Category Archives: Playwright

Guest Post: HIT AND MISS: MY OWN LITTLE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME by Mary Steelsmith

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The Södra Teatern is theater complex in Stockholm, Sweden is located at the top of a steep cobblestoned street (“steep” as in the Santa Monica Pier ramp), overlooking waterways, carrying boats of all kinds. Six small theaters are spread up and down this scenic hill, connected by dozens of iron stairs. There, all nearly three hundred of us scampered or in my case, limped from readings to workshops, dashing back to the huge, old main theatre, and its red plush seats.

OKAY. I’M STOPPING RIGHT HERE.
It was my intention to fill this blog with keen and incisive impressions of the many workshops and keynote events I attended at the Women Playwrights International Conference, in Stockholm, Sweden last month. Seriously. I had my trusty steno pad, Bic AND Sharpie pens with me at all times. The one thing I forgot was how the Universe gets a hearty chuckle at all of my good intentions. As usual, the Universe had an agenda all its own.

The message: see what comes along, listen, take notes and tell these stories to as many people as possible.

HOW WE LOOK TO OTHERS
One day, I missed a keynote speech when a young playwright from Serbia took me aside. It seemed so urgent to her — this woman with eyes downcast and in a quiet voice to speak of her country of origin. She feared that I and the other Americans attending would be mad at her for atrocities “put upon Muslims.” I doubted if she was old enough to have been alive during that terrible time. Still, here was this beautiful, young, talented person, taking the guilt of a whole country onto her little shoulders. Once she saw that she wasn’t about to automatically be condemned, we created a great conversation in our new international language – that of the female dramatist. My advice to her – put it all into your next play.

HOW WE LOOK TO OTHERS AND DON’T KNOW WHY
A few days later, I gave up my spot on a workshop waiting list in order to sit on a bench in the square outside the main theatre, doing an impromptu reading of my Eileen Heckart Award winning play, HAPPY AND GAY, with the wonderful Swedish actress, Ulla-Britt Norrman. She was a brilliant ‘Betty’ to my so-so ‘Veronica.’ I looked up from the script to see a small crowd had gathered around us. We even got a bit of applause. In retrospect, maybe I should have passed a hat. Afterwards, I had to explain why ‘Veronica’ was so worried about the ramifications of the first gay wedding in their church. Ulla wanted to know why there was much “gay fear” in America. The more I tried to explain gay rights in America, a realization crept into my consciousness. What’s the big deal about America’s gay rights? I have no clue.

A WALK IN THE STONE GARDEN/ROLLING HEAD SCARVES INTO TURBANS
My new friend, the beloved Lia Gladstone, made an unexpected appearance at the Columbus Hotell (yes, two “l’s), where I was staying. She had just gotten in from a long flight and needed a good walk and talk before the arrival of her charges, the young women who would perform their “Afghan Voices” presentation later in the week. Lia knew from the moment they arrived from Afghanistan, she would have to constantly be there for them, giving multiple interviews with the press and shepherd her charges to the various public events.

Since this might be her one rare, peaceful moment before the impending media storm, I suggested we take a stroll through the Katarina Churchyard, located behind the Columbus Hotell. We walked and sat on benches, listening to the church bells dutifully toll every fifteen minutes. As a family of rabbits, the graveyard’s unofficial grounds keepers, nibbled on the grave side flowers Lia and I quietly chatted about everything from our lives, writing and eventually to her work teaching drama to young girl orphans in Kabul. Lia moved me to tears as she described giving one little girl a head scarf to play with for an improv exercise. The child rolled the scarf up, making it into a turban, the symbol of masculine power in Afghanistan. Lia said she looked out over the rest of the class, watching all of the other little girls empower themselves by rolling up their head scarfs into turbans and wearing them.

CATCHING POLITICAL LIGHTNING
With my Steno pad, Bic and Sharpie in hand, I was bound and determined to take the iron stairs from the main theatre down to KGB West in order to find the director of “Isaac, I am,” my play to be presented the next day. Once again, the cosmic chuckle materialized into a downpour outside. About a hundred of us were caught in the lobby, awaiting the rain’s end when Van Badham, a fresh, fierce playwright from Australia, climbed up a couple of stairs and called for our attention. She announced the conviction of members from the Pussy Riot punk group, who had broken into a church and recorded a protest song about Putin in Russia.

