Now On Sale - "In A Single Bound: Superheroes For Greater Boston...And Beyond!"

(wow I can't believe I totally forgot to post about this back in April) (yes I realize I've been neglecting this site) (I could have sworn I posted about this when it happened...)

I recently published another comic book story, this one with Boston Comics Roundtable / Ninth Art Press and featuring artwork by my friend Jim Gallagher. Our story is part of an anthology series about Boston-centric superheroes, and what's even cooler is that our superhero "Louie the Lone Dervish" (inspired by Louie With The Tricycle, a popular homeless guy around these parts) is featured right there on the cover on the anthology as well. Not bad for a story about a crazy superhobo on a refurbished three-wheeler!

The comic was originally set to have its debut at Boston Comic-Con back in April, but, well, that kind of got postponed because, you know, all kinds of craziness. So it's now available online following the re-scheduled Boston Comic-Con from last weekend. You can pick up a copy of "In A Single Bound" #2 over at the Ninth Art Press website, a scant $6 for 36 glorious black-and-white pages done entirely by Boston-based writers & artists.

UPDATE: this blog post managed to make the rounds today, thanks to the magical powers of the Internet, and I was interviewed by Boston Magazine about it. You know, 'cause I'm awesome n'shizz. Check out the interview over on their website!

The Jungle Book Comes to Boston!

The opening show of our 2013-2014 season at the Huntington is a brand new stage adaptation of Disney's The Jungle Book, which we're all pretty excited about. I talk about it more extensively over on the Huntington's blog, and here's a video interview I put together with our Artistic Director Peter DuBois about the production: 

Performances of The Jungle Book begin September 7 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre.

Toni Tone Tony

So this one time, I won a Tony Award.

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(damn I look good in a tux)

Okay well technically my entire company won a Tony Award, but still, I fall under that category. Which means that I am now officially a Tony Award-winning playwright! I just, you know, didn't win the Tony Award for playwriting; I won it for, uh, well, I guess, Web & New Media Management. WHATEVER YO I GOT A TONY.

Anyway, it was awesome. I've recapped the experience over on the Huntington's blog, as well as on the Boston Herald website, so you can read about it in detail on one of those sites. But mostly I just wanted to brag for a moment.So excuse me while I go brush my shoulders off.

Big News! #Clarion2013

I just returned from the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska, which was an absolutely incredible time filled with lots of new friends (hi everyone!). While I was there, pondering how so many people could afford to be alcoholics in such a remote and expensive small town, I learned three important things: (1) how it feels to be Al Pacino in Insomnia; (2) what I think is the final missing piece of my play True Believers; and (3) that I just got accepted into the Clarion Writing Workshop Class of 2013! Clarion is pretty much the premiere training grounds for short fiction writers in the realms of science fiction / fantasy / horror. I'll be spending 6 weeks in San Diego along with 17 other writers, studying under such notable names as Cory Doctorow (woohoo!) and pumping out and workshopping a new short story every week. And somehow, my job is actually letting me get away with this (although the timing is fortunate in that we don't actually have any shows running in the summer). Clarion is a hugely respected program, and I couldn't be more excited or proud to have been accepted, and so far, everyone else in the program has been incredibly welcoming (at least through our minor e-introductions, anyway).

Granted, it's kind of crazy and stressful to deal with news like that when you're already 4 hours behind the people in Boston that you need to talk to about it and you're also supposed to be adhering to a somewhat-rigid schedule of play readings that conflict with everything on the East Coast, but I was able to make it work (seriously the Clarion phone call literally came in the middle of the workshop reading for True Believers) (don't worry, I silenced my cell phone ahead of time) (yes, there is cell reception in Valdez).

So basically if anyone wants to hang out in San Diego in July, I'm yours! I'm going to be sad leaving Boston at such a beautiful time (and especially leaving Bevin behind), but it's a pretty exciting reason to make such a sacrifice.

Oh, and yes, this does mean that I will be at #SDCC this year. Hollerrrr.

