by Cynthia Wands

I found this article about books and reading and libraries from Neil Gaiman‘s lecture for the Reading Agency, delivered on Monday October 14  at the Barbican in London.  So much of what he has to say really resonated with me on the “now” of playwriting.  And in reference to the scary memory crunch of the web, I found this quote very compelling:

“In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.”

Neil Gaiman’s Lecture on Reading and Daydreaming

I was recently asked by a friend to read a script for comments and feedback, and there was a flash of memory to the days when I was sitting in a library, opening up a book for the first time and reading words that would become part of me. (Yes, it was a really good script to read. It was an actual script with three-hole punch pages.) It reminded me of the memory of actually holding a book in my hand, turning the pages, and enjoying the treasure of an object that could hold new surprises.

Neil Gaiman’s article reminded me of a “Hogwartian” place called Owl Pen Books in Greenwich, New York. Owl Pen Books is a crowded, musty magical place and reminds me how books, tangible worn out books, become a part of our memory. Like plays.

Owl Pen Books in Greenwich New York

by Cynthia Wands

Recently I’ve been listening to conversations about our “photo memory” generation.  This follows the idea that our young audiences are “seeing” a lot of visual content in their computers, Iphones, Ipads that represent their “memories”.  When I was a child I was lucky if I was included in the family holiday photographs of Christmas/Easter/Fourth of July/Halloween.  My father took some great photographs of our family – just not that often.  So we would really remember those images as “that really happened” for our memories. Nowadays, young people are instagraming their snacks.  So many images are being recorded of their everyday life, so the visual “store” of what their childhood/self image memories are legion.  And I wonder, how does that affect this generation in terms of what they see and feel in theatre?

I’ve seen some incredible images in my years of watching theatre: in 2001 I saw Judy Dench walking down a staircase in “Royal Family” like a cobra (that was a lesson in motion/controlled suprise); the scope of different worlds in the “Mahabharata”, the stage play directed by Peter Brook in 1985; and the rain that fell from the sky in “The Grapes of Wrath” on Broadway in 1990.  I loved being surprised by the power of those visual images.  They had a surprising sense of “new” about them and they’ve become prized memories for me.

So I was actually distressed to read this article about the exclusivity of men on a number of lists. Granted women have only been allowed to vote in the United States since 1920, so it’s understood that there is some catching up to do.  But I was weirdly horrified to see how many important groups of people do not include a single woman.  It reminded me of the “Dry White Male” season at the Guthrie. To see the images in the articles of all the men’s faces, and not a single woman in their leadership lists, was stunning.

It made me wonder, do young audiences assume that the voice and face of a leader is a man if what they are exposed to are only men as leaders?

I suppose the remedy to this would be to create lists that have women involved as leaders (along with men) and help share their faces and names as recognized “memories” of leadership.  But for now, I am going to make a cup of tea and take some cold medicine.

The lists of all men everywhere.

by Cynthia Wands

I celebrated the new year with pecking trials on my new (to me) writing software.  I’ve not been enthused about using software for writing plays – but Final Draft was given to me as a Christmas present and I am now on the learning curve with it.

I found a link regarding  the controversy on the Gutherie’s Male Only season – and found the comments at the end of the article very illuminating.

The Article: Checking Back in with the Guthries Dry White Male Season

by Erica Bennett

One of the tricks I use to keep myself writing is the self-imposed deadline. My deadlines are usually not “get it done by Sunday so I can go to a movie.” But, set myself up for a reading, get a date on the reading list, and cast it, all without a finished script. My current deadlines are 12/31/2013 for a draft and 1/4/2014 for a readable draft.

One of the great things about belonging to playwrights groups and listening to new works and critique is when you realize things like I just spent an entire year building characters and improvising with them on the page around which no action occurs? This realization absolutely shocked me. Clearly, I have a problem with conflict.

