The Artist Susan Rothenberg

Susan Rothenberg 1986
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

Playwright Portrait, Adam Bock, Excerpt from The Typographer's Dream

The Playwright Adam Bock 2006
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

From The Typographer's Dream.


MARGARET
The typographer’s dream: Ink on paper.
To typeset a book. To have a civilized deadline. To work at a slower pace. Oh. To see the metal type kiss the paper. To use quality ink on archival acid-free paper. To have time stop.
Pause.
I’ve got a book that was printed in the seventeen century. It’s still good.


publications:
FIVE FLIGHTS and SWIMMING IN THE SHALLOWS have been published and are available at www.playscripts.com/author.php3?authorid=308

Lake of the Clouds, Mount Washington, NH

Playwright Portrait, Milan Stitt, Excerpt from The Runner Stumbles

Playwright Milan Stitt (February 9, 1941 – March 12, 2009
circa 2006
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

THE RUNNER STUMBLES
(excerpt)

RIVARD: Loneliness is not contagious, you know, yet people stand by and
willingly watch others suffer as if they were afraid they'll catch it
by intervening. It makes me wonder if we are naturally cruel. Something,
here, inside, makes us, unlike God, revel in misery.

Playwright Portrait, Desi Moreno-Penson, Excerpt from GHOST LIGHT

Desi Moreno-Penson

2009 copyright Peter Bellamy 2010
from GHOST LIGHT

BRIAN
(angry outburst) I can be one charming motherfucker when I want, alright?
People like me
They like working with me
They like drinking with me.
Playing poker...they say to my face, “Gee, Brian—you’re such a cool guy,” and then they go to my wife and tell her she’s lucky
LUCKY to have a husband who’s not ‘out there’ doing what every other married man is doing
Looking for other women
Looking for strange.
Just looking to get away with all kinds of shit.

NATALIE
So, you’re a liar.

BRIAN
I have issues with fidelity.

NATALIE
You’re a hypocrite.

BRIAN
(he’s had it) I’M AN ARTIST! And if I said I’d produce one of your fucking plays you’d grab your cell phone so goddamn fast and call your husband so he could come down and watch you SUCK MY COCK.

Playwright Portrait, Ryan Holsopple Excerpt, in 31Down's METRONOMA

 

Ryan Holsopple as Robert Bloch in 31Down's METRONOMA written and directed by Ryan Holsopple

Richard Forman's Incubator series summer 2006

copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

"I knew the time had come for me to go to that hideous house of death…I knew that I was going to meet Lovecraft for the first time…I was prepared to do what he told me to do, his orders on the page became clear to me…And I was ready for the first and last encounter with my one idol…So I left my hotel for good, and made my way through the quiet, peaceful streets of Arkham, Mass, but I wasn’t alone…the light footsteps of a young child seemed to follow me where ever I went…"

Playwright Portrait, Daniel Reitz, Excerpt, Perfect Evening

 

Playwright Daniel Reitz 2007
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

CLARK

Then one night, he called me into his office. He and a hustler took turns fucking me, and when they were done he sent the kid home in a company car and had me sign a prepared resignation letter. I was getting in the way at work – he’d be sitting through a partners’ meeting and looking through the plate glass, and fantasize putting me through it.

Normal life does intrude every now and then. I asked him not to hit my face for a while, at least not until I’m back from seeing my mother in Connecticut. He made me beg him not to, but the truth is, I think he’s getting tired. It takes a lot out of him. Lately he’s been farming me out. Last Saturday night he made me blow a homeless guy in the Jersey Path station.

I mean, he says he won’t rest until I’m on life support, but … fundamentally, though? He’s a very … you’ll laugh. Humane person. Civilized.

-- From Perfect Evening

by Daniel Reitz

Lost Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, 1975

Carroll Gardens 1975
copyright peterbellamy 2010

Playwright Portrait, Anne Washburn Excerpt from Apparition

Anne Washburn 2006
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010 all rights reserved.

