Pig Iron Workshop

I did a workshop this weekend with Dido and Quinn of Pig Iron theater. If you don't know Pig Iron, they're a pretty amazing group out of Philly that generates work as an ensemble...including "Chekhov Lizardbrain," one of the best pieces I saw last year.

The workshop was, for the most part, a review of a lot of the generative techniques that I'm familiar with from having studied with Tina Landau...lanework, composition, things that people who have studied Viewpoints would recognize.

But there were a couple of things they said that will stick with me.

The main one:

That theater is a "failure-based art form."

In context, I think that Quinn meant that "usually, plays fail." The vast majority of new work doesn't turn out the way we want it to...which is, of course, what spurs most of us to try again.

But the comment strikes me as pretty damn profound, in part because I think one of the reasons we go to the theater is because there's always the possibility of failure. Live theater necessitates the possibility, at any given moment, of an accident. And while you don't (usually) want to see harm come to the actors onstage, it's the danger -- emotional danger, physical danger -- that lurks around any given corner that assures us we are, in fact, watching something real.

We all have stories of the actor who completely forgot his lines in the middle of the third scene, of the missed entrance, of the actor or piece of scenery that collapsed. Audiences love these stories, tell them over and over. Things don't go wrong on film -- those mistakes end up on the blooper reel, or the cutting room floor. Likewise, any "accident" you hear in recorded music was kept there for a reason. Visual art has "mistakes," but the artist made the choice to allow you to see that mistake and has, in a sense, sanctioned that mistake. Only live performances offers the possibility, every night, of a real "oh shit" moment -- only live performance asks us to live on the high-wire.

What does that mean? On some level, I would say that it's our job to invite failure in. I would say that failure, or danger, is as much of a tool in our craft as anything else. If we can create danger -- emotional danger, physical danger, the REAL sense that things are just on the edge of going out of control -- then that failure will bring us closer to success than playing it safe.

Go Big or Go Home, I guess, is the message here.

Image Exercise -- Play Analysis

I'm teaching August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone right now, in my Classic American Plays class. Last year I taught Fences -- a play that is, in a lot of ways, much simpler. In Fences, we meet the protagonist on page one. He's a huge character, the character who speaks the most. The dramatic arc of the play is pretty straightforward.

Joe Turner is a whole other ballgame. I was a little bit nervous about teaching it -- it's such a BIG play to try to wrap your arms and head around. How would I lead my students through it in a way that would help them make sense of it?

My way in has been "image." Wilson is so amazing at giving the audience images -- either clear staging or stage pictures, like the Juba and Herald Loomis's collapse at the end of Act One, or gorgeous stories in the mouths of his characters, like the ritual Seth describes Bynum performing, or the encounter with the Shiny Man that Bynum details.

So each day, I've asked the students to freewrite on the images that have most stuck with them overnight, to begin to think about how those images connect to the central themes of the play. Most have really responded to the exercise. We've had wonderful conversations.

Two days ago, they had to bring in three pictures: (1) a photo from a past production of the play (2) an accurate picture from the period in which the play is set and (3) a non-literal picture that reminded them of the play. We talked through the different design choices that had been made in the different production images they'd found, then talked through things we noticed in the historical pictures. Finally, I asked each student to talk about the non-literal picture they'd brought in, to talk about how it connected, for them, to the text.

This was a great exercise -- they noticed a lot of different choices in the production images, and began to talk about why, if they were the director, they might have made one choice over another. With the historical images, we talked about what might be useful to think about, or to share with actors or designers.

The non-literal images were, of course, the toughest. Some kids made the leap to something more abstract really easily, and could talk about the visual translation of theme and metaphor. Others were like "what the hell are you guys talking about?" I tried to talk about how directors and designers often begin conversations about inspiration and theme by collecting images and talking them through.

Last night, I asked each student to bring in two to three images that connected, in some way, to what they saw as the most important themes in the play. Today, I asked them to pretend that they were directing the play, and to talk to a partner as though that partner was the designer, explaining how the images connected to the text. The partner then had to explain to the group what their "director" was envisioning. It was an exercise in communication, and in moving from the concrete (text) to the abstract (image) to the concrete (design choices). It wasn't a universal ah-ha moment, but more of them are getting their brain around this more abstracted way of thinking/taking about theme, image, and design.

Their paper, for this play, will ask them to choose one or two images that communicate, to them, the central theme of the play...and then use the image as the beginning of a textual analysis that revolves around theme.

Ultimately, I want them to understand that there is, in fact, an intellectual rigor to the design process, and to the conversations that directors and designers have about a play.

Somewhere in here, I think there's a really good PLAYWRITING exercise.

Event & Circumstance

Dietz says a play is a SERIES OF EVENTS THAT UNFOLD IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE.

We must distinguish between an ACTION and an EVENT.

Let us say that an ACTION is something that happens onstage.

An EVENT is something that happens onstage and MOVES THE STORY FORWARD.

So "Betty drops and spills a glass of water" is always an action, but not necessarily an event.

"Richard, a man Betty claims never to have met, enters the room and Betty instantly drops and spills a glass of water" IS an event.

"Betty drops and spills a glass of water over the letter from her missing husband that she's not yet read, rendering it unreadable" IS an event.

Often, I find that I have to help my students between EVENT and CIRCUMSTANCE.

CIRCUMSTANCE is the CONTEXT that gives meaning to the EVENT.

