Tag Archives: playwriting

Nurture vs. A Good Slap in the Face

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Sometimes I sit on my sofa watching X-Files reruns with a fist-full of chocolate just because I feel like it…  Lately, I’ve felt like it a lot more.

So much so in fact that I’m thinking I might just  need a good a slap in the face to get my day-dreaming butt back to the keys, because although that Fox Mulder makes me go “mmm,” indulging the inner kicker and screamer can only lead to wider hips and a few cavities.

(sigh)

I don’t know if it’s all the “working” that’s got me so lazy lately, or what, but I get home from my 9-5er and all I want to do is vegitate.  I don’t want to look at my computer, I don’t want to think, I just want to be whisked away by alien-chasing men in well tailored pants… or sit in the back yard with a glass of red wine and look for my own alien adventures in the sky above.

I think that this is why I treasured my unemployment, even as it was landing me on my parents couch; I knew the time was precious.  I knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to spend days, Weeks, MONTHS, writing…

I’ve spoken to several friends lately who find themselves at the mercy of jobless woes, but it’s the artists who seem the least fazed; as though having long ago made peace with the fact lthat they were dedicating themselves to a dance with uncertainty by pursuing their passions.  Eating bologna and corn flakes for a week stinks, but if you’ve done it before the economic crisis/disaster/total and complete meltdown, it’s not like you’re slamming your head against your law degree in abject and stunned anxiety, wondering “How in the world did this happen to me?!”

Oh no, the artist knows unemployment and financial uncertainty are always just outside her door.

I knew it was a risk the moment I signed on to work with a burgeoning Theater Company… and I knew I wasn’t doing myself the most favors by pursuing a string of part-time, temporary positions after that…

But I will always choose art over practicality.  (sigh) It’s just how this cricket jumps.

And it’s why she’s so damned tired now that she has a “real” job to tend to.

In any case, it’s interesting to see how this will inform my writing.  I just wrapped up a play about an unemeployed, heartsick woman ravaged by too much news and the oil spill, and I threw in a census worker (temporary time job # 129), so who knows what will come of this present experience…

If I can just manage to turn off that handsome David Duchovny…

Equality Now and the Monday Artist Blues

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I was more than happy to be a fill-in blogger this week, my imagination already percolating with a crock-pot of thought… Then I went and started a new job… the capitalist inside of me (and lets face it, the survivalist as well) is veeeeery happy to be (finally!  Hallelujah) earning a paycheck at last.  The artist inside is a bit nervous about the next two weeks of “project necessary full-time-ness.”

Even though I know it’s only two weeks of this 40-hour business, my little muse is shaking in her boots at all the writing she may not get done… and it’s not necessarily that she was projecting a wordsmithing windfall, it’s just that now, if she does want to bury herself in verbage, she’s going to have to do so late into the night…

(sigh)

And so it goes… the starving artist taking what she can, cobbling together a patchwork type of life made of imagination, tender typing, and hard-earned bread.

In any case, I’m going to amuse you today with this little gem a dear friend forwarded to me (see below for link) – it’s an acceptance speech by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity, Firefly) as he receives an award from Equality Now, an organization his mother founded to support women.  He is being honored for creating so many strong women characters, and I think the things he says about his choice in creating these wonderful roles are very moving and inspiring!  Just the type of fodder for a good Monday start.

~Tiffany

Joss Whedon’s Equality Now speech

The Winepress (stretching)…

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I don’t know about you but with me, every time I hit another level/dimension in my writing, I feel like I’ve been put through a winepress then stretched out like taffy and thrown back into my mold.  It’s as if all the pieces and parts of me get re-blended back into themselves in different proportions.  I am momentarily left somewhat disoriented and completely vulnerable to self-doubt.  Then, the last of me gets pressed through and suddenly the execution of a story that seemed to be a fleeting vapor in my mind materializes and I am able to embrace the change in myself.

Recently, I have been on a mission to stretch – to consciously grow in my craft – to be more uncompromising when I write.  I can’t think commercial; I have to think timely.  I have to continue to write to my rhythm and submit from what I have rather than write to submit.  Although, it is very good exercise to push oneself to write a play specifically for a certain conference or contest; it can get in the way when one needs to revisit a story but writers learn by writing so the time is never wasted.  When stretching, I like to read/see other playwrights’ plays which help me dissect my own work (written, in progress, even in the idea stage).  I have been telling myself to stretch for about seven months now…  I wasn’t quite sure how to do it so I figured that if I spoke it to myself long enough, it would materialize somehow.  By speaking it, I would be able to reach from where I was to where I wanted to go.  Seven months ago, I thought it was possible.  Today, I know it is possible because I am seeing a change in myself and my writing.  I know now that I am ready to revisit pieces from my back burner and work through them.  I’m not the same person I was when I put the pieces on the back burner; I’m more open to bending form to tell the story.  I’m more confident that I can create something new out of vapors –  the same way I become new each time I go through the winepress…

Discipline as Art (or) Where I panic for a bit

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I’ve been trying to decide if I want to go back to grad school.

