It’s been an amazing experience to listen to all the women’s voices during the Democratic Convention. Women who are journalists, broadcasters, politicians, a woman who works as security in a high rise elevator, sisters, mothers, Nancy Pelosi, and citizens.
I didn’t hear much authority in women’s voices when I was growing up. The nuns at Catholic school were characters, some brash, some almost invisible, but they were never heard from in the congregation at mass. They could sing in the choir. But they didn’t have voices that you could hear as an individual or participating as an equal in the church hierarchy.
As a playwright, I think back to all the characters I wanted to be as a young girl: a lion tamer, the first person who could fly without wings, an eccentric artist who kept a large menagerie of exotic animals, or a lawyer, like Katherine Hepburn in ADAMS RIB. I loved mouthy, extroverted, fearless, confident women who were fierce.
I’m looking at all the women who are running for office this election, and the voices of women interjecting their issues into the fabric of our chaotic American life right now. And I’m relieved to see that the centuries of women’s silence is coming to an end. I also see the pushback and disrespect and misogyny and violent objection to women in power, using their voices.
So I’m encouraged. For our voices as women, as characters, as people.
I wanted to share a bit of a giggle. This is a bit of diversion taped by the BBC, and the actors are having a bit of fun with our Zoom culture. I love it. I hope you do too. It’s about three minutes.
Remembering an audience of 11,000 at the MUNY Theatre in 2019
I was watching the Democratic National Convention last night, and I’m still thinking of all the faces and voices from the Americans who appeared during the states roll call.
I’ve watched it three times since last night, and I’m still very moved by it.
I loved seeing the faces, and hearing their individual voices: some of them polished and confident, others were quirky and spontaneous and awkward. It’s a great melange of the people who care to be involved in this difficult period of time.
I miss being part of audiences, crowds, spectators, and feeling like I belong to a large group, a clutch, of people.
Last year I flew over to the MUNY theater to see a production of 1776, a musical I’d never seen onstage before, and I didn’t know much about it. It certainly reflects the time in which it was written, almost a piece of amber with flecks of culture embedded in it. And I still think about it, and the music, even today.
What I also remember about that production was the audience of 11,000 people who saw the show.
The MUNY Theatre in 2019
I wonder when we will ever get to feel that thrill of being together to celebrate en masse and to carry with us the contact high of belonging to such a large animal group.
I will say, that watching the close ups of people’s faces last night on the television, was rewarding and intimate. And it makes me wonder about the scale of what we’ll get to experience in the future.
Feeling alone, either literally as a result of this quarantine, or in dealing with the unforeseen challenges of life during a pandemic? Towne Street Theatre, LA’s premiere African-American Theatre Company, will meet you wherever you are with their presentation of Corona and Other Maladies. Experience the virtual performances of six short plays on Saturday, August 15th at 7PM and Sunday, August 16th at 4PM coming to you LIVE from the sets/homes of over a dozen entertainers attempting to navigate this bizarre time just like you! This event includes 4 plays by women+ writers, all directed by Nancy Cheryll Davis, Towne Street Theatre’s Artistic Director. I had the privilege of connecting with Nancy to learn more about this event.
LAFPI: What inspired this event and what makes it unique from other Zoom readings?
Nancy Cheryll Davis
Nancy Cheryll Davis: We had just started our 10 minute Play Festival rehearsals when the pandemic hit, and it became clear that we were not going to be able to return to live theatre anytime soon. After doing our first Zoom event with our Spoken Word program, Sum Poetry, I realized how much people wanted to stay connected. I also realized how important it was for all of us, Company and Audience, to do so.
In May I came up with the title, Corona & Other Maladies, and asked our writers if they had, or could come up with, some short plays about living through this moment. We were originally going to do it in June, but after the deaths of Ahmad Aubrey, George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, I decided to postpone our programming and take a much needed pause to reflect on what was happening in our communities across the country.
We really worked on having some movement and semblance of the reality of each piece through the actors’ own home backgrounds. We used a few virtual ones and rehearsed everything just like we would in real time.
“Zoombies” by Madeline Puccioni, with Justin Gurbersky, Daphne Jones and Colette Rosario
LAFPI: What did you find the most fun and the most challenging not only directing all six plays, but in this specific format?
Nancy: Towne Street is fortunate to have incredibly talented writers and actors. Each script was so good! The beauty of having a company is that I know the members so well and what they really shine in. It was fun to cast each piece knowing they would all bring their special skills to their roles. Our production team is also incredibly talented and has fearlessly delved into this unknown world with me. We have all commented on the fact that although we are not doing live theatre, we are still able to practice our craft be it writing, acting, designing or directing, with this platform.
