Tonight, my romantic comedy, The Piaggi Suite, is having a staged reading at The Blank theater in Hollywood.  The reading is part of the Monday night Living Room Series of new plays the Blank has been hosting on its 2nd Stage since 1991.

The plays are free (suggested donation $10) to the public.  The actors have books in hand but give a sense of how the plays would be in full production.

I have been reading for the series for several years, turned on to it by fellow lafpier, Sara Israel.

I have been so fortunate with Piaggi, a play that is close to my heart.   It has incidental music and I looked for a long time for a composer who liked the piece and wanted both to write for it and promote it as well.  Ignoring the scoffers and the supercilious, who said, “bigcheap?”, I posted  on the big cheap list and found Andy Chukerman who wrote some lovely music and got us this gig tonight.

This is just part of his resume: Winner of the Richard Rodgers Award and the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award as composer/co-lyricist of the musical, “The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea”, Andrew Chukerman works extensively in film, television, theater, and concert work, as a composer, orchestrator, music director, and keyboardist.

He also worked with the Blank producers and found the BEST DIRECTOR AND CAST I have seen in a long time.

I’m posting the names of the cast.  If you are ever looking for first rate people, here they are:  Lisa Zane, Maura Knowles,  Megan Moran, Chris Devlin,  David Lago, J.P. Karliak, Peter Katona,  Julie Garnye  and  Mary Carrig.

David Glenn Armstrong, the director, is from New York, in town visiting his brother and putting this up for fun.  Instantly likeable, he accomplished miracles in three very short days.  Efficient, specific, encouraging and engaging, he moved nine actors around a small space and encouraged everyone to play, play, play.

David has staged over 160 productions/workshops seen in 49 states.  He has also worked extensively with Sheldon Harnick and just finished working with him on a new musical.  (Kitty!  Sheldon Harnick is 88 and still going strong.)

So, I’m looking forward to tonight but the best part has already happened.  I haven’t been happy with the ending of the play for sometime.   Voila!  David found me a new one and the rewrite is on.

Back Row:  Lisa Zane, Chris Devlin, David Glenn Armstrong, David Lago, John Paul Karliak, Maura M. Knowles

Front Row:  Mary Carrig, Andy Chukerman, Diane Grant, Julie Garnye, Megan Moran, Peter Katona

A Very Happy Holiday to all lafpiers.

May 2013 be full of lovely discoveries and surprises, good friends and laughs, and time to write it all down.

I’ve been asking myself. Do I blog about the general perception of community theatre or do I go right to shameless promotion? What the heck? Why not do both?

Lately, I’ve heard people disparage non equity theater, saying that the work is not on a par with equity shows. Having worked in both professional and amateur theater for many years, I think that’s a misperception, and that good and bad work is done by both. I’ve seen exciting shows at the Taper and the Odyssey, at the Elephant and the Blank, the Pacific Resident Theatre, etc. and some that were rotten.

I’ve seen exciting work at community theaters as well. I’ve been knocked out by some of Theatre Palisades’s shows. Lieber and Stoller’s Smokey Joe’s Café to name one, was superb, as was DiPietro and Robert’s I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, and Alan Ayckbourn’s Things We Do For Love. The sets are often gorgeous and some of the talent that I’ve seen on that stage rivals that in shows I’ve seen in New York and Toronto. Amy Adams did a terrific job in Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart, for example.

There are differences. Generally speaking, the community theaters rarely take chances and believe that new work will not draw. I wish they’d produce more shows by women. (Was Agatha Christie a woman or was she born an icon?)

That brings me to the shameless self-promotion. Theatre Palisades is giving my comedy, Has Anybody Here Seen Roy? a good run in 2013. It goes up on January the 18th and runs through February the 17th, playing on Fridays, Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2.

Rehearsals are fun and exciting. I know many of you, like me, have been shut out of the creative process – I know some playwrights who have been not allowed into the rehearsal room – and I’m very grateful to both this director and the company who want me there.

The director, Susan Stangl, and an excellent cast are taking the time to establish the tone, go deep into the characters, explore the subtext and find the theme. The cast is delighted to be putting its stamp on new characters. The talk is lively, improvisations bring new discoveries, and the play grows as they work.

