Category Archives: playwriting

Day One: Playwrights in Mind: A National Conversation – Part Two

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Snuck out of Jeffrey Sweet’s seminar and dropped in on Juanita Rockwell’s: “Elsewhere: The Fulbright and Other Journeys.”  She participated in what’s called the Fulbright “Specialist Program.”  Lots of tips in no particular order:

Instead of a one year or three month program, Rockwell was given the option of going overseas for a shorter period of time: two to six weeks.  Her posting was in San Jose, Costa Rica.  She knew a little Spanish, but worked on it before going.  While in country, she had theatre rehearsals in the morning, and two afternoons a week, she went up to the university in the mountains and taught class and met with students.  “A fantastic experience!”

For the Specialist Program, you have to be invited.  You’re put on the roster for five years – meaning you may get a call sometime in that five years to go somewhere to do something.  Or not.  It’s better to create your own opportunity.  If you know someone who teaches in a university in another country, ask if there are exchange possibilities.  She had colleagues in Costa Rica who taught there, and through their institution, invited her to come.  Fulbright is talking about perhaps allowing a theatre (rather than a university) make the invitation.  Frame the invitation from the institution so that it can only be you. 

Qualifications: It used to be required that you have a PhD or terminal degree (MBA), but now it’s expanding to include “professional equivalency.”  Get fancy people to make recommendations. 

US Studies is an area to look at: ie, contemporary American theatre.  Any area of American culture would fit under this category.  There are also humanities categories, or propose using contemporary American culture (ie: theatre) to teach English.  What is it in your background that you can frame towards what they’re asking for.

The Fulbright officers are very helpful. 

On language: in Western Europe: if you can’t speak the language, it ain’t gonna happen.  No one’s sending you to Paris if you don’t speak French.  But many countries have languages few folks speak and often they want English speakers to work with their students.  Sometimes the posting will say “language helpful but not required.”  Do take the language course before you go. 

Here’s a resource: Theatre without Borders – a website where you can make connections to feed into other programs to get you abroad.

How to get started: go to the website.  Search for areas of interest.  Look at how many Fulbrights are being offered in that country.  Check out the “new” section for countries that have added a slew of new postings.  Or look for the countries you’re dying to go to.  Look at what’s available and see if you fit the qualifications.  Look for those that look for “all disciplines.”  Or “arts.”  Sometimes they say “drama” or “playwriting” or “theatre.”  Sometimes.

Writing on the Verge…

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Over the years, I have found myself writing on the verge…a lot – on the verge of losing the last bit of sanity/strength/peace/hope/ I have…  Yet still…I write, even with the waves of life beating rapidly and endlessly in the fore/back/foreground, with me straining to catch my breath and trying to step out of the way of the onslaught of water but never making it to a dry patch of earth in time.  Drenched/soaked to the bone in water that covers me, my pen and paper, swollen with the wet liquid so wet the ink bleeds the letters into each other, bleeds word into word into word into word but I write anyway because nothing short of death can stop me from putting pen to page, my thoughts ebbing into and through my hands ever so precisely ever so like and unlike the water rushing over me… so… unstoppable… so unmistakably lucid despite the fog…

Writing… on the verge of finding that one sure vein that leads to my well/spring, that sways to my authentic rhythm playing the song of my authentic self…  Writing to find the whole of the story dancing past my inner ear begging to be told, aching to “be born & handled warmly”1  On the verge of living my dream of writing full-time…  It’s hard to know and feel the tide is changing but you still can’t quite see it though you feel it deep inside your self and it’s so real you can’t stop writing, can’t stop kicking and pushing against the stones…can’t stop living… and writing on the verge of whatever comes in on the tide…

                                                     

1 “dark phrases” from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

Stones in the Garden…

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I’ve always wanted a garden even though I don’t know much about growing things.  I have destroyed a rubber plant twice and they’re supposed to be hard to kill.  I keep thinking that if I have a designated place for plants, they will grow well with water, air and soil and maybe a few stones here and there.  Certain plants need more or less sun than others.  I don’t know the exact planting season for each plant – hope it is on the package of seeds.  What I do know, is the smell and feel of good soil, played in enough of it as a child while digging up ant hills and worms.  I could always find at least one worm under a dug up stone.  The worms were always found in the best part of the soil.  Why did I spend so much time in dirt?  Feeding the pet ants of course!  Yeah, yeah, they didn’t know they were our pets but me and my big brother visited them all summer long with crumbs and water and ice cream so they were “pets.”  And, if we were careful, we could see the tunnels virtually intact once we started the excavation.

