Tag Archives: playwriting

Dangerous Influences

Uncategorized, ,

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?

Uncategorized,

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

Uncategorized, , , , ,

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

Uncategorized, , , ,

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

Uncategorized, , ,

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!

Uncategorized, , , ,

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

Uncategorized, ,

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.

Gearing up for a new play

Uncategorized, , , , ,

I always thought it was actors who were children, needing to be coddled and mollified. Now, I think writers are the the most infantile of all.

At least I am.

It’s been a lousy writing year for me. Two public readings of a pair of new plays, a crash and burn failure of a rewrite of a full length that’s been haunting me for a decade, and just no guts to tackle anything new. Perhaps, I told myself, I could write a second act to a lovely play that’s been begging for a companion piece this summer. Didn’t happen. I was tempted to just write off the year entirely.

But it’s fall. And the horrible summers of Washington, DC are finally gone. Leaves are glorious, humidity is a thing of the past, the sunshine is heartbreakingly gorgeous. Feels like southern California.

Fall has always been my favorite time of year anyway. It’s the promise of a new beginning – new friends, a new teacher, new notebooks. So why not a new play?

The theory sounds great, but I admit it: I’m scared.

So I’m going to trick myself.

First, I’m buying myself new writing presents: a new notebook, note cards in various colors, new pens, a designated tote bag.

And If I’m not brave enough to write more than a few lines, I can make lists – character traits, themes, bits of dialogue, words of encouragement from other writers. I can fill pages with words. It’s something, right?

I need theme music. So a search of Pandora is appropriate, yes?

What about visual stimulation? I’ve searched my stash of magazines for pictures of the locales I’m writing about. And pictures of people I’d cast as my characters. Just looking at them is a kick in the seat of the pants. It’s as if they’re saying: “so what do you want me to say? And will you hurry up and write it?”

What about the perfect writing place? I’ve written in our highrise stairwell, in my car, even in the Library of Congress. I’ve taken hikes near a lake, camped out in a library, taken over a table at Starbucks. Anywhere to shake up my brain. Anywhere that I won’t be disturbed for at least 90 minutes a day. 90 minutes where email can’t find me, Twitter doesn’t need me, the phone won’t ring, the cat doesn’t need feeding, the husband doesn’t need to talk about logistics. A place where I can feel brave enough to write something.

I am trying as many tricks as I can to tempt me into being brave enough to once again put my heart and soul into a play that may once again be shredded or dismissed or worse, ignored.

It’s a bit like starting to date again – new clothes, new hairstyle, little aphorisms, and asking yourself: what’s the worst that can happen?

I’ll report my progress as the week progresses.

With a Little Help From My Friends

Uncategorized, , , , ,

It’s been a tough year for my playwriting. Changes at the day job, fighting for writing space in an 800 square foot coop with my husband who’s writing a book, plus a tough critique of a play that’s been haunting me for ten years are all the excuses I have for not turning out stellar pages ready to hit the stage.

And I call myself a playwright?

Thank goodness for my playwriting community!

I’ve been lucky to have that strong playwriting community in three cities – LA, DC, and Omaha. These are people who’ve heard my lousy first draft, shown up at the first public reading full of encouraging words and – a day later – helpful criticism, who never miss a full production. They’re the ones who’ll nurse a glass of wine for hours, talking about the process of writing, the tyranny of the literary manager, the terrific show they saw at Fringe. They’re the ones who talk you off the roof when you’re having that very tough year.

And of course, the best way to create that community is to be that friend for them, too, showing up at opening night, offering to read their first draft, buying them that glass of wine and sitting for hours.

So how do you create that community of playwrights?

Mary Steelsmith Goes To Sweden

LAFPI, News, Playwright, playwriting, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

When: August 15 – 20, 2012
Where: Riksteatern, Stockholm, Sweden
What: The 9th Women Playwrights International Conference
Why:  From the WPIC website: “The conference will be an opportunity to meet and to create genuine, lasting contacts between women playwrights and other theatre professionals. The conference’s aim is to have a supporting impact on collaboration and to build bridges between people from different parts of the world.”
Who: Women playwrights from around the world, including LA FPI’s own Mary Steelsmith.
Mary’s play Isaac, I am will be featured at WPIC 2012 on Saturday afternoon, August 18, 2012.

Award-winning dramatist Mary Steelsmith and her highly-lauded play Isaac, I am will be featured at the upcoming 2012 Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.  It’s a six-day conference with international focus, filled with lectures, workshops, and most of all, performances of works by women. This year’s theme is “The Democratic Stage.” The WPI Conference moves around the world: it’s held every three years in a different city. In 2015, it will be held in Cape Town, South Africa. For more on Women Playwrights International, and to join, visit their website.

107 plays from around the world will be featured at WPIC 2012, and Mary is thrilled: “What an honor it is to have Isaac, I am chosen to be presented at this conference! The opportunity to meet with and learn from so many female dramatists from other countries and cultures is a rare and wonderful one. While it will be an expensive journey, the experience of this conference in beautiful Stockholm will be priceless.” Only fourteen women playwrights from the U.S. were selected to attend. (To see the complete list of selected plays and playwrights, click here.)

Steelsmith’s Isaac, I am is a story of love, life, death and AOL. A winner of the Helford Prize (and she’s only female playwright to win it), Steelsmith also lists productions of Isaac, I am at the Racounteur Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, and most recently, here in Los Angeles at the Women’s Theatre Organization at the University of Southern California.

Steelsmith has won other playwriting awards, including the Eileen Heckart Drama for Seniors Competition and the Hewlett-Packard Action Theatre Prize (Singapore).

Would you like to help Mary Steelsmith get to Sweden? On Saturday, July 14, 2012, 2 p.m., there’s a benefit performance of 5 short plays by Steelsmith  at Vidiots Video, 302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA, 90402. She’s also selling copies of her work on Amazon.

For more info, go to marysteelsmith.com.