Thanks for checking out the LAFPI “tag team” blog, below, handed off each week from one interesting female playwright to another.
Who are they? Click Here
The FPI Files: Exploring, Healing and Educating Through the World Premiere of “Luzmi”
By Elana Luo
In lieu of a plane ticket from LA to Bogotá, HERO Theatre offers audiences the much more affordable and low-emission option of venturing into the mountains and rainforests of Colombia as a viewer of Diana Burbano’s new play, Luzmi. Devised and directed by HERO founder and producing artistic director Elisa Bocanegra, the play follows the eponymous young woman, Luzmi, as she returns from the United States to her birthplace of Colombia. There, she experiences the country’s abundant natural biodiversity as well as human threats to it, and embraces the communities that rely and care for it.
Luzmi serves as the inaugural production of HERO’s Nuestra Planeta, an initiative with the goal of generating new work about environmental justice issues in Latine countries. To prepare for and ground Luzmi in reality, Diana and Elisa took trips to Colombia and conducted years of research. Elisa, who is Puerto Rican, fell in love with the country, and Diana, who is Colombian, got to see a completely different side of it. I had a chat with them to talk through what took to put Luzmi together—what inspired it and how it inspired them right back.
Elana Luo: Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about the genesis of Luzmi.
Elisa Bocanegra: I started Nuestro Planeta because I wanted to create a project that was reflective of what I was experiencing during COVID. I had suffered a great loss – I lost my brother – and I know a lot of other writers in our community and theater makers were really experiencing a great amount of sadness because all of the theaters were closing.
So once the airports opened, I got to go back to Puerto Rico and I started to write in nature. I started to go into the mountains, outside of the west coast of the island where my family’s from, [and to] the beach. I just immersed myself in nature in my homeland, and that was helping me a tremendous amount. I was losing my brother, watching him die over the course of 18 months—over Zoom because the hospitals were closed—and my only solace was nature.
I came back to LA and I thought to myself, “What if I created a program where I brought writers back to our ancestral homelands, and they can heal from the effects of COVID, from the effects of not being able to practice their art, and from the trauma that we have had to experience being artists of color in American theater? And what if we sought out nature in a place that we are not seen as others, and create there?”
Elana: Did you decide to work with just Latine writers?
Elisa: I knew from my studies that communities of color, especially Latine communities, are greatly affected by the climate crisis in California. I know that many of our Latine people are on the front lines of agriculture, [part of] workforces that cause us to be outdoors, experiencing that kind of punishing heat that the climate crisis has made happen.
We pay extra attention to narratives when they’re our own.
Elana: How did you land on Colombia for the first piece?
Elisa: I thought it would be great to start with Colombia, because it’s the second most biodiverse country on the planet, and the first most biodiverse country that’s Spanish-speaking. Diana and I had worked on another project at HERO, and I read in Diana’s bio that she was a Colombian immigrant. I was like, “Hey, I have this project, and I really think you’re so cool, and I like your writing so much. Do you want to take this commission on?” And so that’s how Luzmi started.
Elana: I heard there were some trips to Colombia that you took for research?
Elisa: I chose areas in Colombia based on some science research that I had done. The first was the Andes Mountains, outside of Risaralda, which has the highest amount of endemic bird concentration. Orchids grow there, and there are more butterflies there than anywhere in the country. And then the other part was that Colombian side of the Amazon rainforest. That was the first trip. After that, I asked Diana, “Do you feel like you have enough to get started on on this?” And she said yes. And I said, “Okay, I’m going to apply for a Fulbright to go back to Colombia and to do some more research”
Elana: How did that turn out?
Elisa: I didn’t think that I would get a Fulbright. I was like, “I’m in an online MFA program. I’m never getting a Fulbright.” And, you know? And I got it. I sent a letter to Instituto Humboldt, which is Columbia’s largest biodiversity research center. And I said, “I’m an artist, I have HERO Theatre, I have this initiative. I would love to come and be in residence there. I can provide theater education based on your science studies.”