I’m not only allowed at rehearsals but am asked to clarify, contribute, and to rewrite when doing so improves the play. It’s just a joy to be part of the team and to hear my words coming to life.

If this play draws, maybe more community theatres will do more new plays by women. Or I’ll go back to my original plan and change my name to Agatha Simon.

I have been whining about Writer’s Block for a couple of years. Whining, fretting, raging – in despair. I’ve tried everything – exercises, games, ten minute nonstop unfiltered writing, resting, relaxing. Nothing. Zip.

In September, Valerie Ruel, an actress with the Kentwood Players, asked me if I had a short play she could look at. She was auditioning to direct at Kentwood and had to bring in a more or less full production of a short play for a one night workshop, which the membership would attend.

I gave her my favorite one act play, a comedy called Rondo a la Condo. It’s a forty-five page, one set piece with five characters. And she liked it. Not only that, she asked me to play a part in it. “Well,” I said, “Yes.” I think I may also have said, “Yippee.”

We rehearsed for a brief couple of weeks. Valerie was efficient and well prepared, the actors were fun and enthusiastic, and the stage manager transformed the existing set into a condo balcony in about ten seconds flat. On performance night, the audience loved it.
We all had a blast!

After it was over, one of the actors, Ted Pitsis, said, “People don’t put up one acts. Why don’t you turn this into an evening?” “Impossible,” I thought and put it out of my mind.

Then, walking down the street, the other day, I suddenly had a “What If?” Out of the blue. What ifs came tumbling after what ifs. What if this one act is actually the second act of a two act play? What if the first act took place fifteen years earlier? What if the one actor plays two different parts, one in the first act, and one in the other? Etc.

I made some notes and have made some more and I’m hope, hope, hoping that the note making continues and the lines start to flow.

It could happen. It’s happened before. Yippee.

What do you do when your Mac breaks down? CRASHES, COLLAPSES? Have you seen the blue screen of death? Have you stared at the small rectangle in the middle of a blue field with the smiling??? face in the center, alternating with a question mark? Have you followed the troubleshooting instructions in the manual? Held down the Option key, held down the start button? Have you turned the power on and off, pulled out the plug? Waited a few seconds and started everything up all over again?

I have. And I hate it.

I mean, how do you write when that happens? That happy hovering of the fingertips over the keyboard, the thought that the fingers might hit the keys and without ever engaging the brain might tap out something unexpected and undoubtedly brilliant is gone. No back space, no delete, no spell check. No dips into Google for a quick check on who, when, and where. No rest breaks in email, no welcome distracting photos of friends and family, no hilarious Youtubes gone viral.

I imagine that most of the modern playwrights we respect and admire had a typewriter. Lillian Hellman probably tapped things out. Arthur Miller. Carson McCullers. On a manual  typewriter, do we think? Or an electric Corona? But how did writers without machines manage to write such wonderful things and do it so fast?  Charles Dickens wrote fifteen novels with a quill pen before he died at fifty-eight. And he had ten children!

I recently read the oldest poem found, a Sumerian love poem, circa 2030 BCE. Here is the first stanza:

“Bridegroom, dear to my heart
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet
You have captivated me
Let me stand tremblingly before you.”

The poet or poetess wrote that gorgeous poem by pressing the letters into wet clay using a reed stylus and then baking the clay into a tablet.

So, I’m not going to complain.  I can put words to paper. I have some pens I love – the Precise Pilot rolling ball in blue and black. I’m crazy about lined legal pads in white and yellow. I could jot down a few notes. Record some observations.

And stick the Mac hard drive into the freezer for ten minutes. That might work, too.

I have been under the weather and out of the loop and thought that before I blogged, I would catch up with my fellow bloggers. I’ve been reading and marveling at how much we have in common, how much support we need and give to each other, how informed and curious we are about the world, how engaged in life, and how madly, wildly, truly, persistently, we pursue The Play and The Production.

Almost all of us have suffered from writer’s block and have looked for ways to jumpstart ourselves, to beat self-pity and self-destruction and self-criticism and despair. I’ve read all of the blogs on the subject and have taken a lot of the advice but am still struggling with all four. The tip I liked most and consistently implement was #101 from 101 Tips to Fight and Overcome Writer’s Block. “Grab the chocolate.”

