Short video on navigating our website to find a Hollywood Fringe Festival show to attend and support Women on Stage, and more specifically, Women on the Fringe! Also some helpful tips once you’re on the Hollywood Fringe Festival site to share and support!
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It’s the end of my blogging week, and I want to talk (finally) a bit about time… How we spend so much of it waiting, making excuses, rushing around from unimportant (in the scheme of things) task to unimportant task – how we put so many wonderful moments on the backburner because it’s not vital to our day-to-day existences…
We’ve got to stop that nonsense.
Cason and I spent our final “Jane Doe in NY!” vacation day puttering around Park Slope – there was a wonderful street fair with plenty of good food and excellent knick-knack browsing to be had. The weather was gorgeous.
And the art was everywhere.
I need to stop getting sucked into my “Oh-my-God-I’m-so-Broke!” panic and remember to make more art.
I need to write more plays.
When I moved back to AZ (almost 2 years ago now – yikes!) it was never with the intention to stay as long as I have. I was unemployed, beat down, and depressed as all get out about my “Why can’t I just EMERGE ALREADY” Emerging-Playwright status. So I took my Arizona Sojourn as an excuse to hide out, lick my wounds, and heal.
Well, the healing has happened – it’s time for me to get back on the hamster wheel.
And that’s not to say I’ve been lazy – just the opposite in fact – I’ve been insanely busy. But it’s primarily been a producerly and survivalist sort of busy… I haven’t done a lot of writing or art-making of my own, and this weekend was just the right thing to help me refocus and get my sails back up again.
Because it’s incredibly validating when a theatre company reads your work and decides to produce it – there is so much involved in theatre making, it is a tremendous compliment to know that someone besides you and the non-producing back-clappers think your work is worthy of an audience. It’s why we write plays, after all.
There is also something incredibly inspiring about visiting a city full of artists fighting to make their art seen/heard/count.
We saw Fuerza Bruta this week and the sheer spectacle of the thing had my imagination spinning with possibilities – my playwright brain was in visual ecstasy.
I walked into shops full of hand-crafted clever arts and wanted to run home and start building pieces of my own.
I have really missed the visual and theatrical feasting that the East and West Coasts provide… and I am inspired to bring my reclaimed whimsy and dedication back home with me with a vengeance, now that the “licking-my-wounds” sojourn is over and I’m feeling the Muse stretch her wings again.
Thank you CAKE Productions, and thank you New York!
~Tiffany
As a storyteller, when I create the worlds for my stories, I must believe them to be real worlds. If I believe it, the audience will believe it. If I believe it, my characters will know I believe it and they will talk; they will tell me their secrets and show me their hearts. We can sit a spell and work it out on the page. We can see what the end will be… We can find a way of telling the truth about things considered intangible/ethereal/surreal/too terrible to speak of/so hush-hush, the revealing can blow the mind. As a storyteller, I have to be open to conversations with the truth – whatever that truth is… I have to be brave enough to share it… and let the chips fall where they may…
The singer, Brandy. I watched an interview with Brandy “Behind the Music” where she mentioned one of her albums that didn’t do too well. She said she was supposed to be “sexy” then she revealed, “I didn’t believe it. And, if I didn’t believe it why would you?” I remember that album of which she spoke and I remember thinking, “What is she doing? Why doesn’t she just be herself and sing?” I did not buy that album – her voice was different – her sound was off. And, I love me some Brandy; I think that her gift is phenomenal. I love the deep colors in her voice – how one can feel the graininess of the “Shekinah Glory” in the tone, and hear the octaves rising and falling like a breeze on a warm day, telling stories in flats and sharps like nobody’s business. I’ve been missing that sound until recently when Brandy teamed with Monica on a song “It All Belongs To Me”. Hearing the first notes, it’s easy to see, “She’s back!” You can best be sure she is not trying to be sexy, she just is and that voice…she is definitely telling a story that she believes and that makes me want to hear it…
As artists/storytellers/writers/painters/sculptors/singers/dancers, we must stay true to our authentic selves striving always to the perfecting of the gift as we translate it through our vessels. We must strive to stay on course and learn to get back on course should we ever lose our way. I am convinced that sometimes the best part of the story is how it is filtered through the artist. If we don’t believe in ourselves and what we have to say and how we say it, is it fair to expect anyone else to believe in us? We are different for a reason, unalike to serve a purpose, not-the-same because being the same was never the point. It’s the collective sound of harmony in the many voices of a choir that makes it a choir, the collective sound of the woodwind, brass, string and percussion instruments that make up an orchestra and that collectiveness facilitates a symphony; and it’s the collective sound of a people that make its culture. If we are listening, we know that all the parts are needed to give a true reflection of the sound of our times. We must continue to believe and act accordingly.
