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

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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.

The Bechdel Test Talks continued

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The Bechdel Test Talks began HERE, on LA FPI, in June.

Now a monthly series where my co-hosts and I look at various types of entertainment through the lens of The Bechdel Test. Etta Devine & Caroline Sharp join me every month!

The Bechdel Test asks 3 basic questions for every story (originally applied to film):

1. Is there more than 1 female character (with a name)?

2. Do they talk to each other?

3. About anything besides men?

These perimeters are not meant to be judgement calls, but simply starting points for discussion.

Today at 4pm PT, we’ll discuss Fantasy & Science Fiction!

[Video link available at 3:55pmPT]

Watch Bechdel Test Talk Ep3: Children’s Stories

Watch Bechdel Test Talk Ep4: Who’s Breaking the Gender Glass Ceiling?

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See the full schedule

Subscribe to YouTube
http://bit.ly/theCMJstoriesBLOG

Facebook.com/theCMJstories

Don’t miss a segment @CindyMarieJ

Leaving LA

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Recently, a writer friend and I started talking about LA. Do we really need to be in LA? We asked each other and ourselves.

The beauty of being a writer is that you can write anywhere and you don’t have dress to go to work. You just need a place that inspires you. So what do you do when LA is no longer inspiring? What do you do when the bright sunshine is too bright and the lack of rain is a little obnoxious? What do you do when sitting in traffic is no longer amusing?

Is there a point when you should leave LA? Someone once said that you should leave New York before you get too hard and you should leave LA before you get too soft. I don’t consider myself a bathroom towel, but is there some truth to that?

Really, what is here? No matter how much we try to build it up, it is a theatrical hinderland. Sure, there’s probably the largest pool of actors in the world here, but how many can really do stage acting? Sure, as a dramatic writer, you can work in film and TV. Nice work if you can get it.

Yes, there are theatres and writer groups. There are odd spaces with strange parking and plastic cups of cheap white wine. There are little cliques of self-congratulation and tiny bubbles of hot air.

Folks don’t come to LA to do theatre. Folks come to LA to surf and get famous. I’m not famous and I don’t surf. What the heck am I doing here? What else is out there?

Talkbacks

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I recently saw Samuel Beckett’s great short play Krapp’s Last Tape with John Hurt at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It was a production from the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Hurt was so precise that his performance could balance on the tip of a pin. He respected the silence and made the audience respect it too. This production didn’t reach out to the audience. It brought the audience into it. It was my kind of theatre.

But enough about the production. I want to talk about the Talkback. Beckett might not reach out to his audience, but the Center Theatre Group certainly does.

As soon as my ticket was scanned, I realized I had entered a way too happy carnival. In the lobby, you could record and listen to your own audio recordings. There were tables and chairs and a wall of Irish writers in an area called Sam’s Pub. It was ghastly.

Still, I felt celebratory about seeing a Beckett play. I settled into the lobby with a plastic cup of champagne and noticed a flat screen with a twitter feed on it. I fought the urge to not to read the changing screen containing absolutely nothing.

Suddenly, I heard a theatre guy all in black announcing to some older patrons that there will be a Talkback in the lobby after the performance.

It’s only fifty-five minutes, and it’s so absurd, so you can talk about it in the lobby after the show. The bar will be open.

I listened as he said it again and again as he went from group to group. The part about the bar being opened intrigued me.

So the play happened. I won’t go into the superlatives. After a quick trip to the ladies room (champagne, glorious champagne) and a hand wash in the Ladies trough (if you’ve been to the Ladies Room of the Kirk Douglas, you know what I mean), I was back in the lobby just in time for the beginning of the Talkback.

It was moderated by a twenty-something theatre girl all in black who obviously had been given a list of talking points. Whenever there was a silence she added a new point. My favorite was when she pointed out that John Hurt looked like an older Beckett. Uh-huh.

