Category Archives: Uncategorized

No whining allowed.

September 10, 2011Uncategorizedehbennett

The shocking thing is just when I start to believe I understand, I realize I know nothing. To me experiencing growth feels like bits of candy exploding on my tongue after a quick chew; sweet and tart. Bittersweet.

I’ve been pondering, gnashing my teeth, and thinking aloud over dinner with a patient friend for months over Water Closet, and yet, I’ve rewritten not one word. I realized this week I may have learned a bit or two from the Waffle experience, so it is possible I may reshuffle and rewrite WC before I’m dead from trying. It feels as much like a roll of the dice, although I know it is supposed to be craft. I hope that I’m up to the task. For it’s due in New York by September 16^th.

I began the night with a bit of bubbly caffeinate. However rather than keep me awake, exhausted by my work week, I am headed for bed. In the morning I work in the garage and get the roomies car washed, and have to get to the Grand Opening of the museum exhibit by 4pm where my film Mendez v. Westminster: Families for Equality is being featured through June 2012. How can I write when my job consumes my days?

Then I remember. Sunday is September 11^th. And I think how pitiful is my complaint.

Dramatic irony?

September 7, 2011Uncategorizedehbennett

I had an extraordinary experience last weekend. I brought in a new two character, ten-minute play for a first read at an Orange County Playwrights Alliance meeting. However the experience wasn’t extraordinary only because of the two amazingly talented actors who read. What was out of the ordinary was that my little play was without exception well-received. I never thought that possible with a play of mine. No joke. I was encouraged to submit it to the Actors Theatre of Louisville, which I have done.

If you don’t know, I am a librarian by day, and I am paid (essentially) to find stuff. I’m pretty good at it, because (I believe) I am curious and I love my job. So it’s my nature to try to figure out ‘why’ A Waffle Doesn’t Help Insomnia was successful with this group of playwrights first time out. Waffle started out as a funny Facebook thread I wrote with a friend who lives in Kentucky. We just happened to be awake at the same time eating, yes, wait for it – waffles. Friends who read the thread encouraged me to include the dialogue in a play. I decided to write one instead. My Kentucky friend read the play last Friday and loved it; he told me to take full credit. I have dedicated it to him.

I am also attempting to figure out why this play struck my audience’s core when so many others of mine haven’t, because, frankly, I’d like to hit a ball out of the park again. The comments I received were essentially it’s a relationship play. Yet I disarmed them with wacky, likeable characters, and when they were least expecting it created a life-and-death reality both in the text and visually; our ‘waffle twins’ were a hit.

Perhaps I learned a lesson in dramatic irony?

Writing here, writing there – by Kitty Felde

September 3, 2011UncategorizedKitty Felde, LAFPI, playwritingKitty Felde

It was nice to have two complete weeks in Maine, sitting by a lake, listening to the loons, dodging a hurricane, picking tomatoes and beans from the garden, drinking wine, swimming every morning, and writing. And writing.

What a blessing to not have to ‘feed the beast’ as we say in news, always on the lookout for a story, trying to catch up with a story you should have reported yesterday, making calls for tomorrow’s story. And squeezing in maybe 90 minutes of writing time on exactly what YOU want to write.

I’m in LA this week for a grammar school reunion (!) and a check in with the home office, but haven’t typed a word. But I will. I have five characters bugging me to tell the rest of their story. They get so impatient! They don’t understand that it’s important for the writer to visit her favorite farmers market where “industry” folks talk shop as they wait for their breakfast burrito, where she’ll run into an old friend having a tough year, and where finally, she’ll come home with heirloom tomatoes and peaches and basil for a family party on Labor Day. Those characters don’t understand why the writer needs a nap or needs to get her nails done for that grammar school reunion. They keep saying, “what about OUR reunion?”

Okay, guys. One quick nap and I’ll be back at the keyboards. Promise.

Stitching a play together – by Kitty Felde

September 2, 2011Uncategorizedcharity shop chic, Kitty Felde, LAFPI, playwriting, sewingKitty Felde

I am finding a relationship between my twin passions: playwriting and sewing. One involves visual puzzle pieces that are stitched together. The other involves character puzzles and pattern pieces of plot.

I came to Maine earlier this month to puzzle out act two of my LA riots/Kenya play, not to sew. But that sewing side of my brain started calling me. It might just be the need to do something creative using my hands, not a keyboard

So I started reading sewing blogs. And fell in love with this one: a British gal who does amazing things with thrift store finds.
http://charityshopchic.wordpress.com/
She gives herself permission to take things apart, discard what’s soiled or not needed, and create something fun and new. It’s that giving yourself permission that’s so important.

And by the way, it also sent me out to the local Goodwill where I spent $20 on five garments that I’ve totally taking apart! (at night, of course, AFTER my writing day…)

Writing lessons from young adult literature – by Kitty Felde

September 1, 2011Uncategorized"Plugged", Eoin Colfer, Lisa Scottoline, playwriting, young adult literatureKitty Felde

There’s a wonderful quote in Lisa Scottoline’s review of the new novel “Plugged” by Eoin Colfer. She says, “like any great fictional character, he is what he does.” Boy, is that true for drama!

