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Lauren B. Mangiaforte
Samples 2013
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We act decently because we are decent people: How we do business at Caliburn. At Caliburn Consultancy, were conscience-conscious, for our own sake as well as yours. That means we take care to spot possible conflicts before we sign contracts. It also means we keep our people trained up on the latest regulations and laws, so that they can follow them. Basically, it means we treat our clients how wed want to be treated. Namely, with honesty. We know that businesses face conflicts of interest and ethical problems all the time, and that how they respond to these challenges can make or break their reputations in the long run. Thats why we put extra effort into making sure our clients, and the consultancy itself, dont get into morally murky situations in the first place. We act responsibly by: Following The Caliburn Code of Honour. The Code is our promise to our clients and each other that well be truthful every day. Providing up-to-date training. We make sure our consultants know what laws and regulations say today, not last month or last year. Checking new clients through our conflict squad. We talk to potential clients and to each other to make sure there arent any conflicts of interest with existing customers. We even have a whole bunch of people on staff that will check this over for us before we do business together. Keeping things to ourselves. When you tell us something private or sensitive, it stays between us. Full stop.
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The Derring-Do is a mostly-digital communications consultancy based in New York City. Were a loosely organized collective of writers, web developers, designers, social media marketers, and other communications movers and shakers dedicated to giving clients smart advice on their online outreach from all corners. We are the strategists that tie villainously ugly branding to the railroad tracks. That rescue blogs and websites from jargon-filled language. That steal social media campaigns away from the clutches of content that doesnt engage. That produce websites sure to turn heads in a whiplash-inducing way. Do all smart brands work with us? Of course not. But the daring do.
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Interview and Press Release for The Adventures of Boy and Girl
In the spring and summer of 2013, I produced and directed communications for a New York Fringe Festival production. This meant a lot writing, including interviewing our writers and actors and assembling a press kit. Here is an interview I wrote up for the Journal of Cultural Conversation, and the release that generated interest. Facebook Chat and the Art of Playwriting: The (Social Media) Adventures of Boy and Girl If you believe what you read in the media, we millennials are simply enamored with social media. Its been intimated more than a few times that we use it too much, or that we use it for nefarious purposes, or that it leads us to have lowered attention spans, inflated senses of self-worth, and a decrease in faceto-face social skills. Its unfortunate that there are far fewer stories out there talking about how social media has allowed us to become an entrepreneurial and envelope-pushing generation in business, technology, and the arts. The Adventures of Boy and Girl is a play that will premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival this weekend. It is cleverly written and structured, with two recently broken-up characters at the center of the plot exchanging interrupted monologues about the demise of their relationship. It is complex, acerbic, funny, heartbreaking and it was written by two millennials over Facebook chat while they were students at Hunter College High School in Manhattan. Writers Alec Grossman and Rachel Kaly have seen their work produced at the Stella Adler Theater in Hollywood in addition to its current incarnation at the Fringe. They owe these successes to their innate talents and their hard work. They also owe it, in part, to social media. I talked to Alec and Rachel recently about how the process of writing over Facebook chat shaped their show and characters and freed them to make jokes they might not have in person. Lauren Mangiaforte: How did you first come up with the concept for The Adventures of Boy and Girl? How did Facebook chat influence your creative process? Rachel Kaly: Alec messaged me one day on Facebook and said we should write a play together. It was winter break and I was bored, so I said yes. I had written plays with other people before, but we had always been physically together to hash out the script. The concept of The Adventures was different, since it came out of the medium of Facebook chat. I wrote the first monologue and sent it to Alec without any idea of where this play was going, how many characters there would be, or what the ending was. Alec responded a few hours later with another monologue: it had nothing to do with the first one, except for that the character he wrote was my characters ex-boyfriend. For the next week, we messaged each other monologues (we didnt talk about the play at all), and within a few days we had a complete play. Our ability to write so fluidly and quickly because of Facebook chat is clear in our writing: the monologues play off of each other and there are as many new ideas as there are connections to the text that is already there. Its a play about two people talking, written by two people who were typing about people talking.
! LM: What were your goals for the script initially? How did writing on Facebook help you achieve these goals?
