Prologue

I'm just going to start this blog out with a fair warning: there are going to be a LOT of musical theatre puns, references, and general wordplay that appear within this blog. Each blog title is also going to be the lyrics from a song within the musical theatre cannon because, frankly, coming up with them gives me something mindless to do at the end of a long day's work. If all of this upcoming theatre trivia and neediness is going to be too much for you to handle, I would suggest consulting your physician in order to make sure that you are put on a round of medication that will allow you to keep up with the general goings on of my life, since that's probably the reason that most of you are currently reading this blog.

However, if you are one of the millions of Americans who are joining us mid-season because of word of mouth., I'll just I've you a brief overview: I was selected to work with New York Stage and Film Company as a Stage Management (SM) Intern for the summer. It is a great honor and privilege to have been selected for this position as hundreds of people applied for the program, and only five of us were selected as SM Interns. I'm sure that you are all wondering "what on God's green earth is New York Stage and Film (henceforward referred to as NYSAF)? So that you don't have to go to the heinous trouble of opening another web browsing window or, God forbid, a new tab in your current browser, I took the liberty of copying and pasting an abbreviated version of the "About Us" section of the NYSAF website:


For 30 years, SAF has played a major role in the development of new plays for the American theater, provided a home for a diverse group of artists free from critical and commercial pressures, and has established itself as a vital cultural institution for residents of the New York metropolitan region...

The cornerstone of SAF’s artistic programming is the Powerhouse Season, an eight-week residency and partnership with Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, where each summer more than two hundred and fifty professional playwrights, directors, actors, and designers, as well as close to fifty student interns, and fifty student apprentices live and work together.  During the Powerhouse Season, SAF is deliberately flexible with its production resources and with its three producing venues, to meet the specific needs of artists and projects. The professional artists present mainstage productions with full technical support, as well as workshops and readings of works in progress, all of which are open to the public.  The Powerhouse Apprentice Program is a key part of our activities – a rigorous, pre-professional, hands-on experience for a new generation of theater artists.  The Apprentice Company take conservatory-level courses taught by resident faculty, attend master classes led by distinguished artists, and perform in their own season of classic and original works...

We are a vital incubator for artists and their work, a catalyst for new stories that go on to theaters across the country.  The Tony Award-winning plays Tru (Jay Presson Allen) and Side Man (Warren Leight) received premiere productions with SAF, and our  audiences have seen nearly all of John Patrick Shanley’s works in development, including the first public reading of his Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play Doubt and most recently the world premiere production of The Danish Widow. Other recent highlights include the world premiere of Richard Greenberg’s The Babylon Line and a workshop of Beth Henley’s Laugh.

At least nine projects developed recently by SAF will have major New York City, regional, and international productions during 2014/2015, including: The Fortress of Solitude, by Michael Friedman and Itamar Moses (Public Theater & Dallas Theater Center); Found, book by Hunter Bell & Lee Overtree, music and original lyrics by Eli Bolin (Atlantic Theater Company); The Invisible Hand, by Ayad Akhtar (New York Theatre Workshop); Brooklynite, by Michael Mayer and Peter Lerman  (Vineyard Theater); Bright Star by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell (Old Globe Theater); and Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Public Theater).

Several other recent projects that trace their developmental roots to SAF include Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812; Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian; the Broadway productions of Seminar (Theresa Rebeck), A Steady Rain (Keith Huff), and American Idiot; as well as The House That Will Not Stand (Marcus Gardley), Murder Ballad (Juliana Nash/Julia Jordan), The Twenty-Seventh Man (Nathan Englander), The Power of Duff (Stephen Belber), Emotional Creature (Eve Ensler), and Jennifer Westfeldt’s feature film Friends with Kids.

SAF has supported the development and work of writers such as Jon Robin Baitz, Lee Blessing, Eric Bogosian, The Debate Society, David Marshall Grant, Zoe Kazan, David Lindsay-Abaire, Joanna Murray-Smith, Eric Overmyer, Steven Sater, Duncan Sheik, Nicky Silver, and Ruby Rae Spiegel, and directors including Joe Mantello, Michael Mayer, Pam MacKinnon, Leigh Silverman, Alex Timbers, and Kate Whoriskey.


Okay. I know that was a LOT of information, but I gifted that it was the most efficient way of informing all of you about this wonderful organization.

Essentially, what I am hoping to accomplish this blog is to most efficiently keep everyone up-to-date with my various projects and shows that I will be working on during my internship. This is particularly exciting because all of the shows that we are working on are in various stages of the play development process, meaning that they could be extremely different pieces of theatre two years from now. 

Okay, I lied. What I REALLY hope to accomplish from this blog is a book deal that will eventually get me a movie deal where I will write the screenplay and the film will be directed by Nancy Meyers of The Parent Trap fame...Kidding.

Also, I should have warned you all that there will be a great deal of sarcasm that is laced within the writings of this blog. That being said...Here we go!