How to Hang Out with Female Playwrights

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Last weekend in Prescott, when I wasn’t watching my own play, soaking in a Jacuzzi, or poking around the local Salvation Army thrift store, I was hanging out with the other women playwrights.

Because what happens in Prescott stays in Prescott, I won’t air all the Dirty Laundry details. However, I did notice some interesting things about this flock of nine playwrights who all happened to be female.

Since members of the other gender might be curious about how to deal with such a gathering of women who write plays, I’ve decided to raise the curtain on female playwrights.

First of all, female playwrights like to shop. Yep, we like the shopping. Now, shopping is not to be confused with buying. Still, I think our presence did good things for the economic index of Prescott.

Second, female playwrights like to drink adult beverages. We might all drink different adult beverages, but we really appreciated drinking adult beverages of quality.

Third, female playwrights complement each other. During performances, there was a lot of tapping and whispering and giggling in the playwright section.

Fourth, female playwrights ask a lot of questions. I like to ask questions in conversation, and I soon realized that I was around people who also asked questions in conversation. At some point, I just started making statements.

So if you are thinking of producing a Women’s Playwriting Festival, just be aware of these four things, and you should do well.

And on that bombshell, I come to end of another playwright blogging week. Good night!

Dirty Laundry Play Festival

Audience, News, Playwright

This past weekend, I braved the humidity of Prescott, AZ because my ten-minute play, Rinse, was produced along with ten minute plays by Jennie Webb, Micki Shelton, Katherine James, Kate Hawkes, Charlotte Winters, Sara Israel, Tiffany Antone, and Shanee Edwards in the Dirty Laundry Festival.

Yep, the ladies took over Prescott. Woohooo!

Tiffany Antone came up with Dirty Laundry because she decided to create a few playwriting opportunities of her own. And wow did she deliver an evening of theatrical fun. She is also courageous and bold, and her enthusiasm for all us writers was inspiring.

Even before I got to Arizona, Dirty Laundry was a growth experience. Since I lived 450 miles away, I couldn’t sit in on rehearsals. I couldn’t say yes or no to ideas. I had to let go of my play.

On Friday, Jennie Webb and I rode out to Prescott on 109 horses. When I arrived in the high altitude town, I immediately sought sanctuary in my hotel’s Jacuzzi.

On Friday night, Tiffany put together a backroom meet-up for writers, actors, and directors of the show. When folks learned that I had written Rinse, they usually reacted with Ohhhhhh as if there had been speculation about me.

My favorite encounter at the reception was with one of the actors. He was not in my play but had seen it at the tech.

Man: You don’t usually expect a play like yours from a woman.

Jen: What kind of play?

Man: Women don’t write about torture.

Jen: Actually there was a very popular play off-Broadway in the mid-eighties about a torturer and written by a woman.

Man: There was?

Jen: The Conduct of Life by Maria Irene Fornes.

Man: Never heard of it, but now I know.

On Saturday, the Dirty Laundry plays were presented at 2 and 7 at the Prescott Fine Arts Association whose theatre is an old Catholic Church. My play happened right after intermission, so I spent most of the intermission mentally making people sit down. Sit down, damn it!

Then I watched my play. . . .

Oh wow. . .

The director and cast took it on and went for it. The look and feel of the play was unique. The actors were physical and trusted what they were doing. It was like they were in their own self-contained universe.

So let me take this opportunity to publicly stand up and applaud Cason Murphy, the director and lighting designer and the excellent cast—Sean Jeralds, Anthony Osvog, and Dino Palazzi. I playwright love you guys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also a big thanks to the crew that toweled down the stage after my play. Things got a little wet onstage, but no towels were harmed during this production.

Special Thanks to David Cottle for the Production Photos

No Such Thing As Failure

playwriting

As I strive to create a warm and fuzzy wuzzy theatre, I try to keep it all in the positive.

However, I find it very difficult to keep in the positive even though I live in three hundred days of sunshine and seventy degrees. Still the torture chamber of darkness and despair in my brain sometimes surfaces at inopportune times. 

Recently I was having lunch with an actress friend. She’s one of those actresses that writers dream about. She’s smart and talented. Anyway, she told me about an acting workshop she took which wasn’t really a fit for her. She went in with the best of intentions but the facilitator turned out to be an asshole. It happens.

After she told her tale of woe, she felt bad for how it all worked out. She felt like she had failed in some way. At that moment, I had a career epiphany.

