Oh wow – who watched the Super Bowl on Sunday? I’ve got to admit, I was less invested this year because the “Defending title team VS a team embroiled in controversy over deflated balls” narrative wasn’t especially gripping. I did, however, get totally into the commercials (as I usually do), and want to talk for a moment about Always’ #LikeAGirl commercial.
I loved this commercial. I think Always struck just the right balance between messaging and emotion, on top of totally owning its brand. Twitter lit up with the #LikeAGirl hashtag afterwards… and then some ass hat self-proclaimed “Meninest” decided that the commercial, by encouraging 50% of the population, was exclusive and unfair to men and started a competing hashtag, #LikeABoy.
Gag.
I mean, let’s ignore for a moment that the entire freaking Super Bowl is basically penis Mecca—what do these people honestly expect from a company that sells feminine products?
And what does it say about them that a commercial encouraging girls to be awesome would be so threatening that they felt the need to immediately attack it…
I just can’t even.
Except, I produce a female playwrights festival called the ONSTAGE Project, and this year – for the first time – I received submissions from men. At first I thought *maybe* the gents simply hadn’t read the submission details thoroughly enough to understand that by using the words “Female Playwrights Festival” in the event name, we meant this festival is for FEMALE PLAYWRIGHTS.
Until one of them signed his submission email with the following:
P.S. Yes, I am male, but isn’t it about the story and not the gender of the author?
WOW.
I was gobsmacked. Gobsmacked, I tell you.
And more than a little furious.
Furious because his email not only communicated a total disregard for our company’s mission statement, but a complete disregard for female playwrights’ gender parity struggle at large. Also, it’s a pretty dick move to tell a female playwright that writing a woman character basically negates the need for female writers.
I’m still feeling incredibly growlsome about it.
But isn’t this why we’re talking about gender parity? Isn’t this very issue one of the reasons the LAFPI exists? It’s certainly part of my motivation to increase production opportunities for female playwrights. So I can sit and stew, or I can turn this particular Twitter turn into further grist for the “Get shit done!” mill…
Because I write #LikeAGirl and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Every once in a while, you come across a work that knocks your socks off.
In September of last year, I saw a performance of Mary Lou Newmark’s Breathing Room at the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose. The play was filled with beautiful music. The language and situations were fresh and arresting and I still think of that evening with pleasure.
Billed as A Chamber Symphony for Two Actors and a Musician in Four Acts, it was written and composed by Mary Lou, directed by Dan Berkowitz, with movement by Gary Thomas.
The other two performers were Joshua Wolf Coleman and Eileen T’Kaye who played two neighbors in a Los Angeles suburb – Marilyn, an artist, and the Professor, a high school science teacher.
This is from her website: The two of them struggle with “modern technologic vertigo” as they negotiate living with hummingbirds, meatball eating bears, coyotes and backyard chickens. With evocative music performed live on stage by Mary Lou, they explore personal relationships with nature, quantum physics and embodied spirituality through playful, humorous storytelling.
(Shallow creature that I am, I particularly enjoyed a segment on Bed, Bath and Beyond.)
Mary Lou plays a green acrylic 5-String Electric Violin and uses an Eventide Ultra-Harmonizer.
Here’s a photo so you can see that wonderful violin.
Mary Lou Newmark and the neon green electric violin
In a clip from Breathing Room on her website, you can also see the instruments that stand in for an entire orchestra.
Breathing Room was at the Zephyr for only one night and Mary Lou is looking for a long run. I hope she finds that production because I’d like to see it again.
Did I talk about this before? It’s still on my mind. I teamed up with a composer, Andy Chukerman, and have been writing lyrics for a play that he’ll put music to. We’re transforming my romantic comedy, The Piaggi Suite, into a play with music. Andy says that a musical has a formula that a play with music need not have. “It’s new,” he says. “It’s fresh.”
So I’ve been traveling into new territory.
Writing lyrics hasn’t come easy. I don’t know why. I sing. I write poetry. But for this exercise, the words have incubated for a long time. My admiration for Paul Simon, which has always been great, is now huge. And how did Billy Joel come up with “car” and ‘guitar” (easily) but “Zanzibar?”
