Category Archives: LAFPI

Words, words; rolling…

Someone once said to me – well, alright, actually it’s been said to me many a time but I remember quite clearly at least the first time I heard it – that I write “with a lot of rhythm.”  At the time I think I nodded dumbly, and tried to feel good about what seemed to be a compliment but was something I hadn’t really thought all that much about as I wrote… it seemed strange to receive a compliment on something that I had no awareness of.

They were right of course… as I listened to the actors digging into and discovering the play, there was an amazing sense of rhythm and musicality to the language of the piece, and now I realize that the rhythm of a word or a combination of words has a lot to do with whether or not I’ll use it/them (or opt for silence) in my work.

Word selection, it would seem, has become as as serious for me as selecting the right wine, your child’s name, or which freeway to take during rush hour…

In other words, I take it pretty damn serious, but I also try to maintain a healthy sense of humor.

Because I have yet to meet an actor who hasn’t had to (on occasion) rearrange some portion of my text to suit his/her mouth.

Now, I used to act, and so I understand that sometimes getting your brain to remember a line that has been composed in such a way as to feel as comfortable in your mouth as a cheese grater, can be damn near impossible.  I understand that sometimes an actor winds up spitting out the subtext of a line or some mutant hybrid instead of the original…

And as a playwright who understands actors but who is still a pretty persnickety wordsmith, I’ve learned to pick my battles on which lines are truly crucial to the rhythm of the thing and which can survive a few… abuses.

But I still wonder if, although they are treating the play with much reverence and care, an actor realizes the value of the words themselves (and their order) to the playwright… or if it is only I that see them as a magical, swelling, and lyrical recipe that must be said in the correct order and pairings, lest they loose their power and cast (instead) only a murkish sort-of spell…

And now I’m in the unique position of directing my own play for the Dirty Laundry fest, and I’m battling with myself on the merit of nit-picking vs. focusing on the cohesive whole…

That said, when I find myself bristling and silently screaming inside at some liberty taken with my text, I take a breath and gently task the actor with getting it right, even if we have to work the beat several times or break down the text line by line to get their brains to accept it as written rather than letting them put it in their own words.  It’s avery interesting internal battle indeed to juggle egos (theirs and mine) with productivity and specificity.

And it’s taught me a lot about balancing expectations with function as well.

However, just because it might be fun to compare notes, here are my top three pet peeves in the line department:

  • Don’t start every line with “Look” or “But” or “Well”… This is an actor trick that I DESPISE…  Either they get stuck and need a second to recall the line,  or they don’t quite understand the transition that brought them there so they add a beat of their own wordage to “help” themselves with, and if left unchecked it turns the whole thing into a play about humming and hawing.
  • Don’t reduce poetry to “comfortable” language…  Sometimes an actor will come across a more complex line than they themselves would use and instead of mastering it, they alter it to suit their tongues.  “I left to fetch flowers” becomes “I went to get flowers” and I sit there and bemoan the lost mood of the line and silently curse the actor for their clumsy murder of my alliterative text, even though the same basic point has been made.  To me, the care I take in selecting my words mean the difference between craftsmanship and an “anyone can write a play” vibe.  There is very little in my characters mouths that I didn’t put there carefully and with specific intent.
  • Don’t blast through beats.  I use a lot of beats in my plays.  I hate when actors (or directors) try to fly through them – even if a director decides a “Beat” need not be illustrated on stage with time, they risk missing important shifts in power, emotion, intent, thought, etc. if they don’t take the time to ask “Why is the playwright adding a beat here between these lines?  What happens for the characters in this moment?”

~Tiffany

Crazy Schemes Produced

So, I’m a pretty active person, playwright, and dreamer… I like to keep busy and I like to feel productive.  I think it’s one of the reasons I was SO excited about the LAFPI starting up… I mean, a group of kick-ass playwrights all working towards gender parity in theater?  AND we get to have fun mixers and support each other and address important issues in theater?

Count me IN!

And over the past year (+) I’ve been super happy to see all the strides we’ve made – the very important LAFPI study helmed by the amazing Miss Ella Martin, the Women on the Fringe work that honored theatres who produce female playwrights, and the all encouraging and inspiring support that this site has offered for countless other female playwrights who want to get involved and join the revolution.

It’s been amazing.

But I’ve been watching a lot of it from AZ – where I’m now stationed – and I’ve been ants-in-my-pants-to-the-extreme for more ground-work than I can actually do from afar…

Until I realized that my new stomping grounds include an amazing community theatre and quite a few talented and accomplished female playwrights of its own…

And then I realized that I could support female playwrights by actually producing them.

