Interview with Playwright Cynthia Wands

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Cynthia Wands cross-examined:

LA FPI Blogger Cynthia Wands has been blogging from day one. Her use of the visual teamed with her intense depth as a writer is phenomenal.
LA FPI Blogger Cynthia Wands has been blogging since 2010. Her use of visual art teamed with her intense depth as a writer is phenomenal.

1.  How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?

I was a working actress for several years in San Francisco and Boston. As a child I loved going to see plays (a rare opportunity as my father was in the military and we moved frequently). I remember seeing the Scottish play when I was in junior high school in Northern Maine and it blew my mind. 

2.  What is your favorite play of yours? Why?

I used to think that Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” was one of my favorite plays, until I had to play Titania in a run for over 100 performances.  I would be okay never seeing that play again.  Now I tend to remember Christopher Fry’s “The Lady’s Not Burning” as a favorite, but I haven’t seen it in years – so it might be another old chestnut.

3.  What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?

I had a reading of my script “The Lost Years” at the Dramatist Guild Footlight Series in Los Angeles that was really wonderful – the cast was very special.

4.  What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

I remember sobbing at “Rabbit Hole” because of the subject matter and the performances.  It really gutted me.

5.  Who is your favorite playwright? Why?

I like Wendy Wasserstein, and Tina Howe, but I find them dated, in my own conveyor belt of time.  I also like Mary Zimmerman, but some of her writing feels thin and watery.  Maybe it was the rain onstage.

6.  How has your writing changed over the years?

I’m trying to stay away from the easy laughs.

7.  What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?

I write comedies that have a lot of drama in them.

8.  Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

I’ve written screenplays, and two novels.  They’ve informed my character research, although I have to say that my acting life informs a lot of my approach to conflict within a character’s reach.

9.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

I read a few of the blogs on the LA FPI page and thought “Wow, these women are so honest about their writing and what they live with.  I wish I could do that.”  So I did.

10.  What is your favorite blog posting?

There was a recent blog on the LA FPI from a writer who wrote that she had a planned her blog to be about being the most unsuccessful playwright ever, and just in the past few days, she had a playwrighting opportunity and that changed her.  I loved reading that.

11.  Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?

My influences are a crazy quilt of what entertains me:  Old roadrunner cartoons, Emily Dickinson, Jessica Tandy, performance art and my husband’s gothic glass art.  The images and voices inform me of my own searching.

12.  When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?

I ‘m still searching for my voice as a writer.  Sometimes I sound like my twin sister. Sometimes I sound like a sitcom writer.  And other times I can hear my own voice.

13.  Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?

I woke up at 3:30am this morning and wrote for two hours and then went back to bed. Usually I like to write late at night.  But I haven’t had the 3:30am call to write before.  I got enough down on paper that it was worth it.  Although I may feel differently by 3:30pm this afternoon.

14.  How do you decide what to write?

My subjects seem to find me.  Or chase me until I write about them. (Now apparently they find me at 3:30 in the morning…)

15.  How important is craft to you?

That’s an odd question for me – that’s like asking an actor or director how important is craft for them?  If they’re (we’re) not skilled enough to create a magical event, then it’s really not the theatre I want to help create. So I feel craft is what we use to create theatre – so I think it’s very important.

16.  What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I will sometimes read scripts as an actor for other playwrights, but that’s the extent of my participation.

17.  How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

I’m not really as engaged as I would like to be in the Los Angeles theatre community.  I have a lot of family issues on my plate and it’s a challenge to participate. And frankly, because I haven’t been “produced” in Los Angeles I feel like I don’t quite belong here.

18.  How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)

I have an ongoing battle with my back biting voices.  They can stall my work and create a kind of paralysis.  The only thing that seems to work for me is to belong to different writing groups and be accountable for showing up with pages.

19.  Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

I seem to write a lot about the duality of the human/mystic experience.  It’s hard to cram a lot of jokes in that one.

20.  What are you working on now?

I’ve been working on a “new” script for the past year.  I’m in rewrites and it feels like I’m trying to rebuild one of those Christmas gingerbread houses (oh no the marshmellows are melting all over the gumdrops).  Okay, so that was not the best image for this script.  (Again, my problem with going for the cheap joke.) But it’s probably time for a coffee and aspirin!

