THE COOL at Amado’s. February 2017. Photo credit: Dennis Hearne
What a busy two months — THE COOL sold out before it even opened on 2/10 and then ran for three weekends. It’s been a terrific/challenging experience blending live jazz with dialogue, not to mention there was a cast of 14. I got to be on the radio — twice — and tried to be charming.
For a Presidents Day protest of the current protest on 2/20, I was charged with writing a song that would be in the parody musical “A Little Night Tweeting.” I came up with “We Elected A Clown,” a little humorous riff on “Send in the Clowns” that was quite droll. It was part of a #NameAPenceMusical (a sentient hashtag, essentially) at PianoFight here in San Francisco.
Tonight, I’m seeing THAT IT ALL MAKES PERFECT by Erin Bregman and directed by Susannah Martin. It is the third production by 6NewPlays — I’m #5, so expect to see a lot more about my piece within the next year.
At the TBA Conference at Berkeley Rep, the great Noelle Gibbs directed a selection from my play WEEK during a panel. It was crazy trying to sound smart aboard the Roda Stage, i.e. the big boy stage at Berkeley Rep. The snippet went really well, and I’m hoping soon the piece will finally get a full production somewhere.
Backstage at the Roda with director Noelle Gibbs (left) and the cast of the “Week” excerpt — Jessica Sarah Bennett, Tony Ortega, (me) and James Pinkman.
Today, it is the 2 year anniversary since 6NewPlays held its Rough Draft Festival, our inaugural public event. So there’s a lot to celebrate.
Next up? Oh yea, I’m writing an opera.
I’m part of the 48 Hour Opera Festival by local opera company Opera Theater Unlimited. That’s coming up on April 30. If it wasn’t clear, essentially a team works together to come up with a 10-minute opera in two days.
Between then and now, I’m spending some R&R time in Iceland. I’ll see some Northern Lights, step on some glaciers, eat a few puffins (just kidding). I’ll report back!
Also, two weeks ago me and my girlfriend headed to Southern California to check out the “Superbloom” at Anza-Borrega State Park in the Mojave Desert as well as Joshua Tree. Yes, it was transformative. Also, warm.
Here are some photos:
A Joshua Tree — a type of yucca named by Mormons who believed the wacky branches represented the Biblical Joshua welcoming them to the Promised Land.Desert Dandelion at Anza-Borrega. The Superbloom was litA ocotillo, which is a pretty alien looking shrub
A particularly intense Nora Doane as Amy in THE ICE CREAM SANDWICH INCIDENT, produced by FaultLine Theater in August, 2016
I’m a fiend for 2017!
Although, like many people, 2016 was tough because many of my idols died and a good portion of my enemies came into power after a sucker punch of an election, it was also a pivotal year career-wise for me.
Let’s look at some important dates. Considering how late into January I’m publishing this, hopefully it is the last such breakdown you’ll be forced to sit through until November.
JANUARY 12 – Titan Award
One year ago last week, Theatre Bay Area announced that I was a recipient of the Titan Award along with two other extremely talented writers and one extremely talented director. I used the money to crank up the heat on several new plays and on revisions. On the same day, it became public that FaultLine Theatre was producing my play THE ICE CREAM SANDWICH INCIDENT in August.
JANUARY 18 – THE MORRISSEY PLAYS opens
My last work with SF Theatre Pub, which would close for good at the end of the year, was a 10 minute play revolving around the lyrics of The Smiths’ “This Charming Man.” If you aren’t into 1980s college radio, then you might not realize that all of the plays in this production were focused on music by Morrissey, either with The Smiths or his solo work. It was a melancholy time, perfect for a melancholy year!
MARCH 25 – First day at Piedmont Post
My first day involved profiling the florist behind this masterpiece.
I started working as a features writer for the Piedmont Post, an independent, print-only newspaper serving the 11,000 people of Piedmont, CA. It’s been a blast so far, and strengthened my journalism chops like nothing before.
MARCH 28 – Reading of BANTER at TBA Conference
My short play BANTER, set in the 1920s, received a staged reading as part of the Playwrights Cabaret set up at the Theatre Bay Area annual conference. It was my second year participating in the project, and it was a fantastic outlet.
APRIL 16 – Opening of HOME INVASION
After four years of working together, 6NewPlays, the playwright collective I was part of founding, finally opened our inaugural production. HOME INVASION, by Chris Chen, was a site-specific existential romp that sold out before it even opened.
JUNE 1 – I moved!
Bye bye, Oakland, hello San Francisco! Although still mad love for the East Bae, but got to love being less than a block away from Golden Gate Park.
JULY 6 – Promoted to City News editor
After just three months at the Post, I was promoted to replace the long-time City Editor after she took a new position. Again, its been quite a fulfilling career move, and now I really know the difference between a burglary and a robbery.
