On the Fallacy of Space

Performance, Playwright, playwriting, Production, , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Don't Panic

Although I’m a playwright, I’ve been focusing a lot on producing this week in the hopes that what I’ve learned as a producer can be helpful to playwrights who are tired of sitting around waiting for someone to make the production magic happen for them. I’m going to continue on that thread today as I talk about the unfortunate brain melt that so often happens when we talk about space.

When I’m talking to a playwright about the hurdles of producing, unless they have an ‘in’ at a theatre company, the conversation inevitably begins to circle the panic-drain of “BUT I DON’T HAVE A SPACE!”, because when you consider the fact that most theaters/art galleries charge pretty hefty fees to rent their spaces, a lot of aspiring new producers get cut off at the knees before they’ve even started, and head back desk or day job, defeated.

But when the dollar signs start flashing red and you feel the panic rising, just remind yourself of this simple truth: you don’t need a theater space to make theatre happen!

I’m not sure exactly when it occurs, but somewhere along the route to professionalism, many of us begin to adopt this weird attitude that theatre needs to happen in a theatrically appointed space, and anything else is just… unprofessional, and… ewwwww!

When did we turn into such catty teenagers?

I agree, production-wise, a dedicated theater is a much easier place to work: the lights, the sound equipment, the dressing rooms and fixed seats… all of those things make life easier when you’re producing a show.  But they’re not the end all be all to making theatre happen.  I’ve seen vivid and exciting theatre happen in living rooms, in parks, at restaurants, in civic auditoriums, and in old abandoned warehouses – and each time it’s been a unique and awesome experience!

The trick is in knowing your space ahead of time, so that you can match your production goals to your resources and select a play (or collection of short plays) that will work in the space you’re using.  For instance: living room plays are great fun, but they only work if you select small cast pieces that can be put up around a coffee table, TV stand, book shelves, and whatever else homey obstacles your hosts may have present.  It’s also important that they can be performed comfortably for a handful of people sitting within inches of the actors – I saw a very sexually charged piece done this way once and I just couldn’t get over the fact that two strangers were dry humping six-inches away from my face!   And sure, you can’t do a piece with a million different locations/light cues because there’s no light board to play with and you can’t load in flats… but each of those Don’ts is an opportunity to seek out what can and will work.  So you pick something small, something intimate, something that is transportable, engaging, and good in the close-up, and you make it happen.

So what does this have to do with what we do over here at Little Black Dress INK?  Well, for those of you who don’t know, we rely completely on Partner Producers to present readings of our semi-finalists – I wish I could afford to put our female playwrights on tour, but I just can’t (my superstitious side is telling me to include the waiver “yet”).  So instead I rely on these awesome Partner Producers—who are actors, writers, and directors themselves— to bring our festival to their cities in the best way possible for them, which means that each reading is unique and personal to them.

This year our semi-finalist readings took place at an art gallery, a teaching studio, and a university, as well as a few very cool theatre spaces, and our final two readings will happen in “unconventional” locations as well; a public park and at Samuel French’s Los Angeles Bookshop.  I love these unique spaces – they add a flavor all their own to the readings and add to the conversational atmosphere after the readings are over.

And yes, when we get to production in Prescott, we’ll be putting the shows up in an actual theatre – but if we didn’t have one, I’d have still made the fest happen somehow.

The point I’m going for is this: Playwrights are traditionally rich in imagination, but poor in actual cash-money.  Unless you get a theatre to back your production (or find a patron of the arts to fund you), production expenses can add up fast.  Space doesn’t have to be the huge obstacle it so often is! You can make just about any space work if you put your creative juices to work making the most of the resources you have available to you.  And if all you have is the back room at your local bookstore and some gumption, then why not recruit some like-minded folks and create a reading series?  You never know where it could lead, or how good it will feel just to be making something happen.

Creating an Awesome Festival Line-up

playwriting, Production, Theatre, , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Female-Playwrights-ONSTAGE-cropI got started in theatre as an actress.  I loved being on stage, but I hated auditioning because that very necessary internal confidence that keeps a persom from being a neurotic mess was rarely in full bloom for me.  Instead, I’d pretend I felt confident at auditions and then quietly go home where I could pick apart every choice I’d made and obsess in peace.

Then I directed my first show, which meant I was casting a show for the first time, and in so doing, I had a revelation: for the first time, I understood just how much time I had wasted locked in actor anxiety about things I had very little control over.  After that experience, I auditioned with a lot more boldness, confidence, and less personal worth on the line.  It was freeing.