I am experiencing my first production in exactly six years and the past several months have been glorious. I stepped in as director of my short play for the holidays, Love, Divine. The journey has been filled with humble joy: I did that. The actors own it now. But I did that.

by Analyn Revilla

The first big choice to make today was either to go to practice yoga or do “other things” before I go to work.  The “other things” is a list of activities that aren’t part of my weekday routine.  These are “other” fun things that feed my soul:  read, write, play music, bake a pie, meditate and take the dog for a long walk.  I skipped the yoga class.  Later, when I was wiping away the flour dust and blueberry stains from the kitchen counter I smiled, because I recognized that I made the right choice.

 That feeling of knowing is intuition.  I can habitually and easily destroy this gift of intuition when I’m way too much in my head calculating the minutes and hours of the day, dividing the day with allocations of how much time I can spend on the to do list.  I’ve recognized that it can be a form obsessive compulsive disease to always be on top of my to-do list (checking it and checking it twice and checking it some more not just to put check marks and cross marks, but ensuring I’ve got everything in the list.) 

This is not my natural way, by the way.  I’m not a list person, nor am I the person to print the directions from Mapquest.  I’m more the person to get an overview of the direction and area that I’m supposed to be at, then I’ll use my nose to find the spot.  Indeed, I’m hardly on time, and exact in getting to my destination, because I end up discovering different roads and stopping to ask people for directions before I find my spot.  If you’re not that kind of a traveler then you wouldn’t want to be travelling with me.

 I know I can be more balanced if I was more organized and orderly, but I like the practice of using my sense of direction and intuition to guide me.  I attribute many of my wonderful experiences in life to my “adventurous” and devil-may-care approach to certain things.  It’s not uncommon that the “unlikely” and “illogical” choice is the right choice on many occasions in my life so far.

 But I agonize over making decisions and choices.  When I went for my computer science degree there was a point when I had to specialize.  I would guess that 60% of the class chose the option that would guarantee the best probability of getting employed upon graduation; the other 35% chose their area that was best suited for their interest and aptitude while the remaining 5% (which I’m part of) did not really choose an option.  But I did make a logical choice this way.  My option was “Decision Systems”.  It was about linear programming, and I thought “Ok, this is the one for me, because this will give the tools I need to make better decisions in life.”  The last laugh was on me, because the curriculum was heavy on statistics and linear programming and calculations, which is opposite to my nature.  

But it was possibly what I needed, because my computer programming career provided me with the means to have shelter and food, plus other amenities.  But having “blueberry pie” moments is equally necessary to fulfill my soulful needs, and gave me the sustenance to hope and dream as we all do during the festive holiday season with its lights, decorations, music and all-around cheer.  

Most of the year and throughout the days I live in the practical  world to survive; and rarely heed the small voice that asks to be heard.  As I read in one of my treasure trove books, “what good is a voice if no one is listening to it?”  It is only during this season that I relax a little more to restore a balance of slowing down and listening.  So now I’m open to giving more consideration to that little voice that pipes up, “Hey, let’s make blueberry pie, and forget about rushing off to the studio and feeling great after a good sweat.”

 Being in the midst of the end-of-the-year holidays, it is the period of observing traditions of rites and rituals that convey significances of the passing of time.  The observance of these rituals can be a mixture of being automatic and heart-felt, or one or the other.  As a child, my memories of Christmas were the rites of getting a tree, decorating it, and afterwards watching with wonder the flicker of lights in different colors.  It was this precious wonder that I want to preserve for all my Christmases.  The wonder is a knowing that All Is Good.  It is the intuitive knowing hope lives.  And choosing to be open to possibilities rather than calculating probabilities, which is the more expansive experience that deepens our soulfulness.

 by Analyn Revilla

I think a lot of stories reflect the subtext of the hero’s need to belong. It begins as a want for something outside of herself that she believes would make her be acceptable, loveable and eligible to belong to a group/family.  A simple idea of a shampoo commercial that depicts a pretty woman with gorgeous hair, and how suddenly this product makes her attractive to the world around her and now she belongs to the ideal of beautiful. 

