All Our Tragic

Hello,

I am going to host one more reading of All Our Tragic this summer. I think it will help me solidify the details for my Fellowship next year.

I arranged an extremely pleasing cast, made of some of my most valued collaborators mixed with some young, talented actors that offered much insight over the past year at different educational workshops. It is all very exciting.

The reading will be on Saturday, July 13th from 11AM to Midnight in Chicago. This is not a public event, but I will gladly make room for some people really interested. Please contact me at sean@seangraney.com.

Sincerely, Sean

Hello Everyone Interested,

Some of you may already know this exciting news, I have received a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University from September 2013 to May 2014 in order to work on the script of All Our Tragic for another year. I am very honored and excited.

With this Fellowship, I can construct the most conducive work environment in order to put the final touches on the script- including having access to Harvard libraries and classes, being able to work with actors, and having vast amounts of dedicated time to write and only write. It is like a dream.

The major aspect of All Our Tragic on which I will concentrate are the many human stories at the core of this event. During the last reading many of my smart friends noticed an over all concentration on plot and I lost sight of empathy, which ironically is one of the major themes of the event. So I am excited to have this time to reconnect with the people that populate All Our Tragic.

At the close of this Fellowship, I will have a solid script for All Our Tragic, which can be produced any time after September 2014. (Do you know any crazy theaters interested in a 12 hour marathon of Greek tragedies? Get them in touch with me, sean@seangraney.com. Yay.)

The only sadness associated with all this news is that after 18 years, I will be leaving Chicago, a city that was very nice to me. In the future, I will continue to work occasionally with The Hypocrites, so most people won’t even know I am gone. But still it is sad for me to leave.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for reading this.

Sincerely, Sean

Hello,

Thank you to all the audience members that attended the entire 12 hour reading of All Our Tragic yesterday at Illinois State University. About 20 people stayed awake and engaged for the entire event. You are all amazing, it means so much to me that you were there.

The script as it stands now is 500 pages. Including dinner and breaks, it will fit neatly into 12 hours in performance (the reading took about 11 hours, 45 minutes).

The act containing Philoktetes, Ajax and Hecuba Troyfall still is a problematic section. I will be doing a lot of work on that, the students and the talented director, Ed Iskander had some great suggestions. Another problem, as pointed out by Geoff Button, some of the depth I added to minor characters began to intrude a little too much on the overall narrative, so I will be scaling back on some quirks.

Lastly what I noticed some problems with the ending. I had done much work of the four Orestes plays that closes the event, all four are now under the title of The Furies. And I loved the arc and drive of three of the four plays (Euripides’ Orestes, Andromache and Iphigenia in Tauris) more than I ever have before, and I am really proud of that work I did on the character of Orestes. But when we reached the section that deals with the Aeschylus play The Furies, where Orestes stands trial for matricide, I noticed it wasn’t as quite a crowd pleaser as it had been in the past readings. I have some theories as to why that is, and I look forward to working on it, so I can end All Our Tragic with the impact it deserves.

I would like to thank the two academic leaders of the ISU Theater Department, Janet Wilson and Deb Alley. Not only did they allow this workshop to happen, but they helped set up and break down, and brought so much food and coffee. What an amazing University.

The several weeks I spent with these students reading and pondering All Our Tragic has been the single most influential force on this script. So many hours spent discussing character development, story arcs, individual moments and thousands of bad ideas. I wish this could have gone for several more months.

Here are the names of the students: Omar Shammaa, Kayla Stroner, Molly Briggs, Chris Bryant, Liz Dillard, Kelly Steik, Matt Helms, Allison Sokolowski, Shelby Brand, Kelsey Bunner, Janice Kulka, Taylor Wisham, Alyssa Klein, Caitlin Boho, Angela Geiss, David Fisch, Elsa Torner and Angie Aiello. Thank you all. You are all great!

Hopefully next week, I will be able to announce future plans for the development of All Our Tragic. Be well and thanks for being interested. And as always please send me questions: sean@seangraney.com

Sincerely, Sean

Hello Everyone,

I am so very excited, in one week from today, Saturday April 27th, there will be a twelve hour directed reading of All Our Tragic at the Illinois State University in Bloomington/Normal, I hope you can come.

The reading will last from noon to midnight in the Westhoff Theatre. A casual “meet and greet” with continental breakfast will happen before the reading beginning at 11AM; snacks, refreshments, and dinner will be served during the reading. Audience members may come and go as they please throughout the day, or be brave and stay for the whole event.

