Swamp Driver Monthly – 12/19/23
prepared for the weather
Welcome back! If you want to know more about what I’m about, feel free to check out my first entry. Otherwise, without further ado…
I got to visit a real swamp with Ali over Thanksgiving. And not just any swamp, but the Swamp of All Swamps: the Everglades! Behold her majesty!
I can’t believe 2023 is over! She was so good to me! Don’t get me wrong, I had my share of ups and downs and bumps and disappointments and month-and-a-half-long OCD spiral/depression spells. But I also have a lot to be thankful for this year. Good Apples put up our first show. I had my first play published. I participated in my first residency. I wrote my first song. So many firsts! And that’s just the professional-related stuff! Because amidst all of it was so much life and life and life. Good friends and good food and good theater and good sunsets over the bridge. And so much love. That especially.
A few months ago, Leah challenged me to name my top ten shows of the year once 2023 came to a close. (Check out her list here!) I accepted her challenge. If you have your own top ten list (or are inspired to make one), send it to me! I wanna know what my friends are into and what inspired them this year! Listed in chronological order of when I saw them, these are my favorites from our most recent trip around the sun:
The Immortal Jellyfish Girl at 59E59. I saw this with my dear and talented friend Michela Murray in January and we spent the whole walk to Columbus Circle screaming into the frigid air about how much we loved it.
Parade on Broadway. Nina got me into Parade in a huge way last year, and it was so lovely to get to see it together on the big stage.
How to Defend Yourself at New York Theatre Workshop. I read this play for the first time in college, so it’s been on my radar for a long time. It was special to see a play that was such an inspiration to me in the past receive a full production of this scale. (Shoutout to Ali, my favorite NYTW date.)
Wolf Play at MCC. The staging knocked my socks off and left them somewhere in the stratosphere. I am in love with that puppet. And the fake cereal.
Bonefruit at NYU and at The Tank. This play hurts me so beautifully, and I loved getting to see two very different interpretations of it this year. (If you’re looking for a scourging yet tender two-hander to put up, this is the play for you.)
Wet Brain at Playwrights Horizons. During the penultimate scene, I found myself blasted back in my seat with my mouth agape as my brain tried to comprehend what my eyes were seeing. Don’t you love it when that happens?
Radio Man at SheNYC. I sat in the front row, and never have I been more thrilled to get spattered with fake blood. Sarah Groustra has something really special on her hands with this one.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth by Double Feature. Maybe it’s cheating to list two, but they were technically a double feature! And they were both so damn good. Katherine Wilkinson and Mikhaela Mahony are directing geniuses.
Infinite Life at Atlantic Theater Company. Annie Baker is one of my great theatrical heroes, and getting to see the premiere of a new Baker play was definitely a huge Life Moment for me. (We also got to speak to her in class yesterday and I have not yet recovered.)
Pyschic Self-Defense at HERE Arts. I have never in all my years seen anything like this. There were two lines of dialogue and then an hour and a half of curtains, creatures, tassles, shadows, puppets, soundscapes, and psychic wonder.
I’m so grateful to live in a city that gives me access to such incredible art and to be surrounded by a beautiful community with which to share these experiences.
INSPIRATION/CONSUMPTION
The android kick continues: I just finished (and greatly enjoyed) Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot.
I also I read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and absolutely loved it. Using humanity’s relationship with domesticated animals as a metric for our species’ sense of empathy? Come on! This was made for me!
Then Ali and I watched Blade Runner (which is based on Electric Sheep) and I hated it. There was nary an electric sheep to be seen! As Ali’s roommate put it, “You don’t watch Blade Runner for a movie about feelings and ethics. You watch Blade Runner for a movie about ‘shoot robot.’”
However, it did lead us to the fascinating Wikipedia article for “stories set in a future now past” and to another article about the “Blade Runner Curse.”
I was led down another interesting rabbit hole about the seed vault at the Soviet Bureau of Applied Botany by my director friend Talia Feldberg. The tragedy of nine scientists dying of starvation during the Seige of Leningrad while protecting the seeds of thousands of crops is haunting.