Leaning on her cane (“I have a bum ankle,” she told me later), Van’s strong, clear voice delivered her message, electrifying the room. She announced an impromptu march from the theater to downtown Stockholm. The place went wild! With Van’s permission, I recorded her repeating the announcement on my little camera as she stood on the stage of the big red-plush-seated theatre. Lightning struck again! A few moments later, I sat with Van, as she gave a quiet, focused statement. She was illuminated only by a single window, which gradually brightened with the passing of the storm.

See below– these are short. Feel free to share these links.
Van’s announcement on stage:

Van’s quiet, focused statement:

I shared these links with Hettie Lynn Hurtes at KPCC/National Public Radio in Los Angeles. She passed them on to her colleagues.

MISSING THE GUERRILLA GIRLS FOR A DANCING AFGHAN VOICE
You gotta hand it to the organizers of the WPIC. Besides hosting 275 playwrights from dozens of countries, they fed us, provided those who had play presentations with excellent directors and actors, who gave our work respectful and often brilliant treatment. The cast in my Helford Prize winning “Isaac, I am” was so enthused, they honored me with requests for full copies of the play so they could find out how it ended.

Yes. The organizers did a wonderful job. The only problem? There was too much ‘wonderful.’ It was physically impossible to see absolutely everything. On Saturday night, August 18, I had to choose between attending two performances in different venues at virtually the same time; Afghan Voices or the Gueerilla Girls. Hoping to catch up with the Guerrilla Girls back in the states, I chose to support Lia Gladstone and her Afghan performers.

We were mesmerized as one young woman made the stage her own with a self-choreographed hip-hop dance, while rapping her own lyrics. While I wish I could have translated her words, in the end it didn’t matter. What transcended any language issues was her joyous defiance and courage in the face of possible dire consequences back home. Her spirit moves me to this moment.

I’m writing from this from home with the Democratic Convention livestreaming on my laptop beside me. My poor steno pad is within reach, its Bic and Sharpie waiting patiently nearby. Before the WPIC, my biggest concerns were working to get productions and hoping for good reviews.

Spending one extraordinary week with these women playwrights and performers who, every single day put it all on the line while expressing their art has given me a greater appreciation of the freedom we have always known, must protect and encourage in others.

Fringing with Form 1: LOLpera

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One exciting theme I saw through my 45+ interviews for the Fringe was the question of form. How, where and why do we create our art? I selected this video interviews from artists who push their own boundaries and deserve a larger audience.

Ellen Warkentine from LOLPERA (co-writer Andrew Pedroza, who unfortunately couldn’t join us)

An absurb opera about cat memes? I initially was snobby about this and so didn’t try to see it. Boy, am I sorry. Not only is Ellen a fascinating mind with whom I want to grab a beer, but tons of people recommend it.

 

 

on a pilgrimage and quest

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My transmedia series MYTHistories has its own pilgrimage, from the very first time the idea popped into my head to one of the segments I will finish during a writing date I have tonight with my friend Bree. Here are a few videos that helped shape my revisions while I work-shopped one piece to the MYTHistories puzzle at The Indy Convergence.

I ask people 2 questions:

1. What do you think of when you hear the word pilgrimage?
2. Do you feel like you are on a pilgrimage?

Please comment with your answers below, either typing it or a video response!
Puppeteer Leila Ghazvani responds and has a strange discovery towards the end:

 

Writer Sarah H Moon responds while we prepare for tech:

 

Dancer & Choreographer Sarah Weber Gallo responds while wearing one of her props:

Now it’s your turn:

What do you think of when you hear the word pilgrimage?

Do you feel like you are on any sort of pilgrimage?

 Comment below or send me a link to your own video interview.

