Austin's One Minute Play Festival

I've had two pieces chosen for Austin's first One Minute Play Festival (which uses the hashtag #1MPF, if you're curious.)  It was a fun writing exercise for me, and given the talent involved, the whole thing should be pretty interesting.  Details below.

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The One-Minute Play Festival (#1MPF) & ScriptWorks, In Collaboration with Salvage Vanguard Theatre Present:

The 1^st Austin One-Minute Play Festival

Thursday Aug 28^th, Friday Aug 29^th, and Saturday Aug 30^th at 8PM

At Salvage Vanguard Theatre

2803 Manor RD

Austin, TX 78722

Tickets are $20 and available at: 

www.scriptworks.org

One-minute plays by 40 active Austin & Texas playwrights were commissioned for this special annual event, and developed with #1MPF’s playmaking process.

Featuring Brand New One-Minute Plays By

Katie Bender, Allison Orr Block, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, James Burnside, Monika Bustamante, Bastion Carboni, Katherine Catmull, Elizabeth Cobbe, Martha Lynn Coon, Adrienne Dawes, Trey Deason, Elizabeth Doss, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Raul Garza, Kirk German, Aimée Gonzalez, Meg Haley, Reina Hardy, Joanna Horowitz, Brian Kettler, Abe Koogler, Rhonda Kulhanek, Max Langert, Kirk Lynn, P. Paullette MacDougal, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Jennifer Margulies, Tegan McLeod, Briandaniel Oglesby, Jason Rainey, Candyce Rusk, Sarah Saltwick, Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, Hank Schwemmer, Diana Lynn Small, C. Denby Swanson, Lisa B. Thompson, Cyndi Williams, Anne Maria Wynter, & more

Directed by Christi Moore, Derek Kolluri, Ellie McBride, Jenny Lavery, Ken Webster, Linda Nenno, Will Hollis Snider, & Lily Wolff

Curated By #1MPF Producing Artistic Director, Dominic D’Andrea

SCRIPTWORKS

ScriptWorks (formerly Austin Script Works) is a playwright-driven organization that seeks to promote the craft of dramatic writing and protect the writer’s integrity by encouraging playwright initiative and harnessing collective potential. ScriptWorks is funded and supported in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future.  Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com. Find ScriptWorks on the web at www.scriptworks.org

Thanksgiving Quick Post

Happy Thanksgiving, all.  I've got pies and stuffing and turkey to make*, so I won't go on for too long on this post**.  I had considered just linking to some past posts, like on worldbuilding holidays or food details.   But I didn't want to be quite that lazy. 

So: state of the writer, thankfulness version.

First and foremost, I'm thankful for by amazing wife, whose love and support have kept me going through this journey.  She's put up with the many, many times I've stayed awake into the wee hours or sequestered myself with headphones on and nose in the computer, accepted the fact that my head is quite literally in some other world half the time, and has kept the fire under my feet when I get distracted.  She's willing for me to not only have giant maps printed, but to have them framed and hung in our studio.  Thanks to her I've got three novels*** in my agent's hands, and more on the way.

Second, my agent.  It's hard to quantify what an agent does for someone, but in the time we've been together, he's been a source of support, as well as inspiration.  He's pushed those three books into being better than they were without him.  He's regularly plugged this very blog.  He's working for me, and he doesn't make a dime from me until we have a sale.  And when we do, you damn well better believe he's earned his percentage. I sure do.

I'm thankful for my health and my energy, and that I've had the ability and freedom to keep working like I have been.  I'm thankful that I've just finished a draft of a short story, and wrote another short play last week.  I'm thankful that I have more ideas than I know what to do with.  Novels are cooking and brewing in this brain, and I have every intention of continuing to crank them out.

I'm thankful for all the people who've given help and advice over the past year and more-- from my mentor and friend Stina Leicht to my worldbuilding brainstorming partner Dan Fawcett to the café manager who doesn't charge me every once in a while because she likes supporting writers.  Too many people to name.  Besides, that's what the acknowledgement page of books are for, right?

All right, time to hit the kitchen, folks.  Have a good one.
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*- I'm a traditionalist, but that ties to my roots as a worldbuilder and an amateur food historian.  Turkey, potatoes & corn are all native foods to the Americas.  That's important, in my mind.  That's why desert is a chocolate pecan pie. 
**- I swear, half the times I say that, I end up writing twice as much as a normal post.
***- And two trunked ones.  I don't think anything tests the patience of a writer's spouse quite like a trunk novel. 

Out of Ink Season Again

For the past 13 years, I've participated in Austin Scriptworks Out of Ink ten-minute playwriting "fling", as it is called, which basically works like this: Every year in November, on a Friday evening we receive three "rules" for a ten-minute play.  The deadline is 48 hours later (give or take, since it's usually by 6pm on Sunday).  Then eight of those ten-minute plays are selected for production in April-ish. (It varies from year-to-year, but it's usually April.)

