NYCPlaywrights April 12, 2025
26 views
Skip to first unread message
NYCPlaywrights
Apr 12, 2025, 5:05:10 PMApr 12
to NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR
Adapted and Directed by Nick Gabriel, Stage Manager Kevin Wang
With Meridian Anastasia, Sophia Chacon, Feras Halabi, Finn Mackimmie, Isabella Kaplan, Michael Reese Shald, Sam Trott, Kevin Wang
This original adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR was originally conceived by author and director Nick Gabriel at the height of the CoVID-19 pandemic and further developed in response to the #metoo movement. Gabriel has recreated a version of this metatheatrical, Existentialist classic that is faithful to Pirandello’s original vision, while contemporizing the circumstances to reflect the current cultural zeitgeist.
Wednesday, May 14
7:30 - 8:45pm EDT
Doors at 7pm
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo' at NYU
24 W 12 Street New York, NY 10003
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/six-characters-in-search-of-an-author-tickets-1308234156579?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
As a part of our 10th annual season, the Barr Hill Players (BHP) will present a staged reading of new works by emerging playwrights. Selected scripts will be workshopped by our ensemble of acting fellows during the BHP summer intensive in Greensboro, VT, then presented for a developmental staged reading at La MaMa ETC Galleria in New York City on August 16, 2025.
***
Westchester Civic Theater (WCT) is holding another round of our 8x10 Play Festival. It will include 8, ten-minute scripts that are new. We hope one (or more) will be written by you!
WHO KILLED THE DIRECTOR?
Your job as the writer is to come up with a 10 min play using the characters provided in the opening as well as any other characters you feel you may want to add to enhance the play and solve the crime as to who killed the director and why. One catch, the opening of your play must have a character start your play by saying, "This is what happened."
***
Golden Thread Productions is seeking short plays for consideration in ReOrient Festival of Short Plays 2026. ReOrient Festival showcases the diversity of voices and aesthetics from the Middle East and its worldwide diaspora in a curated festival of short plays produced biennially in San Francisco.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** NICHOLS AND MAY ***
SAM WASSON (writer): Mike [Nichols] was playing Jean the valet in a production of Miss Julie, and Mike was declaiming at the foot of the stage, overacting, and there in the third row was this beautiful girl staring at him with contempt. He immediately respected her for hating him. A day later he picked up the review in the newspaper, and to his incredible shock, he got a rave. [Paul] Sills, who directed the show, came up to him, and said, “Mike, I want you to meet the only other person on campus who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May.” She looked over Mike’s shoulder at the rave and went, “Ha!” and walked off. It’s the beginning of a romantic comedy.
Then, of course, Mike was coming back from the radio station one day, and he sees Elaine on a bench in a train station reading a magazine. He goes up to her and says, “May I seet down?” He starts improvising as a spy, and she’s immediately there with him, and starts improvising back: “If you veesh.” They improvised all the way back to Elaine’s apartment.
JANET COLEMAN (writer): She served him a cream-cheese-and-olive sandwich—you can imagine what kind of cook she must have been. I heard they did sleep together. They did it one time, and that was it. But he might have been madly in love with her. Everyone was.
ANDREW DUNCAN (actor): I think it was Eugene Troobnick who said to me, “Don’t fall for her. Don’t ask her out and try to go to bed with her, because she’s a killer. She’s a ball-cutter, a castrater.” I figured from the way he talked she had done some damage to him.
ALLAUDIN MATHIEU (composer): I was both sexually attracted to Elaine and afraid of her. She was over the top, but with great conviction. The only thing to say about everything she did was, That’s Elaine. I knew her when she was young and there was no stopping her. Turns out there was.
More...
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/how-mike-nichols-met-elaine-may
***
The New Yorker 1961:
However, describing Nichols and May as solo performers is beside the point, for the essence of the act is that it is a duet. If there is a difference in kind between the contributions of the two, it is that Nichols, as the one less likely to lose himself in what he is doing, is the one more likely to know when the moment has come to change the direction of a scene or to end it. Certainly it is Nichols who has taken day-by-day command of the team’s career. Alexander H. Cohen, the producer of “An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May,” estimates that he has a telephone conversation about business with Miss May every ten or twelve days and that he has one with Nichols three or four times every day. “Mike’s middle name is Emergency,” Cohen, who has limitless affection for the eccentricities of actors in general and for those of Nichols and May in particular, said not long ago. “He may call me at home from his dressing room during intermission to tell me the theatre is ‘in total darkness,’ and when I check with the stage manager I’ll find that one bulb burned out up on the bridge and has already been replaced.”
