Category Archives: Playwright

World Premiere: A Subtle Kind of Murder

Female Artists, Feminism, Playwright, playwriting, Theaters, Women

By Alison Minami

When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are.  It’s a subtle kind of murder.  —Jim Morrison

The play A Subtle Kind of Murder written by Dale Dunn had its world premiere at the New Mexico Actors Lab this past summer, and it has just been nominated for the Broadway World Awards in the categories of Best New Play, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Ensemble Acting, Best Scenic Design, Best Lighting Design, and Best Production! This achievement could not make me happier or be more inspiring for myself as a fellow playwright who offered feedback in the early stages of writing. I had the pleasure of being a part of Jennie Webb’s Next Draft Workshop with Dale back in 2021, reading early drafts of the script when the sinewy musculature hadn’t been fully realized and the thematic threads were not neatly tied. It is always satisfying to see a play come together after being a part of its developmental process. Dale knew clearly what she wanted to write about, but there was a lot of metaphor and symbolism within the overlapping worlds she was creating, especially tied to the multimedia aspect of her piece that needed shaping. What I remembered most about her play was that it was deeply feminist, and it spoke to the relentless sexism and abuse of young women who are trying to make something of themselves professionally. While I did not get to see the production, I reached out to Dale to read the latest production copy of the play. I’ve now just read it, and all I can say is that it leaves a reader breathless! I can only imagine what it was like to have a seat in the darkened theater. Five years in the making, and the final script is simultaneously heartbreaking, gut-punching and, dare I say, hopeful.

A Subtle Kind of Murder is a play seeded by a confluence of ideas (and worlds) that are all thematically tied to living as a woman in a sexually predatory patriarchy. Jane, an acclaimed novelist, has been hired to write a screenplay adaptation of the 1947 noir murder mystery novel In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. Under deadline to finish the script, Jane sequesters herself in her childhood home, a remote Kansas farmhouse with the Filmmaker, her staunch but strict motivator who encourages Jane to stay focused and get the job done. However, the two are unexpectedly interrupted by the Woman in Brown, a young, bright-eyed woman who stumbles into the farmhouse after being followed by the Man in the Hat. The Man in the Hat, a shadowy figure whose voice and presence is felt by all the women, but never materializes until play’s end, doubles as the serial killer from Hughes’ novel and the bigtime executive who once sexually assaulted Jane in a Hollywood studio, when she was once a young, naïve assistant, whose dreams of making it big in the industry were killed from the humiliating transgression.  Not coincidentally, Jane’s current writing contract is with the same Hollywood executive who assaulted her decades before; he does not recognize her because she’s taken on the pen name Jane Franklin, after Ben Franklin’s sister, a woman who never got an education nor a fair shot while her brother was given every resource to become the famous intellectual, inventor, and founding father. So, it’s fair to say, Jane has something to prove and an axe to grind.

As the play progresses, we start to gather that the Woman in Brown, like the Man in the Hat, doubles as the murder victim in the Hughes novel as well as the younger version of Jane. She is, as Jane describes her, “the young woman who had the nerve to think of the world as her oyster.” Both the Woman in Brown and the Filmmaker are versions of Jane at different stages of her life. They serve as figments of her imagination as she is haunted by the chilling veil of a man’s rapaciousness while she fights to claim her agency as a woman and an artist. Jane references her own acclaimed novel, which is the same title as this play, by describing a subtle kind of murder as the “the murder of the self.” Jane goes on to say “The subtle kind of murder leaves you in a sort of tortured half life….dazed…powerless…often fighting shame and regret.” As the three women argue over Jane’s chosen pen name, she declares “Jane. It’s every woman’s name.” Here is the crux of the play for me. Aren’t we women all Jane? Even in 2025, when there is lip service paid toward a #MeToo movement that holds powerful men accountable, it seems that for every jailed Weinstein, Cosby, or Epstein, there is another man lurking in the shadows, ready to decimate a woman as, in Dale’s words, “just another girl in the office.” Ultimately, as Dale describes, the play is about “self-forgiveness.” She says, “there are so many Why didn’t I?’s in life.” She is quick to answer the question: “Well, you didn’t, and it’s okay. You have to look at it. And then leave it.”  She goes on to explain, “Jane is confronting her past, the assault that made her turn away from her ambitions, and she needs to see it for what it is in order to move past it and do the creative work she is meant to do.” The pain of regret and humiliation is suffocating, and it consumes so many victims of assault. But it’s not just physical assault that women contend with, it’s the multitude of micro-aggressions that tell us to behave, to please, to keep quiet, to wait our turn, to act right, to apologize, to shrink, to cower, and on and on and on. A woman must permit herself to reject it all, to say no, to get out from under the patriarchal power.

