The New Works Play Reading Group has announced their April reading of AFFORDABLE RATES AND COLOR TV on March 18

The New Works Play Reading Group will have their April meeting on Sunday, April 19 @ 11am at Salut Kitchen Bar in Tempe on University and McClintock.

Please Note - it is expected that those who participate in this Meetup have read the play. It only takes about an hour to read a script of this size and without doing so you will not be able to contribute meaningfully to the conversation. Our Meetups last approximately 90 minutes and are devoted entirely to discussion of the piece.

The piece that we will be discussing is "Affordable Rates and Color TV" by David Boyd (https://www.andyjboyd.com).

The script can be obtained at no charge here: http://phxnewworks.com/
Please note - we ask the author for explicit permission to use the script for our meeting. Once you obtain it you may only use it for the purposes of this specific Meetup and may not re-distribute it under any circumstances.

Here's some info about it:

After 17 year old Kim's mother dies under mysterious circumstances, Kim must decide whether to stay in her small Arizona town [note from Jason - The play is set in Prescott. Andy Boyd, the author, is from AZ and actually wrote this script in Strawberry. Andy now lives in Brooklyn.] or leave with her 23 year old boyfriend Scott. Before she does either, though, she has to turn 18, at which point she will be able to inherit her mother's motel. This means Kim must operate the motel while hiding the body and navigating the pressures of being a 17 year old girl. Affordable Rates and Color TV is a bizarro mash-up of Sam Shepard and John Hughes, a coming of age dark comedy set in the Arizona high desert.

This play was first performed in October of 2011 at the Adam’s Pool Theatre in Cambridge Massachusetts in a production directed by the author.

AUTHOR'S ARTISTIC STATEMENT
I write plays that seek to serve both as a form of civic engagement and as a form of spiritual practice. In this work I am inspired by the ancient Greeks, whose theatre confronted issues of worthiness and hatred, revenge and justice, state and citizen in a poetic language rooted in myth. Myths are stories we tell in order to understand ourselves and the swirling chaos around us. As I am not an ancient Greek, the myths I draw on are (typically) not those of classical mythology. They are the American myths of rugged individualism, glorious history, and family values. They are myths of safety and of righteousness. In my plays, I am trying to suggest that our myths are increasingly mythic in a more pejorative sense: they are not true. We are not a just and good nation. We are a rapacious empire that imposes on others values we ourselves do not obey. As an artist, I seek to expose the darkness in the American soul and perhaps to suggest alternate myths of resistance, love, and hope.
________________________________________

Jason Walz and Janis Webb will be your hosts for this meeting with Janis facilitating the discussion. We hope you will come to what will be a great time discussing and analyzing a new work! This isn't like a "play reading" where you might read a part in a group setting. This will be more like a nuts and bolts discussion of a new play from the perspective of character analysis, scene development, producibility, action, and whatever other angle you'd like to look at it from. Actor's perspective, director's perspective, TD's perspective...however you'd like to participate is welcome! We intend this to be an open forum but one focused on a discussion of the play as viewed from different perspectives. Since we will be meeting at a restaurant please be prepared to buy at least an iced tea or something.

CLICK HERE for more information