The Promise…

I have a dream that one day I will get to the promised land…  I will be sitting before a window, looking out into the day/night/day; I will be writing…and the sun sets and rises will not deter me from my place before my computer.  There will be no alarm clock going off in the middle of my thoughts to alert me to the time.  I will not have to shower, dress and make my way down the 405 to work; I will sit contemplating the next words.  And, I will be happy…

But right now, at this precise moment, I have to pull out my ‘pick me up poem’ and carry on till then…

I Will Go In The Strength Of The Lord

i will go in the strength of the Lord / i will make mention of Him to the people and praise Him always for His tenderness toward me / for the kindness with which He shows me / because there are times… /when within myself i cannot find the strength / …to take the journey / i am overwhelmed by even the thought of it… / and stand paralyzed /behind a wall of “i can’ts” / shifting my weight from foot to foot / pretending “i’m gonna try” / but…it is too much for me…at times / and i cannot wade the waters…they are too deep / and i have to seek rest in Him / so i can scatter my apprehensions to the four winds / it is then / in times like these… / that i find solace in the hollow of His hand / and lay myself down to rest awhile / then we take the journey together / and windsurf above the clouds / up where eagles dare / up where the sun lives / and mountaintops look like small hills and stormy weather is beneath us / and we glide…glide…glide / into the promised promised land…

“I Will Go in the Strength of the Lord” by Robin Byrd

Writing Adrift

A year and a half ago I was sitting on my parents’ couch, awash with grief and abject helplessness as the news showed footage of the BP oil spill ad nauseum, interrupted only by depressing unemployment figures, tragic economic shoulder shrugs, and tales of unrest abroad.  I was unemployed, newly returned to my home-town (per a very sympathetic welcome from my parents) with less than $50 in my bank account, and no idea what I was going to do with myself now landed.

I spent a lot of time that summer sobbing at the horror of it all, and stuffing my face with my parents’ hard-earned cupboard snacks.

I felt so adrift in all the news, I couldn’t find anyplace to drop anchor – and I felt powerless to do anything about any of it.

Then a cricket kept me up one night, tossing and turning and seeing red with insomnia, and I got up in the morning, sat down to the keys, and wrote a play about it all – even the cricket.

I felt better.  I had found a place where I could be heard – even if the play was still just on the page, it was my words, my world… it was mine and I no longer felt like I was bubbling with inarticulate horror… I was doing something about it.

That play got a reading, was a finalist for the O’Neills and is now in rewrites… whether it will see the stage, I can’t predict, but it makes me feel good to know it’s here – ready to be realized – and no longer eating away at my stomach.

I find myself going through a similar news-induced-panic now.

Every time I turn on the news or visit my home-page, there’s some new development here or there or in my back-yard, that has me nearly paralyzed with unease…  Where are we headed?  The deep polarity dividing the nation seems to be getting worse day by day, and news of our internal strife is riddled with continually depressing unemployment numbers and even more upset abroad.

Is it time for another play?

I read somewhere that Artistic Directors are lamenting the lack of “current” plays – Well, a lot of the artists most affected by current events are the ones they haven’t met yet.  A lot of the artists who are feeling the pinch are trying to decide between peanut butter or jelly because buying both is too expensive.  A lot of the creative minds who have been crock-potting the state of things are just now starting to send that work out into the world to be received/or/rejected and it’s going to take a bit of a hunt on those hungry Artistic Director’s fronts to find them amidst the piles.

Because although I love and adore many of our contemporary playwrights, many of those who are currently getting produced are watching the National Implosion from more comfortable seats than those of the not-yet-discovered.

Oh, of course all of us artists are in danger – popular thought on the national relevancy of  arts is too hot-button of an issue for any of us to be able to relax – but there’s a big experiential difference between those of us who are able to turn off the television and write about it at our stable desks, and those of us who are cramming our creative moments in front of the computer between job searches and coupon raids.

Which is why I’m looking forward to hearing from some of my fellows writing adrift… I’m looking forward to seeing their work on the national stage.

I’m looking forward to the day when more of us can finally drop anchor.

~Tiffany Antone

24 hour switch

I have a confession… I haven’t written anything much lately.  I could (accurately) claim the busy-bee-nature of my calendar

has left me less than energized, but there’s a bit more to it than that; I just haven’t felt particularly inspired to actually make the writerly effort.