So I started up Little Black Dress INK (www.LittleBlackDressINK.org), sent out invitations to some awesomely talented women, had a thrilling meeting with the head of the theatre here who said “YES!” to my crazy scheme, and got the ball rolling…

Now, a few months later, I find myself in the home stretch of a most passionate project:  Dirty Laundry, a ten minute play fest benefitting the Prescott Area Women’s Shelter and including plays from 9 awesome female playwrights!  There are also 7 female directors helming each of the plays, and a WAY talented team of actors bringing these plays to life.

So that ants in the pants feeling I was complaining about?  It’s settled down a little bit, appeased that I’m making something happen instead of waiting for it to come to me…

And isn’t that what the LAFPI is all about?

Becoming an “Instigator” is a call to arms!  All it takes is some daring, some passion, some wild-eyed-scheming, and a shared vision.

I might be one tired puppy at the end of this week, but I will be sleeping happy 🙂

~Tiffany

WHAT IF…..?

Performing Arts High School

What if theatre weren’t seen as a luxury but as central to the fabric of our country?

The Theatre Communications Conference is asking this question and more from June the 16th through the 18th at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Biltmore; and the Central L.A. High School #9, for the Visual and Performing Arts.

LAStageAlliance is sponsoring the conference, which is also celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of TCG. The national organization for the American theatre, their website says, was founded in 1961 with a grant from the Ford Foundation to foster communication among professional, community and university theatres, and now has nearly 700 member theatres and affiliate organizations and more than 12,000 individuals nationwide.

There are 1,084 attendees signed up – playwrights, artists and members of theatres from all over the country – and the TCG has teamed with Radar L.A which will be presenting its plays at the same time, including Moving Arts’ Car Plays, L.A., and a CalArts’ adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s play, Brewsie and Willie.

Here are some of the other questions the conference is asking:

What if artists and other theatre leaders talked regularly and openly about art and aesthetics?

What if theatre institutions and their boards committed to hiring more people of color in leadership positions?

What if a group of billionaires created a “Giving Pledge” initiative for theatre?

What if the US became more embedded in wars around the globe – what would become the role of theatre and artists?

What if there were a new audience engagement model as powerful as the subscription model?

What if theatres and artists could commit to each other for multiple years?

What if we could solidify new business models that would truly lead to the sustainability of our theatres?

Here’s one I wish it was asking. What if more artistic directors were committed to producing plays by women?

However, women and the LAFPI are represented. Hooray! Instigator Laura Shamas, and Paula Cizmar are asking “What if…Social Activism Could Inspire New Models of Theatre?” on Thursday, June 16th at the Biltmore Hotel from 2:30 to 4:00, and instigator Dee Jae Cox is moderating a panel called “What if Women Ruled The World?” on Saturday, June 18th at the Central L.A. High School from 11 to 12:30.

I can’t attend the conference but am part of the National Playwrights Slam on the 19th from 9 pm on at the Biltmore Tiffany Room and will report back. I’ve bought a pair of sandals and may break down and buy a new outfit as well. (Maybe, maybe not. I’m a rotten shopper.)

I know that one rarely makes contacts at any conference that lead on to fame and fortune. (I went to one a while back that was called Reinventing the Future. I’m still reinventing and thank God the future is always a day away.) But the panels sound interesting and may lead to some positive changes, and the explosion of the L.A. Theatre surrounding the conference is exciting.

I imagine that a great schmoozefest will be the heart of the affair. And that sounds like fun. With one thousand and eighty four people there, everyone is bound to meet a few simpatico persons, exchange some good ideas, and have a few laughs.

Day Three: Playwrights in Mind: A National Conversation – part four?

What will it take to have gender parity in America?  Julia Jordan says lots of local, grassroots groups are springing up – like LAFPI.  Collectively, they hold a lot of power.  But not as much as artistic directors.  They have the power to break the cycle.  Look at the Blackburn Award winners and runners up who’ve never had a production.  AD’s can aggressively go out there and decide to produce work by women and they won’t be hurt artistically or economically.

Sheri Wilner says AD’s are choosing playwrights not plays.  We need to raise their conscience – take it to the streets and ticketbuyers.

Laura Shamas says she spent a year going to nothing but plays by women.  If someone asks her to resubscribe to a theatre season, she says “no” unless they’ll do more shows by women.  Economic information.

What can I do if I live in a tiny town?  Jordan says it’s almost a PR war.  You’d be hard pressed to find an artistic director who doesn’t know the “right” answer when it comes to the question of playwrights of color.  Not so with gender.  Add to the conversation with those artistic directors, this is something people have thought about and there IS a right answer.  The numbers are so glaring, it cannot be ignored.  Write letters, don’t give them your money.  And it’s not just playwriting.  It’s about all the arts, beyond the arts. 

