The 31 Plays in 31 Days Project

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by Cynthia Wands

I have a chance to share this opportunity with our readers, and I want to champion those of us who would like a challenge to pursue this opportunity!

(I’ve done something similar to this before and it was a great discipline to get a project going and done!)

The 31 Plays in 31 Days Project is a chance for playwrights to push themselves to write a new play every day for the month of August. The plays must be a minimum of one page. Are you up for the challenge?

Why?

The 31 Plays in 31 Days Project is based on the idea that to become a better writer, you must write. You must write a lot. And you need to practice experimenting with your writing form constantly. The pressure of this goal will allow you to set aside preconceived notions of what you should be writing and how you should be doing it. You will not have time to overanalyze your work, you will just have to write, write, write and be surprised by what comes out of you. You may love your work some days and wonder what happened on others, but by the end of the month, you will have amassed 31 new plays. Instead of waiting for the breeze of inspiration to blow your way, you will see that writing is a craft that can be called on at any time.

When?

August 1st at 12:00 am until August 31st at 11:59pm

Where?

Anywhere and everywhere!

Who?

Playwrights who are crazy enough to write 31 Plays in just 31 short days!

Finally…. How?

Register here. We’ll send you instructions on how to submit your script daily. Or, you can just write a play a day on your own and not tell us about it! We encourage all participants to comment on their progress often, and their experience throughout the month.

31 Plays in 31 Days is sponsored by Play Cafe, a Berkeley based playwright group.

Code of Ethics & Guidelines

A lot of writers are wondering what the rules are for the 31 Plays in 31 Days project. We really only have one: write 31 plays within the 31 days of August.  The 31 Plays in 31 Days project exists to serve your needs as a writer. We’re providing you with a challenging and structured opportunity to write while giving you the flexibility you need to be successful. The following Code of Ethics and Guidelines are designed to give you parameters within which to work. Rachel and I are busy moms and we don’t have time to carefully monitor every playwright and still write our own plays. With that said, we are moms and we have ways of knowing if you’re behaving or not …

CODE OF ETHICS

1. No plagiarism. Seriously, what’s the point of doing this project if you’re going to copy someone else?

2. Submit only new plays written in August. It’s one thing to write a play based on ideas conceived earlier, but this is not the time to tweak a play you wrote, workshopped, and produced two years ago. If you’re really stuck on revisiting a story you’ve written before, consider how you can retell the story in a completely different way (maybe all of the characters are dogs, the setting has changed from a WWI battlefield to a modern high school, etc.).

3. Treat this challenge as an opportunity to bump up against some walls and break through them. When facing self-doubt and self-sabotage, provide yourself with excuses and opportunities to succeed. We will offer writing prompts to help you move beyond writer’s block, and we’ll post encouraging messages to help you continue on this journey.

GUIDELINES

1. Each play should, by your standards, have some semblance of being a complete play. The length, structure, presence (or lack of presence) of a through line, and all of the other “rules” about what makes a “good” play are all subject to your whim.

2. Submit the work that you’re not happy with. We don’t care if your characters are believable, if your plot is plausible, or if your ending is satisfying. We just want you to write a bunch of stories in a fixed period of time. We won’t publish or perform anything without your permission.

3. Do your best to submit one play per day. Although you will be able to submit everything at the end of the month, you’ll be more likely to keep up with the project if you submit frequently and regularly.

4. Create space in your day to write. Consider scheduling specific times to write each day or writing alongside a friend to make sure you follow-through on your commitment. (Yes, you can collaborate on plays with other writers, and you can each submit the same play as part of your 31 plays in August.) We are really excited that you’re interested in participating in this writing challenge. We’re as nervous as you are about figuring out ways to succeed in writing 31 plays in 31 days, but we know we can do it, and we know you can, too. Honestly, this project is about helping us overcome the things that get in our way. Whether or not you follow our guidelines or write 31 plays, this project will give you a chance to stretch your playwright’s muscles. Go for it!

