by Jennifer Bobiwash

Every December I begin my shopping spree for a new planner.  Ok, who am I kidding, I usually start in the summer when Student Planners come out and I long to be back in school.  Yes, I still use paper and pen, but I also keep track of things online, but since I am a planner, I plan for the event that I lose power to my electronics or can’t access the cloud and then I will be lost and not know where I am supposed to be for that day.  Yes, it does take a bit more effort, but it’s like a double check so I know where things are.  This year, I’ve decided I am going to try and make my own.  I say this because after spending hours in the office supply aisle at several different stores, I always end up walking out empty handed.  So instead, I am spending hours sifting through my collection of downloaded planner pages in the hopes of creating a useful book.

When I’m at meetings I love to see what other people use and how they stay organized.  Right now I’m reviewing my blogs (it’s a long list) and creating editorial and content calendars, wondering how I can put all the required information on one sheet per day, as well as other additions I want to monitor, like social media stats.  I also need a place to take notes from my variety of meetings and room for a to-do list of the items that pop randomly into my head.

December also signals a time for review and reflection on what you’ve accomplished from the year, so you can begin planning bigger and better things for the next.  Planning your “season” if you will.  When is the deadline for that play competition? When is Fringe?  What holidays or events are coming up that I want to discuss or work on?  When is so-and-so’s production start and end so I can help out on that?  These are just some of the things I need to think about.  A planner is also a great place for all your worlds to collide.  I use it as an opportunity to look at the different jobs and events that I have planned and see how they can come together to help out one another.  If I’m working on so-and-so’s production, how can I use my time there to help out another production. 

A planner keeps me on task and keeps all my to-dos in one place.  As the year slowly comes to a close, my January and February are already filling up.    Now it’s only a question of where I’ll be writing everything down.

I’m hoping Santa brings me this planner so I don’t have to think about it anymore.   I’d love to hear how you stay organized, where do you keep track of everything?    My quest is never over.

by Jennifer Bobiwash

I mean, I am a playwright?  I know.  Strange title to start off with LA FPI, should this be one of my first blog posts?  Especially on a playwriting blog.  To me the term/title playwright is just that.  Something that identifies you to a particular segment of the population.  What’s in a title?

When I was approached to contribute to LA FPI I happily said yes.  That’s what I do.  I say “yes” then after it sinks in I wonder “what the heck have I done”.  Trust me, if you knew me, you would know that saying yes first and asking questions later is so not in my wheel house.  Most decisions are well researched with lists and talking to people and several lost hours on the internet.  I need facts before I make a life changing decisions.

Where is this going you’re wondering?  For me it begins with the title of Playwright.  You see, after saying yes, THEN doing my research on the other women of LA FPI, I felt out of my league.  I am still playing house-league hockey, the ladies of LA FPI are truly NHL material (yes, I’m a hockey fan).  I have a problem with titles.   When you’re a college student you are dreaming of the big corporate job you’re going to get after graduation, you do job searches based on the title the job carries and once you get the job, you are defined by that title on your business card.

Don’t get me wrong, I wanted a big fancy title and a stack of business cards to hand out to say “look at me”.  But it wasn’t until I went to work for a non-profit I realized how difficult and pointless a job title can be.  I was listed as Director.  That meant that I was in charge.  Ok.  But what the people I was talking with didn’t realize that I was also the Executive Assistant, Public Relations, Fundraiser, Social Media Manager, Volunteer Wrangler, and IT.  I was a staff of 1, reporting to the President and Founder.   Knowing this secret, I always smirked when someone asked for my card, like I was part of an inside joke they would never know the punch line to.

Networking events are the worst for me.  The inevitable question “So what do you do?” is a tough one.  I’m not trying to be evasive you see, I do a bit of everything, so it takes me a minute or two to decide what to say (I really need to work on my elevator pitch).   Ever have that problem?  But, the addition of playwright to my ever growing resume is a hard one for me to wrap my head around and I am always forgetting to tell people about it.  I love to write.  This past year has been filled with “writer” me.  My play was chosen to be workshopped, where I got to sit back and just write.  An actor performed my words.  I had conversations about the theme of my play and how people related to it.  When I began writing my show I never thought of the ramifications of it.  I just wanted to write.  Now, I’m an artist-in-residence (another interesting title) and working on my next show that will be workshopped next year.  What does it all mean?  I guess for once I just don’t feel worthy of the title.  A playwright to me is this deep thinker of a person, they know stuff (oh, I am sensing a theme in my life).   I’m just a perfectionist and I want to make sure everything is perfect before I send it into the world.  Structure, storyline, character arc, all that writer-y stuff.  I guess that’s why it took me so long to finish my one-person show.  That and after awhile I just wanted to complete something.  I had to let go of all the crazy thoughts in my head that were stopping me from writing and just write.  I am a playwright?  Yes, yes, I am!

How many titles do you have?

by Cynthia Wands

This has been a year of gratitude. And revelation. I didn’t get to learn the lessons I’ve been longing for:  a new finished script, a staged reading, a Broadway contract, a full production of one of my works.