And I don’t mean “inspired” in the sense that I’m waiting for some hot-commodity-idea either.

(From my blog on Little Black Dress INK a week or two ago)

Writer’s Block… They should call it “Emotionally Disadvantaged Creative’s Block”.

There are countless essays and processes devoted to understanding and conquering the writer’s enemy, mostly involving baby steps of free-writing, calendering oneself, forcing it out like a stubborn turd, etc.  But I always thought these things were a crock – the reason we stop writing is because we’re harboring some deep fear or resentment – not because we’ve run out of ideas – and no amount of straining ourselves over the proverbial toilet is going to make them come out if the tunnel is plugged by baggage!

(I know, that’s a disgusting analogy)

But then, I haven’t written anything new in months (besides blog posts) so I had to ask myself, might I be stricken with a fog of literary stasis?  I mean, I’ve been really busy; I’ve been teaching and producing and directing and dating…

I have been doing any number of things besides writing…

(this is when my inner guru/muse/whatever it is within that is plugged more keenly into the source of things, lets me know that I am indeed hiding in the fog…)

Sigh

(and then I have to ask myself why….)

Double Sigh

But I think the answer is this:  I’m not writing because I’m afraid that whatever I’m working on still won’t be good enough to produce, and quite frankly I’m a little more than tired of all the back-patting and head-nodding and open readings leading to naught…

My demon it seems (the first in my history with the pen) is fear, chased by an ugly little thing called anger.

And it’s time I process it all, chew it up, and spit it out, and stop giving myself excuses.  I’ve collected seeds of anxiety and doubt and now they’ve spouted into a full blown emotional forest that needs cutting down.

Perhaps I can turn all that lumber into paper?

Then this past weekend I was invited to participate in a 24-hour play fest.  I’d never done one before, so I jumped in with a lot of willful trepidation and more than a little attitude (pointless as it is, attitude always makes us feel a little safer in the un-trod, doesn’t it?)

I was terrified – How was this going to work?  Was I going to be able to write a whole play (minimal page length be damned- would it have a beginning, middle and end?  Would it make sense?) in one evening?  Would my brain and The Muse be able to stand each other after so long apart and under the pressure of such short turnaround?

Turns out, the answer – just like my answer to the challenge – was “Yes!”

We gathered at 9 p.m., started writing at 11, and I had a 9 pager ready to hand over at 3:30 a.m.  I was exhausted, and I was seeing a little double, but by God, I crafted a funny enough piece to forgive it it’s whimsy, and the actors and directors who memorized and staged it in the morning/afternoon/evening did a great job and seemed to find it quirky and enjoyable enough that I could feel I had indeed done well.

And now I can’t get my little Muse to stop poking me, pushing me, demanding me to get back at the keys.

It seems that the “cure” was to just stop worrying about my attitude and the sheer overwhelming nature of my theatrical hopes, and just write already!

Now – if I can just get my calendar to listen, I’d be a much happier, even-busier-(but writing, damnit)-bee!

~Tiffany

Grace…

Every year, I plan my summers for last touches on new plays so they will be available for the September 15 deadlines.  Spring is spent going through rejection letters and reassessing where to send plays for the next go-around and getting a start or finish on any piece I think I can have ready for that next go-around.  This year was the first time I was contemplating poetry manuscripts into the mix.  This year, like every year, I asked for grace to make it through the madness.  Things were going well until I was rear-ended twice between April and July, the injuries have made it hard to sleep (muscle spasms in the middle of the night suck) and the time it has taken to go to the doctors is very disruptive – I have never been to the doctor this much in my life.  The lack of sleep has been cutting into my writing time but up until August, I still felt I could dig down and make my deadline goals.  Then the unthinkable happened, I lost my 35 year old niece on August 16. 

My niece, Tracie, had a kidney transplant in early summer; the kidney was working when she passed away from other complications.  She left behind a daughter, TéAnna, who turned 9 yesterday, October 4.  Working through the pain of lower body and upper body spasms,  has made it challenging to sit long enough to hit a flow in my writing.  Losing Tracie has forced me to have to consciously talk myself into putting together all my packets because I really did not feel like doing the drill.  Not now.  But if I didn’t, it would be a year till the next window and Tracie was always so excited about my writing…

What do you do when your world collapses on you and you have a deadline or two to meet?

Focusing on tasks can be a great distraction and writing is always in itself, a peace-giver, a life-saver, a place of solace.

