The Diary of a Teenage Girl

So, oddly enough there are a series of books which came after The Diary of a Teenage Girl, titled Diary of a Teenage Girl (no “the”)  which are Christian books focused on bringing high school aged girls closer to Jesus… or that’s what I can tell from their website… Here’s a synoposis of one of the books: Chloe Miller is a free spirit with funky clothes and dramatic hair. She struggles with her own identity, classmates, parents, boys, and—her biggest question—whether or not God is real. But this high school freshman definitely doesn’t hold back when she meets Him in a big, personal way. Refusing to change her image to fit into the “stereotypical Christian preppy mold,” Chloe expresses God’s love through the girl band she forms, Redemption.
Yeah.  Really couldn’t be more different from what Diary is about.  And someone brought up to me recently, that perhaps they created these books in direct response to THE diary of a teenage girl.  Interesting thought.  Phoebe’s work has been banned from certain libraries, and many people have been scared by the honesty that they read in her book.  She’s kinda the Harry Potter of teenage girl genre books… spooking the right wing by her honest metaphorical story about teenage girls which clearly promotes witchcraft and mocks authority, and lures young girls into demonic thinking. Hmm. Not exactly.  Amazing that such an honestly told, brave story could make people so scared.

At least the pope hasn’t condemned The Diary of a Teenage Girl.  Yet.

Hey duders,

So, as time ticks down to our first rehearsal for Diary (Oh did we mention?  We’re going into production in March! That’s right!), people are starting to talk!  Have you seen the video we made?  It’s all over this website, so I’m sure you have… and check this out: Comic Book Blog

We’re excited that people are getting excited because we couldn’t be more excited and couldn’t want others to be excited more. EXCITED!

lots of love,

the diary team

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Please join us for a sneak-preview reading & party!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl Adapted for the stage by Marielle Heller From the graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner Directed by Rachel Eckerling & Sarah Cameron Sunde Featuring (In order of speaking) Marielle Heller, Francesca Feridany, Tim Cummings, Deborah Knox & Jon Krupp Produced by Aaron Louis Party With Us After the reading, come party with the actors, directors and playwright! Listen to the quirky, folksy sounds of MANSON FAMILY PICNIC, win some amazing prizes (tickets to Saturday Night Live, tickets to Manhattan Theater Club), and help us raise funds for our August video workshop!	When Monday, May 4th 6:00pm – Wine Bar Opens 7:00pm – Reading – Abridged version 7:30pm – After Party Suggested Donation: $50 Or help us even more: $100 – Best Bud $250 – Show Off! $500 – Mari Will Carry Your Child or more… All donations accepted at the door. RSVP: thediaryofateenagegirl@gmail.com or Call Aaron Louis at 646-201-6071 Where Robert Steele Gallery 511 West 25th St. suite 101, NYC
Donate Now If you are not able to attend but would still like to make a tax deductible donation to THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL, please make an online payment through our fiscal sponsor, NEW GEORGES. Pay Online CLICK HERE VERY IMPORTANT Write “DIARY” in the designation line Pay By Check Please mail your check to: THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL c/o NEW GEORGES 109 W. 27th St, Suite 9A New York, NY 10001 VERY IMPORTANT Write “DIARY” in the memo line NEW GEORGES is a 501c3 not for-profit organization. All contributions are tax -deductible to the full extent of the law.

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But I am sorry.  I am getting a lot of inquiries about what is happening with the project these days… and I am sorry I have been so bad about updating the website.

But rest assured, things are moving forward.  We’re thrilled with the phase of development we are in these days.  We are planning a video workshop for the summer where we will experiment with the multi-media, video aspect of the project and get ourselves ready for production.  We have been meeting with video designers and video artists and are so excited to break open the ideas for how to bring this project to life.

Thanks to all of you who are out there silently rooting for us (yeah, you)… We need that support and I promise we won’t disappoint.

And I’ll try to be better about updates.

love

Mari

I have no good excuse.  But I do want to report on what has been happening with the play.  Things have been going so well!

We did our reading in LA at the Zephyr Theater… and it was an amazing success.  The team of people who work at the Zephyr and for the Zephyr Reading Series were so wonderful.  They made the entire experience so easy.  We flew in (Sarah, Rachel, Aaron and I) to LA and did a couple of days of rehearsal before the actual reading.  The big news of the weekend was that Phoebe Gloeckner was coming to see the reading!  (oh my god… everyone went into a bit of a panic)  She was flying in and it would be her first taste of the play.  It was a bit intimidating, I’ll admit.  But so exciting.

So, the reading was packed to the gills (that’s a phrase right?) and there was a ton of anticipation in the room.  And the whole thing flew by like a whirlwind.  But through it all I could see Phoebe leaning in from the audience.  But that could mean a lot of things.  Turns out- it was a good leaning in.  She really loved it.  AMAZING!  (don’t believe me? check out her blog here: www.ravenblond.com)  She and I spent the next afternoon together and talked about her experience of seeing her beloved book up on the stage.  She was so generous and complimentary.  It was more than I could have ever expected.  And then she and I went back to her hotel room… the exact hotel room in which Janis Joplin died (not a coincidence of course).  I was with this amazing woman who I so admire, paying tribute to another amazing woman we both admire.  It was one of the best days.

So… we’re doing a reading in LA in October. That’s pretty cool, huh?   Yep.  We think so.  It will be at the Zephyr Theater on Melrose.

Hopefully this will be our last reading that focuses only on text.  The next step is going to be doing some sort of workshop that incorporates the video element.  That will be exciting.

We did a reading of the script the other night, just Sarah and Rachel and I.  We just wanted to hear the new draft out loud and I’m overly proud to announce that it came in under an hour and forty five minutes.  That was the goal.  And I think the script is getting better and better.  It would suck if it was getting worse, wouldn’t it?

Well, that’s the report.  Things are going well.  Things take longer than I want them to… but they’re moving in the right direction.

phew.

Well, THAT is a good question!  Thank you for asking…

I am in rewrites these days, attempting to cut down the script to possibly live without an intermission.  Which means it needs to be an hour and a half (an hour and forty at the tops!).  It’s a task, since at the last reading I think it clocked in around 2 hours and 5 minutes or so.  But the work we did in the last two readings has made certain cuts very obvious to me.

And the biggest changes have come in re-imagining the multi-media aspects of the play (letting them really represent the progression and development of Minnie as an artist).  The drawings, film and photographs represent her internal artist’s story, and the story live on stage is her personal teenage self story.  Sometimes those two aspects progress together, and sometimes they are in direct contrast.

The good news is every time I take a week long break from the script, I get back to it and see some new or changed parts of the script that I had forgotten about.  And every time I’m thrilled.  The script keeps getting better and funnier and more poignant.  And that feels great.  Sometimes I think I could live and evolve with this script forever.  But, I want it to be in production too badly to let that happen.

Well, that’s the news from my brain.

M

Hi out there…

Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time contemplating the future path of Diary… and I’m happy to conclude that I’m still spending lots of time contemplating that.  It’s wonderful and confusing to have options.  But I do know that a series of readings are in our immediate future.  One in the bay area, one in LA, and perhaps one more New York reading.  It’s a complicated task to take a new play like this, and find the best trajectory for it.  And I’m so committed to creating a fantastic production that does this story justice, that I want to make sure we step carefully (but not too carefully).

Either way, the latest good news is we’ve gotten some interest from LA to do a reading at a theater, most likely in October.   I think it will be a great opportunity to expand the base of support for this project.  There are many other potential opportunities popping up… but I’ll talk more about them once they’re more real.

“Don’t get nervous in the service, kid!”  As Monroe would say.  There’s lots to do.

Still just saying yes!

(a serious homage to Phoebe Gloeckner here… my two cats making themselves at home on my diary notebook… how am I supposed to get any work done?)

Was our reading…

And it was really fantastic!  We had a great group together for an intimate reading of the script, with our fantastic team of actors… and you could just feel that the script has taken on a new life.  It was totally exhilarating.  The only hard part about doing these readings is that I get to live in the world of the play for one night, and it’s so satisfying, and then I don’t know when it will happen next…  I wish we were doing it every night.  Can’t wait for that.

The actors were all fantastic… and the story was able to really stand on its own.  One of the funniest moments of the night came when Lillian, who was doing a fantastic job reading stage directions, mis-read a direction “Minnie enters.  Monroe enters, chasing her”, and instead she said “Minnie enters.  Monroe enters her”.  Everyone lost their shit… including Tim and I.  It was quite a moment.

Afterwards, we sat around drinking wine and cold beer (the room was so hot)… and everyone was so eager to discuss what they had just seen.  It was great.  Four of us ended up staying for hours, cleaning up and then just finishing off the wine… discussing the play in depth (along with many other topics).

Huge thanks need to go out to all of the people who helped make the night happen: DT, Liza, Julie, David, and all of the fantastic actors (Tim, Christina, Deb, Jon and Lilly).

Whew!  On to the next….