All posts by Jen Huszcza

On Woody Allen

playwriting

Back when I was a baby writing student of eighteen, there was a cute guy in my craft class who loved Woody Allen, so  I watched a bunch of Woody Allen films in rapid succession. Some of them I liked. Some of them I didn’t. There certainly were a lot of them.

Fast forward to now. Woody Allen has just had a hit with Midnight in Paris and was the subject of a PBS documentary. He’s in his seventies, and he just keeps churning out movies. Every year we get a new Woody Allen film. Some are good, and some are yawners. I loved Match Point, but I fell asleep ten minutes into Cassandra’s Dream.

I was thinking about Woody Allen when I got a rejection letter recently. No the letter was not from Woody Allen. It was from a literary manager who said the play wasn’t for her company, but if I had anything else, I should send it on. I thought, heck yeah I have something else, and I sent her another play.

As a playwright, my job is to the write the plays. Some of my plays are not bad. Some of my plays are probably not producible on this planet.  I just keep writing them and throwing them at the wall. One of them might stick.

I keep waiting to run out of ideas. Hasn’t happened yet. I’m gonna do this when I’m in my seventies. Oh no.

The Play I Hate

playwriting

 

It started with the title. It was a great title. It was one of those titles that I thought, yes that’s what it’s all about. It was provocative yet mysterious. It was sexy yet full of ideas. It would even look good on a poster.

I started writing the characters. They were all right. They took their time revealing themselves, but I’m not a pushy writer. I gave them their space. There were five of them. They were all humans. They were characters that actors would love to play.

I liked the stage I saw. There was versatility to it, yet it was just realistic enough for an audience to say, ahah, I know that place. It was a good space.

I wrote a draft beginning to end. It was exploratory. I just wanted to see the characters run. It was two acts.

I put it aside for a year. Or maybe three years. Time is not specific in Los Angeles.

Recently, I picked it up again.

And

I hated it.

I hated everything about it. The set was claustrophobic. The characters were awful. The ideas in it were stupid and muddled. Even the title annoyed me.

I didn’t hate myself for writing the play. I just hated the play. What was I thinking?

I have written other plays that I’ve put aside for years. When I picked them up again, I could see my thinking and build on it. But this play was a junkyard of yuckiness. I even started to relish in my hatred of the play, and I knew not to give into hate.

So I put the play back in its virtual little yellow folder.

Then, last week, I started thinking about the play I hate. The title wasn’t so bad. I started making notes to change it. Oh no.

Then I realized that if I push all the things I hate about it further, I might start to like it.

Or not.

Meanwhile, I continue to work on a completely different play that I like.

For now.

And on that bombshell, I end my blogging week here. As always, it was a delight. Jen

On Jealousy

playwriting,

 

Recently, I was talking with a writer friend whom I’ve known a lot of years. We go all the way back to writing craft class.

My writer friend works in a writing related field and makes good money. He also writes scripts occasionally.

We see each other from time to time and usually have a nice writing related discussion. Recently, over coffee, we were talking about the stuff we were working on. I was going through my list of writing to be done (it never will end, ever).

I’m Jealous. You’re so prolific. My writer friend said to me.

I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t want to say, oh you can be prolific too, you just have to write more because that would be just not true.

I was also shocked that someone would be jealous of me. Me???? I have terrible vertigo, and that’s just the beginning.

My writer friend has a lot going for him. His job is good. He lives well. He should not be jealous of me. I do not have the power job. Compared to him, I. . . .

Ahhh-hah. I see.

Maybe we should strive to not compare ourselves to others. In the long run, it all evens out, and if it doesn’t, so what.

 I have seen friends from school go on to be super successful in writing, and weirdly I don’t feel jealous of them. Besides, we were all goofballs in school, and I still think of them as goofballs.

 Besides, I don’t have time to be jealous. I’ve got writing to do.

The Kobayashi Maru Scenario

Audience, Playwright, playwriting, , , ,

 

 Or my Kirkian response to the Who Gives A Sh*t Question

I do read this blog when it’s not my week. Recently, Tiffany Antone raised the all important Who Gives A Sh*t Question. I could also call it, do people really want to see another play about characters sitting in chairs and talking about their issues?