They took about six months to write back, but they wrote back: “Sure, come!”
And so I was sort of like “the theater lady.” The biologist would come in and say, “We’re working in a community that we’re studying wetlands, or butterflies and insects,” and I would try to create theater for that community about the science work that they did. So that’s a long story, but I went back, Diana came back, and then we did the second part of her research studies.
Elana: What was that second trip like?
Diana Burbano: That second trip was steeped in actual communication with the actual people who live there—the people who are experiencing the day-by-day, the people who actually look at and own those parts of the Amazon, who belong there. And it’s a completely different experience. Seeing from a tourist’s eyes versus from those of the people who live there is really, really different.
Elisa: And then the biologist who took us through the Amazon Andes, Felipe Jiménez—we fell in love, and he’s now my husband.
Elana: Wow!
Diana: So maybe part of the story, maybe might have possibly been influenced, slightly, by—
Elisa: —by Diana saying, “Go for it, go for it!” And I’m like, the shyest—I got no mojo when it comes to boys, I never have! I’m a geek. My head has always been buried in theater books. And Diana was like, “Go, hang out with him tonight!”
Elana: That’s incredible. Diana, what were the trips to Colombia like for you, personally?
Diana: One of the most intriguing and important things that happened was sort of the ability to be there as a Colombian. It was literally being able to explore it knowing I belong there, but also with brand new eyes. That was really exciting. Going to Las Amazonas was eye opening, I mean, because it’s something that you read about and see in National Geographic Magazine, but to actually go and experience it—it starts seeping into your bones. You can see the climate change happening in front of your eyes. I mean, it changed my life.
Elana: Can you put into words what that shift was?
Diana: It’s a shift of responsibility. When you look at something—like you see it in a museum, or documentary, or whatever—you feel a lot of sympathy and empathy for it. But you’re always at a remove. When you’ve actually been to these places you can’t take yourself out of it. You can’t go back to looking at single use plastic anymore, because you’ve been there, you’ve seen the actual impact. And hopefully one of the things that we can do with our work is giving people the sense of what it feels like to really, really understand.
Elana: How did you go about connecting that with people at home in LA?
Diana: A lot of the times you get a commission and they’re like, “It can be inspired by or it can be this and that.” But we really did research and we really had things that that were important to to convey to the audiences, especially to our Latine audiences here in LA. I think so many Latine people want to be connected to nature. You find a lot of people who live in the cities with their little patches of land that they tend and their one fruit tree. And I feel like it’s bridging that connection between your own patch of land and the big patch of land that is the earth.
Elisa: Like a reconnection of sorts, right? Because our ancestors were deeply connected. Before lands were taken away, but that’s a whole ‘nother subject.
Elana: Elisa, how did you prepare to direct this piece?
Elisa: One of the reasons that really made me want to stay in Colombia was the fact that I am Puerto Rican, and I didn’t know enough about Colombia.
That’s one of the big mistakes they make in American theater. They’re like, “Oh, this person’s Latina, this person could direct that. That person’s Asian…” And we’re all from disparate cultures and countries. We’re not all the same. [Diana and I] embraced the similarities that we have, but I didn’t feel that I was equipped to direct a Colombian play, so being there for the two years really, really helped me.
Elana: How did that work with other members of the production?
Elisa: I also knew that the cast would not all be Colombian. We definitely strove to have as many Colombian actors as we could; half the cast is and half isn’t. That’s another thing about American theater. We just love to cast everybody in everything, but how do I direct actors to have a cultural sensitivity for the communities that they’re playing?
We can bring in an intimacy coordinator, but this is another element I consider to be very intimate. What is that sensitivity we should have? How do we work on this together? How do we make it so that the actors from the native homelands are feeling honored, and also feeling included in the building of the ensemble? So that’s something that I really wanted to do.
Elana: Luzmi was definitely a joint effort with the two of you working very closely together. What insights do you have from your experiences with creative collaboration?
