I just watched Marion Seldes accept a lifetime achievement award for her 60 years of service to the theater as an actress at the 2010 Tony Awards. After the award was presented to her, she zipped her lips, and walked off the stage. She never said a word.

Taking a cue from this great person, I have picked up my gauntlet and relinquished all of my creative rights to my last seven years of work on the body of work in question to the Executive Producer, who is actually not my antagonist; she has been quite supportive. Of course it comes with the conditions that it is only to be used for educational purposes, and the rights cannot be sold.

I expect that I will also gracefully decline any invitation to “collaborate” on any production in the Los Angeles and contiguous counties of any work that I may write in the future. However I may show up unannounced during the play’s run, if I am ever fortunate enough to have a play of mine chosen for a production again.

For it would be interesting for me to see if it worked on the stage; if I had successfully communicated my ideas, intentions, and words. The rest is for the birds.

Erica Bennett

“It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.” Dorothy Parker.

I’ve been writing a lot in the last two days. Not PHISHING unfortunately, but emails. Not the good kind. “Hi. How are you? Let’s get together for a beverage. Love you. See you soon.” No. I find myself yet again in the middle of a grab for power over a body of work that I’ve spent over seven years and thousands of dollars and my personal time developing.

Since I’m actually in the middle of it, I won’t suffer anybody the details; can’t, as I don’t have two years of honest reflection behind me. Let’s just say, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, and I don’t know where that will lead. I have done so, not out of conceit, or ego, but because it is the right thing to do; that is what I learned from my work on this project and I would be dishonoring the memory of the people who fought so hard, if I did not.

Sort of as an idle test, about a month ago I offered up a creative idea to another group. It wasn’t an original idea, but I went out on a limb and presented it. The words I received back were to the effect, “Great idea. We’ll proceed with it in the fall.” When I responded that I would like to be involved in its development as I writer, I received back “Thanks for the idea.” That’s it. “Thanks for the idea.” Thanks for the idea?

I read Michael Golamco’s blog in the New York Times a couple of days ago about his experience bringing his new play YEAR ZERO to the Second Stage Uptown. His excitement is palpable.

“When I go into production on a play, it literally changes my life. I’m suddenly in a rehearsal room with other people — actors, a director, a creative team — every day. I suddenly have a morning commute. The solitary process of storytelling turns collaborative.”

Collaboration means working together. That presumably is how it works in the professional world, my friends, and that’s how we’re trained in professional training programs, as evidenced in Mr. Golamco’s happy report. I have rarely had a collaborative theater experience in the last ten years, outside the three staged readings last year.

I’ve diagnosed it this way: there appears to be an insidious cross-over between industries in the Los Angeles contiguous counties between theater and film. For example, one young man asked me in class Thursday why I was allowing the other students to have a voice in casting the revised scene from PHISHING that I brought in. “That’s not how it’s done in the real world”, he said. His brother is a screenwriter apparently, working in the indie film market. Apparently this brother is constantly outraged over his Producer’s casting decisions, and that they don’t take his voice into consideration.

After I stressed to the class the importance of not doing things my way, encouraging them to get a degree of higher education, I also told them that in regards to collaborative casting, “I could get upset about it, or I could make sure that I know how to write my characters in dialogue, so that even when I am not asked my opinion, my scripts become producer, director, and actor proof.” Then I led them on a critical thinking assignment designed to deconstruct and analyze a title page, a cast of characters, and dialogue.

A writer may presume that she chose to write specific words for a purpose. My experience has shown that most readers do not operate from the same perspective. My only conclusion is that if readers are not visualizing the words that I write in the way that I intend them, I must write better. Also, never expect collaboration. And do not offer ideas and credits because you are nice; make sure you have weighed the personal and political ramifications for doing so; for when you give something away, you can’t take it back; it’s gone forever.

Erica Bennett

Suggested for her tombstone: “This is on me.” Dorothy Parker

I met twenty authors late Tuesday morning, including Tina Fey, Victor Hugo, Jennifer Weiner, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Okay. I really met twenty young adult students who had each chosen a famous published author, and witnessed two reader’s theater presentations that they prepared. The stagings featured an excerpt from each of the author’s work, and were directed by an amazing female actor/teacher, who was also featured in one of the readings of my play FREED last fall.

I entered the auditorium with an open mind, several blank sheets of paper, and a mechanical pencil. I turned off my phone and Internet connection, sat forward to engage in their production, and begged their inspiration to shine down on me. I was enthralled for the full hour and a half.