Believing involves more than the worlds we are trying to create, it also involves the world we are in – the here and now – and the pieces that inevitably we leave behind.
From time to time, I have taken acting classes. While studying at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, I learned a technique called the “Picture Exercise” where the actor finds a picture of a person/character and recreates the picture by recreating the exact pose and costume. This exercise helps the actor find specific character traits to incorporate into life-like behavior for the character. Once the actor is dressed and posed like the picture, the actor must answer one question, “What does the person in the picture say at that moment in time?” In order to answer that question, the actor must get a sense of the inner and outer voice of the character/person in the picture. The actor has to create backstory and has to create the moment before. The actor has to know what frame of mind the person in the picture is in, where they are physically, how they move, if they move, and why they move. Then what do they sound like when they talk, do they have an accent, a lisp, are they loud or quiet…
I did my exercise from a picture of Sethe from Toni Morrison’s Beloved who is patterned after Margaret Garner, the slave who killed her young daughter rather than let her return to slavery. I used a photograph by Ken Regan (found in the book Journey to Beloved by Oprah Winfrey) on page 48. The actress who played young Sethe, Lisa Gay Hamilton has a video of that scene “get in the shed” and while I did not recreate her scene, I did recreate her look and the look of the babies for my exercise. The picture I used was of Sethe holding her two infant daughters in her arms – in complete controlled hysterics. I made my costume, bought two dolls – a small brown one and a larger white one, as there are seldom brown dolls to be found in stores. I bought paint and mixed it to get the perfect hue and painted the white one brown, after the paint dried, I glued hair onto the head in little braids all over. I made dresses for the babies. Grabbed a knife – one that could slice skin and created and reenacted what I considered fitting backstory that would make a mother slit her baby’s throat.
What did she say? “Dey be dead or dey be free.”
I always liked the picture exercise but hadn’t thought of using it for a writing exercise until I participated in a playwright’s workshop at Native Voices the Autry with Bernardo Solano. The seminar was right around the time that I lost my niece and I needed to do something to get my mind off my grief. I needed to write and I was craving the company of other writers… It was hard to focus; however, when we were asked to select a picture and write whatever it inspired us to write, I found the selection process somewhat soothing. I selected a picture of a man and an infant lying dead on stone steps. The picture began to speak almost immediately – “the bombs came in the night…” The resulting piece is a 10-minute play titled MILK DUST.
