Tag Archives: playwriting

RADAR L.A.: Staging the Political as Personal

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By Diane Lefer

A stirring doubleheader of RADAR L.A. productions last night at LATC gave me a lot to think about, including this: I am left wondering if it was coincidence, curators’ choice, or larger cultural influences that gave Los Angeles an international theater and performance festival at which only two plays (of 14 scripted pieces, many involving female artists) were written by women; both women are Latin American; both of their plays look at generational trauma in the aftermath of defining tragedies in their countries; both temper their documentary materials with poetic license as they explore the intimately personal in the political. Whatever. I can thank the forces – occult or otherwise – that brought Mariana Villegas and Lola Arias to town.

image-3For Villegas, in her supertitled 55-minute solo performance Se Rompen Las Olas, the disaster is the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 – evoked through video news clips –  that left tens of thousands dead, discredited the government, and briefly brought together the woman who would be her mother and the man whose absence and abandonment would shake the performer’s life to the core. Villegas holds the stage with a powerfully expressive physicality as when her exuberant and uninhibited dance shifts in an instant to a vision of abuse. At one point, a recorded song asks Where did the earthquake catch you? and goes on to answer dancing with Catalina, shaking the floor so hard, the singer explains, he never noticed the quake. (Can anyone imagine a comparable song in this country citing 9/11?) In Se Rompen Las Olas, these lyrics with their upbeat tune and danceable beat offer a compelling truth of daily life and human desire going on in the midst of catastrophe while Villegas, through her body and her words reminds us that people born in the aftermath of disaster continue to feel the reverberation in their lives.

arias01For Lola Arias, the disaster is the coup in Chile that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende and led to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The supertitled script of El Año en que Nací (The Year I Was Born) is drawn from the actual lives of the 11 performers all of whom were born (or were infants) at the time of the coup and who seek to understand the roles their parents played during years of repression, violence, prison, and exile. Notably, the performers come from families all across the political spectrum from participants in the armed struggle on the left to the authoritarian paramilitary organization on the right along with those who had political preferences but tried to go along with the status quo. While the opening scenes of the play suggest the new generation’s commonalities, the picture becomes more complex and fractious (and comical) when the players are challenged to line up to show their political stance, their economic position – When it comes to poverty, does having a dirt floor at home trump going hungry? – and their social status as reflected in skin color. Simple yet inventive staging keeps the production lively with tonal shifts and surprise.

Arias, from Argentina, previously created a similar program exploring the post-dictatorship era in her own country and if you’re familiar with Latin American politics, her work shouldn’t be missed. Know nothing about Allende and Pinochet? The production still fascinates. It runs two hours without intermission without ever inducing fidgets.

Final performances of both productions are Sunday, and then they are gone. See the RADAR L.A. schedule here: http://www.redcat.org/festival/radar-la-festival-2013

Villegas and Arias made me think of another Latin American woman at the head of a company that uses documentary material – Claudia Santiago who writes, directs, and performs with Mexico City-based Espejo Mutable. Their most recent production, Náa-Gunaá, looks at the lives of indigenous migrants (including children) from the south of Mexico who are exposed to exploitation and pesticides as they harvest GMO crops in Baja California. The company would love the opportunity to share this work and explore the lives of indigenous migrants from Oaxaca in our own California fields.

logo_radarla_transparent_0_0And a quick shoutout to three additional RADAR L.A. offerings that have women at the helm if not in the playwright’s chair:

Puppet designer extraordinaire Janie Geiser directs Clouded Sulphur.

Franco-Austrian director Giselle Vienne chose to employ simple hand puppets to create the unnerving effect in Jerk, the story of a serial killer.

Theatre Movement Bazaar, with Tina Kronis as director and choreographer, continues its reinterpretation of Chekhov with Track 3.

 

Diane Lefer is a playwright, author, and activist whose collaboration with Hector Aristizábal, Nightwind, has been performed in LA and in 30 other countries around the globe. Also in LA, her work has been presented by Grupo Ta’Yer at the Frida Kahlo Theater, Indie Chi Productions, Playwrights Arena, Three Roses Players, and Triumvirate Pi. She is co-author with Aristizábal of The Blessing Next to the Wound: A story of art, activism, and transformation as well as several anthologized essays about Theater of the Oppressed, and she has worked with theater groups in Colombia and Bolivia. Her works of fiction include the historical novel, The Fiery Alphabet, published this month, and the short story collection, California Transit, which received the Mary McCarthy Prize. Visit www.dianelefer.weebly.com.

