As we read submissions and gear up for our July 14 show in St. James Park, we’re “auditioning” new material to see how it will sound when performed aloud. It only makes sense to conclude our Take Flight series with this final short play by Brian Van Winkle, aptly titled “Audition”:
Thanks to Michael Weiland, Melinda Marks, Julia Halprin Jackson, and guest “singers” Ryan Alpers, Adam Magill and Brian himself.
We hope to announce our lineup for the July show in the next week, so stay tuned!
Play On Words fans will recognize Andrew Christian’s name from when we performed his poem “Thirteen” in May 2014 at Blackbird Tavern. He was unable to join us because his son Leo was born that very day–Leo didn’t want to miss the show. This spring, Ryan Alpers performed Andrew’s poem “Scars” at Cafe Stritch. Leo was there too:
We’re also hijacking this post to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN. We heart your voice.
Don’t forget: We’re accepting submissions for our July 14th show til midnight TONIGHT! Email us your submissions at playonwordssj@gmail.com
‘Tis graduation season at Play On Words!
Have you ever written an ode to your diploma? Gary Singh has–and Ryan Alpers performed “Sirs Parchment” June 3 at Cafe Stritch, along with “I Ride On the Bus Out to the Suburbs in the Searing Heat”:
Don’t forget to submit to our July show! We’re looking for short, funny, absurd, thought-provoking, surprising content that performs well aloud. Send us your short stories, essays, poems and one-acts at playonwordssj@gmail.com. Deadline is June 30, but the sooner the better!
It’s nearly time to take flight. We had our rehearsal on Saturday night and we are pumped to perform tomorrow at Cafe Stritch. Our playbills will be printed tomorrow–and in one last effort to spread the word, we’re sharing the full lineup for Play On Words: Take Flight here:
ACT ONE
ACT TWO
As we gear up for the big show, we’d also like to extend our gratitude, once again, to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the San Jose Downtown Association, as well as Steve and Max Borkenhagen of Cafe Stritch, whose support and guidance helped make this show possible.
Are you ready for a fresh take on Hamlet? Our closing piece at the 2014 Lit Crawl in San Francisco’s Clarion Alley was Melinda Marks’ award-winning short play, “Danes in Purgatory,” originally created and performed at San Jose State University’s 48-Hour Play Festival in September. In case you weren’t there to witness it, here are Melinda Marks, Ryan Alpers, Jeremy Ryan and Brian Van Winkle performing her piece:
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RRz-rxtx0s
Feeling inspired? We’re currently seeking submissions for our upcoming shows and would love to read your work! Send submissions <2000 words to playonwordssj@gmail.com.
We did it: we filled San Francisco’s Clarion Alley last Saturday night for our Lit Crawl debut. What a terrific night. We couldn’t have done it without the support of the amazing Lit Crawl crew–Renee Senogles, Andres Bella, Lisa Church and Travis Peterson–as well as Lyra Halprin, our day-of photographer, and Rick Alpers, our trusty videographer. A million thanks to all of you who came out to revel in good words.
And, for those of you who missed it, here’s our first installment from Saturday night’s show, featuring Andres’ introduction and our re-production of Brian Van Winkle’s brilliant play, “The Way I Picture it In My Head,” as performed by Brian Van Winkle, Melinda Marks, Jeremy Ryan, Ryan Alpers, and Michael Weiland. Enjoy.
Play On Words is thrilled to represent South Bay at the 2014 LitCrawl in San Francisco on October 18! This show celebrates our one-year-anniversary as a collaborative reading series–and as such, we’ve curated an exciting show that showcases some of our most frequent contributors:
Leah Griesmann‘s stories have recently appeared in Union Station, The Cortland Review, J Journal: New Writing on Justice, The Weekly Rumpus, and PEN Center USA’s The Rattling Wall. A 2010-2011 Steinbeck Fellow in Fiction, she is the recipient of a 2013 DAAD grant in fiction and a 2014 MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She is currently at work on a collection of stories.
Jimmy Allan read Leah’s story “Slave” at our October 2013 premiere. We will be performing an excerpt of her story “The Unigirl” in San Francisco.
Kirstin Chen is the author of Soy Sa
uce for Beginners. A former Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, she holds an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from Stanford University. She has received awards from the Sewanee and Napa Valley writers’ conferences. Her short stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hobart, Pank and others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best New American Voices. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently lives in San Francisco, where she’s at work on her second novel, set on a tiny island off the coast of southern China in 1958.
Melinda Marks performed an excerpt of Soy Sauce for Beginners at our February 2014 show. (You can watch it here!) We will be performing her short story “Boys on the Roof” in October.
Brian Van Winkle
graduated from Southern Oregon University with a B.S. in Theatre Arts. He is a member of the Pacifica Table Readers. We performed Brian’s play “The Way I Picture it in My Head Is…” in February, and it was such a big hit that we are bringing it with us to San Francisco. He is a regular POW performer.
Nicole Hughes completed an MFA in fiction writing from San Jose State University. Her story “Impasto Portrait” was published in Liebamour. As an MFA student, she was awarded the 2011 Ann Lillis Creative Writing Scholarship and the 2009 and 2011 James Phelan Literary Award. Nicole is one of POW’s three co-founders and the current events manager at Kepler’s Books. We’re thrilled to see her perform “Illimitable Space” in October.