Or I can ask, should I write stuff other people want to see? Should I play to the mob? Or should I challenge audience expectation and possibly never get produced? How do I keep the audience interested? How do I keep myself interested? I’m not interested. I suck. I can’t go on, I shall go on.

The no win cycle of writing new stuff-will the audience dig it-but needing to write it- but no one will get it (I’m paraphrasing) kept repeating in my head.

This led to the inevitable playwriting funk which sent me crawling back to prose-writing while watching movie star interviews on youtube.  

Then I was rescued by basic cable. One night, as I surfing channels, I came upon Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn. Ahah! The Kobayashi Maru Scenario.

In Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn, a Starfleet cadet has to take a simulation test. She is the captain of a starship and receives a distress call from a civilian freighter (called The Kobayashi Maru) in the neutral zone. If the captain goes into the neutral zone, it would mean war with the Klingons. The purpose of simulation is to test the cadet in a no win scenario.

Captain Kirk’s solution to the no win scenario was to reprogram the simulation, so there was a solution. He cheated. But he won.

Maybe the solution to the Who Gives A Sh*t question is not in the answer but in the question itself. Change the question or make the question irrelevant. At the same time, there’s an audience out there in the dark. Show them something.

At the end of Wrath of Kahn, Kirk faced a no win scenario, but Spock saved the day and sacrificed himself (although he came back in Star Trek 3). So another question about the no win scenario, is what will you give up to win? Sometimes, the cost is too high.

Then again, that’s just a movie. And all we’re doing is writing plays. Or are we?

Maybe it’s time to become more Kirkian in the playwriting. Live long and prosper.

Texting the Play

Uncategorized

 

Way back in April, Kitty Felde wrote on this blog about the audience texting during performances of bad plays.

This led to me thinking. What if it were possible for the audience to text the play during a performance and see their texts scrolling above the stage? It could be the next step in theatre watching. Folks comment on the blogs and articles on the web. Why not a play?

A performance of Hamlet could yield some interesting commentary:

Ophelia’s da bom!

2b not 2b woohoo!

Is that a real skull?

Why are they talking funny?

 

Or maybe during a performance of Waiting for Godot, the audience would get to see the following scroll:

When’s Godot gonna show up?

I don’t get it.

That’s cause you’re stupid.

No you’re stupid!

Why did we come?

Why are we here?

 

 Maybe the audience could text the playwright directly:

 This scene is totally not working for me.

 She DIED?????? Why??????

 Your actors are hot!!!!!! Yum

 That character is sooo based on me.

 

 Maybe members of the audience have their own drama to share:

 My blind date is an asshle!

 My blind date won’t give out

 Will u mrry me Sara?

 Which Sara?

 Sara T.

 No! —Sara T

 🙁

 

 In the spirit of audience democracy, comments are welcome.

 

 

The Paper Toss

playwriting

 

I love paper.

That’s a good love because I write on a lot of it. Even in this age where I can work on my cell phone, I prefer the pen (black or blue) and paper. I love the immediacy of putting pen to paper. I look at a blank sheet of paper (preferably with lines but I can work on blank stuff too), and I see possibility.

Through the years, I’ve written in notebooks and journals, on legal pads and post-it notes, around envelopes and folders. I don’t write on skin or fabric.

I now also write while typing into a keyboard. However, most of the time, I’m typing in something written down.

I also love doing rewrites on paper. I love crossing out and drawing arrows and making inserts and spreading several sheets on the table as I change around a section.

I have accumulated a lot of paper through the years. Even though my papers are organized in boxes, I felt like I was drowning in it, so this past holiday season, I did a huge paper toss.

Over the course of two nights, I hauled out the boxes and dove into two decades (I’m old) of paper. I swam through pages. Sometimes it was a script, sometimes a story, sometimes a love letter.

Sometimes, the pages were stiff from age and moisture. Sometimes, they were fragile from too much writing on them. Page by page, I kept or tossed, and my toss pile got larger and my recycling bin got fuller. 

It was time to let go. Let go, let go, let go.