I hear music and there’s no one there

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Do you have a playlist for your current writing project? I usually write in silence, occasionally distracted by the hum of the refrigerator or the shriek of the little girl down the hall or the meow of my very needy cat. But I remember when I was really cooking, working my way through fourteen drafts (!) of an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol short stories, I was listening to a lot of music. I auditioned a lot of genres, trying to find exactly the right composer and style to suit what I was working on. Luckily, a CD from Ego Plum, the marvelously talented composer hired by the Rogues to compose music for our “Gogol Project” arrived. It set the perfect mood.

It was reassuring somehow to discover that I wasn’t the only writer in need of musical inspiration. At the end of his Roman Empire/Camelot adventure novel “The Last Legion, Italian novelist Valerio Massimo Manfredi gave a nod to composer Paolo Buonvino, citing his lush soundtracks as his constant companion. After reading that, I immediately sought out Buonvino and was carried away to that romantic Italy that lives in our dreams.

My Omaha writing buddy Ellen is married to a musician and always finds interesting music to inspire her writing. She’s tackling a historic subject in anything but a traditional way and is listening to the recent Pulitzer winner for composition Caroline Shaw and a Native American group called A Tribe Called Red. The music is edgy and interesting and challenges her to get out of her comfort zone.

Me? I was stumped for a soundtrack for the romantic comedy I’m fighting with. I tried piano solos, Erik Satie, Tony Bennett (whatever did we do before Pandora?) Not perfect.

And then I remembered – duh – one of my characters sings show tunes. He explains in a monologue that he’d grown up listening to every Broadway album his mother owned. And there were a lot. His guilty pleasure as an adult was to once a month to leave the political realities of Capitol Hill behind and join the Washington theatre community, standing around a piano in an elegant hotel bar, belting out show tunes. Karaoke for nerds.

I knew his taste exactly: “If Ever I Would Leave You” from “Camelot” and “Into the Fire” from “The Scarlett Pimpernel.” Big, robust, hopelessly romantic from another era. Just describing his taste in music helps me define him more clearly.

And so I’ve been listening to Broadway musicals as I write. But only ones I know so well that I don’t have to listen carefully to hear the lyrics. Songs that are firmly implanted in the back of my brain – just as they are for my main character. They provide the drama and the fortitude and the color in his life. And they’re playing the same role for me as I write “Statuary Hall.” But what’s on your playlist? What soundtrack do you use to write your plays?

Sigh

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I hate writing about this. But it should be known that the Great Plains Theatre Conference has become a much lesser plains for the ladies.

I’m a big fan of GPTC. My play KIGALI was chosen several years ago to be one of the mainstage shows. I had an entire week to work on rewrites, working with terrific director Sonia Keffer and wonderful actors like Amy Lane and Terry Brannen. A year later, I was invited back to give feedback to other actors and hear another great reading of my short play TOP OF THE HOUR.

I didn’t apply this year. It’s just as well, apparently.

That first year I participated, more than half the shows chosen for mainstage readings – five of the eight chosen that year – were written by women. This year, there is just one play by a female writer on the mainstage. 26 other writers were invited to participate in the conference PlayLabs. Of them, seven are women.

And this in the year GPTC is honoring the wonderful writer Connie Congdon.

Artistic leaders say the selections are blind.

I don’t argue for a quota system. But when the numbers look like this, it begs a closer look at who is making those blind selections. And what criterea they are using. How blind is blind?

Or perhaps it just means we don’t write very well.

Dangerous Influences

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They always talk about how violent films and video games affect the minds of young people. What about those of us with older minds? How affected are we writers by what we watch?

For me, the answer is “quite a lot.” And I found out the hard way.

I’m writing a rom/com.

