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The Mississippi Theatre Association announces its CALL FOR SCRIPTS for the annual Adult and Youth Playwriting Competition. Spend your summer writing or polish up your favorite original one-act script. Submit your entry from now until September 1, 2009. The winner of the adult competition will win $500 and the youth winner will win $250. Both scripts will receive a staged reading at the 2010 Festival in January 2010.

Please help us spread the word about this competition and call for scripts! Let your friends know about this opportunity.

I decided to audition for a MFA program this year back in March. I decided to go back for my MFA last summer and also applied for a MTA program. So of course for months anxiety built and I dealt with the usual transcript transfers, letters of recommendations, and the hardest part of all, choosing my pieces. I knew I needed two contrasting pieces, but this is Graduate school I have to be smart. So I researched what other people and professors offered, and Of course the program I was applying for. A lot of the people said something in common. Be yourself, and truly contrast the pieces.

What bugs me most about bad directors? The answer is found in what annoys me as an actor. Actors are taught to focus, concentrate, and reveal the truth of the moment. We strive to improve ourselves in this way, most of the time while being our own bosses.

This letter was posted online through MSN this morning. Not that I think this is a connection with Mississippi Theatre, but it does pertain to a lot of theatre people here.

I have heard this from several married people that they worry about their spouses while they are doing theatre. Your thoughts

Our Marriage Is All an Act
My wife loves appearing in community theater more than she loves me.
Posted Thursday, March 19, 2009, at 6:50 AM ET

I am so excited about SETC Last week. Mississippi theatre was everywhere representing Mississippi. I find it refreshing not to be at the last of someone's national list. Mississippi is flying with talent. For instance Starkville Community Theatre, whose cast was named one of the two best productions and will advance to American Association of Community Theatres (AACT). Their production of "Catfish Moon" was excellent. Congratulations to SCT not just for their award winning production, but for their talent as well.

Southerners and Shakespeare dont always get along. People are confused by the language and driven away. I personally think that the south has a lot of stories that would make Shakespeare laugh and cry. Some of our stories are just repeats of stories that he once wrote. Someone I know who is a lot smarter than I once said that Shakespeare is always about sex. Especially when it’s a play with multiple pairs of would-be lovers chasing each other through the forest in the springtime. Southern enough for you yet?

Today is Jan. 6, Epiphany to the Christian Church. This is the day that the wise men supposedlyended a two year trek and arrived to see the Christ child. It is also the twelfth day of Christmas, so park that in your pear tree, and bring down the decorations. Epiphany is a time of excitement for me. This is where my new year really starts.

Monday shall be a first for me. That's right, on Monday, I will encounter my university's theatre auditions for the spring semester mainstage productions. I bypassed the auditions in the fall, and I did not need to audition for the showcases I was a part of this semester. So coincidentally, as my finals come around the corner, the auditions jump off the beginning of the most stressful and busiest week for any college student.

Barefoot children, dirty tear-stained faces, and a girl marrying her own brother.

A sordid new soap opera, “Days of our Over-Stereotyped Incestuous Young Hillbilly Lives”?

Nope. My first play.