ismsetcetera

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Machiavelli

Discourses on Livy, c. 1517

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Our problems are not new, but they are our problems.

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"The Cat"

Charles Baudelaire

(translated by Roy Campbell)

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Just discovered Jeffery Sweet has a blog!?

https://jeffreysweet.blog

Sweet is – in my opinion – in the highest echelon of Journalists, Educators, and Practitioners of stagecraft in America, and here all his thoughts lay bare with a wall-of-text-wordpress-blog which he posts to regularly, even today.

Books by Jefferey Sweet worth reading for burgeoning Actors, Directors, Playwrights, dramatists all:

The Dramatist's Toolkit

What Playwrights Talk About When They Talk About Writing

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A beautiful cake I saw in a window while walking home tonight.

It's a bit hard to see because of the reflection, but there is a white and a black flower atop this piece; i think they're faux Peonies?? idk.

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"I write down what I feel in order to lower the fever of feeling."

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Do you ever read something and then it stays with you for the rest of your life? inspires you again and again when all else fails?

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Fernando Pessoa – "The Book of Disquiet" (Publisher: Serpent's Tail)

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It's OK to take 15 years to write what you need to say.

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Jeffrey Sweet interviewing the late Lanford Wilson – "What Playwrights Talk About when they Talk About Writing" (Yale Press, 2017).

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Throwback to 2020 when Google had at-a-glance-discernible app icons :(

Color and Shape -> ??? GOOD BRANDING.. I GUESS ???

But! Today I actually found the Photos app correctly the first time!! And it only took 4 miserable years!!

They still suck, but WOW LOOK (insert exclamation mark here) on how perfectly on-brand they are

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"... I've got some word that won't leave me alone."

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Time and again in this series of interviews, the underlying call for these world-renowned playwrights wasn't some a top-tier education at Oxford or Yale or Harvard, but instead has been "I wrote what I wrote because it spoke to me." And of course many went on to teach courses at those institutions later in their career.

It's a liberating read for aspiring playwrights.

Dear tumblr users: we dearly need your voice on the Stage! Speak up!!!

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Jeffrey Sweet interviewing Moira Buffini – "What Playwrights Talk About when they Talk About Writing" (Yale Press, 2003).

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Studying – in my own time – Dialogue. This is from a college text called "Writing Dialogue" by Tom Chiarella. It's terribly wry and funny and, importantly, helps one consider the act of dialogue in a new light. (Published by Story Press).

Still working my way through it but the context it brings is clear and concise and, importantly, practicable!!

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Excerpt from Anna Badkhen's "The World is a Carpet"

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On emergency-preparedness for seafairing vessels.

"Log from the Sea of Cortez" - John Steinbeck

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Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction to John Redmon’s “How to Write a Poem”

Really wish I had this kind of text back in High school and College.

See: https://ismsetcetera.tumblr.com/post/691707624288387072/this-is-the-best-book-on-how-to-write-no-how-to

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This is the best book on how to write – no, how to think about writing poetry – that I’ve ever come across. It’s not printed in the US and will cost ~$40 to have it shipped here, but it’s worth the price.

Excerpt from the Introduction here: https://ismsetcetera.tumblr.com/post/691717293013712896/heres-an-excerpt-from-the-introduction-to-john