DANIEL JOHN KELLEY

Semester one of my graduate school experience is finished, and I have a shiny new play to show for it. Thanks Tina Howe!

The play is Wall, Ball, Summer And Fall (a Coney Island Adventure), and it’s a 100 minute comedic drama about Coney Island Handball and how one finds one’s place in the world. It’s an adventure story, really, about a young boy who flees the Brooklyn he knows for the Brooklyn he wishes he knew, encounters a range of sad and funny broken people along the way, and all this changes his life forever. You can read all about the play here.

The play started as a kernel of an idea, based on a fabulous article from Sports Illustrated in 1991 about a guy who is a master of handball in Brooklyn, but the fact is, American culture has never really been that captivated by handball. The article is available online, and you can read the thing here. It’s a fantastic read.

I’m going to keep working away at it- and a few other projects, which have been on the back burner until now- and this will the first place to know if anything comes of it. Until then…

In exciting news, a few weeks ago the editor of Nytheatre.com, Martin Denton, asked to include The Conveniences of Modern Living in a new project of his:

The project is called “Indie Theatre Now”, and it’s a digital library of new American plays, produced in New York, as part of the self-producing Indie Theatre scene. This first batch of plays are all plays from the NY Fringe, and as “Conveniences” was produced there last year (to a rave review from Nytheatre.com), it fit the bill. So huzzah for that.

I’m really grateful to be included on the site, as it features some of my favorite playwrights writing today including Mac Rogers and Qui Nguyen and others.

You can take a look at the play below, and purchase it to be a part of your digital library on Indie Theatre Now. And a portion of the proceeds go to me so, you know, buy it a lot! Hooray!

http://www.indietheaternow.com/Play/PlayDetail/95

It’s official: I’m one of four playwrights accepted into the second year of Tina Howe’s playwriting MFA at Hunter College. The deposit is paid, the GRE is taken, and I start in September!

The other three folks I’m going with are: Rob Cardazone, Kristen Palmer, and Lindsey Ferrentino. We all met over a non-lunch and several pitchers of sangria with Tina Howe in lower manhattan, and they all seem like excellently smart and talented folk. I’m looking forward to our journey together…

In fact, I went this past week to see the readings by the current MFA students, and was incredibly impressed by the work going on there- a great variety of passionate original voices, with ambition, imagination, pathos and humor.

My favorite piece was one by current student Johnna Adams- it was a searing 90 minute drama that takes place in a parent teacher conference *spoiler alert!* after a 5th grader commits suicide. Really, really strong piece. My favorite thing about it was that- though it’s super unambitious in terms of putting it up- it dug deep into these characters, and didn’t sacrifice anything in terms of scope of imagination. It is incredibly HUMANLY ambitious, true, and brutal. Producers, if you’re looking for a play, may I suggest this one? No, really, do it.

So…the bar is certainly set, and I’m gonna have bring my A game- or perhaps even a game above that, if such a thing is possible- but that’s kind of the point, right?

Onwards!

Coming up in May, my short play “More Wondrous Things” will be performed as part of “The Flash Plays: City To City” by the  Special Sauce Co.

I love the concept of these shows: it’s a 3 week festival of 5 minute plays, performed in site specific locations, and occurring without warning. Is it a play? Or are they crazy people? OR BOTH? Only time will tell.

My play, “More Wondrous Things”, is about a little boy coming of age as he crosses the street all by himself for the very first time. There’s also magic and dancing and music. I’m curious to see how it will play out in the real world in real time. We shall see…

Fun news- Monster Literature lives!

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan has asked the good folks behind “Monster Literature” to bring the series in for their Spring Break Arts Festival. We’ll be remounting “The Secret Garden…OF MONSTERS!” on Saturday April 23rd, for two shows at 2PM & 3PM.

This is the first time we’ve been asked to take this show- which last time we did it was (for us) pretty tech and set heavy, and put it up in a way that’s more mobile. The solutions we’ve come up with, I think, are pretty exciting, and a bit of fun for all the kiddos at the show.

So…basically…come along!

The Secret Garden…OF MONSTERS! @ The Children’s Museum of Manhattan
Saturday, April 23rd @ 2PM & 3PM
212 W 83rd St btw. Bway and Amsterdam
$11- (cost of admission to museum includes the performance)

Another fun thing is on the horizon- a number of excellent folks (the folks behind Theatre In A Van, in fact) have put together an evening of short plays by the likes of Daniel Talbott, Maya Macdonald, Dan Moyer and yours truly, in addition to several others.

It’s all going up site specifically in an apartment in Williamsburg, and each play has a drinking game involved. So you can watch some short plays and then- as part of each play- get very drunk. An excellent idea, if ever there was one, and there have been several in the course of HISTORY!