I woke up this morning reflecting on this, because we at Little Black Dress INK recently announced our ONSTAGE Finalists and I thought it might be interesting to know how I came to narrow down what was a very awesome list of 36 plays to just 15.

First, it’s important to know that we use a peer review process to select our initial semi-finalists, so all of our participating playwrights are responsible for determining the first cut. After that, I consider peer-review scores and Partner Producer nominations along with the points I’m outlining below to create what I hope will be an awesome and successful line-up.

So, in the interest of helping alleviate some writerly anxieties, I’d like to talk today about what I’ve learned—as a playwright—in the five years I’ve been producing new plays:

  1. First, proofing your work is important, but a typo here or there won’t sink the ship!  I can’t believe how many playwrights send in work that just looks like a hot mess.  If you don’t take my time as a reader seriously, why should I take your play seriously?  Make your plays easy to read – format it in a way that is friendly to the eye and go over it for typos and grammar!  BUT, that said, if a play is truly unusual, gripping, or awesome, I’m much more likely to excuse a few formatting hiccups.  That’s just the way it is.  I would never not-produce a piece that I loved just because there were a few misspelled words.  On the other hand, most of the time, the work that is the most compelling is usually also in top readable shape.
  2. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t just select the “very best” pieces.  If I’m creating a festival line-up, I’ve got to build a satisfying one – and that means a mix of genres and topics and tones… I may have nine FABULOUS dramas, but if I produce an entire evening of dramas, my audience is going to be exhausted.  The same holds true if I have multiple pieces that tackle the same subject: even if they’re fantastic, I’m only going to put one of those in the line-up because including too many similar pieces in one night can feel redundant.
  3. I like to use monologues in my fest, so I do.  Monologues have been a really nice addition to our festivals – they are perfect curtain pieces that keep the audience engaged while we set the stage for the next piece.  So, when I select my final line-up, monologues are something I put a lot of energy into.  The other  fabulous discovery I’ve made as a producer is how incorporating short scenelets (a 10-minute play comprised of several mini-scenes) into our fest between plays can provide a delightful through line in what is usually a fractured event. This is just my own preference – and other producers will have theirs.  The reason I mention it is that if I’m selecting 5 monologues to help cover set changes, I might not be able to include that 9th totally awesome play in the line-up.
  4. “Best” is relative.  This one is a no-brainer, but I still mention it because I think even though we all know it, it helps to be reminded once in a while.  Personally, I like plays that feel like they can only live on the stage.  I like plays that challenge or delight me, plays that feel fresh and unique and unlike anything I’ve seen or read before… But what’s the common thread in all that?  Me, myself, and I.   What’s “fresh” to me isn’t guaranteed to feel fresh to she/he/you – so it’s an unpredictable factor that a playwright can’t control and shouldn’t fret over.  What I like about our peer-review process is that it identifies a broad spectrum of work that is outstanding – not just from my own personal perspective, but from a variety of eyes – but as I winnow that list down to the final selection, my perspective comes back to fore.  You could take our same group of 2015 semi-finalists and create a multitude of awesome festival line-ups, each uniquely reflective of what different producers were looking for… and there’s just nothing a writer can do to change that.  Which is why the best thing a writer can do is write work they believe in, send that work out in the best shape they can get it into, and repeat.  Meanwhile, we’ll be here sifting through the incredible amount of awesome work, trying our best to create a line-up that we feel best matches our mission, our audience, and—sometimes—our own personal aesthetic.

And there it is – my ten cents on festival selection.  I hope it’s of interest and of help to you, my fellow writers!

 

Self-Producing and Investing in Others

Female Artists, playwriting, ,

By Tiffany Antone

TEAM

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone respond to a playwright bemoaning a lack of productions with a tired “Why don’t you just self-produce?”

As though self-producing is the end-all, be-all to theatrical frustration.

Have a drawer full of unseen scripts? Self Produce!

Tired of slogging along agent-less?  Self Produce!

Wish people were more familiar with your “brand”? Self (you got it) Produce!

But producing takes money.

Sometimes, depending on the types of plays you write, it takes a great deal of money.

And if you do manage to gather the space, creative team, marketing materials, and all-necessary-else to get your production up and running, unless you’re in a major theatrical city, the chances that the production will lead to anyone of consequence seeing it are pretty slim.

Which is why I think we need to stop telling playwrights to simply produce their own work as if it will satisfy the burning desire to speak to the world that compels them to spend countless hours crafting works that can only be realized through the efforts of many.  Instead, let’s look for ways to create a stronger network that leads to continued creative evolution and more production opportunities.

