I’m going crazy over the amount of texting going on in the theatre these days. Do people not imagine it’s driving those around them crazy?
I saw a very bad production of Jon Jory’s not very inventive adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” in Orlando back in February. (more on this tomorrow) People were taking phone calls, texting, even some joker on the far side of the theatre was sending messages, the light of his phone was brighter than the stage lights.
I even chewed out one young theatre goer in Silver Spring at a matinee last month. I’m becoming the crabby old lady I always accused my mother of being.
But then I realized the only time people were taking out their phones was when the play dragged. Nothing interesting was happening onstage. They were bored. And frankly, so was I.
I tested this theory at a few plays that really worked. No one reached for a cellphone. Not a single text.
So here’s my new standard of finding out when a play is working well: when nobody even thinks about taking out their phone. They are too enthralled in the action of the play. They care about the characters. They want to know what happens next.
There are many of aspects of life in the theatre that drive one into the ground – rejection, harsh criticism, plays languishing in drawers and computers, the fear that our labors of love will never be produced.
And then there are the times in that life when we feel nothing but joy. One of those times for me was the three years I spent as a mentor to young playwrights in a program called HOLA (Heart of Los Angeles), which was then hosted by Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire.
I was in a workshop called Wordsmiths at the LATC with Kitty Felde when she was looking for volunteers and I, always sucker for long drives on a Saturday, raised my hand.
A group of us, Kitty, Melanie, Dan, Dick, Jim, and more, met Saturday mornings with kids from the neighborhood, who were different ages, from seven to twenty. We plunged into writing. We started with a scene and wrote to the clock. I think we had five minutes. Everybody, kids and mentors, read his or her scene out loud and then we moved on to crafting the plays.
Kitty taught with a simple technique to jumpstart the process. Before beginning the play, we would write our Protagonist Profiles with these headings; Name, Age, Family, Habitat, Job, Greatest Wish, Secret Fear, Antagonist, and Extras. Here’s one: Name: Orgel, Age: 47, Family: None, Habitat: The backroom of a pound with only a cot and a hat tree, Job: Watering and feeding the dogs, Greatest Wish: To have a dog of his own, Secret Fear: That he’ll be alone for the rest of his life, Antagonist: The owner of the pound, Extras: He is skinny and tall with a big moustache.
The play grew from there.
At the end of each session, we went to the youth hostel in San Pedro for a weekend of polishing and cooking and fooling around. Kitty’s husband, Tad, would take the kids on a hike and terrify them around a campfire with ghost stories. We all took turns cooking meals and cleaning up, kids and adults played basketball and collected shells on the beach, and in between, we wrote, wrote, wrote. Each kid had a mentor and we had time to forge a working relationship.
We ended with a performance of the plays, some at the church, and one memorable one at the Central Library, in which the plays had been inspired by a trip to the Armand Hammer Gallery. A play called Return of the Landlord featured a spectacular use of black light.
Many were very talented, and one teenager, Paul Park, had a collection of his plays, called Out of the Park, presented at the Evidence Room. All the kids were fearless (or learned to be). Their stories were fresh (sometimes silly, sometimes sad, sometimes scary), and all gave me an insight into worlds I would never have been a part of without them.
About a month ago, Enci of Bitter Lemons (http://bitter-lemons.com) wrote asking for reminiscences from people who played at The Complex. Our production of my play, Sunday Dinner, was way back in 1997 and I had to think about it.
The Complex was bijou. Everything was small, the lobby, the lighting booth, the dressing rooms, the stage. Sunday Dinner took place in a living room (what else, you may ask?) and the stage was the size of one. Perfect. A couple of chairs, a sofa, and a table, and we were home.
We put up our very own sign outside and although everything was pretty clean, we dusted and swept and vacuumed inside. We had a few hitches setting up and our lighting designer began to fret after one of the actresses plugged in her hairdryer, turned it on, and blew the electrical system. However, by opening night, the lights and sound worked like a charm.
There was a narrow dirt alley behind the theater, leading to a chain link fence on Wilcox. Between acts, we could hang out in costume, listening to street noise, and the production in the theater next door. There was a mysterious shack back there, too. I never discovered what it was for.
