Tag Archives: LAFPI

Do We Really Need This?

GLO 2014 Casting
Jen Bloom, Allie Costa, Liz Hinlein, Alex Dilks Pandola & Katherine James casting for GLO 2014

Guest blog post

by Alexandria Dilks Pandola

I started Green Light Productions in 2003 to create new opportunities for women in theatre. As of 2008, Green Light has exclusively produced plays written and directed by women.

This year, Green Light completed The Shubert Report to examine the 349 theatres that received $16.4 million in grants last year from the nation’s largest private funder of the performing arts. We found that only 26% of the plays being produced were written by women and that 125 of those 349 theatres weren’t producing ANY plays written by women.   Foundations, especially those as large as The Shubert Foundation, play a huge role in sustaining American Theatre – most of which is classified as nonprofit. Imagine the impact it’d have if they required applicants to produce seasons that had 50% female writers and directors?   Imagine the impact if just one major theatre a year decided to do a season of plays by women.   Just that one step…

In 2005, I took that step. Heather Jones sent me her one-act play “Last Rites” about a life-long friendship between two women.   It’s a beautiful play and I walked around with Heather’s script in my bag for month thinking about how it could be produced. I had the idea to create a festival of one-act plays all written and directed by women: GLO,  Green Light One-Acts.   And since the first GLO in, we’ve given world premieres to 15 one-act plays with productions in Philadelphia, New York and now Los Angeles.

In GLO 2014 we introduce to the world 4 new plays written by female playwrights based in Los Angeles – Allie Costa, Jennie Webb, Julianne Homokay and myself – with directors Liz Hinlein, Jen Bloom, Ricka Fisher and Katherine James. I have met the most incredible women just working on this first Green Light show here and I am so excited to plan our next steps here in LA.

Alex with artists at first GLO 2014 Read Thru
Alex with GLO 2014 Artists at First Read Thru

Getting here wasn’t easy. While I’ve had the absolute pleasure to work with hundreds of women who support our mission, over the years I heard a surprising amount of negative feedback – much of it from women who felt that the theatre didn’t need companies like Green Light. A female journalist actually responded to one of my press releases with “Do we really need this?”

Yes, we do. And we need YOU!

I hope that by forming new collaborations, asking lots questions, challenging those who need to be challenged and producing work by women, Green Light will continue to have a valuable impact on artists and audiences. And I hope you’ll be part of it.

Mark Your Calendars: November 6-9, GLO 2014, 4 plays written and directed by LA women artists at Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica. www.greenlightproductions.org.

Be part of Green Light Productions first foray into the LA theater scene (after mixing it up in NY and Philly).  Join the FB Invite here (LA FPI tix for only $10!). This femme-fest is Green Light Production’s annual event, but the company is looking for more women artists moving forward. If you’re interested in getting involved, contact [email protected].

 

WHEN NEWS COLLIDES

by Kitty Felde

I have an orphan play that keeps getting readings, but no production. I’m sure you have one, too. Mine is a play for young audiences with a controversial topic – a character in blackface – and revolves around a holiday festival most Americans know nothing about. (And I wonder why nobody’s produced it yet!)

I’ve discovered the reality of the marketplace in children’s theatres these days: lots of new plays are being produced, but nearly all of them are based on favorite children’s books or Disney movies. Like Hollywood, these theatres are surviving by offering audiences the familiar and the famous.

So I decided to adapt my play to a chapter book. I even found an agent who is shopping it around to children’s book publishers.

But now, news about the topic of my play is breaking out worldwide. I just wish I knew how to capitalize on it.

And so I appeal to you, the great brain trust of LAFPI.

The Netherlands celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday on December 25th – though I found the churches sadly empty of anyone under the age of 100 when I lived there. Instead, Holland celebrates December 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas – or, as he is known in Holland, Sinterklaas.

Most Americans know Sinterklaas from one thing: the scene in “Miracle on 34th Street” where Edmund Gwenn as Santa speaks to the little Dutch war orphan and sings the Sinterklaas song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNpijhg3KN4

What most Americans don’t know is that when Sinterklaas arrives in Holland by boat from Spain (don’t ask), he’s accompanied by his buddy Zwarte Piet. That’s literally translated as Black Pete. And yes, it’s a Dutch person in blackface, complete with a bad Afro, overly large red lips, hoop earrings, and a clown-like costume.