Diana: Don’t be precious about your stuff. Don’t think you’re so great that you can’t reach out to somebody else and work with them. Because sometimes I find that people feel like, “This is mine, it’s only my thing—I don’t want to share it with anybody.” And yeah, there’s definitely pieces like that, but sometimes it’s okay to go ahead and expand your universe as far as how you write and how you create.
Elana: What’s your perspective from the other side, Elisa?
Elisa: For me, we have an infestation in American theater: It stank. It stinks! If we keep saying you have to have a Pulitzer in order for us to commission you, we’re not taking enough chances on playwrights from underserved communities.
I think what’s happening with a lot of our bigger theaters in America is that we’re not investing in community, and we’re also not giving credit to the subscribers. They actually want to discover. If I find a writer and I connect to the writer’s voice and I connect to them as a person, then I give them the opportunity to create a new play here at HERO.
Elana: It’s not all about pleasing every person in the audience.
Elisa: I’m less concerned about the finish line or what a critic would think and I’m more concerned about the collaborative experience that we have as writer, producer, director and actor in the room, and the healing of artists. I want a safe playground. Our artists have been so harmed in American theater. What I want HERO Theatre to be is that place where artists feel nurtured and we can create together, and the preciousness of what the finish line product has to be… that’s taken away.
“Luzmi” plays through October 27 at Inner-City Arts in Downtown Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, visit herotheatre.org.
The harvest
I speak often and often only of whatever is growing around me. How else are we to ground ourselves in life if not by the state of what lives near us too. In California especially, you must look more closely at the subtle changes happening around you, or you might miss the gentle shift of seasons that are taking place.
As we paint the canvas of our year, the boldest streaks of paint are of course, the unforgettable days when the outdoors dominated. The heat wave that caused rolling blackouts. The endless weeks of rain. The immense relief when the change so visibly came: the sun, the break in heat, the drop back to clear warmth, the kind that blurs the days together.
But I don’t want to miss what’s in between the moments that draw your eye first: the bougainvillea are blooming yet again. The grapes that crawl along the fence are beginning to turn from green to purple. New birds have moved into the neighborhood, there are new songs in the morning. Our foliage might be non-existent, but surely you can see that the sunset has turned from honey to amber now.
Our writing is like this too. As we begin to near the final stretch of the year, remember to ground yourself not only in the boldest marks you’ve made, but in the moments in between too. It is not about just what has been finished, but the pages started and abandoned, the thoughts you wrote down on a piece of paper and subsequently lost, and perhaps most of all: what changed in you this year, subtly, a small seed planted that you aren’t even aware will bloom your next work, maybe next year, maybe ten years from now. Take stock of your harvest. Even if there is not much visibly on the table today, that says nothing about the hard work taking place inside you.
wondering why
Have you ever had a moment and wonder why, why do I write plays? Or just, why do I write in general? This year has been filled with rewrites, a lot of producing, and some teaching, and I haven’t written. And I haven’t stopped to wonder, why am I not writing?
That brought me to another idea, was where do my ideas come from? But I think that’s a whole other conversation. Right now, I’m concerned with why I write.
I saw a play last night. A play that I have been wanting to see but afraid to see lest it ruin me and I never want to listen to that music again. In those first couple of moments, three rows away from the stage, and I was overcome with emotion. I wanted to cry. I didn’t because I got caught up in my thoughts and wondering, why am I crying? Why are these tears forming?
If you hadn’t noticed, I ask why a lot. And so as I sucked back the tears and watched as the cast danced and sang across the stage, my eyes were aglow, rimmed with tears. But I held them back. And I sat in awe, singing with the cast, enjoying some of the music. It didn’t quite ruin me, but some songs took me a few bars in to recognize what song they were singing. But at the end of the night, I was overjoyed.
And did that make me want to write? Mm, yes and no. It made me wonder about writing. It made me wonder why we write. Watching this play based on an album, written by a band, I wondered how the music all came together with the story and the dance. I wondered about the production of it. To know how things work.
So now I have to go back and find the documentary of the making of this piece. And maybe it will help me write. I’m hoping. Because I am in a funk right now. And I am overthinking things, if you couldn’t tell.