Oh Whoops Sorry Website Didn't See You There

So the last few months have been a little crazy, from my True Believers reading in New York through our million-dollar fundraiser gala at the Huntington and our receiving the regional Tony Award and OH YEAH horrible attacks on Boston and in my response to Amanda Palmer's narcissistic response to that event getting picked up on BuzzFeed and my latest comic book getting published with my story on the cover and also writing/recording some music for the world premiere of John King's From Denmark With Love and then occasionally sleeping and then now I'm in Alaska for the Last Frontier Theatre Conference and another workshop reading of True Believers and then we have our production of Rapture, Blister, Burn starting previews at the Huntington this Friday and then it's Alumni Weekend at Emerson plus I have a wedding to attend that I still need to write some things for and then there's the Tony Awards themselves where I plan on armwrestling Alec Baldwin and so basically I'm sorry that I've been neglecting this website but I really really swear that I will try to be better about it going forward so that I'm not either back-dating blogposts en masse to pretend that I'm sharing everything in a timely manner or giving off the impression to all 3 of my loyal readers that my constant doing of things has come to a grinding halt or that I am dead or somehow disappeared or maybe that The Doctor has come and stolen me away in his TARDIS and I know this is getting pretty ramble-y right now but I'm kind of enjoying seeing how much I can vomit from my brain without stopping or using any commas but I should probably get back to the theatre conference because holy crap a bald eagle just flew past my window so I'm gonna go okay bye.

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Good News, True Believers!

I've got two new exciting bits to share with you about your favorite nerdy theatre experience. First, The Hive Theatre in New York will be presenting a staged reading of True Believers on Monday, March 18 at 7pm at the Lee Strasberg Film & Theatre Institute on East 15th Street near Union Square. The reading is being presented under an Equity showcase contract, which technically means that they're all professional actors who probably aren't being paid, but that's okay, because hey, cool, professional NY actors! I've met with the company once so far, and they're incredibly excited and supportive about the show. I by no means feel that the script is perfect, but when I asked them about a few of the concerns I had about it, they all pretty much answered, "Nope, it's great, don't worry about it," so, ya know, that's nice. If you're in New York, or have any friends in New York, please tell them to come (especially if they're important agents/editors/producers/superheroes/billionaire philanthropists/the real-life inspiration for Avenger because oh God I want to see his face). The other great news I received this same weekend (which also pertains to True Believers) is that I've been invited to participate in the Last Frontier Theatre Conference at Prince Williams Sound Community College in Valdez, Alaska, which is apparently a 6 hour drive from Anchorage. It's a week long conference full of panels and workshops all focusing on new works for American theatre, and another staged reading of True Believers will be presented under my adept direction. But mostly, it'll be cool to go to Alaska in May when it's not a frozen tundra and there's only like 3 hours of darkness and then suddenly I'm Al Pacino and I'm going crazy trying to catch a killer and hey that could be plot of my next play (he says, already working on 2 more simultaneously instead of focusing on finishing one UGH).

So in conclusion: The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee was right.

Athbhliain Faoi Mhaise Dhaoibh!

(that's "Happy New Years" in Irish, 'natch)

It's a busy end to the Holiday Season, with back-to-back-to-back celebrations, but here's a quick update on some things. First, a little New Years poem I wrote over at Five By Five Hundred about 2012's significant lack of jetpacks. I also wrote a little blog / essay about my brain as a writer entitled "Less Talk, More Rock" for the Boston One Minute Play Festival, which is this coming weekend, January 5-7, at Boston Playwrights Theatre, and features two short plays that I wrote. I have very specifically avoided rehearsals, so I'm excited to see what's going to come out of the little bits of text I wrote. If you're interested but unavailable to make it to the show, the 8pm performance on Sunday, January 6 will be streamed live on HowlRound's NewPlay TV, so you can watch the whole thing from the comfort of your laptop.

That's all for now; see you in The Future!

