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.

Gearing up for that new play: take the process on the road

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I was invited to teach a playwriting class this morning at a DC charter school. More than a dozen kids had signed up – or had signing up thrust upon them – for playwriting! They’d slogged through Hamlet and play analysis. I wanted them to WRITE.

We did my favorite “build a play” exercise. It works with writers of all ages (hint to myself: try it this week…) Here it is:

-What’s your character’s name?
-Age?
-Who’s his/her family? (often when I do this with kids, they say their character has no family. So I tell them to describe the people they’d spend Thanksgiving with, the person they’d call if they needed a ride home from school, etc.)
-Habitat – be specific
-What’s your character’s greatest wish?
-What’s their secret fear? (I would run into kids who insisted their character wasn’t afraid of anything. So we ask the secret fear question)
-Extras – anything else that doesn’t fit in these categories.

Then I ask the class to pick the person who gets in the way of the greatest wish or pushes them toward their secret fear. Then write a character sketch of them.

And then write a scene.

And I watched firsthand exactly my own struggles with writing a new play.

One girl kept changing her mind. Her play would take place in a car – no, in a hospital room – no, the girl’s bedroom. All that second guessing stopped her from writing anything. Note to self: pick one. You can always change it if it doesn’t work.

One young man couldn’t begin at all. He sat there paralyzed for half an hour. But he finally put pencil to paper. He didn’t want to read his few lines of dialogue in front of the class. He kept apologizing for the work. But when he finally did, it was really good. He didn’t believe it. But it was. He was the only one in the room who’d set up a mystery that every one of us wanted to find out what happened next. Note to self: stop kvetching. The work might be better than you think. But you’ll never know if you don’t write it.

Several kids decided to write about ghosts. One decided to write about an alien whose planet was polluted and had to live on earth and lived in fear of being found out by the other kid who was a paranormal hunter. These were fearless writers, willing to take a step outside the ordinary and create something fun and scary and interesting. Note to self: think unconventional.

One other observation: it took FOREVER to get started. They plowed through the character sketches in a heartbeat. But the entire room moaned and groaned when it came time to write a scene. Sounded a lot like me. Note to self: you’re not alone. We all hate to write. Except when we’re doing it.

Tomorrow, I try to take my own advice.

Gearing up for a new play: why reinvent the wheel?

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All this week, I’m priming myself for the plunge into a new play. I’ve tried bribes and writers toys, given myself a soundtrack and some writing space. Now what?

Perhaps the best road map to success (which to me means typing “lights fade to black…”) is to see what my peers are writing. What can I learn from them?  What can I steal?

Having read and seen a LOT of new work lately, it seems I can divide the new play world into some very broad categories:

– Familiar stories in a world we’ve never seen before

Steven Drukman’s The Prince of Atlantis is a pretty straightforward story about finding your father and brothers growing up. But it’s set in an Italian American suburb of Boston in the cut throat world of the fish market. Yussef El Guindi’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World
is a simple boy meets girl, boy loses girl story.  But the world is that of recent Muslim immigrants in America.

I could take a familiar story, a familiar plot, but the play would become new and interesting when I take my audience to a world they’ve never visited before.

– reach for the classics

Everybody’s getting in on the updated translation act. Michael Hollinger tackled Cyrano. David Ives took on The Liar. For heavens’ sake, even Moises Kaufman is taking on The Heiress!

Why don’t I find my favorite classic and reinvent it for a modern audience?

– you gotta have a gimic

Or not. But there’s sure a lot of them out there. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City has the lead actor playing his twin brother. Natsu Onoda Power’s Astro Boy and the God of Comics had actors drawing cartoons right before your eyes. James Still’s I Love to Eat had food writer James Beard making canapes for selected members of the audience.

Is there something unusually theatrical that I can incorporate into my play?

That’s a start. But now I’d welcome your list of “must have” items for the modern dramatist. What’s getting produced? Why? What do you want to see?