That’s what it is. I am overthinking why I write. Jennifer, just sit down and write! I tell people all the time, get in the practice of writing 10 minutes every morning. And even if you don’t know what to write, just write. Something will come out.
So, I guess as I’m writing this at 7 a.m. mornings are when I write. I should just do that instead of procrastinating by sharing with you the delight of a play that I saw last night and try and work on my own stuff because I want to write. I want to write plays and stories and share them with the world. Oh, but that’s a whole other different story, huh? Maybe tomorrow. For right now, I’m gonna set my timer to 10 minutes and hopefully write more than the same sentence over and over. I wish you good writing.
Bad Parenting
by Alison Minami
Over the weekend I took my five-year old to see Duel Reality by a group named The Seven Fingers at the Ahmanson. This show promised to be a mix of acrobatics, aerial stunts, and dance choreography set to the storyline of Romeo and Juliet. Think Cirque du Soleil, but on a much smaller, therefore, much more intimate scale. The morning of the show, I decided to explain the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet to my daughter. It was one of those things that I didn’t think through, and once I’d realized the folly of my ways, well, you could say, I was in too deep; I proceeded to tell my daughter the very end of Romeo and Juliet, death included but minus the graphic of daggers, and….surprise, surprise, she burst into tears.
As an aside, and perhaps, somehow, in some unconscious way, undergirding my questionable parenting decision, I’ll never forget in college going to a showing of the film Romeo and Juliet starring Claire Danes and Leonardo Dicaprio. It was the holiday season, and we were in a crowded mall in Cleveland. That was the first time I’d ever seen a family of four—mom, dad, girl, and boy—wear matching Christmas sweater outfits complete with Santa hats, without, I’d believed, any sense of irony. Having barely left high school, I could not stand the sight of these two sibling teenagers, leaner and taller than I (read: more American), happily donning the same gaudy red and green bauble sewn sweater as each other and their parents. I felt mortified on their behalf, and because I was young and judgmental—now I’m old and judgmental, but also much more empathetic and forgiving (I think, I hope), I attributed such behavior to all the stereotypes fed to me by my new-ish collegiate peers about the Midwest. Nevermind that I was then living in the Midwest, de facto a guest of the Midwest, drawing from its cultural and educational institutions like an ignorant leech, engaging in the worst kind of generalizing that I had hoped to escape when leaving high school.
I digress. It was on this same mall trip that I and a friend went to see Romeo and Juliet. And now that I think of it, I believe that this was the Thanksgiving Weekend, and we were the loners who had nowhere to go for the holiday, which tells you something perhaps about the origins of my judgment. Maybe, just maybe, in some twisted way, I was jealous of a family that loved so much, so openly, that that symbol of unification and holiday cheer overrode their tacky spectacle. Anyway, I was not as insightful as I’d believed myself to be at age nineteen. Sitting in the theater, I resisted enjoying the film. I used to reference Leonardo Dicaprio as Leonardo DiCRAPrio because I thought he was a shit actor. This wasn’t really based on anything except that everyone else seemed to think he was a heartthrob. I hadn’t even yet seen Titanic, which I’d later watch with a proselytizing Bible beater who tried to make Jesus ties to the film’s end to convert me to Christianity. I thought that movie was shit too. Why on earth didn’t Rose let homeboy onto the floating raft or whatever? And were we just going to gloss over all the poor people stuck on the ship, literally under lock and key to prevent them access to rescue boats? Why did it have to be about Leo and Kate, their love, and not the injustice of class discrimination? At the time, I was an anti-capitalist who didn’t understand capitalism, and certainly, not the capitalism embedded into the movies. Anyway, at the end of Romeo and Juliet (SPOILER ALERT), the theater erupted in clapping and cheer, and one kid in the row ahead gasped, “But wait, they die?” My friend and I took this as an opportunity to sneer and ridicule (privately) this presumed teenager. It was another way to separate and elevate ourselves–and to stereotype kids and their Midwestern origins, despite our likely only being older by a couple years. It really is embarrassing–for me, not them–to think of my snobbery. After all, just because I read Romeo and Juliet in eighth grade, doesn’t mean every kid does.