The links are always worth reading. It was good to catch up with Eve Ensler again and her passionate (everything she says is passionate) reply to Todd Akins and his theory of legitimate rape. I liked the article about the Pasadena Playhouse’s problems with Tales Of A Fourth Grade Lesbo, particularly the caution about email that I know and forget, which is that “you can’t tell tone in an email” and that “if you haven’t offended someone, unintentionally, recently, you will — trust me.” It’s the same with Facebook, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t really know how to use it and rarely visit my page and I find out I’ve been unfriended three times. What’s up with that?

It was lovely to find out that I share Ravenchild’s love of The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. It’s one of my favorite books. (I was tickled to hear someone in the audience at the Odyssey say that the last line of the book was one of best she’d ever read. I agree.)

Jen Huszcza’s idea of going for silly in plays, too, resonated. I think that Singing in the Rain is the best movie ever made, and when Donald O’Connor sings Make ‘Em Laugh, I laugh. (After shooting that scene, Donald O’Connor was taken off to the hospital. He smoked four packs a day!).

The blogs about self-producing and looking for funding never grow old.

What we all seem to feel is the loneliness of the long distance playwright. Jessica Abram’s feeling about “how freaking lonely it is” hit home.

I always want to bridge that gap between the writer and the rest of the world and have to restrain myself on opening nights. If the production is good and the play works, I am so high with joy, I want to embrace the world. If I add a couple of glasses of wine to that, I hug, kiss, and press the flesh, wanting to share that crazy high, terrifying dogs, children, delivery people and passing strangers. I have to stop at two glasses. If I had three, I’d make everybody stand in a circle, hold hands and sing, “We Are The World.”

Of course, if the play isn’t a success and I can see only fixed smiles and glassy eyes in the opening night crowd, I just grab some sausage rolls and cheese bits from the lobby trays, retreat to my car, and sob.

It was a pleasure to read all the blogs and I was delighted to hear about Robin Byrd’s grandmother who could “sing a whole church happy.”   I think that’s what we are all trying to do.

Our neighbor has a sign on his front door that says, “Something wonderful is about to happen.” That’s the feeling I have every time I send a play out into the world.

I’ve sent my romantic comedy, Sunday Dinner, to anyone who asks for it. I’ve sent it to Iran, where a student says he is translating it. I’ve sent it to a high school sophomore who was going to report back after his production. I’m waiting to hear. I’m also waiting to hear from a couple in Manitowoc, Wisconsin who were going to get back to me with comments on their informal reading. I’ve emailed it to Kenya and to the British Virgin Islands and to a playhouse in Lancaster, U.K. Did they like it? Did they read it? Did they produce it?

“Night and Silence. Who is there?”  Day and Silence, too.

However, one wonderful thing did happen and it happened because of the lafpi!

A couple of years ago, when the lafpi was first formed, I saw a post on the lafpi info list in which a company in Italy asked for ten minute plays for a festival in Rovereto, Italy. I submitted one and heard back that it was to be produced as part of the festival.

I heard nothing more and wrote back after a few months, after the festival was supposed to have been held. The A.D., Leonardo Franchini, replied that his company had been unable to stage my play. I think it was because the actors had left for another job.

He asked. “Do you have a full length play?” I did. I sent him Sunday Dinner and then I actually heard back. Leonardo, who is a terrific novelist and journalist as well as a theatrical producer, liked it and translated it.   Sunday Dinner became e cosi anche tua suocera? Compagnia dell’Attimo produced it twice, once in 2011 and once in 2012.

I have taken to saying, “Ciao,” and talking with my hands. And I am very happy that I am part of the wonderful lafpi.

For the last two decades, when I’ve not been busy crouched over a keyboard writing my plays, I’ve been working in the box office at Theatre Palisades, a community theatre in the Pacific Palisades.

I don’t know how that happened.  I’ve heard that John Lennon said that life is what happens to  you when you are making other plans.

(He didn’t say that first, of course. Allen Saunders, the cartoonist of the comic strips Steve Roper and Mary Worth did in a 1957 issue of the Reader’s Digest.  Thank you, Wikipedia.)