So, of course, I used the rhyming dictionary on the Web and have spent hours looking at it, just because it is so much fun. There are words of one syllable that rhyme, two syllables, three syllables, words that almost rhyme but not quite, words that sounds like others, etc.
Here’s just one example:
Words and phrases that rhyme with love: (89 results)
89 Results! I wish I had needed to use uncharacteristic of.
(Whoever wrote this particular rhyming dictionary was crazy about Bob Dylan and used his songs all the time.)
However, in order to rhyme something, you have to have other words for words to rhyme with. How to say in song what you want to say? What do you want to say?
I asked for advice. A colleague from ALAP, Eugenie Trow, advised me to write everything in prose first, then go for the rhyme and rhythm after. The composer said to use dialogue already in the script.
There’s advice you can buy – books on Amazon like Successful Lyric Writing by Sheila Davis, Writing Musicfor Hit Songs by Jai Josefs, Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison.
I found a terrific book online called Teach Yourself Songwriting by Sam Inglis. He talks about hooks, those lyrical phrases that repeat in the chorus or open the song that catch you – that hook you. Like The Beatles singing Let it Be, or Kate Perry’s You’re Hot, ThenYou’re Cold, Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You. The hooks have to fit the rhythm, the melody, and the mood of the song. They’ll tell you what the song is about and if they’re good, they’ll stick with you.
Start with the hook, he advised, and go from there. Listen for them in music and conversations, look for them in the news, hear them in your head.
So, I started listening for the hooks.
This is one of my favorites:
Hooks were just the start but I now have 8 finished lyrics and hope they’re good. Sugar, yes, please.
The First Manifesto of the Cocktail Nation:We, the Citizens of the Cocktail Nation, do hereby declare our independence from the dessicated horde of mummified uniformity – our freedom from an existence of abject swinglessness. We pledge to revolt against the void of dictated sobriety and to cultivate not riches but richness, swankness, suaveness and strangeness, with pleasure and boldness for all.
BE FABULOUS.
— The Millionaire of Combustible Edison
(Glenn, Joshua. “Cocktail Nation; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Be Fabulous.” Utne Reader 65 (September/October 1994)
“Revival” is featuring at the Acting Artist’s Theatre in West Hollywood and it opened last Sunday, January 18th. Carla Neuss and I had a conversation on the weekend before it opened. She arrived from Friday’s rehearsal, and seemed focused and relaxed. It was the first rehearsal without any glitch. She produced and directed the play for its premiere in Los Angeles. The play was featured in Oxford in 2010, and was the winner of the 2010 Oxford New Writing Festival.
The inspiration of the play was the revival of cocktail lounge culture that emerged in the 1990’s. She started writing the play around 2009, at a time when she was looking to work on a lighter piece apart from her thesis. From her experience of working in a bar and dating a bartender in Oxford, she taught the actor who plays Crispin how to properly mix drinks. There are specific order and techniques in making a cocktail. The magic potion is a combination of three things. Similar to the creation of a new perfume that has its base notes, middle notes and high notes – a cocktail has the base spirit that is the main flavor of the drink, the modifier/mixer that blends with the base without overpowering it, and a flavoring that rounds out the whole packaging.
A mixologist is a craftsman like an artisan of food, pottery or glassmaking. He considers the environment and its inhabitants when creating the concoction. The play begins with Tyler, a regular patron of the unnamed bar, and he tells a story about being a knight errant. An angel offers him a chalice brimful of potion to regain his strength. He asks Crispin “make me that drink.” There are four rules that patrons of the bar must abide by. Rule #4 is drink requests are not permitted. “Only stories or inclinations should be presented to the bartender for him to utilize or ignore at his discretion.”
One of the challenges of producing this play was finding the right actor to play Crispin. The play is 90 minutes long without any intermission, and Crispin is onstage at all times while patrons arrive and leave. With each entrance and departure they spin a web of their realities, dreams, aspirations and woes. Crispin works to enhance their stories with his custom made drinks. Carla told me that she had to reach out to Ben Moroski with whom she collaborated with on another project last year. When casting the role she sought someone who had a strong presence without the showmanship. The role of Crispin needs an actor who can be the eye of the storm while the other characters whirl in the vortex around him with their pretenses and their stumbling truths.
