The lights faded out, and just as quickly as we had come together, my latest play came to a close. The Century Box. Itself, a play about history, about the people of Grove City, Ohio, and Jackson Township --- about remembering them --- is now itself, history. Below are some final thoughts about this experience, why this play was different than my others, and some wonderful production photos courtesy of The City of Grove City.
I like to think of theatre as this culmination of frenetic energy that bursts forth onto the stage and then disappears. It was there, it happened. You go see it. You live with it. You applaud when it's over. You go home. They pack up. Everyone moves on. It's like the circus that way. It's like life. So why did The Century Box feel different?
After the curtain falls, the actors and crew strike the sets, lights, costumes, and everything else that made this temporary world something more. This is how every theatre show ends. I know this. I live this. It's simultaneously one of my most favorite and "unfavorite" things about making plays. I love that they are ephemeral and real and just for us, those in the room in that moment, and then they're gone. Yet, I hate when they're gone. I miss them.
This one, The Century Box, I will never forget. This one was real. A century box is simply another term for a time capsule. So, much like building an actual century box and filling it with history, I built a play which centered around a century box and ultimately served as one. Usually, I write about fictional people. I make up stories. This play --- these people, these stories --- this one was based in truth; based in history. It came with this enormous responsibility to honor these sons and daughters of Grove City and Jackson Township, to tell their stories, and to remember them.
You see, this year marks the 200th Anniversary of Jackson Township --- specifically, the Jackson Township located in the southwest corner of Franklin County, Ohio. I specify because, just in Ohio alone, there are 37 Jackson Townships; something I now know because I wrote this play. This Jackson Township, the one which encompasses The City of Grove City, has been my focus for over a year; and it has been my absolute pleasure to get to know the story of this township and the people that built it.
It was all the more sweeter to see it come to life; to see history take the stage. Even more rewarding was watching the audience watch the play. More then once, I saw people recognize the historical figures I chose to highlight, or remember a story because their parents or grandparents had lived it. A family name would be said and an excited chatter would crop up somewhere in the audience. Family names like Grant, Hoover, Miller, Breck, Chambers, Schilling, Gantz, Borror, Willert, Orders, Smith, Dunnick, and so many more. Descendants of the people we were portraying were there, watching their grandparents and great-great grandparents exist again, if only for a moment; and every time one of them came up after the show and shared their story with me, I was moved.
Like I said, it's an enormous responsibility to portray history on stage. History is such a fragile concept; it truly is just stories isn't it? Stories that we pass down from generation to generation. Our stories. Our viewpoints. Of which we all have our own, don't we? History is a combination of facts and memories; so to take that and then dramatize it... there may be two sides to every story, but there are an immeasurable number of sides to history. Thus, there are infinite possibilities as to what a century box for Grove City and Jackson Township could hold. This play was but a glimpse of what I found, and even that feels like just the beginning.
While this chapter of The Century Box has come to a close, I'm not done with this play. I hope to share more stories, to see this play back to the stage, and to watch it grow and evolve as the City of Grove City and Jackson Township has grown and evolved over the centuries. Until then, I will fondly remember the last weekend of May 2015, when the Little Theatre Off Broadway took a bunch of my words and made history come alive. I love what my director, Lisa Napier-Garcia, and her cast and crew put together, but it was no easy task.
200 years carries with it more history than any one person could have possibly encapsulated into one play. My hope is that the play inspired the audience to do what I did --- I hope it encouraged them go to the Grove City Library and read about their history. I hope they will visit the Southwest Franklin County Historical Society, and that they will take some time to find out more about the people who came before them; to research the pioneers and entrepreneurs that built their city; to find and share the stories of the people that lived here.
To remember them. Because they are fascinating. And I hope I did them proud.
Photos courtesy of The City of Grove City. May 29-31, 2015 at Central Crossing High School.
Featuring: John Bils, Kate Charlesworth-Miller, Amelia Crabtree, James C. Daniels, Glen Anthony Garcia, Nicholas Garcia, Kathy Hyland, Tahrea Maynard, Mark Miller, Holly Rahrig, Sue Rapier, and Martha Kathryn Smith.
Production Crew: Donnie Lockwood, Kat Wexler, Bev Babbert, Michael Bynes, John Heckman, D.C. Simpson, and Jai Furlong.
Special Thanks: Grove City Museum, Karen Lane, Jim Hale, Mike Lilly, the Staff at Grove City Library, Central Crossing High School (Billy Smith, Catherine Knoblauch, Sophia Friend, Nathan Weaver).
My new play about GROVE CITY (want to help me name it? See below!)*, slated to premiere in 2015, will have a first look preview this weekend at LTOB at the Arts in the Alley festival.
FREE, available at the door.
Earlier this year, the City of Grove City, Ohio, commissioned me to write a new play for 2015 to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of Jackson Township and the role that Grove City has played in its history and development. While the full play will premiere next Spring, the city is working with their hometown theater, the Little Theatre Off Broadway (LTOB), to present a first look preview of the play at this weekend's Arts in the Alley festival.
Download this PDF from the Grove City Area Chamber of Commerce with a complete schedule of activities happening this weekend at the festival!
We're not doing the full play, yet; instead, we're doing about 20 or so minutes of the opening of the play. It's a chance for us to share a bit of what I've been working on, and to have some fun at an arts festival showcasing how we're celebrating Grove City and Jackson Township through our art.
In an added bit of fun, my wife and I will be on stage playing two of Grove City's earliest residents. We don't get to share the stage that often, so I'm looking forward to that. We're practically doing cameos, which makes it more fun. We'll leave the heavy lifting to the talented actors of LTOB and Grove City.
As part of the development and spirit of making this a Grove City play, the Grove City Historical Commission is sponsoring a contest to help us find a name for this new play! Individuals attending the Arts in the Alley previews can suggest a name for the play; the winner receives dinner for two at a local restaurant!
It's been a great pleasure working on this play thus far; and although I can't share the full story with you until next Spring, I'm thrilled that Grove City and LTOB are bringing this first look to the stage. And all during an arts fest celebrating its 35th year. They're calling for an absolutely beautiful weekend in Grove City, like high 70s/low 80s, so please come and enjoy the arts festival and stop by LTOB for one of our six performances of the first look of the Grove City Play. See you in the theater!
So they talked about me on TV this weekend. What? Yeah. I don't think that will ever get old. It's pretty sweet (and by "they" I mean my director, Lisa, and the host of a local show with regard to a new play being previewed at Grove City's Arts in the Alley later this month). On Sunday, my mom called to tell me that my aunt phoned her to say that she heard my name mentioned on OUT N ABOUT COLUMBUS. After some internet research, this was proven true.
OUT N ABOUT COLUMBUS spoke with my director (and active member of LTOB), Lisa Napier-Garcia about the history of LTOB and how we're getting involved with Arts in the Alley by sharing part of this exciting project. I've tried to cue up the segment below. Lisa's interview begins close to the 17:50 mark.
Keep reading after the YouTube video to find out more about my Grove City play.
The play is one of two plays I've been working on for this Fall (the other being ROBIN HOOD... more on that later this week). I call this one THE GROVE CITY CENTURY BOX: A HISTORICAL MYSTERY. Commissioned by the Grove City Historical Commission, the play will have a full production in Spring of 2015 to coincide with the 200th Anniversary of Jackson Township.
I'm excited to be working with LTOB (The Little Theatre Off Broadway) in Grove City on the production side of things, as they will present a preview of the play, September 20-21 at Arts in the Alley. Think: extended trailer. You'll have six chances to stop by LTOB during this annual arts festival in the heart of historic downtown Grove City and get a glimpse at what we're working on for next Spring.
About the play: In present day Grove City, Sydney and her brother Dylan are prepping a house for auction when Sydney discovers what appears to be an abandoned time capsule. When they open it, it unlocks a mystery that centers on a young girl in 1952. Who she is, what happened to her, and why she created the forgotten century box can only be answered by digging through the history of Grove City---and the answers Sidney finds will forever change her.
Showtimes and further information will be posted as soon as I have it!
One of the key components of writing a great play is rewriting. Writing IS rewriting; it's a phrase tossed around as one of the tenets of storytelling in this modern age. Many a creative writer would probably agree with this. Playwrights have editors too. They're just called something else. And we couldn't do this without them.
