Announcments – Page 32 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

“The Promise” – a new children’s book from Rosanne Welch and Dawn Comer Jefferson

Based on a true story, The Promise follows Mary, the 9 year old daughter of slave family in Louisiana in the 1850s. Because Mary and her father can read and write, Mary’s family is promised freedom if they travel with their master on the treacherous Oregon Trail. When they reach Oregon, the master frees the parents but keeps Mary and her brother as slaves. Mary’s parents take the master to court to sue for custody of their children, and with Mary’s brave testimony, they set in motion a law which helps determine if Oregon will come into the Union as a free state or a slave state. The Promise is a historical chapter book for children ages 7-9.

About the authors

Dawn Comer Jefferson

Dawn Comer Jefferson is a television writer whose credits include Judging Amy, South of Nowhere, The Bold & the Beautiful and the Los Angeles Holiday Celebration. Dawn was nominated for an Emmy Award for Our Friend, Martin, an animated family film about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. With Rosanne Welch, Dawn co-edited the nonfiction book, Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family (Seal Press).

Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

* You don’t need a Kindle device to read Kindle books. With Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader — a web browser-based Kindle Reader — you don’t even need to download any extra software. That said, the Kindle reader apps for Windows, Macintosh, iPhone, iPad and Android devices improves the reading experience.

Article: Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees – Written By Magazine

My latest article for Written By Magazine is an interview with several of the writers who began their career on the writing staff of The Monkees. You can read the entire article by clicking the page below or downloading the entire issue as a PDF.

Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees
How a few writers changed the hair-length (and face) of television

Early 1960s television characters came in a one-size-fits-all, squeaky-clean-cut style, from Dr. Kildare in his white lab coat, to Hoss Cartwright in his white Stetson, to Sr. Bertrille in her white habit. That lasted until 7:30 p.m. Monday, September 12, 1966 when four long-haired teenagers began dancing a Monkeewalk while singing, “Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees.”

Though it looked simple enough, the comedy was about more than four struggling musicians living in a beach house they couldn’t afford, without adult supervision, and hoping for success while engaging in Marx(Bros)ian humor. According to star Micky Dolenz, the only actor with previous television series experience: “It brought long hair into the living room and changed the way teenagers were portrayed on television.”

Dolenz’s opinion is backed up by psychologist and author Timothy Leary in The Politics of Ecstasy: “While it lasted, it was a classic Sufi[ism] put-on. An early-Christian electronic satire. A mystic magic show. A jolly Buddha laugh at hypocrisy. And woven into the fast-moving psychedelic stream of action were the prophetic, holy, challenging words. Micky was rapping quickly, dropping literary names, making scholarly references.”

Read the entire article

Download entire Written By issue as PDF

Book Reading: Mastering Monologues and Acting Sides: How to Audition Successfully for Both Traditional and New Media

I’m excited to say I’ll be attending a book signing on Thursday, October 13 at 7pm at Book Soup on Sunset Blvd for this book by Janet Wilcox that includes a chunk of scenes from an unproduced pilot of mine. There will also be a reading held in New York City.

She met Doug and I while teaching at UCLA Extension and asked if I had any unproduced work she could consider – and ended up really liking the one I sent. So though I never saw the piece performed on film, I’ll know tons of aspiring actors are using my words to polish their craft. Kind of fun.

Working voice actors, some our friends, will be reading scenes included in the book for a live demonstration of voice acting.

According to Amazon.com “Mastering Monologues and Acting Sides: How to Audition Successfully for Both Traditional and New Media” by Janet Wilcox teaches actors how to audition for anything from webisodes to Shakespeare. Scripts, acting technique tips, and exercises keep a performer toned and ready, while industry experts give advice on how to audition professionally.

Book Soup

October 13th – 7PM-9PM

1818 Sunset Blvd.W. Hollywood, CA 90069

Actors Connection

Sat. Oct. 22nd – 2:30-4:30

630 Ninth Avenue, Suite 1410(between 44th & 45th)New York, NY 10036

My Written By interview with Russell T. Davies is here!

When Written By editor Richard Stayton asked me if I would enjoy interviewing Russell T. Davies for an article in the magazine, well, I won’t say it was like all my dreams come true – but certainly one of my dreams coming true! Writing FOR one of his shows would be amazing but writing ABOUT Russell and his writing style was pretty fun. I took that opportunity to ask him several questions that will help me write my chapter on Torchwood for the upcoming book Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television. I also used the opportunity to ask about certain plot twists from my favorite Who episodes and basked in the fun of debating them with the man who invented them. I must be turning into a true academic ’cause talking process was nearly as good as processing itself!

Read the full interview with Russell T. Davies – “The Doctor is in America”

Recent Publication: Book review of Born Southern: Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010.

Book Review: V. Lynn Kennedy. Born Southern: Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010.

My book review was recently included in the Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 40, Issue 3

Rosanne presents paper at SW/TX Popular Culture and American Culture Associations conference

This week Rosanne is presenting a paper — “The Changing Face of the Doctor’s Voice: A Tale of Two Writers” — on the writing of the BBC program DOCTOR WHO at the joint SW/TX Popular Culture and American Culture Associations conference in San Antonio.

Rosanne Welch spent 2010 finishing her dissertation “Married, With Screenplay: A Study of 3 Married Screenwriting Teams and the Films They Wrote” in order to receive her Ph.D from Claremont GraduateUniversity in summer 2011. She also wrote “Class of ’80: How (and why) the Writers of 1980 are Creating the Culture of 2010” for November issue of Written By Magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America West.