 

To read all articles by Cynthia Wands, go to https://lafpi.com/author/ravenchild.  Her first blog article is titled “Breaking Up An Iceberg With A Toothpick” dated October 25, 2010.

 Cynthia’s Bio

I am looking to create language based plays which explore the mystic and historic elements of our consciousness.

I worked for many years as a stage actress in San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and had the opportunity to work with some extraordinary theatre artists.  My work included plays produced at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco Rep, Celebration Theatre, and the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival.   I have also had the opportunity to read as an actor for new works for the Theatre Series on KCRW (The House In The City), and independent play readings at the Coast Playhouse (The Crimson Thread), Burbage Theatre (Pearls & Marlowe), and the Marin Playwright’s Festival (Sarah Bernhardt).

My exposure to the plays and playwrights gave me an appreciation for magical realism, and my writing explores the connection between the natural and unknown.

My theatre writing has been informed by studying with Dakota Powell at UCLA and also with Murray Mednick at the Padua Playwrights Workshop.  I have also studied playwright classes with Leon Martell at UCLA, and studied with Jack Grapes in his Method Writing classes.

I have developed scripts at the Ohio State University retreat for playwrights with the ICWP (International Center fro Women’s Playwrights). The Dramatist Guild has hosted a reading of “The Lost Years” in November 2007 for Footlight Series in Los Angeles.

I am a member of The Dramatist Guild, ALAP (Alliance for Los Angeles Playwrights), LAFPI (Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative) and ICWP (International Centre for Women Playwrights).  My theatre works include:  Best Fest Forward, The Lost Years, Emily, and The American Woman. Screenplays include:  Whitley Heights, The Wedding Ring, and The White Datura.

I am the author of two novels, Gift of Afternoon Light, and Improbable Fiction.  My short stories have been published in Mo+h Magazine and Bombshelter Press.

Interview with Playwright Jen Huszcza

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Jen Huszcza detained for questioning:

Jen Huszcza
LA FPI Blogger Jen Huszcza has been blogging with us since 2010. Her dry humor and wit is a gift we like opening again and again and again.

I just finished up my blog week, so this makes me feel so self-indulgent.

How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater?

It was all a big mistake actually. I should be a screenwriter with a house in the hills and a BMW. I studied screenwriting in college but jumped over to playwriting because the playwrights were cooler than the screenwriters.

What is your favorite play of yours?  Why?

My favorite play is always the play I finished most recently. My most recent play is a short play called Rebec, CA, and it brings a smile to my face. I smashed a smartphone in that one. I also recently wrote a longer play called Bury That Horse, and it’s about kicking and kissing.

What is your favorite production of one of your plays?  Why?

My favorite production is my first production of my first play, Viper, back at NYU. That was the play that opened it all up for me. It was done in the Dramatic Writing Festival of New Works, and it had an outstanding director, cast, crew. It was beautiful both in process and result.

By the way, shout out to Gary Garrison who produced the New Works Festival back then. He did an outstanding job of surrounding my play with great people.

What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

Back in the 90s, I saw Letters from Cuba by Maria Irene Fornes at the Signature Theatre in New York and was crying like a baby at the end because it was so beautiful. Fornes also directed the production.

Who is your favorite playwright?  Why?

This is a hard one. I have a core team of playwrights that I love. If I get stuck when I’m writing, I call the team—I’m speaking metaphorically since most of my team is dead.

How has your writing changed over the years?

My plays have become less expensive to produce.

What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it?

Crazy, sexy, cool plays. I love physicality. I love writing plays set outside. I love comedy, but I don’t set out to write comedy. I believe experimentation should be done in playwriting. Otherwise, what’s the point? I write women, men, animals. I’ve even gone into vegetables a few times, but they’re hard.

Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

Yes, I have written long form prose, novels, screenplays, musicals, blogs, essays, short stories. Long form prose & novels: big canvases, I’m comfortable with the epic. Screenplays: condense. Musicals: respect for the lyrical, comfort with the drama in music, impatience with over-sentimentality. Blogs & essays: cohesive thought, what do I want to say. Short stories: character depth.

Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

It seemed like a fun thing to do.

What is your favorite blog posting?

Back in January 2012, I wrote about the Kobayashi Maru Scenario.

https://lafpi.com/2012/01/the-kobayashi-maru-scenario/

Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process?