Directing these plays was like playing in a sandbox for me. The biggest challenge of course is the bandwidth each actor has or doesn’t have, on any given day, and the lack of control over that issue.
LAFPI: How do you feel that these plays “meet” audiences wherever they are and what would you like them to take away from the experience?
“Coming To You Live” by Laurie Allen, with Andrew Cudzilo and Samantha Clay
Nancy: The plays explore so many of the experiences that people are having now. They are beautifully written and acted and despite the title, rather lighthearted.
I always think finding some joy and laughter in the midst of chaos is critical to the human spirit. I hope for the time they spend with us on either Saturday or Sunday, that they are able to relax for a little bit and just have a good time. We are having an “After Party” following the performances, and I look forward to sharing some conversation and drinks with all!
Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
In 2016, I was a writer in the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. It was a life changing experience for me. I had always been a fiction writer, but that Fellowship gave me tools and confidence to finally embrace that part of my career.
Of course I have this whole other “career” as a playwright too. And I have been wondering, since 2016, how I could find ways to merge the two worlds and help amplify the program and the writers involved.
So last fall I pitched an idea to Amanda Fletcher, the Emerging Voices Fellowship Manager, for a live reading night called Puppets & Prose – during which we could get puppets and puppeteers to read written work from EV alum. It would be the weirdest reading night ever, but we were both super excited about it.
And then a pandemic hit. And there would be no live in-person puppet shows for a while…
But then…why not do it online?
So in April, when all the world was shutting down, I poked and prodded at Emerging Voices writers to send me some 1-3 min written pieces. And I worked withRogue Artists Ensemble and the LA Guild of Puppetry to put a call for puppeteers, performers and visual artists who might want to take a piece and interpret the work into a short video.
The response was overwhelming – so much so that each of the 17 written pieces I got had TWO artists assigned to it – resulting in 33 final micro films. It took me almost a week to figure out the pairings!
All the films still live on our website and YouTube channel – but I wanted to share with you a few pieces that ended up being very fem-tastic – the writers and artists identify as female artists, and the results are amazing…
Granted, all I ever wanted were a few weird puppets looking into the camera and reading poetry to me, so maybe I have a low bar. But I think you will enjoy.
Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
2020 feels like the year that’s never going to end. You would think that during a worldwide pandemic, American people could put aside their differences, find compassion, and do a better job of taking care of each other. But, in just two short months after states began enforcing quarantine, the country proved that old habits die hard. In late May, George Floyd, a Black security guard in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was killed by police, and his murder was broadcast throughout social media the following morning in an eight-minute video.
However, George Floyd is not the first Black man to be killed by cops. Hell, he’s not even the first one to be killed by cops this year. Back in February, Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in his neighborhood when he was shot and killed by three white men claiming, “a civilian arrest.” In April, Breonna Taylor, a Black EMT who was sleeping soundly with her partner in their apartment, was murdered in a flurry of bullets in an unannounced, mistaken drug raid. These three highly profiled murders of Black folks became the catalyst for the newly-revitalized, revolutionary Black Lives Matter movement that we are still experiencing today.
As the country trembles in fear with the reality of their own mortality amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, non-Black folks are now understanding concepts that Black folks everywhere have been screaming from the rooftops: that to be Black in America is to have grappled with your own mortality from that moment you realize your skin color is different. To be Black in America is to have to write social media posts that read, “If I’m ever arrested by cops, and I’m found dead in my jail cell, I would never kill myself. Don’t let them rule it as a suicide.” To be Black in America is not only to be one of the most vulnerable groups amidst a viral pandemic, but to also experience the social pandemic of police brutality.
These murders, paired with the continued protection of police officers against the consequences of police brutality, have coaxed people everywhere to protest, share historical injustices toward Black folks, post resources on social media, and facilitate difficult discussions with their own communities with a question that Black Americans have been asking for the last 400 years: When will enough be enough?
And now, since the government is still not listening, since the police have used violence against protesters and killed several more black citizens after George Floyd’s death, Los Angeles artists are taking the movement into their own hands.
This past weekend as well as tonight (August 1 & 8 at 8pm), Company of Angels premieres a virtual play festival titled What’s Going On?, inspired by the Marvin Gaye 1970s hit song. According to CoA’s website, “these 5-Minute Plays are set during the uprising in Los Angeles and the world that’s followed the murder of George Floyd by Police in Minneapolis, Minnesota… These plays address not just one aspect of what we’re going through, but rather speak to what happens when you add civil unrest to a pandemic, racism to a quarantine and a mask to social media?” The evenings include the work of 9 BIPOC women+ writers (playwrights & spoken word artists) and 10 female directors.
