NYCPlaywrights June 15, 2024
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NYCPlaywrights
Jun 15, 2024, 6:11:56 PMJun 15
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Quannapowitt Players are seeking new plays for Suburban Holidays, our annual holiday-themed play festival and fundraiser. We are proud to be presenting our thirteenth year of this holiday tradition in 2024.
Play submissions should be between 10 and 20 minutes in length and focus on a holiday. All holidays are welcome! Past plays have focused on everything from Christmas to Arbor Day, and everything in between. Casts of varying sizes are welcome, as are shows that feature children. Please keep in mind that the festival is family friendly, so plays with excessive profanity or other inappropriate material are discouraged.
***
This is Sundog Theatre’s 23nd presentation of new and original, one-act plays about our favorite boats.
This year’s theme: SECRETS EXPOSED.
Plays can be comedies or dramas. However, humor is always appreciated.
-Original plays not previously produced or published, with a signed note affirming that.
-10-25 minutes in length and set on the Staten Island Ferry.
***
Sixth Annual International Human Rights Art Festival
The submission window is now open for performance work in any form - every discipline!
Work may not have been produced within the last year in NYC, or be scheduled in the next six months of December 15th, 2024.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** HOW GAY WAS SHAKESPEARE? ***
“The language of sexuality in some of the sonnets, which are definitely addressed to a male subject, leaves us in no doubt that Shakespeare was bisexual,” Dr Edmonsdson said.
“It’s become fashionable since the mid-1980s to think of Shakespeare as gay. But he was married and had children.
“Some of these sonnets are addressed to a female and others to a male. To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing.”
More...
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/shakespeare-bisexual-sexuality-evidence-plays-a9684056.html#
***
DOLLIMORE: Some of the known facts are that some of his sonnets, which are definitely love poems, are written to a man because they have a male pronoun in them. However, it’s very easy for us to interpret this left of centre, because the word ‘love’ meant very differently in Tudor England. Today, we have a very defined boundary between love and friendship, and for us, those two relationships are tangibly different, and we have all kinds of phraseology in the modern world to distinguish those things. We say about two people, “Oh, they’re just friends”, meaning they’re definitely not lovers. And for us, the boundary between a love relationship and a friendship relationship is absolutely cut and dried. We don’t hang around in ambiguous relationships, which have a bit [of] “might be friendship and might be love” for any length of time.
More...
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/was-shakespeare-gay/
***
A new debate has broken out between some of the world's top Shakespeare experts over whether the playwright's sonnets prove he was attracted to men.
Sir Brian Vickers, a visiting professor at University College London, began the row by condemning a book review which suggested Sonnet 116 appears in a 'primarily homosexual context'.
In a letter to the Times Literary Supplement, he said the claim was 'anachronistic' because scholars now accept there were forms of rhetoric that allowed men to express love without implying sexual attraction.
More...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2851355/Was-Shakespeare-gay-Row-breaks-experts-playwright-lines-sonnets-reveal-sexuality.html
***
If I told you William Shakespeare was in love with a transfeminine crossdreamer, would you believe me?
Some will tell you that gender variance is a recent phenomenon. It is not. Transgender and gender variant people have existed all the way back to Antiquity and beyond, and they have been found many different cultures. See, for instance, my post on the poem written by a European Medieval transgender woman and the article on transgender characters in the Indian Kama Sutra.
And yes, Shakespeare was in love with a male to female crossdreamer/gender variant person/transgender woman. Our modern terms do not translate easily into the context of the English Renaissance, and we cannot ask dead people about their identities, but I am pretty sure that at least one of these terms hits pretty close to home.
More...
https://www.crossdreamers.com/2020/08/william-shakespeares-love-for.html
***
At the end of the cycle (sonnets 127-154), a woman suddenly appears, the so-called ‘Dark Lady’. These poems are again surprising in their content. Shakespeare carps about the Dark Lady’s dishonesty, her reeking breath, promiscuity, venereal disease, and dark complexion (synonymous with ugliness in the Elizabethan period). The poet-narrator is nonetheless having sex with her; in sonnet 133, more remarkably, it transpires that the Fair Youth is sleeping with her too. In sonnet 144, Shakespeare makes it clear which of the two he prefers:
Two loves I have of comfort and despair
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To make a long story short, the sonnets appear to describe a bisexual love triangle where Shakespeare’s true beloved is the man.
More...
https://aeon.co/essays/shakespeares-sexuality-in-question-who-was-the-fair-youth
***
Joseph Sobran, in his Alias Shakespeare (1997), was not the first to point out Shakespeare’s homoeroticism, but he was the first to connect it to apparent homosexual behavior in the biography of the Earl of Oxford. Yet, despite Sobran, few Oxfordians seem to understand either its importance or how it supports Oxford’s case for the authorship. Orthodox Shakespeare scholars are just as hesitant. As Maurice Charney states, “The issues of the homoerotic in Shakespeare are hopelessly entwined in academic controversy. Everything seems to come back to the unanswerable question of Shakespeare’s own sexual orientation” (159). With Oxford as Shakespeare, “the question” is no longer unanswerable.