Sheri says there should be a wider net.  A study looked at children’s books: 33% have a lead female character; 100% have lead male characters.  We need to start early.

Laura says we were so inspired in LA by the east coast work, they did their own study, there’s a listing of plays by women on the website, and a blog as well.  Start a festival!  Address it creatively.  There are LAFPI “agents” who reach out to theatres to ask, “how can we get you to consider more plays by female playwrights.  Mixers.  You can do this in your hometown.  You’d be surprised what you can do with some cocktails. 

Marsha Norman says every woman has to help another woman.  There’s an infinite amount of “antelope” out there – we can be in the business of generosity.  Why do the stories of women need to be told?  Not just because they’re stories of women.  We need to hear the stories of all the people here on earth if we’re to live here with any semblance of compassion and understanding.  Every story that’s there to be told has to find its way to the stage.  People in power have to stop telling the same damn story again and again on the American stage.  We also have to get our own body of work done.  And make it possible for people to come after us.

When Primary Stages did a season of plays by women, it was their lowest grossing season…it was also the season after the market crash.  But did women get blamed for bad sales?  Playwrights Horizons did really well with female playwrights.  Last year, nearly 40% of the plays in NYC were by women, and many were hits.

How about cross-discipline boycotts?  Dancers boycotting theatres that don’t do plays by women.  Is there a Dramatists Guild policy on gender parity?  Marsha said if that’s what’s needed, we’ll do it.

Marsha says the “afraid” part is a huge part of it.  Be not afraid.  Because what?  It’s gonna get worse?  Her two Broadway producers kept asking whether she’d seen any Tony nominated shows.  She said no.  “In a season where’s no work by women, I’m not going.”  Our mouths have to open.  Create an organization, be the artists telling stories who go to the White House. 

Parity: Julie says she met with funding organization who told her what they did for writers of color.  No quotas.  Instead said, “we just want to see the numbers…how many did you produce…just for our own information.”  Suddenly more works by writers of color were getting done.  Something similar could be down the line for women.  It starts with data, which is being compiled now and being available for anyone who wants them.

Day Three: Playwrights in Mind: A National Conversation – part three

Self-Production Primer: Team Building – Roland Tec

Roland’s rules about producing:

The biggest challenge: writing is solitary.  In order to become an effective producer, fight against natural tendency to hide in the corner.  Producing is about gathering people together, getting a team of people to work at their peak.  Producing is a creative act.

Get a notebook.  Takes notes.  The minute you start producing, every conversation moves it forward – or back.  Take notes on every email, meeting, etc.  Time is in short supply.  Follow up quickly and effectively. 

The “all in” rule: when you’re sending someone an email or leaving a phone message, include all the necessary information.  Otherwise you slow down what needs to get done. 

Clarify your goals: what’s your objective for this production?  Is your goal to break even?  Have a commercial success?  If you don’t know before you begin, hard to access your success at the end.

Find a producing partner.  You can’t write and produce at the same time. 

We often think: who can help?  Ask another question: how can every person in my life help?  Everyone can offer something to the production.  Find the right thing they can do.  Some it may be money. Others may introduce you to other people.  Others will be your greatest cheerleader.  Or a great actor.  Or teaches at a university and can get you student interns.  Start thinking about finding ways in which the people in your world can become involved in your dream.

Scheduling: can’t start without your director.  You want to make sure you have the right director, one who understands your show.  If you have any reservations, keep looking.

Pre-production tasks: (2-6 months) Book the venue, raise the funds, hire the cast and publicist and crew (when hiring crew, delegate whenever possible – let your lighting designer hire everybody else in lighting, etc.), sign and file all union and legal paperwork, obtain the insurance.

Production tasks: rehearsing to performance level, build set and costumes, loading in, hanging and focusing the lights, rolling out the PR in all its forms (press release must drop at least six weeks prior to first performance), box office (never too early to start taking people’s money) and house management

Post: pay bills, strike set, return borrowed materials, assemble a clippings book (good press agent will do this for you, but they may miss something) – every mention in the press is there; assess financials; gather the team to say goodbye and thank you.  Followup: what were your goals?  Start assessing the success or failure or in between during the run of the show.  If you want to move the show, you need to know early.  Decide who’s on your decisionmaking team who’ll sit down with you to decide about moving the show. 

Have a production office (your living room?) where people can meet, leave packages, etc.  One central place. 

