All posts by Robin Byrd

Writing About Death…

LAFPI, Playwright, playwriting, , , , , , , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

Death, spirits, the ghosts of memory, these are the things that turn up in my plays.  I used to think that I was weird, not that weird is a negative word to me.  I am peculiar and I am okay with that.  In Proof by David Auburn, Catherine states while talking about her dad, “He’d attack a question from the side, from some weird angle, sneak up on it, grind away at it.”  I love that sentence, it’s all we can do in our world of doing art – attack from our perspective and grind away…

I have been reading The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat. What I mean is I have read it several times 4 and a half times to be exact.  I am working out the processing of my mother’s death.  She left this earth in April of this year.  It has been difficult to write it yet write it I have – to request to drop classes I was in at the time of her death, classes I have had to repeat and get past the point of her death in each of them. One, I made it through, weary but victorious, the other, I am still weathering.  It is amazing the depth of grief.  I read somewhere that grief causes forgetfulness, that and the lack of sleep…   Except I know the forgetfulness of sleepless nights well and this thing – it is scary and it is a demon whose head I am chopping off with a twice dull blade.  I will be rid of it.  I have found comfort in the stories that Danticat shares in The Art of Death; at one point, she asks her mother, “Did you rage enough?” this in response to Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”:

“…Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” by Dylan Thomas

Similarly, before the thin veil of denial left me, before I bought the ticket and made the journey home, I spoke to my mother’s spirit, “Mommy, do not go gentle into that good night wait for me, I’m coming home…”  And, I watched her fight until the end unsure of the road…  She almost died 3 days before, we sat in the nursing home around her bed for hours but she would not leave.  She wanted a reprise.  She wanted to be bathed… Almost like a baptismal service, two young nurses, bathed my mother from head to toe in preparation for the day.  She lay there knowing it would be her last bath with breath in her body, resolved to meet the day…clean….  Clean from the blood that had begun to seep from her body in clots of pain, clean from the last of things no one can carry with them into the presence of God. I took to sitting through the night with her, on guard.  I did not want her to die alone.  I blessed the room and sealed it (in the name of Jesus) from anything that was not like God…so she could rest in peace until that appointed time. I had asked God to let me be there and had traveled from Los Angeles on a ‘red eye’ to make sure I was there the entire month of April.  I asked Him, rather demanded that He let me be there, “I want to see her when she leaves, not in a dream, like with Dad, and the others, I want to see her!  I must be there, it will not be alright if I am not there.  I do not want to get that call.”  So, there I was by the grace of God, sitting beside my mother’s deathbed…taking notes in my spirit… and then it happened, and God let me see:

I saw her when she left, the lift off, her eyes shown like glassy circles of pure glee, the hologram of her Self barely visible but not her smile, it was wide and happy because she knew I saw…my mother, my mother – the wind of God…

I wrote and read a poem on behalf of my mother at her funeral titled, “Getting it Right” – the thing my mother had on her mind the last days of her life.  I had sat by her bed every day from April 1st till she passed at the end of the month, 2 days before her 83rd birthday.  She continually told me to “Pay attention Robbie, you’re going to have to write about this…  We got to get this right.”  How could I fail?  “A mother’s song should be heard in the voices of her children”…it should never be lost to time.  I found her song in the space where breath had left her and became her voice for a time…  I could feel her there with me… adlibbing…

Part of getting it right is forgiving and letting things go.  We all must do it…

It is difficult…these days… not because I do not know that my mother is with Christ…

“…We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with Christ.” Paul the Apostle, II Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 8

It is difficult because the moments have germinated and taken root and are sprouting trees so tall it is hard to see the sky.  It is renewing and stripping but best of all, I did not lose on the moments that the last of things said to me by my mother set in stone her confidence in who I am – a Writer…

 

The Stories In My Head…

LAFPI, Play, Playwright, ,

by Robin Byrd

“Trying to teach my hands to do what I hear in my head” John Hartford, fiddler

Every year I try to work on a new play or writing project and part of that entails finding different ways to tell the story.  I have all these stories in my head that I want to tell and at times I feel like John Hartford, that I must teach myself a new way into the story before I can get what’s in my head out.  The last few years, I have noticed that even when I hear “first words,” I must still wait until the structure is revealed to me as well.  At other times, I must prevent myself from overriding what seems to be outside the realm of textbook playwriting – more theatrical than normal for me.