More...
https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/shakespeares-sexuality-affects-authorship-issue/
***
The play As You Like It contains one of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters: Rosalind. Traditionally read, Rosalind disguises herself as a man named Ganymede and retreats to the woods to find her father, the Duke Senior, and have her family restored to their original power back in the city. There are romantic interests involved, the wrestler Orlando and Rosalind have a blossoming relationship while she is disguised and it truly flourishes in the conclusion of the play when her father becomes the rightful duke and she can remove her disguise. This is the traditional read of the play and how it is generally performed on stage or in movies.
There are, however, many other ways of reading into the character of Rosalind and her interactions with others. As Catherine Belsey explains in her article “Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies”: “[Shakespeare’s comedies call into] question a set of relations between terms which purposes as inevitable an antithesis between masculine and feminine, men and women” (171). In As You Like It, Rosalind impersonates a man and completely succeeds. When she finally removes her disguise, no one is embarrassed or chastises her, which is how one would assume that, as a woman, she would have been reprimanded for her actions.
More...
https://shelbylueders.com/2015/06/16/getting-between-the-sheets-homoerotic-tendencies-in-play-and-production/
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Hudson Classical Theater Company, formerly known as Hudson Warehouse, begins its 2024 summer season at Riverside Park with a free alfresco revival of Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield's wacky sketch-comedy compression of Shakespeare's oeuvre, performed by three actors at a madcap pace. Susane Lee, who directed the show in 2013, is at the reins again.
Riverside Park, Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument
Riverside Dr at 89th St
www.hudsonclassicaltheatercompany.org/current.php
Hudson Classical Theater Company, formerly known as Hudson Warehouse, begins its 2024 summer season at Riverside Park with a free alfresco revival of Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield's wacky sketch-comedy compression of Shakespeare's oeuvre, performed by three actors at a madcap pace. Susane Lee, who directed the show in 2013, is at the reins again.
Riverside Park, Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument
Riverside Dr at 89th St
www.hudsonclassicaltheatercompany.org/current.php
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Quannapowitt Players are seeking new plays for Suburban Holidays, our annual holiday-themed play festival and fundraiser. We are proud to be presenting our thirteenth year of this holiday tradition in 2024.
Play submissions should be between 10 and 20 minutes in length and focus on a holiday. All holidays are welcome! Past plays have focused on everything from Christmas to Arbor Day, and everything in between. Casts of varying sizes are welcome, as are shows that feature children. Please keep in mind that the festival is family friendly, so plays with excessive profanity or other inappropriate material are discouraged.
***
This is Sundog Theatre’s 23nd presentation of new and original, one-act plays about our favorite boats.
This year’s theme: SECRETS EXPOSED.
Plays can be comedies or dramas. However, humor is always appreciated.
-Original plays not previously produced or published, with a signed note affirming that.
-10-25 minutes in length and set on the Staten Island Ferry.
***
Sixth Annual International Human Rights Art Festival
The submission window is now open for performance work in any form - every discipline!
Work may not have been produced within the last year in NYC, or be scheduled in the next six months of December 15th, 2024.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** HOW GAY WAS SHAKESPEARE? ***
“The language of sexuality in some of the sonnets, which are definitely addressed to a male subject, leaves us in no doubt that Shakespeare was bisexual,” Dr Edmonsdson said.
“It’s become fashionable since the mid-1980s to think of Shakespeare as gay. But he was married and had children.
“Some of these sonnets are addressed to a female and others to a male. To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing.”
More...
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/shakespeare-bisexual-sexuality-evidence-plays-a9684056.html#
***
DOLLIMORE: Some of the known facts are that some of his sonnets, which are definitely love poems, are written to a man because they have a male pronoun in them. However, it’s very easy for us to interpret this left of centre, because the word ‘love’ meant very differently in Tudor England. Today, we have a very defined boundary between love and friendship, and for us, those two relationships are tangibly different, and we have all kinds of phraseology in the modern world to distinguish those things. We say about two people, “Oh, they’re just friends”, meaning they’re definitely not lovers. And for us, the boundary between a love relationship and a friendship relationship is absolutely cut and dried. We don’t hang around in ambiguous relationships, which have a bit [of] “might be friendship and might be love” for any length of time.
More...
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/was-shakespeare-gay/
***
A new debate has broken out between some of the world's top Shakespeare experts over whether the playwright's sonnets prove he was attracted to men.
