Landed! And still Juggling…

Well, I’m in NY… and it’s just as loud, as bustling, and as chaotic as it was the last time I was here… or maybe not.  Actually, the last time I was here, there was a freakin’ hurricane-a-coming, so things were pretty intense.

In any case, I’ve landed, taken a nap, and am safely resting in Brooklyn, trying to recover from the lack of sleep I got on the red-eye flight over.  I’m excited and nervous about tomorrow – there’s been a lot of anticipation and anxiety around this event for me for the past several months… mostly me fearing the unknown and also being afraid to trust in the awesomeness of the opportunity.  Now that I’m here, I’m like “Hey, whatever happens/doesn’t happen, I’m still a playwright who got to travel to NY to see her play performed!” and some of the anxiety it dissipating… some of it.

And I’m so thankful I have some good friends and loved ones attending the show tomorrow night with me.

Meanwhile, I’m also trying to get some emails written to the ladies contributing plays to my Female Playwright’s Fest, From the Mouths of Babes, this July.  It’s very exciting – 9 new plays written by female playwrights from AZ, CA, and MN will be performed in Prescott, AZ then read in LA (I’ll be sure to make sure the LAFPI posse gets VIP invitations!) and then also read/performed in Minneapolis.  As a playwright who yearns to have more control over her destiny than merely writing plays and sending them out into the ethers, it’s really satisfying to put on my producer hat and make things happen.

First thing I need to make happen though, are those dramaturgy emails to the playwrights

So, even though I’m here in NY and on a lovely vacation of sorts, there’s still lots to be doing, to be juggling, and to keep me from chewing all my finger nails to the nub.

More to come…

~Tiffany

Control Freak

Of all the readings and workshops that In the Company of Jane Doe  has had over the years, this – my first NY production – is the first one I haven’t been able to help rehearse.  On one hand, it’s kind of exciting because it will be a completely new experience for me to walk into a space and see the play done based solely on someone else’s interpretation of what’s on the page (and a few email clarifications between myself and the producer).  On the other hand, it’s kind of terrifying to think that I will walk into a space and see the play done based solely on someone else’s interpretation of what’s on the page (and only a few email clarifications between myself and the producer).

It’s been a healthy challenge in learning to “let go”…

It’s been a healthy challenge in learning to respond to notes and questions coming from people meeting the play for the first time as well.

I don’t even remember sending the play to CAKE productions two (or was it three now?) years ago.  Apparently they had posted a call for female-focus plays and I had sent them Jane Doe.  They received so many submissions from that call that they  simply read till they found something they liked, produced it, and then went back to the pile of unread scripts for year two.  When they called me to ask if they could do a reading of the play, I was surprised (as I confessed, I didn’t remember sending them the script) and I was also over the moon excited.  When, after the reading, they said they’d like to produce it, I was over the moon again.

But when they asked me if I would take some script notes, I crash-landed at my desk and began to sweat like a mother-f***er.

My neurotic Playwright Brain began to torture me with panic:  What if I don’t agree with their notes?  Will they not do it?  What if I can’t fix the hiccups they’ve identified?  Will they not do it?   What if I make all the changes and it makes the play worse?  Will they not do it?  And even worse-   Do I even know how to write plays???  What if all this panic leaches into my brain and erases everything I’ve learned and I just sit here at my desk like a cucumber, staring blankly at the screen and thinking horribly blank vegetable-like thoughts…

Every email they sent, I sweated over, so dreadfully afraid was I that they were going to change their mind at any second and this super-cool-awesome-can’t believe-I’m-going-up-in-NY reality would dissolve into “Too bad, so sad, and bye bye Tiff!”

But only a few of those emails had notes –  really good notes – notes that challenged me to look at this thing I’d written at the start of my playwriting career and tighten it up with tools from my “7 years later” tool box.

So I wrangled the notes - I didn’t turn into a cucumber – and CAKE took the play into rehearsal.

They sent me a few more “Can we cut this, Can you write a bit more of that” emails that I listened to and worried over – it was really hard not being in the room and hearing these beats skip in the way they said –  but all in all, I had to trust them and trust myself, and negotiate my own view of the play with what they were hammering out in rehearsals in regards to which changes needed to be made and which did not.

It was a crazy new experience… and one I hope I managed well.  I guess I’ll know when I see the play on Thursday!

But all in all, this new step of “playwriting from the opposite coast” brought with it a lot by way of learning to let go, and just trusting in the play – quite a feat for an self-admitted control freak.

~Tiffany

Gearing up for NY

This week I’m traveling to NY to see my play open off-off Broadway and I’ll be sharing it with all of you – what great blogging synchronicity!

