ANDREW BISS

I’m happy to report that the Royal Court’s GRIT project has just added my monologue “Organ Failure” to its Tumblr site. If you have a spare moment I highly recommend taking a look through some of the plays, short texts and images on the theme of “moments of rebellion that go unnoticed and the voices of dissent which can't be heard.” There’s a great variety of work, from the very moving to the wryly humorous, and some very clever examples of tiny acts of defiance.

The Royal Court Theatre is currently running a project called GRIT , which is a collection of short/small works that are about acts of everyday resistance, revolution and defiance. The pieces can be created in any medium - words, videos, images or audio – and those selected will be put up around the theatre, as well as online at their Tumblr site created for the project. Today I was pleased to see that the extract from my extended monologue play “A Small Act of Vandalism” has been chosen for the project and can now be seen online along with all of the other pieces selected thus far. I would encourage anyone to head over to the site to take a look around as there are many truly excellent submissions – text and images – on display.

This week I had my play “Suburban Redux” selected for the final slot in the 2010/2011 season of a new theatre company in the Twin Cities. Naturally, I was very pleased by this development, but especially so in light of recent events…namely, the rather off-putting final panel discussion at last week’s Guild meeting (which I’ve been grousing about far too much and vow never to mention again). It was a timely reminder that if you write a play that someone enjoys and wants to produce, it really can be that simple and straightforward. We had no prior relationship, imbued with tacit understandings; it was simply a case of them enjoying the play I’d written and discovering that it fit very well with their mission and core values, so a request was made to stage it. How nice and uncomplicated. And they seem to be really terrific people to boot, so it’s a double plus. So, yes…sometimes it can be just about the work. Amen.