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.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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?
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.
"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.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Van Gogh Quotation
Have I written this here before? Now I can't remember.
Eliminate the obvious.
Exaggerate the essential.
Eliminate the obvious.
Exaggerate the essential.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, April 17, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, April 13, 2009
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.
'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.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
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.
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.
"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."
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?
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?
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?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
"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.
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.
Friday, April 3, 2009
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.
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.
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