Writer for Stage & Screen
Science Fair the Musical will be featured in the Musical Cafe Showcase this November 12-14 at PianoFight in San Francisco. Please join us for twenty minutes of some of my favorite songs co-written by Philip Surtees from the screenplay, including “First World Problems,” “Sell Out,” and “I’m Always Right (So You Must Be Wrong).”
The screenplay for Science Fair the Musical is currently available for film industry professionals at The Black List.
On Sunday, October 16th, I will be moderating the first panel for Play Cafe’s How to Get Your Work Produced workshop at The Bakery at the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre.
How to Get Your Work Produced
Join us for Play Cafes popular workshop panel How to Get Your Work Produced featuring panel discussions with prominent and successful writers, artistic directors, and composers. Participants are welcome to attend as many or as few sessions as they wish. For $10, we will offer an optional dinner item from a local eatery to be delivered during the meal break.
This event will include three sessions:
Session 1, 1:30-3:00 How to Get Your Play Produced
Panelists: Jon Tracy, Lauren Gunderson, Cleavon Smith,
Jeffrey Lo & Annette Roman
Moderator: Tracy Held Potter
Refreshment break from 3:00 to 3:30 included in price
Session 2, 3:30-5:00 How to Get Your Musical Produced
Panelists: Scott Guy, Patricia Milton, Min Kahng,
Sarah Rose Leonard, Elizabeth McKoy & Gretchen Feyer
Moderator: Jerome Joseph Gentes
Dinner Break 5:00-6:00
Optional dinner provided for an additional $10
Evening Networking Session, 6:00-8:00: Meet Your Colleagues and Potential Collaborators. Bring a quick pitch! Looking for a playwright? A composer? Lyrics? Incidental music for your play? Early registrants will have the opportunity to sign up for time to sing a song, play a tune on the piano, read from a play or lyric, or just introduce yourself and your current project to the community.
Play Cafe members use code cafe1016 for $5 discount. To join Play Cafe, visit http://www.playcafe.org/memberships.
Purchase Tickets Online
Play Cafe is a nonprofit playwrights group dedicated to supporting Bay Area writers with monthly Scene Nights to develop works-in-progress and by hosting special events.
My screenplay Science Fair the Musical with music by Phillip Surtees will be included in Play Cafe’s Musical Cafe Showcase in November in San Francisco from November 12-15. We’ll have 20 minutes worth of material in this showcase, alongside three other musicals in progress by Northern California musical writing teams.
Auditions for this showcase are happening on Monday, September 12th at PianoFight (near Powell BART) in the evening. We’re casting for four non-equity parts: two women who can play teens (both altos), one man who can play a teen (tenor with falsetto), and one woman who can play “older” than the teens (vocal range is open). Just email musicals @playcafe.org to schedule an audition.
I’m extremely thrilled that All Terrain Theater is producing my one-woman solo performance play “Suddenly Split and Swiping Over” this summer through the Hollywood Fringe Festival, and will then do something that we’ve never done before: tour it back to the Bay Area!
At the end of my MFA program at Carnegie Mellon University, my professor sat me down to go over my experience with the program and to discuss my next steps. I had written a 20-minute version of this play for class and he thought this was the one play that I should make sure to finish and send everywhere. SO, I am following through and making it happen and I could not be more excited to have the excellent direction of award-winning director Katherine Vondy to guide me through this process and to have the incredible Susan-Kate Heaney to originate this role with the Hollywood Fringe Festival. As if that weren’t awesome enough, the versatile Angela Jaymes is understudying the role for Hollywood Fringe and will then tour the show to the Bay Area in July!
That is, if all goes well with our Kickstarter campaign! We are hosting a brisk fundraising campaign to raise $3,000 by Thursday, April 28th to make sure we can adequately promote the production in Hollywood and to then tour the show back to the Bay Area. If you can make a contribution, please do!
My Year in Review with a list of the writing/professional accomplishments I’ve made this year in film, television writing, opera, and stage theater.
All Terrain Theater, Six Monsters, Photo by Rob Eves
LIVE PERFORMANCES
FILM/WEB SERIES/OTHER MEDIA
I guess that does it!
“White Woman Tears” is the third of three micro plays that the Playwrights Foundation produced in its 2015 FlashPlays festival. This play was directed by Sydney Painter and performed by Laura Peterson and Jasmine Williams.
WHITE WOMAN TEARS
A Short Play
By Tracy Held Potter
Setting: An office today.
Characters:
White Woman (f, 20s)
Black Woman (f, 30s)
[BLACK WOMAN enters. She is professional, but not smiley. She sits at her desk and gets to work. WHITE WOMAN bursts into the office.]
WHITE WOMAN
Oh my God! I can’t believe what happened to that poor boy!
[BLACK WOMAN takes a breath.]
WHITE WOMAN (cont.)