I asked Carla how she chose to collaborate on projects. She said she’s only been back in California for a year, having spent the previous 4 years in Oxford. She’s building her network from word of mouth. I heard about the play from James Svatko, the actor who plays Fred in “Revival”. James was the producer and director of “The Last Train” a play written by Natacha Astuto. I told James it was delightful to see him another role wearing a jacket instead of his prison cell overalls (from ‘The Last Train’). After the opening performance last Sunday, James and I had a brief moment to greet each other at Harlowe’s, the bar next door to the theatre.
I asked Carla if there was any particular group that she hoped to attract with this play. The context of the question is that most theater goers I’ve seen at Ahmanson, Geffen and Pasadena Playhouse are in the mature age range. We agreed that theater competes with other genres of entertainment. As an art form a play asks of its audience to invest intellectually, and draw upon their experiences and imagination to understand what it is about. The audience can be moved by a scene, but understanding what the play is all about is challenging. Perhaps the topic of mixology can attract some of the younger crowd, especially the cocktail lounge culture. On opening night, the play’s program can be used to get a ten percent discount on a customized cocktail at Harlowe’s. (I don’t know if this applies throughout the run of the play.)
A mysterious liqueur in the play has its own revival in history. Crispin, in his quest to help the world transcend beyond the ordinary life had found Crème Yvette on e-Bay. The liqueur had not been produced since 1969. The setting of the play does not refer to a specific period, but it probably occurs before the 2009 when the production of the liqueur was revived by the Cooper Spirits Company. The arrival of the box that holds the precious nectar made from raspberries, wild strawberries, blackberries, and cassis from the famed Aquitaine region and blended with dried violet petals is a ceremony. Crispin puts on ethereal music, (Arvo Part’s “Spiegel im Spiegel”) on the turntable, then lays out a lace mantle. He pours the violet-garnet hued Crème Yvette into a crystal glass and takes his first sip.
The cult of the cocktail is a successful religious ceremony transformed into a secular rite. The bartender is the high priest, the drink is the sacramental cup, and the cocktail lounge is akin to a temple or cathedral that uses lights, music, and even ceiling fixtures to reinforce moods of comfort and inspiration.(Lanza, Joseph. “Set ’em Up, Joe: A Cocktail Primer.” Esquire, 127.4 (April 1997): 74 – 75)
Crispin’s bar is this place of transformation. What is a story without the heat between a man and woman? Enter Jo, a beautiful young woman played by Adrienne Whitney. She supports her studies in literature as an escort. She uses the bar as a regular spot for her rendez-vous, but she’s also attracted to Crispin. She becomes a catalyst to change the homeostasis of the bar. Victor Gurevech plays Tyler, the young dreamer who voraciously upholds the rules of the bar. Tyler looks to Crispin for relief from the mundane world. Joseph Martone plays two supporting roles, both as escorts of Jo. He did marvelously in maintaining his composure when his moustache slipped from his upper lip to cover his mouth just as he was to start a story. Then there is the pastor, Fred, (played by James Svatko). Fred is simply a man who needs a break from his job description ‘to love all people’.
Crispin listens to their stories and mixes their drinks. The customers’ wear their lives on their jackets, ties, costumes and breathes it out through their skin. Their realities mix with the sanctity of Crispin’s bar. The revival is opening the eyes to our humanity while striving for perfection.
“There’s a feeling you can get sometimes… something triggers it and you suddenly feel all your fingers and toes and you loop up and the people around you are smiling and you are talking about something big and important and beautiful and the world feels like not a such a bad place to live after all – it feels like it was meant to be good…” – Crispin (from “Revival”).
Revival is playing on weekends from January 18 at 8pm and will continue on Saturdays, January 24, 31, and February 7 at 3pm and 8pm.
I like kids’ movies a lot. Sue me. Please don’t actually sue me as that’s a dumb reason to sue someone and I’m too poor for legal fees. What was my point? Oh right, I like kids’ movies. I think that children’s films present a lot of simple truths in easy to swallow, not quite as grandiose ways. The Lego Movie teaches us that everything is better when you’re part of a team and that by believing you’re “the Special” you can become “the Special.” Side note: If you haven’t seen the Lego Movie you’re wrong. Just wrong. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is wrong for not nominating them (I have a lot of Feelings about it).
