There’s something about mannequins that remind me about a writer’s first/second/final drafts. Maybe it’s the skeletal frame, or the glassy eyes, but I’ve always been attracted to the idea of an idea taking a form, a body, a costume and then resembling a whole idea.

When I was a child my mother was keen on bringing us to every small town museum she could find, The Lobster Museum in Kittery Point, Maine, the Birch Tree Forest Museum in the White Mountains, Vermont – and some of them were quite surreal in their use of mannequins and taxidermy. The museum with the most sinister theatrical memory was a rather musty one in Fremont, Nebraska: “The American Indian in the American West” . It had a grouping of “American Indians” (this was before the term “Native Americans” or the discovery that Indians had tribes or nations of their own), anyway, the Indians looked very much like suburban neighbors who were dressed up in bad fitting leather outfits and they were lumped around a glassy eyed buffalo that they had apparently just killed (it looked like a moth eaten buffalo sofa with bent arrows coming out of it).  There was the square jawed Indian Chief with the Eagle feather headress, and the sullen young Indian brother, and the Indian Mom with a fake looking papoose on her back who was cleaning up the buffalo blood on the floor.  The caption read something to the effect of: “…here the Indian family are dressing one of the last of the buffalo, which were soon to be extinct on the plains of Nebraska….”

This exhibit really confused me. The Indians really didn’t look like Indians, they looked like white people with smudged dirt make up on, and the buffalo didn’t look dead, except for the glassy eye part, and I didn’t realize that buffalo were already extinct. I thought we saw one at Six Flags Over Texas the summer before. I didn’t quite get the distinction that they would soon be, perhaps, extinct on the plains of Nebraska. And I didn’t understand why they would be dressing a dead buffalo – (if he was dead, why would he need clothes on him?) – but when you’re nine years old and you know everything, you don’t ask questions.

So anyway, this really does bring me back to mannequins. The idea that they represent an idea – especially in theatre – as characters take shape in the time/place/class that they inhabit. I went to see the new costume exhibit at LACMA at the newly opened Resnick Exhibit this past weekend. The daring of these clothes really sparked my imagination – the curious nature of the each generation’s idea of the ideal form. It was inspiring. Especially the feathers in the hair.

……Is Hard To Do

(Writers Block)

You know that feeling when the words are tumbling out of you and you’re typing so fast because you’re raining dialogue, you’re percolating scenes and stomping exits and slamming doors and people in your head are yelling at you to hurry up – they’re waiting to get on stage. (…Okay, this could be a fantasy…)

And that’s only happened to me when I’m at writing retreats and I’ve paid money to show up and have actors read my scripts. But I swear, it has happened. I’ve had dreams where characters are chasing me like some kind of Twilight Zone episode and they’re trying to catch up to me to get to me to have their last say in the script I’m writing. I don’t mind that kind of scenario. I’d rather have that, then the Siberian exile I’m living in now.

Yeah, that island I’m living in now is called Writers Block. I know a lot writers have lived there, or had to visit. There are lots of life issues at play here: a family member is battling with cancer, my husband and I are dancing with unemployment and financial dread, and my life seems smaller and less assured.   What else.  My beloved Abyssinian cat is very ill and I know I love him too much in a way that people who own Abyssinian cats do. It’s a cult thing.

I guess it started with an unhealthy attachment to my last script. I loved it. I still do. Maybe you’re not supposed to love an unproduced script. Hell, it’s still out there, circling the zip codes.

But after I sent the script out I stopped writing. Six months of not writing was called “a break”. A restful pause. Refueling. A blank page. But then a series of life earthquakes happened and the writer’s block stayed.

So I teased the white fog to other names: Block head. Gnawing doubt. A log jam of inability. Did I fall out of love with writing? Did I use up all I had to say?

When I was a young actor, I played Eve in a production of “The Apple Tree” in Boston and worked with a very talented opera singer. He would save himself during rehearsals, barely coasting through the score and script, but then, eventually, gave an incredible performance in front of the audience. I thought he cheated the rehearsal process; but he shared, what was for him, a important part of his technique. “Darling,” he said, “God only gives us so many high notes; and I’m going to spend them with the audience, and not in the rehearsal room.” I might have thought he was selfish and a little precious, but I have to say, that technique really worked for him. He sang the role of Adam like an angel.

