It’s been nearly a year since I posted any news on what was at the time my newly redesigned website. It’s not that nothing’s been happening. Theater Breaking Through Barriers presented a reading and then a staged reading of SAD HOTEL with the wonderful Sam Tsoutsouvas in the Tennessee Williams part, which he played in the White Barn production ten years ago. For the third time, I participated in Blue Coyote’s Standards of Decency Evening, this one called STANDARDS OF DECENCY 3: 300 VAGINAS BEFORE BREAKFAST. My play was called PLATO’S RETREAT (pictured) and looked at internet pornography through Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It may be the first time I’ve ever missed the entire rehearsal and performance period of a brand new play, since I left for Brazil (that’s Carlos and I in Brasilia’s Oscar Niemeyer-designed Cathedral) a few days before rehearsal started and returned two days after the last performance.
My big project for the summer was to finish the novel that I started in my first year in NYU’s MFA Fiction Writing (in Chuck Wachtel’s amazing year-long novel-writing workshop). I should say I finished the first draft of the novel, as pretty much the entire last half is an unholy mess, which I will spend the next year straightening out.
As for other news, my three-character thriller DEADLY MURDER (I know, I know. Can I just say, here, publicly, that I didn’t give it that title?) seems to be sprouting up at community theatres thanks to the Samuel French edition. There are also productions slated for Prague and Athens in December.
So that’s the news for the year. The website also remains in the beautifully designed but empty state that my friend Bob Chatelle left it in when he designed it, lacking the information and material that I was supposed to fill in. Hopefully, I’ll be able to spend a little time over the next months getting it into shape.
“(Rachel) Brown rises brilliantly to a plethora of challenges. As Nance, she must act the free spirit chafing at the limitations imposed on women of her era; she does, while remaining — in posture and deportment — true to the strictures of the age. In Nance’s various acting roles (Judith, Magda, Lady Macbeth), she must duplicate antiquated dramatic styles — the stylized gestures and heightened oratory. Brown handles it all so well, you’re left eager to see her take on the whole canon, for real.
