I don’t know about you, but after I “hit” submit, I always reread my blog posts. Invariably, I find a typo or five or some type of formatting issue I somehow missed the first twenty-seven times I tweaked it, but that is neither here nor there.

As I reread yesterday’s post, I was suddenly taken back to ca. 1991 when I lived in a 2^nd floor apartment in Toluca Lake, an aerie-like apartment that overlooked some beautiful trees on Blix Street.

Theater is Not a Democracy

About that time, I auditioned for and became a founding member of a famous acting school’s theater company. We were, as a “group”, attempting to come up with a playbill. Remember the saying, “The theater is not a democracy?”. While that is quite true, it, too, is another story.

Anyway, one day in the heat of the process, after I pitched a short play that I wanted to direct, whose title I cannot remember today, I received a phone call from another actor in the company, who happened to be a regular on a soon-to-be much-loved sitcom.

He proceeded to harangue me about my directing aspirations. “Who did I think I was…?” “Did I know how long he had worked before…” “What made me think I could direct…?” I think I protested, “But I have directing experience.” “Where?” “College and university… But I chose to transition into acting…”

However, his verbal abuse went on and on.  Ultimately, I went to the place where traumatized people go when old wounds are reopened. And his call stayed with me for a long time. Even so, when I heard many years later he was forced to retire due to several terribly vicious and racist public rants, I felt only pity.

And I moved on. In late-May 2012, sitting in the Water Closet director’s chair as a playwright, and being allowed unrestricted access to the actors, became immeasurably important in my continued development of the play.

Several Discoveries

1. After an actor “sing-songed” a line for the second time and after reading the line aloud myself, I realized it was not the actor, but the line of dialogue. I rewrote the line.

2. I did not make it perfectly clear that the military convoy is waiting for them, as “Oma” readies to leave Holland, even through the character mentions they only have an hour to pack. Having that realization gave the actors more to “play” and provided the scene added tension. I will fix that in the next revision.

3. A friend in the audience wrote me she didn’t realize “David” was in the karaoke scene even though he talks about things he must have seen in order to discuss. She had trouble understanding because the actor isn’t physically written into the scene until he walks to “Mary” and “Oma’s” table. I have always seen Water Closet as a piece with no walls, a psychological drama, with limited set pieces and lit areas from which actors enter and exit. However, my friend needs to see “David” in the scene. So, now I am having fun contemplating how to incorporate the character into the top of the scene, perhaps waiting in line to take his turn at the karaoke machine. Next revision…

There were many more examples of how illuminating, important and wonderful the experience was for me, and I think, would be for any playwright preparing a new work.

It was rare and unique to be encouraged to direct an informal reading of Water Closet. I will always remember Eric Eberwein for it and thank him from the bottom of my heart.

I will direct a reading of one of my plays again… Maybe even a production.

Soon, I hope 🙂

Playwright and Orange County Playwrights Alliance director, Eric Eberwein, encouraged me to direct the Orange County Playwrights Alliance “OCPA Studios” informal reading of my play Water Closet at the Hunger Artists on May 26^th. Eric had participated in many a read and discussion over my dining room table as the play developed over the last two years, and apparently, liked what he heard and saw.

Now I have been fortunate upon several occasions over the last two years to hear a different cadre of talented actors bring the roles of “Mary”, “Oma”, “Philip” and “David” to life. However, that I will forever hold a special place in my heart for the last group of actors, does not take away one iota of sincere appreciation and genuine awe for the abilities of the others, and for the directors who brought them together.

Yet, this reading for OCPA Studios was an entirely different experience for me, and it was because I directed it.

This Directing Thing

I accepted Eric’s suggestion to direct and decided early that I had two choices: 1) Totally freak out or, 2) Not freak out, because the facts are, no matter whether I freaked or not, everything works out in the end.

So, I took my road less traveled; I didn’t freak. Rather, as I observed when I couldn’t cast the piece until the week before the reading, I stayed cool. In fact, I never met the highly-recommended actress who played the lead role of “Mary”, until she showed up at my home three days before the reading for the first read-thru.

Wondrously, Actress Jennifer Pearce was exactly who I saw and heard in my head when I wrote the piece, from her natural beauty to the facility in which she modulated her vocal inflections, and to how she was able to work the punctuation I slave over.

