I found this to be  interesting revist to Eve Ensler….

Eve Ensler talks about the body

Yes, that was a conversation I had with a literary agent regarding a screen play I wrote. It was a great character. But it was a woman.  And the story had a lot of “chick time” (yes, this a while ago when that kind of phrase was popular).  The representation with the agent didn’t last long.  But I still carry the echo of that question with me when I watch some of the current movies playing now:  Can you make that character a woman? 

New York Times: Celebrating the girls of summer

I’m grappling with writing a “strong female character”.   Is grappling the right word I’m looking for?  Maybe I’m hunting/wrestling/seducing/pleading/yelling/negotiating for that strong female character.   This article seems to hit me directly between the eyes with the idea – the fantasy – of the strong female character.    Maybe its not a strong female character that I’m writing…

The New York Times: A Plague of Strong Female Characters

I live in a noisy world – and travel in a bubble of traffic, work, computers, machines, multiple voice over tracks and an occaisional hungry cat asking for better cat food. Silence is something that I generally live without. During the recent reading of THE LOST YEARS, I experienced the power of ….the pause.  I think I forgot how powerful, and artful, a pause can be.  One of the actors held a beat to look at someone he was talking with, and the brief moment of silence around his words, spoke volumes.  I know that pacing in a scene is something that can be burst like a soap bubble if the rhythm is thrown off by actors pausing for effect.  But this was different – and I so appreciated the risk the actor took to find that moment.  Too many o f those moments and it would have been – longer.  I loved this talk on listening, and I’m trying to find three minutes of silence every day, so I can hear the world in a clearer way.

 Ted Talk on Listening

A TED Talk on the immediate presence of theatre by Patsy Rodenburg

A week ago, I had a “green read” of one of my scripts, THE LOST YEARS, and I’m not the same now. The Seedlings at the Theatricum Botanicum hosted the green read of the script so I could hear it read outloud. I’d had a reading of the first act with the Dramatist Guild Footlights Series a couple of years ago – now I was able to hear the whole script. I didn’t expect to be so surprised by the actors. They were good. They were very good. They were so good they took the characters places I didn’t imagine or intend or realize.

I had a few friends who listened to the reading with me, and their comments really helped steady me to the feedback and perspective of the reading. I wanted to wait a few days before I looked at the script again, so I could filter my immediate reactions to a more thoughtful mindset. Mostly, I wanted to let the memory of the laughter subside – because I love it (maybe too much) when an audience laughs with something I’ve written. Now I’m back in re-writes and I’m so grateful for the reading, because now I can hear/see/feel the immediate presence of theses characters I’ve written. Now they seem more alive. Where’s my coffee and aspirin…

Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes’s, The Forest Princess, was the inspiration for Jennifer Fawcett’s The Invaders.

Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes (1818-1863) came from an American theatrical family. Her mother and father were both actors, were ambitious for their daughter, and put her on the stage when she was in her teens. (Some things never change.) She got lukewarm reviews as an actress but learned to write plays.

Like many of us, she took her stories from incidents of the day. Octavia Bragaldi was developed from something that happened in Kentucky at the time and transformed into a story set in 15th century Italy. It also had a terrific leading role for herself!

She married another actor, E.S. Conner, and the two appeared and toured together in the play. She also recognized the public’s interest in Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, and wrote The Forest Princess, based on them, which became hugely popular.

Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion, was adapted by Coya Paz and called FA$HION.

Anna Cora Mowatt was born a year later than Charlotte Barnes and died in 1870. She, too, hasn’t been forgotten entirely. Fashion was also adapted by Bonnie Milne Gardner and produced by Ohio Wesleyan University in 2008.

Her life was full. Born in Bordeaux, France, she was six when her family returned to the U.S. She eloped when she was fifteen and was published by the time she was seventeen, using the pseudonym Isabel. She wrote two novels, using the name Helen Berkley, and wrote a biography of Goethe, as Henry C. Browning.

I wonder if she thought that publishing under a man’s name would make the book sell better? I’ve seen that discussion on many a list today. Like many of us, too, she took a day job as a public reader to make ends meet. (Edgar Allen Poe attended her first performance.)

She was also an actress, and toured until 1854.

In December 1853, her book Autobiography of an Actress was published.

Pauline Hopkins’ s Peculiar Sam, was the inspiration for J. Nicole Brooks’ Shotgun Harriet.

Pauline Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930), born in Portland, Maine, was an amazingly prolific, influential African-American novelist, activist, editor and historian, who is still studied and written about today.

The Pauline Hopkins Society, formed in 2009, continues to promote her work, including four novels, and numerous short stories, one of which is considered the first African American mystery. She, too, sometimes used a pseudonym, using her mother’s name, Sarah A. Allen.

Her novels were serialized in the Colored American Magazine, a literary journal for which she became the editor. Through her editorial work, fiction and non-fiction, she emerged as one of the era’s preeminent public intellectuals and one of its most prominent editors, using the magazine to write about black history, to promote racial and gender equality, and to fight for economic justice.

A follower of W.E.B Dubois, she ran afoul of a new editor of the magazine who supported Booker T. Washington’s policies of conciliation, and she was fired. However, she continued her writing and activism until she tragically died in a building fire.