Admission is free and free parking can be found in the School Street Parking Deck, located on School Street just off of 400 W. Beaufort Street. Here is a map for parking and the theater.

If you plan on attending, traveling from any where but Bloomington/Normal, and have not contacted me, please do so: sean@seangraney.com. I can help arrange travel and lodging arrangements. And it will be nice to know you are coming.

If you are on the fence about coming, contact me and I will convince you. (12 hours of theater, all your favorite Greek characters, free food, and incredibly talented college kids!)

If you have contacted me, I will be emailing you shortly to check if you have any more questions.

Yay. Thanks, as always, for reading this post.

Sean

Hello Everyone,

I am excited that Sophocles: These Seven Sicknesses is published. This is my version of all the Sophocles plays, the seed of the idea behind All Our Tragic.

Want to buy a copy? It’s $20, not so expensive. Amazon or Broadway Play Publishing

I hope you like it.

Sean

cover art by Bridget Schultz. 

Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible, especially Ed Sylvanus Iskandar and Exit Pursued By a Bear; Jim Simpson and Carol Ostrow at The Flea; Lue Douthit at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Halena Kays, Megan Wildebour and all the rest of The Hypocrites; Mark Orsini, my great agent; Kip and others at at Broadway Play Publishing.

Hello all the nice people who read this stuff,

First of all I really appreciate you still being invested after a year and a month, you really have stuck with it. Great work.

I spent several hours this morning experimenting with a new look for this blog, but after multiple trials, I decided not to change. There was delightful theme with cartoon lions, that I kept returning to, very cute, but didn’t seem appropriate. So same old look and feel- like urban crumble/blue-print or something. Ho-hum.

Aside from an update on this blog, I wanted to send out a script update as well:

The script is 525 pages, 9 Acts (Part One: 5 Acts and Part Two: 4 Acts), every act an hour or under. When staged (if ever) it will run in its entirety about 12 hours.

I just finished two more phases of writing work on All Our Tragic.

The first at Depauw University in Greencastle, IN. Under the guidance of Tim Good, we spent a week working on the six Trojan plays, Acts 6 and 7 of the larger event. Most of the students really did not know what to expect, so it was extremely helpful to hear this difficult and graphic section read by such fresh eyes, and then hear their candid opinions. It was great work done by all.

The other phase was a class I taught at University of Chicago called Examining Greek Theater, this ten week class had such a major, major impact on the entire script. Each week we would focus on an act of All Our Tragic. The brilliant students would read, as homework, a more traditional version of a tragedy featured in the act. Then, in class, we would read the Act and discuss changes I made and what was the outcome of those changes. It was really fun, the students were very open and at times harsh. I had one really smart student who prefaced her frequent negative critiques with, “I think it’s a real loss you…” I loved it, and sometimes I hear her voice in my head while writing “I think it’s a real loss you…” This class led to some major re-writes with much deeper examinations.

I also personally have been doing a ton of work on Act 9, which is now called the Furies. It basically tells the story of Orestes after his matricide, it is a combination of four plays: three by Euripides- ORESTES, ANDROMACHE and IPHIGENIA AT TAURIS and Aeschylus’ THE FURIES. It is the only act with four plays (all the others have three), it is the only act with one protagonist living a continuous story, and it ends the entire event. I am really beginning to love this act in all of its strangeness.

That’s it for now, sorry again this blog has the same old look, “I think it’s a real loss you didn’t alter the look of this blog.” Maybe next time – cartoon lions, roarrrr.

And don’t forget the big Directed Reading coming up on Saturday, April 27th, noon to midnight at Illinois State University in Bloomington/Normal. Here is a link to my earlier post- Upcoming Directed Reading of All Our Tragic. Please come, it will be awesome to have a bunch of you supporters there so I can gauge your reactions and hear your feedbacks. Please let me know if you can make it. sean@seangraney.com

Be well, please. I think you are great.

Sean

Hello Everyone,

One year ago today I officially started writing All Our Tragic.

A huge heartfelt thank you to everyone who made this year possible: from all of you who donated money, to all of the actors who did workshops, to the audiences who attended readings, to the students that suffered through make-shift classes, to the talented people of Lake Forest College who are opening the seven Orestes plays this evening.

All Our Tragic has grown beyond my imagination, and it is really becoming a huge social creation. Thank you.

Sincerely, Sean