Gearing up for a new play

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I always thought it was actors who were children, needing to be coddled and mollified. Now, I think writers are the the most infantile of all.

At least I am.

It’s been a lousy writing year for me. Two public readings of a pair of new plays, a crash and burn failure of a rewrite of a full length that’s been haunting me for a decade, and just no guts to tackle anything new. Perhaps, I told myself, I could write a second act to a lovely play that’s been begging for a companion piece this summer. Didn’t happen. I was tempted to just write off the year entirely.

But it’s fall. And the horrible summers of Washington, DC are finally gone. Leaves are glorious, humidity is a thing of the past, the sunshine is heartbreakingly gorgeous. Feels like southern California.

Fall has always been my favorite time of year anyway. It’s the promise of a new beginning – new friends, a new teacher, new notebooks. So why not a new play?

The theory sounds great, but I admit it: I’m scared.

So I’m going to trick myself.

First, I’m buying myself new writing presents: a new notebook, note cards in various colors, new pens, a designated tote bag.

And If I’m not brave enough to write more than a few lines, I can make lists – character traits, themes, bits of dialogue, words of encouragement from other writers. I can fill pages with words. It’s something, right?

I need theme music. So a search of Pandora is appropriate, yes?

What about visual stimulation? I’ve searched my stash of magazines for pictures of the locales I’m writing about. And pictures of people I’d cast as my characters. Just looking at them is a kick in the seat of the pants. It’s as if they’re saying: “so what do you want me to say? And will you hurry up and write it?”

What about the perfect writing place? I’ve written in our highrise stairwell, in my car, even in the Library of Congress. I’ve taken hikes near a lake, camped out in a library, taken over a table at Starbucks. Anywhere to shake up my brain. Anywhere that I won’t be disturbed for at least 90 minutes a day. 90 minutes where email can’t find me, Twitter doesn’t need me, the phone won’t ring, the cat doesn’t need feeding, the husband doesn’t need to talk about logistics. A place where I can feel brave enough to write something.

I am trying as many tricks as I can to tempt me into being brave enough to once again put my heart and soul into a play that may once again be shredded or dismissed or worse, ignored.

It’s a bit like starting to date again – new clothes, new hairstyle, little aphorisms, and asking yourself: what’s the worst that can happen?

I’ll report my progress as the week progresses.

With a Little Help From My Friends

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It’s been a tough year for my playwriting. Changes at the day job, fighting for writing space in an 800 square foot coop with my husband who’s writing a book, plus a tough critique of a play that’s been haunting me for ten years are all the excuses I have for not turning out stellar pages ready to hit the stage.

And I call myself a playwright?

Thank goodness for my playwriting community!

I’ve been lucky to have that strong playwriting community in three cities – LA, DC, and Omaha. These are people who’ve heard my lousy first draft, shown up at the first public reading full of encouraging words and – a day later – helpful criticism, who never miss a full production. They’re the ones who’ll nurse a glass of wine for hours, talking about the process of writing, the tyranny of the literary manager, the terrific show they saw at Fringe. They’re the ones who talk you off the roof when you’re having that very tough year.

And of course, the best way to create that community is to be that friend for them, too, showing up at opening night, offering to read their first draft, buying them that glass of wine and sitting for hours.

So how do you create that community of playwrights?

Getting out of that funk

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I’m calling upon my bag of tricks to try to break free of this current writing slump.

Step one: read something inspirational…or just plain fun. I picked up the latest Alexander McCall Smith Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Which takes me to Africa, reminds me of what I love about that place – a continent where making time for people is an important priority in life. And McCall Smith shares with us the wisdom of the imagined father of Mma Ramotswe, the “late” Obed Ramotswe. It’s wisdom appropriate this week for me:

“How to lead a good life:
Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.”

The Dog Days

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Maybe it’s the week of 90 degree weather and 90% humidity here in DC (the days when I REALLY miss Southern California!!!) Or maybe it was the discouraging feedback from the play that’s been haunting me for the past ten years (and appears to continue to do so…) But writing-wise, I’m in the dumps.