Playwrights of “What’s Going On?” at CoA
To learn more about these plays and how they speak to the moment, I contacted company member/producers Xavi Moreno & Julianna Stephanie Ojeda.
LAFPI: What about the pieces you’re directing/starring in are you most excited for folks to see? What images/questions do you hope they leave with?
Xavi Moreno: I’ll be in the final play of the final night, The Stimulus Check by Israel Lopez Reyes. I’m always excited to do plays that the audience can relate to, where they can see themselves saying the words that are coming out of my mouth. So with this play I feel people can put themselves in the shoes of both the characters and connect with it, to take them back to the moment they received the check and what they spent it on instead of what they should’ve.
Julianna Stephanie Ojeda: I directed Kiss by Diana Burbano and performed in Diciest Timeline by Howard Ho directed by Joyce Liu-Countryman. I’m most excited for people to see the importance of human connection. In Kiss, we get to see that with Shae (Taylor Hawthorne) and Loren (Analisa Gutierrez). With Diciest Timeline, we see it through Sarah and Steve’s (Victor Chi) relationship. Both plays have so much heart and I hope people leave feeling that love and connection.
LAFPI: Why do you think it’s most important for folks to see this play festival right now, while we’re all dealing with information-overload and overwhelmed emotions?
Xavi: For more than 60 years we’ve had the privilege of sharing the wonder of storytelling together. We’ve persevered through the fire of 1988 that destroyed our theatre, the L.A. Riots, the 2008 recession, and gentrification forcing us to move from theatre to theatre. None of those events has stopped us like Covid-19 has. With What’s Going On?, with doing theatre online we get this opportunity to continue our commitment to support diverse L.A.-based artists and to tell stories from unique underrepresented voices. Plus we get to share it outside of the limits of our physical theatre space in the City of Angels. In our first performance last week, we had performers telling us how friends from college in the east coast watched it, family members who they haven’t seen them in years watching them perform for the first time. That was beautiful.
Julianna: Patricia Zamorano said it best in the live broadcast comments on Facebook, “Bam! It’s possible!” To me that means it IS possible to produce a show that is a true reflection of our city and what we are experiencing. We need that more than ever. That need was reflected in the comments and the feedback we received from the audience. They shared that they felt seen and that they recognized a bit of themselves in our first weekend. Hopefully, the second weekend will be the same!
Catch Xavi Moreno, Julianna Stephanie Ojeda and other talented Los Angeles artists in Company of Angel’s ”What’s Going On? A Virtual Play Festival.” Streaming live Saturday, August 1 & August 8 at 8pm. For more information and to tune into the Livestreams, visit https://www.companyofangels.org/whatsgoingon.
“What’s Going On? A Virtual Play Festival” Company
Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at [email protected] & check out The FPI Files for more stories.
Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of LAFPI must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
I am at a loss. Still. I want to write and I do. I write something everyday. Now I just need to pull it together for a cohesive piece, but then I find another reference, or another article that I add fuel to my writing and I can’t put it out there.
I am searching for the secret, so if you know, please share it will me? How do you give zero f*cks? I can say all day long that I don’t care what people think and that I am writing my truth, but something hides in the shadows just waiting for me I know. Someone there to have the conversations I am dying to have but…procrastination. My house is so clean because of this. If only I could channel it.
“You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.” — Source unknown
I have started once again doing writing prompts. Which at the time when I choose the prompt I don’t think it will be helpful but as soon as I start the timer my mind is drawn into my play and I am filled with some sense of accomplishment.
Taking a 5-10 minutes clearing my head is hard. Sitting still. Needing to do something, anything else than sit here. What’s better for me, to get my writing done is to lead the meditation. That way I’m always thinking of what I’m going to say next, which I know is not what I supposed to do, but I’m trying. The random prompt then leads to dialogue. The time limit making me choose my words quickly and not overthinking it. Just write. Get something on the page. Don’t go back and edit. Just write the next sentence. What makes it worst, I have a book with 400 writing prompts, yet I insist on searching online everytime I need to find a prompt.
What else is productive for me is to take a class. During this time there have been so many opportunities to take classes from all around the country. I’ve written 2 short plays already. Way more than I think I’ve done before. EVER. I mean in a week’s time. But now I am procrasting on deadlines to submit a full length play and I’ve turned to reading a book about playwrighting. You know, just so I can get it right. I think I’m getting good at this procrastination.
