I’ve noticed that women write about themselves in relationship to others, and men write about themselves in relationship to the world.

As a consequence it seems that women and children are often secondary in stories written by or about men because women and children are peripheral to the male experience.

I have a suspicion that the only reason women are included in plays written by or about men is because plays have to be transmitted verbally through language, and women are often a requirement when men wish to express their relationship with lust.

Am I way off?

I have striven for the last thirty years of my adult life to make worthwhile contributions to society and have for the most part supported myself and my interests financially. Certainly there have been times of illness when my family provided food and shelter above and beyond their obligation. Some generous organizations even allowed me use of their facilities to self-produce my own dramatic works, and in some cases actually partially participated in their financing.

However I have only recently discovered using the criteria set down by our multi-millennia-old patriarchical mythologies that I am actually a failure. I.e. I never had children, never married, and as was retold to me in October after my name was dropped in an argument to provide evidence of my lack of worth that “I will die alone.”

That came amidst several other major life disappointments. I promptly followed up by abusing myself with food and gained twenty pounds. The effect of which elicited words to the effect, “Go see a doctor; you don’t look good”. Not “What’s wrong? How can we help alleviate your stress?”

As I reflect back on the year’s events from my place of apparent worthlessness, I can’t help but wonder (with some amount of glee) what’s next for me? I mean to write, since I have realized that it doesn’t really matter what I do – outside of my reasonable obligation to my household and responsibility to continue to honor my employer’s requirements of me, of course – I throw off the shackles of the Judeo-Christian-Muslimologies and reject all gynocide. And with this I hope to honor the work of Mary Daly.

On January 3, 2010 Mary Daly died at the age of 81.

Ms. Daly strove from within her faith to find a place for herself. However ultimately “she gave up the futile project of criticizing and seeking reform of a fundamentally corrupt and corrosive institution. Her attention turned instead to the Spinning of new tales, new ideas.”

Here’s to new tales, new ideas, the New Year and freedom!

I’ve learned over the years not to expect thanks after giving a gift. It’s odd to me then that I would forget that simple lesson when I gave birth to my baby last Sunday at noon. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect a shower of words. However, uncharacteristically, I suppose I did expect a simple “how was the labor”.

For it was a pretty big event in my life; after a nearly 8-year gestational period I was able to get an amazingly compact, moving, and complex piece of work that inter-cuts oral history interviews with a play I wrote onto a public broadcasting station. The play is based upon my research with original court testimony about an Orange County desegregation case and was included in a new civil rights curriculum developed for the State in 2009.

I watched my 28:30 documentary with a dear friend, some pizza, and my two small dogs. At 12:35pmish my parents and my sister called to offer their words of joy. My dad, finally, “liked” on something that I created. Hearing the pride in his voice was a great moment for me. I emailed the films editor who I had given a director credit for his phenomenal efforts, because I couldn’t find his phone number to call him.

At 7:30pmish, because I had arranged to give 50 participants a gift copy of the film, I received an email from one participant asking for two extra copies of the dvd followed by some wonderful words for the films editor. I shared her accolades with him. Later she forwarded me an email that she sent out to her friends and colleagues in the community. Since I was not ccd in the email, I have no idea what the response to her email has been. Nor has she shared community reactions with me.

Later I saw a Facebook status appear that stated “Great Job Erica, I saw your film on KOCE.” I was fascinated to watch as four of the films participants liked on it, yet noticed that none of them reached out to me directly. I was happy when five of my dear friends from college Facebooked me to express their pride about what they saw on television.

Around 5:30pm on Monday night I received a phone call from a participant and the only positive acknowledgement of my work on the film for the day.

I had a nightmare last Tuesday night where my baby languishes and I am powerless to help her because she really isn’t mine. She belongs to the world, because that is the way I designed it, and I have got to let her go. I don’t expect or need accolades. It’s hard to explain. I don’t need anybody to tell me that the film is “good”. I already know that.

