Words That Don't Mean Anything

"What are you like to work with?"

It's a fair question. It's 90% of theater, right, is working together?

And yet, it can stump us. Especially when it arises unexpectedly.

Here are some WORDS we tend to use to describe ourselves and the way we work...words that mean little, if anything, unless you go into more detail. They came to mind, because it was a question R asked during auditions...again and again, we got the same two or three words thrown back by actors who were caught off-guard...

"Generous"

"Collaborative"

"Open"

"Play"

"Physical"

Good to have something more concrete than that, no?

What Do We Ask of the Actor?

This is something we did in our "Collaboration" class, back along, and of course everyone has different answers.  But how nice to hear, up front, the demands of a director -- and THEN decide whether you want to work in a process that makes those demands.  Here are several I heard recently:

1) That the actor be able to hear "that was terrible" and take it as an invitation to do better (parallels Halena Kays and the "rub dirt in it" school of acting).

2) That the actor, given 52 different ideas, come back with 52 BETTER ideas -- rather than freeze in the face of innovation.

3) That the actor take DIRECTION as a DARE -- that, given the impossible direction, he or she say "oh yeah?  Watch me!"

On Auditions

Attended auditions for the play I'm helping adapt.

Interesting to watch a very good, very smart director run his audition process.  And to see how actors respond to that.

R.P. says he looks to answer five questions during an audition:

1) Can the actor move?  What is the quality of his or her movement?

2) What is the quality of the actor's speaking voice?

3) What is that actor's emotionality/access to emotion?

4) What is this actor's relationship to RISK?

5) Who is the PERSON in the ROOM.

What was interesting to me is that there wasn't, necessarily, one "right answer" for these questions -- how much agility, vocal ability, emotionality or willingness to take risks might change, project to project or role to role.  But those five questions set up an interesting matrix within which to evaluate a potential collaborator.  Where R.P.'s process was new, at least to me, is that he has made explicit the variables in that matrix.

I wonder, what are the five questions we need answered, as playwrights, in order to find our collaborators?  What do directors or producers need of us?  What are our criteria, and how do we evaluate a potential partnership?

In talking to actors, he stressed that he wanted everyone clear on the following by the end of the process:

1) How does the ACTOR work.

2) How R.P. works.

3) When is the actor's "moment of crisis" within a rehearsal process, and how does he or she approach/move through that moment.

Saw a play this week, a reading, in its early stages. It had some great characters, and some great scenes, and was doing some things that were highly theatrical.

The problem? The play was still at the stage where the author was throwing in everything but the kitchen sink...the only "rule" seemed to be that she would do whatever she wanted. The result? It was very, very difficult to tell what "world" the play was trying to make. There wasn't a logic to what was happening, so we didn't really know where to look. A character floated up toward the ceiling in one scene, but it never happened again. A character was a puppet...but why only one? And to what end? Characters would establish themselves as existing within a particular "world" and having particular concerns, and then would show up, willy-nilly, in another world with different concerns. It felt like the play's "signals" were going in every direction at once.

So now, of course, I sit down to work on this adaptation...and face a similar problem. We are combining some disparate and gorgeous elements (bicycles, a classic musical, saturated color, a war story, time-bending and a funky time structure)...but how do we do it so that those things feel organic, feel NECESSARY to this story? How, especially, do we handle the liberties we're taking with time in such a way that they feel earned, that they have their own logic...so that even if the audience can't explain it, they can go along with it? So that it doesn't get in the way of the storytelling?

We shall see.

Mother Courage

...so it's been an exciting few weeks.  A nomination for something cool, a finalist interview for something else cool (nice just to be a finalist).  Both of these came at a good time.  The reason to apply for lots of opportunities is so that you don't fixate on any one opportunity, I think.

BUT.  THIS IS THE BIGGEST ONE.

Ruben Polendo, Artistic Director of Theatre Mitu, asked me to help him adapt Mother Courage and Her Children.  He's envisioning a radical, radical departure from the original script and original "model production."  It's the kind of thing that people will love or get angry about.

Reader, did I say yes?  OF COURSE I DID.  This happened a week and a half ago, we've already had two meetings.  Last night we sat on his floor for three and a half hours and argued and had eureka moments and argued for scenes and axed scenes.  Brecht is spinning in his grave...but we're having a ball.

There's a lot to do, and fast, since the show starts rehearsal in January.  Stay tuned.

On Reviews

The reviews came out for my Chicago production.

At first, I didn't want to look at them. But I thought about Dietz, who reads his worst reviews out loud in class. And I thought about Halena Kays, whose response to rough moments tends to be "rub dirt in it." And so I looked.

They weren't good -- "eviscerating" is the word that comes to mind. "Embarrassing" is another.

What to do? I could say "reviewers don't know anything -- let's see THEM write a play, clearly they didn't see all the nuanced, sophisticated things I was doing. I could say "I'll never read reviews again" or "They don't know what they're talking about" or "I can't define success by what a couple of people tell me" or "I'm a terrible playwright, my career is over." And honestly, I said all of these things, in quick succession.

Then I rubbed dirt in it.

Because the thing is, there were some common threads in what the reviewers had to say...some underlying dissatisfactions, places where they were pointing out problems I'd tried to solve but know I didn't solve...because I wasn't sure how to solve them.

The question, I think, is this: "do I treat these reviews as a verdict leveled on a finished product, where I now take my lumps and go home, or are these reviews an opportunity?"

The reviews gave me some new lenses through which to view my play. These are people who don't love me, who don't know me, who haven't seen the multiple drafts of the play, who don't know my intentions. And the fact is, they saw the play and still don't know my intentions. Which means I have work to do. And their reviews are a tool I can use to do that work.

I always argue that I learn as much from going to see bad plays as good plays -- often more. I think the same, in this case, is true of bad reviews. They took apart my play, but insodoing, they're giving me a way to put it back together.

Dirty Hands

36 Hours in Chicago, 10 hours in transit, I should be wiped.
I'm not.
Why not?
Oh, right. After months of CONSUMING theater and sometimes WORKING ALONE, I got a chance to hash things out with colleagues and be MAKING theater, in the room with people I respect.
Forgot now necessary that was.
Like when you finally, finally set your alarm early and get your ass out for a run before work.
This, friends, is why we need a community of artists.
Not to discuss art.
To make it.

Two Nights to Opening...

...Summer People in Chicago. 36 hour trip to the Windy City to see the second (and second-to-last) preview.

So of course, I've realized we should eliminate a scene, and move a different scene from the middle to the OPENING IMAGE.

Woo-hoo. You know that scene in "Dr. Strangelove" where the guy rides in on a bomb, waving his cowboy hat? That's a little what this feels like. My flight's at 10:00 am tomorrow; I won't even get to see this change on its feet.

But the critics will....

Ehn Questions - Overview

1) Be Honest with the contents of your head -- not merely with the conventions of what's in your head.
2) Remove obstacles and be swift. How can your play gather energy as it goes? How can YOU gather energy as you go? How can you stay loose, excited, open...rather than going into lockdown? Value speed.
3) Simplicity. Most things are simple, especially good things.
4) Complexity -- how can it be a practice of stacking simple things, holding a mirror to a mirror of an object, rather than adding ornamentation?
5) How can you understand your images in an immediate way? Is there a pail of water in your play? Interrogate it. What is its essence? You're not looking for an "equals" sign. Be in the center of your image, enter it, allow it full license of meaning.
6) How can you create space where connections are not yet made, or may be made? How can you avoid imposing your will, how can you allow the characters to have their own way? How can you allow yourself to be invisible?

On Meaning and Form - Ehn

Says Ehn:

*In creating our plays, we're not telling people our dreams.
*We're giving people material to make dreams.
*We're not providing meaning, we're providing opportunity for meaning.
*We provide opportunity by providing materials and space for people to generate meaning.

"It's not what a character wants, the object of desire, it's the wanting itself."

"Maybe we don't have to be precise about meaning, but we have to be extremely precise about the space we make." Erik said this, and of course I thought immediately about conversations with Michael Bigelow Dixon, with Dietz. These are three giants in the field of new plays, whose work and ideas are often in direct opposition. I love it -- the trick is figuring out how to triangulate between these ideas, to find my own ground.

What is a Play, what is our obligation to story? - Ehn

1) You can think of a play as a series of events.
2) You can also think of your play as a flow of energy.
...or maybe both.

What if your job is this?
...to bring characters into an experience
...to crack them open
...to leave them at the end

This parallels Noh drama, and the structure of jo-ha-kyu

Says Ehn:
An imaginative story -- is it the ideal, or the easiest thing? If writing your story is getting to be a chore, make it the last thing you do.

If you're merely filfilling a story, how can you put energy into the process for yourself? How can you stay energized? If you aren't energized, your story won't be.

Memory House Exercise - Ehn

1) Think of the SECRETS your character has.
2) Think of a house -- it doesn't have to be a house you've ever seen before. It is the house of your character's mind and heart. Your character is standing somewhere in the house. Where is that?
3) Your character goes to the place where his or her first secret is kept; where is that? Is it contained in an object, a corner, a closet, in plain sight?
4) The second secret, same thing.
5) The third secret, same thing.
6) The character goes to a part of the house he or she has never visited. Opens a door (what kind of door?), finds an object. That object is or represents a secret that does not belong to him or her. Whose secret is it? What is it? Your character takes the secret, and does something with it. What does he or she do?
7) Your character leaves the house now, and goes somewhere else. Where does he or she go? What does she do when she gets there? What object does she find?
8) Your character knows the house is haunted. Who or what haunts the house?
9) Your character takes something as a talisman. Why does your character need a talisman?
10) What does your character do with the talisman?

