Tag: Louis Slotin Sonata

Day 7 / Reason 7: My Sons

December 7, 2021

When I fully and officially retired from theatre in 2013, my younger son Keelan was only eight years old. My older son, Declan, was eleven. This means that the person in their lives mostly likely to spark an interest in them for the artform is also the person who cut it out of his life when they were little.
I was mostly okay with this for most of the last eight years, but this May I was blessed with a unique opportunity, which caused my mind to start changing. May 21, 2021 was the 75th anniversary of the accident dramatized in my play Louis Slotin Sonata, and thanks to generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and additional support from Circle X Theatre and Trial and Error Productions, I got to produce a virtual “Zoom” performance of the play, directed by John Langs leading a cracker-jack cast and crew.
Running up to the night of the broadcast, we had no idea what kind audience we were going to have (as it turned out, quite sizable, thank you very much) but I found that in my heart of hearts the only two people I really I cared about watching it were my two sons. See, most of what I have written for the stage is for grown up audiences. So neither of my sons had ever seen a staging of one of my full-length plays. And I didn’t even know this sad fact bothered me until I had the opportunity to rectify it.
My sons enjoyed this virtual staging very much (or at least credibly claimed to, smart fellows.) And I subsequently promised myself to expose them to more theatre, when more theatre was available, especially now that they are both close to the age I was when I fell fully in love with the artform.
I never regretted not encouraging Declan and Keelan to do more theatre. They have their own interests, and to me there’s no one quite so cringey as the quintessential stage parent, foisting their dreams of show business glory onto their children in hopes of vicarious fulfillment. But, on the other hand… a man does prefer for his sons to understand what he wasted his youth on.
An added reason for taking them to this particular production of A Christmas Carol at ACT is the fact that neither one of them really knows the story beyond the Muppet movie version. (A fine iteration, for the record. No need to fight me in the comments on that point.) So I will be delighted indeed to sit with them and watch a great story, staged at one of Seattle’s great theatres, performed by actors I know and love.

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
Day 5 / Reason 5 for Going back to the Theatre: A Contemporary Theatre

December 5, 2021

When I attended the University of Maryland on an acting scholarship, I was required to meet at the end of every semester with the faculty advisory board to discuss my progress as a student of the theater arts. At one such meeting, in the middle of my sophomore year, the head of the department expressed his concerns that I was “not a team player”. At the end of that academic year, I left college, for good as it turns out, though I didn’t know that at the time.
I have been a practicing Buddhist for over thirty years. The three jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha. “Dharma” is just a fancy sounding Sanskrit word for “the teaching” or “doctrine”. “sangha” is Sanskrit for “community” or “monastic order”; what Christians might translate as “the congregation” or “the church.” I feel pretty good about my relationship with the first two jewels, but I am the first to admit that I am bad at sangha.
I have an inherent distrust of institutions, and I am especially bad at trusting large theatre institutions. The larger they are, the less I trust them. From my perspective as a playwright, large regional theaters operate to maximize their own survival as institutions over the quality of the work they produce. I used to relish comparing the Seattle Rep to the Queen Mary ocean liner, now permanently attached to its mooring in Long Beach, trotting out the old adage, “Ships are safe at harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” I used to think I could do something to help change this sad status quo, but after doing my damnedest to move the needle for at least ten years, I gave up. This impasse can certainly be listed among my reasons for retiring from theatre, but I’d be lying if I claimed it was the only one.
I always assumed that Seattle’s Big Houses would survive, regardless, because that’s what they were designed to do. I assumed they would always be there for people who wanted to watch safe theater, and, because I wasn’t one of those people, I didn’t have to care. Now, after nearly two years of lockdowns and dark stages, I am not so sure.
With eight years to think things over, I will straight up own my institutional distrust as a character flaw, particularly egregious for a playwright, for whom every achievement is necessarily the result of a team effort. I will also openly admit that A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) has been a pretty good friend to me as a theatre artist over the years. In 1997 ACT commissioned me as one of four playwrights to participate in a new play development workshop, and my play Louis Slotin Sonata received its first ever staged reading in ACT’s Bullitt Cabaret space. I have acted and written for many iterations of 14/48 at ACT, and for many years I was a teaching artist associated with the theater’s FirstACT program, which brings playwrights into Seattle high schools to teach young people the craft.
ACT has two mainstages, and several other smaller performance spaces, and has been very generous in opening these venues up to outside performing arts organizations, like New Century Theatre, The Seagull Project and 14/48, just to name a very few.
Until The 5th Avenue Theatre comes back online in January, ACT is the only live theatre actively producing in the downtown corridor. Think about that. Then think about the relationship of live theatre to the health of a city. What would Seattle look like without a flagship complex of performance venues like A Contemporary Theatre?
Would it look like Seattle’s downtown core does right now? Half-empty, garbage-strewn, whole blocks lined with tents and active drug markets obstructing the entryways to the small businesses.
Do we really want live in a city devoid of live theatre?
I’m not interested in that.
I want ACT to survive, so I am shifting gears, breaking my fast, and heading back to the theatre on Sunday, December 12 to join the crowd coming downtown to see A Christmas Carol.
Maybe I’ll see ya down there.