David Henry Hwang states in his author’s note in M. BUTTERFLY, “Before I can begin writing, I must ‘break the back of the story,’ and find some angle which compels me to set pen to paper.’

Compelling angles are very important to giving a story a fair chance to have a life on stage.

Each play is different.  Each time we write, we must find a way to get words on the page worthy of living out loud on the stage – always new, always the same but different, always the best journey to take to “The End.” And then, we start all over again trying to get more stories out of our heads…

 

Too Specialized…

Female Artists, LAFPI, playwriting, Women, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

I was having a meal with a playwright friend who I invited to read my newest 10-minute play.  After reading the piece, she asked me if I ever thought of writing something a little less specialized (I am paraphrasing because I only remember the jest of the conversation which usually happens to me when things hit my core like a grenade launcher.  How well do you remember in those times?  Memory can be selective…but I digress.).  She went on to say that because it was about women’s issues, it probably won’t ever be done. I was slightly taken aback as the words seeped in.  But then, I know my friend, so I looked closely at her body language and she was off into thought; it was as though, she was wondering aloud about her own work – that when finished it might also be considered “specialized” and un-producible.

“It is not specialized,” I say, “it is universal because it has happened to others. The work might not get done because I am a woman no matter what I write so I might as well write about women’s issues because maybe…just maybe, someone will be brave enough to want to tackle it. And, the stories need to be told regardless.”

“I relate to part of it but not all of it even though it may be true.”

“You don’t have to relate to all of it, no one hardly relates to all of a story – a piece is fine…”

Then I thought to myself, you have been having this conversation all week with yourself.  Write what you need to write, find a way to get it out there…  Shoved a fry in my mouth, food was not particularly good but I really love being around this friend, she makes me think and try harder.  She’s pretty profound…  And, I had been thinking  —  more than week actually, about the kinds of things that I write, and how each story steps up to the plate when they are ready to start swinging the bat and not one second before.  And how what I write absolutely affects when and where I enter…  I write down my story ideas, list them in close proximity so I can get back to them easily, go back to add notes from time to time and I try to listen really hard to what characters start talking to me because I am not one to write before I hear first words…  Sometimes it’s all smoke and no flames but when the flames start, I write.  It’s the decade benders that seem to be coming up to bat now.  I had concluded that these stories have been fixin’ to talk for too long for me to get in the way with stipulations on what they can talk about…besides birthin’ babies is hard work… I also concluded that I was not going to have that conversation with myself again.  I write what I write and am loving the new octaves…

I was reading that sometimes when searching for female ancestors, one should try Insane Asylums because there was a time when wives and daughters were “put away” for not being obedient enough.  Emily Mann wrote a play titled “Mrs. Packard” about just this sort of thing, Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard was put away by her husband the Reverend Theophilus Packard in 1860.  (https://mccarter.org/Education/mrs-packard/html/index.html)

Women have been sterilized (see compulsory sterilization, forced sterilization, Eugenics Movement) if deemed “weak” or “undesirable” or “feeble-minded” along with men deemed the same.  Carrie Buck was sterilized at 17 after giving birth to an illegitimate child – a child sired by a family member of her foster parents who raped her.  Carrie was in foster care because her mother had been committed to an asylum probably for having an illegitimate child.  (http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Buck_Carrie_Elizabeth_1906-1983).

We have to tell our stories.   They all count.

“The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete; they make one story become the only story…The consequence of a single story is this – it robes people of dignity…” Chimamanda Adichie

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie talks about “The danger of a single story” at TED Talks  https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story .