The observation and excavation skills I learned those summers work well when I’m writing or collecting moments for my writing.  I have to see the inner workings of things mainly because I believe there is a reason for everything and what’s on the inside affects your outside world more than you know.  So, when I say “does not cry” it is because I am hinting at a backstory to that character not trying to direct the actor.  I am lifting stones to get to the worm-filled soil.  My mother used to tell me that the worms made the soil good; at first sight a worm can appear to be an icky thing but ultimately the icky-ness is what enriches the soil or story…  The simple smell of it is as wonderful as spring rain on pavement and the feel of it in the hands always takes me back to the beginning of things…the place of possibility…

Garlic Fingers

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My whole kitchen smells like BBQ and I’m typing with fingers that have peeled more garlic than fingers should peel and yet… they’re really happy, these digits of mine, for making something delicious today.

You can’t always say that about your fingers, you know?

I mean, sometimes we labour (I prefer the “our” kind to the “or”) for (what feels like) eons on a project, only to ship it off to a respected pair of eyes and get naught but a raised eyebrow in return…

So it feels good to know that today I made something awesome, and that people will love it (because let’s face it, almost everyone loves themselves some springtime BBQ!) and now, as I sit working on other things less certain… well, the Muse celebrates a little instead of just holding her bated breath.

I think it’s important in this marathon we have selected to run, to remember the little joys and pleasures and the small victories in which we have some actual control.  It’s important to celebrate the satisfaction in crafting a thing, no matter how pedestrian and it’s important to remember that we ARE mighty – even if our might shows up a bit more readily (sometimes) in the crock pot than on the page 😉

Mold and Things Left Forgotten

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Horror of Horrors last month, as I ventured to the garage to finally open and put to use some of my most favored theatre books: I found instead a damp, moldy, spongy mess in their place, as apparently some snow melt had made its way beneath the garage door and into my precious box of books.

But what the hell were they doing there in the first place?

You see, when I moved into my parents house, oh, nearly a year ago, I never expected to be here this long.  Or I don’t know, maybe I didn’t have any expectations, period.  Which amounted to me guessing which boxes would most benefit from unpacking, and which could linger longer in uncertainty…  Although I (rightly) thought that this box should be brought inside and my beloved books put on shelves immediately, I had already used up most of the shelf space in my room and so adding these to the fray would require a fair share of rearranging that I (in my I’m-so-tired-of-packing/unpacking-that-I-could-pitch-a-fit-that-would-render-a-five-year-old-jealous) simply didn’t have the interest or wherewithal to tend to…

So I left the box, midway between safety and safer-still -all too near the garage door.

Where it lingered, hopeful and neglected, for 11 months.

And so, dear reader, is it not a gross metaphor for the negligence I’ve visited upon my own theatrical fires, that this box of Hagen, Meisner and Mamet, of Viewpoints, Shakespeare, and Limericks, of Collected Works and Collected Histories, be completely overrun by the very herald of disuse; Mold?

Which isn’t to say that I’ve completely abandoned the theatrical ship – oh no, far from it – what with a new play, a screenplay, and that time-consuming play festival I was coordinating, I can hardly beat myself up for being a deserter.  However, I’ve not been as deeply in tune with The Muse as I’d like to have been these past few months either… and I’m left wondering, as I hope and pray that the books dry “Useable”, could I not have spared myself the heartbreak of seeing those pages wrinkled and flecked with grey if I’d only made more of an effort to feed The Muse and brought those damn books inside where they could remind me to buckle down and create?

(sigh)

I suppose the answer lies somewhere between the guilt of “what if” and the incredible urging said moldy books now offer to redouble my efforts and get back in the game.

Because I will be teaching some acting and writing classes this spring, and I have two new plays crock-potting between The Muse and The Laptop…

And I don’t want any of that to grow mold!

Staying Relevant

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I have a strange little confession to make:  I hardly watch the news anymore – instead, I read Twitter.

It’s faster, it’s concise, I can skim through piles of stories in a single sitting and hop over to those that scream at me the loudest…

Only, the overwhelming immediacy of that Twitter feed is making me sick.  It brings every blessed blemish to the forefront of my digital world to fester in my overly sensitive frontal lobe… which leads me to produce overly grandoise rants on my blog and scheme bloody cirque du soliel plays about the futile nature of our masochistic being untill my head hurts.

Sometimes, I wish we were back to newsreels and radio.

Because the world is this huge throbbing thing, and we but the meager players making it spin, and I’m not convinced that all this psycho-techno-spinning is good for the soul.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

And yet…  As a writer and artist, isn’t it my job to stay aware of this crazy place?   Isn’t it a responsibility to keep Rueters in my Twitter Feed and get riled up at all 140 of those damned intrusive characters?

Can I stay “relevant” if I unplug, move to the mountains, and tend goats?

(sigh)

I don’t know… it’s just kind of a difficult time to be living in the world, but ignoring it all isn’t going to solve anything either.

Is anyone else in the LAFPI-Sphere feeling the unbearable weightiness of our constant state of updated-ness?

Monster Inside You

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I’ve always written things. Since I was small, writing and telling stories was just part of my life. I followed an acting dream to NYU and within a month switched to directing and design.

Writing always followed me but I never focused on it. I don’t know why.

