Baltimore playwrights

I loved these stories I would hear while visiting with patients and their loved ones. There were people who told me stories of lives that were glamorous.

One evening, driving home from the internship, I called my wife. I think they want to be songs. Professional musicians from the Jewish music world performed ten songs in solo and ensemble numbers accompanied on live piano, along with narration in between songs. We got back to work, expanding the play and building more scenes around more songs. This time we presented a more robust play, now with dialogue and 14 songs. Local community theater actors performed memorably in the ensemble piece.

Local music director Miriam Kook directed music and played piano live during the standing-room-only performance to over people. Once you began writing your play, did the play proceed as you intended, or were there surprises?

The ideas for the songs and the characters who would sing them came to me quickly — often when I was swimming laps or riding my bicycle. I would always try and jot down the song title, and revisit the idea to write lyrics late at night.

Some of these songs developed into beautiful gems, while others were duds. To get to those 14 wait — 16! I describe it as a tapestry of sorts — lots of disparate stories that are woven. The passage of time, the loss of old friends and the making of new friends — those are the big stories of the story. That narrative structure is not conventional, but the challenge here is that in a place like a hospice, you have a dramatic story unfolding in every one of 50 rooms and five nurse stations.

Sometimes the idea of a song, say, a clever song title, worked better as a voice memo or a few words at the top of a page than any subsequent attempt to turn it into a song. For instance, I still want to add another dance number.

I just have to write it! I loved music and theater from a young age, and I have fond memories of performing in plays as early as third grade, on through middle school and high school. I grew from boyhood into teenage years, and my musical interests grew steadily. I became a 15 year old kid who loved to sing enough to want to start lessons. I have studied voice on and off for two plus decades since. During graduate school to become a Cantor, I had the joy of co-writing several Jewish-themed songs with classmate and friend Lance Rhodes.

It was the first time I realized I was a lyricist. This project, Life Review, is my first musical. With this project, we are currently in the midst of some very exciting developments on our Virtual Tour The first cabaret-style virtual performance was in January, presented by Columbia Jewish Congregation the synagogue where I have worked for four years.

Over fifty families attended and asked questions afterwards. More recently, I presented this same virtual cabaret show at Charles E. Members of the activities team moderated a brief discussion following the performance. The idea is that I will make attempts at opportunities this year.

I am trying to share this project with a variety of different types of venues, so this opportunities includes podcasts, synagogues, professional conferences, hospice providers and associations, and educational presentations with middle school, high school, and college-age learners.

Better that I hustle during this time of dormancy so that I can share the moving songs and stories with an ever expanding audience. That would be fabulous. I have at least one large synagogue in the region talking with me about a live show for Wear your mask everyone!!

In the meantime, if you are reading this, and you are interested in bringing my virtual presentation to your organization, please check out our website and get in touch. Michaels March 11, The play is about a man reuniting with friends and strangers after a period of isolation due to a plague that transformed most Americans into horned beasts.

While it is not a flat criticism of the sudden upsurge in populism and semi-fascism leading up to the Trump presidency, it more speculates on the issues that would arise in the aftermath of a populist and semi-fascist presidency.

I wrote the play before I knew that we would all spend a year or more in isolation due to the Coronavirus pandemic, so I guess it was strangely predictive. I also wrote it before knowing that the Trump presidency would end, so in that way it is a hopeful piece. What are the theatrical benefits and challenges in your choice to have some characters portrayed by puppets?

I imagined the beasts being somewhat monolithic and unemotional. If the puppets were only terrifying or only humorous then it would be a failure, which would have been a narrow path to walk.

One practical benefit is the disguising aspect of the puppet keeps the cast size down since not only was the puppet a dual role, they also create a rotating dual role based on which actors were needed on stage. I think that surrealism is a way to make something appear larger than life or rather, allow an idea the appropriate amount of size to its importance. I think these issues and ideas are so important that we need to grow them on stage to dissect them appropriately.

I live outside Annapolis with my wife, daughter, and two dogs and we have another child due in August. My wife and I have always been into European-style board games and now our daughter has enough reading and math skills to join us.

We have a big garden that grows way too much zucchini and amazing bell peppers. I have an engineering degree, law degree and have worked in patent law for a decade. I write mostly poetry and plays. While my neighbors did everything correctly after the fact, thinking about all the alternate ways it could have ended up are fresh in my mind. This feels like a good way to discuss issues in domestic America. During the pandemic I converted our basement into a recording studio and built my own electric octave mandolin.

The play follows young Macduff as h e grows into the man who eventually stands up to an evil king. What were the challenges of writing a play using a well-known Shakespearean character who was also an historical figure? Focusing too much on where Macduff and the others end up often distracted me from building out where they start.

Writing young Macbeth came easily to me, which was a surprise. He changes rather dramatically over the course of the play, and I wanted his evolution to feel genuine and convincing, not forced. I am a writer and educator living in Baltimore city, and I love that we live in an era that embraces remakes. I love how each version speaks to different time periods, audiences, and concerns.

Mostly raising my one-year-old son, but when find time to write, my main project is a fantasy novel that explores our misconceptions about fear. I have two plays that have been knocking around in my head for some time now, one based in C. I hope to build out both in the near future. RUTH is a story about a woman who suffers from dementia.

