Thank You…

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Written by Nancy Beverly

I decided this morning to make this my last blog for the LAFPI.  I suddenly realized late yesterday I hadn’t read the blog in over a month (okay, my home computer was in the shop for two weeks, which made my personal web surfing minimal).  I’d been religious (spiritual?) about keeping up with everyone’s posts… and now my life is so jam-packed that I unintentionally let the blog drop.  I apologize to those whose posts I didn’t read — I tried to do some speed reading yesterday to catch up but I still didn’t get to all of the entries.  Sigh.

So, I need to let some things go to make room for the new things in my life — mostly they’re connected to my movie, which now has a wonderful director, fabulous D.P., line-producer, co-producer, budget and business plan in place.  And I’ve barely begun — now comes getting investors and actors!

In my final post, I’d like to share with you the link to Shawn Tolleson’s website:

http://entertainmentcareerstrategy.com/

Shawn is a career coach, as well as a film and theatre director, and it’s thanks to her tools that I’ve been able to put this movie (and some of my other projects) together and keep moving forward.  She spoke at Fierce Backbone, my playwrights group, last night and the writers and actors got a lot out of her talk.  If you ever get a chance to hear her or have the time to sign up for one of her seminars, I can’t say enough about the strategies she teaches.

And so, thank you for letting me take up this space every few months to contemplate, to rant, to share… and to feel connected to the wonderful female playwrights of L.A.

 

Stillness…

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by Analyn Revilla

I wanted to write this blog from a quiet place inside of me.  After some reflection and some practice I believe that creativity comes from a quiet place, and the by-product of creativity is a creation.

Most times, I’m too busy with being busy that I’m hardly ever quiet, so there isn’t much creativity happening.  It’s all noise, and that creation isn’t inspiring or useful to others – hardly anyway.

I had been mulling about creativity, creation and stillness in the past few days.  Then I stumbled upon the whole kit and caboodle while preparing dinner last night.  What I had been trying to understand is also something that Bruno experiences as a professional chef.  He has worked for a lot of very good charcutiers.  I asked, what makes one better than aother?  He said, for example, he is different from one his former employers, Thierry, because Thierry was a perfectionist.  Thierry had the ability to invent new products, because he’s not too concerned with productivity.  Meanwhile, Bruno was able to create something new based on parameters he is given by a client.  He admits that he didn’t invent what he’s created, but he’s able to reproduce someone else’s idea.  I followed with the question, why can’t he create something new and original?  He said he’s too busy with being productive.  He needs to have time to be quiet to inspire creativity.

I’ve been wanting to give you something worthy of your time, and I didn’t want to rehash something that has been said before or a cliché about life.  Though I wanted to remind myself that it’s good to just be still, like telling a child who fidgets to “be still.”  Being busy without being rooted to a purpose dissipates energy, and can even lead to an unwanted residue of consequences.  (I should have gone home before I deleted some report configuration from an environment which was firstly an embarrassing mistake, and also created more work in the end.  The only salvation I grant on this occassion is a Miles Davis quote, “Do not fear mistakes – there are none. ”)

Here’s another analogy.  A playwright friend of mine was auditioning actors for a new play.  His comment at the end of the auditions was, “there was too much movement of arms and legs from some of the actors, and less focus on what’s being said.”  I know what he meant, because when a person is embedded into a character there is a sense of stillness in their demeanor.  Less is more.  Like makeup, applying less brings out more of the essence rather than covering it up; and over-amplification of the action takes away from the subtext of the conversation.

On my office wall, across from my desk, is a picture of Martin Luther King from the TIME magazine cover (August 26th to September 2nd 2013 issue).  There is a remarkable stillness in this image.  I wonder what he was thinking, feeling and being.  There’s a stillness there that draws me in closer that I put the words “Role model inspire to aspire” beneath the picture.

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Play It Loud

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by Analyn Revilla

I had driven around and stopped at four other pawn shops around New Orleans, before I found “the guitar”.  It had been sitting in a darkened room of the pawn shop next to a small food stand.  It was, in fact, the food stand that I used as my marker to locate the shop, based on directions from a local.