Wow. Our Town. Wow. Okay.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPwJ-8cGXpI] I say this with no personal bias -- not because my wonderful girlfriend, the producer of this fine production, has been busting her ass for 10 months to make this show as a reality, and not as an employee of the theatre company that is presenting the show.

David Cromer's production of Our Town at the Huntington is one of the Desert Island All-Time Top 5 Most Moving Shared Communal Experiences I have ever had in my entire life.

Perhaps it's especially poignant for me when I think of the friends that I've lost in recent years, but I watched the show on both Tuesday and Wednesday night, and I couldn't stand to watch it for a third time last night for our opening because I was already so overwhelmed with emotion. Three days in a row, and I think I would be eternally reduced to a sobbing puddle of flesh lying in fetal position on the floor. Yes, this show is so good that I literally could not watch it a third time (although I will probably go back at the end of the run, and hopefully catch some things I missed the other 2 times, because there's so much to see in the nothingness of this production, and as the play itself suggests, we can't possibly appreciate all of it when it's happening).

Anyway, there's a video I made up there about the show. I cannot stress enough how powerful and poignant this production truly is. Our Town might be seen as hokey and sentimental and high school-y to many people (though oddly I grew up in Thornton Wilder's hometown and never read or saw the show once, although I did play lots of shitty punk rock shows at Thornton Wilder Memorial Hall), but man, David Cromer just gets it, in a way that'll just blow your mind.

(Also don't read the review in The Boston Globe because [a] it's douchey, [b] IT SPOILS THE END OF THE PLAY, and [c] it's douchey. Yes, Our Town has been around a while, so there are certain spoilers that are now beyond the statute of limitations, but to spoil what makes this production so remarkable -- and to spoil it in such a nonchalant manner -- is awful. If this guy had reviewed The Sixth Sense when it first came out, he would have said "And then it turns out that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time which was totally brilliant and stunning -- I mean, that is to say, if you're one of those people who enjoys brilliant and stunning things or whatever. But otherwise, meh.")

Music To Soothe Your Jangled Innards

Quick update about a few events I've got coming up. One, I'll doing a show THIS Friday, December 14 at the All Asia in Central Square, Cambridge with my / Boston's premiere all-male hard rock Lady Gaga cover band Alejandro and the Fame. These shows are always a blast for everyone involved, and are almost always guaranteed to sell out, so make you get there (lookin' at you, People On The Other Side Of The River Who Missed Our Last Show Because It Was Allllllll The Way In JP Oh BooHoo). Admission is a scant $6, and we hit the stage around 10:30pm! I'm also excited to announce that I'll be performing a short set for MORTIFIED at Oberon on Saturday, December 22. For those who haven't heard of this, MORTIFIED is a night of performance in which real-live grown adult humans read horribly horribly embarrassing things from their high school journals / AIM transcripts / etc, and hilarity ensues. And so, during my set, you'll be treated to some particularly painful gems that I dugout from my high school and middle school songwriting notebooks. Ever wonder what kind of angsty tunes I wrote when I was 14 (including "Dot of my 'I'" and instant never-classic "Fuck You Hotchkiss Lane")? Here's your only chance to hear them live! More information to come when I got it.

And finally, I was asked to write up a few scripts for the 2nd Annual Boston One-Minute Play Festival at the Boston Playwrights Theatre, January 5-7. I believe the evening as a whole contains about 100 one-minute plays (yes, really, but c'mon, that's barely an hour and a half!), so I'm sure there's going to be some great variety. And if you don't like a play, well, just wait one minute! I will say that writing a play, complete with a status quo, conflict, rising action,and denouement is remarkably more difficult than you might expect it to be, but I'm pretty pleased with what I came up with (and I should be blogging a bit more about it soon over at their website).

That's all for now, folks! See you Friday!

Holiday Special

Today on Five By Five Hundred, I decided to kick off our celebration and excitement for the upcoming holiday season. No, not Christmas; I mean the end of the world! With only 12 days left until the supposed Mayan Apocalypse / World Shift / New Age / Another Boring Saturday Where Nothing Significant Actually Happens Or Changes, I decided to tweak one of your perennial holiday favorites and update it for the times. Enjoy!