And sure, that sounds lovely, but of course the question will be “But HOW?!”

I think we go back to that initial producing instinct and look at what we can do on the micro level as playwrights that satisfies, strengthens, and propels us forward.

Four years ago I was a relatively new playwright who’d been gaining accolades, but not productions. In engaging my critical self, I came to a few conclusions:

  1. I was a new, unheard of playwright who wrote fantastical plays with big casts
  2. “Fantastical” and “Big Cast” aren’t small-company friendly
  3. Being a new playwright, I needed to write something that would be doable on a smaller budget, in a smaller venue, so that I could build some theatrical street cred and graduate from the Staged Reading Vortex.

So I sat down and began Ana and the Closet – a small cast, abstract (re: no huge set needed!) play that needed projections, and needed a puppet, and needed to rain ash and end on a precipice with a black river… Yeah, my “simple” piece wound up being one of the most visually demanding in my catalog.

(sigh)

I just don’t write “simple” plays.  At their core, my work may be about simple things, but I’m too heavy into visual metaphor and this “crazy” notion that theatre should show me something I can’t see on TV or at the movies…

Ana and the Closet went on to land a number of exciting reading opps and got me within a hair’s breadth of the Jerome Fellowship (damn that hair!) but ultimately I was left feeling unsatisfied because the play, while garnering attention, still wasn’t getting produced.

The lesson, of course, was that you need to write the work you believe in – and I do that, which keeps me sane.  But the challenge still remains, how do I satisfy the burning drive to create if the things I’m creating aren’t being seen through to completion?  A play isn’t a play until it’s breathing on stage!

Being an impatient young artist who was terrified of the long haul, I wanted to get MORE done FASTER!  But I didn’t have any money with which to produce my own work…

So I decided I would wrest control by creating a short play festival and make other playwrights happy by producing their work.  Because short play fests are a lot easier and more affordable to produce.  And because I wanted to know more of my peers, to learn about their work, and to satisfy my own need to see something through to completion while I wait for someone else to bring my work to fruition.

And as a result, the Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Project I began 4 years ago is blooming!  We had readings in six cities this year, with two more to come before the fest culminates with a production in AZ.  We’re continuing to grow, and I couldn’t be happier to see our playwrights connecting with one another on social media, cheering one another on, and supporting each other along the way!

I’m still writing my own plays, but I’m also forging ahead on this other exciting project that has legs, has a beating heart, and is creating opportunities for other writers.

So, sure, you can self-produce, but you can also invest in other writers who challenge and inspire you, who cheer you on and whom you applaud and root for.  It’s lonely out here in the writing world, but it doesn’t have to be!  And there are a multitude of ways in which we can be more proactive on our writer’s journey that help satisfy our urge to see things through in a business where it isn’t always possible to do so for ourselves.

Just a few thoughts as I begin this week’s LAFPI blog duty…  I’m sure there will be more!

The Female Science Fiction Writers of Tomorrow

Female Artists, Feminism, Girls, Performing Arts, Play, Playwright, playwriting, Theatre, Young Women,

by Korama Danquah

It’s not a secret to anyone that science fiction writing has, in the past, been a boys’ club. I can’t really tell you why. Perhaps it’s a carryover from the gender gap in science education or maybe it’s just that women feel it’s more productive to construct a real-world society of equality before creating elaborate fictional future worlds. Whatever the reason, there are 20 H. P. Lovecrafts for every Ursula Le Guin.

This weekend, however, marks a momentous step forward for women in science fiction writing. Five young women will have staged readings of their science fiction short stories at Sci-Fest LA’s Tomorrow Prize. These LA high school students will have their stories (1500 words or less) read by prominent sci-fi actors and all five finalists are women.

Screen Shot 2015-05-15 at 4.58.39 PM
Finalists from Left to Right: Ashley Anderson, Erica Goodwin, Janeane Kim, Ruby Park, and Athena Thomassian

The five finalists are a beacon of hope for female sci-fi fans. For decades women in science fiction have been seductive aliens and, more recently, captains and starship officers, but we have not often been the authors of these fantastical stories. These finalists and others like them are saying no to the boys’ club of the past and carving a place for themselves in the annals of sci-fi history. It is often said that “you can’t be what you can’t see,” and these young women are making themselves visible for female science fiction writers of today and of tomorrow.

