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Playwrights should always keep in mind that there are substantial numbers of disingenuous theatre groups in the USA today, claiming they accept new plays for submission. How to recognize them: 1) They will first judge the quality of a play based upon the race, gender, or sexual identification of the author. 2) They make the demand that the author have an agent. Many talented, acclaimed authors today, do not have an agent, but use an entertainment attorney, or have neither. 3) They will request a 10 page sample of play. Show me a quality work that can be judged accurately with a 10 page sample. Impossible. Intricate plot turns, and complex characters cannot be revealed in 10 pages.
'all art should be a mix of light and shade...' this has finally put in words what attracts me to the theatre / tv / music / art that I gravitate to. Even in my own song writing that's what I now see what I try to achieve... thank you Amy for illuminating my thoughts with your words...
From Haaretz, Israeli paper. Could Sami have been his son? The Egyptian Man Who Was Persecuted as a Jew, Buried as a Muslim Cairo's oldest Jew was an anti-Zionist and communist: Albert Arie was a proud Egyptian who wrestled with his Jewish heritage, was jailed for 11 years and later converted to Islam. When his friends emigrated to Israel, he insisted on staying put The young Albert Arie. 'He was an Egyptian citizen who insisted on staying in his country despite the intolerable pressures on him.' Ofer Aderet Oct 26, 2021 Albert Arie was a Jew, a communist and an anti-Zionist. During his lifetime he converted to Islam, but retained his connection to his Jewish heritage and culture. Above all, Arie, who passed away in April just before his 91st birthday, saw himself as a proud Egyptian citizen. He was among the last vestiges of the Egyptian Jewish community. He remained loyal to his homeland, Egypt, even when the authorities persecuted him and made his life difficult due to his origins and his ideology. “He was an Egyptian citizen who insisted on staying in his country despite the intolerable pressures on him,” his son, Sami Ibrahim, said in his eulogy. Arie was born in 1930 in Cairo during the monarchist period known as “the liberal era.” In the secular French school he attended, he also grew to love the Arabic language. His Turkish-born father, who owned a clothing store, even hired the services of a Sunni sheikh to help expand his son’s knowledge of the language. In the 1940s Arie was active in the communist movement: This was a time of changes in Egypt that led to the 1952 Free Officers’ coup, which heralded the start of the Nasserist pan-Arabism era. Albert Arie. After he was released from prison, he again suffered harsh treatment - this time because he was a Jew.Credit: Dina Ozrat About a year later Arie was imprisoned with other communist activists on charges of trying to foment a coup. During his 11-year sentence with hard labor, carried out in a few different jails, he forged ties with prisoners from the Muslim Brotherhood. “We spoke to them, we gave them newspapers and we shared news with them that we heard on a small radio set that we hid in our cell,” he once recalled. “After all, we were all political prisoners.” Even before meeting up again in jail, Arie had become friendly with one of the leaders of the Brotherhood: Mohammed Mahdi Akef. Arie first met Akef as a customer who purchased sports clothing in his father’s store, encountering him later within the framework of various political activities. After Arie was released from prison, he again suffered harsh treatment - this time because he was a Jew. At the time, a mounting wave of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist hatred was beginning, spearheaded by the government in Cairo. Some two decades beforehand, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and then following the Sinai Campaign in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967, most of Egypt's Jews emigrated to Israel and other countries. At its height the Jewish community in the country numbered 80,000 people; today there are fewer than 10. Arie was the oldest Jew left in Cairo. For his part, he insisted on being part of society - an Egyptian citizen and nationalist. For years he wouldn’t leave the country due to the demand that every Egyptian Jew who flew abroad would have to sign a document relinquishing their citizenship and would be unable to return. In the 1960s Arie converted to Islam and married an Egyptian woman, a journalist. “My father was secular, and for him Judaism was an identity and not a religion,” Ibrahimi said. Despite Arie's efforts to become integrated into Egyptian society, it didn’t fully accept him. The Egyptian Interior Ministry even declared that it would not recognize the Muslim identity of Jews like him, who had converted. “They treated my father like a foreigner who was not an Egyptian,” his son said. “Whenever he flew abroad he was required to obtain a permit from the Interior Ministry in