 

Visit this link for more information:   http://31plays31days.com/about

 

 

 

 

Advice for Aspiring Playwrights

Play, playwriting,

By Jen Huszcza

Recently, the LA Times reported about a meeting between a young novelist and Philip Roth in a deli. The novelist, John Tapper, had passed on his first novel to Roth and was looking for advice and inspiration.

Roth reportedly said:

Really, it’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say stop now.

Likewise, I would say to folks who dream of being playwrights, stop. If you gotta do it because of some fire in your belly or blinding light in your brain, well, you’re doomed. If you throw crap out into the world, you’ll feel like a sellout. If you work hard on something with all the best intentions, you will probably be ahead of your time.

Whatever you do, you will probably despise some aspect of your work or yourself. Sure, there’s drinking, drugs, facebook, and therapy, but none of those will put the words on the page for you.

Sure you might love language or love the theatre or love cinema. But at some point, you will hate all that, and you’ll only be left with yourself. And you’ll wonder, why the hell didn’t I become a rocket scientist? I had the grades. 

Still, the writing continues. It has to continue because you have no choice. You have to finish one play because there is something in it that will help you write the next play. You have to finish another play because you promised it to an actor friend of yours who is super talented. You have to think about that next play because it’s a thought that’s interesting. Then, when that is done, then you can stop. Of course, unless, something else has to be written.

Tracy Letts: Groundbreaker

Playwright,

By Jen Huszcza

I must confess that I don’t follow Broadway too closely anymore. I don’t live in New York, and I have other things on my mind like what the heck do I name my third character in my three character play and why are theater curtains usually red.

This year, I caught some of the Tony Awards on TV. Actually, I only saw the Best Lead Actor winners. Billy Porter’s acceptance with pink index cards became something beautiful when he talked about his mother’s unconditional love.

However, when Tracy Letts beat Tom Hanks and won best actor for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I felt I was truly watching something groundbreaking. A playwright had won an acting award. A playwright! How great is that.

Okay, yes, I should also point out that women won both directing awards as well as best original score of a musical, and Cyndi Lauper had some awesome red hair. You’re never too old to dye your hair.

But I want to return to the Tracy Letts triumph. For years, centuries even, playwrights have written plays, and actors have acted in plays. Occasionally, an actor might get all creative and write something. Then, there are the special ones, the over-achievers, who write and act usually in a one person show. But rarely, do you see a playwright jumping in and acting in a play he/she didn’t write.

Feel free to give examples of other playwrights acting or raise the question of whether Tracy Letts was an actor first or a playwright first in the comment field below, but please keep reading.

Yes, playwrights can act. Not only can playwrights act, but playwrights can win awards. Please theatre community, embrace playwrights as actors. We have brains. We can memorize words.

 Playwrights understand story as well as how plays develop and build over the course of two hours. We understand how the scenes work. We understand process. We understand moments. When in doubt, we can fake it.

 So yes mainstream theatre, there are lots and lots of playwrights out there who can show up to rehearsal on time because they know what a pain in the ass it is when an actor is late. There are lots of playwrights who know the weight and power of the words they say. There are lots of playwrights who can walk across a stage and not freak out.

 Find us. We’re out there. We’re ready. We’re cheaper than Tom Hanks.

LA Stage Day was Fun

Audience, News, , , , ,

By Jen Huszcza 

Hello everyone, I’m delighted to be back blogging on the LAFPI website. I want to begin my blog week by talking about a theatre event I attended back in May, so I’m setting the blogging time machine back (wayyyy back) to May 18th and LA Stage Day.

LA Stage Day was a one day event put on by the LA Stage Alliance and dedicated to theatre in LA. It was held on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles on a bright and sunny Saturday.

To summarize: I went and I had fun.

I found out the event needed volunteers, and the volunteers could get in free if they volunteered three hours of their time. Sweet. I thought. Sign me up.