My niece was in pain every day, yet she took care of her daughter and was a very good mother.  While cleaning out her apartment, we found that Tracie wrote down her prayers.  What we learned was that Tracie was always thankful for each day…she always had a Praise for God in her heart.  She loved music and all her baby sister’s missing CDs were in her possession.  She was beautiful and we miss her…  I am so glad that I end my calls with “I love you”…

Have you ever written down your prayers?

I write my dreams and visions down but my prayers, I say them and go on.  They’re something I speak into the atmosphere. 

In September, I went back home for a wedding.  It was bittersweet.  Death has a way of pulling things together or tearing them apart.  There is no neutrality.  We, my family and I, choose to pull together.

I know that I will write about Tracie in some way.  I can feel the story forming.  I’ve had a few bad days but mostly, I haven’t really grieved yet.  I am hoping to do it in the writing…

Do you find you use your writing to work through issues? 

Everyone grieves differently; there is no set way to take that journey…  I find that writing is the best way for me to find, maintain, and be my self in the middle of a raging storm…  It’s also my saving grace…  It’s times like these where I am reassured that writing is something I must do – I survive and thrive by writing…it is the greatest gift of grace….

The National Kidney Foundation / Mayo Clinic

Writing on the Verge…

Over the years, I have found myself writing on the verge…a lot – on the verge of losing the last bit of sanity/strength/peace/hope/ I have…  Yet still…I write, even with the waves of life beating rapidly and endlessly in the fore/back/foreground, with me straining to catch my breath and trying to step out of the way of the onslaught of water but never making it to a dry patch of earth in time.  Drenched/soaked to the bone in water that covers me, my pen and paper, swollen with the wet liquid so wet the ink bleeds the letters into each other, bleeds word into word into word into word but I write anyway because nothing short of death can stop me from putting pen to page, my thoughts ebbing into and through my hands ever so precisely ever so like and unlike the water rushing over me… so… unstoppable… so unmistakably lucid despite the fog…

Writing… on the verge of finding that one sure vein that leads to my well/spring, that sways to my authentic rhythm playing the song of my authentic self…  Writing to find the whole of the story dancing past my inner ear begging to be told, aching to “be born & handled warmly”¹  On the verge of living my dream of writing full-time…  It’s hard to know and feel the tide is changing but you still can’t quite see it though you feel it deep inside your self and it’s so real you can’t stop writing, can’t stop kicking and pushing against the stones…can’t stop living… and writing on the verge of whatever comes in on the tide…

¹ “dark phrases” from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

If Nobody Sings Along…

Chrisette Michele, a phenomenal singer/songwriter, has a new album out titled LET FREEDOM REIGN and on the album there is a song called “If Nobody Sang Along.” In this song, she discusses having an audience to appreciate her work and wondering if the absence of that audience would affect her desire to tell her story… She resolves that when everything is said and done, it’s about the possibility of affecting someone’s world simply because she told her story that drives her to sing regardless…

As a playwright, the answer has to be ‘yes’, as well, otherwise, we would hardly get anything done.   What determines art – productions, readings or simply creating it?  How much stuff going wrong stops or trips you up?  For most of us, we write because we must and the obstacles work their way into and through our stories.  We answer those questions again and again as we endure…  We stand and fight for ourselves as we press through those moments of weakness.  Exhaustion wrapped ‘round our shoulders, we sit once more at the computer or pad and pen and write — something, anything, as long as it is story…

Years ago, at a church that I attended in the Midwest, the young ministers were given time on Sundays to preach from 3 – 5 pm (in the basement of the church).  Service attendance at that time of the day was usually slack; it was in the middle of the day when everyone was at home relaxing before returning for the 7 pm evening service or if they did return to the church early, they would be upstairs talking to other church members.  Most of the time the young ministers would cancel their service because no one showed up or if there were less than 5 people. There was one minister, a Minister Tom Carey, however, who would start preaching to an empty room.  He would preach as if the room was full, as if there was no tomorrow.  And, this brother who stuttered sometimes would preach stutter free.  You could hear him from the stairwell; it would draw you right down those stairs and into a seat.  We asked him why he would preach to an empty room and he would say, “God’s here.  I had something to say.” or “The Word is good all the time, even in a room with no people.”  (I paraphrase from memory.)  After a while, his services would be packed; his gift had made room for him even when nobody was singing along… 

I think about Minister Carey when I am up in the wee hours of the morning typing away at a story knowing my gift is making room for me, knowing God’s here and I have something to say, knowing that even in an empty room, my story is relevant and that I will always sing regardless of whether or not anyone sings along…

Entry Level

Yesterday I published an article for Bitter Lemons on the amazing way that Arena Stage, 2amtheatre and LA Stage Alliance* are working together to widen the dialogue on new plays.