I didn’t know until I read the analyses by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes of the fairytale “The Ugly Duckling” (written by Hans Christian Andersen) that this story holds deeply textured meanings in terms of Jungian psychoanalysis. The chapter “Finding One’s Pack:  Belonging as Blessing” in her book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves”, is devoted to describing the movement of characters through the different archetypes of:  the Innocent; the Orphan, the Martyr; the Wanderer, the Warrior and the Magician.  (She does not specifically use the terminology listed, but the concept is there.) 

 A common thread that runs through each stage of the journey as the Ugly Duckling shifts from one stage to the next stage is his desire to belong and his never-ending search for this sense of belonging (which is essentially home.)   Dr. Estes awakens the reader to the significance of the Ugly Duckling’s movement from the river’s nest to the marsh, the farm, and finally the lake.  In each locale he meets with groups with which he tries to fit in; or who tries to make him fit in; but inevitably he needs to continue his quest because the “shoes never quite fit in” for the hero.  This need to never give up is attributable to the call of the wild.

 “The duckling of the story is symbolic of the wild nature, which, when pressed into circumstances of little nurture, instinctively strives to continue no matter what.  The wild nature instinctively holds on and holds outs, sometimes with style, other times with little grace, but nevertheless.  And thank goodness for that.  For the wildish woman, duration is one of her greatest strengths.” – from “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I work in a corporate environment where, as any large body of people, change is slow to happen; and communication, though stressed to be of high importance, can be challenging because of the large mix of individuals needing to work together for a common purpose.  One method of communication within our group are forms.  There are specific templates for something that needs to communicate something specific.

 There is a new form called “Project Commitment Form” that needs to be filled out and reviewed to get it to a stage of getting approval for funding of projects.  This form begins with a statement that defines the “Business Problem”.  When I met with the first reviewer, she started with “you did a marvelous job, but…”  Then she continued to say, “I’ve never had to fill out one of these forms, but…”  At the end of the meeting I absorbed the suggestions and incorporated most of the changes, but hung on, at least, to my version of the “Business Problem”.

After the meeting and sending out polite emails I went home, but something didn’t sit right in my belly.  What am I hanging on to that does not belong to me anymore I asked myself.  To say the mantra “Let it go” repeatedly was pointless unless I meant it.  At the end of the day, I said to myself, I’m just trying to conform, and get the job done with some personal integrity left.  That was the kicker for me – I was attached to the final result.  I now see that the document shows responsibility and accountability for approving a project for funding in a language and format that is understood from their perspective and not mine.  I’m writing for the audience and not me.  The sense of belonging is defined in terms of what they need, and not my own.

 I began to unwind the tight ball of confusion by reading “The Ugly Duckling”, and the wisdom unbound by Dr. Estes analyses brought the light to eyes.  I had been trying to “fit in” so hard at work to the best that I can; and even then there’s always room for improvement as is often conveyed through the annual performance review.  Isn’t there just a point in time, during your employment years with a company where you just fit in? or does the criteria change with each change of leadership, or change in what’s new and trendy for “process” and “methodology”, including (even) vocabulary?

 “The other important aspect of the story is that when an individual’s particular kind of soulfulness, which is both an instinctual and spiritual identity, is surrounded by psychic acknowledgment and acceptance, that person feel life and power as never before.  Ascertaining one’s own psychic family brings a person vitality and belongingness.”  –  from “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

 After reading her analysis of the fairytale using Jungian psychoanalysis I felt enlightened and this gave me so much joy.

 The next day I IM’ed a friend at work, “I’m so happy this morning I don’t know why.”  The response was, “Do you need a why?”

 I did know the source of the joyful feeling.  It was that I truly let go of the result, and it came about by my internal inquiry combined with a serendipitous opening to a page in the book about The Ugly Duckling.  (I found the book in a thrift store at Lake Elsinore during the weekend.  The previous owner had written the word “= Grace” after “Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman.”)