The Tomorrow Prize readings take place on Saturday, May 16th at 4:00 at Acme Comedy Theatre (135 N. La Brea Ave, Hollywood). Tickets are available for $10 online and $15 at the door. All box office proceeds and any additional donations received that day go to the winner’s high school science department. 

Karen Black Acting On Film

playwriting

      by Diane Grant

My husband, Kerry Feltham, is a filmmaker who specializes in documentary films. I’m blogging about one of his films today because it is about the late Karen Black, who died on August the 8th, 2013. Called Karen Black Acting On Film, the film is up on Amazon Instant Video – $1.99 to rent and $7.99 to buy – and is really worth watching.

He and I followed Karen around as she made films and friends, talked about life in show business and shared her insights into acting technique. She had a prodigious natural talent but was also so disciplined and skilled, she made it look easy.

And it isn’t.

What is so good in the film is her understanding not only of acting, particularly on film, but about the courage and energy and strength it takes to keep going in show business, pushing through on the rough days, having fun on the good ones. The latter is pertinent to all of us, whether we are acting, writing, or producing in either film or theater.

Even when she was no longer at the top – and she had been for a long time in such films as Trilogy of Terror, The Day Of The Locust, Nashville, The Great Gatsby, Five Easy Pieces – she continued to work. Character work was her forte and she created wonderfully full characters, some odd, some funny, some sad, but always full.

Lately, I’ve thought quite often about packing it in. How many plays can you have in the drawer? How many staged readings of plays you long to see on their feet can you sit through? How many submissions can you make in a month? And to whom? Didn’t you submit that one to that contest in 2011? Or was it that one in 2012? Should you keep all those email rejections?

And we all tell ourselves the same thing over and over. It’s the work, the doing of it, the joy of doing it.

Karen was a vivid example of that joy.

Karen Black

KAREN BLACK Acting on Film

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Self Production Series with Anna Nicholas: #12 Rehearsal…

LAFPI, Playwright, Production, , , , , , ,

#12. Rehearsals – Or… Making it to Opening Night

by Guest Blogger Anna Nicholas

In the theater, things don’t always happen in a nice, sequential and unstressful order. And in Equity-waiver theatre—read low-budget—things not going as planned is the order of the day. Meaning a playwright doesn’t often have the luxury of a wonderful theatre to work in, fabulous designers to bring her vision to life, a positive casting period during which actors ideal for the roles you’ve written show up to audition and a smooth but exciting rehearsal period where each rehearsal builds upon the last; until finally your show peaks on opening night in front of an appreciative audience with top critics in attendance loving your play. Oh, would that it were so easy! In fact, getting a play up is more a case of overcoming obstacles—whether those obstacles be physical or mental. And with Villa Thrilla, we had our share of both.

Once we had our cast—a challenge in itself—rehearsal began with just four weeks until opening night. (For more on the challenges of casting, see this post in the series: https://lafpi.com/2015/03/the-self-production-series-with-anna-nicholas-9-finding-your-actors/) Four weeks is not much time when you’re mounting a new play with a cast of ten; particularly when it seemed impossible to get all the actors to the same rehearsals, even though the play required that their characters be on stage at the same time.

You do your best to get peoples’ schedules ahead of time in order to plan rehearsals but a few people in our cast apparently hadn’t heard about looking at a calendar to verify their availability before committing to doing a play. Did they not know about Yom Kippur or their Mother’s birthday when they signed on? Add losing a cast member one week into rehearsals, losing another cast member for 10 days when a parent became sick out of town and a third cast member who was so difficult to work with we wanted to lose him but replacing him would have meant losing another cast member we liked and there just wasn’t time to get new people up to speed.

The only advantage I can see to 99-seat theatre going away—and I truly hope it does not—is an advantage only to Producers. I guess they should get something for having to pay actors more. The advantage I see is that actors will need to make a greater commitment to the play they have agreed to do, adhering to rehearsal schedules for the privilege of earning minimum wage. Currently actors can pretty much not show up if they feel a little sick, have an audition the next day or realize there were important events they forgot—including their dog’s graduation from obedience school.

