Category Archives: Playwright

A Dream of a Play

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Kitty Felde – January 20, 2011

Have you ever dreamed about writing a fabulous play?  Usually such dreams involve a Tony or a string of productions or actors like Alec Baldwin and Colin Firth fighting to play roles in your work. 

But do we ever dream about the actual WRITING of a play? 

I did.

Of course, I can’t remember most of it.  But even in my sleeping state, I knew that I’d forget 99% of the wonderful plot devices, character development, sparkling dialogue, etc, etc.  So I kept telling myself in my dream to remember one thing.  Just one thing.  And when I woke up, that one thing is all I remembered.  It boiled down to two words: vegetable juggling.  Which actually meant something to me and made its way into a scene I was writing.

It’s the only time I’ve ever had this experience.  How about you?  Have you found a way to tap into your subconscious?  Tips, please!

Act Two, Scene Three

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Kitty Felde – January 18, 2011

I keep coming up with ways to trick myself into writing.

I have an act two problem with a play I’ve been struggling with for several years.  It’s the one about which my husband keeps saying, “why don’t you just let it go?”  But you know how it is.  It’s like the troubled kid you know you can see through the bad times so he’ll become an upstanding citizen when he’s done growing up.  So I know I’m committed to that play. 

But I’ve been stuck for months trying to finish act two.  And not writing a thing.

So I’ve decided to trick myself.

The very first play I ever wrote was a melodrama, “Shanghai Heart.”  As an actor, I had played a season in lovely Oceano, California with The Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville Theatre, playing 12 year old ingénues (I had just graduated college!)  Some of the plays were classics, some newer knock offs. 

Melodramas rarely get the kind of serious dramaturg attention that other genres get.  Even musical comedy is taken more seriously.  So when the urge came for me to write my first play, I chose a melodrama.  I knew the style.  But more importantly, I told myself, if the play stunk, no one would know.  It was a melodrama, for heaven’s sake. 

This kind of ploy worked pretty well when I was freelancing as a journalist for several years.  The days that my story ideas were rejected, I told myself I wasn’t a journalist, I was really a playwright.  When my plays came back in that sad, beaten up envelope, I told myself I wasn’t really a playwright, I was a journalist.  Schizophrenic, but it worked for me.

Of course, in my heart of hearts, I was going to write the BEST melodrama on planet earth.  And with a cast of ten (TEN!  What was I thinking?) I had a lot of characters to create and plots to keep straight.  But in the end, my tale of mistaken identity and love on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast was a hit.

The Los Angeles Times said, “Felde knows the melodrama form and has created an admirably intricate plot involving lost children, double amnesia, filched land deeds, a displaced Mountie, vamps, chorines, an evil foreigner, revenge and love triumphant.”

 Drama-Logue raved, “clever, talented and resourceful Kitty Felde…we should be hearing more from this versatile young lady.”

 I went on to write ten other plays. 

 And then got stuck in act two hell.

 So back to my solution. 

 I decided to choose another genre that’s gotten short shrift: plays for young audiences. 

 I’m a Helen Hayes judge here in Washington (kind of like the Ovations or LA Drama Critics Circle awards) and because I’m on the New Plays committee, I see a lot of new kids shows.  And unfortunately, a lot of them are bad.  (I know because the kids I’ve borrowed as my theatre companions tell me that on the drive home.)

 So I decided to write a kids show, using the same rationale I used to write that very first play: if it was bad, who would know?

 Now, before anyone gets all hot and heavy, I know kids’ theatre should be the BEST we have to offer.  Otherwise, why would kids ever pay the big bucks to attend theatre as adults?  And I have seen some WONDERFUL theatre designed for kids that’s MUCH better than the dreck offered to adults.  In my heart of hearts, that’s the play I want to write.  But I won’t admit it to myself.  Not just yet.

 www.kittyfelde.com

Act Two Hell, scene two

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Kitty Felde – Martin Luther King Day

Okay.  All that stuff I wrote a few months ago about tips to dig yourself out of Act 2 hell?  It didn’t work for me.  

I was cooking along on a long-delayed rewrite of a play that’s haunted me for more than a decade.  I’d even made it into the middle of Act 2, up to the big climax scene.  And then I fell apart.

I made the mistake of bringing 30 pages to my old writing group when I was in LA this past fall.  Turns out, it was a big mistake – mostly  because I hadn’t yet slogged through the rest of the first draft.  In other words, I hadn’t yet solved act two. 

The notes my old writing buddies gave me were terrific.  And made sense.  Unfortunately, knowing what I’d need to change in the second draft made going on to the end of the first draft seem overwhelming.  I lost heart.  I lacked courage.  Why write lines for characters I knew I’d have to excise in the next draft?  It seemed like a betrayal to those characters.  And if one of those main characters was going to change along the way, who knew if writing a first draft ending was even appropriate anymore?   And on and on and on. 