I can define my belongingness in my own terms as acknowledging my boundaries.  There is a real and imaginary line between what I take home with me and what I leave at work.  The integrity asked of me and what I ask of myself has been fulfilled in that I created something that I share with a community; and it does not belong to me anymore.  At the end of the day I go home to my family, and when the family retires to bed, and turns out the light then the dog is sure to follow.  She imposes her weight against me like a falling sack of potatoes, telling me “I belong here with you.”  It is a wonder to behold the irony of the extraordinary in the most ordinary of our daily routine – to lie down and rest and accept one’s truth.

I can’t put it more eloquently than Estes:

“So that is the final work of the exile who finds her own:  to not only accepts one’s own individuality, one’s specific identity as a certain kind of person, but also to accept one’s beauty… the shape of one’s soul and the fact that living close to that wild creature transforms us and all that it touches.” – from “Women Who Run With the Wolves”.

by Diane Grant

I was going to go on and on, following my last post, about John Fletcher and The Tamer Tamed, which I borrowed from the library. “Wow,” said the librarian, “he couldn’t come up with a better title than that?” He tried.  It was also called The Woman’s Prize.

Reading it was a revelation. Fletcher was twenty five when he wrote this wild, raunchy feminist piece, which used Shakepeare’s characters and turned his premise upside down. Petruchio the “tamer” is “tamed” by his second wife Maria who is joined by women from town and country in a sex strike, a la Lysistrata, in which chamberpots are prominently featured. Bianca, Kate’s sister, is her avid supporter. What a kick.

Shakespeare couldn’t have been too upset. He and Fletcher co-wrote three plays after The Tamer Tamed in 1611 and Fletcher became the chief dramatist of the The King’s Men when Shakespeare retired.

Well, that’s enough of going on and on.

The point is that I wouldn’t have thought as much about these plays had I not been blogging for the lafpi. And because it’s just after Thanksgiving and near the end of the year, I thought I’d just express my thanks for that opportunity and for all that the lafpi does.

It’s so good to share and to connect with so many, all of us in this same boat. Let’s keep rowing.

By   Diane Grant

This summer, I saw a production of Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew at Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon.  It was well acted and directed, fast paced, full of movement and meant for fun.

But I felt as if I were being plunged into a cold bath.

My God, I thought, what was that?

I went home to read about the play, written between 1590 and 1594, and soon realized that it would take years (or at least a semester or two) to go through all the literature and the reviews.

It is according to the Folger’s Edition, an “entertaining farce on a topic of eternal interest,” – the battle of the sexes. According to George Bernard Shaw, it’s a play that is ‘altogether disgusting to modern sensibility.’ (Perhaps it wasn’t just modern sensibility that was offended. John Fletcher, a contemporary of Shakespeare, rebutted Shrew saying in his epilogue to The Tamer Tamed that his play was “meant/ To teach both Sexes due equality; And as they stand bound, to love mutually.”)

Ellen Geer, the director of the production at Theatricum, says, “The many years of discussion and scholarly investigation about this dear and loved piece is endless and changes throughout the ages as societies decide what it REALLY means. Yada, yada, yada.”

Sir Laurence Olivier, who played the role Katherine, when he was fifteen, also thought it was a farce.

But could it really be a farce? A farce is something you laugh at.

How can you laugh at the arranged marriage between a man, Petruchio, who marries an angry and unhappy woman for money and who says of his wife, Katherine, “She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house.?” How can you hope that this marriage can be saved when Petruchio deprives his wife of food and sleep, subjects her to public and private humiliation and who on subjugating her, makes a bet with other men about whose wife is the most obedient?

Here Katherine, in her ending monologue, speaks as the tamed shrew and advises women:

KATE: Fie, fie, unknit that threat’ning unkind brow
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee
And for thy maintenance; commits his body
To painful labor both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou li’st warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience–
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
Whey they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms,
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown.
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot,
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

In the 1929 movie with Mary Pickford as Katherine and Douglas Fairbanks as Petruchio, as Katherine delivers the ending monologue, she winks toward her sister, Bianca, unseen by Petruchio. Bianca smiles back, an acknowledgment that Katherine has not been tamed at all.

I don’t know. Wink or no, it still makes me feel pretty damned chilly.