Persons of Interest

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I Walk the Line

Some recent events:

Someone in my writers’ group brought in sections of his full-length play over the past few months whose set-up is this: in the future, old people will be eliminated because they are no longer of use to society. It’s satirical, it’s biting, it’s funny. And after a few scenes, it wasn’t my cup of tea. My mom, a widow, has had a rough few years (read between the lines: so have I). I had to move her first into assisted living and then six months later into a nursing home. In Florida. That would be the Florida that’s waaaaay far away from California, where I reside.

Many of the other writers and actors in attendance laughed all the way through but it just was salt in the wound for me. The writer did rewrite it (some of his changes seemed sparked by an observation I made about the passive wife in the piece, “So similarly, perhaps the Nazi wives had some thoughts about what their husbands were doing…”), and that provided better arguments for the other side, for which I give him major credit. But I still passed on going to see the full read-through and sent him an email explaining the situation with my mom.

Then a few weeks ago, another writer in our group brought in a short play set after the Civil War wherein a very graphic rape and murder were described. By the end, I had no idea what I was supposed to take away from the play, or what the characters learned or how they had an arc. In my comments, I gave the writer props for holding my attention the entire time, but I wondered for what purpose.

It’s true we can all write whatever we darn well want. I wouldn’t want anybody, even a fellow writer, telling me what or what not to write. But do we consider how much we might lose the audience with our subject matter or approach? Or do we just say frack the audience, I don’t care what they think or feel, I’m doing this for me.

I tend to come down on the side of WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER, me and the audience. I have a journey I want them to witness, to understand to some degree.

I think those two guys in my group care about what the audience response is, otherwise they wouldn’t be in a writers group where feedback is a part of the process. But they can’t tailor their work for just me, because my taste isn’t their taste. It’s an interesting line to walk.

And then there was this event:

Some friends and acquaintances went to see the movie The Kids Are All Right. I saw angry email subject lines from some of them and chose not to open those emails so I could see the movie with fresh eyes. But one of my closest friends walked out of the movie. I was stunned. Then I went to see it, and I and the friends who went with me that afternoon, loved it. So I was even more stunned. Yeah, all of the adult characters have major flaws and make bad choices. But they all learn something by the end. That to me makes an interesting journey and good drama. But perhaps my friend reacted for a deep reason I don’t understand (we haven’t talked about the movie yet). Maybe the movie hit her the way the play about snuffing out the elderly hit me.

Here’s to walking the fine line of getting an audience to go with you on the trip and staying true to your vision all at the same time.

Best Behavior…but not Perfection

I was fortunate enough to have a meeting last Saturday with a director who is interested in a full-length play of mine. We’re not quite sure what we’re going to do with it after a private reading, but high hopes and artistic dreams were in the air as we chatted over iced tea at Aroma in Studio City.

Before the meeting I said to myself something along the lines of “Don’t say anything stupid.” Or words to that effect.

By stupid, I meant I hoped I wouldn’t cross a line that playwrights probably shouldn’t cross. I don’t do it often (I’ve been at this for a looooooong time) but now and then in the fervor of a moment, I’ve said something that I regretted afterwards.

A year ago I said a couple of those type of things to a woman who was directing a staged reading of my play in a festival. She was very intelligent, had a lot of experience, had just gotten her Masters from a nice school back East – but she was a good 20 years younger than I am.

And at one point I pulled the age card. I swore I wouldn’t do it, but I got so testy I did. We were discussing stage directions and scenic design, and my script had descriptions she thought weren’t necessary. I said in L.A., with our small theatres on micro budgets, I don’t want them to think they have to re-create the Taj Mahal to do my script. So in this particular script, I had stated that the hospital, E.R., restaurant and car could be all be done with two chairs. The main set of the living room could be more fully-realized. She thought I was telling the director and stage designer what to do.

It’s a fine line. It’s a collaborative art. The stage directions aren’t written in stone. If someone has the money to do more elaborate sets than what I suggest, have at it.

But in the moment I didn’t say those things with the calm and reason that I normally have or I’m exhibiting here in this blog. I got testy and loud and pulled the age card, explaining that she didn’t have the experience that I had with small theatres in L.A. We don’t have the budgets that nice grad schools have.

