Veni, vidi, video

Another introductory video, this time for playwriting.



Sample clips from some of Emily Snyder's plays to date:

From Playscripts, Inc.

Wallace's Will

Math for Actors

Original Musicals

King of Fools (Musical)

Pink Noir (Musical)

Bearskin (Opera-Ballet)

Nutcracker (Story-in-Dance)

Original Plays

Cupid and Psyche

A Christmas Carol

Not shown (no video)

The French Butler ~ An Evening's Diversion

Mood: Good! I got to sleep in today, praise God!
Music: Why isn't it you? sung by Jeremy Northram
Thought: I really, really, really needed this day off!

Updating I shall go

Updating I shall go
High-ho the coding-O!
Updating I shall go!

A bit of introductory fun for the updated director page.



I'm also searchable on Amazon! Check it out!

Emily C. A. Snyder on Amazon.com

And on Open Library! Check it out as well!

Emily C. A. Snyder on OpenLibrary.org

And apparently, I have a page on Smash Swords - voila!

Emily C. A. Snyder on SmashSwords.com

Mood: Better and better
Music: Currently the above (First Poetry Duel from Dangerous Beauty) on mental repeat
Thought: I know when I'm getting over being ill when I gleefully begin to throw myself into work.

At last I can start suffering...

...and write that symphony! ~ Cosmo from Singing in the Rain

So, because Nachtsturm Castle is now available from Girlebooks.com, I decided it was long overdue for me to update my personal page which you can find here.

And as I was doing so, I was struck with "Wowzers! I guess I've written and published a good bit. Quite a bit of it not by me!" (Although it was hilarious to go through the 1993 Impact Literary Magazine which had an embarrasement of riches. I can't find the 1994 magazine, which is rather irksome, though!)

The frustrating thing is, that although I recently wrote to Bob something like this:

Some great news first:

When I was down in NYC, I had a chance to meet with my publishers, which has resulted in another acceptance, this time for a short play called Math for Actors which I directed over the summer (the link goes to the video). Playscripts has asked to see three more plays (Nutcracker, One Nation, and French Butler) and we'll see where we go from there...! Wallace's Will is starting to pick up - I've begun keeping a map of who's ordered the book (blue) and who's ordered performances (pink). Very exciting!

And, because this has become the ridiculous world of publishing these past few months, and as a fellow Austen-phile, I'll tell you that my sequel to Northanger Abbey, the ridiculously-named Nachtsturm Castle, has been picked up by Girlebooks.com. (Long story how that fell in my lap. Let's just say, the web is a happy thing. And novels written a decade ago, apparently, do not die.) Otherwise, I'm acting in Theatre906's All in the Timing (Mrs. Trotsky in "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," Milton in "Words, Words, Words," Betty in "Sure Thing," and the Waitress in "The Philadelphia." I find the monkey the hardest, but I quite like the Marxist!), and prepping to direct some unnamed but female-heavy play in December and music direct "Guys and Dolls" in March.

And then asked for possible recommendations to gradschool (redux) for Fall 2010...it looks like I'm doing a lot, and I am doing a lot - I mean...this is a lot! I think it's six plays I've written this year? But none of it is monetary. Or lucrative enough to support survival. Which makes me go, "Hey, God. This is cool. This is very boho-chic. But what do you think about supplying yesterday's daily bread? Hmm? Hmmm!"

So, support a starving artist! Buy Wallace's Will! Buy Nachtsturm Castle! Hip hip hoorah! Hours of entertainment at your command!

Mood: Improving - the cold is (hopefully) lifting
Music: The Pierces
Thought: But seriously, check out the very cool new Author pages!

The World According to Wallace

Below, is a map of where Wallace's Will has been ordered. Thus far, it's only perusal copies of the book...but terribly cool, nonetheless. (One of the groups considering the play is from Dublin!!!)


View Wallace's Will in a larger map

We also got a write-up in the Portsmouth, NH paper, Foster's Daily Democrat. Also, tres cool.

I guess this is just the year of writing/publishing? No hands-on theatre, which is weird and unsettling, but lots of publishing (?). It's very curious to be back here. But I must recall that His plan, although frustratingly circuitous, is always the fastest and clearly the best. (He's like an old grandfather who knowingly takes tangental detours in his stories when you wish He's just get to the point.)