The first movie I remember seeing in theaters was Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear asserts that he’s not flying, he’s “falling with style.” That moment is great because you realize that Buzz knows he’s never going to fly and he’s ok with that because damn, can he fall with style.
Lately I’ve been wondering if that’s all success is – Falling with Style. I have trouble watching other people fly, not because I want them to fall but because I am ashamed of my own clumsy falling. But perhaps it’s just an issue of style. If anyone can show me how to keep falling, but how to do it with style and aplomb, please let me know in the comment section. Until then, I’m going to watch Tangled for the 1000th time.
Speaking of unexpected sources of inspiration or, if you will, gifts that don’t fit into (figurative) boxes, it occurred to me, how swell and gift-like an extraordinary play is – the kind with the capacity to shed light, to transform, to expand our world, along with our individual and collective understanding of it. The kind that reminds one she isn’t alone in said world. A play that acts as a soul companion of sorts for one who’s experienced it, for subsequent days and years to come. I think of “thank you” notes I might have written over the course of a lifetime to Carol Bolt for ONE NIGHT STAND, Wallace Shawn for A THOUGHT IN THREE PARTS (and, really, everything else), Gertrude Stein for WHAT HAPPENED, Rochelle Owens for FUTZ, Harold Pinter for OLD TIMES.
It’s quite a rosy way of looking at what we do, I’d say, writing as an act of giving—if only to one person, a single “willing and prepared hearer,” to borrow from Robert Louis Stevenson. And it isn’t so naïve. After all, it’s often been said there’s an audience for everything, for every creative offering. As we look and click around, glimpsing comments on various YouTube videos, there is often the suggestion that this postulate is true.
I do wonder what sorts of gifts we’ve all been working on this holiday season, who will be their most affected recipients. And how to best go about finding those recipients. Another post, I suppose.
I met a playwright at a party, she was half-dead. She wasn’t drinking. But she was having trouble keeping the lines on her face in order. “Are you okay,” I said. I didn’t ask, even nodded my head. She was neck-to-toe in grey, and I was at the top of a staircase, so I figured we might have an understanding.
She explained that she couldn’t get a grip on her personal statement – which sounds much like one doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t it? No, in her applications to the litany of must-get-ins, into which she presumably never got, it’s that she never felt she knew what they wanted. They. Narrow or broad. Long or short. Casual or formal. Specific or general.
She was in between what we un-ironically call submission deadlines and had come to the soiree to escape the uncertainty, but it was not working. Amid all of the faces, smirking, wowing, grimacing, scanning as they encountered other faces, foods and beverages, she was again and constantly faced with “what do they want?” Really want. Tremendous, the secrets these expressions hold. On the face, and on the paper. Describe your role . . .
What do they want? Same question. Similarly unknown people. The sort found in theatre companies, non-profits, corporations, audiences, cities, parties. People.
It was driving her crazy. I asked her, more flippantly than planned, what it was like to care that much. And at 40+, at which point it’s all, I’m told by numerous magazines, water insouciantly dripping from a duck? It was meant to empower her.
She was unamused. “You wouldn’t be here, if you didn’t have the same problem.” Quietly, I considered the nature of my work and almost conceded but then wondered where “here” was. The staircase? The party? The conversation? California? And what, in fact, was the problem? I didn’t decide. I sat next to her, and we said nothing further. Our eyes in tandem, we peered out into the sea of secret wants as the flock of corresponding faces dwindled to fewer and fewer still, maybe mystified.
Then we went home, at least I did, and wrote a play, along with an accompanying statement, about nothing. Except the things I wanted to know more intimately.
Every December I begin my shopping spree for a new planner. Ok, who am I kidding, I usually start in the summer when Student Planners come out and I long to be back in school. Yes, I still use paper and pen, but I also keep track of things online, but since I am a planner, I plan for the event that I lose power to my electronics or can’t access the cloud and then I will be lost and not know where I am supposed to be for that day. Yes, it does take a bit more effort, but it’s like a double check so I know where things are. This year, I’ve decided I am going to try and make my own. I say this because after spending hours in the office supply aisle at several different stores, I always end up walking out empty handed. So instead, I am spending hours sifting through my collection of downloaded planner pages in the hopes of creating a useful book.