For example, a bridge blows up on an isolated road. Who cares? Not an event.

A bridge blows up on an isolated road, thirty seconds before a bus full of children hits the bridge going 70 miles per hour. One of those children is the daughter of our protagonist. We have reason to care.

"Our protagonist goes spelunking and there is a cave-in." Spelunking is the circumstance. The cave-in is the event.

Rubber Hits Road

Learning a valuable lesson of late...which is that you don't get to pick your moments of opportunity. They come when they come.

What does that mean? It's that moments of opportunity can also create moments of heartbreak, anxiety, indecision, and come-to-jesus. Can create moments when you need to choose between following this admittedly slightly bonkers idea that it makes sense to make up stories for a living and fulfilling the expectations to people around you...fulfilling OBLIGATIONS you have made. Your "big break" can come in the middle of a big project at work, at a time that is totally inopportune for your love life, at a time when your family needs you.

And you gotta choose. You gotta decide where the writing fits in with the rest of your life.

So sure it's easy to say "the writing ALWAYS comes first! I suffer for art!" But how low a paycheck, how small a promise, how small a probability does it take for you to give up the 401(k)?

I don't have an answer to this right now.

Doug Wright Ten Tips Great Plains Conference

http://www.mccneb.edu/theatreconference/DougWright_Acceptance.mp4

The Bottle Opener

So. I'm moving tomorrow. Yes, it's the old New York story of "I love my place, but I also like YOU and the commute is killing us and neither place is big enough and Christ, look at the deal we can get if we split rent so...we're ready to move in together, right?"
And we spent ALL of last weekend cleaning.
And I've spent MOST of this week packing. And packing. And packing.

And it's my last night, alone, in my first New York apartment.
The books and brilliant storage solutions and clothes for every kind of weather are packed.
My mattress is back on the floor the way it was my first month in the city.
The windows are open and the temperature's bumping up against ninety.
I still haven't caved to air conditioning. I *have* found all the best take-out places in my neighborhood, AND learned that it's still cheaper to cook at home.
I never have to be a first year teacher again.
It will never be my first year in New York again.
Plenty of reasons to celebrate.

So I buy a beer
(okay, actually a hard cider, but that makes me sound like a wuss, so for the purposes of this story, a beer).
And I take it home. And put it in the fridge.
And I take an ice-cold shower to bring down my body temperature.
And I sigh, grab my beer and...if you're a playwright, and you know about the importance of titles (see: Death of a Salesman, The Glass Menagerie), you may see where this is going...
and realize I've packed my bottle opener.
In one of my twenty heavy, taped boxes. Not only that (and believe me, I tested this) -- I've packed every object in my apartment that has any remote potential to open a bottle. Save, perhaps, my teeth. And friend, I can't afford that kind of dental work. So it's 90 degrees and I'm naked in an apartment with nothing but a mattress, taped boxes, and a laptop.

And God, do I want that beer.
And I'm thinking: This Is Its Own Special Place in Hell.

But I rally. And I write (dragon play, five pages, yippee!). And I eat bread with mustard on it (because that, friends, is what's left in the fridge at this point).

And I still want the fucking beer.

And then, I do the thing I should have done two hours prior. The thing that you, perhaps, dear reader, have been exhorting me to do for the last several sentences:

I throw on a dress.
I slip on my flip-flops.
And I march into the bar around the corner and say "I'm moving tomorrow. I have no bottle opener. Will you please open this?"
And the bartender laughs.
And she does.
And I stroll out.
And sip my beer (okay, cider) in triumph.
And I go back to my empty apartment.

"What on earth," you ask, "does this have to do with theater?"
Well, Dear Reader, it has something to do with overcoming your own myopia to truly assess your potential resources. It has something to do with the kindness of strangers and remembering, always, that there is a third solution in any situation. Beyond that, I'll sleep on it.
And tell you more from our new apartment.

Dragongirl?

I'm including this because I needed to make sure I could upload images to a blog...and because it reminds me of the play I'm working on.

Voice

I saw a reading of a dear friend's play last night. I really enjoyed it -- and appreciated the way it made me reconsider this idea of "a playwright's voice." I've struggled with the voice question -- What is it? Do I have one? Will I ever get anywhere until I develop a discernible one?

But last night, my friend showed us a play that seemed, to me, unlike any play of hers I'd ever read. Structurally, plot-wise -- it was a departure. And yet. It was absolutely still hers. In fact, it was maybe more "her" than anything of hers I've read. Maybe that's a presumptuous statement. But. It may have eased my mind about the voice question. Because, if anything, as she gets further from what I always thought of as "her kind of play," I hear her even more clearly in her own work -- her concerns, her sense of humor, her worldview.

So that was cool.

Transported

My friend/colleague asked me yesterday when the last time was that I remember "really liking" a show -- because he hears me talk about theater a lot, and it's rarely in those terms that I talk about it.

The truth is, I really like shows all the time. I saw three in the past two days -- a highly realistic three-hander, a play that was about language and first love and borders (geographic and metaphysical), and a dance party of a play set in the future. I really liked all of them, or at least lots of things about them.

