I live by the Los Angeles River. Until recently, I thought it was a drainage ditch (the sign was missing). It has been cemented in and down the center of the cement slabs runs a stream of water – the river. It bothers me every time I cross the bridge that is built over it. Why? Because sometimes I drive several miles just to see the ocean or a lake because bodies of water have a calming effect and help me when I am writing. With the exception of the drainage ditch otherwise known as the Los Angeles River, I usually come away from the ocean, river, lake, or even fountain refreshed. To think that I am two blocks away from a river that doesn’t look, smell, or flow like a river.
There is a certain expectancy where rivers are concerned – greenery/the presence of nature for one. New life… I have read that this river suffers pollution from agricultural and urban runoff. I have also read that there is talk of removing the concrete to allow the restoration of natural vegetation and wildlife. It’s out of place this river in the city; it’s not allowed to be its natural self.
I feel like that river sometimes – stuck beneath preconceived notions of story and the telling of such – ever fighting runoffs. I am tired of hearing that there are no stories for female actors, no good female writers or no female directors specifically regarding persons of color.
We’re here just under some damn cement; if you look closely you’ll see we’re chipping away at it from the underside…
I am by nature an optimist. I love to laugh and I don’t hold on to grudges. I am sincerely hoping that is the key to my longevity and will compensate for the lack of physical exercise. But as a Playwright and theatrical Director and Producer, I have also had my rose colored glasses ripped off of my face a time or two. I try and see the glass as half full, rather than half empty. But imagine that glass as less than a quarter full. Imagine two equal sized water glasses, one that is 80% full and the second that is only 20% full. Stand them side-by-side and visually take in that image. That will give you a picture of gender parity in American theatre in 2013… or rather the lack thereof.
The Hollywood Fringe Festival is always a good jumping off point for discussions on gender parity in Los Angeles theatre. The number of female participants is usually inflated because of the self-production element, which in all honesty, self-production is something I would encourage any woman with the skills and means, to consider at any time of the year. DIY! That is what motivated my Cofounder Michele Weiss and I, to found The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project, in 2007. I’m a Playwright and I understand the challenges that we face and I wanted to find a way to help more women get their work on to the stage, though all too soon realized that our efforts were only a small step in addressing an overwhelming need.
A playwright tells a story based on their unique perspective, which really does differ between men and women. As female playwrights, of course we can create male characters. And no doubt male playwrights can create female characters. But we’re talking about one simple thing. Truth. I had a cherished mentor and writing instructor who taught me the word, verisimilitude,the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability. He used to say that it was essential that a play possessed verisimilitude.
There is a serious lack of verisimilitude in American theatre, when eighty percent of the plays that are produced are written by and about men. The absence of gender parity is a crisis and has not progressed in the past century; so waiting for it to catch up to the times is not going to happen on its own. Not only are women’s perspectives and voices denied, but also the trickle down effect of this discriminatory practice is insidious and seeps into the pours of how we produce theatre. The dysfunction is reflected in the lack of protagonist and leading roles for actresses. It is reflected in the low percentage of female directors, stage crew and it most certainly impacts the number of stories about women or even stories from a woman’s perspective. When the majority of critics who review plays are male, it slants the reporting, the reviews and even the amount of media coverage and awards that women receive.
Perhaps we’ve been indoctrinated that if we get on our feminist soapboxes and demand equality, we are just being downright rude. Theatre is not just entertainment, it is an ageless reflection of our communities, our culture and our lives. If that reflection has historically lacked gender parity and truth, do we simply acquiesce to the status quo? Or do we find the courage to undertake the mission of creating equality in the art that we value so greatly? As Producers of theatre, we can not be willing to sacrifice verisimilitude or to deny our right to expect it.
“I’m forming a new ad hoc committee in Los Angeles to explore fresh ways to solve the gender parity issue in theatre. Join me on July 20, 1-4 p.m., at the next LA FPI Gathering at Samuel French Bookshop, to learn the details and become part of it.”
Dee Jae Cox is CoFounder and Artistic Director of The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project (www.lawomenstheatreproject.org).
My play—originally called The Rules of Affection—started with a vague idea of a relationship involving an addict. I did a lot of research about addiction, including talking to any kind of addict willing to speak to me. I eventually finished a draft but didn’t feel it was complete enough to do anything with it. So off it went to the back burner as other projects took priority.
A year or two later I went to graduate school at CalArts for playwriting. I was writing even more new projects, exploring different forms of story-telling and meeting new artists, including dozens of wonderful actors. In my final year of school I connected with two actors—we decided we wanted to work on something together. I pulled out my addiction script.
I had been through a major break-up, dated (mostly unsuccessfully) for a couple years, and tackled a few personal dilemmas. I had more perspective and more life under my belt. I also had a new, more appropriate, title for my play about addiction: FleshEatingTiger. I wasn’t just a different human being, I was now a better writer.
The actors and I met regularly. We read at the table, worked on our feet, tried some staging with bare bones props. I re-wrote and re-arranged scenes. I wrote new scenes. We eventually shared the work as a workshop performance for our fellow students. People talked to us about the play. More re-writes, more rehearsals and we took a revised version of the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Then another revision which we performed at the Hollywood Fringe in 2012. Professional reviews, audiences, more feedback from fellow artists.
Early this year we were invited to perform the most recent (and final version) of FleshEatingTiger at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. The script has had even more re-writes, including a new scene or two. We have a terrific new director and an outstanding team of designers. Each member of the team brings more insight and growth to our final script.