The fact that we didn’t have all the actors to rehearse when we needed them made a lot more work for Gary Lee Reed (Director), Josephine Austin (Stage Manager) and me. At the time, if felt as if it took years off our lives. Gary couldn’t tell what he was looking at with the stage missing up to 5 people at any given rehearsal, which resulted in having to block scenes multiple times; Josie was constantly changing blocking in her master script and having to phone errant actors who were late or hadn’t shown up; And I was not able to watch and rewrite during rehearsals, something I’d been counting on, because I had to stand-in for missing cast members—often two or three of them in the same scene. I was dashing around the stage speaking with multiple dialects and vocal timbres providing a real person for the actors who had actually shown up to rehearse. Some nights, we wanted to strangle someone—usually someone who was missing—and yet, we had to try to remain upbeat for the actors who bothered to come to rehearsal. What would be gained by screaming? I don’t know; we didn’t try it. But I doubt it would have improved the rehearsal experience, which I’d hoped would be a gloriously fruitful period when my play would change and grow in leaps and bounds. But alas, I didn’t get to have that on this one.

Being an AEA actor as well as a playwright, I like to think I understand actors but when I put my producer hat on for Villa Thrilla, I was shocked by the behavior of some of my fellow thespians. Emergencies are one thing but it would never occur to me to commit to doing a show, commence rehearsals and then spring a few “unavailable” dates on the producers.

In retrospect, I would have helped myself by choosing a play with a smaller cast but I’ve already explained why I chose this play in the post on Selecting the Work: https://lafpi.com/2014/12/the-self-production-series-with-anna-nicholas-3-selecting-the-work/

Shockingly, we did not have our entire cast onstage at the same time until 5 days before opening. And the only thing I can say by way of comfort if you’re considering producing your play, is that once we got to tech, the actors were mostly great. They showed up for the remainder of rehearsals, then performances and, for the most part, knew their lines. So you may get a few more gray hairs, but if you hire professionals, they will be there.

Next up: Ticketing, pre-sales and making some money back

What is a Heart?

playwriting

A conversation over instant message begins with:

A: What’s worse than losing your mind?
B: Death.
A: How about a heart turning to stone?
B: That’s death

I began with an inquiry on the expression “heart of stone”. With the approach of Mother’s Day, I wanted to have a heart-to-heart connection with my mom. I felt the distance between Hawaii and Los Angeles has created a permanent rift between us, and especially since I’ve never been good at initiating a phone call. During the times I tried, I couldn’t have a conversation with her because of the blare of her television. “Mom, turn down the TV”. “What?!” I’m afraid my mom’s heart has turned to stone. She lives alone, and she’s old. Ever since my father died, I think she’s walled off her heart.

This is my idea about the heart. It’s the engine that drives life literally and figuratively. In the literal sense the brain is the “control” center akin to the operating system of the computer. It regulates the body’s optimal homeostasis and gives the commands to the organs and glands to do their jobs. If there is an imminent threat I need to get away from then my brain tells my adrenal gland to give my body a little extra boost of adrenalin. So the gland drops a dose of the adrenalin into my blood stream, and my heart pumps the blood through the rest of my body. At the same time this flow of the blood removes toxins and other byproducts from the respiration of the cells. With every exhale the impurities are taken away. Every breath in and out is a cycle of life.

So that’s the mechanics of the heart. The heart is referenced with a breadth and depth linguistically in the Romantic and Germanic languages. The heart is the container of our emotional life. It is the motor of our motivations and aspirations. We use heart in our language that expresses our soul, spirit and our body.

If my “heart is not into it” then I either won’t do it or I do it badly.

If I don’t get the “heart of the matter” then I am missing the essence or the point.

If my “heart stood still” then I could either have been frightened that I catch my breath or I’ve been hit by a bolt of love at first sight.

If I’m “disheartened” then I’ve lost my spirit for something that I once had courage for. There’s the Latin origin of heart “Coeur” in courage. To be lion-hearted is to be brave and courageous.

When I say, “Don’t play with my heart” then I’m asking you to please be gentle with me.

I saw a production of Beth Henley’s play, Crimes of the Heart, at the Rubicon Theater in 2010. I savored that scene between Babe Botrelle and Barnette Lloyd in the kitchen where she describes how she shot her husband because she didn’t like his looks. The thrust of those words stood for her anger at her husband’s cruelty because of her affair with a 15 year old black teenager. After shooting him in the stomach, she made a big pitcher of ice-cold lemonade which she drank thirstily while he bled and moaned asking her to call for help. Out of her customary politeness she offers him a glass of lemonade – the whole thing executed with an absence of mind. In a 1998 review by Jamie L. Jones in the Harvard Crimson, he noted that:

It should not surprise audiences of Crimes of the Heart to learn that Babe Botrelle did not kill her husband when she shot him (she aimed for his heart but hit his stomach): she’s a good Southern woman, after all, and among the other myths she heard about men and women, she undoubtedly learned that “the only way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

It’s fascinating how the heart in language to represent the real, intangible and yet powerful aspects of our persona.