I cast and lost and then recast my narrator, Eric Eberwein, as “Philip”, and his performance took me completely by surprise. With only one rehearsal, he was able to nail the character, who is a sort of rangy, likeable rogue, an academic, who everybody likes, but after meeting, feels like they need a shower.

“Oma” was played with great beauty and exceptional emotional power by playwright and actress Lorin Howard. It was an honor to direct her.

I first met Felipe Leon when he read “David” last January at the Fullerton College Playwright’s Festival, where Water Closet received a workshop and staged reading. Felipe had been directed to play the role with a sort of “Rico Suave”-flair. Yet, Felipe had the ability to make a complete about-face once he realized through two rehearsals and discussions that “David” is totally sincere about his love for “Mary’s words”, as the dialogue suggests, but without ambition; a true artist.

This directing thing? I highly recommend it to any playwright developing a new work. I may never go back. But more about that tomorrow…

My play Water Closet was selected by the Orange County Playwrights Alliance “OCPA Studios” for an informal reading at the Hunger Artists Theatre Company on Saturday, May 26, 2012 at 2:00pm. I directed.

Profound

I casually mentioned to the cast, just before the house opened, that my parents would be in the audience. I also told them, while my mother has always been a good audience member at my several productions, I did not know how she would react to Water Closet, because she lived some of the dramatized events that take place in the play.

My mother, bless her heart, did drop a bomb during the Q&A session after the reading. She asked me, “Erica, was that about my mother?” She then gave the most moving anti-war speech I have ever witnessed. And she broke down and cried.

As a playwright, to be in some part the catalyst for such a cathartic experience for anyone, much less the most important woman in my life, fills me with so much emotion it’s hard for me to articulate my thoughts.

That my mother was moved enough to then share a personal story with a group of friends and strangers, something me, her daughter, had never heard before? Yes, it was truly a profound afternoon of theater for me.

 A few observations about the nature of power…

1st Observation

 This is story depicted in Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation inVancouver many moons ago.  Picture an ordinary plane floating in space.  It has four corners and sits suspended in ether.  From the bottom of the plane, at  each corner, pops up four faceless and genderless figures.   They stand at each corner balancing the plane.  One person steps forward disturbing the balance and the plane tips slightly.  The other three take one step forward, towards the middle, and the equilibrium is restored.  The initiator experiences a sense of power, so he tries something else.  He moves sideways to his right, and the other  3 follows suit, sidestepping the same amount of distance in the same direction.  It is a game of “Simon Says”.  If the other three do exactly as the first man, then the balance of the plane is maintained.  The game continues a little longer with the initiator toying with his companions.  It is a dance without unison.  The initiator manipulates the situation; choreographing the whole show.  His next bold move is to shove one of the men off the plane, leaving the other two to help balance of the plane which proves a more difficult task.  The initiator now plans to to separate his remaining two.  Though faceless, the other two communicates with the turn of their heads their fear.  “This person wants to get rid of us.”  They turn from each other to look at their fiendish companion.  The three figures form an equilateral triangle on the plane.  Each stands in a wide stance to maximize the surface area that they can balance.  The initiator inches towards one man and the other two move prevent tipping the plane.  The initiator gets bold and runs towards one man and pushes him off the edge.  Only two remaining now, like a see-saw.  Finalyy, the Initator jumps up, and the moment he’s in the air the plane tips sidesways and the other man falls off the edge.  Helands in the middle of the plane, balanced in one point and stands alone.  Seemingly satisfied he puts his fists in the air in a “V”.  But now he is stuck.  He cannot move freely along the plane, because he’s the only weight left to maintain the balance of the plane.  He stands alone.

2nd Observation

 “The tendency of power to drive intelligence underground;

The tendency of power to become a theology, admitting no other gods before it;

The tendency of power to distort and damage the traditions and institutions it was designed to protect;

The tendency of power to create a language of its own, making other forms of communication incoherent and irrelevant;

The tendency of power to spawn imitators, leading to volatile competitions;

The tendency of power to set the stage for its own use.”

 Source:  “The Pathology of Power” by Norman Cousins.