Howsomever, last night I went through my filing cabinet, trying to locate (unsuccessfully at it turned out) two very old plays I'd written for my summer stints at Hershfield Park in New Jersey in prep for getting together a list of possible plays for Playscripts, Inc. (whom I met not this Tuesday but last when I was down in NYC for the Risking Innovation AATE/ATHE Theatre Educator's Conference).

So, I was going through my filing cabinet and found, much to my surprise and delight, files from 1991-2000 - plays, music, poems, programs (including David Tennant as Romeo! With pictures!!!), journal entries, French homework, all sorts of stuff! I found quite a few old stories with worlds that I'd completely forgotten and characters that I didn't remember. Some of it was fairly passable prose. I feel I was much more quirky then. And certainly full of life and longing for life and vim and vigour and emotion and love for what might be. There was one journal entry from 16 year old Emily that said "Good night" to future Emily...who is now almost twice that Emily's age.

A frightening thought. Am I old enough to have files upon files upon files of poetry and prose from nearly two decades ago? And was I once truly so caught up in the idea of doing nothing but writing as I was then? I honestly would do almost nothing but writing. I remember that. But to read it, to hold the proof of it in one's hands, to hear - as it were - the voice of a person I once was, who is somewhere still within me, but whom I had forgotten or disdained over these past decades in favour of a life with people and not merely with prose (and therefore with publishing...).

Emily of 16 would be over the moon, would be dancing about, would be ecstatic, would be shouting for joy, would be singing her guts out and bouncing her voice off of buildings, heedless of what the neighbours thought at the mere idea that anything of hers should be really (e.g., not by her) published. I suppose, at least here on the interwebs, I still am. But I should like to do so, courageously, in life.

Kristen recently wrote me "Be Bold."

I've become so cautious. So inured to these joys that I'm not immediately giddy. However, I'm still melodramatic at least in my so-called introspection! Regardless, in this year that seems to be about publishing and not about doing, it's good to remember that a self half my age was mooning about hoping for this day. And for her sake, I must embrace it. And for my sake, I must rejoice.

Mood: Ca va.
Music: Random flotilla in my brain.
Thought: How utterly ungrateful we humans can be.... Thank You, God, for this opportunity and the time in which to do it. Amen.

Scripts Falling from my Fingertips

So, as one can see from the side, it's just been a play-heavy year so far! Which is fabuloso. This past week I had Peter run Coraggio, five short plays over five short days chronicalling the Life of Saint Peter for Immaculate Conception Vacation Bible School, which according to all accounts ran very well! It was Theatre for Young Audiences, full of badgers, gummy worms, audience participation and much fun. Starring my own brother, Peter!



I also began Math for Actors, which is a short one-act about a math tutor and her actor student and the sparks that fly when one plus one equals two. Rehearsals are going well, and we go up right before Mackers, as sort of a break for the Mackers cast, an opportunity to bond and laugh and relax for a moment before going into Hell Week. Starring Keith (previously Romeo) and Brianna (currently Seyton).



I'm also working on a couple other projects, among them Supermarket Soliloquies, and the two prequels before (or rather, plays one and two, to which the third part of the cycle is) Cupid and Psyche: to whit, The Rape of Persephone and The Seduction of Adonis. Somewhere in there, I'm revising Nachtsturm Castle for kicks and giggles and the hope that Girlebooks.com picks it up after all. If nothing else, it's a good kick in the butt to get those novels out and about. (Below is a cover for myself, because everything deserves artwork. It makes it more real?)



Music: "Yellow" by the Vitamin String Quartet - exquisite!
Mood: Giddy and improving.
Thought: Good grief! It's like I can't stop writing! It's like The Red Shoes, but for my fingertips!

More Plays

Than you can shake a stick at!

Playscripts, Inc. has just published Wallace's Will!!! Buy your copy today!

And voila, two little snippets from Pink Noir

Working as well on a short piece, Math for Actors, and on developing two possible prequels to Cupid and Psyche. Need to revise the latter, as well as revise and expand Pink Noir (see above) into a full-blown musical (with music playing: events precluded live music for this production), and The Accidental Assassin into a full-blown farcical play. But that latter must wait.

