night we raised the money we need to rent the theatre space, we still have more to raise. Please click through here to get to our fundraising page on Kickstarter.

I’ll leave you with what Wynton said last night in hopes that it will inspire you further, “By virtue of your being here you’re making a statement and every artistic statement is a large statement.”

I’m a little late posting about this, but I went to see Clybourne Park at Playwrights Horizons last week and really enjoyed it. I loved The Pain and the Itch when I saw it at the Royal Court back in 2007 and had high hopes for this new play by Bruce Norris. It’s a riff on A Raisin in the Sun. A couple is moving out of their house in Clybourne Park and they find out that a black family has bought the house. 50 years later, in the same house, a white couple hope to renovate and move into the same house. It’s a grim play, with lots of laughs and self-recognition. It plays with stereotypes effectively and efficiently and while I was surprised by what felt like an abrupt end of Act 1, by the beginning of Act 2, I understood its necessity to the structure of the play.

The cast was great, the direction solid, with constant banter, arguing and conflict. A lot of fun to watch and definitely lots of material for post-theatre discussion.

In non-theatrical news, Pierce Brosnan came into the book shop last week and rendered me cotton-mouthed. After he left the information desk, a customer asked if we got celebrities in the shop often, I said “yes, but this was our first Bond.”

I’m also just starting to get myself into my work for Nylon Fusion Collective. I’m both dramaturging their production of Fuente Ovejuna and starting a Writer’s Collective. Applications for the Collective were due today and we have two weeks to select the members. Lots of strong applicants makes it a tough job, but I’m looking forward to reading some plays, getting to know new writers and seeing how we can develop some exciting new work together.