Boys of Winter IRNE 2008 Nominated!

Congratulations Dean Kaner & Crew!

IRNE AWARDS 2008 - The Independent Reviewers of New England Awards (IRNE'S) will take place on Monday, April 6, 2009, at 7:30pm at the Boston Center for the Arts. Here are the IRNE Nominations for productions January 1 through December 31, 2008.

SMALL THEATER CATEGORIES - Best New Play

THE BOYS OF WINTER by Barry Brodsky, Dean Kaner & Eric Small (BKS Prods.)

THE OIL THIEF by Joyce Van Dyke (Boston Playwrights' Theatre)

ACCORDING TO TIP by Dick Flavin (New Repertory Theatre)

Boys of Winter is a rock solid story and the runner up for The Last Play Standing 2. I am truly happy for Dean and his crew and happy for the crew from A.C.T. Company the work they did to put this play in motion was fantastic! Does this validate the process of the LPS? I told someone a long time that "once is luck and anything more then that is .... something else." The finalist's from the LPS 1 & 2 have set a benchmark for the new play scripts. Going forward since the average scores from LPS 1 & 2 were higher then LPS 3 the LPS 4 will only select those plays for the final round that have a score equal to or greater then the scores from the LPS 1 & 2. Again hats off to Dean and the Boys of Winter, If everything works out I may be directing the Boys of Winter in Chicago sometime this year, keep your fingers crossed. But If I don't and you hear of a production of the Boys of Winter buy a ticket I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

Script in hand (SIH) format for rehearsal & performance

So I go to see this event in Chicago this past week-end and I watch 2 groups perform scripts in hand, and while the work was ok the professional production aspects specific to a SIH reading where lacking in a huge way. Different colors of paper, 3 ring notebooks (great for jugglers not for actors) papers held loose without the benefit of a staple, different color hi-lights, different color papers, notes it was all just a mess. Yes, I understand its the struggle for the art and money is tight. Unfortunately these items that everyone takes for granted take away from the struggle of creating and growing a new script. How can you find the truth of the written work in the early stage of development if your not giving the newly written text every chance to have a life that can stand on its own. The work the playwright created must be dare I say respected with clean format and structure. Here are some basics to keep in mind the next time you do any cold reading or script in hand work.

DUMP the 3 ring binders..Why? They are clumsy, distracting for the actor and the audience, they fall more often then you think and when they do papers fly in all directions like a grenade and that explosion of sounds will just take everyone right out of the moment. Not to mention the fact that every time I see a 3 ring in SIH work the side pockets are filled with hand written notes, receipts, and fast food menus! I could go on and on but I think I have made my point. Here are some other things to keep in mind.

Everyone in the cast please please use

1. The same color paper
2. A yellow hi-lighter
3. A stapler to keep the pages stapled together (no paperclips)
4. Number the pages at the center not to the left or right corner.

These are just a couple of tips to keep your focus on your SIH work as your working with a new scipt and the script moves to aspects of rehearsal & performance

More later Keith.

Trust your gut: Too much thinking leads to bad choices

Trust your gut: Too much thinking leads to bad choices

January 26th, 2009 in General Science / Other

Don't think too much before purchasing that new car or television. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who deliberate about decisions make less accurate judgments than people who trust their instincts.

"Whether evaluating abstract objects (Chinese ideograms) or actual consumer items (paintings, apartments, and jellybeans), people who deliberated on their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments," write authors Loran F. Nordgren (Northwestern University) and Ap Dijksterhuis (Radboud University, The Netherlands).

In five separate studies, the researchers found that better judgments can often be made without deliberation. In the first study, participants rated Chinese ideograms for attractiveness. In a following study, participants were asked to judge paintings that were widely considered high- or low-quality. Subsequent groups of participants rated jellybeans and apartments. In all the studies, some participants were encouraged to deliberate and others to go with their gut.

The more complex the decision, the less useful deliberation became. For example, when participants rated apartments on just three primary characteristics (location, price, and size) deliberation proved useful. But when the decision became more complex (with nine characteristics) the participants who deliberated made worse decisions.

The authors believe this study has consequences for the marketplace. "If deliberative attention naturally gravitates toward highly salient or novel aspects of an object, marketers might use a deliberative mindset to focus consumers' attention toward particular aspects," explain the authors.

"For example, if a car boasts one particularly good feature (for example, safety) but has a number of other negative features (for example, expensive, bad gas mileage, poor handling), a car salesman might encourage a potential car buyer to deliberate over the pros and cons of the car, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of safety. In this way, the disturbed weighting of attributes created by deliberation might be used to highlight the one sellable feature and draw attention away from the unattractive features," write the authors.

Paper: Loran F. Nordgren and Ap Dijksterhuis. "The Devil Is in the Deliberation: Thinking too Much Reduces Preference Consistency." Journal of Consumer Research: June 2009.

Source: University of Chicago