It’s been about two and a half years since the very first table read of the first draft. In so many ways, it’s still the same exact story. But it has also changed so much. What we will present June 21st and 22nd is the culmination of months of work combined with time away to process and germinate ideas. We are all very proud of the show and I am happy with where the script has ended up.
It takes collaboration. It takes revision. It takes time.
Saturday, I took the Red Eye home to see my mother. My sisters were not sure what was going on with her – one minute she was fine, the next she was disoriented and feverish. I could hear nurses in the background, uneasiness in my sister’s voice and when I finally got to say hello to my mother she made absolutely no sense at all. By the third call, I was looking online for a cheap flight – with all my almost points, that miraculously expire before I can use them, I was left to the mercy of Priceline and not much choice. So, I flew in for Mother’s Day, surprising my mother who was up and dressed – for a while. By 6:30 pm we were on our way to the hospital where we stayed till about 2 am the next day when we put her in a room. Getting Mother somewhat situated, thankful to the doctors and nurses at Methodist for connecting dots, ruling out, and genuinely caring, I was able to think about keeping the flight plan to return to LA. Before my mother went to her room, she told me I looked like a “thug” with my scarf on my head, my leather jacket and the way I was standing, which made everyone laugh. To that she exclaimed she didn’t know I was so short. More laughter. She was “in” again. She told me to come back later and stay longer.
I got to see nieces and nephews, all my sisters, the new baby and the green of Indiana. Concrete filled Los Angeles seemed like a prison sentence and I was out on parole. Air without exhaust fumes – who knew? The speed limit is 55 mph on the highway, there are about four of them, a few overlap – 465 circles the city. Go either way, you’ll get there eventually. Not a lot of traffic – none if you compare it to the 405.
Spent the night (wee hours of the morning till my flight back to LA on Monday) talking with one of my sisters; got to see her new grandson. Got to have some White Castle burgers, wish I had gotten to go to the (farmers) Market. Sleep deprived, I drove off into the sunlight, promptly missed my exits had to turnaround three times, turned into incoming traffic, had to drive over the center divider because I couldn’t back up. A miracle, I got to the airport on time and safe.
The whole three days of travel, I kept getting “that would make a good play” thoughts in response to something I saw or heard. I had a chore staying present to visit with family while waiting on results of tests for my mother. But, I’m a writer so I am aware of story even when I am preoccupied. Story can be triggered by anything – the visual, sounds, emotions…
My mother always asks me what I am working on. She gets real excited when I say I am researching things. She has every confidence in my gift. My regret is that she wasn’t well enough and there wasn’t enough “in” time for me to read her some poetry.
I found story on my journey, none of which will pass the “b” test but if I, as playwright – because I am female, am not only limited by the male dominated theater-world but also by the female constituency because of the content of my work, who gains? Art should not be held under dictatorship. I have a distinct voice and my stories are universal in scope. I am a playwright, I am of color and I am a woman and I tell damn good stories. I face racism daily – in America – and must shake it off like sand continually. Truth be told, when I send out my work, I don’t think I may not get picked because I am a female, I think “I hope they don’t ask for a picture then they will know I am of color”. I have to decide whether or not to send a play that would be considered too ethnic. I have to say on conference submissions whether or not the characters have to be played by ethnic actors which in some cases can limit or put one out of the running altogether. I count yellow/brown/red faces on theater company rosters to see if my work will even be looked at in the first place. I had an actress read a page from one of my works who was shocked when I told her I wrote it for a blond-haired blue-eyed woman, just like her. She liked the universal story but had assumed the character was written as a woman of color because I am a woman of color.
I want to tell my stories as I find them, how I hear and see them and be able to take them straight through to the next level based on their substance and craft, not my lack of a dick and my failing of the “b” test no matter how many times I take it.
As a habit, I write through the night, so in a sense, I am always riding the Red Eye…
LA FPI Blogger Analyn Revilla has been a blogger since day one. As Thinker/Sage/Truth-seeker, Analyn delves with surgical precision into the heart of inner thoughts and lays bare the road to living and growing in a writer’s voice.
How I became a playwright is through a writing class I took with Al Watt back in 2007. I wasn’t working, and he offered a free session at the library. I enjoyed and got a lot of value from that introductory class so I joined his writing group. The small group of writers had to submit a sample of their work, and the following class he announced to the group, “We have a playwright!” That moment is akin to a newly adopted dog from a shelter, and being renamed by the new owners. The event is like being given a new identity. “You are no longer ‘Codi’. Your name is Goliath!’. (These are both true stories. I just adopted a puppy and renamed her Goliath.)
I came to the theater by a serendipitous route. I was working at a café on San Vincente and Hauser, and the title of the story was “The Unimagined Life”. I sat at table by the window and looked across the long stretch across San Vincente to big letters spelling “Imagined Life”. Weird. I walked across and knocked on the door. A woman answered, and I asked what the place was about. She called to another person, and the next woman that came to see me was my writing mentor’s wife. Yes, it was Al Watt’s wife, and I recognized her, but she didn’t know me. She said the Imagined Life is an acting studio, and she teaches young children about creativity. I’m a big believer in signs and so I decided that this is a path I need to explore.
