Playwrights Write in Pontelandolfo!

Write Where You Are –

Pontelandolfo 2024 🇮🇹

SponsoreD by

Other Rooms founding artistic director, Jonathan Samarro, understands playwrights. Not only is he a produced and published playwright himself, but the organization he leads has been providing playwright support through a variety of initiatives. How do I know? Hey gang, you know I’m a playwright. (Check out my work on Next Stage Press and YouthPLAYS.) I’ve participated in and gained a lot from the resources Jonathan has created.

Accountable Sundays encourages writers – like sometimes lazy me – to commit to writing every Sunday. Write Where Your Are, a workshop that provides feedback during the creation of a new work, has been incredibly helpful. Other Voices is a reading series that features new completed plays. Retro Reads gives playwrights insights into the work of master playwrights through readings and discussions of classic plays. Seriously, we can all learn from the masters.

Jonathan’s latest initiative, Write Where You Are – Pontelandolfo 2024, offers playwrights the space, time, and community needed to move forward in their work. Those of you who follow this blog have already guessed why Pontelandolfo was chosen. It is my home town and where I do most of my writing. For those of you that are new – Pontelandolfo, nestled in the southern Italy Sannio hills, is a small village off the beaten tourist track. The Italian landscape and village life are a great catalyst for creativity.

Only eight playwrights were selected to participate in Other Rooms’ first retreat. Between October 14 – 23, 2024, the participants will be staying in La Locanda della Presuntuosa, an interesting villa built into a mountain and on acres of land. The villa provides an escape from the trodden tourist track of Italy’s big cities yet is minutes from Piazza Roma, the main piazza, and the center of Pontelandolfo life and lore. Cobblestone streets lead one to a medieval castle tower and cafés, ancient Roman churches and miniature works of art are hidden within an area steeped in history and culture.

The week begins with a bar crawl to introduce everyone to village life. Hey, they are playwrights did you expect high tea? In addition to time for one’s own daily writing, the retreat offers master classes in playwriting, a stimulating array of traditional cultural activities, introduction to the province’s theatre community, opportunities to socialize with fellow writers and local people. They can even choose to eat lunch with a local family! YUMMMM!

Jonathan and his local team – gulp – which includes both Annarita Mancini and I, wanted to create a writer’s retreat that was different than the usual – meet around a table for a workshop. Chatting with Playwright and Professor Rosemary McLaughlin we decided to hold a master class, Writing Site Specific Work, at a site. The workshop will be held at Altilia, an excavation of a Roman Village in the town of Sepino – Area Archeologica di Saepinum.  How cool is that!

Rosemary is the head of the Playwriting Program at Drew University. She received her MFA in Theater Arts from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School and several writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Recent plays include Paterson Falls, commissioned by Writers Theatre of New Jersey, about the 1913 silk strike; A More Opportune Time, a contemporary adaptation of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus; Pushing the River, a comedy about aging, memory and eminent domain; Seven Fishermen, about the deadly consequences of a Westerner’s determination to “save” uncontacted people; and D.O.H. (Dykes of Hoboken), set in the 1980’s, a comedy in spite of being about gentrification and AIDS. Rosemary is also a director, a member of the Dramatists Guild and a board member of the International Centre for Women Playwrights.

Sidney Rushing will be introducing the group to the VOTE method to viable and practical story telling. (Victory, Obstacles Tactics and Emotions) It is method to attack a sagging second act, an inactive protagonist  and mine for a more meaningful story. (I really can’t wait to participate in this workshop.)This user friendly process is something you can apply to any story telling medium without angst or trepidation. You will learn how this technique applies to other stories and do the work for your own narrative. We haven’t decided yet where Sidney will be conducting this workshop but know it won’t be in a classroom like setting.

Syd has penned various stage productions in both Chicago, Texas and Los Angeles. He also wrote and performed his one man show Brother’s Tellin’  in Los Angeles earning a NAACP Best Play nomination. It opened up for Lily Tomlin’s show, The Search for Signs for Intelligent Life in the Universe. Syd was then selected for the Mark Taper Playwright’s Program. He went on to a string of produced plays including Aberdeen and Netarine, Akashic Permutations, Zu’s Earth, Unsung Heroes and more. Rushing was honored to be a recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Distinguished Achievement Award, The 21^st Century Voices winner, The Inaugural August Wilson Fellow and a top ten finalist in the Screen Craft Pilot Screenplay Competition 2023. He has taught every grade level from K-12, Prep for College and at Texas State University — named teacher of the year three times in succession within public schools. 

Write Where You Are – Pontelandolfo 2024 will be an exciting program for both the participants and the citizens of Pontelandolfo. This year’s participants have been selected but Other Rooms has set up a waiting list. If you would like to be considered for the waiting list or are interested in any of the programs sponsored by Other Rooms, contact Jonathan Samarro –   jonathanjsamarro@gmail.com.
 

Ci vediamo prossima volta!

Midge Guerrera

Books and plays make great gifts!

consider gifting a work of mine. Thanks!

• Cars Castles Cows and Chaos – an outright funny Italian road trip
• An Italian Treasure Hunt – The Quest for the Crests of Pontelandolfo!
• Mamma Mia – La Befana?! – holiday play with a strong female protagonist
• Many Snows Ago – stories from the Eastern Woodland Native Americans
• Wanda, The Girl Who Cried, Witch! – a halloween tale with a moral
• The Eagle and the Old Woman – based on an Ashanti tale
• Email: 9/12 – demonstrates how sharing, grieving and even allowing a spark of humor to fly through cyberspace helped America get through the painful aftermath of 9/11.