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR
Adapted and Directed by Nick Gabriel, Stage Manager Kevin Wang
With Meridian Anastasia, Sophia Chacon, Feras Halabi, Finn Mackimmie, Isabella Kaplan, Michael Reese Shald, Sam Trott, Kevin Wang
This original adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR was originally conceived by author and director Nick Gabriel at the height of the CoVID-19 pandemic and further developed in response to the #metoo movement. Gabriel has recreated a version of this metatheatrical, Existentialist classic that is faithful to Pirandello’s original vision, while contemporizing the circumstances to reflect the current cultural zeitgeist.
Wednesday, May 14
7:30 - 8:45pm EDT
Doors at 7pm
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo' at NYU
24 W 12 Street New York, NY 10003
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/six-characters-in-search-of-an-author-tickets-1308234156579?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
As a part of our 10th annual season, the Barr Hill Players (BHP) will present a staged reading of new works by emerging playwrights. Selected scripts will be workshopped by our ensemble of acting fellows during the BHP summer intensive in Greensboro, VT, then presented for a developmental staged reading at La MaMa ETC Galleria in New York City on August 16, 2025.
***
Westchester Civic Theater (WCT) is holding another round of our 8x10 Play Festival. It will include 8, ten-minute scripts that are new. We hope one (or more) will be written by you!
WHO KILLED THE DIRECTOR?
Your job as the writer is to come up with a 10 min play using the characters provided in the opening as well as any other characters you feel you may want to add to enhance the play and solve the crime as to who killed the director and why. One catch, the opening of your play must have a character start your play by saying, "This is what happened."
***
Golden Thread Productions is seeking short plays for consideration in ReOrient Festival of Short Plays 2026. ReOrient Festival showcases the diversity of voices and aesthetics from the Middle East and its worldwide diaspora in a curated festival of short plays produced biennially in San Francisco.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** NICHOLS AND MAY ***
SAM WASSON (writer): Mike [Nichols] was playing Jean the valet in a production of Miss Julie, and Mike was declaiming at the foot of the stage, overacting, and there in the third row was this beautiful girl staring at him with contempt. He immediately respected her for hating him. A day later he picked up the review in the newspaper, and to his incredible shock, he got a rave. [Paul] Sills, who directed the show, came up to him, and said, “Mike, I want you to meet the only other person on campus who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May.” She looked over Mike’s shoulder at the rave and went, “Ha!” and walked off. It’s the beginning of a romantic comedy.
Then, of course, Mike was coming back from the radio station one day, and he sees Elaine on a bench in a train station reading a magazine. He goes up to her and says, “May I seet down?” He starts improvising as a spy, and she’s immediately there with him, and starts improvising back: “If you veesh.” They improvised all the way back to Elaine’s apartment.
JANET COLEMAN (writer): She served him a cream-cheese-and-olive sandwich—you can imagine what kind of cook she must have been. I heard they did sleep together. They did it one time, and that was it. But he might have been madly in love with her. Everyone was.
ANDREW DUNCAN (actor): I think it was Eugene Troobnick who said to me, “Don’t fall for her. Don’t ask her out and try to go to bed with her, because she’s a killer. She’s a ball-cutter, a castrater.” I figured from the way he talked she had done some damage to him.
ALLAUDIN MATHIEU (composer): I was both sexually attracted to Elaine and afraid of her. She was over the top, but with great conviction. The only thing to say about everything she did was, That’s Elaine. I knew her when she was young and there was no stopping her. Turns out there was.
More...
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/how-mike-nichols-met-elaine-may
***
The New Yorker 1961:
However, describing Nichols and May as solo performers is beside the point, for the essence of the act is that it is a duet. If there is a difference in kind between the contributions of the two, it is that Nichols, as the one less likely to lose himself in what he is doing, is the one more likely to know when the moment has come to change the direction of a scene or to end it. Certainly it is Nichols who has taken day-by-day command of the team’s career. Alexander H. Cohen, the producer of “An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May,” estimates that he has a telephone conversation about business with Miss May every ten or twelve days and that he has one with Nichols three or four times every day. “Mike’s middle name is Emergency,” Cohen, who has limitless affection for the eccentricities of actors in general and for those of Nichols and May in particular, said not long ago. “He may call me at home from his dressing room during intermission to tell me the theatre is ‘in total darkness,’ and when I check with the stage manager I’ll find that one bulb burned out up on the bridge and has already been replaced.”
