All posts by Jen Huszcza

Inciting Incident

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Let’s start at the very beginning

A very good place to start

I start my blog week with Julie Andrews’ voice in my head. A very nice voice to hear. I’m also going to begin my blog week with beginnings.

Recently, I heard an aspiring screenwriter use the term inciting incident so reverently that I thought she had found the holy grail. Then I realized that she was just trying to sound writerly.

An inciting incident in a play or movie is the moment when the whole thing gets moving. The conflict is introduced. The goals of the protagonist are laid out. The inciting incident is all very precise and mathematical.

Aspiring writers are usually very good at having the inciting incident happen quickly then giving us a lot of pages of gobbelygook.

Gobbelygook is my term for time-filling writing.

When I went to writing school, we didn’t talk about the inciting incident. We just talked about the beginning. We also called it the start.

In sports, the start is very obvious. It’s the first pitch or the starting bell or buzzer or flag. The contest is happening. Action movies usually have a definite starting bell; then it’s on, and we’re in for two hours of some excellent sound editing.

However, not all plays are contests. To begin a play, you just gotta get some characters out on a stage. However, sometimes they don’t want to leave the backstage. Characters can be so difficult sometimes.

Wouldn’t it be great to start the play before the audience showed up? Just start in an empty theatre, then the audience shows up and has to figure things out.

However, in LA, the audiences would want to know when the start before the start is, so they can have access to the play. In LA, it’s all about the access.

How to Hang Out with Female Playwrights

Playwright, playwriting

Last weekend in Prescott, when I wasn’t watching my own play, soaking in a Jacuzzi, or poking around the local Salvation Army thrift store, I was hanging out with the other women playwrights.

Because what happens in Prescott stays in Prescott, I won’t air all the Dirty Laundry details. However, I did notice some interesting things about this flock of nine playwrights who all happened to be female.

Since members of the other gender might be curious about how to deal with such a gathering of women who write plays, I’ve decided to raise the curtain on female playwrights.

First of all, female playwrights like to shop. Yep, we like the shopping. Now, shopping is not to be confused with buying. Still, I think our presence did good things for the economic index of Prescott.

Second, female playwrights like to drink adult beverages. We might all drink different adult beverages, but we really appreciated drinking adult beverages of quality.

Third, female playwrights complement each other. During performances, there was a lot of tapping and whispering and giggling in the playwright section.

Fourth, female playwrights ask a lot of questions. I like to ask questions in conversation, and I soon realized that I was around people who also asked questions in conversation. At some point, I just started making statements.

So if you are thinking of producing a Women’s Playwriting Festival, just be aware of these four things, and you should do well.

And on that bombshell, I come to end of another playwright blogging week. Good night!

Dirty Laundry Play Festival

Audience, News, Playwright

This past weekend, I braved the humidity of Prescott, AZ because my ten-minute play, Rinse, was produced along with ten minute plays by Jennie Webb, Micki Shelton, Katherine James, Kate Hawkes, Charlotte Winters, Sara Israel, Tiffany Antone, and Shanee Edwards in the Dirty Laundry Festival.

Yep, the ladies took over Prescott. Woohooo!

Tiffany Antone came up with Dirty Laundry because she decided to create a few playwriting opportunities of her own. And wow did she deliver an evening of theatrical fun. She is also courageous and bold, and her enthusiasm for all us writers was inspiring.

Even before I got to Arizona, Dirty Laundry was a growth experience. Since I lived 450 miles away, I couldn’t sit in on rehearsals. I couldn’t say yes or no to ideas. I had to let go of my play.

On Friday, Jennie Webb and I rode out to Prescott on 109 horses. When I arrived in the high altitude town, I immediately sought sanctuary in my hotel’s Jacuzzi.

On Friday night, Tiffany put together a backroom meet-up for writers, actors, and directors of the show. When folks learned that I had written Rinse, they usually reacted with Ohhhhhh as if there had been speculation about me.

My favorite encounter at the reception was with one of the actors. He was not in my play but had seen it at the tech.

Man: You don’t usually expect a play like yours from a woman.

Jen: What kind of play?

Man: Women don’t write about torture.

Jen: Actually there was a very popular play off-Broadway in the mid-eighties about a torturer and written by a woman.

Man: There was?

Jen: The Conduct of Life by Maria Irene Fornes.

Man: Never heard of it, but now I know.

On Saturday, the Dirty Laundry plays were presented at 2 and 7 at the Prescott Fine Arts Association whose theatre is an old Catholic Church. My play happened right after intermission, so I spent most of the intermission mentally making people sit down. Sit down, damn it!

Then I watched my play. . . .

Oh wow. . .

The director and cast took it on and went for it. The look and feel of the play was unique. The actors were physical and trusted what they were doing. It was like they were in their own self-contained universe.