The first time I saw Piet, I was appalled. My Dutch friends brushed off my reaction, insisting Pete was a Moor, or perhaps that dark from sliding down chimneys. They said he was a friend to Sinterklaas, not a slave. And that his crazy antics were amusing, not meant to ridicule people of color. Yeah, right.

I found it particularly interesting that there were now many people of color living in The Netherlands – from Suriname and Turkey and Africa – but none of them were called upon to play Pete.

In The Hague, where I was covering war crimes trials, I talked to the only American judge at the Tribunal, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, an African-American former federal judge who became the Tribunal president. I asked her about Pete. She said every year, there was a debate in her group of African-American ex-pats about whether to make a big stink about Zwarte Piet or ignore him.

Judge McDonald became the inspiration for the adult character in my play THE LUCKIEST GIRL, the story of a ten year old African-American girl who moves to Holland with her grandmother, a lawyer at the Tribunal. Tahira is homesick. The last straw is when she discovers that Santa doesn’t come to Holland; instead, it’s Sinterklaas, and his politically incorrect buddy Zwarte Piet. Much to the horror of her grandmother, Tahira likes Piet.

This fall, UNESCO considered taking The Netherlands to task over Pete. And the Dutch reacted with a Facebook page devoted to Zwarte Piet that got a million likes in a DAY!

https://www.facebook.com/pietitie

Everybody and their brother has been writing about the controversy: New Yorker, Huffington Post, the Economist, and tons of newspapers in Great Britain.

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/11/is-a-dutch-holiday-tradition-racist.html&ct=ga&cd=MTA3NDcxMTQ1MTc5OTg4MDk3ODY&cad=CAEYAA&usg=AFQjCNGgyKlg3dkXVljaoVqSTblGZqWuqg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/zwarte-piet

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21588960-debate-holiday-tradition-exposes-racial-attitudes-zwarte-piet-racism

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/tensions-mount-in-the-netherlands-as-un-questions-black-pete-christmas-tradition-8909531.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2474693/Zwarte-Piet-abolished-Outrage-Netherlands-Black-Pete-Christmas-tradition.html

A bonanza, yes? Maybe.

So here’s my question for you playwrights smarter than me: what would you do to capitalize on this kind of publicity? Does it help or hurt the chances of a theatre doing the play? Should I be sending it to British children’s theatres? What should I be doing???

Meanwhile, I’m excited that THE LUCKIEST GIRL is getting another workshop reading at 11 AM, Sunday December 1st at Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles as part of their fESTivity/LA 2013 series. (3269 Casitas Avenue, LA 90039)

It’s directed by Susie Tanner, who loves the script, and starring the two actors who should be playing Tahira and her Dutch friend Jan: Tamika Katon-Donegal and Whit Spurgeon.

http://ensemblestudiotheatrela.org/about/programs/festivityla-2013/

Please, please, please post ideas about marketing. And come on down for the reading at EST. Zwarte Piet might even have pepernoten and suikergoed (gingerbread cookies and sweets) to toss to the audience.

 

IT’S ALL ABOUT STORY

by Kitty Felde

Like many writers, plot is not my strong suit.

It’s been interesting of late, seeing a lot of new or newish plays that have major problems with plot. As in: nothing happens until the end of the first act, or the second act does not satisfy the desires of the audience set up in the first act, or the entire evening is just a series of short scenes with a twist at the end of each one. I may not be able to solve my own plot problems, but I can sure spot them in others.

I’ve put aside the new play I’ve been working on because of hitting the wall on plot.

Instead, I’ve been spending every early morning working on my second chapter book. These are the books designed to wean kids off picture books – designed for age 7-11 or so. I got frustrated that most theatres producing theatre for young audiences are adapting kids books rather than choosing original scripts. So, I thought I’d fight back by adapting my play THE LUCKIEST GIRL* into a BOOK. I even found an agent who’s shopping it around.

