Category Archives: Writing

The Mask

Women, Writing

written by Chelsea Sutton

This feels like a funny story to share publicly. I’ve been sitting here staring at a blank screen, wondering what I could possibly offer in terms of writing advice or experience or reflection right now, on this blog. And I just keep circling this moment.

So here it goes.

I love Halloween. I love October. It also ends up being the busiest time when it comes to work, and this year I also happened to have several projects on top of day job stuff. But I was determined to not let spooky season pass me by. So I packed every spare moment with haunted houses and horror movies and spooky excursions.

This included going to two seances in one day.

If you know me, you know I like ghosts. They are becoming a kind of brand for me, I guess. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a real paranormal experience, though. I tend to be pretty skeptical even when seeking out these kinds of things. But I’m also beginning to think I have a wall or thick curtain inside me that drops around my heart anytime I do anything that is sincerely taking these things seriously.

Because how embarrassing to be sincere, right?

So I go to this seance that is meant to be a space for folks to kinda practice their intuition; the folks running it think everyone has the ability to communicate with Spirit et al, and it’s really just a time to try; and to offer any messages to the room that you think you are getting.

I, of course, was getting nothing, and feeling increasingly stupid sitting there. Jealous of others feelings things, but also thinking they were lying, somehow. I tried to focus and observe, filing this away to put into a story or play someday. It’s research! That’s what I always tell myself. Research.

And then one of the facilitators says they have a message for me. They don’t know who it is, but the visual they are getting is someone who is very theatrical, wearing a mask that goes over their eyes and head, kinda like Zorro. And this spirit, they are hopping back and forth being an entertainer, a clown, and then being a savior, a protector. Like these were the roles they bounced between in life. And the message, the facilitator says, is that the spirit is telling me that they wore a mask their whole life and hoped that I would not follow that path. They hoped I could remove my mask more often than they could when they were alive.

Does that resonate? asked the facilitator.

I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about it, I said. And didn’t elaborate.

There are two weird things about this. One is that it was the most specific and detailed message offered that day, amongst many others to other folks in the room, messages that felt relatively vague or general. I mean, the theater girl in the room got a masked Zorro talking to her from beyond.

The other weird thing is that the day before I was talking to my mother, reflecting on some emotional things that have been happening lately, and I said out loud, with emphasis, three times how I’ve gotten very good as masking my emotions. Masking, I said, almost proudly, frustrated, resentful, powerful. A skill I’ve had to learn for various reasons. A skill most women learn. A skill I’ve mastered and had to implement a lot recently.

I masked in the seance room too. I said thank you and I’d think about it. I was calm. But inside I was frantically trying to logic this message — do I know any dead people who would have dressed up like Zorro? No. This was so stupid. But then I started crying. A wave of heat flooded over me. I pulled myself together. Got through the rest of the seance. And in the safety of my car, finally wept. And I cried for a good two hours off and on after that.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know if it was the Universe or Spirit et al or my own unconscious reaching out. Or just a very intuitive guy who saw a woman who hadn’t spoken for an hour and got a read on her because she isn’t as good at masking as she thinks she is.

But does it matter?

I sometimes think I don’t have paranormal experiences because I have a predetermined idea of how they are supposed to look or feel. I wonder if things come through all the time but I’ve blocked them out, out of fear or stupidity or stubbornness. And okay, that’s one kind of problem. But if I’m like that in one area of my life, am I like that other places?

Do I feel like a writing failure because I think success is supposed to look one way? Do I feel behind or lost or sad because I think life is supposed to look one way and have made it almost impossible to allow myself to see it differently?

I’m hoping in the new year I can take off the mask and only put it on for special occasions. I hope that whatever mask I do put on is one that is gorgeous and celebratory and not one I’m hiding behind. I hope I can be open to the possibility of the writing life looking different than what I was told it would be. Not just the writing life, but everything.

I hope I can get out of my own damn way.

Does that resonate? Because I hope it does.