"The 12 Days Of Apocalypse" on FiveByFiveHundred.com

ALSO! In case you don't already follow the rest of the daily exploits on 5x500 without me telling you (for some bizarre reason I don't know why you wouldn't), we are currently taking submissions for a new weekly contributor to join us on Sundays! Follow link to learn all about the necessary submission information in handy haiku form. All we ask is that you post a new something every Sunday in keeping with the theme of the website. "What's the theme of the website?" you ask, like some fool who hasn't even been paying attention. "Glad you asked!" I respond through gritted teeth. I pause for a moment as I hiss in my breath and explain that the only criteria is that must write something and that it must be under 500 words. Poetry, prose, scripts, rants, memoirs, serial fiction, serial murders -- whatever, it doesn't matter, just as long as it's under 500 words. Simple enough, right?

If you think you have what it takes, check out our submission guidelines. We look forward to hearing from you!

They Like Me! They Really Like Me!

GOOD NEWS: The 2012 BroadwayWorld Boston Award nominations are out, and my play True Believers has been nominated for a ton of them, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Direction, and Best Ensemble (they seem to have gotten rid of the "Best Play - Small/Fringe" category this year, jerks) BAD NEWS: Now you have to go vote for me. With every email address you have. Also tell your friends to do the same. Or else The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee will come to your house and destroy your soul. KTHXBYE.

(also, while you're at it, vote for my girlfriend M. Bevin O'Gara's incredible production of Love Person at Company One, in all of those categories, too, 'cause she's awesome.)

(you can also vote for the Huntington in all of the Large Theatre categories as long as you're there, ya know?)

Also also...

....we just bought a condo. So, uh, so that's pretty cool. And keeping us pretty busy. But it's awesome! So goodbye, Westerly Street Brewing Company, and hello...uh, I guess I'll have to figure out a neat little name for this place once we finish decorating and unpacking everything....speaking of, I should probably get back to doing that....

Five By Five Hundred: Back In Action

After a brief summer hiatus for some professional and mental recuperation, Five By Five Hundred is now officially back in action! For those of you who somehow managed to find your way here and yet still have no idea what I'm talking about, Five By Five Hundred is a website started by back in April of 2009 by me and my good friend Brian McGackin (of Broetry fame), inspired by an idea from the Internet Jesus Warren Ellis. The website originally featured 5 writers, each of whom composed poetry/prose/whatever consisting of no more than 500 words on his/her assigned day of the week (hence, 5 writers x 5 days a week x 500 words = 5x500 = totally bad pun on Faith Lehane's catchphrase). The website has gone through a number of writers, with Brian and I remaining consistent since the beginning, and has now expanded to include new posts on Saturdays and Sundays as well (which, with 7 writers, technically screws up the whole 5x500 pattern thingie, but oh well). Anyway, now that you're all caught up, you can go check out my latest post over there, an oldie but a goodie titled Dad's Diaries (and you can listen to it here, too!)

"Dad's Diaries" at FiveByFiveHundred.com

First review of True Believers is a rave!

From EdgeBoston:

Heroes and villains clash in Thom Dunn’s True Believers; it’s not the fate of the cosmos that hangs in the balance, but rather the personal worlds of everyone involved. This salute to comic-con is fraught with sharp writing and impeccable performances. Comic books are wildly colorful exaggerations of life, a form of contemporary myth, and Dunn understands this. Dunn’s energetic script takes on the general form of a farce, albeit one in which aimless young men dress in crude cardboard approximations of cyborg armor. The play’s particulars may be specific to a certain social subset, but its themes and motivations are universal. The characterizations are well wrought and the jokes are smart, sometimes downright wicked sharp.

Yeah, alright, I'll take that! You can read the full review online as well. We have just 5 more performances this week (Wed - Sat) before the show closes, so make sure you catch it will you can!