AUGUST 5 – THE ICE CREAM SANDWICH INCIDENT opens
The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident at FaultLine Theatre, San Francisco. 2016. (Photo Credit: FaultLine Theatre)
In August, my play THE ICE CREAM SANDWICH INCIDENT opened to very positive reviews and impressive houses at PianoFight theatre in downtown San Francisco. I’m am beyond grateful to FaultLine Theatre for taking a chance on this wacky, often dark piece, as well as for the solid work of director James Nelson, who left after opening weekend to start an MFA program at the University of Indiana. The piece got some revived attention in December, when Theatre Arts Daily declared it the “Best New Work” of 2016 and called it “aggressively bizarre and bizarrely aggressive.” It will forever be a highlight of my career as a dramatist.
NOVEMBER 4 – dark is a different beast opens
Andrea Hart’s fiery “dark is a different beast”, the second production ever by 6NewPlays, opened in San Francisco, a huge success for us as a group. After so many years of planning and scheming, it was so awesome to see us actually pull through and put up an awesome new play more than once.
NOVEMBER 9 – Record breaking day for BarryEitel.com
I wrote a piece on theatre after the election that became my most viewed blog post since I humbly began this website in 2012. I mean, it didn’t get like an amazing amount of attention but a record is still a record. Oh yea and Donald Trump was elected president yikes!
DECEMBER 23 – The Chronicle loves THE SPEAKEASY
THE SPEAKEASY, a massively immersive theatrical wonder that I helped forged several years ago, reopened this year in a much larger space to raving reviews. As the original Head Writer of the piece, it was incredible to see it blossom once again.
AND A LOOK TO THE FUTURE
Some of what to look for in 2017:
The first cast reading/playing of THE COOL.
THE COOL, a new jazz play with like 15 actors and lightly immersive staging, is opening at Amado’s in February.
My work will again appear at the TBA Conference as part of the Titan Showcase.
ISHTAR IN SYRIA (a working title), an allegory about the Syrian Civil War, will be part of the SF Olympians Festival in October. It’s my first time being part of the readings series, and I’m thrilled they were willing to take a chance on a piece on such an important subject for a full-length piece.
The march of 6NewPlays continues! Erin Bregman’s THAT IT ALL MAKES PERFECT will go up in two months, followed in the fall by Eugenie Chan’s MADAME HO. And….I’ll begin preparing for my 5 of the 6NP — CHAMPAGNE is scheduled to go ahead sometime next spring.
Social media echo chambers led to Trump, can theatre help destroy them?
After an ecstatic early morning casting a vote for the first woman presidential candidate from a major party, I probably spent the late hours of Election Night 2016 like many others in the Bay Area: stunned, with a sense of dread gathering in the stomach and fielding a steady stream of woeful text messages.
Although I wanted to be close to people I love, I was stuck working. I’m the City News Editor at a small paper in the East Bay and we were wearily waiting to hear about City Council and School Board results as Donald Trump, the president-elect of these United States, gave his victory speech in New York City.
The number of think-pieces published today will probably be able to fill an encyclopedia set (that’s a freebie business idea for anyone looking to profit off liberal misery). The dirge of Facebook posts today is like the digital version of wearing a sackcloth and sitting in ashes.
Thinking, of course, is important. Mourning is important.
But I have the day off to wallow, and several questions have been buzzing around my head for the past 12 hours. I’m not much of a blogger, but I thought I would process these questions here, now.
What? How? Huh?
We were so sure! Some big deal media outlets said Trump had a 2% chance of winning! Sure, white people came out in droves yesterday for Trump, but he also made impressive gains among African-Americans and Hispanics! Clearly, nearly half the country thinks astoundingly differently than we do in America’s sapphire coastal metropolises and azure Midwest cultural capitals. We can wave away a lot of Trump’s support as based in racism and misogyny, sure, but I think it would be logically impertinent and artistically irresponsible to blame the whole phenomenon on this.
Why is the divide so surprising?
Trump’s breathtaking victory makes me think the Progressive Left saw the election completely differently than the rest of the country. The former includes many members of the media (as well as us theatre artists!), and it seemed we were astonishingly unable to really reach half of the electorate.
This could probably be called the first real social media election, especially with the rise of alt-right and itchy Twitter fingers of Trump himself. And this, evidently, is a catastrophic problem.
The algorithms powering Twitter and Facebook place us all in walled gardens of information, whether we like it or not. Many of us get a lot, if not all, of our news from our friends – think about how that could be a problem.
By creating these tailored-made echo chambers, social media presents a fundamentally different experience from cracking open the newspaper and pouring over its breadth of information. We can hem and haw about the importance of citizen journalists and the danger of information gate-keepers, but it doesn’t remove the fact that social media keeps us isolated in many, many ways.
