Archive for the ‘Writing Career’ Category
The response to Second Skin Theatre’s production of Blood Privilege in London has been absolutely amazing.
“Sexy cast, great scripting, and a brilliantly gothic venue. It finishes on 14 April so be quick (we saw it on Saturday and loved it).” Bizarre Magazine
“Second Skin is a regular on these pages. More so because the company’s plays are so carefully chosen, masterfully written and even better brought to life by their actors.” ”This play, masterfully directed by Andy McQuade and written by Don Fried, brings this story to the stage with a magnificent cast. Mia Zara makes for an amazing Countess Bathory.” Theatre in London
“Second Skin Theatre continue their challenging and provocative work with a new play by Don Fried. ” ”Mia Zara absolutely dominates the evening as the charismatic and mysterious Elizabeth Bathory.” “The production is fast paced and atmospheric. We are drawn into a different world – forbidding and ominous. The lighting design (Anna Sbokou) adds to the otherworldliness, especially in the bookend scenes. Don’t miss this provocative play!” UK Theatre Network
“Don Fried gives us a clever and intelligent woman, an efficient operator and a prototype feminist battling against male and royal control.” “This is a picture of the way someone can be schooled into transgression, of how the law can be followed and yet manipulated, and how power can be concentrated in an elite, none of which has been limited to sixteenth-century Transylvania. Mia Zara’s Countess Elizabeth goes from oestrogen-driven girl to manipulative woman; when she is on stage things revolve around her.” “There is a layer of ironic humour that lies beneath much of McQuade’s production and Fried’s writing.” British Theatre Guide
“Fringe company Second Skin Theatre continue their run of theatrical hits with this chilling look at Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian Countess accused of murdering over 600 women. The superb script by Don Fried deftly combines elements of horror, sex and political intrigue combined with a knowing tongue-in-cheek humour that never threatens to descend into parody. On a technical level, it’s flawless with brilliant use of set and lighting effects maintaining an atmosphere of impending doom. It’s cast with a powerful ensemble who nail their various characters, most notably George Collie as Sigray who gives his initially bumbling character an unexpected sympathetic edge. Centre of the whole play is the entrancing Mia Zara as Bathory, who delivers a complex and seductive performance. She charts the character’s progress from naive young girl to crazed Countess with a flawless precision. Her final moments on stage are a beautifully poetic touch. For theatre that chills, entices and tickles the brain cells “Blood Privilege” comes highly recommended.” Write Out Loud
“Chilling and atmospheric.” “Excellent use of the tiny black box theatre.” “Lighting … brilliantly done.” “Ross Mullan [as the king] mesmerizes.” “Mia Zara is also spellbinding as the murderous countess.” “George Collie [as the judge, Lorand Sigray] gave a great comedic performance.” “Second Skin Theatre is one of the few companies in London doing such intriguing work and the risks they are taking on stage are duly noted.” Hackney Hive
The first review is out for the premiere production of my play “Blood Privilege” in New York City. Here are some of the lovely things the reviewer said.
“Don Fried’s new play Blood Privilege is a feminist powerhouse; the Countess Elizabeth Bathory could be the Hedda Gabler of 16th Century Hungary, with equally tragic outcomes.”
“The Richmond Shepard Theatre production is a showcase for lead actress Jessie Komitor, who handles her role as the doomed Countess with deft skill. She commands the stage in each scene in which she appears .”
“Andrew Rothkin, who plays both her tyrannical husband of convenience, Ferenc Nadasdy and her beautician-physician Pataky made such vastly different choices for each character I had to check my program to make sure I was watching the same man.”
“It must be said that Blood Privilege is very smart and very funny. Mr. Fried writes with a dry wit that had me laughing in my seat.”
“If you can catch Blood Privilege for its remaining run through February 24th, I highly recommend it. I certainly hope his British audiences in their upcoming London engagement will appreciate this show as much as I did.”
Not bad, huh?
Click here to view the trailer
Blood Privilege Trailer from RoseGoldCreative on Vimeo.
A logline is the one-sentence marketing blurb that screenwriters use to pitch their works to production companies. I heard today that the logline for my screenplay of “Senior Moments” has been selected as the Grand Prize Winner for October/November edition of Three Lines or Less: A Logline Contest. I’ll get over $900 of screenwriter-related goods and services. But most important, the logline will be sent to several hundred producers, agents and managers.