I rejoined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and attended a local conference last month.

And there I was, listening to book writers talking about … plot.  Guess what? It’s all the same damn thing.

  • Conflict: You ask yourself what does my main character want? And what will she do to get it? Who or what’s standing in her way? Her desire conflicts with that of her antagonist. And you ask yourself why the antagonist doesn’t want her to achieve her great desire?
  • You start with the present world, then something happens to upset the apple cart.
  • Creating scenes: What character flaw or bad habit creates complications? Complications intensify, more obstacles, things get worse. Is there a single, driving force through all scenes? Are the heroine’s wants in the entire story?
  • Climax: the darkest hour that allows the heroine’s truest self to emerge. She takes charge of dealing with the story problem
  • The end: have we satisfied the expectations we have given our audience for what we promised at the beginning?

It’s the same damn Aristotelian story structure we all learned in Drama 101.

And so, now I find myself starting a new book**, knowing full well I’m going to have to wrestle with story structure again.

Just maybe not tonight.

*THE LUCKIEST GIRL: A ten year old African American girl who moves to Holland with her grandmother, who’s there to prosecute accused war criminals. Tahira is homesick. The last straw is when she discovers that Santa doesn’t come to Holland; instead, it’s Sinterklaas, and his politically incorrect buddy Zwarte Piet. Much to the horror of her grandmother, Tahira likes Piet.

**UNTITLED CAPITOL HILL CAPER: The young daughter of a Congressman walks dogs on Capitol Hill and solves the mystery of the Demon Cat of the Capitol Crypt.

 

FEMALE PLAYWRIGHTS GET THEIR MOMENT IN THE DC SPOTLIGHT

by Kitty Felde

So here’s some really big news that’s not yet public:

ALL the DC/VA/MD theatres are banding together and vowing to produce world premieres of plays by female playwrights.

It’s not official yet, but two different artistic directors have confirmed it.

This is a MAJOR step for female playwrights.

Unfortunately for DC writers, I don’t think it’s limited to us. Fortunately for you in Los Angeles, it looks like it will include you as well. So dig out that unproduced masterpiece and submit!

But more important than that, the challenge is on the table for theatres in OTHER cities – like LA – to follow suit. The pressure will be on THEM to produce ONE new play by a female playwright.

As soon as the DC theatre community makes it official, I’ll post the article and I’m asking each of YOU to send it to one or more theatres in LA.

One more word about being a playwright in DC. A recent study by our Dramatists Guild rep Gwydion Suilebhan showed that nearly one in three plays produced in Washington this coming season (2013-2014) are considered “new” – that means first, second or third productions.  Unfortunately for local DC writers, fewer than 1 in ten plays is by a local writer, about half the number of locally written plays produced in DC during the previous season. Writers here ARE getting produced – just not in DC.

So LAFPI activists, start putting the pressure on LA theatres so I can get something produced out there!

 

RADAR L.A.: Staging the Political as Personal

By Diane Lefer

A stirring doubleheader of RADAR L.A. productions last night at LATC gave me a lot to think about, including this: I am left wondering if it was coincidence, curators’ choice, or larger cultural influences that gave Los Angeles an international theater and performance festival at which only two plays (of 14 scripted pieces, many involving female artists) were written by women; both women are Latin American; both of their plays look at generational trauma in the aftermath of defining tragedies in their countries; both temper their documentary materials with poetic license as they explore the intimately personal in the political. Whatever. I can thank the forces – occult or otherwise – that brought Mariana Villegas and Lola Arias to town.

image-3For Villegas, in her supertitled 55-minute solo performance Se Rompen Las Olas, the disaster is the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 – evoked through video news clips –  that left tens of thousands dead, discredited the government, and briefly brought together the woman who would be her mother and the man whose absence and abandonment would shake the performer’s life to the core. Villegas holds the stage with a powerfully expressive physicality as when her exuberant and uninhibited dance shifts in an instant to a vision of abuse. At one point, a recorded song asks Where did the earthquake catch you? and goes on to answer dancing with Catalina, shaking the floor so hard, the singer explains, he never noticed the quake. (Can anyone imagine a comparable song in this country citing 9/11?) In Se Rompen Las Olas, these lyrics with their upbeat tune and danceable beat offer a compelling truth of daily life and human desire going on in the midst of catastrophe while Villegas, through her body and her words reminds us that people born in the aftermath of disaster continue to feel the reverberation in their lives.

