#directing posts — Ben Crowder

Fire and rain

Ben Crowder — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I forgot to include the info on the play I’m directing! The show is produced by New Play Project and is called Fire & Rain. It includes six short plays, the first of which was the one I worked on — Ben Phelan’s The Sword Without, and Terror Within. Showtimes:

Monday, Oct 13 @ 7:30pm
Friday, Oct 17 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, Oct 18 @ 2:30pm
Saturday, Oct 18 @ 7:30pm
Monday, Oct 20 @ 7:30pm

Tickets are $6/person ($5 for students/seniors, and if you come to a Monday performance as an FHE group with 5 or more people, it’s $4/person). You can buy tickets online (at www.newplayproject.org) or in person at the box office. And last but not least, the theater’s at 105 E. 100 N. in Provo (the old Provo Theater Company building).

I love theatre.

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Take it from the top

Ben Crowder — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT

In spite of how magical theaters are, I realized today that I really have no idea what I’m doing as a director. Jumped in the deep end here. It’s too early to tell if I’m any good at it, either. Humbling.

But you know, even though I’m sticking my neck out with this directing gig and might get it chopped off, at least I tried. If it bombs, well, I learned a lot, and I’ve always got my writing and the magazine and so on to put me back together again. And if a miracle happens, three cheers all around. The important thing is being open to failure and ready to learn from it. It might take a long string of failures to become a success as a director. Or I might realize it’s not for me after all. Either way, it was worth the shot.

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No business like show business

Ben Crowder — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Have I mentioned I’m directing a play? If I forgot, well, I am: it’s called The Sword Without, and Terror Within, and it opens next week. (More info forthcoming.) Anyway, we’ve been rehearsing it these past two weeks in library study rooms. It’s worked well enough, but it wasn’t till tonight at our company runthrough at the theater itself that I realized I’d forgotten how magical theaters are. It was like stepping into another world almost. All of the excitement of putting on a show returned, accompanied by a burst of much-needed energy and rejuvenation. I’m raring to go — this magic of theatre is addicting as all get out.

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Catching up on stuff

Ben Crowder — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:00:00 GMT

First off, thanks for all the feedback on the magazine. My inbox is sagging at the seams with responses, overwhelmingly positive ones for the most part. The print edition should be ready for orders by the middle of next week, which’ll be nice because great as online stuff is, print is still so much more delectable. I’ll have more news on this later. And be sure to check out the news page (and RSS feed) on the Mormon Artist site itself, since, you know, that’s really where I ought to be announcing stuff about the magazine.

In other news, I’m back in classes for the first time in a year and a half — I’m taking Welsh and Playwriting, and they’re both a lot of fun so far. (Had to write a ten-page play by today. We got our titles and actors by random selection, mine being “Into the Oven” (one of the titles I’d suggested) with Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, and Zooey Deschanel starring in it. Hypothetically, of course.)

And on a related note, I’m directing a play (Ben Phelan’s “The Sword Without, and Terror Within”) for this next New Play Project set of shows. We had our directors’ meeting tonight and will be holding auditions next Tuesday and Thursday from 7–9pm each night in the HFAC. (Exact location to be determined. I’ll announce it again when we get closer.) And the shows will be performed in October. Fun times.

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Third place tree

Ben Crowder — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I’m sick (came down with something this afternoon) and trying to get better (I knew the sleep deprivation would eventually catch up to me), so posting may be intermittent till I’m back to normal. In the meantime, though, we closed the show (“Long Ago and Far Away”) last night, and to my surprise, my play Tree of Blood snagged third place overall. (It was a surprise because the play I directed, Repeating History, looked fairly solid in third.) That’s the third time in a row that my play has gotten third place. I’ve submitted two new plays for the next set, “Fire and Rain,” and am looking forward to starting a new show because dang it all, I’m addicted to theatre. Can’t give it up. Don’t want to. Gotta do more. (Once I get better, that is.)

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The August update

Ben Crowder — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:00:00 GMT

We’re in the middle of the run of Long Ago & Far Away, and it’s going quite well. (Last night’s Tree of Blood performance was head and shoulders above the last four performances, in fact. And Repeating History is proving to be one of the audience favorites.) Three more shows — two today and one Monday.

Monday also happens to be the submission deadline for the next set of New Play Project plays, Fire and Rain. Originally I’d hoped to submit four plays, but now it’s looking like it’ll be two, with a small chance that I’ll finish a third one in time. The first is called Sixteen Stones and is about the brother of Jared, taking place around Ether 2–3. I’ve got ten pages written so far and just have to write the middle scene and it’ll be done (done as in first draft done, which is about all I can hope for considering my time constraints). The second is tentatively titled Missing and is about a wheelchair-bound mother whose three-year-old daughter goes missing in the woods. And the third is a comedy about four missionaries, called Scrambled Eggs. (I’ve got two or three pages of it written so far.)