There are several factors involved: I haven’t been able to land a job (other than the part time, odd and ends, type jobs – Census, PA work, etc.) I recently interviewed for an English Faculty position but was told that my lack of coursework in the English field (countless playwriting classes & MFA not-withstanding) was under-impressive, and, well, let’s face it – School is Cool and I’d like to spend some more time in that soft scholarly nest.

But then the inevitable question arises: What would I study?

It seems that the degrees I am most drawn to are the ones with the least stability: Film studies, directing, screenwriting, photography.  In these fields I have great diligence and passion.  Pursuing an English degree, even just a Masters, seems like… welll, a lot of work.

But don’t I work hard already?  Aren’t I used to “difficult”?  Don’t I eat, sleep, and breathe “challenge” by the very nature of my chosen path; playwriting?

I will spend countless hours at my desk, for days on end, tapping out a play or outline or treatment, I can work tirelessly on my photography/art without giving bathroom breaks and tea-time a second though.  But the moment I start to think “maybe I should go get a practical degree with all this free time currently on my hands”, my hearts starts to skip a beat and I get sweaty all over.

Am I that stubborn and artistically crazed that I truly can only bear to do that which I love?  Or is it the fear that all this time spent in pursuit of my dreams will be jeopardized or minimized by “realistic” time-lines?  If I were to get an MA in English, would I really then go crazy trying to get a teaching position in that field, or would I just graduate with the paperwork, another loan in the hole, and get back to my playwriting – get back to chasing after theater faculty positions?

(sigh)

It’s enough to make a girl go a little, well, crazy.

But you know where a girl can really lose her mind and not worry too much about it?  Film school…

Hmmm… perhaps this bird just knows her feathers.

~Tiffany

Size Matters

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It really does.

I mean, there’s no need to get pink in the cheeks, I am talking about theater here, after all – and really, the play is the thing.  But, unlike the world’s grotesque obsession with mammoth manly pieces, it seems the theatre world is dead set against that which looms huge… So what does one do when one writes “large” plays?

My first grad-school play, In the Company of Jane Doe, called for a cast of 12 (or 8, if you got creative) but the first time we produced it, we cast 14.  And the script (not I, oh no) asked for some pretty interesting effects like  “A row of Clones spill out and around” the main character.  And it called for a large voluminous womb.

Fun for designers… better yet for designers with a nice little glorious budget… budget… budget  (from the echoes of an empty purse)

So the next play I wrote, I limited myself to four characters and wrapped them around a kitchen sink… but wouldn’t you know it if one more showed up, and those characters insisted on clamoring about the place… the living room, the garden, and the attic.   Still, at the end of the day, I felt I had done a lot to curb my “big thinking”  So much so in fact that I set out to write a THREE person play… It would be minimal. it would be clean… it would be: The most expensive play I’ve imagined to date. There are multi-media projections, a fire-breathing closet, five characters, and some of them fly in and off stage or hover “Above their own bodies.”

And I wonder sometimes if I am just hell-bent on making the most of this struggling artist thing by writing these monstrously theatrical shows that make dreamers giggle and realists cringe: “How can we produce this when you’re still just a pipsqueek in the theater world?”  I guess the economic crisis hasn’t done much to endorse the gambling spirit.

That, and the fact that in addition to my affinity for theatricality, I also write primarily about (wait for it….) WOMEN.

And if there’s one thing that seems to scare the Powers that Be more than big casts or fire-breathing budgets… it’s a “feminine” story.

But why?

I can’t figure it’s got any firmer basis in anything other the fact that many, many plays hover around or originate with men, and if there’s one thing people dread in any sort of business it’s untested change… Change brings uncertainty, and uncertainty breeds nervous pocket-books, and we all know that when the pocket-books get nervous, not a whole heck of a lot happens by way of taking chances.  Soooo, if the standard is “Male playwrights and male-centered plays sell tickets” then we are quite literally going up against “The Man” when we send in our materials.

And it’s crazy frustrating!  Especially when there are some kick-ass female playwrights out there creating all kinds of exciting theater.

So a playwright is faced with questions – Does she write smaller shows?  Does she try her hand at commiserating with a Manly public and changed “Sallie” to “Doug”?

