All posts by Kitty Felde

About Kitty Felde

Award-winning public radio journalist, writer, and TEDx speaker Kitty Felde hosts the Book Club for Kids podcast, named by The Times of London as one of the top 10 kidcasts in the world. The Los Angeles native created the Washington bureau for Southern California Public Radio and covered Capitol Hill for nearly a decade, explaining how government works to grownups. Now she explains it to kids in a series of mystery novels and podcasts called The Fina Mendoza Mysteries. Kitty was named LA Radio Journalist of the Year three times by the LA Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.

The dreaded synopsis

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I do not claim to be a very good synopsis writer. But I had to boil down my lengthy synopsis twice for the upcoming Capital Fringe Festival. And I think it’s actually a good exercise for anyone else out there struggling with putting together a good, concise pitch.

So here’s the long-form version of my synopsis for my play ALICE:

It’s June of 1971. And Tricia Nixon is getting married. Every reporter in town is determined to interview the last bride to be married in the White House, 80-something Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

Long before there was a Lady Gaga or a Jenna Bush, there was Alice. She was the daughter of one of America’s favorite Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt. She married a future Speaker of the House in a White House ceremony that was the event of an era. Before she was married, Alice made headlines in an era when tabloid journalism was exploding. She was tall, gorgeous, and loved to shock the American public with her antics. She endures, perhaps because every other sentence she uttered was a sound bite with teeth that still nip.

In tonight’s play, Alice is being interviewed by an unseen reporter. She offers her opinions on the Nixon presidency and several other presidencies in her long lifetime. But she is also trying to justify her own gadfly existence to herself and to her father. The ghost of TR appears in the play to question Alice’s version of events and force her to confront the truths in her own life: her unhappy relationship with her daughter, the infidelity of her husband, her own marital indiscretion, and her selfishness in general.

Welcome to an evening with the ultimate political celebrity: Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

The Fringe Festival asked for a much shorter synopsis: no more than 40 words. Here’s what I finally came up with:

“If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the ultimate political celebrity: daughter of a President, married to the Speaker of the House. Spend time with “Washington’s other monument.”

That was frustrating, because I couldn’t get in the fact that she was Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter. But I figured the quote was famous enough and conveyed exactly who she is and that was more important to attracting an audience for the show.

But the Fringe wasn’t done with me. They wanted a TEN WORD version! Here’s what I ended up with:

Meet the ultimate political celebrity: Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

Very unsatisfying. But again, I was thinking of my audience: a Washington DC crowd that LOVES political celebrities. And the names Roosevelt and Longworth are famous enough to entice even those who’ve never heard of Alice.

Or at least that was my thinking. (I welcome better rewrites!)

But it’s a useful exercise: start with your synopsis. Then write a 40 word version. And then a ten word version. You may never use them, but just think how pithy that ten word version would look as an opening sentence in a pitch letter!

But all I really want to do is sew

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For those of us with day jobs that keep us staring at a computer screen all day, coming home (or getting up early) to sit down at the keyboard…and stare at a computer screen…is difficult. Some creative types use pen and paper to sketch out ideas. Just to get away from that damned computer.

I think it’s even harder when the day job involves writing. You spend several hours using your writing brain to turn around something for someone else and have little left for the writing you really want to do.

Sometimes I’ll divide my day by a swim – come home, do half an hour of laps, and return to my desk with a fresh brain. Or on days when I don’t have to dash out, I can sit at my desk and pound out something before the dayjob madness begins.

But here’s the truth: right now, all I really want to do is sew. I can create something from scratch and not have to use the computer at all. I can feel the material in my fingers, mix colors and textures, fit it perfectly to my body, and best of all, not have to wait for a theatre to choose my work before I can strut it around town. The gestation period is so much shorter – a couple of weeks or less instead of several months or years. It’s not exactly instant gratification, but close.

Maybe it’s just summer. Maybe I just need a vacation. Maybe I need some suggestions. Got any?

How do you organize your writing time? Where do you find the juice to write? Is there a slow time for you? Are there times when all you really want to do is … fill in the blanks?

I hate producing

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I have a very wise Skype writing buddy Ellen Struve, who says, “producing is what drives writers back to the keyboard.” Truer words were never spoken.

I’m thrilled beyond belief that my play ALICE (an evening with the tart-tongued daughter of Theodore Roosevelt) will be part of next month’s Capital Fringe Festival here in Washington, DC. It will be my first DC production since moving here two and a half years ago – my formal introduction to this hopping theatre town. But it’s been a long time since I’ve produced anything. Now I remember why.