For over a decade, I’ve been submitting my plays to the Play Recommendation Committee at Theatre Palisades.  I’ve done workshops and specials and two night membership shows.  I’ve nagged and whined and maybe mentioned once or twice that I’ve been PRODUCED ELSEWHERE, but every year I’ve been turned down.  I would slink away and slip the wounded play into the drawer.

The policy of the theatre did not change.  It does not do new plays.

For one my workshops, quite a few years ago, I wrote a one act comedy called All About Harold, which contained a woman’s monologue about her husband, Harold, and his feeling that the Buick was a perfect car.   The woman’s sister did not share her affection for the man or the car, and had a secret about him that was revealed at the end of the play.

I worked with two wonderful actresses at the theatre, discovered new things about the characters and rewrote as we went along.

Then, I fell in love with the characters and rewrote until I had a two act play with an ending that was set in the Pacific Palisades!

I submitted All About Harold to the Play Committee and it was rejected.  Undaunted, two members of the theatre (George Lissandrello, Gail Matthius) and the amazing Spolin Players staged it at the local American Legion as a fund raiser for the Fisher House (http://fisherhouse.org/) in West Los Angeles.  We got some laughs and raised a thousand dollars!

I rewrote yet again, and the play became Four Women In Search Of A Character.  I submitted it to Play Recommendation Committee and it was rejected yet again.

Following that, I had two readings, one at The Blank and one at the Red Brick Road.  I re-rewrote and the play became Whatever Happened To Roy?.  The monologue about Harold is gone.  Harold is gone.  The perfect Buick is gone.  But the last act is still set in the Pacific Palisades.

I resubmitted it to the Play Recommendation Committee.

TO MY SURPRISE, the 2013 Season is starting off with Whatever Happened To Roy?!   I’m not quite sure how it happened and am still not quite sure that it’s going to happen but I am over the moon.

So, I wanted to say, “Thank you,” to the theater, to my husband and daughter, fellow writers and friends, all of whom have helped me to shape the play over the years.

Whoo hoo!

I’m repeating this from my last blog. It bears repeating.

Joe Dowling, the Artistic Director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minnesota, interviewed on NPR, said this about his all white male season at the Guthrie:

“Let me address the playwrights first. We’re largely a classics theater – that’s what we do and I may be reading the wrong books but I find it difficult to see – because of social history in the 17th, 18th, 19th and indeed early 20th century – which are termed ‘classic plays’ – women playwrights emerged who would be able to fill large theaters.”

His indifference to and ignorance about women playwrights took my breath away and raised loud voices about the problem of gender parity. The following is from Karen Kinch who addresses the question.

Karen Kinch is the Artistic Director of DramaQueen Theatre in Seattle, WA. DramaQueen. It was founded in 2002 to develop new works written by women. www.dramaqueen.org/.

She did some research, the results of which also took my breath away:

“This past week my husband and I spent several evenings visiting the websites of all 74 LORT member theatres across the USA, to tally up how each are doing with regard to gender parity. If the website listed the coming season, we looked at that — if not, we tallied up the current 2011-12 season.

You may be interested to know that, of the 74 LORT houses, we found only two theatres – both of them with women Artistic Directors at the helm – who actually achieved a season of true gender parity for playwrights, one for the current 2011-12 season and the other for the just announced coming 2012-2012 season.

It’s also wonderful to note that AD Lyn Meadow at the Manhattan Theatre Club has achieved gender parity for directors as well in 2011-12:

Manhattan Theatre Club – New York, New York, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director

2011-2012 Six-Play Season:

We Live Here by Zoe Kazan
Close Up Space by Molly Smith Metzler
Wit by Margaret Edison
Regrets by Matt Charman
The Columnist by David Auburn
Venus in Fur by David Ives

Playwrights: 3 men, 3 women

Directors: 3 men, 3 women:

Sam Gold, Leigh Silverman, Lynn Meadow, Daniel Silverman, Carolyn Cantor, Walter Bobbie

City Theatre Company – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tracy Brigden, Artistic Director

2012-2013 Six-Play Season
Maple and Vine by Jordan Harrison
South Side Stories by Tami Dixon
Seminar by Theresa Rebeck
Breath and Imagination by Daniel Beatty
Little Gem by Elaine Murphy
Abigail/1702 by Roberto Aguierre-Sacasa

Playwrights: 3 men, 3 women
Directors: Not Yet Announced

It was easy to grow discouraged as we made our way through the websites. Many theatres listed no women playwrights and no women directors. Many others listed only one woman playwright or one woman director.

