For years, I have been carrying around a story not knowing how it should meet the page but knowing that it had to get there somehow. A few months ago, I decided it would be in poetry – carried the pages around with me trying to shake the order and the theme out. No luck.
Then… a play I needed to submit somewhere refused to speak to me and I thought what if I take these notes and make it into a play. Decided on the characters and began to write for three days till “The End”, proofed it, let a few close friends read it and sent it off.
The end result was as intense as the writing of it. It struck me as odd that this story lay dormant for so years then exploded on the page like it did. Out of order on my list of things to write and not in the genre I picked. Dormant for 32 years then the alarm goes off waking me up from the exhausted sleep deprived state working too many hours on my day job has caused. It spilled out in 3 days like nothing I have ever written before. But then that’s the thing about writing each piece should be better than the last. Funny to have a story shut down on you because another one wants the roadway. I almost missed the signal but when I told friends I was not going to be able to finish the play I was working on but had this idea that I might be able to pull off in time, they each said, “go for it, what do you have to lose.”
I said, “I’ll try…”
I guess all you can ever do when you hit a wall is to try something else. Timing is everything. Who knew story notes had alarm systems attached?
I spent the weekend in San Diego – in the basement theatre of San Diego Rep, to be exact – for the National New Play Network festival. It’s my third new play festival this year (I also went to Humana in Louisville, Kentucky and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in West Virginia.) As I’ve written before, it’s INCREDIBLY helpful for us as playwrights to see new plays.
New play festivals are a bit like Fashion Week – you get a preview of the new season – not what will be hanging on the rack at Nordstrom’s, but what will be listed in the season ticket brochure at theatres around the country.
You can also spot trends. Not exposed zippers and the Pantone color of the year, but what playwrights are doing in their work that keeps showing up all the time.
Here’s a few of the emerging trends spotted at the NNPN’s festival:
– Direct Address: several plays used this device. It works as shorthand, delivering internal monologues and exposition in an efficient manner. Though to me as an audience member, it doesn’t have the same resonance as a scene between two characters. There’s blood on the floor when characters are confronting each other. You can’t look away. The energy literally bounces off the wall. When there’s sexual chemistry, we’re right there as peeping Toms, blushing and getting aroused and wondering what’s going to happen next. And even long monologues delivered to another character seem fuller, richer, more punchy than directing them to the audience.
– Humor: nearly every one of the six plays I saw was funny. Not necessarily knock down physical humor or an evening full of zingers, but lines that made you smile or surprised you and made when you laugh out loud. Even the stage directions were funny! Serious topics handled with humor made an audience want to stay through the painful parts of the story.
– Obsession: several plays had main characters who were obsessed. Two were trying to find absent ancestors. (I’m not sure I understood WHY these characters were obsessed, but boy, is that a handy tool for getting your protagonist moving! Other characters tell them they’re crazy, but they just keep keeping on. They were like bulldozers, ploughing through obstacles on their way over the cliff.)
– Larger casts than you’d think: I know. We’ve all been told don’t dare write a play with more than three characters if you ever want to harbor a hope of production. That wasn’t the case at the NNPN’s festival! Several plays boasted of more than half a dozen actors playing lots of characters. And these are plays that at least ONE theatre wants to produce!
– Slavery: Two of the six plays dealt with slavery – one a highly comic, stylized piece set at the deathbed of Martha Washington; the other a search for the ancestor who jumped a slave ship. A third play dealt with racial injustice of the 1960’s, the generational remains of slavery.
– Absent fathers: Lots of missing parents in these plays. A father in jail whose teenager ends up in foster care, a biracial girl looking for her African-American father and grandfather, an obsessive compulsive painter who wasn’t looking for his absent father directly, but certainly his abandonment of the family fed son’s condition. Slaves sired by white masters were also fatherless. One father who seemed to be missing in action was merely hiding out in the den until he was needed to deliver the best monologue I’ve heard in a while about how you want a bitch of a mother to be on the front line fighting for you. I’m not sure what this says about our society today with all these missing dads.
– Theatricality. Not every play reached beyond the naturalistic, but there were elements of theatricality in everything. One used the tinkling of a bicycle bell to spur memory. Another structured the play backwards to forwards. One play included actors carrying on in a bad TV movie behind the main action. There were game shows, swimming fish, even a Viking ship onstage. The most successful pieces took a chance on larger-than-life happenings.