The sort of thing that exasperates Miss May professionally is of a different order, which she recently summarized by imagining a situation in which the team appears on a television show with Dinah Shore. The hypothetical script calls for Miss Shore and Miss May to exchange the customary inconsequences before the team goes into its act, with Miss Shore beginning by saying, “Why, Elaine, you’re wearing the same dress I am.” Miss May finds it psychologically impossible to make any reply but “Certainly, didn’t you see it at dress rehearsal?,” and her part of the badinage is suppressed. Because Miss May’s imagination teems with mortifying predicaments like that, Nichols handles most of the public chitchat for the pair.
More...
https://archive.ph/FXZG7
***
Three theatre groups have joined together to present a delightful, well conceived evening of two one-act plays highlighting the talents of veteran actresses. Both plays premiered in 1998, one in the U.S. and one in Britain, and both examine a power relationship that turns on its head. The two plays – The Way of All Fish by Elaine May and Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet by Alan Bennett – are not only enjoyable in themselves but work well as a pair, just as the best double-bills should.
The Way of All Fish, the first play of the evening, finds us in the office of Miss Asquith (Elva Mai Hoover), a top business executive in Manhattan. After Asquith chides her skittish secretary Miss Riverton (Tracy Rankin) about throwing out her exercise bands, Asquith discovers that she has no engagement for the evening and makes an about-face towards Riverton by suggesting they two order in take-out and dine together that evening. Drinking wine on empty stomachs as they wait for the order to arrive, the self-absorbed Asquith loosens up and makes an attempt to get to know the woman who has been working for her. Suggesting Riverton say whatever pops into her head, Riverton reveals that her dream since childhood is to be famous. Knowing, however, that she has no special skills, she realized the easiest way to achieve lasting fame was to kill someone famous. Fleeting fame could still be achieved by killing someone rich. As Riverton continues, Asquith becomes increasingly ill at ease.
More...
http://www.stage-door.com/Theatre/2013/Entries/2013/6/21_The_Way_of_All_Fish___Miss_Fozzard_Finds_Her_Feet.html
***
Shawn, who writes dark, profane plays and acts in cuddlesome movie roles (he's the voice of Rex the dinosaur in "Toy Story" and the teen-baffled teacher in "Clueless"), worked on the play for five years with Nichols in mind--or rather in ear. "For some uncanny reason," says Shawn, "I'd lie in bed at night and read it to myself in his voice." When Shawn and English playwright-director David Hare invited Nichols to do the play, he consulted with his wife, Diane Sawyer, and with Elaine May, who both advised him to do it. "I always ask Elaine to read stuff I'm going to do," says Nichols. "I once asked her opinion of a certain script. We went to an Italian restaurant, and before she told me what she thought I told her I was doing the movie. `You've accepted it?' she said. `Well, yes,' I said. And she fainted, right there in the restaurant. I had to take her home and put cold compresses on her forehead. She helped me to get out of the movie."
The only other time he acted in a play was with May in a 1980 production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. "I never liked acting because I preferred being a daddy to being a baby," says Nichols. "But with Wally's play I liked being a baby. I just did what David told me. I trust him absolutely." For his part, Hare says that Nichols was "amazing, natural and nervous. He made that work for him. You could ask him to do anything and he'd do it." The brilliant and beautiful Miranda Richardson (who is herself amazing in Robert Altman's upcoming "Kansas City") recalls Nichols saying, " `I don't know what I'm doing.' But his mind is so sharp, you'd see it mesh perfectly with the character of Jack."
More...
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA18237528&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00289604&p=HRCA&sw=w&userGroupName=nysl_oweb&aty=ip
***
Elaine May became famous at twenty-five and rich soon thereafter, but it took her another decade to figure out what to do with her life, by which point she was too far ahead of her time to fit in with it. In the mid-nineteen-fifties, May formed a duo with Mike Nichols that brought improv comedy out of the night clubs and into the forefront of pop culture, helping to codify the art form and to establish it as the institution it is today. But, as significant and as delightful as that work is, May stayed with it only briefly—barely half a decade. Professionally, she was at loose ends through most of the sixties, and at risk of being remembered as fondly and dimly as most topical humorists of past eras. Then, in 1969, she became a movie director and proved, even in her first feature, to be one of the most original filmmakers to have emerged in the so-called New Hollywood. Yet her cinematic legacy has been cruelly defined for the general public not by the greatness of her films but by the undeserved ignominy of the fourth and most recent of them: “Ishtar,” from 1987, which was a box-office flop and was obtusely adjudged by many critics as an artistic disaster and a historic folly, thus killing her directorial career.