Casting: in conjunction with director.  A good director should have a way that he/she likes to cast.  If using Equity actors, must notify Equity before casting the show.  There are rules about casting Equity actors.  When you start casting the show, that’s the beginning of your PR campaign.  Actors are great marketers – talking up your show after reading the sides.  The way you run your auditions is having an impact on how folks perceive the production.  If they’re sitting around for seven hours to be seen for five minutes, forget it.  Schedule appointments in 15 minute intervals.  Your auditions are the first time you’re engaging with the public.  Be organized.  Don’t run long.  Make people feel taken care of.  Never give out roles.  People value the things they have to work for.

Day Three: Playwrights in Mind: A National Conversation – part two

Self-Production Panel: War Stories

Larry Dean Harris, Kathleen Warnock, Roland Tec

You are the one who is the most passionate about your work.  Protect your own work.  If it’s not right, you have the right to pull out.  No production is better than a bad production.  Don’t work with people who’ve already screwed you over.  When someone shows you who they are, trust that.  Work with people who like what you do.  Don’t rush casting.

PR lessons: Do not count on reviews to fill your house.  Sometimes reviewers don’t even show up.  And even if they do, the review just doesn’t have the same impact it used to.  (Reviews are good for an actor and writer for career building.)  Build an audience your own way.  New media is the way to go.  Having a PR person is the first wing of your attack.  How about a YouTube trailer?  Postcards are being used less often (except in festivals) because of new media.  But business card sized handouts are becoming popular.

Don’t count on your publicist to fill your house.  But look for the thing that’s unique about your show – it gives your publicist something to sell.  Good pictures are helpful online.  Constant Contact is helpful.  Create an event on Facebook, cultivate an individual blogger.  You first contact your personal people, then media folks you know, then start emailing reporters you don’t know, and go to the festival bar and hand out postcards or fliers.

Go out and find your audience: whatever it is about your play that will drive people to the theatre.  For a Bible play, Larry went to churches, talked to pastors and got church groups to come.  For his play about alzheimers, he went after those groups.

Venue: putting your show in the appropriate venue can be key.  Send your director to the walk thru so they know what they’re facing.  And learn to live with it.  Choose the venue with the smallest number of seats…then you’ll have a sellout.  Get your feet wet the first time.  Learn on someone else’s time: volunteer to be on someone else’s show.  Learn from their mistakes.  Find a buddy: do their show, then yours…and learn.  Go see other folks’ shows; talk to people who’ve produced in that space.  They’ll tell you what to put in your contract.  And tell you about the things you don’t know: the rockband rehearsing next door, the parking lot that fills up from restaurant patrons down the street, the helicopters that fly overhead, the pipes that bang…  Be aware that if you’re sharing space with other productions, you may have laughter next door during your serious drama.  And their intermission becomes part of your show.

Think about non-traditional spaces – the front porch of a house, a tent.  The venue can be an ad for your play.

Day Two: Playwrights in Mind: A National Conversation – part four

Publishing seminar with Abbie Van Nostrand of Samuel French, Deborah Hartnett of MTI, Music Theatre International, and Ron Pullins of Focus Publishing

Selection:
Focus: He has a list in mind what he wants to do and is interested in the changing theatre scene – acting, directing. “We sell people, not books.”  Doesn’t publish plays…except the dead ones. 

MTI: Publishes plays from Broadway, off-Broadway, sometimes a show in the Midwest.  Junior program, deliver “musical in a box.”  High school and middle school kids can keep the scripts.  Like to have a range of things for customers: large and small musicals.  They have almost 400 shows in the catalogue. 

French: publish and license straight and musical plays.  45K titles either archived or in print.  The last 4-5 years, seeking keeping authors happy, but looking for emerging and early career playwright.  Stats: Look at what theatres are doing, playing it safe.  Theatres are closing, cutting back on seasons, those that are doing the best are playing it safe.  They’re pushing their authors, finding the right theatre for the right show.  They’re pulling back on acquisitions.  They’re still actively seeing everything in NY, going to Humana, they get agent author submission, and website queries.  Check the website for updates.  But the reality is that the parameters are shrinking.

Day One: Playwrights in Mind: A National Conversation – Part Two

Snuck out of Jeffrey Sweet’s seminar and dropped in on Juanita Rockwell’s: “Elsewhere: The Fulbright and Other Journeys.”  She participated in what’s called the Fulbright “Specialist Program.”  Lots of tips in no particular order:

Instead of a one year or three month program, Rockwell was given the option of going overseas for a shorter period of time: two to six weeks.  Her posting was in San Jose, Costa Rica.  She knew a little Spanish, but worked on it before going.  While in country, she had theatre rehearsals in the morning, and two afternoons a week, she went up to the university in the mountains and taught class and met with students.  “A fantastic experience!”