Dale Dunn, Playwright and Co-Artistic Director of Just Say It Theater

The play is a multi-media performance that utilizes film projection and sound to tell its story. Dale has a lot of experience using projections in her staged works. She sees it as a theatrical tool to serve as “an extension of the mind” and to be “inside the writer’s [Jane’s] mind” as opposed to being a place setter. Throughout the play there is the projection of Jane’s text as it is being typed, the thunderous and chilling projection of the ocean—the place where the Woman in Brown is found murdered—and of the diner into which the Woman in Brown escapes. All of the stage design and multimedia lends itself to the mirrored and mysterious worlds characteristic of the noir genre.

Dale herself is no newbie to the theater. She has worked in theaters across the nation including the Public Theater in New York and the Red Barn Theater in Key West. She co-founded her own theater in New Mexico called Just Say It Theater and has years of teaching experience in both playwriting and production at New Mexico School for the Arts. Her longtime theater partner, Lynn Goodwin served as both the dramaturg and director of A Subtle Kind of Murder, which explains the synergy, flexibility, experimentation, and care that the ensemble carried throughout the developmental process from table read to production.

I asked Dale whether or not she had a recording of the piece that I could view; Sadly, she didn’t have anything, only a muffled and grainy recording that wouldn’t do the play justice. At first, I felt that this was disappointing, but I also realize it’s sort of the point. Nothing can replace the ephemeral magic of theatre. I truly hope A Subtle Kind of Murder gets another production; It’s a play that every Jane (and John) should see.

East West Players in Good Hands: Meet Lily Tung Crystal

Director, Female Artists, LAFPI, Performance, Play, Playwright, playwriting, Production, Theaters, Theatre, Women, , , , , , ,

By Alison Minami

Lily Tung Crystal, artistic director of East West Players in Little Tokyo of Los Angeles, has made a full circle back to Southern California. While the path may have been unconventional and circuitous, every place she’s had the pleasure of making home along her artistic journey has contributed to her role as a thoughtful and influential leader in the Asian American theatre community.

Lily’s first stage was the raised fireplace of her childhood home in Rancho Palos Verdes. She’d use the handle of the fireplace screen pulley as her microphone and sing the showstoppers she’d learned from outings with her mother to the Pantages or the Ahmanson. Having once been a competitive dancer and carrying a natural ear for music, Lily’s mother held a deep appreciation for the arts and passed this on to her daughter. At the age of seven, Lily began taking singing and piano, which ultimately led her to musical theater—roles in Oliver, The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz to name a few. Despite being one of the better singers, Lily never got the lead, possibly because the directors couldn’t square Lily’s Asian face with the traditional white casting of these shows. At the time, representation was barely a conversation, and it never dawned on Lily that she could ever see her onstage talents as anything more than a hobby.

After graduating Cornell University, Lily moved to China to work as both an educator and a journalist. All the while she kept her hand in the theatre—but mostly as an avocation, something to keep her creative spirit nurtured. Eventually Lily made her way back to her home state of California, but this time to San Francisco, where she found herself joining community theatre and acting classes. Even as she was immersing herself in the Bay Area theatre scene, she never considered herself a professional actress despite joining the union and landing significant onstage roles. Claiming the identity was a slow process, and Lily recalls herself thinking, “Maybe I can say I’m an actor now. Can I really say that?”  Asking for permission is an all too familiar refrain for artists in the shadows, especially those of color—I certainly have had my fair share of imposter syndrome around my creative life—but once Lily gave it to herself and said YES, there was no holding her back.

In 2009 Lily received a Theatre Bay Area Titan Award, which led her to start the Bay Area Asian American Actors Collective, where she found kinship with fellow actor Leon Goertzen. A year later the two co-founded Ferocious Lotus, an Asian American theatre company in the San Francisco Bay Area. As it turns out, in one year, Lily birthed a theatre company and a baby! She remembers sitting in rehearsals for their first show—a night of one-acts co-sponsored by the Asian American Theatre Company—with her infant strapped in a baby carrier. I am particularly delighted by this image in my mind’s eye—a scrappy and determined young Lily with a script in one hand and a bottle in another, baby nuzzled up against her body—as it demonstrates the grit and passion that Lily has always brought to her work. With Lily at the helm as founding co-artistic director and later, artistic director, Ferocious Lotus went on to produce and support many emerging Asian American playwrights and artists and became a vibrant and influential theatre space with national recognition and reach.

In 2019, Lily moved on from Ferocious Lotus to become artistic director at Theater Mu, the premiere Asian American theatre of the Midwest based in Minneapolis. There Lily continued to grow the landscape of Asian American theatre and stretch the boundaries of definition and opportunity, always striving for diversity and equity in development, education, production, and outreach. Five years later in 2024, Lily found herself back in Southern California, the stomping ground of her youth, taking on the role of Artistic Director at East West Players (EWP).

EWP is the longest standing Asian American theatre and theatre of color in the nation, and Lily is ushering in its 60th anniversary. Honored by the task, she was particularly mindful of the curation of such a milestone season, aiming to create balance between the OGs of Asian American theatre–the elders like Philip Kan Gotanda and David Henry Hwang, who laid the foundation when there was no Asian American representation to speak—and the next generation of playwrights, like Lauren Yee, Prince Gomolvilas, and Jaclyn Backhaus, who have created works that have become Asian American classics in their own right.

