Our Expectations, Our Fears

Uncategorized

by Andie Bottrell

o-matic

It was around 10am Sunday morning, October 13th and I was hauling industrial strength trash bags down to the end of the long parking area of my apartment building in Van Nuys. The contents made a lot of noise from the mix of empty wine bottles, cutlery, broken glass, potted plants, and the miscellaneous cloth of cut up clothes, no-good sheets and pillowcases. After making about 15 of these trips, I looked around my mostly bare apartment and deemed it “good enough” to make my escape. I had intended to move my chewed up couch to the curb and my neighbor had offered to help me, but when push came to shove and time ran out- he was no where to be found. There was no way I was going to attempt moving it by myself down a flight of stairs and up the long, long parking lot/driveway to the curb. I had managed such a feat once before in my life, but I was 24 then and a lot had changed in 3 years. I had also intended to offer all the items I couldn’t sell or fit into my car to my neighbors, but as mentioned- they were not home. So, I meticulously stacked, lined, folded and arranged in my OCD best a display of the items I was leaving behind in my apartment and wrote a little note to them to come take whatever they wanted, taped the note to their door, left my apartment unlocked, scrambled quickly into my car and took off down the open road- okay, not quite “open” road, I was still driving in L.A. for another hour and a half or more before I reached anything close to resembling an “open” road.

I had not foreseen my departure, though perhaps I should have, instead, it hit me like a ton of bricks the moment I had to call my mother to help me because I could not get myself out of a very serious financial pickle. When I realized what I needed to do, every fiber of my being screamed in totally overdramatic pain, “NO F-ING WAY! THAT’S NOT WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!” And shortly after other wailing thoughts cried out about how I was a failure to have let this happen, how I deserved it, how I had lost my shot, how I hadn’t tried hard enough, how all my work was going to be in vain now, how I would probably die having only gotten this far- which is to say NO WHERE. Devilish, unproductive and super overdramatic thoughts that some may even call “self-centered” and “first-worldly.” To which, I could not rationally disagree. However, the artistic soul, as I have observed it, is anything but rational. This is what makes it great. This is what allows it to do and create things other people can’t. This is also what makes so many artists tragic figures. While other people long to have families and save money for nice vacations and travel and have a nice house and car and a retirement plan, artists long to make great art- and that’s about it. This art becomes our family, our jobs, our vacations, our nice things. This art becomes everything. Of course, there are exceptions, and balanced artists probably do exist somewhere, but at least for me, this has been the case. I can live far away from my family with ease if it means I get to make art with other great artists on a daily basis. I can deal with loneliness. I can’t deal with not consistently working toward achieving my artistic goals.

My expectations when I moved to Los Angeles almost 6 years ago were something along the lines of: 1. Act in everything I can, 2. Get an agent, 3. Audition for TV and Films, 4. Book stuff, 5. Live the life of a working actor. I considered my expectations realistic because I didn’t give myself a timeline to achieve these things. I knew that some actors lived in LA 10 years before they got any kind of significant “break.” I was ready for a life-long battle that was going to be hard and uphill- or so I thought. About three months after moving to LA, while sharing a mattress on the stained carpet of a bachelor apartment that had been converted from a utility closet, I began to have my first ever “how is this going to work” breakdown.  It wasn’t the closet-apartment or the stained carpet or the shared mattress that got to me- it was the fact that I couldn’t get an audition for a crappy student film re-make of a bad movie scene for a one-line part, much less anything I wanted to play that broke me. I cried into my sleeping roommates arm, who refused to wake up for the drama. The next day I wiped my tears and decided to take action.

I started writing. I wrote my first short film. Then I produced, directed, and starred in it. I joined a writing group. I read book after book on writing. I did writing exercises. I made 5 more short films. I started writing features, and plays, poetry, short stories, title ideas, dialogue fragments, anything and everything. I joined a theatre company. I started something called Film Practice where every month for a year I would act and/or write/direct/edit a short film or scene with my friends. When I drove away from my apartment on Sunday, October 13th we had just completed our 10th month of Film Practice. My life since making the decision to take action, rather then wait for “Action” to be called was at least doubly improved. I was empowered and my artistic spirit soared with constant stimulation. On my 26 hour drive from L.A. to Springfield, MO I thought about how my passion had not diminished even slightly since my initial drive the opposite direction to LA, if anything, it had increased. I thought about my new goals and expectations. I want to be a writer/director/actress for Film/Television/Theatre. I want to be a female David Lynch-esque, Kafka-esque stylistic brand. I want to always be working, like Woody, from the last edit or curtain call of the last project to the first page of the new script. More than anything, I want to spend my entire life making a living doing what I love, what makes me excited to get out of bed, what makes it hard to go to sleep, what keeps me energized after 13 hours on set and only a half hour of sleep the night before. Elaborate, collaborative storytelling is the drug for me.

This is a super-sized expectation to carry, and the fears that challenge it have never been more loudly heard than in the quiet country of the bible-belt amongst the rain and cows and a Mother who worries how I will ever be able to live any kind of life on the expensive coast with the kind of work my Associates Degree in Occupational Studies from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts can get me. My irrational artistic soul tries to soothe me by telling me that if I just keep working at it, if I just never stop working at it, if I just work hard enough for long enough, there will HAVE to be some kind of payoff. Then, the migraine that is my rational brain-peanut-bitch pinches nerves and screams at me to “for the love of god” find some kind of stability to hold onto while I surf the seas of my creativity. And I am trying to listen to both. And I am trying to keep hope. And I am trying to stay creatively inspired midst constant anxiety of having left my home and life behind while I try to pay off the last 6 years of acquired debt and try to find a job here and deal with not being in a city where who I am and what I want in life are easily understood.

Managing expectations is hard. How do you keep dreaming the limitless possibility of dreams without making them so unrealistic that you’ll never be able to achieve them? The same can be said for managing fear- How do you allow yourself just enough fear to stay in touch with reality but not enough to keep you from avoiding life all together? I don’t have any answers, but am hoping to hear from other artists, particularly those further along in their journeys on how they’ve managed to balance survival jobs, life expenses, and creating the art they live for. Most the artists my age are in similar positions to me, working a billion odd jobs, occasionally living on credit cards, acquiring more and more debt that they have no illusions of ever being able to pay off, happy just to be making their art, and crossing their fingers nothing bad ever happens in their lives because they certainly don’t have insurance or a savings account. My move back to Missouri is my attempt to start over financially- get rid of my debt- build up some savings and learn how to manage my money better so that I can move back to LA, hopefully in a year, with slightly more solid ground under me and the tools necessary to support myself and my art and allow me stay there for the rest of my life. I’m looking at the long term and my artistic goals are a marathon; I’m going to need physical, emotional, creative and financial stamina if I’m ever going to get where I intend to go.

 

p.s. Looking for some writing exercises to challenge and inspire you to think outside your usual parameters? I post writing exercises weekly on my blog! Play along and send ’em in and I’ll post ’em!

 

 

 

Winnie Holzman at the LAFPI Gathering…

LAFPI, Playwright, ,

by Robin Byrd

When you talk about Wicked, two names come up Winnie Holzman, the book writer and Stephen Schwartz, the composer/lyricist. Winnie spoke at yesterday’s LA FPI Gathering held at Samuel French here in Los Angeles.  She spoke about what inspires us or what shuts us down as writers and how to navigate those waters.  In order to do so, we must know what inspires us and work toward it and we must know what shuts us down and steer away from it.  “Positive Denial” is a process she uses – in positive denial, one does not look at the whole picture.  You have to have the blinders on like a runner who is in denial that anyone is there because they are running their race…  We have to learn to be our own parent – a parent’s job is to encourage their children to develop their gifts and stay away from things that get them off track.