I suppose I yearned to be part of the larger community rather than just the person you email your DVD order to. I am extremely grateful for those who did share their congrats with me, but I realize how foolish of me it was to imbue need onto an inanimate object.

When an archivist works with a community, she has no right to expect to belong to the community she has chosen to document. However I volunteered my efforts for these many years, because of the passion that I developed for the story in graduate school. In my mind I suppose I am still that student, who was disenfranchised at a very early age from the community at-large because of the way I look.

I am happy that I continue to learn and grow as a person, extremely grateful that my employer continues to allow me to pay my mortgage, and thrilled to finally be moving on to tell other stories, because I did MENDEZ V. WESTMINSTER: FAMILIES FOR EQUALITY right. And that is good enough for me.

When I’m in the middle of a project I’m pretty careful about what extracurricular activities I allow myself because I understand that being open to them may (and often does) divert, as well as inform what I’m writing. Today I trusted in the actress Julia Roberts, and went to the movies to see her in EAT, PRAY, LOVE where I was introduced to Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 story. (No, I haven’t read the novel.)

I don’t need to tell you that there is evidence of rebirth out of destruction all around us. My little bit of transformation actually occurred in the lobby before the movie, while I waited for about twenty minutes for my mom and sister to arrive. I was early; they weren’t late, and no, there is no reason to bore you with the details of my “destruction” of nearly twelve months ago.

For, as I wrote in my last blog post I was diverted from my play rewrites this summer when I suffered the pneumonia relapse. Then I was inspired to start writing the first of my novella series. Somehow two weeks ago, after my birthday, I was diverted off my writing track and have been literally consumed by researching my family tree.

I realized today that I got blocked two weeks ago, because I don’t really know who my protagonist is. What I realized today is that I write to figure out who I am in relationship to the world around me, i.e. I also don’t know who I am. Since my protagonist shares my worldview, albeit she’s twelve-years-old, this poses quite a dilemma. Some people, like Ms. Gilbert, call that finding God or the god within ourselves.

What I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks is that I am apparently descended from French Huegenots and Lutherans, and others who desired a better life for themselves and their children and escaped religious persecution by coming to North America. They settled in Virginia, fought the American Revolutionary War, and were rewarded with land grants in the newly formed counties of Georgia, which were confiscated from the Creek and Cherokee peoples. Many bought and sold Black people, but I was gratified to discover last night that at least one family may have fought for the Union during the American Civil War.

It is no wonder to me that the first Amendment of the United States Constitution is: The Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I believe that my little trip to the movies has started the path toward my creative rebirth. Let’s just say, I’ve worked through my block and have a better idea of where my project is going…

It’s Tuesday night of my week to blog; end of day two. Where have I been? I should say, “I’ve been writing a life affirming post, of course!”; something that describes my life as a playwright. The truth is I actually haven’t thought much about playwriting or this blog for over a month other than to stomp down my abject fear whenever it arises that people who read what I write really don’t care what I have to say.

So I forge ahead. Back in June I imagined that I would update you on my rewrite of PHISHING. However, in June I also happened to attend a college reunion, which I followed with a relapse of pneumonia when I feverishly (accidentally) burned my hand on a splashing, microwaved (boiling hot) cup of tomato rice soup. I came out of the hospital after 6 days and have spent the last three weeks recovering and worrying about how I am going to pay my bills. I go back to work on Friday, and the semester starts next Monday. Where has my summer gone?

With all of my good intentions to rewrite PHISHING and WATER CLOSET, something said to me at my college reunion sparked my return to a story that I first began as a tween. In the first two weeks of my recovery I wrote over 10,000 words toward a projected 30,000 word novella, the first of a series. Then I had a birthday. Not a milestone birthday. Yet this begins the year toward a definite milestone indeed, and I haven’t written a word in the intervening week. I have been immobilized. I have barely moved from my computer where I have spent the last week researching my family tree on the Internet (free resources, of course). Why, you ask? I can’t answer that question. I don’t recall the connection.

