I’m caressing a wall – feeling its temperature and taking notes on “all kinds of walls”. I’m listening to a stranger’s stomach gurgling (even though I’m supposed to be pressing my hesitant ear down heavily enough to hear his heart beat) – now this stranger has his head to my belly… listening. I can feel his breath on my hand which is resting just below my stomach. The sudden and unexpected closeness of this listening exchange is alarming and calming all at once.
Now I’m watching a man press a lit cigarette into a child’s painting, burning away the colors.
Now I’m shaking hands with a cardboard-obscured (and thus body-less) hand… someone else kisses the hand. I laugh, I think about germs, I think about intimacy amongst strangers, I think about chapstick and lotion and Purell and calluses.
I think about my laptop, sitting a few feet away and I feel the familiar feeling of yearning to just… write.
I’m at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (#GPTC) and this is Lisa D’Amour‘s Yoko Ono workshop. I’m learning about the occasions on which D’Amour has performed Ono’s “Cut” piece and how her work as a performance artist has influenced her as a playwright. Her experience is transformative.
There are playwrights everywhere.
It’s hard to believe that only 8 days ago I was in LA, putting up my Little Black Dress INK Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Project at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. We live-streamed last Sunday’s play readings, and I will go on to produced each of the plays in Prescott, AZ this Fall. It’s been a FANTASTIC experience, a wild ride…
But I’m exhausted.
Which is why I’m so ecstatic to be at the GPTC this week.
This week, I get to sit back and just be a playwright.
I’ve taken two workshops and seen five new play readings already, and it’s only Monday!
So while I’ve got to get to bed early tonight in order to try to sleep off the rest of last week’s Producer fatigue (in order to enjoy the accumulation of new Playwright fatigue), I can promise I’ll be blogging again soon about my time spent here on the Plains, enjoying my role in the writer’s tribe.
In 2013, writer/performer Chris Farah’s show Fancy: The Southern Gothic Camp Parable debuted in the Hollywood Fringe Festival, winning a “Virgin” Award and “Best of Fringe Extension.” The good news is that Farah’s latest iteration of Fancy is back this year, opening in the 2014 Hollywood Fringe on June 8th at 3 Clubs as Fancy: Secrets from my Bootydoir. Since meeting Farah last year, I’ve seen her on television a lot, and as a fan, wanted to ask her some questions about her process, how she writes/performs comedy, and what it means to be a Fringe Femme. Luckily for me, she had time to respond. By the way, Farah is guest-tweeting for LA FPI starting the week of June 8, 2014.
Q: What is your background and how did you become interested in comedy?
A: How do I even begin this question? Haha, I was born in the valley and raised in Orange County. I always liked to sing and grew up being obsessed with musical theatre, everything from Guys and Dolls, to Godspell, to Cabaret to Rent (especially in high school). We moved around a lot, so I started to cultivate being funny or embracing my innate ridiculousness to be popular in new environments.
In high school, I started taking theatre classes at South Coast Repertory and found a teacher there, Laurie Woolery, who was such a strong, inspirational female mentor to me that when I got into college I had the audacity to major in Theatre (I had promised my dad I was going to go into Journalism and Communications). I went to Loyola Marymount University, and got cast as a freshman in the play Portia Coughlan by Marina Carr (directed by Diane Benedict, another strong female mentor and my favorite teacher in college) as the retired prostitute aunt, Maggie May, who smoked like a chimney and limped around the stage due to her varicose veins. Still to this day, my favorite role and production of my life. The play is haunting, and dark, and beautiful, and cemented in me the reality that theatre was my life. I dreamed of graduation and going to get my MFA at NYU but alas, my dad, albeit supportive, wasn’t into paying thousands for more theatre education and when I quite easily got a commercial agent I decided to stay in LA.
