Thursday, May 15, 2008

Interviews with the Authors of SWP and more

This week we at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival have been furiously work-shopping the new plays and getting them ready for their staged readings this weekend. For those of you not in the know, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival has a festival of new plays called the Southern Writers' Project where we commission new plays for the American Theatre cannon. The only criteria are that the plays be about Southern stories, by Southern writers, or about an African-American story. I recently managed to grab all the authors and interview them for our information station (which has the completed interviews, voice overs with background information on each play, and all the events for the weekend) and decided to post one question from each author on the blog. They're a bit much to embed into the blog, so I'm putting all the links to our site over at youtube.com. Click here and check out how each of the very different stories brought to SWP this year were inspired. Tickets to all of the staged readings are still on sale and only $10 per reading. I hope to see everyone there this weekend!

Mike Vigilant, author of "Bear county" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl6KudQVAbw

Pat Cunningham Devoto, author of "My Last Days as Roy Rogers" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDGlz0JCRxE

Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, author of "Furniture of Home" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYWBvRkUr8k

Jeffrey L. Chastang, author of "Preparations" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNIkJI-hJc

Richard Aellen, author of "Nobody" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf_i_H70ebA