I do know that when I was a young girl I used to ask my grandpa all kinds of questions about our ancestry. He never answered me directly. He just sort of hemmed and hawed, which I thought was odd at the time. I was romantic in my youth, and thought that I would naturally be proud of where I come from. Over the years I’ve heard tale of being of Irish and English descent on my father’s side. However, it’s always been kind of like my family starts with me, my parents, and my two sisters, and in a way it’s turned out to be true.

Over the last seven days, I have discovered that it’s possible that my father’s family apparently “won” in the 1805 Georgia land lottery, and moved from Virginia and the Carolinas and settled land confiscated from the Creek people. There they purchased and sold Black people, farmed, mined, had many, many children, and apparently some of them intermarried with the Cherokee people. They also settled in Alabama.

There is even an unsubstantiated written rumor that in the early 1700s an ancestor of mine “married” a member of the Monocan tribe in Farnham Parish, Richmond, Virginia near the James River. They’ve fought and some died in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Indian Wars, and quite a few were Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, and (at least) one was murdered.

I’ve read that my g-grandfather was so upset upon finding out that his mother was part-Cherokee that he burned her paperwork and fled to Oklahoma to get away from his family. He apparently also changed his middle name; either to escape any connection to her “Indian blood” or most likely to escape the rumor that he murdered a man for teasing his horse. Of course these are musings posted online by “family” members passing down stories, jots from family bibles, and records copied out of the State Archives.

I guess you could say, I’m incubating an idea. That may indeed be the point of this blog posting, and an affirming one after all; research, research, research. Who knows where it will lead. Unfortunately, I don’t have any children to pass my worldview on to, but I write. Maybe someday someone will care very much about what I have to say. I love serendipity 🙂

I just watched Marion Seldes accept a lifetime achievement award for her 60 years of service to the theater as an actress at the 2010 Tony Awards. After the award was presented to her, she zipped her lips, and walked off the stage. She never said a word.

Taking a cue from this great person, I have picked up my gauntlet and relinquished all of my creative rights to my last seven years of work on the body of work in question to the Executive Producer, who is actually not my antagonist; she has been quite supportive. Of course it comes with the conditions that it is only to be used for educational purposes, and the rights cannot be sold.

I expect that I will also gracefully decline any invitation to “collaborate” on any production in the Los Angeles and contiguous counties of any work that I may write in the future. However I may show up unannounced during the play’s run, if I am ever fortunate enough to have a play of mine chosen for a production again.

For it would be interesting for me to see if it worked on the stage; if I had successfully communicated my ideas, intentions, and words. The rest is for the birds.

Erica Bennett

“It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.” Dorothy Parker.

I’ve been writing a lot in the last two days. Not PHISHING unfortunately, but emails. Not the good kind. “Hi. How are you? Let’s get together for a beverage. Love you. See you soon.” No. I find myself yet again in the middle of a grab for power over a body of work that I’ve spent over seven years and thousands of dollars and my personal time developing.

Since I’m actually in the middle of it, I won’t suffer anybody the details; can’t, as I don’t have two years of honest reflection behind me. Let’s just say, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, and I don’t know where that will lead. I have done so, not out of conceit, or ego, but because it is the right thing to do; that is what I learned from my work on this project and I would be dishonoring the memory of the people who fought so hard, if I did not.

Sort of as an idle test, about a month ago I offered up a creative idea to another group. It wasn’t an original idea, but I went out on a limb and presented it. The words I received back were to the effect, “Great idea. We’ll proceed with it in the fall.” When I responded that I would like to be involved in its development as I writer, I received back “Thanks for the idea.” That’s it. “Thanks for the idea.” Thanks for the idea?

I read Michael Golamco’s blog in the New York Times a couple of days ago about his experience bringing his new play YEAR ZERO to the Second Stage Uptown. His excitement is palpable.