Have you been there? The feeling that you have nothing new or worthwhile to add to the library of theatre literature. That your puny efforts don’t amount to a hill of beans. That even if you were to whip out a brilliant drama or boffo comedy, nobody would produce it anyway.

Welcome to my current world.

It’s not that there’s any proof to my belief that I’m an awful writer that will never be produced. I actually wrote a five page play that actually got a reading on a major DC stage (Theater J) two weeks ago. And it looks like the one-woman show ALICE will be revived in DC this fall. And my one commission (okay, my first commission – how’s that for positive) GOGOL PROJECT is being revived next year by the wonderful Rogue Artists Ensemble. And there’s interest in my kids play THE LUCKIEST GIRL.

But it’s a discouraging life we lead as playwrights. Plays need to be seen and heard to truly come alive, unlike novels or short stories. We need to be alone to write, but we need that community of other theatre artists to share our work with the world. And when we’re alone, that negative voice in our heads keeps talking to us, discouraging us from writing, from sending out a script, from even thinking about a new play.

That’s the dog days. And for me, that’s where I am right now.

This week, I’ll share some motivational thoughts from smarter people than me about getting through these lousy, hot, depressing days. Please share yours.

Supreme Theatre

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I’ve been a bit distracted this week. My day job took over my life. Something I think most of us understand. But there are lessons to be learned about our craft wherever we are. And so I thought I’d share a few thoughts about this week’s Supreme Court arguments about the health care law.

Voice: My seat inside the court was awful. The press is stuck on the other side of large marble columns, red velvet curtains, and bronze gates (with odd symbols like fish and some bird with a hooked beak that looks nothing like an eagle). I could see the attorneys making the arguments, but not the Justices. So you had to rely on their voices to tell who was speaking.

Which is a reminder for playwrights: voice matters. If our audience couldn’t see our characters, would their way of speaking define them in their minds’ eye? I have been working of late to make sure my characters speak like themselves. Some leave out words. Some never finish sentences. Each manner of speaking helps me craft that character.

Humor: Here we were in the midst of one of the most serious policy debates in a decade and yet it was the humorous lines I remember best. Justice Sotomayor suggesting that it would be Justice Alito’s clerks clawing through the 2700 pages of the law to figure out what could stay and what could be discarded. The many lines about brocoli. And even outside the High Court, the protestor I remember best was the guy in the gorilla outfit fondling what was either a large banana or a yellow penis.

As a playwright, even in my most serious plays, I seem to be most protective of my funny lines. All the chicken jokes that permeate my war crimes play A PATCH OF EARTH – like the tapped phone of a journalist who describes it as clicking and clucking as though there were chickens on the line or the protagonist looking for courage as though you could buy it at the chicken kiosk down the road or the annoying rooster that crows three times as he’s suffering from a hangover. If the audience doesn’t laugh at those lines, I feel defeated.

The Supreme Court taught me humor can be a great tool when the stakes are truly high.

Exposition is deadly: especially in the Supreme Court. Several times in oral arguments, the lawyers got out half a dozen words before the Justices jumped in with questions. DIalogue, in other words. Challenges – ie confrontation.

In this case – unlike our plays – everyone knew the back story. They’d read all the prior case law, the legal briefs, etc. Our audience often doesn’t know all the details. But an audience does know the basics of storytelling. They trust us to fill in the details AS NECESSARY along the way. What they want to see is that confrontation, that dialogue live, onstage, between characters. In the courtroom, whenever anyone cited case law, eyes glazed over. When a penetrating question was posed, everyone leaned forward in their seat.

It was a week of Supreme Theatre. And not a bad week to remind myself of the basics of playwriting.

Enough

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There were two theatre events tonight here in DC: a discussion of the state of the new play at GWU and a public thrashing of Mike Daisey at Woolly Mammoth. I wanted to attend both and ended up attending neither. And doing my best not to beat myself up.