order not to lose his citizenship.” That situation changed only after the peace treaty was signed with Israel in 1979. Arie spoke out in the media against depicting reality in black-and-white terms, when describing the persecution of Jews by the Egyptian authorities. “It’s really absurd. The attempt to minimize the story of Egyptian Jews after 1948 to attacks against several Jewish targets, does a disservice to the historical truth,” he said. “I mean that yes, they [the Egyptians] did carry out several attacks, but the Jews weren’t the greatest rivals of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Despite his anti-Zionist opinions and conversion to Islam, Arie worked to preserve Egypt’s Jewish heritage. “Today only a few elderly Jews and a few additional adults remain [in Egypt], and that will also end in a few decades,” he said. “Now we have to ensure that the history of Egyptian Jews, which is basically a part of Egyptian history, will be well documented and that its monuments will be preserved, so that one day maybe the whole story will be told accurately, without political, propaganda and commercial motives.” Arie lived his entire life in the Cairo apartment where he grew up as child. After he died he was buried as a Muslim. “Our entire family is buried in this cemetery,” his son said. “Why should we bury my father in a Jewish cemetery?”
as someone who's performing this play for A Level, this was super helpful to get insight on the director.
Thank you 🌌🦋✍️🐛🌎❤️🩹
That’s brilliant advice! Now, where’s that bone?
Wow. She's a repellent character. I was surprised to find that the playwright is a woman. It's usually men that write female characters as inexplicably psychotic.
what do people do when you feel drained, as if every plot is just a repetition of the past ones one seen, read, thought of and that all work that is being done is done by those with agents, editors and theatre houses giving them money to do what you could but never will, as if you all began at the same street during a marathon but now realise you are the only one walking alone a cold, moist and dark alley leading you nowhere while in the distance hearing the people cheering on all those writers, director and actors that been famous since you ever can remember your first inspiration to get into this field of work but never can find your way back to that main road, to the avenue of light, bight and sun-dried softly shaped cobblestones that lapped sunlight for ages and will make your every step forward a feeling of being a small toddler again running barefoot for the first time and feeling those very warm, soft cobblestones under the innocence of your soles, feeling it to the degree that so vill also the grey old writer in you do, to once again feel the writing process flow within you, but there is that humongous IF in your way, large as a horse or that circus elephant you patted as a kid, if you could only pass it, then, yes then maybe, if you only could find your way back to that first path of your writing life that slipped out of your mind, the life you cannot tell even when you lost it anymore, just as in the same fashion as you cannot really tell when physical maps went out of fashion and was replaced by google maps or iPhone apps.... and look here you stand in this cold, moist and dark alley and hear all the people cheering on to those that already made it on the other side on that main road, the avenue, and just keep that success on repeat year after year as if they had an electric bike passing you by in every hill you ever taken while you now lie alone in a pile of dirt water feeling how you are starving to death from not having ever published anything but stupid articles in news papers back in the days of your first internships that no one even bothered to pay you for and you wonder where did the time go, why did I not move on with it, why am in this alley, all alone can I be the only one who walked into a dead end and is there anyone out here if I scream, really scream right now and right out in the open, - Help me, my soul died and I woke up in this side track of my own life, this is NOT me, this is not the life of my own dreams, I lost it all, I lost what I believed to be mine, to be my future, .... and now I am asking straight out with no fear, please, please tell me where the road back to a life I can be proud of and aspired by lies, because is surely not down here in a pile of dirt-water in a cold, moist and dark alley that I been locked into all too long, is so cold I cannot even feel the pen I am still holding in my hand when I first began to write, and my ink is frozen and my book withered and dispersed into midair, all that is left is a beacon somewhere mysterious deep inside me, a beacon searching for a path, a route back home, the safe shore of a working writer. thanks for taking the time to hear me out, now I can rest and let the Winter that is coming cover my grief, sorrow and struggles, time is all there is left to be, time will let me free. / Sep 3 2023 Kison
Great Advice, said greatly.