May’s life has had two and a half acts—comedy, directing, and everything since—and it can be hard to figure out what they have to do with one another or what to do during the long intermissions. Among the many merits of “Miss May Does Not Exist,” a deeply researched, psychologically astute new biography of May by Carrie Courogen, is that the author sees continuities and patterns in a career that is unified, above all, by the force of May’s character. Courogen also assesses May’s fortunes in the light of social history, giving a detailed account of the many obstacles that May, as a woman, faced in the American entertainment industry of the late fifties and early sixties—a time of few female standup comedians or playwrights and no female movie directors working in Hollywood. The book is written with a brash literary verve that feels authentic to its subject, and it does justice both to May’s mighty artistry and to the complex fabric of her life, linking them persuasively while resisting facile correlations between her personal concerns and her blazing inspirations.
More...
https://archive.ph/y780W
***
Everyone is inspired to do their best work, and eventually, they discover the show’s story: Arthur and the knights are forced to create a Broadway show, with Lancelot coming out as gay. As Idle notes, “It’s not just the movie”; it is now its own creation, with new characters, songs, and a plot. Seeing the show evolve, especially with a song like “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway” (which Nichols calls “The Jew Song”), is fascinating.
Idle also records the tense and sad moments. In one early meeting, Nichols makes a speech that confuses Idle and, as he later reflects, puts him back in boarding school, facing hostile teachers. It takes several conversations and the possibility of both Idle and Nichols leaving the project before they reach an understanding. In Chicago previews, Nichols cuts “The Cow Song.” Some of the cast protest, one behaving boorishly until Nichols talks with him.
More...
https://dctheaterarts.org/2024/12/03/spamalot-diaries-spills-how-the-hilarious-hit-happened-book-review/
***
"Telephone" with Mike Nichols and Elaine May | Omnibus With Alistair Cooke
Excerpt: Comedy Duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May present 'Telephone' - A man panics as he attempts to get a telephone number from Information but then loses his paid dime in the process. From the Omnibus special episode 'Suburban Revue'.
Date aired - January 14, 1958, NBC - Mike Nichols, Elaine May
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J2A3CmfCxU
More...
https://archive.ph/FXZG7
***
Three theatre groups have joined together to present a delightful, well conceived evening of two one-act plays highlighting the talents of veteran actresses. Both plays premiered in 1998, one in the U.S. and one in Britain, and both examine a power relationship that turns on its head. The two plays – The Way of All Fish by Elaine May and Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet by Alan Bennett – are not only enjoyable in themselves but work well as a pair, just as the best double-bills should.
The Way of All Fish, the first play of the evening, finds us in the office of Miss Asquith (Elva Mai Hoover), a top business executive in Manhattan. After Asquith chides her skittish secretary Miss Riverton (Tracy Rankin) about throwing out her exercise bands, Asquith discovers that she has no engagement for the evening and makes an about-face towards Riverton by suggesting they two order in take-out and dine together that evening. Drinking wine on empty stomachs as they wait for the order to arrive, the self-absorbed Asquith loosens up and makes an attempt to get to know the woman who has been working for her. Suggesting Riverton say whatever pops into her head, Riverton reveals that her dream since childhood is to be famous. Knowing, however, that she has no special skills, she realized the easiest way to achieve lasting fame was to kill someone famous. Fleeting fame could still be achieved by killing someone rich. As Riverton continues, Asquith becomes increasingly ill at ease.
