Today was the first rehearsal of a show in which I’m especially proud to play a role. It’s called “Expressing Motherhood,” and I share a stage with 13 amazing women who  tell stories about…well, motherhood.

There are new moms, experienced moms, singing moms, a divorced mom, a mom who gave birth late in her 40s, a mom who’s due in 3 weeks, a woman who never got to be a mom and a mom who shares a story that will stop your heart.

And then there’s me. The only guy.  Batting clean-up in the show with a personal story about my own mom. I hope you will come see it. We open Wednesday at the Elephant Theatre on Santa Monica.  www.expressingmotherhood.com

These women speak such powerful truth: be it funny or furious, sardonic or serious. The stage is bare, but the production is epic.

And I am so fortunate to be in their presence.

It’s the same way I feel about LAFPI. This group has an energy about it that no Super Bowl locker room could ever hope to equal.

When I tell people I’m in a show about motherhood – or a proud member of LAFPI – I get a raised eyebrow or two. And I usually laugh “What can I tell you? Girls are a lot more fun than boys.”  It’s true.

But it’s more than that: women can connect easier, cut through the bullshit faster and get down to business and celebrate what’s truly important in a far more spectacular fashion.

And the food?  It’s always good, and it’s always plentiful. And this fella is just happy to have a seat at the table.

I’m proud to be the first male blogger. Thanks to LAFPI for letting me join your cool club, and congrats on your first anniversary!

I want to give a nod to playwright Lanford Wilson, who passed away March 24. He was one of my guiding lights, especially when I was first trying to write plays. In high school, the playwright I was most familiar with was Neil Simon. What can I say, I did a lot of speech tournaments and used cuttings from his plays. As I got a little older I read Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare and Eugene O’Neill, as we all did. Stuff to admire but I couldn’t imagine writing like any of those folks. But then I discovered Lemon Sky and This is the Rill Speaking and Talley’s Folly and The Fifth of July by Lanford Wilson. Plays filled with people who seemed relatable and real. Plays crafted in a way that seemed that maybe if I put my nose to the grindstone I could emulate them.

Well, I ended up not writing like Lanford Wilson, either, as you can imagine, but he gave me hope and something to shoot for.

I went to see his Burn This at the Taper last Saturday. I can’t say I “grog” the character of Pale nor root for his relationship with Anna, but there were other moments that pulled me in – the pain of being at a funeral where the relatives don’t know or won’t admit the deceased is gay, the push-pull of writing a big, commercial screenplay versus something more human and intimate. So the play wasn’t perfect, but it was still a worthy effort. Thank you, Lanford.

Here are other tributes to him by people who knew him intimately, if you want to see how profoundly he touched others’ lives: 

http://www.playbill.com/features/article/150064-Remembering-Lanford-Wilson-Colleagues-Reflect-About-the-Playwright/all

Went to see Jane Anderson’s thought-provoking and funny The Escort last week at The Geffen. The basic storyline is a female gynecologist meets a call girl (“A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar and…” sorry, I couldn’t resist…) and ends up learning where she stands when it comes to her own sexual beliefs and just how open-minded she really is. It makes the audience think, too, presumably, if they’re willing.

I bring it up because in the second act, the call girl did something that made my stomach muscles tighten. No, it didn’t involve sex toys. She asked the gynecologist if she could keep a photo of the doctor’s teenaged son. It didn’t seem in character plus it seemed like a big red flag of a plot point to be used later. Sure enough, it was.

Then even later in the second act, the doctor and her ex-husband got all worked up (again, not in a sex act…) and took a decisive action. My stomach muscles were all in a bunch, the decision seemed forced.

I try and pay attention to my stomach muscles at my own play readings and performances, but it’s harder because I don’t often have the distance that I have when I’m seeing someone else’s play, especially if I’m hearing it for the first time. But seeing Jane’s play – which I liked in spite of my stomach muscle moments, and I’m a huge fan of her work in general – reminded me how important it is to pay attention to my gut reaction.

Hmmm… maybe I can market this as The Playwrights’ Workout: “Build better plays and stronger abs all at the same time…”

I don’t know how far we’ve come. It’s hard to measure when you’re in the smack in middle of something.

But an initiative was born. Heat was generated. Actions have been taken.

We have our study (thank you again Ella Martin and all who queried and compiled) and its oh-Lord-we-have-more-work-to-do results… https://lafpi.com/about/the-study/

Theatres have been put on notice that we’re paying attention.

Speeches have been made at award shows, articles have been written and circulated.

And this blog was started a year ago, April 19, 2010.