Melinda Marks has performed in the Bay Area for over 20 years, and has more recently begun trying her hand as a writer of short plays and as a director. She holds a BA from UCSC in Theater with an emphasis in dramaturgy, and an MA from San Jose State in Theater Studies. She will be performing her own translation of Dante’s short poems in October. As POW’s casting director, she has performed in every show. Check out our YouTube page to see a sampling of Melinda’s performances.
Julia Halprin Jackson has an MA in fiction from UC Davis. She has received scholarships to the Tomales Bay Writer’s Workshops and Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Her work has appeared in West Branch Wired, California Northern, Fourteen Hills, Flatmancrooked, Sacramento News & Review, Fictionade, Fiction365, Catalyst and Spectrum. She will be reading a selection of 100-word-stories at our LitCrawl event–and as a POW co-founder, she is thrilled to bring South Bay writers to San Francisco.
Ryan Alpers teaches English and journalism in San Jose. He has a B.A. in literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a teaching credential from San Jose State University. While studying at the College of Creative Studies, he was published in the CCS Literary Magazine “Spectrum” and awarded the CCS Brancart-Richardson Award for fiction. A regular POW performer and contributor, he will be reading a few pieces for the October show.
Jeremy Ryan is a POW actor who has performed as Chester “Cosmo” Collier in It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play! at Broadway By The Bay. Other favorite roles include Biff Loman in Death Of A Salesman (Broadway West,) Dennis Shepard/Aaron McKinney in The Laramie Project (Foothill Theatre,) and Chevalier Danceny in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dragon Theatre.) Jeremy is a graduate of the Foothill Theatre Conservatory. You can watch his performance of Adam Magill’s “Only Customary” here. He will be performing at our October show.
So…what are you waiting for? Swing by the Mission District’s Clarion Alley on Saturday, October 18 at 6pm to check out our one-year-anniversary show!
Our February show highlighted the work of noted journalist and Silicon Valley arts regular Gary Singh. Singh is an award-winning journalist with a music degree who publishes poetry, paints, and exhibits photographs. As a scribe, he has published hundreds of works as either a staff writer or freelancer, including travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, short fiction and poetry. For 450 straight weeks he’s also penned a creative newspaper column for Metro, San Jose’s alt-weekly newspaper, an offbeat glimpse into the frontiers of the human condition in Silicon Valley. He is a sucker for anything that fogs the opposites of native and exotic, luxury and the gutter, academe and the street.
This week we asked Singh what it felt like to hear his poem, “Here,” read aloud by Ryan Alpers at the Blackbird Tavern on February 13.
“Hearing and seeing my poem performed by someone else brought a new dimension to my creativity,” he said. “The actor brought inflections and emotions into the poem that I didn’t even know existed. The experience gave me some confidence that I didn’t know existed either. I would highly recommend anyone to submit their work for this series.”
In case you missed it, here’s Ryan’s performance of Singh’s poem:
Feeling inspired? There’s still time to submit for our May 22 show! We accept works of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and theater under 2000 words. Submissions can be sent to playonwordssj@gmail.com.
In the mood for a good story? A funny ten minute play? How about both?
Join us as we return to San Jose’s Blackbird Tavern this Thursday, February 13, at 7:30 pm. We are thrilled to showcase original work from six Silicon Valley writers, performed by local actors. Here’s our lineup:
First up is “Menage a Un,” a short play by Melinda Marks, performed by Brian Van Winkle, Jeremy Ryan, and Melinda. This piece plays with the awkwardness that accompanies unexpected romantic reunions.
Next we’re proud to feature “Platonic Affairs,” an excerpt of former Steinbeck fellow Kirstin Chen’s forthcoming novel, Soy Sauce for Beginners, which has been named a January pick by O, The Oprah Magazine and Glamour, and Chen has been named one of USA Today’s “New Voices”. Melinda Marks will be performing the piece.
Our first poem, “Vibration,” is by Darrell Dela Cruz, a recent graduate of San Jose State University’s MFA program. This wonderful piece captures the charged spirit of romance and will be performed by Adam Magill.
The next poem, “Here,” is written by Metro journalist Gary Singh and explores one writer’s journey to pin a story down. For 450 straight weeks he’s also penned a creative newspaper column for Metro, San Jose’s alt-weekly newspaper, an offbeat glimpse into the frontiers of the human condition in Silicon Valley. His poem will be read by Ryan Alpers.
Adam Magill will read Eli Hansen’s bombastic satire, “The State of Generation Y.” Hansen is an MFA student at SJSU, specializing in poetry. He graduated from San Francisco State University in 2011, where he served as the poetry editor of Transfer.
Our final piece is a comic play, “The Way I Picture it Is,” by Brian Van Winkle. Brian is a recent graduate of Southern Oregon University, where he received a B.S. in Theatre Arts with a minor in Shakespeare Studies. He is also a graduate of the Foothill Theatre Conservatory and a member of the Pacifica Table Readers. His piece will be performed by Adam Magill, Jeremy Ryan, Melinda Marks, Ryan Alpers, Julia Halprin Jackson.
We hope to see you there! Don’t forget to RSVP on Facebook!
Play On Words 