Plays are written for the stage, they are designed to be performed. By people. Usually out loud.
By actors. To an audience.
Back when stories were handed down over campfires and around tables at the local public house, the stories evolved over time to make them better, more enjoyable, more understandable.
Like the storytelling of old, plays are stories designed to be shared with a crowd of people. Yes, we have more storytellers working collectively at the same time thanks to a stage full of actors, but the idea is the same. A play needs to be read aloud, and eventually staged, to engage the "editors" that the playwright has access to. We call them actors, directors, and dramaturgs. They are one huge part of the new play development process. We'll get to the other part in a moment.
For anyone reading this who has never been part of new play development, here is one quick example: a writer brings in a script, actors read it aloud, and anyone in the room offers feedback on what they just heard. Writer then takes script and then, after processing feedback, rewrites. Rinse. Repeat. Ideally, this process leads to production. Until then, playwrights need this collaborative environment and feedback to help determine what stays and what goes.
While, in the end, the playwright is the ultimate authority on what words end up in the script, I'm a firm believer in readings. The voices in your head only go so far because plays aren't meant to be contained in your head. They need voices from actors. For years, I've bribed many an actor with pizza or Jimmy Johns to read my words. Every one of them were helpful. There is, however, a diminishing return on just readings. Eventually, you need more. Plays need actors, yes. They also need input from directors. From creative staff. They need the help of a theater.
Since last September, I have had the joy of working on my new play, PATHOGENESIS, with the talented folks at Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville. As part of the Ingram New Works Lab, I've been able to bring in pages, scenes, and drafts to their writers' room and hear my words interpreted by their amazing actors; I've received feedback from those actors, my fellow writers, and the artistic staff at TNRep. PATHOGENESIS is a father/daughter play set at the end of the world. A three-hander, the third character wasn't working at the start---his impact on the father and daughter story wasn't clicking; he is one example of a character that has significantly changed during this workshop process. Changed for the better. On top of the feedback, workshops like this one have the added benefit of offering invaluable education on the craft. I'm not the only playwright in the room, and when another writer shares work and receives feedback, that feedback can illuminate me as much as the other writer. On top of that, thanks to the set up of TNRep's program, I've had the immense pleasure of getting to know and receiving one-on-one feedback from this season's Ingram New Works Fellow, Doug Wright. If it wasn't enough that he's a master of the craft with a Pulitzer and a Tony, the man is also wicked smart, generous, kind, and inspiring as a person. Needless to say, with all that support over several months, PATHOGENESIS has evolved and developed. But we weren't done after the monthly development meetings.
Now, in the past week, we took a gigantic leap forward. While the months of readings and feedback were essential in crafting the play to this point, TNRep has stepped it up in advance of the Ingram New Works Festival. Like the play evolves, so too does the method of rewriting. At this point, I can only speak for myself. If you follow Tennessee Rep on Facebook or check out their blog, you'll meet Nate Eppler, Andrew Kramer, and Dean Poynor. The plays they're writing are hysterical, poignant, surprising, and a large number of other adjectives that add up to "must see". Each of us has taken to working with our festival team separately, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the last few weeks have treated their work. For me, where I used to listen to a reading, hear feedback from the room, and go home and write, the process is now more entwined. Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting my festival cast, the wildly talented Brian Russell, Evelyn O'Neal Brush, and Patrick Waller; and my awesome director, Christopher Bosen. I tout them here, not because I'm trying to talk them up, but because our two in-depth rehearsals last week were instrumental in taking PATHOGENESIS to the next level.
We spent the better part of eight hours over two nights going through the script, working the scenes as if we were heading into production. In essence, we are. The Ingram New Works Festival, while not fully staged, is still a series of plays that are rehearsed, directed, and presented to an audience in order to tell a story. We might not have sets or costumes (and right now, we don't need them), but we have the words and we have actors and directors that work with us, in the room, giving us the chance to experiment with dialogue; to hear how something sounds coming from one character verses another; to play with striking lines to let emotional beats play out between actors. The fact that I still have eight more hours coming up with these people next week? Priceless.
Not all writers enjoy rewriting in the room. I love it. I love the give and take between writer and actor. I love the insight a good director brings. By the time one of my plays is nearing public display, I've lived with it for ages. I know it. Almost too well. I know the backstories, I know the subtext, I know the characters like I know my friends and family. I like to think I do. The fantastic part about an in-the-room workshop is that the actors and director can approach it like any future company. They don't have all the answers, but they'll have questions. The actors are focused, each on their role---a wonderful gift as they can help fine tune a character arc and the character herself. The director is pouring over the script looking for the story that needs to be told. This is extremely valuable as a good director will alert you to the stories you're telling (some that you never meant to tell). Having this additional playground in the weeks leading up to the festival is another reason I know Tennessee Rep gets new plays and gets that playwrights need support to bring a play to life on stage.
For those already doing new play development, I'm preaching to the choir and not sharing any state secrets, but for anyone who doesn't enter the equation until the public reading, I think it's great to understand how much went into the script and development up to that point. Maybe it's a festival where this is the first read anywhere and thus it's like those first days in the room; it's new to everyone. However, if it's like the Ingram New Works Festival, then there are months of internal readings and workshops where the play is protected and nurtured and it evolves to get it to this public reading. To get it to the next stage of development.
The final part of this equation, the part that I'm equally excited by and anxious about, is the audience. Having access to actors and development staff is amazing; TNRep follows through by making sure that all that work is seen. Is heard. As I said, plays are meant to be staged and performed for an audience. We take advantage of the talent in the room to edit our scripts along the way, but this is still a development festival and so the talent in the room includes the audience.
I am looking forward to seeing how the audience reacts to PATHOGENESIS. We---and by "we" I mean any theatre company working to rehearse and stage a play (new or established)---have the luxury of living with it for months before an audience sees it. We get to debate character motivation and author intent and why we'll light it in cold hues instead of warm ones. An audience? They get one night. 90 minutes, maybe two hours. Maybe there's an intermission to discuss what's going on, maybe the audience is on the ride from curtain to curtain. It's one chance to tell a story. So for me, this last stage is crucial, thrilling, and terrifying. My hope is that when my play is presented to an audience, that I've articulated my story in the best way possible; that I've given my actors and director the blueprint they need to go out there and make theatre.
But it doesn't stop here. My goal is to see PATHOGENESIS move on to a production and full staging. So, I'm counting on these first audiences to go with me on this journey and through their feedback, continue to polish and better the play to the point it is ready for that production. That's the best part of the development process---the development audience gives you your first insight into what works and what doesn't. They offer feedback, and not just at the end. You see it in when they lean in because they're literally on the edge of their seats; you see it when they check out and read the program; you hear it in their laughs, or their gasps, or in focused silence. I'll be listening for feedback and opinions after the show, but I'll be paying attention to real-time reactions during the reading just as much.
We may write plays to say something about life. Or we write to be artists. I write for those things, but I also write plays for audiences---whether those audiences are the actors, directors, the theater staff, or the honest-to-God audience that paid to see a night of theatre---so I'm partial to listening to what they have to say.
This season has been a wild ride and I'm thrilled to have the chance to share this play with Nashville audiences (and, if all goes according to plan with technology, the world, as several of the plays will be livestreamed). I hope you'll join me and everyone at TNRep for this year's festival!
Visit TNRep's site for tickets and information.
A global pandemic, a dangerous cure, and a father / daughter relationship set to explode at the end of the world. A new infectious pathogen is discovered in a remote village in Belgium---a supervirus that means nothing less than the beginning of the end. One of the world's leading scientific minds has figured out a way to stop the outbreak, but his theory is untested, unthinkable, and unsupported by the CDC. While it could save most of the planet, it would cost millions of lives. Regardless of that risk, he's convinced it's the only way to save us all. What's more frightening is, he might be right. He can't execute his plan alone, and the one person he's trying to convince to help him--- a brilliant young scientist and insider at the CDC---is the one person who could stop him: his daughter. The question is, will she?
May 08, 2014, at 7:00 p.m.
*The May 11th reading will Livestream on Howlround.