Last week, it was working with the postcard designer. Today, it was handing in a list of names of the production team to the box office and a phone introduction of my director (in Maryland) to my leading lady (in Florida) while waiting in the retina doctors office, with my eyes dilated. I haven’t written a new word in weeks.

But perhaps Ellen is right. The horrors of producing will indeed drive me back to the less scary world of a blank page. I sure hope so.

Meanwhile, there’s the Dramatists Guild event to look forward to! Starting Thursday night, I’ll be filling you in from the event. So stay tuned.

ps: any words of advice on producing would be greatly appreciated!

On the road again

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I’m looking forward to Tuesday.  That’s when I’m stepping on a plane to Rhode Island where yet another college is producing my war crimes play “A Patch of Earth.”  I’m looking forward to the talkback session with the students.  They always ask the hard questions.

I’ve been very fortunate with this particular play to find exactly the right audience.  It premiered at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, where it won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition.  But it’s not exactly the most commercial thing I’ve ever written.  As my pal who runs MetroStage in Alexandria puts it, “it’s hard to sell tickets to a show about slaughtering Bosnians at Srebrenica.” 

But it’s exactly the right play for colleges, a place where young people spend hours debating moral questions.  The play is the true story of Drazen Erdemovic, a Bosnian Croat who ended up fighting for all three sides during the Yugoslav war.  He says he never killed anybody until his unit was sent to a farm outside of Srebrenica where they were instructed to kill busloads of men.  He said he didn’t want to shoot, but was told if he felt so sorry for the victims he could stand up there with them and be shot himself.  And then his compadres would go back to his village and shoot his wife and child. 

It’s a story with characters around the age of college students, a story that happened in most of these students’ lifetime.  The play has a big cast (at least 9, as many as 30) with lots of good female roles.  Perfect for college productions.

And it’s had those college productions in Detroit, Pretoria, Costa Mesa, New Jersey, and now Rhode Island.  (It even had one high school production last year in England!)  “A Patch of Earth” was even published by the University of Wisconsin Press. 

I don’t write all this to brag on myself, but to remind myself that not everything I write is destined for the Taper.  Or the Geffen.  Or the Pasadena Playhouse.  That doesn’t mean the script doesn’t have value.  In fact, it might affect more lives by being the perfect script for colleges.  Or for community theatres.  Or for young audiences. 

Write the play that’s calling you to be written today.  Worry about the audience it’s written for after you’re done.  Because plays that need to be written seem to find their own audiences.

Think local, write local

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I continue my discovery of theatres around the Washington DC area and always compare them to our companies in LA. Last night, I saw a new show “Resurrectionist King” by a local DC writer Stephen Spotswood, at a theatre near the University of Maryland called Active Cultures Theatre.

Was it a perfect play? No. Was it a darned good attempt? You betcha. And creatively directed and pretty well acted.

But here’s the thing that impressed me: the play was commissioned by the theatre company Active Cultures.  It was based on a true story that someone had read in the local free weekly paper, about a local “celebrity” – a guy who dug up bodies for medical students to examine. The Resurrectionist King he called himself. And he did a one night show at a theatre near Ford’s Theatre (where Lincoln was shot) showing the audience the art of his craft.

Active Cultures worked for about a year with the playwright, developing the piece.  And then, instead of just a reading, they actually produced it!  What a concept.

The audience LOVED the fact that it was a story about their own community. They could identify with the places and some of the characters.

How many great stories are untold in LA? And why isn’t there a company commissioning local writers to write them?

Time management

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There really are only 24 hours in a day.  And on a night like this, where I’m just getting home at 8:30 in the evening, the last thing that I want to do after dealing with words and sound bites all day is stare some more at my computer and deal with words and dialogue.  If I were a better person, I’d go to bed earlier and get up at the crack of dawn and write.  But I’m not that better person.

I’m giving myself a pass this week.  I knew it would be a stressful week at work, what with threats of a government shutdown.  Plus, my Skype partner had another commitment and couldn’t make our once a week playwriting lab.   So no new pages for me. 

But just giving myself a week off gave me the space to actually send out some query letters and submit a couple of plays here and there.  And my brain has been working on rewriting the LA Riots play.  So I haven’t completely given up my identity as playwright. 

I’ve had a hard time finding a regular schedule for my writing – partly because of the unpredicability of the day job, partly because both my husband and I work out of an 800 square foot coop.  And he’s a writer, too.  There’s something about that other person sucking all the creative energy out of a place. 