We also have to know what’s normal for a writer – the amnesia that happens when we begin a new piece, the feelings of being less than adequate for the task at hand, and the failures (projects that don’t seem to get picked or get picked but don’t go anywhere) between the home runs.  Writers go through basically the same things regardless of their notoriety.

She talked about her play, Assisted Living, which she wrote with her husband Paul Dooley which looks at the ways in which people change each other without meaning to or knowing that they do.  Assisted Living will be playing in New Brunswick, New Jersey at the George Street Playhouse, January 28 – February 23, 2014.

We all found Winnie to be such a lovely, down-to-earth, and powerfully fierce woman.

 

For more on writing Wicked with Winnie Holzman & Stephen Schwartz go to the Dramatists Guild Panel at  http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/STAGE-TUBE-Dramatists-Guild-Panel-Stephen-Schwartz-and-Winnie-Holzman-Talk-Writing-WICKED-20130824

 

Interview with Playwright Robin Byrd

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Robin Byrd weighs in:

LA FPI Blog Editor Robin Byrd
LAFPI Blogger Robin Byrd has been blogging since day one. Hers is an authentic voice determined to be heard.

1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?

I guess I sort of evolved into one.  I started telling stories at three and a three year old usually acts out a story so it’s theatrical by nature of the storyteller.  I had regular story time for my two younger sisters up until I was eight.  Even then I was acting out the story using spectacle and character development.  Decades later, I joined a very large church and in the orientation, someone said that a way not to get swallowed up is to join one of the groups so I went to a theater group meeting. This theater group would meet every month to discuss what the annual production would be.  Nothing seemed to pass the preconceived “Bishop Test”- based on biblical principles and something he – Bishop Blake – would approve of for his congregation.  This discussion went on for months.  Out of frustration, I suggested we write our own play. I wrote a synopsis which I didn’t know was a synopsis at the time; everyone in the group liked it and the president of the group, the late Stuart Brown, told me to write it.  I would bring in pages to the meetings and we would read them and then Stuart would go back to that darn synopsis and say but I don’t see this part and I’d have to keep writing till everything in that synopsis was in the play.  Everyone in the group was very helpful with pushing me to write and giving feedback.  After the play was completed, we did a workshop production of it.  I met Charlayne Woodard, theatre artist extraordinaire and she greeted me like I was a playwright and that is when I knew I was on this theater artist journey. (Funny the things you remember.) Thus, with “In Times Like These (Is He the One?)”, I started writing plays; by the time I wrote the book for the musical “For This Reason (A Love Story), I knew I was a playwright and I could see my voice as a writer introducing itself to me.

2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why?

My favorite play is always the one that I learn something more about craft or my voice as a playwright.

3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?

“The Day of Small Things” would be it because my family flew out to Los Angeles to see it.  My father was too ill to come but he was so proud of me.  There was one scene where something went wrong with the lighting queues so the actors had to improvise and walk onto the stage while the lights were up.  The scene was right after a funeral.  The actors walked slowly onto the stage as if in shock of the events, they had to play their “just before moment” on stage; they walked in a synchronized movement as if to an inaudible dirge.  It was magical, performance art at its best, had we been able to run the play longer, I would have asked them to do it again. (Actors – got to love good ones who can commit to their character and are able to react in character without losing a beat.)  Moments like these are what make Theater so alive.

4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

There are a few plays for different reasons: “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee made me take craft really serious; “Body Indian” by Hanay Geiogamah made me contemplate sound as a character; “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry made me look at family dynamics; “A Star Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hole In Heaven” by Judi Ann Mason made me look at family secrets; and “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, taught me to embrace other dimensional storytelling; it’s a memory play and my whole life I’ve dealt with memory in some form.  As a child the beginning of most of my sentences was “’Member when…” so when I got to high school and “The Glass Menagerie” was on the reading list, it not only reminded me of the late night PBS filmed plays I loved to watch.  It felt strangely familiar.  “The Glass Menagerie” bears witness to writing remembered things; it is a testament to what can be done in a play, that boundaries should be lifted like a fourth wall, if it will help to tell the story.

In my work, I deal a lot with memory, flashbacks, visions, and dreams.  Writers are normally told to stay away from flashbacks, write what you know, write what you want to know, keep the story forward moving.  What I know is flashbacks and pushing forward beyond them so it is inevitable that flashbacks would show up in my work.  Perhaps, because I already had a good knack for remembering things, this made me susceptible to flashbacks.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that as a survivor of rapes (plural intentional), flashbacks ruled my life from the time I was 18 years/7 months/28 days old well into my twenties.  Writing is therapy; sometimes you have to make your own closure.  My way of dealing with the negative events in my life has been to channel it into my creative work.  I like being able to take down the fourth wall – as it were – of the past as it intersects the present, that’s the moment of change for me, a moment of lingering inner impact where new futures can be forged in the flames. It’s like dreaming and opening a door you just walked through only to find it leads somewhere else but doing it on purpose, like throwing jacks several times to get a better layout which will give a better end result.

Tom Wingfield, “The Glass Menagerie” (at least it is my interpretation) hits this intersecting of past and present on more than one occasion; he discusses his wanderings and how un-expectantly he could see his sister beside him in memory and how he tries his best to get away from those recurring moments:

“…Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!  I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles out!”

In his memory she blows them out.  But he doesn’t change anything.  He doesn’t go back; doesn’t start again. He just stays in his hell.  I found that to be so sad.  He never found a way out of the perpetual maze.  He didn’t know how to dream another dream.  I never want to be found not able to dream again…

5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?

I am not sure I have a favorite.  I do go on binges, devouring everything I can by playwrights that catch my eye.

6. How has your writing changed over the years?

I have become more confident in my gift.  I know my sound and I try to be as fearless in my plays as I am in my poetry.

7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?

I mostly write dramas but I also tend to have music in my plays, it just happens and I tend to write my own music.  I have always loved musicals but have only written one to date with music, in addition to the composer’s music. I wrote a 10-minute comedy on purpose once just to see if I could do it.  I tend to have laughter in my plays naturally but I do want to write a full-length gut buster one day. I don’t write experimental or avant-garde plays, that’s not to say I might not try at some point.  I don’t care much for the abstract in art, poetry or plays.  If I can’t tell what it means, I tend to move on to something else.  I do write a lot about the revealing of secrets and the journey from bondage (emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical) to freedom.  I think what draws me to the subject matter is the fact that I am a survivor and I want to leave bread crumbs albeit in the form of stories for others to find.  I believe my plays take me to the door in the dream over and over again and each time I change the outcome on the other side as long as I can believe what I see in my mind’s eye can come to past.

8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

I write poetry.  I got the nicest rejection letter once saying how my work was so lyrical which I think is due to my poetry background.  I started out wanting to write fiction, one of my monodramas “Me, My Fiddle an’ Momma” started out as a short story.  My professor at Indiana University said it was so full of dialogue it felt like a play.  Some years later, I took an acting class with Ben Harney (Tony Award winner for the original Dream Girls) and he encouraged me to tweak it so I could perform it.  I did.  I found out more about writing drama by taking his acting class than I had in any book I read about drama.  I’ve studied screenwriting at the American Film Institute in their certificate program and plan to write more screenplays.

9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

Jennie Webb, one of the co-founders of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative walked up to me at the second meeting for LA FPI and asked, “How is your life going right now?”  Fine, I answered (not if you count everything that was going WRONG but I was in denial so technically, I was fine.)  She smiled.  “You want to be the blog editor?” Blink.  Nod. “Be the blog editor.  Yeah?  Yeah.”  Then she walked away to “herd” someone else to do something else.  And I, never having written a blog article in my life, wondered loudly in my head, “What the hell, did I just commit to?”  I sent copies of my first article to playwright friends on opposite sides of the continent – one in Sacramento, the other in Brooklyn – to get their opinions, because I was completely unsure of myself.  I barely knew what a blog was, let along write one.  But it has been the best experience and blogging helps tremendously with writing the essays sometimes asked for in submission packets.