So back to my daughter. Yes, she cried, as one should expect at such a sad tragedy. Isn’t that what Shakespeare wanted? For us to feel. I tried to reel in my poor parenting decision, wiping away my daughter’s tears. “The main point of the story is that when you love someone, no one can keep you apart. Like me, I love you so much, that no matter what, I’ll always be with you,” I told her. To which, my daughter, without skipping a beat says, “unless you get arrested.” While this may lead you to question my other parenting decisions and to query why she might even know about the carceral state, try to stay focused.
Any description I come up with, cannot do justice to the extraordinary wonder of this show. There were people doing triple spins in the air before landing on their feet; there was pole climbing and sliding upside down, stopping short within an inch of their face hitting the floor; there was swinging and body tossing; there was hoop jumping and gliding like dolphins at Sea World but without water, and all without harnesses or safety ropes…I could go on. But suffice it to say, it was mostly a physical show, with very little in the way of Shakespeare, although audience members on one side of the house did receive blue bands while the other side received red bands, which we were supposed to raise into the air for our respective Capulet or Montague teams, until the end when we were encouraged to throw them in the air, casting aside our differences.
Despite the spectacular nature of acrobatics and body contortions, more than once my daughter leaned over and asked, “When are they going to die?” and “Is this the end, because I didn’t see anyone die?” As it turns out, no one dies. A performer, in one of the only lines in the whole show, announces, “We changed the end, because who needs that kind of tragedy these days?” (What?! I didn’t even have to tell my daughter about the poison and the fake death and the real death, not one, but two!) I guess the troupe had already thought through little children coming to see their show.
Why am I writing this? Because it just happened. It’s funny. It’s also a reflection of my bad parenting, I think. But also, also, drama is a thing that starts at the beginning (of life) and lasts forever. My daughter was a pure, or maybe I should say, unadulterated (literally) receiver of the story. She knows, at five, what sucks and what hurts, and she was waiting for it, even amidst the fanfare of triple flips in the air, she was waiting to see the simultaneous destruction and unwavering bond of star-crossed lovers reach its ultimate fate.
Art is the Yang and Yin is the Science.
by Analyn Revilla
Art is creation, the yang energy of expression. Edges define boundaries of dark and light and reflect upon the canvas of the retinal cones that mirror shapes and shades. Aural caves and visual effects filtering through the mind, a level of consciousness.
Where is the seat of consciousness?
Science is the inquiry and investigation, the yin energy of making sense of the stimuli of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. The mind clutches to make order, sense orientation and have perspective of existence and reality. Truth is elusive through the lens of the mind.
Antennae probe into granularity of structures and grandiosity of formations of cosmic cliffs. Mirrors reflect back time of fading light like the waning of a siren, harkening what is to come and what too will pass. This form, illuminated with the light of consciousness, will also pass.
In Hindu philosophy all of the entire cosmos originate from the vibration of Aum (OM, ), since all existence is made of vibration. The breath expression articulated in the form and resounding the I AM.
Report from Great Britain
by Kitty Felde
I just got back from “over the pond” and wanted to tell you about two terrific productions I saw – one at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the other in a small theatre in the West End of London.
RADIUM GIRLS
DW Gregory, a wonderful writer from my D.C. playwrights group posted on Facebook that her most popular play “Radium Girls” was getting its first outing at the Fringe, courtesy of a group of young actors from a high school in England. I just happened to be in Scotland during its play dates and told her I’d take the train from Glasgow to represent her.
This was my first Fringe experience. Unlike Glasgow, where few Americans could be found, Edinburgh was overrun with Yanks, there for the theatre festival, the book festival, and because Edinburgh was the only place on their list unless they were chasing down film spots for “Harry Potter” or “Outlander.”