My friend had not failed. There’s no such thing as failure in the theatre. It just didn’t work out. Because it just didn’t work out, you can’t really say anything majorly bad about the experience. It just didn’t work out, then move on to the next thing and the thing after that.

Tomorrow, the fuzzy wuzziness continues with Dirty Laundry. It’s not just about socks anymore.

Illusion and Hustle

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Theatre is just illusion and hustle.

I came up with this theory as I watched Guy Hollingworth in The Expert At the Card Table, a one man play directed by Neil Patrick Harris at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica earlier this month. The play has long since closed and like great illusions, it only exists in our inaccurate memories.

The Expert At the Card Table was a book published in 1902 which gave away card shark secrets. In the course of an hour and a half, we learn the fate of the book’s author. Even though I consider myself pretty good at figuring out stories, I must say honestly that I didn’t see the ending coming.

Interspersed with the story of the author, Hollingworth, an accomplished magician, performs card tricks. Thanks to a large screen behind him, we see his hands work. He can make a deck of cards do anything he wants.

It’s like watching a dancer only he dances with his hands. I could write a play starring his hands. Oh wait, that was The Expert at the Card Table.

As the play went on, I thought about the theatrical hustle. He draws the audience into the trick, shows the audience what he wants them to see, then snap, magic!

We playwrights are hustlers too. We are hustlers on the page (we also have to be hustlers with artistic directors, but that’s a different essay). We only show the audience what we want them to see. We might hold off on a bit of information until it is necessary. We might only show one side of a character. We might only show one room of house.

We practice long hours to perfect our illusions, to make them seem almost natural, so the audience doesn’t miss what they can’t see.

Having that much power over an audience is kind of a sexy thing.

Feedback is not just about speakers

Home, playwriting

Hello again

I just got back yesterday from Prescott, Arizona where my short play, Rinse, was produced at a women’s playwriting festival called Dirty Laundry put together by the great Tiffany Antone.  I will talk about Dirty Laundry a little later this week. In the meantime, you can also check out the Little Black Dress website to learn more about it.

Today’s subject is feedback.

I am a genius, and I like to be praised.

 Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I will talk about feedback.

We live in a time when we are surrounded by dramatic writing. Film reviews talk about a weak third act. TV watchers blog about character arch. Everyone knows about conflict, conflict, conflict!

I think it’s cool that everyone knows how a basic story works and can rationally explain emotional catharsis. It makes me freer to break from convention to draw in an audience and reach dramatic completion.

I don’t mind feedback. I’ll either use or not. I don’t mind dumb feedback because it reflects more on the relative intelligence of the feedbacker rather than the work itself.

Recently a friend praised the feedback I give to other writers. He went on and on about how precise and articulate my comments were. He praised my intelligence. Since I am a genius and like to be praised, I let him go on and on.

 This also led me to think about feedback. How can feedback be intelligent?

Wayyyy back in the late 90s, I was part of the Womens Project Playwrights Lab in New York. We had a specific way of handling feedback, and I adapted it as my own. It was a method developed by someone outside of the Lab, and if anyone could tell me whose method this is, I will happily give credit where credit is due.

The writer presents the work. Then, there is only praise. I liked this and I liked that. It should be specific. After the praise, the second part of the feedback is questions. Who, what, where, when, why? Most criticism of work in development is in the form of a question anyway, so it makes sense. Instead of saying that makes no sense, the feedbacker asks why. Usually the question part of feedback takes a long time because it leads to discussion. The third and final part of the feedback involves general comments. Since most of the criticisms become questions, the third part is usually quick. Someone might want to really specify a point. Someone might want to return to an area worthy of praise. Since comments are intended to be conclusive, it forces the feedbackers to be specific.

I still try to use this form when giving feedback. Intelligent feedback is not about my intelligence. It’s about the work.

How can one become a more intelligent feedbacker? I would say read a lot and watch a lot, so new forms and ideas are not so strange.

How can a writer receive intelligent feedback? Well, unfortunately, you can’t control other people’s minds (I’ve tried, it doesn’t work). I show early drafts to people I trust. Then, I have the next ring of people who read the piece once it’s gone a little further.

For the plays, I also have actors I trust. I can learn a lot about a character from five minutes with a smart actor. By the way, smart actors are geniuses and like praise too.