My favourite play of mine is a short one that is set in a salon (or “beauty parlor”). It’s a place where tongues tend to get loose, because customers are vulnerable and exposed while they are being worked on. It’s therapy at many levels when someone is analyzing your hairstyle and the health of your hair. Our heads are our crowning glory, and we’re so open to ideas or sometimes we get encrusted in our ideas of who we think we should be. I have so much trust in my hair “caretaker”, and we’ve become friends over the years, and shared so much about ourselves.
The play that has moved me the most was watching the CTG’s production of “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. The acting, the set, the time of day, the story… I was moved through and through and cried my eyes out.
That answer segways to my favourite playwright who is Samuel Beckett. I wish I could’ve lived his passion and romanticism through and through. He took risks in his own life, and the nature of his personality lives in his plays. There’s also the dark side of his ideas, which I say dark, but not ominous by nature, but fullness. Life is light and dark, and the shadows are the meanings between the lines. I like his ideas and how he enlivened them.
My writing has evolved in its depth. I think I write more succinctly and directly now. Maybe that’s what comes with experience of life. I feel like I want to say more with less. Sometimes not saying anything at all conveys so much more.
I’m only working on one play and it is drama and avan-garde, maybe even experimental.
I like poetry. I was a poet first before being a playwright. I like journaling too, though to some people they think it isn’t really writing. Both forms are important I think, because it’s exploring inwards and outwards.
I became a blogger for LAFPI, because (laugh…) I was one of the first people to volunteer. (Thank goodness they allowed me to do it.) I had been writing and blogging for other groups before, and when those opportunities dried up, the LAFPI came along to save me.
Favourite blog posting? That’s a toughie. There’s a lot of good ones out there.
Amy Goodman is one of the influences in my writing, because the type of news reporting she does for DemocracyNow! is about issues that we don’t see in normal channels. I appreciate the deep investigative and responsible reporting that organization does. I read their news daily, and I also donate to the organization because I think it’s important to support advertisement/corporation funding-free sources of information.
I found my voice as a writer while working with LAFPI and also working at the Imagine Life studio. And yes, I am still honing the sound and tone of my writer’s voice.
I don’t have a writing regiment, and the little I have are stolen moments which bugs me so much… It really eats at the inside of me, and it hurts.
I decide to write by what I’m thinking and feeling…. Something that gnaws at me is a sign that I need to explore this.
Craft is important to me, if I understand the question correctly… craft is a skill that shows that the writer cares about the work, and gives soul and a head of responsibility to the work. When I think responsibility, I think the ability to respond to what the work is asking of me and the audience. Is it moving the situation forward or sending us back to non-evolution, non-communication, non-understanding i.e. less compassion and empathy towards others.
The theater community in LA is thriving, because there are a lot of hands and feet keeping it going by volunteers – people who care.
I battle the negative voice by drinking wine.
The theme that comes back to me a lot in my work is the first line of the song “Alfie” by Burt Bacharach… “What’s it all about? Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?…” So on.
I’m just finishing answering the questions to our anniversary blog, and I’m going to work on Original Sin again, workshopping it this time around.
Analyn is a new playwright, and she is currently working on her first play, “Original Sin”. This play has been in the works for two years, though it had its first public reading in April 2010. Like “Alice” in Lewis Carroll book, she gets deeper into the rabbit hole of the story and emerges from the burrows with a wealth of subtexts about her humanity and the characters in her story. Analyn imagines a life of living fully in the theater, but for now she supports her imagined life with a career in Information Technology. She believes our humanity lives in our imagined life and contributes by actively supporting LAFPI and in writing, imagining and writing some more.
I think we are all born to tell stories and to listen to them. Leslie Marmon Silko says “I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. They are all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have stories.”
LA FPI Blogger Diane Grant, has been blogging since 2010 – the beginning. Diane’s thorough research of subject matter makes her work not only entertaining but educational as well.
1. How did you become a playwright?
As I child, I learned to love stories. My father was a wonderful storyteller who could take the ordinary events of family and of daily life and spin them into something that always made us laugh. My Aunt, my dad’s sister, also told stories. She was the National Secretary of the Women’s Temperance Union in Canada and would travel from town to town with her felt board, speaking and reciting. I was very impressed.
When I was in middle school and I can still remember being mesmerized by hearing a performance of The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Our school auditorium was full of rowdy students when suddenly a man dressed all in black appeared on the stage and began….
“The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas….”
It’s hard to imagine now but that auditorium was utterly quiet until he came to the end. I thought, “Oh, I want to write something like that.”
I’m a Canadian from Vancouver, British Columbia, and my desire to write was reinforced every time my mother, grandmother and I would go to Theatre Under theStars, an outdoor musical theatre in Vancouver’s gorgeous Stanley Park, where the singers had to compete with the seals barking and the peacocks screeching. Magic!
2. What is your favorite play of yours?
I just did a performance of my one act comedy, Rondo a la Condo, with The Kentwood Players, which remains my favorite play. I don’t know why, except that I’m crazy about the characters, who are all trying to find a little peace and quiet but who keep each other on high alert much of the time.
3. I loved a production of another short play of mine, called Sex and Violence. It’s a difficult play to do because the comedy is dark. The protagonist has grown slightly mad and his wife, who despises him, has to be played as a cold, ambitious woman, indifferent to his pain. This production captured all of that and got all the laughs that were there, too.
4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?
One of the plays that most moved me was The Glass Menagerie, which I grew to know well because I played Amanda Wingfield in two different productions. I hate productions of it in which Amanda is played as a self centered shrew. Her story is so contemporary. She’s a single mother, abandoned by her children’s father. She makes terrible mistakes but she loves her children and tries to keep everything afloat in a time of depression. Her son also deserts her and his sister, and his guilt is at the heart of the play. And the language is superb.