In what she coins a “widening circles” vision for EWP, Lily focuses on several values that undergird her goals. Think of the concentric circles in the frequency of sound waves. In the first circle, Lily wants to encompass as much of the Asian American diaspora as possible. While Asian American representation in the theatre has historically limited itself to East Asian cultures, Lily recognizes the need for wider visibility for all Asians American voices including those from South, Southwest, and Southeast Asian American communities. Her second circle aims to acknowledge all the creativity and labor of the people backstage. What of the set and sound designers, costumers, and stagehands? Lily is doing just this by inaugurating a fellowship for backstage artists, where recipients will get paid on-the-job training to learn firsthand the behind-the-scenes work of production. The third circle aims to address intersectionality with other marginalized communities— LGBTQ, disability, or specific racialized communities to name a few examples. The fourth circle—and there’s some overlap here, but that’s the point—considers the question of how we make theater accessible to all people. EWP has made moves to make the theatre more affordable with $20 tickets or pay-what-you-can performances as well as affinity evenings for specific audiences. For example, for Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee, EWP worked with Khmer leaders in Los Angeles to ensure that the show could be accessible to Khmer audiences; it stands to reason that a play about a people should be viewed and experienced by them, or else, whom and what is it really for? The final circle aims to innovate alongside and in collaboration with the film and television industry. A great example is in this season’s revival production of Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die, which utilized high level film projections to capture the old-timey feel of Hollywood circa 1930s.

Notwithstanding all the managerial and administrative duties that come with leading a theatre of EWP’s size and stature, Lily has found space to nurture her own creative projects. This springtime, she will direct a revival of David Henry Hwang’s Flower Drum Song for this season’s last show. This is especially exciting for Lily who has known Hwang for years as a mentor and friend—and whose name is on the EWP theatre—but has never collaborated with him artistically. Hwang is also updating the musical after first rewriting it in 2002 to be more relevant to the times—Oh the times! Combine that with Lily’s musical theatre sensibility, and the show promises to be a tour de force.

The show runs from October 19 through November 16 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Secondly, as I write this, Lily is completing her first tech week as director for नेहा & Neel (pronounced Neha and Neel) written by playwright Ankita Raturi and produced by Artists at Play. नेहा & Neel is about an Indian immigrant mother who goes on a road trip with her teenage son, in a last-ditch attempt to teach him his culture before he is off to college. Raturi’s play resists preachy polemics and instead engages with serious issues—racism, colonialism, identity in America—through humor. In another serendipitous collaboration, Lily found herself crossing paths again with Raturi, an artist she’d supported during her tenure at Theater Mu, but whose new work Fifty Boxes of Earth, which Lily programmed for Mu’s 2024-2025 season, she did not get to see to its fruition because of her departure last year. So, it was an honor to be asked by AAP and Raturi to direct this piece and to celebrate, as Lily describes, a play that centers on “Asian joy.”

Given the current political climate and the blatant assaults from this administration on people of color and the arts—EWP lost all its NEA funding—Lily does not take lightly the mandate of EWP.  She says, “It is more important than ever to continue to tell our stories and to lift up BIPOC stories. When people don’t know our stories, it’s so easy for them to perceive us as other.” She goes on to emphasize how important it is that “people see us for the true Americans that we are.” Everywhere we turn, this administration is pushing us to the margins, rendering us invisible as people of color, and telling us in so many words that “we are not patriotic or don’t belong here.” Lily is adamant that we counter the bigotry with our own narratives of community. She is committed to making EWP a “safe and joyful space to create art together” and it is with this spirit that Lily carries the torch for many generations of Asian American theatre artists—past, present, and future.

Finally, when I ask Lily, how she likes being back in Southern California outside of work, she quips, “the traffic sucks, the food’s great!” And to that I say, “Welcome home!”

fog…

LAFPI, Playwright, Poetry, , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

fog they say can dissipate
like rain and humidity back to the clouds
it does not linger
– unlike night sweats that soak the bed linens
drenching you cold or hot
depending on the season
it’s the sporadic discomfort of momentary confusion i hate
when i wake to my body sweat-soaked
in full on visceral self questioning
of how this outside the shower wetness
is a wet all over wet,
that needing a towel wet
that checking for pee wet
’cause it can’t be sweat wet
but it is
even the palms of my hands are wet, closed tight and almost clammy wet

they tighten – my hands – when i sleep laying down but only at night
perhaps due to the dream voyages
i wake hands always clutched around some invisible treasure so tight i have to pry my fingers open
i look expectantly eyes straining to see what i am holding
if i check before i am fully in waking consciousness, i might be able to see what it is before the day hides it
because i still feel things in my hands
just before
and there’s a faint image visible
just before there isn’t

what is in my hands?

and that is when i discover i am holding my breath too as if i were deep diving without gear and need to inhale because  there is no air in my lungs

when dad died, a year to the date, i passed out on my couch from the held in grief and when i awoke four hours later, i gasped for air as if i had been coming out of something or someplace where air was not there, as if raising from the dead

it’s the same feeling
and the fog rises grey and grainy enveloping the room
hovering
till i force myself to remember the day of the week, the time of day,
and what i need to do next

leave me

i need water

Words count…

LAFPI, Playwright,

by Robin Byrd

We don’t always know how our work affects others. We hope it inspires. We hope it bears witness to the thing, any…thing, some…thing. We hope it marks time or opens the windows to let time out. We hope, yet can only speculate.