I don’t have a writing regiment, but I do have a reading regiment. I read daily.

How important is craft to you?

I used to think craft was not important, then I read play submissions for a variety of theatre companies. Yikes. I can be experimental, but I have a grounding in craft. Writing is no different from anything else. If you want to crochet a scarf, you need to learn the stitches. If you want to paint, you need to learn line and color. Craft is the basics. I also have found that craft comes in handy when you’re developing scripts with actors and directors.

What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I’ve worked box office for a variety of theatres. Trust me, box office is not a cushy job.

How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

Great acting pool.

Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

I have a bag of tricks. There are things I go back to again and again, but I don’t reflect a lot on recurring themes or ideas. Maybe when I’m older, I’ll look back, but I’m not in a looking back stage right now.

What are you working on now?

I am writing a play for an actor friend of mine. It has death and kissing. That’s really all I can say. I’m in the middle of it.

 

For more blog articles by Jen Huszcza, go to https://lafpi.com/author/jen-huszcza/.  Her first blog article is titled Yes, Sure, Okay, Yes dated June 14, 2010.

Jen’s Bio

Jen Huszcza is a playwright currently based in Los Angeles.

She has a BFA in Dramatic Writing and an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU. After graduating from college, she stayed in New York and worked a variety of day jobs including video librarian and study guide writer. She eventually moved to Los Angeles for better weather and more trees.

Out in Los Angeles, three of her plays have been presented as staged readings in the Monday Night Living Room Series at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood. Also at the Blank, she was an Associate Producer on Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, and she was a Weekly Producer and Playwright Mentor for the Young Playwrights Festival.

She wrote and acted in Gunfighter Nation’s collectively written piece, LA History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, presented at the Lost Studio.

She is a script reader for a variety of theatre companies. She is a member of the Playwrights and Directors Lab at the Actors Studio West.

In addition to plays, she has written ad copy, film reviews, blogs, bad poetry, screenplays, a novel, and several short stories.

She has heard numerous pronunciations of her last name, but the one she prefers is Hooo-zhah.

Interview with Playwright Jessica Abrams

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Jessica Abrams interrogation:  

Jessica Abrams
LA FPI Blogger Jessica Abrams started out as a guest blogger during the Los Angeles Fringe Festival in 2012. We’re glad she stayed with us to add to the many voices here on the blog.

1.  How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater? I was a dancer after college, but after finding myself in Italy with a sketchy Vegas-type show, I decided the time had come to hang up my dancing shoes… and write about the experience. It led me to screenplays, and some TV, but the heartbreak of not seeing my work produced made me write plays. And in a way, I came home because theatre was where I came from…

2.  What is your favorite play of yours?  Why? My play Easter in Tel Aviv is my favorite play because it represents where I am as a playwright now.  It’s also an example of a story being born from a very specific — and slightly messy– situation that, one day, revealed itself to me as a play.

3.  What is your favorite production of one of your plays?  Why? I haven’t had that many… but I’ll say this: every time a group of actors come together and speak my words, something new and magical is revealed.

4.  Who is your favorite playwright?  Why? It’s so tough to say… Tennessee Williams is at or close to the top.  He gave us such iconic characters, who spoke such a colloquial language expressing desires that, even then, weren’t often readily expressed.  he gave them the right to be profane, to be base, to be real.

5.  How has your writing changed over the years? I’d like to think it gets closer to expressing that core question I have at the center of who I am, the one that prompted me to write in the first place — not necessarily answering it, just asking it.

6.  What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it? I write — or aim to write — comedic stories with a dramatic arc.  I try — emphasis on try — to walk that line between comedy and drama… to find funny moments in slightly tragic situations, moments that don’t call for laughs, but for recognition — “oh, shit, I do that too” — the deep belly laughs that we know means  a nerve has been touched.

7.  Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting? I write personal essays and TV stuff.  I find playwriting to be much more free, and often feel restricted for instance when writing for the screen — that ‘get in, get out’ idea always hampers me.

8.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI? I LOVE this community.  I’m so grateful for it.  To be able to commune in this way, to share stories and touch a nerve with other playwrights — it’s a thing of beauty.  I also love  the freedom of blogging, but also having deadlines.

9. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why? So many people — mostly my creative network and the way it inspires me.  other female playwrights who are just doing the work, every day.  I am humbled and inspired by them.

