NYCPlaywrights March 18, 2023
NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
African Venus - The Play
The extraordinary story of a beautiful African Woman captured in a sculpture in 1851 has never been told.
Presented by Shades of Truth Theatre & New Heritage Theatre Group
Staged Reading Series 2022-2023
https://www.shadesoftruththeatre.com
Saturday, March 25 · 6:30 - 9:30pm EDT
The Salvation Army Harlem Temple Corps Community Center 540 Lenox Avenue New York, NY 10037
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/african-venus-the-play-tickets-543165912867?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** THE NEGOTIATING STAGE ***
STRUGGLING WITH A DRAFT? STUDY PLAYWRITING WITH THE MAN WHO WROTE THE BOOK! Award-winning playwright, Jeffrey Sweet has a few places open in his weekly playwriting class. This is your opportunity to work one-to-one with the man who wrote “The Dramatists Toolkit”, the best-selling book on playwriting. Sessions begin on the first Sunday of each month and cost $140 per month. That’s just $35 per class.
Get ONE FREE LESSON here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNIQCSMY5tI&t=1s&ab_channel=JeffreySweet
SIGN UP for the next session here: www.thenegotiatingstage.com/classes
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
We accept fiction, pop (genre) fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, dramatic works, experimental, and visual art. We can’t wait to see your best pieces! Stonecoast Review offers feedback on 10% of declined submissions. Contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the issue in which their work appears. Stonecoast Review acquires First Serial Rights and First Electronic Rights for all work published in the journal. Rights revert to the author upon publication.
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The Overtime Theater in San Antonio, Texas is looking for unproduced winter holiday plays (ie: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, etc.). The Overtime Theater will consider traditional, quirky, or non-traditional holiday tales. We have a history for offbeat and unique productions, so all ideas will be considered.
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Teatri Riflessi International Short Play Festival is a festival centred on a core event: a short play competition, no matter the genre: theatre, dance, or performance. The competition aims at promoting the expression of contemporary languages, hinging on the form of short plays—playlets and short pieces—encouraging dialogues and exchange between the performing arts and various participants—geographically, culturally, and artistically diverse.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** GREATER DIONYSIA ***
The Festival of Dionysus, otherwise known as the “Greater Dionysia” was the theatrical event of the year in 5th century Athens. Every year in the spring (around our March) playwrights would compete to entertain the masses of Athenian citizenry. As many as 16,000 Athenian citizens (this excludes women, slaves, metoioi, and metics) would file into the amphitheater to view the newest plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and others.
Although the plays changed, this festival of renewal would remain the same. At the start a huge procession, or pompe, would usher the sacred statue of Dionysus from outside the city limits to the theater of Dionysus, located near the Acropolis. Dithyrambs would be sung by choruses and giant phalloi would be carried along the procession route in honor to Dionysus. This would all be accompanied by generous amounts of wine and overall lechery.
More...
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7411.html
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The Greeks didn’t just invent theatre – they invented the performance space as well. The occasion was a religious celebration that honored Dionysus, the patron god of fertility and wine. The celebrants were dithyrambic singers and dancers, and they came to Athens in the late 6th century BCE to perform at The City Dionysia, a festival honoring the god, Dionysus. The performance space was probably little more than a circle of packed earth similar to the threshing floors used to harvest wheat. [Bieber, p. 54]. An assembled audience sat on a scaffolding of temporary wooden bleachers. Before the end of the 6th century, the dancers moved to the Sacred Precinct of Dionysus, and the southern slope of the Acropolis became the designated viewing area. The Greeks called this a theatron (the seeing place).
Over time, wooden plank seating became tiers of carved stone benches, and the flat, earthen orchestra was backed by a stage with increasingly elaborate dressings. The ever-increasing size and complexity of the Greek stage is a testament to the popularity of a performance art that combined entertainment with history, religion, and philosophy.
More...
https://ancienttheatrearchive.com/theatre/athens-dionysos/
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The dithyramb (Dithyrambus, gr. Dithyrambos) was originally an ancient Greek hymn sung to the god Dionysus. Its wild and ecstatic character was often contrasted with that of the paean: just as Paean was both a hymn to and a title of Apollo, Dithyrambos was also a title of Dionysus as well as a song in his honor. According to Aristotle, the dithyramb was the origin of the Ancient Greek theatre. Richard Bentley writes that the Dithyramb was an old Bacchic Hymn and too old to be dated.
