by Cynthia Wands

Claire with a Mask Outside, July 2014

Many years ago I was in a production of ANTIGONE that made all the actors perform wearing full face masks – a nightmare for diction and a weird foray in acting without a face to express a performance.

I remember lots of drooling and sweating and mumbling behind those masks. I couldn’t wear to tear it off after the show and bang it on the dressing room table, a certain enemy for being understood on stage.

But I also remember the eyes of the other performers during the show – how much electricity was shared in the gaze with one another. Often times their eyes looked like wild animal eyes, blazing out of a dead mask on their face. I don’t know what the audience got out of that performance, but I hated doing it.

Years later, I saw TANTALUS, by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and those actors were also asked to wear full face masks in performance. I understood every word the actors said (some with a plummy British accent) and the mask work was amazing. I loved seeing it. And I know that most of the actors in that production hated their masks too.

I was reminded of that memory of TANTALUS when my niece Claire wore a couple of masks this past weekend; she loved hiding/posing/playing with them.  And I loved the visual of her bright blue eyes peeking behind the mask. I’m rethinking what masks are in performance.

Robert Petkoff as Achilles in TANTALUS, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, an amazing performance behind the mask.

by Cynthia Wands

Sisters in the Woods, artwork by Cynthia Wands, 2014.

I found this interview by Olivia de Havilland, who turns 98 years old today.  I love the look of her in this interview. Her age and her dignity, reminded me so much of my own grandmother, who passed away some years ago. I don’t get to spend much time with women who are this old, and I miss that.  Her story of working with a new director, and her emotions and concerns about her work, was fascinating.

In the past, I’ve found myself working with people I didn’t want to work with, and yet they have informed me and shaped me in ways I never anticipated.

I did a photography shoot with my young nieces this past week, and they were very – enthused – for short bursts of time – and challenging to direct.

But I also learned a lot about the way that they imagine things, and the way that they play, and create characters they enjoy interacting with. Actually, I think I learned a lot working with them.

Olivia de Havilland Interview

by Cynthia Wands

I have twin nieces, Jeanne and Claire.  They are four and they are connoisseurs of costumes. Their mother is French and my brother is not. Julie (my sister in law) is beautiful, clever, warm, and very French. She can put on a burlap sack and a scarf around her neck and she could go to a cocktail party at the Met.  She understands that her daughters, my nieces, love costumes. But only certain colors. And with certain trims.  They are, after all, half French.

I started buying them costumes when they were very small. All kinds of costumes in all kinds of colors and trims.  But Jeanne, the oldest twin, only loves the blue dress. The blue dress has been worn for the past year, and is now a rather grey, torn, dirty, ragamuffin blue dress. That does not matter to Jeanne. She prefers it to all the other costumes and will wear it when no one is looking.  I purchased several other costumes this week, and yes, included princess dresses for the girls to try on.  They would not even attempt the “Jasmine” (Aladdin Princess) harem pants outfit.  They both wrinkled their noses. They murmured something in their four year old French about the color.  I still don’t know what they said about it, but the color was so unfortunate, that they could not try it on.  “Mais non, ” was all I could get out of them about this particular costume. And unfortunately for my brother (who does not like this princess dress attachment) I also bought a larger size of the dreaded “blue dress” for Jeanne.

When Jeanne saw the new “blue dress” she immediately shot her hands in the air, to be changed immediately out of her current costume, so she could try on the familiar dress. She wore it most of the weekend. With pearls, with a stuffed dog, and also with a purple floral fan.  But no other dress was worn, or even considered. Claire, her sister, wore a variety of the costumes I brought for them.  She seemed enthused, but never expressed any interest in her sister’s blue dress.

I marvel at this attachment to an idea, a costume, a color, a dress.  I wonder how many of my old ideas, about myself, my writing, the plays I have loved, I continue to wear. I became really aware of the contrast of embracing a new idea with an old idea, when I saw Jeanne’s old dress lying on the floor next to the new one.  How much love and energy and time had been spent in the old dress.

by Cynthia Wands

I have taken some writing classes that have pointed the way to “write what you know”, “write with your authentic voice”,  or “write what you feel”.

I stopped writing plays and novels and stories in February when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

That wasn’t the “write what you know” that I intended.

I started writing a blog about cancer. But its far away and less about other people and ideas and plays – than about me. It doesn’t even seem dramatic.  It’s more of a conveyor belt.

Now my life has two people in my household with cancer, and writing seems….more about taking the steps to finding a way through it.

I’m more than halfway through my chemotherapy, then I have 5-7 weeks of radiation.  Then, maybe, later, I will get to have hair again. Having loved the script “Wit” (about a woman fighting cancer, chemo and being bald), I thought being bald might make me look…smarter? More intellectual.  More like a playwright. Instead, I do rather resemble a human light bulb. Or a large hard boiled egg. Or more accurately, Uncle Festus from “The Addams Family”. Not that much more like a playwright.

But I’ve changed, and I don’t quite know how I will write with that.  I wasn’t sure I should about that here. But it’s what I know to be true.

I will say that I am, more than ever, interested in the stories from women.  And that’s why I wrote this. Please keep writing.