Other than that, I’ve got a rather big project coming up in the near future, and I think within a week or two I’ll be able to announce it. This is the one that’s been consuming a lot of my time for the past month and a half. It’s the one I’m most excited about, too.

Oh, I’ll also be starting up a new blog in the next month or two — whenever I find time to design it — and as a result this blog will change slightly, repurposing itself to fit into the new scheme of things. More on that once the new blog’s up.

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The July update

Ben Crowder — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Over the past month, I’ve been revising Tree of Blood a lot. (Ten or eleven times, to be exact.) After several revisions I realized that I’d written myself into several plot knots, primarily because I’d been adding in all sorts of backstory without stepping out to make sure it still made sense as a whole. And so I stopped myself. I wrote an outline for the whole play, then went back and rewrote it from scratch, and after a few tweaks here and there, it’s noticeably better. Still creepy, but without all the confusing holes in the plot. We’re in the middle of rehearsals at the moment and will be performing in a mere two weeks. Egads!

And I’m not assistant directing anymore, by the way. I’m directing. Yup, I don’t have all that much experience under my belt (assistant directing a single forty-five minute play and writing four of my own plays, plus watching lots of plays and movies over the course of my life), but I’m now the director of James Goldberg’s play Repeating History. It’s a good training-wheel play, since it’s only three pages long. But it’s got its own challenges, too — the bulk of the play is effectively a Powerpoint presentation, for example. There’s only one character (well, there’s sort of a second character, but she only has two lines and she’s not onstage). And the play has a lot of historical allusions that most people probably aren’t going to get, because we’ve all forgotten almost everything we learned in U.S. History.

In other news, I’ve got a few new projects lining up. First, I really want to get back into writing novels, so I’ve decided to aim at 1,000 words a day (which, as I learned from my NaNoWriMo experience, should be a piece of cake) and I’ve started outlining the one I’ll focus on for the next few months.

Second, almost every time I watch a movie I want to start writing screenplays, so I’ve decided to finally start doing it. I’ll probably start out with short films because, well, they’re shorter. And they’re similar to short plays, which I’ve got a decent amount of experience with.

Third, I’m writing some TV scripts for a demo for this new television channel that’ll be starting up soon. I don’t know how much I can talk about it yet — probably more than this, but I’ll play it safe for now — but it’ll be fun. And regardless of the fate of the channel, it’ll be a really good learning experience. Besides, who ever thought I’d be writing for TV? Not me.

And last but not least, I need to start blogging on here more often. Monthly isn’t going to cut it. I’m also itching to redesign the site, but that’ll have to wait for a bit. (I’m currently redesigning the New Play Project site. And have been for a while; hopefully I’ll get it done this weekend.)

Unbindery’s on hold for now.

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Lost and found

Ben Crowder — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:00:00 GMT

New Play Project’s Lost & Found show opens this week, featuring seven short plays on religious themes, and it’s going to be good. Yes, yes, I’m biased (I wrote one of the plays, Safe and Sound, and I’m assistant directing another, Prodigal Son), but it really will be worth your time. And your $5. :)

Anyway, the show runs a little over two hours with a ten-minute intermission. Here are the performances, all at Provo Theatre Company at 105 E. 100 N. in Provo:

Thursday, April 10th @ 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 11th @ 6:00 p.m.
Friday, April 11th @ 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 12th @ 2:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 12th @ 7:30 p.m.
Monday, April 14th @ 7:30 p.m.

Several of the nights sold out at our last show, so I’d recommend buying or reserving your tickets in advance via the website. On Monday, by the way, you can get an FHE discount at $4 per person if you have a group of five or more. Lastly, make sure you show up ten to fifteen minutes before the performance starts to guarantee your seat.

For the curious, my play Safe and Sound is the second of the set, and Prodigal Son is last. (And even though I didn’t write it, Prodigal Son has its main character serve a mission to Thailand, so it totally gets extra bonus points.)

If you’re in the area, you should come! Every play in the set has never been performed before, which makes this a great chance to see new Mormon theatre — plays that don’t compromise our values and that are actually good, too.

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New directions

Ben Crowder — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I’ll be assistant directing James Goldberg’s play Prodigal Son in our New Play Project Lost and Found festival next month. It’s my first time directing anything — which is why I’m assistant director — and in all honesty I have only the slightest idea what I’ll be doing, or how to do it well, but I’m very much looking forward to it. Theatre really speaks to me. For most of my life I’ve only been an observer (in the audience, though my sisters have acted in dozens of plays and I’ve gone to some of their rehearsals), but in the last six months that’s started changing. Playwriting, (assistant) directing…who knows, maybe I’ll even start acting one of these days. But for now I’m content to write. (And if the directing goes well, that, too.)

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