She wrote only one play, a musical, first called Slaves’ Escape; or, The Underground Railroad, and later revised as Peculiar Sam; or, The Underground Railroad. First performed in 1879, when she was twenty, it is one of the earliest-known literary treatments of slaves escaping to freedom. Perhaps, I say, speculating, it took the form of a musical, because into the 1880’s, she performed as a vocalist with her family ensemble, the Hopkins Colored Troubadours.

All five multi talented women shared a love of words and of the theater and I’m glad that Halcyon has given their works new life.

One of the pleasures of writing this blog is giving myself permission to take the time to read plays and do a little digging, and I enjoyed learning something of the history of the five historical playwrights chosen for the Alcyone festival.

They were all from the educated class, were celebrated in their time, and are largely but not completely forgotten today. What was interesting was that they had many things in common with contemporary playwrights and shared many of the same concerns and passions.

There is so much to say about them all and I don’t want to wear everybody out, so I’ll talk about Hrosvitha and Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor today and the rest tomorrow.

The works of Hrosvitha inspired EMLewis’s Strong Voice.

Hrosvitha, who lived from 935-1002, was a Benedictine canoness, born into German nobility, and highly educated. She studied the Greek and Roman classics; Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Plautus, and wrote her six comedies as a Roman Catholic alternative to Terence. They seem to be closet dramas, to be read or perhaps listened to by a small group, and I couldn’t find any information about their being produced. (A nunnery is, of course, a captive audience.) I can relate to that, having a few plays that meet that category.

She hasn’t disappeared from contemporary consciousness. She is frequently referred to in John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces, in which she is called Hroswitha. The Guerrilla Girls on Tour are keeping her name alive and in 2006 issued a First Annual Hrosvitha Challenge to any theater that scraps plans “of producing yet another production of a Greek tragedy and instead produces a play by Hrosvitha, the first female playwright.” I don’t know if they’ve awarded a prize to the Halcyon Theatre on not.

Maria de Zaya y Sotomayor’s La Traicion en la Amistad, was freely adapted by Caridad Svich and called A Little Betrayal Among Friends.

Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor of Madrid, Spain, also came from the aristocracy. She lived from 1590-1661 and wrote during the Spanish Inquisition. An early feminist, she describes the abuse of women and their inferior role in society, one determined by a paternalistic society and the Inquisition.

She considered women as intelligent and capable as men, and saw the convent as a haven for women’s independence. Perhaps, Hrosvitha shared that point of view. Like Hrosvitha, she was admired by her contemporaries, including Lope de Vega, but in the nineteenth century was censured for “perceived vulgarity,” and faded into obscurity.

Here’s a quote from one novel, The Enchantments of Love, translated by H. Patsy Boyer. (Thank you Wikipedia).

“Why vain legislators of the world, do you tie our hands so that we cannot take vengeance? Because of your mistaken ideas about us, you render us powerless and deny us access to pen and sword. Isn’t our soul the same as a man’s soul?…. [Later the husband listens her laments and approaches Laura] moving closer to her and incensed in an infernal rage, (Diego) began to beat her with his hands, so much so that the white pearls of her teeth, bathed in the blood shed by his angry hand, quickly took on the form of red coral.”

I don’t know if her language is vulgar but it is vivid. And pretty darn good.

I just finished my rewrites on Shelby’s Vacation. This is the power of a good reading combined with time and distance away from the script so I could actually see the forest and the trees of the script, so to speak.   

I’m several minutes in to the reading of my script Shelby’s Vacation (see previous entry) and something’s gnawing at me. Why is this woman on vacation? I’m asking as an audience member. I’m feeling the need to know. Then suddenly my writer brain kicks in (not to be confused with my reptilian brain), and I suddenly remember: a scene is missing.

Fortunately, this didn’t derail the whole reading. What was going on in the present was engaging, I cared about who was onstage and their relationships and wasn’t worried about the past.

The next day, on a sunny porch (with 117 acres of woodland behind me and a pond made for taking a dip in front of me), I calmly chatted with the director and asked about the missing scene. He apologized and said he couldn’t figure out a way to stage it but would try and work something out for that night’s performance. He was a genius at all the other scenes so I was surprised this one scene tripped him up.

That night… the scene was missing again. In the Q & A with the audience afterwards, one fellow mentioned he had trouble following Shelby’s boss in a scene near the end where she’s talking about her upcoming wedding. Mmmhmm. I politely mentioned there was a scene that hadn’t been read that would have set it up. The director spoke up and said this was his fault.

There was so much that was funny and sharp and relatable and touching about the reading, I actually wasn’t angry about the missing scene. It seemed not worth having my reptilian brain go on the attack. And the fact that an audience member missed it, well, that was confirmation it needed to be there. The director asked (not during the Q & A on stage) if that scene is in the script, then wouldn’t it stop Shelby from fantasizing about her boss? The boss is no longer available. Good question.

No, she would still fantasize for awhile – it’s hard to let those things go, even when your fantasy person is off the market. And that happens to be the journey of the play – she learns to live in the present.

The same cannot be said of me. Part of me is still in Vermont.