Excerpt from

APPARITION, An Uneasy Play of the Underknown

A

anyhow you're trundling along and then...

B

suddenly out from the mist

E

it all seems hopeless.

C

From out of the darkness of the forest looms suddenly the Weevil Tender!

A

(and there was a horrid shriek)

C

There is a rustling in the scratchy branches and then horribly from out of the middle of those prickly foliages pops…the Weevil Tender!

E

(and the screams echo and echo throughout the primeval forest

and then the sun sets)

A

with a terrible plop and a sizzle. Into the cold ocean.

All hear a sound off right.

Mark Christian Subias, 2007

Mark Christian Subias 2007
copyright peterbellamy 2010

Mark Subias is a playwright agent.

Playwright Portrait, Sigrid Gilmer, Excerpt from Slavey

Playwright: Sigrid Gilmer, 2008

copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

2008 Ohio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb Festival

The Play SLAVEY

DAY 11.

SMITH HOUSE. KITCHEN.

Ted stands.

Nora is seated at the table. She consults a list. There is a small rectangular box in front of her.

Sonny is seated at the counter with his face in a bowl of cereal.

NORA. First we have to put your collar on. Now don't tense up, they are much improved. It looks just like a platinum choker.

See. Kneel down please.

Ted kneels.

Nora, with slow absentminded seduction, puts the collar around Ted’s neck.

NORA. Except this choker gives off 100,000 volts of electric shock, if you stray from the property or it can also be detonated by remote control. Of course Robert and I have one.

Sonny yelps with glee.

NORA. What has mommy said? Not until you're 12.

The Playwright Tina Howe

The Playwright Tina Howe

copyright peterbellamy 2010

Why can't you set up your camera in my brain? Bore a hole in my skull and let 'er rip. (Lurid sound effect) There's no plainness here, but heaving oceans ringed with pearls and ancient cities rising in the mist… Grab your tripod, wonders are at hand… Holy men calling the faithful to prayer as women shed their clothing at the river's edge… Click! Jeweled elephants splash beside them, their reflections shiver and merge -- slender arms dissolving into rippling tusks -- loosened hair painting bashful flanks… Click! Now you see them, now you don't… A breast, a tail, a jeweled eye… Click! Macaws scream over head (sound effect), or is it the laughter of the women as they drift further from the shore, their shouts becoming hoarse and strange… (Sound effect) Aim your camera here, Mr. Hugo. (Tapping her temple) This is where beauty lies… Mysterious, inchoate and out of sight! Click!

           

Tossing Salad, Rockaway Beach, 1977

Tossing Salad, Rockaway Beach 1977
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

Staten Island, 1974

Staten Island, 1974
copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

The Photographer William Eggleston

William Eggleston

Rose Parks, Greenpoint 1973

Rose Parks of Greenpoint 1973 copyright 1974

When I met Rose she was pregnant. Rose was the first person I ever photographed in Brooklyn, She lived in a storefront with children and a husband who had a heart ailment and eventually died. She was on welfare and the apartment had no windows.  I thought she was beautiful: her difficult life, her children, the bleak storefront, her life as an outsider.  There is a great beauty in suffering, and the dignity that people have who live with it. "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth."

Guido with his pompadour and little brother, Carroll Gardens

Carroll Gardens Portrait 1974, copyright Peter Bellamy 2010,

I learned that when you did street photography, you always gave people you photographed a photo, so that when you returned you would not get beaten up. I learned this from my late teacher Bill Gedney.

Barbershop, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, 1975

Barbershop 1974, Carroll Gardens, Copyright Peter Bellamy 2010

I would prowl the streets, look in stores, engage people in conversation.  I had a big camera, on a tripod, and I was 19 at the time.  Carroll Gardens had Italians, mostly, and was safe only if they wanted you to be safe.  It was a neighborhood.

Young Smokers, Brooklyn, 1975

Cypress Hills

copyright peterbellamy 1975

and everybody smoked then.

