Handwritten Theatre Fifteen: "I look to you for advice."

Finally, some practical information on how to handle life in corporate America. Feel free to take notes. There will be a test on this material.


Handwritten Theatre Fifteen: "I look to you for advice."
Performed by David Clennon and Dan Farren
Running Time: 9:52
All Audiences

Remembering Kenneth Millar on his birthday.
13 DecemberWriting as Ross Macdonald, he took the American detective novel to a new level.

Handwritten Theatre Fourteen: "I saw the obituary while I was recycling the newspapers."

A cold, rainy, winter night in Los Angeles and a friend comes over late to see you. There's something she needs to talk about. You give her a glass of wine and sit down with her. She talks, you listen.


Handwritten Theatre Fourteen: "I saw the obituary while I was recycling the newspapers."
Performed by Donna Allen Figueroa
Running Time: 17:55
All Audiences

Handwritten Theatre Thirteen: "This is how the story was told to me." (v.2.0)

Another first for Handwritten Theatre: Our first sequel. Time once again to join that interesting man in the window seat on board a jet-liner bound, non-stop, for...say, is that Rod Serling standing by the cockpit door?


Handwritten Theatre Thirteen: "This is how the story was told to me." (v.2.0)
Performed by Paul Jacek
Running Time: 6:51
All Audiences

Another belated birthday.
Kurt Vonnegut
11 November

Handwritten Theatre Twelve: "Note the relationship between the two seated figures in the booth."

Handwritten Theatre returns with a cycle of brand-spanking new plays, fresh from the kitchens of L.A. Podcasters' Studio 101 at The Brewery in Los Angeles.


Handwritten Theatre Twelve: "Note the relationship between the two seated figures in the booth."
Performed by Donna Allen Figueroa, Tony Figueroa, and David Clennon
Running Time: 11:23
All Audiences


Belated good wishes to Harold Pinter on his 76th birthday.
10 October

Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #4

Once more into the archives, dear friends, but this time it's for something that's never been publicly heard before: A scene from a television pilot called Georgetown written and produced in the disorienting months after the 9/11 attacks.

I was asked to create a series about the permanent power structure in Washington, D.C. in August of 2001. I said yes and a few weeks later the meaning, content and relevance of the project changed completely. There was still a desire to do the show on the part of the network and I felt it was important to become part of the national dialogue about what it meant to be an American when America was under attack. I wrote the piece in October and November, 2001.

In the scene, the powerful matriarch of the Garrison family has a quiet chat with a new senator from Colorado, recently appointed to complete the term of a beloved politician who died in office. It takes place in the library of the Garrison house in Georgetown during a dinner party at which the President of the United States is expected.

I gave Mrs. Garrison my take on this country and had the great good fortune to have my two-cents delivered by Helen Mirren. Andrew McCarthy plays the idealistic senator.

The pilot was not picked up by the network and has never been shown to the public. So, a world premiere right there on your computer and in your iPod.

Something you won't get from listening to the dialogue: The photograph Mrs. Garrison refers to as hanging over the mantel in the library is by O.Winston Link. Here's a reproduction:




Helen Mirren










Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #4
Performed by Helen Mirren and Andrew McCarthy
Running time: 6:08
All audiences




O. Winston Link's black-and-white photographs from the last days of American steam engines are some of the most powerful and evocative images ever recorded. Take a look.

Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #3

All the actors are stuck in traffic coming back from the beach or standing in long lines at the airport while we remain cool, calm and collected for another dip into the archives. This time we're going back to the Gulf War...the first Gulf War. At the time, I was one of the writers of thirtysomething and I took the opportunity to write about the disturbing trend toward lockstep patriotism the first Bush administration was pushing down our throats at the time.

thirtysomething was a series about the lives of two friends who worked in an advertising agency. In an episode I called A Stop at Willoughby, in an unsubtle tribute to Rod Serling, Michael Steadman is at odds with agency head Miles Drentell over a client's demand to fire an actor from an endorsement contract because of his temerity to appear at an anti-war rally. It was a way for me to articulate the very queasy feeling I was getting about the right-wing shift the country was experiencing. At the time, we thought it couldn't get any worse. Yikes.