5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?
I have a few favorites. Right up there is Shakespeare with his wit and insight and gorgeous language. It’s amazing that so many of his words and thoughts are still part of our lives. I wonder how many books there are with titles taken from his plays. Tom Stoppard’s sophistication and crisp language is thrilling. (I keep looking for revivals of Arcadia. Saw a very moving production at Vox Humana a few years ago.) Ann Jellicoe was an early influence. I admire her immediacy, sense of place and culture, her zest for life. She also plays with style and is not afraid to work outside a conventional framework. Shelley or The Idealist is one of my favorite plays.
6. How has your writing changed over the years?
I’ve learned to cut, cut, cut. I still overwrite and am fortunate to have a husband who is a fine editor and who spots every comment on a situation, every repetition. I’ve also learned to enjoy rewriting. And rewriting.
7. What type of plays do you write?
Although I’ve written plays with political themes and dramas, generally speaking I write comedies. I like to call them “profound comedies.” And I don’t know if I’m joking about that. I don’t start out to write in any style. Comedies are just what happens. I often use music, too, and like the way it enlivens the proceedings.
What also influenced my style was working in a company that built new plays from research, documentary material, and improvisation. We’d write as we sat on the stage, put the pages on their feet and go.
8. Do you write in any other literary forms?
I write poetry on occasion. I’ve used poems in my plays but have usually turned them into songs. My husband and I used to write screenplays, which involved a lot of walking around the block.
9. Why did you become a blogger for the lafpi?
The fab trio, Jennie Webb, Ella Martin, and Laura Shamas asked me to become part of the lafpi and I was absolutely delighted. Women are still not adequately presented and represented in the theatre and we need to raise our voices. I don’t know if I volunteered or was drafted to blog.
10. What is your favorite blog posting?
Catching Up, which is about my fellow bloggers. The bloggers’ voices are so diverse and wide ranging. I like getting to know their different worlds and approaches to writing and life.
11. Who do consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And why?
My first mentor, George Luscombe, the Artistic Director of Toronto Workshop Productions, encouraged me to write.
12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?
I think I found it early on but couldn’t describe it. I’ve been criticized for being too implicit but I like nuance, subtext, and irony, and have been writing like that for a long time.
13. Do you have a writing regimen? Can you discuss your process?
I used to write every day and kept a daily journal but have found that the business of marketing has intruded something fierce and I write more sporadically. I just read a quote from Bertolt Brecht that says, “It’s not the play but the performance that is the real purpose of all one’s efforts,” but he doesn’t say tell you how you get to the latter.
14. How do you decide what to write?
I don’t think about it consciously. When I have made a conscious decision, it has often been the wrong one. I tried for over a year to write about the friendship between Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein before I realized that I’d never be able to make it work.
15. How important is craft to you?
It’s key for me. Searching for conflict, clarity, a character to root for, a beginning, middle, and end are what I look for when I rewrite.
16. What other areas of the theater do you participate in?
I’m an actress. At one of the lafpi meetings at Theatricum, I got to stand on the Theatricum stage and thought I’d die from joy.
17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?
I’ve seen some great plays and some rotten ones but there is always something going on that’s interesting. The Black Dahlia’s production of The Last Days of JudasIscariot was out of this world and I still think of a number of plays I saw at the Odyssey, Tracers, to name one, with real pleasure.
18. How do you battle the negative voice?
The negative voice is my default position, so I deep breathe and walk a lot. It’s thematic in my life, walking.
19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?
I realized recently that I write a lot about betrayal and abandonment. But I also write about love, and betrayal and abandonment are part of that.
20. I have three rewrites that I’d like to settle down and work on. When those are finished, I hope that an idea will immediately attack and start the words flowing again.
Diane Grant is an award winning playwright and screenwriter, whose film Too Much Oregano won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize.
She was a co-founder of Redlight Theatre, the first professional women’s theatre in Canada. Her plays, which have been produced and published in the US and Canada, include Nellie!How The Women Won The Vote,Sunday Dinner, Sex and Violence, The Piaggi Suite, Four Women In Search Of A Character,Rondo a la Condo, A Dog’s Life; and The Last Of The Daytons, a semi-finalist for the 2007 National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Will To Win, a documentary on the Southern California Shakespeare Festival, written by Ms. Grant, and produced by filmmaker Kerry Feltham, previewed in Los Angeles and the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2007 and is recommended by the Royal Shakespeare Company of London.
Ms. Grant has performed at the Stratford Festival and the National Arts Centre of Canada. She was Literary Manager of the Los Angeles Write Act Repertory Company, a mentor for the young playwrights’ group HOLA, and a member of Los Angeles’ Wordsmiths. She’s a member of the Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Guild of Canada, the International Center for Women Playwrights, and is Vice-Chair of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights.
LA FPI Blogger Kitty Felde joined the blog team in 2010 during our first year. A generous artist who shares her many talents on and off the page, Kitty’s is a voice to hear; she’s fearless.
1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater? I’d always loved to perform. In fact, I was an actor for about ten years – mostly commercials, but also a Woody Allen film (Radio Days), an equity show at SCR, and tons of commercials (including Skippy Peanut Butter with Annette Funicello).
