THEATREdART recently announced auditions for its short play festival THEATREGASM 11 for May 6 and 7 at 6pm at the company’s new head office at 223 North Wahsatch in Colorado Springs.

Sign up for the auditions with this Web link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050F4CAFAD29A4FD0-theatregasm

Two of my 10-minute plays have been selected for the festival, last weekend in June. Updates to come.

Check out THEATREdART on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/THEATREdART/ or from its Web site at https://www.theatredart.org

Well it’s been a while since I could say one of my works was hitting the stage, but apparently that appears to be changing this year.

Recently, I was notified two of my 10-minute plays will be a part of THEATREdART’s Theatregasm 11 short play festival this June in Colorado Springs. The theme for the festival this year is “Show Us Your America.”

My two works selected are…

Plan A for Martin; a satirical play where a school principal attempts to convince a hard working father his son would benefit from the school’s unique special education program.

Makes No Census; satire again when a woman answers questions for the U.S. Census Bureau only to discover its true purpose.

As I get more details on the festival, I will post updates. For now, you can learn more about the interesting things THEATREdART is up to by visiting http://www.theatredart.org.

Yes, I’ve been busy. Yes, It’s been a stressful work year. But thankfully I did find a moment to write down an idea for a new play to work on this winter…hopefully.

Usually when I get play ideas, I have a concept and I start developing characters. But often if my idea doesn’t go any further than that, it’s because I don’t know what I want to say with my play. What message or theme(s) do I want it to have? If I can’t answer that, I can’t move forward.

After toggling around a couple different concepts, I finally landed on one which would serve as a vehicle to share my thoughts on journalistic integrity, which seems scare today, and the practice and perspectives on protests in America, which everyone seems to have an opinion on if you have and read any kind of social networking feed.

So I came up with a premis and set it in a television news studio setting. But as I started to determine characters I would need to mold the story and adversity, I started to realize I haven’t a lot of experience with how a television news studio operates outside of what I’ve seen on dramatic series and motion pictures. As a journalist, I hate it when news outlets cite other news outlets as a source for a story. It makes me always wonder, “What if news outlet A got it wrong? That means now news outlet A and B are now reporting false information.”

It’s the same for creative writing for me. What if the the creative television and movies got it wrong, what it’s like to broadcast a news report on television? They probably didn’t but if I haven’t experienced this first hand with my own research or professional experience, how can I be sure I depicted it properly on my own story?

So with this in mind, I switched the news outlet for my story to a news magazine instead, of which print news I have plenty of experience in and was a vehicle for my play Mourning News. So this will be my third play which involves a journalist and second set in a news outlet. Too much? Maybe it will change again once I start scribbling changes, but I feel relying on what you know well is never a bad thing. Is Tom Clancy going to write a book about lumberjacks? No. He’s going to continue to fall back on his experience in government intelligence. Same with John Grisham. He will almost always fall back on law and legal stories. So I don’t think this would be too much for me.

I’ll try to develop outside the box in other ways. Wish me luck.

I’ve been quiet these last few weeks, as I have vigorously been composing music for my musical Dadly Intentions. Seven numbers written, seven to go.

However, the other reason I’ve been busy is I took on helping teach a couple musical theatre classes where my girls take dance and my son learns gymnastics. Recently, both classes, taught by myself on the acting side and a nice young gal named Kelsey, participated in the studio’s annual spring recital.

The first class was comprised of pre-K to fourth graders and we had them studying Hard Knock Life from the musical Annie. Both my daughters were among a large cast of 15 kids. We received many compliments for handling a class that size, and although the performance wasn’t perfect, the kids did as well as I’d hoped having started late in the season. (Not all kids are pictured in the photo below).

The second class was comprised of grades five through middle school grades. For them, we decided to study and create a story around When You’re by My Side from the musical Side Show. This was a great group of kids; only six but they really took to what Kelsey and I were attempting to have them absorb and it was led by a couple of very capable young dancers who took on the challenge of dancing as conjoined twins Daisy and Violet. Again, their performance come day of show was a little off but their effort and willingness to learn was impressive.

Anyways, if you’ve been following me and curious why I’ve been quiet that is why. I’m hoping to offer a couple one day workshops for kids at the studio over the summer and offer the same classes this fall. Unfortunately, Kelsey will have moved on to New York City to further her career as a dancer. Best of luck to her.

As for me, I’ve always enjoyed teaching what I’ve learned from some of the best theatre mentors the Rocky Mountain region had to offer at the time. Hopefully it will continue into something bigger each season.

#musicaltheatre #kidsintheatre #dadlyintentions #educationaltheatre

Hartley pleases to see her artwork in print for the revised cover of my stage play Slow Kids at Play.

#slowkidsatplay #stageplay #hartleyart #theatre