I'd like to say the episode now feels like a quaint artifact of another period in American history, something we've all gotten over. But I realize this scene is more relevant now than it was when it was first broadcast on May 14, 1991. It sounds like I wrote it yesterday.

In the scene, Michael and two associates are pitching an alternative commercial to save the contract of the actor, Randy Towers, who has offended the patriarch of Durstin Ale.

Miles Drentell (David Clennon) and Michael Steadman (Ken Olin)

Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #3
Performed by David Clennon, Ken Olin, Andra Millian, Richard Cummings, Jr.
Running Time: 9:34
All Audiences



thirtysomething has never been released on DVD or VHS, but there is a volume of scripts out there.
thirtysomething stories

Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #2

Summer simmers on, but we're nice and cool and climate controlled down here in the archives. Let the actors enjoy their vacations! They're just going to miss my favorite all time scene...of scenes I've written. It's from a movie I wrote called Cast a Deadly Spell, a film noir detective picture based on the premise that H.P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler once collaborated on a story set in an alternative 1948 where magic and witchcraft are commonplace.

This script was written in an un-air conditioned apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens while I was working as an office temp and couldn't get arrested as a writer. I wrote it for personal encouragement as much as I did in the hope of getting it made. I needed a hero, an example, a ragged knight who'd speak truth to power...so I blended the worlds of two favorite authors and invented H. Phillip Lovecraft, private eye, then filled his personal mean streets with all manner of demons and amused myself through a hot summer of writing.

The film was made eight years after I wrote it, and this scene appears in the movie exactly as it did in the first draft. Remarkable.

Phil Lovecraft takes the case of a millionaire with a missing book and a misbehaving daughter. Things get personal when the clues lead him to a beautiful woman from his past, a night-club singer named Connie Stone. There's a lot of unfinished business between these two and plenty of residual heat when Connie shows up late one night in Phil's office.







Julianne Moore as femme fatale and nightclub canary, Connie Stone.












Fred Ward as the hard-boiled gumshoe, Phil Lovecraft







Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #2
Performed by Fred Ward and Julianne Moore
Running Time: 6:36
All Audiences



Cast a Deadly Spell was made in the early 90s, and last year it was selected for screenings at The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon where I got to see the picture with an audience for the first time in more than a decade. The hard-boiled detective I invented to remind myself how important it is to keep the promises you make in hot Queens apartments is still out there, still fighting the good fight, cracking wise and taking a punch, and never giving up.

Cast a Deadly Spell hasn't been released on DVD, but there are still VHS copies hanging around out there.

Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #1

Just because the actors have all gone to the beach, doesn't mean we're not going to soldier on here at Handwritten Theatre. A presentation from the archives: A scene from a movie I wrote a couple of years back, the remake of a key film from my youth, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. While not conceived for this podcast, I can guarantee that it was handwritten at the time.


The movie was directed by Christopher Guest and produced by Debra Hill with Daryl Hannah in the titular role. In the great tradition of B-movie science fiction pictures, the movie was short. So short the studio insisted we go back and add scenes to pad the running time. While this had an unfortunate impact on the pace, it gave me the unique opportunity to go back and write new scenes for two of the actors, O'Neal Compton and Victoria Haas who played the sheriff and deputy in the town rampaged by a giant Daryl Hannah.

Sheriff Denby and Deputy "Charlie" Spooner were characters at the edge of the action, but Victoria and O'Neal had the most remarkable...I refuse to say chemistry. Let's just say they were really good in scenes I'd written before I met them. The need to add screen time gave me a chance to write something specifically for their voices. What I came up with is a scene that does nothing to move the picture forward, just the Sheriff and the Deputy talking about two thirds through the movie. It's pure padding, but it's one of my favorite scenes. And I think it's one of the perfect counterfeits in a movie filled with scenes meant to sound like they were lifted from a Jack Arnold Universal-International picture made between 1954 and 1957.