It was part of the ambiance. There was lots of ambiance. There was walking to rehearsal past the triangular plastic banners above the car lots on Santa Monica Blvd., the feel of the hot sun bouncing up from the sidewalk, the oasis of the corner store where the clerk served us from behind a Plexiglas shield (I think we couldn’t find a place to eat), a fierce fight between two ladies of the street in front of the marquee, the race day and night to find a place to park, the humungous fine one of us got for parking 3-1/2 inches into the red curb, the volatile valet parker we never gave our keys to for fear the car would disappear; and the proximity to The Blank and The Hudson.
We were on Theatre Row.
We didn’t know then how hard we had to push and arm twist, how much we had to plea and cajole to get everyone to come to our absolutely amazing, fabulous, splendid, did we mention?, not to be missed production, so I remember, too, the not so large crowds who made us glad that the space was cozy, comfortable and intimate.
We didn’t sell out but the Complex gave us a great time. And we won a Dramalogue award!
Thank you, Ella, for posting Theresa Rebeck’s Laura Pels Keynote Address on your blog.
I was so intrigued and impressed by her heartfelt defense of women playwrights and her eloquent plea to producers to give us equal representation that I went online to the library to look up her work.
I had seen Spike Heels at the Red Brick Road Company and Bad Dates at the Lounge Theatre (an outstanding performance by Samara Frame) and loved them both. I started my reading with The Butterfly Collection, because it was vilified by a New York Times reviewer who saw it as a feminist diatribe and portrayed Rebeck as a man-hater.
He must have seen a different play from the one I read.
The Butterfly Collection is beautiful, skilled, and complex. It’s like a Shaw play in which vivid characters argue passionately about art and life and love in language that bites. It’s about the relationships between men and women, among members of a family, between employer and employee, between young and old. It’s about infidelity, envy, ambition, exquisite things, and about living one’s life based on false assumptions.
The last idea was the one that got to me. The protagonist is considered and considers himself a genius, and he and everyone in his family think that gives him permission to destroy and demean his children, betray his wife, and seduce his young assistants, all in the name of his art.
He prides himself on his “outrageous statements”.
Here are some that he addresses to his actor son:
“You want to know what’s wrong with the theater? All those people, all those fucking people everywhere, on the stage, in the audience. Wrinkling their candy wrappers. Turning on their hearing aides, talking on their call phones. You sit there going, where the fuck are the words, you’re so drowning in people you can’t find the damn words. They‘re there, they’re gone, and no one even notices! Half the actors can’t speak but that’s fine, because half the audience can’t hear. Or think for that matter. All that emotion. Bad one liners. Every other word is fuck. Every character’s a victim, some battered woman or unhappy homosexual. Don’t talk to me about Shakespeare, we’re talking about the theater.”
His wife says to the young assistant whom he’s tried to seduce, “I hope you don’t take any of that personally. I certainly don’t.”
The middle aged actor son, emotionally adolescent and his father’s bitter rival, (he seduces the assistant because he knows his father wants to) is crushed by the man, but behaves exactly like him and puts his career above everything.
The other son, so reduced by his father’s bullying that he can’t finish a sentence when his father is present, says “They’re different things, life and art; you shouldn’t get them confused.”
The butterfly collector kills his butterflies for his art. Does the beautiful collection justify their death?
There’s a lot more and I’d love to see it on its feet, then go out for drinks, and talk about it.
In the meantime, (when we are not writing, of course) there are more plays to be read – Mauritius, The Water’s Edge, Abstract Expression, The Bells, View of the Dome, Sunday on the Rocks, The Scene, Omnium Gatherum, The Family of Mann: a comedy in two acts, Loose Knit, 2010’s The Understudy; two novels, Twelve Rooms With A View, and Three Girls and Their Brother; and a non-fiction book, Free fire zone: a playwright’s adventures on the creative battlefields of film, TV, and theater.
She’s done all that and takes the time to fight for us, and our art. Good on you, Theresa.