I don’t usually do writing exercises because I believe to get better at writing, you have to write… Writing is like doing pushups, the only way to get better at pushups is to do more pushups. I do like this exercise though; I like the way it can be used from the acting and the writing perspective. It’s close to what I do in my head when I visualize the characters that I am writing about, when I am listening to what they say. This exercise is a perfect way to find an unexpected way into an unexpected play…
They were camped less than a mile outside Cooke Barracks in the empty field on the way to town for months. The young children would wave at me as I passed by. I would walk because, 1. I was in tip top physical shape and, 2. I did not have a license to drive in Germany. Everyone on Base noticed them – the gypsies – camped like something out of a movie. Dark haired, dark complexioned – a beautiful and intriguing people… One weekend, the children waved as usual but the teen-aged girls called me over to have me show them how to put on makeup. I showed them how to apply eyeliner, mascara, blush, lipstick… losing my stash of course to their giddy “May I haves.” I asked them if they were gypsies, “No, we are German” they answered. Adamantly, Wir sind Deutsch. We are German.” The next time I walked to town, they were gone…
I think about them sometimes – German, not Armenian, not gypsies – and the freedom I felt standing there in their camp. I think about their claim to a land, a heritage not expected by outsiders or even by insiders with standardized tests. They did not look the part but the field settled softly beneath their trailers disguised as carts disguised as trailers. And the trees hung over them shielding their skin from the penetrating sun as if ordained as covering since the beginning of time. And when they were gone, the trees sagged and could be heard moaning for the children.
Gypsies; part of the world but not confined by the world, always ready and willing to move anywhere to find home – never losing the authenticity of self. Owning their space and place in time, they drew you into their story…made you look…made you want to know…
Sometimes, I feel like a gypsy (submitting work authentic to me and clearly not on the same-dar as what is being selected). Sometimes I consider “what if I changed”…but never do because it’s the me way down on the inside that’s got so much to say and there is somebody somewhere who needs exactly what I write, how I write it, because the feeling of freedom when I write is worth the waiting period needed for that gypsy spark to ignite. It must be the softness of the ground beneath my feet begging for seed during the planting season promising fruit during the harvest that keeps me pushing on head first into the wind and rain…into the fray…because I belong…because I am a storyteller…
When contemplating words and worlds, sometimes I go to the movies to see what other stories are being told. It inspires/fuels/rouses me to create another day… On my last such outing, I went to see THE GREY by Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (based on the short story by Jeffers titled GHOST WALKER). It is a wonderful movie, wonderfully told. There is a poem in it that made me think of my life as a writer… in this time just before…
Once more into the fray
Into the last fight I’ll ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day.
— from THE GREY
And all the artists said, “Amen.”
Out of nowhere I got a directing job.
The last couple of years I focused on my outreach and writing, with a few small self-produced projects along the way. I purposely wanted a break from the rehearsal room and it was a good one. The last year I’ve written more than the five beforehand, and in that time fell in love with the whole idea of the new play.
Howlround and the formerly-Arena Stage-now-Emerson-College newplay initiative did a lot for me. So did the myriad of new work I saw during the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Part of my own odyssey involves ongoing class with the LA Writers Center, an inspirational incubator for new works. Not to mention being part of creating genre-defining projects last year while at The Indy Convergence. And of course, finding a community among this group, the Los Angeles Female Playwright’s Initiative.
So out of the blue is this opportunity, and it happens to be a play I really dig. I thought long and hard about what it would take for me to want to direct again, and I’d say 90% of my personal requirements are met.
In between meeting the wonderful playwright and making my decision, I saw friend Brian Polak’s reading as part of EST-LA’s Winterfest. I walked into the large black box with hidden rooms that create magic. I walked across stage and took my seat, turning off my phone. As I got comfortable, saying hellos and catching up with colleagues, I breathed it all into myself. I missed the potential inherent with only a space, actors, music stands, words and people to listen to them.
So here I am, flexing my directing muscles again, bringing a new play to life.
This afternoon I hear a new draft out loud for the first time. It’s more exciting a prospect than I thought, even after I’d made the decision.
Raise a glass to new works, folks. Keep the juices flowing.
I’ve been reading a lot of plays lately – some current, most not – and I’m starting to see double, hate Neil Simon, and long for a new reading list…
You see, I’m part of the play selection committee at our community theater, and we’ve had a number of plays submitted for consideration in the 2012-13 season. It’s an interesting position to be in, as the community I’m currently a part of isn’t likely to take to something like Bruce Norris’ The Pain and the Itch (although I love it), Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (does it get more visually poetic than that?) or even Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage (though it is under consideration with a bevy of voiced hesitancies – hesitancies even though it won the Olivier and Tony and makes me pee my pants with writerly joy! Ack!)