Artwork: The Timekeepers Daughter by Aimee Steward

by Cynthia Wands

Cold medicine makes you feel time differently: there’s a morphed, muffled sense of what time of day it is and what really is imporant. (Primary importance: where are the kleenex tissues and how many cough drops does it take to stop sounding like a barking seal)

I’ve been putting some effort in “Planning Your Year” for my writing projects – deadlines / workshops/ software.  But I’m also feeling a bit of a malaise – (why am I doing this/where is the kleenex/when was the last time I took the Mucinex…).

And then I found this:

The New Play Map

This shows on a daily basis where new plays are being produced. I don’t know why it made me feel so buoyed up to see this – but I am so relieved to know that new plays are actually being done. (And I will admit I wanted to see how many of the new plays were by women…)

But just seeing this map of new work being done, the far flung reach of where new plays are being made, just lifted my spirits.  And that’s an image I’ll carry with me in the coming year.

by Cynthia Wands

I gave myself the assignment of finding positive images/stories for women artists in 2013.

This was of some interest to me:

2013 Iconic Images of Women

But it wasn’t really what I had in mind. And then I found this:

100 Years of How Women & Men Dress Up

But I wanted something more – data driven. And I didn’t find what I was looking for.

I wanted a spreadsheet/world map/renaissance painting of how far women have come this past year – how much more visible and accountable women’s voices are in the arts. Yeah. I didn’t find that.

But on a more personal level, I can say that I have felt more influence from women in theatre and writing.  Maybe it’s because I’m hungry for that and I am looking with more of an appetite for those stories.

One of the women I most admire and follow is Judi Dench.  I’ve seen what an influence she is to the actors and theatre community in England – and I giggled when I heard that there is a bumper sticker seen in London that reads:  “What Would Judi Do?”

And then I found this image: Judie Dench and Maggie Smith, friends for years, fellow artists and brilliant actors.  I like the power of women being connected to women.

by Cynthia Wands

I found this article about books and reading and libraries from Neil Gaiman‘s lecture for the Reading Agency, delivered on Monday October 14  at the Barbican in London.  So much of what he has to say really resonated with me on the “now” of playwriting.  And in reference to the scary memory crunch of the web, I found this quote very compelling:

“In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.”

Neil Gaiman’s Lecture on Reading and Daydreaming

I was recently asked by a friend to read a script for comments and feedback, and there was a flash of memory to the days when I was sitting in a library, opening up a book for the first time and reading words that would become part of me. (Yes, it was a really good script to read. It was an actual script with three-hole punch pages.) It reminded me of the memory of actually holding a book in my hand, turning the pages, and enjoying the treasure of an object that could hold new surprises.

Neil Gaiman’s article reminded me of a “Hogwartian” place called Owl Pen Books in Greenwich, New York. Owl Pen Books is a crowded, musty magical place and reminds me how books, tangible worn out books, become a part of our memory. Like plays.

Owl Pen Books in Greenwich New York

by Cynthia Wands

Recently I’ve been listening to conversations about our “photo memory” generation.  This follows the idea that our young audiences are “seeing” a lot of visual content in their computers, Iphones, Ipads that represent their “memories”.  When I was a child I was lucky if I was included in the family holiday photographs of Christmas/Easter/Fourth of July/Halloween.  My father took some great photographs of our family – just not that often.  So we would really remember those images as “that really happened” for our memories. Nowadays, young people are instagraming their snacks.  So many images are being recorded of their everyday life, so the visual “store” of what their childhood/self image memories are legion.  And I wonder, how does that affect this generation in terms of what they see and feel in theatre?

I’ve seen some incredible images in my years of watching theatre: in 2001 I saw Judy Dench walking down a staircase in “Royal Family” like a cobra (that was a lesson in motion/controlled suprise); the scope of different worlds in the “Mahabharata”, the stage play directed by Peter Brook in 1985; and the rain that fell from the sky in “The Grapes of Wrath” on Broadway in 1990.  I loved being surprised by the power of those visual images.  They had a surprising sense of “new” about them and they’ve become prized memories for me.

So I was actually distressed to read this article about the exclusivity of men on a number of lists. Granted women have only been allowed to vote in the United States since 1920, so it’s understood that there is some catching up to do.  But I was weirdly horrified to see how many important groups of people do not include a single woman.  It reminded me of the “Dry White Male” season at the Guthrie. To see the images in the articles of all the men’s faces, and not a single woman in their leadership lists, was stunning.

It made me wonder, do young audiences assume that the voice and face of a leader is a man if what they are exposed to are only men as leaders?

I suppose the remedy to this would be to create lists that have women involved as leaders (along with men) and help share their faces and names as recognized “memories” of leadership.  But for now, I am going to make a cup of tea and take some cold medicine.

The lists of all men everywhere.

by Cynthia Wands

I celebrated the new year with pecking trials on my new (to me) writing software.  I’ve not been enthused about using software for writing plays – but Final Draft was given to me as a Christmas present and I am now on the learning curve with it.

I found a link regarding  the controversy on the Gutherie’s Male Only season – and found the comments at the end of the article very illuminating.

The Article: Checking Back in with the Guthries Dry White Male Season