arias01For Lola Arias, the disaster is the coup in Chile that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende and led to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The supertitled script of El Año en que Nací (The Year I Was Born) is drawn from the actual lives of the 11 performers all of whom were born (or were infants) at the time of the coup and who seek to understand the roles their parents played during years of repression, violence, prison, and exile. Notably, the performers come from families all across the political spectrum from participants in the armed struggle on the left to the authoritarian paramilitary organization on the right along with those who had political preferences but tried to go along with the status quo. While the opening scenes of the play suggest the new generation’s commonalities, the picture becomes more complex and fractious (and comical) when the players are challenged to line up to show their political stance, their economic position – When it comes to poverty, does having a dirt floor at home trump going hungry? – and their social status as reflected in skin color. Simple yet inventive staging keeps the production lively with tonal shifts and surprise.

Arias, from Argentina, previously created a similar program exploring the post-dictatorship era in her own country and if you’re familiar with Latin American politics, her work shouldn’t be missed. Know nothing about Allende and Pinochet? The production still fascinates. It runs two hours without intermission without ever inducing fidgets.

Final performances of both productions are Sunday, and then they are gone. See the RADAR L.A. schedule here: http://www.redcat.org/festival/radar-la-festival-2013

Villegas and Arias made me think of another Latin American woman at the head of a company that uses documentary material – Claudia Santiago who writes, directs, and performs with Mexico City-based Espejo Mutable. Their most recent production, Náa-Gunaá, looks at the lives of indigenous migrants (including children) from the south of Mexico who are exposed to exploitation and pesticides as they harvest GMO crops in Baja California. The company would love the opportunity to share this work and explore the lives of indigenous migrants from Oaxaca in our own California fields.

logo_radarla_transparent_0_0And a quick shoutout to three additional RADAR L.A. offerings that have women at the helm if not in the playwright’s chair:

Puppet designer extraordinaire Janie Geiser directs Clouded Sulphur.

Franco-Austrian director Giselle Vienne chose to employ simple hand puppets to create the unnerving effect in Jerk, the story of a serial killer.

Theatre Movement Bazaar, with Tina Kronis as director and choreographer, continues its reinterpretation of Chekhov with Track 3.

 

Diane Lefer is a playwright, author, and activist whose collaboration with Hector Aristizábal, Nightwind, has been performed in LA and in 30 other countries around the globe. Also in LA, her work has been presented by Grupo Ta’Yer at the Frida Kahlo Theater, Indie Chi Productions, Playwrights Arena, Three Roses Players, and Triumvirate Pi. She is co-author with Aristizábal of The Blessing Next to the Wound: A story of art, activism, and transformation as well as several anthologized essays about Theater of the Oppressed, and she has worked with theater groups in Colombia and Bolivia. Her works of fiction include the historical novel, The Fiery Alphabet, published this month, and the short story collection, California Transit, which received the Mary McCarthy Prize. Visit www.dianelefer.weebly.com.

PLOT

By Kitty Felde

I’ve always hated Aristotle.

He said there were only two parts to a good drama – the rising action leading to the climax, and the denouement, or the unraveling that follows. It sounds so simple. But my brain doesn’t work that way.

I remember when I first started out as a reporter. It was so hard for me to write with the denouement in the lede. Why the heck would you put your best stuff at the top? I wanted to tell a story the way you tell a story – give your audience a setting, introduce them to the characters, make things worse for them, and worse again, and solve the problem. But news rarely conforms to that clean format.

And I find that when I write plays, those stories rarely conform either.

I wonder if it’s because I don’t like torturing my characters. I like them too much to give them grief, let alone trouble after trouble. I enjoy spending time with them. I don’t want to kill them off.

Which leads me to my Act Two problem.