I know I’m overthinking this.  (A writer overthinking?  Shocked, I tell you.  Shocked!)  But I have come up with Plan B.

So here it is: I started a new play.

I know.  This is dangerous.  It’s like serial dating.  You might never get to the commitment stage…in playwriting terms, I might never get to the end of the first draft.   I’ll just add to my closet full of great ideas that never got finished. 

But I overcame my own warnings and moved ahead.  And I suspect it might work.  In fact, it might even work for you. 

Details tomorrow.

 www.kittyfelde.com

Something About Someone Who Succeeds

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I found that this link helps me keep the idea of success and failure in a manageable framework. And not having anything of my own to offer today, I thought I would share this:…..

http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure.html

Running Up the Side of the Mountain…

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When I was in the military, one of my duty stations was Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.  El Paso was so hot that at 0600 in the morning the units were already sweating before the run.  Running during the day could be considered suicidal; it rarely rained so much so, that there was no drainage system.  In order the make the PT (physical training) runs, one first needed to become weatherized and second, one needed to match the stride of a 6’ 2” male (the average height of the males on the post at that time).  I am 5’ 2” and it took me a step and a half to keep up with them.  My solution:  putting in the extra work; so I ran on Saturdays too — first around the base – that kept me about a half block behind which one didn’t want to be because if there was another unit behind you, they would pass you like road kill (not a good look when you get back to formation). 

It was a hard few months just to stay behind the second unit.  One day, one of the male soldiers in my unit (under 6 feet) told me about a mountain about 30 minutes away from the base that was good to run down.  He said that I would never be behind another unit again.  “Running up it,” he said, “was overkill.”  But I wanted to do more than just not be behind another unit, I wanted to be with mine and I did not want to make the other females look bad who were making the run with no trouble.  So, I was going for uphill work.  The thing about unit runs was there was the formation after the run and if you were getting an award that was when you got it.  If you weren’t there…“Shame on you.”  You had all of 3 minutes to catch your breath.

Then there was the CG’s Run (Commanding General) which was always longer than our regular run and if he felt “good” that day, the General would be present for award giving (even if it meant he had to run a little longer past his drop off point).  The entire base was running together during the CG’s Run.  It started at the Head Shed and picked up and dropped off units as we all circled the base once.  Never embarrass your Commanding Officer (CO) and First Sergeant by not being present at the end of that run.  So, 5’ 2” me ran the extra miles on the weekend up the side of the mountain to make sure I was on point should I ever get an award – which I did.  You can imagine the look on my CO and First Sergeant’s faces after the CG run when “Byrd, front and center!” was called and I materialized out of the ranks– completely obvious to everyone that I had made the run and wasn’t out of breath.

I think about those military days…especially when the goal I am trying to reach as a writer seems to be an uphill battle.  I remind myself about the mountain that was hard to even walk up the first time but after some time and diligence, I was able to run it…  I remember how it felt to make the runs.  As long as I use the time I am waiting to continue to hone my craft and expand my repertoire, I am not losing anything, not even time…  I am building… muscle, stamina, and confidence – confidence that when the time is nigh, I will be more than ready to stand among peers and not be out of breath…  I will be ready to report “front and center” with work built on strides perfected by running up the side of the mountain…

And, So It Begins…

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I have been internalizing for months.  I’ve named my characters, renamed some.  Heard first words and written them down.  Looked at the symbolism forming, done my research and talked out loud about some of what I think is going to happen – listening intently to the nuances of change in the story on its way to the page…

I am still debating which state the story takes place in but I am sure it will reveal itself to me while I am writing.  Some things just can’t be allowed to hold up the writing.  I can see the room, the scattered toys, the dim path lights and I can hear the sound of the snow cracking the bridge cover.  I’ve stepped to the beginning mark…

Of course, I feel as though I’ve bitten off more than I can chew like I do each time I start a play but I’m writing it anyway…  I plan to stay out of the way as best I can and let Fiddler’s Bridge reveal itself to me bit by bit, layer by layer, word by word, sound by sound.  I’m excited and at peace about it.  I love that it is finally time to write… 

And, so it begins…

When Did You Know…?

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At what point did you know that you were a playwright?  When was the first time you said, “I’m a playwright” or “I write plays” and it sounded right.  Was there some other career you were headed toward; where did you detour?   Or, were you always on track?

Did you study playwriting or learn by trial and error?  When did you find out that you were good at writing plays?  Was it by osmosis or did you get an “A” on a writing assignment or some serious clapping at the end of one of your plays?  What was the play?

When did you determine your voice as a writer?  Did it catch you by surprise?  What were you writing?

When did you know that life without writing was not an option…?