10. When did you find your voice as a writer?  Are you still searching for it? I thought I found it in my first play.  Then, writing the second, I found it again.  I continue to “find” it, because even if it’s in me, it’s also lodged somewhere in the story, in its tone, in how its characters are feeling and acting… so it’s constant process of discovery.

11. Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process? It’s not a good one lately.  I haven’t written a play in a while.  Right now I’m working on a spec screenplay and a spec TV pilot and I tend to get work done in spurts, mostly after 3 PM because I feel like crap in the morning, usually.  I have a lot of guilt around my willy nilly schedule of late — is that obvious?

12. How do you decide what to write? It comes to me — characters, situations…

13. How important is craft to you? You know… yes and no.

14. What other areas of theater do you participant in? I’m an actress, which I came to fairly late in life, but which really rounds me out as a storyteller.

15. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?  I think it’s vast, and that makes me so happy, knowing there’s so much creativity happening in a city dedicated to that ‘other’ storytelling mode.  That said, I wish it had more pride and confidence in itself.  I wish it would solidify as just that: a theatre community, rather than let its voice be in the hands of the ‘establishment’ — CTG, etc.  Some of the best theatre I’ve seen here was in a small theatre, often 49-seat house.  Those artists need to be supported, in terms of audience, monies and award recognition.

16. How do you battle the negative voice?  (insecurity, second guessing) I meditate, say mantras, prayers, and novenas.  I also keep in touch with fellow creative souls who understand that voice and battle it themselves.  I used to have a daily calll with a fellow actress, just to bolster each other.  I need to do that again.

17. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work? Yes — the theme of self-discovery.  identity.

18. What are you working on now?  I’m working on a screenplay and a TV pilot and I need to get back to writing plays ASAP.

 

For other blog articles by Jessica Abrams you can go to https://lafpi.com/author/jessilou/.  Her very first blog post is titled THE WOMEN OF TU-NA HOUSE at The Hollywood Fringe  dated 2012/06/17.

Jessica’s Bio

Jessica Abrams’ play The Laughing Cow had its world premiere this past April at the Meta Theatre on Melrose and received Pick of the Week by LA Weekly. Her short play, Melissa, is currently part of New American Theatre’s Short Play Festival in Los Angeles. The First To Know (the full-length play of which Melissa is a part) was read in the MaD Play Reading Series last Spring, and her solo piece If I Look This Good, Why Do I Feel Like Sh*t? was read at the ExAngeles Writers Collective’s A Month of Sundays Reading Series this past October. Her television writing credits include The Profiler for NBC and Watch Over Me for Fox/MyNetworkTV. She was a guest artist at the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in 2010 and is a co-founder of the New Leaf Endeavors Theatre Company. She attended Barnard College of Columbia University in Manhattan.

Interview with Playwright Nancy Beverly

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Nancy Beverly answers 20 questions:

Nancy Beverly
Playwright Nancy Beverly has blogged for LA FPI since the beginning of the blog in April of 2010. Nancy is a diverse voice that you don’t want to miss.

1.  How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater?

Mad Magazine.  No kidding.  My friend Gena and I would read it out loud into a tape recorder.  We’d also make up our own stories and fake ads and tape those as well.  I also got tapped on the shoulder (literally) by my grade school principal to be in a stage presentation (it wasn’t exactly a play, more like a patriotic celebration) because he’d seen what a live wire I was just in the hallways of school.

2.  What is your favorite play of yours?  Why?

It’s always the one I’m currently involved in — in this case it’s my nutty comedy called COMMUNITY.  When I’ve heard it out loud and when I read it to myself, I just fall down laughing.

3.  What is your favorite production of one of your plays?  Why?

Too hard to pick.  It’s more like I have favorite moments — Lisa Temple doing the monologue “My New Best Friend” — again, I literally fell out of my chair laughing; Hannah Crum and Mandy Dunlap doing “Happy Wanderer” and I’m brought to tears…

4.  What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

EXTRAORDINARY CHAMBERS that I saw at the Geffen (Robin & Jennie were there that night!).  Horror was conveyed so simply (a monologue near the end of the piece with hundreds of photos on display behind the actor).

5.  Who is your favorite playwright?  Why?

Don’t have one, I just enjoy plays on a moment by moment basis.