The Alligator Farm

Artists, Playwright, playwriting, Writing

by Chelsea Sutton

I just came back from a three month residency in Taos, New Mexico. As someone who is not independently wealthy and has a few (many, loud) obligations to people and entities that cannot be put on hold for an entire, unbroken three months…it was not exactly the most peaceful or focused period of artistic creation anyone has ever had. Life must go on, after all.

But I never (truly) expected it to be. Hoped it would be? Sure. Expected it to be? Naw.

While a residency is meant as a time to take a pause on the rest of the world and focus only on your art…they are, in my experience, more than that. Yes, how lovely would it be to truly turn off the world (especially the world as it is right now) and just create. But to me they are opportunities to live, for a time, in a place I would never be able to afford to live in (or perhaps even think about moving to) otherwise. It’s a chance to be filled up with new experiences, a new environment, new people. It’s a time to be inspired by others’ practices, art, and points of view.

But I think most importantly, it’s also a time when you keep your artistic practice at the forefront of your mind — even when you are not actively creating, you are aware that you are there to create. And that time is limited. It’s pressurized time. That simple awareness and ticking clock makes you prioritize the work, and to look at everything that happens there as fuel for that work. Even interruptions. Even the things that don’t go as planned. Even the things you miss while you’re gone.

It’s easy to allow your priorities to slip in every day life. It’s easy to forget things that are important to you. And sometimes a change of scenery is the thing you need to remind you of what you do and why. And maybe discover something you’ve lost.

And one thing I was reminded of while in Taos was my love of late night radio. I am such a Spotify bitch — I don’t listen to radio anymore, only the endless playlists and podcasts. I even find myself listening to the same episodes of the same podcasts over and over, like a kind of security blanket.

But in Taos, I began to listen to the local radio station True Taos Radio — and I was even a guest one early morning to promote an artist showcase. But what started my new obsession for the station was the segment “Monotone Mondays” on Monday nights from 10pm-12am during which the DJ listed the artists he was about to play in such a performance poetry adjacent vibe that it made me stop the conversation I was in the middle of and listen. I was hooked.

I began streaming it as often as I could, and often when I was writing. I came to love the listing off of the local events that day, mentioning locations I was familiar with and sometimes artists I’d met who would be performing at the Taos Inn or the Alley Cantina; the ads for local businesses; the casual DJ voices; the always new, always a bit odd, always changing music choices. It made me remember how something can be hyper-local and still feel strangely expansive.

One Monday night, I kept listening past when Monotone Mondays ended. I was writing, pushing to meet a deadline I’d made up for myself. It was Tuesday morning at 1am…and suddenly I discovered “The Alligator Farm.”

I was only able to catch it a couple times, but what I remember of The Alligator Farm was a mix of macabre sketches, oddball music, non sequiturs, and high strangeness that again made me stop and listen. It was chaos and whimsy at 1am. And I loved it, even if I didn’t understand it.

I suddenly remembered years of driving late nights listening to George Noory. Being seven years old and hosting my own radio show in my room that I recorded on cassettes in my boom box. The early morning radio I’d look forward to on my long commutes to a job I hated.

I don’t know where this remembering, this discovery may lead to. Maybe nowhere. Maybe the act of remembering and being inspired or being made to stop and listen to something fleeting, that I can’t go back and replay, is enough. Maybe THAT is just another way of keeping these things present in our minds. THAT is what I got from the residency.

That’s the scariest thing about leaving a residency. That any progress you made shaking off bad habits or a poor artistic attention span will slip right back to where you started.

Remembering is a practice, just like mindfulness, just like writing. It is active.

Perhaps I didn’t finish the great American play at the residency. But I got The Alligator Farm. And you know what I’ll be doing at 1am (12am PT) this Tuesday night. So I can keep remembering. So I can keep this feeling at the forefront of my mind and not let that ticking clock out of my sight.

Here’s to you. Finding your own Alligator Farm.

Give Up?

Artists, LAFPI, Playwright, Writing, , , , , ,

by Leelee Jackson

Give Up? 