 3rd Observation

“John Leonard, while editor of the New York Times Book Review”, contended that statistics are an abstraction which explain why “our ethical systems haven’t caught up with the social fact of the way we live now…”  It compares the jailing of a father who beats his son versus the fining, a minor reprimand, of a company that distributes spoiled milk to thousands of children and is therefore responsible for killing – according to statistical analysis – several of those children…” 

 “If accountability is abstract, a random sample, a scatter curve, it means very little to us, because we are first and foremost individuals, not citizens.  To quantify us is to enslave us to likelihoods, probabilities…  We haven’t grown up at all from “I” to “we”, and our childhood is hazardous to all of us.” – John Leonard

 An abstraction can be doublethink, George Orwell’s word for “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would ring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.”  The unforgettable example in Orwell’s great novel1984, inelegant lettering on the glittering white concrete face of the Ministry of Truth, were:

 WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Source:  “Power Inc.” by Morton Mintz & Jerry S. Cohen

 4th Observation

The psychology of Evil was examined by a psychiatrist in the book “The People of the Lie – The Hope for Healing Human Evil”.  The author, Dr. Scott Peck used his years of experience as a psychiatrist as a basis of his study.  He documents cases which exemplifies human evil and he tries to define evil. 

 “Pride goeth before the fall,” it is said, and of course laymen simply call pride what we have labeled with the fancy psychiatric term of “malignant narcissism.”  Being at the very root of evil, it no accident that Church authorities have generally considered pride first among the sins.”  It is not the pride that comes with doing a job well done and a healthy build-up of a sense of worth.  He describes the type of pride that is arrogant, and rejects “and even attack the judgment implied by the day-to-day evidence of their own inadequacy.” 

The author cannot explain why an excessive self-absorption afflicts one individual but not another, but surmises that it is a learned pattern.   

“a leading theory of the genesis of pathological narcissism is that it is a defensive phenomenon.  Since almost all children demonstrate a formidable array of narcissistic characteristics, it is assumed that narcissism is something we generally “grow out of” in the course of normal development, though a stable child hood, under the care of loving and understanding parents.  If the parents are cruel and unloving, however, or the childhood otherwise traumatic, it is believed that the infantile narcissism will be preserved as a kind of psychological fortress to protect the child against the vicissitudes of its intolerable life.  This theory might well apply to  the genesis of human evil.”

The book weaves in many layers of stories and analysis of the cause and effect of savage, brutal acts of evil practiced by individuals and groups of people, including governments and nations.

Fifth Observation (via the book:  “People of the Lie”)

An excerpt from Erich Fromm’s book, “The Heart of Man:  Its Genius for Good and Evil”:

Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life.  The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our hearts hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens – or better perhaps, comes alive… Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action.”  Conversely, a person who chooses acts that brings a false sense of self-worth by excessive self-importance will likely loses the perspective of other choices and possibilities that bring about harmony in community.

 I blogged on this topic earlier this week, but I took it down because it was too heavy for me to carry it with good effect.  And I still am not doing it justice.  What I can bring from my original post of the blog is this:  Our true power is in our ability for empathy, and we have the free will to choose what we focus our attention on in our thoughts and actions.  Certainly random thoughts and the byproduct emotions come and go, but it a choice of what we focus our attention to.

I’m on my way to the gym for a swim inHollywood.  I hear drums and a horn and I follow the noise.  An ancient ritual of music and dancing has unfolded on the playground of the school affiliated with Blessed Sacrament Catholic church.  Two teens beat on drums, a man blows into a conch, and I’m reminded of Tibetan refugee  monks in Nepal blasting into conches to banish evil spirits, avert natural disasters and scare away poisonous creatures.  Today, the ritual I was is complete with dancers shaking tambourines and clacking shells decorating their ankles.  Incense burns in goblets.  It is a celebration and an offering to invoke ancient mythical gods of the Mayan or Aztec civilization.

 The participants express beliefs, hopes and dreams in an ancient art form; it was the theater of an ancient civilization.  I stand in awe.  Faces expressing deep joy and freedom without artistry.   My thoughts tumble and ramble:  primitive form is art; sophistry is inauthentic.  I am taken back to another place and time.

“Who’s organizing this event?” booms a voice from behind.  I half-turn to see a curiousity mixed with annoyance expression on a man.  I say, “The church or the school probably.”   He turns sideways and looks to an apartment, “Well nobody can sleep in that apartment with all that noise.”  It is 10:30 in the morning, and this is Hollywood.  “What are they doing?” he asks.  I turn back to the dance.  “Performing an ancient ritual.  Isn’t it great, right here, right now inLos Angeles.”  I affirm the gift of this display.