 

Read about other women storytellers at Amazing Women Rock,  http://amazingwomenrock.com/7-inspirational-storytellers-who-have-captivated-audiences-worldwide

 

About the Baby…

Play, Playwright, playwriting, , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

I almost died having the baby.  Feet.  Breached.  Early.  Late.  Viable.  I almost died…  I was alone and scared to push.  She weighed 8 pages when born.  Serious little thing.  Made such a fuss to get here – weeks of labor pain, decades in the womb.  She made me read to her and talk to her.  She requested Nikky Finney’s poem The Afterbirth, 1931; she said you’re trying not to say it.  Say it!  And Dael Orlandersmith, she said, look at her –  good – does she look like she messes around with plays?  Tell it!  And Charlayne Woodard, do you remember the expression on her face when you mentioned me…remember how even now that look makes you cross your fear…Write it! Straight – no chaser…

She seemed to gain strength there at the end – the baby – even though she almost aborted when Mr. Albee passed, screaming and flipping herself feet first so she could push better, wanted to be standing soon after her toes hit air.  You been digging the same well since you met him, time you hit water – it’s a gusher.  She pushed and leaned and pushed and leaned…  All that leaning on my rib cage made me ill but when she was born, I understood why the labor pains were so great.

She had talked nonstop that last month, and I wrote till I couldn’t write no more then she plopped out, feet first and stood before me, naked and unafraid.  She was beautiful, covered in afterbirth,  and I am not just saying that because she’s mine…it’s true…she’s been aching to be born…and she wears herself well…

Ever birth a play like that?  Hard to write but it won’t let you water it down, won’t let you go till you write it?  Because…you have to write it, even if it is a piece at a time.  Some plays are just meant to be…  Only you can write yours so —

Do your art.  You never know how it’s going to shake out or who it will inspire or who it will help survive the storms of life….  In hindsight, I realize that I gravitated to Albee because he distracted me in a the middle of a traumatic time in my life and made me think of better days…and possibilities…  The women — Nikky, Dael, Charlayne — they make me want to fly….

 

“I hope that in the year ahead the art you create makes our country a better place.  We need you.” Katherine James, playwright, actor

 

Stories from Anywhere…

LAFPI, Playwright, playwriting, Poetry,

by Robin Byrd

Listening for “First Words” – took me to a poem I started 10/26/12:

 

he got the tattoo

–so they would leave him alone

across his face

the skin once

smooth and beautiful

now marked

as he was marked

–for things no one should ever have to see

 

Today, 3/29/16, I continued:

 

he got the tattoo

across his face

–so they left him alone

the skin elsewhere

intact

not marked

–by things seen in places no one should ever have to go

 

he got the tattoo

–in a place no one should have to go

marring the skin

once smooth and beautiful

across his face

it, the self-marking of himself

–with words that say leave me alone…

 

he got the tattoo

–for things no one should have to see and places no one should have go

flung

across his face, across the smooth beautiful skin

in loud display

–leave me alone, it said, i will not take lightly to any more disruption

 

I title it “On the Occasion of Going to Jail…” and I wonder if there is a story trying to get out…

 

“First Words” :  Being a Playwright…being female…;  Voice…; On the Matter of Subject…

 

The Voices that Grow Within Us…

LAFPI, Playwright, playwriting, , , , , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

I have mentioned this before but lately, it been getting more pronounced.  Ever had someone tell you that they don’t mind if you talk to yourself but will have a problem if you answer?  That is when – at that moment — I have to say that I do in fact, answer myself but “only when I’m writing…”  They usually catch me answering anyway… What writer do you know who can carry on conversations with the characters and not “appear” to be talking and answering their own self?  I get the best inflections when I hear:

(Off stage whisper) the voices

(SOUND: loud clearing of a throat) THE VOICES!

Yeah, them.  Only profession I know where you can actually have more than one personality speaking out of your mouth almost simultaneously and not be labeled a “Schizophrenic” – or rather, be committed…to an institution.  Whole worlds going on in your head and you ain’t crazy, just a writing somebody.  J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, were friends – both of them had some really strange and fascinating worlds in their heads.  Octavia Butler’s Kindred blew me away especially the part where (spoiler alert) the arm got stuck in the wall — read it.