Just what is a playwright’s responsibility to the yawning public (or frightened Producers) to give them what seems to be selling… or try to sell them what should?

Possibly, the solution is to set yourself some guidelines and then test them- my “Three person, one-set, super-clean” play ballooned into one of the biggest (And I think most beautiful) plays I’ve ever written.  It’s received oodles of praise, and I believe it WILL get produced (eventually) it’s just too exciting not to.  But I wouldn’t have written the thing if I hadn’t started out with that mindful, business-like plan of writing something “Small”…

What budgetary/production-ary/mind-set-ary do you take into consideration when inspiration strikes?

~Tiffany

Breaking Dawn…

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I don’t know what it is about the morning, I generally sleep right through and past it into that mysterious “brunch” hour of 10:30 – when it’s no longer morning, not really – and even then I groan at the sunlight teasing my eyes open.  I LOVE to sleep.

But the other day, for reasons unexplained, I woke up early.  Like, really early. I woke up at 8 a.m.

And I realized (though far from a normal person’s “early”)  this 8 a.m. business was no joke.

The sun wasn’t yet high enough to have laid it’s grip upon the scenery, the air still carried a whif of midnight on it’s coat… I was reminded of some of my most favorite mornings in LA, when I would get up early for some other totally bizarre reason, and actually embark on a journey to the beach or somesuch… I really love the soft quiet of a city still waking up.  I love the breath of night on the air.

In any regard, there I was, sitting at the breakfast table, totally stymied, when I realized what it was that had woken me: I was excited – genuinely and totally excited – to get to work on my play.

At 8 a.m.

Crazy.

And although I spent yesterday working on less exciting re-writes, re-writes that will continue today, I woke up this morning with a similar thirst to sit down before the keys.  It wasn’t 8 a.m. excited – more like 9:30 – but it reminded me how easily one can sleep the dawn away when one has little in front of her that gets her revved up.

It’s been a long trip down unemployment lane these past – oh – 14 months (!)  And easy to get a little depressed, a little wary at the idea of facing the world… I think mornings like these are what’s keeping me sane – mornings where I can experience some vicarious living through the pages of my imagination.

~Tiffany

Banging my Head Against the Wall

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Sometimes a girl gets frustrated; with her messy desk, with her lack of internal thesaurus, with the stack of plays next to her and lack of productions behind/before her, with email, with the BP oil spill, with having to work for the Census because she’s STILL unemployed…  Sometimes a girl gets so frustrated, so overcome by her own seeming inertness, that she dreams of action, even if it’s the bang-her-head-against-the-wall kind.  So what does the girl actually do in these situations?

I suppose she writes a play about it.

I used to rub my eyes in confusion when other writers would lament the difficulties of writing from their own experiences – since all of my plays are pretty much beyond the realm of The Real, it had never been a problem for me.  In fact, I quite enjoyed the fact that I wrote so fantastically…  Sure, all my leads are women, and sure, they share some of my nutty neaurosis… but surely that’s where all the “Me” ended.  So imagine my surprise when just this last month I sat down with all my frustrations, all my rage at the BP oil spill and my lack of solid employment, and wrote a play.

In two weeks.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable because I’ve never written a play in two weeks!  (Not unless it was a little nugget of a script.)  I was flabbergasted – and super excited – and also intensely uncertain as to its value or merit.  You see, this play was definitely about me this time – a hyper-charged “me” in disguise to be certain – but there was the unemployment, there was the Census, and there, center stage, was my heartbreak over the BP oil spill.

You see, I may not be able to do much about my current state, or the current state of the world, but I could create a character who could. I could endow this character with the supernatural pull that I myself lack…

So I did.

I was no longer just pulling my hair out, banging my frustrated head against a wall!  I was engaging in some urgent spiritual catharsis, and making a play in the process.

And I did so because I’m a writer.

I wrestle with the notion of striving for a career in “entertainment” when the world is as crazy as it is… sometimes it feels selfish, others like a coward’s ploy… but I think all this observational anxiety just comes with the territory – the sit-on-the-perimeter-to-observe-and-report territory, that a writer occupies.

Even as I sit in fear of this rocky economy, listening to theaters who are afraid to take a chance on new work, accepting pats on the back from my peers who also sit in dread, I’m able to recognize this – I’m able to sit with the muse and get to work – because that’s what I do.  It has never been as obvious to me, this commitment and actuality of the writer’s life, as it is right now amidst my own personal panic; I can’t plug the hole in the Gulf, I can’t MAKE someone hire me, but I can write a play about a woman so affected by the world’s current state of crisis that she becomes more than herself in a bid to help it.

