NYCPlaywrights December 27, 2025

[NYCPlaywrights]

Greetings NYCPlaywrights


*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***

TILLIE THE TERRIBLE SWEDE
Based on the true story of pioneering sportswoman Matilda Anderson, a puppet show on how Tillie became the best woman cyclist in the world!
https://www.tillietheterribleswede.com

A show for the whole family featuring marionette puppets, live performers, and most importantly — a bicycle! Tille the Terrible Swede is based on the true story of pioneering sportswoman Matilda Anderson, the play shows us how Tillie became the best woman cyclist in the world!

Saturday March 7
10 AM & 11AM
Battery Park City
6 River Terrace
New York, NY 10282

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tillie-the-terrible-swede-tickets-1853855534809?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

The Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award celebrates an author whose work embodies the lyrically powerful and historically engaged nature of Dr. Alexander’s writing.

Each winner will receive a $500 Prize, publication in Meridians, and will have the opportunity to spend a week-long residency at Meridians at Smith College the following Fall or Spring. The award is open to all genres, including: poetry, fiction, play scripts, and non-fiction. All submissions will be judged anonymously.

Works engaging with feminism, race, and transnationalism will be prioritized. Translated works and manuscripts in languages other than English are encouraged as well.

***

Musical theater challenge for high school students 2026

Each Participant can submit one original composition tailored for a musical theater production. The full musical does not need to be written, but the student will be asked to justify the song as a storytelling moment as part of the larger hypothetical work.

Collaborative entries (up to three Writers) are accepted, but all members of the team must meet the age and schooling requirements.

***

Arkana Magazine seeks short plays for its Micro issue

We publish work by established and emerging writers unaffiliated with the University of Central Arkansas. We accept previously unpublished fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, scripts for the stage or screen, translation, artwork, and illustrated narrative through our Submittable submission manager.

As a compendium of the rare, intriguing, and unheard, we’re looking for quality writing that is thought-provoking and literary. We are especially interested in work that explores the identities and experiences of writers from the Delta region, BIPOC, immigrant, LGBTQ+, women, disabled, and neurodivergent writers, the resource-poor, writers over 50, those who have experienced or been impacted by incarceration, or anyone whose voices have traditionally been silenced.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** ACTING TECHNIQUES ***

Acting technique and your personal practice are not the same thing. One is a system developed by an individual or school, with methodologies to support an actor. The other is your daily routine as an actor, as well as how you might prepare for a role. If you decide that Method Acting is your cup of tea, it should not replace your wider practice.

A good actor’s practise might look something like this:

Daily vocal warm-up.
Daily physical exercise.
Read a play a week.
Prepare two monologues each month.

You can apply your newly-found chosen technique to your monologue prep. But you should still be maintaining good vocal and physical health, regardless of the technique you’re using. Having a strong personal practice will ensure you are open and capable of trying out different techniques.

The Three Pillars of Technique

If you’ve ever had even a mild interest in acting, you’ve likely come across three techniques already: Stanislavski Method, Meisner Method and Method Acting. They form the foundation of modern acting technique and theory, so here’s a quick primer for each of them.

More...
https://www.stagemilk.com/how-to-choose-an-acting-technique/

***

Stanislavski’s method is built on a series of interconnected principles that guide an actor’s preparation and performance. Below are some of the most important concepts:

1. The “Magic If”

One of Stanislavski’s most famous techniques is the “Magic If”—a simple yet powerful tool that allows actors to put themselves in a character’s shoes. Instead of simply pretending, actors ask:
• “What if I were in this situation?”
• “How would I feel and react?”

By engaging their imagination, actors create genuine emotional responses rather than forced expressions.

2. Given Circumstances

Every character exists within a specific set of circumstances, including:
• Time period
• Location
• Relationships
• Social status
• Events happening before the scene

Actors must analyze these details to shape their character’s motivations and behavior. Instead of playing a character generically, understanding the given circumstances adds depth and believability to the performance.