I’d written a revision of a Jean Claude Van Itallie one-act in college, but that was about it, as far as playwriting. Until I had a day job that bored me out of my mind. I had a quiet office and a keyboard at my disposal. I wrote my first play – a melodrama called “Shanghai Heart” that the LA Times favorably reviewed. I haven’t stopped writing plays.
2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why? My NEW favorite is an unproduced piece for young adults that no one may ever produce since it has a character in blackface. It’s “The Luckiest Girl” – the story of a ten year old African-American girl who moves to Holland with her grandmother, a lawyer at the war crimes trials. Tahira’s homesick and latches on to the Dutch holiday tradition of Sinterklaas – and his politically incorrect sidekick Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete. Her grandmother – as you can imagine – is horrified.
3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why? I think the premiere of “A Patch of Earth”, my Bosnian war crimes courtroom drama. The Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo flew me upstate in glorious fall, put on a terrific production, even gave me the Maxim Mazumdar Award. The play’s been produced worldwide since then, but I remember that production best.
I also loved “Gogol Project” – a truly collaborative adaptation brought to life by the talented Rogue Artists Ensemble. They make magic on stage with puppets and masks. I think I wrote 14 drafts for them.
4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why? I saw Bill Cain’s “How to Write a New Book for the Bible” at South Coast Rep a few months ago and wept buckets and buckets. It isn’t a perfect play – certainly needs a trim – but I connected on a personal level, having lost my own mother several years ago.
5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why? These days, it’s Enda Walsh, Bill Cain, and Ellen Struve.
6. How has your writing changed over the years? I think I’ve gotten braver, more personal in my writing. Being glib is easy for me. It’s digging deep that’s tough.
7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)What draws you to it? I’ve written a musical comedy, a melodrama, a radio play, a courtroom drama, a one woman show, a play for young adults, ten minute pieces, you name it! It’s the story and characters that draw me in.
8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting? I’m a public radio journalist by day. Sometimes, the stories I cover inspire a theatrical piece. More often, it wears me out so the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit down at the keyboard again.
9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI? I support the work of LAFPI! Particularly when you can count on one hand the number of productions a theatre has produced by women playwrights. It’s a wonderfully supportive group! And as an ex-patriot Angeleno, it keeps me in touch with my LA community.
10. What is your favorite blog posting? The one about how to best use feedback from a staged reading.
11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why? My mother, a teacher, who encouraged and nagged me and offered to loan me the $2 thousand that I spent on my very first computer if I ever needed it. My high school English teacher for four years, Sister Judith Royer, who now heads the theatre department at Loyola Marymount University. And Jean Giraudoux, the French playwright, who saw magic in everyday life and dared to write about it on stage. I was in 3 of his plays in high school, wrote a paper about him for English class, then acted in another of his plays in college, directed by the professor – Robert Cohen – who wrote the book on Giraudoux!
12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it? I’ve always written like I talk. And when I go back and blush as I read romantic short stories from my early school days, I can still hear that same voice.
13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process? This is the hardest thing for me: finding a structure to write. My day job consumes me. Theoretically, because I’m on the east coast, I have an extra three hours in the morning before the folks in the Pasadena office are aware of me. That’s when I SHOULD be writing. But the reality is, I need tea – lots of it. And I drink it while reading the paper and tweeting and clearing the emails. Then it’s a mad dash to cover stories.
So, I’ve decided the best time for me to call my own is at dusk. My brain is clear (hopefully) of the debri of the day. I can escape to a desk down the hall – or to the stairwell steps around the corner – and breathe. And think. And write. I usually start with a freewrite – not the three pages advised by “The Artist’s Way” – but as much as I need to slough off the issues of the day to clear space in my head. I’ll return to it when I’m stuck, just to brainstorm with myself, trying out ideas. I’ve also created a new file for myself while I write: leftovers. This is where I’ll put lines of dialogue – or entire scenes – cut from my play. It’s somehow comforting to know it isn’t lost forever, that I can go back and retrieve it if I need it. Sometimes I do. But usually I don’t. (Maybe someday I’ll write a play just with these leftovers!)
When I have a draft I can stand to hear out loud, I like to schedule an informal reading. It’s usually in my living room with lots of wine for me and the actors. A more formal reading by a company or a festival is the next step, with lots of rewriting in between. Then, if the stars are in order, a full production.
14. How do you decide what to write? It’s either a story that won’t leave me alone (like the war crimes play “A Patch of Earth”) or something that’s been bugging me (like “Clybourne Park” which I thought got desegregation all wrong and it led to my ten minute play “The Flier”) or characters that I’d like to spend some time with (my current project, a romantic comedy set on Capitol Hill).
15. How important is craft to you? Very. I try to learn from other writers – how did they do that? Why does that work? What doesn’t? I find writers groups enormously helpful – hearing other plays in progress, figuring out how to make them sing.
16. What other areas of theater do you participant in? I’m a Helen Hayes judge here in DC. That’s the local version of the Tonys. I see about 3-4 plays a month. And I think if I left my day job, I’d work in a costume shop. I LOVE to sew and create clothing!
17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles? It’s interesting to contrast with DC: both are STRONG communities. Both have larger theatres that snub local playwrights. Both have a strong group of smaller theatres reaching out to local talent. I miss my LA writing group at Ensemble Studio Theatre. And I miss ALAP (Association of LA Playwrights). And there’s no LAFPI in DC!
18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing) I have a weekly Skype appointment with a wonderful Omaha playwright I met a few years ago at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Ellen Struve and I spend an hour every Wednesday night, sharing pages, talking about plays we’ve seen or read, and sharing the insecurities we all feel as writers. She gives me courage to face blank pages for another week.
