The Car Plays are Revving Up in San Diego!

Still trying to figure out what these "Car Plays" are that I keep mentioning, as they move from the Radar Festival in LA to the Off-Center Festival in Costa Mesa, and now to La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego?

Click here to see a lovely little television news feature about Moving Arts' wonderful site-specific theater production, featuring creator and producer Paul Stein, Michael Shutt, and a bunch of our fabulous Los Angeles and San Diego actors, working together to make this latest production happen!

Click here to see another television feature, this one from the local PBS station.  We're getting lots of love in San Diego!

Or click here to see a review in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Or click here to see a review in the North County Times.

Or click here to buy tickets to the La Jolla Playhouse production of Moving Arts' "The Car Plays!"

I'm proud that my play "Reveille" is part of the mix.

Reveille by EM Lewis
Directed by Sam Woodhouse
Featuring Will Tulin and Michael Zlotnik

Leonard's only son has signed up for the military. He leaves for boot camp this morning.

Big News! $10,000 Fellowship from the NJ Arts Council!

The big news this month is that I'm the lucky recipient of a $10,000 Fellowship in Playwriting from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.  I drove up to Summit, NJ a few weeks ago to accept the award, along with other recipients in five categories, at their Annual Artists Roundtable.  Twenty-two artists were selected from more than 300 applicants in the categories of crafts, sculpture, photography, playwriting and poetry.

Front row, from left to right: Ben Marshall (playwriting), E M Lewis (playwriting), Thea Clark (crafts), Joanne Hoersch (playwriting), Erin Endicott (crafts), Catherine Doty (poetry).  Back row, from left to right: Frank Tribble (of Mancenido Tribble, photography), Douglas Ensel (photography), Jackie Clark (poetry), Sheri Lynn Behr (photography), Riccardo Berlingeri (sculpture), Anne Dushanko Dobek (sculpture), Deb Margolin (playwriting), Mihaela Moscaliuc (poetry), Michael Waters (poetry), Won Ju Seo (crafts)

The money will help me make it through the rest of the year -- which is rapidly filling itself with a wonderful array of productions, publications and teaching gigs.  Thank you, New Jersey, for helping me to be a full-time playwright for a little longer!!

A nice article about local playwriting recipients in the Star-Ledger.

"This Isn't About Love" in Eleven Eleven

Three of my short plays are getting some attention this Valentine's Day month.  "Reveille" is in Moving Arts' The Car Plays -- which is roaring into the Without Walls Festival at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, CA.  "Partners" is in the Briefs Festival in St. Louis, MO.  And "This Isn't About Love" has been featured in Eleven Eleven -- a biannual journal of literature and art published through the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.  

"This Isn't About Love" is about a lunchtime tryst between two lovers in a hotel room; one of them wants something the other might not be ready to give.

Click here to read "This Isn't About Love."  Look at the rest of the journal while you're there!

February 24-26 -- "Partners" in the Briefs Festival in St. Louis!

From February 24-26, 2012, my short play "Partners" will be showcased in the Briefs Festival in St. Louis, Missouri, produced by That Uppity Theater Company, in partnership with Vital Voice Media.

"More than a traditional theatrical production, BRIEFS is a community event, innovatively bringing together a diverse audience from the LGBT community, straight allies, local businesses, and local artists and involving eight different directors and playwrights."

"Partners" is one of my most popular ten-minute plays. It's a comic little piece about a cop who brings her male work partner home to meet her female *partner* partner, and the fireworks that ensue. It was most recently seen in Boston, at Another Country Productions' SLAMBoston event. I'm proud to have it included in the St. Louis event.

For more information, check out this article by Vital Voice Media or this feature in West End Word or this article in Alive Magazine.

Finished a draft of a new full-length play!