Whenever I work on a piece, I start by tearing it down and building from the ground up, discovering the structure as I go. As a director, I always chose plays that required more imagination than simply a kitchen sink. Whenever I went the kitchen sink route, I utterly failed. It’s just not my niche.

Writing is the clear solution. So why not the focus? Recently I defined the underlying reason : The Ursula Effect. Getting past the monster inside me who says people won’t like my voice, who says I will hear that one word to kill all drive:

bad

I can’t believe I even included it in this blog. That’s the equivalent to screaming “MacBeth” as a community theater is about to open a production of Sweeney Todd.

How do you stomp on this monster and move onto writing? I essentially wrestle with her until I punch her out.

Time to put on the boxing gloves. Chat later.

On the road again

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I’m looking forward to Tuesday.  That’s when I’m stepping on a plane to Rhode Island where yet another college is producing my war crimes play “A Patch of Earth.”  I’m looking forward to the talkback session with the students.  They always ask the hard questions.

I’ve been very fortunate with this particular play to find exactly the right audience.  It premiered at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, where it won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition.  But it’s not exactly the most commercial thing I’ve ever written.  As my pal who runs MetroStage in Alexandria puts it, “it’s hard to sell tickets to a show about slaughtering Bosnians at Srebrenica.” 

But it’s exactly the right play for colleges, a place where young people spend hours debating moral questions.  The play is the true story of Drazen Erdemovic, a Bosnian Croat who ended up fighting for all three sides during the Yugoslav war.  He says he never killed anybody until his unit was sent to a farm outside of Srebrenica where they were instructed to kill busloads of men.  He said he didn’t want to shoot, but was told if he felt so sorry for the victims he could stand up there with them and be shot himself.  And then his compadres would go back to his village and shoot his wife and child. 

It’s a story with characters around the age of college students, a story that happened in most of these students’ lifetime.  The play has a big cast (at least 9, as many as 30) with lots of good female roles.  Perfect for college productions.

And it’s had those college productions in Detroit, Pretoria, Costa Mesa, New Jersey, and now Rhode Island.  (It even had one high school production last year in England!)  “A Patch of Earth” was even published by the University of Wisconsin Press. 

I don’t write all this to brag on myself, but to remind myself that not everything I write is destined for the Taper.  Or the Geffen.  Or the Pasadena Playhouse.  That doesn’t mean the script doesn’t have value.  In fact, it might affect more lives by being the perfect script for colleges.  Or for community theatres.  Or for young audiences. 

Write the play that’s calling you to be written today.  Worry about the audience it’s written for after you’re done.  Because plays that need to be written seem to find their own audiences.

Time management

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There really are only 24 hours in a day.  And on a night like this, where I’m just getting home at 8:30 in the evening, the last thing that I want to do after dealing with words and sound bites all day is stare some more at my computer and deal with words and dialogue.  If I were a better person, I’d go to bed earlier and get up at the crack of dawn and write.  But I’m not that better person.

I’m giving myself a pass this week.  I knew it would be a stressful week at work, what with threats of a government shutdown.  Plus, my Skype partner had another commitment and couldn’t make our once a week playwriting lab.   So no new pages for me. 

But just giving myself a week off gave me the space to actually send out some query letters and submit a couple of plays here and there.  And my brain has been working on rewriting the LA Riots play.  So I haven’t completely given up my identity as playwright. 

I’ve had a hard time finding a regular schedule for my writing – partly because of the unpredicability of the day job, partly because both my husband and I work out of an 800 square foot coop.  And he’s a writer, too.  There’s something about that other person sucking all the creative energy out of a place. 

When I was working on the many, many rewrites of “Gogol Project,” I found that if I could set aside 90 minutes a day, I could write a play.  That resolution has fallen away. I did manage to finish the first draft of a new play in spits and spots.  But after more than two decades of writing plays, I wish I knew a more efficient way to do it.

I’m curious about your writing habits.  Do you have a sacred place and time?  How long do you typically sit down to write at a time?  Is caffeine a requirement?

Agents

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I know you really don’t need an agent at the beginning.  But suppose you’re a “mid career” playwright, you’re getting productions around the world, half a dozen a year, but still not yet enough of a name to be chosen for the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage?  

It’s so frustrating to find submission restrictions from theatres that won’t even look at a few pages and a synopsis unless you’re represented by an agent.  And since there’s so little money for agents representing playwrights (unless they sell that script to Hollywood) most call ill afford to take on new clients. 

I had a wonderful agent back in the days when I was writing spec scripts and going out for meetings.  I sold TV scripts, but we parted ways when I showed a decided lack of interest in becoming a staff writer on a bad sitcom.  I wanted to freelance.  But there’s just not enough money for an agency to support a freelancer. 

I’m curious to know what you do.  Send a query and pages and a synopsis anyway?  Beg influential friends in theatre to write letters of recommendation?  What works?