Watch more Pilgrimage videos here

Mary Steelsmith Goes To Sweden

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When: August 15 – 20, 2012
Where: Riksteatern, Stockholm, Sweden
What: The 9th Women Playwrights International Conference
Why:  From the WPIC website: “The conference will be an opportunity to meet and to create genuine, lasting contacts between women playwrights and other theatre professionals. The conference’s aim is to have a supporting impact on collaboration and to build bridges between people from different parts of the world.”
Who: Women playwrights from around the world, including LA FPI’s own Mary Steelsmith.
Mary’s play Isaac, I am will be featured at WPIC 2012 on Saturday afternoon, August 18, 2012.

Award-winning dramatist Mary Steelsmith and her highly-lauded play Isaac, I am will be featured at the upcoming 2012 Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.  It’s a six-day conference with international focus, filled with lectures, workshops, and most of all, performances of works by women. This year’s theme is “The Democratic Stage.” The WPI Conference moves around the world: it’s held every three years in a different city. In 2015, it will be held in Cape Town, South Africa. For more on Women Playwrights International, and to join, visit their website.

107 plays from around the world will be featured at WPIC 2012, and Mary is thrilled: “What an honor it is to have Isaac, I am chosen to be presented at this conference! The opportunity to meet with and learn from so many female dramatists from other countries and cultures is a rare and wonderful one. While it will be an expensive journey, the experience of this conference in beautiful Stockholm will be priceless.” Only fourteen women playwrights from the U.S. were selected to attend. (To see the complete list of selected plays and playwrights, click here.)

Steelsmith’s Isaac, I am is a story of love, life, death and AOL. A winner of the Helford Prize (and she’s only female playwright to win it), Steelsmith also lists productions of Isaac, I am at the Racounteur Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, and most recently, here in Los Angeles at the Women’s Theatre Organization at the University of Southern California.

Steelsmith has won other playwriting awards, including the Eileen Heckart Drama for Seniors Competition and the Hewlett-Packard Action Theatre Prize (Singapore).

Would you like to help Mary Steelsmith get to Sweden? On Saturday, July 14, 2012, 2 p.m., there’s a benefit performance of 5 short plays by Steelsmith  at Vidiots Video, 302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA, 90402. She’s also selling copies of her work on Amazon.

For more info, go to marysteelsmith.com.

A Love Vaccine: Believers by Patricia Milton

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One of my favorite writing subjects is myth and fairy tale adaptation. Robin Byrd, whose new play The Grass Widow’s Son is part of the DC Black Theatre Festival on 6/28/12, kindly blogged here about a talk that I gave on the topic at the Dramatists Guild National Conference last year.

Award-winning Bay Area playwright Patricia Milton has a new comedy opening in August in San Francisco titled Believers. It’s a fairy tale adaptation, and sounds fascinating—about a love vaccine. I interviewed Patricia via e-mail to learn more about her new show and her fairy tale adaptation process.

Q: Please tell us about your new play Believers. What’s it about?

Milton: In a remote pharmaceutical lab, brain researcher Rockwell Wise works to develop a love vaccine so he will never again suffer the pain of heartbreak. His ex-lover Grace Wright shows up to lead his drug development team, bringing her own agenda — her plan to create a love activator. Their maneuvers to achieve their own aims result in unexpected side effects.

Q: A love vaccine. What sparked the idea? How’d you come up with it?

Milton: I read an article in the NY Times about the brain synapses involved in romantic love, and was intrigued by the article’s assertion that if a love vaccine were made, there is already a large market for it. I immediately wanted to write about this: I think it is funny and touching to follow a protagonist whose desperate, heartfelt goal is totally wrong for her or him. I wanted to adapt a fairy tale as a couple’s backstory. I also was eager to explore the notion of pharmaceutical side effects. Brain-altering drugs are a boon for many people, but when their side effects are ignored or concealed, there are tragic results. In a similar way, sometimes our own actions produce unintended consequences that hurt the ones we love.

Q: Sounds like so many people can relate to this play! When did you start it and what’s your development process been like?