In January of this year, Los Angeles was burning. Sleep was a luxury for those outside the fire lines; prayer was a necessity for those inside. Food was an afterthought. I called a friend, “Can I come to you if I have to evacuate?” Otherwise, where would I go? The urgent evacuation alert told us to pack important items and be ready to go. My car would not start. No matter how many times I turned it over, it would not catch. Time slowed like a scene from Inception. Streets were blocked, curfew was in effect, and there was no one to come get me. It was a long night of praying the evacuation order didn’t go into active status, praying the fires didn’t turn toward me, praying the wind would just stop blowing. I spent the night checking funds and rental car agencies in the area. In the morning, I walked to a car rental agency and rented a car.

I packed water and more water, copies of my work, funeral programs, Bibles, important papers, and clothes I could re-wear over and over again.

I packed the lump in my chest and the memory of what it’s like to be physically on fire. After all these years, I could feel ten-year-old me running through the house, screaming as my terry cloth robe burned. Where was I going? Freakin’ flashback.

Even though I was affected on the outskirts, there were friends in the thick of it who had to leave because the fire was upon them.  Friends who lost some and friends who lost all. Nevertheless, they are alive, and that was my biggest prayer for them. Loss is always devastating. Reconciling yourself to what is left is a long, hard task.

I wrote a poem for one of these friends ten years ago. It was on my mind to replace the framed copy I gave them. I don’t know why. A few days ago, I received an email from another friend who said that of all the things this person lost, they mentioned the poem. This other friend wanted to know if I would mind them reframing it for our friend.  Imagine.

The poem took me ten years to write. It was a conscious, subconscious project that I mulled over, making mental notes while checking the air for signs of shifting timelines. After all that mulling over, the poem did not come to the page until the night before the reading. Printed, framed, and stuffed in a bag, I made my way to the event. I did a quick read-through with another friend outside the venue. The reading was a success. And now, ten years after that, the words are still speaking.

I am honored, humbled, and encouraged.

Lately, I have been wondering if my work counts, and by extension, do I? Guess that’s an all-around “Yes.”

Words count…even the time it takes for them to be born matters…

The Alligator Farm

Artists, Playwright, playwriting, Writing

by Chelsea Sutton

I just came back from a three month residency in Taos, New Mexico. As someone who is not independently wealthy and has a few (many, loud) obligations to people and entities that cannot be put on hold for an entire, unbroken three months…it was not exactly the most peaceful or focused period of artistic creation anyone has ever had. Life must go on, after all.

But I never (truly) expected it to be. Hoped it would be? Sure. Expected it to be? Naw.

While a residency is meant as a time to take a pause on the rest of the world and focus only on your art…they are, in my experience, more than that. Yes, how lovely would it be to truly turn off the world (especially the world as it is right now) and just create. But to me they are opportunities to live, for a time, in a place I would never be able to afford to live in (or perhaps even think about moving to) otherwise. It’s a chance to be filled up with new experiences, a new environment, new people. It’s a time to be inspired by others’ practices, art, and points of view.

But I think most importantly, it’s also a time when you keep your artistic practice at the forefront of your mind — even when you are not actively creating, you are aware that you are there to create. And that time is limited. It’s pressurized time. That simple awareness and ticking clock makes you prioritize the work, and to look at everything that happens there as fuel for that work. Even interruptions. Even the things that don’t go as planned. Even the things you miss while you’re gone.

It’s easy to allow your priorities to slip in every day life. It’s easy to forget things that are important to you. And sometimes a change of scenery is the thing you need to remind you of what you do and why. And maybe discover something you’ve lost.

And one thing I was reminded of while in Taos was my love of late night radio. I am such a Spotify bitch — I don’t listen to radio anymore, only the endless playlists and podcasts. I even find myself listening to the same episodes of the same podcasts over and over, like a kind of security blanket.

But in Taos, I began to listen to the local radio station True Taos Radio — and I was even a guest one early morning to promote an artist showcase. But what started my new obsession for the station was the segment “Monotone Mondays” on Monday nights from 10pm-12am during which the DJ listed the artists he was about to play in such a performance poetry adjacent vibe that it made me stop the conversation I was in the middle of and listen. I was hooked.

I began streaming it as often as I could, and often when I was writing. I came to love the listing off of the local events that day, mentioning locations I was familiar with and sometimes artists I’d met who would be performing at the Taos Inn or the Alley Cantina; the ads for local businesses; the casual DJ voices; the always new, always a bit odd, always changing music choices. It made me remember how something can be hyper-local and still feel strangely expansive.