In preparation for our work tomorrow, I’ve been writing for approximately the last twelve hours. I developed a 22-page lesson plan that compares my revisions to the title page, character list, and scene one of PHISHING; 2008 vs. 2010. Then I’ll leave it up to the kids to decide which version tells a better story. It should be an interesting morning.

More soon…

And they chose PHISHING 2010 🙂

Erica Bennett

True, I did ask the music director to tell me if the actress portraying J.J. could sing her song so that I could write her a monologue or rewrite the scene, if she could not. True, rather than communicate with me or the director, he cut two of the three stanzas from her song, rendering the build-up to the climactic moment of the play incomprehensible; still frosts my a— just thinking about it. After all, we’re talking about the first production of a new, unpublished play, right?

Notwithstanding our sad, cruel situation, the only truth that matters to me today is that while I exhibit proof of a theater education and acting training, and the “objective eye” of an archivist, as well as evidence that I am quite capable of directing and producing plays and short films featuring trained actors, as well as untrained students, at the time my raw inexperience and over-eagerness as a playwright caused me to underwrite, as well as overwrite the play.

Thus the only one who should receive blame for PHISHINGs 2008 failure is ME alone. I wrote a play, in fact had written several in the previous eight years, had read and directed and witnessed many more in the years prior to that, had studied playwriting for just over a year at that point with two different teachers, but obviously had much more to learn.

I should have known not to assume that the director and music director read and understood my descriptions and choice of song lyrics, or that they would wish to discuss and develop them with me, if they did not. They understood what they understood. Sadly, what I had been trained to understand as collaboration was interpreted by the music director as challenging the director’s authority.

Apparently I was also quite unsuccessful in indicating my intentions in dialogue. For even beyond the music director’s oddly successful power-grab, the evidence was staring me in the face, and had been all along. For the director made two casting choices, which I accepted but did not agree with, i.e. her interpretation of the words that I thought I had written were at odds with mine.

It all ended on an early Sunday evening in May with a phone call from this wonderfully patient professional female actor/director, who had made me her partner early on because that was also her experience. However, she had gotten off the phone with the theater’s artistic director, who had often been kind to me in the past, but who had more history with and understanding of the music director’s position. In the face of this difficult political situation, she was forced to tell me, and she did so quite sweetly and very reasonably I might add, that I was being asked to “go away” again, although I was invited to return on opening night for the “premiere”.

I believe that I did the only thing any self-respecting playwright could do in my situation. I agreed. I agreed with one caveat. I would go away, if she agreed to remove my name from the production. I even offered to send her a pseudonym, as soon as I could think of a good one.

My suggestions were not accepted. My next recommendation was that the production be pulled. It was. For in the end it didn’t matter the amount of time and the money that I’d spent in the previous six months, the truth of the matter is the play simply wasn’t ready for a production and nobody was willing to develop it and me.

More fortunate is that I figured out the answer to this very puzzling dilemma the next year through study with another patient playwriting teacher and a gentle mentor.

My important lesson of 2009, and I thank you sincerely, C.F., is, if a description is important enough to FIGHT for write it into the dialogue. Apparently dialogue is read, and there’s less chance it’ll be cut. I am also now trained not to design sets, lights, props, or costumes in description, because apparently NOBODY reads that. Nor do I block, although I may indicate CROSSES. I also indicate the transition LIGHTS, thank you, my mentor E.E., and leave it to the director and designers to interpret what exactly all of it means to them.

Interpretation is their job, after all. Writing dialogue and story is mine. Don’t get me wrong; I still believe that it is the director’s job to serve the action of the play, not visa versa, and I can’t help but comment on what I perceive as irony when I see a director’s name printed larger than the playwright on a marketing poster.

However, I have learned that directors and actors must be able to ascertain my intentions whether I’m in the rehearsal room or not because it’s more likely that I will not be there more than once for the table read, if ever again. I can only hope that I have begun to exhibit evidence of this harshly learned lesson in my most recent work.

More soon…

Erica Bennett

It occurs to me that before I start blogging about how PHISHING revisions are going, I could share one of the most important lessons that I believe I’ve learned in the last two years. It’s probably quite obvious to most of you, but it was a revelation to me.

I actually can’t remember which one of my theater teachers taught me this, however I’ve known for years that published plays include a transcription of the play’s first production blocking and designs. I understand that transcription is generally struck from a play by actors and directors in rehearsal during subsequent productions. I’ve done it myself with a sturdy black felt-tip pen.