The volunteer email said that I would have to pay $6 for on campus parking, but some clicking on LA’s Metro website showed me that I could take the Expo line from West Los Angeles and connect with the Silver Line in downtown LA all for just $5 for a day pass. It turned out that the Silver Line was a bus that had its own special bus lane next to a freeway. Yes!  

After being greeted and given a black T-shirt (theatre people definitely came up with the color scheme), I sat with other volunteers and explained twitter to folks. It’s cool really, it is.

As volunteers, we had to set up the rooms for two workshops. We could stay for whatever workshop we were at or go to something else once everyone was settled.

The first workshop that I helped set up was called Learning to Love the Arts, and it was conducted by Abe and Charley from Arts for LA, a nonprofit which advocates for all arts (not just theatre) in LA. By the way, Charley is a poet. Along with playwriting, poetry is one of the writing forms most likely to get the reaction, you do what?

Just as I was helping Abe and Charley set up in the lobby of the theatre, a playwriting workshop showed up to be in the theatre space. For most of the Arts Advocacy workshop, I had to quietly herd the playwrights into the theatre. Playwrights are so needy when they’re confused—like lambs off to slaughter.

The Arts Advocacy workshop was about changing the narrative of how arts is talked about and how all art is vital not only culturally but economically as well. What do you say to someone who says artists should get real jobs? How do you turn that conversation into something positive?

After their workshop was over, I congratulated Abe and Charley on a job well done and was able to snag some handouts from the playwriting workshop. Jon Dorf and Dan Berkowitz (of ALAP fame) had done the playwriting workshop. I had seen them talk before, and they usually had excellent handouts.

The second workshop was going to be on social media and the rehearsal process. The three guys moderating were two guys from SDC and Michael Michetti of Boston Court. The two guys from SDC were east coast based, and you could tell they were loving on the Cali sunshine.

I helped them arrange the chairs into a circle because they wanted to do a discussion, and slowly folks trickled in and started to talk. Apparently, Actors Equity recently loosened its restrictions on videotaping, and this has left other guilds scrambling to come up with some way of drawing a line about taping.

Additionally, theatre companies tape rehearsals and parts of productions to promote their shows online, and there was a discussion about how intrusive that was in the rehearsal space.

Meanwhile, as we were discussing whether taping was intrusive, a girl with a video camera came by to tape us discussing, and the workshop took on a post-post modern vibe.

What I also really liked about the discussion was that there were lots of different people in the room. There were actors, directors, stage managers, producers, playwrights. We all could sit down and discuss something from our different points of view and find common ground. I think this is how politics use to work.

After that session, I went over to take a melodrama acting workshop with Debbie McMahon of the Grand Guignolers. The blurb in the program said that non-actors were invited to come and participate. After herding playwrights and sitting and thinking, I was anxious to get up and move around.

True to its name, the workshop was MELODRAMA!!! (apologies for the caps and explanation points, I’m going for feel). Yes, there was highly dramatic music (think silent films). Yes, we were allowed to make big gestures in extreme situations. Yes, I crossed the pit of molten lava on a rickety bridge, and let me tell you, it was terrifying.

I was physically exhausted when I left the workshop, so I caught a bus back.

Basically, I went to three sessions, but there plenty more at LA Stage Day. There was a courtyard filled with information tables and plenty of socializing events.

I liked the idea of folks volunteering and getting in for free. I thought it opened up the range of people who were there. Besides, as a volunteer, I got a really cool t-shirt and some cookies. Yes, I will volunteer for cookies.

I hope the LA Stage Alliance puts on another LA Stage Day. LA is a giant sprawl, and the theatre community is very spread out, so it was nice to experience the LA theatre community all in one place even if it was just for one day.

Writing for Whom?