Instead I learned humility (being bald from chemo for six months is at the top of the list for this lesson).  I learned compassion – especially from the other people in my life who helped me to learn to live again in a different way.  I learned a lot of other lessons in the mixed bag of nuts in my recovery from cancer this year: how irrational/moody/forgetful and detached I can become. How much I can ask for from friends and family and my husband.  I also got a new (old) cat (Puck: a rescue cat who helped save me from myself this year).

But I also want to say how much I’m grateful to this blog, as this is the only writing I’ve been able to do this year. Thank you.

And here is a story that is very close to my heart.  It starts as a story about a man with a broken neck, but it really resonated with me in some of my life lessons.  Especially those lessons about gratitude.

by Cynthia Wands

I found this facinating article:
HOW I INSULTED SONDHEIM (AND THE WISDOM RECEIVED THEREBY)

I’ve had my share of young stupid interactions with performers/artists I’ve admired.  But I loved how this writer shared an awful experience and how he learned from it. It’s amazing to see that even celebrated and successful playwrights have such feelings about feedback to their work.

A Paraphrase from the article.

Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn’t. But that is not your problem.

If you come to my show and you see me afterwards, say only this: “I loved it.” It doesn’t matter if that’s what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not “in spite of its flaws”, not “even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it,” but simply, plainly, “I loved it.” If you can’t say that, don’t come backstage, don’t find me in the lobby, don’t lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don’t. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet.

Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I’ll be ready to hear what you have to say, but that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you; that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist’s life. If I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me, “I loved it.” That moment must be respected.

by Cynthia Wands

“the avant-garde is deader than last year’s short-in-front, long-in-back skirts”….

Deader?

Than last year’s skirts?

I appear to be far far away from the Avant- Garde and those who write about it.  I came across the above mentioned quote from an article today:

The Clyde Fitch Report: The Death of the Avant-Garde and Other Urban Legends

I remember sitting through weird performance arts pieces over the years: John Cage concerts at Wesleyan University, and Merce Cunningham dance performances in New York, the incredible THE WAY OF HOW performances in Berkeley in the 1980’s, Rachel Rosenthal shows, and strange happenings in the Ivy Substation and Highland Grounds.  But I never considered them “Avant-Garde”.

They seemed to be honest constructs from the artists to the audiences. Even if I didn’t appreciate the monotony and self absorption of a John Cage concert (a four hour concert with kitchen utensils was the last and ultimate test of my endurance with him), I learned a lot about courage and authenticity from those weird performances.

I don’t feel that I’m much in sync with the referenced “performative events” (I guess they aren’t called performance art pieces any more). And I can see, I’m really okay with that.

by Cynthia Wands

A few weeks ago I went to a staged reading of a script that I have watched develop over the years, and it was gratifying to see how much life and vulnerability that the actors gave to the script.

Most of the actors had been involved in reading pages from this script for some time, and they brought a lot of nuance and humanity to the reading of the characters.

I didn’t understand when I watched/listened to the reading why I experienced the two women in the script to be such completely different characters than what I had understood them to be. It was only afterwards when the director pointed out to me that, unlike the previous readings I had seen of the script, the two principal actress had exchanged roles.

This had been the director’s idea, and I was surprised that I hadn’t recognized the switch in the actresses – I saw very different characters because of this casting change, and they was very intriguing.

But what I missed, and what I had hoped for, was a script that could deliver that kind of surprise and dimension in the writing.  Several times conflict would simmer up from all the talking onstage, and yet it wouldn’t quite boil up to a resolution or crisis. Poignant, hurtful, insightful things were said. It just didn’t matter much what they said.  The characters went off at the end of the play pretty much as they started.  I do think the playwright is a very good writer, but this script seemed to miss the mark for me.  I left somewhat chafed and dissatisfied.

Maybe it’s because I’ve gone through such a sea change in myself and my life this past year, that I want to see/hear/experience rousing life changing theater.  I’m grateful to have the chance to have witnessed the growth and development of this script – and I learned a lot by not liking it.

by Cynthia Wands

I recently went to a yearly ceramics sale with a dear friend of mine; and had one of those intoxicating, life-flashing afternoons where there was discovery and laughter and afterwards, really good middle eastern food.

Granted, I’ve been house bound for a while, and the chance to go out and play hasn’t presented itself like that in some time.  But it reminded me of….rehearsal.  A really good rehearsal.  Where actors are making connections, and giving the gift of their talent and mind and spirit to create these phantoms on stage.

But I know, this was a ceramics sale.

There was a large noisy line of shoppers waiting to get into this sale, and once the doors were opened, I lost my friend in the crush of people foaming around the tables. It was thrilling to see such beautiful ceramic pieces, the glazes, the whimsy, and the various degrees of artistry and taste. There were some really crappy pieces too. I saw candlestick holders shaped like giraffes, and copper colored bowls, and strange plates.  I picked up a bright blue teapot with “hello kitty” skeletons painted all over it and considered buying it. But then I paused, and put it back down on the crowded table, and someone behind me scooped it right up.  I’ll never see that “hello kitty skeleton” teapot ever again.  But what a thrill of discovery and connections.

And then I heard this talk today on Ted Talks.  There is a bit of an overlong story about a Russian spaceship, but, overall, the exploration of where good ideas come from really sparked me up. Almost like a rehearsal. Or really strange ceramics.