And then the following week, if that altercation wasn’t fun enough, I really lost it when the producer of the festival thought my show was going to run WAY OVER our time slot allowed. This was because the “run-through” she witnessed was actually a “work through” of Act I, with a million starts and stops. Neither the producer nor the director had any concept of how long my play would run. They even suggested we do only one act for the festival because there wasn’t time for both acts. I explained to them the whole thing would run 90 minutes, without all the starts and stops. But I didn’t explain it in a nice tone of voice. I was a red-faced apoplectic cartoon character with smoke coming out of my ears and fire coming out of my mouth.

I wish I had remained calm. As it turned out, my play ran 90 minutes and I was vindicated, but I still wished I hadn’t lost my temper.

But no one’s perfect. And that’s the moral of today’s blog. The young director wasn’t, the producer wasn’t, and I wasn’t. I’m working on forgiving everyone involved, myself included.

And I’m hoping I will carry these lessons – stay calm, remember no one’s perfect (least of all me) – in my next venture.

Work, Work, and Surprise!

Well, what a crazy week this has been!  My first 40-hour workweek in… oh… I don’t even know.  I mean, sure, when I was in grad school juggling two part time jobs, class, and teaching, I pulled in some gnarly hours – but they were varied, they were all over the place – they were almost unquantifiable.

Heading into an office 5 days in a row is new; staying there for 8 hours at a time even stranger.

So imagine my glee at the weekends arrival!  ”Ahhh, time to sleep in, time to read, time to (gasp) WRITE!”  because although I spent a fair bit of time this week responding to the insane comments my blog stirred up, I hadn’t really gotten any work done on the script I’m currently revising (and we all know submission season is banging on the door!)

But then I got asked to come in today as well; Orientation is Monday and there are still things to do, and I didn’t even hesitate to jump on board.

This is how I know that I really like my new job.

I guard my writing time like a tiger guards its cubs; I don’t want anyone messing with or infringing upon it.  I get grumpy when I don’t have enough of it, and I get angry at those who try to take it from me… I know, real pretty picture, huh?

Which is why my willingness to head in on my day off surprised the hell out of me…

Although I really aspire to (double gasp) make a living writing and teaching,  and although I hope, Hope, HOPE that this next year brings that dream to fruition in a big way… I am seriously enjoying working at this burgeoning college, running their learning center, and planning student activities.  It’s fun!  It makes me happy.

It’s kind of amazing.

That initial panic that I was wrestling with has kind of faded into an exhilarating kind of high… I won’t be rolling in money, but I will be doing something useful, helpful to students, and enjoyable to me and my little sparkling muse.

So while I don’t think I could pull 40 hour + work weeks every week (woof!) I don’t mind doing it for now… Very soon I’ll be down to the promised part-time schedule, with plenty of days off to devote to my computer; only now, perhaps, with a bit more bounce in my step, and a bit more fuel in my emotional tanks, for although I’m tired at the end of the day, I’ve noticed I’m attacking my tasks with a lot more enthusiasm than weary old, worn out, dejected and unemployed Tiffany was doing.

It seems that feeling useful goes a very long way in feeding the muse.

What a thing to figure out this far into the game

~Tiffany

Open mouth, Insert Pitchfork…

A while ago I returned home to the mountains of Arizona for a respite from my own little economic crisis: I was totally, and completely broke, having depleted all my resources in a last ditch effort to stay in LA (after being laid off the year before.)  I was sad, I was tired, and I was totally heartbroken.

So I moved home and stuffed my face with mom’s cooking, did a lot of writing (it’s amazing what can happen when you’re not spending every waking second worrying about scraping together rent money, food money, cell-phone-bill money…) and basically embarked on the road to recovery.

And while a lot has changed in my little home-town, apparently the thing that has changed the most, is me.  You see, last weekend I went to see a production at our local (newly remodled) theater.  It was (I thought) a horrifying production – horrifying in that it hadn’t yet been developed, hadn’t the benefit of a practiced playwright or director at it’s helm, and as such I left quite angry that I had been asked to fork over $17 to sit through something so wildly unprepared for the venue or admission fee it had adopted.

I talked about it with the people I saw it with; we were all disappointed – what a mess!  I thought about it that evening – How frustrating that this great venue had been used for this level of work!  I even ruminated on the value of ruminating on it further, as the thing had already come and gone and I wasn’t going to have anything further to do with it…

But then I blogged about it.

