In the early nineties, I began my quest to look at my heritage and find more pieces of what makes me who I am. I imagined that any journey toward that knowledge would be good for my little box of things to write. One day while home from my day job, a man stepped out from between two cars in front of me. I had to swerve to miss him. Later that night in my apartment, I had a visitation from the man in the street. Not his physical self but his spirit or so it seemed. I write about things of the spirit a lot in my work…it just shows up – like he did. I have been trying to put the vision I had that night in a play but am not sure when, where or how to enter as I really do not want a literal interpretation of that experience. I want to capture how I felt in those moments… Over the years, I’ve tried different things but can never quite get that, “this is it” feeling. Two years ago, I wrote this poem:
the Medicine Man
he stepped out from between the cars
with his staff
magnificent, authentic, ancient, familiar
he was tall like my uncle huron
with chiseled facial features
in headdress/ high moccasins/ native attire/ regal/ warrior-like
the feathers hanging from the staff caught my eye first
they were real
and i wondered if they were eagle
then i noticed that he was looking directly at me as i approached
our eyes locked for an instant/ for an eternity
my car seemed to be driving through a time warp
as i slowly passed him there in the street
looking through me to some place
we must have met before
in the rearview mirror
he turned his entire body to watch me drive away
i could not watch the road for watching him
he was a shaman/a medicine man, i knew
but why was he looking at me
did he know me/ daughter to native ancestors
i should have stopped/asked
later that night as i lay on the floor in prayer
i could hear and feel footsteps vibrating on the floor
moving toward me
a hologram in moccasins was all that i could see
his…
he placed one foot on the back of my head and pushed me into a vision
of the past
afraid/ unable to resist/ unable to move from the floor from the smoke
what is that?
i could hear the rattlers and sounds of war
the screaming women and children
i could smell the smoke and see its fog
then it lifted just enough for me to see
i was there dressed in buckskin
lying face down in the rubble
watching the boy as he searched through it for
his family
i was there
he knew me, daughter to native ancestors…
he knew me…
As a writer, do you ever wonder just how long a story can germinate before you can write it? Have you ever come up against any story that just doesn’t seem to have an “in”? What do you do? One of the greatest things about theatre is that the playwright doesn’t have to limit their approach to conventional ways in order to write their story. Stuff just needs to be pulled out of the box, lived with for a while and looked at it from several angles…
There are long nights of writing and longer nights of thinking about writing. All seem to run together as I work out story bits, running plot lines in my head, listening to dialogue, visiting the people who live first in my mind then on the page. A lot of time is spent working through a preliminary story, till it flows just right … If I could add up the hours spent before my computer, wonder how many times I could cross the earth with it. It gets old – the constant push – but the time spent doing my craft is so much a part of me, too much time away from it makes me disoriented. Funny, I can imagine myself day-job-less but I can never imagine myself not writing…
Time well spent is my daily goal; no matter the discomfort, it’s worth all the long nights needed to create that next perfect line…
Recently, a writer friend and I started talking about LA. Do we really need to be in LA? We asked each other and ourselves.
The beauty of being a writer is that you can write anywhere and you don’t have dress to go to work. You just need a place that inspires you. So what do you do when LA is no longer inspiring? What do you do when the bright sunshine is too bright and the lack of rain is a little obnoxious? What do you do when sitting in traffic is no longer amusing?
Is there a point when you should leave LA? Someone once said that you should leave New York before you get too hard and you should leave LA before you get too soft. I don’t consider myself a bathroom towel, but is there some truth to that?
Really, what is here? No matter how much we try to build it up, it is a theatrical hinderland. Sure, there’s probably the largest pool of actors in the world here, but how many can really do stage acting? Sure, as a dramatic writer, you can work in film and TV. Nice work if you can get it.
Yes, there are theatres and writer groups. There are odd spaces with strange parking and plastic cups of cheap white wine. There are little cliques of self-congratulation and tiny bubbles of hot air.
Folks don’t come to LA to do theatre. Folks come to LA to surf and get famous. I’m not famous and I don’t surf. What the heck am I doing here? What else is out there?
I recently saw Samuel Beckett’s great short play Krapp’s Last Tape with John Hurt at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It was a production from the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Hurt was so precise that his performance could balance on the tip of a pin. He respected the silence and made the audience respect it too. This production didn’t reach out to the audience. It brought the audience into it. It was my kind of theatre.