Never heard of NNPN? It’s basically a way for playwrights to get not just a world premiere, but also a second, third, and on and on – future productions. Pick a NNPN theatre. Submit your script. Next year, it could be YOUR play that sets the trends for theatres across the country.
It’s been interesting of late, seeing a lot of new or newish plays that have major problems with plot. As in: nothing happens until the end of the first act, or the second act does not satisfy the desires of the audience set up in the first act, or the entire evening is just a series of short scenes with a twist at the end of each one. I may not be able to solve my own plot problems, but I can sure spot them in others.
I’ve put aside the new play I’ve been working on because of hitting the wall on plot.
Instead, I’ve been spending every early morning working on my second chapter book. These are the books designed to wean kids off picture books – designed for age 7-11 or so. I got frustrated that most theatres producing theatre for young audiences are adapting kids books rather than choosing original scripts. So, I thought I’d fight back by adapting my play THE LUCKIEST GIRL* into a BOOK. I even found an agent who’s shopping it around.
I rejoined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and attended a local conference last month.
And there I was, listening to book writers talking about … plot. Guess what? It’s all the same damn thing.
Conflict: You ask yourself what does my main character want? And what will she do to get it? Who or what’s standing in her way? Her desire conflicts with that of her antagonist. And you ask yourself why the antagonist doesn’t want her to achieve her great desire?
You start with the present world, then something happens to upset the apple cart.
Creating scenes: What character flaw or bad habit creates complications? Complications intensify, more obstacles, things get worse. Is there a single, driving force through all scenes? Are the heroine’s wants in the entire story?
Climax: the darkest hour that allows the heroine’s truest self to emerge. She takes charge of dealing with the story problem
The end: have we satisfied the expectations we have given our audience for what we promised at the beginning?
It’s the same damn Aristotelian story structure we all learned in Drama 101.
And so, now I find myself starting a new book**, knowing full well I’m going to have to wrestle with story structure again.
Just maybe not tonight.
*THE LUCKIEST GIRL: A ten year old African American girl who moves to Holland with her grandmother, who’s there to prosecute accused war criminals. Tahira is homesick. The last straw is when she discovers that Santa doesn’t come to Holland; instead, it’s Sinterklaas, and his politically incorrect buddy Zwarte Piet. Much to the horror of her grandmother, Tahira likes Piet.
**UNTITLED CAPITOL HILL CAPER: The young daughter of a Congressman walks dogs on Capitol Hill and solves the mystery of the Demon Cat of the Capitol Crypt.
When you talk about Wicked, two names come up Winnie Holzman, the book writer and Stephen Schwartz, the composer/lyricist. Winnie spoke at yesterday’s LA FPI Gathering held at Samuel French here in Los Angeles. She spoke about what inspires us or what shuts us down as writers and how to navigate those waters. In order to do so, we must know what inspires us and work toward it and we must know what shuts us down and steer away from it. “Positive Denial” is a process she uses – in positive denial, one does not look at the whole picture. You have to have the blinders on like a runner who is in denial that anyone is there because they are running their race… We have to learn to be our own parent – a parent’s job is to encourage their children to develop their gifts and stay away from things that get them off track.
We also have to know what’s normal for a writer – the amnesia that happens when we begin a new piece, the feelings of being less than adequate for the task at hand, and the failures (projects that don’t seem to get picked or get picked but don’t go anywhere) between the home runs. Writers go through basically the same things regardless of their notoriety.
She talked about her play, Assisted Living, which she wrote with her husband Paul Dooley which looks at the ways in which people change each other without meaning to or knowing that they do. Assisted Living will be playing in New Brunswick, New Jersey at the George Street Playhouse, January 28 – February 23, 2014.
We all found Winnie to be such a lovely, down-to-earth, and powerfully fierce woman.
LAFPI Blogger Robin Byrd has been blogging since day one. Hers is an authentic voice determined to be heard.
1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?