Clothing Your Character - Ehn

1) Take five minutes to draw a costume for your character.
2) Take ten minutes, using anything you can find, to weave a textile for your character. Incorporate a sentence into the weaving.
3) Remind students of the connection between text and textile.
4) Find a place to leave your textile where you think your character has something to learn, a place where there is a lesson for your character. Leave it there.

Exercises - Ehn

To use in class.

Character Deepening
Part One
1) Write down a profession (like baker, contractor, lawyer)
2) Write down five ways that your character is that profession (i.e. my character is a contracter because...x, because....y, because...z)

Part Two
1) Write down five public places.
2) Write down a secret that your character carries to each of those places.

Theme
Write down five motifs that are appearing in your play, just as a reminder to yourself.

Quick Writing exercise, for fun - Ehn

1) Write down three letters of the alphabet.
2) Write a word that starts with each of those letters.
3) Write a sentence that begins with each of those letters.
4) Write down five cities.
5) Write down five cities on the moon.
6) Use the word [X] in three sentences. Make the sentences as different as possible. Make them the first three sentences that come to mind.

Eugenio Barba Quotation

"Theater teaches us how to be together."

Does it? It certainly requires us to be together -- part of the reason for the craziness of theater people. The art form mandates a collectivity that works in opposition to the (admittedly paradoxical) normative individualism of contemporary U.S. culture. We theater people are a nutty band of gypsies, forced to work together as we stand apart from the nine-to-fivers of the world.

But DO we stand apart? For me, this is an open question. Ehn would say yes, would say (did say) "we are artists. There's a separate word for us because we do on behalf of others what they cannot. We have access to the waters." And on the one hand that's true, but on the other I am suspicious of anything that sets me apart from my dear friends who are doctors, teachers, students, security guards. Don't we all, on some level, do on behalf of others what they cannot? Yet there seems to be the assumption, often, that artists really are a breed apart, that we have chosen a path that sets us at odds with society as a whole, that relegates us to grinding, hanging-by-a-thread poverty or parallel-reality let's-do-lunch fame and fortune.

How can we say that theater teaches us how to be together if the people who make it choose (or are relegated to) a life that is separate from the "us" in question? Yes, there's something to be said for the objectivity of the "outside observer," but how can we wring our hands about audience size, about the idea of making "relevant" theater if, through the very practices we employ (are often forced to employ) to make art and/or live as artists, we distance ourselves from the people we're trying to reach?

Maybe this is a particularly American problem.

Character Mandala Exercise, Part IV (postscript)

Why do the Character Mandala?

I like it because it's a clear representation of what Ehn was, I think, trying to get at in talking about story and character as landscape, as looking at playwriting as a way to explore the darkness, or the space between images, as a way to put images in relationship.

If you have images existing on the periphery of a circle, and you say that the character is what exists in the middle of the circle, you realize that a character can be both CENTRAL and be a kind of NEGATIVE SPACE, both the container and the contained, like a bowl.

This lines up, in a lot of ways, with my experience as an actor. Less about generating things than finding a way to contain and be available to the images, themes, plot. On the other hand, I think this idea of negative space also leaves room for an actor to bring a generative energy to a rehearsal/performance process. Oh, hell, I don't know if I'm articulating that well at all. All this to say that the Image Mandala exercise seems to open possibilities for the actor in rehearsal and performance that move beyond a reductive "what do I want, how do I get what I want" model. And that, at this point, room for that interests me.

Character Mandala Exercise, Part III (Ehn)

By now, you have at least THREE stories in front of you -- the story from your own life, the extant story that is similar to your story, and the extant story that is those stories' opposite.

1) Take a fresh piece of paper. Draw a large circle. Around the circle, at equidistant intervals, write the numbers one through eight (like a clockface, with fewer numbers).

2) At each point on the circle, you will write a few words to represent a SINGLE IMAGE. Here's where my notes aren't quite thorough enough, but I think what you want is this:

3) For Images One Through Four, write a single image from your original stories (of the actual people and places in your life that have inspired your writing). For images four through eight, write images from the stories that are their OPPOSITE.

4) You should now have a circle of images that draw from your own life and from a life of literature/stories/broader mythic culture. In the middle, you have an EMPTY SPACE. That space is important; it's where character lives, it's where new ways of looking at your story live.

5) Here's the fun part. Imagine that these images are dancers at a party. Bring two into the middle; what's the NEW IMAGE that's formed when you smash them into each other? On a separate piece of paper, make a list of NEW images formed by playing your 8 "circle images" off each other in pairs, in threes. List images until you stop finding anything new and interesting.

6) Look at what you have. Imagine that what you have are memories or images from a character's life or story. WHO IS THIS CHARACTER? Take a few minutes to tell yourself who this character is, maybe what his or her story might be.

Character Mandala Exercise (Part II)

1) Take one of the people you described in Part I, and write the most specific memory you have of him or her, in as much detail as you can. Now the next. Now the next.

2) What story is that? Think of a story that exists in the world that is LIKE THIS STORY.
Take a few minutes to write down that story (for example: the first time I did this exercise, I told the story of sitting on a porch with an inspirational teacher and a smart boy I'd had a crush on in high school. The story that was LIKE that story was Anne of Green Gables.

3) What known story is the OPPOSITE of your story?
Take a minute to write IT down (the first time I wrote this story, I wrote down "Little Red Riding Hood" and "A Dragon Story" and "Snow White." I suspect that your choices matter less than your willingness to work in opposition to your original story...again, this is an exercise, to some degree, about tricking your brain away from its well-trodden paths).

MONEY!!!

If you don't know about the Foundation Center...

...now you will. A national resource with branches in several cities, it's the go-to for research on how to get money for you, your nonprofit, your dog...

October is Funding the Arts Month.

http://foundationcenter.org/newyork/ny_calendar.html

Character Mandala Exercise (Part I)

This is from Erik Ehn


1) Write 7 things on your mind. 2) Write 3 places that often appear in your writing.
3) Write 3 people or characters that appear in your writing.
4) Name the REAL places that led to each of the places you named in #2
5) Name the REAL people who led to each of the places you named in #3
6) Answer this question: How am I storing these people and places in my brain? In my body? If my brain/body were a house, where would they be stored?

What is a Vow of Silence? - Ehn

"Another way to think of a vow of silence 

is

as a vow of conversation.

It's being honest about a conversation that is already happening between you and your work, you and the things on your mind, you and the art, to which you as an artist owe your time, your attention.  It's a vow of conversation to the world at large, that you are entering into through temporary silence."

My Observations on Silence:

1) It became clear very quickly how much of what I had to say was filler, a way of "performing self" for the people around me, ie bullshit.

2) It became clear soon after that many of the more pressing things I wanted to say were questions, or observations that, while I might want to make them, could wait until later.  If they were still there at the end of the silence, they were worth asking/saying.

3) It was interesting to notice what kinds of conversation were the hardest to let go of.  For me, I really wanted to make sure that everybody else was okay -- if someone needed tea, or looked like they were having a tough time, those were the times it was hardest for me to maintain silence.  When we could talk, and could compare those sticking points, it turned out everyone had different "hot buttons."  Good to know what prompts your speech, what rose, insistent, to the surface.

What is Character, and an Exercise- Ehn

In keeping with the primacy Ehn places on image, he puts character, I'd say, in the SERVICE of image.  He is definitely operating from a model that subverts the heirarchy we inherit from Aristotle (Above all these is action, character next...etc. etc.)

Anyway.  Says Ehn:

Character is the space that allows distinct image to become personal.  Character is the space between images.  "Hamlet is the logic of landscape that puts images in relationship to each other."

I think what Ehn is saying is that "Hamlet" or the word on the page that is then embodied by an actor playing "Hamlet," exists so that we can have the arras scene, so that we can have Yorick's skull, so that we can have a flight of angels singing ["him"] to ["his"] rest.  In Ehn's definition, character is, in essence, a negative space.

An exercise he gave us to get at this, and to MAKE A CHARACTER:

1) Take two objects.  A pen, say, and a bottle of hand sanitizer.

2) Each is a character.  Describe that character.

3) Describe the relationship BETWEEN these two characters.

4) Just kidding.  These two characters are the SAME character, with the relationship described.  WHO IS THIS CHARACTER?

So think of a character as a TERRITORY, as a VARIETY OF POSSIBILITIES.

What is Image - Ehn

Says Ehn:

"Image is a NOUN with the energy of a verb.  A thing that has so much energy it threatens the nature of the thing, that it threatens to consume the universe.  An image is an object ensouled, not only itself, but the quality of itself.

Not a cup, but the president of Cupville.

Not a slap, but the entire relationship between men and women in a single gesture.

It is our job, as writers, to have a complicated, fated, loving relationship with images -- not in a sentimental way; love is a real problem"

I loved this idea of love as a problem, and I love the idea that it is our job to make images so strong they become the "president of cupville."  Images as active, images as full of real ferocity and power.  That's ambitious.

An Alternate Definition of Story - ehn workshop

"Story is the logic of a landscape; it's how space is shared"

Says Ehn,  " we are tempted, when writing fast, to work with people and power structures."  It can be a shorthand for story.

Getting at a Play Subject

1) Make a list of what you noticed today.

2) Take HONEST STOCK of what's on your mind.  List what is on your mind.

