Schrödinger’s Gun

May 3, 2019 Plays TCR Daily
By Greg A. Smith

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Roland – Male, Caucasian, Twenties
Freeman – Male, African-American, 50+
Griggs – Female, African-American, 25-40

SETTING
A small, bare room. Modern day.

Production History:
Staged Reading – Itinerant Theatre, LA; 2017
Staged Reading – City Theatre, FL; 2018

Awards:
City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting – 2018 Finalist

 

A small, bare room. A metal table in the center, a beaten-up briefcase laid flat on it. Two men sit either side – ROLAND (Caucasian) and FREEMAN (African-American). Both wear civilian clothes, FREEMAN open-carries a gun in a holster. ROLAND appears a little nervous, antsy.

A moment’s uneasy silence.

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Book Review: Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

May 1, 2019 Book Review TCR Daily
By Lindsay Jamieson

New York Times best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson departs from her beloved YA fiction with Shout, her brilliant new memoir written in verse.

Shout, published in March, 2019, marks the twentieth anniversary of Anderson’s groundbreaking novel, Speak, which told the story of Melinda, a 13-year-old who stops speaking after she’s raped. With Shout, Anderson opens a window into the personal experiences that gave her the insight, empathy, and emotion to conjure Melinda, a protagonist who, as she reveals in Shout, has become a hero (and a moniker) for survivors—men and women—of sexual assault. Anderson, like Melinda, was also raped at 13, and she is an ardent believer that words—spoken, shouted, and written—offer a “bridge to escape” the shame. As the last line of the introduction states: “This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.”

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Shaking Coco – A Short Screenplay

April 27, 2019 Screenwriting TCR Daily
By Kevin Kautzman & Abbie Lucas

INT. RITZ GENEVA LOBBY – DUSK

JENNIFER (F 50), a flustered Texan “of a certain age,” enters a bustling hotel lobby. Her flats SLAP against the checkered floor. She checks in with a passport and gold credit card. Très fabu.

Behind her, a polished but anachronistic flapper type FIGURE (F 30) appears and positions herself at the concierge desk. You know her but you don’t. Jennifer DARTS a glance toward the Figure. A faceless hand SWIPES the gold card.

JUMP CUT TO:

INT. THE SUITE – DUSK

The door SHUTS and Jennifer faces Lake Geneva at magic hour: golden, stunning, a heck of a long way from Texas. She reveals and FLICKS a business card: “Thomas Egger Ph.D., Université de Genève.” She places the card onto a surface and takes a toiletry bag from her luggage.

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TCR Talks with Elaine Grogan Luttrull

April 22, 2019 Interview TCR Daily
By Anjali Becker

Elaine Grogan Luttrull is not your average CPA. Through her company, Minerva Financial Arts, Luttrull works to build financial literacy in creative professionals and creative arts organizations, helping people figure out how to make the business side of their creative ventures a financial reality.

Luttrull is also the author of the book Arts & Numbers: A Financial Guide for Artists, Writers, Performers, and Other Members of the Creative Class, a resource for writers (and creative professionals of all stripes) who intellectually understand that financial literacy is important but may not be entirely clear on where to begin.

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Book Review: The Condition of Secrecy by Inger Christensen (translated by Susanna Nied)

April 10, 2019 Book Review TCR Daily
BY: A.M. Larks

“For as human beings, we can’t avoid being part of the artistic process, where source, creation, and effect are inextricably bound together. Here in our necessity,” Inger Christensen writes in her collection of selected essays, The Condition of Secrecy, which contain, in part, her thoughts on writing and its fundamental role in human existence.

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Diagnosis

April 5, 2019 Poetry TCR Daily
by: Elizabeth Hazen

I.

In Exam Room 3, I drank
barium sulfate through
a bendy straw, breast buds

rising beneath my hospital gown.
Sharp pangs like scissors
snipped inside me, but the x-ray

revealed no ulcers. In his preacher’s
tenor, the doctor insisted
I had no cause for pain.

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Fauré’s Requiem

April 2, 2019 Nonfiction TCR Daily
By MAxima Kahn

The deer are here, four of them, all does, strolling through the underbrush, munching the tender leaves, picking clean the lowest branches of my flowering pear tree. It has been so long since they have spent time here in the daylight, I am glad to see them and watch their elegant dance among the trees.

I don’t go out on the porch this morning so as not to disturb the deer—and also because it is chillier. I sit inside and listen to Fauré, who takes my breath away with the beauty and perfection of his music. If I could write music like this but relevant to now, if only I could do that, be in that state of grace, what a gift and blessing and offering that would be. I would have to know that was worthwhile, that was enlarging the world, that was magnifying, in a sense, the glory of God, of creation.

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