To me, the echo chamber of social media has failed us in a few ways over the past year – it prevented those of us on the Left from understanding how much support Trump was truly gathering and it also prevented us from communicating with this surprising tide of Trump supporters who popped up yesterday seemingly out of nowhere.
I truly believe Progressive principles would resonate deeply with many Trump voters if communicated well. I have to believe this, as an artist, so I’m not here to argue this concept (although I’m sure there will be at least 110 to 200 articles about this very subject in that November 9, 2016 think-piece collection, if any willing entrepreneurs want to take that on).
What can playwrights and other theatre artists do about this?
Hey, what’s that 6,000 year artistic medium that requires everyone to get together in one area and be introduced to diverse stories and ideas? The one that is supposedly always on the verge of death? The one that by its very funding and granting nature is often far more diverse than blockbuster Hollywood cinema and dives deep into storylines the Big 3 networks would never touch?
The thing with Hamilton?
As you probably guess after just one of four rhetorical questions, I’m talking about The Theatre!!
I think theatre artists have a tremendous opportunity to break through the echo chambers that played a large part in the brazen and frightening election of Donald Trump.
Ok, bub, how could this chronically underfunded and under-attended art form possibly have an impact on the rise of Apprentice star, steak salesman and worryingly neofascist Donald Trump?
I’ll lay out my cards – I think the arts can defeat Trumpism. I think the arts can defeat ISIS. I think the arts can stem the receding tide of democracy seen around the world, from the Philippines to Kenya to Egypt to Singapore to Russia.
Maybe this makes me an idiot, but I already have a B.A. in theatre and I only have like four years of student loans left.
Here are some specific ways “Theatre in a Time of Trump” (now that’s a season announcement) could smash the echo chamber and, hopefully, actually impart a well-presented Progressive message that sticks, I think. And maybe we can actually play a part in ensuring Trump only (*yikes!*) leads the country for four years.
–Diversify your characters
Like Van Jones powerfully said on CNN last night, Trump’s election seems like a “white-lash” — a mandate from white voters who have are uncomfortable with idea of an African-American or woman in charge (as well as from dyed-in-the-wool KKK-style racists). Theatre has a great opportunity to combat this notion by normalizing a wide variety of races and genders in a myriad of roles. This has been trumpeted by many artists more elegantly spoken than I, but it bears repeating now.
-Diversify your storylines
Again, this concept has been pushed many times before in the past decade. But I think now we could use some stories that honestly explore what would attract someone to Trump’s worldview (or, at least, whatever is coherent about it) and how that interplays with the wider world. As always, we need more stories that detail the current issues faced by minorities and women in engaging ways.
-Stop preaching to the Progressive choir
Theatre sorely needs a diversity of viewpoints if it’s going to succeed in breaking the echo chambers. I’m not suggesting that we embrace Trumpism, but I think we can all agree there can be a lot more thematic diversity in the American theatre. I want ideas that articulately challenge the typical liberal point of view just as much as I want theatre that attacks the now extremely conservative status quo (well, maybe not just as much). Audiences crave more than just a living UpWorthy post.
These artistic goals are nothing new, but I think Trump’s election puts them in a new light, at least for me. I think theatre could provide a weighty counterpoint to Trumpism, and could push past the social media echo chambers we’ve undoubtedly become mired in.
Remember, hand-washing is very important — a promo shot from my play FLESH, a piece in the 2012 Santa Cruz Fringe Festival
Happy Halloween from everyone here at BarryEitel.com! This October has been pretty busy so far, with lots of pumpkin picking and writing and oh yea fall TV is back, BABY!
Right at the start of this autumnal era, I found out I was selected for the SF Olympians Festival — the long-running festival of staged readings of myth-inspired plays. This year, the plays, there’s like 40 of them, are moving beyond Mt. Olympus and focus on the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Latium (which I figured out is like pre-Roman Empire Italy).
I was selected to write one of the four full-length plays of the festival for the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. The piece will be an allegory of the Syrian Civil War, allowing me to finally get a chance to defeat ISIS via the very relevant medium of theatre.
Mark your calendars now: ISHTAR IN SYRIA opens at 8 p.m. on Friday, October 13, 2017 at the Exit Theater here in San Francisco.
Also, keep your eyes glued here for info on the upcoming production of THE COOL, a play featuring live jazz and a vibrant, engrossing cross-section of 1950s Americana. This piece, which features actor Phil Watt playing the timeless jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, is set to open in February.
And in more pressing big news — dark is a different beast by Andrea Hart is going up on November 4 here in San Francisco. It’s the second play produced by 6NewPlays, the new play collective that I co-founded alongside five other Bay Area playwrights. Our inaugural piece, Chris Chen’s Home Invasion, went up in March and sold out every performance, so buy your tickets now.