It's a process I really enjoy, and it keeps various tools in my toolbox sharp.  This is a key reason why I participate every year. 


2000:  Last Train Out of Illinois (Selected) My first year with Scriptworks, the rules involved boots, a character directly addressing the audience, and someone performing an "aria".  I had, at the time, had the vague idea of a Tom Waitsish Musical called "Last Train Out of Illinois", but all I had was Atmosphere and an Ending. Which is just fine for a ten-minute piece. 

2001: Dead Air On The Open Road (Not Selected) I don't remember all the details, but one of the rules here was an "incongruous element".  So the story involved people in a car breaking down in the desert, and then a foul-mouthed puppet shows up to save them.  When we did the reading, it was actually pretty hysterical, but I can see that as a script, it's rather thin.

2002: Freaks of Nature and Acts of God (Selected) The rules aren't quite in my memory, save "only one chair" as set.  I came up with three young women stuck in a near-empty beach house during a hurricane, who are then rescued by a pizza-delivery guy who has the wrong address.  It's probably the weakest of mine that was chosen.

2003: Danger Girl's Night Off (Selected) The rules dictated 1. something involving superheroes and 2. a seduction, so I immediately thought of a grown-up sidekick who just wanted to have a date night.  This was a lot of fun.  Elements of this story ended up fueling the core ideas behind my story in The Protectors, which you can still purchase on Amazon.

2004: Triangles and Broken Circles (Not Selected)  The rules had something to do with chalk and a ceremony, but what I wrote was pretty much weak sauce.  Can't blame it not being selected.

2005: No Entry.  This year, for budgetary reasons (I think, I could be wrong) the format changed, asking for a 5-minute radio play.  I was at something of a loss with that idea, so I didn't enter this time around.

2006: Alignment of Celestial Bodies (Not Selected) Of the "not selected" ones, this is probably my favorite.  I forget the details of the rules, but it was a sweet romantic story of a couple going stargazing, with an interconnecting Creation-of-the-World Myth of my own creation. 

2007: Hourglass (Selected) I'm really pleased with this one.  The rules involved 1. A physical transformation on stage, 2. a secret and 3. a piece of music connecting to a memory.  This may have been, for me, the most synergous set of rules.  The discovery of an old hourglass reminds an old woman of the true paternity of her child.  Hannah Kenah did really lovely work on stage going from 107 to 20. 

2008: Ten Minutes Ago (Selected)  The play goes backwards!  That was the rule that had to define this one.  The idea I was struck with here was having an innocuous instigation (a woman answering her door) lead to events that had disastrous consequences (her husband and a stranger dead in her living room), and then show it Consequences-Events-Instigation.  This one was challenging to stage, but enjoyable.

2009: The Q (Not Selected) Here, I think I bit off more than I could chew.  The core idea was about people being smuggled out of a quarantine-zone after a biological attack.  I think it ended up too dense and too vague.  I like it, I may revisit it at some point, but I'll admit in the writing, I wasn't quite "feeling" it.  So when it wasn't chosen, I wasn't all that surprised.

2010: Entropy (Selected) "Time is Running Out", "Use the Beginning and End of Finnegan's Wake" and "A Ceremony of Forgetting".  How does this NOT say "two people stuck in a time loop"?  OK, it does to me, because I'm a sci-fi geek. 

2011: Slept the Whole Way (Selected) Again, the rules sent me to an SF place: the play needed to span 3000 years and have 300 characters.  So a cryosleep ship that missed its target and kept everyone in stasis for 3000 years made perfect sense to me. 

2012: I Asked My Friend Art, And He Said It Isn't Him.  Given that I just sent this, and don't know what it's fate is, I won't talk about it too much.  I will say I enjoyed writing it a lot.  I found myself cackling and grinning much of the time, and I'm hoping that's a good sign.

Slept The Whole Way Interview

I was interviewed for my play for ScriptWork's Out of Ink, opening this weekend.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca's SLEPT THE WHOLE WAY is part of Out of Ink: Sound Off, the 14th Annual Showcase of 10 Minute Plays.
"Four people wake up from suspension sleep on a space ship to find something has gone horribly wrong."

1) Three required ingredients, 48 hours - how did you start your play?
 
 In this case, it was with a series of false starts. For the Out of Ink plays, I've found that one ingredient has to form the spine of the play, the driving force. So the first step was figuring out which ingredient worked best in that role. This year, I analyzed the three ingredients to see how they worked with each other, which ingredient might "demand" being the driving force of the play. The 3000/300 ingredient gave of a sense of scope, that the play needed to be epic in scale. This made it the most logical choice to be the spine. But figuring out what that scope would mean became the big challenge. Let alone the 300 characters-- how to express 3000 years in a way that can make sense on stage in a 10-minute play? I tried several different paths, most of which showed my roots as a sci-fi/fantasy writer, such as time travel.