I left. I had to go. As I walked away, I went to my negative place. Oh God, what horror, what awful terrible horror. The Talkback.

When did theatre become a democracy? When did it become okay for the audience to discuss their feelings? This is Beckett, not therapy. Just because you have an opinion, madam, doesn’t mean you have express it. Is there any place these days without a comment field?

I don’t care how my plays make you feel. Okay, I do a little. I like it when folks laugh and clap and give me money. I don’t want to hear how my play relates to your life. That’s between you and the play. When the play’s over, clap and leave. Thank you, good night.

Sometimes Deadlines Are Helpful

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I’ve always taken pride in being a disciplined writer who doesn’t need deadlines to get the work done. I usually have several plays in various stages on my desktop. If I end up hating one, that’s okay. There’s one or two others coming up behind it.

This year, the deadline for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference was October 26th. On October 1st, as I was going over the submission requirements, I decided to not send the play I had finished. I still had problems with it.

Okay, so I could send a different play. However, there was one small catch. The play wasn’t done. I didn’t have a full draft.

Just a minor detail. No need to panic.

What did I have in my undone play? I had the characters. I had the visual world. I knew the tone of it. I didn’t have the ending, but I knew where I was going. I had been working on it for two years, so I had spent some time on it. I realized that I knew more than I thought I knew about it. I just had to get it to draft.

I sat down and finished the play. Every day, I worked on it and worked on it. The first ten pages took two years to write. The last ten pages took two days. I got it to the O’Neill five days early.

Having that deadline turned out to be beneficial. If there had been no deadline, the play would still be incomplete. Sometimes deadlines are helpful.

But. . .But. . .But

Playwright, playwriting,

Last month, Tiffany Antone put her writing heart on her sleeve on this blog. She kept coming back to the phrase but I’m not writing full length plays as she talked about everything she was doing—and she does some great stuff.

I totally understood her pain. She was going through the Buts. Yes, I have the buts too. I might be writing away and kicking ass on a new play,  but. . .but. . .but. I might have sat through a really successful production of a short play I wrote, but. . .but. . .but.

The Buts have caused me to start smoking (which creates real butts, hahahaha), drink too much, and curl up into a little ball with my eyes tightly closed and my fists clenched.

How do you fight the Buts? I do not recommend smoking, drinking too much, or curling up into a little ball. I fight the Buts by doing yoga (skipping the little ball part), sailing, and just plain getting on with it.

Sometimes, you just gotta get on with it and say, okay, what next? Actually, that might be a good phrase to counter punch the Buts. What next? Also what can I do now?

And Tiffany, don’t worry about them full length plays. According to Wikipedia, Chekhov wrote less than ten full length plays. Less than ten. Okay, so he was a prolific short story writer. Okay, so five of those plays are considered classics. Okay, so he was also a doctor. Okay, so he died young. Still, he did the work. Remember it’s quality not quantity. Insert inspirational quote here.

It’s your time now. What are you going to do with it?

Fuzzy Duck Fridays

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I’ve spent the last few Friday nights writing until after midnight – tying to cram in one night all the pent up writing from the week.  There are times when I think I’m going to burst in the car driving home from work (“I hope I can remember that idea/feeling/concept sentence”) so I can smash into the few hours left in the week.  I feel like a pile of fuzzy ducks flopping around together.

This makes for tangled, incoherent, nervous writing.  But at least it makes for re-writing.

I always find it interesting that when you have an image in  your mind that belongs somewhere in you writing, somehow that image seems to pop up everywhere. (An hourglass?  A skull with painted teeth?  A bad looking carnival?) They all seem to find their way to me in the hours before I write, beeping at me as I try to remember – where did I see that?

Now for the rest of my re-writing weekend!