When do you give up? Like when do you finally throw in the towel and call it quits? Being an artist is hard work these days. We face constant rejection at an alarming rate, oftentimes with no real understanding  as  to why we were rejected in the first place. Art centered establishments who have the power to change lives are underfunded, overworked and sometimes even corrupt. The world has broken and will a poem fix that? Can a play help it heal properly? Will the film adaptation evoke change in the necessary hearts and minds of those who can undo the very  policies that broke the world in the first place? It’s all so strange being a creator these days. Our biggest competition has become AI. I wanna be like Dwight from The Office when he outsold the website in a single day. Like with hard  work, focus and dedication, I too can beat technology. But what if I can’t. And  to be honest, I don’t know if  I  even want to try. Like if a robot writes a play better than me? Or paint a picture better than Amy Sherald, what can I do to stop that? Where would I even start? 

“I’m weary of the ways of the world” 

How could I not be? I’m constantly (disarmed) distracted by social media. Doom scrolling content to make sense of it all but only confusing myself more. “Post something idiot”  a voice  in the back of my head that pressures me to contribute to the madness. Believing I got something to say that the people need to hear and that if I really wanted to,  I could easily get in the creators fund. I’m smart. Funny. Passionate and creative enough right? I could go “viral” or whatever the kids are doing. “Why not?!” that same voice justifying why I spent two hours on social media calling it “research”. Still not posting what I want to. Just regurgitating what has already been said while believing I’m saying something different. Thinking that if I wanted to be heard, this is the way to do it. And if I’m not heard here, I’m not heard anywhere. So what’s the point in speaking at all?  

Is there a point to defeat?  

I’ve been overwhelmed lately with the feeling of wanting to be important. To be someone that people will listen to for real. I don’t know if it’s because I lost my parents but for some reason, the last few years I’ve been thinking heavy on my legacy, how I want to be known in the world when I’m no longer in it. How will I be known? As a failed artist or as an artist who stopped trying? 

“I have hopes for myself” 

But I lack hope in the rest of life. The world has broken (again and again) and I’m struggling to know how I can help fix it. I’m just a writer, which I know is no small feat. But when will I get to write about love and not war? Kindness and not hate? When will the human experience be soft for me (Black folks) instead of constant protest and creative efforts to fix a world I ain’t even break?  I wrote out 31 of my  favorite plays to read and all 31 centered gender, class and race. I wonder if Black people have ever gotten the stage to write about anything different?  

This shit is hard. When do you give up? Take your losses and find a quiet lil life  for yourself? Turn around and head yo ass back home? You tried it in the little city and couldn’t cut it. When do you give up?  Find a better role to play? 

I believe the fundamental job of an artist is to create. To make. To offer another perspective at something we’ve looked at before but never in that way. But damn, all these rejection letters got me feeling like I’m saying the same shit. Making me feel like there is nothing new to say because it’s all been said before since Black people’s work is only celebrated when it centers a limited range of topics (gender, race and class). Is it time to write about keeping myself and my plants alive? 

“Struggling through the work is extremely important – more important to me than publishing it.”

Toni Morrison is always right. If this is the work, then giving up sometimes has to be a part of the process; at least contemplating it…deeply considering it. 

But I’ll never be romantic about how hard this is. If it weren’t hard, would it be a struggle? But do we always have to struggle to do the work? 

But I hope not. 

The taste of fire

Female Artists, Home, Playwright, playwriting, Writing

The view from my house on Tuesday, January 7, 2025

by Cynthia Wands

January 11, 2025

It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m writing this while I’m watching the smoke from the Palisades Fire continue to menace the skyline. I’ve been on evacuation alert since Tuesday, when I packed up my car, reassured the cat (Ted) that we’re in this together, and that we’ll leave once I’m given a Mandatory Evacuation Order. It’s been four days of trying to remain calm and organized during the power outages, the buzz of evacuation alerts, and the sleepless nights hunched over the phone, tracking the Watch Duty fire maps.