I guess I sort of evolved into one. I started telling stories at three and a three year old usually acts out a story so it’s theatrical by nature of the storyteller. I had regular story time for my two younger sisters up until I was eight. Even then I was acting out the story using spectacle and character development. Decades later, I joined a very large church and in the orientation, someone said that a way not to get swallowed up is to join one of the groups so I went to a theater group meeting. This theater group would meet every month to discuss what the annual production would be. Nothing seemed to pass the preconceived “Bishop Test”- based on biblical principles and something he – Bishop Blake – would approve of for his congregation. This discussion went on for months. Out of frustration, I suggested we write our own play. I wrote a synopsis which I didn’t know was a synopsis at the time; everyone in the group liked it and the president of the group, the late Stuart Brown, told me to write it. I would bring in pages to the meetings and we would read them and then Stuart would go back to that darn synopsis and say but I don’t see this part and I’d have to keep writing till everything in that synopsis was in the play. Everyone in the group was very helpful with pushing me to write and giving feedback. After the play was completed, we did a workshop production of it. I met Charlayne Woodard, theatre artist extraordinaire and she greeted me like I was a playwright and that is when I knew I was on this theater artist journey. (Funny the things you remember.) Thus, with “In Times Like These (Is He the One?)”, I started writing plays; by the time I wrote the book for the musical “For This Reason (A Love Story), I knew I was a playwright and I could see my voice as a writer introducing itself to me.
2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why?
My favorite play is always the one that I learn something more about craft or my voice as a playwright.
3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?
“The Day of Small Things” would be it because my family flew out to Los Angeles to see it. My father was too ill to come but he was so proud of me. There was one scene where something went wrong with the lighting queues so the actors had to improvise and walk onto the stage while the lights were up. The scene was right after a funeral. The actors walked slowly onto the stage as if in shock of the events, they had to play their “just before moment” on stage; they walked in a synchronized movement as if to an inaudible dirge. It was magical, performance art at its best, had we been able to run the play longer, I would have asked them to do it again. (Actors – got to love good ones who can commit to their character and are able to react in character without losing a beat.) Moments like these are what make Theater so alive.
4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?
There are a few plays for different reasons: “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee made me take craft really serious; “Body Indian” by Hanay Geiogamah made me contemplate sound as a character; “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry made me look at family dynamics; “A Star Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hole In Heaven” by Judi Ann Mason made me look at family secrets; and “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, taught me to embrace other dimensional storytelling; it’s a memory play and my whole life I’ve dealt with memory in some form. As a child the beginning of most of my sentences was “’Member when…” so when I got to high school and “The Glass Menagerie” was on the reading list, it not only reminded me of the late night PBS filmed plays I loved to watch. It felt strangely familiar. “The Glass Menagerie” bears witness to writing remembered things; it is a testament to what can be done in a play, that boundaries should be lifted like a fourth wall, if it will help to tell the story.
In my work, I deal a lot with memory, flashbacks, visions, and dreams. Writers are normally told to stay away from flashbacks, write what you know, write what you want to know, keep the story forward moving. What I know is flashbacks and pushing forward beyond them so it is inevitable that flashbacks would show up in my work. Perhaps, because I already had a good knack for remembering things, this made me susceptible to flashbacks. I don’t know. What I do know is that as a survivor of rapes (plural intentional), flashbacks ruled my life from the time I was 18 years/7 months/28 days old well into my twenties. Writing is therapy; sometimes you have to make your own closure. My way of dealing with the negative events in my life has been to channel it into my creative work. I like being able to take down the fourth wall – as it were – of the past as it intersects the present, that’s the moment of change for me, a moment of lingering inner impact where new futures can be forged in the flames. It’s like dreaming and opening a door you just walked through only to find it leads somewhere else but doing it on purpose, like throwing jacks several times to get a better layout which will give a better end result.
Tom Wingfield, “The Glass Menagerie” (at least it is my interpretation) hits this intersecting of past and present on more than one occasion; he discusses his wanderings and how un-expectantly he could see his sister beside him in memory and how he tries his best to get away from those recurring moments:
“…Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles out!”
In his memory she blows them out. But he doesn’t change anything. He doesn’t go back; doesn’t start again. He just stays in his hell. I found that to be so sad. He never found a way out of the perpetual maze. He didn’t know how to dream another dream. I never want to be found not able to dream again…
5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?
I am not sure I have a favorite. I do go on binges, devouring everything I can by playwrights that catch my eye.
6. How has your writing changed over the years?
I have become more confident in my gift. I know my sound and I try to be as fearless in my plays as I am in my poetry.
7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?
