whee yay music!

OT at LTS!

Oceanic Tongues is running a workshop at the annual Listen To The Silence conference. We’ll be going on from 3:30 – 4:45 in Cubberley room 208.

Come stop by and check out what we’ve got planned, or just drop in briefly and show your support! See forwarded message and flyer below for details about the larger conference.

See you there,
Henry

Winter Quarter Update

hey all, happy new years!

OT is starting again, next Tuesday, January 13th! an LTS conference workshop and a guest speaker from the English department are among the events planned for this quarter. hope to see you at our meetings! 6:30pm, Margaret Jacks Rm 429.

Monologue craft seminar 11/13

As you can see from the entry below this one, AATP is having its 1st Annual Monologue Slam next week (11/20) so come to OT’s craft seminar this week if you’re interested in going over the basics of monologue writing! Usual time, usual place, everyone is welcome!

Workshop Session – 11/6/08

Just a reminder that OT will be holding the first of its bi-weekly workshop sessions tonight, at 6:30 PM in Margaret Jacks (Bldg. 460), rm. 429.

Please bring 2-3 copies of a draft on which you’d like to receive peer feedback.

AATP’s Monologue Slam!

Hello, OT’ers:

Here is a wonderful opportunity for all of you budding or would-be playwrights out there to flex your creative muscles.  OT will be collaborating with AATP in preparation for the latter’s first annual monologue slam (competition), to be held on November 20th at 8 pm in the CoHo.  The slam itself will feature performances from the 10-minute play “R.A.W.” as well as the presentation of original monologues written by no other than…that’s right…YOU!

OT will be co-hosting a craft seminar with AATP about dramatic writing on the Thursday before the entry deadline.  We will also be posting periodic updates, including advice about monologue-writing, to this blog, so keep checking back for more info!

Here are the rules, courtesy of the AATP’s e-flyer:

“Write a monologue (2 mins max) for you or a friend to perform and compete for awesome prizes to the Stanford Bookstore, Jamba Juice, and the Coho!! Simply sign up, show up, and SLAM!!!

To enter the competition, email kwyoung@stanford.edu by Sunday, November 16, with the following information:

• Author and performer name
• The subject and style of monologue
• (e.g.  My name’s Mitra Tizzles, I’m performing myself, My monologue is a comedy about giant balls…of boba.)

For guidance writing the monologue, visit oceanictongues.stanford.edu [OT's note: actually, visit the BLOG, not the main web site] or attend one of AATP’s Thursday night acting workshops at 9PM in the A3C Ballroom!”

Happy writing, folks!  Keep ‘em coming.

10/30 Craft Seminar – What Makes a Man

OT is having its first craft seminar this Thursday, Oct. 30th.  Please join us in Margaret Jacks Hall, rm 429 at 6:30pm. I’ll be leading a workshop on “characters” in fiction and writing in general.

How do you bring someone to life using only words?
Why is it that some characters haunt us long after we’ve put the book down?
Where do characters come from?
Is there a difference between being a character and being human?
Are YOU a character?

For a hearty discussion of such questions and more, come Thursday with a pen, paper, and favorite persona (or imaginary friend! =]). You will be doing some writing.  Should be fun!

Hope to see you there,

Ben-Zhen
Vice President

First Meeting of The Year: Free Pizza! Fun People!

From our new president, Henry Leung:

“Check it out: Oceanic Tongues (Stanford’s Asian American Writers’
Workshop) is having its first official meeting this Thursday the 16th
at 6:30. It’s been a long summer and a long few weeks of classes. Now
it’s time to have free pizza, to meet with other writers on campus, to
have some fun, and to have free pizza.

Come if you write, like to write, want to write, always thought about
writing but never really got around to it. Come if you’re
Asian-American, or Pacific-Islander, or white, or blue, or any
combination of skin color. Come with an empty stomach, a pen and
paper, and a story to tell.

Thursday, October 16th
6:30-8pm
building 460, room 429
(Margaret Jacks Hall, aka the English Dept)

Don’t miss this.”

-Henry Leung, president

Spring Quarter Reading!

Things have been rolling along so fast in the O.T. world that your humble webmaster has not been able to keep up! We just finished our last workshop session of the year (yesterday), and the week before, we were honored by the presence of a special guest, Prof. Shimon Tanaka, who came out and talked with us about the marketing of Asian American fiction and some of the unique decisions that Asian American writers have to make about language, setting, and characterization.

This Friday – we are happy to announce – we will be wrapping up what has been a landmark first year with our Spring Quarter Reading, to be held from 8pm to 10 pm in the A3C Couchroom (on the Third Floor of the Old Union Clubhouse). Please come join us for a program of student-written poetry and prose and a special presentation of the scripts created during our playwriting workshop with the AATP. Light refreshments will follow, courtesy of the English Department.

For more information about the A3C, including directions, please click here.

AATP Recap + Election Results

Thanks very much to the awesome actors from the Asian American Theatre Project who came out to help us read-through and workshop our scenes this past Tuesday. We had a blast, and we would love to see you guys at our final reading if you can make it (the group loved you guys; there were many murmurs of “can we please have the actors read our scripts for us at the reading?”)

In other news, we have just finished electing our new officers for the 2008-2009 school year. This coming week, the new board will begin the process of transitioning into their new roles. They are:

Henry Leung, President
Ben-Zhen Sung, Vice President
Atha Fong, Financial Officer
[Calendar Administrator, still TBA].

Congratulations, guys!