Milton: I’ve been working on it for about two years. I developed it in several writers workshops, including at Playwrights Foundation and Central Works writing group. It has had three public readings: at Playwrights Center of San Francisco, Playwrights Revolution, Capital Stage Company, Sacramento, and Wily West Productions, San Francisco. From the last reading, Wily West decided to produce it. As a side note, the Playwrights Revolution reading was directly as a result of Twitter: Stephanie Gularte, artistic director of Capital Stage, read my tweet about the play and asked to read it.

Q: That’s great that social media helped you get a reading. Speaking of readings, what’s their value in terms of a play’s development?

Milton: I learned so much from each reading. Believers is a comedy, so sitting in the middle of the theatre, listening for the laughter, told me a lot about what was working in terms of what was funny. The play explores a complex mash-up of ideas, and has an intricate plot, so I asked a lot of questions in talk-backs to make sure audiences were following the action. There’s still some juicy ambiguity, but the action has become clearer with each rewrite.

Q: Believers is based on a fairy tale. Please tell us about your fairy tale adaptation process.

Milton: Fairy tales are fascinating to me: layered, deep, and speaking directly to the unconscious. Many of the fairy tales we know here in the U.S. have been “Disney-ized,” removing some of the darker elements.  In “The Frog King,” a princess promises to love the Frog King forever and ever if he will rescue her gold ball from a pond. When he delivers the ball, she refuses to keep her promise. Now, many of us know a version where the princess kisses the frog to change him into a prince. But in the fairy story I found, the princess changes him by throwing the frog against a wall!  To me, this version is not about physical violence. It depicts the power of love to completely, often fiercely and uncomfortably, shatter our psyche as it transforms us. I was challenged to figure out how Grace “throws Rocky against the wall” to bring him to his fully realized self. One other aspect of the play is that the frog is both a religious symbol (as in Egypt’s plague) and a fairy tale symbol. I was prompted to explore the apocalyptic side of the frog as well as its fairy tale side.

Q: Any thoughts on writing comedy you can share with us?

Milton: I want to put in a good word for romantic comedies. For centuries, all comedies were romantic comedies. Hollywood, with its frequent use of stale formulas and generic couples, has somewhat tarnished the rom-com. I’m doing my part to reclaim the genre for smart people. I’d like to also make a plug for Wily West: a fantastic production company, employing talented women artists like our director, Sara Staley, Lead Designer Quinn Whitaker, and Executive Producer Laylah Muran de Assereto, as well as many other talented actors and design professionals. Founded by Morgan Ludlow, Wily West Productions produces only local SF Bay Area playwrights.

Q) A female-driven production company? We certainly want to support that. Thanks, Patricia, for all the good information. Congratulations and we can’t wait to hear more about your show.

Wily West Productions presents the world premiere apocalyptic comedy, BELIEVERS, by Patricia Milton, directed by Sara Staley. August 2-25, 2012. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8 p.m. at StageWerx, 466 Valencia Street, between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco. For more information: www.wilywestproductions.com 

 

Heading West with Paula Cizmar

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The new Tactical Reads venture, matching female playwrights with female directors, debuts Wednesday night, 6/27 (meet-up for networking/ideas at 7 p.m., reading at 8 p.m.). Award-winning playwright Paula Cizmar will launch the series, with her  play Strawberry, directed by Sabina Ptasznik, creator of this innovative reading series.

I’ve written about Paula Cizmar previously; there’s more about her life and extensive career on her website. Cizmar wrote a Guest Post for the LA FPI blog a few weeks ago about her May 2012 visit to Turkey, as one of  the authors of the internationally-acclaimed play Seven. I corresponded with Paula recently about her newest show.

Q: So you are the first playwright in the new Tactical Reads series with Strawberry. Congratulations! What’s this new play about?

Cizmar: Strawberry is about a young botanist, Anabel, who arrives in a remote section of the California growing fields to search for a plant that is believed to be extinct—at least that’s what she says.  But ultimately the play is about something else entirely—solving the mystery of her true identity, trying to connect with a birth mother she didn’t know she had, trying to connect with the land as a living entity, rather than as a scientific specimen.  And of course, it’s about love.