Dear friends have lost everything, their house burned to the ground that Tuesday night. And so did thousands of their neighbors. The images of the neighborhoods charred beyond recognition look like the aftermath of the bombings in Dresden during World War Two.

And there’s a lot in this disaster that reminds me of what war might be like: the constant awareness that at any moment your life could be shattered; knowing that other lives have already been ravaged; there’s the unexpected roar of helicopters, and the shock of the hurricane winds that slammed through that dark night; the occasional burst of acrid smoke that make your eyes water; and the scent of burnt everything when you step outside to see if the fire is on the ridge line.

You get jumpy. And bursts of emotion can surprise you. Last night a friend was online with me as we were both yelling at the newscasters ON THE TELEVISION. I know. I know they can’t hear us, but it was the only yelling we could do. HOW MANY HELICOPTERS ARE ON THEIR WAY? WHERE’S THE FIRE? STOP THE STAMMERING! WHERE? WHERE IS IT? STOP IT!

That kind of thing. You’re so helpless that the only sense of engagement is yelling at the television. At least the power was on.

I’m thinking that these fires, and the disaster of these fires, will change the stories we tell about our life here in Los Angeles. We’ve had other fires, and earthquakes, and riots. And mudslides. But this disaster feels differently for me – its about the four elements: fire, air, water, earth. Its about home and refuge and community.

It’s also about the thousand little things we live with, the thousands of decisions we make about the things in our life. When I was packing up the car in case I needed to evacuate, I had to evaluate the value of any item I would carry away with me. And that’s when the story of my life here became a kind of inventory – what do you take with you when you have to leave everything else behind? After I packed up the legal documents, the computer, the medicines, cat treats, my grandmother’s quilt, Eric’s artwork – then I paused. Could I fit the artwork on the walls in the car? Family portraits? Some of it would fit. But could I fit the big pieces of artwork, the big paintings, the six foot mannequin, the six panel art screen – maybe not. The family china? The books? Oh, the many books – do I have time to go through my favorite books? Maybe I’d get more books. Later.

And that’s when the story became a thousand different stories. The mosaic of my life here: when I lived here with Eric, as I’ve lived here without him, the dinner parties with the fancy wine glasses. I felt every object asking “Would you take me?”

In the end, I took what I could. I hope I’ll be able to unpack it all when the evacuation alerts end, and the air is cleared of smoke, and the bits of the mosaic of lives burnt by fire finds a new pattern.

Just now I stepped outside to watch the trees thrash around in the winds. The air tasted like fire.

Future History

playwriting, Theaters, Theatre, Writing, ,

By Tiffany Antone

I’ve been spinning. Are you spinning? What even IS this world right now? I find myself doing a lot of listening. Books that have been bringing me insight, gifting me language which which to make sense of things: On Tyranny, On Freedom, Jesus and John Wayne.

I guess I’m trying to figure out what artists are supposed to do in fascist times? Timothy Snyder says it’s vital to build/cultivate community. Artists are good at this. He also tells us we must not obey in advance. Artists are rebels, so that feels like another check.

But artists are also targets.

Tyrants know we are dangerous – it’s why they always go after us first. Maybe we need to lean into our dangerousness? Do you feel dangerous?

I’m writing… writing… It’s taken me all week to write just this post because what I am writing is fractured, fuzzy… I don’t have answers. I can’t make sense of things. I’m leaning hard into absurdism, post-modernism… I know that I don’t want to write fluff. What truths can I embody? What are the metaphors for this moment? Does any of it matter? Does my art matter?

I have no answers.

Theatre as a business is too much an egregore to respond to this moment with teeth. It will be up to the individual artists and scrappy theatres to challenge our new norms, to speak truth to power, to keep ourselves honest. Theatre companies have bottom lines to worry about, and that means they will lean heavy into what they think they can sell, but anyone will eyeballs can see the truth isn’t selling right now.

Be a witness to history. Be present in your history. Be an active participant in your history.