“the guitar”, covered in dust, was hidden behind other abandoned guitars, but at least it stood upright, and not on its back.  Any weight on it could’ve broken the neck or cracked its body.  The headstock was chipped, the back was falling off and it couldn’t hold the tuning, because the tuning pegs were not its original stock and the strings were gritty with dust and grease.

I looked down the neck of the guitar and did not see any serious bends.  Plus it was really too dark in the shop to study that kind of detail any closer.  I tried to tune the guitar and play a chord.  Imagine plucking a note from an electric guitar plugged to an amp in a large and empty stadium.  Hear the note.  It is true and just keeps on vibrating.  Its call brings your soul to its knees.  I was unnerved by the tone of this old soul.

“How much do you want for this?” I asked the owner.  I got the answer I expected.  Something along the lines that it’s a vintage guitar, and it’s a bargain for $125.  It comes with its own gig bag.  The guitar was worth something as it was an Alvarez and it was fabricated in Japan.  It was an old soul with a worn body.  Its back was falling out and I saw there was some damage to the heel too.  I liked the scorpion sticker on the front, and ghs guitar boomer sticker at the back.

“Ok, I’ll take it.”  My answer, without its haggling down words, made the man pause and probably wonder if he’s really given away a gem.  The gig bag was in better shape than the guitar.

After returning to LA, and having paid an extra $100 for the extra carriage of the guitar I was the owner of a vintage guitar that couldn’t be played.  You can tune it, but it begins to lose its tuning before you can finish a song.  I took it around to a few shops to get an idea of the cost of fixing it, but the answers I got weren’t too promising.  I took it on a trip to Vancouver.  I always need the companionship of a guitar when I’m away from home.  The guy at Bonerattle Music store offered to at least glue the back and change the strings.  I didn’t mind playing an out of tune guitar, as I just needed to hold it.  I could still play a melody on one string; and practice anything with simple creativity.  The guy was surprised by its sound.  “Its got great tone.”  “I know,” I told him, “that’s why I got it and I wanted to save it.”

Then the guitar sat on a gig stand around my apartment unfixed and played not often.  It was like grandpa sitting in his rocking chair, waiting for something, that I wish I knew what for.  Then one day, I found out there was a hobbyist luthier working in the office.  His day job is a technical engineer.  His office is adorned with 3 guitars and a bass he built.  All of these babies were beautiful.  His favorite is a retro-green Strat body with pink knobs.  I told him about my guitar, and he said he’d like to work on it.  Wide-eyed, I said, “Really?”

That was almost a year ago that we had that conversation.  Yesterday morning he handed me the fixed grande dame of the Mississippi.  I cradled it, and couldn’t resist strumming a few favorite chords.   In his words he said it’s the only guitar  he’s worked on that’s “live”.  Then he quickly changed his mind and said, “it is one of two… ”  He figured that “the guitar” has been played a lot by the look of the wear on the fingerboard.  The wear on the headstock looks like the guitar had been pulled out of gig bags often, the kind of guitar you just reach for.  “Imagine,” I said, “Can you imagine the hands that’s touched this guitar.”  “I know,” he enthused.  Our minds raced with stories of its own making.

Last night, while Bruno watched the news, I sat holding the guitar and warming up my fingers and noodling quietly.  At times I would stop and apologize for getting carried away.  He gently told me, it’s okay.  He liked hearing me play.  “I don’t play,” I said.  This morning, after he left for work, I picked up the guitar again.  I started gingerly as my fingers hadn’t played very much lately.  I put the metronome at a slow beat of 40.  The electronic tick tock focused my attention.  After a few minutes of that I moved to chords, then playing songs.  I was enamored with the sound.  This guitar likes to be played loud.  Its tone was so grand and deep – resonating tones and semitones like an aria.  By the time I became I aware of time it was 8:44.  I still hadn’t walked the dog, and I’m supposed to be at work soon.

I laughed at an old reminder a guitar teacher used to tell me.  “Play louder”.  This was the first and only guitar I’ve played which I could play loud.  I found my voice with this guitar.  I dressed for work, happily thinking about an idea – when one day, St. Peter, at the Gate, asks me to play a song to let me pass through into heaven I would have a song to play and I would play it loud enough.