But I think what my friend was asking me was really "when was the last time you were really transported by a show." And that's much harder. I used to go to the theater and pay a lot of attention to the acting -- I'd come out with opinions -- but if the acting was stunning, I'd get wrapped up in the experience and come out transported. That rarely happens anymore. I've now trained as an actor, trained as a playwright, studied alongside designers and dramaturgs and directors. And every time I go to a show, that training kicks into gear. There are so many ways that I can "break down" what I'm seeing, that my brain has been conditioned to dissect and measure and compare, that watching a show, for me, is very, very ACTIVE. I absolutely enjoy that activity, I learn an enormous amount -- it is, for me, a way to work my muscles, in a way I can't when I'm sitting at my desk.

But there is a down-side. It's hard to turn that analytical part of me off, and it's hard, as a result, to be transported. So I very rarely walk out of a show anymore with that simple, deep-gutted, rapturous response. I come out talking, and questioning, and weighing -- nothing simple about it. I imagine that a food critic or a chef approaches meals the same way, I imagine a musician approaches concerts the same way. You may still like things, but there's a complexity to your response that, from the outside, probably looks like something somehow less pure.

And maybe it is less pure.

The Aliens

Three years into keeping this blog, I begin to notice that I'm repeating myself. I'm a little embarrassed by that, yes, but I also think it makes sense -- there are lessons you need to learn and re-learn, obsessions that stay with you. And sometimes you come back around to old ideas, from a different angle.

I was reminded of this two nights ago, when I went to see Annie Baker's "The Aliens." Annie is a major talent -- and if you don't believe me, just ask the New York Times. She's had three plays produced in New York now, all gold.

The Aliens reminded me a lot of her previous play, Circle Mirror Transformation. Of course it did -- it was set in the same Vermont town, it employed an impeccably realistic set, and the dialogue unfolded slowly, with lots of silence and pause and false starts. It felt a LOT like watching real life unfold onstage, a kind of studied verisimilitude.

It also flew in the face of an enormous number of things I was taught in grad school -- where were the "things that could only happen on stage?" Where were the events? Where plot? Annie gave us these rich, rich characters...but those other things, the things I teach my kids when I teach Aristotle, weren't as easy to spot.

Or DID she give us rich, rich characters? I don't really know. The thing I loved about this play was the acting...because they took what felt like pencil-sketch lines and turned them into something in every nuanced color. And yet it takes one hell of a playwright to make the exactly right pencil-sketch lines with which that can be done.

What am I struggling with? I think I'm struggling with the fact that I loved the play, this play that did all sorts of things I've been told not to do. I loved this play because it was like watching the best acting class you've ever seen, where people are given a scene that's two steps above a "blank scene" and told to do their magic, and they do. And I know how hard that is.

And I think of all the bells and whistles and time-jumps that I throw at my own work, at least lately (and hell, that stuff is fun!) and I wonder where it leaves room for the work of very, very accomplished actors (not performers, who are also wonderful, but bigger and more primary-color somehow) -- for those water-colorists of the soul. It reminds me why I started writing plays -- to write good parts -- and makes me want to return to that.

I'm reminded of something I told one of my students two weeks ago -- that she should assume she has the best possible director, the smartest designers. I told her that every play is, among other things, an invitation to collaborators -- and that the smartest artists will run in the other direction if they feel like you're trying to do their work for them.

I think Annie writes gorgeous, golden, hand-engraved invitations to the kind of artists with whom she wants to work.

Advice From My 12th Graders

I just finished teaching my first semester of playwriting to high school students.  It was unimaginably different from teaching playwriting in the college setting -- not so much because of the students, but because of the structure and expectations of our environment.  We met every day (almost), but for only 40 minutes...the students had six or seven other classes at a time, and homework every night, and a gazillion extracurricular activities, and were used to much more specific instruction, and much more constant feedback, than was the norm for kids (adults, really) at a place the size of UT Austin -- 50,000 students versus 250 students, friends.  A whole 'nother universe.

That said, these guys had some of the same struggles and triumphs as any group I've worked with: what IS event?  How do I avoid cliche?  How do I make my characters feel "real?" How do I create a world onstage that isn't OUR world, and teach people the rules of it?  How do I write good stage directions?  How do I respond to criticism in a workshop setting?  How do I GIVE good criticism?  How long is it really gonna take me to write this frickin' draft?  Why doesn't anybody see the same story I see in this play? I've created two people in a cool situation, but what the hell do I do NEXT?  The same struggles, really, that I think we all keep wrestling with, as we go.  

And so, on the last day, I asked them what advice they'd give to next year's playwriting class.  Here's their collective wisdom:

Write about yourself and your experiences because it's what you know best.

Your stuff may suck (probably will) in the beginning but that's part of it.

Always have character names.

Play with names.  Try out a lot and look up their meanings.

Trust your readers to find hidden twists/metaphors -- you don't always have to spell it out.  Your class is a smart bunch.

Get stuff done on time because you'll regret it when you get to your portfolio reviews if you don't.

Read plays!  Not just ones written by your classmates (but read those too)!

Do your work, do the exercises whether or not they are crazy/frustrating -- they're also fun and helpful in the end.

Be HONEST.

Listen to feedback from your classmates, your teacher...take what they have to say and go with it.  They will give valuable information and will give you very different ideas and ways to look at your play.

Try everything, even if you won't use it, get it all on paper, then decide what you will do with it.

Trust yourself, your actors, your words.

Create mystery, keep the audience on their toes!

Don't be afraid to set your play in a completely different universe.

Create a world your audience wants to be a part of or learn more about.