Q: What inspired you to write it?

Cizmar: Wind.  Ideas of extinction.  Agriculture.  Death.  Romantic notions. California. Typical! My inspirations come from a variety of places that float around and finally somehow land and form an idea.  This play followed the same odd path.  I was up near Soledad a while back, and got out of the car in a rural area—and the wind was unbelievable.  You could barely stand up in it. Unforgiving.  And then when I drive from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo County, where I live, it is impossible not to pass field after field of tomatoes, broccoli, and most of all, strawberries.  And these fields are often full of migrant workers, covered up in layers and layers of clothing to protect them from the sun, or the wind, or the pesticides, or the prickly plants.   I just read a statistic that strawberries have now passed marijuana as the number one money-maker crop in California.  It used to be marijuana, grapes, almonds—and now strawberries are at the top.   So the strawberry fields are ubiquitous, and you’d have to be driving with your eyes closed to not notice the pickers.  They’re bent over.  So I can’t help thinking about the people who harvest our food and the conditions they work under.  And then, I get nervous about global warming, about the future of the earth, and I know that in our own lifetime certain plant and animal species have disappeared from the planet.  Right now, biologists are trying to save the Gila trout, a small fish species that is being threatened by the wildfires in New Mexico.  I heard a researcher who was part of the rescue operation on NPR and he got choked up about this stuff—and so do I.  So listening to the news and crying in the car—that’s an inspiration.  And the West.  And heading West.  And then there’s the strawberry itself, red, heart-shaped.

Q: I love that you’re using the strawberry symbolically, too.  So when did you write it?

Cizmar: I started it last year [2011] and we did a cold reading of a very early—and quite different—draft of it at USC; Luis Alfaro put the reading together and after it was over he kept saying, ‘Somehow I keep going back to the notion of how carnal it is, how carnal the need of each character is, carnal, carnal, carnal.’ He repeated this word to me often enough that it finally made an impression! And I took a look at what he was talking about and realized that I had only touched on carnality—and should let it play out.  So that sparked a new approach to the play and took me on the road to the current version—which is entirely new, and this is a brand new draft of the new version.  So—it’s really never been seen by the public before and the reading will be the first testing ground.

Q: Do you think readings are valuable to a play’s development?

Cizmar: Just submitting a play for a reading sparks a certain amount of development—as the writer, you want the script to be coherent enough, enticing enough, you want it to show potential.  And then, the luxury of talking to the director about the play, just exchanging thoughts, comments, questions, sparks more development, and then the rehearsal process itself even more.  We playwrights work so often in isolation and there seem to be fewer readings to go around these days.   But ultimately, there’s only so much a playwright can do alone.  It could be a rationalization, it could be laziness—and I try not to fall into this trap and really try hard to get my plays to be as theatrical as possible on my own—but theatre is a collaborative medium, plays are to be performed, and playwrights need to be able to commune with other artists at a certain point in the writing.  A reading removes a play from where it’s lodged inside of the writer’s head and shoves it out into the world.  If you’re faithful and true, you listen to what’s going on in the rehearsal and reading process—and with any luck, the play grows a bit more.

Q: What do you think of the new Tactical Reads series, created by Sabina Ptasznik, and its mission to pair female directors with female playwrights?

Cizmar: Sabina not only has created a program where playwrights get to be in dialogue about a script with actors and a director in the rehearsal process, as you would in most readings, but also she has taken this program one step further: The pairing of female directors and playwrights. Simple, but brilliant. This is a very far-sighted approach; it’s about putting creative teams together, developing long-term relationships that can support imagination and process. We know that the big institutional theatres support specific playwrights—mostly male—through commissions and ongoing commitments to develop and produce their work. And of course with support, a writer’s work gets better—and is more likely to be produced.  So Tactical Reads is the no-budget grassroots version of that—creating artistic partnerships, facilitating communication, and ultimately, searching for opportunities.

Join us! Strawberry by Paula Cizmar, directed by Sabina Ptasznik, with Chuma Gault, Mariel Martinez, Meredith Wheeler. 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 27, 2012, Atwater Crossing, 3245 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90039. Admission: Free.