Obviously, I hope you'll see Pathogenesis, but know that Good Monsters, Cut it Out, Together We Are Making a Poem in Honor of Life, and Posterity are not to be missed! Trust me. They are well worth your time. It has been a pleasure and an honor to see them all develop.
It's not everyday you get the chance to stage history.
Happy to share the news that I have been commissioned by the City of Grove City, Ohio to craft a new play!
In celebration of the 2015 Bicentennial of Franklin County's Jackson Township, home to Grove City, I'll be writing a new play that will highlight the history of the area. The play will be a collection of tales aimed at capturing a wide range of stories and events from the past 200 years.
Right now, that's all I can tell you. This commission is new and so I am actually in research mode. I'm already learning some fascinating things about Grove City, like that the first graduating class from Grove City High School was all women; or that a surprising number of the city's founding fathers died in freak accidents; or that from 1898 to the 1920s, you could travel from Columbus to Grove City on the Grove City and Greenlawn Street Railway, which gave the city a boom at the turn of the 20th century before automobiles came into fashion (as they were still pretty new then). I also heard a rumor about Al Capone and a racetrack, but I'm trying to verify that one.
With close to 200 years to sift through, I'm excited to see what stories emerge.
The full play is slated to be shared in the Summer of 2015. A short preview of the play is in the works for this Fall's Arts in the Alley and as that develops, I'll be posting about it.
This entire project would not be possible if not for the commitment to the arts by the City of Grove City and the Grove City Historic Commission, especially Jim Hale and Lisa Napier-Garcia. I'm excited to work with them on bringing Grove City and Jackson Township's history to life!
I am excited to announce that after the success of Ichabod: Missing in Sleepy Hollow last fall, Street Theatre Company (STC) has invited me back to write an adaptation of the adventures of the world's most famous outlaw, Robin Hood.
This new script, which will be developed for their ClassAct Dramatics youth program, will be produced in November 2014 at their Nashville, Tennessee, playhouse.
I had an absolute blast last year, writing a new take on Washington Irving's classic story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, so I'm thrilled to have the chance to tackle another legend of the literary world. Robin Hood's been written about for hundreds of years, some of the earliest ballads of this folk hero dating back to the 15th century. There have been many versions of Robin Hood penned by many a talented writer. I'm humbled to follow in their footsteps and continue the tradition. Plus, I mean, it's Robin Hood, and I've loved these stories since I was a boy. This will be fun!
Lastly, I want to thank Chris Bosen, Nate Eppler, and everyone at Playhouse Nashville for introducing me to Cathy Street and ClassAct Dramatics. I love writing for Nashville.
The artistic staff at STC, including Artistic Director Cathy Street and director Elaina McKnight Shaver, are amazing and I'm running out of synonyms for "happy" to express how much I'm looking forward to working with them again. The wickedly talented youth actors of ClassAct Dramatics absolutely rocked Ichabod last Fall. I can't wait to see what they do with Robin Hood!
Following in the footsteps of my friend and writer Jacob Juntunen, I've decided to post short plays now and then in my blog. The one I'm posting today was recently seen in Nashville at the Ten-Minute Playhouse (even if runs about 7 minutes).
We're in a subway car. It's run down, but efficient.
Well traveled and in a major metropolitan area.
It's a weekday, about lunchtime.
newspaper and briefcase, dressed in a suit.
Anything happening in the world today?
LAURA goes back to her book.
Now approaching Fulston Station, please exit the train on your right. Thank you.
Doors closing. Next stop, McKinley Avenue.
LAURA looks at ALAN and his cooler.
I'm sorry -- you were being nice.
Riding the subway or talking to strangers?
these people suss each other out.
The cooler. In your lap. What's in it?
What, is it like a bomb or something?
What? No! What is wrong with you?
It's not a -- don't worry, it's not what she said.
You don't have to freak out.
Well it's not a bomb is it?
Would you stop saying that word?
I'm not an FBI agent.
See? No harm. I was just kidding.
You shouldn't joke about such things in this city.
then I can connect to the hospital line.
Oh my god, are you transporting human organs? Can I see?
Approaching McKinley Station. Please exit on the right.
Well, then we'll just sit here and bear the silence.
Doors closing. Next stop Anderson Street.
LAURA puts down her book.
SHE and ALAN exchange awkward glances.
at him; he puts his paper down.
Can you believe that guy? He won't show me what's in his cooler.
Actually, I don't even know his name. A little suspicious don't you think?
I'm Sam by the way.
Nice to meet you Sam. I'm Laura.
Just Central Station. I have business there.
No, it was quite lovely small talk. Very enjoyable.
SAM goes back to the paper.
LAURA goes and sits by ALAN.
Why? We're just strangers. In two stops, we'll never see each other again.
I like that one. He's observant.
I need to focus on my job.
That's a pretty good assumption.
What's the point? Now Anderson's coming up and after that, it's one stop.
The point is that everyday I sit here on this train and watch the world ignore itself.
talk about. Something to break the silence.
You know what? I don't care if you are a terrorist, it's something new.
HE opens the cooler for her.
Oh my god, look at it... it's so small.
a kid's heart. It's terrifying. To hold something like that in your hands.
It's beautiful. Look at all that life. So fragile.
SAM exits without his briefcase.
Doors closing. Next stop Central Station.
briefcase. ALAN seals up the cooler.
I'm going to see if Sam has a business card or something.
No response. SHE's focused on the case.
Hey, you're freakin' me out, come on.
We have to call the -- we have to get off this train.
I don't even know your name.
Nice to meet you Alan.
visit my download scripts page.
One of the greatest helps to any playwright (or writer, for that matter) is peer feedback during the development process. Now, we could debate until the cows come home as to whether new plays are being workshopped to death in this county (and some are). I'm not talking about some endless cycle of readings and workshops that can plague a script into obscurity---that happens, unfortunately. This isn't that. Thank God. No, I'm speaking of one of the positive versions of new play development. A small, intense, lab setting where ideas are fostered, played with, supported, bounced around, and heard. Where the time in the workshop isn't weeks, but months. Where you don't come in with a script that needs "fixed" but with an idea that needs nurturing. Sounds awesome, right? To good to be true? Perhaps in some places. But not in Nashville, Tennessee. I've been wildly lucky, fortunate, and blessed (all three of those times a ba-jillion) to be working with Tennessee Repertory Theatre's annual Ingram New Works Lab this season. And on my most recent trip to Nashville---they took it to a-whole-nother level.
The Ingram New Works Lab is simple and elegant in its design. I've blogged about it before, but now, half a season in, I feel like I have a better handle on what actually happens there. A small group of writers are invited to write plays. Those plays stem from an idea. Not a script. This workshop is first and foremost a lab. A place to experiment and grow your idea into the script you will later put into something called workshop. So you come into this process with your soul ready to be laid bare upon the table---bringing in the rawest of pages and words to share with your fellow writers. And once you get over the absolute fear that comes with the prospect of artistically (and potentially emotionally) humiliating yourself by letting professional actors read 1st draft stuff, you learn that it's incredibly rewarding. Incredibly exciting. And liberating to an insane degree. You come to learn quickly that every person in that room wants the same thing: for everyone to succeed. There's no competition. No hedging bets. Everyone is in the same boat and we all want to survive this voyage together. So together we write. We read. We share. We become friends. We become brothers in arms. In pens. In keyboards. We meet up once a month like some playwright support group. "Hi. My name is Jeremy. And I have no clue how to write this scene." With a level of trust normally reserved for family and lifelong friends, you invite each other in to the earliest stages of your play's development. And it works.
I'm not suggesting you randomly pull together some random bunch of writers and try this at home. The artistic staff at Tennessee Rep, led by the insightful Rene Copeland, takes great care when crafting the room of writers who will share the lab each season. But if you have a group of writers and supportive actors that you trust with new material, I'm telling you---there's nothing better than having freedom to create within a group of fellow artists. Especially when these artists are Nate Eppler, Andrew Kramer, and Dean Poynor.
After months of meeting and writing and sharing and rewriting and inspiring each other, the entire lab gets a jolt of awesome at the mid-point when we're brought together for a week to work with an establish playwright, otherwise known as the Ingram New Work Fellow. The Fellows of yesteryear include Theresa Rebeck, David Auburn, Steven Dietz, and other nationally acclaimed writers. This year, we were treated to a week with Doug Wright, the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of I Am My Own Wife, Quills, and a new play that (trust me) is a keeper. He's worked on dozens of projects and has a bio that rocks. Oh, and he's the kindest man and tells the best stories. Of all time. Ever. True story.