When I’m at meetings I love to see what other people use and how they stay organized. Right now I’m reviewing my blogs (it’s a long list) and creating editorial and content calendars, wondering how I can put all the required information on one sheet per day, as well as other additions I want to monitor, like social media stats. I also need a place to take notes from my variety of meetings and room for a to-do list of the items that pop randomly into my head.
December also signals a time for review and reflection on what you’ve accomplished from the year, so you can begin planning bigger and better things for the next. Planning your “season” if you will. When is the deadline for that play competition? When is Fringe? What holidays or events are coming up that I want to discuss or work on? When is so-and-so’s production start and end so I can help out on that? These are just some of the things I need to think about. A planner is also a great place for all your worlds to collide. I use it as an opportunity to look at the different jobs and events that I have planned and see how they can come together to help out one another. If I’m working on so-and-so’s production, how can I use my time there to help out another production.
A planner keeps me on task and keeps all my to-dos in one place. As the year slowly comes to a close, my January and February are already filling up. Now it’s only a question of where I’ll be writing everything down.
I’m hoping Santa brings me this planner so I don’t have to think about it anymore. I’d love to hear how you stay organized, where do you keep track of everything? My quest is never over.
I mean, I am a playwright? I know. Strange title to start off with LA FPI, should this be one of my first blog posts? Especially on a playwriting blog. To me the term/title playwright is just that. Something that identifies you to a particular segment of the population. What’s in a title?
When I was approached to contribute to LA FPI I happily said yes. That’s what I do. I say “yes” then after it sinks in I wonder “what the heck have I done”. Trust me, if you knew me, you would know that saying yes first and asking questions later is so not in my wheel house. Most decisions are well researched with lists and talking to people and several lost hours on the internet. I need facts before I make a life changing decisions.
Where is this going you’re wondering? For me it begins with the title of Playwright. You see, after saying yes, THEN doing my research on the other women of LA FPI, I felt out of my league. I am still playing house-league hockey, the ladies of LA FPI are truly NHL material (yes, I’m a hockey fan). I have a problem with titles. When you’re a college student you are dreaming of the big corporate job you’re going to get after graduation, you do job searches based on the title the job carries and once you get the job, you are defined by that title on your business card.
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted a big fancy title and a stack of business cards to hand out to say “look at me”. But it wasn’t until I went to work for a non-profit I realized how difficult and pointless a job title can be. I was listed as Director. That meant that I was in charge. Ok. But what the people I was talking with didn’t realize that I was also the Executive Assistant, Public Relations, Fundraiser, Social Media Manager, Volunteer Wrangler, and IT. I was a staff of 1, reporting to the President and Founder. Knowing this secret, I always smirked when someone asked for my card, like I was part of an inside joke they would never know the punch line to.
Networking events are the worst for me. The inevitable question “So what do you do?” is a tough one. I’m not trying to be evasive you see, I do a bit of everything, so it takes me a minute or two to decide what to say (I really need to work on my elevator pitch). Ever have that problem? But, the addition of playwright to my ever growing resume is a hard one for me to wrap my head around and I am always forgetting to tell people about it. I love to write. This past year has been filled with “writer” me. My play was chosen to be workshopped, where I got to sit back and just write. An actor performed my words. I had conversations about the theme of my play and how people related to it. When I began writing my show I never thought of the ramifications of it. I just wanted to write. Now, I’m an artist-in-residence (another interesting title) and working on my next show that will be workshopped next year. What does it all mean? I guess for once I just don’t feel worthy of the title. A playwright to me is this deep thinker of a person, they know stuff (oh, I am sensing a theme in my life). I’m just a perfectionist and I want to make sure everything is perfect before I send it into the world. Structure, storyline, character arc, all that writer-y stuff. I guess that’s why it took me so long to finish my one-person show. That and after awhile I just wanted to complete something. I had to let go of all the crazy thoughts in my head that were stopping me from writing and just write. I am a playwright? Yes, yes, I am!