Dithyrambs were sung by a Greek chorus of up to 50 men or boys dancing in circular formation (there is no certain evidence that they may have originally been dressed as satyrs) and probably accompanied by the aulos. They would normally relate some incident in the life of Dionysus. The leader of the chorus later became the solo protagonist, with lyrical interchanges taking place between him and the rest of the chorus.
More...
https://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/LX/en/Dithyramb.html
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Ancient Greek Theatre: The City Dionysia
30-minute lecture on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysld98_n-ak
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Imagine you are a tragic poet named Agathocles and you want to put on a tragedy in Athens at the festival of the greater Dionysia (the end of March). Here are the steps you would follow to put on the play.
1. Decide what plays you want to stage.
You first have to decide what plays you want to put on. Tragic poets normally presented their plays in groups of four: three tragedies and a satyr play (a humorous treatment of a mythological theme). Some tragic poets, like Aeschylus, presented their plays as part of a connected trilogy + satyr play, e.g. the Oresteia, which dealt with successive stages in the fall of the house of Atreus (the Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides), and the satyr play Proteus (now lost). Other tragic poets often presented three tragedies and a satyr play which were unconnected thematically, e.g. Euripides, who in 431 BC presented the Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys, and Theristae (the latter three plays have been lost). After thinking for a while, you decide you want to write four plays based on ancient stories: the tragedies Achilles, Helen, and Theseus, and a satyr play called the Amazons. You write up a synopsis of the plot of each play.
2. Submit your proposal to the archon eponymos.
Since plays were publically funded in Athens, you next submit your proposal to a polis official called the archon eponymos, (called "eponymos" because the year he served as archon was named after him, e.g., "in the year so-and-so was archon at Athens..."). This official was responsible for, among other things, regulating religious festivals including the Greater Dionysia. You and all of the other poets who wish to present plays at the next Greater Dionysia submit proposals, and the archon decides which three poets will get funding (out of the larger number who have submitted proposals). You submit your proposal and wait...some time later, you find out it is accepted. Congratulations! You don't celebrate too long, though, because you also find out the other two poets who are funded this year are Sophocles and Euripides. Euripides has his ups and downs, but Sophocles' plays rarely fail to get first prize. Oh Zeus!
More...
https://www.reed.edu/humanities/110Tech/staging.html
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Sophocles, the son of a wealthy arms manufacturer, lwas born probably in 496 B.C.E. in the deme Colonus near Athens. Of all the ancient playwrights, he scored the most wins in dramatic competitions, and won the most important dramatic festival, the City Dionysia, an unmatched 18 times. He received an education in music, athletics, and dancing, and as a boy of fifteen was chosen to lead the paean (hymn of praise) sung by the chorus of boys after the victory of Salamis. Like most of the ancient playwrights, he acted in the plays he wrote. He showed his musical skill in public, when he played the blind singer Thamyris in his drama of the same name, and played the cithara with such success that he was painted as Thamyris with the cithara in the famous Stoa Poecile ("painted colonnade"), a prominent gathering place in ancient Athens.
More...
https://www2.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/tragedy/index.php?page=sophocles
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Oedipus at Colonus
The second play sequentially of Sophocles' Theban tetralogy but written last and produced at the Dionysia posthumously.
The play picks up years after the events of Oedipus Rex, with the now blind and beggarly Oedipus and his daughter Antigone arriving at Colonus. They stop to rest in a sacred grove and are confronted by citizens concerned for the sanctity of the place and fearful of Oedipus' curse. Oedipus knows this as a sign of his imminent death and asks for an audience with Theseus, the king of Athens.
Ismene, Oedipus' other daughter, arrives bearing news of the succession crisis in Thebes, where their younger brother Eteocles has ousted the older Polyneices, who intends to wage civil war as a result. Oedipus' favour is central to the success of the war, but in bitterness he chooses to give his favour to the people of Colonus rather than his sons. Theseus gratefully accepts his blessing and declares him a citizen of Athens.
More...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Theatre/OedipusAtColonus
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THE THEBAN PLAYS available for free online
https://ia600807.us.archive.org/34/items/threethebanplays01soph_0/threethebanplays01soph_0.pdf