But enough about the production. I want to talk about the Talkback. Beckett might not reach out to his audience, but the Center Theatre Group certainly does.
As soon as my ticket was scanned, I realized I had entered a way too happy carnival. In the lobby, you could record and listen to your own audio recordings. There were tables and chairs and a wall of Irish writers in an area called Sam’s Pub. It was ghastly.
Still, I felt celebratory about seeing a Beckett play. I settled into the lobby with a plastic cup of champagne and noticed a flat screen with a twitter feed on it. I fought the urge to not to read the changing screen containing absolutely nothing.
Suddenly, I heard a theatre guy all in black announcing to some older patrons that there will be a Talkback in the lobby after the performance.
It’s only fifty-five minutes, and it’s so absurd, so you can talk about it in the lobby after the show. The bar will be open.
I listened as he said it again and again as he went from group to group. The part about the bar being opened intrigued me.
So the play happened. I won’t go into the superlatives. After a quick trip to the ladies room (champagne, glorious champagne) and a hand wash in the Ladies trough (if you’ve been to the Ladies Room of the Kirk Douglas, you know what I mean), I was back in the lobby just in time for the beginning of the Talkback.
It was moderated by a twenty-something theatre girl all in black who obviously had been given a list of talking points. Whenever there was a silence she added a new point. My favorite was when she pointed out that John Hurt looked like an older Beckett. Uh-huh.
I left. I had to go. As I walked away, I went to my negative place. Oh God, what horror, what awful terrible horror. The Talkback.
When did theatre become a democracy? When did it become okay for the audience to discuss their feelings? This is Beckett, not therapy. Just because you have an opinion, madam, doesn’t mean you have express it. Is there any place these days without a comment field?
I don’t care how my plays make you feel. Okay, I do a little. I like it when folks laugh and clap and give me money. I don’t want to hear how my play relates to your life. That’s between you and the play. When the play’s over, clap and leave. Thank you, good night.
I’ve always taken pride in being a disciplined writer who doesn’t need deadlines to get the work done. I usually have several plays in various stages on my desktop. If I end up hating one, that’s okay. There’s one or two others coming up behind it.
This year, the deadline for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference was October 26th. On October 1st, as I was going over the submission requirements, I decided to not send the play I had finished. I still had problems with it.
Okay, so I could send a different play. However, there was one small catch. The play wasn’t done. I didn’t have a full draft.
Just a minor detail. No need to panic.
What did I have in my undone play? I had the characters. I had the visual world. I knew the tone of it. I didn’t have the ending, but I knew where I was going. I had been working on it for two years, so I had spent some time on it. I realized that I knew more than I thought I knew about it. I just had to get it to draft.
I sat down and finished the play. Every day, I worked on it and worked on it. The first ten pages took two years to write. The last ten pages took two days. I got it to the O’Neill five days early.
Having that deadline turned out to be beneficial. If there had been no deadline, the play would still be incomplete. Sometimes deadlines are helpful.
I totally understood her pain. She was going through the Buts. Yes, I have the buts too. I might be writing away and kicking ass on a new play, but. . .but. . .but. I might have sat through a really successful production of a short play I wrote, but. . .but. . .but.
The Buts have caused me to start smoking (which creates real butts, hahahaha), drink too much, and curl up into a little ball with my eyes tightly closed and my fists clenched.
How do you fight the Buts? I do not recommend smoking, drinking too much, or curling up into a little ball. I fight the Buts by doing yoga (skipping the little ball part), sailing, and just plain getting on with it.
Sometimes, you just gotta get on with it and say, okay, what next? Actually, that might be a good phrase to counter punch the Buts. What next? Also what can I do now?
And Tiffany, don’t worry about them full length plays. According to Wikipedia, Chekhov wrote less than ten full length plays. Less than ten. Okay, so he was a prolific short story writer. Okay, so five of those plays are considered classics. Okay, so he was also a doctor. Okay, so he died young. Still, he did the work. Remember it’s quality not quantity. Insert inspirational quote here.
It’s your time now. What are you going to do with it?
All this week, I’m priming myself for the plunge into a new play. I’ve tried bribes and writers toys, given myself a soundtrack and some writing space. Now what?
Perhaps the best road map to success (which to me means typing “lights fade to black…”) is to see what my peers are writing. What can I learn from them? What can I steal?