I took improv classes at the Groundlings and then started taking long form improv and sketch classes at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre right when it opened in LA (I had wandered into the now defunct Tamarind theatre space and into the UCB opening party where I was seduced with all the people dancing, drinking and generally being full of debauchery inside a theatre, it felt VERY Dionysian). Long form improv felt like true stripped down, bare bones theatre, no director, no writer, just theater artists jumping from the backwall to create a full and succinct piece. I started doing shows there, lots of “dirty” or blue comedy, sketch shows, character bits in shows, and genre-based improv like musical theatre or Tennessee Williams, and then writing my own short musicals for a show at UCB called Quick & Funny Musicals. Through writing I really got to hone in on my comedic voice which, of course, ultimately helped me as a performer, and that voice was camp comedy. I had done a musical improv show at the Celebration Theater where I met Kurt Koehler and Efrain Schunior. Kurt would later facilitate me doing shows at the Cavern Club at the basement of Casita del Campo, the best camp and drag theatre in the town! Efrain would go on to write and let me star in his improv telenovela saga Stallions de Amor. When I started writing my one lady show Fancy, Kurt ended up being my director and Efrain my producer. And that’s where we are now!
FANCY at the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival
Q: How did you develop your show Fancy and how is it different this year than last?
A: I took a class on writing a one person show at the Writer’s Pad that was taught by Julie Brister, another UCB improviser whose own one lady show Fat Parts I had seen and respected. I knew I wanted to create a piece of theatre but I didn’t want it to be a SNL audition (big characters, haphazardly strewn together), nor did I want to talk about my personal life or family, and I had seen Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel and didn’t think I was capable of that kind of character work, Godbless, so I literally had no idea what I was gonna do. Julie had asked to email her show ideas if we didn’t already have one and I, only in passing at the end of the email, mentioned Fancy. Fancy, an idea based on the fact that my mother used to sing me the song while playing the guitar and as I got older it had become my karaoke anthem. There was something about the storytelling in that song, Fancy’s strength, the melodrama and southern spirit, the fact my paternal grandmother was from a small Louisiana town, and finally the last verse where she gives it to the “hypocrites” that I connected with, and with Julie’s support wrote some monologues that would end up being in Fancy’s first show – Fancy! A Southern Gothic Camp Parable. Fancy first premiered at the Cavern Club and the next summer I brought it to the Hollywood Fringe ’13. I love performing her and was completely overwhelmed by the response people gave her. I can’t even express the delight and appreciation I have when people say they connect with her or love her. I want for her to have the accessibility of cult icons like Elvira or Dame Edna.
For this next show, Fancy: Secrets from my Bootydoir, I want to connect with the audience in a brand new interactive cabaret show which picks up with the Fancy we left you with at the end of the last show, strong, independent, fearless and free. She is going to share the things she has learned along the way but of course in her warm, sassy, and “innocent for a prostitute” way. Fancy is going to talk directly to the audience, answer questions, integrate social media, teach/preach, sing songs, maybe even improv a song, who knows. 🙂
Q: Where/when/how do you write? What are your inspirations? Who are your mentors? Do you mentor someone?
A: I write on my couch which is where I eat, watch TV, hang with friends, take afternoon naps, and do pretty much every other important thing in life on. I write only when necessary, so I have to “book myself” things to ultimately get me to write. I am naturally HORRIBLY LAZY, and have nightmarish self-discipline skills. I don’t have a mentor but my best friend Amy Rhodes is a writer (she has done a couple of one person shows and published plays and currently writes on Ellen) and she reads everything I write. I don’t mentor anyone for writing, but I have acted in the Young Storytellers Foundation’s Big Shows and would love to mentor school-aged kids soon. I pull inspiration from so many sources! Mae West, Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, Jennifer Saunders, Jill Davis, Tina Fey, Rebel Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham, Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, Lennon Parham, Morgan Murphy, Jackie Beat, RuPaul, & Elvira. I get inspired every time I see Angelyne riding around LA in that pink corvette, she’s like a living nomadic performance artist (though maybe I wish she did something besides sell t-shirts for 20 bucks out of her trunk, I own at least 3 shirts by the way).