On Meeting Playwright Sarah Tuft in Chicago…

Conference, Play, Playwright, , , , , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

“…she was fun and fierce, and we chatted.”  Laurel Wetzork

I was running (okay walking swiftly) past Laurel Wetzork – LA FPI Onstage Editor, and Debbie Bolsky – LA FPI Agent Process Co-Captain, after an event at last month’s Dramatists Guild Conference (Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future) when I was introduced to Sarah Tuft by Debbie.  Laurel was engrossed in conversation with her.   I had interrupted to say, “See y’all back home.”   I met a lot of people in Chicago, so many, I had to take notes, but I remember Sarah’s name because I had just used the word “tufts” in a poem:

           “…pulling the small tufts from my eyelids trying to leave the lashes in tact…”
I like the word so much, I keep thinking about it.  And, I liked Sarah right off when I met her — not just because of her last name.  She seemed so open to me and she was really excited about her project coming to Los Angeles.  Debbie, Laurel and I asked her to drop us a line about it, so that maybe we (LA FPI Instigators) could show up in clusters.  Just received her email today:

Dear LA Playwrights,

As promised, I’m here in town for the benefit reading of my play “110 Stories” next Wed at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center at 4718 West Washingtob Blvd. 90016.Some advance press: examiner.com/article/12th-anniversary-of-9-11-brings-broadwayglobal-must-see-play-110-stories FB invite: facebook.com/events/346706322129808/?ref=br_tf Segment on A&E: vimeo.com/channels/sarahtuft110stories

Love to see you there.  If you can make it, sign up at itsmyseat.com/events/733971.html  or call 626.869.7328.

And if you’re on FB, please friend me so I can include you for any other shenanigans!! Best wishes, Sarah

110 Stories by Sarah Tuft
110 Stories by Sarah Tuft

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

110 stories sarah tuft

110 STORIES by Sarah Tuft

Wednesday, September 11, 2013 – 8:00 PM

Nate Holden Performing Arts Center
4718 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90016

110 Stories Celebrity Benefit Performance will commemorate the 12th anniversary of the events of Sept 11th 2001.

Sarah Tuft’s play expresses the human side of history, without politics and agenda, giving voice to those who experienced 9/11 directly.Proceeds from the event go to Operation Gratitude.

All schedule permitting, the cast includes: Jon Heder, Ernie Hudson, Ethan Kogan, Anthony Ruivivar, Stelio Savante, Jessica Silvetti and Diane Venora. Directed by Rudolf Buitendach. Lead Producer: StelioSavante, Casting Director: Engine Media Group, Producers: Al Han, Ethan Kogan, Freddy Luis, Anne McCarthy, Kellie Gesell Roy, Jessica Silvetti.Consulting Producer: Michael Greenwald and Playwright Sarah Tuft.

Operation Gratitude is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, volunteer-based organization that annually sends 100,000 care packages filled with snacks, entertainment items and personal letters of appreciation addressed to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed in hostile regions, to their children left behind and to Wounded Warriors recuperating in Transition Units. This charity is supported by First Lady Obama, The Bidens, Ben Affleck, Gary Sinise and many other respected celebrities, athletes and politicians. For more info, please visit their official website at http://www.operationgratitude.com/

Special Note: Our charity Operation Gratitude will be providing tax deductible letters of receipt for everyone who purchases tickets. If you are unable to attend or do not live in LA, you can still purchase tickets/make a donation and you will receive the tax deductible letter from our charity.

COME AND JOIN US, experience firsthand accounts of the events of Sept 11th 2001 with an illustrious cast and together we can raise money for this worthy charity.

The performance starts at 8:00 p.m. with ticket prices ranging from $25 to $55. All ticket purchases and donations are tax-deductible.

https://www.facebook.com/events/346706322129808/?ref=br_tf

Tickets: http://www.itsmyseat.com/events/733971.html

In Which I Ask A Lot Of Questions

Audience, Feminism, playwriting, race, Theaters, , , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Something about my previous post stuck with me this week… I couldn’t quite put a pin in it until today.  At the end of the piece, I mentioned “I can’t presume to tell a woman of color about her own life anymore than a WoC should be telling a transgender white woman about hers.”