For the Girls Who Tell Stories…

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My month – last month – started off well, full of good intentions with the exception of scrambling for references for a certain competition.  It’s always hard to ask – again.  It’s not hard to know who to ask just hard to ask someone to write that reference one more time and you hope you won’t have to ask next year because you’ll be successful and there will be no need to ask again – you hope.  Near the middle of the month – September, the heaviness that accompanies the submission period hit me like a brick…  This time of the year is also the most demanding period of my “day job” which causes the inevitable fight to replenish myself in order to just keep up with everything.  For some quick R & R, I found myself sneaking moments with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” which I had never read and even though I have the beginnings of the perfect play to send…somewhere, I couldn’t stay away from the book.  It was like balm; reading it renewed me…like watching the sun set over the Pacific does.  That’s the thing about a good story, it pulls you into that world and out of yours for a moment.  I found Scout’s voice very comforting even though some of the subject matter was not.  I think it was the pure innocence of the child that grabbed me.  It seemed Atticus, Miss Maudie, and even Aunt Alexandra tried very hard to keep the children viewing the world through unskewed eyes.  As long as I could see the events through Scout’s eyes, I could see the patches of light in the middle of the gray. 

There are things about fiction that I try to bring to my playwriting like the full on description of the world to be materialized in some way in my plays and the lingering of sorts, the way a book lingers with you after you have come to know the characters or come face to face with the clear essence of the piece.  I had that experience this past weekend with Jennie Webb’s play, “Yard Sale Signs” about mothers and daughters (playing at the Rogue Machine Theatre).  It’s a comedy but it is so rich and full of stuff, I have to admit, there was a point early in the piece where I heard myself think, “Don’t you dare do that here and now”.  Who cries at a comedy?   So, I laughed instead, it was easy to laugh because it’s a really funny play.  I wasn’t sure I understood it all till the ride home when I couldn’t stop thinking about it, then I woke up the next morning thinking about it.  I’m still thinking about it.  I had never seen a play like that before, it caught me off guard so I promptly put my guard up.  Didn’t matter, it lingered.

The most important thing I came away with from Jennie’s play is that I need to work my  “Mother things” into the mix with approaching deadlines.  Live theater – it is truly a living breathing thing with a voice.  What really draws me to theater is the “right now-ness” of it – right now you are in the characters’ world and they are flesh and bone and if they stumble, you see it unfold, you feel it jumping out at you and you may even jump with them or in response.  You can’t push pause or sit the actors down till you are ready to get back into it; it’s an “off and running” thing and “ready or not”, it’s a “right now” moment.  But, if it’s a good moment, it lasts a lifetime…

I talk about going there as a writer but the flip side is going there as an audience member.  I should have cried like I wanted to.  Laughing and crying are tied together and sometimes the emotions that cause one to laugh are the same that cause one to cry.  I hope I can get back to see “Yard Sale Signs” again.  I’ll sit in the back and just let the jewels of truth have their way with me… 

It’s all the special moments that make theater so exciting, so spellbinding…like when I saw “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf” by Ntozake Shange.  I had forgotten those moments until I saw the trailer for the movie “For Colored Girls” based on Shange’s play; the movie will open November 5th.  I tell you, I have to watch that trailer almost every day.  I had to re-read the play and that’s when I remembered…it was after seeing that play that I really began to search for my voice as a woman which has everything to do with my voice as a writer.  It was the first play I had ever seen at a real theater and there were brown girls just like me up on that stage but they were more than just brown girls, they were women talking about women’s things and feeling women’s feelings.  It is impossible to have a true world view without hearing from the women and the men…

So…

for the girls who tell stories…/ and climb trees alongside their brothers, reaching the upper branches to look out on the world/ who dance in spite of the offbeat rhythms running through their lives/ who sing in the wrong key till they learn the notes were never theirs to sing any way/ for the girls who find their own song and their own way to sing it/ who create from wombs, from words, or from living/ having more than a little “somethin’ somethin’” to give/ for the girls who dare to have a say…

i say… thank you…/ i’m listening…

The Winepress (stretching)…

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I don’t know about you but with me, every time I hit another level/dimension in my writing, I feel like I’ve been put through a winepress then stretched out like taffy and thrown back into my mold.  It’s as if all the pieces and parts of me get re-blended back into themselves in different proportions.  I am momentarily left somewhat disoriented and completely vulnerable to self-doubt.  Then, the last of me gets pressed through and suddenly the execution of a story that seemed to be a fleeting vapor in my mind materializes and I am able to embrace the change in myself.