Go-Go-Gadget Brain

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I drove home from rehearsal last night, my brain firing off lists like nobody’s business – Program, DVD, Certificates, Monk’s, Forks, Fruit, Sound, Tech (!), Blog, Blog, Blog…

So I got home and stuffed my mouth with a ChocoTaco and set down to tidy up a few things on that list before my lids revolted and permanently shut down for the night, in the hopes that I could get a handle on it all somehow…

What is it that drives me to continually engineer means to be busy?  I look around at my “Civilian” friends who have their evenings free to eat at the table, watch t.v. and help the kids with their homework and I think “Am I just crazy?”

Or is it part of the artist’s path that s/he may not be satisfied until her/his work is out there… in the world… making some kind of imprint…

I woke up this morning after dreams about tornados and long, treacherous hallways (thank you subconscious) with that list-making brain already back in full gear, and noticed -forming at the bottom of that list – were fresh thoughts about the next big “What if…” project.

Umm, I might be obsessed.

Which may be why I’m so tired.

See, I started LittleBlackDressINK out of my frustration with waiting… it felt like, as a playwright, I was always waiting for a reading, or a production – and (to be honest) although readings are fun, I’ve had about all of them I can cheer about and now just experience them as the observational meet and greets they mostly are – for very rarely does it seem the reading is being held to weigh in on possible production.  (If you haven’t read Outrageous Fortune yet, they talk extensively about the realities of what many of us call “Development Hell” and it’s seriously fascinating to hear from both other playwrights AND theatre companies on this subject)

Which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy readings – I do, I do.  I just attend them with my writing ears on and little expectation beyond some new business cards in my pocket and rewrites on my mind.

Meanwhile, I’m hungry for stage time.

So it seemed the obvious step to carve some out for myself.

Yet… the hat-juggling of working a “real” job, plus producing/directing a show, plus the numerous other projects I have running simultaneously (I’m in the midst of managing some theatrical marketing for an upcoming event and I edit two other blogs) does make me wonder when I’ll tire of this circus life and…

…Settle down?

(shiver)

Doesn’t it manifest a “Throw in the Towel” type vibe when you read that?

But will I ever be able to truly support myself on my writing alone?

Will I ever be able to truly be satisfied with a teaching gig and some writing time in the summer?

Will things change when I finally tie my wagon to another’s and start popping out tots of my own?

Or am I too hard wired for motion?  Too geared for hurdle-jumping, to ever truly slow down to a snails pace, and get back to just “Waiting”?

It’s probabaly all a little too much to be thinking about at the moment- I’ve got a mountain of things to check off that list today and scant time for little else – but still, it lingers…

It lingers along with loud dreams of the next “What if?”

~Tiffany Antone

Words, words; rolling…

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Someone once said to me – well, alright, actually it’s been said to me many a time but I remember quite clearly at least the first time I heard it – that I write “with a lot of rhythm.”  At the time I think I nodded dumbly, and tried to feel good about what seemed to be a compliment but was something I hadn’t really thought all that much about as I wrote… it seemed strange to receive a compliment on something that I had no awareness of.

They were right of course… as I listened to the actors digging into and discovering the play, there was an amazing sense of rhythm and musicality to the language of the piece, and now I realize that the rhythm of a word or a combination of words has a lot to do with whether or not I’ll use it/them (or opt for silence) in my work.

Word selection, it would seem, has become as as serious for me as selecting the right wine, your child’s name, or which freeway to take during rush hour…

In other words, I take it pretty damn serious, but I also try to maintain a healthy sense of humor.

Because I have yet to meet an actor who hasn’t had to (on occasion) rearrange some portion of my text to suit his/her mouth.

Now, I used to act, and so I understand that sometimes getting your brain to remember a line that has been composed in such a way as to feel as comfortable in your mouth as a cheese grater, can be damn near impossible.  I understand that sometimes an actor winds up spitting out the subtext of a line or some mutant hybrid instead of the original…

And as a playwright who understands actors but who is still a pretty persnickety wordsmith, I’ve learned to pick my battles on which lines are truly crucial to the rhythm of the thing and which can survive a few… abuses.