When I was working on the many, many rewrites of “Gogol Project,” I found that if I could set aside 90 minutes a day, I could write a play.  That resolution has fallen away. I did manage to finish the first draft of a new play in spits and spots.  But after more than two decades of writing plays, I wish I knew a more efficient way to do it.

I’m curious about your writing habits.  Do you have a sacred place and time?  How long do you typically sit down to write at a time?  Is caffeine a requirement?

Agents

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I know you really don’t need an agent at the beginning.  But suppose you’re a “mid career” playwright, you’re getting productions around the world, half a dozen a year, but still not yet enough of a name to be chosen for the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage?  

It’s so frustrating to find submission restrictions from theatres that won’t even look at a few pages and a synopsis unless you’re represented by an agent.  And since there’s so little money for agents representing playwrights (unless they sell that script to Hollywood) most call ill afford to take on new clients. 

I had a wonderful agent back in the days when I was writing spec scripts and going out for meetings.  I sold TV scripts, but we parted ways when I showed a decided lack of interest in becoming a staff writer on a bad sitcom.  I wanted to freelance.  But there’s just not enough money for an agency to support a freelancer. 

I’m curious to know what you do.  Send a query and pages and a synopsis anyway?  Beg influential friends in theatre to write letters of recommendation?  What works?

Adaptation

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I was taught that Jon Jory was a god in the world of playwriting.  But I saw a lousy production of his adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” in Florida.  And the actors and director cannot take all the blame. 

Jory’s adaptation was way too literal – this happened, then this happened, then this happened.  The theatricality was mostly absent, except for borrowing the technique used in “Nicholas Nickleby” where prose is put in the mouths of characters and shared with the audience breaking the fourth wall. 

Now, I admit I’m a bit prejudiced myself on the topic of Jane Austen and “P&P.”  I’ve seen the 1995 BBC adaptation at least two dozen times and the various movie versions several times apiece.  But those were films.  This was theatre – or at least it was supposed to be.

I’m no expert on adaptation – though I did win the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for my adaptation of Nikolai Gogol short stories for the Rogues Artists Ensemble – but I do have some thoughts.  And I hope you’ll add to my list of what makes a good adaptation.

A work of theatre has to be theatrical.  There has to be a place where the page is left to lie there to gather dust and something bigger than life comes alive in front of an audience.  I don’t need Spiderman to fly across the stage (speaking of problems with adaptation) or a helicopter to land at the end of the second act.  A play should be dangerous.  And unpredictable.  Use the stage.

Someone will be disappointed.  It happens all the time in movie adaptations – something gets left out, characters get melded.  A playwright has to face those expectations an audience brings into a familiar work and be brave enough to disappoint some people.  Trying to please everyone creates bland work.

Jane Austen will not turn over in her grave.  We all want to honor the original work.  But why bother to do anything but retype the book in play format if you’re not willing to make it a bit of your own?  It’s an adaptation, not a literal translation.

That’s enough for now.  What’s on your list?

My new standard for when a play is working

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I’m going crazy over the amount of texting going on in the theatre these days. Do people not imagine it’s driving those around them crazy?

I saw a very bad production of Jon Jory’s not very inventive adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” in Orlando back in February. (more on this tomorrow)  People were taking phone calls, texting, even some joker on the far side of the theatre was sending messages, the light of his phone was brighter than the stage lights.

I even chewed out one young theatre goer in Silver Spring at a matinee last month.  I’m becoming the crabby old lady I always accused my mother of being.

But then I realized the only time people were taking out their phones was when the play dragged. Nothing interesting was happening onstage. They were bored. And frankly, so was I.

I tested this theory at a few plays that really worked. No one reached for a cellphone. Not a single text.  

So here’s my new standard of finding out when a play is working well: when nobody even thinks about taking out their phone. They are too enthralled in the action of the play. They care about the characters. They want to know what happens next.

THAT’s the kind of play I want to write!

A Writing Assignment

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Kitty Felde – January 23, 2011

I work on Capitol Hill.  It’s a day job much like the theatre – lots of colorful characters and drama.  And mystery.

I’ve started collecting odd signs.  This one keeps haunting me…it sounds like the title of a play.  But I can’t imagine what it would be about.

So as I sign off this week, in the spirit of  leaving you with homework, I offer this sign as the title of the play you’ll never get around to writing.  Write a one paragraph synopsis – the annoying kind theatres keep demanding.  And this is your title:

The title of your next play