It stirred the question, “Where do transgender playwrights fall in this fight for gender parity?”

Does our drive for equal representation on stage scuttle transgender authors into Male/Female categories, or do we recognize them with a third gender category, thus indicating that an ideal season would include plays by men, women, and transgender playwrights?  And, if so, how would those genders break down from there?  Does a truly balanced season include an exact number male/female/transgender playwrights of color/queer/disabled/et al distinctions?

I guess what I’m getting at here is that in our bid to be better represented on stage, we become but one segment of an assembly of segmented voices demanding to be heard.

So…

What does this mean for theatres on the grand scale?   Should they try to appease each and every piece of these divided masses?  Could they?  What would a season look like if they did?

And what does this mean for playwrights on an individual level?  Is it possible to fully engage theatres en masse, or do we ultimately split time between our soap boxes and our desks, desperately self-promoting our own brand of whatever it is we’re selling whenever we’re not talking about everyone else in our “group”?

Is this just the way of things?  Are we all really just choosing the battles that lie closest to us, and to hell with the rest?

And if so, how can theatres – besieged with criticisms from so many groups – be expected to satisfy everyone?

Unfortunately, the answer for theatres is they cannot.

In order to “revolutionize” their production schedule in a manner that would satisfy our collectively diverse demands, theatres would need to be indifferent (at best) about alienating their patron base.  (The bigger the theatre, the more true this statement.)  A regional theatre that has primarily produced classic works by white men, for instance, would face a marketing and attendance nightmare were it to do a complete 180 – because it takes time (not decades, granted, but time) to grow new audiences*.

Smart purposefully-diverse substitutions in a theatre’s season, on the other hand, can serve to satisfy a theatre’s established audience as well as bring in new audiences previously deterred by what may have been perceived as static programming.   And when I say “smart” I mean searching for work that will challenge your theatre’s audience without alienating it.  If your theatre is in a city with a strong Latino community, and that community isn’t frequenting your theatre,  finding/producing work by Latino artists could be the first step your company takes towards diversifying your season.  If your company exists in a community with a large gay/lesbian population, but that population doesn’t visit your theatre, you should be seeking out playrights who can speak to that audience over and beyond playwrights that wouldn’t.  And if you’re one of those theatres producing Neil Simon after Mamet after Donald Margulies, you might be able to spice things up without mystifying your (probably) primarily white audiences just by bringing in some Sarah Ruhl or Theresa Rebeck.

Yes, adding one new voice to your season – new to your theatre and to your audience – could quite the change make.

In each instance, you are working towards a more balanced and robust season one new play at a time without moving too far beyond the circles of what you know your community will support.  You are contributing to a shifting theatrical landscape that continues to diversify and grow at a pace that allows audiences and hesitant administrators to keep pace.

Yet, would such incremental season changes be enough to make us happy?  If a regional theatre includes two plays by white women in their season where before they had no women at all, do we credit them as moving closer to gender parity, but berate them for ignoring playwrights of color?  Or do we decide on an individual level whether or not the fact that they are producing two works by women is satisfying and encouraging “enough” to us as women playwrights that we sort of “settle” down for a bit and direct our energies elsewhere?  Do we then look at other artists demanding the theatre give voice to their cause and say “Good luck!” or do we allow their fight to color our “victory” less victorious?

Which brings me back to my initial query – when we say we are asking for “gender parity”, what does that really mean?  And does it supercede or walk in step with the fight for diversity on stage in total?

Do we, in aligning ourselves with the fight closest to us, become a hindrance to those walking beside us?  Or can we all fight for our chosen “team” and still fight for all of us together?

It seems to me that the answers to these questions help us decide how we talk about gender parity/racial diversity/etc. with theatres and with one another, and it decides what we want to happen as a result of those discussions.  If we can agree that diversity at large is the goal, then we can work to encourage theatres to adopt changes in programming that best reflect the communities surrounding them by giving voice to the artists who serve those communities.  This might be a more realistic and attainable goal than asking theatres to give stage time to all of our voices at once.

So, the question becomes, is it a goal we can all work towards together?