Q: What do you think are the challenges and perks of being a woman in comedy in Los Angeles?
A: The challenge is if you don’t know about comic books, sports, video games or other things comedy guys like, it can be super frustrating to be in male-dominated scenarios. That frustration can weigh on your own self-esteem as a writer and performer, and if you aren’t able to take yourself out of the situation and know your intrinsic value, it can ultimately be super depressing. Surround yourself with people that understand and appreciate you and that also WORK. Cultivating a group of ambitious and hilarious females and homosexual males that have driven me to work has been the biggest blessing in my career. The perks are once you get to a level where you know what you do and you trust you do it well, there are unforetold opportunities to share your voice. Sometimes you have to make those opportunities but so many successful females are writing and producing their own work (again: Casey Wilson & June Diane Raphael, Jessica St. Claire & Lennon Parham, obs Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Chelsea Handler, Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham). I believe as female comedy writers, we all own a lil’ piece of each other successes (SPOILER ALERT: one of Fancy’s secrets), because it says there IS a market for female-centered comedies written by females who truly understand the feminine narrative in the modern world.
Q: What are some of your theories on comedy? (Its value, why we need it, how to do it, etc.)
A: Godbless, I think truth is always present in successful comedy. Maybe that’s why I enjoy camp, I can always wink at the audience with the “You know I’m wearing fake eyelashes and a drag wig, right? This is a show.” I also think that’s why comedy and heart plays so well together; it’s another way of showing the truth of characters or relationships being portrayed. I guess I subscribe to all the other rules of comedy: “yes and,” ” don’t ask questions,” “comedy in reversals,” “the unexpected,” “rules of three,” “funny is in the details,” and “using plosives,” but they don’t define my work. I don’t know HOW to do it per se; I think what I write is funny and I know it’s not for everyone but that at least SOME other people will think it’s funny too.
Q: Why do you like to perform in the Hollywood Fringe? And what does it feel like to be a part of it? What are your thoughts on being a Fringe Femme?
A: I love performing at HFF for so many reasons but here’s just a few:
a) because it’s my hometown and as a theatre artist, I’m gonna rep LA for life
b) it’s easy as I live here, and obs cheaper for that reason too
c) it gives me a place and sense of community
d) I love meeting new people and seeing new work
e) it has taught me to be a producer and for that alone I am eternally grateful
f) it helps give validation to Fancy whom I care so deeply for, and the insight on how to give her legs beyond her first show last year
g) forcing me to continue her shows (literally because I won the Virgin award, I couldn’t just not come back the next year) and wanting to make this next show better than the first.
It feels completely different this year than last! I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and this year people already know Fancy’s name! It feels like what i always thought going to a dream performing arts high school would feel like! Except I can stay out late. 🙂
Being a Fringe Femme is everything. The support I was granted by the LA FPI last year was immeasurable and helped shine a light on Fancy when no one knew her. For me, it validated me as a writer. I always knew when writing Fancy that I was going to give myself the subtle platform to express my views on feminism (as well as LGBTQ rights) and being a Fringe Femme and honestly reading Jennie Webb’s blog filled me with the pride that I had infused this crazy, ridiculous character with those values. We are women, and we do have to fight tooth and nail to bring ourselves from one stage in life to where we ultimately want to be. It’s hard, and there’s going to be adversaries and antagonists along the way, but if you know yourself and your power, no one can take it away from you.
Q: Any other upcoming projects to discuss?
A: I mean, what else do you want from me? Haha, joking. I have been blessed to get into talking head work on pop culture shows. I live for pop culture, reading gossip blogs are another favorite pastime to do on my couch. I am doing a lot of standup shows and am trying to get a monthly variety show happening in LA. Besides that, I’m producing a podcast and writing a pilot because, as I said, I rep LA. 🙂
Q: Are there links to any of your performances already online (TV, etc.) that we can include?
