Working with the ICT, home of Virtual Iraq

We had an amazing visit with the 3 of us taking YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. to the Institute of Creative Technology in L.A. These are the guys that designed Virtual Iraq and are inventing other therapeutic uses for virtual technologies. YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. is repurposing Virtual Iraq to theatrical, multi-media narrative (away from its primary use as a therapy tool) and there’s much to learn from the collaboration with the designers and therapists. Here’s their take on our visit, from the ICT blog:

Reading with digital media

Friday’s reading in L.A. should be exciting! A quick preview from our last workshop:

http://vimeo.com/23592174

Come along if you’re in town, and please RSVP here.

L.A. reading

Working this week with Dr. Skip Rizzo and the creative team at the Institute for Creative Technologies in L.A.
It’s fascinating to see new developments in Virtual Iraq and think about how we can work together in creating our theatre piece. Here’s a teaser trailer of the piece, YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. from our previous workshop in North Carolina.

We’re doing a reading this Friday at 4 pm with media at the I.C.T. in La Playa.: Event details are here. Please come if you’re in town– it’s free and open to the public. You’ll hear the play, YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. and see some of the amazing work the I.C.T. team are doing on Virtual Iraq, a virtual-reality program for use in military rehabilitation from P.T.S.D.

L.A. visit to the Institute of Creative Technologies

It’s an exciting week coming up–heading to LA to work with Skip Rizzo and the design team who built Virtual Iraq to continue our collaboration as we work on You Are Dead. You Are Here.

Australian Theatre Writers’ blog

Cristin Kelly, expat American dramaturg in Australia, has started a blog interviewing Australian playwrights–
check it out here. It’s a kind of sister website to playwright Adam Szymkowicz’ blog series, “I interview playwrights”.

Can’t Complain–one minute version.

In case anyone’s curious about that one-minute play, Can’t Complain— Here it is! (All rights reserved.)

________________________

CAN’T COMPLAIN A one-minute play by Christine Evans
Characters:
Maureen
Rita, Maureen’s mother
________________________

MAUREEN:
Mom. How are you settling in?

RITA:
Can’t complain, darling. How about you?

MAUREEN:
I’m fine. Everything’s fine. (Beat, then very fast.) Actually it’s not. Last night Jilly declares she’s pregnant and Joel chips in with, Well, it’s gonna be retarded anyway ‘cause of all the glue sniffing, and Michael says we’re all fucking monsters and walks out on us, SLAMS the door, Jilly’s hysterical and Joel is all like, what did I do? So I say, let’s go get pizza kids, and they calm down. But I left the stove on and

Play size and shape

I was reminded, in conversation with director Dominic D’Andrea recently, that my most recent full length play started life as a one-minute play. (Dominic runs the one-minute play festival that’s gone viral nationally). Sometimes you don’t know the size of something til it emerges–as the mothers among us can ruefully attest! Anyway, I wrote several one-minute plays at Dominic’s request, thinking something like “Humph. How can a real play actually be only a minute long?” and to my surprise, discovered that it can–as a raindrop refracts an entire world in the surface tension that forms its curve.

Of the three plays I wrote,

Feathers

I was cleaning up my digital debris the other day (is it clutter when it’s on your laptop?) and discovered some long-buried poems. Here’s one from my first, disoriented days in the U.S., where the tricky and subtle gaps between Australian and U.S. English (and manners, New England style) kept tripping me up.

__________
There’s something stuck in my mouth.

It tastes like feathers.
It tastes like a foreign language.
It’s stuck to my tongue, and I can’t get it off.

I think it’s my accent.

There’s a bird in my mouth.
There’s a bird built a nest in my mouth
out of old gum wrappers and string, and bits of:

–see you Tuesday yeah no sweat
-alright but the steel don’t connect

and bits of:

I said call me. Call me. I said, I said call me.

There’s a bird laid an egg in my mouth.
I’m running and I trip

–on Empire St.
-outside Perishable Theatre

and I trip and the egg breaks in my mouth

-near the locked door of the Citizens’ bank
-up from the library

and my mouth floods with

-gas
-coffee
-light
-blood

my mouth floods

a story fills my mouth

I swallow.
I spit.
I swallow.

Trojan Barbie in London

Thrilled to see that Mountview Theatre School’s graduating class is performing my play TROJAN BARBIE at the Charing Cross Theatre in London’s West End this July! Details here:

Glass Menagerie– design notes

Jared Mezzocchi, my media design collaborator on YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE., recently posted on the process of designing for a new interactive media production of The Glass Menagerie at Arena Stage. A very thoughtful reflection on the relationship between spectacle and narrative; you can read it here.