One Monday night, I kept listening past when Monotone Mondays ended. I was writing, pushing to meet a deadline I’d made up for myself. It was Tuesday morning at 1am…and suddenly I discovered “The Alligator Farm.”

I was only able to catch it a couple times, but what I remember of The Alligator Farm was a mix of macabre sketches, oddball music, non sequiturs, and high strangeness that again made me stop and listen. It was chaos and whimsy at 1am. And I loved it, even if I didn’t understand it.

I suddenly remembered years of driving late nights listening to George Noory. Being seven years old and hosting my own radio show in my room that I recorded on cassettes in my boom box. The early morning radio I’d look forward to on my long commutes to a job I hated.

I don’t know where this remembering, this discovery may lead to. Maybe nowhere. Maybe the act of remembering and being inspired or being made to stop and listen to something fleeting, that I can’t go back and replay, is enough. Maybe THAT is just another way of keeping these things present in our minds. THAT is what I got from the residency.

That’s the scariest thing about leaving a residency. That any progress you made shaking off bad habits or a poor artistic attention span will slip right back to where you started.

Remembering is a practice, just like mindfulness, just like writing. It is active.

Perhaps I didn’t finish the great American play at the residency. But I got The Alligator Farm. And you know what I’ll be doing at 1am (12am PT) this Tuesday night. So I can keep remembering. So I can keep this feeling at the forefront of my mind and not let that ticking clock out of my sight.

Here’s to you. Finding your own Alligator Farm.

Give Up?

Artists, LAFPI, Playwright, Writing, , , , , ,

by Leelee Jackson

Give Up? 

When do you give up? Like when do you finally throw in the towel and call it quits? Being an artist is hard work these days. We face constant rejection at an alarming rate, oftentimes with no real understanding  as  to why we were rejected in the first place. Art centered establishments who have the power to change lives are underfunded, overworked and sometimes even corrupt. The world has broken and will a poem fix that? Can a play help it heal properly? Will the film adaptation evoke change in the necessary hearts and minds of those who can undo the very  policies that broke the world in the first place? It’s all so strange being a creator these days. Our biggest competition has become AI. I wanna be like Dwight from The Office when he outsold the website in a single day. Like with hard  work, focus and dedication, I too can beat technology. But what if I can’t. And  to be honest, I don’t know if  I  even want to try. Like if a robot writes a play better than me? Or paint a picture better than Amy Sherald, what can I do to stop that? Where would I even start? 

“I’m weary of the ways of the world” 

How could I not be? I’m constantly (disarmed) distracted by social media. Doom scrolling content to make sense of it all but only confusing myself more. “Post something idiot”  a voice  in the back of my head that pressures me to contribute to the madness. Believing I got something to say that the people need to hear and that if I really wanted to,  I could easily get in the creators fund. I’m smart. Funny. Passionate and creative enough right? I could go “viral” or whatever the kids are doing. “Why not?!” that same voice justifying why I spent two hours on social media calling it “research”. Still not posting what I want to. Just regurgitating what has already been said while believing I’m saying something different. Thinking that if I wanted to be heard, this is the way to do it. And if I’m not heard here, I’m not heard anywhere. So what’s the point in speaking at all?  

Is there a point to defeat?  

I’ve been overwhelmed lately with the feeling of wanting to be important. To be someone that people will listen to for real. I don’t know if it’s because I lost my parents but for some reason, the last few years I’ve been thinking heavy on my legacy, how I want to be known in the world when I’m no longer in it. How will I be known? As a failed artist or as an artist who stopped trying? 

“I have hopes for myself” 

But I lack hope in the rest of life. The world has broken (again and again) and I’m struggling to know how I can help fix it. I’m just a writer, which I know is no small feat. But when will I get to write about love and not war? Kindness and not hate? When will the human experience be soft for me (Black folks) instead of constant protest and creative efforts to fix a world I ain’t even break?  I wrote out 31 of my  favorite plays to read and all 31 centered gender, class and race. I wonder if Black people have ever gotten the stage to write about anything different?  

This shit is hard. When do you give up? Take your losses and find a quiet lil life  for yourself? Turn around and head yo ass back home? You tried it in the little city and couldn’t cut it. When do you give up?  Find a better role to play? 

I believe the fundamental job of an artist is to create. To make. To offer another perspective at something we’ve looked at before but never in that way. But damn, all these rejection letters got me feeling like I’m saying the same shit. Making me feel like there is nothing new to say because it’s all been said before since Black people’s work is only celebrated when it centers a limited range of topics (gender, race and class). Is it time to write about keeping myself and my plants alive? 

“Struggling through the work is extremely important – more important to me than publishing it.”

Toni Morrison is always right. If this is the work, then giving up sometimes has to be a part of the process; at least contemplating it…deeply considering it. 

But I’ll never be romantic about how hard this is. If it weren’t hard, would it be a struggle? But do we always have to struggle to do the work? 