6.  How has your writing changed over the years?

Yep.  A lot more depth now.  I’m not afraid of emotions like I was when I was a kid.

7.  What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it?

Dramas filled with comedy.  I like linear storytelling, so my stuff isn’t avant-guarde or experimental.

8.  Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

I’ve written screenplays, a webseries, a lot of essays… the truth is the truth.  Still trying to figure out how to be effective with the screenplay, though.

9.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

The energy in the room at Topanga during our first meeting, all of us crammed together in a dressing room, shivering, and yet in high spirits.  What a great group.  I wanted to be part of it.

10. What is your favorite blog posting?

Can’t pick just one, but the moments when I learn something about myself when I’m writing the blog come to mind.  (Same is true of my plays, I always end up learning something.)  That said, one that I wrote last year called “Less is More” about a final rehearsal of OF MICE AND MEN where they had no props, no costumes, no furniture and yet I was a puddle of tears at the end… is a fond one for me.

11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?

Whatever play I’ve just seen.  If something’s really good, I’m in my theatre seat thinkin’ “Oooo, I wanna do that!”

12. When did you find your voice as a writer?  Are you still searching for it?

When I wrote A NEW YOU, my first produced full-length.  The voice is always a work-in-progress, and actually, writing is more about finding the voice of the characters in the play, not about finding MY voice.

13. Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process?

If I’m working on a play, then every free night and several hours on the weekend get devoted to it.  I have a quote on my desk from Woody Allen that I’ve had posted since grad school.  In part it reads, “It’s the steadiness that counts.”

14. How do you decide what to write?

Man, it really has to GRAB me.  If an idea is superficial and won’t take me deep into the water, then I won’t work on it for all of the months it takes to make something good.  It has to be a puzzle to figure out, not pre-digested and formulaic.

15. How important is craft to you?

Very.  I re-read parts of Buzz MacLaughlin’s The Playwright’s Process every time I’m working on something new.

16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I’ve done performance art and took classes to develop pieces with Danielle Brazell (former Artisic Director at Highways).  Loved it.  Loved creating something in the moment inspired by just the slimmest of suggestions.

17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles? 

It feels like a real community — witness the Fringe Festival last year.

18. How do you battle the negative voice?  (insecurity, second guessing)

Go see inspirational theatre.  Go to my writers’ group Fierce Backbone every Monday night in support of my fellow writers.  “It’s the steadiness that counts.”

19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

Yes — there is joy, love, contentment, satisfaction in the present moment.  Not the past, not the future.

20. What are you working on now?

Finding a director (AGAIN) for my film SHELBY’S VACATION.  And keeping my fingers crossed for the production of my play COMMUNITY.

 

To read all LA FPI blog articles by Nancy Beverly go to https://lafpi.com/author/nancybeverly/.  Her very first blog article is titled “Go On Anyway” dated April 25, 2010.  You can find it here. 

Nancy’s Bio

In addition to Cloud’s Rest,which is part of the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival through the writer/actor group Fierce Backbone, Nancy Beverly’s most recent theatrical adventure is her play Community, a comedy that takes place at a community theatre, where, on opening night, everything that can go wrong, does. It’s slated for a full production from Fierce Backbone in 2013.

Her most recent award was the selection of her screenplay Shelby’s Vacation for a staged reading in July 2011 in Randolph, Vermont, under the auspices of Pride Films and Plays which operates out of Chicago – and the same script made the semi-finals for the Chicago readings.

In 2010 her one-act Chicago (a.k.a. The Happy Wanderer), was part of “Shorts and Briefs,” a sold-out afternoon of play readings at the Stella Adler’s Gilbert Theatre that were all written and directed by women. The venture grew out of a discussion she, Jan O’Connor and Mary Casey had earlier in the year about the sorry state of women getting their plays produced. They decided to do something about it.

“Shorts and Briefs” was produced under the banner of The L.A. Women’s Theatre Project. Additionally, Beverly’s full-length play Handcrafted Healing was featured in L.A.W.T.P.’s dynamic weekend of play readings in October 2009 – again, all written and directed by women. Beverly developed Handcrafted Healing through Playwrights 6, a writer-run group in Los Angeles, where she was a member from 2001 until 2009.

In August 2007, also in conjunction with P6, Beverly produced her drama Godislav at the Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica for a month-long run. Additionally, Godislav had the honor of being chosen in 2006 to be part of the Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region in Denver.

West Hollywood’s Celebration Theatre gave Beverly’s coming-of-age dramady A New You its world-premiere in the summer of 2001.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Beverly worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville as the Assistant Literary Manager. While at ATL, she had several short plays produced in ATL’s twice-yearly short play showcase. Attack of the Moral Fuzzies, one of those 10-minute comedies, was published in an ATL anthology of short works and has been performed several times a year for 25 years by theatres all around the U.S. and Canada.

Beverly has also written for the Showtime series Women, knocked out 70 articles for the how-to website ehow.com, conducted radio interviews for KPFK’s weekly show IMRU, and gotten up and done performance art under the direction of Danielle Brazell, the former Artistic Director of the performance space Highways in Santa Monica.

She’s also worked in network television as an executive producer’s assistant on and pitched stories to such hit shows as Desperate Housewives and Ghost Whisperer.

HAPPY 3-YEAR ANNIVERSARY LAFPI BLOG!

LAFPI, , ,

The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative Blog has been going strong for 3 years.  The blog started April 19, 2010 with our first blog post of “Being a Playwright, Being Female“.  The purpose of the blog is to give the Los Angeles theater community a place to come to get to know the playwrights.  We thought it would be nice to ask them all a few questions about their lives as playwrights and this week we will post the responses.

The authentic voice of a playwright is worth its weight in gold yet it is hard to measure when it is not given a place in the miner’s pan… 

Enjoy. Thanks for reading.

 

Wild Women

LAFPI, playwriting, , ,

I have just three bits of business before I finish up my blog week.

First of all, I highly recommend Cheryl Strayed’s memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s called Wild, and it’s a fun read. I saw Cheryl Strayed read at the Central Library downtown as part of the Aloud Series this past Wednesday, and it was great fun with a room full of adventurous folks.

I have a story that I want to share. The event was free, but you had to make a reservation online. However, all the reservations were booked, so you had to show up and get a standby number. When I showed up forty minutes before the event, all the standby numbers were taken and there was a long line of people with reservations. Since I didn’t have to be anywhere else, I decided to just hang out and see what happens. So I was leaning against a wall and talking to people when a woman in a gold shirt came up to me and gave me her ticket. It wasn’t a standby ticket but an actual ticket ticket. I thanked her profusely and walked in. Sometimes I should not ask how or why. Sometimes I should just go with it. Thank you lady in a gold shirt. Nice top by the way.

In other news. I had mentioned at the beginning of the week that I had no playwriting stuff happening until Tiffany Antone emailed me. I do have other writing stuff happening. I recently launched my second ebook. It’s a book of short stories about women in Los Angeles, and it’s written by my internet superheroine persona. It’s available exclusively for Amazon Kindle, and you can find it here.

Finally, looking ahead to tomorrow (Saturday), I plan to be at the LAFPI gathering at Samuel French Bookstore on Sunset in West Hollywood. It’s happening 1-4 in the afternoon. The first person who says the word, Tundra, to me gets a quarter.

Joy by Regina Leonard

playwriting, Uncategorized,

 

When I’m writing, I sometimes take a facebook break. I don’t stay on facebook too long, but I figure a facebook break is healtier than the cigarette breaks I used to take back when I smoked.

One day recently, a link to a youtube video of a song that my friend Regina Leonard (a great singer/songwriter) wrote popped up on my facebook. I clicked and watched. By the end of the song, I was in a happy place.

Regina Leonard is one of those awesome people that one meets every so often. I met her a few years ago at the Lost Studio. She’s fearless and fun as heck too. It is not surprising that she wrote a song called Joy.

So if you need a break from writing, here’s a great song to listen to:

Here’s the youtube link and her facebook page. Happy stuff

My Awesome Place: An Autobiography of Cheryl B

Poetry, ,

I recently read a great book that I just have to recommend to you all. It’s called My Awesome Place: An Autobiography of Cheryl B, and it’s an excellent portrait of a young writer finding her voice and her awesome place in the world.

I knew Cheryl B back in the nineties at NYU. She went on to become a playwright, poet, and spoken word artist in New York. Sadly, she passed away way too soon in 2011.

When I finished this book, I felt I had to pass it on. It’s the kind of book that should be passed around. Then I started to get all poetical in the head. . .

This book is for that girl, that girl who’s too fat, too shy, not a straight A overachieving high school student. This book is for that girl who gets told she’ll never be anything except a toll booth fare taker. This book is for that girl whose parents don’t understand or maybe sort of do but can’t talk about it because the words don’t come out right. This book is for that girl who dreams of being more than what everyone around her thinks she can be even though she doesn’t know how to do it exactly. This book is for that girl and her friend and her friend’s friend. This book should be passed around while music’s blasting and the pages should get stained with beer, cigarettes, weed, and aquanet. This book shows that girl how to get to that awesome place.

You can get My Awesome Place on the Topside Press website.

Most Unsuccessful Playwright Ever

playwriting, , ,

Yep, right here. Most unsuccessful playwright ever. And I hate superlatives.

Hello Lafpiers,

It’s my blog week here on LAFPI. So I had a whole big comic riff planned for my Monday post. I had planned to talk about how I had absolutely nothing happening in my playwriting world and how I was now aiming for a lack of success instead of success and how once I realized that I became a happier person even though to desire a lack of success instead of success is very un-American.

Then last week I got an email from Tiffany Antone. Darn you, Tiffanyyyyyy!

Tiffany is producing an evening of plays about pets, and I had sent her some monologues which I had totally forgotten about. Anyway, she’s putting my monologues in her pet play evening and would I be interested in writing another monologue?

Of course I wrote another monologue. So now, I have something theatrical happening and I can no longer be the most unsuccessful playwright ever. I’m bummed. I’m seriously bummed.

Meanwhile, on the cover of the most recent LA Weekly was a drawing of William Shakespeare with a laptop and the headline: Why Be a Playwright in LA? Inside, Steven Leigh Morris wrote a very engaging profile of four Los Angeles based playwrights. The article can be found here.

Personally, I’ve never been very good at being a playwright. I can’t figure out the secret handshake, and my wardrobe is all wrong. I just like to write plays that are crazy, sexy, cool.

But I could relate to the LA part of the headline. I’ve been looking around LA and asking myself why am I here? Sure there’s a great acting pool, but great actors can be found all over the world. Sure seventy degree February days are nice, but so is rain. Why am I in LA? I don’t have a witty answer for that one. I just know it’s April 2013, and I’m still in LA.

SNAPSHOT: A True Story of Love Interrupted By Invasion

Playwright, Uncategorized

Sinnott 2 higher res

Mitzi Sinnott has a big story to tell.  Mitzi Sinnott has the kind of story that a writer would kill for, a story that makes most other personal journey tell-alls seem somewhat trivial.  But like all big stories one lives through, the price paid for doing just that — and coming out on the other side — makes the gift of the story that much more deserving (even to those envious writers among us).

In her one-woman show, Snapshot: A True Story of Love Interrupted by Invasion, Mitzi Sinnott tells the story of growing up in the South as the daughter of a white mother and black father.  There’s enough story right there for a novel and sequel, but Mitzi’s father was sent to Vietnam, and the man that returned was not the vital, artistic, loving man she knew, but a haunted shell who was ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Mitzi’s attempts to get to know her father led her to Hawaii where he was living and to coping with the death of the man as she knew him.

She tells this story through re-enacting moments of her childhood: of facing schoolmates who taunt her for being the product of a mixed marriage, of a mother who does her best to keep it together in those challenging circumstances.  She gives us a glimpse into her father’s days in the all-black barracks as he sends letters — and love — to his family back home.  She deftly moves between the roles of unsure enlisted, worried mother, bullying schoolmate, scared little girl and confident storyteller.  And she does it with humor and levity.

That’s the thing: despite the weighty subject matter, Mitzi never asks for our sympathy or pity.  Rather, using various tools to tell the story (projected images, the re-enacting of key moments, even dance), Mitzi shares this rocky journey as opposed to dumping it mercilessly.  It helps that the woman we see in front of us is a sheer delight, brimming with confidence, glowing with the desire to let us in, because we know she made it through to the other side, a better person — not to mention, storyteller — for it.

The gift of her burden will pay her, and her audience, back many times over.

Snapshot: The True Story of Love Interrupted By Invasion plays Thursdays through Sundays through April 21 at the Greenway Court Theatre.

— Jessica Abrams