10. What is your favorite blog posting?

I love all the different voices of the ladies who blog; they cover such timely subjects.  I am not sure if I have a favorite of my own but I do feel that “Write it Scared” was very instrumental in me putting together a manuscript of poems that dealt with some scary dark places. And, just looking at my level of “going there” enabled me to become more free.  In “She, Who Was Called Barren,” I wanted to experiment with creating an event depicting what it is like to survive trauma and how it can be a roller coaster of dark and light moments and what that feels like.

11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?

I have a few influences but I would say Ezekiel, the prophet, mostly.  God was always telling him to go do something theatrical to “show” the Israelites what was coming in their future.  And, his language is so poetical.  He used a lot of symbolism; I like to use symbolism as well and have received many a “rejection” letter commenting on how lyrical my writing is.

12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?

I found my voice a long time ago; it was recognizing that I knew my sound that came after I began calling myself a playwright.  Because I started telling stories at 3 years old and oral storytelling requires one to have a way of telling, I think that helped me a lot in developing my voice.  I like finding new nuances of my voice, that’s exciting to me.

13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?

“Always be writing…” that is my mantra.  I do a lot of internal work first so I turn over stories and moments in my spirit before any one story makes it to the page.  I have to live it in some way before it will release authentically even if it’s a snippet of someone else’s story.

14. How do you decide what to write?

It is usually something that I can’t shake.

15. How important is craft to you?

Craft is very important to me.  At one point, I had thought that playwriting was not for me because I was not sure how to do it on a level where I could be respectful of the craft it takes to earn the “wright” in playwright.

16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I studied acting and have performed one of my pieces as well as my poetry.  I also have co-directed one of my plays and made costumes.  The reason I came to Los Angeles in the first play was to study fashion design at Otis/Parsons (now Otis College of Design) – to specialize in costume and men’s wear – that didn’t work out so I had to do a paradigm shift which lead me to writing plays.

17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

As an audience member, there is something for everyone.  As a playwright, I feel left out.  The worst part is when I have submitted something to a theater/company and go to see new work that has elements of what I submitted in someone else’s piece.  I would like to think that it’s a coincidence but when people can’t look you in the eye, you know they ciphered from your well.  It makes one a little skittish, although, I must say that this has happened to me outside of Los Angeles too; I try to take it as a compliment – a rude one – but one nonetheless.

18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)

A lot of prayer and rehearsing of positive results – a place that I go to remind myself that my gift will make room for me and bring me before great men.  I have to know who I am and what my gift is and why it is.  There is always a little “buyer’s remorse” but it passes; it usually only turns up in the submission process.

19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

Family secrets, ghosts and surviving trauma.

20. What are you working on now?

Being more fearless – a play about Race and a book of poetry on loss.

For more articles by Robin Byrd go to https://lafpi.com/author/ladybyrd/.  Robin’s first blog post is titled “Being a Playwright…being female…” dated April 19, 2010

Robin’s Bio

Robin Byrd is an Indiana born playwright and poet residing in Los Angeles. Growing up in Indianapolis (sometimes referred to as the northernmost southern city), attributes to the playwright’s affinity toward southern themes and language in some of her pieces.

Her plays which include The Grass Widow’s Son, Tennessee Songbird (the place where the river bends), The Book of Years, Dream Catcher, The Day of Small Things, For This Reason, In Times Like These (Is He the One?), and, Me, My Fiddle, An’ Momma have been read and produced in Los Angeles as well as read in Nebraska, Maine, North Carolina, and recently in Washington, D.C. Robin has performed Me, My Fiddle, An’ Momma in Los Angeles; the piece was also read at the 1st Annual SWAN Day event in Portland, Maine in March of 2008. Her plays Tennessee Songbird and Dream Catcher have won “Best Concurrent Play Lab Script at the 2008 Great Plains Theatre Conference” and been selected as a semi-finalist for the 2008 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, respectively. Her poetry has been read in venues in Los Angeles and Indiana and has been published in two International Library of Poetry books.

The playwright is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., the Theatre Communications Group, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, Native Women Writers (at the Autry),  and the American Film Institute from which she holds a certificate in screenwriting. For more information on Robin please visit her website at www.ladybyrdcreations.com.

Robin acts as LAFPI Blog Editor.

“This Clement World” at Redcat

Uncategorized, , ,

by Analyn Revilla

“This Clement World”, as presented by Cynthia Hopkins is a “live documentary film”.  If I hadn’t caught those introductory words I would be at a loss to categorize this wonderful and creative performance.  Starting with the thoughtful title, “This Clement World”, I anchored to what is familiar to me; the word ‘clemency’, by definition is giving pardon or mercy as used in the context of religious and/or judicious subjects:  To give clemency to a sinner or granting clemency to prisoner.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary second definition of the word “clement” is “temperate, mild” .

The earth, to me, is not at all “temperate” nor “mild” as I know it. Populations are around the world are subjected to earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, wild fires and hail storms.  This is not a clement world, though compared to other planets like Mercury or Mars, yes it is the most temperate and habitable planet for human beings.

The theme of the play alludes to the first definition of a merciful world that in our briefest lifespan (compared to the world’s long history), it has been mercifully bountiful with giving us the mines of minerals, fields of abundant food, forests of shelters and showers of rain, snow and sunshine among other things.  Mother Nature is more powerful than human nature.  Its wisdom to nurture us Mother Nature will always exists and evolve, but man may end up exhibiting the “failure of success”, if we should continue to destroy our human habitat.

 Three story tellers describe their experiences and perceptions in a series of monologues that are intertwined over the course of the play.  They channel their stories through the traveler, a woman who is a recovering alcoholic.  She joins a crew of scientists and artists in a voyage to the Arctic Circle. There are 5 marine scientist and 10 artists from Russia, the US, Australia, Spain and Canada. plus the crew of Noorderlich.  It is a 100 year old vessel that was restored to its original form by the owner and captain, known as “Captain Ted”.

 At the beginning, she steps onto the stage and describes her situation.  Afterwards, she steps behind a white screen that instantly turns into a film medium.  We are transported to the “live” documentary.  We are on the ship, observing her thoughts on paper.  Each thought is scribbled across a piece of paper that is flashed across another screen, and moves as quickly as the hand can write down the thoughts.  It feels like a silent movie and your attention is focused.

 Like a dream, we move from different characters to the real character.  The first one is a ghost of a Cheyenne woman who was murdered during the 1864 massacre at Sand Creek.  “I was pregnant,” she moans.  The symbolism of a future generation already dead imparts gravity of the moment in the past and present.  Following her is an alien dressed up as a farmer.  He explains his costume as a means of being recognizable.  He is afraid that if we saw how foreign looking he is, then he would probably end up dead.  The third character is a child from the future, and I’m sorry to confess that I missed this character.

 My lack of attention to this detail is mostly due to my inability to “catch on” with what’s happening in the play, because the visual and aural textures of this multi-media performance were full of wonder.  It was playfulness at its most inventive crescendo, without losing any balance.  The closest experience I’ve had to seeing a live multi-media performance on stage was a long time ago, and the artist was Laurie Anderson.  Cynthia Hopkins’ talent crosses over music, words and dance.  I don’t know the persons (or groups) who helped her realize the vision of the props and the mediums to convey the various stories.  I wish I did so I could give them kudos for their work.

