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Does a Play Exist Without Performance?

There’s an old saying in some theatrical circles that a play does not exist unless and until is has been performed on a live stage in front of an audience.  You can imagine the heartache that creates for the amateur, but vigilant, Playwright who writes page after page only to have the work discounted in the end analysis by some because there is no final proof of production to validate the effort.  Is that a right and fair way to deal with a written Art in Performance?  Does the actor exist without being staged?  Does the director have a role without filling an empty space?

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Writing a Sixty Second Play

One task I give my amateur Playwriting students is to have them write a 60-second play in Two Acts using the Three Act structure.  That means you have around 30 seconds to set up the plot conflict points, 20 seconds to explode the conflict and 10 seconds to bring around a catharsis and denouement. 

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The Problem with One Set Plays

In addition to the awful reality that One Act Plays are ruining the Modern Theatre,
one set plays are killing off any and all theatrical design aesthetic and that deathly trend cannot die soon enough.

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Play Along Blues with Hal Leonard

Hal Leonard is a great publishing house.  We like their GuitarInstructor.com website and we’re totally over the moon for their fine “Play Along” series of books and bundled CDs.

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Stand Up if You Plan to Play the Blues

If you want to effectively play The Blues — or any style of guitar, really — you need to get off your chair, strap in your guitar, and stand up!

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Do Only Women Sing the Blues?

When you think of the history of The Blues in America, you are struck by two, stark, gender realities:  Women sing The Blues and Men play The Blues on guitar.

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The High Price of Fun

Why is the price of fun today — if you’re a novice and just trying to become an amateur — is at least a thousand dollars in upfront costs if you want to do it right?

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The Farm Town Review

If you’re looking for a terrific game to play online — in addition to Pet Society — then let me humbly suggest to you:  Farm Town.  You will be stunned by the gameplay and addicted to the gamesmanship in a matter of moments once the colorful logo greets your eye and your fertile farmland loads waiting for your aesthetic touch and business brilliance.

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SuperPoke Pets Spins Straw into Gold

UPDATE April 23, 2009:  After getting an inappropriate comment on this article
from Slide this morning, my wife and I have decided to no longer play.  We’re through.  Any links to our SuperPoke Pets sites are no longer active
and should be considered dead.  Why should we pay for that sort of
attitude from a company?  We’re voting with our billfold and the answer
is, “No thank you.”

Few of us know the value of a dollar other than we can make purchases in the real world with money that is given worth based on a common exchange of economic agreements.  What, then, is the value of a Gold Dollar?  If you play Slide.com’s SuperPoke Pets, you know the game isn’t any fun any longer unless you use your real world dollars to buy Slide Virtual Gold. In the images of my pet’s habits below, the animated things cost Gold while the Superheroes were “purchased” with earned “coins.”



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The Comcast Triple Play Home Run

I was never a fan of cable modem internet service — mainly because you share that copper wire with up to 100 of your neighbors — but I now recant that condition after experiencing the Comcast Triple Play package overt the last three weeks.  I now have superlative broadband internet access, extensive HD cable programming and digital voice telephony.  My internet connection is so fast up and down that even the Speakeasy Speed Test gets whacked trying to make sense of it as you can see below:

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