 

* The topic of growing new audiences is worthy of a deeper discussion in and of itself  – of which there have been many.  For a fresh take and very insightful article on the topic, check out David Schultz’s Soil, Sunshine, Fresh Air, and Water on HowlRound

 

 

#Solidarity and Gender Parity Onstage

Feminism, playwriting, , ,

By Tiffany Antone

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week.  It’s been good for me, because much of the recent conversation I’ve been observing has been coming from the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen perspective, and although I’ve got my own little Twitter account (and a rockin’ Twitter name!), I barely ever actually surf the Tweet Stream.

In other words, had it not launched beyond the Twitter-sphere, I probably would have remained completely unaware that such an intensely important conversation was taking place.

So, there’s today’s Twitter promo.

If you are a fellow part-time-Luddite and need a run-down on just exactly what it is I’m talking about, then take a moment to check out this link regarding the hashtag’s origin.  Then read a more personal accounting of it on XOJane HERE, and lastly – if you’re as fascinated as I’ve become- you can read a response to all the hubub by the hashtag’s originator, Mikki Kendal,  HERE.  Go ahead and do the clicking… it’s worth it to get the full picture and this post will be here when you get back.

Good, you all caught up?  Is your head spinning a little with the enormity of it all?  Me too.

I took Women’s Studies as an undergrad at UCLA.  I sat in class, did all the reading, felt that undergraduate tingle racing up my spine (making me sit up taller and pay more attention than I did in my History of the Beatles class…)  Because here was a class that was genuinely interesting to me because it was about me.  I didn’t grow up underserved because I was female, and I didn’t experience discrimination simply because I was female.  But I could feel a feminine fight stirring inside me as I read and discovered what ground the women before me had tread.  I was moved by the stories of my peers.  I was touched by the togetherness of those who marched and fought and made a difference.  I felt a sisterhood in those pages on in our discussion groups, because here were women who were interested in being their best selves and making sure the world honored and respected the female of the species.

It was awesome.

And then the semester was over.

So I put my textbook on my bookshelf and plowed on.

But by simply living in the real world, I found myself coming back to that book again and again as a sort of touchstone for my female reality…  I wasn’t out in the world getting abused because I had breasts, but I did find myself wondering how much of the daily crap I saw myself and my girlfriends wading through was more than just detritus from the unfinished work our mothers (and their mothers, and the mothers before them) had handed down to us.

The work is never done.

We never stop fighting for equality, no matter who we are, as long as a “majority” continues to swell against an “other than”.

This is as true for today’s feminist breakdown as it is for racial divides as it is for gay rights as it is for class warfare as it is for…  No matter where you fall in the Human Being Periodic Chart, you will struggle against the lines between yourself and “them”.

I’m a woman.  I’m white.  I’m straight.  I live slightly above the poverty line (or, at least I was before I became unemployed).

In witnessing the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen discussion, I come back again and again to a feeling of ostracism because my straight white mantra of “Women will achieve gender parity by building and maintaining an equal voice.” was not, apparently, equal at all.

Have I been a closet imperialist feminist all this time?  Am I part of the problem because, in maintaining feminist intentions based on my own socioeconomic background vs. the “movement” at large, I haven’t really been part of the conversation?

Or is it because I’m white?

I write plays.

I write plays with female protagonists.

My female protagonists are usually “white” in the sense that I am writing from a Caucasian perspective.  That doesn’t mean my heroines can’t be played by actresses of color – they certainly could and should be – but my characters aren’t speaking from WoC perspective because, well, I’m not a WoC and I can’t possibly expect to tell their stories better than they can/do.

But does my primarily pale perspective make me, as a playwright, part of the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen problem?

If the Guthrie committed to producing a whole season of work by women playwrights, but only two of them were women playwrights of color, would those of us angling for gender parity be appeased, or would we then stand up together and insist that true gender parity includes racial parity as well?

My hope is that we’d all fight for the latter.

My fear is that in order to achieve it, we need to be even more specific in what we’re asking for.

The discussion at large really must be: What does gender parity look like?  And in order to answer that, the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen discussion needs to bleed over into the arts.

Because in order to really become a force to be reckoned with, we have to reconcile our divisiveness and create a dialogue that is productive.  I can’t presume to tell a woman of color about her own life anymore than a WoC should be telling a transgender white woman about hers.  Each of our perspectives is grounded in our own personal experience of the world – which is why we need to listen to one another.