Last fall, I saw three plays over the course of three days. Two were full-on theatrical productions, and one was a reading. They all involved people I know, and since I strive to be diplomatic, I won’t name names.
The first play I saw was a good. Oh hell, it was great. It was one of those plays where you sit there watching it and thinking, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh whoah, oh, oh, oh, there!, yes! ahhhhh. It made me play drunk. When it was over, I wanted the actors to do it all over again, but they had to go home.
Then. . .the morning after. . .hangover.
First, I went to a reading which left me curling under my seat in a fetal position while holding my hands up to my ears. Oh make it stop! Make it stop!
There was no character, no dialogue, no play. The reading was just people reading words.
As I tried to block out the noise, I noticed my two friends next to me. One had his hand over his eyes as if he had a terrible headache. The other friend had her hand over her mouth as if she was about to vomit.
At least I did not suffer alone.
The second bad play was a full production that was all over the stage in its bad bad baddyness. I ran from the theatre.
Now you might be thinking, now Jen, surely there was something salvageable or redeemable in the bad plays. Surely, you could learn something about your own writing from the mistakes of others. Surely, you could be nice because art is hard (sooo hard). Surely you could be supportive of your fellow writers putting themselves out there.
Surely, no. There was nothing salvageable or redeemable. There was nothing learnable.
Why do bad plays annoy me more than bad movies or bad television? Is it because the actors are right there on the stage, and they could stop that awfulness if they were asked to politely? Is it because plays are a dying form, and the bad ones make one wish the form would die faster? Is it because my time and gas (which is expensive) are being wasted?
Maybe I shouldn’t be so negative.
Maybe I should just focus on the good. Be positive. Okay. Okay. Positive. Yes.
What made the good play good?
It had simplicity. It didn’t need a lot. The characters were there without a lot of explanation or fuss as if the writer knew that the audience didn’t need all the junk that writers get told the audience needs. Maybe it’s just a matter of cleaning out the theatrical clutter.
And there was something else to it. Something in the stuff not shown. I’m not talking about illusions. I’m talking about the world beyond what one sees, that powerful other place in a stage play. It might be offstage or just beyond the spotlight. It might be moving between the characters. It’s the stuff of angels. Be kind to them or they will disappear.
And on that metaphysical note, I’m heading to the movies.
Okay, I’ll just come out and say it. I love writing men.
Phew! Glad I got that off my chest.
That other gender fascinates me, amuses me, and delights me endlessly.
I used to kill off my male characters a lot. I’m not sure if this was some unconscious hostility or just a love for good tragedy. Now, I don’t kill the men so much. In fact, I’ve even had a male protagonist a few times. I guess I’m evolving as a playwright.
How do I approach male characters? Is there a trick? There is, but I’m not giving away all of my playwriting secrets.
At the end of the day, male characters are just characters with hopes and dreams and wants and needs.
As playwrights, we (I’m assuming a collective we because playwrights are probably the only readers of a blog about women’s playwriting) are shapers of time.
By time, I’m not talking about THE TIMES. Instead, I’m talking about the time that an audience is sitting on their backsides and watching a play. It’s the magic hour between dinner and late night cocktails or perhaps between cocktails and late night dinner.
Like sculptors, we have different knives to cut through time. We could show some nifty characters, maybe put them in conflict with each other. We could show flash and sparkle. Or we could show nothing at all but turn it into something magical. We could have dancing and singing. We could have kissing—people seem to like the kissing parts.
Whatever we decide to do, the audience is sitting there. Sometimes they’re eating snacks. Sometimes they’re drinking water out of plastic bottles. Sometimes they’re sleeping. Maybe they had some wine in the lobby before a performance.
Maybe some are secretly texting their lovers. Maybe some are getting live updates of a championship game they are missing in order to see the play they were dragged to. Maybe some are making a mental to-do list for the next day.
Maybe, just maybe, some get sucked into the play in spite of their best intentions to remain aloof and cynical about the proceedings. After all, it’s just actors pretending on a stage. Or is it?
What is the play’s relationship to the audience? How can the playwright slow down time? Speed up time?
Why do people spend their time watching plays? It’s something to do, I suppose.