Going back to a heart turning to stone, I researched that the leading cause of death for women (short term and long term( is aortic aneurism where there is an abnormal bulge in the wall of the artery (the artery being the largest artery in the body). Medically, what can cause aortic aneurysms are (source: www.webmd.com):
• Atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which weakens arterial walls.
• Hypertension (high blood pressure).
• Local injury to the artery.
• Congenital abnormality. A number of conditions, such as Marfan syndrome or bicuspid aortic valves are present at birth and can cause weakness of the artery walls.
• Aging
• Syphilis used to be a common cause of thoracic aneurysms, but it is no longer as common

Could a long-term psychological-emotional trauma of a heartache lead to a heart of stone in its fullest sense. An emotional wound that won’t heal could render a person to choose to stop feeling their feelings as a protection, and so they become cold and unfeeling. There is a medical condition called Calciphylaxis. In Wikipedia, it cites that ‘a severe calciphylaxis can cause diastolic heart failure from cardiac calcification, called “heart of stone”.’ Also from the same source: Calciphylaxis can result from “chronic non-healing wounds and is usually fatal. Calciphylaxis is a rare but serious disease.”

Women tend to have a longer life span than men. Imagine generations of women whose husbands or boyfriends have died in the war, natural causes, illnesses or accidents. Some women succumb to the grief. It’s been 14 years since my father died. Since 2001, every year, my mother still prays novenas and holds masses for his death anniversary and birthdays. She carries a vial containing his ashes wherever she travels. I’ve stopped asking why she does it, because she responds with a sigh that sounds like I’ve treaded into private territory. Whether she does it from a sense of duty or the ritual of honoring their marriage, I feel she hasn’t allowed herself to move past the grief. I don’t mean for her to “get over it”, because that sounds like it is nullifying the sacrament of their marriage. Though I wonder if she still carries the torch for her departed beloved.

There is also the biblical aspect from the book of Ezekiel on the heart of stone:

Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land which I gave to your ancestors, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:22–28)

With the guidance of Jeffrey Keuss in understanding this scripture, he breaks it down to the Word of God (or the Hebrew word Rûaḥ which means the Breath or Spirit of God) which brings life to the inanimate stone.

as God breathed his spirit (rûaḥ) upon creation at the beginning of all things, this same spirit will remove that which is inanimate stone and bring life where once there was death. As deep calls out to deep, the same breath that blows away stone will reside as a living spirit to animate and enliven. This much is clear: bones come together in Ezekiel 36, but they don’t live until the spirit is breathed on them. It is the Spirit of God that animates, and it will also be the Spirit that preserves, redeems, and restores.

I ask these questions of myself that were suggestions from the same posting:

In Hebrew culture, having a “heart of stone” means that the core of one’s being is lifeless. What are parts of modern life that leave you feeling as if you are experiencing a “hardening of heart?” Conversely, in what ways have you experienced the rûaḥ of God breathing new life in creation of a “heart of flesh?”

Jeffrey Keuss is a professor at Seattle Pacific University.

I know my Mom has the heart of a woman, the heart of a mother and the heart of a human being. She is warm and tender and full of love. In writing about this I see now that this has been a season for me where I’m trying to put life where I feel I’ve stagnated. From my last blog Lilac Time I shared that I am feeling a dead end with my corporate job. My heart ache is not having the title of “Writer” in my Linkedin profile. I love Nancy Beverly’s profile. Flat out “Writer”. I wondered if anybody’s put down “Mother”. That resume of work experience and aptitude would be at the top of the list of the most desirable people to work with. (Maybe not everyone would agree.)

But within the last 10 minutes of writing this post I bought tickets to fly to Hawaii on my mother’s birthday which falls on Memorial Day this year, May 25th. It’s my chance to make a heart-to-heart connection with her, and I can turn down the volume of the TV myself.

Lilac Time

playwriting

By Analyn Revilla

The lilac season is very short. My room is suffused with its sweet scent. Lilacs have an allure with its delicate heads bowing to the ground in a humble curtsy. They remind me of childhood days in the cold north. I don’t know the physiology of these plants, similar to the bulbs of tulips and daffodils, that need the cold winter to hibernate. I look at the bouquet often even as I type words on the page. The cursor blinks and it waits to obey the next action.