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
A Delightfully Disorienting Video Sneak Peak at the French SLOTIN SONATA

October 21, 2014

When I decided to travel to Quebec to see this upcoming production of Louis Slotin Sonata translated into French, I thought to myself, “Well, this experience will certainly be new, but what will it be like?” I had so little idea that, even though I wanted to write about it in advance, I couldn’t.
And then came this trailer…
What I love about it is that its director trusts the play so much that he leans exclusively into the power of the words, and the power of the actors to speak them, to sell it to a potential audience. Of course, because there are no “staging landmarks” for me to follow, I am delightfully disoriented. On my first watching of it, I only really gained my bearings when an actor started speaking Hebrew. Ironically, once he heard the Mourner’s Kaddish, this born-and-raised Irish Catholic boy felt on familiar ground.
It’s a fundamental and powerful truth of theatre that the spoken word is orders of magnitude more primal than the written. Plays are not literature. They are an altogether different form of art.
Seeing my words transformed into another language, and then transformed again back into life by these captivating actors, gives me chills. The good kind.
I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Live!

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
J’adore la Nouvelle Affiche pour La Sonate Louis Slotin

September 11, 2014

Before retiring almost exactly a year ago, I worked on and off professionally in the theatre for well over a quarter of a century. Most of that time was spent as a writer, but I also worked as an actor and producer. (I did not do much directing—maybe two or three shows, tops—as I find that particular job wracks my nerves in ways I don’t like having them wracked, and besides, there are so many folks better at it than I am.) With my experience under many hats, I can assure you, without fear of convincing contradiction, that no one gets more excited about a new poster than the playwright.
Sure, it’s exciting as an actor to see the image that will sell your show, but other distractions and responsibilities tend to absorb you just at the time a poster usually rolls out. As a producer, you were likely so involved with a poster’s design and production that it’s impossible to think clearly about it anymore. You’re a bit like the chef who can’t enjoy the meal once it’s been brought to the table.
But for a playwright, let me assure you that there is no joy as pure and powerful as seeing the new poster for the first time, especially when it’s as good as this one, designed by Sonia Caron for the upcoming World Premiere of Claude Germain’s French translation of my play Louis Slotin Sonata, produced by L’Escadron Creation at the Auditorium du Séminaire in Saint-Hyacinthe in Quebec.
And added bonus: it’s in French. Nothing says “I’m Classy” like hanging a big framed poster in French. I can’t wait for my copy! (God, I hope I get a copy!)

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
A Friend Visits my Slotin Notes

August 15, 2013

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
Experimental Results

December 20, 2012
I made a promise to myself a while back that if I was going to use the word “experiment” in association with my work as a theatre artist, I had to do so more like a scientist and less like some avant garde poser. As I said in my earlier post “Putting the Fail back in “Experimental”:

Any actual scientist understands that true experiments have rules and consequences. Experiments are tests of hypotheses hoping to become theories; and theories, in order to prove useful, must be falsifiable. In other words, true experiments by definition contain the possibility of failure.