I mostly write dramas but I also tend to have music in my plays, it just happens and I tend to write my own music. I have always loved musicals but have only written one to date with music, in addition to the composer’s music. I wrote a 10-minute comedy on purpose once just to see if I could do it. I tend to have laughter in my plays naturally but I do want to write a full-length gut buster one day. I don’t write experimental or avant-garde plays, that’s not to say I might not try at some point. I don’t care much for the abstract in art, poetry or plays. If I can’t tell what it means, I tend to move on to something else. I do write a lot about the revealing of secrets and the journey from bondage (emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical) to freedom. I think what draws me to the subject matter is the fact that I am a survivor and I want to leave bread crumbs albeit in the form of stories for others to find. I believe my plays take me to the door in the dream over and over again and each time I change the outcome on the other side as long as I can believe what I see in my mind’s eye can come to past.
8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?
I write poetry. I got the nicest rejection letter once saying how my work was so lyrical which I think is due to my poetry background. I started out wanting to write fiction, one of my monodramas “Me, My Fiddle an’ Momma” started out as a short story. My professor at Indiana University said it was so full of dialogue it felt like a play. Some years later, I took an acting class with Ben Harney (Tony Award winner for the original Dream Girls) and he encouraged me to tweak it so I could perform it. I did. I found out more about writing drama by taking his acting class than I had in any book I read about drama. I’ve studied screenwriting at the American Film Institute in their certificate program and plan to write more screenplays.
9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?
Jennie Webb, one of the co-founders of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative walked up to me at the second meeting for LA FPI and asked, “How is your life going right now?” Fine, I answered (not if you count everything that was going WRONG but I was in denial so technically, I was fine.) She smiled. “You want to be the blog editor?” Blink. Nod. “Be the blog editor. Yeah? Yeah.” Then she walked away to “herd” someone else to do something else. And I, never having written a blog article in my life, wondered loudly in my head, “What the hell, did I just commit to?” I sent copies of my first article to playwright friends on opposite sides of the continent – one in Sacramento, the other in Brooklyn – to get their opinions, because I was completely unsure of myself. I barely knew what a blog was, let along write one. But it has been the best experience and blogging helps tremendously with writing the essays sometimes asked for in submission packets.
10. What is your favorite blog posting?
I love all the different voices of the ladies who blog; they cover such timely subjects. I am not sure if I have a favorite of my own but I do feel that “Write it Scared” was very instrumental in me putting together a manuscript of poems that dealt with some scary dark places. And, just looking at my level of “going there” enabled me to become more free. In “She, Who Was Called Barren,” I wanted to experiment with creating an event depicting what it is like to survive trauma and how it can be a roller coaster of dark and light moments and what that feels like.
11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?
I have a few influences but I would say Ezekiel, the prophet, mostly. God was always telling him to go do something theatrical to “show” the Israelites what was coming in their future. And, his language is so poetical. He used a lot of symbolism; I like to use symbolism as well and have received many a “rejection” letter commenting on how lyrical my writing is.
12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?
I found my voice a long time ago; it was recognizing that I knew my sound that came after I began calling myself a playwright. Because I started telling stories at 3 years old and oral storytelling requires one to have a way of telling, I think that helped me a lot in developing my voice. I like finding new nuances of my voice, that’s exciting to me.
13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?
“Always be writing…” that is my mantra. I do a lot of internal work first so I turn over stories and moments in my spirit before any one story makes it to the page. I have to live it in some way before it will release authentically even if it’s a snippet of someone else’s story.
14. How do you decide what to write?
It is usually something that I can’t shake.
15. How important is craft to you?
Craft is very important to me. At one point, I had thought that playwriting was not for me because I was not sure how to do it on a level where I could be respectful of the craft it takes to earn the “wright” in playwright.
16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?
I studied acting and have performed one of my pieces as well as my poetry. I also have co-directed one of my plays and made costumes. The reason I came to Los Angeles in the first play was to study fashion design at Otis/Parsons (now Otis College of Design) – to specialize in costume and men’s wear – that didn’t work out so I had to do a paradigm shift which lead me to writing plays.
17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?
As an audience member, there is something for everyone. As a playwright, I feel left out. The worst part is when I have submitted something to a theater/company and go to see new work that has elements of what I submitted in someone else’s piece. I would like to think that it’s a coincidence but when people can’t look you in the eye, you know they ciphered from your well. It makes one a little skittish, although, I must say that this has happened to me outside of Los Angeles too; I try to take it as a compliment – a rude one – but one nonetheless.