So instead I’m re-reading The Rainmaker, A Shayna Maidel, and meeting Harvey and other plays I might not normally pick up (like Don’t Dress for Dinner, which is pee-your-pants funny!) And each of these plays, while interesting or moving in their own right, have been pretty outside my “cup of tea” as a reader, and as a writer…
So I have to step out of the “What does Tiffany like” comfort zone and into the “What would this community like” (not-as-comfortable) zone. It’s a super strange position to occupy, but I’ve found that (while frustrating at times) being forced to shift one’s artistic POV like this can be enlightening, educational, and overall good for the writer’s soul…
Because it forces you to thing commercially.
It forces you to think about the community you’re living in/hoping to work in.
It forces you to think like anything but a writer.
Which then makes you turn around and look at your own work with a clearer eye to what a theatre might need/want vs. what your little muse thinks is pretty.
When’s the last time you can say you looked at your own work like that? Don’t we usually sit down with some characters/a story idea/whatever form your genesis usually tends to be, and a heart full of blood-pumping enthusiasm with very little thought of what a theatre needs?
I’d like to think that all the producing and committee-sitting I’ve done this past year is going to help me ask that question next time the story romance hits me… not so I can bury my idea in the “Nobody gives a shit” box (maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow) but so that as I cook and scheme and start to work, I can think more realistically about how to develop my idea to be produceable…
After all, I’m not writing for my drawer, am I?
~Tiffany
I have a dream that one day I will get to the promised land… I will be sitting before a window, looking out into the day/night/day; I will be writing…and the sun sets and rises will not deter me from my place before my computer. There will be no alarm clock going off in the middle of my thoughts to alert me to the time. I will not have to shower, dress and make my way down the 405 to work; I will sit contemplating the next words. And, I will be happy…
But right now, at this precise moment, I have to pull out my ‘pick me up poem’ and carry on till then…
I Will Go In The Strength Of The Lord
i will go in the strength of the Lord / i will make mention of Him to the people and praise Him always for His tenderness toward me / for the kindness with which He shows me / because there are times… /when within myself i cannot find the strength / …to take the journey / i am overwhelmed by even the thought of it… / and stand paralyzed /behind a wall of “i can’ts” / shifting my weight from foot to foot / pretending “i’m gonna try” / but…it is too much for me…at times / and i cannot wade the waters…they are too deep / and i have to seek rest in Him / so i can scatter my apprehensions to the four winds / it is then / in times like these… / that i find solace in the hollow of His hand / and lay myself down to rest awhile / then we take the journey together / and windsurf above the clouds / up where eagles dare / up where the sun lives / and mountaintops look like small hills and stormy weather is beneath us / and we glide…glide…glide / into the promised promised land…
“I Will Go in the Strength of the Lord” by Robin Byrd
I bought a bumper sticker back in 2004 and loved it:
Do Something For a Change
Unfortunately the car that hosted it is gone, but the phrase still sticks with me.
I began obsessing over outreach and consulting for nonprofits when I saw an incredible, invisible gap: the disconnect between nonprofits or civics leaders and the people they serve. This gap is not always a result of lack of trying, but very often due to a lack of time, objectivity, funding….choose one.
More on that gap later, but the connection between it and the bumper sticker is a simple one. While you are busy changing
the world, I help you reach as many people as possible. This is what attracts me to nonprofits like The Global Theatre Project. How Bari Hochwald does what she does is not simple, but her mission can boil down to:
creative engagement and collaboration that will unite American theatre artists and students with their international counterparts positively affecting the communities where they work
I know from some time overseas – and across the country – that travel and true creative collaboration is the key to an open and receptive mind. I feel it greatly affects my ability to adjust to new situations, embrace new tools, and understand the world a little more.