For the Specialist Program, you have to be invited.  You’re put on the roster for five years – meaning you may get a call sometime in that five years to go somewhere to do something.  Or not.  It’s better to create your own opportunity.  If you know someone who teaches in a university in another country, ask if there are exchange possibilities.  She had colleagues in Costa Rica who taught there, and through their institution, invited her to come.  Fulbright is talking about perhaps allowing a theatre (rather than a university) make the invitation.  Frame the invitation from the institution so that it can only be you. 

Qualifications: It used to be required that you have a PhD or terminal degree (MBA), but now it’s expanding to include “professional equivalency.”  Get fancy people to make recommendations. 

US Studies is an area to look at: ie, contemporary American theatre.  Any area of American culture would fit under this category.  There are also humanities categories, or propose using contemporary American culture (ie: theatre) to teach English.  What is it in your background that you can frame towards what they’re asking for.

The Fulbright officers are very helpful. 

On language: in Western Europe: if you can’t speak the language, it ain’t gonna happen.  No one’s sending you to Paris if you don’t speak French.  But many countries have languages few folks speak and often they want English speakers to work with their students.  Sometimes the posting will say “language helpful but not required.”  Do take the language course before you go. 

Here’s a resource: Theatre without Borders – a website where you can make connections to feed into other programs to get you abroad.

How to get started: go to the website.  Search for areas of interest.  Look at how many Fulbrights are being offered in that country.  Check out the “new” section for countries that have added a slew of new postings.  Or look for the countries you’re dying to go to.  Look at what’s available and see if you fit the qualifications.  Look for those that look for “all disciplines.”  Or “arts.”  Sometimes they say “drama” or “playwriting” or “theatre.”  Sometimes.

Writing on the Verge…

Over the years, I have found myself writing on the verge…a lot – on the verge of losing the last bit of sanity/strength/peace/hope/ I have…  Yet still…I write, even with the waves of life beating rapidly and endlessly in the fore/back/foreground, with me straining to catch my breath and trying to step out of the way of the onslaught of water but never making it to a dry patch of earth in time.  Drenched/soaked to the bone in water that covers me, my pen and paper, swollen with the wet liquid so wet the ink bleeds the letters into each other, bleeds word into word into word into word but I write anyway because nothing short of death can stop me from putting pen to page, my thoughts ebbing into and through my hands ever so precisely ever so like and unlike the water rushing over me… so… unstoppable… so unmistakably lucid despite the fog…

Writing… on the verge of finding that one sure vein that leads to my well/spring, that sways to my authentic rhythm playing the song of my authentic self…  Writing to find the whole of the story dancing past my inner ear begging to be told, aching to “be born & handled warmly1  On the verge of living my dream of writing full-time…  It’s hard to know and feel the tide is changing but you still can’t quite see it though you feel it deep inside your self and it’s so real you can’t stop writing, can’t stop kicking and pushing against the stones…can’t stop living… and writing on the verge of whatever comes in on the tide…

                                                     

1dark phrases” from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

Stones in the Garden…

I’ve always wanted a garden even though I don’t know much about growing things.  I have destroyed a rubber plant twice and they’re supposed to be hard to kill.  I keep thinking that if I have a designated place for plants, they will grow well with water, air and soil and maybe a few stones here and there.  Certain plants need more or less sun than others.  I don’t know the exact planting season for each plant – hope it is on the package of seeds.  What I do know, is the smell and feel of good soil, played in enough of it as a child while digging up ant hills and worms.  I could always find at least one worm under a dug up stone.  The worms were always found in the best part of the soil.  Why did I spend so much time in dirt?  Feeding the pet ants of course!  Yeah, yeah, they didn’t know they were our pets but me and my big brother visited them all summer long with crumbs and water and ice cream so they were “pets.”  And, if we were careful, we could see the tunnels virtually intact once we started the excavation.

The observation and excavation skills I learned those summers work well when I’m writing or collecting moments for my writing.  I have to see the inner workings of things mainly because I believe there is a reason for everything and what’s on the inside affects your outside world more than you know.  So, when I say “does not cry” it is because I am hinting at a backstory to that character not trying to direct the actor.  I am lifting stones to get to the worm-filled soil.  My mother used to tell me that the worms made the soil good; at first sight a worm can appear to be an icky thing but ultimately the icky-ness is what enriches the soil or story…  The simple smell of it is as wonderful as spring rain on pavement and the feel of it in the hands always takes me back to the beginning of things…the place of possibility…