I mean, it’s just so shocking how an innocent kid–and for all we know, he was innocent–could be, could be … how could that happen to him?! By the police! Because of the color of his skin!
[BLACK WOMAN processes files.]
WHITE WOMAN (cont.)
We should take the morning off.
(tearing up)
I was crying all night. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
[WHITE WOMAN collapses into tears on top of Black Woman’s desk. BLACK WOMAN stares at White Woman. She eventually picks up WHITE WOMAN and hugs her.]
BLACK WOMAN
I am so sorry. So sorry that the world has been so unfair to you. Until last night, you didn’t have to think about injustice unless you were in the mood for it. Your view of equality and fairness has been shattered. But it’s alright, because now I’m here to comfort you for all of the suffering you’ve experienced on behalf of my people. Because that’s what’s important right now.
WHITEWOMAN
But…
BLACK WOMAN
Shhh…
[End of play.]
Photo by Marcus Kazmierczak
“Cleansing” is my second of three plays performed by the Playwrights Foundation in its recent FlashPlays festival. This play was directed by Logan Ellis and performed by Caleb Cabrera, Anthony Agresti, Ehsaan Taeb, Rivianna Hyatt, and Michael-Ann Conner.
CLEANSING
A Short Play
By Tracy Held Potter
CHARACTERS
A
B
C
D
[A, B, C, and D act out gestures for each of their concerns. They keep moving the whole time.]
A
Gripe: gentrification.
B
Grumble: cost of living.
C
Hissss: racism.
D
Rrrrgh: pollution.
C
Hisss!
D
Rrrrgh!
A
Gripe!
B
Grumble!
A
Gripe!
B
Grumble!
A
Gripe! Gripe!
C
Hissssssss
B
Grumble! Grumble!
D
RRRGGHHH!!!!!
[Rain begins to fall. D notices first. The others catch on and become entranced by the sound, feel, and existence of water falling from the sky. They revel.]
D
Aaaahhhh….
C
Aaaahhhh….
A & B
Aaaahhhh….
A/B/C/D
Ah.
I was very honored to be invited to participate in the Playwrights Foundation’s FlashPlays festival this year. Below is “Neon Bracelet,” one of three micro plays that I wrote for this event. This piece was directed by Rem Myers and performed by JD Scalzo and Radhika Rao.
NEON BRACELET
A short play
By: Tracy Held Potter
Setting: Apartment in the San Francisco Mission.
Characters:
WOMAN (f, 30s) – tech project manager
MAN (m, 30s) – computer developer
[WOMAN and MAN lounge on the couch with their respective laptops.]
MAN
Bam! Work day is officially over!
[WOMAN shuts her laptop.]
WOMAN
Did you actually do any work?
MAN
That’s between me and my supervisor.
WOMAN
So. What are we doing for date night tonight?
MAN
(seductively)
Oooh… how about we Netflix and Chill?
[They kiss.]
WOMAN
How about we go out?
[MAN strokes Woman’s arms.]
WOMAN (cont.)
I heard that new place Neon Bracelet is good.
MAN
You mean that bar on Valencia with the life-sized cutouts of Ferris Bueller?
WOMAN
(pulling away)
Nevermind.
MAN
We had one rule when we moved to the Mission: no hipster places.
WOMAN
I just…
MAN
It’s a slippery slope, Babe. You go to Neon Bracelet tonight, then you think, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with this place.” And the next thing you know, you’re gentrifying like everyone else.
WOMAN
We’re already gentrifying. This way, we can stay in our neighborhood and save on the Uber. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not. I want to go to a bar with expensive drinks where people dress nicely and they project 80’s cartoons on the wall.
MAN
Like what?
WOMAN
GI Joe. Smurfs. Fraggle Rock.
MAN
Fraggle Rock?
[WOMAN nods.]
MAN (cont.)
It’s just once.
[MAN and WOMAN hop up and down and run offstage, holding hands. End of Play.]
Last winter, I completed my first short film called “Fashion Foes,” a clothing swap comedy featuring actors from Carnegie Mellon University and a crew primarily from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA. Incredible cinematography is by Kevin Galloway. Enjoy!
My latest full length play, “A is for Adeline,” inspired by the 19th Century writer Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, is getting a second staged reading tonight through the Loud and Unladylike Festival that I co-founded with Rachel Bublitz and Claire Rice as part of DivaFest at The EXIT Theatre. All three of us will present our new plays in this development workshop series.
Loud and Unladylike is dedicated to presenting stories that feature complex historical women that most people don’t know much about. In “A is for Adeline,” I’m building a story around the complex and conflicting attitudes that people had about women’s roles in society and a home and specifically whether or not they should have the right to vote.
Join me tonight to hear a reading of this piece and offer comments and feedback afterwards.
Get your tickets for the Loud and Unladylike readings.
Claire Rice, Rachel Bublitz, Tracy Held Potter. Photo by Rob Reeves
© 2024 Tracy Held
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments