I’m grappling with writing a “strong female character”.   Is grappling the right word I’m looking for?  Maybe I’m hunting/wrestling/seducing/pleading/yelling/negotiating for that strong female character.   This article seems to hit me directly between the eyes with the idea – the fantasy – of the strong female character.    Maybe its not a strong female character that I’m writing…

The New York Times: A Plague of Strong Female Characters

I live in a noisy world – and travel in a bubble of traffic, work, computers, machines, multiple voice over tracks and an occaisional hungry cat asking for better cat food. Silence is something that I generally live without. During the recent reading of THE LOST YEARS, I experienced the power of ….the pause.  I think I forgot how powerful, and artful, a pause can be.  One of the actors held a beat to look at someone he was talking with, and the brief moment of silence around his words, spoke volumes.  I know that pacing in a scene is something that can be burst like a soap bubble if the rhythm is thrown off by actors pausing for effect.  But this was different – and I so appreciated the risk the actor took to find that moment.  Too many o f those moments and it would have been – longer.  I loved this talk on listening, and I’m trying to find three minutes of silence every day, so I can hear the world in a clearer way.

 Ted Talk on Listening

A TED Talk on the immediate presence of theatre by Patsy Rodenburg

A week ago, I had a “green read” of one of my scripts, THE LOST YEARS, and I’m not the same now. The Seedlings at the Theatricum Botanicum hosted the green read of the script so I could hear it read outloud. I’d had a reading of the first act with the Dramatist Guild Footlights Series a couple of years ago – now I was able to hear the whole script. I didn’t expect to be so surprised by the actors. They were good. They were very good. They were so good they took the characters places I didn’t imagine or intend or realize.

I had a few friends who listened to the reading with me, and their comments really helped steady me to the feedback and perspective of the reading. I wanted to wait a few days before I looked at the script again, so I could filter my immediate reactions to a more thoughtful mindset. Mostly, I wanted to let the memory of the laughter subside – because I love it (maybe too much) when an audience laughs with something I’ve written. Now I’m back in re-writes and I’m so grateful for the reading, because now I can hear/see/feel the immediate presence of theses characters I’ve written. Now they seem more alive. Where’s my coffee and aspirin…

TED Talks: A demonstration of the Puppetry behind \"War Horse\".

War Horse on Broadway: the play was nominated for a Tony. And everyone who I’ve talked to who has seen the show has been very moved by the emotional power of this “puppet show”.

Conversely, my sister invested in a show in London, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourgh”, that used puppets -and she was perplexed and unsatisfied with their appearance in the musical. And the musical closed quickly on the West End this spring.

I’m using “Mixed Media” in one of my scripts ~ as in performance art/surreal action and circumstances. I don’t know how a theatre can “perform” some of these ideas – but the images of “War Horse” really inspired me. Can a six foot eagle’s nest have dialouge? I guess I might find out….

>An article about dramaturgs – that gave me – pause.

Here are some of the comments following the lead article:

“Many plays are ruined by dramaturgs who have an agenda such as feminism or strict rules for writing a play. All plays aren’t the same. It used to be that the director or producer-director acted as dramaturg, such as Elia Kazan with Tennessee Williams. By the way, the singular for phenomenon is NOT phenomena. Your logos are blocking this box so I can’t see what I’ve written completely!”

“This article seems to start from an assumption that playwrights need help. My formula for New Play Development is pretty simple: Listen to the playwright. Trust the playwright. If a playwright knows what she’s doing, then just get out of her way. If she doesn’t, she can ask for help. Either way, she steers the ship.”

This article and these comments have given me – pause – for some of the thick/thin skin revealed in this process. I’d like to think that playwrights could be as robust as actors are in rehearsal to taking “notes” in “NPR” – (a grouse here: must we abbreviate everything to a code instead of using the words that describe our actions?)

At any rate, this article gave me a lot to think about and I wanted to share.

Friday night I went to the REDCAT Theatre at Disney Hall to see a Dance peformance of “Faith”. I’d been submitting my work to the REDCAT Theatre’s “new works” series and they offered me a couple of comps to see how their theatre works, and what they do.  I love Disney Hall, (and how music sounds in Disney Hall) and I hadn’t been inside their experimental theatre space, REDCAT, and I wanted to be able to “see” what my works might look like there.

A few minutes before curtain, my cell phone rang. I never have my cell phone on – at any time – it’s always off until I turn it on to make a phone call. So I was very surprised to hear someone’s really annoying cell phone ringing in the lobby, and realized it was me.  I picked up the phone and talked to a friend, who was in tears and greatly upset: she had called to let me know that a mutual friend had just died.  Our friend, Leticia, had fought cancer for two years.  It started out as cervical cancer, then lung cancer, liver cancer, spleen cancer, brain cancer.  She was 36 years old and had three young children.  I had been part of her support/meals/spa as therapy group and I knew we were in the “end stage” of her illness.  She had just died at the hospital with her family gathered around her, and she is now, gratefully, finally, out of pain.  I’m relieved that she doesn’t have to suffer any more, or be afraid of what treatment/chemo/clinical trial awaits her.  I’m glad her illness is over.

I just didn’t expect her to die then.  I thought she would die…..later. We ended the call, and then I went in to see the performance.  I knew I was “upset” but I thought I could sit through the event and process my feelings later.

I’ve never been to the theatre before with the specter of death as a companion, and let me tell you, it really changes the ride.  I know at any given moment babies are born, and people die, and puppies learn to walk, but when you sitting on the razor blade of grief with death, watching theatre/dance/performing takes on a different perspective.

I wondered – how many times in my life as actor, did people in the audience come to the theatre knowing that someone they loved had just died?  How many times have I worked with people, stage crew, ushers, actors ~ who checked into the theatre, put on their make up, and gave a brilliant performance, as someone they loved just died.  (I know of one actor, who managed that feat, and I wondered if the actor’s ability to compartmentalize their roles had anything to do with his amazing ability to just…put it…away from him that night.)

The performance was strange and stunning:  I found myself moved to a place of contemplating the history of grief as seen in paintings and dance.  I experienced grief in a public place in a very unexpected way.  I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.

The review of \”Faith\” from the Los Angeles Times

This interview with Lauren Bacall has a rather bracing take on the idea of a nostalgic visit to the golden days of Hollywood.  (Just don’t take too long to open her chocolates…..)

Vanity Fair interview with Lauren Bacall

“Bacall continues, “I don’t think anybody that has a brain can really be happy. What is there really to be happy about? You tell me. If you’re a thinking human being, there’s no way to divorce yourself from the world.””

The interview has some interesting insights into the sting of nostalgia – and what was or wasn’t said in the past.

Last night I went to a  meditation class ~ I’m trying to find ways to hit the pause button on my monkey mind; and our meditation teacher taught (or tried to teach) a lesson on “the insight of stopping”.

I can’t begin to tell you how infuriating it was.  “Stop the impulse.”  “Stop the wanting”  “Stop, stop, stop.”  And I’m trying, but I seem to have an overactive, ADD, coffee candy control addicted, sugar spun-out mind that only wants stories, interaction, distraction and the next thing.  What ever that is.  I can see that it’s pretty hard to find insight and inspiration amongst all that freeway noise. But I’m used to my carnival of chaos; at least that’s what I know.

This morning I went back in my archives to find this. 

Jill Bolte Taylors Powerful Stroke of Insight

It did make me pause and think.  And if I didn’t stop, at least I slowed down (a little).

This is what happens when you write about ghosts; they follow you from the darkness. They follow you offstage. They slip into the bathroom. They cross over from realism to surealism to magical realism. 

Magical creatures onstage don’t have to obey the “laws” of those real lives – they can fly/float/appear in other times/as other people/other voices/other animals/other languages.

And then they don’t always obey the playwright.  As in shut up when I’m done writing.

The ghost I’m writing about now – follows me around sometimes like a helium balloon during the day – and hovers over my head when I’m trying to go to sleep.  Mostly she’s in my thoughts, trying to escape the ordinary.  Whatever that is.

I thought the attached link was an interesting “find” in the natural world.  Of course the images at the VERY END of the(16 minute) piece are what I was most interested in.  They resembled characters waiting for the playwright to bring them to life.  Or, at least, to bring them a strong cup of coffee.  Substance and Absence: An artist shows/demonstrates

One of the writers in my writer’s group goes to the Sundance Film Festival every year, and comes back to share stories of what she’s seen. It sounds like a Harry Potter experience, to be able to see these wildly original films, ready for marketing (or not), and to be part of a small group of industry insiders who get to see those efforts.

What I loved hearing from her this year is that all of the films that she saw (and she only saw a sampling of what was offered there), the films that she saw –  were written from a very personal point of view.  The films were “intimate” and “story-focused” and “emotional”.  Now granted, these are films, not plays. But I think that there is an influence from theatre to cinema, just as there is an influence of cinema to theatre.

I was thinking about that influence of cinema on theatre when I saw this clip on Anna Deavere’s Smith’s new play.  Look at the visual effects for this one woman show – it looks like a scene out of a big budget motion picture. And yet, there’s an intimacy in her writing, and obviously, in the people she’s portraying. 

The Clip from the News Hour on One Person Shows

I remember when I did a one woman show on Emily Dickinson, all I had was a desk and a fainting couch for a set, and some pretty low budget lighting.   (“And lights up.”  “And lights down.”) Would the show have been better served with a scrim projecting images of Amherst, and Emily’s handwriting, and beautiful photographs of the natural world, the beauty, the despair, that she wrote about?  Perhaps, and especially in the media/photo saturated world we lived in now – but I like to think that theatre is also about asking the audience to imagine a cowboy holding a beer at a bar, or an enraged patient at a doctor’s office.

I still think about using scrims with projected images for background images onstage.  But I just haven’t made the leap. Yet.