And why we need to tell more stories.

We need to gather round the listening place, open our eyes and ears and hearts and minds, and bear witness to each story with shared passion and respect.

Then we need to promote one another’s stories with the same kind of passion and dedication we give to our own.

This is what being a feminist and a playwright is all about.

Playwriting Stall

playwriting, , , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Eight years ago, I was excitedly sitting in on my first graduate classes as an MFA playwright.  E.I.G.H.T. Whole. Years.  Ago.

I didn’t know what the future would bring – I just knew my Muse was alight with passionate glee.

Oh, and I also knew that I had three years to write “something awesome” because after graduation, The Real World (and Sallie Mae) would come crashing down around me with all of its grubby demands.  Demands like “You better pay for that education!” along with other necessities such as gas, food, somewhere to live – you know, the basics.

Well, the basics plus student loan and credit card debt.

(sigh)

But I read an article today in the Huffington Post that has me re-evaluating the way I’ve been handling The Real World since graduation.  The article was titled “Where You Should Be vs. Where You Are”.  I clicked on over to check it out because, like many an artist, I am constantly compelled to compare my actual career trajectory to the one I think I should be on by now.  Also, like any good perfectionist, I like to read up on all the ways I’m not yet meeting my fullest potential so that I can berate myself about it later.

Which is, of course, exactly what the article’s author, Emily Bennington, is telling us not to do.

Emily tells us that she had her “Just what the heck is wrong with my constantly unsatisfied self?!” moment when her son told her how sad she was making him, what with all her yelling and irritation – you see, her shortage of patience with her self had dribbled over and onto her family as well.

I don’t yet have kids to hold a mirror in front of my face, though – so I suppose it means I have to find a way to hold one up by myself.

I’ve always been a fairly positive “You can do anything if you put your mind to it!” kind of person.  It’s why I work so hard to improve my own short-comings: If I’m doing my best, I will get as far as my best can get me, right?  But I how can I be doing my best, when I’m constantly picking myself apart in search of said shortcomings?  Don’t you, at some point, start to peck into your own self-confidence with all that drive to improve?

Well, somewhere along the way, I got so bummed out by the constant self-analysis of my own “slow” trajectory as an artist that I froze – mid-takeoff – in abject panic.

Because the business of theatre eludes me.

When I’m wearing my Playwright hat, I sit in a room and type and type and type and TYPE.  Then I send it out to play contests and theatre companies, and I wait.  I wait and wait and WAIT.  Sometimes the response is “Hey, we like this!  We are going to give it to actors and invite people to hear your words!” and sometimes it’s “Hey, we like this!  You should keep writing!” And, of course, sometimes it’s crickets.

That’s the nature of the business for a playwright, right?

I mean, is that really all we can do?

So about two years ago, I took a hiatus from all the pitching and mailing and waiting, and instead began producing small play festivals in a small town in AZ.  I expanded my producer skills, learned that I was not actually afraid of directing (and that I, in fact, actually enjoy the high-stress immediacy of it), and dedicated myself to creating other theatre opportunities to feed my creative soul.

And I enjoyed it.  I really did.

But I never escaped the feeling of heartbreak and ineffectiveness of a writer whose plays weren’t getting produced, nor the guilt-ridden dissatisfaction with myself for neglecting to write.

I’m not good at feeling powerless.

But I’m realizing that part of my “problem” is that I turned the mystery and frustration of my playwriting career’s seeming lack of progression into a mentally insurmountable hurdle.  I sat down and stared at that hurdle for a while, kicked some stones its way, and decided to go left instead.

Only, left has really just been this other trail alongside the one I disembarked, and I’ve been looking over my shoulder the whole way.  It’s like walking along a length of wall guarding the palace you built.  And I put up more wall with every blessed step.

You’d think knocking down a metaphorical wall would be super easy…

But I don’t know how to knock it down except to maybe stop counting up the things I “don’t have” and just get on with my bad self.  So…

Okay.