I’ve often wondered if there isn’t a part of my writer’s brain that is a little bit like his Adam. That it needs to get what it needs to write, and then –  it just turns off. I’m done. I’m tired of your stressful, fussy life. I’m tired of you giving the cat shots twice a day. I’m tired of the invisible cancer in the house, and the checkbook and the migraines and the grinding teeth.  So my brain just says:  I’m not writing.  Just not.  Just make me.

So I’ve been doing some “inspirations” to try and lure my curious self back into writing mode: meditation class, venturing out to see a couple of plays through LAFPI, embarking on a mannequin project, infusing vermouth. Getting engaged in something with my mind and hands has helped. Starting my writers group again will be a bit of trial when I really do not feel like writing at all, which I suppose,  is the point. Writing on this Writer’s Blog is supposed to be part of breaking the iceberg.  I don’t know that I can do this.  I will try.

And we’ll keep giving the cat his shots twice a day. That’s just part of the deal.

Last month, I worked with Gunfighter Nation on LA History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, a collectively written evening of theatre. Some of my writing ended up in the evening, and I did a bit of acting as well. Today, I want to talk about the writing, and tomorrow, I will talk about the acting. 

Gunfighter Nation is a new Los Angeles theatre company of actors and writers who want to take theatrical possibility to the edge and beyond. It is a multigenerational company with members ranging in age from twenties to seventies. Playwright John Steppling is the artistic director. 

When I arrived on the scene in July, half of the writers in the company had already written pieces for the evening, and I felt myself playing a bit of research catch-up. The task was to write about Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the history of Los Angeles as a dark mass (which appealed to my Catholic upbringing).

For me, the hardest part of the whole process was the beginning. I was working with a company I didn’t know and an artistic director whose work I knew but I didn’t know his process. Because only half of the pieces had been written, I didn’t know exactly what the aesthetic was and felt a little lost in the dark.

However, lost in the dark is not a bad place to start writing.

I looked at my empty yellow pad, and my first thought was Pico and Yorty in a bar in hell. The bar is my fall back location. If I’m stuck, I go to the bar in my head. I can move through it with ease. By the way, I no longer go to an actual bar if I’m stuck while writing.

I also started to think about what Los Angeles meant to me. What is the Los Angeles I see? Then, I stumbled into something I had been thinking about for awhile. In Los Angeles, we are a city of millions, yet we hate crowds. We drive around in cars that separate us from each other. We collectively fear contact with strangers.

One could take this fear of crowd contact into a bigger American context and into an American obesity—we need lots of fat around ourselves in order to protect ourselves from cruel human dangers.

I started writing a monologue for a heavy woman. Like many in Los Angeles urbanites, she hates crowds and doesn’t want people around her. She also can’t breathe because the air in Los Angeles is bad. She just kept talking and talking. Her talk became a song of fear and non-contact. Stay Back! Stay Back! she shouts at the audience and the world.

I am not a monologue writer, but this woman was singing out. What can I do? I’m just the writer.

I brought the pieces into our next meeting. The Pico and Yorty piece didn’t feel right to me. It was sketchy, and there was no idea to it except putting Pico and Yorty together onstage in a bar.

Then, I passed the monologue to Tina Preston, an actress in the group, and told her that she was afraid and couldn’t breathe. Tina read the monologue cold out-loud. She got into a rhythm with it. She read and read, and when she was finished, I yelped. Yes, I actually yelped.

As a writer, I sometimes have moments which confirm to me why I do what I do and remind me that I’ve still got some juice in my brain. Such moments are rare and gold. This was such a moment.

As the whole evening started to form, I thought it would be cool if the monologue was cut up and served as a transition between longer pieces. The woman could run into characters entering for the next play. I also figured that if I kept the monologues short, I would leave the audience wanting more.

Working with Tina was a true writer/actor collaboration. Tina worked extremely hard to take my conceit and turn it into something human. In the course of our working, our character who was very vulnerable and afraid became powerful and present.