I’m as guilty as most, my characters do more talking than doing. Not to say they need to scale mountains and fight wizards onstage. But they need to constantly be doing something emotionally. What do they want and what are they doing to get it?

I know Eoin Colfer’s work from his young adult novels. We read ”Artemis Fowl” in my Book Club of the Air for Young Adults, a show that ran on LA Cable 36 where a trio of middle schoolers discuss YA literature. (http://la36.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=26&clip_id=1000Great fun.) In “Artemis,” Colfer’s characters were always DOING something. But he also created an entire universe, with its own rules and villains and quests.

I really like YA literature. David Almond’s “Skellig” is one of my favorites. He creates a character in a ramshackle garage that may be a cranky old man. Or an owl. Or a bird. Or something else. The young hero of the story keeps the creature alive with beer and take-out Chinese food. He decides he HAS to as his way of keeping his prematurely born little sister alive. Such invention! A real page-turner! And full of rich, emotional depth.

Which makes me think about expanding my universe of writing inspirations. I read and see as many plays as I can every month. But rarely am I truly blown away, transported to a really imaginative place where I cry and laugh and am haunted by words and images for days. That happens often when I’m reading YA literature. Why is this? Is it because YA books are short, to the point, aimed at an audience that demands to be wowed, an audience whose raging hormones make emotional outbursts a daily fact of life? That’s what I want to capture and put onstage.
Which is why I’m heading over to the YA section of the library to see what’s new.

Hurricanes and other natural disasters by Kitty Felde

August 29, 2011UncategorizedHurricande Irene, Kitty Felde, LAFPI, playwritingKitty Felde

I’m a southern California girl. I know earthquakes and brush fires. I don’t know hurricanes.

But I was up in Maine for two blissful weeks of vacation – nothing but reading, eating, swimming in a lake, sitting, and writing. I’m working on rewriting act two of a play that’s been haunting me for ten years. More on that later in the week. But we were supposed to drive back south to DC on Saturday. That didn’t happen, thanks to Irene.

Friday was an absolutely perfect day! Warm temperatures, blue skies, you could smell the pine trees. The sun glistened on the lake. Hard to imagine the storm coming. By Saturday, you had this feeling you should be DOING something. Preparing somehow. So I drove into town to buy a battery for the flashlight and a power converter to run my laptop from the car’s cigarette lighter. (A true writer: can’t live without her laptop!) I made soup and chocolate pudding – to nourish the soul. We put away the plastic lawn furniture and took down the hanging plants and wind chimes. And we waited. And waited.

Finally, Irene arrived Sunday morning, first with rain, then with wind, then with wind and rain, and finally, just a bit more wind. Inland Maine got hit hard. We spent the day with friends, eating pasta and playing Crazy Eights.
It’s a nice metaphor for playwriting: that big idea that grows and grows, both scaring you to death and exciting something deep inside you. It takes its dear, sweet time developing, moving slowly towards you. You spend your time preparing – research, note cards, writing in longhand, making notes to yourself on the Iphone, freewriting – doing SOMETHING until it arrives. And then it does – you’re in the midst of the writing, full of excitement and terror. That new play makes you feel ALIVE! And then, all too soon, it’s over. It gets produced or a reading and your emotional brain is already preparing for the next creative storm.

Perhaps the National Hurricane Center can help me with titles when I sit down to write my next “hurricane.”

Illusion and Hustle

August 23, 2011UncategorizedJen Huszcza

Theatre is just illusion and hustle.

I came up with this theory as I watched Guy Hollingworth in The Expert At the Card Table, a one man play directed by Neil Patrick Harris at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica earlier this month. The play has long since closed and like great illusions, it only exists in our inaccurate memories.

The Expert At the Card Table was a book published in 1902 which gave away card shark secrets. In the course of an hour and a half, we learn the fate of the book’s author. Even though I consider myself pretty good at figuring out stories, I must say honestly that I didn’t see the ending coming.

Interspersed with the story of the author, Hollingworth, an accomplished magician, performs card tricks. Thanks to a large screen behind him, we see his hands work. He can make a deck of cards do anything he wants.

It’s like watching a dancer only he dances with his hands. I could write a play starring his hands. Oh wait, that was The Expert at the Card Table.

As the play went on, I thought about the theatrical hustle. He draws the audience into the trick, shows the audience what he wants them to see, then snap, magic!

We playwrights are hustlers too. We are hustlers on the page (we also have to be hustlers with artistic directors, but that’s a different essay). We only show the audience what we want them to see. We might hold off on a bit of information until it is necessary. We might only show one side of a character. We might only show one room of house.

We practice long hours to perfect our illusions, to make them seem almost natural, so the audience doesn’t miss what they can’t see.

Having that much power over an audience is kind of a sexy thing.