I don’t have money.  Who does?  I’ve really got to move on from this one.  I’ve got to stop lusting after “things” and realize – at this juncture especially – how much simpler my life will be when I stop tallying up how much money I’m NOT making and all the things I CAN’T do with an empty wallet.  Instead, I’ve got to figure out how much I need to earn in order to create space and time in my life to focus on all these words needing to be put down on paper.  I repeat:  It’s. Time. To. Move. On.

But then what am I going to do to make that money?  A small amount of money is still an amount.  Just because I stop hating how small my sack of coin is doesn’t solve where I’m going to get the coin from in the first place?   I mean, I really hate working desk jobs!  And I don’t know how to get a teaching gig, and, and, and…  Holy cow!  How can a person display so much ingenuity on occasion and yet find herself stuck again and again on others?  I just moved to Waco – there’s time to explore and get creative and get serious about this desire I have – this strong instinct towards saving my own sanity – and to carve out a pleasing paying gig.  Instead of bitching about not knowing where to find those elusive university teaching gigs, how about creating my own opportunities to teach and write?  (Massive DUH thought bubble)  I need to focus on figuring out how much I really need to earn to survive – and then make it happen.  There is no reason not to feel confident in this.  Move.  On.

Okay, but the saddest bit of truth here is that I don’t feel happy when I look at my plays anymore because I just see the unmet potential.  WAAAAAHHHHH (crumbles into a mess of ugly, fat, tears of disappointment)  Ummm… Gross.  That’s just gross.  And sad.  And it just feeds my guilt about not writing, thus making the whole ugly thing worse.  This will go away when I stop being angry at my plays for not being scooped up by producers after I’ve sent them out into the world.  I need to forgive myself for not even really knowing how to get my plays to the people doing the producing.  I need to forgive my plays for not getting a big production yet.  But I also need to celebrate my plays who have had productions or very nearly.  I need to tally up the pats on my back instead of just the unmet hopes.  And I need to just write more damn plays – to get the machine working again instead of cursing my rusty hinges for being “ineffectual”.  In essence, I need to knock.  It.  Off.

And write.

And move on.

Because here’s what I’ve realized:  When I’m honest with myself, I can see just how much energy I’ve spent these past few years developing other great theatre skills at the cost of neglecting my own passion for the written word.  I love writing, and I love teaching – and that’s where I need to put my energy.  I did learn that I also, strangely enough, love producing and enjoy directing… but I can’t be a whole (or healthy) artist if the part I most readily identify with – my playwright self – has been put in the corner for the crime of not traveling up the Playwright Ladder fast enough.

It is time for me to stop comparing myself against all the things I haven’t yet done… it’s time to find joy in where I am now, and that it is MUCH harder to put into practice than I’d like to admit.

But that’s where I’m at, right now.  And I’m going to celebrate it.

 

Last Day of the Dramatists Guild Conference

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by Robin Byrd

This morning ended the 2013 Dramatists Guild Conference “Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future with some very inspiring words from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Doug Wright (I am my Own Wife); I can only tell you that you need to read it if it is every published or watch the video if one was made because that is what I am going to do.  Yes, it is worth listening to over and over again.

I think the consensus in the room was, “I want to write a play now.”  Not just write a play but do the research behind it I so much love to do, you know, walking in the “wright” of playwright.  I came away knowing that any dumb stuff I need to fix about me so I can squeeze through a door, I can do.  I am a dramatist.  I don’t have to apologize or feel “less than” in the room with other collaborators collaborating on my play…  I can look forward to the Dramatists Guild fighting the good fight for us because that is what they do…  They make it possible for us to continue “Having Our Say…”

 

Writing History

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by Robin Byrd

“Taking historical events and turning them into compelling stagecraft can be a huge risk but can also yield huge rewards.  John Weidman, former DG president and librettist of Pacific Overtures, Assassin, and Road Show (all with scores by Stephen Sondheim), discusses the processes, pitfalls and challenges of writing about the real world in theatrical terms.”  – Writing History

John Weidman has a very interesting interview in the Dramatists Guild’s “In the Room” series.  Listen here.

At the Dramatists Guild Conference, Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future, I sat in on a session titled “Writing History” with John Weidman.  He told some wonderful stories, discussed “Road Show” and how and why he made the choices he did in writing it the way he did.  Additionally, he discussed how he broke down the killers to their commonality in “Assassins” in order to write the piece.