It was time for the paper to go, get recycled, and become something else.

I kept the love letters though.

Spalding Gray

playwriting

 

I first saw Spalding Gray perform in person at Lincoln Center in 1996 when he did his monologue It’s a Slippery Slope about learning to ski and changes in his relationships. He sat behind a table with a notebook in front of him. He spoke with a Rhode Island twang. I liked his voice.

He was performing in tandem with Julie Taymor’s The Green Bird and Taymor’s lush green forest hung above stage like a forest of the mind.

I later learned he never wrote out his monologues. He performed from an outline, so he wasn’t reading. He was engaging the audience. He was telling his story, and this made one feel very intimate with his story. However, this intimacy only went one way. He didn’t know his audience members personally and only told what he wanted to tell. He had control over his material.

Even though he was sitting the whole time, he had physical presence. He leaned forward and leaned back. He gestured with his arms. He could become very animated without leaving his seat.

The second time I saw Spalding Gray perform was at PS 122. I don’t remember the year. It was probably the late 90s. He was workshopping a new piece called Morning, Noon, and Night. He went for an hour and a half, got to late afternoon, and stopped there. He was trying tangents out and still trying to find the structure of it. We witnessed the hours of his day pass in minutes, and it was so rich and lovely that we could’ve sat and listened for another hour.

The last time I saw Spalding Gray on stage was a panel at ColumbiaUniversityon the theatrical avant garde. It was late autumn 2001. 9/11 had just happened, and we were still sorting through the rubble. Other panelists included Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, and three or four others.

Spalding Gray walked with cane and several times had to get up and walk off the stage, but he always came back. I didn’t know at the time that he had been in a bad car accident that past July. At one point on the panel, he talked about stories and how he use to think they had power but he doesn’t feel that way anymore. Still, he structured his thoughts as a story.

I recently read The Journals of Spalding Gray published by Knopf. Even though I knew how the book would end, I was still very sad when I got there. However, the journal journey to that end has writing and insights from some good time spent on this earth.

He wasn’t just an autobiographical storyteller. He sculpted his story to something beyond even himself.  He created a theatrical event with desk, a chair, a notebook, and himself. Adios, Spalding Gray. Thanks for the words.

At the end of my blog week on Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, I’m gonna give Spalding Gray the last words. This is from a journal entry dated June 9, 1995:

 . . .eating my old tuna, jalapeno and “hot” hummus sandwich I had a peaceful sense of NOTHINGNESS and that was what I was going to come to. DEATH is NOTHING. It’s not death that’s sad, it’s life. There is nothing sad about nothing. I had a very strong feeling that I am nothing visiting something. Yes, I am nothing visiting something and returning to nothing.

Theatre Dot Orgy

playwriting

Earlier this month on facebook, Tiffany Antone posted a really funny Freudian slip her Dad made about her website (http://www.theatricstheatre.org/). He called it theatre dot orgy.

This made me laugh not only because I love puns, but also because Tiffany’s Dad stumbled onto a fundamental truth about theatre. Way to go Tiffany Dad! Woohoo!

On dictionary dot com, Orgy is defined in a variety of ways. First, it is a wild drunken or licentious festivity or revelry. Second, it is any actions or proceeding marked by unbridled indulgence of passions (an orgy of killing). Third, in Ancient Greece, an orgy is an esoteric religious ritual in worship of Dionysius with wild dancing, singing, drinking. Finally, informally, an orgy is a boisterous rowdy party.

I worry sometimes that theatre writing is too much in the head, that plays ignore the body in favor of people sitting and talking about feelings, psychology, philosophy, ideas. Bodies on stage can move, dance, sit down, stand up. Plays are not just about the spoken. They are about the physical.

Orgy in theatre is not just sex orgy. Orgy in theatre is the revelry of the play. It is brutality and joy. It is passion and destruction together in their most extreme form. And there’s something holy in it—not in some organized religion kind of way, but in the communal understanding of the mystery of the unspoken.

And this unspoken does not need to be talked about. It does not even need to be whispered about, but when it happens, everyone in the audience knows it.