More...
http://www.stage-door.com/Theatre/2013/Entries/2013/6/21_The_Way_of_All_Fish___Miss_Fozzard_Finds_Her_Feet.html
***
Shawn, who writes dark, profane plays and acts in cuddlesome movie roles (he's the voice of Rex the dinosaur in "Toy Story" and the teen-baffled teacher in "Clueless"), worked on the play for five years with Nichols in mind--or rather in ear. "For some uncanny reason," says Shawn, "I'd lie in bed at night and read it to myself in his voice." When Shawn and English playwright-director David Hare invited Nichols to do the play, he consulted with his wife, Diane Sawyer, and with Elaine May, who both advised him to do it. "I always ask Elaine to read stuff I'm going to do," says Nichols. "I once asked her opinion of a certain script. We went to an Italian restaurant, and before she told me what she thought I told her I was doing the movie. `You've accepted it?' she said. `Well, yes,' I said. And she fainted, right there in the restaurant. I had to take her home and put cold compresses on her forehead. She helped me to get out of the movie."
The only other time he acted in a play was with May in a 1980 production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. "I never liked acting because I preferred being a daddy to being a baby," says Nichols. "But with Wally's play I liked being a baby. I just did what David told me. I trust him absolutely." For his part, Hare says that Nichols was "amazing, natural and nervous. He made that work for him. You could ask him to do anything and he'd do it." The brilliant and beautiful Miranda Richardson (who is herself amazing in Robert Altman's upcoming "Kansas City") recalls Nichols saying, " `I don't know what I'm doing.' But his mind is so sharp, you'd see it mesh perfectly with the character of Jack."
More...
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA18237528&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00289604&p=HRCA&sw=w&userGroupName=nysl_oweb&aty=ip
***
Elaine May became famous at twenty-five and rich soon thereafter, but it took her another decade to figure out what to do with her life, by which point she was too far ahead of her time to fit in with it. In the mid-nineteen-fifties, May formed a duo with Mike Nichols that brought improv comedy out of the night clubs and into the forefront of pop culture, helping to codify the art form and to establish it as the institution it is today. But, as significant and as delightful as that work is, May stayed with it only briefly—barely half a decade. Professionally, she was at loose ends through most of the sixties, and at risk of being remembered as fondly and dimly as most topical humorists of past eras. Then, in 1969, she became a movie director and proved, even in her first feature, to be one of the most original filmmakers to have emerged in the so-called New Hollywood. Yet her cinematic legacy has been cruelly defined for the general public not by the greatness of her films but by the undeserved ignominy of the fourth and most recent of them: “Ishtar,” from 1987, which was a box-office flop and was obtusely adjudged by many critics as an artistic disaster and a historic folly, thus killing her directorial career.
May’s life has had two and a half acts—comedy, directing, and everything since—and it can be hard to figure out what they have to do with one another or what to do during the long intermissions. Among the many merits of “Miss May Does Not Exist,” a deeply researched, psychologically astute new biography of May by Carrie Courogen, is that the author sees continuities and patterns in a career that is unified, above all, by the force of May’s character. Courogen also assesses May’s fortunes in the light of social history, giving a detailed account of the many obstacles that May, as a woman, faced in the American entertainment industry of the late fifties and early sixties—a time of few female standup comedians or playwrights and no female movie directors working in Hollywood. The book is written with a brash literary verve that feels authentic to its subject, and it does justice both to May’s mighty artistry and to the complex fabric of her life, linking them persuasively while resisting facile correlations between her personal concerns and her blazing inspirations.
More...
https://archive.ph/y780W
***
Everyone is inspired to do their best work, and eventually, they discover the show’s story: Arthur and the knights are forced to create a Broadway show, with Lancelot coming out as gay. As Idle notes, “It’s not just the movie”; it is now its own creation, with new characters, songs, and a plot. Seeing the show evolve, especially with a song like “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway” (which Nichols calls “The Jew Song”), is fascinating.
Idle also records the tense and sad moments. In one early meeting, Nichols makes a speech that confuses Idle and, as he later reflects, puts him back in boarding school, facing hostile teachers. It takes several conversations and the possibility of both Idle and Nichols leaving the project before they reach an understanding. In Chicago previews, Nichols cuts “The Cow Song.” Some of the cast protest, one behaving boorishly until Nichols talks with him.
More...
https://dctheaterarts.org/2024/12/03/spamalot-diaries-spills-how-the-hilarious-hit-happened-book-review/
***
"Telephone" with Mike Nichols and Elaine May | Omnibus With Alistair Cooke
Excerpt: Comedy Duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May present 'Telephone' - A man panics as he attempts to get a telephone number from Information but then loses his paid dime in the process. From the Omnibus special episode 'Suburban Revue'.
Date aired - January 14, 1958, NBC - Mike Nichols, Elaine May
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J2A3CmfCxU
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages