|
|
Opportunities & Resources
|
To be included in this News article concerning item with gay and lesbian content,
please send the following to purplecir@aol.com:
• Opportunity Heading
• Opportunity Text
• Deadlines or Kill Date
• Name
• Address
• Phone
• E-Mail
• Web Site
|
For assistance, see:
How to Write a Press Release
|
To be included in our Openings article which contains plays and other presentational events with gay themes please fill out our
Event Submission Form
|
|
|
Job Openings: Auditions, Positions
|
Auditions in Montreal
Ongoing: posted May 11, 2008
Various productions.
Seeking both English and French-speaking actors.
villagescene.com/audition.html
Davyn Ryall, artistic director: 514-656-3420; info@villagescene.com
Village Scene Productions, P.O. Box 142 Station C, Montréal, Québec, H2L 2H0
|
Artist in Residence: BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange
Deadline: May 2, 2008 - 5pm
Two awards in Experimental Theater/Performance will be made for the July 2008-June 2009 period. Selected artists are provided with a base for development over a one year period - with a possible extension of another full year.
BAX will consider original work only, not the re-staging of existing work, and we are deeply invested in developing original voices and work that explores new ground.
Application : 718-832-0018; bax.org/inResidence.html
BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215
|
|
|
Ongoing Support Needed (no deadlines)
|
Seeking Volunteers: Rude Guerrilla
Ongoing: posted March 3, 2008
Opportunities in every aspect of the theater experience including ushering, production, set-building, design, marketing, and administration.
Volunteer website: rgtcvolunteer.blogspot.com
Aurelio Locsin, volunteer coordinator, 714-547-4688, rgtcvolunteer@gmail.com
Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, 202 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, CA 92870
|
Seeking Volunteers: Theater Offensive
Ongoing: posted May 15, 2007
Positions include: usher, flyer distribution, photographer, videographer, backstage helper, office help, marketing, etc.
Time commitment: regular or intermittent, weekday and weekend slots, day or evening. You determine your commitment level, and we work with you to find volunteer tasks that youd enjoy.
Theater Offensive, 43 Thorndike St., Box 14, Cambridge, MA 02141
617-621-6090; joinus@thetheateroffensive.org
thetheateroffensive.org
Forming and presenting the diverse realities of queer lives in art so bold it breaks through personal isolation and political orthodoxy to help build an honest, progressive community.
|
Seeking Volunteers: Thorny Theater
Ongoing: posted July 17, 2006
Thorny Theater
2500 N. Palm Canyon Drive, #A4, Palm Springs, CA 92262
|
Seeking Stand-up Comics: Sunday Night Gay Comedy
2nd & 4th Sundays of the month - 8pm - ongoing series
Ongoing: posted January 3, 2006
QComedys Sunday Night Gay Comedy is San Franciscos only ongoing gay comedy showcase.
Jon Sims Center, 1519 Mission St., San Francisco, California
Wheelchair accessible
Information 415-541-5610
To perform, contact: Nick Leonard nick@nickleonard.net
|
Seeking Volunteers: Performing Arts Collection
Ongoing: posted January 2004
Seeking volunteers to help in many areas: sorting, cataloguing, research, acquisition, events and more.
ONE Institute & Archives, 909 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007
213-741-0094; 310-854-0271
oneigla@usc.edu
|
Seeking Writers: Lodestar Quarterly
Ongoing: posted March 6, 2005
Lodestar Quarterly, an online journal of gay and lesbian literature, seeks one-act and full length drama. No minimum, and a maximum length of 100 standard-formatted pages. Submissions accepted in Microsoft Word or plain text format with a brief bio and relevant contact information.
editors@lodestarquarterly.com
www.lodestarquarterly.com/submit
|
|
|
Seeking Scripts: Theaters, Festivals, Contests
|
Script Contest: StageQ
Deadline: October 1, 2008
StageQ seeks submissions of 5-15 min. plays for their 4th annual festival of short queer plays.
If selected, you will know in early March 2009. Selected plays are performed May 28-June 6, 2009 at the Bartell Theater in Madison, Wisconsin.
Send the following:
- The Play
- One page précis
- A one-paragraph plot description
- Casting requirements (# actors, gender, ages, any special requirements)
- Set requirements
- Running time (15 min. limit)
- Special technical requirements, if any
- Who is the intended audience?
- What is the lesbian, gay, or other queer content?
- Is there nudity? Adult language?
- If a musical, is there a written score?
- If a musical, what are the instrumental and vocal requirements?
Please send no more than 3 scripts.
Do not re-submit scripts previously sent.
Keen to have a musical in the fest. Might be willing to increase the time for a musical to 25 minutes. Fest staff read nearly 300 scripts for Queer Shorts 3 and accepted 11. Scripts are downgraded for typos, spelling, grammatical, and syntactical errors.
All scripts received are acknowledge, so if you dont hear back within a couple of weeks, re-contact to assure submission.
Submit to:
queershorts@stageq.com
Queer Shorts c/o StageQ
P.O. Box 8876, Madison, WI 53708-8876
|
Script Contest: New Works of Merit
Deadline: July 15, 2008 (extended deadline from June 30)
New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest seeks plays that:
- Enhance self-realization.
- Support peace and social justice.
- Foster new understanding of minority issues that focus on racial, ethnic and gender discrimination both in the United States and abroad.
- Empower youth to build healthy inner foundations.
- Educate to gain further insight into healthy social/emotional living.
- Shed new light on religious, spiritual, and cultural differences and issues.
- Build respect for cultural expression and identity in a world that is experiencing rapid globalization.
- Explore the widening gap between the values this country was founded on and the values we present to the world today.
1st Place awards $300 and a reading. 2nd and 3rd Place awards a reading.
Rules
- Original, unproduced plays - workshop, staged reading, or non-professional production also eligible.
- Full-length - 2 hour or 100 page (U.S. standard format) max.
- One-act stage plays.
- Childrens plays.
- No musicals.
- No published scripts.
- No plays professionally produced.
- No adaptations or collections.
- Full contact information on the cover/title page.
- Brief synopsis of the play, no longer than half a page, bound into script.
- Brief character descriptions, bound into script.
- $25 fee per play.
- $50 fee per play - plus one evaluation.
- $75 fee per play - plus two evaluations.
Guidelines:
playwritingcontest.cjb.net
Application form:
hometown.aol.com/sandranord/myhomepage/travel.html
Submissions to:
New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest
511 Ave. of the Americas, #2000, New York, New York 10011-8436
Information:
Sandra Nordgren 917-363-2369; newworksofmerit@aol.com
|
Festival Scripts Needed: North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe
Deadline: postmarked by June 30, 2008
North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe, San Diego, California, is a 35-seat theater, which sells old-time candies, and periodically has vaudeville shows. Their annual festival of short plays mounts about 20 plays over a four-week run, all selected by the Festival directors from submissions.
Rules:
- Mostly open subject matter and language.
- No nudity.
- 15 min. or less total time - no play excerpts.
- New work, although one or two previous productions is O.K.
- Easily staged in a small (7.5 x 15 foot) space.
- Maximum of 4 characters on stage at one time.
- Submit only one script.
- No e-mail submissions.
- Submit with Title Page containing all contact information, and a character summary.
- NO FEE.
Information: northparkvaudeville.com/PlaywrightFestivalWebpage.html
Further information - do not send scripts: jfbushnell@cox.net, zgolden1@cox.net
Send scripts to:
Summer Golden, artistic director
North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe
2031 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego, CA 92104
|
Playwriting Competition on Lesbian Themes
Deadline: May 31, 2008
Lambda Players seeks to encourage both experienced and new playwrights to write about subjects and issues of interest to the lesbian community. By providing a forum for these works, we hope to increase the number of relevant plays that, not only focus on the lesbian experience, but also celebrate lesbian culture in the United States.
Rules
- Contemporary or historical subjects and characters that resonate with lesbians living in United States
- Open to any playwright, male or female, of any sexual orientation or gender identification
- Dramas, comedies and farces are eligible
- Full-length plays only - 1 hour:15 min., no longer than 2 hours - no one-acts or compilations
- Unpublished original work only
- Scripts produced in a workshop, staged reading, or student production are eligible
- Scripts once produced by a pro or community theater are not eligible
- No musicals or childrens plays
- Scripts not be returned; will be destroyed when the evaluation is completed
Notes
- Staged public readings of top 3–5 scripts in June and July 2008
- Audience will provide written feedback that will help determine the winning play
- Winning play announced July 2008
- $1,000 cash prize
- Winning play will be produced during our 2008-2009 season
$20 entry fee per play
Complete rule and entry forms: lambdaplayers.com/competition/competition1.htm
West Ramsey theatricalguy@sbcglobal.net
Lambda Players Playwright Competition, P.O. Box 13248, Sacramento, CA 95813
The Lambda Players is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that began as a project of the Lambda Community Center, in 1989, in response to the lack of local gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender theater. Their mission is to educate and entertain, through the medium of live theater, with subject matter relevant to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population.
|
Seeking Scripts: Ivy Theatre
Ongoing: No Deadline
Ivy Theatre seeks submissions for a national tour.
