Totally stoked. Wish I could go. Proud of/excited for all the great folks involved.
(this is a still from the movie...dramatic, no?)
...there's a clip of my scenes around somewhere (first few minutes of the movie), but I can't find it.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Going to South By! ...sort of...
I've got a speaking role in Geoff Marslett's mumble core "Loves Her Gun," screening at South By this year!
Totally stoked. Wish I could go. Proud of/excited for all the great folks involved.
(this is a still from the movie...dramatic, no?)
...there's a clip of my scenes around somewhere (first few minutes of the movie), but I can't find it.
Totally stoked. Wish I could go. Proud of/excited for all the great folks involved.
(this is a still from the movie...dramatic, no?)
...there's a clip of my scenes around somewhere (first few minutes of the movie), but I can't find it.
Offer Help
Was re-reading my Ask for Help post, and my post about Turnabout as Fair Play.
I wanted to make a quick list of ways that, even where I am now, I can help fellow artists. I'm sure there are more...will keep thinking. Just want to continue turning the question from "what do I need" and "what do I believe" to "what can I give" and "what don't I know?"
Anyway. Some ways to help artist friends:
1) Make an introduction. Introduce a writer to a director, an actor to a teacher, a director to a producer. Don't worry about them connecting more with each other -- spread the love.
2) When you're offered comps, be sure to take two -- and give the second to an arts friend you haven't seen in a while, or who might not be able to afford the show otherwise.
3) Read their stuff. Give positive but rigorous commentary.
4) Share what you learn -- in blog form, in person. If you have a really great "eureka" conversation, don't keep it to yourself -- tell your theater buddies what you're picking up.
5) Promote their readings. Promote their work. When someone asks you what work you like, don't just name the three "safe" (or dead) artists everyone names -- tell people, loud and proud, about your awesome writer/director/actor/designer friends.
6) Create moments where people can gather. Invite people over to do something that is somewhat artistic or useful, but keep 'em long enough to break bread, talk and laugh.
7) Give'em ten bucks for their kickstarter campaign. It won't change the world, but it's a start.
8) Willingly offer to take young alumni from your alma mater out for coffee, to share what you can about the experience of the first few weeks/years/months. Tell them what you can about surviving what city you're in.
9) Call the colleagues who live far away. Remember to ask how they are -- about their lives, not just their work.
10) TELL THEM when you really like what they're working on. TELL THEM when you don't, if you can do so in a way that's productive and kind.
11) Show up. Whenever you can.
12) Cheer them up -- buy 'em a drink or meet up for a walk during the inevitable dark moments.
I do all of these. I don't do any of them ENOUGH (is there such thing?). The goal, I think, might be to do at least one of these a day, or a week.
I wanted to make a quick list of ways that, even where I am now, I can help fellow artists. I'm sure there are more...will keep thinking. Just want to continue turning the question from "what do I need" and "what do I believe" to "what can I give" and "what don't I know?"
Anyway. Some ways to help artist friends:
1) Make an introduction. Introduce a writer to a director, an actor to a teacher, a director to a producer. Don't worry about them connecting more with each other -- spread the love.
2) When you're offered comps, be sure to take two -- and give the second to an arts friend you haven't seen in a while, or who might not be able to afford the show otherwise.
3) Read their stuff. Give positive but rigorous commentary.
4) Share what you learn -- in blog form, in person. If you have a really great "eureka" conversation, don't keep it to yourself -- tell your theater buddies what you're picking up.
5) Promote their readings. Promote their work. When someone asks you what work you like, don't just name the three "safe" (or dead) artists everyone names -- tell people, loud and proud, about your awesome writer/director/actor/designer friends.
6) Create moments where people can gather. Invite people over to do something that is somewhat artistic or useful, but keep 'em long enough to break bread, talk and laugh.
7) Give'em ten bucks for their kickstarter campaign. It won't change the world, but it's a start.
8) Willingly offer to take young alumni from your alma mater out for coffee, to share what you can about the experience of the first few weeks/years/months. Tell them what you can about surviving what city you're in.
9) Call the colleagues who live far away. Remember to ask how they are -- about their lives, not just their work.
10) TELL THEM when you really like what they're working on. TELL THEM when you don't, if you can do so in a way that's productive and kind.
11) Show up. Whenever you can.
12) Cheer them up -- buy 'em a drink or meet up for a walk during the inevitable dark moments.
I do all of these. I don't do any of them ENOUGH (is there such thing?). The goal, I think, might be to do at least one of these a day, or a week.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
An Expert in Curiosity
Two days ago, through a series of unexpected events, I was asked to take over a colleague's African Fiction class for about two weeks.