Take risks, be open-minded.

Have many questions throughout your play, and provide answers at the right time.

Be clear, try to make the audience see what you see.

Embrace your demons.

Sometimes awkwardness is good onstage.  Sometimes it's too much.

Fights don't have to be screaming -- people can be quietly angry.

Write clear stage directions.

Write in long spurts, or if not, read what you had before and THEN keep going.

Make your characters distinct.  Make them conflict.

If your characters curse, make the curses mean something.

Make the set purposeful.

Make people laugh.

Write about personal events.  It keeps the ideas flowing.

Write about something that interests you to the bone.  Otherwise you will get bored and stop.

Theater is an art, not a show.

Strive for the unknown and unusual.

Feedback is very good.

Write what you like, not what you think will be deep and impressive.

Make your audience FEEL.  Put comedic moments in tragedies and vice-versa; don't make a one-note play.  Make it funny/sad/weird etc...

Trust the actors, trust the audience.

Read your dialogue out loud to hear how it comes across!

If you make the audience say "what the f*#k," you win.

Don't make sense until they force you to (the audience).

Don't be afraid to write a play you would dislike.

If you can't think of anything, write anyway.  Let your subconscious tell the story.

Don't be too controlling.  Let the actors/designers/directors have their say.

Take something personal and GIVE it to your audience.

Don't piss off future techies trying to produce your play.

Each character should have at least one unexpected characteristic -- for example, Superman is a lazy perfert.

Not everything has to be dramatic or tragic.

Invite great directors to produce your play -- assume you will always have great directors, don't baby them.

Separate your characters -- each with his or her own movement, language, style, etc.

Don't listen to Aristotle.  F*#k Poetics.

Write about cats.  Frequently.  And Hot Pockets.

Be honest (or don't).  Either be REALLY BRUTALLY honest, or COMPLETELY dishonest.

Write good things.  And really bad things.  LOTS of really bad things.  And then you'll get good things.  Accidentally sort of.

Go into the world, little chickadees.  My work is done.

On Metaphor...an email exchange between me and Steve Moulds

Me:

And, so, I have a question.  Or maybe a statement -- I STILL don't really "get" metaphor.  I mean, I use the word a lot and so do a lot of my friends, but I'm not really sure what any of us mean by it, even after Sherry Kramer talked about it.  And it makes me feel really stupid that I don't really get it, or know how to employ it effectively on behalf of my plays.

Do YOU feel like you can explain what we mean by it, when we're talking about the use of it onstage?  I'm actually doing a crash-course in August Wilson now because he seems to be a master of it...sigh...

Steve:

Huh. That's a complicated question. On a basic, like, English major level, metaphor is any language or imagery that draws a comparison between two things. Among other such devices, a simile is not distinct from metaphor per se; it's a particular subspecies of metaphor. Allegory, similarly, is also metaphorical--just that in allegory, the correspondences between things line up pretty rigidly. Metaphor's a pretty broad category, frankly.

So there's metaphor through language, which is easy to spot. "All the world's a stage" is a pretty basic (and obviously successful) example.
Then there's metaphor through action or imagery.

From the opening stage direction of Eugene O'Neill's DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS: "Two enormous elms are on each side of the house. They bend their trailing branches down over the roof. They appear to protect and at the same time subdue. There is a sinister maternity in their aspect, a crushing, jealous absorption. They have developed from their intimate contact with the life of man in the house an appalling humaneness. They brood oppressively over the house. They are like exhausted women resting their sagging breasts and hands and hair on its roof, and when it rains their tears trickle down monotonously and rot on the shingles." I believe that at least some of that will read to an audience. The oppressive part, certainly.

I always find the metaphor / allegory distinction interesting and instructive. (A great example of allegory: Spenser's THE FAERIE QUEENE). Because allegory is seen as fairly rigid, and allegory is also considered a subset of metaphor, this implies that metaphor as a larger definition can function in a slippery fashion, where meanings can be fairly fluid. A theatrical metaphor might be localized and specific, but it can also be diffuse, suggesting connections vaguely.

I would say a metaphor is anything in a play that can stand in for something other than its value as a literal object. That's the simplest I can make it for myself.

I would locate my frustration with poorly defined metaphors around those which ANNOUNCE themselves as metaphors. These are images, or turns of phrase, or actions, which an audience can tell are supposed to be metaphors because they have almost no value as literal actions, and therefore rely almost entirely on the power of the metaphor itself. Which is a dicey proposition.

A great example of a metaphor that locates itself firmly in both metaphor and literal reality: In DEATH OF A SALESMAN, when Willy can't work the tape recording machine, he's wrestling with modernity and being a professional dinosaur. But guess what? It's also ACTUALLY A TAPE RECORDING MACHINE.

And see what I did? I called him a dinosaur. Unintended use of metaphor.

As far as using metaphor effectively in my own writing, I think that's tough. My own litmus test for imagery, though, is the reality test. So maybe the doll on stage represents all sorts of things. But when I write the plot to THE BODY, I have to make the doll a literal doll in my storytelling and let the metaphor take care of itself.

But if someone's hand starts glowing for no reason just because... I don't know, it looks cool? That's an irresponsible use of metaphoric imagery.

Drama Desk Nomination

Not for me, but for Adam Cochran, for the original music in "A Play On War."

The lyrics to which I wrote.

