It's been a while since I posted any news on here and that's not because I haven't been busy! If you follow me on social media, you already know. Since my last post in April, I acted in two staged readings directed by Saheem Ali (A Free Man of Color - Broadway). The first reading was entitled Tsunami, by Tunisian playwright, Jalila Baccar, which went up as a part of the PEN: World Voices: International Play Festival and dealt with the events around the Arab Spring's origins in Tunisia. I played a reformed rebel fighter who'd lost his brother in the Syrian war. I got to work with some amazing talent including Kathryn Kates, who plays Larry Bloom's mother on Orange is the New Black.
Next, Saheem asked me to be a part of the first staged reading of a play entitled Bhuta Kala, a NYU MFA Thesis by Nathaniel Shapiro. This play was super interesting and also dealt with some very heavy material concerning the genocide that swept over Bali during the Communist purge in Indonesia between 1965-66. The playwright told the story in the tradition of Balinese theater steeped in Hindu myths, but used humor throughout the piece while the dark events unfolded before the audience. I played a young Communist who gets executed by his one-time classmates who remain loyal to the old guard.
After those two readings, as I alluded to in my last post, I became consumed by revising Dear Brother. I spent the next two months getting it in shape to submit to a number of competitions.
The fruit of that labor...I got on a list! Dear Brother wound up in the top 15% of scripts that advanced to the Second Round of the Austin Film Festival Screenplay competition. Unfortunately, that's where it topped out, but the sheer volume of submissions (close to 7,000) makes that feat somewhat noteworthy. So I may join fellow screenwriters in Austin come October, we'll see!