Lately, I’ve been into analyzing dreams. I describe mine as fantastic. I think anyone who remembers their dreams would probably use ‘bizarre’, ‘strange’, ‘amazing’ when they put together the images and scenes that play out in their dreams. When I awake I’m curious to know what my dreams mean; are there messages being conveyed? I want to linger in bed and let it play out, but duty calls and I have to get up. I intuit that I could be missing out on something of value in my dreams, and I decided that I need to pay closer attention to it.

It was April in Vancouver and the lilacs were in full bloom. My dog Chloe and I walked on a street that had a generous hedge of lilac bushes. I wrote a poem that year called “Lilac Dreams”. Like dreams the lilacs were ephemeral, like the fog that sits on the lake. The moment is surreal, because it’s a tangible reality that lasts for a such a brief period of time.

So it goes with dreams. You’re in it during the REM stage of sleep which lasts maybe 3 minutes. Everything that happens feels real and has dream logic. One moment I am washing my face under the running waters of the kitchen sink and the neighbors can see me through the window then it changes. I’m sitting in a car with a girlfriend and we’re driving a slushy narrow road that we decide that we can’t travel on any further. So we turn back. I get out to direct my friend turn the car around. My feet are in the freezing cold lake and I have this magnificent strength to push the car onto the paved road so it doesn’t fall into the lake. Then another friend, a man, and I argue whether or not to continue on the motorcycle on the same road. There’s a tricky hairpin turn that forces the rider to glide into the opposite lane to navigate the way, but risks slamming head on with oncoming traffic. Plus the icy conditions will make it harder than it already is. I told him I’m not going to risk it. He said he’s going to go for it.

I’ve been researching dream symbols and this is what I’ve deciphered about my dream. People in my conscious life can appear in my dreams, and each one of them is an apparition of me. In my dream there was a woman and a man. They are the female and male aspects of me. The number 2 occurs in each scene. Two represents “the balance of masculine and feminine energies; or some balance in some area of life that is needed” (source “The Dream Book” by Betty Bethards). The kitchen is a work area where plans and schemes are “cooked”, and preparations for nourishment are made. There’s also a window which is the ability to see beyond a given situation – a view to the other side – “inter-dimensional awareness” (“The Dream Book”)

The feminine aspect intuits that we can’t continue the journey, so the decision is to turn back and not continue with the journey. A car is symbolic of the daily physical life and how it is used to manifest what I want. The course of the car is parallel to the direction my life is going. I am not behind the wheel so I am not in charge of the my life’s direction. A motorcycle means a need to have balance. The images in my dreams are symbols of a dialogue between my masculine and feminine aspects. My masculine nature decides to continue the journey despite the risks of the road conditions and the weather. My feminine aspect says ‘Wait. Stop. I’m not ready to take the risks.”

What context is this dream juxtaposed against? I’ve been seriously evaluating my career path and I’ve decided that I need a change and I need growth. My feminine side wants to be safe and it fears change; while my masculine side wants to bolt out and ‘go for it’ despite the limiting parameters.

This dream does not seem to give me an answer as to which course to take, but it examines the conflict within. So, I need to sit more with the decision and make the right choices with wholeness of being. How will I navigate this change? At times of upheavals I remind myself to be kind with myself by being aware of my feelings, being in touch with them and accepting them wholly. I need to balance both sides of me: one who wants to be a bull and charge forward and the other who wants to be bearish and roll with it.

The subconscious is like a winter scene where everything appears silent and still on the surface, but underneath it, there is the teeming subconscious – full of creativity. It flows and churns eddies of images. These dreams come to consciousness and my active consciousness is the tool to manifest them. I liken the lilac season to dream time. The moment is fleeting, and I have to be present and aware of the fruits they bear.

My D-bag Writing Partners

playwriting, Women, Young Women, , , , , ,

by Korama Danquah

I hate my writing partners.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh my goodness! Korama! That sounds like a personal problem that you and your writing partners should discuss together.” Ordinarily you would be right. I’m an adult(ish type person) who likes to handle my problems in a (mostly) adult way. Talking to my writing partners would be the adult way to handle any issues. Except that they aren’t just my writing partners – they’re your writing partners too.

“What?” you just exclaimed “I don’t have any writing partners.” Or perhaps you wondered “Why does Korama think Lewis and Clark are d-bags?” (Side note: This imaginary conversation thing is really amusing to me) The particular writing partners I’m talking about are not of the human variety, but the nagging-voice-in-the-back-of-your-head variety; I’m talking about self-doubt and insecurity.

Everyone has self-doubt and insecurity in varying degrees, but the effects are most felt by people who do creative work. You can doubt yourself when you do a spreadsheet, but at the end of the day the spreadsheet reflects facts and figures, not your thoughts and feelings.