Your job is to begin from a point of honesty, and what's really on your mind.  That's what you have to share.

Imagination, Inspiration, Invasion - Ehn

In the order in which we did them.  There are some missing.

1.  List all the trees you can think of.

2.  List train terms.

3.  List FAKE TOWNS, that don't exist.

4.  Imagine standing on a bridge, looking down at someone walking far below.  Describe who you see, what you see that person doing.

Idea presented after these exercises:

Lists one & two is a list that relies on memory, the brain's ability to name things.

List three relies on understanding, your ability to use the contents of your mind.

List three relies on will, how you present yourself to the world.

So memory = the contents of your head.  Understanding is what you do with the contents of your head.  Will is how you then ACT, how you move from your interior world to the exterior world.

Each of these - memory, understanding, will - are known at their edge, are know in the test of themselves.  We test our memory by stretching it to its limit.  We test understanding, and make it strong, at the breach of rationality.  We test our will at the edge of how we present ourselves to the world.

Erik Ehn Workshop, Overview

People have been asking about the (amazing) workshop in which I participated -- the one led by Erik Ehn, organized by the Pataphysics group at Flea Theatre.

Here's an overview:

Day One:

Arrive.

Dinner.

Group Session: overview of retreat and how it will work.  Silence begins.

Day Two:

Breakfast.

A series of Group Sessions (no speaking except for Erik) in which he introduces several exercises, intermixed with solo writing time, meals, and "vacancies" -- periods during which we are neither to write nor to do anything specifically "productive," a kind of regenerative period to keep us ready for our more generative writing periods.  

On day two, there are four Group sessions (if I remember correctly).

Day Three:

"check in" time in the morning -- time for people to speak with Erik, one on one, if the silence is getting to them.

Breakfast.

3 writing sessions, three gatherings, lunch & dinner.  One vacancy, one break.

We are asked to set our alarms for 3:00 am and write for an hour.

Day Four:

Two gatherings, a lot of writing time, meals, vacancies.

Before dinner, we break silence.  We stay up late, talking a lot, decompressing.

Day Five:

 Breakfast, we leave.

Plays Seen Lately...

Mostly for my own reference...

Hamlet. With Jude Law. For cheap. It was, I thought, awful...mostly through bad/lazy/obvious directorial choices. Really? EVERYBODY in black? Really? NO sexual heat between Gertrude and Claudius? Really? King's speeches delivered from dead center, on a red carpet? And an Ophelia who seemed less likely to drown herself than to say "screw him" and go get an MBA? Argh. Come on, people, this is Broadway. It felt like somebody said "These Americans...tell them it's Shakespeare and put in a movie star, and they'll see anything."
Killers and Other Family. By Lucy Thurber, who wrote Monstrosity, that play I loved in July. Really liked this one too, and it couldn't have been more different. Good, strong roles, felt like early Sam Shepard, if Sam Shepard were a woman. The kind of play the Steppenwolf should be doing now. It's not often, lately, that I go for the straight-up living room play...but when a living room play can feel as dangerous as this, and is as well-acted as this, we're in business.
Mandala, a one-man-show by a friend of mine. Well-crafted and smart. I wanna read it.
A Steady Rain, by Keith Huff, with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman, who both turned in strong performances, with only a few false notes. A good story, if a less traditionally recognizable "play-play."
A friend's reading, last night. An interesting early draft.
Karinne Keithley's play at the Here Arts Center; not my cup of tea, but hypnotic, beautiful, thoughtful, and assured. I would love to see more of her work, to learn what she's doing and how. Even though I like a more obvious "story."
Any Other Name, by my friend George Brant. A solid production of a lovely new script, in New Jersey.
A Lifetime Burning by Cusi Cram. Honestly, I wasn't a fan of this one. I'm thrilled to see Primary Stages doing new work, and the play takes on the hot topic of fabricated autobiography...but the play felt a little "safe." I've seen other work of Ms. Cram's that I like better.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Went to hear a screenwriter speak.
The kind who teaches at the university level.
The kind who charges $400 to read a script.
No, I didn't pay that much to hear him talk.
And it made a nice date.
But damned if he wasn't rehashing every screenwriting book I've read.
Which, in turn, are usually rehashing Aristotle.
And it's good to be reminded of the basics, but...
Lately I feel like Treplev in The Seagull; "We need new forms!"

Anyway, BELOW is what he had to say, nutshell version:

1) Tell a good story, a lie that looks like the truth. Make it exciting and make it make sense.
2) Write good scenes so that good actors will want to be in it -- for all actors, not just the lead.
3) Make sure your story is credible. Do research and/or write from your own experience.
4) Make sure your story contains, and builds, tension. Order of events is everything.
5) Hope and Fear -- audiences go to the movies to worry.
6) Your story must change and be changed by your protagonist. The world should change.
7) Leave the audience with a question; was it worth it? Your character won, but at what cost?

Like I said, standard Aristotle.

'Tis The Season...

...For applications. SPF, O'Neill, Lark, and PlayPenn are all on the horizon.

Can I just pause to say that I would rather WORK ON my work than write ABOUT my work, ad my-and-everyone-else's nauseum?

On the other hand...
the annual trotting-out-of-artist-statement IS an opportunity, or CAN BE an opportunity, to clarify/revisit/reevaluate what we do, why we do it, how we situate our recent plays within the body of our work, how we situate our work within the landscape of contemporary theater, how we view the work of theater in the world.

And today, after a day of statement-wrestling, I'm feeling emboldened to get way more radical with a revision.

Always hovering, that question "how is my duty my opportunity?"

Erik Ehn's Workshop

There will be so, so much more on the weekend I just spent in the woods with Erik Ehn and the Pataphysics workshop people. Below, though, an email from him, that I don't want to forget. If this were an actual notebook, it would be cut out and pasted in along with a pressed flower (probably a black-eyed susan):

In my own experience, there can be a swift nostalgia for silence and community. Realistically, a louder life will come streaming back. But like any time with a natural phenomenon (a waterfall, a great walk in the woods, shooting stars), the experience can remain a practical and living memory. One can access silence like a talisman (a photo, a religious medal, an oath). One may build a house inside oneself - an imaginary, a wonderful house - as polymorphic as one's dreams, a house that will change like a dream on behalf of dreams - a house in which one shelters and stows the gifts of time in a way that they are not immune from time, but safer than they are in the wild. Then all those times when one is not talking (or not talking/listening to purpose) can be converted to a meaningful, maintained silence by force of recollection.

So. A talisman, here on the web, for later. Revisit as necessary.

O'Neill Panel

So...I had to reread the confidentiality clause to make sure I could post this...but it looks like I can. What follows are my notes from a really good panel at the O'Neill Conference's MFA Convening. Panelists were: Liz Frankel (The Public), Ed Sobel (Philly, PlayPenn, formerly Steppenwolf), Marc Masterson (Humana), Jack Tantleff (Agent), Paula Vogel (Yale).

QUESTION: How do we create more opportunities for playwrights, rather than having us all fight for the same resources?
ANSWERS from the panel at large (not attributed – I lost track and don’t want to attribute wrong):
-Are you talking about institutional or non-institutional opportunities? Because those are two different things.
-What’s the root impulse? Is it to enshrine your work? Or…
Is our root impulse not to create new PLAYS but to create NEW THEATRES – by which we mean a new DISCOURSE with our audience.
-As playwrights, we have two options: 1) Take a number, and wait patiently 2) Say “fuck it” and start your own company (taking Clubbed Thumb and/or 13P as models). Do you want to MAKE A CIRCLE or SCALE THE PYRAMID?
Here’s another way to frame the question: What do you need in order to write and then hear your work and see it on its feet, sooner rather than later?
-The best most of us can do is to inject ourselves into a community, to find out who’s doing interesting things at our level and who might want to know us. Find our peers, FIND COMMUNITY.
(My thesis: Hard Work + Community + Something worth saying = Opportunity)

QUESTION: What Can WE DO, now that we’re leaving school, to get our work seen?
ANSWERS:
-Find and cultivate advocates in literary managers, directors, actors, other playwrights…people who are actually passionate about YOU and YOUR WORK. Nurture your own network. Not much will come to you “out of the blue” or “cold” – most opportunities happen because people know you, trust you, are passionate about you.
Nuts&Bolts Answers
-Read William Goldman’s The Season and Adventures in the Screen Trade – esp. Chapter two.
Everyone in the business wants to find the people for whom they’d lay down in traffic.
-Dramatists Sourcebook. Read it, follow every link.
-State Council of the Arts, grantwriting workshop. Take it.
-The Foundation Center. Go, and seek out grants.
-Start a theater program with a foundation or community group.
-Google the playwrights whose plays you love – where are they being produced?
-Find colonies with free room and board.
-New York Foundation of the Arts, TCG, New Dramatists, Dramatists Guild – get to know their resources

ON AGENTS
Don’t email them. Write great letters – absolutely no form letters. Research who they represent, and contact the ones who represent people to whom you compare yourself. Don’t say how inexpensive your play is to produce. Send an amazing one-act. Have a sense of yourself, and where you fall in the universe. Spell their name right. Remember you’re gonna be asking them to have faith in you as a human being.
Everyone has to find their own way.

