Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009!

The change of year encourages us to assess what we've done and make plans for the year to come, and that's what I've been up to lately.

Highlights of 2008:

• winning the Primus Prize for Heads
• receiving a host of readings for Song of Extinction (including finalling in the HotCity Theater's Greenhouse Festival in St. Louis, being one of four winners of the Ashland New Plays Festival in Ashland, participating once again in hotINK at NYU and receiving my first regional theater reading at the Atlantic in New York)
• receiving a world premiere production of Song of Extinction by Moving Arts at [Inside] the Ford, through a special grant from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission
• founding the War Plays Project (and keeping it going throughout the year)
• teaching playwriting workshops for the first time

Coming soon in 2009:

• A scene from Heads is scheduled to be published in a Smith & Kraus anthology
• Song of Extinction is a finalist for the 2009 Eco Drama Festival in Eugene, OR

Goals for 2009:

• A regional or off-Broadway theater production of Heads or Song of Extinction
• Publication of a full-length play
• A world premiere production of Catch, Reading to Vegetables or one of the other plays I know have in the works
• More teaching of workshops -- and begin looking toward college-level positions teaching playwriting, preferably on the west coast (and possibly the Pacific Northwest)
• Do better with my record-keeping
• Work with good people
• Work hard and have fun
• Keep writing! Keep writing! Keep writing!