More...
https://www.theatre33wa.org/post/stanislavski-101-understanding-the-system-and-its-impact-on-modern-acting

***

Method acting is a technique or type of acting in which an actor aspires to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances by fully inhabiting the role of the character. It is an emotion-oriented technique instead of classical acting that is primarily action-based. It was further developed and brought to American acting studios in the 1930s by Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan.

However, Konstantin Stanislavski, a Russian actor and theatre director invented the technique in the early 1900s. Stanislavski did not call it method acting back then, but his ideas created a model to help actors build believable characters. Stanislavski’s approach was to encourage the actors to draw from personal experiences and memories in order to garner real emotions, and to connect with the characters. This stood in stark contrast to the more traditional, theatrical and classical acting of that time.

More...
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-method-acting/

***

The Meisner Technique is a brick-by-brick process designed to get an actor out of their head and into their gut. To that end, they must learn to put focus and attention on the most important thing: the other actor. From this simple principle, Sandy created the Repetition Exercise.

You may have experienced the Repetition Exercise. It often seems ridiculous, even pointless. However, over three months, what began as, “your shirt is blue,” “your shirt is blue,” transforms into a moment-to-moment connection between two hyper-focused individuals.

At this point, we introduce the Independent Activity. The Independent Activity was built on the other core principle of the Meisner Technique — acting is NOT talking. Acting is doing. We will teach you to do an activity truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

More...
https://themeisnertechniquestudio.com/meisner-technique/

***

Classical acting is primarily focused on precision and control. It usually requires actors to use both their singing and speaking voice, and their whole body during performances.

Where other modern techniques work from an inside-out perspective and harness an actor’s natural responses for realistic performance, classical works from the outside in.

This means their performance is more heavily shaped by the technical aspects of the technique itself and natural responses are downplayed.

Historical Roots
Classical theatre grew from the performative traditions of ancient Greek dramas and tragedies.

Greek playwrights such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, believed in the cathartic power of theatre to entertain while also evoking emotional and contemplative responses in their audiences.

Remaining largely unchanged until the Renaissance, a renewed interest in classical literature and arts also saw a revival in classical theatre. Its continued success is tied to one of history’s most famous playwrights – William Shakespeare whose works would come to epitomise this technique.

More...
https://www.theactorspulse.com.au/acting-techniques/classical-acting-exploring-the-acting-techniques-of-the-past/

***

Brecht’s alienation effect is about encouraging the audience to look at the familiar in new way: that is, to make the familiar unfamiliar or strange. When performing the alienation effect, the actor has to not only inhabit their character, but remember that they are simply an actor portraying that character. This duality, or double vision, has to come across during the actor’s performance.

Portraying to the audience that the actor is also merely an actor stops the audience from getting lost in the performance and finding cathartic release as they typically would from traditional theatre and self-indulgent acting. Instead, they are constantly reminded that this is a performance and, so, are alienated from the events on stage, constantly reminded they are watching an actor. So how would an actor go about acting in a Brechtian way? Well, Unwin writes in The Complete Brecht Toolkit that:

‘Brecht sometimes asked his actors in rehearsal to perform in the third person, prefacing each speech with ‘he said…she said….’ At other times, he made them highlight particularly important moments by adding ‘instead of responding like this, he responded like that.’ At other times he asked them to read the stage directions aloud. […] He wanted his actors to do two things at once: play the scene and provoke a discussion with the audience about its content.’

More...
https://alannah.co/2021/03/28/brechtian-acting-realism/

***

The biggest difference between acting for stage versus acting for screen is the location of the audience. In a theatre, the stage tends to be far away from the audience. Depending on the size of the theatre, the actors need to exaggerate their facial expressions and gestures so even the patrons in the back row can see what’s going on. For example, actors cannot express sadness with just a single tear onstage, since only the audience members closest to the stage will see it.

When acting on screen, however, the camera can get extremely close to the actor, which closes the gap between the audience and the actors. Because of the close-up perspective, actors on film must use more subtle, controlled, and natural expressions and gestures. Large, exaggerated “stage acting” can look awkward and silly on screen.

More...
https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/stage-vs-screen-a-comparison-of-acting-techniques