But I hope not. 

The taste of fire

Female Artists, Home, Playwright, playwriting, Writing

The view from my house on Tuesday, January 7, 2025

by Cynthia Wands

January 11, 2025

It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m writing this while I’m watching the smoke from the Palisades Fire continue to menace the skyline. I’ve been on evacuation alert since Tuesday, when I packed up my car, reassured the cat (Ted) that we’re in this together, and that we’ll leave once I’m given a Mandatory Evacuation Order. It’s been four days of trying to remain calm and organized during the power outages, the buzz of evacuation alerts, and the sleepless nights hunched over the phone, tracking the Watch Duty fire maps.

Dear friends have lost everything, their house burned to the ground that Tuesday night. And so did thousands of their neighbors. The images of the neighborhoods charred beyond recognition look like the aftermath of the bombings in Dresden during World War Two.

And there’s a lot in this disaster that reminds me of what war might be like: the constant awareness that at any moment your life could be shattered; knowing that other lives have already been ravaged; there’s the unexpected roar of helicopters, and the shock of the hurricane winds that slammed through that dark night; the occasional burst of acrid smoke that make your eyes water; and the scent of burnt everything when you step outside to see if the fire is on the ridge line.

You get jumpy. And bursts of emotion can surprise you. Last night a friend was online with me as we were both yelling at the newscasters ON THE TELEVISION. I know. I know they can’t hear us, but it was the only yelling we could do. HOW MANY HELICOPTERS ARE ON THEIR WAY? WHERE’S THE FIRE? STOP THE STAMMERING! WHERE? WHERE IS IT? STOP IT!

That kind of thing. You’re so helpless that the only sense of engagement is yelling at the television. At least the power was on.

I’m thinking that these fires, and the disaster of these fires, will change the stories we tell about our life here in Los Angeles. We’ve had other fires, and earthquakes, and riots. And mudslides. But this disaster feels differently for me – its about the four elements: fire, air, water, earth. Its about home and refuge and community.

It’s also about the thousand little things we live with, the thousands of decisions we make about the things in our life. When I was packing up the car in case I needed to evacuate, I had to evaluate the value of any item I would carry away with me. And that’s when the story of my life here became a kind of inventory – what do you take with you when you have to leave everything else behind? After I packed up the legal documents, the computer, the medicines, cat treats, my grandmother’s quilt, Eric’s artwork – then I paused. Could I fit the artwork on the walls in the car? Family portraits? Some of it would fit. But could I fit the big pieces of artwork, the big paintings, the six foot mannequin, the six panel art screen – maybe not. The family china? The books? Oh, the many books – do I have time to go through my favorite books? Maybe I’d get more books. Later.

And that’s when the story became a thousand different stories. The mosaic of my life here: when I lived here with Eric, as I’ve lived here without him, the dinner parties with the fancy wine glasses. I felt every object asking “Would you take me?”

In the end, I took what I could. I hope I’ll be able to unpack it all when the evacuation alerts end, and the air is cleared of smoke, and the bits of the mosaic of lives burnt by fire finds a new pattern.

Just now I stepped outside to watch the trees thrash around in the winds. The air tasted like fire.

Entering the Twilight Zone

Female Artists, Performing Arts, Play, Playwright, playwriting, Reading,

by Chelsea Sutton

This summer felt a little Twilight Zone-y. I got the opportunity to travel to Valdez, Alaska for the annual conference there and to Ivins, Utah for the Kayenta New Play Lab — both for readings of my play The Abundance.

The play, as I’ve come around to understanding, is a horror play, though, like most things I write, I didn’t know it was horror until I shared it with a wider group of people. In one feedback session after a reading in Utah, an audience member said that the play was a like an extended Twilight Zone episode written at the height of Rod Serling’s abilities. And I truly can’t think of a better compliment I have ever (or will ever) receive.

Why am I sharing this? For bragging rights? Maybe. Partly because the way new play development goes these days, this may be the last time this play is ever performed in front of an audience. It may disappear as swiftly and suddenly as Lt. Harrington in Season 1 Episode 11 of The Twilight Zone. So I have to try to hold on to the moments that mean something to me. That make me feel like I succeeded in getting something across and clear, at least to one person.

The author Lincoln Michel wrote an article recently about the fleeting and fickle nature of literary (and in our case theatrical) fame and memory. Who decides what lasts, what is remembered, what continues to be seen, produced, read years from now. You won’t recognize the books on the best sellers list from 1924, nor probably the plays produced on stages then. Why should we assume anything we create will have meaning in 2124? And there’s an unsettling feeling in that realization. And a freeness.

Many of the episodes of The Twilight Zone that I love are about the desire for more time, about figuring out how to let go or being plucked from existence or entering a new plane of reality altogether or being forced to experience something over and over again. They are about the smallness of the horror of our existence — the beauty and terror of things that matter so much to our little lives and how they are swallowed up by the outside world.