 Uhm…. There it is.  I see the words jumping out at me on this page after several ruminations of what it is I’m trying to say about this piece of “heart work” by Cynthia Hopkins.  It took a few rounds of research including reading Cynthia Hopkin’s blog during 2010.  What do I see?  “my inability to catch on”, and how we as a human species are slowly (maybe?) catching on that the biosphere is in a serious crisis that it will no longer sustain human habitants.

 “Because although I don’t fully understand the climate crisis, I am beginning to grasp the mortality of our currently hospitable biosphere and the inter-related mortality of our human species, and I’m beginning to be possessed by a yearning to understand both the enormity and complexity of the climate problem as well as the thrilling possibilities for its solutions, and I’m beginning to be obsessed with the search for a way to be of service, to serve as a translator or conduit of information in whatever way that might be possible for me with my little voice and arms and legs to dance and sing the information into the hearts and minds of fellow members of my endangered species. – Cynthia Hopkins posted on Day 17 of the journey September 16th, 2010.

We go back to real time, when the woman returns to the stage, stepping out from behind the screen.  She is dressed in a lumberjack shirt and jeans and confesses to hitting rock bottom.  She lacks experience as an interviewer and on videotaping skills, but she persists to interview the guests on the ship to capture their professional and personal observations. 

Despite the gravity of the messages there is lightness and light in the story telling.  She apologizes for the poor audio quality of the interview so she mimes them while the interview plays on the screen.  Her foreign accents and depiction of the character quirks are skillful and funny. 

 Towards the end of the journey she tries to draw parallels between her recovery from her alcoholic addiction to human kind’s addiction for things they don’t need; and its effect on others and the environment.  She cannot find a metaphor, nor a resolution to the dilemma.  Unlike the human lifecycle, the cycle of Mother Nature is vast and long and independent of human activities.  It’ll continue to evolve through its volcanic actions, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis or meteor showers.  But humans are finite as finite as our imaginations.  If our imaginations can only stretch to our immediate gratifications then there is no future for the unborn.

 This Clement World was written and composed by Cynthia Hopkins, designed by Jeff Sugg, and directed by DJ Mendel.  It was presented at the Redcat theater on October 25th thru October 27th.  It is scheduled to be shown in Toronto as part of Cape Farewell’s Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Festival on February 7th – 9th, 2014.

Interview with Playwright Erica Bennett

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Erica Bennett investigates:

LA FPI Blogger Erica Bennett has been blogging since 2010. Honesty and dedication to the arts are qualities that have shaped Erica’s work but it’s her unique point of view that draws the audience in and keeps them in their seats.

 

1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?

I tend to think of it as coming back to theater after most of my lifetime away. I began my academic career in the theater, after seeing a high school musical production and saying to myself, I can sing better than that. I rehearsed in my bedroom, auditioned and was cast in a musical review. Of course, I’m not a great singer. It was at community college that my competitive nature was converted; theatre became my favorite place of worship. And I found my strength in perseverance. I was fortunate enough to study acting with Don Finn, Jose Quintero, Arthur Mendoza, and Stella Adler. I left the theater, as part of a natural progression, to work in dramatic television as a writers assistant. I like to think that’s where I learned how to edit. I finally came home to the theatre thirteen years ago. I was driven there by illness and the force of wondering, what did I truly want to do with the rest of my life. Time is my driving force and my enemy; I feel like I have a clock on my shoulder, always. When I made a decision to write plays, I studied playwriting with Tom Jacobson (UCLA), William Mittler (Fullerton College) and Cecilia Fannon (SCR).

2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why?

My favorite play is the play I am currently writing, Bender. Bender tells the story of a woman who finds her voice once she finally learns how to love herself. I’ve found myself retelling this story in play after play. I like to think, I’m getting better at it with each one.

3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?

My favorite production is going to be of Love, Divine, my new short play written in verse for the holiday season that is being produced by New Voices at Stage Door Repertory in Anaheim on December 7, 8, 14 and 21, 2013 at 2:00pm. It’s my favorite, because it was such a fun challenge to write and because it’s my first production in six years.

4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

I am moved by most things theatrical. Two years ago,  during my first and only trip to New York, I wept through War Horse at the Lincoln Center in the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. I wept for the majesty of it; the puppetry, the humanity, the storytelling.

5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?

My favorite playwright as an actor was Tennessee Williams. Now? That is a really tough question. I will have to say, under pressure, I am my favorite playwright. Somebody has to be fully in my corner.

6. How has your writing changed over the years?

I have a tendency to be too internal with my stories, to the detriment of actual understanding. I generally need to develop my plays over time and with actors reading around my dining room table. I need to hear the words and talk about their intention as I go. Because I often write, but don’t fully understand why my characters speak. So, hearing the words helps me understand them. I think I work best this way, because I used to be an actor and feel a deep kinship and trust of them. I used to apologize for my process, but it is my process and now I own it. Consequently, I think I’ve become more effective at articulating myself on the page.

7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?

I write plays with musicality. I’m drawn to musical plays because it’s where I feel closest to my center, to the world around me. When listening to music, I often experience a physical sensation, my heart swells, opens up; I experience joy. When I put words to music, it makes the joy even greater.

8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

I have tried to write conversational poetry, but am always pulled toward making them theatrical.

9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

I became a blogger for LA FPI because LA FPI trusted me enough to blog. I take writing posts quite, perhaps too, seriously. Sometimes I am so scared and intimidated that I don’t know what to say. I mean, I get to thinking, who am I to blog? Who cares what I have to say? I get over that thinking by just writing. The first organization that embraced me as a playwright was the Orange County Playwrights Alliance, led by Eric Eberwein, in 2009. I went to LA FPIs first meeting in 2010 representing myself as an Orange County playwright in a sea of Los Angelenos. I will forever be grateful to LA FPI for accepting me.

10. What is your favorite blog posting?

They are all great because every blogger is writing with their heart on their sleeve. I love everybody for putting it out there.

11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?

I used to think, if I wrote like “so-and-so”, I’d be a playwright. So, I modeled my writing after other playwrights, like Williams and Beckett. Now, not so much. I am my biggest influence. My sense of time, the pressure of time in my life and music are my biggest influences.

12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?

I think I found my voice as a playwright when I realized that I am writing the same story over and over again but through different characters, and that it’s my story… Once I learn to love myself, I will find my voice… Once I could see that and articulate it, I think I spoke it aloud to Robin Byrd at a Dramatist Guild meeting in L.A., I began to understand what it is I’m actually working toward. Then, I began to face my fears as a person and on the page and love myself and through my characters. Only then did I feel like my writing began to blossom.

13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?

My writing regiment is to write every spare minute. I have no process but to write. Write and write, as much and as quickly as I can in the time I have available to me.

14. How do you decide what to write?

Usually it’s an inspiration brought out by an image, text or music.

15. How important is craft to you?

Craft, to me, is what allows inspiration to live on a page.

16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I have a tendency to want to direct and produce.

17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

I live the life of a cloistered academic librarian who writes (mostly) between academic semesters. I love the idea of the L.A. theater community and hope to participate more in the future.

18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)

I accept it as truth and then it recedes from lack of attention.

19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

Yes. Love. Forgiveness. Faith.

20. What are you working on now?

Bender, a two-act full-length play with music written by Karen Fix Curry.

 

For more article by Erica Bennett go to https://lafpi.com/author/ehbennett/.  Erica’s first blog article is titled “1. Phishing (2008)” dated June 7, 2010.

Erica’s Bio

Erica Bennett is a playwright and tenured librarian at Fullerton College, where, as Systems Librarian, her primary responsibility is to coordinate the use of technology in the library.

Her short documentary Mendez v. Westminster: Families for Equality has aired on KOCE-TV (PBS) since October 2010. It is centered about her play El Primer Dia de Clases. Her plays Freed and Jolly and Bean were respectively presented in staged readings at the Laguna Beach New Play Festival and Newport Theatre Arts Center in 2009.

In November 2011, after a two-year development process, her play Water Closet was read by the White Horse Theater Company in New York City at the Dramatists Guild of America. The play was workshopped and read by the Fullerton College Playwrights Festival in January 2012. In May 2012, it was selected by the Orange County Playwrights Alliance “OCPA Studios” for a reading at the Hunger Artists Theatre, which she directed.

Her 10-minute play, A Waffle Doesn’t Cure Insomnia, was selected for publication in the Best American Short Plays 2011-2012. A staged reading was directed by Bennett and presented by OCPA’s Discoveries series in December 2012 at the Empire Theatre, home of Theatre Out. The Fullerton College Playwright’s Festival is producing her 10-minute play, Don’t Ever Love Me, as part of its 10 Cent Story Project in January 2013.

Bennett received her B.A. in Theater Arts from California State University, Fullerton, where she studied acting with Donn Finn and Jose Quintero. Upon graduation she moved to Los Angeles where she studied acting with Stella Adler and Arthur Mendoza. She was featured in Benicio Del Toro’s short film Submission. She worked for nearly ten years in dramatic television production on such shows as The Young Riders, Gabriel’s Fire, Under Suspicion and The Big Easy, as a writer’s and development assistant.

Bennett holds a Master of Library & Information Science from UCLA, and is a member of the Society of California Archivists, the Dramatists Guild of America and the Orange County Playwrights Alliance.

 

Training Days

Uncategorized

By Jessica Abrams

Even though numerous astrologers predicted otherwise, last Spring was not a good time for me. It felt like the footprints of my path had become etched in the kind of material that no ocean wave could erase and make new again. Certain areas seemed stuck — the minor ones like money, career, and relationships.  I wasn’t sure how to unstick them. So when I saw a notice in a theatre Yahoo group seeking actors to work as field interviewers for a social science study, I immediately responded.  Compared to Craigslist with its calls for egg donors and depression sufferers, this sounded downright promising.

After two phone interviews, I was told I had the job.  Did I mind going to Washington, DC to train on the company’s dime for two weeks?  No, I certainly did not.  There were a lot of letters in the company’s name.  There were also a lot of companies: one did payroll, one worked with the company doing payroll, another was the one I would actually be reporting to.  To this freelancer, it felt like I was entering a corporate morass from which I might never emerge.

So, when I arrived in Washington, DC and checked into a hotel room the size of my entire Hollywood bungalow, anticipation had built to a fever pitch.  Did I mention I was also broke, scared, and prone to moments of existential angst that would force me under the covers for long periods at a time?  The resounding question that kept repeating itself was, Is this really what my life has come to?  A Hilton Hotel in a DC suburb and a company with a weird name?

The answer to that is, of course, no.  It started with a no when I forced myself — yes, it was an act of sheer will  — to let go of any ideas I had about who I was, ideas I’d been carrying around with me like a knapsack loaded with rocks.  I did this by praying — yes, praying — to be released from the clutches these ideas had on me, to truly believe that I might not be who I thought I was.  It didn’t hurt that I met some really nice people, many of which were also creative types looking for flexible work, and that the managers were caring, maternal women wanting us to succeed (how often does one find that?).  Ever so slowly I began to give in to the job, to the work, to passing the various certifications necessary to do the work.  I also began to make friends.

One such friend was also an actress from LA.  We talked, we shared stories, we discussed ways to combine our talents so that maybe, one day, we could make money doing what we love.  Fast forward to being back on LA soil.  She introduced me to her life coach.  Said life coach encouraged us to shoot something to get into the Screen Actors Guild.  One morning while meditating, an idea came to me: we would do a web series based on the work we just trained to do.

Our web series, KNOCKING ON DOORS, was born.

The rest is the stuff you hear about but often (I did!) cast a jaundiced eye over: cast and crew came together in this miraculous way, everyone agreeing to work for free.  A Director of Photography and an editor just got it.  In fact, everyone just got it.  It was also the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.  We shot five episodes and will shoot more.  This little venture turned into something life-changing.

I can’t presume to offer a moral to this story.  What I will say is that, at least for me, change happened in a way I would never have predicted it; and so from now I won’t pretend to know when something might be good for me.

Or when that suburban hotel room might offer something besides expensive bottles of wine in its minibar.

KNOCKING ON DOORS is up and running:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEgStFxA9Wc&list=PL5doPMCJ-Z0k4PAdF4gJ63qjvOuqyefuT

 

Everything I Needed To Learn in Life I Learned Making A Web Series

Uncategorized

By  Jessica Abrams

I co-created a web series that I wrote, directed and starred in.  It’s called KNOCKING ON DOORS.  The process is not for the faint of heart.  Or rather, it required — for me, at least — the kind of candid self-scrutiny usually reserved for long-term relationships or the therapist’s couch (or long-term relationships with the therapist’s couch).  But I made it through and even learned a few things — things that extend far beyond audio files and title cards and even the limitlessness of cyberspace and into the universal experience of being human on this planet, right here right now.  I’ll try to distill them down to some key bullet points:

JUST DO IT.  I learned that Nike’s mantra extends well beyond running that 5K.  As someone with a long history of thinking rather than doing, I was surprised at my ability to turn words on a page into words on a stage — i.e., an apartment with some lights and cameras and a person shouting “action!”.  As writers, we write to be produced and published but we also write to be read.  We envision a reader as erudite and discerning as we are — a classy woman with cool glasses who chuckles at our wry humor, possibly letting out a giant guffaw when no one’s around.  That’s what we hope for — at least I do.  But writing five pages of words to be said not only by actors you deeply respect, but by yourself is another matter.  Those funny pieces of description don’t carry as much weight.  What matters is — here we go again — JUST DOING IT.  I know this because I agonized over each and every one of the five scripts I wrote — not because I wanted them to be perfect; I wanted them to be.  There was a group of people assembled on a specific day, a day they did not have work or auditions or family in town.  It was write or die.  Miraculously, I am still here.

ONCE YOU DECIDE TO JUST DO IT, THE UNIVERSE JUMPS IN AND HELPS.  I’d never fully experienced (or been aware that I was experiencing it) the way things just come together when a decision is made and a huge leap of faith is taken.  A sound operator shows up on set when you thought you might have to recruit someone in the Home Depot parking lot.  Some of your favorite actors are free and willing to speak your words all on the same day; and various other miracles that, despite your stress and fear, make manifest.  This is the lesson I need to remember every day, regardless of whether or not a camera is rolling.

IT’S ALL ABOUT PLAYING WELL WITH OTHERS.  We hear that life is a collaborative effort and as writers for the theatre we are all too aware of this, but as a newbie web series-maker, I relied on more than just a little help from my friends.  I not only welcomed input, I craved it.  Does this line work?  Be honest with me, because we can change it if it doesn’t feel right (note: if it doesn’t feel right, it generally doesn’t look right on camera).  What’s a card reader and how can I get one? Even the ex-boyfriend I ran into who expressed doubt about my ability to go through with this endeavor helped — I was determined to prove him wrong — and for that I am grateful.

LET IT BE.  Nothing’s perfect, certainly not a first-time web series.  Do I wish my sound was better in places?  That I had remembered to wash my hair before confronting the camera?  Of course, and I’ll take the information with me when I do the next five.  For now, I know that, despite questions and outstanding issues, I didn’t let my own crippling perfectionism get in the way of making something that has given me a confidence and renewed sense of purpose and that, in a profound way, has changed my life forever.

Just do it.

 

The Numbers Problem and Why It Matters

Uncategorized, , , ,

By Laura A. Shamas

Last month, a popular entertainment blog caused quite a stir when it flashed a hopeful headline and post that misstated women playwrights wrote “half of the plays being performed in the upcoming season across the country.” After two days, the blog post was corrected; it was unintentional, a misreading of a New York Times report about Theatre Communications Group’s Annual Top Ten Most Popular Plays of the Season list; half of this year’s list is female-authored (and there are 14 plays on this year’s list due to ties). Until the entertainment blog was corrected, many people were expecting that a 50/50 level of gender parity in production had been achieved in U.S. theaters for female and male playwrights. Not so.  But it raises the question: then what are the actual statistics for female and male playwrights in American theater seasons for 2013-14? Here’s the truth. No one knows, because national data collection on this topic is not currently funded in the United States by any single research entity or institution.

Earlier in 2013, LA FPI volunteers Stephanie Hutchinson and Jan O’Connor undertook what has become an annual measurement task performed by our Los Angeles advocacy group: tracking the League of Resident Theaters [LORT] seasons of nine theaters in Southern California, to find out how many female playwrights and directors are working on their stages. You can read our results from 2013 and 2012 here.  The numbers are down significantly this current season from last: only 16% in both categories.  These are terrible numbers, quite disheartening, miserable. Everyone at LA FPI is very grateful to Stephanie Hutchinson and Jan O’Connor for taking the time to complete the season count for this yearly total, which we use in an attempt to discern any gender parity progress (or lack thereof) in our local theater scene.

Yet, this 16% number is really not an accurate picture of the complete theater scene here, nor were any of our previous annual LORT counts. Here’s why: a SoCal LORT count does not nearly encompass all of the theaters in the area who use professional artists, including Equity actors. If SoCal is defined as the large region from Santa Barbara to San Diego, there are at least 20 “professional” companies here who use full Actors Equity [AEA] contracts –not just 99-seat waiver agreements.  Not all of these companies are members of LORT. Should we be counting the annual seasons of these theaters instead of LORT? Maybe.

Moreover, there are many other companies in this area who are not LORT members, nor using full AEA contracts, yet they could or would say that they, too, are “professional” theaters because they use artists in all disciplines who are members of professional unions. How many of these companies are there in SoCal?  According to a reply tweet to us from Los Angeles STAGE Alliance  on October 14: “Well, we estimate we have around 350 companies working with us in a given year. But we also have a list of 230-some others.”

So, let’s just say that each of those 350 companies (and the sometimes additional +230 groups) produce several shows a year. Who’s counting all of these LA theatre season rosters for gender parity stats? No one.

So do we truly have any understanding of the complete theater scene in terms of gender parity and statistical breakdowns in Los Angeles or SoCal?  No, we do not. And it’s not just here in southern California. Try finding 2013-2014 season data related to gender parity for New York City shows—New York, the exciting heartbeat of our American theater scene. Can you find them? (If you do, please add them to the comments sections of this blog post. Because I could not.)

When LA FPI began, it was in part a response to Julia Jordan’s 2008 decision to calculate the numbers of female playwrights in the New York seasons per non-profit theaters, and her finding that only 12.6% were female-authored. Our website has a “Facts” page where we have attempted to aggregate gender parity/theater data links in the past few years, but I haven’t tried to update it in awhile. I don’t know what data or studies to add, because there are no precise new annual national numbers to report.

To be completely clear, the numbers used most often to describe the typical American female playwright’s status are New York-based stats. In 2011, Ella Martin, Jennie Webb and I partnered to investigate data from the Los Angeles area for the beginning of the twenty-first century. We wanted to find out what the percentage number was in SoCal for productions by women playwrights. Thank goodness for the Los Angeles STAGE Alliance and their willingness to hand count into their 2002 – 2010 records for us, because without their generous efforts, we never would have had a basis for our 20% result, reflecting the 993 shows that were female-authored and produced here during those years.

Some of the problems that plague an accurate assessment of any gender parity stats in American theatre are:
1) lack of funding or resources for any such studies;
2) uniform metrics, methodology and data sources of what should be counted and when.
I’ve shared some samples of these types of questions in the early part of this essay. One of the more famous American studies that garnered attention in 2009 was Emily Sandburg Sands’ report which relied on the Doollee.com database, a source criticized by some as incomplete. You can find Sands’ “Opening the Curtain” report here.  And yet, as Doollee is incomplete, where will more accurate data come from?

Fortunately, there are heroic theater datakeepers in various places around the world who are trying to amend the numbers problem by keeping track of what’s going in the communities where they live, as related to gender parity and diversity.

One of those people is Niall Tangney of Sydney, Australia. Tangney is a long-time hospitality employee and theatre enthusiast who has “rediscovered his love of theatre in his middle-age.” He promotes theatre free of charge to the theatre community of Sydney and NSW via the Theatre in Sydney website [found at www.theatresydney.info], which he runs as a fairly intensive hobby. Niall writes: “I am a regular theatregoer but am not involved in making theatre in any way, so I am able to stir the pot in a way that no one can accuse me of it being self-serving. I think perhaps this is part of the problem. Regarding speaking out on the issue, I think (but do not know for sure) that some female playwrights may not want to be seen as simply complaining that their particular play was not selected or got rejected by a major company… but if no one speaks up, nothing will change.“ Here’s Tangney’s tally of the 2013-14 season as related to gender parity. For the 2013-14 season, Tangney found that from a total of 59 shows of five state-funded theaters, approximately 30% are plays written by female playwrights, and approximately 30% of plays will be solely directed by female directors.

Tangney thinks that collecting the numbers does matter, related to fairness:  “The issue has been discussed in Australia for a number of years already, particularly by this group of playwrights called 7-ON  who raised the issue as a collective. I also have three sisters, none of whom are writers by the way, but they give me a fair insight into things as well, in terms of equality. So I just say to myself…’if I was a woman would I think that was fair?’  One thing I have been thinking about with this issue is that, where theatre companies receive state funding, you could argue that since taxpayers are funding the art, and governments are committed to equal opportunity, that the theatre companies should be required to represent the genders equitably in their choices of work by (at least, living, and taxpaying…) playwrights. But it is a tricky question, and not being involved myself in theatre I have no idea how you would implement this practically. But it is worth thinking about. If people in theatre are smart enough to put on all this great theatre, which I love, surely they are smart enough to work this out.”

In 2012, a major report on Women In Theatre was released by the Australia Council, in hopes of raising awareness about the current state of gender equity in the art form, and advocating for action to bring about change. Those who authored the report found “no progress over the decade since 2001 and there is evidence that the situation for women in creative leadership deteriorated over that time” (pps 4-5).

Hilary Bell also makes a strong case as to why it matters to keep track of gender parity-related stats.  Bell writes for theater, radio, film, TV, opera, and music theatre; she graduated from Julliard in 1998 and lives in Sydney, Australia. Bell responded to me on behalf of  the “7-On” Playwrights. Bell wonders what would happen if 16% male quotas were proposed for theater seasons, such as: “’In our next season, we will give male directors 16% of the productions.’ There’s an unconscious bias towards giving creative roles in theatre to men. The only way to redress the balance is to make employers conscious. Rightly, there’s a hue and cry about women being underrepresented on boards, in business and government. In the arts – supposedly inclusive, progressive, liberal – women artists are consistently marginalised. An all-male playwrights season raises no eyebrows; an all-female season (were anyone to ever propose one) is seen as a provocative statement. This, despite an equal number of female artists and a majority of female ticket-buyers. The ‘merit’ argument is as spurious as it is insulting. Only when artistic directors see the numbers, over and again, will they wake up to the fact of this discrimination, and do something about it.”

