Nick Tecosky counts all the way down to a bout at Write Membership Atlanta. (Picture by Annalise Kaylor)
This week, the longtime emcee will conclude a 15-year period.
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On June 11 at 8 p.m., Write Membership Atlanta — the literary month-to-month occasion now at Dad’s Storage Theatre the place native writers compete towards each other in entrance of a raving crowd — marks the tip of an period. Nicholas Tecosky, the host and a producer of the present since 2010, is stepping down because the emcee.
To have fun Tecosky’s work as “viceroy” of Write Membership Atlanta, this month’s present will function a best hits assortment of previous performances from veteran native opponents, together with Topher Payne, Nicki Harris Salcedo, Ryan Jones, Mark Kendall, Chris Alonzo and Evan Fulton. Tecosky may even compete one final time towards his longtime adversary Jason Mallory.
For Tecosky, Write Membership Atlanta was a transformative expertise.
“After I did my first Write Membership with Ian Belknap at PushPush Theatre, I used to be 30 years outdated,” he stated. “It was 15 years in the past. I used to be a younger, scrappy fellow making an attempt to make a reputation for himself. This present made me a greater particular person. I used to be capable of hear views that I’d by no means heard earlier than. I grew to become a greater listener.”
Write Membership Atlanta follows an ordinary format. Two opposing writers are given matters two weeks previous to the occasion, and they’re suggested to create a brand new seven-minute piece to carry out. The opponents know solely what their subject is versus their opponent, like “up vs. down,” however they’ve free vary to deal with that subject in any approach they select. The opponents know one another’s names, however they have no idea what materials they’re up towards till they’re onstage performing it. The order of efficiency is decided randomly, utilizing the sport “rock, paper, scissors.”
The format originated in Chicago, designed by Belknap, and Write Membership has been carried out all around the nation. However Write Membership Atlanta, produced by Tecosky and Mykal Alder June, grew to become its personal distinctive success due to the depth of the expertise pool in Atlanta.
“Particularly on this world — particularly with social media and this sort of fixed barrage of stories all the time — we are inclined to shut away,” Tecosky stated of the present’s enchantment. “I believe we’ve change into extra lonely and extra reactionary. And the act of going right into a group and listening to different folks’s voices proper in entrance of you means lots. I believe that it opens us up. It retains us from changing into these beings with slim worldviews. I believe it’s obligatory for the well being of a society to grasp the folks round you or to make an try. This present permits folks to grasp numerous views.”
Payne stated the founders of Write Membership Atlanta took native writers out of isolation and gave them a platform.
“Once we received to know one another as storytellers, we grew to become exponentially extra invested in one another’s tales,” Payne stated in a press release. “Whether or not accidentally or design, Nick was the catalyst for the creation of a group. That essentially modified the Atlanta literary panorama.”
Harris, a novelist, columnist and common combatant, stated she was nervous when Tecosky invited her to Write Membership in 2015, however he instructed her that she would “kill it” onstage.
“I quickly realized that the Write Membership stage was a spot to kill your concern, kill your isolation,” she stated. “You aren’t actually competing with one other author however with your self. Nick wished us to struggle for the most effective phrases and probably the most evocative tales. Nick pushed us to be our truest selves onstage for six minutes, 59 seconds. He cares about nurturing every kind of voices, even mine — a self-proclaimed soccer mother and nerd. I’m not kidding once I say he’s modified my life.”
In an e-mail, Belknap praised Tecosky’s talents as host and producer.
“As producer, you want sound curatorial instincts for pitting the best abilities towards one another, for choosing broad-yet-specific matters that contact a minimum of obliquely on the prevailing zeitgeist,” Belknap stated. “As host, you may have a twofold obligation. Within the second, it is advisable to direct and form the power of the gang. And extra broadly over time, you’re on the hook to teach the viewers in regards to the ethos the present seeks to embody. Nowhere in all of the enterprise’s historical past has this explicit, peculiar set of capacities and abilities been extra absolutely in proof than within the singular smartypants weirdo that’s Nick Tecosky.”
Belknap stated Tecosky and Write Membership’s affect upon the Atlanta arts group is profound.
“Atlanta’s cultural scene has been enlivened by his tenure as viceroy,” he stated. “However Write Membership total has been deepened and made higher by his having consented all these years in the past to be part of it. Phrases usually are not ample to specific our gratitude.”
Tecosky is stepping down as host for quite a lot of causes, although he’ll proceed to provide the present.
“What it boils all the way down to is I believe we develop and alter, and I’ve different issues in my life that I wish to give attention to, and I wish to strive new issues out on this planet,” he stated. “That present deserves a number who desires to place all of their power into it. And my power has simply been in 50 totally different locations, and I didn’t need the present to undergo.”
Longtime producer, author and performer Dani Herd will step in as the brand new Write Membership host.
“Dani has all the power that I had once I began and has concepts for the best way to transfer the present ahead,” Tecosky stated. “I really feel like I did about as a lot as I might do with the present, and I wished handy it over to any individual who liked it as a lot as I did.”
Tecosky’s plan for the long run includes writing, directing and producing extra podcasts, such because the upcoming Havoc City for iHeartMedia, which can star Jewel Staite, James Callis and Ray Sensible. He stated that due to Write Membership, different anthology podcasts he’s created — equivalent to 13 Days of Halloween — have been written by Atlanta expertise, many he found by the present.
“I’d put our group of writers up towards another group on this planet,” he stated.
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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Affiliation, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Membership and the Horror Writers Affiliation. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as a part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Brief Play Pageant and on-line in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was printed by The Story Plant.