Go Adam! It really was great music. I've been reminded several times, in the last few days, of how great the people are who worked on that project.

Good stuff.

New Play Tactics

(or tricks, or habits... depending on your point of view...)

I recently found myself talking about a new hit play, telling someone who hadn't seen it that it "used every trick in the New Play Playbook." This person, not a new playwright, asked (reasonably) what that meant.

Fair question, right? And in that context, "I know it when I see it" won't do. What I meant was: there are certain choices, either in structure or presentation, that one often sees in quote-unquote "hot" new work. Some of them indicate a certain skillfulness or playfulness, some are winks to an educated theater audience, some are nods to popular culture, contemporary life...ANY of them, used intelligently, can add great layers to a production. ALL of them, used together, tend to make me think that a playwright has looked at recent successful plays, compiled a checklist of theatrical/storytelling elements, then gone down the list in a cynical attempt to garner attention from critics, literary managers, directors -- from gatekeepers who, we playwrights imagine, have seen it all and are looking, always, for what is "new."

At worst, any of these tactics are a shorthand to signal to the gatekeepers that the playwright is "new" and hipper than the next scribe in the critic/litmgr's/director's ever-growing slush pile.

So, below, a list of a few of the tactics I keep seeing in new plays...for worse or, sometimes, much much better:

Integration of "new" media like video and projection...

Integration of Youtube

Txtspeak

A million short, short scenes (yes, you could argue that Shakespeare did some of this too)

Pop culture references to "Geek" or "Cult" movies like Star War, Legally Blonde, etc...ditto obscure hipster bands...

Sex on stage...whether or not it's relevant to the plot...

Pop Culture references to things like wrestling (I'm talkin' you, Chad Diety, but God did you use it well -- an example of how these tactics can be used beautifully)

The Spoken Stage Direction

The random musical or dance number in what is not, necessarily, a musical or dance show

The EXTREMELY-RIPPED-FROM-HEADLINES title or topic (yes, Enron, that's you)

The extremely meta/self-referential production

The random "this is what my whole experience means" monologue that stops the production in a direct address to the audience

The reference to metaphor...which might turn your metaphor into an analogy, if you think about it...which really is different than a metaphor...

from friends...

"I would add Bold visual conceits that bear no actual metaphoric weight nor stand up to any scrutiny of their symbolism" Slacker Men Extreme Sarcasm Comic Book Aesthetic or Reference "Zany Characters" -- ones you'd never look at and say "that's me," but rather, "what a fun cartoon" Tons of (realistically staged, but not credible) onstage violence "Postmodern Myths" (guilty as charged, on that one) The "we're gonna take an 'issue' (global warming, financial collapse, school shootings) and mix in just enough plot to call what we're doing a play...then create a forum to educate/pontificate for 50 minutes" play. AND THIS IS A RESPONSE/ADDITION FROM A PLAYWRIGHT FRIEND: Funny thing is, I actually feel like this is completely UNCONSCIOUS on the part of up-and-coming playwrights. I also feel it can be traced directly back to what is being taught in many MFA programs in the country: the idea that "inspiration-based writing" is somehow separate from "nuts and bolts" (or structure based) writing. I think the two must be linked - what's popular now in MFA programs is telling students to go with their gut; to write what they want for no apparent reason; to scorn structure or - really - story, in any form. There was a play produced Off-Broadway several years ago. That play featured a scene with a man speaking to a snack item. That playwright was taught by a world-famous playwright who scorns story in favor of inspiration. THAT I call bullshit on. A snack iteml? Fuck's sake, you know? That drove me NUTS. Also, I'm furious at the latest wave of devised theater, the majority of which I feel is driven by their own marketing gimmicks and - again - no story. Call me old-fashioned. So I guess basically what I'm saying is: plays with no story. They LOOK sexy on the page - ooh, weird language! Ooh, weird punctuation! Ooh, lots and lots and lots of images! - but in production, they're nothing, nothing, nothing.

Short List of Recently Viewed NYC plays

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety (a wrestling play that was really about race and exploitation in America)
Enron (a play, with music and velociraptors, about the end of economics in America)
The Aliens (okay, that one's in a few days)
The Whale (a reading of a play in progress by Sam Hunter)
Theater Masters MFA showcase (10 ten minute plays)
Bloodsong (a spaghetti western musical)

In the next couple of weeks:
Song For a Future Generation
Bobrauschenbergamerica
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
UT MFA showcase
A new play (a reading) by Jeanine Nabors
A new play (a reading) by Joe Tracz

The Mysterious Object

I had one of those "duh" moments the other day, when I saw my friend Ben's play.

In it, he introduced a mysterious package in the first scene -- a package that one character had asked another to carry through customs, a package intended for a mysterious slum lord.  

The package remained onstage for most of the play.  It was argued about, it was wondered about, it was a way to talk about the dangerous slum lord and the potential for violence in the city where the play took place.

The play was not really ABOUT the package -- the play was about the relationship between the three men in the room, and their relationship to their home culture and the culture in which they found themselves.  But the package provided an entry point into discussing those relationships, and was just about all the "plot" the play had -- if you were trying to map the events of the play, they'd be "men show up with package. Man disappears with package.  Friends are worried something has happened to him.  Man returns."  

The play was a relationship play, but the package gave the play a skeletal system.