I can always tell when I need to sit down and write, the talking gets a bit much.  Stories busting at the seams need to be fitted for the page; they get tired of walking around in bloomers and say so.  If I stuck to a regimen, I would have it down to a minutes but I like to write wherever…, whenever…  I break up the wildness with little structured writing windows from time to time, letting the voices put on formal wear and heels or formal wear and combat boots.  Fehlge Burt is wearing combat boots — literally — and she’s ready to speak.  I have no idea when and where she enters but am looking forward to hashing it out…  I looking forward to hearing her voice that has been growing down inside of me for a few decades and I am hoping she does not slack on her words….

 

Tell A Good One…

LAFPI, Playwright, playwriting, , , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

There is a place for all of us – writers… on the page, on the stage, on film…  We may not get into the venues we want to get into but there is a place for our stories.  Don’t give up.  Don’t settle for not writing your stories down or telling them out loud… record them somewhere – the library of congress, your website…

I think of this because of the book “Sounder”, the author’s note in the beginning admits that an old black man told him this story – an old black man that was his teacher and was sometimes allowed to pray in the white church from the balcony – a sign of the times.  The author couldn’t even remember the old man’s name but he remembered the story.   William H. Armstrong recounted the story of Sounder omitting all the names of all people in the book, the only name given was Sounder’s.  The old black man was probably the boy all grown up.  The lack of names gives the story a very poignant universal air now I can’t forget the story.

I am about to read Tennessee William’s first play, A Candle to the Sun.  Why?  He can tell a good story.  I’m working on Suzan-Lori Park’s Father Comes Home from the Wars Parts 1,2 & 3.  Why?  She can tell a good story, too.  They do it so well…this thing called writing… so well, it makes me try harder…  Makes it a little bit easier for me to just do the thing and let come what may…as long as I telling a good story and doing my best to tell it well… someone somewhere will read it.

I finally finished a play I’ve been mulling over for about five years, Fiddler’s Bridge.  Felt good to get it out and even better to see my evolution as a writer  — not so much that I am different but I know my craft better and it’s easier to just do the thing…  Now all I have to do is stop putting Fiddle, Fiddlin’ or Fiddler in the title…but then again, titles have to fit the piece.  I imagine after I have completed more of my 80 plus projects there will be an evolution to the handling of subject matter that can be seen.  Or not…  All I need to do is keep telling good stories…  How about you?  Told any good ones lately?

The Playwright’s Voice and/or Intentions…

LAFPI, Play, Playwright, playwriting, , , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

The collaboration part of theater should not to come at the expense of the playwright’s voice and/or intentions. Is that a true statement?

I have been thinking about this — how intent/vision plays a big part in the end results of play production. But, whose vision should win out – if there is such a thing as winning in this case. Should it be a battle to get the story you wrote told, should you have to pick which part you will let go for the sake of someone else’s vision? Getting it to the stage is a big deal, getting collaborators who see the play as you do is an even bigger deal. I think the collective vision should be the playwright’s vision, first and foremost, and all other visions should move that vision forward, not stifle it, change it, ignore it but add to the layers of it. Tied up in all that intent, is a playwright’s voice which is life…blood, the culmination of many journeys, a song whose rhythm is pain and joy, a sound flung up to heaven echoing back at us…

I wonder about these things. What if after all one’s striving over the perfect line, it is missed in delivery or rearranged or deemed non-important; I hope my intent as a playwright is not lost…and I hope collaborator choices bring something wonderful to the piece and do not take away from my intent or my voice. I hope they ask me questions… while I am a living playwright.  But, most of all, I hope that I speak up if and when I need to, whether or not it is expected or welcomed to make my intentions known.

Intent. What is the playwright’s intent? That question is asked in literary settings when studying fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama; it is also asked in acting class during scene study. It is a question that I strive to answer in all my work. It is the thing that makes a story stay with you…

Some interesting articles I found about intentions:

Pulitzer Winner Bruce Norris Retracts Rights to German Troupe’s Clybourne Park Over “Blackface” Casting

Playwright Katori Hall Expresses Rage Over “Revisionist Casting” of Mountaintop With White Dr. Martin Luther King

Playwright David Mamet Halts Play over Gender-Bending Casting

Heated exchanges at La Jolla Playhouse over multicultural casting [Updated]

Mike Lew – Playwright on Casting Actors of Color

‘For Colored Girls’ Movie: Ntozake Shange’s ‘No Madea’ Rule

 

I think about these things because I want to make sure that all of my work is filled with my voice and my intent without confusion and I don’t want to have to worry about it once the piece takes wings.