Another theatre data keeper here in the U.S. is Gwydion Suilebhan of Washington, D.C.; he’s a playwright, transmedia artist, arts advocate, and digital strategist for arts organizations. Suilebhan is part of the new D.C. company “The Welders, A Playwrights’ Collective.” Suilebhan has partnered with playwrights Patricia Connelly and David Mitchell Robinson to keep track of theatre demographic data from the area. The season results for 2013-14 are here. You can access the full study, launched in 2012, here. From the 2013-14 results: “Of the plays being produced in D.C. in the 2013-14 season, 73% were written by men, 27% by women. By comparison, in the 2012-13 season, 79% of the plays were written by men, 21% by women.”

Of why the numbers matter, Suilebhan writes: “Looking at data is like looking into a well-polished mirror. It shows us exactly who we are, whether we like what we see or not…and helps us make reality-based decisions. If we really want to achieve gender parity in the American theater, we have to know exactly where we’re starting from…and monitor whether our choices are really making a difference or not. That’s why I gather data.”

Performer Valerie Weak tallies data from the San Francisco area in monthly posts called “Counting Actors.” In a Tactics Interview with Amy Claire Tasker posted earlier in 2013 on the “Works by Women Blog,” Weak said: “The big tactic with Counting Actors is to let the numbers speak.  When I do my monthly blog post, I don’t say anything about how the numbers make me feel, about what’s bad or what’s good.  I just say here are the numbers, please talk about them.” Weak’s count may be found here. In one of Weak’s recent posts, she reports: “There were 56 shows (56%) that were on [AEA] contracts that use health weeks.Those shows had: 46 male directors, 21 female directors (67%, 33%), 58 male writers, 15 female writers (79%, 21%), 274 male actors, 208 female actors (57%, 43%).”

In the United Kingdom, Professor Maggie Gale made headlines this summer at a National Theatre panel in London with an assessment that women playwrights there are produced in the 8-12% range; this estimate is especially discouraging when compared to “18.4% in 1923, 20.4% in 1936, and 22% in 1945.”  (For a response to Gale from a different perspective, please read Katy Brand’s view.)

Wendy Thomson, Editor of FemaleArts.com, an online U.K. magazine promoting women in the arts, pointed me towards several key sites with research on gender parity and playwrights, such as the excellent Archives of the Sphinx Theatre, which lists on its header: “35% of actors, 17% of writers, 23% of directors…52% of the population.”  Thomson also referred me to this excellent Datablog piece in The Guardian from December 2012, about the 2:1 ratio of men to women working in theater, compiled in collaboration with Elizabeth Freestone: 35% of new plays in this Datablog are female-authored.

Another great U.K. site with specific regional data is the 17Percent Blog. In a guest post by Lindsay Nicholas, Nicholas writes that keeping track of what’s happening is purposeful: “For now, it seems to be down to writers themselves, such as Sam Hall at 17Percent, dedicated to changing a very bad statistic through regular showcases of women’s writing, to explore the issues. She suggests that close monitoring of gender ratios in theatre writing could bring about improvement. This has worked well in Sweden, for example, where in 2011 46% of new plays were written by women.”

Thomson, too, believes there’s value in keeping track of parity-related data. “It is important to monitor on a regular basis if gender inequality is decreasing or increasing and this activity should be funded! The public must be aware so they can celebrate when things get better and campaign when things get worse, we can never be complacent. There should be equality on stage just as in every walk of life. There can be rapid deterioration of women’s rights and achievements and that is why we need campaigners like Malala for girls education and LA FPI for Los Angeles playwrights.”

What of Canada? I do not have specific data from any regional sites to report. But here are some recent studies that address the general topic of Women in Theatre.

1) “…only 27 percent of the plays produced in Canada are written by female playwrights.” – “The Status of Women in Theatre: Disturbing Reports from Australia, Canada, and the US” by Sarah O’Conner, August 2012, Vol. 1, No.2, published in Women in Theatre. From March 2011, the same 27% stat for female playwrights is quoted in “Females Try to Smash Glass Ceiling” by Kathleen Renne, but there’s also a mention that most stage managers and costumers are female.
2) The 2006 Study on the Status of Women in Canadian Theatre  – “Adding It Up”
3) The 2009 Equity in Canadian Theatre Report, from Professional Association of Canadian Theatre [PACT], discussed here.

Rebecca Burton, of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, shared an update on overall 2012-2013 stats and plans for a new Canadian initiative: “The Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC) has followed-up every year since then [2006] with a straw poll to see how women playwrights are faring. This year, for the 2012/13 season, women constituted 23% of the produced playwrights (men were 61% and mixed gender collaborations accounted for 16%). These stats suggest that the situation is regressing rather than improving! PGC has plans to launch an industry-wide Equity initiative next year to help combat the problem.”

One global organization for women playwrights is the International Centre for Women Playwrights [ICWP]. They feature a research page for gender parity data on their site.

Margaret McSeveney is a writer, poet, and playwright who resides in the U.K. McSeveney has been an ICWP Board Member since 2000, was ICWP President from 2009-2011, and ICWP Vice President from 2011-2013. McSeveney, too, feels that data should be collected on gender parity in theatre: “It matters a great deal because the figures will show the progress (hopefully not the lack of progress) theatres are making towards treating women playwrights fairly, as artists worthy of equal treatment and human beings worthy of an equal share of the commissioning and production funding used to support the theatre industry.”

Winding back to New York City, I have discussed these same gender parity data issues recently via e-mail with several members of the League of Professional Theatre Women. There is a desire for a more formal study about gender parity in theater from LPTW members, and there’s a hope for future funding. Jenny Lyn Bader is a playwright and author, a Dramatists Guild member, the Artistic Producer at Theatre 167, and an executive board member of the League of Professional Theatre Women. Bader generously shared some of her thoughts about data collection related to gender parity arts stats, or lack thereof.

In regards to New York stats, Bader writes: “It’s shocking how little hard evidence there is to document this problem that so many are aware of — and how difficult it is even to find a record, not just of gender breakdowns in our industry, but of everything in our industry! It’s nearly impossible to find a comprehensive list of all Broadway and Off-Broadway openings. And forget Off-off-Broadway — we’re talking about 2,000 productions. “

A methodology for data collection is also daunting, related to the shows produced in New York. Bader notes: “I realize that the statistics are not easy to compile. For example, just look at new plays on Broadway in 2012. I found one list that seemed comprehensive. But it included Rebecca, which never even opened. So I narrowed it down to shows that opened. But does that include musicals? It might be easier not to count musicals since they are frequently co-authored. But then how do you count a play with music? Do you count one-person shows? Does Kiki Tyson count as a female playwright, since she co-authored, with Randy Johnson, Mike Tyson’s one-man show? Does the comedian Lewis Black whose Running on Empty played 8 performances on Broadway during its tour count as a male playwright? Should William Shatner’s one-man show count as a play? What about Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which has been produced on Broadway four times? Should that still count as a new play? Should Wit, by Margaret Edson, previously produced Off-Broadway and already having won the Pulitzer, be counted as new? Maybe since Edson and Albee are both alive, they can be put in the ‘new play’ category, but then how do we count Nora Ephron, whose play was produced posthumously but was new?  In the end, using any consistent method, it still looks like women playwrights wrote fewer than 15% of new plays produced on Broadway in 2012. But how do we decide on what the method is?” And of course, any variance in data collection methodologies may mean that the data is not directly comparable.

And even though issues of collection, such as funding and methodology, are challenging, it is necessary that we collect the data, according to Bader. “We’ve exploded glass ceilings in so many fields, but not in this one. There are different numbers, but everyone can agree that of produced plays, a minority are written by women, while women make up the majority of the audience. So women are coming to see these plays mostly written by men. At some point, that has an impact. It’s a question of putting women’s stories at the center of stories and not just on the sidelines, of privileging voices from both genders, of not teaching young women always to be considering things from the male point of view. It seems surprising and bizarre that we have not reached gender parity in a field such as theatre which is normally not perceived as exceptionally traditional or conservative. Indeed it seems so surprising and bizarre that many knowledgeable people don’t even believe it. That’s why the numbers matter. It’s important to collect them.”