(True confessions: I did take an “Outlander” tour with a guide who was a Jamie knockoff.)
Patrons lined the staircase, waiting to get into the show.
The theatre was on the fourth floor of an office building near the shopping district – a simple black box with perhaps 50 folding chairs for the audience.
The simple set was most effective – neon “Brat” green light glowed from boxes that became tables and stools, and a chain link fence that separated the company of actors from the audience, hung with props and costumes.
The play is based on a true story about the young women who died of radiation poisoning from licking their brushes as they painted the glow-in-the-dark dials of clocks and watches.
The actors were terrific, but my favorite part was hearing the wide spectrum of American accents. (Is this what American actors sound like when using an “English” accent?)
The “kids” were thrilled that their playwright had sent an emissary to see their production and DW was happy with the pictures from the production.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
I considered the plethora of West End musicals playing in London, but nothing tempted me.
And then I read a review of “Pride and Prejudice.”
As a Janeite and English County Dance aficionado (with three ball gowns in my closet) how could I not attend?
That’s me on the left.
Again, the venue resembled our own 99-seat theatres. My seat was front row – so close to the actors, I had to keep moving my feet so that Mr. Darcy wouldn’t trip.
Abigail Pickard Price both adapted and directed the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s sparkling production.
And here’s my favorite part: just three actors performed the entire play! April Hughes played Lizzie…and Mr. Bingley. (Her credits include playing Moaning Myrtle in the hit West End show
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”) Guildford co-founder Sarah Gobran played Mary, Charlotte, and Mrs. Bennet. And Oxford-trained Luke Barton played Mr. Bennet, the Reverend Collins, and of course, Mr. Darcy. Sigh.
And it really worked! I’ve seen every adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” ever produced, but the adaptation managed to condense and highlight parts of the book I’d forgotten. Authentic English Country Dance choreography punctuated the scene shifts. The 140 minute evening whizzed by, even with numerous costume changes. If this version isn’t snapped up by an American theatre desperate for a small cast that would pack the house with a female audience, I’d be shocked.
I wish I’d written it.
Kitty Felde’s most produced play “A Patch of Earth” (a Bosnian war crimes story) was also produced in Great Britain by a talented troupe of high school thespians.
UNTITLED
In between the acts of routine and a hard-lined schedule, my body becomes numb. I hold a series of thoughts that refuse to reveal moments of clarity. The body cannot find rest and the mind roams. To quiet the noise she writes, she goes back in time, for her body holds onto what she can’t understand.
These days I whisper hard to hear truths.
I alter time so my eyes bear witness to hidden atrocities.
Daringly, I move through space holding and releasing the stories of exiled women.
To the brave souls occupying space in Sudan, Palestine, and Ukraine:
It may seem as though your fight for a free life goes unnoticed, misunderstood, or not heard at all. Yet, we see you fighting, we hear your piercing cries for freedom that ring as loudly as church bells on Sunday morning.
These days I dream of running the 8,397 miles to Sudan, walking the 6,414 miles to Ukraine
Or crawling the 7,562 miles into Palestine to hold hands with those faces who go unseen.
I see the bloody face of an old woman shouting out her husband’s name.
I hear the howling cries of the mother holding the remains of her daughter as blood runs down the crowded street.
These days I hold onto the voice of the little girl who stands in rubble as she talks into a camera about her hopes and dreams for the future of her country.
I pray for the woman dancing in the streets holding the ‘Free Palestine’ cardboard poster proudly above her head.
I understand having less, fearing tomorrow, and surviving today.
Tonight I do not light a candle in memory of those who have passed.
I shall not shed a tear for the unspoken names whose bodies go unclaimed.
Instead, I’ll write, create, and move to remember your profound ability to continue toward the light.
____________
‘Quay’ she called with her soft melodious voice bringing familiar comfort.
I knew Her right away //
This delicate yet statuesque woman of bold proportions…
her smooth skin as clear as the midnight sky.
She—the woman whose hands had rubbed my back while soothing my soul night after night |
days not so long ago.