You Will Submit!

playwriting, Uncategorized

 

You all are catching me at a crazy time. I’m in the middle of a big script send out to places far and wide. My brain is thinking about Character Breakdowns and Playwright Biographies. Am I just a playwright character? Or am I a character playwright? Who am I? What am I doing?

I also want to give a shout out to the National Playwrights Conference which used their Facebook page as a force of good to explain what a Statement of Objectives was. Yay Eugene O’Neill!!! And I’m not kissing ass to get my play selected. Okay I am, but whatever.

I have also been on the other side of the submission process and read submissions for theatre companies and contests.

I am currently on a submission reading hiatus, so I know for a fact that I am not reading plays by anyone who might be reading this.

I recently was asked by a new playwright acquaintance about submissions. What makes a good play? Or more importantly, how can one’s play stand out and shine in the early rounds of judging?

There’s no definite answer because every reader comes from a different place. However, there are a few simple things that all writers can do.

Layout. Especially dialogue. I don’t care if you put the character name over the dialogue or on the same line as the dialogue. Please, just do it one way or another, and keep it consistent.

Also, make sure the character’s name is spelled the same throughout the script. Yes, I have read scripts where character names change halfway through.

Sometimes characters speak over each other. Yes, I know it happens in life. I don’t want some weird formatting. Just write (speaking over her) in the character direction.

I don’t want to see a lot of character direction. I don’t want to know when a character turns her head or even crosses the room. Please, just the essentials for staging. Think of it as the important stuff.

Third, please, please, please could I have a list of characters at the beginning of the play. I don’t need a lot of detail. Sometimes I forget who’s the mother and who’s the sister especially in big epic family melodramas.  

Should you have it single sided or double sided on paper? I don’t really care. But please, make sure you have all your pages. For computer submissions, I prefer the script be in pdf instead of a word processing program so I don’t mess up your lovely formatting.

How should the paper script be bound? Brass binders are fine for me because I can take them out when I hold the manuscript.

Finally, please please please don’t write plays that are dumbass. How do you know if your play is dumbass? Well, you really don’t. That’s the fun of it.

Another comic thought. I have no power to get your play produced. However, I can recommend it or not recommend it.

I will read your script intelligently and perceptively. I will try to imagine the characters as flesh and blood people on a stage. I will delight when I am surprised and laugh when it is funny. When I’m reading your script, the stage in my head is yours. Now, show me something

16 Possible Glimpses by Marina Carr at the Abbey Theatre

Playwright, ,

This is not a review. Just my notes.

Last month, I was in Dublin and caught a preview of the world premiere of the latest Marina Carr play at the Abbey Theatre.

16 Possible Glimpses is an artistic impression of the life of playwright Anton Chekhov. Instead of writing a definite biography play, Marina Carr set out to write her own Chekhov, and she shows us a man who is both contradictory and painfully human.

Personally, I also thought her Chekhov was kind of sexy, and that is an adjective I never would have used about Anton Chekhov in the past. The structure of the play is nonlinear, so Chekhov dies in the beginning, then he’s onstage for the rest of the night. We see him resurrected again and again.

Carr’s Chekhov embraces a lot of people, and these physical connections make the missed connections in Chekhov’s tragic comedies even more tragic. How often we are afraid to embrace each other in life. Chekhov had TB and did not have the luxury of time, so he had to embrace as much as he could.

The play asks the question: what is a good man? How can one be both a good man and a good writer? There is a great scene where Chekhov is trying to write a story to pay the mortgage, but he is constantly interrupted by people needing him either in his family or as a doctor.

The production also incorporates video. By projecting the actors behind their physical selves, what is said and not said becomes more distorted as some phrases become overemphasized. It also allows glimpses of actors’ faces when they have their back to the audience or to other actors. The focus is not so much on the talker but on the listener.

As I witnessed the play in the tiny Peacock theatre, I thought about how a person’s life is really just glimpses and how fortunate that we got sixteen possible glimpses of Chekhov. By the way, the play doesn’t have sixteen scenes. Sixteen never comes up. It’s just a random number. Now, that’s really cool.

The production at the Abbey closed on October 29th. You can find out more about it here.