ON LITERARY DEPARTMENTS
Pay attention to who’s there, what’s being done. Know the aesthetic conversation they seem to be having, based on what they’re doing.
Something to think about, both for which literary departments to target and to know your own voice/mind:
What are your ten “Saint Plays” and “Devil Plays” of the last FIVE YEARS? Who wrote them? Where were they developed? Where done? Research them. Update the list?
Know what you ARE and what you ASPIRE TO.
Money comes sometimes. Don’t worry about it.
Express what’s important to you.
Writers write best from EXILE. You can’t write about home while you’re there.
Playwrights are sailors with LOTS of ports. Have a brothel in every port.
Know where home is.

On Knowing What You're About

I had the good fortune to see a couple of extraordinary pieces of theater in the last week or so, back-to-back.  Any ONE of these plays would be worth writing about at length -- Our Town for its faithfulness to Wilder's original aims, Ivanov for its brilliant performances and deft sense of timing, Monstrosity for its ambitious scale.

Taken together, though, I think there are some essential lessons at play.

1) Don't be afraid to play with scale/scope.  We're used to performing, these days, in tiny spaces.  Don't think that the scale of your ambitions, of what your tackling, has to match your playing space.  How can you keep changing the space over the course of the evening?  How can your production AND YOUR SCRIPT keep opening up, opening out.  Teach your audience your play, and then turn the tables.

2) Be brave, bold, and resolute.  All three of those productions were BALLSY, all for different reasons.  "How," you might ask, "can 'Our Town' possibly be ballsy? What's ballsy about Chekhov's fifth-best known play?"  Our Town dared to go back to Wilder's original intentions, to strip naked, to remind us that the play is, can still be, IMMEDIATE.  Likewise the Ivanov did a great job of solving the "boredom" problem in a lot of Chekhov -- how to ACTIVATE it, what's the ROOT of it.  Monstrosity wasn't afraid to create a whole new world, to get undeniably weird, to get violent.  It wasn't afraid to barrel ahead and let us catch up to it.

3) Cultural Context matters.  One of the reasons that "Our Town" reduced me to tears is that I'm FROM THERE.  Like very few people in that audience, I have lived the world (to the degree possible) described in that play.  Thornton Wilder knew what he was about in that play, knew the world he was creating on a DNA-level.  The Ivanov, same thing.  The Eastern European cast didn't have to struggle to "fix" or "make sense" of the world of that play -- they could play within it, because they are, in some sense, the product of it.  It made them, so they could make it.  This isn't an argument to always "write what you know," but its an argument for history, and ancestry, and the honoring of ROOTS -- something toward which we tend to turn a blind eye in this culture.  But if you look at something like Tracy Letts's "August: Osage County," or Williams's best work, or Inge's or O'Neill's best work, the through-line was that they were all, on some level, tapping into the deep, deep well of their ancestry -- literal, cultural, geographic.

Kimber Lee Cleveland was talking about all the plays she's been seeing at Playwrights Horizons, about the unnameable, indescribable factor of "voice" that tends to distinguish plays that are rejected versus plays that move forward.  Listening to her, and seeing these plays, I begin to see what she was getting at -- it's about a playwright who KNOWS WHAT SHE'S ABOUT, about the guts and confidence to stake a claim, to mark a territory, to OWN the landscape of her play, of the world she's making.  The productions did that, the best plays I know do that.  There's nothing tentative in it.  There's god in it.

List of plays, recently...

Seen around NYC...

"Our Town," by Thornton Wilder, directed by David Cromer

"Ivanov," by Anton Chekhov, performed by a group out of Hungary

"Monstrosity," a new play by Lucy Thurber, a member of 13p

"A Map of Virtue," by Erin Courtney, a member of 13p, at New Georges

"The Chimes," by Kevin Christopher Snipes, at SPF

"Reborning," by Zayd Dohrn, at SPF

"Job," by Thomas Bradshaw, a reading with Soho Rep/the Lark

"Stunning," by David Adjmi, at Lincoln Center

A night of poetry by Abraham Burickson, which I include because I'll be talking about it soon...

Two new play readings by members of Youngblood -- the memorable one being by Robert Askins, a play set in Texas.

I saw far, far more last summer -- but the theater so far this summer is far, far better.  I'll get into why, and get into questions, in the next few posts.

From Erik Ehn...

...by way of Erin Courtney.

Is your story about a feather? Maybe the right structure for your story is also a feather.  What does it mean to have a feather-story structure?

In some ways, this is the most compelling (and non-argumentative) argument for alternative form, for a different kind of "story" that I have heard.  As Dietz says, people are narrative animals -- we will MAKE narrative.  And there is much to be said for form following function -- sometimes a playwright's aims may require something more Aristotelian, but sometimes, if the aims of the playwright are less linear, the form the play takes may be as well.  Or rather, more "feather-shaped."

The goal, I think, regardless of one's sensibility, is that there be a purpose or design behind the shape of your play.  Just as we may look at an object in nature and not grasp its underlying design, the fact remains that there almost inevitably IS one -- the feather's sharp linearity, hollow, with thousands of infinitesimal outcroppings...

Maybe I was especially susceptible to that image.  I grew up on beaches, of course, and used t hunt down seagull feathers, tracing their shape with my fingers, pushing against their natural grain to watch the edges separate, then smoothing them back down to their natural shape.  I've watched a lot of coastal birds, too, and seen the feathers as part of the whole, in action.  Feathers, too, serve a purpose.

And of course, I've told my students to think of their plays as mountains, as rivers...why not as feathers?  What would that open up?

What remains critical to me, I think, is that you find a way to invite your audience into your play.  I think that any model you find can work, but for me a play is always about creating a point of connection with a community -- it matters to me that my plays invite people to join me at the table, no matte what their narrative structure.  Everyone loves a good story, and one well-told...but there are as many ways to tell a good story as there are storytellers.

Is this, maybe, a common ground between (what I perceive as) the divide between the "well-made play" folks and the "alternative structure" folks?  Is there no binary to begin with, is it in my head?

First Look

A few observations:

1) Know, when you're doing a festival or workshop, what the aims are of the institution. Is it to do a big re-work of your script? To showcase your script for a local or national audience? To get to know you and your work? It could be any of these or more.

2) It's a lovely thing, and an important thing, for everyone in the room to recognize that the playwright is the expert on his or her play. Even if the playwright knows she will learn as much from her director, actors, dramaturg -- you never wanna walk into a room where you feel like you're at the service of the director, an actor. You are there in service of your work. Which means listening hard to everyone and doing what needs doing. Lisa/Meg are great with this.

3) Embrace the director who asks questions of the play and her actors. Find one who keeps telling them/you what to think, and you might wanna run. I'm not saying a director should never lay it on the line, just that you want to make sure there's at least as much Opening Up going on as shutting down. You'll learn more. Lisa Portes is great at this.

4) Don't be afraid of big changes.

5) Try to welcome everyone into the room. Flatten the heirarchy where you can. Good ideas can come from anywhere. That ASM? She's an expert on contemporary literature, and your main character's a writer. If you don't make space for it, you can't use it.

First Look Festival, First Read

I'm in Chicago this week, observing Steppenwolf's First Look festival.

One big difference between this and other theatres I've seen is resources. People, space, money -- Steppenwolf has more of each than you see very often (okay, yes, there are plenty of theatres in its league, but not ones where I see the inner workings much). Need a costume? The talented costume designer will render it, make or buy it, and fit it to your actor. Need a rehearsal space? Would you like the Garage or Yandorf Hall? Can't find a lead actor? Ask Erica Daniels, who will find you exactly what you need.

I simplify. I know. And my point is not that this is a Goliath of a company -- it's that the people here are at the TOP OF THEIR GAME. There is a confluence of talent, brains and dedication in the Steppenwolf family, from Artistic Director Martha Lavey to the literary intern they brought on a few days ago (nice post, btw, Michael Van Ness). It's a culture of excellence fostered by the deservedly legendary ensemble, and made possible by smart people with money who recognize that IMPORTANT WORK IS HAPPENING HERE.

And what that means, that culture of excellence, is that Steppenwolf will always strain its resources. Give these guys more space, they will fill it with another show (the "garage theater," which used to be rehearsal space, is a case in point). Give them enough new scripts, and they will dream up (then figure out how to fund) an important new work festival. Steppenwolf, for all its resources, is busting at the seams. The same has been true at virtually every point in its history. It's what make Steppenwolf Steppenwolf -- but I'd argue that it's also what makes great artists great. Testing limits. Busting through ceilings. Waking up with the crazy idea, daring to speak it aloud, and asking "how can we put this into practice?"

I was reminded of that, yesterday, when The Wolf filled Yandorf Hall with actors, directors, dramaturgs, interns, funders, and the occasional fly on the wall (me :) ). To see those kinds of resources marshalled in the service of new work, especially in these dark economic times, was thrilling. And that was before we even heard the plays.

I don't want to say exciting, but maybe an inciting article in the New York Times today, part of an ongoing conversation about the difficulty female playwrights seem to have in getting to Broadway. This young woman at Princeton put together some pretty strong research that looks at the possible factors involved in that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/theater/24play.html?_r=2&ref=theater

What do I take from it?
1) The playwright with a play ready to go, wins.
2) Don't assume that because the AD or Lit. Manager of a theater is female, she will automatically be an advocate...on the other hand, no matter what this study might imply, don't assume she's out to screw you. Just know that a man is as likely to be an ally in getting your page to the stage as a woman.
3) Work harder. Get your play in front of people. Work harder. So what? Do we need higher "batting averages?" Then know that, and get moving.

Pen and Paper

Saw a new play reading this week.