19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work? Justice. And that nagging question of why neighbor turns against neighbor, almost overnight.
20. What are you working on now? It’s a five person comedy set on Capitol Hill – a modern version of “Pride and Prejudice” called “Statuary Hall.”
By day, she’s a public radio reporter covering Capitol Hill. But in her real life, Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright.
Felde’s written everything from a courtroom drama about the Bosnian war (A PATCH OF EARTH, winner of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition) to a one woman show about Alice Roosevelt Longworth (ALICE, winner of the Open Book/Fireside Theatre Playwriting Competition) to an adaptation of a trio of short stories by Nikolai Gogol (GOGOL PROJECT, winner of the 2009 LA Drama Critics Circle Award.)
Her one-act TOP OF THE HOUR has been chosen for the Provincetown Theater’s Fall Festival for a reading and will premiere in New York City in December.
She’s a co-founder of Theatre of Note, a Helen Hayes judge in Washington, DC, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, ALAP, and FPI.
LA FPI Blogger Tiffany Antone is one of the six bloggers to kick off the LA FPI Blog back in 2010. Direct, bold and innovative, Tiffany not only creates with words on the page; she creates venues for art to happen.
1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater? I grew up an actress – I was always auditioning, performing, and staying in the theatre till the last possible second. I moved to LA in 1998 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts… but I wasn’t the most amazing actress ever, and I hated auditioning. I decided to apply to UCLA in pursuit of my Bachelor’s Degree. I took a playwriting class in my first year and fell in LOVE. I had always written, but this was the first time I had written a play – it felt like exactly what I should be doing.
2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why? My favorite self-penned play is Ana and the Closet. The play is incredibly fantastical and (I think) poetic. I’ve been fortunate enough to see several readings of the play (including an AMAZING reading at the Kennedy Center), but it hasn’t yet been produced. I think it’s to do with the fact that there are a number of “theatrical” moments in the play requesting multimedia projections, flying people, and a black river that writhes on stage beneath a crumbling ledge… (I know, I know… I’m not asking for much, am I?) But even though it’s a wild show, it has it’s heart a very moving story about traversing the abyss of deep loss. I look forward to the day a director envisions bringing these moments to life with Bunraku artists in charge of the magic… Theatre is nothing if not inventive.
4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why? Argh! I hate these types of questions because they limit the field so narrowly… Okay, I’l pick three – how about that? Three of my favorite plays are: Sarah Ruhl’s Euridice (HOLY COW – the lyrical nature of the script and the you-would-think-impossibly-contradictory-succinctness, the fantastic staging… oh, I was in love with the first read!), Anything by Albee or O’Neill (the men are story genies!), and I’m going to list two final plays in tandem because I LOVE how they are – in principle – both family dramas, and yet each ignite into something much more perverse, combustible, and ultimately delightful on stage: August Osage County by Tracy Letts, and The Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris.
Yeah, yeah… I know – that was way more than three (sigh) but I tried!
5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why? Can’t pick just one… just can’t! But top honors on my bookshelf go to Martin McDonough, Sarah Ruhl, David Lindsay-Abaire, Suzan Lori Parks, and of course the great Albee, Shephard, O’Neill & Williams.
7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it? This is always a hard question for me to answer, because I don’t just work in one medium or style. I have written fantastical plays, “sci-fi” plays, and kitchen-sink dramas, and – I’m currently working on my first absurdist piece. The thing that draws me to write is the world, and the “how” of its writing is dependent on the story I’m trying to tell. My only “rule” when it comes to drafting a script is does it pass the “Who gives a shit?” test. If I have an idea and I ask myself (honestly) “Who is going to give a shit about this play/screenplay?” and the answer is “Probably nobody” then I don’t waste my time developing it – I just scribble the idea down in my little notebook and turn the page. That way, I’m not cluttering my calendar with brutal work on material that would probably be better off written as a poem that will sit in the back of my desk drawer – because if I’m the only audience for something, it’s probably not going to be a very good play. If I feel an audience exists for the story in my head/heart, then I set to figuring out it’s mood, style, and shape and start writing.
8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting? I am also a screenwriter, which terrified me when I first sat to developing the skill-set for it. I think working in both mediums makes me a better assessor of story, and enables me to create/inhabit very different worlds. And if I ever sell a screenplay, I’ll be a much happier playwright 🙂
9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI? I jumped on board because there are so many layers to gender parity in theater – why not start delving into/and/writing about them? I love the sense of togetherness LAFPI supports!
13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process? Snacks. I have to have snacks in every nook of my desk. I also have to be careful with my “other” life, meaning Tiffany Who Pays the Bills must not work so much that Tiffany Who Writes gets buried in exhaustion.
16. What other areas of theater do you participant in? I find myself doing a lot of producing lately, and teaching acting/production/writing. It’s good to be comfortable in all of these areas (especially since some of them actually PAY a girl), and I’ll probably continue to work in these areas as they provide a different brand of satisfaction – that of realization (vs. the incompleteness of a play un-produced). Writing is definitely my “Ahhhh” place, but I don’t think I’ll ever be of a mind to stop my other theatrical endeavors… I like wearing more than one theatre hat.