Me—A woman child still in need of her mother’s touch.
A woman child still needing to hear her mother’s patio chime laughter.
Her She Me //
Mother
Daughter
Strangers.
Or perhaps
long-
lost friends
_________
*A note from within:
Finding the work is living between trust and letting go.
Entering the Twilight Zone
This summer felt a little Twilight Zone-y. I got the opportunity to travel to Valdez, Alaska for the annual conference there and to Ivins, Utah for the Kayenta New Play Lab — both for readings of my play The Abundance.
The play, as I’ve come around to understanding, is a horror play, though, like most things I write, I didn’t know it was horror until I shared it with a wider group of people. In one feedback session after a reading in Utah, an audience member said that the play was a like an extended Twilight Zone episode written at the height of Rod Serling’s abilities. And I truly can’t think of a better compliment I have ever (or will ever) receive.
Why am I sharing this? For bragging rights? Maybe. Partly because the way new play development goes these days, this may be the last time this play is ever performed in front of an audience. It may disappear as swiftly and suddenly as Lt. Harrington in Season 1 Episode 11 of The Twilight Zone. So I have to try to hold on to the moments that mean something to me. That make me feel like I succeeded in getting something across and clear, at least to one person.
The author Lincoln Michel wrote an article recently about the fleeting and fickle nature of literary (and in our case theatrical) fame and memory. Who decides what lasts, what is remembered, what continues to be seen, produced, read years from now. You won’t recognize the books on the best sellers list from 1924, nor probably the plays produced on stages then. Why should we assume anything we create will have meaning in 2124? And there’s an unsettling feeling in that realization. And a freeness.
Many of the episodes of The Twilight Zone that I love are about the desire for more time, about figuring out how to let go or being plucked from existence or entering a new plane of reality altogether or being forced to experience something over and over again. They are about the smallness of the horror of our existence — the beauty and terror of things that matter so much to our little lives and how they are swallowed up by the outside world.
I guess I’m ruminating on this because I don’t get invited to conferences and new play labs very often, and until its proven otherwise this may be the last summer it ever happens. It was a strange summer — to feel like I was in community with people who cared about the work, and to also feel like I don’t know where theatre is going, that it has more often than not been a fickle partner in this life, and I can’t count on it. Theatre still thinks she is quite important even in the yawning maw of everything else happening in the world. And I want to believe her when she says so, but I suppose I’m trying to stake less and less of my identity in that notion.
All I can do is enjoy the red mountains of Southern Utah, and the endless waterfalls of Alaska, and the little bit of laughter and applause that echo across them, and try to ignore that maybe I’m living in an extended Twilight Zone episode, and the moment I say out loud that there’s time enough at last…time will have run out. In case we get to the end of the episode and find out theatre was only a rumor or an illusion by Fate or an alien experiment. Or the last pitch we make to Death himself before we take his hand.
House of Cards…
by Robin Byrd
There have been earthquakes over here, shaking up my house of cards. Strange how they aren’t actually falling from their perches one upon the other, row upon row. Almost as if glued in place, they stand. Yet in the background, I can hear glass shattering from my past Northridge earthquake memories, leaving shards of glass on the bookshelf from the one broken item – my high school prom token. The glass shattered from the sheer sound of the earth shifting. The wine glass read, “Looks like we made it” from the Barry Manilow song by that name, it’s words lingering in the air:
Looks like we made it
Left each other on the way to another love
Looks like we made it
Or I thought so ’til today…
I kept the shattered token for months till I just couldn’t anymore. It was like the shattering negated something – like it stopped it in motion and throwing it away would make it final…
The past is either haunting me or resurrecting the unfinished need-to-be-finished things.
And I wonder why the cards weren’t falling…
Wonder how much more before the dam breaks and the cards come toppling down on themselves?
I keep wondering if the quake was stopping a motion or restarting something this time… if it’s a good, good or bad, bad vibration.