My next play will have no props! No props except for a few cans of beer!
I resolved internally at some point between making a typewriter out of a priority mail box and drinking some really cheap German sparkling wine so we could use the bottles.
This was all for a recent staged reading of my play, Let’s Go, at the Blank, and I was working with actors who were so good that I wanted to give them everything they needed. They were so good that they made me look good. They were so good that they should all be rich and famous
The play itself had a lot of props. There were cups of tea, bottles of booze, papers, cigarettes, and general clutter. Sure it could all have been mimed, but once you bring in one thing, you suddenly want another thing and another thing. Before you know it, you’re making a phonograph out of a cardboard box.
Now that I’ve gone to one Prop extreme, I think it’s time to go to the other. Cans of beer. Yes, that will work. I won’t even have to empty them. The script specifically states that they get cracked onstage.
And who are these actors who should be rich and famous because they are so good? They are: Alena Von Stroheim, Joanna Kelly, Matt Crabtree, Tad Shafer, Karen Jean Olds, and Emilia Vitti.
I give them all props in all definitions of the word.
I’m a bad playwright. I never learned the lingo for conversation in playwriting settings. I probably should talk about myself more, but I’m thinking of myself most of the time in the making of said plays, so in playwriting settings, I would rather not talk about myself. I want to talk about baseball or kittens. Just not about me.
Another reason that I’m a bad playwright is that I don’t dress right. Sure I wear a lot of black, but I never liked the colorful patchwork clothes or mismatched socks that I’ve seen playwrights wear. I also can’t afford to spend thirty dollars on cool t-shirts with hip sayings on them. I’m sorry. I just can’t.
Also, if you come to see my play, I will ask you what you think. Yes, I know. Awwwkward. It’s okay. Just lie because if you say something negative, I will carry that around for a week while compulsively tearing off my finger nails.
I can’t stand bad plays. Sometimes I wish the audience would just riot and storm the stage to put the actors out of their misery. I know, I know, I should be supportive. I will go into the experience of bad plays later in the week.
I never know what to say to playwrights or actors or directors I admire. I remember over a decade ago I was at event and a playwright whom I admire was there as well, and damn if I could figure out what to say. Your work feeds me as an artist seemed a bit much for a cheap wine and cheese event.
I will say this. I’m good at disguise. I can be at a party or an event, and no one would know I’m a playwright.
Honestly when I (pretend to) watch television or a film on my television set, I’m usually doing something else. I’m not mult-tasking, I’m just bored.
I do watch Glee on Hulu (commercial-free). I also admit to watching tons of 2-5 minute videos on YouTube, and have even been sucked into multi-part series on such topics as religion, mathematics, and evolution. Okay, I admit it. I’m a geek.
However when I witness a movie or a play in a theater I do expect to engage; become completely and emotionally involved with the story to the extent that I may lose myself in it.
I believe that if I commit as deeply to the script, direction, and performances, as the production does itself, my experience whether good or bad, will have done what I sought when I purchased the ticket; I will have been moved.
Have you ever not gone to the theater because of subconscious or conscious emotional and physical trauma directly related to the world of the play, and going there again is too frightening to contemplate?
Last year I actually got lost driving to go witness a local production of Edson’s WIT. I mean, I literally drove around in circles. Of course it was night and I was glasses-less; my stigmatisms made being lost even more surreal. Of course it was the year of my ten-year-cancer-free mark, and I guess I was too freaked out to witness somebody else’s cathartic moment.
The first time I experienced this type of physical reaction of “do not see that play” was around 1991. The event that I am currently avoiding closes this weekend. How do I explain to a respected colleague that his highly-touted and “fun” theater event is actually a traumatic reminder of something that I remember happening to me when I was five-years-old? I can’t and I probably won’t.
While I admit to feeling perplexed when I read about writing from a consumerist point-of-view, I do understand their motive. I just happen to want to write plays that address great trauma with humor, because that is my life experience.
For even as much as I attempt to avoid reliving these events as an audience member, these are the stories that pour out of my subconscious through my fingertips into my computer. I write plays even I don’t want to witness. Ah, the irony.