Tiffany is proud to have received her MFA in Playwriting from UCLA’s prestigious school of Theater, Film, and Television, where she also completed her BA in Theater. She also holds her A.A in acting from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Tiffany was a 2008 Hawthornden Fellow, which included a writing residency in Scotland, and a 2009 Sherwood Award Finalist with Center Theatre Group. Tiffany has received the Tim Robbins Award for plays of social importance, James Pendelton Foundation Prize, Hal Kanter Award in Comedy Writing, Dini Ostrov Stage Spirit Award in Playwriting, the Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Scholarship, and the Florence Theil Herrscher Award.
Her plays have been read and/or performed in Los Angeles, New York, D.C. and Minneapolis. Her plays Twigs and Bone and Ana and the Closet were both Jerome Finalists and O’Neil semi-finalists for 2009 and 2010. Ana and the Closet was also presented at The Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival in 2009. Her play In the Company of Jane Doe was a Princess Grace semi-finalist in 2006, a winner of the New Plays on Campus series with The Playwrights’ Center, and winner of the 2008 New Works for Young Women contest with the University of Tulsa. In the Company of Jane Doe premiered in January 2010 at The Powerhouse Theatre (LA Theatre Ensemble). Tiffany’s play The Good Book was a winner of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway play festival and is available through Samuel French publishing.
Other plays include The Low Tide Gang, Ham Brown’s House (Princess Grace Semi-Finalist, 2008), Little Phoenix, Stalled, My Pet George, and From the Rubble. Screenplays include The Sisters Roberts and A Disappearing Woman (Golden Brad Finalist 2009).
LA FPI Blogger Cynthia Wands has been blogging since 2010. Her use of visual art teamed with her intense depth as a writer is phenomenal.
1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?
I was a working actress for several years in San Francisco and Boston. As a child I loved going to see plays (a rare opportunity as my father was in the military and we moved frequently). I remember seeing the Scottish play when I was in junior high school in Northern Maine and it blew my mind.
2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why?
I used to think that Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” was one of my favorite plays, until I had to play Titania in a run for over 100 performances. I would be okay never seeing that play again. Now I tend to remember Christopher Fry’s “The Lady’s Not Burning” as a favorite, but I haven’t seen it in years – so it might be another old chestnut.
3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?
I had a reading of my script “The Lost Years” at the Dramatist Guild Footlight Series in Los Angeles that was really wonderful – the cast was very special.
4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?
I remember sobbing at “Rabbit Hole” because of the subject matter and the performances. It really gutted me.
5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?
I like Wendy Wasserstein, and Tina Howe, but I find them dated, in my own conveyor belt of time. I also like Mary Zimmerman, but some of her writing feels thin and watery. Maybe it was the rain onstage.
6. How has your writing changed over the years?
I’m trying to stay away from the easy laughs.
7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?
I write comedies that have a lot of drama in them.
8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?
I’ve written screenplays, and two novels. They’ve informed my character research, although I have to say that my acting life informs a lot of my approach to conflict within a character’s reach.
9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?
I read a few of the blogs on the LA FPI page and thought “Wow, these women are so honest about their writing and what they live with. I wish I could do that.” So I did.
10. What is your favorite blog posting?
There was a recent blog on the LA FPI from a writer who wrote that she had a planned her blog to be about being the most unsuccessful playwright ever, and just in the past few days, she had a playwrighting opportunity and that changed her. I loved reading that.
11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?
My influences are a crazy quilt of what entertains me: Old roadrunner cartoons, Emily Dickinson, Jessica Tandy, performance art and my husband’s gothic glass art. The images and voices inform me of my own searching.
12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?
I ‘m still searching for my voice as a writer. Sometimes I sound like my twin sister. Sometimes I sound like a sitcom writer. And other times I can hear my own voice.
13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?
I woke up at 3:30am this morning and wrote for two hours and then went back to bed. Usually I like to write late at night. But I haven’t had the 3:30am call to write before. I got enough down on paper that it was worth it. Although I may feel differently by 3:30pm this afternoon.
14. How do you decide what to write?
My subjects seem to find me. Or chase me until I write about them. (Now apparently they find me at 3:30 in the morning…)
15. How important is craft to you?
That’s an odd question for me – that’s like asking an actor or director how important is craft for them? If they’re (we’re) not skilled enough to create a magical event, then it’s really not the theatre I want to help create. So I feel craft is what we use to create theatre – so I think it’s very important.
16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?
I will sometimes read scripts as an actor for other playwrights, but that’s the extent of my participation.
17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?
I’m not really as engaged as I would like to be in the Los Angeles theatre community. I have a lot of family issues on my plate and it’s a challenge to participate. And frankly, because I haven’t been “produced” in Los Angeles I feel like I don’t quite belong here.
18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)
I have an ongoing battle with my back biting voices. They can stall my work and create a kind of paralysis. The only thing that seems to work for me is to belong to different writing groups and be accountable for showing up with pages.
19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?
I seem to write a lot about the duality of the human/mystic experience. It’s hard to cram a lot of jokes in that one.
20. What are you working on now?
I’ve been working on a “new” script for the past year. I’m in rewrites and it feels like I’m trying to rebuild one of those Christmas gingerbread houses (oh no the marshmellows are melting all over the gumdrops). Okay, so that was not the best image for this script. (Again, my problem with going for the cheap joke.) But it’s probably time for a coffee and aspirin!
I am looking to create language based plays which explore the mystic and historic elements of our consciousness.