I deserve it. I’ve been slogging through heavy pieces on election violence in Kenya and the LA Riots and racism in Dutch holiday traditions. I’ve written about the Metrolink disaster and my own version of what REALLY happened in the 1960’s when racial covenants were thrown out.

I wanted to write a comedy. A romantic comedy. And set it in a very specific place that most people would find fascinating.

I was having a marvelous time, writing way too many pages for the first act, not caring, just wanting to plow through to the end before editing myself. I had characters I loved, a great design concept, dialogue that flew off the keyboards.

And then I watched “House of Cards” on Netflix.

It’s very good and it’s great fun to see them pass Baltimore off as Washington, DC. But it’s dark, cynical, rather depressing at times. And it began to cling to me and my writing like cat hair.

All the joy I felt when I sat down flew out the window as I tried to be “adult” and “serious.” I became embarrassed about “only” writing a rom/com. My characters embarrassed me. I stopped writing. It wasn’t fun to sit down with them anymore. It was downright depressing.

Finally, I told my husband that we had to stop watching “House of Cards.” Later, we can watch it later. It was eating up my writing mojo. My husband, a writer of books on serious subjects like preventing nuclear war completely understood.

And it’s working. I’ve started watching BBC rom/coms about Scottish restauranteurs who return to the castle to become the “laird” and any movie with Colin Firth. I’m listening to music that makes me happy, reminds me of those first few months of absolute joy and craziness when I first fell in love, I’ve stopped apologizing for my work. I’m actually looking forward to sitting down with my characters again.

What about you? How much of your writing is influenced by what you’re watching, reading, listening to at the same time that you’re writing? Do you have a soundtrack for each play?

Too old?

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DC playwrights are watching their “in” boxes this week, awaiting word about whether they’ve been accepted into Arena Stage’s playwrights’ group. Six locals will be invited to join this elite bunch.

I’m not one of them.

And that’s fine. I have a weekly skype writing appointment with a fellow playwright in Omaha, a wonderful writer named Ellen Struve, who gives me feedback and keeps me honest – ie: keeps me writing. I’m also lucky to have found a great group of writers here in DC that meet monthly. They call themselves the Playwrights’ Gymnasium. And I still am a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles’ Playwrights Lab – though my attendance has been spotty of late due to that five hour plane ride. So I’m not lacking for writing groups.

But Arena’s cache would mean avoiding the slush pile when sending out plays. It would – to paraphrase Jane Austen – put me in the way of meeting other eligible theatres and literary managers. It could jumpstart a career. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Lately, we female playwrights have been counting noses – how many plays being produced are written by those of our gender. Theatres are more aware of that these days. Some progress has been made.

But the fear among other writers here in DC who were also not chosen to join the Arena group is that frankly, we’re too old. Too old to be considered an “emerging” playwright. Too old to be the hottest young thing out of an MFA program. Too old period.

Somehow, this hurts more than being told one’s writing is just not good enough. We can certainly work on our craft. Not much we can do about turning back the hands of the clock, no matter how much we spend on facial products.

I aged out of acting when the commercials slowed way down; I know I’m too old to write for television anymore. But I never thought I’d become too senior for the theatre. Particularly since when I attend most plays, I’m the youngest one in the audience!

I hope this isn’t sour grapes. I hope the writers Arena chose are truly wonderful, no matter what their birth certificate says. I hope they choose at least one person old enough to remember where they were when John Glenn flew in space.

After all, isn’t it the theatre that keeps us all forever young?

Old Friends

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I had the unusual opportunity a weekend ago to see and/or hear one of my earliest plays – and one of my newest ones. It wasn’t quite as embarrassing as looking through old photo albums full of 80’s hair. But almost.

MUM’S THE WORD was the second play I ever wrote – dialogue heavy, lots of phones ringing, a fairly simple story that was a tribute to one of my favorite genres in film: those 1930’s Warner Brother musical comedies. My characters didn’t sing. But I hoped the play would crackle with that fast paced dialogue between dames and saps. I hadn’t seen it in – okay, I’ll admit it – in nearly 30 years! I wrote it with a part for myself, of course. And it was a wonderful role: Jinx Riley, the gal born on Friday the 13th, the sucker for the wrong kind of guy. I kept the wonderful depression era secretary costume until just last year, when I admitted I’d never get down to that size again. Or play that part again.