The week was a whirlwind of activity. From Saturday night to Tuesday afternoon we saw a staging of Doug's musical Grey Gardens, heard readings of plays from all four lab writers, and got a sneak peek at Doug's new play (coming soon to the Tennessee Rep Ingram New Works Festival in May---what? I'm gonna plug that). There were master classes with Doug, one-on-one meetings, loads of rewriting, more readings, nights out to cocktail receptions to meet the generous people who serve on TNRep's Board, and some fun dinners with Rene and Doug where the aforementioned stories were told late into the night.
Somewhere, in between all the events and readings and listening to Doug tell stories, I made huge strides on my new play. In between reading one and reading two, there spanned perhaps 96 hours. And in that time, I managed to crank out another draft of my play. A rough, raw, still bleeding, draft---but a new draft. The week was there to give me writing time, and space, to work, to think, to draw upon the notes I gleaned from the lab and the wisdom I siphoned from Doug, in order to figure out my play. To understand it. To wrestle it down and make sense of it. And lo and behold, it worked.
Doug offered up a lovely analogy to the TNRep board when we all met them (p.s. that's where that awesome photo above was taken). He spoke of plays like recipes. We write them down and send them out to theaters and hope that what each theater creates resembles the original. So this lab is like our test kitchen. Working out the kinks in the recipe, smoothing out the issues, and creating a recipe, a blueprint, that is clear and easy to follow for any theater that picks up the script. I like that thought. Not in that I expect every production of my plays to be identical (there's going to be differing interpretations from production to production), but I want the recipe to be clear. I want the play to come through in the script and not get buried in a muddy mess of confusion. Taking time in the TNRep kitchen...er, lab... is giving me the time and resources to create that clarity and tell the story I'm trying to tell.
Playwriting is often about discovery, at least for me. My lab mate Andrew is crafting a lovely play that mentioned at one point this idea of how sculptors chisel away at the stone, working to release the statue that's already inside. I'm paraphrasing and mixing some images, but the concept still holds (and Andrew says it way better in his new play). When I look my computer screen, at the pixels coming together to form words, there's a play somewhere in those pages. It's in my head. It's already there. Only it's surrounded by paraphrased scenes, alternate reality versions of itself, and pages and pages of dialogue that may or may not survive until the festival in May---all this stuff I'm trying to sift through, sort out, and chisel away in the hopes of revealing the play I know is buried in there.
When all this started in the Fall, I remember having to let go---having to release the anxiety that can boil up when facing the blank page. Of course, sometimes that anxiety creeps back in, builds up, settles in the nooks and crannies of the mind even when the pages are full. That week with Doug and the lab reminded me once again why I love this story and these characters and helped me discover some insights into the play. In the end, that's what a great writers group does---it works with you to support your vision for a play, helps you sort through the clutter, and in the best cases, it inspires you.
To learn more about Tennessee Rep and the Ingram New Works Lab, make sure to visit their website. We have a festival of new plays coming up in May. Until then, keep reading my blog for an inside look.
STC Releases Teaser Trailer for ICHABOD!
I posted this on Facebook and Twitter the other day, but it should be added here because of how awesome it is. A teaser trailer for the my play, Ichabod: Missing in Sleepy Hollow! The young lady in the video is Quinn Cooke, who plays Abigail Seymour, Sleepy Hollow school's new Headmistress, who arrives shortly after the strange disappearance of Ichabod Crane. She's quick to dismiss talk of the Headless Horseman as stories, but soon discovers that the Horseman isn't done claiming heads, and her's might be next!


America's Beauty Show celebrates the 2018 ABS Global Image Awards WINNERS!
America's Beauty Show (ABS) by Cosmetologists Chicago (CC) announced today the winners for second prestigious 2018 ABS Global Image Awards – WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!
America's Beauty Show announces the 2018 ABS Global Image Awards FINALISTS!
America's Beauty Show by Cosmetologists Chicago proudly announces the finalists for the second annual international ABS Global Image Awards hairdressing photo competition.
America's Beauty Show (ABS) by Cosmetologists Chicago proudly announces the 2018 ABS Global Image Awards are open for entry. This second year of the famed photo competition for hairdressers, colorists, nail technicians and salon teams alike is expected to grow exponentially.
Hail the Champions! America's Beauty Show announces the 2017 ABS Global Image Awards WINNERS!
America's Beauty Show (ABS) by Cosmetologists Chicago (CC) announces the winners for the first ABS Global Image Awards, recognizing hairdressing talent on an international level. The photo entries represent the best of the best in original hairstyling, hair coloring and haircutting, in eight different categories.
The new ABS Global Image Awards will recognize international talent in eight different categories and will discover the best of the best in original hairstyling, hair coloring and haircutting. Are you ready? Deadline for entry is Sunday, January 15th 2017!
ABS Global Image Awards 2017: Deadline Extended!
America's Beauty Show (ABS) by Cosmetologists Chicago (CC) just announced the deadline extension for the ABS Global Image Awards – the deadline for entries is now Sunday, January 15, 2017!


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'Trolls World Tour' first home release timed to theatrical release
In Breaking News, Features by Chris Giroux March 16, 2020 Leave a Comment
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Trolls World Tour News
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Universal Pictures, owners of franchise giants Fast & Furious, Jurassic World, etc. today announced new titles will become available as home releases day-and-date with their theatrical release, signaling a shift in the industry and in response to the Coronavirus epidemic.
The press release includes the situation may be fluid. It is unclear if F9, the ninth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise will be available in the home when the film eventually releases. The highly anticipated film was originally scheduled for release this April 2, 2020 but is now delayed.
Home releases will be available as 48 hour rental at a suggested retail of $19.99. Current in-theater releases like The Invisible Man and The Hunt will become available beginning this Friday.
Trolls World Tour Trailer
Trolls World Tour Press Release
March 16, 2020—NBCUniversal today announced that Universal Pictures will make its movies available in the home on the same day as their global theatrical releases, as current circumstances have made it more challenging to view our films. Beginning with DreamWorks Animation's Trolls World Tour (opening April 10 in the U.S.) the company will also make movies that are currently in theatrical release available on-demand starting as early as Friday, March 20. Titles from Universal and its specialty label Focus Features, including The Hunt, The Invisible Man and Emma., will be available on a wide variety of the most popular on-demand services for a 48-hour rental period at a suggested retail price of $19.99 in the U.S. and the price equivalent in international markets. The announcement was made by Jeff Shell, CEO, NBCUniversal.
Given the rapidly evolving and unprecedented changes to consumers' daily lives during this difficult time, the company felt that now was the right time to provide this option in the home as well as in theaters. NBCUniversal will continue to evaluate the environment as conditions evolve and will determine the best distribution strategy in each market when the current unique situation changes.
"Universal Pictures has a broad and diverse range of movies with 2020 being no exception. Rather than delaying these films or releasing them into a challenged distribution landscape, we wanted to provide an option for people to view these titles in the home that is both accessible and affordable," said Shell. "We hope and believe that people will still go to the movies in theaters where available, but we understand that for people in different areas of the world that is increasingly becoming less possible."
The Trolls World Tour release will benefit from the full arsenal of a marketing campaign already underway, including Comcast, NBCUniversal and Sky's cross-company Symphony support, which will be in full effect. The day-and-date release will be concurrent with Trolls World Tour's local theatrical release date in each international market where available.
Feature Author
Chris Giroux
Movie Reelist Contributor: Chris Giroux
Chris Giroux is founder and editor-in-charge at Movie Reelist, an entertainment news and review blog serving the most fanatic moviegoers. Chris started his publication in Detroit in 2010 and has since reviewed hundreds of films and interviewed numerous talent across the country. He is an avid film festival attendee and red carpet photographer, having shot the likes of Steven Spielberg, Bill Murray, Mark Hamill, and more. Chris grew up in New Mexico, where he studied mass media writing while working in post-production and multimedia authoring. It is also where he discovered Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York, resulting in an unhealthy Kurt Russell obsession.