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Alec Grossman: I wanted to write a typical love story in a fresh way. I think why this play has been successful is that weve stripped away everything except for the two protagonists. The Adventures contains no specific setting, subplots, or spectacle; its just two people talking through their relationship. Because were both comics, the play was naturally going to be funny, but our priority was for the piece to be relatable. This play would have been much different if we wrote it physically being together. It relies a lot on rhythm: for a page or so, Rick and Trish have quick and playful dialogue and then suddenly Rick will have a monologue, which is largely a product of us writing the play on our own time. This pattern makes the dialogue authentic. LM: How might the shows characters, its structure, its themes, and/or its jokes evolved differently had it not been written on social media? RK: There would have been more dialogue, because, in my experience, Ive found that its very hard for two people to write one monologue together. It makes it more difficult for the characters to sound distinct while simultaneously making it difficult for each character to have clear personality traits. Facebook chat made it easier for us to write monologues rather than dialogue; rather than waiting for short, quick responses from each other (that is, if we kept the same system of me writing Trishs character and Alec writing Ricks character), we were able to send fully formed thoughts coming from rich, complex characters through monologues. I found it was easier to write jokes because we could bounce them off of each other without having to be horribly embarrassed about whether or not they were good or bad. I think this is both a negative and a positive trait of the Internet; honestly, if I had written it in person with Alec, I dont think I would have written the same jokes. I might have been embarrassed to sit there and say a joke that I thought would fail. The Internet allows people to hide behind their computer screen and behave differently than if they were interacting in the physical world. AG: Definitely. If we had written this while in the same room, the characters voices would blend together. A lot of the jokes come from the fact that Rick and Trish are two very different people, much like Rachel and I. Because we wrote it on Facebook, it was really easy to transition from writing the script to just talking as friends. Sometimes, the distinction wasnt so clear, and that was a good thing. LM: Your play has been very successful its now in its third production. Any plans for the shows future? What have you learned in the process of watching it be staged? RK: We dont have any definite plans now, but if something comes to us, Im sure well consider it very seriously. By now, weve seen three different versions of this play, and they have all been incredibly distinct from one another. Certainly working on it with so many different people has gotten us to think about our words, and were continually changing the script based on what audiences tell us, and the work that actors and directors alike have put into the character development. AG: Rachels right: all three productions of the play have been completely different in terms of the actors performance of the characters and the directors vision. Thats a product of the actors being able to find themselves in the characters and the director projecting his or her personal take on the piece. I
! dont think any two productions of the same play should be similar, and this play has definitely exemplified that. To learn more about The Adventures of Boy and Girl, visit www.boyandgirlfringe.com. THE ADVENTURES OF BOY AND GIRL TO BE PERFORMED AT NEW YORK FRINGE FESTIVAL Play Written via Facebook Chat by Two Hunter High School Alums Returns to New York
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NEW YORK -- While completing high school together at Hunter in Manhattan, friends Alec Grossman and Rachel Kaly set out to write a play. Today, they have grown into college students, and their play, the aptly-named The Adventures of Boy and Girl, has grown along with them: it is entering its second production at the New York Fringe Festival following a performance in 2011 at the Stella Adler Theater in Hollywood. The play tells the story of a recently broken-up twenty-something couple, Trish and Rick. Told through a series of interrupted monologues, the two characters recount their relationships pitfalls and try to determine the root cause of its dissipation. Grossman and Kaly drafted the play through Facebook chat, the social media networks instantmessaging mechanism. The influence of this groundbreaking, industrious, and truly Millennial means of writing is evident in the plots structure and means of character development. The shows publicity has also focused on social media. The production boasts a lively Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a Tumblr, the tongue-in-cheek ImGladUrMyEx, which provides the internet community a platform for anonymously and sarcastically voicing reasons to be glad that exes are exes. Examples include "Im glad ur my ex because u were my ex once before. And once before that. U have been my ex almost more times than all the other exes I have. Im so glad. So, so, so glad and Im glad youre my ex because you wore cargo shorts with sandals and black socks. The shows fundraising campaign on Indiegogo.com exceeded its initial $2000 target by 200%, due in large part to the buzz generated on its social media channels. The cast is comprised of Margy Love (Trish) and Matthew Goodrich (Rick). Love, a Williams College graduate, is the veteran of New York theatre companies and training programs such as Tugboat Collective, The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and Stella Adler. Goodrich recently understudied several roles on Broadway in Roundabout Theatre Companys Picnic and in Lincoln Center Theatres The Nance starring Nathan Lane. In a production directed by Patrick Vassel, both actors make their New York Fringe Festival debut in The Adventures of Boy and Girl. The new production will show from August 9th to 25th for a five-show run at the Kraine Theater at 85 E. 4th Street in Manhattan. Details and times have been announced on the shows website, www.boyandgirlfringe.com. More information can be found on the shows Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boyandgirlfringe. For more information or to schedule interviews, contact publicist Lauren Mangiaforte: laurenmangiaforte@gmail.com or 630.903.0432.
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