We hover in liminal space. What happens after Jan 20 is big business right now – read all the papers and pick out your favorites. Glue them on the wall. Throw darts at the scariest words. Breathe deeply in the liminality knowing that soon air will be spiky, things will turn sharp, our new reality will close in with force.

Write your plays. Your words are power. Even if they don’t get performed, our future history needs these plays

Visiting the Dead…

LAFPI, Writing, , ,

by Robin Byrd

In my dreams the other night, I met my twin aunts. They were happy together; they were young again – just turned thirty – the age where I first took note of them and mother, who was thirty-two. I had wanted to make sure I remembered them as they were because they were getting old. They were no longer in their twenties. I was too young to know thirty is not old. They were laughing and asked me what I was doing there. “Visiting,” I said.

I am not sure why I dreamed of them. I will look into it further later. This is the second dream I’ve had in as many months where I was seeking out someone in a hidden place and being asked, “What are you doing here?” Again, I was visiting.

The places were nearly identical in that they were located in some sort of festival-like place, either underground or in a hidden realm. The atmosphere reminded me of the festivals we used to have in my school gymnasium when I was in grade school.

My biggest questions are: why am I visiting the dead, and why are they at festivals?

I am wondering if it has anything to do with my break from writing plays. While reworking some pieces, I have not started anything new outside of my deep inner process. Which, as I think on it more, may be where the dreams are coming from.

I am also wondering if it is time to shift back to writing plays again. Lately, I have been delving into alternative poetic styles of expression. I am also starting to lose interest in things other than story. I’m obsessed with research, knowing that the fodder will be used in something one day. I have got to get away. I need to get away lest I drown in an overabundance of stories cutting off my air, lest I bust due to the worlds growing within me fighting to be born.

Anticipating the many new branches growing from my tree of life, I am excited for the coming days. I look forward to many new birth dates and an answer to why I am visiting the dead in my dreams…

What is an “Important” Play?

Female Artists, Performance, Play, Playwright, playwriting, Reading, Writing

by Chelsea Sutton

This question – what defines an “important play” and what doesn’t? And do we, as playwrights, need to worry about this? It’s been…on my mind.

Yesterday I got to hear a reading of a play of mine that I hadn’t looked at in years. On a whim, I submitted The Sudden Urge to Jump for a new work series with Full Circle Players, a Riverside theatre company that is doing the good work in Riverside County to bring classic and new theatre to an area of SoCal that needs more theatre. (I grew up in the Inland Empire so I’m allowed to say this lol. Check them out in the area and support!)

The play takes place in a video store (that used to be a church) as two siblings try to pick up the pieces of their lives after their sister’s funeral. The sister may fall for the brother’s best friend in an vaguely enemies-to-lovers kind of way. The dead sister might monologue and try to control the story that is continuing after her death. There are a lot of movie references. A lot. It is ultimately about how we try to fit our lives so neatly into genres and categories and shape how things go…but that’s just not how this shit works.

I don’t know what made me specifically choose this play to submit to their call. Maybe I thought it was one of the most digestible, accessible plays I have, and knowing the Inland Empire like I do, I wanted to offer something that was…not alienating? I mean it’s about suicide, but it’s also a love story and there’s jokes so – wee! Maybe I knew that I’d never look at it again unless I had a real reason…and I hoped they’d give me a reason?

What came up for me really, as I was thinking about this play and doing a rewrite of it for the reading, was why I had kinda put it aside. I wrote the first draft of it in the first year I was in the Skylight Theatre PlayLab. It had a reading. And I remember feeling, in that group, that because it was a love story, that was at least vaguely a comedy, and was looking at things like human connection and depression…and maybe, possibly, because it was written by a (young at the time) woman, it didn’t feel…important? Despite it having a prominent storyline about suicide, it felt like fluff in the sea of other work being created in that group. And honestly, it felt like it set the tone for me for reactions in that group for the next few years as I wrote two other plays. Reactions from others, and self doubts and judgements within myself. Fluffy. Women problems. Working class problems. Not important.