He also gave pointers on what is appropriate when working with historical material:

1.  You have an obligation to invent, stimulate, and push

2. You have an obligation not to misrepresent.

If you have to manipulate material so much that you are leaving your source material you want to look at that as a problem/flag alerting you to misrepresentation of the facts.  Be careful of diluting actual action.  Take a look at what you have to leave out and what you put in.

This session really put me at ease about tackling historical material as a writer.

Shaping Real Life: Present & Past

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“How do dramatists balance fact and fiction when crafting stories from real life events?  This panel, made up of award-winning playwrights and documentarians, explores how factual materials can be crafted, shaped, and transformed using the dramatic writer’s art.” – Shaping Real Life: Present & Past

by Robin Byrd

At the Dramatists Guild Conference: Having Our Say:  Our History, Our Future, I sat in on the “Shaping Real Life: Present & Past” session.  The panel included:  Sheila Curran Bernard, Andrew Pederson, Craig Thornton, Jayme McGhan.  The above questions are what they focused the session on.

What I took away from the session was the following:

When writing history, one should try to keep the facts straight where you can.  If it is missing you have to fill in the blanks but when it’s there, you should try to keep the facts straight.  This was the consensus among the panelists.

Be ethical when writing live characters.  Check with the Dramatists Guild about the way to get permission to use the person/persons’ story.  You should take care of this before you start the process.  However, just because you have a waiver to write about an incident doesn’t mean all those involved should be subjected to how putting it on a stage will affect them so this is where you should use discretion.  With live characters, it is a continuing relationship you can’t do the story and go away to work on another play like you didn’t build those relationships.  Ethically, you would want to deal with the matter of you making money off their story by reason of your finished piece (once in the play, it becomes your copyright property).  You want to make sure you have already come to an agreement with them (because you consulted the Dramatists Guild lawyers before you started the process and all parties have signed the agreements/contracts.)  It can not be stressed enough, the Dramatists Guild is there to help the playwright.

When writing real life and to creatively move the story, you may need more than the facts you have in your notes.  The panel discussed using made-up characters to handle  factual information.  “In My Shoes” (a docudrama about the tensions of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan felt by the children of the soldiers),  written by Craig Thornton, used a chorus to tell the story of 911.  Because, ultimately you are trying to make  a drama out of the real life events, all the elements of a drama must be in place.  “In My Shoes” needed an inciting incident to pull all the monologues together and solidify the collection as a play; the use of the chorus satisfied this need.

When more than one person is involved, like a novelist, the live person, and the publisher, the panel urged the room to consult the Dramatists Guild lawyers to make sure there are no underlying rights agreements that crop up later because you got permission from only one person in the involved group.  Here is where working with dead subjects is a little easier because dead characters have less rights than live ones.  You will, in some cases, have to deal with heirs or the estate…

Panelist Jayme McGhan, I believe, quoted his favorite reminder, “Better to ask for permission than to ask for forgiveness.”

Another thing to note about working with live characters is that by the end of your interviewing/gathering information, you will have created a relationship with the person/persons.  More likely than not, a continuing relationship, where you cannot do the story and go away to work on another play like you didn’t build those relationships.

The panel also discussed when to stop researching.  One clue Andrew Pederson said, was (as I remember it) “when you find yourself asking yourself if you have enough information.  You have too much information.”  Too much research can kill your creative impulses.  If you have the essence of a story, you can start.  Outlines are good to help with research so all you have to do is fill in the blanks but be open to changing it as you find the good kernels in your research notes that you may want to use.

In some cases, while crafting your play, you may have to “cheat” to give back story – by cheat I mean find a way to creatively add it without it looking or feeling like you added it.  Historical stories gain context immediately because you should tell history at a certain level as it is.  Truth is the most powerful thing you can work with if you can get it out so the fudging should be limited otherwise, you may have to state at the beginning of your play that it is “based on” or “inspired by”…

In essence when you are shaping real life into drama, your dramatic license should be the tool used to keep the story moving within reason but not a thorn in the side that takes away from the credibility of your piece…