Gowanus Canal, 1975

Gowanus Canal. 1975 peter bellamy copyright 2010

Back when Brooklyn was still Brooklyn, when there were greasers instead of hipsters.

Articulated Liar, collection MOMA, Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois 1985 copyright peterbellamy 2010

In her studio.  

Playwright Portrait, Gregg Moss, Excerpt from punkplay

Gregg Moss 2009 copyright peter bellamy 2010

 

Name of play: punkplay

 

1. "It's morning in America"

2.

DUCK:

I just want to - you know. It’s hard enough just getting by, without making trouble for

yourself. My dad says.

MICKEY:

Yeah. I know.

But. You know.

Some people just can’t help it.

Making Trouble.

Name of play: punkplay

TIME

the entirety of american history in the 1980s /

one american boy’s high school career

CHARACTERS

duck - an unremarkable american boy, 14-18

mickey - an unremarkable american boy, 13-17

actor 1 - marcel - wheelchair bound, french canadian, 25

chris sawtelle - the coolest punk rock guy in a very small town

actor 2 - sue giki - it’s pronounced “geeky”, exceptional

Asian-American teenage girl 14-18

inés - marcel’s girlfriend, french canadian, 13

ronald reagan - a bikini clad lite beer model / the

40th president of the united states

chair, desk, clock - jovial animate furniture (puppets)

pisschrist -a controversial photograph by andres serrano (puppet)

  

Addict's Damn

Addict's Damn, my second book, was published in collaboration with the late Joseph Chassler, a poet, and edited by the late Patty McQueen.  The gentleman in this photograph lived in the basement of a courthouse.

Addict's Damn: An Interleaving of Architecture and the Homeless (Paperback)

~ Joseph Chassler (Author), Peter Bellamy (Author) "Life corrupts..." (more)

http://www.amazon.com/Addicts-Damn-Interleaving-Architecture-Homeless/dp/0962599433

The Hand of God, The Wilderness Project

After I finished my book Addicts Damn I traveled from the Rio Grande towards the Arctic Circle, trekking through the woods, mountains and deserts for a period of about 8 years.  It was a spiritual quest for me.  I was in pursuit of the living God, which was, in fact, nature.  When I took this photograph on the Appalachian Trail, I realized that nature was the display of the hand of God, for only such a force could make this flower reach for the sun.

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0962599433/peterbellamyc-20

Louise Bourgeois

I worked for Louise Bourgeois for about ten years as her personal photographer.  In 1985, she had fired her last photographer and I made an exchange that I would photograph her work in exchange for a portrait. It was the start of a long relationship.  I spent hundreds of hours photographing her work under her close supervision and, once again, I came to understand what it means to be a great artist.  In the time I worked for Louise, the relationship worked because I was invisible - in the sense that I left my ego at the door.  What I took away from Louise, was that as an artist you should be careful whom you trust.  That you could take the hurts and pain of your life experience and  nurture and incubate them, covet and nurse them, into artistic expression.

This print is owned by Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer.

It was featured in the film LOUISE BOURGEOIS, THE SPIDER, THE MISTRESS AND THE TANGERINE A FILM BY MARIONCAJORI AND AMEI WALLACH

http://romanandwilliams.com. http://artkaleidoscope.org/bourgeois.htm, www.diaart.org/exhibitions/main/78 -l

Orson Welles

Orson Welles 1977 Copyright Peter Bellamy 2010, all right reserved.

Working for Mr. Welles was my first job out of art school at Pratt Institute.

For a week I worked under his direction and to this day, what I learned from him has not only defined how I photograph and how I light, but who I am as an artist. I heard endless stories of his day at MGM, the people he worked with and, most particularly, how to light.  When you work for a great artist you also learn a set of values, a code of honor. That you are responsible to your art. As an artist you are a creator of language, a storyteller, and the story that you tell is your own story. I realized that Mr. Welles was ultimately Citizen Kane, and that his masterpiece is autobiographical.

http://www.wellesnet.com/