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

2012 In Review

So, a year ago I put out my goals for 2012, for which I can say: some came to pass, some not so much.  I still don't have a book deal, for Thorn, Holver Alley or Maradaine Constabulary.  However, I can honestly say I feel like I'm a lot closer on those.  All three of those were re-drafted or fine-tuned, so this year I have finished-until-a-paying-editor-tells-me-otherwise levels of drafts for all three. I got a really excellent rejection letter for Thorn. So for the first three goals, I'm still a bit short of the line. 

Number 4: Finish Rough Draft of Way of the Shield, did not come together.  I see now that my initial outline for it was woefully flawed.  In outline, it was a politically-themed murder mystery, but that was far too thin.  It needed scope, grandeur, and more antagonists who had a clue.  I need to get back in there and work out the details. I've had recent epiphanies that made things gel in my head.  Now I need to get them onto the page.

I did do more outlining and worldbuilding-- and some scene writing-- for what Banshee has morphed into.  I feel good about how this is coming together.  The bits that I have written, I really like.  But I need to solidify the outline before it really starts to live and breathe as a novel.  The finale is still something of a mystery to me.

Also, had Out of Ink produce one short play, wrote another for this year's.  I wrote an actual short story that I feel pretty good about.  ArmadilloCon and the Writers' Workshop went very well.

All in all, 2012 went strongly.  Not as well as I would have liked, but still: progression on the writers' path.  That's good, though.  It serves as a humbling reminder that I can always do better.

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. 

A theatre announcement

At long last, selections for the upcoming ScriptWorks 10-minute play showcase have been made!

COMMODIUS VICUS - Amparo Garcia-Crow
ENTROPY - Marshall Maresca
FAMILY TRADITIONS - Devo Carpenter
FINN'S LAST DAY - Max Langert
JOYCE, OR THE UNKNOWING - Hank Schwemmer
RIVER RUN PAST - Sarah Saltwick
THE DO NEVER - Lowell Bartholomee
TRASH TALK - Susan McMath Platt

The plays will run April 7-9 and 14-16 at Salvage Vanguard.

Raves for Muses IV

In addition to the excellent review from Now Playing Austin, you can read the many glowing reports from audience members, including this gem:  

Some of the best playwrights in Austin contributed to this awesome show...

Also this:

Each scene is a unique snapshot of one family, and the audience gets to act as a sort of fly on the wall, but sometimes more. The script holds strong and thought provoking material, and the acting is excellent.  

I have to say (having not seen the production yet), that's pretty impressive that the "script holds strong", especially consider there were eight of us working independent of each other.  Of course, the good folks at Vestige picked pieces that worked well together.  I know I'm honored to once again share stage space with Aimee Gonzalez and Sarah Saltwick, two fellow Austin playwrights that I highly admire.

Just a few bits of news

I may have mentioned this before, but my short story "My Name Is Avenger Girl" was accepted for the superhero anthology "The Protectors", edited by Paige. E. Roberts.

Also, my short play "Pleasure to Meet You" is being produced as part of The Vestige Group's "Muses IV: Memories of a House".  This is the third year in a row a piece of mine has been featured in their "Muses" series.

I took a brief respite from my add-20k-to-Thorn of Dentonhill project to write a ten-minute play over the weekend for Austin Scriptworks. I've been a frequent participant in the 10-Minute Play Weekend Fling... in fact, I think I'm the most frequent participant. Over the years I've done it nine times, missing only the first two (before I was a Scriptworks member) and in 2005 when the project was to do a five-minute radio script instead of a ten-minute play. Of my previous eight scripts, five were chosen for the showcase production: Last Train Out of Illinois (which I still hope to expand into a full-length show someday), Freaks of Nature and Acts of God (what I would consider the weakest of my "winning" scripts), Danger Girl's Night Off (a personal favorite, and soon to be made into a short film by a friend of mine), Hourglass (my wife's favorite) and Ten Minutes Ago.

This year's entry, "The Q"... it's hard to gauge it off the bat, since I'm still "close" to it. But I like it, and I'd certainly put it up there with the two most recent as a strong piece.

But we'll see in February or so if it's chosen.

In July I wrote "Poolside", a play that actually takes place in a pool. This probably limits its ability to be produced in most venues. It was written explicitly for the venue it played in, as part of a recurring project by The Vestige Group, called Memories of a House.

On the whole, it was a production I was pleased with, and the Vestige Group are a good bunch that I'd like to work with more directly in the future. The production got a few good write-ups. Recently there's been a lot more internet-based reviews of Austin Theatre, a development which pleases me a lot. Back in the late 90s, when I started doing theatre here, the Chronicle and the Statesman were the only games, really.

Anyway, some highlights:

Preston Kirk's review for Nowplayingaustin.com

Dan Solomon's review for Austinist.com

AustinLiveTheatre.com's review

Those three reviews, for me, stood out because they not only praised me, but got my name right.