What I didn’t realize until last year is that some actors and directors see no difference between the transcription and the playwright’s descriptions. In fact they may be indistinguishable from each other, and I’ve been told that OC storefront theater directors and actors strike them all.

I am not sure if this is endemic in all professional theater training programs or just storefront theaters in the OC, or if it’s even a factual representation of what is actually taking place in rehearsals at all, but I was shocked when I first learned it might be true.

If I remember correctly, Tennessee William’s depiction of the United States and southern American life in 27 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON made my descent into Flora’s world possible. I studied acting with Jose Quintero in college. I don’t remember him saying so, but I was reminded at dinner recently that he encouraged us to read the descriptions.

Yet in the last two years when I have occasionally looked back at my role in PHISHINGs 2008 failure, I discovered that beyond personality differences and conflicting work ethics, beyond my ease with and apparent overuse of electronic communications, beyond every awful name I may have been or may still be called behind my back, the bottom line is, I realize that PHISHINGs director and music director misunderstood my play and that the blame, if any should be assigned, was NOT their own.

More later…

Erica Bennett

Last month I was surprised when PHISHING called out to me from the drawer begging for air. The 2008 play is set post-Katrina on a Louisiana bayou, and is centered on a young woman, J.J. (Justice Jaeger), an expert computer hacker, who is hired by a Presidential candidate to “fish” for dirt about a much hated rival. The story starts there revealing J.J.s traumatic youth and search for self. The time is now.

However PHISHING is challenged by a whole new set of dramatic circumstances today; we’re now post-2008 Presidential election, post-2010 John Edward’s baby/mama reveal, and only beginning to realize the full tragedy of the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster. Three weeks ago I decided to cut the songs, alter the antagonist’s gender from male Janus to female Janis, change one character’s ethnicity from Black to Latino, and gender-bend another; male or female. Yet how these events change and shape character arcs and motivations, I have yet to imagine.

Whatever PHISHING finally turns out to be, I begin the rewriting process today. I am leaving the house soon to meet with a group of young actors and their instructor in the Los Angeles environs to witness a performance and discuss casting. On Thursday, June 10^th we read from the play, and discuss it. I am invited to return on Tuesday, June 15^th with revisions.

I look forward to sharing my reflections with the LAFPI blog as I begin the process of rewriting a work so representative of old heartache, as well as revitalized hope and vision for its and my future.

More tomorrow…

Erica Bennett

In December 2009 I also began a new play, WATER CLOSET. It is about two women of Dutch-German descent, who are dealing with the effects of two wars nearly sixty years apart; a revised draft was completed in May, and submitted to several theaters and contests around the country.

In the summer of 2009 my cowboy play in one-act, JOLLY AND BEAN, was stage-read at the Newport Theatre Arts Center for the Orange County Playwrights Alliance of which I am an active member. In the fall of 2009 my play about a young Asian-American woman whose life is flashing in front of her eyes, FREED, received a staged-reading at the 2^nd Annual Laguna Beach New Play Festival, and at the LA Women’s Theatre 20% New Works Festival.

The last three theatre experiences are particularly remarkable in that they all began similarly to PHISHING. One, I chose the directors; the last three were all led by the same professional female director, PHISHING was led by a different professional female actor/director. In all four cases I worked with and assisted the directors as Producer, and revised the scripts. In all four cases, we made casting decisions together, as collaborators. In all four cases, we also determined together that I would only go to the rehearsals to which they invited me.

However, the last three theatre experiences sharply differ from PHISHING in that they were all allowed to develop and grow naturally over time without the gross interference by a non-professional without any apparent formal theater training or education.

For after my faith in her direction of my words and story was securely understood by all, those three theatre experiences actually grew to the point where I was invited by the director to give notes to her actors. She clearly understood that I was working only to support her vision of my material, because I had collaborated enough in its development to trust that she was working toward achieving mine. Bingo: faith, trust, collaboration; that’s what I had been seeking all along.

While it’s also pretty clear that I haven’t been sitting around for two years wallowing and worrying about my 2008 OC storefront theater failures, it was only after those three last awesome theatrical experiences that my PHISHING wounds finally began to heal.

More later…

Erica Bennett

I began writing plays in 1999 to escape the horrors of chemotherapy. Ten years later I remain a dedicated librarian and archivist who writes plays. I was informed just this past Thursday that I am also ten-years cancer-free from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. However, I am not certain that cancer survivors can ever really turn off the ticking clock.