About 7 years ago I began a little play called In the Company of Jane Doe.  It was my first graduate school play and only my second full-length play ever.  I was in the throws of “How am I ever going to get everything done?”ness and I had a wacky dream about a mad scientist and a woman who clones herself, only the clone comes out looking like she would sans all the plastic surgery and etc. she’d had done to herself over the years.  I woke up enthralled – I’d found my play!

The writing of the thing was another matter – all too aware of my newbie status as a writer, I allowed my un-baked babe to prance around before my peers for dissection at quite the price:  they didn’t get it, and I began to think I didn’t know how to write.  I spent the summer after that first year of grad school convinced I’d made a horrible mistake, but I kept working at the play because even if it wasn’t there yet, and even if they didn’t yet get it, I knew where I wanted it to go and I really believed I could get it there if everyone would just stop asking me so many dang questions…  See, I’d started to realize that the people who’d been challenging me along the way weren’t to be blamed for all that I hadn’t yet gotten onto the pages – it was time for me to stop worrying about everyone else for a little bit and just write the damn thing!

So I did.  I took the notes I thought helpful, and I ignored the ones based on the play’s absence of “Finished-ness”.  I worked hard to take the play where I knew it needed it go and go there it did!

And, as a result, I learned that all that strife and stress I’d been fighting was the result of showing my work too early/allowing too many notes to land on my big-sensitive heart.  I learned that I shouldn’t ask for opinions until I have gotten a thing as far as I can on my own, lest I get feedback on something I already know is undercooked.  I learned that I don’t need to take every note/comment/or question.

I learned to trust my own inner muse.

That that summer the play was selected by the Playwrights Center for their New Plays on Campus project and was a finalist for the Princess Grace Awards.  Those little victories were just what I needed – I redoubled my efforts and the play has had several other cool awards and opportunities tacked on to it since.  It even got a production in LA in 2008.

This week In the Company of Jane Doe opens in New York.

It’s been a long journey and a lot has happened to me since I met Jane Doe and the wild clone-making Dr. SNAFU – I graduated, I’ve written a number of other plays that have had cool things happen to them, I’ve been unemployed, I’ve taught, I’ve created playwriting opportunities for other female playwrights, and I’ve gotten a little less precious and a whole lot tougher about all of it along the way.

Which is all to say, I’m excited about NY – so very much so.  And I’m also dreaming about what comes next…

~Tiffany

Picture Exercises…

From time to time, I have taken acting classes. While studying at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, I learned a technique called the “Picture Exercise” where the actor finds a picture of a person/character and recreates the picture by recreating the exact pose and costume.  This exercise helps the actor find specific character traits to incorporate into life-like behavior for the character.  Once the actor is dressed and posed like the picture, the actor must answer one question, “What does the person in the picture say at that moment in time?”  In order to answer that question, the actor must get a sense of the inner and outer voice of the character/person in the picture.  The actor has to create backstory and has to create the moment before.  The actor has to know what frame of mind the person in the picture is in, where they are physically, how they move, if they move, and why they move.  Then what do they sound like when they talk, do they have an accent, a lisp, are they loud or quiet…

I did my exercise from a picture of Sethe from Toni Morrison’s Beloved who is patterned after Margaret Garner, the slave who killed her young daughter rather than let her return to slavery. I used a photograph by Ken Regan (found in the book Journey to Beloved by Oprah Winfrey) on page 48.  The actress who played young Sethe, Lisa Gay Hamilton has a video of that scene “get in the shed”  and while I did not recreate her scene, I did recreate her look and the look of the babies for my exercise.  The picture I used was of Sethe holding her two infant daughters in her arms – in complete controlled hysterics.  I made my costume, bought two dolls – a small brown one and a larger white one, as there are seldom brown dolls to be found in stores.  I bought paint and mixed it to get the perfect hue and painted the white one brown, after the paint dried, I glued hair onto the head in little braids all over. I made dresses for the babies.  Grabbed a knife – one that could slice skin and created and reenacted what I considered fitting backstory that would make a mother slit her baby’s throat.

What did she say?  “Dey be dead or dey be free.”

I always liked the picture exercise but hadn’t thought of using it for a writing exercise until I participated in a playwright’s workshop at Native Voices the Autry with Bernardo Solano.  The seminar was right around the time that I lost my niece and I needed to do something to get my mind off my grief.  I needed to write and I was craving the company of other writers…  It was hard to focus; however, when we were asked to select a picture and write whatever it inspired us to write, I found the selection process somewhat soothing.  I selected a picture of a man and an infant lying dead on stone steps.  The picture began to speak almost immediately – “the bombs came in the night…”  The resulting piece is a 10-minute play titled MILK DUST.