Say What You Really Mean

August 10, 2011UncategorizedAnalyn Revilla

Imagine that you just had an encounter with your boss who has made a hasty judgment about you. For example, she accuses of purposefully disregarding her order; but in reality you acted with initiative to give a fuller or more expansive answer and/or analysis to a problem. She continues to say or do something that you feel is unjustified. You are reluctant to defend yourself knowing perhaps you’d be digging a deeper hole for yourself. (This reminds me of a quote I saw on someone’s desk – “Don’t argue with a fool”.)

Later, a friend who is aware of your explosive relationship with your boss meets with you. In politeness and care he asks, “How are you?”, and you say, “I’m alright” when in your heart you’re hurt and angry and want to pour it all out. Eventually the truth does spill over in the course of the conversation.

That is a classic situation of words behaving as a mask. We put on the masks to save ourselves and the receiver. We want to save each other from the truth. I don’t know why this happens so often that it seems like it’s a conditioned knee jerk reaction.

In my Imagined Life classes my mentor Faline has encouraged her students to “Look well into the words.” Discover the world behind the words. As writers we purposefully choose the words that is put on paper. I look back to the poem “Trippin’ Across The Bay” and can reword a few bars to be more succinct and precise in what I want to express. When is it ever done? We have all probably revisited an old piece of writing, and our point of view has probably shifted since the point in time that the thought and feelings were captured till eternity in that printed form.

The ARE has one of the largest if not the largest collection of metaphysical writings in its library. I was so overwhelmed with the books I came across in one place and time. The book, “C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships” by Michael Serrano, describes a conversation between the author and Herman Hesse. The topic was the message of the poem “The Raised Finger” written byHesse.

“Words are really a mask, ” said Hesse. “They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it.” excerpt from C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships.

In the story telling realm the most dynamic situations is when the hero says something and does opposite of what they say. Our human nature is to reveal ourselves in our display of actions and artistry, and not in our words. Words do get in the way, because they are open to interpretation based on the filters a person is subject to.

It is more telling to witness the hero tells his lover, “I love you,” before shoots his beloved. If you have not read the short story by Thomas Mann called “Tobias Mindernickel”, it is such a fascinating read. It depicts the Freudian concept of “Reaction Formation and Displacement”.

The hero Tobias mistreats an adopted dog, Esau. In final scene after Tobias had already broken Esau physically (after dropping him from a window) after Esau had disobeyed and escaped. Tobias says to Esau, “You see, you are my only…my only…..”

Clay Sisman, an educator wrote: “He never finishes the sentence. What was he going to say? What would he say that?”

The typical symptoms of Reaction Formation are:

behaving the opposite of how one feels
saying things that are opposite to what one believes

The typical symptoms of displacement are:

anger and hostility toward someone or something that is not the cause of the anger
a temporary inability to control of one’s rational thinking ability
a temporary inability to control of one’s behaviors, typically striking out physically from anger
a temporary inability to discuss things calmly and rationally

(Source: Cybersisman.)

Rounding back to the You-Boss situation. The words of the boss who accused you of insubordination is likely masking her feelings of insecurity and fear of losing control.

We are a fascinating species. Our minds are wild with distractions and a wild mind begets unpredictable actions that betray the true nature of what lives in our hearts. Thus I conclude the second series of “The Art of the Heart.”

Thank you.

Unwinding Down the Winding Path

August 9, 2011UncategorizedAnalyn Revilla

This week’s theme for my blogs is the collection of gold and gems that comes from an open heart hitting the open roads. Welcome to the philosophy and practice of Art of the Heart. Be it a joyful heart treading lightly on verdant footpaths or a lonely heart that is wound in the ribbons of past lives it is a practice of doing it for the love of it.

Part One – Onley in Virginia

Have you been to Onley, Virginia? I stopped there overnight last week on my road trip to Virginia Beach to catch a band in the Mayhem Festival.

I walked into the hospice thrift store near Onley, a town with a small population (496 residents reported in the year 2000, household count of 223 and the size of 0.8 square miles) I was so happy and surprised to find a biographical book called “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter “. In addition, there was a Michael Franks CD “Sleeping Gypsy” which has the jazz-samba song “Antonio’s Song” (dedicated to Antonio Carlos Jobim.)

These treasure finds put a twist on the expression – ” Onley” in Virginia.

I dedicate this poem to the lovely persons I met in Onley. I’m thinking of you Jay, Laura and the staff and members of the East Shore YMCA; and finally there’s thee owner/manager of the motel where I stayed. He got out of the quiet of his mosquito-netting tent. He told me that it was just 3 days ago that he and his wife sold everything they owned to buy and run a motel in Onley so that they can escape the noise of Norfolk. I was heading towards Virginia Beach/Norfolk area to go to listen to the heavy metal sounds of “All Shall Perish” in the Mayhem Festival.

But the real purpose of the trip was to see the ARE (Association for Research and Enlightment) which was founded by Edgar Cayce. That story will be in a later installment of the series.

Thank you.