Recently, I have been on a mission to stretch – to consciously grow in my craft – to be more uncompromising when I write.  I can’t think commercial; I have to think timely.  I have to continue to write to my rhythm and submit from what I have rather than write to submit.  Although, it is very good exercise to push oneself to write a play specifically for a certain conference or contest; it can get in the way when one needs to revisit a story but writers learn by writing so the time is never wasted.  When stretching, I like to read/see other playwrights’ plays which help me dissect my own work (written, in progress, even in the idea stage).  I have been telling myself to stretch for about seven months now…  I wasn’t quite sure how to do it so I figured that if I spoke it to myself long enough, it would materialize somehow.  By speaking it, I would be able to reach from where I was to where I wanted to go.  Seven months ago, I thought it was possible.  Today, I know it is possible because I am seeing a change in myself and my writing.  I know now that I am ready to revisit pieces from my back burner and work through them.  I’m not the same person I was when I put the pieces on the back burner; I’m more open to bending form to tell the story.  I’m more confident that I can create something new out of vapors –  the same way I become new each time I go through the winepress…

Write It Scared…

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I’m pretty fearless when writing but there are still instances when I am not (two to be exact).  I was writing a one woman show for a friend some years ago.  It started pretty crazy with the voices coming out of my mouth while I was driving – always as I neared or left the Post Office.  This happened for a few days before I realized the voices were characters in a play and not me losing my mind out loud.  There is a poem in that first scene called “Before the Red”; I felt and still feel that the piece should have explored that specific subject matter but I ended it when the voices quieted enough for me to go on to write the other monologues in the piece – maybe because I was tired of those strange characters blurting things out of my mouth – maybe because deep down I knew I was not ready to go THERE…  Individually, the monologues work but the collective piece is not a conclusion to the matter.  And, though I did not censor myself in writing the monologues, for whatever reason, I did fail to push into that first world I found – the THERE space…  I know the exact point I decided not to write the whole ugly truth…when those darn girls stopped blurting out sentences.  It’s at that point where I decided to write a variation of that truth – a modified portion of it which merely scraped the surface – the almost whole story.  The meat of it was left in the quarantined sector in my story bank – in the scary dark – THERE…  Though I am not easily jarred, with this piece, I was scared.  Scared that to really tell it, I would have to go deep enough to hit oil.  Would I be able to survive the gushing out of it?  I was scared to find out and I was scared that if I could survive the gushing part, I would put it out there before its time…  I am a firm believer that “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…Ecclesiastes 3”  Baring “uglies” for no purpose other than to bare them is not part of my makeup as a writer.  Perhaps it’s all those Aesop’s Fable cartoons I watched as a kid or the Twilight Zone episodes…  I sort of let myself down by writing an alternate piece and it’s stuck in my head (annoying me with thoughts of – “You know you still have to tell that story ‘cause you didn’t really go THERE… and you know you didn’t.  When are you going to write that story?  Soon, I say, right after the submission period is over and I have more time.”). 

I had been able to push the first instance to the back of my subconscious for a few years until I met playwright Will Eno who wrote “Thom Pain: based on nothing”.   I met him at a conference and he knew at once when I read the girls’ scene that I had failed to let that play go where no play (of mine) had gone before…all the way to the scary dark THERE…  The conversation went a little like this (because this is how I remember it):

Me:  “I think I failed.  I think I edited myself in some way.  I think the play wanted to say something else.”

Will Eno:  “You’re right.  You failed.  You have to throw it out and start over.”

Me:  “But, what I ended up with – the monologues are good.  I can’t throw them out.”

Will Eno:  “Then keep them but you still have to start over.  Trust that the thing that originally motivated you will motivate you again.”

He’s right.  I started over.  Since I never actually kill my darlings, I have them on standby to recycle/rework into other pieces.  When I sit quietly enough, the girls start to chatter again, taking me back to those moments when the sparks of their voices made me shake…

More recently, the second instance came about when I decided that I did not want to write a piece too close to the occurrence of the current event that inspired it.  My preference…  Again, I was scared that the timing was not quite right to go THERE … so I wrote something else.  A good piece but not the project I should have tackled.  Then I went to see “Stoop Stories” by Dael Orlandersmith.  After the talk back, I mentioned to her how her play “Yellowman” affected me.  Profoundly.  It made me shake…made me remember the girls who have been stepping aside for all the other plays I’ve written (funny both plays involve just girls/women).  Dael’s work makes me think about those two pieces on my back burners; it makes me want to revisit them now;  it makes me want to tackle the scary dark…just get right in there and look around.  I asked her how she was able to keep from editing herself.  I asked if she cared about what people may think or how they would respond when she’s writing.  I asked her if it scared her to be so open and honest.  She said – (and this is what struck me the most and this is how I remember it) – she said, “I care but I can’t do that to myself.  Do you understand?  I just can’t do that to myself.  Of course I’m scared; it scares me but I have to do it.” 

She’s right.  I just have to resolve it in myself that I will always write everything as open and honest as I can.  Otherwise, and I’ve learned this over time, I won’t give myself a pass because I can’t do that to myself either… 

As a writer one owes it to oneself to go to the THERE space… to the scary dark place and write it…just write it scared…