I had a wonderful weekend at Passage Theater in Trenton, workshopping the new play that I have JUST finished -- a five-character murder mystery called "If I Did This."  A big thank you to Passage for organizing this wonderful event, in which eight members of our playwriting workshop were able to work with directors and actors from New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia -- more than sixty theater artists in all!  Thank you, also, to my friend David Hilder for his dramaturgy and directing, and to my wonderful cast:

• Chad Hoepner, as mystery novelist Hal Walker
• Kathryn Markey, as senior editor Brett Martin
• David Crommett, as real estate agent (and acquitted murderer) Donnie Lawrence
• Brielle Silvestri, as Donnie's teenage daughter, Miriam Lawrence
• Nedra McClyde, as detective Hayden Quinn

Now...  delving into the rewrites!

Passage Theater Playwrights Lab Retreat! 

David Hilder, directing our merry little band of actors.

Characters, from left to right:  Brett, Hayden, Hal, Donnie, Miriam.

Characters at the music stands:  Brett, Hal, Donnie.

If I Did This
90 minutes
Five Characters:  2 Men / 1 Woman / 2 characters that can be played by either men or women (all any race)

Grieving mystery novelist Hal Walker has been sent by his editor, Brett Martin, to the home of Donnie Lawrence -- infamously acquitted in the murder of his wife.  But Hal didn't anticipate the presence of Donnie's teenage daughter, Miriam, nor the emotional undertow that his own wife's death creates as he attempts to ghostwrite Donnie's book "My Story."

"Infinite Black Suitcase" hits the bookshelves!

The mail lady delivered the best package today!  My author's copies of "Infinite Black Suitcase" have arrived from Samuel French.  What a wonderful feeling, to hold a book in your hand and think, "I wrote this."

Copies of "Infinite Black Suitcase" and "Song of Extinction" (published in 2010) are available for purchase from the Samuel French bookstores or website, or from Amazon.  I hope you'll buy one today!

The Car Plays race into Costa Mesa and San Diego!

I love starting the new year with a couple of new productions!

In January and February, Moving Arts -- my home theater company in Los Angeles -- is reprising what has become its signature event, The Car Plays.  After successful participation in last year's Radar Festival, we've been invited to participate in two more Southern California festivals -- the Off-Center Festival at the Segerstrom Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, and the Without Walls Festival at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.  I'm proud to have a play in each production.

The Car Plays roll into Segerstrom Center for the 2012 Off-Center Festival.

The Car Plays are a unique event.  When you buy a ticket, you have just purchased one row of five cars -- and there is a ten-minute story in each car.  There are usually three rows all together -- fifteen short plays.  Ushers escort you from one car to the next when each play is done.  Paul Stein brought the concept to Moving Arts, and continues to be the artistic director and producer of the event, along with producers Steve Lozier, Kim Glann and Cece Tio.  You need great producers -- a really great team of everybody, really -- to make this event work.  It requires precision, clock-work timing, and a lot of heart and hard work from all the writers, directors, actors and ushers to bring you the most intimate theater experience you'll ever find.

"Car Plays is a brilliant and inventive concept, a kaleidoscope of situations that draw snapshot portraits from life, with soulful acting and cinematic details that's so close to home and physically intimate that it blurs the distinctions between theater and life."

-L.A. Weekly

Now playing in the Off-Center Festival at the Segerstrom Center

Bohemian.  Like You.
Written by EM Lewis
Directed by Darin Anthony
Featuring Peter James Smith, Daria Balling and Warren Davis

Richie has known Melody and Don forever.  But he didn't know they did this...

The cast of "Bohemian. Like You."  Warren Davis, Daria Balling and Peter James Smith heat up the front seat!

This car is our stage.  "Bohemian. Like You."  Written by EM Lewis and directed by Darin Anthony.

More Information:  Segerstrom Center "The Car Plays" site

Press:  LA Stage Times (article by Don Shirley)

Coming soon to the Without Walls (WoW!) Festival at the La Jolla Playhouse

Reveille

Written by EM Lewis

Directed by Sam Woodhouse

Featuring (TBA)

Leonard's only son has signed up for the military.  He leaves for boot camp this morning.

More Information:  La Jolla Playhouse "The Car Plays" site

Press:  U~T San Diego