Trying to get myself moving again, and out of this sluggish post-Masters slump.

Mood: How can one be anything but giddy on the day one's play is published?
Music: Nothing at the moment, but it was "Comedy Tonight" earlier.
Thought: Lilies of the field.

Some more snippets

And random factoids:

Pink Noir goes up today. Whoa.

I graduate Monday.

Jules will be married a week from Saturday.

I will have a new brother that day.

Life? Plans? I'd love to have 'em!





Mood: Getting pre-show anxious
Music: None. Ambience.
Thought: I've written/adapted 19 theatrical things that have had 22 performances, and have two more completed shows that have not yet been performed. And yet, I always feel like I'm a slacker. A good thing, I guess! Epiphany fish, that's me.

Some Video Fun

Two snippets from Cupid and Psyche - from Act II and Act IV.





Mood: I've got nothing to do! Yay!
Music: Sean Fournier - very upbeat and fun
Thought: It's so wonderful to have no obligations for a day! Praise God!

Ruminations

So, as one can imagine by the (this time unapologized for?) radio silence since January life has become very busy and very...private. Lots happening: prepping for Jules getting married, Jules carrying little Jaimie (yay!), welcoming in Jay (double yay!). All of which, unfortunately, it's taken me a bit to adjust to. But things are well, and very well now. Thank God! And academically, wrote three and a half plays in the past school year, two produced:

In Memoriam - a full-length Anouilh-esque play about a fellow who hires others to play his memory over and over again. Basically, either Hell or Purgatory. I'm actually rewriting the last two acts (it's a four act play) by the 30th of this month for my playwriting class. It's dreamlike and macabre - a new form for me. I'm...not sure about entering back into it. Acts I and II are very strong - I just need to let Act III and Act IV do what they want to do and not worry so much about form but make a good play.

Pink Noir - a one-act play (about 25 minutes)...well, musical (only four songs!)...that has fun with the tropes of private eye/film noir movies. Joe Smith, P.I. is hired by the requisite blond bombshell to find her missing husband - but it turns out that her husband is himself. It was fun writing overlapping present and flashback scenes. We're rehearsing right now and it's looking good!

The Steadfast Tin Soldier - this is the half a one! I wrote about half of this one-act opera, meant for young audiences, based loosely on the Hans Christian Andersen tale. I wrote quite a bit of the music somewhere in tech week for Romeo and Juliet, and then wrote and orchestrated quite a bit more for Bob's Theatre for Young Audiences class...but then had, oh, life intrude and actual deadlines. Operas/musicals always take me much longer to write than plays, though. (By and large - actually, Pink Noir was written in maybe a week total? But that's just a little one.)

But I have been singing a lot the bit right before Scene 2, when Corianna sings: "Stay and fear in here?/No!/I want to live/Want to love/Want adventure I/Won't be stuck in here just/Waiting around/And I'll never be found/And that's fine with me/I'm finally free in this/Wide, wide, wide, wide world/In this wide, wide, wonderful world...!" Just been sitting and resonating with a wee bit!

Cupid and Psyche - the big one. First play in iambic pentameter, but God willing, not my last. (See below.) The experiment was less with writing in verse, although that was very cool - over the course of eight months, I wrote the script, but I didn't write during all those eight months. All told, it took about three to three and a half months to write. Rather, the experiment was more to learn how to be just the playwright, without directing. That's what I need to...think, feel, ponder, digest, consider, parce out still. More in a minute.

Actually, last night after the closing of Cupid and Psyche, after going out for Chinese with the family, I tried a stab at Antigone in iambic last night. (Insert laugh or eyeroll here.) Got some good stuff, but I'm not convinced where I began is the beginning. I think, actually, that I'm going to end up writing it as the Sophoclean/Euripedean trilogy: Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes, Antigone. I'm cool with beginning at the end, although I think that looking at the middle play will really inform much about the third. It might be interesting, though. It's time to bring back stage trilogies! Why not?