I took notes. Until I saw that the playwright had neither pen nor paper in hand, or accessible, over the course of a two-and-a-half hour reading.

If she doesn't take her play seriously enough to take notes, why should I?

10,000 Hours? Really?

Read "Outliers" last week, the book by Michael Gladwell. He had many things to say. The one that stuck -- that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master your craft/reach "genius" level.

Math isn't my strong suit these days...but I believe that works out to about 20 hours a week for ten years.

Which is to say, time to get writing. That's a hell of a commitment. And yet -- that's the goal, isn't it? Mastery, commitment?

The Well-Made Play Debate

Is it really a debate? There is an argument I hear being made aloud, often, for the...not the well-made-play, exactly, but in favor of plot.

I've also heard "let theater be theater, let it be theatrical."

Are these in opposition? I don't know. I don't want to think so.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-theresa-rebeck29-2009mar29,0,2065069.story

http://nycphysicaltheatre.com/definition.aspx

If anyone has other links that pertain to "what is theater supposed to be," I welcome them...

More on Rude Mechs Workshop

Rude Mechs were interviewed Tuesday by John Aielli of KUT's Eklektikos, an Austin radio institution. The whole spot runs on his blog, Aielli Unleashed:

http://kut.org/items/show/17099

We all got to go down and sing for the interview...there's a lot of them talking about the piece, and we sing two live numbers. It's interesting to hear them talk about the piece and how it came to be.

More to note on the INBSH rehearsal process. There are two directors, a composer/lyricist, a writer/lyricist, an artistic director, and a projections designer in the room, in addition to a dramaturg and all the actors. This is a LOT of cooks. The Mechs have been working together for a long time -- they've got a lot of very smart HABITS and PRACTICES in place to keep from spoiling the soup.

1) They establish the RULES OF THE WORLD they're making, and they stick to them. There's a logic, and when there's a question about a choice, they defer to the logic, or clarify the logic. This pertains not only to story structure (we're used to that, even if we don't always accomplish that) but to everything in the aural and visual world. For example: In one scene, the projections show a side-view of everything happening in an office, and simultaneously show the things ON the table. So we had to spend time making sure that the timing of everything going on and off the table was solid.

2) They huddle to figure things out. They're good at doing it quickly, but they don't do their figuring out, too much, in front of the actors. It's "cool, go practice this one thing," then they figure something out and come back to us with "okay, this next." There are so many moving pieces and parts, too, that they do a LOT of "divide-and-conquer" -- They huddle up, split the list, take who they need and work on the pieces, then bring'em all together. Then they watch the whole thing, rinse and repeat. So they get to do some collective-brain-contribution, without stopping the process very long to do so, and they take advantage of being able to be several places at once once we're moving gain...so we get a lot done fast.

3) They do something I also saw Halena do in "101 Ways..." earlier this year, which is to give actors an assignment to problem-solve, send them off, and then have a show-and-tell. As in "we know we want a dance with rope here, but we don't know what it looks like. Take ten minutes, come back and show us five things you can do with rope." Then they used the stuff they liked to make a rope dance. In that case, they knew that the dance needed to (a) represent a boy tied to a lion in the desert and (b) be a little bit of a palate-cleanser between two songs.

4) They are 100% clear on the aesthetic they're going for. They might not always have been, but they are now (see the "rules" thing)...which means they can make definitive decisions faster and with confidence.

5) They encourage all of us to bring our "A-game" all the time, to come up with crazy and stupid ideas, and to be brave/fierce/badasses. They do this by explicitly offering the invitation to contribute like crazy, but also by modeling that at every minute. So their collaborators contribute more and sit around less.

That's all for now.

Some Book Recommendations

Probably you've already read these. But a couple of students have been asking me for book recommendations -- these are things worth a look, maybe worth a permanent place on your shelf.

Poetics - Aristotle. (Extremely) Oldie-but-Goodie
Save The Cat. On screenwriting.
Screenplay - Syd Field. The quintessential screenwriting book.
Your Screenplay Sucks. On screenwriting.
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott. On writing, by a fiction writer.
On Writing - Stephen King. On writing, by a fiction writer.
Three Uses of a Knife - David Mamet. (I'm not a big fan of the guy, but...)
The Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide - David Spencer. (Recommended by L. Koenning)
The Playwright's Guidebook - Stuart Spencer (I'm only partway through it, but think it's pretty good)
The Art of Dramatic Writing - Lajos Egri
The Art and Craft of Playwriting - Jeffrey Hatcher
The Dramatist's Toolkit; the Craft of the Working Playwright - Jeffrey Sweet

This is, of course, in addition to the seven-page list of plays I give my students...not to say I've read all those plays, it was compiled mostly by Sheldon Patinkin with additions and updates by me...but that list, with the above books, is a pretty good foundation.

What Next? NYC...

I'm moving to NYC. In seven days. Uh, yikes.

Goals for the first year are modest. Settle in to a first year of full-time teaching. Write three new plays. Win a Tony award. Just kidding on that last one.

Last summer was, maybe, the hardest summer of my life. But it made me think hard about what matters to me, and I boiled it down to "plays, family, table" -- Plays as in writing them, making them, performing them, teaching them -- basically contributing to this craft as best I possibly can. Family as in the one I already HAVE, and the one I hope one day to MAKE. The kids, the partner. And Table as in Community. The idea of building a table and bringing people to it, and always making room for people who need a table. In a narrow and broad sense. Everything else -- lots of money/recognition/material goods/exact location/etc -- it may not be bullshit, but it's not where I want to focus my energy.

This year was incredible. Productions galore -- a short film, three plays. A first chance to direct. Three great acting opportunities. New friendships. Deepened old friendships. If most of the lessons I learned, my first two years, happened in the classroom, most of this year's lessons happened in the rehearsal hall, or on stage. That's a blessing.

This next year...I have no idea what's coming. We'll see. But if anyone has any words of wisdom for the Big Apple, I'm all ears.

Rude Mechs Workshop

Haven't posted much in a while. Busy writing a thesis, graduating, rewriting a couple of screenplays. BTW, Good news. "Unmoored," the screenplay Erica Saleh and I wrote last summer, that Marie Brown and Yari Wolinsky directed, and that Mark Scheibmeir and Stacey Cabaj starred in, premiered at the "Dances with Films" festival in Los Angeles this weekend. Marie spoke after the screening -- sounds like it was well-received.

I'm in week two of a two-week workshop with The Rude Mechanicals (Rude Mechs), for my money the most interesting theater company in Austin. Kirk Lynn, their resident playwright (and one of several Artistic Directors) taught at UT this year, where I got a chance to know him relatively well. He's amazing...as are the other Rude Mechs, from what I've seen.

We're workshopping four scenes from "I've Never Been So Happy," their first musical. It's a western. So far, I get to sing all the high backup notes, get dragged around in a knot of rope, and play the Sheriff. It's awesome. Christina, who is dramaturging, has been blogging about the whole process on the Rude Mech website:

http://rudemechs.blogspot.com/.

The Mechs got a grant from UT to develop the musical, hence the involvement of students, and a grant from TCG, hence the LIVE VIDEO STREAM of the entire rehearsal process, available on the tcg website. So that's cool. And it means I don't need to talk about any of the neat things Christina's discussing, because you can find that commentary on HER posts.

So. The thing about this process is that I'm mostly singing. Which means I'm banging away at harmonies while other folks are doing things that require a little more active dramaturgy. But there are still some lessons:

1) Boy, do you want everybody in the room to say "Yes, And" during a workshop. Ten actors, ten days, and a shitload to do. There isn't time for "I'm tired" or "Eh...I don't know..." Balls-to-the-walls actors who will do anything that doesn't involve serious danger -- that's the name of the game. We've been scaling walls, developing rope burns, singing for hours at a time without a break...and the bravest, craziest folks in the room are the Mechs themselves. They're acrobats, puzzle-masters, and problem-solvers.

2) Know what you're going for. The Rude Mechs might not know exactly what each moment will BE, but they know exactly what each moment needs to DO. IE "The music is really pretty here, but we're not going for pretty -- ugly up the voices, and let your bodies say 'we don't give a shit' so that we're in counterpoint to the music" or "okay, they just got something long and complicated, so this moment is the palate-cleanser" or "don't cheat. Watching you struggle is interesting. Watching you succeed by cheating is boring. And keep the struggle out of your face. Just do it." -- Yeah, there are several lessons in those statements about what's interesting onstage...but in each narrow slice of the show, the directors know what needs to be accomplished. It's up to us to figure out the specifics, but they have a deep understanding of the path they want the audience to take.

3) Let people work to their expertise. Kirk's a writer. He ain't directing us. Thomas knows physical stuff. He ain't tellin' Peter how to write his music. Erin's the queen of the visual world (talk about amazing puppetry and projections!!!!)...she ain't tellin' us how to act. Not that everybody doesn't occasionally have a quick idea that might add...but sometimes the workshop feels like when I go to the grocery store with my mother, rip the list in half, and say "meet you at checkout." We wrote the list together, we are intimately familiar with each others' tastes, and we trust each other to make the best choices on the details.

Advocating for your work

My friend Sarah just defended her dissertation.
Charlotte Canning, one of the people on her committee, talked about the danger in ever saying "this is just my paper...this is just an article."

She said: never forget that it is your responsibility not only to MAKE the work, but to act as its advocate in the world.

You are creator and advocate.
To advocate is not to lack humility,
or to ignore flaws or opportunities to improve,
but to act as caretaker for your work.
And it's part of your job, as artist.