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by Erica Bennett

I’m not sure I ever mentioned but writing these blog posts are torturous for me. Am I being honest… No. I am not trying to suggest I don’t (secretly) enjoy writing them, as well, but my stage fright can grow extreme to the point that I am compelled to expel. Is that true? Well, only when I was an actor… But really, who cares what I have to say? And why should they? I mean to write, sure, every once in a while I may hit upon some bit of truth, but more often I am flailing around, trying to understand, reaching out blindly to a population of readers I may never meet. And does that matter?…

How does one write for an audience? I used to worry about that a lot. How will I make the reader like me and want to do my play?… But with Bloodletting and Poe, I wrote from absolute grief with an eye toward art. Apparently, there was something about me writing that poem because it reached several people who are important to me. In it there was no time to play life’s victim, I just got the illustrative words out there and keep on hitting my larger message.

That is my mantra to myself this eve before the purging of my garage. Through my tears and protestations tomorrow, my lifetime will be sorted and much of it discarded. That I may be able to hang on to some memories by writing about them is my shred of hope for the weekend. Have laptop, will travel. Sigh.

Too sweet (double meanings)

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by Erica Bennett

 

Too sweet. As in vomitus or satisfying? I should ask him which he meant, but I am certain it doesn’t matter. In either intention, he is correct. And I love the challenge that he presents. Was I writing with sincerity, I have to ask myself… Yes.

What about this case?

 

On the afternoon she died, because I couldn’t find her hearing aid in the shuffle of her unconscious body

 

Or

On the afternoon she died, because

I couldn’t find her

Hearing aid in the shuffle of her unconscious body

 

There is a difference; an intentional difference. He wants to respect that difference, because I intended it that way. He taught me that the other night. He is a director.

Luscious

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by Erica Bennett

I’m almost embarrassed enough not to write luscious, because it’s a big, fat, sexy word, but I have taken a vow to write what scares me. So, luscious is how the words of praise I received in rehearsal for Bloodletting and Poe feel coming from its director. It took me threeish years to write a piece that spoke to him. While the child inside jumps for joy, old Erica accepted his words with humility. Even though it felt really good, that I had found a perfect collaborator, at the same time I knew this moment may never happen again. I mean that sincerely. It’s hard to tell. We spoke about having that moment, that moment of perfection. We had both experienced it as actors. But can I, as a writer, recreate that perfect storm of insight, skill, and abject need to communicate? Yes, and I don’t know. And it does not matter. Because experiencing it once is good enough. And ironically, in experiencing it once, I now know how it feels and it feels like I can recreate it. So, I am not afraid. Now off to the next one. Happy Friday!

Unsilence

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by Erica Bennett

 

I cut off my hair to spite him

And grew it out to spite her.

What is a chameleon

To do when there is no

Environment from which

To transform?

When even with the dawn there is

Shadow

And the edge of the cliff

Tempting yawns.

From Girlishness

 

I heard slam poet and activist Andrea Gibson state she was challenged to write only what most scared her. She said, as a consequence, she wrote nothing for six months. But the stuff I’ve seen her deliver, videotaped and uploaded onto Youtube, is so personally challenging, I have to wonder, are her parents still alive? I mean no disrespect. I heard her perform a poem filled with such pain, yet, acknowledge her youthful silence was for the love and sake of her family. When does the unsilence begin? Is it with the death of the family? Or is unsilence, a possible rebirth of the family?

The “M” Word–Revisited

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by Guest Blogger Liz Femi

Liz Femi
Liz Femi

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my quest to cure, or at least temper, my marketing phobia. I would have easily lived peacefully with humdrum marketing anxiety for the rest of my days, until I wrote a play…and decided to produce it. I scoured the web for marketing tips that were suitable for theatre and settled on Clay Mabbit’s blog: Sold Out Run and his marketing kit: Reaching A New Audience. Over the past few weeks, as my team and I promoted,  Take Me To The Poorhouse (our show at the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival), we applied Clay’s marketing strategies in Reaching A New Audience.

I am happy to report that the experiment proved successful.

Our efforts culminated in sold out shows almost every night of our run, not to mention a few laurels and an invitation to extend the run. (BEST OF FRINGE EXTENSIONS, BEST INTERNATIONAL, DUENDE DISTINCTION award nomination for excellence in acting)

How did it happen?