I would add that good scientists publish their results whether or not they find them gratifying. And that’s exactly what I intend to do here and now regarding the experiment of publishing my play Ballard House Duet simultaneously with its recent world premiere. (I enthusiastically explained my reasons for initiating this experiment here.)
So as of this posting, here is how my sales break down by channel:
Not a data/chart nerd like me? Okay, here are my plain English conclusions:
1. I have too much unsold inventory. If I had listened to my publisher and ordered the number of books he recommended I’d be sitting on a mere 3% overhang now, which would have been right in the estimator’s sweet spot.
2. “Show sales” was my strongest channel, which is gratifying, since offering the script simultaneously with performances was the main point of this effort. If I did this again I would lean even more heavily into this channel: maybe invest in a more visually pleasing display than the cardboard box with the words “Scripts for Sale – $10” scrawled on the front of it in ballpoint pen.
The bottom line is I turned a profit about three eBay sales ago. I am now $19.59 richer for this experience; but based solely on the data, I would have to give myself a C +, since I moved only 78 % of my product.
Of course, it is much harder to quantify all the things I have learned from the experience, not to mention all the nerdy fun I have had. Here’s a quick list:
- People will buy scripts at a show, but they have to be reminded, in the pre-show speech and then again at intermission and after the show. The display of scripts has to be prominent. You have to make buying them easy and fun.
- eBay is not the best means of selling a script on line. It wound up costing me $2.31 out of every $10 script I sold on-line. Given the cost of printing, that left me with very little margin to take any profit. If it hadn’t been for show sales, with their much wider margin, I would still be bleeding red ink at this point.
The best outcome of this experiment was, of course, the chance to talk about the experiment itself: to revisit the question of whether it makes sense to publish play scripts simultaneously with world premiere productions, and more specifically, whether it makes sense for a playwright to put up his own capital to do so. I would say the short answers to these questions are, “Yes, with some improvements in the process.” And “No, a playwright already banks enough when he or she antes up their play for staging.”
Fellow playwright Joshua Conkel chimed in on Facebook to point out, “…In the U.K. it’s common to get the script at the show. It costs a few pounds and it also serves as the program…. Oberon Books does it. And then of course the script goes out to bookstores and all that. It’s great!” Perhaps as Seattle grows as one of the nation’s hothouses for locally grown new theatre, it might behoove us as to explore a script sales model like the UK’s, though it should also be noted that the simultaneous publishing experiment has been run quite extensively here in decades past. Bret Fetzer explained in comments posted on my earlier blog:

The experience of Rain City Projects — which published plays in conjunction with productions for over ten years… was that when the theater promoted selling the script, it succeeded, and when they didn’t, it didn’t. The single most significant factor, by an order of magnitude, was having someone hold up the script in a preshow speech and say “This is for sale in the lobby; if you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to buy the script.” Other approaches — such as plugging the script for sale in a program ad — had a fraction of the impact of a live preshow plug.

Over time, theaters became less invested in promoting scripts. There was a trend away from preshow speeches, and even the theaters that still did them just wanted the speaker to say the essentials and get off the stage. Most of the theaters producing new plays were small, volunteer-run organizations, so there was no one to consistently make a plug for the script, and trying to educate a rotating crew of house managers about this was too much to accomplish on top of all the other stuff that had to get done. Everyone supported the idea of selling the scripts in the abstract, but in practice it fell by the wayside.

But the main reason Rain City Projects stopped publishing individual scripts was that, as these were brand new plays getting their first production, a majority of playwrights learned a lot of new things and did significant rewrites after the production. Immediately the scripts were obsolete and the playwrights didn’t want them sold or distributed….

My experience working with Original Works Publishing, eBay and Amazon Direct Publishing leads me to believe that new technologies and processes might allow theatres and playwrights to keep their inventory small and flexible enough to offer scripts, either in hard copy or electronically, such that some of the challenges Rain City Projects faced might now be mitigated.
One conclusion seems certain: folks who bought my script seem very pleased indeed to be able to own a permanent document of an otherwise inherently ephemeral experience. Theatre is fleeting, but perhaps we theatre artists could work a bit harder to bottle some of our volatile moonshine for future times.
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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
My Friend Goes to LA, Becomes Famous Raccoon, Returns to Seattle to Kill Philosophical Zombies

October 3, 2012

William Salyers and I met during Seattle’s fervent 90’s: a now hazy golden age when you could beg an actor like Paul Giamatti to be in your play workshop, or witness a writer like Karl Gajdusek premiere his deeply surreal, nearly inaccessible Dr.s F.s in the Terminal Ward twenty years before he would premiere his eminently accessible action series, The Last Resort, on national network television. So Bill Salyers and I already sort of knew each other from the scene when were forced by the exigencies of corporate temping into the close proximity of the licensing department of Northern Life Insurance. The two of us would blunt the boredom when we could by improvising various scenarios. I would open with something like:

PAUL (best British Colonial Officer voice): Do you remember that time in the Congo when the battalion lost its way and we were forced to eat grubs?