I’m still stuck in Act Two of my romantic comedy. Perhaps I should look at my favorite films to see how those writers solved this part of the story. You know, the part where both parties admit to themselves that they are in fact attracted to each other. I know logically that there needs to be some sort of complication, an obstacle that gets in their way. Now, make it worse.

I know, I know, Mr. Aristotle. I need some of that rising action leading to a climax. I just wish I knew what it was.

So I appeal to you, my fellow writers. What secrets do you have to share about digging yourself out of Act Two?

I await your wisdom.

Gimme a girl (onstage)

How nice to see an article in “The Dramatist” on the topic of missing female playwriting voices! And it’s the lead article. The news is still bad – 59 theatres across the country failed to include a single play by a female playwright last season.

But I want to vent a bit about something else that’s bugging me of late: boy plays. I’m sick of stories without any meaningful female characters. I’m getting to the point where I really don’t care to see another production with either nothing but men onstage. Or 18 men and two – maybe three – women who are there to support the boy story.

I saw two fine productions here in Washington, DC recently: the Shakespeare Theater Company’s production of “Wallenstein” and WSC Avant Bard’s production of “No Man’s Land.”

“Wallenstein is Friedrich Schiller’s play about the Thirty Years’ War, a commissioned adaption by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky. It’s described as an “epic story of war, intrigue and loyalty tested.” To be fair, there are two female characters in the piece (and a couple of women filling in as soldiers to fill up the stage. They’re playing men, of course.) But it’s a boy play. The stage was filled with men. It was the story of one man’s ambition.

And the message? War is bad. I get it. So don’t do it. End of play.

What about those women? They were mere pawns to the ambition. It would have been so much more interesting to hear their side of the story, to see the senselessness of power grabs and blood and gore through their eyes.

And then there’s the Pinter. “No Man’s Land” by Harold Pinter was chosen because of the opportunity to put two former Artistic Directors of WSC Avant Bard’s company on stage together. Great for them. Tough evening for me.

Verbal jousting is fine. But I didn’t care. What was the point? Where were the women?

I want to contrast those two evenings with my recent experience in Omaha. That city’s historic Playhouse – where Henry Fonda launched his career – produced the world premiere of a play by a local Omaha playwright. (A woman, by the way.) It had seven women onstage!

Playwright Ellen Struve’s “Recommended Reading for Girls” is the story of two daughters coming to terms with their mother’s decisions about treating her cancer. But their very real world is invaded by characters from all the books they shared – Anne from Green Gables, the Little Princess, the German-speaking Heidi, and a Nancy Drew wanna-be girl detective.

(Full disclosure: Ellen is my weekly Skype writing buddy.)

At last! A girl play! Girls on stage, talking about relationships and family and fantasy. It was wonderful. And funny. And probably boosted the sale of Kleenex throughout the city of Omaha.

Ellen says she was writing for the audience who actually comes to the theatre: women. And women of a certain age. Nobody’s writing for them, she says. The people who run theatres are choosing “hot” or “edgy” plays or old standards that feel familiar. No one is choosing plays that makes them laugh and cry and go home feeling like they got their money’s worth.

But will Ellen’s play find a second life outside of Omaha? I sure hope so. The statistics are against her – a play by a woman about women.

I recall a golden age of Hollywood where women main characters drove the stories – “Stella Dallas,” “All About Eve,” “Kitty Foyle.” I’m ready for a golden age of theatre where every seat is filled by people like me, who long to hear our stories told onstage.

Sigh

I hate writing about this. But it should be known that the Great Plains Theatre Conference has become a much lesser plains for the ladies.

I’m a big fan of GPTC. My play KIGALI was chosen several years ago to be one of the mainstage shows. I had an entire week to work on rewrites, working with terrific director Sonia Keffer and wonderful actors like Amy Lane and Terry Brannen. A year later, I was invited back to give feedback to other actors and hear another great reading of my short play TOP OF THE HOUR.

I didn’t apply this year. It’s just as well, apparently.

That first year I participated, more than half the shows chosen for mainstage readings – five of the eight chosen that year – were written by women. This year, there is just one play by a female writer on the mainstage. 26 other writers were invited to participate in the conference PlayLabs. Of them, seven are women.