A combination of Clay’s Mabbit’s excellent suggestions and a darn-good, dedicated team.

What did we do?

We applied the modules in Reaching A New Audience, which include:

  • Foundation (marketing basics to create a well-oiled machine)

  • Your Perfect Audience (how to identify and tailor your marketing niche)

  • The Schedule (a detailed marketing calendar with suggested tasks)

  • Worth A Thousand Words (“visual ammunition”)

  • Use Your Cast (tapping into the talent you already have)

We tailored Clay’s ideas to fit a one-person show, along with our mix of flair–like a step-and-repeat for audiences to take pictures after the show, and raffles/token giveaways related to the story.

Reaching A New Audience image

Hits of Reaching A New Audience:

  • We varied our social media content so it wasn’t always focused on promoting ticket sales (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).

  • We produced a pre-preview night generate pre-festival buzz.

  • We committed to a strong involvement in the fringe community by comp swapping, filling seats for other shows, seeing as many shows as we could, engaging in “fringeships” on twitter and in person at Fringe Central.

  • Identifying our audience and reaching out to target groups within and outside our networks (ex: African Artists Association, Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, Directors Lab West, Actors Mastermind Group, friends in and out of the industry, and of course, family members)

  • We were also nominated for Best Trailer!

  • We attracted press to (podcasts, radio, blogs, print) to every show, even with almost 200 shows running simultaneously.

  • Weekend evening shows were easiest to fill, so we brought all hands on deck for the weekday afternoon shows. With consistent and varied marketing, we sold out almost every show.

    • On June 8th and 14th–we oversold and added an extra row of chairs

    • June 16th–full house without many advanced tickets but lots of walk-ups

    • June 19th–slow sales. Reached out to fringe community and Directors Lab to fill house. Quite a few walk ups as well.

    • June 21st–sold out. Extra row of chairs.

    • June 28th–full house.

Misses:

None.

Well…there is the price of the kit, which currently retails $147. You do have to carefully weigh the cost of the Reaching A New Audience with your production goals. For example, depending on the size of a production, one could rationalize the purchase as the cost of 10 seats at $15 a ticket, to get practical, effective, and organized tactics to help build an audience. In my opinion, the price would be too hefty for a one-show run.

Reaching A New Audience image

Finally, nothing beats the power of a strong team to help you get these marketing ideas off the ground and running, and even playing with your own variations along the way. That’s the best part…when marketing becomes a fun game.

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Poorhouse-Postcard-FRONT

Take Me To The Poorhouse is currently on a BEST OF FRINGE EXTENSIONS run in association with Theatre Planners.

Friday, July 12th @8:00 pm

Thursday, July 18th @8:00 pm

Friday, July 26th @ 10:00 pm

Running time: 60 mins

Venue: The Lounge Theatres (lounge #2) 6201 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood 90038

Tickets: $15. Available here.

 

Write What You Know

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by Erica Bennett

 

Light became my friend in

1994

At 4:31 AM, Pacific Standard Time,

When Reseda

Boulevard and Strathern Street

Rocked and roiled for an interminably

Long nearly

20 seconds.

 

My favorite Northridge story came

From a friend

Driving home that early morning.

He turned off his vehicle when

The Earthquake struck,

And said, out loud, “Wow,

Engine’s gonna blow.”

I laughed; after.

 

But in the darkness, then, in the

Early morning, in the pitch

Black before dawn,

After the Noise of a million

Breaking pieces of glass

And falling brick,

I couldn’t escape

My own home.

 

And so starts, BLOODLETTING AND POE, a slam poem I’ve written that expresses my grief over the loss of a recently deceased long-term… friend; for lack of a more descriptive word. I have heard, “write what you know.” In this, my experiment with form, I wrote what I was experiencing. I’ve always thought I immersed myself in my work, but this was the first time I actually “knew”, in the moment, what I was writing… I won’t, can’t, go back.