I decided that the observations I’d had were worth further exploration, and that my opinions about the responsibility of a producer/writer/director might be an interesting read.  I put a lot of thought into my critique, and I knew it was stern, but I maintained my opinion that art made purchasable and presented for fee, is art of an elevated responsibility , inviting critique and measurement by those paying to see it.  For it is one thing to present a play (for entertainment or development purposes) free of charge, it is entirely another to present it as a “finished” production for a fee.

In any case, my blog currently has about 14 dedicated readers, and so I thought they might (as many are writers or purveyors of entertainment) raise a discussion point or two, we would enjoy that discussion, but that nothing else would come of my observations.

Then Google found me, directed some locals my way, and all hell is breaking loose on the thing.

Because what I apparently don’t know about my hometown is that it is NOT okay to voice an opinion – that the mantra “If you can’t say something nice…” extends to all facets of expression here, and that, if I’m not careful, apparently I will “never make it in this world” as surely there is no place for a person like myself who spits on the little people and touts myself as so super-important… Yes (apparently) I am, as one comment reads “WORSE THAN MAGGOT POOP.”

So, why am I sharing this here?  I think it is because I’m absolutely, incontrovertibly, fascinated!  And in spite of the vitriol of these comments, I can’t imagine taking the post down.  I’ve never before been the recipient of this kind of outrage; it’s stunning… it is also helping me understand the danger in playing the role of a… (booming voice)… CRITIC.

A while ago I had a show up that sold great houses, but in the end failed to bring in the kind of critical praise I so hoped for.  Big deal, happens to everyone.  But one critic in particular laid some hefty critique my way, calling my script (paraphrasing) an underdeveloped hunk of junk.  I remember at the time feeling a bit stung, and then feeling angry that people were going to read his review and possibly decide against attending the show.  But I didn’t read it as a personal attack – I knew that this guy possibly hadn’t understood the play, that it was, stylistically and subject-wise, not everyone’s cup of tea, and that this man (as much as I might dislike him at the time) had a right to his opinion.

But I have the ability to process his review with this kind of level-headedness, because this is my profession, and because I’ve cultivated the kind of skin to take it. I don’t have to like it, but I can handle it without loosing my mind, my cool, or my manners.

The one thing I did not consider as I wrote my own sort of “underdeveloped hunk ‘o junk” review, was that this town, and more importantly, these people, might not share my perspective on the roles of an artist, his/her responsibilties to their audience, and (more importantly) they might not have any idea what to do with that kind of criticism.

So I have to say that this experience has taught me what it feels like to be on the receiving end of “Critical loathing” – it has taught me that I might want to think twice before voicing any local opinions, and it has reinforced my opinion that grace and calm in the storm of any criticism is a much more powerful tool than “MAGGOT POOP.”

Nurture vs. A Good Slap in the Face

Sometimes I sit on my sofa watching X-Files reruns with a fist-full of chocolate just because I feel like it…  Lately, I’ve felt like it a lot more.

So much so in fact that I’m thinking I might just  need a good a slap in the face to get my day-dreaming butt back to the keys, because although that Fox Mulder makes me go “mmm,” indulging the inner kicker and screamer can only lead to wider hips and a few cavities.

(sigh)

I don’t know if it’s all the “working” that’s got me so lazy lately, or what, but I get home from my 9-5er and all I want to do is vegitate.  I don’t want to look at my computer, I don’t want to think, I just want to be whisked away by alien-chasing men in well tailored pants… or sit in the back yard with a glass of red wine and look for my own alien adventures in the sky above.

I think that this is why I treasured my unemployment, even as it was landing me on my parents couch; I knew the time was precious.  I knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to spend days, Weeks, MONTHS, writing…

I’ve spoken to several friends lately who find themselves at the mercy of jobless woes, but it’s the artists who seem the least fazed; as though having long ago made peace with the fact lthat they were dedicating themselves to a dance with uncertainty by pursuing their passions.  Eating bologna and corn flakes for a week stinks, but if you’ve done it before the economic crisis/disaster/total and complete meltdown, it’s not like you’re slamming your head against your law degree in abject and stunned anxiety, wondering “How in the world did this happen to me?!”

Oh no, the artist knows unemployment and financial uncertainty are always just outside her door.