2) Did one of the ingredients this provide a special challenge? If so, how did you approach it?
 
This time around, it was the children's song/rhyme/fairytale rule. Just as one rule makes the spine of the play, one rule tends to be almost tangential. In one of my failed paths, I played around with the idea of using it as a code phrase. ("Mother Goose, this is Rapunzel. I need to let down my hair. Repeat, Rapunzel needs to let down her hair.") Once I reached a certain point in "Slept the Whole Way", I knew I was going to need a code phrase, so that was the obvious way I could use that ingredient.

3) How do you like to approach a rehearsal process and collaborators - what are your expectations for any revisions?
 
For Out Of Ink, I'm personally opposed to making revisions, beyond the most minor of line/business changes. Anything more feels like cheating the process of the 48 hours.

4) What else are you working on right now?
 
I'm a fantasy/sci-fi novelist, and I'm currently working on a draft of an action-heavy political-thriller fantasy. I have three other manuscripts currently seeking a publisher. Excerpts of those three are available at my website, www.mrmaresca.com

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OUT OF INK 2012: SOUND OFF
ScriptWork’s 14th Annual Ten Minute Play Showcase
Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Rd.
April 19-21 and 26-28, 2012 at 8 PM
Tickets:  $15 general admission, $12 students/seniors/ScriptWorks
April 19th is a Pay-What-You-Wish preview
$25 includes pre-show reception at Zhi Tea (4607 Bolm Road) and performance on Saturday, April 21st
Purchase tickets online.

2011 in Review

This has been a good year for me, in terms of growing as a writer.  Honestly, I think every year since 2007 (which is probably the year I knocked the training wheels off an got serious about I'm Going To Be A Writer) has been an improvement.  But 2011 was a year with a few notable highlights:

First and foremost, there's acquiring Mike as my agent.  This has been such a joy and relief in my life this year.  I really am quite happy to have him in my corner.  Getting an agent has become such a huge (and sometimes insurmountable-seeming) step in the path to publication, I really can't express how glad I am to have moved up to the next step. 

And while I did have an excellent time attending the DFW Writers Con this past year (and would recommend the experience to those seeking agents), I'm glad I don't have to do that again.

This year is also when I decided to be diligent and post here on the blog every Monday and Thursday.  It's a project that's sometimes challenged me (I almost forgot that today was a Monday), but I've been pleased with the results.  It's built the regular readership, and driven traffic to my blog.  So that's been a good thing.

This was also my first year at ArmadilloCon in a panelist/professional capacity, as well as a coordinator and teacher for the Writers' Workshop.  This was a fantastic experience, and I do owe a lot of it to Stina Leicht.  She's been a fantastic source of moral support on this journey.

What else?  This year I have Thorn finished and shopping, Holver Alley Crew redrafted and (hopefully) ready to shop.  This year I also finished the draft of Maradaine Constabulary and will hope to have the revision ready to send to Mike in just a few weeks. I wrote a couple short plays, including Entropy, produced by Austin Scriptworks.

So it's been a pretty good year.  Fingers crossed for 2012 being even better.

Out of Ink: Review and some other thoughts

The Austin Chronicle has a review of this year's Out of Ink.  I can't help but be pleased with this bit:

Take, for example, the most successful piece in the evening: "Entropy," directed by Sharon Sparlin. (And yes, I'm going to spoil some of this, so stop reading here if you're going to see it.) In it, two scientists, Boson (Jose Marenco) and Higgs (Jacob Trussell), gradually discover that they are caught in a time loop. Playwright Marshall Ryan Maresca changes up the repetitive dialogue in each successive scene so that we discover what is happening at the same time the scientists do, utilizing just enough techno-speak to make it all sound real and possible, while actors Morenco and Trussell use a blistering tempo, a chair on wheels, a laptop, and not much else to make us imagine huge control rooms, massive computers, and the swirling vortex of time. Plus, it's laugh-out-loud funny.

Got to love that.  And you know what? It IS laugh-out-loud funny, but I've got to give most of the credit for that to Jose and Jacob.  Those two really click, both with spitting out the, I'll admit, downright Trekkian technobabble ("The integrity of the field is quantum tied to the half-life of the sample!") as well as building the necessary spiraling momentum.  And Sharon was the perfect director for this piece.  Rare is the artist who not only is an ace at coordinating movement and text into a stronger integrated whole, but ALSO reads quantum physics for fun. 

In short, I am incredibly happy, but mostly because I had a fantastic group of people who brought the absolute best out of my text.