So the play had another reading in Houston a year or two later. Both the original reading and the one in Houston had lovely responses. It was a crowd pleaser in general, the actors always had fun and felt connected. But still, I put it in a drawer. I decided that it was not worth investing time into, because it wasn’t about anything important.

When I look toward the “big” theatres, the ones we all aspire to be at, the gatekeeping contests and conferences, the dwindling new works development opportunities, it always seems like folks are looking for the next “important” play. The one, it seems, that is going to change the landscape of theater and American culture, that is going to solve climate change or racism or homophobia or misogyny, or, hell, cure cancer I guess. As if it is one voice that will be the hero, the savior, and not, instead, a diversity of voices in a rich ecosystem of society that will ultimately make a difference.

I write grants to pay bills, and this comes up a lot too. Every art project has to be solving some big problem and we need to show how we’re going to do that with the $500 grant. Solve the world’s problems with no money and no support. And then give us a 30 page report about it. So my mind is here all the time – trying to convince people why art is “important.” Why what I do is “important.” This happens all the time too in the theatre company I help run. Every show we ask these questions — why is this play important? Why are we doing this now?

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be part of our practice to ask these questions. We should know why we’re driven to do the things we spend so many years on! Having a purpose, a direction for our work is central to keeping ourselves focused and engaged and connected to the world. But twisting ourselves into knots to fit a box is not the way to good art. And convincing ourselves of our own importance is also NOT the way to good art or relationships or longevity.

But also…The Play That Goes Wrong is done everywhere and like…is that an important play? Please, I’d love to see an essay on that.

Do we only have room for fluffy slap stick and trauma porn? Is there nothing in between? Can we do some genre-mixing please?

I wrote a play last year that I thought had the real potential of an “important” play. It was ABOUT something real, a real problem, financial burdens, broken communities, the targeting of vulnerable women. I sent it out in earnest to the annual cycle of awards and conferences, which feel like the cost of being a playwright in this system. And usually I do this with very little expectation. Rejection, to me, is a Season. But this time…I had hope. I had an important play! If only someone would give me the space to develop it, I could change the world!

As one would expect, it got a few nods, a few pats on the head, and I’ll be traveling to Alaska in June for a reading at a conference. Cool! I’m grateful! And also…it’s not an important play, obviously.

Because I don’t know what an important play is. Nor can I, the playwright, be the judge of what that is, for my work. And I’m mad at myself for spending too much time worrying about whether that play, or any play of mine, fits into a box that is always shifting.

When it comes down to it, both of these plays are wildly not important. But they are important to me. They both were written not toward some person’s agenda, but toward my own obsession and curiosity about something. And ultimately a play will never be “important” if it is not important first to you. And frankly, we don’t get to decide what the play does in the world, or how people react to it. That’s not our fucking business. And I guess I’m a little tired of putting too much of my self worth on the validation of forces beyond my control.

So is the life of a writer.

When I sat in the reading of The Sudden Urge to Jump last night, I was reminded why I wrote it. I was delighted at my (slightly) younger self for writing it, for the little quirks of love and attraction I’m drawn to writing about, about the depression and frustrations I felt at the time, and how I still feel all these things. And that the only thing that made the play unimportant was my piss-poor attitude toward it.

Will the play ever get a production? I hope so. Will it ever win awards? Nah. Will it change the world if it does? Absolutely not. But the audience laughed at jokes, giggled nervously at the awkward romantic moments, and cackled or groaned or nodded at the endless movie references (I had chats about the pop culture nods with folks after). In the talk back, the playwright of the other play presented that night and I laughed at the way our plays were paired up, the parallel themes, the dead siblings in the plays, death and religion in general. the pop references, the way they did or did not speak to each other. In the words of one audience member, his play made them weep, and mine was charming. And I’m good with that.

I’m good with that also because I saw my dad laughing. And my mother, who often asks me to write something that is not so dark or pessimistic, who I partially wrote the play for (because love story!) she turned to me after the reading with a big smile on her face. And she said “That was so great!” She delighted in a happy ending, some hope, people taking a chance on each other. And you know what? That’s enough to make it an important play to me.