Excellent advice! Somehow very uplifting too. Great to hear someone talk about being given the space to fail and learn.
Super articulate man.
If i were to make a play based on Luca 2021 I’d choose an actor born in 2004 to play Luca an actor born in 2006 to play Guilia and an actor born in 2001 to play Alberto
I hadn't been aware of Mr Stephens before this video. He presents the most concise and truthful advice for playwrights I've heard. of late It's not advice for the beginner or novice. He's talking to the writer who needs to keep going after writing seven plays. His words are for the artist who needs to be motivated to write his/her eighth play. He talks about standing on the shoulder of giants. If Newton understood this, so should we. Lots of love to all of you who can't stop writing plays, no matter how hard you try and how much the world tells you to stop -- xoxo
As a beginner or novice, I wholeheartedly disagree.
I'm not keen on 'steal' as it can be misinterpreted but instead be influenced by talented writers who came before us. Always be thinking about what we're up against whilst writing otherwise we'd just be writing for one mind set, our own, and our own is hardly the size of audience a producer needs. I have an audience hanging over one shoulder and professional script readers over the other and sift the writing through them which has been, by far, the greatest help. Be wary of writers whose narcissism is a little too high as they will hide behind excuses in order to do everything their way; for them the audience barely comes in to it. We're less likely to be commissioned, or material bought, if it does not connect with customers; if scripts come across as the writer caring about the me, me, me syndrome instead of the paying customer. We have thousands of points of reference of what audiences like and don't like so use them as a compass; use professional script readers, over years, on each script and they will suggest changes or areas that might need looking at again which ultimately will elevate the material. As we write we learn to sense their suggestions/criticisms enabling us to do something about them in advance then there's less and less for producers/directors/actors/audience to grumble about. I keep asking: what do they 'now' need/want? Where am I likely to be loosing them? (which is often towards the beginning of a story). Where am I likely to be engaging women but less likely men; where am I engaging men but less likely women and a hundred variations on that approach. Be aware of the most important element - audience; what do we need to accomplish to give them the ultimate journey?
Thank you for offering this for women! I’m currently writing a musical, first time and at age 66. Knowledge is power and women’s stories are powerful and life changing!
His advice is absolute gold - thank you for sharing this!
Fascinating and thank you.
Glorious! Where do I sign up?!?
This is magic.
Legend.
Simon Stephens is my playwriting hero. I’ve now replayed this five times in succession to inspire me to keep going. Thank you for uploading this 🙏🏻
Thanks so much for watching Ben! We're so glad it's inspired you. If you haven't already, you can watch our first Meet the Writer interview with Simon here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/eZ6uqNaFosnAh8Y.html
"I think theatre is an innately democratic artform, I think there's a sense that theatre is eltist. But the sense in which theatre is elitist has nothing to do with the _art_." This is what I bin sayinggggggggggggggg
Beautiful. What a legend.
🙏 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙢
😍🥰
❤️️
Lets go champ
My guy 👊🏿
Fabulous x
Oooh, this will be good, stunning to see Bonnie and The Bonnettes as part of this
We are buzzing to be part of your promise to 2021!!!
Beautiful and very moving regards from Mark & Karen.
Kathryn Ash, i loved your work, THE BRINK, thank you...get that message out there, x
Beautiful without being overly poetic.
It was wonderful, I agree. And impressive. Not only a good performance but an even better script. (I have just done one of these projects in Australia, and learnt so much from watching this.) Thanks SS, DB and Paines Plough for the experience, and the lesson.)
Brilliant
A gritty and compelling exploration of wonder, loss and love. I was spell bound. Xx
Loved the crop circle one by Tash Marshall!
I really loved that, thank you!
Saw this at the Unity in Liverpool and loved it. Want to see it again, now more than ever. ❤️
Absolutely brilliant 🥰
Excellent work, loved hearing all the references
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ beautiful ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Wonderful
Seen it and it’s absolutely brilliant 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Who are the actors? Who made this trailer?
Can’t wait for the next video!