Are you like me? If you had your life to do over again, you wish you’d gone to graduate school for playwriting? Now you have a grown up job, maybe kids, no money, no time. Oh, well.
There is an alternative: create your own Masters of Playwriting program.
No, you don’t have to join the faculty at UC Irvine. All you need to do is identify what you need as a writer and find the person or persons who can teach you.
MY MASTERS IN MARCH
It’s been an interesting month for me as a playwright. Last weekend, I took a Megabus trip up to Philadelphia to attend an all-day playwriting bootcamp with Paula Vogel, courtesy of the play development program at PlayPenn. Today, I’m sitting in a classroom at Catholic University in DC for an all-day intensive with Michael Hollinger. Next weekend, I’m having a table read in my living room of my LA Riots play “Time of the Troubles” directed by Linda Lombardi, the literary manager at Arena Stage – who I met at another play development program in DC known as Inkwell. Fifteen hours of playwriting instruction in a month with a price tag much cheaper than graduate school!
IDENTIFY THE WRITER YOU NEED TO LEARN FROM
LA is a city full of wonderful writers. Is there one you’ve always wanted to have coffee with? Write them. Ask them. They may say yes.
FIND OUT ABOUT WORKSHOPS
LA also attracts a who’s who of wonderful writers who pass through town. Is there a talk back session after their play? Are they teaching a master class somewhere? Paula Vogel was in Philly for the opening of a new play. PlayPenn invited her to teach her bootcamp on a day when her show was in tech. Forty writers paid $200 each to spend the day soaking up Vogelisms.
CREATE YOUR OWN
What about a writer who has no immediate plans to come to LA? Put together your own master class.
My DC playwriting group Playwrights Gymnasium decided to invite Michael Hollinger (“Opus,” “A Wonderful Noise,” “Red Herring”) to come to town. We figured out a budget (his travel expenses, lodging, food, a stipend), found free space at a local college to hold a seminar (in exchange for free tuition for a pair of grad students), figured out how much other playwrights would pay for such a seminar ($99 with lunch and an early bird price of $79), advertised on a Facebook page (filled up in a week!)
WE ALSO LEARN FROM OUR OWN WORK
There’s nothing like hearing your own work out loud to learn what works. And what doesn’t.
Staged readings are fairly cheap – particularly when you’re doing them in your own living room. Costs include printing, plus coffee and wine and nibbles. Gas money for actors is helpful. A small check is even more welcome.
You can get feedback from your troupe – or not. Or invite playwrights you trust. Or a dramaturg. Or a director. Or thank your actors and send everyone home.
I’ll let you know what I learned from my reading. And from my Masters in March.
Artists observe. We live outside the realm of now, in a place that exists way-back-when and also tomorrow. We search for patterns, for gross inconsistencies, for tropes, for absurdities. We listen to the ever quickening pulse of mankind and then do our level best to translate it into something resembling… something… and it gets labeled art. We deliver this art to those whose feet are more rooted to the planet – the people we’ve been observing – in the hope that it helps them see what we see so clearly from our creative outer space.
We are a weird people. And a special people. Insufferable, determined, scattered, brave – there is something dangerous to living in the grey. Strange things happen in the art-making place. We can be harder on ourselves than we ever are on anyone else.
But it’s Valentine’s Day. A day to be kind to yourself. A day to thank your Muse. A day to look with love at this insane existence, our existence, and just breathe.
I’ll be writing more this week, but wanted to take some time up front to talk about Little Black Dress INK’s Female Playwrights ONSTAGE Project. There is still time left for playwrights to share work with us in anticipation of selection for this year’s festival, Planting the Seed.
Check out the details below – deadline is this Saturday.
Playwright David Henry Hwang had a few more things to say about the craft of writing when he dropped by a revival of his play “Yellow Face” in Washington DC this weekend.
He says it’s his practice to write the first act as a comedy, which allows the audience to more fully embrace the more difficult, serious topics of act two. Ah, the old “give the kid dessert first” technique I used to employ as a babysitter.