Pay is offered for selected scripts
Rules
- Plays should deal with legal or ceremonial marriage for same-sex couples
- Up to four characters
- Use of lesbian and gay male characters are preferred
- Play runs 1 - 1½ hours
Send to:
The Ivy Theatre, 7985 Santa Monica Blvd. #109-88, West Hollywood, CA 90046
tuiejones@aol.com
|
|
Tim Miller Workshop - Solo Performance Intensive
July 21-27, 2008

Tim Miller
photo: Yvonne Boyd
|
Tim shares a variety of strategies to create original performances from the energies and stories that are present in our lives. Using memories and myths as a jumping off point, personal history creates performances that jump out from ones body and onto the stage, or the page. No performance experience necessary.
Participants will be led through a series of exercises to excavate visual, movement-driven and spoken stories of ones body. An exploration that leads to creating original performance work that can explore the charged border between ones body and society. The workshop culminates in an ensemble-generated, public performance, in conjunction with Millers performances of his critically-acclaimed solo performance, US.
For information about Tim Miller and his work see: members.aol.com/Millertale/timmiller.html
Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield Ave., Chicago, Illinois
Workshop: July 21-27 - 1-5pm; July 26 - 11am-3pm
Workshop performance: July 27, 7pm
$150 ($75 non-refundable registration deposit)
Information/registration: Erica 773-281-0824; emott@linkshall.org
|
|
DVD: Demians Film & Video Projects archive DVD
21 shorts and excerpts: 1967-2006

Bruce (Erik Maahs) is
defensive when Bill (Mark
Johnson) vents his fury in
The Fight Before Christmas
|
Contains an excerpt from The Fight Before Christmas a heart-warming story of Bruce and Bill, a male couple, loosely based on Clement Moores familiar poem, The Night Before Christmas. Bruce pretends his mom is Santa, while she pretends the two men are just roommates. But it is Bill, not Santa, who hits the roof.
|

Rev. Mel White in
The Right to Marry
|
Also contains an excerpt from The Right to Marry the first documentary (1996) about the struggle for the civil right of legal marriage for same-sex couples.
|
Click here for more information on contents and ordering: Demians Film & Video Projects archive DVD
|
|
Book: Return to the Caffe Cino

Edited by Steve Susoyev and George Birimisa.
Published November 6, 2006 by Moving Finger Press.
A collection of 22 plays originally produced at the Cafe Cino in Greenwich Village, circa 1959-1967, with memoir-style essays by many of the pioneers who helped to launch the revolution that took place in American theatre on the Cinos 8-by-8-foot stage. Contributors include such Broadway legends as actress Bernadette Peters, playwright Edward Albee, and director Tom OHorgan.
Steve Susoyev writes for the legal community on the child-custody rights of gay and lesbian parents and other human rights issues. His bestselling memoir, People Farm, won a 2004 Writers Digest Culture Award. Steve practices law in San Francisco, specializing in the needs of people with life-threatening conditions.
George Birimisa was the first openly gay playwright to receive a Rockefeller Foundation Grant. He later won the Drama-Logue Award for his 1978 play Rainbow in the Night. Daddy Violet, the 1967 play included in this collection, opened at the Cafe Cino and went on to tour college campuses in the U.S. and Canada. George is the founder and director of Intergeneration Writing Workshops in San Francisco. He won the Harry Hay award in 2005.
The hardcover edition is marked at $44.95 and can be found for $29.67.
|
|
Book: My Blue Heaven
Josie and Molly, an urban, lesbian couple move to the country to save money, and enable one of them to pursue her writing career. They are nominated as couple of the year. An unwitting young man arrives to notify them of this honor, only to find a very different couple than he assumed.
One of Chambers funniest plays, it was the season opener for the Glines Second Gay American Arts Festival in 1981. Chamber directed the premiere on June 3, 1981 at the Shandol Theatre, New York, New York.
Jane Chambers irrepressible comedy, My Blue Heaven is available from TnT Classic Books, which also has published Chambers A Late Snow, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, Burning, Chasin Jason and Warrior at Rest, as well as plays by Doric Wilson, Sidney Morris, Robert Chesley and Arch Brown.
A trade paper back, the library-type edition of My Blue Heaven has author comments, and information on the first New York production. The three-character play was designed to be easily produced with a simple set.
The $7.95 book may be purchased through:
TnT Classic Books
Womancrafts
Drama Book Shop
Samuel French
|
|
Book: 1001 Beds
A collection of my essays, performances, manifestos, journals, and performance touring stories from Tokyo-to-Chattanooga, written by Tim Miller.
For a signed copy, send an $18 (retails for $20) check to:
Tim Miller, P.O. Box 794, Venice, CA 90294-0794
|
|
Book: Michelangelos Models
design by Andrew Caldwall
|
Michelangelos Models, the full-length, Renaissance romantic comedy by Robert Patrick is available in a 100-page acting edition with 30 black and white illustrations from four productions. Los Angeles playwright Robert Patrick, author of more than fifty published plays, is best known for his international success, Kennedys Children. He has ghostwritten for many films and TV shows.
