Tag: NEXT!

Recording of Fall Forever

(Photo credit: The Fenimore Art Museum website)

The recording of the staged reading of Eva Schegulla’s Fall Forever is now available on the Fenimore Art Museum YouTube channel for a limited time. It will likely be taken down mid-June 2024.

I wrote about the staged reading here. I know through reading Eva’s blog, Ink in My Coffee, that she has already completed revisions that grew from the staged reading and that she is submitting it for fully staged production. I’ll be sure to keep you posted when it debuts so that you can attend if you are in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, enjoy the recording for the next month!

Write Out Loud 2024 video now available!

I’m pleased to share the video of the Write Out Loud 2024 performance, which was just released last night.

If you expand the description of the video, you can read the program, which is helpfully indexed to bring you to the beginning of each segment, first the writer’s biography and then their poem, essay, short story, or play. If a piece is performed by someone other than the writer, that information is included, as well.

With 22 writers represented, the full video is two hours, so it is nice to have it organized in this way so a viewer can easily choose segments to watch when they have time.

You can read my blog post about my participation in Write Out Loud 2024 here .

My thanks once again to Mike Tamburrino, Christine Juliano, the Fenimore Art Museum, and the Glimmer Globe Theatre for including me in Write Out Loud 2024 and making it such a memorable experience.

I hope that I will be able to submit work for future Write Out Loud performances and, perhaps, be fortunate enough to be included again. Writers within a 100-mile radius of Cooperstown, New York, can be on the lookout for the submission call coming out this fall for Write Out Loud 2025. Playwrights from that same geography should look for the NEXT! series, which offers staged readings of new work. You can read my post about Eva Schegulla’s Fall Forever, which was part of NEXT! 2024, here.

If you are visiting the Cooperstown area, be sure to check out the Fenimore Art Museum and their partner-across-the-road, the Farmers’ Museum. Both museums have winter closures; the links should take you to the page with their hours and dates for the current year.

To hear more about what it’s like to live in Cooperstown, which most people know as home to the Baseball Hall of Fame, check out the final piece of Write Out Loud 2024, Robert Harlow’s “Cooperstown, an insider’s guide.”

You might pick up some tips…

Fall Forever

(Photo credit: The Fenimore Art Museum website)

It was my privilege on Sunday to attend a staged reading of Fall Forever by Eva Schegulla at the Glimmer Globe Theatre in the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY. It was part of the NEXT! Staged Reading Series, which offers readings of new plays by regional playwrights.

Eva is a friend and fellow member of the Boiler House Poets Collective, so I was especially happy to attend and to see her. Her writing covers a wide range, including stage plays, screenplays, radio plays, fiction, essays, serials, reviews, blog posts, and poetry, some of which are published under pen names. Her blog, Ink in My Coffee, just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

I had never been to a staged reading before. The actors read from the scripts set on music stands, although there were a few instances of characters moving around a bit. Another actor read the stage directions so that we knew where and when the scenes were taking place. There were also some sound effects, although a full staging of the play would include more. Although it is structured as a 2-act play, the reading was presented all in one block, which felt a bit overwhelming but gave me a new appreciation of intermissions.

The story revolves around the aftermath of the accidental death of Lily, especially with her sister Leah and husband Alan. I especially enjoyed the performance of Sharon Rankins-Burd, who read Leah. She is part of nearly every scene and, though having the script in front of her, Rankins-Burd was able to project who Leah is as she struggles with grief over her sister’s death and additional challenges that arise.

After the reading, there was a talkback session with the playwright, the performers, and the production team. It was interesting to hear Eva talk about the growth of the Fall Forever from a prompt at a workshop with the Williamstown Theatre Festival to its current form, awaiting a final round of edits as the result of the reading to be sent out for submission calls. There were some questions that elucidated the choices Eva had made in the play and how the staged reading format had impacted the version of the piece that we experienced. It was also fun to hear choices of favorite lines from actors – and audience members!

A recording of Fall Forever by Eva Schegulla will soon be available for a limited time. I’ll share the link when it is posted. I hope you will find it to be as enjoyable and meaningful as I did. Update: The video is now available here: https://youtu.be/GSgrLP56Q3Q?feature=shared. It will be taken down in mid-June 2024.