Friends, I know nothing about African Fiction. Latin American fiction, yes. European and North American fiction, yes. Middle Eastern fiction, a bit. But besides some Gordimer and Coetzee, besides several African playwrights...I'm exactly where my students are.
But I said yes immediately.
This new adventure is a reminder, though, that on my best days teaching material with which I am intimately familiar, I go in with the mindset of student, of NOT knowing the "answers" to a given text. That the focus, in a classroom, should be on the student's learning rather than the teacher's knowledge. For the next two weeks, these guys are going to be in a deliberately, necessarily student-centered classroom.
This isn't to say I go in with no plan, or with no role. What I can give them is my experience asking deep questions, and holding the group's feet to the fire to be rigorous in seeking answers. I can remind them that no one knows everything (particularly with fiction), and the most important thing to do is keep interrogating.
The best teachers, I think, are experts in curiosity.
What about playwrights? The more I think about it, the more I see a parallel. I've heard people say that I should be an "expert on my own play" or "the toughest critic in the room." But what if I re-frame that? Isn't it the playwright's job to create a play that asks questions? Isn't the difference between great literature (or drama) and great diatribe that art leaves room for questions about the human experience, pushes deeper toward more meaningful, trickier questions? And isn't the real strength of critique the ability to ask fresher, deeper, more rigorous questions about the work in front of you?
And don't the best plays work to create an "audience-centered" experience? How many times have I asked a young actor how they can invite the audience to HAVE an emotional reaction to a given moment, rather than simply observe the ACTOR's emotion in a particular moment? Isn't our job to move our audience toward thought, emotion, action? And isn't the play itself, the production itself, simply the assembly of tools we're employing to do so?
Perhaps the role of theater practitioners, too, is to be "experts in curiosity."
Perhaps the relationship between playwright and teacher is both more direct and more...what...generous? Humble? than I thought.
Friends, I know nothing about African Fiction. Latin American fiction, yes. European and North American fiction, yes. Middle Eastern fiction, a bit. But besides some Gordimer and Coetzee, besides several African playwrights...I'm exactly where my students are.
But I said yes immediately.
This new adventure is a reminder, though, that on my best days teaching material with which I am intimately familiar, I go in with the mindset of student, of NOT knowing the "answers" to a given text. That the focus, in a classroom, should be on the student's learning rather than the teacher's knowledge. For the next two weeks, these guys are going to be in a deliberately, necessarily student-centered classroom.
This isn't to say I go in with no plan, or with no role. What I can give them is my experience asking deep questions, and holding the group's feet to the fire to be rigorous in seeking answers. I can remind them that no one knows everything (particularly with fiction), and the most important thing to do is keep interrogating.
The best teachers, I think, are experts in curiosity.
What about playwrights? The more I think about it, the more I see a parallel. I've heard people say that I should be an "expert on my own play" or "the toughest critic in the room." But what if I re-frame that? Isn't it the playwright's job to create a play that asks questions? Isn't the difference between great literature (or drama) and great diatribe that art leaves room for questions about the human experience, pushes deeper toward more meaningful, trickier questions? And isn't the real strength of critique the ability to ask fresher, deeper, more rigorous questions about the work in front of you?
And don't the best plays work to create an "audience-centered" experience? How many times have I asked a young actor how they can invite the audience to HAVE an emotional reaction to a given moment, rather than simply observe the ACTOR's emotion in a particular moment? Isn't our job to move our audience toward thought, emotion, action? And isn't the play itself, the production itself, simply the assembly of tools we're employing to do so?
Perhaps the role of theater practitioners, too, is to be "experts in curiosity."
Perhaps the relationship between playwright and teacher is both more direct and more...what...generous? Humble? than I thought.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Turnabout is Fair Play
Today, I finish the "first" draft of my TV pilot, which has benefitted from the wise counsel of several of my playwright friends.
Tomorrow, I bake cookies to put in the mail, and read the three plays that those friends have sent me, for return feedback. Because now it's their turn.
Worth remembering -- we all know "you have to put out what you want to get back," but it's easy to forget that's TANGIBLE, not something you simply meditate on whilst in savasana pose. When it comes to your writing and art community, that better take the form of reading their stuff, feeding them, buying them drinks, or calling them on Sundays to see how their lives are going.
Friendships and working relationships are like plants. Very few of them thrive on neglect.
Tomorrow, I bake cookies to put in the mail, and read the three plays that those friends have sent me, for return feedback. Because now it's their turn.
Worth remembering -- we all know "you have to put out what you want to get back," but it's easy to forget that's TANGIBLE, not something you simply meditate on whilst in savasana pose. When it comes to your writing and art community, that better take the form of reading their stuff, feeding them, buying them drinks, or calling them on Sundays to see how their lives are going.