He also poked fun at one of his own less-than-successful plays, even presenting a snippet on stage that could make your teeth hurt. Would I be brave enough to publicly expose my own writing foibles night after night? When I write a lousy play, I want it to disappear.
And for a play that debates race appropriate casting, the play itself demands the director and producer make hard decisions about which actors of which races are appropriate for playing the characters in “Yellow Face.” Can a non-Asian play the mother of Henry Hwang? What does it say to the audience if he’s not? The multi-cultural casting was fun, but it was even more fun to hear the producer Ari Roth and David Henry Hwang talk about the hard choices. It was a debate the audience also joined in on. What a wonderful idea to find a way for the audience to see the political questions of a play at work in front of them, forcing them to ponder the same questions!
Tomorrow, I fly to Denver for the Colorado New Play Summit. Stay tuned for updates from the Mile High City on a new Matthew Lopez play and more!
Theatre J here in Washington DC just revived the 2007 comedy “Yellow Face” and I was lucky enough to hear David Henry Hwang talk about his writing process. Hwang is about to open a big off-Broadway show – “Kung Fu.”
As you know, Hwang makes himself a character in “Yellow Face” – a technique he says was inspired in part by all the times he’s been asked to play himself in small, indie films. Why not try it in a play?
I can’t quite imagine writing Kitty Felde as a character, but it’s something to chew on.
He says he knew two things when he sat down to write the play: he wanted to start it with the controversy that enveloped the Broadway opening of “Miss Saigon” where Cameron Mackintosh cast Jonathan Pryce as the Asian Engineer. Hwang was outspoken on the issue and became embroiled in the debate over colorblind casting. He also knew he wanted to end with a “New York Times” article suggesting his banker father had broken the law. How those two events were connected, he wasn’t sure when he sat down to write the play.
Whether he successfully connected the dots is for you to decide, but what a terrific way to attack a play!
He also knew that the emotional spine in the middle of the comedy and political commentary was his relationship with his father. The humanity shone in those scenes.
Again, a good lesson to learn: what’s the emotional spine in our plays?
An evening of theatre and a playwriting class for one ticket! Quite a deal!
For years, I have been carrying around a story not knowing how it should meet the page but knowing that it had to get there somehow. A few months ago, I decided it would be in poetry – carried the pages around with me trying to shake the order and the theme out. No luck.
Then… a play I needed to submit somewhere refused to speak to me and I thought what if I take these notes and make it into a play. Decided on the characters and began to write for three days till “The End”, proofed it, let a few close friends read it and sent it off.
The end result was as intense as the writing of it. It struck me as odd that this story lay dormant for so years then exploded on the page like it did. Out of order on my list of things to write and not in the genre I picked. Dormant for 32 years then the alarm goes off waking me up from the exhausted sleep deprived state working too many hours on my day job has caused. It spilled out in 3 days like nothing I have ever written before. But then that’s the thing about writing each piece should be better than the last. Funny to have a story shut down on you because another one wants the roadway. I almost missed the signal but when I told friends I was not going to be able to finish the play I was working on but had this idea that I might be able to pull off in time, they each said, “go for it, what do you have to lose.”
I said, “I’ll try…”
I guess all you can ever do when you hit a wall is to try something else. Timing is everything. Who knew story notes had alarm systems attached?
I’ve let all of my professional memberships lapse this year. It’s not because the value I place on them has lessened, it’s because I’m absolutely living-off-my-credit-cards broke.
Every time I get a Dramatists Guild newsletter, or an LMDA listserve digest, I feel guilty. And sad. I consider tacking their membership dues onto my “I’ll never pay it off anyway” Mastercard, and then get even more depressed because the last thing I need to do is collect interest on membership dues in addition to all the interest I’m already collecting on gas, food, and toilet paper.
I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately. I’ve been thinking a lot about whether the Universe is testing me or if I’m only perpetuating my personal crisis by trying to find meaning here in the “What am I doing wrong?” zone of under/un-employment.