True Believers Updates, Part I

Okay. Breathe. We just made it through opening weekend of True Believers, which saw mostly packed houses and very responsive audiences (and only a few technical malfunctions that hopefully no one noticed but me). All in all, I'd say it's going well so far! We'll just have to wait and see what the critics have to say about it. In the meantime, here's a little interview I did with Jacqui Bryant, a local Boston entertainment blogger, about the show. Full disclosure: I thought she was writing an article, not posting the full interview transcription, so some of my answers, uh, well, they go on for quite a while (I wanted to give her a lot of information to pull from!)

We also got a nice shout out in the print & online version of DigBoston / The Weekly Dig:

Now, you might assume this unconventionally comedic play (penned by local playwright and Emerson College alum Thom Dunn, go Lions etc.) chronicling the interactions between conventional comic convention-types—aspiring artists, single-minded fanboys, haute couturecosplayers and so on—would be a tad nerdy. You would be right. Some World’s Greatest Detective stuff, that is. But just how nerdy are we talking? Try “Cyborg Head of Stan Lee” nerdy. Yes, that’s a kind of nerdy. The “most” kind.

Ha. Thanks, guys (I think...)

Opus Affair, a social group for young professional interested and involved in the arts in around the Boston area, also highlighted the show in their "On the Town" weekly roundup, praising it with favorable comparisons to both Closer and Magic Mike (both of which I assume were intended as compliments though I'm not entirely sure...)

Anyway, stay tuned, True Believers, for more updates, including production photos and...The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee!

Top 5 Reasons Why THE AVENGERS Movie Totally Sucked And Also Was Stupid, Part II

After recovering from his earlier coughing fit, "rogue video blogger" Billy Horowitz continues with his Top 5 Reasons Why THE AVENGERS Movie Totally Sucked And Also Was Stupid. Tickets for the world premiere of TRUE BELIEVERS are going fast, with only 50 seats in the theatre, so make sure to get yours ahead of time while you still can! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtR7kMEf5q4]

Billy Horowitz and the No Good Horrible Very Bad AVENGERS Movie

Here's a little sneak peek at the world premiere of my new play True Believers. Billy Horowitz is a self-proclaimed "rogue video blogger" (as well as a cyborg), and his passion for comic books tends to drive him into a destructive frenzy. His video blogs feature prominently into the play, projected on the stage, and here, Billy takes his shot at The Avengers movie. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB6f0bb-n1Y]

Don't forgot to buy your tickets for the show, which only runs for 2 weeks. Performances start this Thursday!

Stay Tuned, True Believers!

Rehearsals for my new play True Believers are now well under way! I'm incredibly to be working with our talented and enthusiastic cast, featuring:

• Ryan Edlinger as Chad Mailer. "Comic book writer, creator of Night Shift. High aspirations; doesn’t get the attention he thinks he deserves. Seriously didn’t mean to make Wolverine gay."
• Michael Avellar as Ted Thompson. "Comic book editor, currently at DC Comics. Worked on Night Shift with Chad. Recently divorced. She took his entire Star Wars collection in the settlement. Yes, that includes his Han Solo in Carbonite coffee table. Not that he’s bitter or anything."
• Zach Winston as Billy Horowitz. "Amateur comic book journalist (read: video blogger) and Cyborg Rights Activist (he has a pacemaker). Avid cosplayer."
• Jeffrey Charles Marcus as Calvin Elder. "By day, a mild mannered aspiring comic book artist. By night, he dons the mantle of...Avenger! No, not 'The' Avenger. Just Avenger. You haven’t heard of him? Calvin didn’t make him up. He’s an original creation."
• James Remmes as Box. "Comic writer and professional druid magic user (or at least that’s what he says). Actually knows how to pronounce 'Cthulhu Ftagn.' His mom calls him Christopher."
• Caitlyn Conley as Kt Watts. "Artist on Night Shift (as Katie Tulle). Also wrote the final issue (as Kt Watts). Recently sold the movie rights to her slice-of-life graphic novel Robots Still Love You (Until Their Batteries Die). Her roller derby name is SnatchBox 20."
• Rachel Katharine Alexander as Chloe Long. "Small town girl from Kansas. Flying to the city for the first time in her life to finally meet her online boyfriend in person. She’s a little nervous."
• and Anne Colpitts & Steve Marois in the ensemble.