Questions

How do you build a story onstage?

How can you take a moment and QUICKEN it, DEEPEN it, rather than EXPAND it?

What does that mean, and what does that do?

State of the World and Future of Arts

I wrote this in my notebook a while ago. It's an unattributed quote from a Seattle newspaper.

"As the economy crumbles further under the weight of stacked illusions, we're going to have to keep finding more creative ways to adapt. That might make us more interdependent, more connected to one another. We're going to survive by unsettling one another's lives a little more."

Recently, someone in a position to speak with some authority commented that he wouldn't be surprised if 20% of our midsize to large regional theatres close as a result of the current economic crisis.

I wonder if that's a bad thing.

And I know that in wondering that, I am both (a) biting the hand I'd like to feed me and (b) positioning myself as an uppity youngster shaking her hand at the establishment while saying "we need new forms!" -- a walking cliche.

I don't want to say that cheap theater, POOR theater, is in a position of moral authority to theater with a budget, with unions, where artists get health insurance and people can grab a glass of wine before the show.

But I DO think that it behooves us all to see the current global economic MELTDOWN, and the ensuing fallout in the non-profit world/arts world, as a moment of OPPORTUNITY.

Because we all need each other, now more than ever.
And ours is an inherently communal form.
Which positions us to interrogate, and to SERVE, in a unique way.

We can bemoan the crumbling finances at our large institutions, or we can figure out how this moment is an opportunity to reimagine what we do, what we need to do what we do, where we do it, for whom we do it, and why.

It's a transition.
Exciting.

Van Gogh Quotation

Have I written this here before? Now I can't remember.

Eliminate the obvious.
Exaggerate the essential.

On "Ghosting" and feeling haunted.

Two Dictionary Definitions of "Ghosting."
1) The appearance of multiple images, or ghosts (usually unwanted) on a television screen.
2) Identity theft of a person not commonly known to be dead.

The performance as public practice students in the theater department use the term "ghosting" too, usually to talk about performances, images or ideas that "haunt" another performance. The way they use it, it seems to mean that you always bring what you already know or have seen to a play -- that this is something a playwright can sometimes use to his or her advantage. We had some visual quotes in "The Psyche Project" that were referencing famous paintings or statues...is that an example of ghosting?

In last two days, I've had two experiences of "ghosting," or what I'm calling ghosting, until someone explains it to me better.

The first, at The Method Gun, the Rude Mech's new show. This is the third iteration of the show I've seen -- the first was over a year ago, in their home space, the second was at a huge arts center in Austin called the Long Center, the third, two nights ago, was in their home space again. Each time, the production changed and grew. Each production had moments that also appeared in previous performances.

It was the strangest thing to watch the production the other night; I felt like I wasn't watching the performance in front of me, but the ghosts of the two other performances. We'd hit a moment that had been in the other productions and suddenly I'd be seeing triple. It was interesting, but also distracting.

The second was yesterday in class. Marie, Melissa, Mark and Arianna did a short play based on the basement of our house -- the basement I didn't know existed until two nights ago, when I helped Marie take props from it. The props? Decades-old glass jars of preserves, littering the dirt floor of the basement like a mass grave.

The play started in 1930, with a man (Mark) digging a basement for his wife (Melissa) in which she could put her canned goods. This went on for several short scenes -- the course of a year. Then, just after he'd put her cans below, he died in the basement, out of sight. Cut to the present, when a young couple considers buying the house, finds the basement, and wonders what happened that there are all these abandoned jars. Melissa, the 1930s woman, is still onstage, canning. The man in the present (also Mark) reads a love note that the dead man (Mark) wrote his wife. It said what he never said while alive -- how much he loved his wife, and how he imagined their lives together, growing old together. The present-day couple decide to buy the house.

There were so many ghosts that they managed to create just within the performance itself -- the jars, Mark as those two characters, Melissa's continued presence. For me, there was also the knowledge that the basement does exist, that it's under my bedroom, that you access it from my closet. I also couldn't divorce what I was seeing from all that I know of Marie, Melissa, Mark as people, as friends I've performed with.

It was a hell of a ghost story.

Questions I've Been Asking My Students

My students wrote 30-page plays. Now they're moving into the revision phase. I've been trying to give them questions and exercises to poke them toward revisions, mostly to make sure that what they're doing is to a purpose, and toward the play they're writing. Below, things I bugged them about this week (good reminders for me, too)

1. Does your play move in time and/or location? In each instance, WHY?
2. Does each character have an emotional investment in the story's outcome? If not, why not?
3. Have you cut for answered questions, stated emotion, repetition, filler words? If not, why not?
4. Use it or lose it. How does each scene forward your plot?
5. Remember retrospective inevitability. If you start with the last moment or incident in your play, what incident MUST happen to get you to it? What incident must happen to get you to THAT incident? etc... work backward.
6. What do your characters know when? What does your audience know when? What is the timeline both of the story and of the audience's experience of time on stage? What do you gain or lose based on how those match up or not?
7. What order of scenes and/or revelation of information will have maximum impact on your audience?
8. Think of Chekhov's gun: if there's a gun onstage in the first act, it will go off by the fourth act. Are there objects, images, people onstage that don't advance your story? If not, they're probably detracting from it (or give me a good reason why you need them).
9. Climax. It's gonna tie to the protagonist's journey, or the audience's journey.
10. Avoid navel-gazing. We don't go to the theater to see characters reflect. We go to see them ACT in ways that cause US to reflect. Even Hamlet was doing a lot (you want an argument for this, go read David Ball's Backward and Forward).

Yes, these are dictatorial. I tend to state things to my students like they're commandments. They can hate me and/or argue later...but most of these things will keep them out of hot water...and by the time they reach the play where these DON'T hold true, they won't need me anymore anyway.

Rejection Letters

Three in the last week.
'Tis the Season.

I'm starting to love rejection letters.
The universe getting in my face and saying
"Whatchoo got, Girlie-Girl?
You play with the big kids, you better BRING IT!"
Oh yes. I will play with the big kids.
And I will bring it.

Time to step it up.

New Works Festival - Reflections

The New Works Festival has come and gone.
Dozens of performances, hundreds of audience members, guest artists from all over the country, a couple of swank parties...for a week, the Winship is like a huge hive of art.

A few reflections from Robert Faires, of the Austin Chronicle:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A764560

A few pictures, from our guest photographer:
http://www.bjurstromstudio.com/Pages/UT2009NWF.html
I was in "101," "Foodstuff," and "The Psyche Project." Some of the pics are serious blackmail material :)

It was incredible week. The thing I was most struck by was the optimism and humor running through so many pieces...there was both a lightness and a depth to piece after piece...the two things juxtaposed in a way that was really inspiring. More later.

NWF - On Ruben Polendo, Continued

On Companies:
"Nobody keeps the company together. Everybody in the company NEEDS the company. Any group of artists can create art -- only a company can move an art forward."

Great quote:
THE TWO BIGGEST POISONS IN ART ARE DECEPTION AND FEAR (...probably in life too).

He had a million good things to say...I could listen to him for a very long time...but these were the take-aways.

New Works Festival - Guest Artists: Ruben Polendo

Ruben Polendo is the Artistic Director of Theater Mitu.
http://www.theatermitu.org/

He's also one of the most inspiring speakers I've met in a while. The kind of guy you'd follow into a burning building or off a bridge because he told you there was a great artistic reason to do so.

He talked about his company, his life, his artistic principles. He's got a lot of life stories (started as a biologist, basically ran away with the circus, has studied theater arts all over the world, spent a long time learning from Peter Brook...)...I want to focus on just a couple of his ideas here.

WHOLE THEATER
...is what he says concerns his theater. By that he means theater that is:
1) Visual
2) Aural
3) Emotional
4) Spiritual (he says this is the one that freaks people out)
5) Intellectual
The best theater, the truest theater, is one that fires all five of these at once.

MITU as LAB
"The Company is a research facility. Our Lab is the rehearsal room. Our paper is our production. Our job is to test what theater DOES."

COLONIALISM and TRAINING
"Where there is food, there's theater. We look at theatrical and performance traditions NOT to colonize and take their FORMS but to FIND HOW THEY TRAIN, and learn from the bodies, soul, mind, spirit at work. TRAINING is how we work and training is how we CREATE."

Polendo says the goal of his company isn't to create good work -- it's to create unignorable work, work that can't be forgotten. "If it bores you, change it."

On Wendy Goldman's NWF Talk...continued...

More good things from the Wendy Goldman talk (smart, smart lady...and very cool...)

IDEAL PUTTING TOGETHER TEAM ON NEW PLAY? QUESTIONS TO ASK...
1) What might be a good home for this play's first production?
2) Who might be a good team of advocates for this play? Who's gonna go home and talk about it? Who's gonna carry it in his suitcase?
3) Who needs to hear these stories?
4) What do you like that youv'e seen?
5) Who will push this playwright (in a good way)?
6) Do your homework on collaborators...how do these directors/designers/actors/dramaturgs work?

New Works Festival - Guest Artists: Wendy Goldman

Wendy Goldman, Artistic Director of the O'Neill, gave a great talk during her stay (NWF).

A few of the things said, worth remembering

THINGS SHE EXPECTS FROM A PLAYWRIGHT who comes to develop a play at a place like the O'NEILL:
1) That the playwright will harness the time she has, and zero in on how best to use that time.
2) That the playwright will know what is and isn't working, what he wants to investigate.
3) The playwright will know his goals and the play's central questions and will GUARD those things.
4) That the playwright will remember why she wrote the play in the first place.
5) That the playwright will remember there is a difference between a play or play reading "looking good" and a reading where the playwright learns what she needs to about the play.

SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE PARTICIPATING IN A DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY:
1) Why are you going to the development experience? To meet somebody you want to meet? To answer specific questions on a specific play? To move a play to the next step? Because you want it to get produced?
2) Are the artistic leaders of the development experience being clear about what they want for you and from you, for your play and from your play?
3) Who do you want to meet? What are the artistic relationships you're hoping to build?
4) Who's good to have a cup of coffee with?

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU'RE COURTING COLLABORATORS:
1) Does it feel like what you're saying is being heard?
2) If a first conversation isn't good, it isn't good...on the other hand, there's something to be said with getting past a first impression...it's always a balance. How many bad dates do you go on before you move on?
3) Always be willing to ask "how much do I need this" ... and "how much am I willing to put up with."
4) You're trying to "make marriages that make sense."
5) Are you trying to defend your play or define your play?

"I am the best teacher ever" -- aka "my students are brilliant and don't need me at all"

So. I teach playwriting. Which means I harp a lot on Aristotle, ask a lot of questions, mention critical response techniques, and get out of the way.

Yesterday, I asked them to teach each other Poetics, as they remembered our discussions of it. Then we talked about the New Works Festival, where they'd spent a week seeing people successfully and unsuccessfully follow and break every tenet Aristotle put forth. Asked them to think about their own plays, and their classmates' plays, and the other plays they'd seen. Asked them to "play Aristotle" and come up with a list of rules for Good Theatre, based on their own experiences this semester. Below, a few examples of their responses (posted with permission):

CELSO'S RULES
Here are my definitive, undisputable, minutely researched rules for good theater, set in stone for all eternity. (But “good” is a very vague word. By “good” I mean captivating and intriguing – keeping the audience’s attention for the entire duration of the play. If you think about it, that’s not a lot, actually. I’d say it’s the bare minimum you can ask of a story that’s being told to you. Whether it’s easy to achieve, however, is a whole different ball of wax.)
1) The play must speak for itself. Elements whose meaning depend on footnotes, background stories or anything relative to the writing process may add some enjoyment to the mix, but if any of them are necessary to grasp the core meaning of the play, it has failed on a very basic level. Above all else, the author must never explain his intention – and never need to.
2) The play must establish the rules by which it is going to be presented and abide by them. Suspension of disbelief may be broken and any or all of its elements may contradict reality (as it is acknowledged by humanity) or storytelling conventions in any manner or to any extent, but that deviation from the beaten path must make sense as part of the play. This rule applies to content as well as form. When the play has no particular plot or aesthetic statement establishing an unusual language or setting, the audience naturally assumes, by default, that they are watching a play set in the real world as they know it, and it in the dramatic language they are used to – e.g., chronological order, clear enunciation, stories ending with some sort of resolution, etc (in other words, it is impossible for a play to have no rules – either it defines its own or the viewer will). The more elements contradict the play’s rules, the less coherent the play seems in form, content or both. If the central elements or too many elements of the play violate the play’s rules, it has failed on a very basic level.
3) All the elements of the play must be motivated by a need of the play itself. In Aristotle’s words, everything must arise out of probability and necessity. The classical example of a failure in this sense is the Deus Ex Machina – the arbitrary ending where a conclusion is reached not as a resolution of the tensions and relationships developed throughout the play, but out of a new, last-minute element. Both Aristotle and the expression Deus Ex Machina refer specifically to plots, but anything can be gratuitous: a character trait (or even whole characters), a soundtrack or a lighting choice may also be dissonant from the whole play to the point of drawing the viewer’s attention to it from a formal perspective. The more elements are dissonant, the less cohesive and meaningful the play is. If the play has more random elements than motivated elements, the play has failed on a very basic level.
4) At least one element of the play must draw an emotional response from its audience. More often than not a character (or more), but it may as well be the plot itself. If viewers love it – or hate it – the play has succeeded. If viewers are indifferent to it, the play has failed on a very basic level.
5) The play’s duration must feel necessary to the viewer. It mustn’t feel too short or too long, regardless of its actual length. Three-hour epics may feel insufficient, and ten-minute sketches may feel too long. If the play’s duration calls attention to itself during the performance, the play has failed on a very basic level.
6) The meanings of the play or of its elements must be limited. A professor I had when I studied Visual Arts once said that “what can mean anything means nothing.” That may have been the most important thing I learned in that major. If no interpretation of the play can be denied or discarded, the play has failed on a very basic level.
7) The more important elements of the play must have more than one meaning. All art must have some sort of poetry, and there’s no poetry in anything that has only a literal meaning. If the audience can grasp no metaphor, allegory, symbolism, humor, pity, risk or some other sort of added value in the play as a whole or in its central elements (whether in form, content or both), it has failed on a very basic level.As you can see, good theater is actually something very basic. Perhaps even more so: the more I think about it, the more I think rule #1 is the only one strictly necessary. Maybe #4 as well. It’s was in fact quite a struggle for me to fill up the 7-rule minimum. At any rate, these are the rules for good (not necessarily great) theater. There’s a lot more I find desirable in a play, but not necessary. If plays can still be good without it, I left it out.The rules above are operational from the moment of their publication. Infringement of said laws may lead to severe civil and criminal penalties.

BOWMAN'S RULES
This time there are RULES - rules for good playwriting (or "playwrighting", as I was taught to spell it on an earlier occasion):

A play should never take itself to seriously - it must be self-aware to some extent and justify its own existence through its content.
A play's first job is to entertain.
A play must compel people to continue to watch the whole way through.
Any play longer than two hours must have an intermission roughly every hour.
Any play longer than three hours must mandate catering during said intermissions in the stage directions.
Any play longer than four hours ought to be seperated into multiple plays.
If your play is short enough, you can do whatever the hell you want. Bizarre experiments are always more acceptable when they only last a few minutes.
If there is no dialogue, the stage directions ought to be pretty intricate.
If there are no stage directions, the dialogue ought to be pretty intricate.
One should always be able to glean more from performing the play than from simply reading it.
One should always be able to find something interesting in reading the play that they didn't necessarily glean from a performance.
Be specific; if something in the play matters to you, feel free to describe it in intricate detail - an accent, a prop, a set, a light cue, a costume, a speech pattern, anything.
Don't specify everything; leave enough room so that a production team can keep its job. Once the director picks up your play, consider yourself dead - the play is the living work, not you. Don't direct from beyond the grave.
Specifically forbid directors in your text from doing anything stupid and dumb that you hate. If something is really important, write a few guidelines right into the stage directions. God knows you're more brilliant than them.
Clarity is essential; the audience must know what the hell was going on at all times.
Leave anything unimportant to the imagination - this includes the fantastic elements of the play which the audience must lend to disbelief or what was actually in the briefcase or whatever.
Include elements that don't move the plot forward but create a stronger sense of the world of the play. Before it can move, it must be established. Or by moving, it can establish.
Surprise and intrigue.
Your title will usually be much more memorable than your dialogue: make it good.
If your play is a tragedy, some parts must be funny.
If your play is a comedy, some parts must be VERY funny.
Embrace the cliché. These are tried and tested. Every written work ever is the most cliché, overdone drivel in the history of the universe, and is completely unnecessary. Until you actually read it.
Your play can fit a certain format criteria, but never must fall into one genre.
Have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Always break all of every one of the rules, all of the time in every way.

ASHLEY'S RULES
1. You do not talk about the PLAY.
2. You DO NOT talk about the PLAY.
3. If someone says "stop," goes limp, or taps out the PLAY is over.
4. Only two guys to a PLAY.
5. One PLAY at a time.
6. No shirts, no shoes.
7. PLAYS will go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first PLAY, you have to...write?
Okay, so number 8 was pretty lame. But I'm loving number 3.
Fight Club aside, here are a few rules I came up with:
1. The material and performance must challenge the audience in some way. It must cause the audience members to reflect on themselves (i.e. beliefs, character traits/flaws).
2. There should be a character that the audience either: a) loves to hate or b) hates to love.
3. I think a good script calls for the performers' own interpretation and improvisation. Not just that there's room for it, but really requires that each performer bring something to the table.
4. Not every play needs to end with resolution. Of course, the path from the play's beginning to end still needs to make sense even if the play doesn't wrap up nicely.
5. A playwright should not answer EVERY question. The audience should walk away wondering a little, thus giving them the opportunity to fill in their own stories. SOME loose ends are okay.
6. I think all playwrights/actors should incorporate the idea of GROWTH into their scripts/performances. There has to be a challenge, a feat, an exploration, a discovery.
7. A least one scene in a play should challenge the actor(s) mentally, emotionally, and vocally. Referencing Joseph Pilates and the lovely Andrea Beckham, I want to see the actors using their girdle of support, squeezing their juicy peach, and really speaking from their core.
8. There should be at least one character that reminds me of someone I know.
9. Sort of getting into spectacle, I think there should be some quality in the play or performance that causes audience members to avert their eyes or blush or shift in their seats. Whether it's simple costume choices or props, or maybe a sex scene or drug use. It can even be two characters discussing a controversial subject like war or abortion. Acting is reacting and I think theatre itself is a series of actions and reactions. It creates this unique dialogue between collaborators and the audience. Again, it's all about growing.