I don’t usually do writing exercises because I believe to get better at writing, you have to write…  Writing is like doing pushups, the only way to get better at pushups is to do more pushups.  I do like this exercise though; I like the way it can be used from the acting and the writing perspective. It’s close to what I do in my head when I visualize the characters that I am writing about, when I am listening to what they say.  This exercise is a perfect way to find an unexpected way into an unexpected play…

Fatima Quest

I’m writing a new piece now, some stories that have been swirling around my head for a while – the Virgin Mary and Fatima sightings and women’s bodies and family stories and growing up Catholic.

Many of these stories I have told before. Most over a beer or two getting to know a new friend. They are the stories told in the night that you can’t imagine putting in print for fear family members would sue. Honestly, they still might.

And it seems that the story to haunt me forever is the one that caused a great shift in my life: Fatima.

Here’s the gist: two young girls and one young boy (ages 7-9) see the Virgin Mary one day while out tending their family’s flock. She tells them of future visitations and offers three secrets which include:

• Russia must proclaim their devotion to the Mother or She will fail.
• (shady interpretation) Pope John Paul II’s Assassination attempt
• The two youngest (Francisco and Jacinta) will die soon while Lucia will live on to spread the glory of the Virgin Mary’s word.

The two youngest did die from a pretty common flu, and Lucia, later Sister Lucia, or Looney Lucia, as I will refer to her, lived to be a ripe old advisor to the church and I believe was appointed for sainthood after she died at 92. The two youngest were the only canonized youth who were not martyrs.

The show is called Fatima Quest, and this is the blog I write before leaping into the next ten pages I promised to finish by Monday.

Wish me luck. I’ll tweet about it @cindymariej & also started a Pinterest Inspiration Board.

If you have any stories or experience with the Fatima story or the Virgin Mary, let me know!

Oh I Could Never Why The Heck Not

Or the post where I try to be inspirational.

I am trying to eliminate the phrase, Oh I Could Never, from my mental vocabulary. It’s not in my writing process, but I’ve been trying to eliminate it from my life thought process as well.

Oh I Could Never. It’s such a simple thought. It can be used ethically. Oh I could never shoot someone. That’s a good thought to have. Please, my friends, never stop thinking that thought.

But Oh I Could Never could also be used in negative ways to eliminate possibility. Oh I could never go and try that new thing. Oh I could never go two days without a shower.

We all have standards that we hope to live our lives by. But what about the possibility of something new? What if I stepped off the curb of Oh I Could Never into the puddle of possibility?

So whenever I think Oh I Could Never, I add the phrase Why The Heck Not. I prefer heck to hell because in this context, heck reminds me that it’s so simple that I don’t have to swear.

Oh! I almost forgot. I have to plug stuff today.

If you are in Prescott, Arizona in April, my monologue “Cake” is being performed by fellow LAFPI blogger Tiffany Antone as part of an evening called Love Makes The World Go Round. Here’s the website.

I will not be in Arizona in April, but I’m sure it will be a fun night.

 Speaking of Tiffany (who is definitely in the WTHN zone), she’s producing another festival of women’s plays. I recently blogged over on her website.

Comment Feedback

We’ve all been there. We’ve all received feedback for a play and gone huh? We writers want to be diplomatic and open, but at the end of the day, some things we hear are just plain stupid.

When we receive those little gems of stupidity, we nod, smile, and say, yeah, I see. Then, we promptly forget it or put the comment on auto repeat as we drink ourselves into a stupor or walk away with our hands on our hips whispering what the f*ck while wondering why we even allowed that person to talk to us in the first place.

I won’t go into all stupid comments I have received over the years. I actually have forgotten many of them sometimes without the aid of the drunken stupor. However, there are a few that I just have to share.

Diplomatic Disclaimer: These are comments I have heard repeatedly over the course of almost twenty years, so if you think you may have said something similar to me, I have no memory of you saying it specifically. It’s not you, it’s me. All me.

You are crazy for writing that.  Wow Jen, you write crazy. Whoa, crazy stuff.

 Sometimes this comment is meant to be a compliment. Still, the implication is that I am out of mind when I work. This is not true. I am focused. I am working with an awareness of both the mental and sensual. I don’t write for therapy either.

 I don’t get it. I don’t feel it. I dig it. I love it! IIIIIIIII. . .

