Good news for new play!

Ana's Key to Anarchy will get a staged reading at the Blue Theatre in Austin! Also to have a staged reading, the same evening, PÈRE BOISSON, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant. Hurray for Blue! August 8, 7:30 pm, "Free and Open to the Public." Link to Blue Theatre at the right.

beaucoup de français, mais pas trop (in new one-woman show)

Elisée Reclus


I've just finished a new play. It's Ana's Key to Anarchy. Catchy title, right? The one woman of show is Ana Fortier, whose family had the sugar plantation in Louisiana where Elisée Reclus, who would become an important geographer and anarchist, was the resident French teacher from 1853 to 1855. She's 87 as she addresses us in 1929.(He left, of course, because he could not tolerate an economy based on slavery). Dans cet piéce il y a beaucoup de français, mais pas trop.

One more play set in 1929 and I'll have another trilogy. A December Eve's Visit with Frederic Demuth (NYC International Fringe Festival show 2008, a one-man show) was also set in 1929. Any ideas?

This new play takes place as the streetcar strike is in progress in New Orleans. Ana is wanting one of those new PoBoy sandwiches that the Martin Brothers created to give out to hungry strikers.

I've re-subscribed to Celtx, though it has no Celtx Central anymore, which I dearly miss. With this new Celtx you can generate PDF files of the plays, so that helps. If anyone would like a copy, let me know!

It's 106F here in Texas where I post this. (I like that snow on the mountains behind Monsieur Reclus.) Stay cool.

Little Lucila still helping her belovèd Chile

Hi,

Just wanted to note here that Lucila: a play for Gabriela Mistral was shown once in my home and will be shown again to a Unitarian forum. We passed the hat for donations for Chile and came up with $250 the first time, all of which we are sending to a real person in Santiago who has worked with a theatre group in poor neighborhoods and through them will give it directly to someone(s) in dire need at this time.

His name is Mauricio and he is a friend of my poet friend, Monique Laforce. He rented a room from her when he was working on his PhD at the University of Laval. Later, when he was working, back in Santiago, he paid for Monique to travel to Chile.

Lucila was even lovelier, to me, this last time. Thanks again to all who gave the play their time and talent, their heart and soul.

Thank Heavens for old friends, but about Celtx Project Central....

Just returned from a visit to the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, with of course a cross over to Mexico for just a taste of it. Cold but sunny that day, Friday, in Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas with my friend Rosemary Miranda and her friend-once-husband, Manual Miranda, a painter.

Manual asked about my plays. I told him about the two produced in NYC in 2008, then told him I'd give him the URL for Celtx Project Central, where all my play scripts are available. But guess what? They're not there! Or maybe they're there, but there's no there there (as Gertrude Stein said of Los Angeles -- or was it Oakland?). Celtx Project Central is all gone! If you click the link at the right to my portfolio, you'll see the sad news of its retirement. And if Manuel hadn't asked about my plays, I'd not even have known, as I use Celtx only to input a new play, and I haven't written one lately.

I've long wanted to publish plays. Real plays. Real paper. Maybe now's the time. If anyone wants to help publish plays, tell me.

with his old camera i took pictures, like these in Quebec City, last day of October

Anthony Joseph (Tony) Weisman

Tony Weisman
May 31, 1944-September 29, 2009



Tony Weisman fixing a neighbor's roof last November, right, and Tony dressed in his nicest jacket, above.


We lost an angel of a friend when Anthony Joseph Weisman died on September 29, 2009. You can see many photos of him at www.MeM.com, where you search with Weisman, Anthony, or just use the link at the right.

He was a gift to everyone who knew him, but he was especially a gift to me, Sylvia; to Leecia (her daughter, Stella, calls him Opa Tony); and to my brother, Thomas Sherwood Manning, 1955-2005, mentally and physically handicapped, for whom Tony made a home the last nine years of his life.



Tony and Sylvia in 2008 in New York for the NY International Fringe Festival, with Stella.

Encore une fois, Bread & Puppet

We, Sylvia and poet friend Monique LaForce, of Québec, attended the B&P Circus this last Sunday. It was in the New Theatre instead of in the field, because of weather. They performed to two packed houses, one after the other, but with no Pageant in the woods. It was even better than before. It was great. Monique, who had never seen a Bread and Puppet performance before, said it was like entering another world.

And Peter Schumann was Uncle Sam again on his sky-high stilts. Go to this URL to see him on them: http://breadandpuppet.org/ (or click at the Bread & Puppet link on the right)




Monique LaForce, poet, after picking wild raspberries at Mullein Hill, Glover, Vermont.