What was the inspiration for RUTH? Did the initial story change once you began writing it? Two years ago my mother fell and broke her hip, and she was in a rehab facility for six weeks. To treat her pain, she was given opioids that caused dementia-like symptoms. I spent a lot of time talking to her and watching the caregivers interact with her and with other dementia patients. So I had the idea for a thriller where a person with dementia is the only witness to a crime, but no one believes her because of her condition.

From there it became a story about a mother and daughter struggling to stay connected. Those are very good questions, and I hope to know the answers someday. For now, I just try to find experiences from my life that made an impact on me, and that other people may be able to relate to, and then try to tell the story in an engaging and unexpected way.

I have been an amateur actor for many years, and it has only been within the past few years that I have started writing short plays. I have had a few staged readings and a few small productions of my plays, and hope to have more. I am looking forward to being onstage again soon doing live theater.

I have had enough Zoom meetings to last me for the rest of my life. And after having written several minute plays, I am now working on my first full-length play.

As the crowd of protestors grows more agitated outside the house, family tensions mount inside, especially after the favorite son comes home with his African-American wife. Since then, the prevalence of police brutality against black people, the stark political divisions that have strained our country, and the violent attack on the U.

Capitol reveal an urgent need to better understand this disturbing tendency. What special challenges did you encounter in the writing a play that deals with a headline topic? I hope LOST CAUSES will provoke everyone—both liberals and conservatives—to consider how their actions may inadvertently contribute to the fear, ignorance and estrangement that underlie extremism.

This is difficult to do without alienating the audience. Very nice of them, indeed. Where do you get your ideas from? How do you know an idea has legs? Ideas come from everywhere and everything. Michael Hollinger, a talented guy who wrote Under The Skin, among other things, says he starts a file on every idea and he uses an agrarian approach…cultivate an idea, give it time, and then harvest only the hardy.

Though I do find it difficult to give up on a play…. What is your general approach to developing a play? I begin by writing the scene I want to write. I become bound and determined to take them to the broader world, even if the broader world has no use for them. Do I get stuck sometimes? Writing was always a given. Then I discovered I loved the microphone and the mike loved me. My career in radio news lasted more than four decades, working in Baltimore, San Jose, Boston, New York, and DC, although the writing was always going on in the background.

We had four kids by then and it was busy. So I quit the radio job, finished the script, my first full-length, and it was accepted by the esteemed Baltimore Playwrights Festival and produced. That play is now published and has had more than forty productions across the US, Canada, Mexico and the U. I later went back to radio part-time and continued to write, but I owe so very much to the BPF for that boost twenty-one years ago.

Two things: turning a full-length play I wrote a while back into a musical and finishing a full-length comedy. Awaiting the publications of my first screenplay in an anthology and a short play on the pandemic in another anthology of comedies. This is a play that deals the struggles of everyday life while having depression, or anxiety that could lead to suicide. I wanted to portray how mental health effects people at different ages and walks of life. Why was it important to you to write the play and what do you hope the audience will take away?

I wrote this play hoping to reach out to people who feel like giving up. I want the audience to connect and not feel alone when it comes to mental health. I also want people who see or read the play to gain knowledge about depression and other mental health disorders and how it effects people differently. I realized I had written a handful of monologues I felt needed to be shared. I knew I was not alone dealing with depression.

When I wrote this play it was around a time when suicide was more visible to the world. I thought about how and why people would give up and it inspired me to write for them and create different scenarios and backgrounds for them. I have been writing scripts and stories since and have had opportunities within my church and school to have some of my plays and skits performed and or read in front of an audience. I like to write plays and stories that people can connect to and learn from. I also enjoy writing fiction novels and poetry as well.

I am always looking for opportunities to improve my work and better myself. I appreciate the support from the Baltimore Playwrights festival for giving me an opportunity to share and gain feedback to improve. I have also been improving past scripts, and building new stories and ideas.

I hope to have my book published this year. Right now I am editing and putting the finishing touches on it.

My favorite part of going to the theater is the anticipation. At that moment — anything is possible. Meet the author, and learn more about The Perfect Stage Crew by clicking here. Read more about The Perfect Stage Crew here.

Take a look behind the scenes at The Perfect Stage Crew here. Meet them, and the TV tech crew, by clicking here. K's notes to the crew and the TV crew. You'll get a little hint of what's coming on the TV show, and learn a few "secrets" about the entire production. Partners, set in New York about a quarter of a century ago, is the story of two brothers faced with the prospect of losing the family business.

They must deal with their culture, their memories of their late father, their relationship with each other, the realities of business and their own fears and dreams as they grow old themselves and cope with their partnership and its heart-wrenching legacy. Click here to learn more about the play and its playwright. Click here to see some scenes from the play.

The Reviews are in! He founded Rapid Lemon Productions in Privacy Policy Reprint Policy: Our content may not be reprinted in full. Excerpts may be used if a credit and link is provided to our website. Max Garner Max Garner is a producer, designer, and playwright based in Baltimore. Top Bar Menu Contact Us. Resource Directory. Breadcrumb Home Welcome to the Resource Directory.

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