Crazytown

FALL TIME FILM/TV RECOMMENDATIONS

Because you know you don't want to leave your couch (and neither do I)

Maya Contreras (Playwright and Performer) 

On Hulu: EL NORTE

Summary: "...two indigenous youths who flee Guatemala in the early 1980s due to the ethnic and political persecution of the Guatemalan Civil War. They head north and travel through Mexico to the United States, arriving in Los Angeles, California, after an arduous journey." Totally relevant to what is going on this election year regarding immigration

Can you stay on the couch?: Yes! It's on Hulu.  

On HBO: HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT 

Summary: "Filmmakers discuss how Francois Truffaut's 1966 book "Cinema According to Hitchcock" influenced their work."

Can you stay on your couch?: Absolutely, It's on HBO. 

GOOD REVIEW? BAD REVIEW? WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

By Maya Contreras (Playwright and Performer) 

MY LIFE IN CHEAP TIES

(This was my last day in the service industry and a week before a moved to NYC. The Joy, the joy.)

Would you like to hear the specials?

By Maya Contreras (Playwright and Performer) 

Tomorrow my play opens at FringeNYC. While I'm looking forward to that, I wanted to look back, for a moment, when I owned a lot of cheap ties. 

I can tie a tie in about ten seconds without looking in a mirror. I don't know if that's a humble brag or just a sad fact. Like many performers and writers I worked in the service industry for years. Many of those jobs required ties. Outrageously ugly cheap ties. Holiday ties, ties with birds, ties with vegetables on them. All of them are probably at the bottom of a landfill now.   

It would be very easy to complain about those jobs, but they helped me buy my first car. Balancing drinks on a tray helped me pay for college and of course, helped keep a roof over my head. I haven't wait staffed for years, thankfully, but that doesn't mean I don't have a deep appreciation for everything that it gave me. What did the service industry give me? It helped me be a better communicator. When you're speaking to dozens if not hundreds of people a day, you need to speak quickly and clearly. It helped sharpen my wit, seriously. Seriously? Yes, seriously. When you have food running late because of a slammed kitchen, angry customers, and flustered hosts, you need to inject some humor into the situation to defuse it. I had to do that... a lot. 

(I didn't defuse it this way...)

GOING A BIT PEAR SHAPPED

Sewing props for the play because... of course. 

By Maya Contreras (Performer and Playwright) 

I’m writing this blog on an Amtrak back to Manhattan right now. I’d love to tell you it’s because I feel wistfully inspired looking out of the window at the Hudson River (it is a beautiful view) but that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is – it’s the first time I’d have a moment to write this before it’s due. I know by the time I pull into Penn Station it’ll be 10:10pm, then I’ll need to run to the Ferry terminal to make sure I make the last Ferry to Jersey City at 10:50pm. By the time I get home – sometime around 11:30pm, I’ll be exhausted and will collapse into bed.

I’m a lil'busy these days. Busier than I’ve been in a while. Not that I’m complaining mind you. It’s what every single person in Entertainment wants – to be busy with great (paying) projects, which I am, it just I didn't expect several projects to collide together at once. My play is going into full dress rehearsal this week before making its’ world première at FringeNYC at the Soho playhouse on Aug 12. Before and inbetween those performances, I’m running Upstate to finishing shooting a television series for PBS: Brewed in NY.

WE ARE NOT IN COMPETITION WITH ONE ANOTHER

Be kind. 

By Maya Contreras (Playwright/Actor) 

The Republican Convention just ended. From what I could see, it was mostly empty, and to quote Nate Silver: 

Total shitshow. 

Melania Trump lifted some of her convention speech from our first lady Michelle Obama's well, 2008 convention speech: 

Trump tried to awkwardly kiss his VP pick Mike "lady hater" Pence. 

#FRINGENYC LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO 'THE DEVIL'

 

FringeNYC is about to be upon us again! Let me introduce you to "The Devil."

By Maya Contreras (Playwright/Performer)

This year I have another play in FringeNYC. I love Fringe because it produces affordable independent theatre - which is incredibly important in a town where the average Broadway ticket is well over $250. FringeNYC is $18 and you have over 200 shows to choose from.

FringeNYC gives a stage (well, 16 of them) to tell our stories that might not quite fit in the mainstream of Broadway, but are still compelling and necessary. 

My offering this year is Let The Devil Take The Hindmost. Set in 1969 Washington DC, Vera, an African American math teacher and her husband Pablo, a Latino Art History Professor, attempt to make sense of a violent decade, their rocky marriage, and what the future holds for their politically active daughter. 