And I think that has value.  The job of the playwright is, after all, to reflect his/her time through story, isn’t it?  So now I task myself with revisions, and I cheer myself forward along this path, my path, the dramatist’s path… it’s a strange sense of comfort to have found in this summer’s storm, but I cling to it.

I have to.  The world is too crazy at the moment for me to find a foothold anywhere else.

~Tiffany Antone

Study to Show Yourself Approved…

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“Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  2 Timothy 2:15.

The above is one of my favorite scriptures.  I hear it in my head when I am chug-a-lugging along pushing against the stones.  It is a sort of affirmation for me; encouraging me to continue the study of seemingly unconnected things – dirt, music, planets, etc…  I am always reading tidbits here and there about this or that…studying…to release stress or because I run across something that gets my attention.  The information bits always come in handy especially when I need to meet a deadline and don’t have time to research (because the play I just spent all my time researching is not ready to be written so I have to write something else and write it quickly).  I notice that my subconscious will unflinchingly pull a tidbit from the annals of my mind that will fit…perfectly…into whatever I am writing.  I used to think that I had all this useless information in my head and what wasn’t useless was so disconnected that finding what to connect it to would be a serious challenge.  Except…when interpreting dreams, I find the tidbits come in handy.  In dreams, all information is relevant as it can reveal the unknown, all that disconnected information finally serves a purpose.  I believe that is why dream sequences show up in my work; it’s part of who I am as a woman, part of that “write what you know” thing.  I know dreams, flashbacks, and things of the spirit… 

There is a play, Body Indian, by playwright Hanay Geiogamah.  In this play, Geiogamah uses the sound/symbolism of a train; his notes set up the business of the train. 

“6. There should be a loud, rushing sound of a train starting off on a journey to signal to the audience that the play is beginning and Bobby’s entrance can be emphasized by the distant sound of the train.” Hanay Geiogamah

I could hear that train for months after reading the piece; it was haunting… moving…beautiful.  It affected me.  It made me want to create moments like that in my own writing.  As long as I am stretching myself as a writer, I know that eventually I will be where I envision myself.  When I write, I hear sounds in my head sometimes but I had never thought to make the sound a character until I read Body Indian.  Perhaps that is just my response to the piece but the train was a profound presence.  An acting instructor of mine told me that if I could see it so would the audience.  I could see that train as I read; I must admit, I have been devouring Geiogamah’s work ever sense.  How to make the sounds visible — that is the question.

In the night, as I write, I like to listen to music, especially violins. I have begun a play called Fiddler’s Bridge; it is my hope to make the sound visible in this piece.  I am listening — as it finds its way to the page — for the sound of its song…

Those of us, who ride the night winds and the morning breezes, who straddle the fence of crazy and sane, must study…always…at our craft.  Earning the “wright” in playwright through diligence and preparation…unashamed and unapologetic for the feats we attempt.  We are the catalogers of our time and must all play our part in marking his/her/our/story.  We must continually grow as artists so our gardens are full of fresh vegetables and herbs and words…that communicate humanity or if so be inhumanity…

On the Matter of Subject…

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I’d like to think that I am open to write about almost any subject matter.  The journey from a thought to choosing the angle to take and researching any unknowns is never the same with each piece I write – always fascinating but never the same.  What can be the same are the moments before I reach page four — those tense moments when I am feeling like a complete fraud and I’m kicking myself because I had the audacity to think I could write that story that way.  I have started a task and it seems daunting.  Those moments I get a little stuck on rewind and time constraints can make it worse.  There is nothing as intimidating as knowing that the play in your head is the one you need to submit and the deadline is nearing and you haven’t gotten to page four let alone gotten to the middle of page three.  Stopped, right at the top of the page, with an air bubble stuck between the period and the next line.  Those are “playwright quote times” which for some reason, reading blurbs about writing calms me down enough to allow my germinating time to finish up its odds and ends.  I tend to forget that I tell myself I will write two or three pages — just to get started — and then let it germinate a while longer before I really get into it.  I usually remember after I have calmed down.  When writing my last play, I remembered…then forgot…then remembered again.  I felt like I was stuck in that Groundhog Day movie.  I should probably paste a note on my mirror but I probably won’t read it because I’ll be busy trying to get to page four from the “first words.”  And, who knows, Groundhog Day might be a needed part of my germinating process from time to time.  I am so preoccupied with getting past page three that my subconscious is free to organize information and listen to the other voices – the ones with the secrets.  I must admit, I am most intrigued by the secret things…and the layers that cover them.  Traveling into the unknown to find out the “why” and “how” of it all, is worth it every time.  It is during these journeys that I truly find out what the subject matter really is…  By page four, I know from what depth the play is coming and whether or not the subject matter at hand is what I thought it was when I began the piece.  By the end of the first act, I will be able to write a brief outline for the rest of the play and gauge how long it will take to reach the end which may mean submitting it the next year.  I used to think “next year” was so far away but there is so much to do in between now and then, it turns out to be just around the corner…