As we moved closer to opening, I realized that I wasn’t feeling the usual writer nerves because I didn’t have to carry all the ideas. The ideas belonged to all the writers. The pressure was off. What did I have lose? When you have nothing to lose, the work gets better.

As writers we are taught to write plays which are complete unto themselves. They can be short or long, but they must complete themselves. The idea must reach a conclusion.

 But

 When writing collectively, the goal is not to write to completion but to write to incompletion. It’s about the whole idea of the evening.   

 When we Americans hear words like collective or socialism, we get very scared. We don’t want to lose our American individualism. We want to be our lone ranger selves.

 But, in a collective where originality is prized, I found myself pushing the originality envelope because I was inspired by the writing around me. It’s like jazz. We were all playing a theme, but when we could break out and solo, ohhh we got hot.

 Because we writers had shared artistic ownership of the evening, I felt myself losing ego about the whole experience. It was going through me, but it wasn’t about me. It was about the group. And the result was work I am extremely proud of with a group of nonconformist artists who make sweet sweet jazz together.

 Gunfighter Nation has a collectively written Christmas Show in the works, and yes, I’m writing for that one too.

I’ve learned over the years not to expect thanks after giving a gift. It’s odd to me then that I would forget that simple lesson when I gave birth to my baby last Sunday at noon. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect a shower of words. However, uncharacteristically, I suppose I did expect a simple “how was the labor”.

For it was a pretty big event in my life; after a nearly 8-year gestational period I was able to get an amazingly compact, moving, and complex piece of work that inter-cuts oral history interviews with a play I wrote onto a public broadcasting station. The play is based upon my research with original court testimony about an Orange County desegregation case and was included in a new civil rights curriculum developed for the State in 2009.

I watched my 28:30 documentary with a dear friend, some pizza, and my two small dogs. At 12:35pmish my parents and my sister called to offer their words of joy. My dad, finally, “liked” on something that I created. Hearing the pride in his voice was a great moment for me. I emailed the films editor who I had given a director credit for his phenomenal efforts, because I couldn’t find his phone number to call him.

At 7:30pmish, because I had arranged to give 50 participants a gift copy of the film, I received an email from one participant asking for two extra copies of the dvd followed by some wonderful words for the films editor. I shared her accolades with him. Later she forwarded me an email that she sent out to her friends and colleagues in the community. Since I was not ccd in the email, I have no idea what the response to her email has been. Nor has she shared community reactions with me.

Later I saw a Facebook status appear that stated “Great Job Erica, I saw your film on KOCE.” I was fascinated to watch as four of the films participants liked on it, yet noticed that none of them reached out to me directly. I was happy when five of my dear friends from college Facebooked me to express their pride about what they saw on television.

Around 5:30pm on Monday night I received a phone call from a participant and the only positive acknowledgement of my work on the film for the day.

I had a nightmare last Tuesday night where my baby languishes and I am powerless to help her because she really isn’t mine. She belongs to the world, because that is the way I designed it, and I have got to let her go. I don’t expect or need accolades. It’s hard to explain. I don’t need anybody to tell me that the film is “good”. I already know that.

I suppose I yearned to be part of the larger community rather than just the person you email your DVD order to. I am extremely grateful for those who did share their congrats with me, but I realize how foolish of me it was to imbue need onto an inanimate object.

When an archivist works with a community, she has no right to expect to belong to the community she has chosen to document. However I volunteered my efforts for these many years, because of the passion that I developed for the story in graduate school. In my mind I suppose I am still that student, who was disenfranchised at a very early age from the community at-large because of the way I look.

I am happy that I continue to learn and grow as a person, extremely grateful that my employer continues to allow me to pay my mortgage, and thrilled to finally be moving on to tell other stories, because I did MENDEZ V. WESTMINSTER: FAMILIES FOR EQUALITY right. And that is good enough for me.

The fragrance of my shampoo is prickly pear.  While I lather my head with this stuff, without even knowing what it really looks like (the cactus variety) I imagine prickly pear as the delicate Bartlett pear.  (I think the Bartlett variety is the more easily bruised compared to the Bosc or Anjou.)  Then I see the thorns sticking out of it protecting the juicy tasty flesh the inviting light green color and odor of the fruit.  I sometimes feel like a prickly pear.