For a limited time, you can even watch a full recording of the play on YouTube. There’s even an intermission so you can pour yourself some box wine and/or go to the rest room and get the real experience!
Right now, I’m hunkering down as City Editor of the Piedmont Post and working on The Next Thing….stay tuned.
My first day involved profiling the florist behind this masterpiece.
There has been a lot of switcharoos the past few months. In March, I accepted a new position at the PiedmontPost, a print-only newspaper – yes, they still exist – covering the city of Piedmont, California. I started as a features editor but I’ll be the City Editor starting this week. I’m very excited about the job; Piedmont only has some 11,000 residents, but that population has a crazy percentage of influential people, including Oscar winners, members of the pop-punk band Green Day, tech industry luminaries and other thought leaders.
A few months after accepting the job in the East Bay, I moved west to the Inner Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. It’s a great neighborhood, great apartment and I’m extremely happy to be closer to so much of the theatre world.
Speaking of which, The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident, which will be produced at FaultLine Theatre at PianoFight in August, is getting sweeter everyday. We had our first read with the cast last month and it was a cosmic treat. James Nelson, the director, and I are very excited to start rehearsals in the coming weeks.
Also, 6NewPlays closed its inaugural production, Home Invasion by Christopher Chen, in March after a sold-out run. Four years in the making, the collective is finally on it’s feet and charging ahead. It’s been a fantastic journey with the other five playwrights, and I’m extremely honored to be working with such high-wattage talents.
Did some updating around the site, going to Las Vegas on Wednesday, so check back in next month to see if I’ve gambled away the deed to BarryEitel.com
ok so I didn’t really do anything to celebrate Leap Day, but the extra time was appreciated, universe. Some cool things cooked up over February — we had our first table read for The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident, which was really, really funny, if I can toot my own horn. Also, very revealing. This is my first full-length play to be part of a professional theatre company’s season, so it’s going to be a fun ride. I’ve been told that you learn something through the development process of a full-length that can’t be taught any other way.
Also, I found out that my short play “Banter” will receive a reading at the Playwrights Cabaret, part of the Theatre Bay Area Annual Conference in April.
Look, I know this hasn’t been that exciting. But I’m keeping up with my promise to keep you updated. There is some cool stuff on the horizon–some of which involves a revival of The Cool, a jazz play featuring the music of Chet Baker.
To keep you satisfied, here’s a little music from Metric. In 2012, I drove across the country in a Honda Civic (the first car I ever purchased) and I had 3 CDs, one of which was Metric’s Synthetica. Though I totaled that car 6 months later (don’t ask), earlier this month I got to see these guys in my adopted city, and it was epic. Enjoy.
This Charming Man at SF Theatre Pub’s The Morrissey Plays, San Francisco. 2016. Photo credit: Gabrielle Lurie, San Francisco Chronicle
2016 is getting off to a rollicking start — I’ve even kept my commitment to posting monthly updates so far!! But dumb self-deprecating jokes aside, there are some really cool announcements! So grab your “fam” and get “lit” on this update.
AWARD SEASON: This time of year is always a nail-biter for us show biz-types with the Oscars and Kids Choice Awards just around the corner, but I’ve already had one victory, the Titan Award for Playwriting from Theatre Bay Area. Last fall, I was accepted into TBA’s ATLAS career development training for playwrights, which in turn made me eligible for the Titan. I would like to thank TBA, my awesome new mentor Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and everyone who helped me on way my way to this award. You know who are.
THE ICE CREAM SANDWICH INCIDENT: On the same day I found out I won the Titan, I also found out that the great FaultLine Theatre would produce my play THE ICE CREAM SANDWICH INCIDENT, about a group of wannabe astronauts testing out group dynamics in a fake space station. It goes up for four weeks in August at San Francisco’s PianoFight theatre complex, and you better believe I’ll let you know when you can get tickets (get subscriptions to FaultLine’s season here).
This show will be the first full production (full budget, four week, full-length play) of my career, so I’m extremely excited to see it come to fruition and break on through to the other side.
I WOULD GO OUT TONIGHT BUT I HAVEN’T GOT A STITCH TO WEAR: My short play THIS CHARMING MAN, based off The Smiths’ tune of the same name, was featured in SF Theatre Pub‘s Morrissey Plays this January, where all of the plays were based off the lyrics of Britain’s saddest vegan. And it was covered in the Chronicle!
IN MEMORIAM: One last thing — a few days ago Nan Withers-Wilson, a dialog coach around Chicago and one of my former theatre professors at Loyola, passed away. She helped me and many others find our voices.
Hey! How was your Thanksgiving? What do you want for Christmas?
Cool. Cool.
Anyway, this website has seen a huge update, including several sexy new sections about Interactive Storytelling and the “The Next Frontier” (i.e. some cool stuff with technology and narrative).
Barry Eitel 