Tickets are on sale now. The show runs July 12 - 21 at the Piano Factory Theatre in Boston's South End. Check back soon for more updates!

I'm Back Now, And I Brought T-Shirts For Everybody!

I have a confession to make. I didn't really bring t-shirts for everybody. Although I do have these sweet new business cards! So that's cool, right? I know I've been slacking (again) lately (again) with keeping this website updated with all of my various doin's. But it's not like I've not been not doing things (...or is it?)! Instead, I've just been too busy doing things to, ya know, write about doing things. It's kind of why I hate meetings in general, because I'd rather be doing things, than talking about doing things. So this website's kind of like a meeting then. Except I don't hate it; in fact, I quite love my little website here. So really, not like a meeting at all.

(shut up Thom) Okay so here's a brief rundown of where the hell I've been:

• My very short play, Stumped, was performed as part of a staged reading series to celebrate Company One's production of Hookman.
• My debut comic book story, Not Dead Yet, finally saw print in GrayHaven Comics' sci-fi anthology, The Fifth Dimension! Also the first printing already sold out, which means maybe someday you'll be able to sell that shit on eBay for like $20 (but probably not)
• I did a totally awesome article for Quirk Books comparing Samuel Beckett (the playwright) to Sam Beckett (the time traveling protagonist from Quantum Leap) and it was totally awesome. Don't believe me? Ask the former executive director of the American Theatre Wing!
• I also started doing some writing for Tor.com, with my first article being a roundup of great sci-fi/fantasy rock bands (so basically my two favorite things, combined. If only there was more beer!)
• We did another staged reading of my play True Believers as part of ImprovBoston's Geek Week celebration. It was really great to hear the play out loud in front of different kind of crowd, as it helps me figure out what kind of changes I need to make to the script before the world premiere this summer at the Factory Theatre (July 12 - 21! Get yer tickets while they're hot! Just kidding, they're not on sale yet). The lovely producing folks at Vagabond Theatre Group have a post up over at their website about the event so you can catch up on all the happening. There's also the first part of an instructional series about how to make your very own The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee, which actually comes a lot more in handy than you might think.
• Did I mention that I launched a new website for the Huntington, and that our world premiere production of The Luck of the Irish was extended, and sold out almost every night? For being, ya know, "just my day job" or whatever, sometimes it keeps me pretty busy as well.
• Plus Cupcake! So many things, so very busy with this wonderfully little world-premiere-musical-that-could. We raised $6,000 in our Kickstarter campaign (we were going for $3,750...whoops!), and we were the featured show this past Friday on Goldstar. You may have seen some of my sexy posters around town as well (just don't tell Grant that I photoshopped his arm a bit...) Previews start this Thursday, May 10!
• AND, to top it all off, I've only got like 50 pages left to read in Infinite Jest (finally! Jesus God this book is epic), so I'm gonna go finish that right now and hopefully conquer my crippling fear (no pun intended) of paraplegic Quebecers.

The Past, The Present, and The Imperfect Future Walk Into a Bar...

Things have been less than ideal as of late, as my girlfriend's best friend quite abruptly passed away from an unexpected heart attack at the age of 28. As you can imagine, it's been a very rough and emotional week. I could very well fill this blog with my thoughts and feelings on the occasion, but anything factual I would attempt to type would feel disingenuous, so here are a few posts catching up on Five By Five Hundred that were inspired by the situation.

Rest in peace, Crystal Gomes. I guess a light as bright as yours is bound to burn out much too fast.

"Being Tense" on FiveByFiveHundred.com

"The Old Maid on the Bar Stool" (part one) (part two) on FiveByFiveHundred.com