It’s easy to get use to the mode of being closed and protected when it ALL seems too much – too much betrayal of others and self.  So, I wanted to change this mode of being.  It simply would not do as I was aware that this mode will not sustain a healthy way of living.  Get rid of the thorns and just be yourself; someone who many describe as sweet and sensitive. 

A short diversion about Luther Burbank, a noted botanist, who was a good friend of Paramahansa Yogananda.  He developed a spineless and thornless variety of cactus and he said:

While I was conducting experiments to make ”spineless” cactus, I often talked to the plants to create a vibration of love. ”You have nothing to fear.” I would tell them. ”You don’t need your defensive thorns. I will protect you.” Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety. (Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, Second Indian Edition, 1975, Twelfth Impression, p. 353.)

Rounding back to my original thought, I am reminded of an incident when I shared a scene with my class from my play.  My mentor asked me, “couldn’t you have some compassion for …” (a particular character in the story.)  He pointed out that I was lacking love and that I was writing with my thumb on the scale; and being the writer with the omniscient point of view I was writing with an agenda which the audience would easily be turned off about.  No one wants to be dictated to.  So I took a step back.  I wasn’t aware of what was happening in the writing. 

Explore the nature of what I’m trying to express.  This is what is more interesting rather than tipping the scale to say in the story that my hero is right and everyone else constellating around him is wrong.  It’s all of them constellating around the theme. 

The imperfect hero, I decided, is what I want to write about.  I think this is more interesting and real rather than the hero who is shown as perfectly right.  I could show him as thinking he’s perfectly right, and then show his arc when he realizes it’s not the whole truth.  There are other dimensions and not one is perfect. 

Back to prickly pear me.  When I’m aware of my modus operandi then I’ve observed my tendency to inject into my writing what I’m thinking and feeling at a personal level.  The awareness often (hopefully) makes me stop, because it makes for a disastrous piece of writing.  I could do all that in my morning pages.  Use that for all the crap and then get on with the real business of writing.

As I close my blogging week, I wanted to share with you that today I initiated the dialogue with the studio I work with about LAFPI.  I started it with an email to one of the teachers/directors of the studio.  He’ll be back on the week of October 18th, and we’ve agreed to talk in person then.

It feels good to have opened the window.  At least I know he’s open to the idea.  I explained about LAFPI and its grassroots, and described the goals we list in our website.  I also introduced the usage of our logo as “deemed appropriate” by the studio.

The worst of my fear has been slain dead.  It was really the fear of the unknown, and my pre-conception that I would be rejected.  Thinking about it makes me realize the immaturity of that mode. 

– Analyn

 The soft and red shade of the ripe prickly pear below is what the imperfect hero’s heart is like.  It breathes and bleeds life.

Our lives move along its path in varying degrees of speed and directions.  Like any journey it’s a sound practice to stop and re-orient ourselves to make sure we’re not deviating from our target destination.

 In my Yahoo! inbox this morning I found an email from the Dramatists Guild Women’s Initiative.  In reading the content it echoed a lot of what LAFPI is all about.  The email from the Dramatists Guild was an excellent reminder of why I’m part of LAFPI.

Revisiting the goals listed in our website is the same as revisiting personal affirmations we make to align ourselves towards our true path as we move from the micro to the macro in our vision of the shaping of our lives.  The micro influences the macro and vice versa.  The analogy that comes to mind is the 3^rd law of Newton’s Law of Motion of action-reaction where as described in Wikipedia as:

The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.

This means that whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force −F on the first body.

F and −F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This law is sometimes referred to as the action-reaction law, with F called the “action” and −F the “reaction”.

A synopsis of the newsletter talks about:

1.  An “Access Event” in New York, NY which will give writers direct access to people who are in decision making roles.[1]
2.  The first conference on Women in Theatre: Achieving Gender Parity. [2]
3.  A general meeting with the topic of  “What am I doing to further parity for women in the American theatre that doesn’t cost any money?”

This last one really stuck an elbow to my side.  I’m reminded to go to my acting studio and ask if they would be willing to support LAFPI in using our logo. 