AND there’s an LA FPI Meet-up before the reading, 7 p.m. We’ll meet at the ATX Kitchen near the wine bar.  Visit atwatercrossingkitchen.com for directions and to check out their cool menu. 

Taking Stock

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(Guest Blogger This Week – Laura A. Shamas, LA FPI Co-Founder and National Outreach Agent)

The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, as a grassroots movement dedicated to the cause of achieving gender parity for women playwrights (and all female theatre artists), has been around for awhile now. Inspired by the advocacy efforts by women playwrights in New York, Jennie Webb and I had our first conversation about it in September 2009 over lunch at the Marmalade Café on Ventura Blvd. In November 2009, we put up a temporary website, begged Ella Martin to head a study of L.A. female playwrights’ activities in the first decade of the 21st century, and tried to figure out how to organize a community-wide outreach to the hundreds of female dramatists here (and those who love them)—not an easy feat when you consider SoCal’s 500 square miles.  But we knew lots of people here cared about this issue and wanted to do something about it. We had our first official meeting in March 2010 at Theatricum Botanicum during a major storm; it seems like a metaphor, looking back. Still, many talented women and men trekked to Topanga Canyon during the torrential rain, and spoke from the heart about how and why this cause—and theatre as an art form—matters.

That initial wet chilly meeting seems like ancient history now; so much good work has happened in the past 2+ years. There’s a long list of artist-volunteers who have contributed to the LA FPI mission. Some highlights include: the creation of this website by Jennie Webb, sponsored by Katherine James; the award-winning staff of playwright-bloggers (Tiffany Antone, Erica Bennett, Nancy Beverly, Robin Byrd, Kitty Felde, Diane Grant, Jen Huszcza, Sara Israel, Cindy Marie Jenkins, Analyn Revilla, and Cynthia Wands) who are featured daily in this space, expertly managed by editor Robin Byrd; Ella Martin’s historic 2011 study results; Alyson Mead’s podcasts with inspiring women playwrights; the Women at Work Onstage page (still the only weekly list of female-authored shows in L.A.), created/maintained by Laurel Moje Wetzork; the bi-monthly e-mail blasts that include member news and submission opportunities, curated by Erica Bennett, then Helen Hill (we’re now looking for communication help!); the support from Larry Dean Harris, who wrote about us for The Dramatist—and gave us a spotlight, featuring Janice Kennedy, at a 2010 regional Dramatists Guild meeting (followed by a panel slot for us at 2011 National DG Conference); the new venture with Tactical Reads launching this week, connecting women playwrights to female directors, originated/helmed by Sabina Ptasznik; the spread of our badges on the Web and in person (a branding scheme with an important meme); an annual look at LORT seasons and stats in SoCal as related to gender parity and playwriting; the enthusiastic LA FPI support for female artists in the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2011 & 2012 (lead by Cindy Marie Jenkins, Jennie Webb, Jan O’Connor, Alyson Mead, Kat Primeau, and Jessica Abrams); sharing scenes via social media in order to increase accessibility and visibility; approaching theaters to ask how we can build relationships, fostered by Debbie Bolsky and Tami Tirgrath; meet-ups to see plays by women, coordinated by Task Force leader Diane Grant; online discussions, such as the fascinating one just hosted by Cindy Marie Jenkins with guests Etta Devine and Carolyn Sharp, about applying the Bechdel Test to the stage—a streamed broadcast that may (fingers crossed!) evolve into an ongoing monthly LA FPI/TV theatre conversation; etc. We have more people following us on Twitter, domestically and worldwide, than ever before. Lots of folks “Like” us on Facebook. And it’s all been created and executed by volunteers of professional theatre artists, for free!

Whew!

But has anything really changed? “Has LA FPI made any difference at all?” It’s a question I’m frequently asked and asking. When we compiled the SoCal LORT stats in May/June this year, for a while it looked as if there might be small gains of +1.5% or even +3.5%, in terms of female-authored shows for the 2012-2013 professional seasons. But then, in the end, it was pretty much the same as it ever was: still around 22% (or slightly less). Discouraging! “Is consciousness-raising effective anymore?” we wonder. Why doesn’t the excellent LA FPI blog have more commenters, at the very least?