18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)
A lot of prayer and rehearsing of positive results – a place that I go to remind myself that my gift will make room for me and bring me before great men. I have to know who I am and what my gift is and why it is. There is always a little “buyer’s remorse” but it passes; it usually only turns up in the submission process.
19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?
Family secrets, ghosts and surviving trauma.
20. What are you working on now?
Being more fearless – a play about Race and a book of poetry on loss.
Robin Byrd is an Indiana born playwright and poet residing in Los Angeles. Growing up in Indianapolis (sometimes referred to as the northernmost southern city), attributes to the playwright’s affinity toward southern themes and language in some of her pieces.
Her plays which include The Grass Widow’s Son, Tennessee Songbird (the place where the river bends), The Book of Years,Dream Catcher,The Day of Small Things, For This Reason, In Times Like These (Is He the One?), and, Me, My Fiddle, An’ Momma have been read and produced in Los Angeles as well as read in Nebraska, Maine, North Carolina, and recently in Washington, D.C. Robin has performed Me, My Fiddle, An’ Momma in Los Angeles; the piece was also read at the 1st Annual SWAN Day event in Portland, Maine in March of 2008. Her plays Tennessee Songbird and Dream Catcher have won “Best Concurrent Play Lab Script at the 2008 Great Plains Theatre Conference” and been selected as a semi-finalist for the 2008 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, respectively. Her poetry has been read in venues in Los Angeles and Indiana and has been published in two International Library of Poetry books.
The playwright is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., the Theatre Communications Group, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, Native Women Writers (at the Autry), and the American Film Institute from which she holds a certificate in screenwriting. For more information on Robin please visit her website at www.ladybyrdcreations.com.
LA FPI Blogger Erica Bennett has been blogging since 2010. Honesty and dedication to the arts are qualities that have shaped Erica’s work but it’s her unique point of view that draws the audience in and keeps them in their seats.
1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?
I tend to think of it as coming back to theater after most of my lifetime away. I began my academic career in the theater, after seeing a high school musical production and saying to myself, I can sing better than that. I rehearsed in my bedroom, auditioned and was cast in a musical review. Of course, I’m not a great singer. It was at community college that my competitive nature was converted; theatre became my favorite place of worship. And I found my strength in perseverance. I was fortunate enough to study acting with Don Finn, Jose Quintero, Arthur Mendoza, and Stella Adler. I left the theater, as part of a natural progression, to work in dramatic television as a writers assistant. I like to think that’s where I learned how to edit. I finally came home to the theatre thirteen years ago. I was driven there by illness and the force of wondering, what did I truly want to do with the rest of my life. Time is my driving force and my enemy; I feel like I have a clock on my shoulder, always. When I made a decision to write plays, I studied playwriting with Tom Jacobson (UCLA), William Mittler (Fullerton College) and Cecilia Fannon (SCR).
2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why?
My favorite play is the play I am currently writing, Bender. Bender tells the story of a woman who finds her voice once she finally learns how to love herself. I’ve found myself retelling this story in play after play. I like to think, I’m getting better at it with each one.
3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?
My favorite production is going to be of Love, Divine, my new short play written in verse for the holiday season that is being produced by New Voices at Stage Door Repertory in Anaheim on December 7, 8, 14 and 21, 2013 at 2:00pm. It’s my favorite, because it was such a fun challenge to write and because it’s my first production in six years.
4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?
I am moved by most things theatrical. Two years ago, during my first and only trip to New York, I wept through War Horse at the Lincoln Center in the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. I wept for the majesty of it; the puppetry, the humanity, the storytelling.
5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?
My favorite playwright as an actor was Tennessee Williams. Now? That is a really tough question. I will have to say, under pressure, I am my favorite playwright. Somebody has to be fully in my corner.
6. How has your writing changed over the years?
I have a tendency to be too internal with my stories, to the detriment of actual understanding. I generally need to develop my plays over time and with actors reading around my dining room table. I need to hear the words and talk about their intention as I go. Because I often write, but don’t fully understand why my characters speak. So, hearing the words helps me understand them. I think I work best this way, because I used to be an actor and feel a deep kinship and trust of them. I used to apologize for my process, but it is my process and now I own it. Consequently, I think I’ve become more effective at articulating myself on the page.
7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?
I write plays with musicality. I’m drawn to musical plays because it’s where I feel closest to my center, to the world around me. When listening to music, I often experience a physical sensation, my heart swells, opens up; I experience joy. When I put words to music, it makes the joy even greater.
8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?
I have tried to write conversational poetry, but am always pulled toward making them theatrical.
9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?
I became a blogger for LA FPI because LA FPI trusted me enough to blog. I take writing posts quite, perhaps too, seriously. Sometimes I am so scared and intimidated that I don’t know what to say. I mean, I get to thinking, who am I to blog? Who cares what I have to say? I get over that thinking by just writing. The first organization that embraced me as a playwright was the Orange County Playwrights Alliance, led by Eric Eberwein, in 2009. I went to LA FPIs first meeting in 2010 representing myself as an Orange County playwright in a sea of Los Angelenos. I will forever be grateful to LA FPI for accepting me.
10. What is your favorite blog posting?
They are all great because every blogger is writing with their heart on their sleeve. I love everybody for putting it out there.
11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?
I used to think, if I wrote like “so-and-so”, I’d be a playwright. So, I modeled my writing after other playwrights, like Williams and Beckett. Now, not so much. I am my biggest influence. My sense of time, the pressure of time in my life and music are my biggest influences.
12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?
I think I found my voice as a playwright when I realized that I am writing the same story over and over again but through different characters, and that it’s my story… Once I learn to love myself, I will find my voice… Once I could see that and articulate it, I think I spoke it aloud to Robin Byrd at a Dramatist Guild meeting in L.A., I began to understand what it is I’m actually working toward. Then, I began to face my fears as a person and on the page and love myself and through my characters. Only then did I feel like my writing began to blossom.
13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?
My writing regiment is to write every spare minute. I have no process but to write. Write and write, as much and as quickly as I can in the time I have available to me.
14. How do you decide what to write?
Usually it’s an inspiration brought out by an image, text or music.
15. How important is craft to you?
Craft, to me, is what allows inspiration to live on a page.
16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?
I have a tendency to want to direct and produce.
17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?
I live the life of a cloistered academic librarian who writes (mostly) between academic semesters. I love the idea of the L.A. theater community and hope to participate more in the future.
18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)
I accept it as truth and then it recedes from lack of attention.
19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?
Yes. Love. Forgiveness. Faith.
20. What are you working on now?
Bender, a two-act full-length play with music written by Karen Fix Curry.
Erica Bennett is a playwright and tenured librarian at Fullerton College, where, as Systems Librarian, her primary responsibility is to coordinate the use of technology in the library.
Her short documentary Mendez v. Westminster: Families for Equality has aired on KOCE-TV (PBS) since October 2010. It is centered about her play El Primer Dia de Clases. Her plays Freed and Jolly and Bean were respectively presented in staged readings at the Laguna Beach New Play Festival and Newport Theatre Arts Center in 2009.
In November 2011, after a two-year development process, her play Water Closet was read by the White Horse Theater Company in New York City at the Dramatists Guild of America. The play was workshopped and read by the Fullerton College Playwrights Festival in January 2012. In May 2012, it was selected by the Orange County Playwrights Alliance “OCPA Studios” for a reading at the Hunger Artists Theatre, which she directed.
Her 10-minute play, A Waffle Doesn’t Cure Insomnia, was selected for publication in the Best American Short Plays 2011-2012. A staged reading was directed by Bennett and presented by OCPA’s Discoveries series in December 2012 at the Empire Theatre, home of Theatre Out. The Fullerton College Playwright’s Festival is producing her 10-minute play, Don’t Ever Love Me, as part of its 10 Cent Story Project in January 2013.
Bennett received her B.A. in Theater Arts from California State University, Fullerton, where she studied acting with Donn Finn and Jose Quintero. Upon graduation she moved to Los Angeles where she studied acting with Stella Adler and Arthur Mendoza. She was featured in Benicio Del Toro’s short film Submission. She worked for nearly ten years in dramatic television production on such shows as The Young Riders, Gabriel’s Fire, Under Suspicion and The Big Easy, as a writer’s and development assistant.