Earlier this year I decided that I no longer write for anybody else but me; no short contests, or 24-hour festivals. I am freshly committed to writing dramatic plays about American women, regardless of ethnicity or country of origin, and the quintessential issues that confound us: men and babies, or lack thereof. LOL.

However by the fall of 2008 I was just fairly recovered from my PHISHING experience, and I began directing and producing the first production of my 2006 one-act play for students, EL PRIMER DIA DE CLASES. Over the 2008/2009 academic school year the play was co-produced by several and featured twenty or more community college students, who were taking classes in my college’s Ethnic Studies Department. This unique group of young adults had organized, discovered and read my play, and decided to adopt it as one of their several projects. I was extremely grateful to be honored in this fashion.

The play was actually the culmination of my 2002-2005 work as a UCLA graduate student in library science where I also achieved an emphasis in archival studies. It was while researching a classroom assignment that I first connected viscerally to the story of a young Orange County Latina, Sylvia Mendez, who was denied entrance to an all-white elementary school in the mid-1940s because of the color of her skin. It became my mission to bring her story out of the archives for the benefit of the community, who I thought would benefit most from its retelling.

For those unfamiliar with it, Ms. Mendez’ story grew into a matter of national historical significance. Her father, Gonzalo Mendez, led a group of five fathers representing 5000 children of Latin or Mexican descent in a class action lawsuit entitled Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County et al. in the California federal courts in 1945. The case won on appeal in 1947 ultimately desegregating California, and setting the precedent for Brown vs. Board of Education, which desegregated the United States seven years later.

Early in 2009 my play was chosen to be included in the new California Social Studies Civil Rights curriculum for primary and secondary school teachers. I followed up in the spring of 2009 by writing formal oral history interview questions with students and with the college produced, and directed the videotaping of memories of as many of the surviving family members related to the case as I was able to contact and coordinate.

In the fall of 2009 I cut a forty-minute documentary film with a talented student editor that wove together video of the play’s production with the oral histories. TALES OF A GOLDEN STATE: THE MENDEZ V. WESTMINSTER STORY screened in November 2009 for the community, and was submitted to a local public broadcaster. We were invited to share the film in full and in part with audiences at the Nixon Presidential Library and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in early 2010.

More in a second or two…

Erica Bennett

In December 2007/January 2008 I wrote a play with music entitled PHISHING for what the OC terms a “storefront theater” whose main requirement was that it be set on the same set as their A-show scheduled in the 8pm slot. It was selected for production, my third at this theater. However, two weeks before it opened, after the second rehearsal on the set, I recommended that it be pulled from production after witnessing and being a party to a perfect theatrical storm. It was.

Long story short, early in pre-production, with the infinite wisdom attainable only from years of labor as a kitchen cabinet refinisher, storefront theater actor, guitarist in a touring band, and so much more, the music director I had attached to the project, who I considered a friend and who was also an insider at the theater where the play was being produced, told me that I had written a “good” play, but that I needed to “go away”, so that he and the director could make it “great”. Our relationship never recovered.

My happy baggage includes a BA in Theater with an emphasis in Acting and an MLIS with an emphasis in Archival Studies. I have read some more than once of the great playwright autobiographies, including Moss Hart’s ACT ONE, which had an indelible impact on me. I’ve read a great many plays, acted in and witnessed many more.

I actually pursued a career in the entertainment industry working as a writer’s assistant with dramatic television writers, several of whom are female show runners. I worked in LA in this capacity for approximately ten years before leaving to reeducate myself, and finally achieved my position as a community college faculty librarian in the OC in the fall of 2006.

Thus I came to this theater specifically in early-2007 hoping not only to become involved with the community I had just moved into, but also with the naïve? understanding that in the professional theatre at least, the playwright is considered an important collaborator.

What I was told directly, and indirectly when I didn’t “go away” because I was attached to the production as Producer, was that storefront theater actors are intimidated by the presence of the playwright in rehearsal. In other words “actors get confused about who’s in charge”, and that their theater is a director’s medium.

While I am trained to understand this to be true in film, in my experience television is very much a writer’s medium, and I believed that the theatre was sacrosanct. I am a trained actor, yet conversely, I always longed for access to the playwright. So theirs were philosophies I didn’t understand, even as much as I agree that the prospect of meeting the playwright is daunting.

Ultimately, however, the result was that this theater and I had extreme difficulty reconciling my expectations and training with theirs, so I pulled my other new drama scheduled for production in the fall of 2008, and walked away.

More tomorrow…

Erica Bennett