The director of Theatre Palisades Youth, Lara Ganz, is over the moon. The troupe has acquired the rights to produce The Sound Of Music for its summer show. It was very difficult to do. Lara asked. They refused. She asked again. They refused. She cried, and they gave in.
The Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, is based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers in Austria at the time of the rise of Nazism.
Since 1965, it has continued to be one of the most popular movie musicals and plays ever.
Maria, one of the Trapp Singers, was a young nun in an Austrian convent who regularly missed her morning prayers because she went into the hills to sing. Deciding that Maria needs to learn something about the real world before she can take her vows, the Mother Superior sends her off to be governess for the seven children of the widowed Captain Von Trapp.
The movie, which starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, is full of glorious music. I can do without Do-Re-Mi, but I love Sixteen Going On Seventeen, My Favorite Things, Edelweiss and Climb Ev′ry Mountain. And more.
My husband made the making of The Sound of Music for the CBC and 20th Century Fox. When they were filming in Salzburg, Plummer would sit outside, hungover on a bench in full lederhosen, and was overheard calling the movie The Sound of Mucous. He is terrific in it.
And can Julie Andrews sing or what?
When I lived in Toronto, I took my aunt, Edna, who was blind, and her friend, Clara, who was hard of hearing, to see it in the movies on a Saturday afternoon. We sat way down front on the aisle, with me between the two.
Aunty Edna would lean into me and whisper,
EDNA Where is she now?
and I would whisper back,
DIANE She’s climbing up a hill and I think she is going to sing.
Throughout, Clara would ask quite loudly,
CLARA What did he (or she) say?
And I would say, also quite loudly,
DIANE He said…..
Nobody threw us out and we had a wonderful time.
It’s perfect for the kids and I’m really looking forward to the Theatre Palisades production. I won’t sing along, but I could!
Earlier in the week, I worked on a rewrite of a 5-minute play (my contribution for the upcoming Los Angeles Short Play Festival, What’s Going On?, produced by Company of Angels. For more info on this festival, please visit: https://www.companyofangels.org/whatsgoingon) that shouldn’t have taken too long to work on but, in fact, took me almost the whole day. It’s not like re-writes come easy to me (an overthinker) but more so than that, my brain has been a little fuzzy as of late. It’s not hard to believe that with all that’s going on, and is continuing to develop, we (because I’ve heard this from other folks too) might not be as focused on the writing/work before us.
Fortunately, I am working with a really wonderful director, Sylvia Cervantes Blush, who quickly picked up what I was going through and gave me a writing exercise that really helped SPARK (hey, hey, there goes the title of this post!) something for me. This all started making me think of some of my favorite writing exercises that have, in this instance, helped me with the development of a current project, or some of which have just been super memorable because they allowed me to reflect and/or think outside the box. I’d like to share some of those here in hopes that it might help clear your fuzzy brain.
SYLVIA’S EXERCISE
To help me clarify what the message of my play was (because trust me, I lost it for a bit), Sylvia offered an exercise to me that consists of three parts. Part 1 asks you to take 20 minutes to go through your play from beginning to end, including stage directions and highlight the words/phrases that HAVE TO BE IN THE PLAY.
It should be noted that 20 minutes was more than appropriate to actually go through an entire 5-minute play. If you’re working on a full-length, well, than of course, give yourself an appropriate amount of time to go through the play but not so much that you have the time to dwell over every word/phrase you possibly can (assuming you’re an overthinker like me).
Once that time is up, comes Part 2! Here, you will take half the time you took in the first step—so for me that was ten minutes—and re-write the play with just those words. Don’t fret, Dear Reader, you’re not starting from scratch! Essentially, you’re blocking out everything you DID NOT highlight and then observing the play in its new little Frankenstein form.
I have to say, this was personally my favorite part. Reading the words/phrases I highlighted from my 5-minute play, blocked off from all the other clutter, sort of felt like diving into some poetry.
Now, Part 3 made me a bit anxious. Part 3 asks that without looking at your original and Frankenstein drafts, you re-write the entire play! My hands just got sweaty typing that…
I did this third part in 30 minutes. Again, for folks writing full-length plays, you’re going to want to adjust that time appropriately.
The draft that was developed during this phase was most definitely not the final draft of my play BUT it was super helpful in going back to work on it, as influenced by these new interpretations of it.
LOVELL’S EXERCISE
While part of the Son of Semele writers group, fellow member, Lovell Holder, gave us an exercise that made me start writing a play I often think about. For this exercise, we were asked to write a two-person narrative (play, prose, or poem—whatever you choose). Through out our writing, the proctor (in this case, Lovell) called out random words that we were to use in our piece. Of course, if you were already on some train of thought with your writing, then the random words were bound to throw you off, but on the other hand, it could also drive your story somewhere pleasantly surprising, which was the case for me. Definitely a good lesson in rolling with the punches.