Asking has always been a weakness for me when it comes to some form of charity.  I’m reminded of a friend who called me recently to ask for a donation for her husband’s political campaign.  I empathized with her when I heard the hesitation exhibited by pauses, carefully selected words, the sighs and mostly the apologetic tone of her voice. After hearing her out, I wondered how the experience for both of us could’ve been different.  I’m changing my viewpoint from “charity” to “how it benefits” the studio to have the LAFPI logo and supporting what we’re trying to achieve.

We’re always championing change as a sign of progress and it takes a lot of courage and action to make it happen.  A segway into Newton’s first law of motion often referred to as the law of inertia:

• An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless an unbalanced force acts upon it.
• An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an unbalanced force acts upon it.  (source: Wikipedia)

The direct translation in my situation is “Stop procrastinating and just ask the studio if they are willing to support the LAFPI cause.”  I gain more by asking even if I don’t convince them the first time around. 

For completeness sake I’ll include the 2^nd law.  F=ma.  I think it’s like the force is proportional to the rate of change (the acceleration) and inversely proportional to the mass of what we’re trying to change. 

We need a lot of force to make the change.  As seen on the page that declares our mission statement “And now the real work begins!”

The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative was created with the following goals:

1. To create an awareness of the facts: women playwrights are critically underrepresented on the American stage.
2. To advocate for female playwrights based Los Angeles – specifically by creating an active nexus between theaters, companies, organizations and theater artists who want to produce, promote and employ women playwrights.
3. To investigate and report the accurate history of producing organizations and plays by women in the Los Angeles area in the 21st century.
4. To recognize and support LA-area theaters who produce, promote and employ female theater artists through sharing our logo and advocating for – and attending – their productions.
5. To open channels and create opportunities for women playwrights, and by extension all women theater artists, in Los Angeles and beyond.

Before the end of my blogging week I will report on how I did with asking the studio to support LAFPI.

[2] This event event marks the first anniversary of the DG Women’s Initiative whose mission is to identify and address the challenges facing women dramatists, and develop action steps to advance and sustain fairness, equality and gender parity for all dramatists.  The keynote speaker for the Symposium is playwright, Julia Jordan, and features two panels moderated by Julie Crosby, producing artistic director of the Women’s Project, and playwright, Tina Howe.  Confirmed panelists include: Tessa LaNeve, literary manager of Primary Stages; Linda Chapman, associate artistic director of New York Theater Workshop; Beth Bickers, agent with Abrams Artists; Emily Mann, artistic director of McCarter Theater; playwrights Annie Baker and Winter Miller. Additional panelists will be announced.  We look forward to welcoming those of you who are coming to New York to participate!

 Just go.  Do it.  Even if what you’re thinking of embarking on is new, foreign and maybe even scary then it’s important now more than ever to trust your inner wisdom.  Trusting the inner voice strengthens our connection to the higher source of our creativity, even if we are blocked creatively.

 Yesterday, I had my first energy healing therapy with a healer whom I met at Jennie Webb’s world premiere of her play, “Yard Sale Signs”.  The Healer came initially as a stranger on Saturday night.  I had a reservation and I was running really late on Saturday evening.  I was ready to forgo the play as  I was afraid of walking in late.  But, my sense of commitment was stronger than my fear so I quickly put on my helmet and fired up the motorcycle.  I wound through traffic and found a spot right in front of the theater.  The doors were open and there was a short line at the box office. 

One of the box-office attendants called out, “Is there a Lauren here?”  I shook my head no.  Then the woman behind me asked “What did she say?”  I said, “She’s looking for Lauren.”  We both settled back into our spots and waited politely for our turn.  After a quick and warm hello with Jennie, I found a seat and settled in for a string of provoking and funny conversations in the next 80 minutes.   The play explores 3 varying mother-daughter relationships.  The impact of the story telling unfolds unconsciously. 

After the play there were pockets of conversations, and I stood next to the woman who, earlier was with me at the box office line up.  She’s a kindergarten teacher and she met Jennie at a fundraiser.  Further into the conversation I found out Hillary is a healer.  She is an Energy Healing Therapist.  Based on what I heard from her I was deeply interested.  She spoke about how Energy Healing Therapy is a healing process that clears blocked “chi” meridians.  This language spoke chakras to me and I was already familiar with the energy systems of chakras based on Christiane Northrup’s book,  “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” (Publisher:  Random House.) 