 The interesting thing about I-comments is that they are about the speaker saying them. They’re not about the work in question. That’s nice that you get it or don’t get it, but if you really want to engage a writer about her work, ask her a question. Questions lead to communication. That’s good. Communication is good.

It’s like Beckett. It’s Beckettesque. Very Beckett.

Beckett didn’t write my stuff. I wrote my stuff. Beckett wrote his own stuff. I respect Beckett. Usually when someone uses a term like Beckettesque (or Pinteresque or Chehovian), she (or he) can’t speak deeper about such a comparison which is not interesting to me anyway.

So what is a poor play viewer to do when she or he encounters me?

If you see me in person and want to tell me that you like my play, simply catch my eye and point to your nose with your right index finger. That’s all you have to do. I’ll know.

And if you want to compliment me, compliment my shoes because deep down, I am a girlie girl.

On Pseudonyms and Pen Names

When the Bronte sisters were first published, they were Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

Pride and Prejudice was first written by the author of Sense and Sensibility, and Sense and Sensibility had A lady listed as author.

Nowadays, women can publish under their own names. My favorite author name for a woman is Lionel Shriver—her name is actually Lionel—she named herself because she liked it.

I have a lot of different pseudonyms. I write plays under Jen Huszcza, but I blog under different names. When I work in different forums, the voice comes from a different place and my mind works in a different way.

I’m not going to tell what my pseudonyms are. I’m not that easy.

Are pseudonyms career suicide? Shouldn’t I make ‘a name’ for myself? Shouldn’t I be a ‘brand’? Shouldn’t I let everyone know everything about me? Shouldn’t I be easily found on facebook and twitter and in the blogosphere?

I won’t insult your intelligence by answering my own rhetorical questions, gentle reader. I will say that in this age of instant access to too much information, it’s nice to be a bit elusive. I can slip in and out the backdoor without being noticed. I can steal kisses in the shadows and pick wallets out of pockets. Was I here? Was I there? Where was I?

On Woody Allen

Back when I was a baby writing student of eighteen, there was a cute guy in my craft class who loved Woody Allen, so  I watched a bunch of Woody Allen films in rapid succession. Some of them I liked. Some of them I didn’t. There certainly were a lot of them.

Fast forward to now. Woody Allen has just had a hit with Midnight in Paris and was the subject of a PBS documentary. He’s in his seventies, and he just keeps churning out movies. Every year we get a new Woody Allen film. Some are good, and some are yawners. I loved Match Point, but I fell asleep ten minutes into Cassandra’s Dream.

I was thinking about Woody Allen when I got a rejection letter recently. No the letter was not from Woody Allen. It was from a literary manager who said the play wasn’t for her company, but if I had anything else, I should send it on. I thought, heck yeah I have something else, and I sent her another play.

As a playwright, my job is to the write the plays. Some of my plays are not bad. Some of my plays are probably not producible on this planet.  I just keep writing them and throwing them at the wall. One of them might stick.

I keep waiting to run out of ideas. Hasn’t happened yet. I’m gonna do this when I’m in my seventies. Oh no.

Write

I wrote this last week for my own blog in response to a big personal upheaval in my life.  The details aren’t important – what matters is that in my moment of crisis, this is what I wrote.  And looking back over it, I felt like it might be worth sharing here, amongst my writing peers.  I hope you enjoy it and that it means something to you as well.  

Write so that it does not rule you, does not wrap itself around your spine and sink into you and become you.

Write so that you remember – so that after the “This is happening”  has happened, and those chemicals that Mother Nature gave us to survive such traumas have done their thing, that there is a record of The Thing That Happened, lest you need to remind yourself what it was that changed you.

Write so that you can heal.  That you can ask the questions no one has answers to, if only to get them out of the hollows of your frightened skull and onto paper – trapped in lead between lines that you own.

Write to take its teeth out – this thing swirling inside you with its black eyes and dark intentions.  Write to strike it powerless against you and your fragile heart.

Write because it’s all you can do.  Surrender to the tap of keys, the scratch of pen… let the knowledge that you know not enough keep you company as you try to make sense out of the senselessness.

Write so that you can sleep.   So that you can lie down at night without the pressure of things unsaid and unanswered pressing into your quaking chest.

Write so that you may quiet that quake and breathe.

Write because language has the power to transform.  Let it take over and wash through you and transform you from frightened observer into active participant in this unfortunate chain of events… even if it is only in how you steer the words on your screen, they are still your words - your truths - they are your sacred experience come to lines and curves and they are beautiful and tragic and transformative.

Write to find stillness.

Write to come to a quiet place where you are spent, finally, and it is still.

… it is quiet.

You are there.

And you are powerful.