Go write your weird little love story. People need that too.

Waiting for Permission

Female Artists, Play, Playwright, playwriting, Women, Writing

by Chelsea Sutton

I can remember almost every moment when someone has made me feel small and stupid for writing what I want to write.

These moments live rent free in my head, every time I sit down to the blank page.

At a writing workshop, a faculty person told me I was “putting on” a “quirky” sensibility, play-acting a quirky writer who writes quirky things, and that I would never succeed with this act.

Men have told me that things my female characters want don’t matter or the “stakes aren’t high enough” because the characters are unmarried and/or without children.

I’ve been told that a black comedy about criminals was good but that I was just play-acting at being a wannabe Martin McDonagh (this play was a finalist for the O’Neill).

Men have told me that my female characters are not “likable” particularly when they are not performing femininity in the way they expect it to look.

Men have asked me to think about what my plays are “about” without even trying to identify themes that are very obviously there (usually plays with all female casts).

I won’t even go into how many times people have looked down on genre (non realism) work.

I’ve heard the words “too weird” or “too experimental” or “too much (fill in the blank)” so often that every time I write I stop and doubt myself — checking myself in case I’m trying to be weird even when I don’t think the things I make are that weird. I would never call anything I do “experimental.” All I try to do is write what I’m interested in.

Everyone reading this has had an experience similar to these, or far far worse.

I’ve been thinking about these things because I recently finished a new play and had a reading at The Road as part of the Under Construction SlamFest. The play was about villains, female villains specifically, and not the Disney villains, but the ones who rip your life apart day-in-day-out. I’ve always wanted to go as far as McDonagh or Shepard or any other celebrated male writer who writes brutality and violence and ugliness mixed with humor. But there’s something inside me (possibly probably influenced by any version of the experiences above) that has stopped me from going as harsh or brutal as I could.

I’ve written violence before. My plays are dark as shit usually. But something about this play made me nervous. Every voice that has ever told me I’m just play-acting, every voice that told me women don’t act like this or don’t write like this, that women have to be likable, every voice that said they don’t like “experimental” work (does anyone even understand what that means?) — those voices surrounded this play in an intense and specific way. I could only really get pages out when I was under an extreme deadline (pages for writers group, pages for rehearsal, etc.) A deadline was the only thing that could silence the voices long enough so I could actually just WRITE IT. Because when I could write it, I could finally see it, without all the judgement.

And at the first rehearsal for the play, after we’d read it and were having a lovely chat about it, I asked the actors and director (a room full of women) if I could go further. Could I make it darker? More violent? Could I make the body count clear and HIGH by the end?

And everyone in the room said a resounding YES in unison.

And so I did.

Is the play perfect? Is it going far enough yet? Is it really truly itself yet? No. But that rewrite I did pushed it closer to its boundary. Because they said yes.

I will never forget the feeling of a room full of women giving me permission. I’m trying to reframe the negative voices as funny stories — silly interludes on the way to seeing the permission that was already mine. And yours, too.

Safely. And at a distance.

playwriting, Writing, , ,

By Tiffany Antone

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Whoa, hey, what is even happening right now?

SO MUCH.

SO MUCH IS HAPPENING.

And it feels like SO MUCH has been happening for SO LONG that I am SHORT-CIRCUITING. I don’t know if I know how to do this anymore. But what has changed? Hasn’t the world always been in peril in some capacity? Or, maybe it’s more accurate to ask “Hasn’t mankind always been in peril in some capacity?” Why does this moment in time feel so hopelessly perilous?

The 2016 election hit me hard, but I rebounded with radical empathy! I was going to create opportunities for connection! I founded Protest Plays Project for playwrights writing for social change. At the same time, I began working with colleges to create opportunities for playwrights to draft plays rooted in their communities – we would then exchange the plays and read them on our myriad campuses. Radical empathy would save us!

It did not save us.