I guess I’m ruminating on this because I don’t get invited to conferences and new play labs very often, and until its proven otherwise this may be the last summer it ever happens. It was a strange summer — to feel like I was in community with people who cared about the work, and to also feel like I don’t know where theatre is going, that it has more often than not been a fickle partner in this life, and I can’t count on it. Theatre still thinks she is quite important even in the yawning maw of everything else happening in the world. And I want to believe her when she says so, but I suppose I’m trying to stake less and less of my identity in that notion.

All I can do is enjoy the red mountains of Southern Utah, and the endless waterfalls of Alaska, and the little bit of laughter and applause that echo across them, and try to ignore that maybe I’m living in an extended Twilight Zone episode, and the moment I say out loud that there’s time enough at last…time will have run out. In case we get to the end of the episode and find out theatre was only a rumor or an illusion by Fate or an alien experiment. Or the last pitch we make to Death himself before we take his hand.

House of Cards…

LAFPI, Playwright, playwriting, , , , , ,

by Robin Byrd

There have been earthquakes over here, shaking up my house of cards. Strange how they aren’t actually falling from their perches one upon the other, row upon row. Almost as if glued in place, they stand. Yet in the background, I can hear glass shattering from my past Northridge earthquake memories, leaving shards of glass on the bookshelf from the one broken item – my high school prom token.  The glass shattered from the sheer sound of the earth shifting.  The wine glass read, “Looks like we made it” from the Barry Manilow song by that name, it’s words lingering in the air:

Looks like we made it
Left each other on the way to another love
Looks like we made it
Or I thought so ’til today…

I kept the shattered token for months till I just couldn’t anymore.  It was like the shattering negated something – like it stopped it in motion and throwing it away would make it final…

The past is either haunting me or resurrecting the unfinished need-to-be-finished things.

And I wonder why the cards weren’t falling…

Wonder how much more before the dam breaks and the cards come toppling down on themselves?

I keep wondering if the quake was stopping a motion or restarting something this time…  if it’s a good, good or bad, bad vibration.

The heat is always sweltering before the quakes. I’ve been dehydrated for weeks.  Forgetting to drink water. Forgetting to eat. Passing out. Not so much from the heat of the day as the heat of the memories, feeling I became nothing of what I dreamed I would.  Feeling like sharded glass on a shelf. Hoping I will make it to another dream or the full awakening of an old one. Maybe that’s why the cards are still standing; we’re gonna make it this time, and Phyllis (Hyman) will be singing,

Old friend
This is where our happy ending begins
Yes, I’m sure this time that we’re gonna win
Welcome back into my life again

And my house, this house, stacked upon itself, will no longer be built of cards…

The Empty Triangle (or, Why American Theatre is Falling Apart)

Artists, Audience, Performing Arts, Playwright, playwriting, Producing, Theaters, Theatre, , , ,

By Tiffany Antone

I’m wrapping up my week here with an excerpt from my article on why American Theatre is falling apart. It’s a long read (grab your beverage of choice and find a comfy spot to sit for a little while) but I think it’s a useful perspective and it contains actionable steps, so like, it’s not just an “idea” paper, you dig? And then, after you’ve had time to digest, let me know what you think! I’m all about the conversation because nothing survives in a vacuum.

EXCERPT FROM “THEATRE’S EMPTY TRIANGLE”

THE TWEET

Listen, theatre is not inherently a public good. Yes, we say we welcome everyone, but we don’t. There are gatekeepers all over the fucking place, companies get tribal, artists get catty and resentful, ticket prices go up and up and up (not to mention the cost of parking!)… none of this is actually welcoming. What theatre is, (not due to a philosophy, but rather due to its very operation) is collaborative. It takes oodles of people to make a play. And that does mean it has the potential to bring people together. But we have to stop assuming that community is a given. Community is an action.

And that’s why your theatre space, should you own one, needs to be MORE than just a theatre space. It needs to be a third space. It needs to have a coffee shop or wine bar, or sandwich shop… it needs to have reading nooks and community art space, and live music and OPEN FUCKING DOORS. It needs to be integrated into the community — not just plopped down somewhere and offered as a culture stop “because culture is good for you!” Like we’re some kind of soul vitamin.

Theatre can be a soul vitamin, if it wants to, and if it is looked at as an act of service. And I don’t mean it has to be volunteer — service organizations can still pay their personnel. But the inherent philosophy and its actions/engagement need to shore up. If you just want to make plays for people, you ain’t a vitamin; you’re popcorn.

And I like popcorn! I really do! But I don’t need popcorn, you know what I’m saying?

Anyway, what follows is basically a manifesto of sorts, with diagrams, asides, and a lot of research (as much as I could get done, anyway… no one is paying me to write this) And I’m going to be honest: I started working on this before the pandemic, but then the world went sideways and the whole goddamn theatre system screeched to a halt. I almost had a (much more academic version) of what you’re about to read published during year one of the pandemic, but the book fell through, so now I’m publishing here (with a fair bit of swearing) because fuck it. Maybe it will be useful.