Then I heard my friend Sam's play...he made an offhand comment, at the end of the reading, about how he was struggling with "those things you think about in realism -- the secrets and the order of revelations..."  His play, too, had a mysterious object -- a short essay that we think is one thing, then think is another, then realize is another still.  Each time we hear the short essay, its meaning has changed.

I've gotten very, very caught up, in the last few years, in the idea of a play as a series of events.  And I think I've taken that to mean that a play must contain as many events as possible.  Ben's play was a reminder that we go to the theater for story, but we also go for MEANING...we don't ask that of our movies the same way, really...

Story exists to carry questions, and meaning.  Yes, you must have story.  But if you spend all your energy on the series of events, and none on meaning/mystery, then you are neglecting part of what's essential to the theatrical form.

Writing Prompts for your Future Use

...old ones...from Austin Scriptworks fabulous 30/60/90 initiative.

1.  A crazed cell phone monologue - Jen Haley

2.  Someone can’t move - Sharon Sparlin

3.  The smell of bleach was ugly, but familiar - Leticia Rodriguez

4.  Two people in a room find a box - Caridad Svich

5.  Time begins to accelerate - John Walch

6.  When I wake up I want to see… - Julia Smith

7.  The cafeteria at your middle school. - Molly Rice

8.  Embrace that nothing is coming to you - Cheryl Parrish

9.  Something that makes you laugh. - Judith Rudakoff

10.  Follow one character gesture to the extreme - Sharon Sparlin

11. Write a play featuring one character wearing a full body neoprene wetsuit

12.  A scene about betrayal and cooking - Caridad Svich

13.  A mountain is not… - Julia Smith

14.  The queen of Spades - Jennifer Haley

15.  Wearing dark glasses while driving was a great place to cry - Leticia Rodriguez

16.  Things that live deep in the dirt - Molly Rice

17.  The environment becomes extremely hot or cold - John Walch

18.  Write a play where something about the internet is personified - Emily Cicchini

19.  A self portrait - Judith Rudakoff

20.  Sitting in silence.

21.  I’ve never told my best friend… - Julia Smith

22.  The last day of someone’s life - Caridad Svich

23.  30 seconds of synchronized movement - Jennifer Haley

24.  Someone can’t stop moving

25.  Write a sitcom with a violently apocalyptic ending - Molly Rice

26.  “Putting out the cigarette, he then gingerly picked it back up.” - Leticia Rodriguez

27. A pair of shoes or boots in a strange place - Judith Rudakoff

28.  Write a play about the color blue.

30.  A new haircut - Kristoffer Diaz

31.  Underneath a Bridge, there is… - Julia Smioth

32.  Write about letting go of something.

33.  Someone has just discovered they can literally walk on water - Dan Dietz.

34.  Your character looks out of an open window.  What do they see?  Caridad Svich

35.  The smell of hippies - Molly rice

36.  A discovery that leads to holding breath - Jennifer Haley

37.  Offstage explosions - John Walch

38.  Slow time down, then speed it up.

39. “The gang member’s son was dressed just like his dad.”

40. Write a scene that takes place in your favorite place in the world

41.  What time is it?

42.  Write a play based on a Leonard Cohen song.

43.  Write a play about someone who has just had surgery.

44.  Darkness.  then slowly light.  Figures emerge.  one of them asks a question.

45.  Falling is another word for…

46.  Write a play where one of the four elements is a character.

47.  Write a play with a duck.

48.  Write a play about someone who keeps losing their reflection.

49.  “Why didn’t you see the tree fall?  You were looking right at it.

50. The pungent odor of burning plastic.

51.  A case of food poisoning.

52.  The single thing that scares me most is…

53.  Write about a missed deadline

54.  Someone just broke something.

55.  Write about a glove on the stairs, and how it got there.

56.  Write about the worst piece of advice you ever followed.

57.  “There was a gash in the palm of his left hand.”

58.  Pretend you are a conspiracy theorist.

59.  Write about an unexpected shower.

60.  Write about home.  What is it?

61.  A character emerges from an unlikely place.

62.  A character apologizes…without using the words “sorry,” “apology,” or “fault.”

Blake Snyder's "Save The Cat" Beat Sheet

RIP, Blake. Your book is great.

Project:
Title:
Genre:

1. Opening Image (1)
2. Theme Stated (5)
3. Set-up (1-10)
4. Catalyst (12)
5. Debate (12-25)
---
6. Break Into Two ( 25)
7. B Story (30)
8. Fun and Games (30-55)
9. Midpoint (55)
---
10. Bad Guys Close in (55-75)
11. All is Lost w/ whiff of death (75)
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85)
---
13. Break Into Three (85)
14. Finale (85-110)
15. Closing Image (110)

Card Breakdown: 40 Cards, nine for each section with four to spare.

Dream Exercise

I'm trying to get my students, right now, to do a few things in their work.

1) Get more personal -- to lean away from their instincts to be clever, put away their armor, and write what's close to them.

2) To open up to the possibilities of theater -- that it isn't film, that there's truth in realism but there's also a different kind of truth beyond strict realism.

3) To get them to be less literal with their stage directions, to take the "exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague" and really own it.

So.  This exercise:

1) Write down a dream.  Everything you can remember about it.  It could be last night's dream, it could be one that recurred, it's whatever you remember.  If you don't remember one, make it up.