LTA/LA WRITERS CIRCLE EXERCISE
As a former member of the Latino Theatre Alliance/LA’s writers group, we would have notable LA playwrights visit our sessions and give us master class/workshop of their choice. This next exercise is from that time BUT, I honestly CANNOT remember WHO gave us this exercise. K sad (“How sad” for all my non-Spanglish readers).
This two-part exercise required that we draw ourselves in a place of emotional significance, but additionally, we are to include someone in that image who may or may not necessarily belong to that space. The second part of the exercise then asks that we then write dialogue between both people in that image, taking the space into consideration. To start you off, the first line of dialogue should be, “Do you really think you know everything there is to know”. Going back to space very quickly– I hate to admit this but I’m not always so good at following directions during exercises like these, either because I didn’t fully grasp what was asked of us or because… I just didn’t want to. I say this because NONE of my dialogue had nothing to do with the location of my play. I can’t say I was a rebel for going against the rules of this exercise, in this instance, I more so just didn’t listen because I got distracted. In any case, this was a super memorable exercise for me because I got to draw myself (in my preferred pants-free state) in my assigned dorm room at the University of Sussex when I was studying abroad. Not to brag, but mine was the BIGGEST dorm room on the floor, so yeah, I was having solo dance parties in there FOR SURE. But back to the exercise… Included in my drawing was my sister’s dog, Lita, who has long been over my shit, so the dialogue portion of the exercise was fun and biting.
This assignment, overall, just did the job of taking me out of my fuzzy brain and putting me in a good mood, so at the very least, I would recommend it for that.
Me and Lita <3
Anyway, if you are experiencing fuzzy brain, I hope that you feel inclined to try one of these exercises. If you do, I hope you’ll let me know how it went.
In Hyde Park, the people are standing outside on the streets, sitting on the porch, parked in chairs on the sidewalks and are looking up at the skies… The skies are bejeweled with color and dazzling sparks. The sound is intensely booming the celebration of freedom.
For one evening during this period of uncertainty, we are united by awe and wonder. Couldn’t we remember to regard each person with awe, respect and wonder more often?
These days, the news reports that drivers are more aggressive on the roads and that there are higher accidents and fatalities on the road. Some people are channeling their unbridled emotions with pressure on the gas pedal or taking unnecessary risks. Today, while driving along Western south of Jefferson Boulevard, someone passed to my left, crossing onto the lane of the opposite traffic and swerved to make a right turn, crossing three lanes. Bold and stupid to say the least.
During my drive, prior to being a witness to that, I was musing about the gamut of human emotions. I thought, as an experiment, that I would start to take notes on the range of emotions I experience in a twenty-four hour period, and correlate those emotions with the thoughts that motivated the emotions. Then, as an objective scientist, I would create a bar graph of the categories of thoughts-emotions, to visualize which bars tend to be higher than others. This bar graph would be an indicator of my tendencies, and perhaps help me to manage my emotions better.
My emotions have been running high. I shared with someone that, lately, I’ve been yelling a lot at the dogs. My temperature gauge is running hot and I don’t like this trend. Upon recognizing my rising emotional temperature, I reasoned that the dogs prefer to be near me, especially with the illegal fireworks exploding during the evenings and sometimes well into the late night. Or they are looking for attention when they destroy the hose or bend the metal bars of the screen door. Big sigh.
It’s interesting to me that what inspired the idea of taking an inventory of my thoughts and feelings by logging them was leafing through a book called “Classics of the Foreign Film”, by Parker Tyler, and published in 1962. Open a page and there, bared to the eyes of the soul are images of the human condition. Every page is breaming with these images. I think this compilation is better than National Geographic. It is art made by artists about You and Me, Us and Them, Me and We, He and She. It is the relationships put into cinematographic art form by years, starting with 1919 thru 1961 from different countries (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, India, USSR, Japan and more).
I don’t quite understand how my mind made the connection of what I’ve been experiencing with my emotions to the catalogue of dramatic scenes in those pages. Like a light switch, the light turned on and I recognized that I needed to step back in my own life and see it as a movie. In doing that, I don’t identify so much as the doer but more of an experiencer of what’s happening at the moment. i.e. not to take it all so personally (in pill form). Watch the images projected on the blank screen as passing moments. The only thing permanent is the screen, me; while the experiences are ephemeral.
This, all this, that’s been making our emotions run high and low, shall pass.