I’ve also been researching the history of contraception and learning more about Margaret Sanger and her complicated relationship with the eugenics movement. One of the things I read was the 1917 reprint of Margaret Sanger’s revolutionary pamphlet Family Limitation, which offers a fascinating look at early attitudes toward birth control.
feeling very glad today that times have changed…
End-of-year and end-of-semester deadlines kept me from seeing as much theater as I would’ve liked. This month’s offerings, in order, were Daphne at LCT3 (with one of the most chaotically rude matinee audiences I’ve ever experienced), Sleep No More (for my very first time!), Slash at the Brick (gotta love a well-researched and loving ode to fangirl culture), and Bedlam’s Arcadia (starring my lovely, talented friends Deychen Volino-Gyetsa and Caroline Grogan).
Even during the busiest of times, the theater that my classmates bring to the classroom never fails to delight and inspire. Last week, Chuck challenged us to “steal” from each other, and my classmate Andrew Reid and I incidentally ended up writing pastiches of each other’s work. I had fun pushing myself to match Andrew’s incredible whimsy and seeing his work go to a bit of a bleaker place.
Finally, Nina took me to see her roommate’s drag show, and Tits Morality served us some Sasha Velour slayage (sorry, sorry—the ten-and-a-half seasons of Drag Race I watched in undergrad came back to haunt me in a big way).
SUBMISSION/REJECTION/AFFIRMATION
It’s deadline season, baby!!! Raise your hand if you’re still alive!
I submitted to Under the Radar’s Coming Attractions!
And to the Playwrights First New Play Award!
And to the 49th Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival!
And to Ojai Playwrights Conference!
And to the EST / Sloan Project (with two different scripts—one for the New Play Commission and one for the Rewrite Commission)!
And to SPACE on Ryder Farm’s Come to the Table Creative Residency!
And to the Relentless Award!
And I submitted an article to HowlRound’s New Crit Series! Hooray for new adventures!
In a fun simultaneous submission-rejection, I submitted to the 16th Street Foundation in Australia for their Cooper Prize on the day it was due—and then relaized that, due to time zone discrepancies, it was already the next day (and thus past the deadline) in Australia. Oops!
I was rejected from ?! (Interrobang): New Works at the Brick. Alas! But we journey onward.
I was also not accepted to Ars Nova’s Play Group—not because I was outright rejected, but because the group is going on hiatus for the next year.
Good Apples Collective’s name was not pulled from the bucket in the Pay Your People grant lottery. But I had a blast at The Big Give and really cherished getting to meet a bunch of cool new indie theatermakers!
I was not selected for Under the Radar’s Coming Attractions. (Gotta love a fast turnaround, though!) I’m still hoping to swing by and listen in on the coversations shared by the other artists.
Affirmation-wise, I got to do this fun interview with my friend Lillian that includes an introductory description that made me feel incredibly seen:
GENERATION/COLLABORATION
This month in my lyrics class, I worked with the brilliant Raiah Rofsky on a song about Diana, goddess of the moon and of the hunt, taking vengeance on the male astronauts involved in the Apollo 11 mission. This was my first time writing lyrics to a tune that had already been composed, and I will be candid—I really struggled with this! I’m very grateful to Raiah for her patience (and to Nina for spending an hour on the phone helping me figure out scansion as I sobbed).
Aside from my Andrew-inspired piece, I also wrote a short play about employees at a haunted corn maze for Chuck’s class. (I’m sad the semester is ending!)
I’ve continued chipping away at my rewrite of the after wife. This month I discovered that, rather than taking place in a retro-futuristic 2163, the play needs to be set in an alternate version of 1963. I’ve had to overhaul a lot of my worldbuilding to accomodate this, but it has also allowed me to dig further into some parallel events taking place during this period that I can use as scaffolding for exposition. It also gives me a chance to practice writing my 1960s dialogue (because I will work on a JFK-related project someday).
I’ve started collaborating with Elizagrace Madrone, an incredibly smart and articulate dramaturg, on my play Riffs on the Yale–Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. This is my first time working with a dramaturg outside of an academic institution/theater company, and I really appreciated Elizagrace’s willingness to have an open conversation with me about what compensation structures can look like between a freelance playwright and a freelance dramaturg. I really do think that these kinds of transparent dialogues are important!
I updated my resume! Behold her here! I based this new format loosely on this layout example from the Dramatists Guild.
A group of college students performed a scene from my play cityscrape and sent me a picture from their rehearsal. Man oh man, I love writing for college students. I love seeing them take the words I wrote and do something I never would’ve imagined with them. How special it is that this gets to be my life.
Until the next nineteenth,
Sophie
P.S. – Nina insisted that I include the following picture from my swamp adventures for all of you, so here you are.
THE SYD THE SLOTH PICTURE IS MY FAVORITE PHOTO OF ALL TIME