I knew it was a risk the moment I signed on to work with a burgeoning Theater Company… and I knew I wasn’t doing myself the most favors by pursuing a string of part-time, temporary positions after that…

But I will always choose art over practicality.  (sigh) It’s just how this cricket jumps.

And it’s why she’s so damned tired now that she has a “real” job to tend to.

In any case, it’s interesting to see how this will inform my writing.  I just wrapped up a play about an unemeployed, heartsick woman ravaged by too much news and the oil spill, and I threw in a census worker (temporary time job # 129), so who knows what will come of this present experience…

If I can just manage to turn off that handsome David Duchovny…

Equality Now and the Monday Artist Blues

I was more than happy to be a fill-in blogger this week, my imagination already percolating with a crock-pot of thought… Then I went and started a new job… the capitalist inside of me (and lets face it, the survivalist as well) is veeeeery happy to be (finally!  Hallelujah) earning a paycheck at last.  The artist inside is a bit nervous about the next two weeks of “project necessary full-time-ness.”

Even though I know it’s only two weeks of this 40-hour business, my little muse is shaking in her boots at all the writing she may not get done… and it’s not necessarily that she was projecting a wordsmithing windfall, it’s just that now, if she does want to bury herself in verbage, she’s going to have to do so late into the night…

(sigh)

And so it goes… the starving artist taking what she can, cobbling together a patchwork type of life made of imagination, tender typing, and hard-earned bread.

In any case, I’m going to amuse you today with this little gem a dear friend forwarded to me (see below for link) – it’s an acceptance speech by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity, Firefly) as he receives an award from Equality Now, an organization his mother founded to support women.  He is being honored for creating so many strong women characters, and I think the things he says about his choice in creating these wonderful roles are very moving and inspiring!  Just the type of fodder for a good Monday start.

~Tiffany

Joss Whedon’s Equality Now speech

Chick Flicks

It’s summer movie time. Ahh summer. I remember hot and sticky summers in New York when I’d escape the heat by going to the movies. In the cool darkness, I could watch the pretty things on the screen float by like colorful snowflakes.

This summer, I have two movies to recommend highly. They’re chick flicks but not in the conventional sense, and I’ll try to give you my impressions of them unconventionally. 

One Sunday, I walked to a cheap movie theatre to catch Winter’s Bone directed by Debra Granik. Yes, I walk in LA. 

Ree, the 17 year old heroine of Winter’s Bone, walks a lot. Her quest to find her father before the family home is taken is not an adventure to distant lands filled with fantastical robots. She walks in a winter Missouri landscape to the houses of her distant cousins. Occasionally, she might get into a truck, but only occasionally. 

Not much is said in Winter’s Bone except the essentials, and Ree is smart enough to not talk too much. Even when she’s showing her younger siblings how to fire a gun, she says only what she needs to. 

The universe of Winter’s Bone is divided by gender. There is a definite man’s world and a definite woman’s world. The men won’t talk to Ree, but the women do. However, the women aren’t the archetypical nurturing home bodies. They are not earth mothers. They have their own problems and issues. 

They can help Ree, but they can also hurt Ree. When Ree goes where she shouldn’t, it is the women who beat her down—not the men. When Uncle Teardrop shows up to rescue her, he faces the men—not the women. 

However, it is the same women who also bring resolution to Ree’s quest and make her take part in a ritual both gruesome and necessary. Through this act, Ree moves from girl to woman in the tribe. Even though Ree and the women will never be on the same side, there is a respect for Ree as a woman and not a girl. 

I like that the film shows us powerful women without getting all you-go-girl Oprah about it. Among the women there is a tribal hierarchy where loyalty is prized along with an ability of knowing when to talk and when not to. The brutality of hierarchies among women is rarely shown. 

The men can have their meth labs and their guns and axes, but the women are the ones who keep the world going and always, eventually, get their way.

 As I walked home from the cheap movie theatre, I wondered if I would see another movie this summer as good as Winter Bone. 

Then Tilda Swinton showed up in Luca Guadagnino’s Lo Sono L’amore (I am Love). Julia Roberts might want to learn Italian, but Tilda Swinton owns Italian. 

Language is important in I am Love. What are the words we use and how do they conflict with the appropriate words to use? How is changing places and languages like putting on a different set of clothes? 