When the opportunity to work with Bari on a fund-raiser for The Global Theatre Project arose, I couldn’t believe my luck. Honestly, I still can’t. I learned many lessons through past campaigns similar to this, and relish the chance to improve and aid in their fund-raising outreach efforts. Amanda Aitken wrote this great article on framing and tuning yourself to attract the right collaborators to your work. I truly feel that my work with The Global Theatre Project is exactly why I started consulting in the first place.
Did I also mention that I wouldn’t know Bari if it weren’t for LA FPI? Oh, that little detail!
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Read about our special guests James Cromwell & Panelists
“This is the power of art” – Interview with Jessica from our partner Amnesty Int’l
Buy tickets or donate if you can’t attend!
I have a confession… I haven’t written anything much lately. I could (accurately) claim the busy-bee-nature of my calendar
has left me less than energized, but there’s a bit more to it than that; I just haven’t felt particularly inspired to actually make the writerly effort.
And I don’t mean “inspired” in the sense that I’m waiting for some hot-commodity-idea either.
(From my blog on Little Black Dress INK a week or two ago)
Writer’s Block… They should call it “Emotionally Disadvantaged Creative’s Block”.
There are countless essays and processes devoted to understanding and conquering the writer’s enemy, mostly involving baby steps of free-writing, calendering oneself, forcing it out like a stubborn turd, etc. But I always thought these things were a crock – the reason we stop writing is because we’re harboring some deep fear or resentment – not because we’ve run out of ideas – and no amount of straining ourselves over the proverbial toilet is going to make them come out if the tunnel is plugged by baggage!
(I know, that’s a disgusting analogy)
But then, I haven’t written anything new in months (besides blog posts) so I had to ask myself, might I be stricken with a fog of literary stasis? I mean, I’ve been really busy; I’ve been teaching and producing and directing and dating…
I have been doing any number of things besides writing…
(this is when my inner guru/muse/whatever it is within that is plugged more keenly into the source of things, lets me know that I am indeed hiding in the fog…)
Sigh
(and then I have to ask myself why….)
Double Sigh
But I think the answer is this: I’m not writing because I’m afraid that whatever I’m working on still won’t be good enough to produce, and quite frankly I’m a little more than tired of all the back-patting and head-nodding and open readings leading to naught…
My demon it seems (the first in my history with the pen) is fear, chased by an ugly little thing called anger.
And it’s time I process it all, chew it up, and spit it out, and stop giving myself excuses. I’ve collected seeds of anxiety and doubt and now they’ve spouted into a full blown emotional forest that needs cutting down.
Perhaps I can turn all that lumber into paper?
Then this past weekend I was invited to participate in a 24-hour play fest. I’d never done one before, so I jumped in with a lot of willful trepidation and more than a little attitude (pointless as it is, attitude always makes us feel a little safer in the un-trod, doesn’t it?)
I was terrified – How was this going to work? Was I going to be able to write a whole play (minimal page length be damned- would it have a beginning, middle and end? Would it make sense?) in one evening? Would my brain and The Muse be able to stand each other after so long apart and under the pressure of such short turnaround?
Turns out, the answer – just like my answer to the challenge – was “Yes!”
We gathered at 9 p.m., started writing at 11, and I had a 9 pager ready to hand over at 3:30 a.m. I was exhausted, and I was seeing a little double, but by God, I crafted a funny enough piece to forgive it it’s whimsy, and the actors and directors who memorized and staged it in the morning/afternoon/evening did a great job and seemed to find it quirky and enjoyable enough that I could feel I had indeed done well.
And now I can’t get my little Muse to stop poking me, pushing me, demanding me to get back at the keys.
It seems that the “cure” was to just stop worrying about my attitude and the sheer overwhelming nature of my theatrical hopes, and just write already!
Now – if I can just get my calendar to listen, I’d be a much happier, even-busier-(but writing, damnit)-bee!
~Tiffany