But Mom said how much she loved Dad this afternoon at lunch, and it was so sweet (their 30th anniversary is this weekend) and it made me think that I had the idea of Creon/Eurydice all wrong. They should be very loving. It'll be a great juxtaposition. And then I read about some local scandal in politics just after that, with bedroom deals, and I thought that was part of what's going on in Thebes as well. So, I'm still gathering thoughts. But I do know that either in I.1 or in I.2 I'm going to let Creon pull a Claudio in Hamlet I.2 and hold a press conference. Also, Seven Against Thebes is going to be (gasp!) driven by actors! and not actresses! - and I'm really OK with that. Should be fun. Secret truces and betrayals and Saint Crispin day speeches and Iliad-like creeping through camps. Boys' schools should have fun with it. I wonder if any women will be involved...well Eurydice anyway. Maybe Ismene doesn't go to Colossus wih Oedipus?

Yes, yes, I know. Cupid and Psyche closed last night. I have to rewrite In Memoriam. Heck, I just finished writing my thesis (more in a second) and have to do the appendices, rewrite whatever needs rewriting, and then defend at some point. And direct Pink Noir. I could also use a job. But, as I catalogue this, I remember why I'm taking time to just do school. Brenda laughed at me - and I'm sure Jules would as well - when I complained to her two weeks ago that I just couldn't find the energy to write my thesis and I felt all sorts of guilty - and she pointed out that I had been writing just a little bit! Which, looking at this catalogue, I guess is true! More than I'd realized. Which is why, I suppose, my professors seem to think I'm a writer. Which is just really amusing to me, because I feel as though I haven't written in forever - not since 2001-2002 when I wrote Niamh and the Hermit.

Because, somehow, Charming the Moon, The Passion Play, King of Fools, Nutcracker, Bearskin, and Wallace's Will DON'T COUNT. I mean, clearly, "they count." I like 'em very much. They need some rewriting - KOF and Bearskin most of all - and someday this millenia Wallace's Will might actually be available from Playscripts.com(they just got my photograph up...holy cow! - OK, that's neat!). But...I feel as though they're finished. Not finished, no - KOF and Bearskin weigh heavily upon me for the rewrites they need - but that they've been done well and so will be fine if they are done well again later but can rest easy for a while having been done well once.

But Cupid and Psyche - this is very new experience. It does not feel at rest, although this production is at rest. I woke this morning with lines running through my head, like music. At mass today they mentioned Love and I felt a sudden, "Awwwww," of missing the play. And yet, not missing it. I will live with Cupid and Psyche forever. It's just odd...to see my child take corporeal form and then to disappate, but to know that it's still there, waiting to be incarnated once more.

It's like this: when I direct, I play in the world, I help create the world. So when I come out of Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, it isn't really Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet I miss, but OUR Romeo, OUR Juliet, the world of OUR Hamlet. I see other versions and see it from the outside, not the inside. But I think if ever I see my own play done by anyone other than myself, I see the play from the inside only and I find it very difficult to judge the outside. It's like, when one of my plays is performed, I myself am resurrected and have only a dim vision of what the audience looks like or thinks or feels. My judgement is completely clouded o'er. (Yeah, I'm currently incapable of thinking outside of dim poetics thanks to tech week!)

I was freaking out after the open dress and the first performance. I had no sense of how the play was received. I couldn't quite see what was a textual difficulty, an actor difficulty, a director difficulty, a design difficulty, or all or some or none of the above. I needed to go invisibly into the audience's mind to see their true thoughts, but I was too afraid to do so. I picked up tape from the floor instead. I sang opera. On my hands and knees, scraping up tape, singing runs in Italian to calm my nerves. That's me. Stupid stupid stupid. Bob came up to meet me after the performance - he said the play was "Ambitious." That does not necessarily mean "good." In fact, it often can mean, "Very not good." I said, "I don't know how to feel right now." He, bless his hippy heart(!), said, "It's OK. You don't need to feel right now." I love Bob. Fear what he really thinks. But love him.

Second performance went much better. Snyders and Gonors in the audience. Energy higher. Got lost getting to the venue. Don't want to think of what an ass I am. Hate Boston when it decides to switch the drive. Frak. Cupid was in the car, too. Way to hold up half the show, Em. But it made ALL the difference to have my family there - for their clear sight and vision, being able to lend their outside sight to mine so thoroughly out looking in. So, I know that I freak out before seeing (at least the opening of) a play I've written but not directed and that from now on I need a family member there, or someone to be my seeing-play person. I need a pair of eyes that are not mine when I am only the playwright. Ironic, given what Cupid and Psyche is about.