So I wrote an outlandish feminist sci-fi play that made me laugh even while I held my breath about absolutely everything else. We moved. I had a second child. I wrote postcards to voters. I experienced the Iowa caucuses. I held my breath. Maybe, if we could just get that gaudy, greedy, mistake out of the white house… I’d be able to breathe a little easier.

Then the pandemic.

The fucking pandemic.

I wrote more postcards. I started Plaguewrites, collaboratively writing “pandemic-proof” (aka, outdoor and long-distance) plays with other playwrights trying to DO SOMETHING. My instinct to keep fucking going, innovate, pivot! LEAN IN!, was in full force.

But now, everything from that time period is a swirly knotted mess. George Floyd, Jan 6th, Giuliani’s drip-drip-drippy dye job, online teaching, closed day care, zoom zoom zoooooooom and double-washing my tomatoes…

I turned a play into a short film with our students.
I got diagnosed with Breast Cancer.
I got my tits chopped off, did radiation, completely revised my syllabus for online teaching, then hybrid teaching, then once more for back-to-the-DON’T-YOU-DARE-SAY-“NORMAL”-classroom. All of my students fractured, thin…
Myself fractured.
Thin
(Well, thin in spirit at least. In person, I become thick with emotional eating. Sucking what pleasure I can from every goddam donut, brownie, and buttery potato I can find…)

I wrote more postcards to even more voters.

I finished a too-long-in-the-crock-pot play that no one seems to be too excited about.

What year is it? What even is “time” anymore?

And now there’s another fucking election coming down the pike, with the same candidates as last time, and it’s like, do we really have to?

I’ve got a new play finished. I’m sending it out. I really love it. But… like…does it matter?
Does any of this matter?

I don’t rebound so well anymore. I’m tired. I’m so, so, so, so, tired. And I’m just a middle-aged, de-breasted, middle-class, white lady with kids. How the fuck are YOU?

What are you writing about?

Is it helping you breathe?

Maybe that’s why I keep hitting these keys… writing is order. Scenes move forward. Characters in impossible situations make choices, which have consequences, and I can see it all safely.

And from a distance.

So.
I’m working on some new stuff. Maybe it will help me deal with the unbearable weight of this impossible world.

In the meantime…
I’m still holding my breath.

Continuing…

LAFPI, Playwright, Writing, , ,

by Robin Byrd

A year ago, I went home, I had Laryngitis and was unable to love on everyone…  Laryngitis, that’s what the doctors called it – I have been having throat spasms since my time in the Army.  A few days before my flight out, my throat closed – no air. The pushing sound of me trying to force my throat open – something I learned from a Marine who blew air into my windpipe to open it the first time my throat closed.  He saved my life.  I was in AIT (Advanced Individual Training) for my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and all of a sudden, the water I was swallowing expelled out of my throat like a fountain as I gasped for air.

Doctors never believe me.  They won’t even check me if I get to emergency after it stops.  Even those doctors this last time in the emergency room didn’t believe me as they watched me gasp for air.  They told me to “calm down”. Then slowly hooked me up to monitor the air, laughed among themselves (probably calling me a hypochondriac in code) until the machine called foul and the people from the front desk came back to see who was sounding like they couldn’t breathe.  The look between them – the doctors – “Oh, she really isn’t getting air…”

“No, I am not getting air, that’s why I came to emergency to pay the $200 dollar plus fee – to be seen.”

I left with a bag of medication but nothing to help with the spasms should they turn up again. They called it Laryngitis but knew there was something else going on.

I don’t know why I am thinking about this.  Maybe, because it’s the feeling I get when every avenue I try to get my work out there seems to expel my efforts like the water I was drinking that first time. The constant reconciling is enough to bust the four back wheels on a semi-truck.  All the ideas, all the words…

And yet I continue…  Here’s to continuing, out of breath and all, until…

The wolves who came to breakfast devoured the meat with the life at once, leaving scant scraps for the omega. There is a hierarchy among wolves, there is also a great sense of community.

“I have never been contained except I made the prison.” – Mari Evans