Sir Brian Vickers, a visiting professor at University College London, began the row by condemning a book review which suggested Sonnet 116 appears in a 'primarily homosexual context'.
In a letter to the Times Literary Supplement, he said the claim was 'anachronistic' because scholars now accept there were forms of rhetoric that allowed men to express love without implying sexual attraction.
More...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2851355/Was-Shakespeare-gay-Row-breaks-experts-playwright-lines-sonnets-reveal-sexuality.html
***
If I told you William Shakespeare was in love with a transfeminine crossdreamer, would you believe me?
Some will tell you that gender variance is a recent phenomenon. It is not. Transgender and gender variant people have existed all the way back to Antiquity and beyond, and they have been found many different cultures. See, for instance, my post on the poem written by a European Medieval transgender woman and the article on transgender characters in the Indian Kama Sutra.
And yes, Shakespeare was in love with a male to female crossdreamer/gender variant person/transgender woman. Our modern terms do not translate easily into the context of the English Renaissance, and we cannot ask dead people about their identities, but I am pretty sure that at least one of these terms hits pretty close to home.
More...
https://www.crossdreamers.com/2020/08/william-shakespeares-love-for.html
***
At the end of the cycle (sonnets 127-154), a woman suddenly appears, the so-called ‘Dark Lady’. These poems are again surprising in their content. Shakespeare carps about the Dark Lady’s dishonesty, her reeking breath, promiscuity, venereal disease, and dark complexion (synonymous with ugliness in the Elizabethan period). The poet-narrator is nonetheless having sex with her; in sonnet 133, more remarkably, it transpires that the Fair Youth is sleeping with her too. In sonnet 144, Shakespeare makes it clear which of the two he prefers:
Two loves I have of comfort and despair
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To make a long story short, the sonnets appear to describe a bisexual love triangle where Shakespeare’s true beloved is the man.
More...
https://aeon.co/essays/shakespeares-sexuality-in-question-who-was-the-fair-youth
***
Joseph Sobran, in his Alias Shakespeare (1997), was not the first to point out Shakespeare’s homoeroticism, but he was the first to connect it to apparent homosexual behavior in the biography of the Earl of Oxford. Yet, despite Sobran, few Oxfordians seem to understand either its importance or how it supports Oxford’s case for the authorship. Orthodox Shakespeare scholars are just as hesitant. As Maurice Charney states, “The issues of the homoerotic in Shakespeare are hopelessly entwined in academic controversy. Everything seems to come back to the unanswerable question of Shakespeare’s own sexual orientation” (159). With Oxford as Shakespeare, “the question” is no longer unanswerable.
More...
https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/shakespeares-sexuality-affects-authorship-issue/
***
The play As You Like It contains one of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters: Rosalind. Traditionally read, Rosalind disguises herself as a man named Ganymede and retreats to the woods to find her father, the Duke Senior, and have her family restored to their original power back in the city. There are romantic interests involved, the wrestler Orlando and Rosalind have a blossoming relationship while she is disguised and it truly flourishes in the conclusion of the play when her father becomes the rightful duke and she can remove her disguise. This is the traditional read of the play and how it is generally performed on stage or in movies.
There are, however, many other ways of reading into the character of Rosalind and her interactions with others. As Catherine Belsey explains in her article “Disrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies”: “[Shakespeare’s comedies call into] question a set of relations between terms which purposes as inevitable an antithesis between masculine and feminine, men and women” (171). In As You Like It, Rosalind impersonates a man and completely succeeds. When she finally removes her disguise, no one is embarrassed or chastises her, which is how one would assume that, as a woman, she would have been reprimanded for her actions.
More...
https://shelbylueders.com/2015/06/16/getting-between-the-sheets-homoerotic-tendencies-in-play-and-production/
***
Gaskell Good evening all, my love. I have returned safe from the Low Countries.
(she hurriedly hides the book she is reading under some knitting and starts whistling) What are thou reading, fair one?
Wife Oh, 'tis nothing, husband.
Gaskell I can see 'tis something.
Wife 'Tis one of Shakespeare's latest works.
(Gaskell picks up the book and reads the title.)
Gaskell Oh ...'Gay Boys in Bondage' What, is't - tragedy? Comedy?
Wife 'Tis a... er... 'tis a story of a man's great love for his... fellow men.
Gaskell How fortunate we are indeed to have such a poet on these shores.
Wife 'Tis one of Shakespeare's latest works.
(Gaskell picks up the book and reads the title.)
Gaskell Oh ...'Gay Boys in Bondage' What, is't - tragedy? Comedy?
Wife 'Tis a... er... 'tis a story of a man's great love for his... fellow men.
Gaskell How fortunate we are indeed to have such a poet on these shores.
(Monty Python)
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