The heat is always sweltering before the quakes. I’ve been dehydrated for weeks. Forgetting to drink water. Forgetting to eat. Passing out. Not so much from the heat of the day as the heat of the memories, feeling I became nothing of what I dreamed I would. Feeling like sharded glass on a shelf. Hoping I will make it to another dream or the full awakening of an old one. Maybe that’s why the cards are still standing; we’re gonna make it this time, and Phyllis (Hyman) will be singing,
Old friend
This is where our happy ending begins
Yes, I’m sure this time that we’re gonna win
Welcome back into my life again
And my house, this house, stacked upon itself, will no longer be built of cards…
It’s All In The Frame
by Cynthia Wands
Nocturne, artwork by Eric Boyd
I’m sharing an image for this blog that my husband, Eric Boyd, created some years ago, and it’s a favorite of mine. The model for this beautiful image was my sister, Barbara. Eric’s legacy of artwork, in images and art glass pieces, reminds me of our evolving viewpoint, and how we frame our perception of the world.
The world has changed in profound ways in the last two weeks. I’m referring to politics, of course, and to Kamala Harris now running for president, and the newly energized Democratic Party. But I’m also referring to how I see the world, how it feels. I’m curious to see how this viewpoint will change how I write, how I grieve, how I experience theater, and how I look at character development again.
I’ve dreaded this election – the ongoing political maelstrom was depressing, infuriating, and my feeble efforts to become involved again as a pollster/volunteer seemed futile. Last year I stepped away from writing. I was finishing a script that I was initially enthused about, but writing with grief as a partner found me profoundly lost. So I just stopped writing.
In the past few months I’ve started to write again, this time working with a fiction writer’s group and it’s a very different dynamic – one I’m enjoying – although I refer to the feedback of the other writers as “puppy dogs and rattlesnakes”. (I miss my playwright comrades too.) This style of writing is a bit like wearing someone else’s clothes: they fit funny, look funny, and get a completely different response. I’m continually reminded about the crucial value of dialogue: words being offered and a change taking place because of that dynamic. And viewpoints being changed because of that interaction. Perhaps like politics this year.
Many years ago, I was cast in a movie , A LITTLE DEATH, based on THE DECAMERON, stories by Giovanni Boccaccio, written in response to the plague of 1348. I have mostly forgotten it, and misplaced most of the production stills from that project. But I recently saw that Netflix is showing a version of THE DECAMERON this month. And it reminded me of a moment that changed me.
At one point in the filming of A LITTLE DEATH, I asked the director why he was so focused on including a lit candle in the shot. It seemed all the effort to balance the light for this brief image was unnecessary. We were filming at Hammond Castle, and it was cold and damp and it was a thirteen hour day, and the crew was tired. That’s when he told me: “It’s all in the frame. How we see it, what we see, what we understand. It’s all in the frame.”
That was a moment of zen for me. I looked at this busy, crowded set where everyone just wanted to get to the next shot. And he was looking at one image, and what was revealed in the frame of the shot. How we frame what we see, how that tells us the story of what we include and focus on. It changed me.
I don’t know that the image of the lit candle created much meaning for the movie. I don’t even know if that image was included in the final version. But it was important to him. His artistry was trying to find – I don’t know – symbols? atmosphere? overtime? But I do know that he created beautiful images in the lightning and filming of this project; and I really admired what he created. (His name is Alan Ritsko, he was a Managing Director at NOVA, and he wrote the book, literally, on lighting for motion pictures: Lighting for location motion pictures: https://a.co/d/3Ec06Uu)
So – when Kamala Harris became the nominee for the Democrats – just two weeks ago – it changed how I saw the election. It changed how I saw where I belonged. So, it became for me, something that was “all in the frame”.
I managed to find two images of a young 19 year old Cynthia, from that film. I wish I remembered where I saved the rest of the production stills.
These still images from A LITTLE DEATH were taken by the photographer Francesca Morgante, who worked with Alan Ritsko on the set.
Even with all the chaos and noise in the political world,I’m going to try to find focus and meaning in the months ahead. I’m going to try to keep writing. I hope you do too.
