This prompt feels strange to me, because the last time I was asked to write about how I felt about a play and why, it was a trick question. Going into my personal preferences and reactions lost me practically all the available points on the question. “Which one did you like and why?” is, in […]
For me, my audience is largely those back home. To give them some insight into what I’m doing in Armagh and to inspire future students to want to study here. The majority of the things I learned while in here in Armagh I had no idea of back home, the troubles, the murals and the […]
Writing Tips from Joyce Carol Oates Author Joyce Carol Oates gave writing advice through Twitter today. 10 simple and straightforward tips from the 75-year-old author. You can follow her @joycecaroloates. #1 and #10 are the same: “Write your heart out.”
I gravitated toward Martin McDonagh’s “Beauty Queen of Leenane.” The text satisfied the ugly in me. You know? When your brain thinks astonishingly morbid thoughts and you’re like “WTF Brain?! Why did you think that?” But you do. And it’s an arena to be recognized. And in “Beauty Queen’s” case, embraced. The story relays a […]
OHMYGOD. This morning, we staged my play and it was other worldly. Honestly. It’s difficult to articulate the sensations I felt as Terri directed and Alison and Joan starred in “Ma.” This piece was excruciating for me to write. The more we work with it, the more comfortable I get with the material. The work […]
I don’t think all people with iPhones are competent enough to report a story. Simple as that. I think they can sometimes contribute, but reporting is a skill that must be learned, presenting information in an unbiased, clear way is not something that you can just decide to type up on a note in your […]
We’re in rehearsals here in Armagh, and my ten-minute play is finally being put into action. So how does that make me feel? A bit like what I imagine a new father feels like when the hospital staff is handling his baby. A little frightened that someone’s going to drop the kid on his head. […]
As part of our ieiMedia curriculum, we the playwriting students have had to read five plays by Irish authors: Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey (and for some reason whenever I hear that name my mental jukebox starts playing “Smooth Criminal”) The Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge (and no, that […]
Alright, after the salt that was yesterday’s post, it’s time to talk about something I love to do: acting! Why do I love acting (and, by extension, the rehearsal process)? Let me confess something. I’m not good at acting. I’m not good at maintaining a dialect. I’m not good at keeping a straight face. I’m […]
The rehearsal process. For a fiction writer who’s never even been in a school play before, it’s incredibly strange. Before coming to Armagh, I wasn’t particularly up on my dramatic reading. As far as plays went, I was well-versed in Shakespeare and had read a few other dramas: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, […]