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Public Safety & Homeland Security
$2,000 First Responder Scholarship Offered in North Carolina
The Eastern North Carolina First Responders Scholarship is open to an EMT, firefighter or police officer working east of Interstate 95. The tuition credit of $500 per six-month term is renewable for up to four terms.
by Alan Wooten, Bladen Journal, Elizabethtown, N.C. / July 2, 2019
AP/Steve Helber
(TNS) — A scholarship of $2,000 for a first responder in eastern North Carolina is available through WGU North Carolina and the N.C. Association of Fire Chiefs.
The Eastern North Carolina First Responders Scholarship is available to an emergency medical technician, firefighter or police officer working east of Interstate 95. The tuition credit of $500 per six-month term is renewable for up to four terms.
Deadline to apply is Sept. 15. More information is available at wgu.edu/ENC.
WGU North Carolina is the state affiliate of Western Governors University, an online university offering degree programs in business, K-12 teacher education, information technology and health professions, including nursing. The Association of Fire Chiefs provides a wide range of programs designed to meet the needs and enhance the skills of fire service managers.
The scholarship was started in response to the number of counties still recovering from Hurricane Florence. The storm made landfall near Wrightsville Beach on the morning of Sept. 14.
Reports on deaths and damage varied according to recording techniques.
The National Hurricane Center said North Carolina had 15 deaths and $22 billion in damage. Gov. Roy Cooper's office said the storm resulted in 44 deaths and did an estimated $17 billion damage.
In a news release, Catherine Truitt said the North Carolina WGU affiliate had to cancel an anniversary event in Wilmington because of the storm.
"Rather than reschedule the event," the chancellor said, "we thought better use of the money would be to establish the Eastern North Carolina First Responders Scholarship as a means of thanking those who put their lives on the line during and after the hurricane."
Alan Wooten can be reached at 910-247-9132 or awooten@bladenjournal.com. Twitter: @alanwooten19.
©2019 the Bladen Journal (Elizabethtown, N.C.)
Visit the Bladen Journal (Elizabethtown, N.C.) at www.bladenjournal.com
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This last day of the year we want to thank you for your support by giving you a gift from the heart, for the heart. We recently completed updates of all of our Healthy Hearts Guides, and added a new Guide titled "Living with Mindfulness", so you can take the very best care of your heart in 2008. Please visit the Link to Healthy Hearts Guides and download a copy of each guide for yourself, and also a set for a friend whose heart you care about.
The WHF Teen Esteem Students at Trenton High have joined me in this photo to send you a heartfelt wish for a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
The Horizon Foundation of New Jersey has contributed $15,000 to the Women's Heart Foundation Teen Esteem Health and Fitness Program. The program is entering its 4th year at the Trenton Central High School and serves vulnerable minority teen girls. The program is administered colaboratively with the school and other partners and is an alternative gym class. more.
Join WHF and Sister to Sister Everyone Has a Heart Foundation in New York City on Friday, Feb 15, 7:30 AM - 2:30 PM for a FREE annual event that includes heart health screenings, seminars, ehibitors with give-aways and celebrity hosts. The annual Campaign with Women's Heart Fairs will take place during February at 17 cities accross the country. Learn more by visiting www.womansheart.org.
WHF, the only Non-Governmental Organization that designs and implements demonstration projects for prevention of heart disease, thanks you for your support. WHF's nationally acclaimed programs have been recognized worldwide. Together, we're making great strides toward improving women's survival and quality of life. Please consider a tax-deductible contribution to support prevention and wellness. DONATE NOW.


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I've uploaded this catalogue as a pdf here.
"Diagrammatic: Works by Lucas Ihlein and Collaborators" Curated by Jasmin Stephens. Deakin University Gallery, Melbourne.
Texts by James Lynch, Jasmin Stephens, Lucas Ihlein.
Featuring works by Lucas Ihlein, Ian Milliss, Big Fag Press, Louise Kate Anderson, Diego Bonetto and Mirra Whale, SquatSpace, Justin Hewitson, Rhonda Murray, Kim Williams, Brogan Bunt, Albie Muller, Nat Thomas, Kylie Wilkinson, Tom Nicholson, Trent Walter, Teo Treloar, Shaun Postie, Fiona MacDonald, Vernon Ah Kee, Marcus Westbury, Clementine Barnes, John Demos and Artist as Family.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on November 10, 2020 by Lucas.
Fremantle Print Prize for Yeomans Project
Ian Milliss and I were recently pleased to find out we'd won the 2012 Fremantle Print Award for our Yeomans Project.
Details are here.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged big fag press, printing on October 11, 2012 by Lucas.
Place, blogging, links
At the Right to the City Symposium yesterday, Jesse Adams Stein organised a panel on "Place Blogging". I wasn't able to make it, as SquatSpace were co-ordinating our wiki-workshop at the same time, but it certainly sounded like it could have been interesting. In the publicity material for the panel, my Bilateral Petersham project (carried out this month FIVE years ago!!) was mentioned as an example of place blogging. Strangely enough, this is the first time I've heard this term used to describe blogging within, and about, one's hyper-local area – but now that I have heard it… wow, check this out!
Jesse writes a blog about her local neighbourhood, Ultimo. Also speaking on the panel was Meredith Jones from Marrickville, Matt & Polly Levinson from Darlinghurst, and Linda Carroli from Brisbane.
Here's Jesse's spiel about the panel discussion. I'll be interested to hear how it went.
Also at the symposium was a panel on walking, organised by Performance Space, and expertly chaired by Bec Dean. I spoke, along with Jo Holder and Stacey Miers, about a collaborative project that Big Fag Press has begun called "Green Bans Art Walks". (I'll write up a description of that project soon).
Accompanying us on the panel was Karen Therese, whose wonderful project Waterloo Girls premiered this weekend; and Jennifer Hamilton, who is planning a walk in the rain along the Cooks River.
I've recently become a big fan of Jennifer's blog… It seems that – contrary to my assumption that facebook (and whatever other shiny new things) had taken everybody's minds off good old fashioned blogging – that this humble medium is still going strong, especially amongst those who want to think a bit more deeply about the place they live. Here's another example.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on April 10, 2011 by Lucas.
The Right to the City – Diagram versus Wiki
SquatSpace are currently involved in an exhibition at the Tin Sheds Gallery called The Right to the City. We decided to start plumbing the depths of our own history, based on the idea that, "after a decade of ratbaggery, if we don't write our own history, who the hell will?!"
The exhibition has a large blackboard diagram beginning in 2000 (when we began) and continuing into 2012 and beyond. On the chalky diagram, we try to map a bunch of activities by protagonists from SquatSpace, as well as those in our nearby networks. I'll put a photo up of the diagram soon – it looks a bit like a pebble dropped into a pond, or a weather map, or the circular rings of the cross-section of a tree.
The good thing about these big diagrams is that they give a kind of "world view" – in a glance, you can get the sense that "a shitload of things have gone on" in our world during the last decade. This visualisation of "a lot of things happening" is an end in itself, quite beyond the more detailed understandings about what those things actually were, that can be discovered by zooming your attention into the diagram.
But no matter how detailed, a two-dimensional diagram has limitations. First of all, the problem is that if too many connections are drawn on the diagram, the whole thing becomes a tangled mess, and ends up not communicating much at all (except the rather obvious fact that "there seem to be a lot of connections"). And as I've observed when making these sorts of complex diagrams in the last few years, when actually drawing up these diagrams, there's a clear relationship between the amount of space on the page, and the flow of ideas in the brain. I've noticed that at the beginning, content and connections flow fast and thick, while towards the end, when the amount of "page real estate" gets more limited, my ideas start to slow down too. How could we go beyond this spatial limitation?
Well, in the case of this particular project, we decided to try out a "post-digital" method – to combine the old-skool analogue chalkboard with a new-skool digital tool of pedagogy: the wiki. The good thing about the wiki is that it is infinitely expandable: there is no end to the amount of stories, and versions of histories, that can be added, and the links that can be made between them. The limitation of the wiki is that you only ever see one detail at a time, rather than the whole world view. (And based on our experience so far, although the learning curve is not steep, it takes a surprisingly long time to craft decent wiki pages…) So the chalkboard and the wiki walk hand in hand.