Bumping Into the Characters

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I saved this to share with you:

By MARK HELPRIN in THE NEW YORK TIME
Published: October 3, 2012

“The  great essayist Roger Rosenblatt once generously reminded me that “good writers have good accidents.” Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that along with will conspires to put words on the page. The craftless anarchy of the Beat poets on the one hand, and the extreme control of Henry James on the other, suggest that for most human beings, just as both freedom and discipline are necessary in life, serendipity and design must coexist in a work to make it readable. Fortunately, the world is rich in the interweaving of the two, which can be found almost everywhere, and not least where one lives.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/garden/bumping-into-the-characters.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

 Recently I’ve been looking for signs for a new script I’m writing:  as in mystical/ magical/ unrealistic signs. 

Then in the  news there were several articles about solar flares.  I’m not sure what the ingredients of this happy acccident were, but the idea of solar flares triggered all kinds of brain synapses about electrical accidents.

 The article is a great read, and the last lines will stay with me for a long time:

 “Houses, rooms, our designs of all sorts and all material things will eventually vanish. Because they cannot last, their value is in the present, in memories that die with us, in things that come unbidden to the eye and in the electric, immaterial, miraculous spark that occurs when by accident and design they jump the gap and, like life itself, are propagated into something else, becoming for a moment pure spirit, thus to become everlasting.”

  

Gearing up for a new play, part 5: Finding the time and the space to write

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So I’ve vacated our 800 square foot coop, an agreement I have with my writer husband. There’s something about having two writers in the house at the same time: as if the other person is sucking all the creative energy out of the place. We both feel it. And so we agree to give the other person some solo time at home.

Today’s my day to clear out.

One advantage to living in DC, you can jump on the bus and in five minutes find yourself surrounded by Smithsonians and other museums.

I began the day at the Hirshhorn. There’s a terrific room on the third floor, wall to wall windows, electrical plugs, comfy chairs. Except they’re hosting some sort of event tonight (museums are forever hosting events here!) and closed off what I call “the writing room.”

Plan B involved snagging one of the small metal tables and chairs in the lobby. Noisy, but somehow reassuring to be surrounded by strangers and cacophony. I happily spent a couple of hours pounding out a script for work.

And then I was starved.

So I hiked a block and a half to the Smithsonian Castle Cafe for Mexican hot chocolate and a banana and am going to try to work on my script.

Yesterday was a good day. Why not today?

It’s so hard to find a regular schedule. And good places to write. I’m always appreciative of great tips. Do you write before or after the day job? Where?

One DC writer, DW Gregory, says she’s a binge writer, scribbling great amounts at a time blocked out for nothing else. I know that won’t work for me. I’m too easily distracted.

Suggestions, please?

Progress!

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One of the cleverest pieces of advice I ever saw for writers was aimed at those brave souls who crank out the first draft of a novel in one month.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
The advice was to have a “bible” nearby. Not THE bible. YOUR bible. In other words, the writer who inspires you, the book you wish you’d written, the book you read over and over again.

The idea was that when you got stuck – had a question about style or pace or dialogue – you could turn to your “bible” for answers.

I’ve decided to do this for my new play.

I’m actually keeping two “bibles” nearby. One is a book I love and find full of wonderfully funny dialogue. In fact, I’m going to write a modern version of it.

The other is a basic book on playwriting.

Admit it, you have a few on your shelf. I randomly flip through a few, hoping one will strike a note with me at this time in my writing career. It’s a reminder of all the things we already know about building characters and dramatic structure and how hard it is to write. But it’s a nice reminder that I’m not reinventing the wheel.

So this morning before starting work, I set out for a short walk down to the waterfront, read a little from each of my “bibles” and wrote three pages of morning pages. Mostly lists of the hundred and one things I could be doing instead of writing. A wasted morning.

I then put in a days’ work.

And just as I was about to kick myself for wasting my life, imagining I’m a playwright, as the sun was setting, I sat down one more time. And managed to write five first draft pages! It’s not brilliant, but it’s more than I’ve been able to pound out in weeks.

So, success!

At least for today. Check in again with me tomorrow.