Give a listen to two very good actors who got to go back after a movie was finished and play a scene written expressly for them.


About an hour into the picture, Sheriff Denby and his deputy are discovered in his office where he times Deputy Charlie to see how fast she can load her revolver. This leads to a general discussion of life and what's been going on up at the Archer place where the beautiful Nancy Archer has grown to five stories tall, yet hopes to keep her marriage with the philandering Harry intact.











Handwritten Theatre: Summer Bonus Track #1
Performed by Victoria Haas and O'Neal Compton
Running Time: 7:02
All Audiences

If you'd like to see the scene...as well as the rest of the picture, you can rent my version of Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman at Netflix...

...or buy a DVD for your very own at Amazon.com

Handwritten Theatre Eleven: "On the afternoon of July 12, 1960..."

In Handwritten Theatre Eleven, the author once again steps to the microphone, just to give the other actors something to shoot for.




Handwritten Theatre Eleven: "On the afternoon of July 12, 1960, as he was waiting for the light at Broadway and Forty-fourth Street, a woman brushed past Riley."
Running Time: 4:33
All Audiences.

Handwritten Theatre Ten: "I can see you're concerned about torture."

Handwritten Theatre reaches the rarefied level of double-digits!
Sit still. Be quiet. The restraints are for your protection.






Handwritten Theatre Ten: "I can see you're concerned about torture."
Performed by Moira Quirk
Running Time: 10:51
Explicit Content (Contains a single, non-gratuitous utterance of a popular vulgarity.)

Other Business

Victoria Haas, who tells the tale of a young woman's first encounter with a sour apple martini in Handwritten Theatre Four, recently finished work on Approaching Union Square, an independent film that has been selected for screening at The 2006 Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck, Michigan, June 8 - 11.

Let me assure you from personal experience that as impressive an actress as Victoria is when she's just a voice on your iPod, she's even more remarkable when you can see her.

Approaching Union Square will also be shown at The Long Island Film Expo at The Bellmore Movie Theatre in Bellmore, NY Monday, July 17th, the New Filmmakers LA series at The Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House Theatre at Barnsdall Art Park in Beverly Hills, CA the first week of August, and the Anthology Film Archives on 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in New York City, Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Waterfront Film Festival 2006

Anthology Film Archives


Thanks and a big "Welcome to the team" to The Pear Tree Pen Company for "stepping up to the plate" by covering the cost of new uniforms for the Handwritten Theatre Little League Team, "The Scriveners." It's just the boost the kids needed.

The Pear Tree Pen Company

Handwritten Theatre Nine: "I defended you."

To better enjoy Handwritten Theatre Nine, picture yourself at a party, standing by the sliding doors looking out at the patio and the blue rectangle of pool, a cocktail in hand, when the sound around you suddenly drops away and you are able to hear the private conversation behind you with amazing clarity. You shouldn't be listening. Really.


Handwritten Theatre Nine: "I defended you."
Performed by Beverly Mickins and Paul Jacek
Running time: 7:49
All Audiences

Handwritten Theatre Eight: "He did not drop the glass."

Tardy, but sincere, it's Handwritten Theatre Eight, performed by the author because sometimes you just run out of actors.




Handwritten Theatre Eight: "He did not drop the glass."
Running Time: 3:39
All Audiences

Handwritten Theatre Seven: "What I'd like you to do is behave more like a husband."

Samuel Barclay Beckett
April 13, 1906 - December 22, 1989
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

The Seventh Handwritten Theatre is being released the day before Samuel Beckett's centenary, because releasing it on his birthday would just be asking for trouble. When I wrote this one I didn't know it would go up so close to Beckett's birthday, but it now seems the best note I could leave on the headstone of the man who wrote some of the purest and most rhapsodic language ever spoken on a stage.