Bennett holds a Master of Library & Information Science from UCLA, and is a member of the Society of California Archivists, the Dramatists Guild of America and the Orange County Playwrights Alliance.
This morning ended the 2013 Dramatists Guild Conference “Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future with some very inspiring words from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Doug Wright (I am my Own Wife); I can only tell you that you need to read it if it is every published or watch the video if one was made because that is what I am going to do. Yes, it is worth listening to over and over again.
I think the consensus in the room was, “I want to write a play now.” Not just write a play but do the research behind it I so much love to do, you know, walking in the “wright” of playwright. I came away knowing that any dumb stuff I need to fix about me so I can squeeze through a door, I can do. I am a dramatist. I don’t have to apologize or feel “less than” in the room with other collaborators collaborating onmyplay… I can look forward to the Dramatists Guild fighting the good fight for us because that is what they do… They make it possible for us to continue “Having Our Say…”
“Taking historical events and turning them into compelling stagecraft can be a huge risk but can also yield huge rewards. John Weidman, former DG president and librettist of Pacific Overtures, Assassin, and Road Show (all with scores by Stephen Sondheim), discusses the processes, pitfalls and challenges of writing about the real world in theatrical terms.” – Writing History
John Weidman has a very interesting interview in the Dramatists Guild’s “In the Room” series. Listen here.
At the Dramatists Guild Conference, Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future, I sat in on a session titled “Writing History” with John Weidman. He told some wonderful stories, discussed “Road Show” and how and why he made the choices he did in writing it the way he did. Additionally, he discussed how he broke down the killers to their commonality in “Assassins” in order to write the piece.
He also gave pointers on what is appropriate when working with historical material:
1. You have an obligation to invent, stimulate, and push
2. You have an obligation not to misrepresent.
If you have to manipulate material so much that you are leaving your source material you want to look at that as a problem/flag alerting you to misrepresentation of the facts. Be careful of diluting actual action. Take a look at what you have to leave out and what you put in.
This session really put me at ease about tackling historical material as a writer.
“How do dramatists balance fact and fiction when crafting stories from real life events? This panel, made up of award-winning playwrights and documentarians, explores how factual materials can be crafted, shaped, and transformed using the dramatic writer’s art.” – Shaping Real Life: Present & Past
At the Dramatists Guild Conference: Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future, I sat in on the “Shaping Real Life: Present & Past” session. The panel included: Sheila Curran Bernard, Andrew Pederson, Craig Thornton, Jayme McGhan. The above questions are what they focused the session on.
What I took away from the session was the following:
When writing history, one should try to keep the facts straight where you can. If it is missing you have to fill in the blanks but when it’s there, you should try to keep the facts straight. This was the consensus among the panelists.
Be ethical when writing live characters. Check with the Dramatists Guild about the way to get permission to use the person/persons’ story. You should take care of this before you start the process. However, just because you have a waiver to write about an incident doesn’t mean all those involved should be subjected to how putting it on a stage will affect them so this is where you should use discretion. With live characters, it is a continuing relationship you can’t do the story and go away to work on another play like you didn’t build those relationships. Ethically, you would want to deal with the matter of you making money off their story by reason of your finished piece (once in the play, it becomes your copyright property). You want to make sure you have already come to an agreement with them (because you consulted the Dramatists Guild lawyers before you started the process and all parties have signed the agreements/contracts.) It can not be stressed enough, the Dramatists Guild is there to help the playwright.
When writing real life and to creatively move the story, you may need more than the facts you have in your notes. The panel discussed using made-up characters to handle factual information. “In My Shoes” (a docudrama about the tensions of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan felt by the children of the soldiers), written by Craig Thornton, used a chorus to tell the story of 911. Because, ultimately you are trying to make a drama out of the real life events, all the elements of a drama must be in place. “In My Shoes” needed an inciting incident to pull all the monologues together and solidify the collection as a play; the use of the chorus satisfied this need.
When more than one person is involved, like a novelist, the live person, and the publisher, the panel urged the room to consult the Dramatists Guild lawyers to make sure there are no underlying rights agreements that crop up later because you got permission from only one person in the involved group. Here is where working with dead subjects is a little easier because dead characters have less rights than live ones. You will, in some cases, have to deal with heirs or the estate…
Panelist Jayme McGhan, I believe, quoted his favorite reminder, “Better to ask for permission than to ask for forgiveness.”