With so many people in so many places agreeing on the need for gender equity data collection in theater, isn’t it time we start a serious conversation about ways to solve this numbers problem, so that studies may be executed to encompass all communities of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and the entire world beyond–including the vast number of non-English language theaters? And shouldn’t we extend our data numbers to embrace all positions held in theater, including designers, stage managers, costumers, etc.?

In closing, and in an attempt to answer the question I began with, about the ratio of female to male playwrights in American 2013-14 theater seasons, I do have one final piece of data to share. A volunteer in Los Angeles (who wishes to remain anonymous) counted all productions listed in the American Theater magazine 2013-2014 season preview, pages 48-97 of the October 2013 issue. This is only an estimate, as some slots were To Be Announced or listed no authors, and thus were unable to be tracked. These are the current seasons of 500 Theatre Communication Group member companies only, spread over 47 states. The data encompasses some non-English language shows. In keeping with other counting methods, any plays by William Shakespeare were not included.  This estimate found that 35% of the shows listed for 2013-14 were female-authored, and 65% were male-authored (female-authored shows, 446.93; male-authored shows, 1,274.77).

Again, this is only an estimate.

© 2013 by Laura A. Shamas. For permission to reprint or repost this article, please inquire: blog(at)lafpi(dot)com

*    *    *    *
ADDITIONAL LINKS, ORGANIZED BY GEOGRAPHY

(If you have more links to share, please let us know in the comments and we will add them below as we can.)

AUSTRALIA
Career Playwrights: (Australian) Working Women Dramatists, 1928-1968, by Michelle Arrow, University of Sydney
Seven On
Theatre in Sydney, Niall Tangney’s Site
2012 Women in Theatre Report by the Australian Council

AUSTRALIA – MISCELLANEOUS, RELATED
AusStage
Playwriting Australia

CANADA
The 2006 Study on the Status of Women in Canadian Theatre: “Adding It Up”

From Rebecca Burton of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, on 2012-13 stats:
“The Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC) has followed-up every year since then [2006] with a straw poll to see how women playwrights are faring. This year, for the 2012/13 season, women constituted 23% of the produced playwrights (men were 61% and mixed gender collaborations accounted for 16%). These stats suggest that the situation is regressing rather than improving! PGC has plans to launch an industry-wide Equity initiative next year to help combat the problem.”

CANADA – MISCELLANEOUS, RELATED
Playwrights Guild of Canada, Women’s Caucus

GERMANY – MISCELLANEOUS, RELATED
Statistics on Women Filmmakers

NEW ZEALAND
Gender Issues for Female Playwrights and Filmmakers

UNITED KINGDOM
Sphinx Theatre Archives
The Guardian Datablog in collaboration with Elizabeth Freestone
The 17percent Blog

UNITED STATES
Boston
The Blog of the Playwrights’ Commons – 2012-13 Stats
Company One – Season 15, 2013-14, all female playwrights

Chicago
Gender Equity Report, 2010

Cleveland
8 of 10 shows at Cleveland Public by women, 2013-14: Cleveland Public Theatre

Los Angeles
2011  LA FPI “The Study,” lead by Ella Martin
2013 – “News”

New York
June 2013, Scream into a Bucket Alert – Guerrilla Girls On Tour
“Why Playwrights Horizon Isn’t Talking About the Gender Imbalance in Their Season”

North Carolina Triangle Theaters
2012-13 Data Compiled by Jules Odendahl-James, Resident Dramaturg, Duke University
“Women writers & directors representation in the 2012-2013 seasons of 20 Triangle NC Producing Theaters/Theater Companies.
94 shows announced. For 21 of these shows, directing staff unknown as of July 21, 2012.
27 women directors. (Some of these are directing more than one show in a season, e.g. Meredith College; some also creators of the work so they are given credit for directing and writing.)
2 women co-directing shows with men. (A Christmas Story, Haymaker’s Elektra).
13 female playwrights.
17 women working on projects as co-writer/part of devising company.”

San Francisco
Counting Actors by Valerie Weak

Washington, D.C.
DC Theatre Demographics, 2013-14, collected by Gwydion Suilebhan, Patricia Connelly and David Mitchell Robinson
DC Theatre Demographics, Full Study

USA – MISCELLANEOUS, RELATED
2002 – “Report on the Status of Women: A Limited Engagement” by Susan Jonas and Suzanne Bennett
2010 – Discrimination and the Female Playwright by Julia Jordan and Sheri Wilner
2011 – Karen Kinch’s data on 2011 LORT counts, as cited in a 2012 post by Diane Grant
2012 – The VIDA Count 2012
2012/2013 – Guerrilla Girls On Tour Annual Girlcott List

With special thanks to Niall Tangney, Hilary Bell, Gwydion Suilebhan, Wendy Thomson, Margaret McSeveney, and Jenny Lyn Bader. 

Let me think about that

Uncategorized

diana-ephesus-detail

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Many Breasted Diana Has A Hard Time Saying No

By Cynthia Wands

 

I enjoyed reading this post from Bitter Gertrude about her blog post:  Why Your Play Was Rejected.

I like this kind of smart, mouthy humor. But then again…..(this section is from her post):

“Luckily for you, you live in the WORLD OF TOMORROW, where submitting a play is as easy as hitting “send.” Take a moment to think of the poor playwrights of yesteryear (15 years ago) who were copying out scripts at work when their supervisors were in a meeting and having to mail them out to theatres at $2.50 a pop if they didn’t work in a company with a mailroom (I remember getting submissions from Lehman Brothers regularly). The flip side of the newfound ease of the submission process is that we’re all getting hundreds and hundreds of scripts, all the time. Even if your script is fantastic, is it better for THAT THEATRE at THAT MOMENT than the other 412 the theatre will get that year? Maybe the AD has done three comedy-heavy seasons and is considering moving to a more drama-heavy season the next year. Maybe the theatre is hoping to work with a specific director and looking for scripts that will appeal to her. Or perhaps this director is already involved in the selection process. Maybe this director had a recent personal experience that increases her interest in a certain topic, and although your play is just as awesome, the play submitted right after yours is about exactly that topic. The point is: You don’t know. The variables are endless, and the competition is just insane. When I’m in season planning season (ha) in Dec/Jan, I’ll sit at my computer and open file after file after file, reading plays for hours every single day. I don’t even glance at the name of the playwright or the title of the work unless I’m already interested in moving it up to my contenders file, or if I’m sending an email to my LM indicating which ones to reject. It’s truly crazy how many plays we get, and we’re the smallest dog on the block.”

I guess I don’t live in the World of Tomorrow, where submitting my play is as easy as hitting the send button.

I live in a world where I carefully consider what I am writing and who and where the play belongs.  And that does mean that the rejection of my play does seem personal, and costly and difficult.

But I also know that I hate disappointing people, that I have a hard time saying no to someone I like/respect/want to succeed. So I’m glad I don’t have the job of being Bitter Gertrude.

Bitter Gertrude Post About Rejecting Plays

Time Management

Uncategorized

Steven Kenny (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artwork by Steven Kenny

by Cynthia Wands

I found a posting from the writer Barry Lancet that spoke to his challenges with time management for writing.

I loved reading this:

Barry Lancet Article: What It Takes

There have been times in my life when I’ve been able to write in a car/train/airplane/Starbucks/concrete prison cell (I wasn’t actually in prison but I can tell you I now know what that feels like), and my kitchen.

I also have a very nice office set up with a totems and books and scripts and a beautiful handmade lamp sitting on the desk. I can have a hard time writing there.  (Especially if there is a cat sitting on the keyboard.)

But I loved reading about this writer’s determination and follow through.