Robert Patrick also wrote Temple Slave a novel, in part, about the early years of the modern gay theater movement. He was honored, on June 28, 2004, with the Off-Off Broadway Review Award of Excellence for the best play produced Off-Off Broadway (June 2003-to-May 2004) for his comedy Hollywood at Sunset.
photo by Andrew Caldwall
|
For comments on Hollywood at Sunset and Michelangelos Models, please see this report from Bill Kaiser and Doric Wilson: Bi-coastal Robert Patrick
= $12 check or money order
= Robert Patrick, 1837 N., Alexandria Ave., #211, Los Angeles, CA 90027
= Please write on check: I am over 18
= Please include your e-address
Foreign sales: rbrtptrck@aol.com
|
Web site: Lodestar Quarterly

Read on-line, new fiction, poetry, and drama by some of todays finest gay and lesbian writers.
|
|
Book: The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays
Purple Circuit member Kenneth Krauss has provided the introduction for a new version of The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde. Kenneth is the author of The Drama of Fallen France: Reading la Comedie Sans Tickets, an examination of various dramatic works written, or produced, in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Both books available from Barnes and Noble.
|
|
CD: Judys Scary Little Christmas
Co-written by James Webber and David Church
Composer and lyricist Joe Patrick Ward
Directed by Kay Cole
The show is a mix of a 1959 Judy Garland Christmas TV special and The Twilight Zone. Among Judys guests are: Bing Crosby, Liberace, Ethel Merman, Richard Nixon, Lillian Hellman, Joan Crawford, and Death.
This CD recreates the show, which premiered at the Victory Theater Center (Burbank, California), and played at the Court Theatre (West Hollywood, California), and in Portland, Oregon. It plays in Chicago and Des Moines in winter, 2005.
Cast includes: Connie Champagne, Sean Smith, Don Lucas, Lauri Johnson, Eric Anderson, Jan Sheldrick, Joanne OBrien, Mark A. Cross, Dustin Strong, Jonathan Neeley, Terri Homberg-Olsen, Allen Everman II.
Connie Champagne recreates for the CD her performance as Judy Garland, for which she won an Ovation Award.
The CD can be purchased via: www.judyschristmas.com
$19.95
|
|
CD: Film Moi: Narcissus in the Dark
image by Howard Cruse
|
A Robert Patrick autobiography seen through his favorite movies.
On CD-ROM formatted in MS Word.
$10 check or money order
Robert Patrick, 1837 N., Alexandria Ave., #211, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Please state you are 18+ and aware you are ordering adult material.
Please include your e-address.
Info: rbrtptrck@aol.com
The disk contains more than 1000 illustrations in chapter-length critiques of 14 favorite films. Patrick is the author of Kennedys Children, Blue is for Boys, T Shirts, and Untold Decades. In Film Moi, he analyzes his life and times (1937-ongoing), the trends and traumas of Hollywood, and the whirled we live in.
Chapters include:
Broken Blossoms, Fantasia, All About Eve, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Ten Commandments, Vertigo & Marnie, Gigi & Damn Yankees, Sweet Smell of Success, Judgment at Nuremberg, La Dolce Vita & 8 1/2, Porn, Nashville, All That Jazz, Aliens & Prick Up Your Ears
Selected Quotes:
American culture is eating itself in front of a mirror, like a porn star.
Charlton Heston is indisputably the lead in The Ten Commandments no matter how you
pronounce lead.
Pornography recaptures the original thrill of film simply seeing ordinary things moving on a screen.
Patrick, a founding father of gay drama in America, writes with intelligent perception about movies
Patricks candid commentary on his own precocious sexual and artistic life is equally absorbing
Patricks prose is so smart and fluid that its hard to, well, put the book down. Richard LaBonte, in his syndicated column, September 2003.
More information on Film Moi
|
|
Book: You Could Drive a Person Crazy
You Could Drive a Person Crazy: Chronicle of an American Theatre Company, by Scott Miller is about St. Louis only alternative musical theater company, New Line.
The book includes material on the theaters first ten seasons, as well as thoughts about New Line from Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, and Post Dispatch critics Judy Newmark and Gerry Kowarsky. It contains a show-by-show history of the company, including cast and staff lists, review quotes, directors program notes, and reminiscences from actors, designers, directors, choreographers, and audience members.
You Could Drive a Person Crazy is published by Writers Club Press (ISBN 0-595-26311-9) for $17.95.
|
|
Back to On the Purple Circuit Table of Contents
|