2) Take that dream and turn it into a theatrical experience -- one you can share with members of an audience.  You want to do whatever you need to do to capture the ESSENCE/FEELING of that dream.  The caveat: every word you put on paper costs $100.

Tech for POW

During a blizzard.

In an old cavern of a theater on East Fourth Street.

Yes, there's something romantic about it.

I got to the theater last night with torturously cold, wet shoes and socks.

After four hours of tech, they'd gotten through one of eighteen scenes.

Final dress is tomorrow.

My fearless director was showing fear for the first time.

The actors looked exhausted.

The designers were stressed.

Tech...maybe it's somebody's idea of a good time, but it's not mine.

I think the process of a show...the experience of a show is the experience of watching it appear (at the second read-through)...the rhythms, the jokes, the moments of gravity.  You say "yes, we're gonna have a play," and "Oh God, let's get on our feet, I can SEE it, I can SEE it."  

Then you get on your feet, start working through it...and it disappears.  The actors haven't found it in their bodies yet, the director hasn't found it in space, or only has a fraction of the design elements in place.  It looks like grown-ups playing dress-up in an abandoned dance room or classroom.

Then it appears again, if you're lucky, for a day or two before you go into tech.  The actors, the director, the play start cooking with gas again, find their rhythm, find the meaning behind the words.  You breath a sigh of relief.

Then tech, and it disappears all over again.  And you despair.  Will they ever find the show again?  Will the audience see the gorgeous play in your head, in the director's head, in the designer's head?  Can reality match the dream?

We shall see.

Where Are You Good?

Some of us are good in front of an audience, and lousy in a rehearsal room.

Some of us are great in a rehearsal room, and lousy in an audition.

Some of us are great in an audition, and lousy at a cocktail party.

Some of us are great at a cocktail party, and lousy in our relationships.

But here's the question; which of these people do you want to hire?

Which do you actually hire?

A lot of the time, the cocktail party/audition actors win out -- they look great on paper, they talk a good game.  But do they bring it?

Likewise, a playwright.  Are you great at talking about your work?  Great.  Do you actually BRING IT when you show up?  Necessary.

Ideally, of course, you excel at all of the above.  

This New Play

I haven't blogged much at all on this project with Theater MITU and NAATCO...planning to make up for that soon.

Two notes to self:
1) Make sure you have the rights to adapt before you take the job.
2) If you're adapting something iconic, you're going to disappoint anyone who actually cares about the original piece. So you might as well horrify them while you're at it.

Jose Rivera; "The truth of what it is to live now"

JOSE RIVERA - from Playwrights Teach Playwriting

Says the thing he’s seen in graduate students is a lot of fear, a lot of hiding, that people are afraid to show themselves in their plays. His exercises are to get people past that.

He also had what I thought was a pretty succinct and useful definition of the “well-made play,” one I thought could serve a person pretty well in any medium: a character wants something, the character has certain obstacles that keep him or her from getting it, and those obstacles provide the conflict. A play is organized around the character overcoming (or trying to overcome) those obstacles. And as he says, he’s less interested in characters who want something than in characters who would kill for something.

He says he prefers to talk to his students about how to ORGANIZE a play, rather than how to “structure” it. He says he asks student what geometric shape his or her play would be – a pyramid, that starts with one character and keeps adding/expanding out? A circle, that ends where it began? A straight line up? I wonder how many options there are…He also compares a play to a recipe, where you have to set out certain steps in a certain order to reach a certain outcome. So he has a lot of analogies that GET TO structure, without necessarily talking about rising and falling action or act breaks.

TEN ITEMS
1) Give students a list of ten things that must happen in their ten-minute play.
2) Some things you might include, that Hwang includes:
a. The use of a particular word a dozen times.
b. A moment of dance.
c. A page of entirely physical action, with no spoken words.
d. A location like a boat or the top of a building or a mountain.
e. An event like New Year’s Eve.
f. A physical action that takes place like vomiting or head-scratching.
g. A sports metaphor.
h. A dog barking or howling.
i. A discussion of the definition of flight.
j. A reference to a political figure.
k. A joke.
l. Always include one visual element, one musical element, one physical element.

EMILY DICKINSON PLAY
1) “The heart wants what it wants or else it doesn’t care.” – write a short scene based on that.

POSTCARD EXERCISE
1) Bring in a collection of cool postcards.
2) Have each student choose two.
3) Tell them: One postcard is the reality of the world of your play before it begins. The other is reality after your play ends. There’s a postcard in the middle that bridges those realities, but it got lost in the mail. It’s your play. Your job: write the play that gets us from one reality to the other.
4) This is a play about transformation! (See pg 42 in the book)

CLICHÉ EXERCISE
1) Take a few minutes, as a class, to make a list of aphorisms or clichés: “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush,” “a picture is worth 1,000 words,” “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
2) Now write a scene where you make that literal: an apple talking to its tree, a person with a bird in her hand, etc…

Two challenges from Rivera:
1) Don’t be afraid of your worst impulses as a person. There’s some fertile ground for writing there.
2) You’re writing a dialogue with the future, trying to tell them the truth of what it is to live now. Are you doing that? (52).

Margulies (Playwrights Teach Playwriting) EXERCISES!

DONALD MARGULIES

Margulies argues more for teaching structure than any of the other playwrights in the book. He says playwriting “requires a knack for distilling experience into stories” (22). He says that he has his students read a different play every week, and that they then take that play apart in terms of its structure; “we talk about how the plays are built, how stories determine the structure of their telling and not the other way around” (23).