So, Yes; it is true that the collaboration part of theater should not to come at the expense of the playwright’s voice and/or intentions…  What do you think?

Words from GLO 2015 Playwright: Robin Byrd

GLO, LAFPI, Playwright, Production, , ,

GLO (Green Light One-Acts), featuring 5 new plays by local women, runs at The Miles Memorial Playhouse November 5-15th. For more information and tickets please visit: www.greenlightproductions.org.

 

Why Fiddlin’ on the Mountaintop…  by Robin Byrd

Lulla Bell Jury has lost her momma; all she has left is the fiddle her mother gave her and the beauty and pain of life in the Appalachian mountains. Sometimes you lose so much it’s hard to see what you’ve gained. Fiddlin’ on the Mountaintop is an Appalachian tale of music, loss, family, and land.

Robin Byrd
Robin Byrd

About Fiddlin’ on the Mountaintop: The piece began as a short story created while I was a student at Indiana University; it consisted of only the first scene which you will see here in GLO 2015 (Green Light One-Acts), the remainder of the play is scheduled for development, so stay tuned.

The short story was written in a creative writing class. Writers tend to work out things in their writing as a way to find answers and closure; I was working out my own sense of loss and Lulla Bell became my voice. In a very broad sense, this piece is semi-autobiographical. Universally, it is a story many can connect with as we all struggle with loss and the journey that life puts us on after that loss.

Part of my family originates from Appalachia which I only learned of in the last few years when writing another story set in the area and looking at the map of the Appalachian region of the United States. One of my grandfathers and an uncle worked the coal mines before migrating to the Midwest. My other grandfather still has family as well as a family cemetery located in the region. I think my comfort of putting Lulla Bell on a mountain came from an ancestral/genetic memory of place; it’s like muscle memory for a violinist/fiddler, any musician – there are songs that come through my fingers that I have forgotten I knew how to play and sometimes that I have only sang and never played before but they start to play themselves because the memory of these songs is more alive than even I am fully conscious of.

From short story to stage play: Ben Harney (Tony Award Winner for the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls”) developed the short story for performance (at the time, aptly entitled “Me, My Fiddle an’ Momma”). Upon reading the piece, Ben suggested that it was a theatre piece that should be staged and I should perform it. It was at this time, Lulla Bell Jury’s story became stage worthy. Ben encouraged me to rework it and flush out areas that I eluded too but did not go into fully. He taught me to attack it from several point of views – the audience’s, the actor’s as well as the writer’s – making sure that the scenes were rearranged in the right order. I learned as much about writing as I did about acting. The exhilaration of performing her on stage was as wonderful as creating her on the page. I am forever grateful to Ben for his mentoring.

Expansion: Over the years, Lulla Bell Jury has made it known to me that she was not finished talking. Taking my cue from Lulla, I began to expand the piece which became Fiddlin’ on the Mountaintop. In Fiddlin’…, I tune back into Lulla Bell Jury to see how her life is going and how she has weathered the storms. In Fiddlin’ on the Mountaintop, I would like to share just what weathering storms means…

About the Playwright: I am a product of the Midwest, mine is a Midwestern voice with flavors of the South. I am a playwright, poet, screenwriter and actor. I love to incorporate authentic regional flavor into my work. Growing up in Indianapolis (sometimes referred to as the northernmost southern city), attributes to my affinity toward southern themes and language in some of my pieces. My work also deals with things of the spirit; I am known for sifting through memories and ghosts and other intangible things for stories… I have studied acting to enhance my voice as a writer. I play the violin; I am more comfortable calling myself a fiddler.

 

(Article written by the playwright:  Article also (posted/to be posted) at “Lightbulbs” on the Green Light Productions website www.greenlightproductions.org.)