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

Handwritten Theatre One: "What do you want me to tell you?"

Handwritten Theatre is on the air! Or in your wires. This is the first in a series of short plays drawn from improvisational exercises I assigned myself during the fall of 2005 and recorded late last year with a group of actor/friends who were compensated with baked goods and a selection of flavored teas. The original engineering for the project was done by Lance Anderson whose work in podcasting lit the fire that resulted in my jumping into this remarkable forum where the artist-to-audience ratio is one-to-one. Over on the right you'll find a link to Lance's Verge of the Fringe.

Handwritten Theatre One: "What do you want me to tell you?"
Performed by Moira Quirk and Michael Rayner
Running Time: 11:48
All Audiences

Coming Soon!

Watch this space for information about how you can download original plays written and produced for Podcasting.

Yes, turn your pants (or your purse or your fanny-pack or wherever you keep your portable music player) into a theatre with innovative and all around swell drama by an actual Emmy winning dramatist. No, really. He won an Emmy and they've never asked for it back!

Stay tuned!