Season: 2012

When it comes to model making, rules and guidelines are virtually nonexistent. Yes, books are sold giving tips and advice on how to construct a “realistic” looking brick wall or a standard dining chair in a variety of scales and sizes…but sometimes these instruction manuals don’t provide all the answers. From time to time, you get that one project that is so complex and difficult in function or shape that you don’t know where to begin.

Four years ago I got roped into a project, helping to develop a new play about these journalists during WWII. Let me begin by saying that I’m not a history nerd, nor do I know the first thing about journalism, WWII or play development. Yet somehow I became involved with creating this script.

It’s been an incredible journey, working with an artistic quartet comprised of a playwright, two actor/dramaturgs and me. The four of us have bonded over this project and it will be something that ties our friendship together for the rest of our lives.

I’ve been in the shop for the last two months. Physical work, sawdust, everyone focused on their own project, everyone in their own dedicated world. And now I’m doing a 180. I’m stage managing the FAIRplay project. What’s FAIRplay you might ask? Well, all of us interns, assistants and fellows are putting on a fully realized, fully produced play in two weeks. Impossible, you say? Not at all! Crazy, you say? Quite possibly.

Four decades ago, the Black Panthers and Puerto Rican Young Lords were young activists providing food and health care in their impoverished communities while in a desperate struggle to survive the systematic dismantling of their movements. Now they are 60-somethings untangling a traumatic past and an unclear future. In ensemble, OSF actors and UNIVERSES toggle between then and now in this meticulously researched, compelling work of fiction.

Well just in time for the New Year, I have Gregory Linington’s interview for The Pen and the Powder Keg. We Tufts are known for promptness.