Hokay, so…
A few weeks ago, I was feeding my addiction to social media when I was supposed to be working on a play for middle schoolers.
It was the project’s fault, you see! It was kicking my ass. The play is site-specific and has the audience divided into two as they follow parallel stories on opposite sides of the campus. So, hard, you know?
An so when an old friend on facebook reposted a meme, I pounced on an opportunity to distract myself.
Sure, I should have been tapping away a tale of an odyssey involving a dragon around the fictional New Dominoso, but I started writing a response… and I kept going.
I screenshot posted to Twitter, mostly for my friend Justin and a couple other folks.
Then it blew up.
I’d never had anything go viral before. And the responses have been overwhelmingly positive.
Usually I see the internet loving snark and incisive owns, tear downs or controversy. This was the opposite. I learned one of the original puppeteers for Statler had died of AIDS, which added another strange and sad element. I had something show up on Towleroad.
Anyway, if you’re stumbling on this website because of the gay Muppets tweet, welcome. Let me introduce myself, though that Tweet is kinda my brand.
I write plays and fiction. In the last few years, I’ve focused on playwriting. About 2/3rds of what I write is for teen and young adult actors. In my theatre-for-young-actors, my goal is to push the form. Theatre-for-Teens can and should be art, and until I am cold and buried, I aim to prove this.
If you want to know more of my work, here are some recommendations. All of my plays are available on the New Play Exchange:
PLAYS FOR MATURE AUDIENCES THAT MAY INTEREST YOU
The queer puppet play: Piper
The gay Martian astronaut play: Small Steps
The sad lesbian love story play: She Gets Naked in the End
The sad mixed/Latino multi-generational family play: Brothers, Sisters, Santos
PLAYS FOR YOUNG ACTORS THAT MAY INTEREST YOU
And Then, She Picks Up the Sword
The Secret Lives of Gamers and Dead Astronauts
I have a number of short stories as well that I may post links to in the future.
In other news…
The draft for the middle school play is DONE. It’s about two sides to a story about, well, a last dragon. Which emerged from our devising process – Disney had nothing to do with it – and so I don’t have a title for it yet. I’ll drop some details on the creative process soon.
I finally wrote the site-specific play I’ve been itching to make. This means that every actor gets a different script. And so there’s gobs of color coding.
OTHER OTHER NEWS
My ten-minute play The Last Human Person on Earth is being adapted into a short film. So that is awesome.
Briandaniel Oglesby 