From This is London: Screenwriter-directors (and husband-wife team) Paul Mayeda Berges and Gurinder Chadha follow up Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice with another tale of the diaspora. The Mistress of Spices is, they say, "an immigrant's tale about keeping the magic alive."

 

From Bloomberg.com: Pulitzers Create Drama by Skipping Playwright Prize. The decision not to award the prize for drama has the theatre world alternately perplexed and chagrined. But it seems extremely unlikely that there was no American play worthy of the Pulitzer this year. More likely is that the drama jury reverted to Pulitzer form and couldn't be bothered to look outside Manhattan. With two exceptions, The Kentucky Cycle and, more recently, Anna in the Tropics, the award has year after year gone to plays that originated in New York or somehow found their way there. Apparently, in the Pulitzer world, a play doesn't really exist until it's arrived at the Port Authority Terminal. If this ever made sense, it certainly doesn't now, when hundreds of new plays appear in theatres across the country each season. The award rules allow for anyone anywhere to submit a script for consideration, so long as it's been produced and had a press opening within the given time-frame. Maybe the solution is for more theatre people (or, for that matter, audience members) outside New York to start doing just that, next time they come across something worthy in their local regional theatre or downtown hole-in-the-wall. That, at least, might make it harder for the jurors to suppose that all the good ones eventually make it to you-know-where.

 

From The Statesman-Journal (Salem, Oregon): Marking the premiere of Going Through Splat, a documentary about his life, screenwriter Stewart Stern chats online about Hollywood and his work, including such classics as Rebel Without a Cause, The Ugly American, and Sybil.

 

From KCRW Theatre Talk (Los Angeles): In this pithy essay (which you can listen to or read), critic James Taylor -- no, not that James Taylor -- takes on the pessimists who say theatre's audience is dying off. Theatre in L.A. has never been so robust, and there's nothing wrong with Broadway that fresher plays wouldn't fix.

 

From Yahoo! News: Which came first, the movie or the game? As film and gaming grow ever closer, the answer grows ever fuzzier -- and screenwriters like X-Men's Zak Penn grow ever richer.

 

From Showbiz Ireland: Bono does Beckett. This pictorial of the U-2er arriving at the launch of the Beckett Centenary Festival concludes, in an absurdist touch that the master might have appreciated, with a picture of some Brazilian samba dancers. (They can't samba on, they must samba on.) For a full report on the Centenary from ABC News, see here.

 

From Yahoo! News: Get the first scene right, and cut the backstory. On the other hand, voice overs have their place. Top screenwriters offer tips in Screenwriters' Masterclass: Screenwriters Talk About Their Greatest Movies. Buy it here.

 

From the New York Theatre Experience: We're big fans of this non-profit, online-savvy organization run by Martin Denton. Once again they've brought out their annual anthology of fresh-off-the-stage plays, this year titled, natch, New Plays and Playwrights 2006. Playwrights this time out include P. Seth Bauer, who in this interview with N.Y.T.E. admits he became a playwright because "I had a bad habit as an actor of trying to act a scene rather than just my character." And Saviana Stanescu posits that "mainstream drama forces you to find a resolution, to 'build an arc and a journey for your characters' and ultimately to compromise in presenting the complexity of life and humanity on stage."