Listen to this one with your eyes closed. Imagine a stage covered with muslin shaped into mounds and hills. Two women and one man onstage. The first woman to speak is in a yellowing gown with cascading bugle beads that falls to the floor. She addresses a man sitting on a stool with his back to the house center stage. The man wears a black suit and a fedora. The woman who speaks second wears a gown identical to that of the first, but hers is new and resplendent as she stands at the edge of the apron looking out over the house. It begins and ends with the same sound.

Handwritten Theatre Seven: "What I'd like you to do is behave more like a husband."
Performed by Moira Quirk and Moira Quirk
Running Time: 11:00
All Audiences (But it is about grown-up behavior)

Handwritten Theatre Six: "This is how the story was told to me."

We arrive at the sixth Handwritten Theatre, the first to come from writing done after the initial cluster was created late last summer. The next few plays were written in a Moleskine notebook with my trusty Waterman early this year. This is also the first edition of Handwritten Theatre to come to you from LA Podcasters Studio 101 at The Brewery Art Colony here in Los Angeles, California. Original engineering and studio facilities provided by the multi-talented Lance Anderson.

Handwritten Theatre Six: "This is how the story was told to me."
Performed by Paul Jacek
Running time: 7:32
All Audiences

Handwritten Theatre Five: "One side is windy, the other is not."

The landmark fifth in a series of short dramatic pieces to be presented under the coveted Handwritten Theatre banner. If you enjoyed a cocktail during the previous play, I'd suggest some hot coffee for this one, served in a cardboard cup and held with both hands for warmth; it's cold where we're going.

Old business: Someone who listened to "I could tell you stories, but I don't think you'd want to hear them" asked me, "Where did that come from?" Well...

"The really odd thing is that I've written probably fifteen plays, including short plays obviously, and I really don't know how I've done it. I don't know where they come from and how I managed to write any of them at all. I really don't. It's most odd. I can't think how I did all that work."
-Harold Pinter

Handwritten Theatre Five: "One side is windy, the other is not."
Performed by Donna Allen Figueroa and Moira Quirk
Running Time: 12:32
All Audiences

Handwritten Theatre Four: "I could tell you stories, but I don't think you'd want to hear them."

The fourth edition of Handwritten Theatre and the first one to come with a serving suggestion. You can enjoy this play anywhere you want, but you can also treat it as a "performance installation." Here's how that would work: Download the play, put it on your iPod and take your iPod to a bar, a not fashionable bar. A neighborhood sort of place. You know what I mean; old dark wood, a mirror behind the bottles, red leather stools, red leather booths. Settle in someplace out of the way and order a drink appropriate to your lifestyle and when it comes, sample it. And then, when you feel you've soaked up enough ambiance, casually put your earbuds in place and push play.

Handwritten Theatre Four: "I could tell you stories, but I don't think you'd want to hear them."
Performed by Victoria Haas
Running Time: 19:44
All Audiences (But it is about grown-up behavior.)

Handwritten Theatre Three: "What's your opinion of memory?"

The third in a series of brief dramatic pieces composed by me in the great tradition of small works done in ink on paper. A sort of capricho. Which gives me enough of an opening to wedge in this quote from Goya: "Even those who have gone furthest in the matter can give few rules about the deep play of understanding that is needed, or say how it came about that they were sometimes more successful in a work executed with less care than in one on which they had spent most time."

Handwritten Theatre Three: "What's your opinion of memory?"
Performed by Donna Allen Figueroa and Tony Figueroa
Running Time: 5:55
All Audiences

Handwritten Theatre Two: "I asked her to sing a song."

The second in a series of brief dramatic pieces originally composed in a Moleskine Cahier notebook with my stalwart Waterman Phileas (fine point), the pen and notebook pictured above, and, yes, I'm open to endorsement proposals.

Handwritten Theatre Two: "I asked her to sing a song."
Performed by Beverly Mickins
Running Time: 5:54
All Audiences