New Works Festival - Post One: Guest Artists

There are definitely going to be several posts for this year's New Works Festival. We're on Day Five of six days of theater and performance OVERLOAD here at UT -- a once-every-two-year explosion of student-initiated performance projects that take over half of campus.

I'm going to need another post to talk about the productions. This one's on the Guest Artists, folks they bring in to lead workshops and respond to our work. So far, the folks we've seen include:

Bruce Ostler, Literary Agent
Wendy Goldberg, Artistic Director of the O'Neill
Meghan Monaghan, Artistic Program Director at The Lark
Ruben Polendo, Artistic Director of Theater Mitu
Mac Wellman, Playwright Extraordinaire
Sherry Kramer, Fantastic Playwright and one of my favorite people
Sarah Benson, Artistic Director at Soho Rep

If your jaw hasn't dropped yet, then you have some googling to do. The wattage of the luminaries in the room is blinding.

I haven't had a chance to interact with all the guest artists (and this is nowhere near a full list), but I've gotten some quality time with Wendy, Bruce, Meghan, and Ruben. Sherry taught here last year and was instrumental in one of my plays, one of the finest teachers and finest human beings I've ever encountered.

A couple of thoughts.
(1) I think that Daniel Alexander Jones was right when he said that our best calling card is our work. I've had some great conversations with these folks this week, but the reason I've been able to do so is that I've had work to show them, to give us something to talk about. They could take my measure, at least a little bit, by what I had to show them...and I could learn something substantive about them by what they had to say. The work gave us an opportunity to cut through the cocktail conversation to something with a little bit more substance.
(2) These guest artists couldn't be more different, in terms of personality, in terms of taste, in terms of their vantage point on the business and art and craft of what we do. They're all incredibly successful, but by different measures. It reminded me that success isn't QUANTIFIABLE so much as it is QUALIFIABLE. How do you define the parameters of success? What are your goals? Then how do you achieve those goals?
(3) These are all fine folks, but it was also clear to me that there are some here who I "click" with, and others who, while lovely, aren't people I connect with. The fact that we're meeting so many at once reminds me that that's okay -- someone can be totally successful and really nice, and if that person doesn't get me jazzed, it's okay. Someone else will. Neither do I have to please all of these luminaries. There are a lot of paths toward success as I define it.

What is your Gift?

In the collaboration class:

"Your WORK is not your gift.
The work is what you promise.
It is your responsibility.

Your Gift is your trust, compassion,
comeraderie, and collegiality.

The Airport

Says Dietz:

"Nobody wants to know
how busy you are
how tired you are
or what happened to you at the airport."

We all need to vent sometimes.
But know that, both professionally and personally,
in the long run IT WILL COST YOU.

Over Commitment

Addendum to the "saying no to say yes" post from earlier this year.

Remember that when you say yes to things, when you get spread thin by overcommitment, it isn't only YOU who suffers from it. It isn't only your work. It is, or can be, your collaborators.

And that's not fair.

Transitions

Day Two of The Psyche Project intensive.

We're not out of the woods yet, but we've got a compass, a map, and good boots. Thank God. This one hasn't been easy. I think I got lazy...third and fourth time out collaborating with a couple of the folks involved, started to think we were okay glossing over some of the HARD, SWEATY LABOR of painstaking communication.

Nope.

Guess what. If anything, you have to work HARDER to keep from making (unsafe) assumptions. A good lesson, if not always a pleasant one. But we're on track, if a little bruised.

THIS is NOT a post about the "trials and tribs" of collaboration.

It's about TRANSITIONS

The show is starting to take shape. With zero tech time, eight hours total of official time in the space, a cast of about a dozen, five hundred scene changes (blame the playwright), nine thousand props (blame the director) and twenty million costumes (blame the...I don't know who), the transitions are...a little scary. Make that terrifying.

Then I think about "Portrait," which had five actors, eleven scene changes, two dozen props and really not that many costumes...and the scary thing was STILL the transitions.

Transitions, friend, don't MAKE a show. But they can break one.
Why?
1) Maybe they're the last thing we think about. Transitions usually fall somewhere between "make sure the actors aren't naked" and "make sure there's a curtain call" on the to-do list.
2) Maybe because they're HARD. There's a lot of nitty-gritty detail in a transition -- that's where your average team will want to put light and sound cues, that's when the actor who was taking a cigarette break is rushing to get through the green room to reach his entrance. There's a lot that can go wrong.
3) Maybe because they're "neither here nor there." Most theater practitioners are concerned, as Dietz would say, with "Taking the Play to the Story." This means that EVERY SCENE revolves around an important piece of information necessary to move the story forward. The transition is, on one level, an embodied ellipses, the "dot dot dot" saying "and then some things happened that you DON'T need to see before we get to the next thing you DO."

This, at least, is one way to look at transitions.

Then again.

You might also say: Every play is its own universe. It tells a story, yes, but it does so by creating its own logic, a language of movement and objects and light and sound and space.
And if transitions are a place where we are forced to employ ALL our theater-making tools in order to move forward, then they're also a built-in chance to REFINE or REDEFINE the (okay, if I'm using this word wrong, forgive me or correct me -- clearly I'm on a tear tonight) semiotic landscape of the production.

Nutshell: every transition is an opportunity to hit the "reset" button on the world of your play.

As such, the transition is your play's moment of maximum possibility. Use it to your advantage. Ignore it at your peril.

A No Passport Thread

On Titles...
This is a bastardized exerpt from a longer article by Playwright Mark Ravenhill, which originally appeared in The Guardian on March 16. As always, better to read the whole article; I'm including the part I reacted to..and, in this case, the part that some of the playwrights on No Passport (a good online listserve for theater practitioners, playwrights, and interested parties).

From Ravenhill:
...It's the same in my profession. There is a certain bond between playwrights. I suppose it's because we have such a strange job: paid to put words into the mouths of people pretending to be someone else. And our shared concerns as playwrights - finding a good director, dealing with theatre managements, ducking the brickbats of critics - mean that we always have far more in common than our plays would suggest. Running a country must be a strange job, too, and a lonely experience; it must be quite a relief to meet another world leader, whatever their politics.It's hard to confront someone over breakfast.
I'm never quite sure where I fit in this relationship... I detected a slight laugh in Marr's voice as he introduced me. I was the final guest. Does this make me the light relief, the skateboarding duck, the "and finally ... "?
I found myself wishing I didn't make plays, wishing I was part of the club. But in many ways, I think what playwrights do is more important than what most politicians do. Being a dramatist isn't just about writing. That part often takes just a few weeks. But we do spend a long time thinking about how people behave, how they live together, how they might live together better - as well as the great cruelties they are capable of. And we're constantly testing language, time and space in our work, to extend the possibilities of human experience. Politicians are concerned with the pragmatic business of running the world; artists, meanwhile, dedicate themselves to finding new insights into our existence. Most of the insights are feeble or crackpot - but some are visionary. So I wish I could shake off the feeling of being the lightweight at the table on Start the Week.

Response from Duca Knezevic:
That's what happens when the playwrights/artists decide they are somehow different than the rest of the society, not to say special, (god given?) constructing the Other willingly and entirely enjoying the process of distancing themselves from the Other.
When we start operating with less and more important occupations, less and more important people, the next step always somehow ends up in concentration camps.

And from (the worship-worthy) Jason Grote (if you haven't read 1,001, do so immediately):
Thanks for this, Duca. I was wondering why this article wasn't sitting well with me (other than that is seems a little self-important) and I think you've identified some sort of deep ontological issue I've got with the occupation of playwriting. I enjoy writing plays, but for whatever reason, I have no desire to "be" a playwright. In modern Western capitalist culture (and perhaps many others), this is seen is a sign of immaturity, but in practice there is something deeply sinister about ascribing a class of career to one's identity (of course Ravenhill can't be blamed for this).

My Thoughts:
This resonates, for me, with a lot of the head-bumping that I've seen happening in our collaboration class. To what degree to you carry your prescribed notion of your role into the room? I have seen some of my colleagues who cling to their definition of "actor," "playwright" or "director" like a drowning man grabbing a life vest, staking out their territory and defending (usually politely, always with good intentions) to the death. Others who summarily reject the idea that any of us should have a particular role in the room.

There's something dangerous about replying to the question "what do you do" with a single word. Playwright. Teacher. Lawyer. It doesn't answer the question at all, does it? "Teacher" might mean I stand in front of a classroom every day, leading them through text or yoga poses or writing exercises. It might also mean that I have coffee with several people every day and help them through a project. Or it could mean something else entirely.

I know someone who walk into a room, records everything she sees, then figures out how to shape it into an experience meant for an audience. Doesn't write much down at all. I know others who spend several hours a day locked in a room, typing. Both playwrights. They are DOING very different things, but have the same one-word answer. If they simply gave you the shorthand version of what they did, you would probably have your OWN preconceived notion of that shorthand...and the truth of it would be entirely lost in translation. God help us when we try to collaborate -- if I come to you with MY definition of YOUR work, I'm cutting you off at the knees before we move an inch.

And when we start to ascribe VALUE JUDGEMENTS to words like "actor," "artist," "mother," "politician," when we do that before we AGGRESSIVELY INVESTIGATE WHAT WE MEAN BY THEM, that way, as Duca says, lies the concentration camp.

So how to keep from being imprisoned by titles? From trapping other people in theirs? What if we take the time to really answer the "what do you do" question? Not every time, but when we can? What if we include what we DON'T do, too, or at least what we haven't done YET?