I have a particularly hard time with these silent partners – maybe it’s because, despite the fact that I consider myself a creative person, I am most comfortable with facts and figures. I am very clear with right and wrong, black and white, good and bad. Subjectivity scares me. I start to doubt that what I am doing is good or worth anything at all, like Semele started to doubt what she previously knew to be true.

For those of you who need a refresher, Semele was one of Zeus’ many lovers (not to slut-shame him, but good god, who wasn’t one of his lovers?). Hera, jealous of her husband’s human lover (who was pregnant with Dionysus the god of theatre!), disguises herself as an old woman, befriends Semele and convinces Semele to confide in Hera/Old Human Lady that she is banging Zeus. Hera then plants seeds of doubt in Semele’s head. She asks her how she can know it’s truly Zeus if she hasn’t seen him in his godlike form. On the one hand, that’s a valid point because dudes could totally be walking around pretending to be Zeus in an effort to bed women. On the other hand, douche move on Hera’s part because she knew exactly what would happen next. Semele asked Zeus for a favor and he promised, no swore, he would do whatever it was. She asked to see him in his divine form. Zeus reluctantly agreed and obviously seeing him in his true form killed her.

The story has several morals, the strongest of which is that doubt will literally kill you.

It’s hard not to succumb to self-doubt and insecurity – they are strong opponents. What I do these days is remind myself that I’m stronger. I’m not Semele or Hera or Zeus, at least not completely. I have a little bit of all of them: Semele’s humanity, Hera’s ingenuity, Zeus’ strength. All of these things are what makes me, and my writing, special and unique.

It’s easy to get comfortable with the right/wrong, good/bad dichotomies of this world, but if everything is one thing or another it loses part of its rarity. Walt Whitman once said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes)” To allow yourself to exist in the spaces between black and white, to contradict yourself at turns, is to contain multitudinous, enormous beauty. I won’t allow doubt and insecurity to squash that, to make my work ugly with fear.

So screw you, writing partners. I’m working on my own from now on.

What I Learned About My Writing From A 6 Year Old

playwriting, Women, Young Women, , ,

by Korama Danquah

Yesterday evening I found a surprise when I walked into my gym’s locker room: a six year-old girl. There were other adults around who seemed to be unconcerned with her presence, so I went with it and said hello. I jokingly asked her if she was there to work out and she told me very matter-of-factly “No, I’m waiting for my Mommy.”

I like kids a lot, so I talked to her as we both waited for the class currently in session to finish. We talked about all sorts of things: birthdays (mine had recently happened and hers is today), our favorite Disney princesses, and her recent trip to Legoland. She was a very polite and talkative young girl. What struck me most about her is the fact that she was an endless font of questions. It started off with my asking my name, guessing (fairly accurately) how old I was, and when my birthday was. But then she began to ask more and more questions: Why do you wear glasses? I have an astigmatism. What’s an astigmatism? It means a part of my eye, called the cornea isn’t shaped right, so my vision is a little blurry. What should it be shaped like? It’s supposed to be round like a basketball, but mine is shaped more like a football. What’s that thing? My asthma medication. What does it taste like? Medicine. Yeah, but what flavor of medicine? And on and on.

A fairly accurate representation of her side of our conversation

 

I wasn’t bothered by her questions. Quite the opposite, actually. I enjoyed conversing with her very much and was sad when her mother came to get her (and not just because it meant that I was about to do what felt like 1,000 burpees). She was fun and engaging in a way that I find adults often aren’t when you first meet them.

Adulthood!

When I was driving home, I realized that I could stand to be a bit more like this little girl I met in my writing. I’m not asking enough questions. Months ago, I started writing a science fiction play called The Fortinian Orbs, but I abandoned it when it started to get difficult for me to continue writing. After my conversation yesterday, I realized that it was only hard because I wasn’t asking myself enough questions; the few questions I was asking, I wouldn’t keep asking until I got the right answer. When I told her that my inhaler tasted like medicine, she kept asking until I gave her an answer she thought was acceptable. There are a hundred different ways medicine tastes and even she knew I was giving a half-assed answer.

I’m going to pick up where I left off with The Fortinian Orbs, ask myself more questions, and give myself more answers. It’s OK if some of the answers are dumb – I’ll just keep asking until I can come up with better ones. And for those of you wondering, my inhaler tastes like chemicals and water that’s been in a plastic bottle in a hot car for too long.