Having read and seen a LOT of new work lately, it seems I can divide the new play world into some very broad categories:
– Familiar stories in a world we’ve never seen before
Steven Drukman’s The Prince of Atlantis is a pretty straightforward story about finding your father and brothers growing up. But it’s set in an Italian American suburb of Boston in the cut throat world of the fish market. Yussef El Guindi’s Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World
is a simple boy meets girl, boy loses girl story. But the world is that of recent Muslim immigrants in America.
I could take a familiar story, a familiar plot, but the play would become new and interesting when I take my audience to a world they’ve never visited before.
– reach for the classics
Everybody’s getting in on the updated translation act. Michael Hollinger tackled Cyrano. David Ives took on The Liar. For heavens’ sake, even Moises Kaufman is taking on The Heiress!
Why don’t I find my favorite classic and reinvent it for a modern audience?
– you gotta have a gimic
Or not. But there’s sure a lot of them out there. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City has the lead actor playing his twin brother. Natsu Onoda Power’s Astro Boy and the God of Comics had actors drawing cartoons right before your eyes. James Still’s I Love to Eat had food writer James Beard making canapes for selected members of the audience.
Is there something unusually theatrical that I can incorporate into my play?
That’s a start. But now I’d welcome your list of “must have” items for the modern dramatist. What’s getting produced? Why? What do you want to see?
I have to apologize – I’m in a real artistic funk and I leaked some of that frustration in Monday’s post. Rather than spend the week whining (isn’t that a seductive plan), I’m going to attempt to treat your time with care. After all, if you visit this site, chances are you’re some kind of theatrician as well and already well-know the challenges of this life.
So let’s talk about sprinkling yourself across mediums… and the wearing-thin of it.
I started a new blog – it’s called Twaddle Squawk and is devoted to fun opinionation. I’ve assembled a terrific group of talented writers, and we will publish our third issue next week.
I write for that blogzine – I’ve got all kinds of things to say there – but I am not writing full-length plays.
I’ve also been producing new play festivals in AZ… it’s exciting to me and I enjoy wearing the producer hat (most of the time) because the results are tangible. I have some major say in what happens and I usually write my own 10-minute play for each, so that Playwright Tiffany is bearing the benefits of Producer Tiffany’s hard work…
I write for those festivals because I know the result will get produced – but I am not writing full-length plays.
I’m organizing theatre workshops, rounding up students and such – because it’s solid and fun, and teaching feeds my soul! I will spend these workshops giving of my experience and knowledge, sharing my path with young aspirants…
I will teach the sh** out of those classes – but I am not writing full-length plays.
But I wonder – With these other creative outlets eating up my time – am I cultivating creative growth, or am I allowing the feeling of completion and ideas-come-to-fruition-ness (via producing and teaching) get in the way of my passion: writing plays (without any guarantee that anything will come of them or not) and letting my muse run wild?
For the reality of the artist’s life is that we are constantly besieged by the “real” world – demanding we meet our real world needs (like eating, paying rent, getting our knee tended to when it’s busted – that sort of thing) – that we can start to lose faith in the solvency of our dreams.
I used to believe that my plays had no chance at being ignored – that if I worked hard enough at my craft, I would certainly succeed – but here I am at a place where I find myself exclaiming “Certainly I’ve worked hard enough to be further along than this!” – and it leaves me grumpy and feeling stuck.
So, I don my other creative hats and revel in the completeness of different-than-playwriting tasks… and mourn the creative zeal that used to light my fire so determinedly.
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.
I finish my blog week with something for the boys. As always, it has been a delight.
Back when I was a little girl making up adventures, all my stories had a female protagonist standing in for me.
Then I got older, and two things happened.
First, I had adventures of my own, so I didn’t need to make stuff up.
Second, I started writing male characters and kind of dug it. Then, the male characters started getting deeper and more complex.
In As Good As It Gets, Jack Nicholson’s character is asked how he writes women so well. His answer is: I think of a man and take away reason and accountability.
My answer to how I write men is not: I think of a woman and take away reason and accountability and tits. I work a little more intuitively.
Men are just guys. They do their guy things. They might do wrong. They might do right. They might have the house fall down around them.
I’m interested in what drives them. What sends these guys hurtling forward to their triumph or their doom? Sometimes they don’t even know. Sometimes they think they know, but they are wrong. Still, they’re a gender that’s interesting to watch.
And there are a lot of great male actors out there looking for parts to play.