SquatSpace is inviting anyone who was ever involved in our stuff (or we in yours) to contribute – as well as those whose work was influenced by us, which influenced us, or which seemed to coincide with what we were doing in a coincidental zeitgeist kinda way. The wiki is here.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged wiki squatspace history pedagogy on April 10, 2011 by Lucas.
[Predator: image lifted from here…]
Every now and then I remember Predator.
Today, I visited Jill.txt, a blog by Jill Walker Rettberg I've been following for a few years now, which explores blogging as a form of research and fiction. In this post, Jill discusses disease blogging.
She writes, "blogging about your illness is to take back control over your body and your life by owning it, by expressing it yourself, on your terms", and she linked to a few key examples of folks blogging about their struggles with cancer.
I felt moved to reply with the following:
One of the most powerful disease blogs I have ever been priveleged to read, is by an old friend known as Predator, who died in late 2003, early 2004, which tracks the progress of his cancer.
He did not believe in fancy mysql platforms underlying blogs – he published .txt files directly via ftp.
Predator did not make it – his last blog entry is particularly poignant.
Sadly, it seems his blog is no longer hosted, but I found a copy on the internet archive, here.
For someone like Predator, who had a fiercely scientific mind, coming to grips with his own impending death was something he needed a regular, public / private forum to think through. It just did not make rational sense to him that his body would soon give up on him, and this is something he grapples with throughout the blog.
Some years ago, I was lucky enough to download from somewhere a PDF copy of Predator's blog, combined with a whole lot of his other writings. It's called "pred.txt: The selected rants of Michael Carlton".
It no longer seems to be hosted online anywhere, so I'm going to post it up again here (about 11mb).
Long Live Predator.
For me, you will forever be visiting our squat in Pyrmont late in the night, with an unfeasibly large hot water system strapped to the back of your motorbike. And installing it. And making it function. In a building without (legal) power.
Long live Pred!
I also found this: Predators manifesto on drain exploration, which is exhaustively detailed and riotously funny. It's worth scrolling down to the end for the legal disclaimers. What a hoot.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on September 15, 2010 by Lucas.
Shows, Shows…
I'm in Melbourne at the moment, for the launch of The Sham exhibition at George Paton Gallery. It's to be an adaptation of my Bilateral Petersham project for the gallery, which I first did in 2007 at Artspace in Sydney.
The exhibition will launch on Wed 29 July, 5-7pm. The show runs from Tuesday 28 July 09 – Friday 7 August 09 between the hours of 11:00AM – 5:00PM, and I will be in there most of the time minding the gallery. Which is George Paton Gallery, second floor, Union House, Melbourne University. So pop in and have a cuppa eh.
All the fine details are here. I'll also be doing a couple of talks while I'm in town.
The first is at Victoria University, at the invitation of Jason Maling. 12-1pm on Thursday the 30th of July. It's at the Flinders St Campus of Vic Uni, 300 Flinders St, Melbourne, 17th Floor – Art and Design department. It's be a general artist-talk about my stuff for the lunchtime lecture series at the uni art school.
The second will be at the Centre of PostColonial Studies. It's specifically focused about the functioning of my blogging as art process. All the details are here.
Look forward to catching up with Melbourne friends at any of these events!
If you're still in Sydney, this week is your last chance to catch Imprint, an exhibition curated by Anneke Jaspers at Artspace. In the show, I've collaborated with Louise Curham under the banner of the Teaching and Learning Cinema (TLC) to re-enact Guy Sherwin's 1976 work Man with Mirror. You can see details of the progress of this work over at the TLC blog. I'll update it with more notes soon, and a downloadable pdf brochure/poster about our piece too!
(the above photo shows Louise and Lucas with Guy Sherwin in the background at the exhibition launch in Sydney…)
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on July 27, 2009 by Lucas.
A Homeless Kid?
Following on from all the recent goat-excitement… A few days ago, Steph from Sugargum Farm forwarded me a goaty plea from the suburbs of Melbourne.
Maja, a goat owner in the council area of Kingston, has been hassled by the council to get rid of Paddy (pictured above), a cute little goat she rescued. Her plea has rocketed around the online goat communities, as she asks sympathisers to sign her petition to let Paddy stay.
Here is the spiel from Maja's petition callout:
We have 2 miniature goats as pets in a residential suburb of Melbourne. We have a permit for one of them, Pedro, who we have had for nearly 2 years. Our other boy, Patrick, was not purchased intentionally. We found him at 2 days old in a paddock near my work and his mother had abandoned him due to his being savagely attacked by a fox. He was distressed and in a lot of pain so we rescued him.Â
Our vet had him on antibiotics for 2 weeks as he had pneumonia and nasty wounds from the fox attack. After about 3 months of 6 time a day feeds and many a hot water bottle filled to keep him warm as well as lots of love and care we have hand reared him back to health and he has become part of our family and an important companion for Pedro.Â
We did the wrong thing and didn't notify the council as firstly we didn't know if he'd make it, and also we didn't believe the council would understand out position and the seriousness of Patrick's condition and make us re house him. Someone in the neighborhood has notified the council that we walk 2 goats in our area off a leash and this has prompted our local council to issue us with a notice to comply and remove Patrick within 2 weeks.
So far there are over 50 signatories urging the council to save Paddy!
I emailed Maja to let her know I was interested in anything to do with "goats-in-the-burbs", and to ask for more details about her battle with the council. She sent me the story below, and a set of great photos of her two goat buddies.
Hi Lucas,
I just had a read through your website!
We got goats because my husband has a similar obsession to you. there is just something about them that he loves! Next time you're in Melbourne we'd love to have you over for a drink!
I have attached some photos of the boys and would love any help if you could offer it.
We are in the process of battling with the council at the moment. Pedro our eldest has a permit which we got by getting our immediate neighbours to sign a petition.
There are members of the council who seem compassionate about our situation but the young man who is dealing with our case directly seems to have it in for us so isn't helping at all.
There is no law about keeping 2 goats. It just states that no domestic animal is to be kept in a property under an acre without a permit.Â
We had some noise complaints when Pedro was younger but he grew out of bleating 🙂 and now I think its because someone said we walk them off a leash, but they are so well behaved they just run after us…
Thanks so much for contacting me, I really appreciate it and I do hope that any exposure about this will help us!
Here's young paddy being led for a walk by his flatmate, Pedro. Aww, cute little fella, how could you turf a kid onto the streets, mean Mr Councilman?
Bon Scott Blog has a home
I've set up a home especially for the Bon Scott Blog: go to http://bonscottblog.com
Hoo roo
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on January 24, 2008 by Lucas.
Performance Space Flier Schermozzle
[the following was first published in The Lives of the Artists (sometime in early 2003) edited by Liz Pulie, Sydney. You can order a copy of the magazine by emailing frontroom_gallery@yahoo.com.au ]
Dear Liz
just wanted to let your readers know about a "schermozzle" that happened with the Performance Space late last year. You might have seen the A3 posters which advertise upcoming events at the space. The design is by Suzanne Boccalatte, and during 2002, the front of the poster always featured two groovy looking people, in their coolest clothes, posing in a grungy inner-city location … its an Aussie re-take on the "Fruits" concept – the Japanese fashion photography book. (The "Fruits" exhibition is actually in Sydney at the Powerhouse Museum right now).
Anyway, in October, Fiona Winning at The Performance Space gave Mickie Quick a ring. Apparently, the two "models" they had lined up to do the shoot fell through at the last minute, and so they were asking me and Mick to pose. We fell about laughing, 'cos we felt about as far away from that fashion stuff as possible. We agreed to do it anyhow, fascinated and perplexed as to why they had actually asked us … apparently they liked Mickie Quick's "Refugee Island" street sign alteration which had popped up during the BorderPanic conference, so they were keen to have that in the photo too.
We showed up for the shoot with the Refugee Island sign, and two t-shirts from an ongoing project of mine entitled "Event for Touristic Sites" – t-shirts emblazoned with national stereotypes, in this case "All Australians are Arse-Lickers" and "All Iraqis are Guilty". We dressed up as daggy as we could, tourist shorts with heaps of cargo pockets, long socks, backpacks, green-n-gold umbrella. Frankly, we were hoping to use the Performance Space poster as a way to place art and politics in the same sphere, and (of course) to promote our own projects via the path of parasitical publicity. (And ok, we admit it, to intervene weirdly in the Performance Space's "too-cool for school" fashion photo series.)