That’s fascinating in and of itself – not my article, but all the detail and coverage that Arena Stage created and is creating, so that artists know what people are talking about and can contribute in a meaningful way.

Remember that.

Cut to later that day, and Dennis Baker announces that the LA satellite convening was relocated because of high attendance. It happened to be relocated to four blocks from my house, the site of the new Atwater Village Theatres, home to EST-LA and Circle X.

Not just convenient for me, but I amended the original article and then could post it on Atwater Village Now, gaining more exposure for both the event and the neighborhood. While writing it, though, I thought of my audience for Atwater Village Now and decided they might have no idea why a convening on new plays is important. If my goal was to interest those outside of theatre practitioners to find interest in the art and the craft, then I needed to write an entryway into the article. The Editor suggested I give some history, a small idea of how important this dialogue is for the national community, the theatrical community, and in some way give a larger importance to our community.

This was my introduction. I welcome feedback and suggestions in the comments:

With Broadway focused on revivals and musicals based on movies and star vehicles, new plays often go by the wayside. If you are an unknown playwright, it’s nearly impossible to be produced.

Not so at The Arena Stage, however, and they’ve been working intensely for a national dialogue that includes all voices – new playwrights, established playwrights, and the people who decide which plays are produced. Arena Stagey began a New Plays Convening yesterday in DC, and Los Angeles participates on Saturday, in our brand new Atwater Village Theatre!

*Full Disclosure: I also write for the LA Stage Times.

How do you invite laymen into the theatrical experience?

Now What?

You know that idea, the one that rolls around in your head whenever you don’t want to concentrate on the project you actually should be writing?

Then one day someone gives you time and resources and says that idea sounds great for a workshop. At least, that’s how it happened for me.

Now what?

Nothing is written, perhaps some notes jotted, an image folder created on my desktop but still sparse: this is the state of that project.

I start by collecting source material, images, and just seeking as much research on the topic at hand as possible.

How do you start a dream project?

Caffeine, please

Kitty Felde – January 21, 2011

Time and energy seem to be my biggest obstacles to writing these days.  I have a day job where I’m writing a lot.  And running all over town.  And shocking though it may be to admit, I just don’t have as much energy as I used to.  

I consume vast amounts of tea and chocolate to fuel my writing periods, but it’s just not enough.  There aren’t enough hours in the day for work, exercise (ballet and swimming), opening the door for the cat, and kissing my husband.  Oh, and many days I’d much rather be pursuing my other creative outlet: sewing.  I can spend an entire weekend at my sewing machine and plan entire trips to various cities just to shop their fabric stores.  (My last trip to NYC was split between seeing theatre and seeing the Balenciaga exhibit and the costume exhibit at Lincoln Center.)

I’m trying to take the long view.  I’ve written ten plays over two decades.  I don’t have to do it all in 2011.  I am entitled to just sit around and be a vegetable sometimes.  I don’t have to write everyday. 

But that’s the rub, isn’t it?  On days when I don’t write, I’m not as nice a person to those around me.  Growl.

Guess I’ll summon the energy to write a few lines.

Nothing’s Impossible…

Nothing’s impossible…I tell myself.  As long as I stay focused, writing one line at a time, I can do anything.  I know it will keep me up all night sometimes but I also know the immediate reward of completing something.   To me, it is what I must do.  I have a list of stories I plan to write; I add new ones to the list when they materialize.  I read through the list to remind myself of the stories from time to time.  I never think I have enough finished work because I have so much I want to write…  Keeping my website up-to-date helps me stay focused and on course no matter the challenges of juggling work and writing.  I believe that one day I’ll be free to just write but until then, I try to…   

“Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.”  Habakkuk 2:2

One definition of “to run” is to “perform something, to carry out or accomplish something.”  There’s nothing like finishing a play, then another, and another…  Adding a new play to my list of completed pieces gives me a sense of accomplishment like no other…  I know that I am running uphill each time I decide to write another play but when I reach “The End”, I also reaffirm that nothing is impossible…