But I still wonder if, although they are treating the play with much reverence and care, an actor realizes the value of the words themselves (and their order) to the playwright… or if it is only I that see them as a magical, swelling, and lyrical recipe that must be said in the correct order and pairings, lest they loose their power and cast (instead) only a murkish sort-of spell…

And now I’m in the unique position of directing my own play for the Dirty Laundry fest, and I’m battling with myself on the merit of nit-picking vs. focusing on the cohesive whole…

That said, when I find myself bristling and silently screaming inside at some liberty taken with my text, I take a breath and gently task the actor with getting it right, even if we have to work the beat several times or break down the text line by line to get their brains to accept it as written rather than letting them put it in their own words.  It’s avery interesting internal battle indeed to juggle egos (theirs and mine) with productivity and specificity.

And it’s taught me a lot about balancing expectations with function as well.

However, just because it might be fun to compare notes, here are my top three pet peeves in the line department:

  • Don’t start every line with “Look” or “But” or “Well”… This is an actor trick that I DESPISE…  Either they get stuck and need a second to recall the line,  or they don’t quite understand the transition that brought them there so they add a beat of their own wordage to “help” themselves with, and if left unchecked it turns the whole thing into a play about humming and hawing.
  • Don’t reduce poetry to “comfortable” language…  Sometimes an actor will come across a more complex line than they themselves would use and instead of mastering it, they alter it to suit their tongues.  “I left to fetch flowers” becomes “I went to get flowers” and I sit there and bemoan the lost mood of the line and silently curse the actor for their clumsy murder of my alliterative text, even though the same basic point has been made.  To me, the care I take in selecting my words mean the difference between craftsmanship and an “anyone can write a play” vibe.  There is very little in my characters mouths that I didn’t put there carefully and with specific intent.
  • Don’t blast through beats.  I use a lot of beats in my plays.  I hate when actors (or directors) try to fly through them – even if a director decides a “Beat” need not be illustrated on stage with time, they risk missing important shifts in power, emotion, intent, thought, etc. if they don’t take the time to ask “Why is the playwright adding a beat here between these lines?  What happens for the characters in this moment?”

~Tiffany

Crazy Schemes Produced

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So, I’m a pretty active person, playwright, and dreamer… I like to keep busy and I like to feel productive.  I think it’s one of the reasons I was SO excited about the LAFPI starting up… I mean, a group of kick-ass playwrights all working towards gender parity in theater?  AND we get to have fun mixers and support each other and address important issues in theater?

Count me IN!

And over the past year (+) I’ve been super happy to see all the strides we’ve made – the very important LAFPI study helmed by the amazing Miss Ella Martin, the Women on the Fringe work that honored theatres who produce female playwrights, and the all encouraging and inspiring support that this site has offered for countless other female playwrights who want to get involved and join the revolution.

It’s been amazing.

But I’ve been watching a lot of it from AZ – where I’m now stationed – and I’ve been ants-in-my-pants-to-the-extreme for more ground-work than I can actually do from afar…

Until I realized that my new stomping grounds include an amazing community theatre and quite a few talented and accomplished female playwrights of its own…

And then I realized that I could support female playwrights by actually producing them.

So I started up Little Black Dress INK (www.LittleBlackDressINK.org), sent out invitations to some awesomely talented women, had a thrilling meeting with the head of the theatre here who said “YES!” to my crazy scheme, and got the ball rolling…

Now, a few months later, I find myself in the home stretch of a most passionate project:  Dirty Laundry, a ten minute play fest benefitting the Prescott Area Women’s Shelter and including plays from 9 awesome female playwrights!  There are also 7 female directors helming each of the plays, and a WAY talented team of actors bringing these plays to life.

So that ants in the pants feeling I was complaining about?  It’s settled down a little bit, appeased that I’m making something happen instead of waiting for it to come to me…

And isn’t that what the LAFPI is all about?

Becoming an “Instigator” is a call to arms!  All it takes is some daring, some passion, some wild-eyed-scheming, and a shared vision.

I might be one tired puppy at the end of this week, but I will be sleeping happy 🙂

~Tiffany

Say What You Really Mean

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Imagine that you just had an encounter with your boss who has made a hasty judgment about you.  For example, she accuses of purposefully disregarding her order; but in reality you acted with initiative to give a fuller or more expansive answer and/or analysis to a problem.  She continues to say or do something that you feel is unjustified. You are reluctant to defend yourself knowing perhaps you’d be digging a deeper hole for yourself.  (This reminds me of a quote I saw on someone’s desk – “Don’t argue with a fool”.)

 Later, a friend who is aware of your explosive relationship with your boss meets with you.  In politeness and care he asks, “How are you?”, and you say, “I’m alright” when in your heart you’re hurt and angry and want to pour it all out.  Eventually the truth does spill over in the course of the conversation.