It’s tough to hold down a day job (or raise small children or take care of a sick parent or…you fill in the blank) and be a writer. And even your role as playwright gets divied between the writing, the pitching, the preparation for the readings, attending friends and other fabulous plays, and the schmoozing. The two theatre events tonight that I skipped fall into the latter category. But frankly, I don’t have the energy. Tough week at work. (okay, I’ll brag: my tough week includes hanging out at the Supreme Court for the health care arguments. But it’s a pain in the butt with dodging protestors, the flood of media, the delay in getting audio from the court, and all the rest, I’m pooped. And I look like it.)

There’s only so many hours in the day. And I know the more rested I am, the more creative I am. Tired often equals depression, wasted hours at the keyboard, and too much chocolate.

So I’ve decided to forgive myself for not schmoozing on a Tuesday night. Instead, it’s fuzzy slippers, a bad movie, and some sewing.

How about you?

The best play I’ve seen in a while

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I really like seeing new work. It helps me think about my own work. What works, what doesn’t. Why.

I see a lot of mediocre plays that get productions for all the wrong reasons. One that shall remain nameless was a concept play. Clever title, great design, fun. No script to speak of. No heart. Was it an enjoyable evening of theatre? Yes. Was it a good play? Not on your life, despite what the WashPo said.

A week or so ago, I saw a US premiere – a show with a title I can never remember unless I look it up. “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found” by the British writer Fin Kennedy. The play won the Arts Council John Whiting Award for New Theater Writing – the first time in a million years the prize was given for an unproduced play. And I can see why.

It’s not a perfect play. The end of Act One was one of those – is that the end of the play? The end of the act? What just happened? That could be a directing problem. And Act Two couldn’t quite measure up to Act One. But the play got inside my head and has been haunting me since I left the theatre.

It’s a little too close to home: what we all do under stress. Internal monologues about all the angry things we’re thinking and in our fantasies would do to all those damned cherry blossom tourists who jay walk at will (my fantasy, not his). It talks about what the pervasive cellphone culture says about us as a nation. And the scene where the lead character is spinning out of control while pitching to clients reminds me too well of those horrible meet and greets with non-profit folks who hold the purse strings to grants and opportunities.

In other words, it was a play that speaks truth – and a very contemporary truth.

Sometimes I feel as though our work as playwrights is old news, something that happened a while ago as the world passed us by. “How to Disappear” challenges me as a writer to write about what’s troubling me or amusing me or stimulating me RIGHT NOW.

AFTER THE READING: NOW WHAT DO i DO?

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In yesterday’s posting, I made my list of “what I’m listening for” at a staged reading. Now, the question now is what to do with that information.

TAKE A BREATH

I like to let the reading sit for a day or two. It helps to get some distance between myself and the script. If there’s a talkback or a critique, I like to give it more time before I start tearing the script apart. That thinking time helps to organize my thoughts.

SIFTING WHEAT FROM CHAFF

Not all your notes – or someone else’s feedback – are useful. I re-read my notes a couple of times. Some things clearly need fixing. Others I want to think some more about. And then there’s the notes you absolutely think are wrong. I don’t burn the paper. Instead, I put those “wrong” ideas someplace – just in case I want to revisit them six months down the line. There’s always the possibility that they were right after all.

ONE STEP AT A TIME

I try to pick one thing that is a) not too disruptive to the rest of the script if I changed it; or b) not too emotionally vexing to change. Just changing one thing gives me courage to do further surgery.

Next, tackle the notes that make the most sense, even if it DOES mean tearing the script apart. You did save the original copy, didn’t you? You can always go back to it.

MAKE THE CHANGES YOU NEED TO MAKE, THEN…

Step back. Let the script breathe. Perhaps schedule another reading, perhaps share with your writing group. Perhaps get it off in the mail to that playwriting contest. Or stick it in a drawer for a little while. Just remember where you put it.