I sent them a variety of short plays to do, but the one the picked is an oldy but a goody: Practical Origami

Should be a bit of fun!

Bottoms Up : a night of drinking game plays
Saturday, April 9th @ 8PM
424 Rodney St btw. Hope and Grand Street, Apt #3 in Brooklyn
Take the L to Lorimer or the G to Metropolitan

The peeps who brought you ‘Friend Me’ and ‘Hand Job’ are gearing up for another night of theater ‘Bottoms Up’! Including drinking games in the plays!

This night is a party night, so wear your party hat and shiny shoes and get ready to dance and experience site specific new plays by:

Maya Macdonald
Dan Moyer
John MacDonald
Daniel Talbott
Caitlin Bebb
Daniel John Kelley
William Shakespeare (yes, he wrote a new play just for us)
and a very special Surprise Person

Bring $10 for entrance and drink all night

See you April 9th!

So following the previous reading of “Sharon Is My Name” , the good people of The Poet’s Art Theatre liked it so much that they gave us a theatre to do another, bigger reading of the play. This one can fit more people, so we’re inviting more people- and you should definitely come:

The Poet’s Art Theatre presents….

SHARON IS MY NAME

by Daniel John Kelley
Adapted from “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare
Directed by Annie Levy

Monday, March 28 @ 7:30PM
The Irish Arts Theatre- 553 West 51 Street btw 10th and 11th ave.
FREE

Shakespeare! Ninja Turtles! Torah! Poop Jokes!

When she was 6 years old, Sharon Rosenberg’s father taught her “The Merchant of Venice”. Then he left. Now, she’s 16 and out to prove to anyone who can listen that this play is beautiful.

Family Drama meets Bromace in this sophomoric adaptation that asks the questions: why do we return to the things that hurt us? What do we do when the people we look up to disappoint us? And who exactly is “Pants-Crapper Leibowitz”?

With

Devon Caraway, Michael Bradley Cohen, Clayton Fox and David Ian Lee*

*Member, Actors’ Equity Association

As I mentioned before, my play “Sharon Is My Name”- an adaptation of “The Merchant of Venice” which I was commissioned to do last year, and which I’ve been developing this year is being read on Monday. It’s certainly a work in progress, but if you want to, come along! Here are the details:

Hi there, universe! You still exist! Lovely.

A few things have happened/are happening/will, in fact, happen in the next few weeks, so I thought I’d update this space with what’s happening:

- Development of this musical I’m writing with good folks Russ Kaplan and Sara Wordsworth (two of the folks behind In Transit) is underway! A full outline of the book exists- and they’re currently working on putting together songs for me to put into the book and then we’ll have a musical. Yes. That’s how it works.

- A workshop of my “Merchant of Venice” adaptation, Sharon Is My Name is going up next Monday at the 14th St. Theatre Lab, featuring some excellent folkses, and directed by Annie Levy. We’ll be working on the play all this week, and putting up what we got on the 7th. It’s come a long way from last year, but still has a long way to go. Excited to see where this is heading.

-I’m taking a playwriting class with playwright Karen Hartman called “Swim The River”- and I’m really enjoying it. As opposed to the general weekly meeting for 3 or 4 hours type class, this class meets once a month over a period of five months, and each time you meet, it’s for seven hours. This gives you a chance to really work on a piece over a significant portion of time, and then the class itself then becomes a great space for exploration on a particular piece. At least, it has for me so far- it’s really done wonders to unlock some thorny and frustrating sections of my new play- about an episode in the late life of Groucho Marx. More on that soon.

And…that’s that. More things on the horizon- and as they become realities- I will put them up here. Onwards!

As the holidays grow near and 2010 comes to a close, I thought I’d post a bit here about all the (artisitical) stuff I’m grateful for in the past year:

- I’m grateful for the incredible group of folks that helped stage 3 preposterously awesome episodes of Monster Literature, starting in February and going into June. I was really proud of those shows, and am grateful to everyone who helped bring a bit of good old fashioned joy and light to the children of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

- I’m grateful to my buddy Annie Levy for commissioning my Merchant of Venice adaptation, Sharon Is My Name- and I’m grateful to her and her compatriots for putting it up in July at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin.

- I’m grateful to everyone involved with The Conveniences of Modern Living in the Fringe this past August- I was really deeply proud of the work everyone involved did on the show, and am really proud in general of that show, and the level of work that was accomplished.

All in all, a lot of great things happened in 2010 and a lot of awesome people gave me a lot of great opportunities. I am grateful for all of it, and looking forward to more in 2011!