We’re thinking we might want to re-do the research this summer when all the theatres have their 2012-2013 seasons posted, and approach it in a more thorough and scientific fashion, including total annual budget figures, venues, and other relevant details.

The MTC’s website says the 2012-13 season will be announced shortly. Do we dare hope that Ms. Meadow might do it again?”

I’m hoping that 2013 seasons across the country will join the MTC!

Joe Dowling, the Artistic Director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minnesota, interviewed on NPR, said this about his all male season at the Guthrie:

“Let me address the playwrights first. We’re largely a classics theater – that’s what we do and I may be reading the wrong books but I find it difficult to see – because of social history in the 17th, 18th, 19th and indeed early 20th century – which are termed ‘classic plays’ – women playwrights emerged who would be able to fill large theaters.”

Gretchen Smith, Associate Professor, Head of Theatre Studies at SMU – Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas responded and I found her reply so useful that I asked her if she would pass it on to the lafpi.

Here is what she said:
Yes, I see his point, and it is the point made not only in professional theatre but community theatre and university theatre, too. It is, at its heart, this: Dowling can’t think of female playwrights whose work fits the definition of “classic” and “would be able to fill large theaters.” Both these things must be so for Dowling to move forward.

As I see and hear it, here are the various sides of this problem:
Knowledge:

Dowling (and others) don’t know enough plays by women or other minorities to evaluate alongside plays by people like Miller, Shakespeare, Ibsen, or Simon (all great playwrights who are also Euro-Centric White Guys). His knowledge of the global dramatic literature repertoire is limited to The Canon – the classical plays he claims the Guthrie uses as foundation and that their audience expects and will buy tickets to.

Arrogance:

Dowling (and others) can’t imagine that there are plays he doesn’t know that are as good as those by these Euro-Centric White Guys that would fill seats in large theatres. He is focusing on economic survival for his theatre based on old-style management models of the 1940s-1970s and known quantities: the drawing power for high schools, universities, and subscribers in Big Plays by familiar playwrights–again, like Miller, Shakespeare, Simon, and Ibsen. He assumes that if there were plays as good as The Canon they would be in The Canon and he would know them.

Economics:

Dowling (and others) face much more direct impact from Boards about things like subscriber bases and budgets (and the Board members even more limited knowledge and desire for risk) than from non-subscribers or minority playwrights/directors they don’t employ. In other words, he has a job on the line and it may be contingent on filling seats, not risk and experimentation in the season, not addressing diversity or bigger issues than the $10 empty seat.

And a lot of men simply can’t imagine finding a story by women centered on women as entertaining and “relatable” as a story by and about men. I understand that: I’ve been living with the flip side of this argument for four decades.

Let’s face it: probably one of the things holding Dowling back is that the Guthrie audience wouldn’t automatically turn up for a Rachel Crothers play the way they would for an Arthur Miller play. And as long as Boards and artistic directors like Dowling think the money paid for tickets is coming from men, why change? And as long as audiences don’t see anything different, why ask for plays by women?

Someone is going to have to break down and take a risk. And market the hell out of their risk.

I’d love to see an all-female classic season at the Guthrie–or any other major regional theatre–as an artistic and marketing risk taken all the way. Go BIG. With an ad and marketing campaign aimed at educating subscribers as well as entertaining them.

Female playwrights, female directors, female designers, female performers of note, female-centered stories that embrace diversity. Aggressively marketed to universities, high school English classes, women’s groups of all kinds. Perhaps even marketed as bucking the trend of anti-woman, risk-free theatre. And then not treat it as one-of-a-kind pink pony but business as usual.

It won’t happen at the Guthrie as long as Dowling’s non-risk seasons fill seats: he has no incentive to change, apparently, either from his Board, his audiences, or his own internal mission/artistic vision of theatre. I don’t know what the answer is, beyond educate a new generation of future artistic directors to do better, and don’t buy tickets to the Guthrie, and let the Board and Dowling know why.