“When I go into production on a play, it literally changes my life. I’m suddenly in a rehearsal room with other people — actors, a director, a creative team — every day. I suddenly have a morning commute. The solitary process of storytelling turns collaborative.”

Collaboration means working together. That presumably is how it works in the professional world, my friends, and that’s how we’re trained in professional training programs, as evidenced in Mr. Golamco’s happy report. I have rarely had a collaborative theater experience in the last ten years, outside the three staged readings last year.

I’ve diagnosed it this way: there appears to be an insidious cross-over between industries in the Los Angeles contiguous counties between theater and film. For example, one young man asked me in class Thursday why I was allowing the other students to have a voice in casting the revised scene from PHISHING that I brought in. “That’s not how it’s done in the real world”, he said. His brother is a screenwriter apparently, working in the indie film market. Apparently this brother is constantly outraged over his Producer’s casting decisions, and that they don’t take his voice into consideration.

After I stressed to the class the importance of not doing things my way, encouraging them to get a degree of higher education, I also told them that in regards to collaborative casting, “I could get upset about it, or I could make sure that I know how to write my characters in dialogue, so that even when I am not asked my opinion, my scripts become producer, director, and actor proof.” Then I led them on a critical thinking assignment designed to deconstruct and analyze a title page, a cast of characters, and dialogue.

A writer may presume that she chose to write specific words for a purpose. My experience has shown that most readers do not operate from the same perspective. My only conclusion is that if readers are not visualizing the words that I write in the way that I intend them, I must write better. Also, never expect collaboration. And do not offer ideas and credits because you are nice; make sure you have weighed the personal and political ramifications for doing so; for when you give something away, you can’t take it back; it’s gone forever.

Erica Bennett

Suggested for her tombstone: “This is on me.” Dorothy Parker

I met twenty authors late Tuesday morning, including Tina Fey, Victor Hugo, Jennifer Weiner, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Okay. I really met twenty young adult students who had each chosen a famous published author, and witnessed two reader’s theater presentations that they prepared. The stagings featured an excerpt from each of the author’s work, and were directed by an amazing female actor/teacher, who was also featured in one of the readings of my play FREED last fall.

I entered the auditorium with an open mind, several blank sheets of paper, and a mechanical pencil. I turned off my phone and Internet connection, sat forward to engage in their production, and begged their inspiration to shine down on me. I was enthralled for the full hour and a half.

In preparation for our work tomorrow, I’ve been writing for approximately the last twelve hours. I developed a 22-page lesson plan that compares my revisions to the title page, character list, and scene one of PHISHING; 2008 vs. 2010. Then I’ll leave it up to the kids to decide which version tells a better story. It should be an interesting morning.

More soon…

And they chose PHISHING 2010 🙂

Erica Bennett

True, I did ask the music director to tell me if the actress portraying J.J. could sing her song so that I could write her a monologue or rewrite the scene, if she could not. True, rather than communicate with me or the director, he cut two of the three stanzas from her song, rendering the build-up to the climactic moment of the play incomprehensible; still frosts my a— just thinking about it. After all, we’re talking about the first production of a new, unpublished play, right?

Notwithstanding our sad, cruel situation, the only truth that matters to me today is that while I exhibit proof of a theater education and acting training, and the “objective eye” of an archivist, as well as evidence that I am quite capable of directing and producing plays and short films featuring trained actors, as well as untrained students, at the time my raw inexperience and over-eagerness as a playwright caused me to underwrite, as well as overwrite the play.

Thus the only one who should receive blame for PHISHINGs 2008 failure is ME alone. I wrote a play, in fact had written several in the previous eight years, had read and directed and witnessed many more in the years prior to that, had studied playwriting for just over a year at that point with two different teachers, but obviously had much more to learn.

I should have known not to assume that the director and music director read and understood my descriptions and choice of song lyrics, or that they would wish to discuss and develop them with me, if they did not. They understood what they understood. Sadly, what I had been trained to understand as collaboration was interpreted by the music director as challenging the director’s authority.