 That is a classic situation of words behaving as a mask.  We put on the masks to save ourselves and the receiver.  We want to save each other from the truth.  I don’t know why this happens so often that it seems like it’s a conditioned knee jerk reaction.

 In my Imagined Life classes my mentor Faline has encouraged her students to “Look well into the words.”  Discover the world behind the words.  As writers we purposefully choose the words that is put on paper.  I look back to the poem “Trippin’ Across The Bay” and can reword a few bars to be more succinct and precise in what I want to express.  When is it ever done?  We have all probably revisited an old piece of writing, and our point of view has probably shifted since the point in time that the thought and feelings were captured till eternity in that printed form.

 The ARE has one of the largest if not the largest collection of metaphysical writings in its library.  I was so overwhelmed with the books I came across in one place and time.  The book, “C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships”  by Michael Serrano, describes a conversation between the author and Herman Hesse.  The topic was the message of the poem “The Raised Finger” written byHesse. 

  “Words are really a mask, ” said Hesse. “They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it.”  excerpt from C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships.

 In the story telling realm the most dynamic situations is when the hero says something and does opposite of what they say.  Our human nature is to reveal ourselves in our display of actions and artistry, and not in our words.  Words do get in the way, because they are open to interpretation based on the filters a person is subject to.

 It is more telling to witness the hero tells his lover, “I love you,” before shoots his beloved.  If you have not read the short story by Thomas Mann called “Tobias Mindernickel”, it is such a fascinating read.  It depicts the Freudian concept of “Reaction Formation and Displacement”. 

The hero Tobias mistreats an adopted dog, Esau.  In final scene after Tobias had already broken Esau physically (after dropping him from a window) after Esau had disobeyed and escaped.  Tobias says to Esau, “You see, you are my only…my only…..”

Clay Sisman, an educator wrote:  “He never finishes the sentence. What was he going to say? What would he say that?”

The typical symptoms of Reaction Formation are:

  • behaving the opposite of how one feels
  • saying things that are opposite to what one believes

The typical symptoms of displacement are:

  • anger and hostility toward someone or something that is not the cause of the anger
  • a temporary inability to control of one’s rational thinking ability
  • a temporary inability to control of one’s behaviors, typically striking out physically from anger
  • a temporary inability to discuss things calmly and rationally

(Source:  Cybersisman.)

 Rounding back to the You-Boss situation.  The words of the boss who accused you of insubordination is likely masking her feelings of insecurity and fear of losing control.

 We are a fascinating species.  Our minds are wild with distractions and a wild mind begets unpredictable actions that betray the true nature of what lives in our hearts.  Thus I conclude the second series of “The Art of the Heart.”

 Thank you.

Unwinding Down the Winding Path

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This week’s theme for my blogs is the collection of gold and gems that comes from an open heart hitting the open roads.  Welcome to the philosophy and practice of Art of the Heart.  Be it a joyful heart treading lightly on verdant footpaths or a lonely heart that is wound in the ribbons of past lives it is a practice of doing it for the love of it.

Part One – Onley in Virginia

Have you been to Onley, Virginia?  I stopped there overnight last week on my road trip to Virginia Beach to catch a band in the Mayhem Festival.

I walked into the hospice thrift store near Onley, a town with a small population (496 residents reported in the year 2000, household count of 223 and the size of 0.8 square miles) I was so happy and surprised to find a biographical book called “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter “.  In addition, there was a Michael Franks CD “Sleeping Gypsy” which has the jazz-samba song “Antonio’s Song” (dedicated to Antonio Carlos Jobim.)

These treasure finds put a twist on the expression  – ” Onley” in Virginia.

I dedicate this poem to the lovely persons I met in Onley.  I’m thinking of you Jay, Laura and the staff and members of the East Shore YMCA; and finally there’s thee owner/manager of the motel where I stayed.  He got out of the quiet of his mosquito-netting tent.  He told me that it was just 3 days ago that he and his wife sold everything they owned to buy  and run a motel in Onley so that they can escape the noise of Norfolk.   I was heading towards Virginia Beach/Norfolk area to go to listen to the heavy metal sounds of “All Shall Perish” in the Mayhem Festival.

But the real purpose of the trip was to see the ARE (Association for Research and Enlightment) which was founded by Edgar Cayce.  That story will be in a later installment of the series.

Thank you.