So let me take this opportunity to publicly stand up and applaud Cason Murphy, the director and lighting designer and the excellent cast—Sean Jeralds, Anthony Osvog, and Dino Palazzi. I playwright love you guys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also a big thanks to the crew that toweled down the stage after my play. Things got a little wet onstage, but no towels were harmed during this production.

Special Thanks to David Cottle for the Production Photos

No Such Thing As Failure

playwriting

As I strive to create a warm and fuzzy wuzzy theatre, I try to keep it all in the positive.

However, I find it very difficult to keep in the positive even though I live in three hundred days of sunshine and seventy degrees. Still the torture chamber of darkness and despair in my brain sometimes surfaces at inopportune times. 

Recently I was having lunch with an actress friend. She’s one of those actresses that writers dream about. She’s smart and talented. Anyway, she told me about an acting workshop she took which wasn’t really a fit for her. She went in with the best of intentions but the facilitator turned out to be an asshole. It happens.

After she told her tale of woe, she felt bad for how it all worked out. She felt like she had failed in some way. At that moment, I had a career epiphany.

My friend had not failed. There’s no such thing as failure in the theatre. It just didn’t work out. Because it just didn’t work out, you can’t really say anything majorly bad about the experience. It just didn’t work out, then move on to the next thing and the thing after that.

Tomorrow, the fuzzy wuzziness continues with Dirty Laundry. It’s not just about socks anymore.

Illusion and Hustle

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Theatre is just illusion and hustle.

I came up with this theory as I watched Guy Hollingworth in The Expert At the Card Table, a one man play directed by Neil Patrick Harris at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica earlier this month. The play has long since closed and like great illusions, it only exists in our inaccurate memories.

The Expert At the Card Table was a book published in 1902 which gave away card shark secrets. In the course of an hour and a half, we learn the fate of the book’s author. Even though I consider myself pretty good at figuring out stories, I must say honestly that I didn’t see the ending coming.

Interspersed with the story of the author, Hollingworth, an accomplished magician, performs card tricks. Thanks to a large screen behind him, we see his hands work. He can make a deck of cards do anything he wants.

It’s like watching a dancer only he dances with his hands. I could write a play starring his hands. Oh wait, that was The Expert at the Card Table.

As the play went on, I thought about the theatrical hustle. He draws the audience into the trick, shows the audience what he wants them to see, then snap, magic!

We playwrights are hustlers too. We are hustlers on the page (we also have to be hustlers with artistic directors, but that’s a different essay). We only show the audience what we want them to see. We might hold off on a bit of information until it is necessary. We might only show one side of a character. We might only show one room of house.

We practice long hours to perfect our illusions, to make them seem almost natural, so the audience doesn’t miss what they can’t see.

Having that much power over an audience is kind of a sexy thing.

Feedback is not just about speakers

Home, playwriting

Hello again

I just got back yesterday from Prescott, Arizona where my short play, Rinse, was produced at a women’s playwriting festival called Dirty Laundry put together by the great Tiffany Antone.  I will talk about Dirty Laundry a little later this week. In the meantime, you can also check out the Little Black Dress website to learn more about it.

Today’s subject is feedback.

I am a genius, and I like to be praised.

 Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I will talk about feedback.

We live in a time when we are surrounded by dramatic writing. Film reviews talk about a weak third act. TV watchers blog about character arch. Everyone knows about conflict, conflict, conflict!

I think it’s cool that everyone knows how a basic story works and can rationally explain emotional catharsis. It makes me freer to break from convention to draw in an audience and reach dramatic completion.

I don’t mind feedback. I’ll either use or not. I don’t mind dumb feedback because it reflects more on the relative intelligence of the feedbacker rather than the work itself.

Recently a friend praised the feedback I give to other writers. He went on and on about how precise and articulate my comments were. He praised my intelligence. Since I am a genius and like to be praised, I let him go on and on.

 This also led me to think about feedback. How can feedback be intelligent?

Wayyyy back in the late 90s, I was part of the Womens Project Playwrights Lab in New York. We had a specific way of handling feedback, and I adapted it as my own. It was a method developed by someone outside of the Lab, and if anyone could tell me whose method this is, I will happily give credit where credit is due.

The writer presents the work. Then, there is only praise. I liked this and I liked that. It should be specific. After the praise, the second part of the feedback is questions. Who, what, where, when, why? Most criticism of work in development is in the form of a question anyway, so it makes sense. Instead of saying that makes no sense, the feedbacker asks why. Usually the question part of feedback takes a long time because it leads to discussion. The third and final part of the feedback involves general comments. Since most of the criticisms become questions, the third part is usually quick. Someone might want to really specify a point. Someone might want to return to an area worthy of praise. Since comments are intended to be conclusive, it forces the feedbackers to be specific.