Tilda Swinton’s Emma is a master transformer. She doesn’t just act a part. She becomes what she needs to be. Her first transformation happens before the film begins. She is Russian born, but she becomes Italian when she marries her husband. Her second transformation is complete at the end of the film in a moment that reminds us that great actors and directors can move beyond words. 

Why does one transform? Why does one change? Necessity? Love? How does one escape the beautiful prisons one builds around one’s self? How does one not just love but become love?

Gunfighter Nation

Recently on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, I listened to a collection of short theatre pieces that will go into the next Gunfighter Nation show, L.A. History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, and I was in playwriting nirvana.

 Led by playwright John Steppling, Gunfighter Nation aims to create text driven theatre that causes anarchy of soul.

 When I first heard of the gunfighters, I thought of playwriting outlaws. I thought of hard grizzled men and kick ass women riding horses, camping out, and drinking whiskey. I thought of dust and rocks and the hot sun bearing down on you so hard that the water in your canteen turns to tea.

 What I found was a group of writers who love to laugh and can write like a charging band of wild horses. I thought, yeah, these are my kind of writers, and I joined the posse.

 L.A. History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles will be at the Lost Studio in September. For more information, check out the Gunfighter Nation website.

Rilke on Cezanne

Recently on the lafpi blogs, there was some quoting of Rainer Maria Rilke. I wanted to add my two cents to the Rilke love.

My favorite Rilke book is Letters on Cezanne, a collection of letters to his wife on the painter Paul Cezanne. Nearly every day in the fall of 1907, Rilke went to a Paris gallery to view a Cezanne exhibition. In his letters, Rilke embraces the paintings not only as a critic but as a fellow artist. His insights on an artist’s life and work are both accurate and exhilarating.

I’m handing over the rest of this post to Rilke. I highly recommend the Joel Agee translation which this quote comes from:

Cezanne lays his apples on bed covers which Mdm. Bremond will surely miss some day, and places a wine bottle among them or whatever he happens to find. And makes his “saints” out of such things; and forces them—forces them to be beautiful, to stand for the whole world and all joy and all glory, and doesn’t know whether he has persuaded them to do it for him. And sits in the garden like an old dog, the dogs of this work that is calling him again and that beats him and lets him go hungry. And yet he’s attached with his whole being to this incomprehensible master who only lets him return to the good Lord on Sundays, as if to his original owner, for awhile. . .

 I wanted to tell you about all this, because it connects in a hundred places with a great deal that surrounds us, and with ourselves.

 It’s still raining extravagantly outside. Fare well. . .tomorrow I’ll speak of myself again. But you know how much of myself was in what I told you today. . .

 (from Letters on Cezanne by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Joel Agee, 1985, Farrar Straus and Giroux)

Playwrights I Love

Hello everyone, I’m back. I begin my week with a tribute.

I wanted to do a tribute to all the playwrights whose work I love. I figured I would write little essays filled with wit and insight that would make the reader sit back in his or her cubicle and say, yes, yes, now that’s a playwright.

However, my ambitions very quickly hit a wall and well, the wall won. First of all, I had the problem of living playwrights. If I include one living playwright and not another, the left-out playwright would feel jealous and probably cry out, why not me! I thought she was my friend, I thought she loved me!! So no living playwrights.

Second, as my list of dead playwrights grew longer and longer, I realized that it would take a very long time to write about them all, so I thought about using twitter form and limiting myself to 140 characters. However, 140 characters is still a lot of characters, so I decided to limit myself to 21 characters.

So here are fourteen dead playwrights that I love in no particular order:

1. Marguerite Duras: Oui!

2. Samuel Beckett: (mdr) lol+wut

3. Witold Gombrowicz: !!-!@****&####

4. Brendan Behan: do yet gud

5. Henrik Ibsen: (====)

6. Tennessee Williams: ^^ + ^^ = TW

7. Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz: ~~~~~~~~~~~

8. William Shakespeare:   ) + (

9. William Inge: $-:-}=~

10. Anton Chekhov: ^^ bang!

11. Jean Cocteau: /////\\\\\/////\\\\

12. Sean O’Casey: {@+}

13. Eugene O’Neill: ~~~~~~_/)~~~~~~~~

14. Bertolt Brecht:  ) + ( = on