The logline that won is:
After catching her husband in a nursing home affair, an elderly woman embarks on a cross-country quest for sexual liberation — only to discover that getting laid isn’t as easy as it used to be. Based on an award-winning play by the screenwriter.
The San Juan Capistrano Patch gave a rave review of last weekend’s opening of Getting Betta at the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano.
Click the picture or here to follow the link to the review.
On Saturday, March 12th, Senior Moments was given a special award for Playwriting at the American Association of Community Theater Region 7 finals at the Bas Bleu Theater in Fort Collins, Colorado. The play’s lead actor, Timothy Englert, won the Best Actor Award for the festival.
Senior Moments was presented at the festival by Coal Creek Community Theater of Louisville, Colorado, having placed in the Colorado state AACT competition last August.
Congratulations to Tim, and thank you to Lynn Fleming and all the other wonderful folks at Coal Creek for having faith in the play and doing all that was required to make this happen.
On Monday, March 14th, I’m off to San Juan Capistrano, California for the opening of Getting Betta at the Camino Real Playhouse.
Lots of Good Playwriting News
Posted on: December 15, 2010
1. Senior Moments is going to be presented at the FronteraFest Long Fringe in Austin, Texas, January 22nd – 30th. Tim Englert, who has been the male role in all the U.S. productions of Senor Moments so far and who recently moved to Austin, will be joined by fantastic Austin-based actor Lana Dieterich. The production is being directed by long-time Austin actor/director, Douglas Taylor.
Senior Moments will be presented at the AACT (American Association of Community Theaters) Regional Finals at the Bas Bleu Theatre, Fort Collins, Colorado, March 11th or 12th.
Senior Moments is being published by ArtAge, a publisher that specializes in plays suitable for senior actors and audiences. It will be available in the next few months.
2. Getting Betta will be premiering at the Theater Company of Lafayette (Colorado), March 4th – 26th. It will be performed in repertory with Robots Like Us (6 new plays commissioned by TCL) in the Machines Like Us play festival.
Getting Betta will be performed March 18th – 27th at the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano, California.
3. Bodice Ripper will have a public reading at the Theater Company of Lafayette April 8th. The play will be produced by the Second Skin Theatre Company in London, England, some time during 2011. I’ll be moving to London this summer to work on Bodice Ripper and productions of other of my plays in which Second Skin is interested. If things work out, I could be there for a couple of years.
Two years ago I couldn’t get anyone to read the scripts of my plays. (Not even my wife, Rhonda!) Life just keeps getting betta and betta.
Senior Moments was presented 3 weeks ago as Coal Creek Community Theater’s entry in the Colorado Community Theater Coalition Festival at the Nomad Theater in Boulder. The production took 3rd Best Production, and Tim Englert won the Best Actor prize. That’s not bad for a show with 2 actors, a table and 2 chairs; we were up against productions with up to 40 actors and full-stage sets!
Senior Moments will have 6 performances between August 19th and 28th at the Boulder International Fringe Festival. I’d love to see you there if you can make it.
Annoyed and Ready to Write
Posted on: April 4, 2010
Each time I finish a play, especially a full length one, I become more or less catatonic. I can’t bear even the thought of writing anything else; a state that lasts for anywhere from two to four months.
Then, one day, I realize that I’m seeing things, and starting to get annoyed. Not that I’m not annoyed a good deal of the time every day. It’s just that now, I find I’m getting annoyed and wanting to tell people about it. And that’s when I know I’m ready to write again.
I finished the script of “Getting Betta” in mid February. Fortunately, in this case my catatonia (sounds like a province in northern Spain, doesn’t it?) corresponded with 2 productions of Shakespeare Incorporated, one of Postville, and a gig of Senior Moments. So at least I appeared to have an excuse for not being productive.
But this past weekend I went to see 3 plays. One of them had gotten a great review in a local newspaper, and another had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Frankly, the only one I thought was a particularly good script was the third one, which was presented by a group of recent CU grads I’d taken classes with over the past several years.
But the thing that got me going was the fact that all 3 plays used the same dramatic device — the characters taking turns stepping out of the action of the play and addressing the audience. I think that device was wonderful for the Stage Manager in Our Town, but that was 80 years ago. Has it become the hallmark for every worthy contemporary piece of drama?
While I was taking a walk this morning, I started thinking about that and all the other things that annoy me about the playwriting business. And Whammo!, a play emerged. (Actually, it happens in the other direction first, so I guess it “inmerged”.) The working title for the play is “Catharsis,” and it’s about overuse of hackneyed dramatic devices, people who tell you how to rewrite your plays, writing to formulae for commercial success, not being recognized for your true genius, …. You get the idea.