Another thing to note about working with live characters is that by the end of your interviewing/gathering information, you will have created a relationship with the person/persons. More likely than not, a continuing relationship, where you cannot do the story and go away to work on another play like you didn’t build those relationships.
The panel also discussed when to stop researching. One clue Andrew Pederson said, was (as I remember it) “when you find yourself asking yourself if you have enough information. You have too much information.” Too much research can kill your creative impulses. If you have the essence of a story, you can start. Outlines are good to help with research so all you have to do is fill in the blanks but be open to changing it as you find the good kernels in your research notes that you may want to use.
In some cases, while crafting your play, you may have to “cheat” to give back story – by cheat I mean find a way to creatively add it without it looking or feeling like you added it. Historical stories gain context immediately because you should tell history at a certain level as it is. Truth is the most powerful thing you can work with if you can get it out so the fudging should be limited otherwise, you may have to state at the beginning of your play that it is “based on” or “inspired by”…
In essence when you are shaping real life into drama, your dramatic license should be the tool used to keep the story moving within reason but not a thorn in the side that takes away from the credibility of your piece…
I am here in Chicago at the DramatistsGuild Conference “Having Our Say: Our History, Our Future” enjoying every minute of it. It is really good to see Stephen Schwartz, President, Dramatists Guild, Gary Garrison, Executive Director, Creative Affairs and hoping to see Ralph Sevush, Esq. Executive Director, Business and Legal Affairs, have to make sure I get to one of his sessions – playwriting without the business side of things can leave one at a loss… Some of the sessions are live streaming from HowlRound at http://www.livestream.com/newplay where you can watch them several times after the live event.
My first session was with Jeffrey Sweet, playwright, author, teacher, actor, director, improvisation master – I could go on. I use his books to help me out of fixes when I’m writing. I met him at the last Dramatists Guild Conference in Virginia. He is the nicest man, very down to earth and very giving where knowledge of the craft of playwriting and theater is concerned.
Mr. Sweet talked about how improvising came into being – the people in the germination period, the history of it – how storefront theater started and what that had to do with the Marxist son of a millionaire who loved theater. He discussed how the question “How do you get plays on a stage when no one is writing them?” gave rise to improvisation. How improvising theater starting from scenarios –Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm uses scenarios. He ran through the history like a monologue, full of comedy and facts. He told us to also look at TJ & Dave for improvisation today.
In “Improvising your Play”, Mr. Sweet discussed set up for Improv and the power of the unspoken word. A writer must know what to leave out. He suggested conveying what the noun is without using the word. As in, conveying “I love you” without actually saying “I love you.” He demonstrated with a skit using two playwrights from the audience giving them clear instructions on what their character wanted but what they could not say to the other character. The Improv turned out to be a nice little scene. He runs a Summer Improv writing retreat (http://www.artisticnewdirections.org/retreats.html) that uses improvisation techniques to write scripts. Then he did an exercise with five playwrights from the audience who were told to describe a noun without using the noun. We got very good descriptions, of a woman who found solace in watching a puppy through the store window, a man whose horse sounded like a woman until the very end, and the description of finding that a vile smell is of poop on the bottom of a shoe.
He also discussed relating something from the past without writing in past tense. There is a technical way called “historical present” that gives the sense of dramatic action. You start in the past but switch to present as you go, for instance, writing “I was walking along the side of the road, suddenly; a large truck is coming right at me. I have a second to get out of the way or I’m toast. I jump…” (as I understood him). There is also “high context exposition” which in essence means don’t explain. Characters who know each other don’t repeat what they already know; this is why the soaps use new characters to rehash old business that everyone else already knows. He feels the writer should always go to the future tense.
Another way of bringing more to a script is by negotiating over an object. “Objects between any two characters will give info about the characters.” Shakespeare uses three objects in King Henry the Sixth, the paper crown, molehill and the handkerchief which create shock in behavior. In “The Apartment,” the mirror compact does the trick.
Improvising your Play was a very informative session. A lot of what he discussed is in his books. Seeing him bring the techniques to life before your eyes is worth experiencing at least once so if you ever get the change to sit in on a Jeffrey Sweet class, please do…
Jeffrey Sweet’s books:
Dramatists Toolkit, The Craft of the Working Playwright
Solving Your Script: Tools and Techniques for the Playwright
Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City and the Compass Players