I still try to use this form when giving feedback. Intelligent feedback is not about my intelligence. It’s about the work.

How can one become a more intelligent feedbacker? I would say read a lot and watch a lot, so new forms and ideas are not so strange.

How can a writer receive intelligent feedback? Well, unfortunately, you can’t control other people’s minds (I’ve tried, it doesn’t work). I show early drafts to people I trust. Then, I have the next ring of people who read the piece once it’s gone a little further.

For the plays, I also have actors I trust. I can learn a lot about a character from five minutes with a smart actor. By the way, smart actors are geniuses and like praise too.

The Uninvited Panel at the Lost Studio

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I took a break from my Fringe watching to peak in on Panel discussion at the Lost Studio last Sunday.

Sponsored by Gunfighter Nation, Padua Playwrights, and The Lost Studio, the panel was titled The Uninvited: Crashing the Party, A Counter-Conference to the 2011 TCG National Conference Convening in Los Angeles.

Chaired by John Steppling and moderated by Wes Walker, the panelists included Murray Mednick, Guy Zimmerman, Denise Devin, Charles A. Duncombe, Zombie Joe, Tina Kronis, Jay McAdams, Matt McDray, Frederique Michel, and Travis Preston.

As someone who is camped outside the TCG castle (I’m the woman tending the fire and brewing the tea), I was excited to see a dialogue and an effort at organizing a theatre community in a place as large and diverse as Los Angeles.

Because this was a meeting of theatre artists and producers (who in this difficult climate are high wire artists), the questions of art and commerce were raised. How do you stay true to a theatrical vision while facing the economic demands? How do you find audiences who are adventurous and want more than television or the Ahmanson? How do you make art in a conscious way that is transcendent?

The panel raised more questions than it answered, but to me, that signaled that there was wisdom in the room.

 For further discussion, I will send you to LA Weekly blog about the panel. Check out the comments:

 http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2011/06/off_the_radar_and_under-funded.php

 By the way, I don’t know how good the food was at the TCG conference, but the food at the Uninvited panel was excellent. I especially liked the oatmeal cookies and the strong spirit of hospitality at the event.

 I heard about the panel through the Lost Studio Facebook page. Now, I’m blogging about the panel here. Maybe we’re more connected than we thought in the LA Theatreland.

 And on that happy note, it was an absolute delight (as always) blogging this week. I’m off to Arizona in August for the Dirty Laundry New Play Festival conceived by fellow lafpi blogger, Tiffany Antone. For more info, you can go to the website: www.littleblackdressink.org/

100 Saints You Should Know at the Hollywood Fringe Festival

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The West Coast Premiere of Kate Fodor’s play, 100 Saints You Should Know, is being produced at the Elephant Theatre and is part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Even though West Coast Premiere is one of my least favorite phrases, I was intrigued by the Saints in the title. Plays about saints are my second favorite kind of play (right after plays about sinners). Will there be a parade of 100 saints with brass instruments? Would St. Anthony get a monologue?

I continued to be optimistic about this play because I like seeing plays at the Elephant Theatre. They have comfortable seats. I also was able to slide into an awesome parking spot one block away.

The set of 100 Saints You Should Know is beautiful. Tree branches weave through wooden squares holding stacks of books. There are large white  screens, and the furniture is efficiently shifted on and off by guys in black. There is a tranquility to the set as if the play is more a meditation than a character driven story.

100 Saints You Should Know is about Catholicism, the relationship between celibacy and the body, and a study of prayer. Matty is a young priest who has been suspended after nude photos of men were found in his study. He goes home to his mother, but one night, the cleaner at the rectory shows up with a book he left behind. The cleaner, Theresa, is a single mom with a sixteen year old daughter, Abby. While Theresa is asking the big God and prayer questions of the priest, Abby, left outside in the car, gets drunk with a neighborhood boy, and horrible Act One ending events occur.

On one hand 100 Saints is a typical Playwrights Horizons (it was produced by Playwrights Horizons in New York) linear well-made play in which the characters are not super extreme and the settings have a realistic feel to them.

However, I found parts of 100 Saints quite moving because Fodor is smart enough to not let her play get in the way of her quest for ideas. She gives her characters time to just exist reading Victoria’s Secret catalogs and playing Scrabble. These little moments take on a prayer-like quality and give the lives of the characters a simple sacredness. After all, this is America. We can all be saints here—even the sinners.