I was surprised at how well it stood the test of time. Acoustics in the North By South Theatre space (a church auditorium in Glendale) were awful. And an electrical malfunction meant all the lights on stage left had blown out. So it was hard to hear the dialogue – or watch the actors’ lips for clues about what they were saying. But I wasn’t embarrassed by the script. Oh, sure, the turn around at the end came too quickly. But it wasn’t awful.

Earlier in the afternoon, I got to hear the ten minute version of an even shorter play for the first time. Ensemble Studio Theatre was holding its annual “Playday” reading series on exactly the same day that MUM’S was going up!

I had written LAKE TITICACA for a contest sponsored by DC’s Theater J. They invited playwrights to create a 5 minute reaction to Matthew Lopez’ terrific post-Civil War play THE WHIPPING MAN. I recalled the odd period after the LA riots when everyone was walking on eggshells. That grew into a five page piece, which was chosen by Theater J for a reading.

But since five minute plays are a rarity, I felt the piece had some room to grow. So I expanded it to ten minutes. But the EST reading was the first time I’d heard it aloud in that form.

Ouch.

This is the blessing that actors offer. You can HEAR and SEE what’s missing, what doesn’t work, where the klunky parts are.

But I was pleased to hear audience reactions – particularly from a trio of African American actors waiting to go on in the next piece. They got it. And looked around to find the author. Me. That made the day.

The experience of two plays in the space of a few hours was particularly valuable to me as a writer. Such a contrast in writing styles over three decades! I’m less verbose. Still interested in quirky humor, but more apt to let the audience figure stuff out.

I’m trying to let the experience reassure me as I try to get back to writing a new piece – much more similar to that first comedy than to anything I’ve written lately. I may not be Preston Sturges or Jane Austen or Tom Stoppard. But I am Kitty Felde. And while my work may not win Tonys or bring down the Berlin Wall, it has value.

Taking the new car out for a drive

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It’s like that first ding in a new car.
It’s all shiny and perfect, those first few scenes of a new play. At least inside your head. Oh, the laughs it gets! How the characters jump off the page. What a clever girl I am.
And then you get that first ding, that hint of criticism. And the bloom is off the rose. The car just isn’t new again. And the play isn’t perfect.
I hate this part of writing – exposing pages that in your heart of hearts you KNOW has flaws. But you’re so in love with it, you can hardly wait to share it with others, confident they’ll love it as much as you do. But they don’t. They see the flaws you blind yourself to see. And they have the nerve to tell you.
I brought 30 fat pages of my newest play – a romantic comedy because I’m tired of writing “serious” plays – into my monthly writing group. (A note about this monthly approach: It’s hard to establish a rhythm when you only meet every month. I much prefer my weekly Skype writing partner for continuous feedback and a weekly deadline for pages.) I was the last to read. There was silence around the table. (I should have prepared questions I wanted the group to answer!) And then our fearless leader asked the question about the king’s clothes: what’s the play about? What’s at stake? Ouch.
It was enough to inspire me to walk the 2 ½ miles home. In the rain. And eat several Trader Joe’s dark chocolate sea salt caramels. And become fearful of even looking at the script again.
At least until today.
It’s still a good car, er, play. It’s just not perfect. But a little polish and TLC and it will still get me where I want to go.

Gearing up for a new play, part 5: Finding the time and the space to write

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So I’ve vacated our 800 square foot coop, an agreement I have with my writer husband. There’s something about having two writers in the house at the same time: as if the other person is sucking all the creative energy out of the place. We both feel it. And so we agree to give the other person some solo time at home.

Today’s my day to clear out.

One advantage to living in DC, you can jump on the bus and in five minutes find yourself surrounded by Smithsonians and other museums.

I began the day at the Hirshhorn. There’s a terrific room on the third floor, wall to wall windows, electrical plugs, comfy chairs. Except they’re hosting some sort of event tonight (museums are forever hosting events here!) and closed off what I call “the writing room.”

Plan B involved snagging one of the small metal tables and chairs in the lobby. Noisy, but somehow reassuring to be surrounded by strangers and cacophony. I happily spent a couple of hours pounding out a script for work.