“Well, isn’t it a strange?” he throws at me.  “It is a pagan practice and this is a Catholic church.”  I am confused as to where he is coming from with the “zig” of the people who can’t sleep in that apartment over there (including him probably.)  The “zag” is the juxtaposition of the pagan practice within a Christian property.  Well, I think, Christianity is also based on many pagan practices (check out Zeitgeist and some back issues of the marvelous series “Horizon”.) 

“Yes, but it’s their ancestry and I think it’s great they’re expressing it,” I add.  He counters back in his Slavic accent “Well this isAmerica,” and stalks off.  As he walks away, a gaggle of Harley bikers in leather turn up the throttle like geese flying by and trumpeting their passing presence.  “What next?” he cries with arms thrown up in the air. 

The encounter awakens me back to present time and place.  I cross the parking lot to the gym, in thought.  What was that?  Some people just like to argue it seems.  He didn’t have to convince me of anything, except of what was obvious; he was annoyed that he couldn’t sleep.  It might’ve been a leaking faucet or the buzzing of a fly, and that would’ve roused him into arguing his point.  Instead he tried to reason with me that this practice in a Christian property in theUnited Statesdoes not compute.  Perhaps it is worthy of calling in “the authority” to break up the gathering, he might’ve thought.  Now I wish I had said something like, “Dude, you chose to live in Hollywood.”  This is not the burbs where everything is predictable:  the same plaza with the collection of outlet stores and franchises galore that you would find in Rancho Cucamonga as you would in OrangeCounty.  Even more poignant is this is a country where people can express diversity and they’re practicing their right to do so. 

He did leave me thinking about the counter argument to the premise of my play.  I am immersed deeply in exploiting my theme with positive arguments, that I lose sight of the other side of the equation which is the other half that makes the story whole.  Let me explore, I thought to myself as I dive into the cool water of the swimming pool.  What’s driving my antagonist?  What perils can he throw in the path of my heroine?  What will make the stakes higher and heighten the drama?

I’m repeating this from my last blog. It bears repeating.

Joe Dowling, the Artistic Director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minnesota, interviewed on NPR, said this about his all white male season at the Guthrie:

“Let me address the playwrights first. We’re largely a classics theater – that’s what we do and I may be reading the wrong books but I find it difficult to see – because of social history in the 17th, 18th, 19th and indeed early 20th century – which are termed ‘classic plays’ – women playwrights emerged who would be able to fill large theaters.”

His indifference to and ignorance about women playwrights took my breath away and raised loud voices about the problem of gender parity. The following is from Karen Kinch who addresses the question.

Karen Kinch is the Artistic Director of DramaQueen Theatre in Seattle, WA. DramaQueen. It was founded in 2002 to develop new works written by women. www.dramaqueen.org/.

She did some research, the results of which also took my breath away:

“This past week my husband and I spent several evenings visiting the websites of all 74 LORT member theatres across the USA, to tally up how each are doing with regard to gender parity. If the website listed the coming season, we looked at that — if not, we tallied up the current 2011-12 season.

You may be interested to know that, of the 74 LORT houses, we found only two theatres – both of them with women Artistic Directors at the helm – who actually achieved a season of true gender parity for playwrights, one for the current 2011-12 season and the other for the just announced coming 2012-2012 season.

It’s also wonderful to note that AD Lyn Meadow at the Manhattan Theatre Club has achieved gender parity for directors as well in 2011-12:

Manhattan Theatre Club – New York, New York, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director

2011-2012 Six-Play Season:

We Live Here by Zoe Kazan
Close Up Space by Molly Smith Metzler
Wit by Margaret Edison
Regrets by Matt Charman
The Columnist by David Auburn
Venus in Fur by David Ives

Playwrights: 3 men, 3 women

Directors: 3 men, 3 women:

Sam Gold, Leigh Silverman, Lynn Meadow, Daniel Silverman, Carolyn Cantor, Walter Bobbie

City Theatre Company – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tracy Brigden, Artistic Director

2012-2013 Six-Play Season
Maple and Vine by Jordan Harrison
South Side Stories by Tami Dixon
Seminar by Theresa Rebeck
Breath and Imagination by Daniel Beatty
Little Gem by Elaine Murphy
Abigail/1702 by Roberto Aguierre-Sacasa

Playwrights: 3 men, 3 women
Directors: Not Yet Announced

It was easy to grow discouraged as we made our way through the websites. Many theatres listed no women playwrights and no women directors. Many others listed only one woman playwright or one woman director.