The photo shoot took place in Redfern: in some side streets out the back of the Performance Space; a funny little concrete apartment block courtyard; and on the traffic island near Space 3 at the corner of Regent and Cleveland Streets. This last location meant that the photo had the racist t-shirts and the Refugee Island sign in the foreground, juxtaposed with the Redfern's TNT "twin towers" in the background. Suzanne, and Mikala from the Performance Space anticipated that these images might be a bit controversial, so they took a few extra shots in which Mick and I wore our backpacks back-to-front, and with the umbrella pointed to the camera – so that the text on the t-shirts could not be seen … a safety net in case the more hard-hitting images got rejected…
A week after posing for those photos, the "Bali Bombing" happened, and the Performance Space had to call an emergency meeting of its Board of Directors to decide if they could go ahead with using the images from our photo shoot for their publicity poster. You guessed it, they decided that they could only use the watered-down shots with the text on the t-shirts covered up.
Mick and I protested (although without much hope of making them change their mind). First we said that the references to Australia and Iraq on the t-shirts were quite un-related to the specific events in Bali (the Board's fear supposedly being that their publicity campaign would be read by poster viewers as a direct comment on the Bali situation.)
Then we thought that to go ahead with the image might, in fact, be a courageous (and timely) tactic that the Performance Space could take, by deliberately juxtaposing national stereotypes, tourism, terrorism and refugees. Fiona Winning, the Performance Space's director, was very supportive of our position. While disagreeing with the Board's decision herself, she wrote:
"It was the weekend events in Bali which provoked a different position (if only we'd got it to the printers last week!). We talked it through and it's clear to me, that the weekend events and the image are not related (ie. terrorism and the intensification of anti Muslim fervor) but as they pointed out we don't have the opportunity to talk through with the viewers of 10,000 posters that are essentially a publicity tool for our program."
"Also there was a feeling that the composition was not careful enough…. (which is Suzanne's deliberate aesthetic) The twin TNT towers in the back kind of bagging the idea that we are vulnerable to terrorism […] Interesting how much semiotic scrutiny this image came under. Which should not surprise me in some ways and I admit to a level of naivety about not having expected that."
(One wonders whether the board went as far as humming the words to the old AC/DC song "T-N-T… it's DYNAMITE!!" as they were debating the semiotics of the shots…)
We respectfully withdrew our consent for them to use the watered down photos, a move Fiona had been expecting anyway. So we left it at that, and the Performance Space organised to re-shoot the poster with new models: two groovy looking kids on a bright yellow motor scooter.
[I contacted the PVI (performance, video, installation) Collective in Perth, having heard that their "Terrorist Training School" project planned for October 2002 had been similarly canned due to the Bali Bombing. Actually, it was only postponed, but the story is similar, and I thought it was fascinating that these two events happened simultaneously on opposite sides of the country… Below is an email reply to my enquiries, from PVI's Kelli McLusky …]
hey luca
yeah know of your t-shirt project! [wonderful pieces] – we were part of the tis exhibition in perth too, so got to check out some of them there, although missed the public happenings with them.
but, sure, of course happy to talk about the situation and have attached a presser & pics of the work to give you an idea [theres also a write up in this month's realtime mag, if you wanted more info], but basically the situation goes like this……deep breath…..
the artrage festival commissioned a piece from pvi for the 2002 festival planned for sept 2002. the piece was originally called terrorist training school [yep, nice and subtle] and involved a long period of research into the history of terrorism and its relationship with the media – the company is a core group of six so we get to cover a lot of diverse ground when we get stuck in to a new work. for example, two performers infiltrated the ranks of the local army reserve to gather info on the mindset of a soldier, another joined a terrorism and the media class, we recorded most sight seeing tours around the city – i guess what i'm getting at is that we're keen for the work to be well grounded before we start to devise. anyway, we wanted the work to be a bus tour around the city, visiting local hotspots and for interventionalist acts to be happening outside at these spaces during the tour. we organised a 22-seater bus, we kitted it out with on-board media [tv, sound, mic and pvi 'tour guide'] and we started to develop a piece that seemed v focused on generating a growing sense of fear and unease within a familiar surrounding – we mixed factual info on sites such as the belltower with complete fiction, always comparing with american counter-parts, so the belltower became perth equivalent of the statue of liberty, known as perths penis and taking the contemporary design of a cockroach mounting a syringe…you get the idea – ended up a v abstract piece in the end…anyway i'm waffling..our original publicity showed four member of pvi on a local bus with ex-american presidents masks, we used a caption from a seminal book called 'terrorism' written in the 70's which was:
"terrorists will always have to be innovative…they are in some respects the super-entertainers of our time"
initially we received good responses from the publicity.
one week prior to opening the show the bali bombing occurred. artrage started to receive an increasing number of calls stating that the work was in 'bad taste' and should be removed from the program – we provided artrage with info on the work stating that it was v much anti-war, but using the structural device of satire in the work. the viewers and listeners association began lobbying the arts minister to have the work banned. one of artrage's sponsors [the west australian paper] requested that their logo be removed from anything associated with the work [after they had two days prior to bali proudly published the tts ex-presidents image in the arts section of the paper, but actually refused to print the name of the show alongside it, as far as i'm aware]. things got worse with the phone calls as artrage staff members were now in tears from relatives of bali victims phoning up and abusing them for supporting the work [we fielded a few ourselves and also received some prank calls], mostly people were offended by the publicity and the quote about 'super-entertainment'
artrage called us in for a meeting to see what we wanted to do about it all and they then received a phone call from the arts minister 'requesting' that we 'strongly consider' postponing or removing the work from the program out of respect for those who had lost loved ones. i have to add at this point that artrage were totally with us and willing to stand behind any decision we made, but we were acutely aware that we were making their life really unpleasant and felt v guilty about that. also anything we seemed to say in retaliation was coming across as defensive, so it seemed to us that we would do more harm to the work by putting it on at this point. we got advice but basically had 45 mins to make a decision before the minister released a statement to the press about it. we were advised to contribute to this statement as it could help to ease the situation, we were also advised at this point that if we wanted to still show the work then the minister could be put in a situation where she have to raise it in parliament in response to pressure from lobby groups – we were worried the work may get banned at this point, which seemed ridiculous as nobody had seen the bloody thing yet! [we were later informed that you cannot ban a work without it having at least one public showing]. anyway our decision after two hours in the artrage office and advice from board members and friends was to postpone and re-mount at a later date.
which we did.
the final work wasn't at all different in form or content from the original, the only differences being we abbreviated the title to tts, were able to bring the sound artist over to work on-site on the soundscapes and hired a bouncer to ride with us on the bus in order to ensure the safety of bus passengers.
it was a huge learning curve for us, we have had problems b4 with previous work – we did a car sticker campaign once on how to steal the three most popular cars in australia and did a weekend hit on all these cars placing stickers with step-by-step guides on how to carry it out, [what tools to use, preferred clothing etc…] and had a visit from police, fingerprints on file etc.. but in terms of being prepared on how to respond when the shit hits the fan and also the negative impact of publicity and the fact that no-one [i'm talking press] seemed to want to hear our side of the story at all, was a real eye opener. we now want to take tts to every australian city and are in the process of applying for funding to do exactly that – so fingers crossed eh!
sorry its been a long one, hope its not a rant, but that was the upshot of events from our perspective. The deal with the perf space sounds a great shame. We know fiona does a bloody fantastic job and that must've been a really difficult call. been chatting to steve [from pvi] about this and you have to wonder if your publicity had gone ahead a week earlier [as fiona mentioned] if you guys would've experienced a similar situation to us, our feeling is yes, we think you probably would. it was equally as provocative, if not more so with the direct reference to iraq. my gut feeling now, looking at the image that did come out on the perf space program is that I would like to have seen that original image and make my own mind up about it, not to have board members do that for me. this is an easy stance to take though, we have had people saying to us that we still should have put tts on at the time and in postponing it, it made us seem to be buckling under external pressure, but ultimately for us it was about trying to reclaim some control over the situation and the work – to stop, evaluate, strategise and come back prepared for it as best we could.
take care and look forward to hearing back from you soon 🙂
[see also www.pvicollective.com and http://www.realtimearts.net/rt53/khan.html]
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged censorship, performance space, PVI Collective, terrorism on June 11, 2003 by Lucas.


