Drone is a Prize Winner
My play, Drone, is the first-place winner of the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest.
The winning play receives both a cash award and a reading in either New York City or San Francisco at a date to be announced.
To read more about the play, as well as an excerpt, click here.
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Drone Scores at FutureFest
My play, Drone, was acclaimed by critics and audience at Dayton Playhouse’s FutureFest, July 19-21, 2019. The play dramatizes the horrors of drone warfare for the pilots, the victims, and their families.
To read more about the play, as well as a short excerpt, click here.
Russell Florence, Jr., at MostMetro.com stated, “.. .Drone, a relevant, riveting examination of family, culture and prejudice concerning a Nevada drone pilot surveilling a Pakistani suspected of being a Taliban insurgent. . .”
Burt Saidel, of the Oakwood Register, wrote, ” It presented the clear dilemma of drones dispatched to follow suspected terrorists in Pakistan. Remarkably, told, it made it clear that a fighter pilot bombing and strafing was almost synonymous. The drone “pilots” knew their victims with remarkable clarity.”
One critic wrote me a personal note, saying, “Your play, Drone, was very well performed in a most convincing staged reading and many agree, I was certainly one, that it was the finest dramatic experience of the weekend.”
Six plays were presented during FutureFest, with one play awarded by adjudicators $1,000, plus the promise of a full production for next season. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the festival, as was mandated, because of a family emergency. As a result, Drone was not allowed to participate in the award process, which seems fair.
Sadly, I missed what was said to be a finely directed and acted performance, which was very enthusiastically received by the audience.
Special Holiday Item:
My new article on Sicilian Christmas cookies entitled, Two Delectable Holiday Confections, was just published in the Times of Sicily.
To view the article with its accompanying recipes, click here.
Go to Books Tab for Information on My Autobiography
Critical Acclaim for The Wrong Side of the Room
“The book’s second half is fully stocked with accounts of stage shows galore—not to mention impressive name-dropping (Barbra Streisand, Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, Gene Kelly). These anecdotes from the theater’s social scene glide alongside vivid imagery from the author’s performances and other successes. The book also has a delightful, chatty sense of humor with moments of wry wit that make it exciting to read.
In the end, it effectively celebrates a life of artistic inspiration alongside the giddiness and glory of live theater.”
—Kirkus Review
Read the entire Kirkus Review here.
Readers’ Favorite Review
by Asher Syed
The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater by Norman Mathews is an autobiography chronicling the author’s life as he transitions from a confusing and often abusive childhood, born in a sleet of uncertainty (literally, as it turns out). Masked by imagination and written with a humor that most would not be able to apply to such situations, Mathews is able to harness this creativity and hitch it to his own ambitions as a rising star. When an injury threatens to derail an ascent that defies all odds, Mathews is forced to reinvent and reignite himself once more, and does so amid a whole host of personal and professional turmoil, scandal, and the kind of stories that are all the more shocking – and inspiring – because they are actually true.
Norman Mathews delivers a riveting memoir with The Wrong Side of the Room that opens with a contentious genesis and powerfully surges through to its finale. This is the ultimate tale of a man who is knocked down seven times and gets up eight, except in this case our tenacious narrator is struck to the ground far more than that. But he does continue to rise and appears to have carved out a genuine niche for himself until, “I woke up one morning with a strange pain in my back and running down my right leg. In a few days, it got much worse, and I began limping.” With the support of his partner Todd, he buys a Steinway, dives into formal education, and…well, at first that all implodes too. But Mathews is the consummate phoenix and, much like he displays in the writing of this book, skillfully maneuvers the trajectory of his life’s own narrative into a story that we are fortunate enough to have shared in The Wrong Side of the Room.
Impressively candid, exceptionally informative, deftly written, organized and presented, “The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater” is an extraordinary memoir that will have special and particular appeal for anyone with an interest in show business. . .very highly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections.
—Midwest Book Review