 100 Saints You Should Know runs with Fringe Festival with performances on Fri, June 24th at 8pm, Saturday June 25th at 8pm, and Sunday June 26th at 7pm. Then the play’s run continues until July 16th with Fri and Sat performances at 8pm and Sunday performances at 7pm. All performances are at the Elephant Space at 6322 Santa Monica Blvd (at Lillian Way). You can get tickets from the Fringe website or the Elephant Theatre Company website (www.elephantthearecompany.com) or by calling 213-644-0556

Voices from Chornobyl Jr. and Hog Riot! at the Hollywood Fringe Festival

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Voices from Chornobyl Jr. is a children’s version of Cindy Marie Jenkins’s Voices from Chornobyl. Since Cindy is a fellow blogger here on lafpi, I was very excited to see her work off the computer screen.

Voices from Chornobyl Jr. is about the Chornobyl Nuclear Meltdown as seen by a nine year old girl named Katya. The disaster happened twenty-five years ago, but recent events at Fukushima have brought nuclear power and its dangers back into public consciousness.

As Katya (beautifully played by Kappa Victoria Wood, an adult actress) both experiences and tells her story, we come to understand that radiation, though invisible, retains a power to hurt even decades after the meltdown.

The short play ends with a question and answer session with the audience as information about nuclear energy is passed between actors and spectators. Yes, a children’s play about nuclear radiation might seem odd, but that’s what makes its presence in the Fringe Festival so darn cool .

Another play with history told from a female point of view is Hog Riot! set during the hog riots of 1826 in lower Manhattan. I didn’t know about this historical happening, so I was intrigued. Hogs? Really?

 Nearly two hundred years ago, hogs were allowed to roam the streets of Manhattan freely until the Common Council issued an ordinance requiring pigs be penned or rounded up by a hog catcher. But! Does government have the right to issue such an ordinance? What of the poor pig girls who can’t afford to build pens for their hogs?

Hog Riot! focuses on the young pig girls. It is not about men and their power plays. Instead we see history unfold from the point of view of the girls on the street. The five leads (Olivia Kamalski, Milan Learned, Sullivan Long, Melissa Lozano, Mizuki Sako) are between the ages of 13 and 15 with two adult actors (Olivia Briggs and Maarten Cornelis) and a butcher violinist (Max Bogrov) rounding out the cast. The young actresses bring a lot of energy and fun to the proceedings.

Hog Riot! was written and directed by Laurel Long for her company, Dollface Ensemble. Laurel started Dollface Ensemble to create artistic opportunities for young female theatre artists and to empower them to eventually create their own opportunities. The Dollface Ensemble plays focus on a historical event told from a young female point of view.

Voices from Chornobyl Jr. will be playing at the Annex Space at the Fringe Central on Saturday, June 25th at 1pm and Sunday, June 26th at 1pm at at 6569 Santa Monica Blvd. Tickets are $10. You can get tickets from the Fringe website, www.hollywoodfringe.org.  You can also visit the show’s website at: www.voicesfromchornobyl.com

The last performance of Hog Riot! will be on Saturday, June 25th at 2pm at the Arena Stage Theatre at 1625 N. Las Palmas (just south of Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood). Tickets are $10, and you can get tickets from the Fringe website (www.hollywoodfringe.org).

Feeling Feeling at the Hollywood Fringe Festival

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This week on lafpi, I’m writing about plays written by women at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Feeling Feeling was the first play I found when I was searching for women writers on the Hollywood Fringe website, so naturally, I had to see it.

At the bar in the big white tent at Fringe Central, there is a Feeling Feeling cocktail with vodka (lots of vodka), strawberry puree, sprite, and a very important lemon wedge, so I was very happy when I sat down to watch Feeling Feeling.

As we came into the theatre, we crossed the stage where a blonde lady is couch dancing to Beyonce and Cher power ballads. We were definitely in a modern happy space.

The play itself is a dark romantic comedy that traces a couple (Darla and Dave) from Oregon to Los Angeles over four Olympic games. Darla feels too much, so she gets a chip implanted in the back of her neck to make her less dependent on her emotions. Dave goes into therapy to feel more or perhaps feel better. They break up, they get back together, they can’t communicate.

The dilemma of the play is summed up early on by a supporting character who says, dudes need to stop treating chicks like dudes, and chicks need to stop treating dudes like chicks. Yes, there is wisdom in that.

However, this play is not a case study of emotionalism and coupledom polemics. It has fantastic dialogue that sizzles with wit and some great characters that get under your skin.

Feeling Feeling  will be playing at the Annex Space at the Fringe Central on Thursday, June 23rd at 8pm and Friday, June 24th at 11:59pm (aka midnight) at 6569 Santa Monica Blvd. You can get tickets from the Fringe website, www.hollywoodfringe.org. 

 Sarah Doyle has a website at www.sarahjeandoyle.com. She also recently did a podcast here at Los Angeles Female Playwrights, and you can find it at https://lafpi.com/events/podcast-archives/