I worked for many years as a stage actress in San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and had the opportunity to work with some extraordinary theatre artists. My work included plays produced at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco Rep, Celebration Theatre, and the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival. I have also had the opportunity to read as an actor for new works for the Theatre Series on KCRW (The House In The City), and independent play readings at the Coast Playhouse (The Crimson Thread), Burbage Theatre (Pearls & Marlowe), and the Marin Playwright’s Festival (Sarah Bernhardt).
My exposure to the plays and playwrights gave me an appreciation for magical realism, and my writing explores the connection between the natural and unknown.
My theatre writing has been informed by studying with Dakota Powell at UCLA and also with Murray Mednick at the Padua Playwrights Workshop. I have also studied playwright classes with Leon Martell at UCLA, and studied with Jack Grapes in his Method Writing classes.
I have developed scripts at the Ohio State University retreat for playwrights with the ICWP (International Center fro Women’s Playwrights). The Dramatist Guild has hosted a reading of “The Lost Years” in November 2007 for Footlight Series in Los Angeles.
I am a member of The Dramatist Guild, ALAP (Alliance for Los Angeles Playwrights), LAFPI (Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative) and ICWP (International Centre for Women Playwrights). My theatre works include: Best Fest Forward, The Lost Years, Emily, and The American Woman. Screenplays include: Whitley Heights, The Wedding Ring, and The White Datura.
I am the author of two novels, Gift of Afternoon Light, and Improbable Fiction. My short stories have been published in Mo+h Magazine and Bombshelter Press.
LA FPI Blogger Jen Huszcza has been blogging with us since 2010. Her dry humor and wit is a gift we like opening again and again and again.
I just finished up my blog week, so this makes me feel so self-indulgent.
How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?
It was all a big mistake actually. I should be a screenwriter with a house in the hills and a BMW. I studied screenwriting in college but jumped over to playwriting because the playwrights were cooler than the screenwriters.
What is your favorite play of yours? Why?
My favorite play is always the play I finished most recently. My most recent play is a short play called Rebec, CA, and it brings a smile to my face. I smashed a smartphone in that one. I also recently wrote a longer play called Bury That Horse, and it’s about kicking and kissing.
What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?
My favorite production is my first production of my first play, Viper, back at NYU. That was the play that opened it all up for me. It was done in the Dramatic Writing Festival of New Works, and it had an outstanding director, cast, crew. It was beautiful both in process and result.
By the way, shout out to Gary Garrison who produced the New Works Festival back then. He did an outstanding job of surrounding my play with great people.
What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?
Back in the 90s, I saw Letters from Cuba by Maria Irene Fornes at the Signature Theatre in New York and was crying like a baby at the end because it was so beautiful. Fornes also directed the production.
Who is your favorite playwright? Why?
This is a hard one. I have a core team of playwrights that I love. If I get stuck when I’m writing, I call the team—I’m speaking metaphorically since most of my team is dead.
How has your writing changed over the years?
My plays have become less expensive to produce.
What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?
Crazy, sexy, cool plays. I love physicality. I love writing plays set outside. I love comedy, but I don’t set out to write comedy. I believe experimentation should be done in playwriting. Otherwise, what’s the point? I write women, men, animals. I’ve even gone into vegetables a few times, but they’re hard.
Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?
Yes, I have written long form prose, novels, screenplays, musicals, blogs, essays, short stories. Long form prose & novels: big canvases, I’m comfortable with the epic. Screenplays: condense. Musicals: respect for the lyrical, comfort with the drama in music, impatience with over-sentimentality. Blogs & essays: cohesive thought, what do I want to say. Short stories: character depth.
Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?
It seemed like a fun thing to do.
What is your favorite blog posting?
Back in January 2012, I wrote about the Kobayashi Maru Scenario.
Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?
I don’t have a writing regiment, but I do have a reading regiment. I read daily.
How important is craft to you?
I used to think craft was not important, then I read play submissions for a variety of theatre companies. Yikes. I can be experimental, but I have a grounding in craft. Writing is no different from anything else. If you want to crochet a scarf, you need to learn the stitches. If you want to paint, you need to learn line and color. Craft is the basics. I also have found that craft comes in handy when you’re developing scripts with actors and directors.
What other areas of theater do you participant in?
I’ve worked box office for a variety of theatres. Trust me, box office is not a cushy job.
How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?
Great acting pool.
Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?
I have a bag of tricks. There are things I go back to again and again, but I don’t reflect a lot on recurring themes or ideas. Maybe when I’m older, I’ll look back, but I’m not in a looking back stage right now.
What are you working on now?
I am writing a play for an actor friend of mine. It has death and kissing. That’s really all I can say. I’m in the middle of it.
Jen Huszcza is a playwright currently based in Los Angeles.
She has a BFA in Dramatic Writing and an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU. After graduating from college, she stayed in New York and worked a variety of day jobs including video librarian and study guide writer. She eventually moved to Los Angeles for better weather and more trees.
Out in Los Angeles, three of her plays have been presented as staged readings in the Monday Night Living Room Series at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood. Also at the Blank, she was an Associate Producer on Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, and she was a Weekly Producer and Playwright Mentor for the Young Playwrights Festival.
She wrote and acted in Gunfighter Nation’s collectively written piece, LA History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, presented at the Lost Studio.
She is a script reader for a variety of theatre companies. She is a member of the Playwrights and Directors Lab at the Actors Studio West.
In addition to plays, she has written ad copy, film reviews, blogs, bad poetry, screenplays, a novel, and several short stories.
She has heard numerous pronunciations of her last name, but the one she prefers is Hooo-zhah.