Apparently I was also quite unsuccessful in indicating my intentions in dialogue. For even beyond the music director’s oddly successful power-grab, the evidence was staring me in the face, and had been all along. For the director made two casting choices, which I accepted but did not agree with, i.e. her interpretation of the words that I thought I had written were at odds with mine.

It all ended on an early Sunday evening in May with a phone call from this wonderfully patient professional female actor/director, who had made me her partner early on because that was also her experience. However, she had gotten off the phone with the theater’s artistic director, who had often been kind to me in the past, but who had more history with and understanding of the music director’s position. In the face of this difficult political situation, she was forced to tell me, and she did so quite sweetly and very reasonably I might add, that I was being asked to “go away” again, although I was invited to return on opening night for the “premiere”.

I believe that I did the only thing any self-respecting playwright could do in my situation. I agreed. I agreed with one caveat. I would go away, if she agreed to remove my name from the production. I even offered to send her a pseudonym, as soon as I could think of a good one.

My suggestions were not accepted. My next recommendation was that the production be pulled. It was. For in the end it didn’t matter the amount of time and the money that I’d spent in the previous six months, the truth of the matter is the play simply wasn’t ready for a production and nobody was willing to develop it and me.

More fortunate is that I figured out the answer to this very puzzling dilemma the next year through study with another patient playwriting teacher and a gentle mentor.

My important lesson of 2009, and I thank you sincerely, C.F., is, if a description is important enough to FIGHT for write it into the dialogue. Apparently dialogue is read, and there’s less chance it’ll be cut. I am also now trained not to design sets, lights, props, or costumes in description, because apparently NOBODY reads that. Nor do I block, although I may indicate CROSSES. I also indicate the transition LIGHTS, thank you, my mentor E.E., and leave it to the director and designers to interpret what exactly all of it means to them.

Interpretation is their job, after all. Writing dialogue and story is mine. Don’t get me wrong; I still believe that it is the director’s job to serve the action of the play, not visa versa, and I can’t help but comment on what I perceive as irony when I see a director’s name printed larger than the playwright on a marketing poster.

However, I have learned that directors and actors must be able to ascertain my intentions whether I’m in the rehearsal room or not because it’s more likely that I will not be there more than once for the table read, if ever again. I can only hope that I have begun to exhibit evidence of this harshly learned lesson in my most recent work.

More soon…

Erica Bennett

It occurs to me that before I start blogging about how PHISHING revisions are going, I could share one of the most important lessons that I believe I’ve learned in the last two years. It’s probably quite obvious to most of you, but it was a revelation to me.

I actually can’t remember which one of my theater teachers taught me this, however I’ve known for years that published plays include a transcription of the play’s first production blocking and designs. I understand that transcription is generally struck from a play by actors and directors in rehearsal during subsequent productions. I’ve done it myself with a sturdy black felt-tip pen.

What I didn’t realize until last year is that some actors and directors see no difference between the transcription and the playwright’s descriptions. In fact they may be indistinguishable from each other, and I’ve been told that OC storefront theater directors and actors strike them all.

I am not sure if this is endemic in all professional theater training programs or just storefront theaters in the OC, or if it’s even a factual representation of what is actually taking place in rehearsals at all, but I was shocked when I first learned it might be true.

If I remember correctly, Tennessee William’s depiction of the United States and southern American life in 27 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON made my descent into Flora’s world possible. I studied acting with Jose Quintero in college. I don’t remember him saying so, but I was reminded at dinner recently that he encouraged us to read the descriptions.

Yet in the last two years when I have occasionally looked back at my role in PHISHINGs 2008 failure, I discovered that beyond personality differences and conflicting work ethics, beyond my ease with and apparent overuse of electronic communications, beyond every awful name I may have been or may still be called behind my back, the bottom line is, I realize that PHISHINGs director and music director misunderstood my play and that the blame, if any should be assigned, was NOT their own.

More later…

Erica Bennett