And this in the year GPTC is honoring the wonderful writer Connie Congdon.

Artistic leaders say the selections are blind.

I don’t argue for a quota system. But when the numbers look like this, it begs a closer look at who is making those blind selections. And what criterea they are using. How blind is blind?

Or perhaps it just means we don’t write very well.

Dangerous Influences

They always talk about how violent films and video games affect the minds of young people. What about those of us with older minds? How affected are we writers by what we watch?

For me, the answer is “quite a lot.” And I found out the hard way.

I’m writing a rom/com.

I deserve it. I’ve been slogging through heavy pieces on election violence in Kenya and the LA Riots and racism in Dutch holiday traditions. I’ve written about the Metrolink disaster and my own version of what REALLY happened in the 1960’s when racial covenants were thrown out.

I wanted to write a comedy. A romantic comedy. And set it in a very specific place that most people would find fascinating.

I was having a marvelous time, writing way too many pages for the first act, not caring, just wanting to plow through to the end before editing myself. I had characters I loved, a great design concept, dialogue that flew off the keyboards.

And then I watched “House of Cards” on Netflix.

It’s very good and it’s great fun to see them pass Baltimore off as Washington, DC. But it’s dark, cynical, rather depressing at times. And it began to cling to me and my writing like cat hair.

All the joy I felt when I sat down flew out the window as I tried to be “adult” and “serious.” I became embarrassed about “only” writing a rom/com. My characters embarrassed me. I stopped writing. It wasn’t fun to sit down with them anymore. It was downright depressing.

Finally, I told my husband that we had to stop watching “House of Cards.” Later, we can watch it later. It was eating up my writing mojo. My husband, a writer of books on serious subjects like preventing nuclear war completely understood.

And it’s working. I’ve started watching BBC rom/coms about Scottish restauranteurs who return to the castle to become the “laird” and any movie with Colin Firth. I’m listening to music that makes me happy, reminds me of those first few months of absolute joy and craziness when I first fell in love, I’ve stopped apologizing for my work. I’m actually looking forward to sitting down with my characters again.

What about you? How much of your writing is influenced by what you’re watching, reading, listening to at the same time that you’re writing? Do you have a soundtrack for each play?

Too old?

DC playwrights are watching their “in” boxes this week, awaiting word about whether they’ve been accepted into Arena Stage’s playwrights’ group. Six locals will be invited to join this elite bunch.

I’m not one of them.

And that’s fine. I have a weekly skype writing appointment with a fellow playwright in Omaha, a wonderful writer named Ellen Struve, who gives me feedback and keeps me honest – ie: keeps me writing. I’m also lucky to have found a great group of writers here in DC that meet monthly. They call themselves the Playwrights’ Gymnasium. And I still am a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles’ Playwrights Lab – though my attendance has been spotty of late due to that five hour plane ride. So I’m not lacking for writing groups.

But Arena’s cache would mean avoiding the slush pile when sending out plays. It would – to paraphrase Jane Austen – put me in the way of meeting other eligible theatres and literary managers. It could jumpstart a career. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Lately, we female playwrights have been counting noses – how many plays being produced are written by those of our gender. Theatres are more aware of that these days. Some progress has been made.

But the fear among other writers here in DC who were also not chosen to join the Arena group is that frankly, we’re too old. Too old to be considered an “emerging” playwright. Too old to be the hottest young thing out of an MFA program. Too old period.

Somehow, this hurts more than being told one’s writing is just not good enough. We can certainly work on our craft. Not much we can do about turning back the hands of the clock, no matter how much we spend on facial products.

I aged out of acting when the commercials slowed way down; I know I’m too old to write for television anymore. But I never thought I’d become too senior for the theatre. Particularly since when I attend most plays, I’m the youngest one in the audience!

I hope this isn’t sour grapes. I hope the writers Arena chose are truly wonderful, no matter what their birth certificate says. I hope they choose at least one person old enough to remember where they were when John Glenn flew in space.

After all, isn’t it the theatre that keeps us all forever young?