In these moments, I have to remind myself: Statistics don’t tell the whole story—only part of it. Things have changed in this way: we are not sitting around and ignoring “the problem” any more. We were cautioned in the early days of LA FPI not to confuse “Activity” with “Progress.” Maybe not, but when you have this much ongoing work towards a goal (see above), there’s a shift of some sort—of attitude, of creativity, of focus, of opportunity, of spirit. It may take many more years before we achieve true gender parity for female theatre artists in the English-speaking theatre (or for women in the world at large). But we’re pretty sure that more Angelenos are aware of the issue and are working towards the goal of parity now. Solved? No. Better? Definitely.

Female theatre artists in New York continue to advocate for gender parity; the 2012 Lilly Awards held on June 4, 2012, at Playwrights Horizons, and the upcoming “We Are Theatre” protest on September 24, 2012, at the Cherry Lane Theater (organized by the Guerrilla Girls On Tour!, 50/50 by 2020, Occupy Broadway, and the Women’s Initiative members of the Dramatists Guild) are two timely examples.

Recent reports from the U.K. and Australia also mirror our struggles. Lyn Gardner, writing from London in The Guardian in February 2012, wonders if a universal blind submission policy is a possible remedy. A new report, “Women in Theatre,” released April 2012 by the Australian Council for the Arts, details the status of Australian women playwrights and female theatre artists. Those who authored the report found “no progress over the decade since 2001 and there is evidence that the situation for women in creative leadership deteriorated over that time” (pps 4-5). It’s a thorough, well-crafted study, and on page 49, there’s a “cross-sectoral approach” that suggests three pathways towards improvement in the professional theatre arena:

1) Information
2) Accountability
3) Vigilance

These points really resonated with us because they align with so much of our LA FPI work thus far. And it’s reassuring to know that others in the arts, including the Australian Council, recognize that the problem of gender parity in theatre is a grave one and must be remedied.

Here’s our promise. We will continue to spread the word; we are taking stock. And of this you can be certain: we won’t give up.


What are your ideas about how to create equal opportunities for women playwrights and female theatre artists? Join us on Wednesday, June 27, 7 p.m., for our next LA FPI gathering to share ideas and network, followed by an 8 p.m. reading of Paula Cizmar’s new play Strawberry, directed by Sabina Ptasznik in the new Tactical Reads program. And please share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

 

If We Believe…

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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.

Picture Exercises…

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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…

Fatima Quest

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I’m writing a new piece now, some stories that have been swirling around my head for a while – the Virgin Mary and Fatima sightings and women’s bodies and family stories and growing up Catholic.

Many of these stories I have told before. Most over a beer or two getting to know a new friend. They are the stories told in the night that you can’t imagine putting in print for fear family members would sue. Honestly, they still might.

And it seems that the story to haunt me forever is the one that caused a great shift in my life: Fatima.

Here’s the gist: two young girls and one young boy (ages 7-9) see the Virgin Mary one day while out tending their family’s flock. She tells them of future visitations and offers three secrets which include:

  • Russia must proclaim their devotion to the Mother or She will fail.
  • (shady interpretation) Pope John Paul II’s Assassination attempt
  • The two youngest (Francisco and Jacinta) will die soon while Lucia will live on to spread the glory of the Virgin Mary’s word.

The two youngest did die from a pretty common flu, and Lucia, later Sister Lucia, or Looney Lucia, as I will refer to her, lived to be a ripe old advisor to the church and I believe was appointed for sainthood after she died at 92. The two youngest were the only canonized youth who were not martyrs.

The show is called Fatima Quest, and this is the blog I write before leaping into the next ten pages I promised to finish by Monday.

Wish me luck. I’ll tweet about it @cindymariej & also started a Pinterest Inspiration Board.

If you have any stories or experience with the Fatima story or the Virgin Mary, let me know!