BILL (way better British Colonial Officer voice): Oh, yes. Sergeant Major Grubbs. Terribly good man. Such a pity.

No one can match Bill for voices and improv.
When I began writing my play Tuesday— a piece which I now, in retrospect, recognize as my first post-journeyman work— I could only manage to finish it by assuring myself that Bill would play the main character, Audie McCall. That development process, and culminating first production at AHA! Theatre, began a collaboration that lasted over the following 17 years, with Bill premiering the title role of my Louis Slotin Sonata at Circle X Theatre in LA and then playing it off-Broadway, then playing Walt Whitman among several other rolls in An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show, and then inhabiting the skin of the now real-life head of NIH, Francis Collins, in my play about the race to decode the human genome, The Sequence. And it’s not just my plays that Bill has helped to mid-wife. Having run the math, I am now convinced that William Salyers has participated in the world premieres of more plays than any other person currently on the planet. I am still waiting for someone to prove me wrong.
While the size of the houses my plays premiere in has stayed, well, let’s say “cozy”, Bill has happily gone on to much wider success as a stage actor. For instance, he’s currently premiering Dan O’Brien’s The Body of An American at Portland Center Stage. Beyond the boards, Bill has achieved exponentially greater fame —the kind only Hollywood can offer— for work he’s done as a voice actor. I finally managed to impress my nephews with my show business connections when I told them that the guy who voiced Rigby the Raccoon on The Regular Show was my good friend. (Congratulations to Bill and everyone on TRS for their freshly won Emmy!)
All this history is just my a long winded wind-up to telling you that Bill will once again be helping me bring a new play to life by playing the role of Simon in a very raw reading of my latest stab, Philosophical Zombie Killers, along with Susanna Burney, John Q. Smith and Amy Love.
Here’s a sort of synopsis of the play:

The graduate level seminar is about human consciousness. Or at least that’s what you thought when you signed up for it. Now someone’s telling you that you’re 45 years old and you’re dying. You certainly didn’t sign up for that. Now this alcoholic professor is asking you to explain consciousness to him. And this depressed ex-cop from Missouri is telling you about the epidemic of decapitations in Seattle. And this weird lady from Omnisoft just wants you to admit that there’s no such thing as consciousness and no such thing as you for that matter. Could she possibly be right? Might make dying easier. Who said you were dying?

And here are the details:

Who:       Susanna Burney, Amy Love, William Salyers and John Q. Smith

What:     Philosophical Zombie Killers by Paul Mullin

Where:   The Bathhouse Theater in Green Lake

When:    October 15, 2012, 7pm

How:      Pay what-you-will, including nothing at all. You’re doing us a favor by giving it a listen.

Reserve seats at Brown Paper Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/278468

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
Messing with Form for Maximum Effect

September 25, 2012

‘Tis true: I have messed about a bit with narrative over my career as a playwright. My best known play follows the sonata allegro form. I have written fugues, concertos and duets as well. Beyond musical inspirations, I have made plays in the shape of a clock, a single day passing, and a palindrome. And even when I’m wrighting the “well made” play— putting all my plot peaks and valleys at the proper places on the x-axis of time, like with my farce Gossamer Grudges— I still lean heavily on the lessons I’ve learned playing faster and looser with the Aristotelian rules of story-telling. That’s why I so enjoy the rare opportunities I get to teach my Hugo House class, Exploring Alternative Narrative Structure.
From Hugo House’s class description:

Aristotle said a story should have a beginning, middle and end, in that order; but how often does life really feel like that? Sometimes to reflect reality we have to challenge old assumptions about how we experience and process narrative. We will explore alternative structures to Aristotle’s cherished mountain of rising action, looking at classical music forms, technology, architecture, political systems and biology for potential models. Indeed, no source of inspiration will be excluded. Famous examples of effective use of alternative narrative form will be examined, including Pinter’s Betrayal, Thorton Wilder’s “The Pullman Car Hiawatha,” Italo Calvino’s novels and Paul Mullin’s Louis Slotin Sonata. Finally, we’ll examine our current writing projects and determine how they might benefit from some structural shake-ups.

Whether you craft short stories, novels, graphic novels, plays or screenplays, if your writing involves narrative, in can help to push the envelope of alternatives.
Come join the fun! I have spaces left in the class, so click on this link for more info on the class and how to register: https://hugohouse.org/class/exploring-alternative-narrative-structure .

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
Louis Slotin Electronic

July 24, 2012

Did you know that the only way you can get my play Louis Slotin Sonata is to order it as an e-book available here? That’s an offer so exclusive I can’t even take advantage of it. (I don’t have a Kindle or any other kind of e-reading device.) So until Houghton Mifflin decides to publish the deluxe coffee table edition of the script, this is the only way of owning it.
If you don’t know the play, here’s a synopsis:

At 3:20 PM on Tuesday, May 21, 1946 Louis Slotin‘s hand slipped– a small, practically insignificant blunder, except that Slotin was the chief -bomb builder at Los Alamos, and at that fateful moment he held in his hands a plutonium bomb core named “Rufus”. The slip caused a chain reaction that in turn released a deadly “prompt burst” of radiation. Slotin and others saw a blue glow and felt a momentary flux of heat on their faces. Slotin flung the shell to the floor but it was too late. The damage was done. In the milliseconds it took for the plutonium to spit its deadly neutrons, Louis Slotin became a walking dead man.

With a structure inspired by classical music’s sonata allegro form, LOUIS SLOTIN SONATA traces a brilliant scientist’s last nine days, as his body and mind gradually succumb to the chaos wrecked by radiation. Reliving the moment of his accident again and again, Slotin slowly makes his own unique way to redemption.

If you do know the play, please consider adding your review to the Amazon page. It would help me out a lot.
* WINNER of the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play
* WINNER of the Backstage West Garland Award for Playwriting
* Nominated for Theatre LA’s Ovation Award for Best Writing – World Premiere Play
* Pick-of-the-Week, The New York Times
* Excerpted in The Best Men’s Stage Monologues of 1999, Smith & Kraus.
* WINNER of The Seattle Times Footlight Award for Best New Play
The New York Times “…a crafty narrative… irresistibly gripping…. as a historical episode suitable for dramatizing, you can’t do much better.”
The Los Angeles Times “…a rare bird– a new play that wraps intellectual complexity, emotional depth and theatrical derring-do in one tight and memorable package. It’s bleak, it’s cheeky– it’s dazzling…. Be there!”
WBEZ Chicago Public Radio “… Intellectually thrilling and rigorous. It really is a must see.”
Backstage West “…a powerful play, full of ideas, extremely verbal, creatively written and extraordinarily presented… imaginative, gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, and unexpectedly, highly amusing.”
The LA Weekly “… drama and symbol couldn’t be more delicately interwoven.”
The Seattle P-I “…Like the crazed geniuses in science fiction, Mullin mixes gobs of this and gobs of that and then — Good heavens! It’s alive! It’s powerful!”
The Seattle Times “…a tumultuous, tour-de-force staging that spreads plenty of intellectual and emotional fallout.”

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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre
José Amador Calls Out Bardolatry

November 7, 2011
Check out José Amador’s insightful and fun essay over at the Seattlest examining our obsequious and unweened relationship with the works of William Shakespeare. To his excellent points I would add an apologia for my own insolence in presuming to wright plays when, according to so many theatre canonophiles, all the great works have already been written. However, I feel compelled to note sheepishly that that a few things have happened in human history since Shakespeare died. And since he wasn’t able to address them, it is up to foolish mortals such as myself to give ‘em a whack.
My own paltry stabs have included so far:
I’m so sorry that Shakespeare couldn’t live forever to put these important issues in their proper blank verse perspective; but since all Golden Ages are, by definition, over, you’re stuck with the unlikely likes of me and others who pathetically soldier on at the art of dramatic writing, so clearly dead since 1616.
‘Tis true, ’tis pity,
And pity ’tis ’tis true.
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Tags: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Louis Slotin Sonata, Paul Mullin, retirement, Theatre