And then I was starved.

So I hiked a block and a half to the Smithsonian Castle Cafe for Mexican hot chocolate and a banana and am going to try to work on my script.

Yesterday was a good day. Why not today?

It’s so hard to find a regular schedule. And good places to write. I’m always appreciative of great tips. Do you write before or after the day job? Where?

One DC writer, DW Gregory, says she’s a binge writer, scribbling great amounts at a time blocked out for nothing else. I know that won’t work for me. I’m too easily distracted.

Suggestions, please?

Progress!

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One of the cleverest pieces of advice I ever saw for writers was aimed at those brave souls who crank out the first draft of a novel in one month.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
The advice was to have a “bible” nearby. Not THE bible. YOUR bible. In other words, the writer who inspires you, the book you wish you’d written, the book you read over and over again.

The idea was that when you got stuck – had a question about style or pace or dialogue – you could turn to your “bible” for answers.

I’ve decided to do this for my new play.

I’m actually keeping two “bibles” nearby. One is a book I love and find full of wonderfully funny dialogue. In fact, I’m going to write a modern version of it.

The other is a basic book on playwriting.

Admit it, you have a few on your shelf. I randomly flip through a few, hoping one will strike a note with me at this time in my writing career. It’s a reminder of all the things we already know about building characters and dramatic structure and how hard it is to write. But it’s a nice reminder that I’m not reinventing the wheel.

So this morning before starting work, I set out for a short walk down to the waterfront, read a little from each of my “bibles” and wrote three pages of morning pages. Mostly lists of the hundred and one things I could be doing instead of writing. A wasted morning.

I then put in a days’ work.

And just as I was about to kick myself for wasting my life, imagining I’m a playwright, as the sun was setting, I sat down one more time. And managed to write five first draft pages! It’s not brilliant, but it’s more than I’ve been able to pound out in weeks.

So, success!

At least for today. Check in again with me tomorrow.

Gearing up for that new play: take the process on the road

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I was invited to teach a playwriting class this morning at a DC charter school. More than a dozen kids had signed up – or had signing up thrust upon them – for playwriting! They’d slogged through Hamlet and play analysis. I wanted them to WRITE.

We did my favorite “build a play” exercise. It works with writers of all ages (hint to myself: try it this week…) Here it is:

-What’s your character’s name?
-Age?
-Who’s his/her family? (often when I do this with kids, they say their character has no family. So I tell them to describe the people they’d spend Thanksgiving with, the person they’d call if they needed a ride home from school, etc.)
-Habitat – be specific
-What’s your character’s greatest wish?
-What’s their secret fear? (I would run into kids who insisted their character wasn’t afraid of anything. So we ask the secret fear question)
-Extras – anything else that doesn’t fit in these categories.

Then I ask the class to pick the person who gets in the way of the greatest wish or pushes them toward their secret fear. Then write a character sketch of them.

And then write a scene.

And I watched firsthand exactly my own struggles with writing a new play.

One girl kept changing her mind. Her play would take place in a car – no, in a hospital room – no, the girl’s bedroom. All that second guessing stopped her from writing anything. Note to self: pick one. You can always change it if it doesn’t work.

One young man couldn’t begin at all. He sat there paralyzed for half an hour. But he finally put pencil to paper. He didn’t want to read his few lines of dialogue in front of the class. He kept apologizing for the work. But when he finally did, it was really good. He didn’t believe it. But it was. He was the only one in the room who’d set up a mystery that every one of us wanted to find out what happened next. Note to self: stop kvetching. The work might be better than you think. But you’ll never know if you don’t write it.

Several kids decided to write about ghosts. One decided to write about an alien whose planet was polluted and had to live on earth and lived in fear of being found out by the other kid who was a paranormal hunter. These were fearless writers, willing to take a step outside the ordinary and create something fun and scary and interesting. Note to self: think unconventional.

One other observation: it took FOREVER to get started. They plowed through the character sketches in a heartbeat. But the entire room moaned and groaned when it came time to write a scene. Sounded a lot like me. Note to self: you’re not alone. We all hate to write. Except when we’re doing it.

Tomorrow, I try to take my own advice.