Next thing I found myself asking her if she could see me for a session the next day.  Rather impromptu, but she admitted she’s an impromptu kind of person.   Meanwhile, my left brain was already putting on the stops:  the cost, the trip out to Venice Beach, the traffic because of the Abbot Kinney Festival.  But Hillary was all about finding a way, a solution.  We made the appointment for 10 a.m.; I showed up at her purple painted door at 10:30 (my lateness signals my resistance.)

At Venice Beach the street festivities were well on their way.  Hillary’s home was a canopy of a serene oasis against the stuffy air.  I was boiling underneath all my motorcycle gear and the heat of the engine.  I changed into shorts and a fresh shirt in the bathroom while I stared at Buddhist thangkas.

The session begins with her question, “Why are you here?”  Though she was aware of the reason it was also a question that forces me to be clear on my intention.  I intuited that the problem was my resolve to finish my first rewrite which I’ve been circling round and round with, and never getting to the end. 

I couldn’t get past a certain point.  The path was blocked.  I had the desire to be creative but I lacked something and I was getting tired of trying to figure out how to get through it.  A heavy lethargic grossness overcame me whenever a great idea popped up.  As soon as I make my way towards the computer or pick up the guitar, I allowed myself to get distracted – too easily.  I found excuses:  coffee, sugar, housecleaning, going for a walk with the dog, and mostly “I’m not ready, because I don’t have the confidence that I have something to say.”  I wouldn’t allow myself the permission to just do it, and trust my inner guidance that I am an authority on what my imagination brings up.

I explained in depth to Hillary personal issues from the past, and that I needed helped to move forward.  It was sort of a desperate plea for help, but I wasn’t sure what form that would come in.  As I relayed the “issues” one by one she would stop me to ask where physically I was feeling something.  Mostly I pointed to the abdomen, and she observed a few times that I held my breath.  After the consultation she asked if I was ready to go on the table where she touched on the energy centers.  She began with a pendulum to determine the blocked energy points in my system.  The answers from the pendulum exposed that I was blocked on my 2^nd and 3^rd chakras.  The 2^nd chakra is related to sexuality, creativity, finances, personal power, relationships, sensuality and pleasure; while the 3^rd is about the development of personality, self-esteem and ego. (Reference –  Christiane Northrup’s website:  http://www.drnorthrup.com/womenshealth/energycenters/index.php.)

I recognized that my blocked chi in this chakra is related among other things with my disjointed relationship with my mother.  In trying to do my “Physician, heal thyself” I had neglected to dig into my own “sickness”.  Guilt can be like eddies draining you down, keeping you under, preventing surfacing up towards light and new growth.  

Story telling is how we share our humanity.  It is a form of healing that asks of us to share our joys and grievances to a sympathetic ear.  The wonder to me is the magic of how my inner guidance led my path to Hillary.  With the network of people who participated that evening at the Rogue Machine Theater, I wonder what new connections were made.  For myself, continuity of the story about mother-daughter relationships and how my intuition guided me to take the risk of trying something new, and being vulnerable to someone unfamiliar, and then coming to a point of initiating the unraveling of a knot in my chi relating to my family history, my need for security, validation and healing of hurts past forgotten but still resonating in my psyche and body as ailments.

While Hillary was moving energy through my 2^nd chakra I found myself unexpectedly sobbing.  Further on, perhaps after that channel opened up I breathed continuously and deeper than ever before.  I spoke to her, “I feel like I’m drinking water for the first time.”  Her response was “the 2^nd chakra is associated with water.”  Wow.  This is too bizarre to try to understand, but just accept it Analyn, I told myself.

Afterwards, I had a feeling of deep gratitude and strong sense of well being that everything is going to be alright and I can continue my work on the play.   There are different methods of resolving creative blocks and this is one method which I highly recommend based on personal experience.  The writing process is in itself a healing process and it’s a cathartic process whereby writers need sensitivity to the effects of the process in their bodies, heart and mind.

 To learn more about Hillary go to:  http://hillarybedell.wordpress.com/.  You can contact her via email at [email protected]