Knowing Your Place and Your Story…

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Most of my life, people have tried to put me in a place.  This place is usually wherever they think I should be based on who they think I am.  In my quest to know myself and to know my voice as a storyteller, I have had to make it a point to stay true to who I know myself to be.  Round pegs don’t fit into square holes; square blocks don’t fit into round holes, nor, do 41-inch hips fit into a size 4 pair of pants.  Tried it.  You might get in them by some miracle but you aren’t getting out of them without a fight or a pair of good cutting shears.  Lost a favorite pair of jeans that way…oh, the memories…I had purchased them when I was stationed in Germany, they were black and had straight legs, and – I digress.  I was stuck in them for two days, thank God for undies that snap.  There is nothing like a jolt of reality to make you pay attention to what happens when things don’t fit which is why one must know one’s own place in this world.  The wrong influence can send you off on a wild goose chase or land you in a pair of pants that you have outgrown.  Growing, in itself, is not a bad thing but ill-fitted clothing can be a hot mess.  Knowing yourself as an artist will help you navigate the waters no matter what changes around you.

Some years ago, I attended a conference where the playwrights were assigned directors to direct the reading of their pieces.  One of the playwrights at the conference got a director who chopped her 20 minute scene up so bad; we weren’t able to give her any feedback on her original scene.  The whole purpose for the playwrights to attend the conference was to hear their work read.  I had to stop the same director from adding lines that did not belong into my 20 minute piece.  I explained to this director that I wanted to hear what I had written; if, after hearing it read, I wanted to change something, it would be my choice.  I knew my piece.  I knew what I had written and why and I wanted to hear it as written; I also knew my rights as a playwright (see Dramatists Guild Bill of Rights http://www.dramatistsguild.com/files/DGBillofRights.pdf) so, I spoke up – not only to the director but also to the conference runners in the “after conference” survey.  The magic that is supposed to happen when a piece has the right director is something to aim for (I’ve had it and oh, the ride is rich and full of surprises, confirmations, and just out and out joyous moments.).  Twenty minutes isn’t a lot of time; it wasn’t a showcase on directing though a reading done well does just that, it was a snippet of a play read for the playwright’s benefit.  From my 20 minutes, I was able to tell that the audience liked my story and wanted to hear more which let me know I was on the right track.  I asked the other playwright why she allowed the director to move things around in her piece (which even with the disjointing of the scene we could tell she was an excellent writer, we just didn’t know what her story was supposed to be about); she said she didn’t know she could stop the director from making changes.  I told her to join the Dramatists Guild www.dramatistsguild.com .  Information is liberating. 

As a playwright, collaboration with other theater artists will enter the process; it is a given.  Part of what makes theater so powerful is the collective gifting of the playwrights, directors, actors, set designers, costumers, lighting and sound techs, etc. who all add to the theater experience.  Just last August, I had a play read in North Carolina.  The group of actors and director who came together to breathe life into my words were so phenomenal.  A character thought to be unnecessary (by panel members) at a previous reading proved to be quite necessary in this one.  The director understood the character.  The director, also, knew how to pull this character out of the actress portraying the character.  The actress knew her craft and knew how to stretch…  Where I was unable to hear the true voice at the previous reading, I was blown away at the second one.  I had suspected that Indigo had something to say and am eternally grateful to the actress, Antonia McCain, who gave Indigo her moments.  I am, also, grateful to the director, Melinda J. Morais, and all of the other actors and actresses who contributed to that reading for list see http://ladybyrdcreations.com/byrd_sightings.  I could hear the harmony building from page to voice, hinting at the stage…

The quest for harmony is an intricate part of what I do when I create.  I try, with each play, to access the artists circle – a place, my place, where all things are equal.  There is neither male nor female in my artists circle – only songs of the soul and rhythms of the spirit – and that circle is sacred.  If I did not know what my place/purpose is, I would never be able to regulate where I should be at any given time.  My journey would be undefined.  I would not know which stories are mine to tell and which ones are for some other writer.  Knowing my place in the artists circle helps me stay focused on keeping the “waste of time factor” out of the equation – out of the place where stories are born…