And maybe this week’s Black Friday Bludgeon-a-thon tipped me over into even drabber waters, because I really can’t help but be so focused on the deepening divide in this country between the “Haves” and “Have-Nots”.
We are not so far from a Hunger Games world as we think.
Which has me thinking: While there are certainly movies and plays being made that address today’s big issues, why aren’t there more being produced that tap into today’s economic and social crises? I admit, living in AZ – and now TX (yeehaw!) – has me at a disadvantage; I do not have my finger on the pulse of American theater. (I’ve had to let my TCG membership go as well – I miss you American Theater Magazine!) But I continue to read books and plays like a fiend and I consider my $5 movie matinees a forgivable splurge. I also spend (too much) time online, trying to stay abreast of theatrical conversations and to feed my artistic self with updates about what is happening.
I try to stay up to date on what people are writing about and what audiences are gobbling up.
And I’d like to see more stories about the struggles going on in the trenches.
I read The Hunger Games series shortly after it came out. No, I take that back… I devoured that series shortly after it came out. I listened to friends talk about how the author didn’t “demonstrate the best craft,” and rolled my eyes, because they were eating the books up almost as fast as I was.
You see, the story is gripping. The characters are compelling. And the issues at play in the series are indeed very relevant, because – thematically speaking – we already live in a panem et circenses era.
Therefore, Hunger Games Fever is stoked not only by the story’s entertainment factors, but by our own class issues, hang-ups, and battles as well. And it’s a HUGE box office success which means the story is reaching people. There are many films, plays, and books that never enjoy the kind of commercial success the Hunger Games has achieved – so I’m not arguing that we need to make commercialism our goal! But what I am suggesting is that audiences, while still wanting to be “entertained”, are also starved for relevance… and that IS a worthwhile goal.
We playwrights need to ask ourselves, thematically, what’s going to move today‘s audience? To make people laugh harder, gasp louder, and think more fully? To create the kinds of worlds and characters that compel an audience to act?
I don’t want to pacify an audience.
I don’t want to be part of the circus.
I want to break the circus down and get people up on their feet!
But that’s a big wish. Even the project I’m referencing – The Hunger Games – which had a profound effect on my busy little mind, is still “just” a book. “Just” a movie… I don’t see people refusing to buy up bits of tabloid what-not written about Jennifer Lawrence because – as is dramatized in the story – they now see that PR is all just illusion aimed to distract us from the pain behind the “circus” of life.
Still… I’m also probably not the only person making such a connection either.
We writers are all throwing stories into the ring, hoping one will catch the eye of the Ring Leader so that he/she will present it to the audience in grand fashion. (Unless we become Ring Leaders ourselves…) Isn’t every story just a part of the circus until someone receives it as more than?
I might be stretching the analogy a little thin…
All I know is, I’m out here on the perimeter looking in – as many writers and artists are – observing this spinning world from my own little nook, trying to say something worthwhile. It’s a tough place to be sometimes, what with also living on planet Earth and locked in near constant financial aerobics in order to stay afloat. I don’t always have the perfect words. Sometimes it takes me months to get a scene “Just right”. But people ask me what kind of plays I write, and I realize that the one thing my works all have in common is that they always tackle something bigger than myself.
Whether my intent is to make my audience laugh or cry, I always want them to leave the theater thinking. I don’t want to distract them from the ugliness that is around them – I want to point at it, analyze it, laugh and scream at it…
There are a lot artists out there trying to achieve the same thing: to awaken the audience.
I just didn’t realize how important that “awakening” was until my life became less about “Which new boots am I going to buy with this week’s wages?” and more about “How am I going to eat this week?”
And, unfortunately, until I can stop answering that grocery question with my Mastercard, it looks like I’ll have to continue putting off paying all those membership dues.
But I’ll still be here – applying for jobs like motherf***er, trying to write stories that really move people, and hoping that enough someone-elses want to hear what I have to say that those stories I’m throwing into the ring start sticking.