I started outlining the play Nov. 22, 2014 and began the second act June 13, 2015. Why do I remember those two dates? Tamir Rice's murder and the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina took place retrospectively on those two dates. Like many in this country I was overwhelmed with grief that a child playing on a swing set with a toy gun, and nine unarmed church goers were all murdered in cold blood. All victims of systemic and institutionalized racism in a culture that has stoked the flames of division and hate for far too long. 

FOR ALTON, ERIC, MICHEAL, TAMIR, DONTRE, AKAI, TANISHA, JOHN, EZELL, ON, AND ON...STOP KILLING US

Alton Sterling: Father, Brother, Partner. 

THE COUCH POTATO LEAVES THE COUCH*

(*First thing I did when I got back into town was put my feet up on my couch)

I love my couch, it’s deep and it’s real, but it’s time to get up

By Maya Contreras (Writer, Actor, Playwright)

I love my couch. No, we don’t have an exquisitely comfortable couch; in fact as my husband puts it succinctly “This couch sucks.” What I mean is I like sitting on my couch because I know I'm home. I sit to write with my laptop on my couch. I watch Criterion films on my couch (O.K. new episodes of The Mindy Project). I take naps on my couch after completing those two activities.

I just got back into town after a week of traveling. In that time I was in Buffalo, NY shooting a new episode of Brewed in NY (Insert shameless plug here: Catch the series on PBS this fall!) then I went to Chicago to see my nephews and new four-week-old niece (she’s perfect).

What’s been surprising to me is my spontaneity these days. If I had to guess, I would assume that my friends think I’m somewhat spontaneous. I have to break it to everyone – I’m not. I like to plan things out to the best of my ability knowing that in life everything can fall apart in a moments notice. Basically I like to mix my fatalistic side with a little Type A planning “I should be there at 9pm sharp if my car/plane/train doesn’t crash, and then I’ll go to dinner at 9:30pm.” Yep, that’s how my brain works. Because of that, my adventurous side has been subdued since I’d say the late 1980s.

Lately I’ve thrown caution (well, abbreviated caution, I can’t change overnight) to the wind and have said to myself “Let’s explore.”

In Buffalo I asked the make-up artist Liz “Hey, do you want to check out Niagara Falls with me?” Thankfully she said “Hell ya” before I changed my mind. Once we arrived (about a 40 min. drive from Downtown Buffalo) I was memorized by it. I can’t believe I was going to let my planning get in the way of seeing it.

 

Niagara Falls from Maya Contreras on Vimeo.

THANK YOU JOHN LEWIS

An inspiration for over four decades now

by Maya Contreras (Writer, Playwright, Actor) 

I had my phone off for the duration of the morning. I spent the day filming an episode of 'Brewed in NY' for PBS today in Buffalo, NY. When we took a short break I checked social media and was blown away with what was happening on the floor of Congress. A sit-in led by Representatives Katherine Clark and John Lewis to protest votes on gun control took the media and it's viewers by storm. 

#NoBillNoBreak

Rep. Tammy Duckworth removed her leg prosthetics and joined her colleagues. 

SIDESHOW DON: A LETTER TO THE MEDIA

 

Not if the media has it's way...

Written by Maya Contreras (Playwright, Actor, Writer)

I’ve been disappointed with media's 24-hour coverage of Trump. They've manage to blanket the entire political election season with the hourly nonsensical meanderings of a small handed narcissist. I feel the media has lost its way. So I’ve decided to pen them a letter expressing my concern. 

Dear Mainstream Media,

First I want to say, I really appreciate you covering the political race with bated breath. I can’t image how difficult it’s been for you all since Ted Turner turned nightly news into a 24-hour news cycle. I’ll never forgive him for that and breaking up with Jane Fonda. They were a great couple.

What must it be like to fill up 24 hours with hard hitting pieces such as: "Why Hillary Clinton doesn’t smile more" and "How much raisin bran Bernie Sanders' eat?".  

I also know you need to keep the ratings up in the age of viral clips, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Slurp (Is that a thing? It’s hard to keep up). I mean it had to be humiliating the first time your boss said, "Hey. I know you all have multiple degrees in Journalism, some of you are Rhodes scholars, but we’re going to need you all to start reading tweets on the air as part of your JOB."

Holy shit, that is awful.

On top of all that, if you aren’t echoing the view points of what the masses want to hear, you’re getting called ‘A shill for the establishment’ or ‘Just another cog of the oligarchy' or ‘An asshole.’ I mean, what the hell! You’re just trying to report the news!