Even though I haven’t gotten to gather in person with the LAFPI gang in many months due to my schedule conflicts (I do plan on making the May 15^th picnicky thing!), I definitely have felt a sense of community as we write and share the journey of being playwrights here in da blog.

It feels better when you’re going through something together. Here’s to the next year of blogging, playwriting, initiating, activating, and makin’ more noise… together.

The LA FPI Blog posted it’s first article on April 19, 2010. This past week was our One Year Anniversary!

There are many of aspects of life in the theatre that drive one into the ground – rejection, harsh criticism, plays languishing in drawers and computers, the fear that our labors of love will never be produced.

And then there are the times in that life when we feel nothing but joy. One of those times for me was the three years I spent as a mentor to young playwrights in a program called HOLA (Heart of Los Angeles), which was then hosted by Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire.

I was in a workshop called Wordsmiths at the LATC with Kitty Felde when she was looking for volunteers and I, always sucker for long drives on a Saturday, raised my hand.

A group of us, Kitty, Melanie, Dan, Dick, Jim, and more, met Saturday mornings with kids from the neighborhood, who were different ages, from seven to twenty. We plunged into writing. We started with a scene and wrote to the clock. I think we had five minutes. Everybody, kids and mentors, read his or her scene out loud and then we moved on to crafting the plays.

Kitty taught with a simple technique to jumpstart the process. Before beginning the play, we would write our Protagonist Profiles with these headings; Name, Age, Family, Habitat, Job, Greatest Wish, Secret Fear, Antagonist, and Extras. Here’s one: Name: Orgel, Age: 47, Family: None, Habitat: The backroom of a pound with only a cot and a hat tree, Job: Watering and feeding the dogs, Greatest Wish: To have a dog of his own, Secret Fear: That he’ll be alone for the rest of his life, Antagonist: The owner of the pound, Extras: He is skinny and tall with a big moustache.

The play grew from there.

At the end of each session, we went to the youth hostel in San Pedro for a weekend of polishing and cooking and fooling around. Kitty’s husband, Tad, would take the kids on a hike and terrify them around a campfire with ghost stories. We all took turns cooking meals and cleaning up, kids and adults played basketball and collected shells on the beach, and in between, we wrote, wrote, wrote. Each kid had a mentor and we had time to forge a working relationship.

We ended with a performance of the plays, some at the church, and one memorable one at the Central Library, in which the plays had been inspired by a trip to the Armand Hammer Gallery. A play called Return of the Landlord featured a spectacular use of black light.

Many were very talented, and one teenager, Paul Park, had a collection of his plays, called Out of the Park, presented at the Evidence Room. All the kids were fearless (or learned to be). Their stories were fresh (sometimes silly, sometimes sad, sometimes scary), and all gave me an insight into worlds I would never have been a part of without them.

About a month ago, Enci of Bitter Lemons (http://bitter-lemons.com) wrote asking for reminiscences from people who played at The Complex. Our production of my play, Sunday Dinner, was way back in 1997 and I had to think about it.

The Complex was bijou. Everything was small, the lobby, the lighting booth, the dressing rooms, the stage. Sunday Dinner took place in a living room (what else, you may ask?) and the stage was the size of one. Perfect. A couple of chairs, a sofa, and a table, and we were home.

We put up our very own sign outside and although everything was pretty clean, we dusted and swept and vacuumed inside. We had a few hitches setting up and our lighting designer began to fret after one of the actresses plugged in her hairdryer, turned it on, and blew the electrical system. However, by opening night, the lights and sound worked like a charm.

There was a narrow dirt alley behind the theater, leading to a chain link fence on Wilcox. Between acts, we could hang out in costume, listening to street noise, and the production in the theater next door. There was a mysterious shack back there, too. I never discovered what it was for.

It was part of the ambiance. There was lots of ambiance. There was walking to rehearsal past the triangular plastic banners above the car lots on Santa Monica Blvd., the feel of the hot sun bouncing up from the sidewalk, the oasis of the corner store where the clerk served us from behind a Plexiglas shield (I think we couldn’t find a place to eat), a fierce fight between two ladies of the street in front of the marquee, the race day and night to find a place to park, the humungous fine one of us got for parking 3-1/2 inches into the red curb, the volatile valet parker we never gave our keys to for fear the car would disappear; and the proximity to The Blank and The Hudson.

We were on Theatre Row.

We didn’t know then how hard we had to push and arm twist, how much we had to plea and cajole to get everyone to come to our absolutely amazing, fabulous, splendid, did we mention?, not to be missed production, so I remember, too, the not so large crowds who made us glad that the space was cozy, comfortable and intimate.

We didn’t sell out but the Complex gave us a great time. And we won a Dramalogue award!