text:
Az Ariège folyó Franciaország területén, a Garonne  jobb oldali mellékfolyója.

Földrajzi adatok
A folyó Ariège megyében, Perpignantól 90 km-re keletre, a Pireneusokban ered 2470 méterrel a tengerszint felett, és Toulouse-tól 10 km-re délre torkollik a Garonne-ba. A vízgyűjtő terület nagysága 4135 km², hossza 163,2 km. Átlagos vízhozama 76,4 m³ másodpercenként.

Mellékfolyói az Oriège, az Aston, a Vicdessos, a Lèze és az Hers-Vif. Nem hajózható. Egy megye névadója.

Megyék és városok a folyó mentén
 Ariège: Foix, Pamiers
 Haute-Garonne: Auterive

További információk
services.sandre.eaufrance.fr

Franciaország folyói

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A: The National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA) has adopted a rule to provide a new capability for moving ACH payments faster. The rule will enable the same day processing of most ACH payments. Currently, ACH payments are settled on the next business day. This rule change will enable ACH Originators that desire same day processing the option to send same day ACH transactions to accounts at any Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI). The rule will become effective in three phases as outlined below.
Q: Will all financial institutions offer Same Day ACH origination?
A: Most large ACH originating financial institutions will offer same day ACH origination services; however, it is expected that most midsize and smaller financial institutions will not offer same day ACH origination. Citizens Bank Minnesota offers Same Day ACH origination.
A: According to NACHA, 99% of ACH transactions will be eligible for same‐day processing. Only international transactions (IATs) and transactions above $25,000 will not be eligible.
Q: When will the three phases of the rule be implemented?
Includes credits (i.e. payroll and payables), with transactions posted to the recipient's account at end of their RDFI's processing day, which varies by institution.
Includes both credits (i.e. payroll and payables) and debits (receivables, rent collection) with transactions posted to the recipient's account at end of RDFI's processing day.
Includes both credits and debits with transactions posted to the recipient's account required by RDFI at 5:00 p.m. local time. For Citizens Bank clients, that will be 5:00 p.m. CT.
Q: Will government payments be eligible for same day processing?
A: The federal government did not participate in phase one of Same Day ACH when it became effective on September 23, 2016. However, the U.S. Treasury has committed to participating in Same Day ACH beginning September 15, 2017, in a phased implementation. At that time, the Treasury will be able to receive tax and non-tax Same Day ACH credits.
Q: Will the current ACH processing schedule change?
A: The rule enables the option for Same Day ACH payments through new ACH Network functionality, without affecting existing ACH schedules and capabilities.
Q: Is there an additional fee for originating Same Day ACH payments?
A: Yes, there is a different pricing schedule for Same Day ACH origination. Please contact Kathy Drexler, kdrexler@citizensmn.com, at Citizens Bank Minnesota for pricing information or refer to the ACH Agreement Fee Schedule.
Q: How do I sign up for Same Day ACH?
A: Contact Kathy Drexler at Citizens Bank Minnesota for more details on Same Day ACH Origination.
Q: If I receive a Same Day ACH Credit or Debit, when will I see it in my account and how will I know it was a Same Day ACH?
A: Same Day ACH entries received to your account will post by the end of the bank's posting day. The transaction will post to your account with the same type of transaction description and details as the ACH entries that currently post to your account today. Keep in mind that Same-Day ACH transactions are not immediate. A transaction that is initiated first thing in the morning will be required to be posted to a payee's receivables effective that business day - which could be the end of the day.
Q: What are the benefits of Same Day Electronic Payment?
A: Many merchants and billing companies may offer you the option to make a same-day electronic payment, such as to pay a bill or to transfer funds. If you agree, then the funds might be debited from your account as soon as that very same day. For example, if you have a bill due on the 25th of the month, the billing company might allow you to call or use its website on the morning of the 25th to make an on-time payment, and also have the funds debited from your account on the 25th. While these types of payments won't be reflected on your account balance as quickly as your debit card and ATM transactions, you will have access to more accurate information about your actual available account balance more frequently throughout the business day.
Q: How does this rule affect Citizens Bank Minnesota customers?
A: Customers should understand that when they authorize a merchant or biller to debit their account with their financial institution, the merchant or biller should include information or a statement about the timing of the payment. If the merchant or biller offers the customer the option to make a same-day payment, it might be referred to as a same-day payment, or noted that the merchant or biller intends to collect the funds as quickly as possible.
If customers have pre-authorized an electronic payment, such as a recurring mortgage or insurance payment, then very likely there will be no charge to the time that these payments are posted to their account. As always, customers' financial institutions will receive and post these payments normally as designated by the transaction effective date.
Customers should always have sufficient funds in their account to cover every payment they make, authorize, or initiate, and should frequently review their account statements and transactions.


This is an exciting and promising time for our organisation. Our employees connect with a wide range of leading professionals in a multi-disciplinary, action-oriented environment, working at the heart of the knowledge triangle to deliver impactful climate innovations.
We recognise it is our people that make us successful and distinctive, and we are committed to maintaining a supportive, performance and development-focused organisational culture which enables our people to realise their full potential at work. We will support our employees' continuous professional development and provide broad career development opportunities across our offices.


text:
Q: What is wrong with the variance formula for linear regression betas in high dimension? According to linear regression formula, assumming the predictors are nonreandom, $$var[\hat{\beta}]=MSE *(X'X)^{-1}$$ where MSE is an unbiased estimator of the population variance.
Intuitively, when the number of predictors (p + 1) is greater than the number of data, the regression model is overfitting the data. Because of overfitting, one would expect the variance of $\hat{\beta}$ to be big.
However, according to the formula, because MSE = 0, we have $$var[\hat{\beta}]=MSE *(X'X)^{-1} = 0$$
What goes wrong? There must be some implicit assumption with this formula that failed in this scenarios.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Darlene is a self-motivated individual who is committed to helping her clients make the best match between their personal needs and real estate goals. She has both professional and personal experience in selling, purchasing and building homes. Darlene will act as your real estate consultant advising you of current market conditions while guiding you on home prices. She uses the most updated technology to help you find or market your home and will give you the utmost personal attention while communicating regularly during the entire process. Given her negotiation skills and commitment to getting the job done, she will manage your real estate transactions with the most care. Her organizational skills and attention to detail will help to make the process go smoothly.
Darlene resides in Spring Lake and is a lifelong resident of New Jersey. She received her B.S. from the Rutgers University School of Business. For more than 20 years she worked in the pharmaceutical industry for Fortune 100 companies holding positions of increasing responsibility and for several years was a successful project manager receiving achievement awards. These keen management and business skills are well utilized in managing real estate transactions for her clients.
Darlene is also committed to social responsibility in the community. She currently serves as second Vice President of the Woman's Club of Spring Lake which is engaged in many charitable giving activities. Darlene also collects donations for local area animal shelters & rescue organizations. She enjoys biking, the pristine Spring Lakes beaches and, of course, helping clients make their next real estate decision.


Auburn and Under Armour will unveil Auburn's 2015-16 basketball uniforms on October 16th to officially kickoff the season. I wouldn't expect anything too eccentric, and based on the teaser video below, it looks to be a mixture of some old and some new. Check back tomorrow to get the whole view of the whole getup.


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2022 saw no shortage of fantastic music, which is perhaps why there's so much disagreement as to what the year's big, standout releases were. With this list, I attempt to break through the noise and put aside any personal biases to objectively assess the most important releases from this year. #10. Alvvays – 'Blue Rev'… Read more
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I'm always finding it harder to put together a "best songs of the year" list than a "best albums of the year" list because whenever I listen to music, I prefer to consume the entire album rather than pick out specific songs. Yeah, there really are people like me out there! Nonetheless, here are ten… Read more
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Posted November 30, 2022 by musicmattersmedia
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