This is an important point. He’s not arguing for an Aristotelian structure, per se – he’s saying that “every story has an inherent structure; your job is to figure out what that structure is and employ it.

Margulies recommends Sweet’s The Dramatists Toolkit, Brande’s Becoming a Writer, and Hayman’s How to Read a Play. Linney recommends McLaughlin’s The Playwrights Progress.

Margulies included a lot of great exercises:

ARBUS EXERCISE (CHARACTER)
1) Give the class a series of photographs by Diane Arbus – or any photos with strange folks, not people they’d know. Curious photographs.
2) Have each student create a list of six or seven questions they’d ask this person – not “when’s your birthday” questions, but “elliptical, non sequitur ones like ‘what was the most puzzling thing about your best friend in third grade’” (25). Or ask who gave them articles of clothing in the picture…etc.
3) Have them then answer the questions in the voice of that character.
4) (EXTENSION) Have each student share his or her photo and share one or two of the responses to questions.
5) Have each student choose two characters and put them in conflict – one wants something the other is unwilling to give.

AUNT DAN AND LEMON EXERCISE (CHARACTER DIFFERENTIATION)
1) In Aunt Dan and Lemon, one of the characters speaks, persuasively, for Nazi/fascist beliefs.
2) Have the students write a monologue where the character is arguing the opposite of something you truly believe. Give that person a voice – and dignity – and a good argument.

TOP GIRLS EXERCISE
1) Include a real historical figure in your play. Not someone off-the-wall; have there be a good reason for your choice, one that feeds back into your play.

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (THEME/PLOT)
1) Have each student bring in two articles from that week’s newspaper.
2) Have each student choose two articles they didn’t bring.
3) Have each student write a short play that tells the story of one of the articles.

BETRAYAL SCENE
1) Read the “Torcello” scene.
2) Have students write a two-person scene where Character A manipulates Character B with information but never reveals that information directly.

FIRST DATE PLAY
1) In five scenes or fewer, write a play about your parents’ first date.
2) The scenes don’t have to be the same stylistically, and they don’t have to be told in linear order.

SIX LINES
1) Write a play in six lines. How much story can we get?
2) Read them the next day.

Margulies cautions that students shouldn’t revise and revise and revise a play because, at some point, revision can be come about the avoidance of writing the next play.
He argues for exposure to good theater, above all else, as a way of learning the craft.

Maria Irene Fornes from Playwrights Teach Playwriting – ideas and exercises.

Fornes says she begins each class with thirty to forty-five minutes of yoga.  It’s clear that she sees the basic building block of a production as its actors, that she sees the fundamental building block of a play as character.  She starts her students there.  Her assumption is that “life is interesting, and life doesn’t have an Aristotelian Structure, so why should plays.”  

I don’t know that I agree with that...not that life isn't interesting, but we don't ask people to pay for the privilege of sitting in the dark for two hours without going for the bathroom during the course of normal life -- theater is, as Dietz says, a time-based medium, and while a structure doesn't have to be Aristotelian, the argument "life is interesting" sounds great over a glass of wine, but doesn't get you as far when tickets go from anywhere from fifteen to a hundred and fifty bucks a pop.  If all theater were free, well, that argument might go further with me.

Most of her in-class work with students seems to revolve around generating pages.  Getting them into a very open state with yoga.  Leading them through visualizations of their characters, of the spaces those characters inhabit.  Having them write scenes with those characters at different points in time.

She says she absolutely believes in structure, but that that comes LATER, that so much of a play is about structuring it, and rewriting it.  But in these pages, she really only talks about generating pages.  She doesn’t indicate how, once students have generated pages, she helps them with shaping those pages.  Maybe that's simply harder to talk about?  Or maybe that, for her, is the easier part?  Or the hard part?

PLAYWRIGHTS TEACH PLAYWRITING

I just finished a useful book, edited by Joan Herrington and Crystal Brian.  It’s a compilation of essays by prominent teachers of playwriting, talking about what they do in their classrooms.

It was interesting, to me, to see what people value.  Almost to a one, they deride teaching “structure” or at least the word “structure. They teach people how to get in touch with their inner characters, they teach argument and how to think about politics, they teach…all sorts of things.

To me, the Aristotelian way of looking at things is pretty fundamental.  What does Aristotle talk about?  Beginning, Middle, End.  Character through Action.  Spectacle, Sound, Reversals of Fortune.  You may write a play where you reject these things, but doesn’t it make sense to begin with some of those basic assumptions?  They get you out of a lot of trouble later. 

Maybe it’s that the word “structure” has been so co-opted by the world of film (where it’s treated, often, in a way that’s somewhere between formula and dogma).  Maybe it’s that, as Jose Rivera says, “writers consider themselves rebels…They think structure is for people with no imagination” (49).  Maybe I escaped that working with Dietz, who is the first to tell you that he’s the son of a railway man, and thus obsessed by time and structure – or at least inclined to give them full shrift.

But we teach what we value, right?  Or do we teach what’s easiest for us to teach?  Or what’s hardest for us, as writers to do?  It’s an interesting question: why do decide to teach what you do to your students?  What is your overall objective for them?  What do you consider it crucial that they learn how to do?  Every classroom is, for better or worse, a living manifesto.