“Catharsis” is going to be no more than 10 pages, so it should be finished in a couple of days.
Watch out, world. I’m annoyed and ready to write!
I needn’t have worried
Posted on: February 10, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I crossed an important barrier. Some time during my working career – I think it was about 1980 — I realized that I was getting a sick feeling in my stomach every time the phone would ring or my boss would call me into his office. It was almost always bad news. I’d done something wrong, or somebody else had done something wrong, or something bad had happened without anyone in particular being at fault. But it usually meant that I’d have to work through the night and, more often than not, it signified that whatever I was involved with was in the process of going down the tubes.
Hope may spring eternal in the human breast, but by the time I retired, it no longer did in mine. Which was just as well, because when I started writing, the trend continued. Nobody was interested in my work, and most letters, emails and phone calls were to inform me that another one of my plays had been rejected.
Not that this was all bad. Viewing the world through mud-colored glasses is a good thing for a playwright. Being a curmudgeon makes for drama, and drama makes for – well – drama.
But then one morning about two weeks ago, the phone rang and I realized as I went to pick it up that I was saying to myself, “Maybe it’s someone who wants to produce Senior Moments. And it was! Good things had started happening often enough that, without realizing it, I’d crossed over from the Vale of Pessimism to the Hills of Positivity. That was a good thing, right?
Not quite. Crusty Old Fart-hood dies hard. My first reaction was to bemoan the loss of one of the driving forces of my artistic inspiration. If I’m not constantly pissed off at the world and everything in it, how am I going to come up with ideas for plays in which pissed off people overcome their problems.
Well, I needn’t have worried. I’m in London at the moment for the opening of rehearsals for a production of Shakespeare Incorporated. As soon as the plane from Denver took off, the woman in front of me put her seat back in my lap and stayed there for the next 9 hours. Sweet! At Heathrow, we landed at the brand new Terminal 5. Rather than being an improvement on the abysmal Terminals 1 – 4, it’s even worse. Delightful! I got onto the Tube to go downtown; we went 5 stations and the train stopped. After a few minutes, the driver came on and announced that a train following us was delayed, so in order not to have too much of a gap between trains, they were going to have all trains on the line sit in their stations until the faulty train was running again. Wonderful!
And so it has gone for the past 3 days. The weather is typical London grotty. The air bed I was sleeping on in my director’s flat has popped half its seams, so the bed lies at a 30 degree angle, and so did I all night. The 5 year old son of the couple I stayed with last night decided that the world would be better if he head-butted me repeatedly in the groin. Could life possibly get any better?
So I needn’t have worried about losing my inspiration for a world in which things are constantly annoying and going wrong. I’m so relieved!
According to Hollywood folklore, the words in the title of this post are what a studio functionary is supposed to have written about Fred Astaire’s screen test for RKO Pictures in the early 1930s.
That quotation comes more and more to mind as Shakespeare Incorporated and several of my other plays begin having some success. Each of these plays was rejected — occasionally quite rudely — by quite a number of the theaters and contests to which I submitted them. I’m also reminded of another Hollywood executive who had an option on the screenplay for ET and sold it to Steven Spielberg. And of the guy from Decca Records who turned down the Beatles.
OK, so I may not be in the Beatles’ class in terms of recognition any time soon, and Shakespeare Incorporated may never rival ET for commercial success. But just in case, I’ve decided to follow the lead of the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado, and I’m compiling a little list (they’d none of them be missed). If Shakespeare Incorporated ever wins a Tony or a Pulitzer, I’ll be ready to look up each and every person who rejected the play and make them eat their words. Preferably, I’ll force them to ingest the rejection letters they sent me. (If they ignored me and didn’t even have the decency to send a rejection letter, I’ve saved up some old scripts that should be particularly appetizing.)
Yes, I do take all this very personally. But hey, I’m a crusty old fart; that’s my job.
I know it’s not the Boulder way. Instead of being bitter and twisted and savoring thoughts of revenge, I should be grateful for whatever success I achieve, and we should all hold hands and hum and frolic semi-naked in the snow of a Colorado January. Screw that! You must be mistaking me with someone else.
Those of you in Boulder, don’t expect to see me any time soon. No doubt when this post becomes public, they’ll rescind my visa to the People’s Republic. Again.