Anywho, still figuring out, but thought I'd put those thoughts out there. Now to C&P dinner at the lovely Brenda's. Nothing due tomorrow. Nothing nothing nothing tomorrow. I'll probably end up going to Border's Cafe and writing Antigone or In Memoriam instead. Oyveh! Right. Right right right.

Wow. It's been a week. Oh, and my thesis turned out well, I think. Only 17 pages over. Silly, Emily, silly, silly.

Mood: Ambiguous - but not coquettish!
Music: "Awake & Dreaming" by Courtney Jones
Thought: Oh! While I was watching C&P, I was remembering how hard I worked to make Psyche not me. I really didn't want to - is it Mary Sue? Mary Jane? - her. And I thought I'd done a decent job. During rehearsals, she seemed like Psyche, not like Emily. But when I watched the whole play together, I had the breath knocked out of me as I watched her and realized, "My goodness. That's a portrait of me. I wrote what I thought I'd hidden." *breath*

Come see Cupid & Psyche!

Come see Cupid and Psyche, a new play in iambic pentameter!



Mood: Terrified but listening to
Music: Apparently 6 day's worth of iTunes...tunes...because
Thought: My thesis is due tomorrow and is really a dissertation in disguise.

Pemberley, O Pemberley

Sooooo, between talking bad Pride and Prejudice sequels with Laura and Kristen and half-watching while baking cookies a filmed MINISERIES of a *timetravelling* P&P (called Lost in Austen), and being rather strapped for cash, without a play to direct, and terrified about stepping into a world beyond Academia (considering the last time resulted in corporate padded cells), I thought to myself:

"Hey! Myself! You have a novel already completed that you could easily sell to some gullible fool smart, savvy business-minded publisher with a few revisions, a few addendums and hey presto! Instant gold!"

So, I took out Not All Wealth Is Bought With Gold (yeah, yeah, need a new title) and began rereading its 51K self. Not too bad. It's absolutely insane with commas that I'll need to take out, hyphens likewise, and I remember that the second half isn't nearly as strong as the first, and in glancing quickly at the ending I remembered how hastily I threw that together (as always, it seems - boo, Emily! Boo!), I set about finding what chump lucky fella I would set prey offer the MS to.

Wouldn't ya know it, I've found one that looks good enough - specializes in selling in Paper Stores and Wal-Marts and supermarche's etc. And also just released a "Hey! Libraries like our Austen stuff!" press thingummy, so they'll be salivating for more prestige where that came from...

...only they want novels to be at least 90K. Mine is 51K. So, I've essentially got to double it. Which, granted, shouldn't be that hard. I remember I wrote one chapter a day (about), each chapter around 1.5-3K words, sometimes less. I know there were parts I wanted to extend - especially why Col. Fitzwilliam likes Maria, introducing Regina Carrington much earlier, giving a bit more to Mr. Delford (because I likes him, and because I'd like to plant the seeds of his spin-away sequel which was justly rejected from Bits of Ivory at Pemberley for being too original and not Austen enough), and I'm seriously toying with the idea of exploiting that century's authors' penchants for filling up random chapters with random digressions (Dorian Grey's dust mote chapter 11 anyone?) and actually taking a full 5K or so and writing an entirely different story in the middle of our novel - and saying so to the audience. HA!

I'm a little freaked out over having to double the novel's length, but I'm psyched about more or less merely revamping a novel as it stands. Also, having, oh, been to London, Bath and what passed for Meryton in the Coswalds, as well as being older, snarkier and more full of Terry Pratchett should result in a better quality of writing than what is already there. So, yay!

I hope I can sell it - I'm pretty sure I can - and if I can, I hope that I can swindle convince them to, oh, buy Nachtsturm Castle (but not at 90K, please!), and my short stories (as a collection, with maybe a few more thrown in), and commission the sequel to Not All Wealth. Huzzah!

Here's to hoping. Because Heaven's knows I need the income....

Mood: Excited and tremulous
Music: Interior "Shy" from Mattress because it's stuuuuuuuck.
Happiness is: School begins tomorrow! Note to self: must track down Bob and shake him like a magic 8 ball, but lovingly.