That title is a lyric from a favorite Warren Zevon song, “Lord Byron’s Luggage” (a song that’s also noteworthy for successfully building a rhyme around the term persona non grata). It seemed an apt description for how I’m feeling as I look back on 2011.
It’s not a bad view, as these things go. Continue reading
As I write this, we’re nine days from opening night for The Love List. And in our third week of rehearsals, the play continues to take shape, each run-through bringing us closer to that one moment we’re all striving for. Continue reading
Working on last year’s Renaissance Guild/PDP co-production of Rumors was really an incredible experience, as you likely remember from my Rumors Control series. I’d learned so much, gained some great new friends, and was pretty sad to see it all end.
But now I get to go through it all over again. Continue reading
Yesterday’s Express-News had a very nice write-up from Deborah Martin about one of my favorite Stone Oak Youth Theatre activities: the San Antonio Stage Script Study Group. She did a great job covering the origins of the group, so I encourage everyone to visit the link to learn more about what it is and how it came to be.
To sum up: the group’s a book club, with an exclusive focus on plays. Each month, we meet to discuss, analyze, and share our experiences of a play, and at the end of the meeting, one of us gets to choose the next month’s play. On the last Wednesday in June – having already read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Uncle Vanya – it was my turn to lead the way. Continue reading
The slate we’ll be using on our next film is a really nice affair. It’s a dry-erase clapboard (very like the one you’ll see to your left) that Nikki picked up at MPS Studios in Dallas as a birthday present in 2009.
And tonight we’ll be using it to call “action” on one of our projects for the first time. Continue reading
As you can likely see from my last couple of posts, the year to date has been one for expanding our creative horizons. And while I’ve been working on building my résumé as a practicing screenwriter, my boss has also found a new venue for her passions and mission… Continue reading
Writing is really, really, really difficult. Have I mentioned that recently? Difficult. There, I mentioned it again. DIFFICULT!!!
– given the post’s title, is it completely redundant of me to say this is from Steven Moffat?
It’s weird to see such a comment about writing coming from someone who’s so damn good at it. But as a writer who still classifies himself as Aspiring and therefore can’t believe he shares a calling with the guy who gave us the likes of “Blink” and “The Big Bang”, I hope I understand where he’s coming from. Continue reading
If you’re in San Antonio, it’s hard to think of a better place to spend New Year’s Eve than the roof of the Cameo Theatre. You get a great show, and if there’s room for you up there, you get a fantastic view of the downtown fireworks. Much as I loathe the term “bucket list”, seeing in a new year at the Cameo, alongside friends both old and new, really is one of those things you just have to do.
For me, standing on that roof last night, watching those fireworks unfurl, became a strange kind of meditative experience, much like staring into the candle. That moment when the old year and the new meet is one of the few times when you can simultaneously look back and look forward. And there was a lot to look back upon in 2010, just as I know there’ll be a lot to look forward to in 2011. Continue reading
Close friends will hopefully know that I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions. But I had made a few exceptions for 2010, and if I had to name the most important resolution, it would be the one I made to really focus on my writing. While I’m still in all ways a novice writer, I want to believe there’s something worth exploring in this.
That said, when that certain individual suggested that I should submit myself as a playwright to the year’s various local playfests, I had my apprehensions. I’ve had a lot of opportunities in the last few years to expand the scope of my writing, to work in so many different styles and genres. I’ve worked on proposals and press releases. I’ve written copy and correspondence. I’ve written bios, blogs, and business plans. And I’ve worked on a few screenplays. But playwriting is still undiscovered country for me. To throw myself into something like TheatreASAP just seemed too daunting.
So of course I threw myself into TheatreASAP. Continue reading
It all came to this.
Two weeks of auditions. Six weeks of rehearsals. Days spent on building the set, securing props, publicity, promotion, and phone calls and texts and E-mails to cover every miscellaneous detail you can think of and probably a few more. All for this.
One moment.
Opening night for Rumors. Continue reading
Lee Hurtado, Writer 