We’re thinking we might want to re-do the research this summer when all the theatres have their 2012-2013 seasons posted, and approach it in a more thorough and scientific fashion, including total annual budget figures, venues, and other relevant details.

The MTC’s website says the 2012-13 season will be announced shortly. Do we dare hope that Ms. Meadow might do it again?”

I’m hoping that 2013 seasons across the country will join the MTC!

Joe Dowling, the Artistic Director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minnesota, interviewed on NPR, said this about his all male season at the Guthrie:

“Let me address the playwrights first. We’re largely a classics theater – that’s what we do and I may be reading the wrong books but I find it difficult to see – because of social history in the 17th, 18th, 19th and indeed early 20th century – which are termed ‘classic plays’ – women playwrights emerged who would be able to fill large theaters.”

Gretchen Smith, Associate Professor, Head of Theatre Studies at SMU – Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas responded and I found her reply so useful that I asked her if she would pass it on to the lafpi.

Here is what she said:
Yes, I see his point, and it is the point made not only in professional theatre but community theatre and university theatre, too. It is, at its heart, this: Dowling can’t think of female playwrights whose work fits the definition of “classic” and “would be able to fill large theaters.” Both these things must be so for Dowling to move forward.

As I see and hear it, here are the various sides of this problem:
Knowledge:

Dowling (and others) don’t know enough plays by women or other minorities to evaluate alongside plays by people like Miller, Shakespeare, Ibsen, or Simon (all great playwrights who are also Euro-Centric White Guys). His knowledge of the global dramatic literature repertoire is limited to The Canon – the classical plays he claims the Guthrie uses as foundation and that their audience expects and will buy tickets to.

Arrogance:

Dowling (and others) can’t imagine that there are plays he doesn’t know that are as good as those by these Euro-Centric White Guys that would fill seats in large theatres. He is focusing on economic survival for his theatre based on old-style management models of the 1940s-1970s and known quantities: the drawing power for high schools, universities, and subscribers in Big Plays by familiar playwrights–again, like Miller, Shakespeare, Simon, and Ibsen. He assumes that if there were plays as good as The Canon they would be in The Canon and he would know them.

Economics:

Dowling (and others) face much more direct impact from Boards about things like subscriber bases and budgets (and the Board members even more limited knowledge and desire for risk) than from non-subscribers or minority playwrights/directors they don’t employ. In other words, he has a job on the line and it may be contingent on filling seats, not risk and experimentation in the season, not addressing diversity or bigger issues than the $10 empty seat.

And a lot of men simply can’t imagine finding a story by women centered on women as entertaining and “relatable” as a story by and about men. I understand that: I’ve been living with the flip side of this argument for four decades.

Let’s face it: probably one of the things holding Dowling back is that the Guthrie audience wouldn’t automatically turn up for a Rachel Crothers play the way they would for an Arthur Miller play. And as long as Boards and artistic directors like Dowling think the money paid for tickets is coming from men, why change? And as long as audiences don’t see anything different, why ask for plays by women?

Someone is going to have to break down and take a risk. And market the hell out of their risk.

I’d love to see an all-female classic season at the Guthrie–or any other major regional theatre–as an artistic and marketing risk taken all the way. Go BIG. With an ad and marketing campaign aimed at educating subscribers as well as entertaining them.

Female playwrights, female directors, female designers, female performers of note, female-centered stories that embrace diversity. Aggressively marketed to universities, high school English classes, women’s groups of all kinds. Perhaps even marketed as bucking the trend of anti-woman, risk-free theatre. And then not treat it as one-of-a-kind pink pony but business as usual.

It won’t happen at the Guthrie as long as Dowling’s non-risk seasons fill seats: he has no incentive to change, apparently, either from his Board, his audiences, or his own internal mission/artistic vision of theatre. I don’t know what the answer is, beyond educate a new generation of future artistic directors to do better, and don’t buy tickets to the Guthrie, and let the Board and Dowling know why.