FOREWORD

I’m going to start things off with an anecdote. The story is not my own, rather it was told to me years ago and stuck. I’ve employed it in various lesson plans and teaching moments over the years, but it feels especially apropos here.

The story goes like this: A mother is making ham dinner for Easter. She gets out the ham, cuts it in half, places each half into a different baking pan, and puts both in the oven. Her daughter watches all this and asks “Mom, why do you always cut the ham in half?” The mother brushes the question off with “Because that’s how you bake a ham.” Her daughter presses her “I’ve never seen anyone else bake ham that way.” Her mother laughs, “Well, that’s how I’ve always done it.” Her daughter isn’t satisfied though: “Are you trying to cut down the cook time or something?” The mother pauses, annoyed, but realizes in her irritation, that she doesn’t know why she cuts the ham in half. It’s how her mother had taught her to bake ham, and that’s that. She tells her daughter that the reduced cook time is probably the answer, now can they get back to preparing Easter dinner, please?

But the question sticks with the mother, because she doesn’t like not knowing the answer. So that night she calls her mother long distance and after the usual “How do you do’s” and “Happy Easter” chit chat, she asks her why you need to cut a ham in half in order to bake it. Her mother laughs, and says “You don’t.” The woman insists: “But, that’s how you always made ham. And how you taught me to make it!” Her mother thinks a moment… then answers “Are you talking about when you were growing up? In our old house? I had to cut things in half because the oven was so short. Are you still cutting things in half? Lord, that’s funny!” The woman, red cheeked, thanks her mother and never cuts the Easter ham in half again.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The prevailing theatre model in the US is one that’s been handed down to us. Its design, and the circumstances under which this system was codified, belong to generations past. And yet, we continue to recreate this model again, and again, because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

And oh lord, are we paying for it now, or what?

Theatres across the country are shuttering their doors, hitting “pause”, and laying off staff in a desperate bid to diagnose the problem so that it can try drafting a cure. But the very system pausing itself, excising its extremities and furloughing its life-blood in the hopes of rebranding, rebooting, and resurrecting itself, IS the problem.

Maybe we should just let it burn?

Because then, like the phoenix rising from its ashes, theatremakers will be able to repurpose the “Theatre That Was” (beautiful, yes, but also transactional, classist, patriarchal, and racist) into the thing that theatre might become: ubiquitous, transformational, inclusive, and sustainable.

And it begins by admitting we’re not all working with the same oven.

THE EMPTY TRIANGLE

So, non-profit Theatre in America — which is a big goddamn country, huge even! — looks pretty homogeneous. Whether it’s a LORT theatre, a community theatre, or something in-between, if it’s a non-profit theatre, chances are good that the organization follows a predictably hierarchal order of operations. Which means it’s probably got a number of administrators working an insane number of hours to keep the theatre operational via ticket sales, grants, and donations. At every level these administrators make choices with the best of intentions: To stay open! So that we can make more theatre! But this top-down model comes with a host of problems — chief among them being that it grants administrators power over the artists they employ while also rewarding themselves with greater financial security.

Which, in brev-speak, boils down to this:

  • Theatre’s administrators, the granting organizations/big donors they must suck-up to, and the critics/tastemakers who whisper-shout about it all, are Theatre’s Gatekeepers. They have the Power.
  • The artists and audience are the only truly necessary part of the Theatre puzzle, but they only get to play if/when the Gatekeepers say so. They make the Magic.

It’s easy to get stuck inside a system of power, know that it’s fucked up, but not be able to pinpoint WHY. Well, here you go, eyeballs — do your thing:

Yes — this is a visual map of the American Theatre Industrial Complex. Ain’t it pretty? Here’s what you’re looking at:

The map diagrams what each of the primary “players” in American Theatre bring to the proverbial party. The cast includes Funders, Theatre Administrators, The Critical Eye, Creators, and Observers. All five of these entities work in service of bringing plays to life in what I have dubbed The Shared Space of Ephemeral Magic (which is just a really fun way to talk about the physical place where Art and Audience meet).

The whole system relies on ideas, prestige, and money to operate. In tracking each entity’s “Power Lines”, you can see what everyone brings into, and takes away from, the Shared Space.

And, as you look at the diagram, you can probably SEE why everything feels broken right now: inequity is literally baked into our prevailing model, making it nearly impossible for any of us to create with equity at the center of our work.

So yeah, it’s pretty clear why we’re all so fucking frustrated.

And yes, there are very real financial reasons theatre currently works the way it does, but the diagram shows us that there are under-valued nexus points already in play in the predominant operating model which we can refocus our energies into mobilizing.

So, if you’re still with me, I’m going to spend a little time breaking the model down for you and address the obvious questions (Why are you calling it the Empty Triangle? What the heck is the Invisible Triangle? Power lines? What? Do you honestly think you can do better?)

To the last point: Yes, and this whole thing ends with a push for us to invest in an Abundant Circle model of practice instead. So hang with me a bit, and then ya’ll can chew things over and decide for yourselves what — if anything — you want to do about it.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE