Things from the Writing Box…

Playwright, playwriting, Poetry, , ,

In the early nineties, I began my quest to look at my heritage and find more pieces of what makes me who I am.  I imagined that any journey toward that knowledge would be good for my little box of things to write.  One day while home from my day job, a man stepped out from between two cars in front of me.  I had to swerve to miss him.  Later that night in my apartment, I had a visitation from the man in the street. Not his physical self but his spirit or so it seemed.  I write about things of the spirit a lot in my work…it just shows up – like he did.  I have been trying to put the vision I had that night in a play but am not sure when, where or how to enter as I really do not want a literal interpretation of that experience.  I want to capture how I felt in those moments…  Over the years, I’ve tried different things but can never quite get that, “this is it” feeling.  Two years ago, I wrote this poem:

the Medicine Man

he stepped out from between the cars

with his staff

magnificent, authentic, ancient, familiar

he was tall like my uncle huron

with chiseled facial features

in headdress/ high moccasins/ native attire/ regal/ warrior-like

the feathers hanging from the staff caught my eye first

they were real

and i wondered if they were eagle

then i noticed that he was looking directly at me as i approached

our eyes locked for an instant/ for an eternity

my car seemed to be driving through a time warp

as i slowly passed him there in the street

looking through me to some place

we must have met before

in the rearview mirror

he turned his entire body to watch me drive away

i could not watch the road for watching him

he was a shaman/a medicine man, i knew

but why was he looking at me

did he know me/ daughter to native ancestors

i should have stopped/asked

later that night as i lay on the floor in prayer

i could hear and feel footsteps vibrating on the floor

moving toward me

a hologram in moccasins was all that i could see

his…

he placed one foot on the back of my head and pushed me into a vision

of the past

afraid/ unable to resist/ unable to move from the floor from the smoke

what is that?

i could hear the rattlers and sounds of war

the screaming women and children

i could smell the smoke and see its fog

then it lifted just enough for me to see

i was there dressed in buckskin

lying face down in the rubble

watching the boy as he searched through it for

his family

i was there

he knew me, daughter to native ancestors…

he knew me…

As a writer, do you ever wonder just how long a story can germinate before you can write it?  Have you ever come up against any story that just doesn’t seem to have an “in”? What do you do?  One of the greatest things about theatre is that the playwright doesn’t have to limit their approach to conventional ways in order to write their story.  Stuff just needs to be pulled out of the box, lived with for a while and looked at it from several angles…

 

 

A Place of Strength…

Playwright, , , ,

“Don’t lose your footing. Find your place of strength. Take time to identify those things that anchor your soul.”  —   Dr. Cindy Trimm

Often life goes full speed ahead – with or without you.  You can be so wrapped up in keeping up you don’t take the time to renew yourself.  Then, before you know it, out of the seemingly blue, you hit a wall and find yourself dazed and confused about how you got there.  You know you have gotten off track…  You know you aren’t yourself.  You know you’ve been missing you for a while.  You know that wall really didn’t just show up out of nowhere, you felt it coming but just didn’t stop yourself from walking into it.  You told yourself to “fake it till you make it;” which worked for a while – till the residue from the build-up of not taking a rest became so thick visibility was lost…

Now you’re at that wall, face in or butt down, and you’ve got to pull yourself back together again, got to find your place of strength…  You’re so far away from yourself, your normal avenues to renew and press just haven’t been working (to be honest, you haven’t been using them, hence the residue build-up).  What do you do?  How do you get your feet back on solid ground and get back to you?  How do you find a place of strength that will help you right here, right now?

I have a favorite passage of scripture, from Jeremiah that was ringing in my head as I found myself getting up off the ground recently:

16 Thus says the Lord: “Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it;
Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not listen.’

Jeremiah 6:16   New King James Version (NKJV)

This verse – taken completely out of the context of the story in Jeremiah but completely in context for me because I was not paying attention to how far away I was getting from my stress releasing regiments  – helped me get back to me.  I had been ignoring my own warning flags – my failsafe anchors that keep me from losing my footing.  I wasn’t taking time to read things that feed my soul, that recharge me and encourage me.  I wasn’t getting out in nature to simply enjoy the air and growing things or checking on/hooking up with family and friends…all the things that seem like nothing special but are…

A place of strength is where you go to find renewal, redemption, and hope…  It is a right now place…

The first thing I did to get back to there was pray.  Not my regular prayers I had been praying everyday for myself but the “can we talk” prayer where I pulled out by backstory, looked at the character traits, and examined the plot.  Repented.  Where did I veer from the natural flow of things?  Where did I lose my footing?  Examined myself with unabridged honesty.  Truth does set you free; it allows you to reset your pace and rewrite…  It allows you to get back to you no matter how far away you think you have gotten…

My place of strength is staying connected to me, to God, and to my backstory that informs the plot points in my life – plot points that can change if needed…

 

Time Spent…

Playwright, playwriting,

There are long nights of writing and longer nights of thinking about writing.  All seem to run together as I work out story bits, running plot lines in my head, listening to dialogue, visiting the people who live first in my mind then on the page.  A lot of time is spent working through a preliminary story, till it flows just right … If I could add up the hours spent before my computer, wonder how many times I could cross the earth with it.  It gets old – the constant push – but the time spent doing my craft is so much a part of me, too much time away from it makes me disoriented.  Funny, I can imagine myself day-job-less but I can never imagine myself not writing…

Time well spent is my daily goal; no matter the discomfort, it’s worth all the long nights needed to create that next perfect line…

Take the Small/99-Seat Theatre Survey

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Brenda Varda has asked LA FPI to participate in her Small/99-Seat Theatre Survey and to help get the word out about it.

Ms. Varda is doing a trial version of this survey to look at arts participation in the intimate theatre scene in Los Angeles.  She is writing some academic analysis on the cultural and personal functions of the Scene and getting more participants (women) would lend some more credibility to the exploration. If you are attached to any companies, tangentially or integrally, that would help the cause.  You can take the survey at one of the following links:

The Pain Principle

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This is a blog post about an acting class, a play being turned into a screenplay, and some flying Chihuahuas.

I had acting class two nights ago.  I love my acting class.  My acting class is my therapy, social hour, Barbie dream house and spiritual retreat in one three-and-a-half-hour time slot.  When I come out of my acting class all I want to do is act, but the next day, well, I have to write.  Correction: I don’t have to, but that’s what I do, right?  I’m a writer.   And yet I crave that instantly gratifying experience that gets me out of my head and ends with people applauding.  Or saying “Cut.  Nice job.”

I am turning a play of mine into a screenplay.  It’s not easy — and by that I mean the writing.  Any writing, lest we forget.  To sit alone and let these characters of our own making speak, especially if no one really cares if they do or not — no easy feat.  And this has been particularly tough for me.  It’s not just that I’ve had a taste of a storytelling process that doesn’t involve one of the most dangerous people I know (me) playing with one of the most dangerous weapons I know (my brain) — it’s that I’m still waiting for that flow, that zone.  And forty pages in, it’s nowhere to be found.  The usual sinister ramblings of the writer mind whisper in my ear: the character is boring.  The story is boring.  The tone is off — one minute flip, the next maudlin, depending on my mood.  And the worst: how does this in any way contribute to the general good of the world?  Particularly if this gridlock puts me in such a crappy mood that I’m pissed off at everyone I come into contact with?

So yesterday, having had one too many of such moments, I decide to shake things up and really contribute.  Give back.  I don real clothes, as opposed to sweats, and head to the animal shelter to volunteer.  This is where the Chihuahuas come in.  I go to help an organization fly twenty of them to New Hampshire where they’ll be adopted as opposed to euthanized.  On the car ride over, I consider the possibility of “taking a break” from writing and devoting my life to being of service full-time.

Anyone been to the county-run animal shelter lately?  Let’s just say it’s not for the overly sensitive and highly hormonal.  But I help.  Get my clothes dirty.  Give and get love and do my best to implore each of those little creatures to hang tight, because a beautiful life is on the other side of six hours in a cargo hold.  I also run into the bathroom every half hour to sob my eyes out.

Three and a half hours later — as long as an acting class but not quite as euphoria-enhancing — I come home.  I uncork a bottle of wine to put things in perspective.  It dawns on me: Who am I kidding?  I can’t put the pen down.  I’ll wrestle this script to the ground if I have to.  Besides, while I certainly think volunteering is a fantastic way to spend time, isn’t this my contribution, my gift to the world?

If I had to find a moral to the story — and being a writer I always try to — I’d say that in some way we writers are like those flying Chihuahuas.  We sort of have to sit with the discomfort and understand it’s not a permanent state.  Somewhere on the other side lies something beautiful.

Or not.  But we have no choice but to go through it.  Or we die.

Someday I’ll wish upon a star

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Reflecting this morning after the Thanksgiving I enjoyed with my family yesterday, I realize November is my favorite month of the year. I love the colors, the scents, the food, the California weather, and coming together.

 

November feels different than other months to me. I love the symbolism of the coming winter solstice. For although I wish the days lasted forever, I feel an ache of anticipation for new beginnings.

 

New beginnings, November leads to December. Then, because my school calendar breaks for winter, I look forward to being at home writing the rough beginnings of a new play. Other months do not seem to gift me the same opportunity.

 

New beginnings, as I realize I’ve got a 10-minute play selected for publication and a second short in consideration for another. I’ve got a musical (or play with music) in consideration for a 2013 production. Another play is being read by two theater companies.

 

Many of my bounties are dreams and will remain there of this I am quite aware. However, I have been writing plays for over ten years now, and I’m getting better at it. My themes are expanding beyond myself and beginning to take on a global scope.

 

I haven’t met up with most of you for a while due to time, distance, and disability. However, I always look forward to my turn as blogger so I can in some small way communicate with you. I write this post with the hope that your Thanksgiving is as quietly joyful, reflective, and filled with a million bounties.

 

Somewhere Over The Rainbow performed by Carly Rose Sonenclar, X Factor 2012

 

Taking off my playwright’s hat

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It’s been four years since I last directed a stage production, not counting working with students. While I received excellent reviews back in 2008, the experience itself was questionable. Since then, I have been fortunate to participate in the process of several staged readings of my works and I am eternally grateful to the directors, Tam Warner and Cyndy Marion, for those wonderful experiences.

My 10-minute play, “A Waffle Doesn’t Cure Insomnia”, was selected for a staged reading by the OCPA Discoveries series and will be presented at the Empire Theatre, the home of Theatre Out, on December 1, 2012 at 3:30 pm. And I am directing. And the process has been fabulous. Although I will admit to some insecurities, apparently, I haven’t driven my actors crazy, but inspired them.
Occurs to me, it’s all about expectations. Having none, other than showing up ready to work, is a healthy way to start. Over the last four years it seems I’ve learned to put aside the play in my head and respect the actors’ instruments in front of me and adapt my expectations to their physicality and musicality. I say I would never direct a production, but who knows, you know?

So, now, I’m a playwright?!

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After pronouncing I would dedicate myself to writing only full-length plays, I wrote a 10-minute play, “A Waffle Doesn’t Cure Insomnia”, in the summer/fall of 2011, and promptly forgot about it. I did remember it in time to revise it and submit it around this fall.

I received word last week that the play was selected for publication in the Best American Short Plays 2011-2012 along with a contract and a request for a bio, production history, and my inspiration for writing it. I am going to receive some money and two copies of the anthology; hard copy and paperback. So, now, I’m a playwright. Wow!!!

I am so excited I can hardly stand it for I will be “legitimately” included in my college library collection and university and college libraries around the country; the library where I work has collected this series since 1990…
So, should I scan the check and cash it or frame it? Or should I exchange the check for a bill and frame it? Or should I exchange the check for a bill, scan it and frame it, and spend the money on a piece of equipment or software? Or buy something frivolous, like a new pair of boots? What do you think?

Alpha Beta

LAFPI, News, , , , ,

I just read this article, through a tweet from Etta Devine. It is truly not to be believed.

“I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.

where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females. 

i believe in manliness.” 

Read in full:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/foreignc/2012/11/post-2.html

Video interview w/ Jen Bloom: Dramatizing the Complexities of an Abusive Relationship

Audience, LAFPI, , , , ,

Talk with Santa Monica Rep’s Director & Actor

“Love Story, Tragedy or Epic Tale of Survival?:
Dramatizing the Complexities of an Abusive Relationship

Mid-run of How I Learned to Drive, there will be a post show talk back with Gail Myers, MFT, a therapist panel and director Jen Bloom
Should this story be onstage? In 1997, Paula Vogel’s play How I Learned to Drive showed us how empathy and pedophilia can exist in the same conversation, and that storytelling as a form of reclaiming memories can be a tool towards self-empowerment. Ms. Vogel stated that she didn’t want her audiences to know before coming to the theater what the story was about, that she wanted them to “take a ride they didn’t know they were taking.” This Saturday, Santa Monica Rep will host an all female panel of three child and family therapists who work with sexual abuse trauma cases to facilitate an audience talk-back after the play. Join a discussion around the actual facts and gray areas of child sexual abuse and PTSD. Weigh in on whether or not you think this kind of story should be on stage and why or why not, and what are the responsibilities of the audience and the theater maker about supporting, producing or attending this type of potentially dangerous traumatic content. This should be a fascinating and provocative evening of theater and discussion. The conversations around the show have already been illuminating; audiences have stayed in the theater and spoken in small informal groups about their reactions and artistic/therapeutic concerns every night for almost an hour. Read more about the panel discussion after the performance on Nov 17 at 8pm.