Friendships and working relationships are like plants. Very few of them thrive on neglect.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Feedback and Revisions
It was easy in graduate school. Bring your pages to class, ask questions, get thoughtful responses from ten people at a time. Set up an appointment with your professor, come in, take notes.
Not so, now. If you're lucky (and I was, for a while), you're in a play group where you get to bring in pages to some smart, talented peers. But that's necessarily on a schedule, and people are busy, and if you're getting feedback on pages once every few months, that's great -- but it may or may not line up with your writing schedule.
I really only had to get my act together, and get proactive about my drafting and feedback process, once I was out of grad school at UT Austin, and out of Ars Nova. I made a commitment to writing more (and took a steep pay cut at my job to do so, which has been holding my feet to the fire), and soon realized that there was only so much I could do on my own.
My favorite professors have always said "be your own worst critic," and I try to be, but it really really helps to have the perspective of people who aren't buried in the work alongside me. So. In the past three months, on three different projects, I've been employing three very different feedback/revision techniques:
(1) One-on-one. I'm working on a film, with a production company. The development executive I'm working with, who is wonderful and who has become one of my favorite new New York friends, gave me terrific page-one-to-one-hundred feedback on the first two drafts. But going into the third draft, I asked her if she'd be willing to give me feedback ONE ACT AT A TIME. She was. So we identified what felt "off" about Act One, I revised it, she gave me feedback, I revised it -- then we moved on to Act Two, then Act Three. The nice thing was, by the time we moved on to the subsequent act, we knew the preceding one was solid. This really may only have worked because the (fantastic) reader in question has a big stake in the script -- she, too, wants it to get made -- but it's incredibly rewarding, makes a script very solid very fast, and really makes you feel like you've got someone on your team.
(2) The Kitchen Table Method. I talked about this in an earlier post. I'm working on a new play. No one's waiting for it; it's just one I wanted to write. So once I hit what I *thought* was the last page, I invited a bunch of deeply trusted folks, mostly actors, over to read the thing aloud. I fed them. A few were friends with each other, so it gave them a chance to catch up. It helped us all feel like part of a community. I think it gave them the (correct) sense that I highly value both their talents and their thoughts. And they gave me terrific feedback, informed by all of their time working on other peoples' plays. I wrote a new draft, invited over a slightly different crew (for fresh eyes' sake). And so on. I'm on the third round now (the first I'm willing to call a real first draft) and it's starting to look like a play -- AND I've managed to deepen some friendships along the way, with people I really value.
(3) The Crowd-Source Method. In mid-December, my manager was finally happy enough with my crazy pilot outline that he said "okay, go to script." BUT -- he wants that script very soon. And I want it to be good, because he's never seen me write for TV. Not enough time for kitchen table reads, and I definitely need outside eyes. So as I got close to the end of my zero draft, I emailed a few (3-4) friends around the country, writers with experience in the genre, and asked if they could do a 2-4 day turnaround on feedback. They said yes. I (barely) managed to get it to them when I said they would, and they got me feedback within a few days. I rewrote for five days straight, and did the same thing -- but this time, with a second group of friends, to get fresh eyes. By this third draft, I *will* send it to my manager, but will also send it to a couple of my very demanding writer friends, so that I will have their feedback *and* my manager's to work from when he (inevitably) asks for a rewrite. All told, about fifteen people will have given feedback on this pilot before it hits the desk of anyone in the industry.
I've also found a method that has helped me to move more efficiently through a rewrite. Which is obvious, and which I guess I've done in some fashion before, but with the amount of rewriting I've been doing lately, it's solidified. I've always used a "punch list," a bullet-pointed list of things I need to work on or revisit in the rewrite. But I've started breaking that list out by act (in the case of movies and TV) and scene (in the case of plays), one page per act or scene, with one extra page for the bigger, longer-thread stuff. It helps ENORMOUSLY.
Not so, now. If you're lucky (and I was, for a while), you're in a play group where you get to bring in pages to some smart, talented peers. But that's necessarily on a schedule, and people are busy, and if you're getting feedback on pages once every few months, that's great -- but it may or may not line up with your writing schedule.
I really only had to get my act together, and get proactive about my drafting and feedback process, once I was out of grad school at UT Austin, and out of Ars Nova. I made a commitment to writing more (and took a steep pay cut at my job to do so, which has been holding my feet to the fire), and soon realized that there was only so much I could do on my own.
My favorite professors have always said "be your own worst critic," and I try to be, but it really really helps to have the perspective of people who aren't buried in the work alongside me. So. In the past three months, on three different projects, I've been employing three very different feedback/revision techniques:
(1) One-on-one. I'm working on a film, with a production company. The development executive I'm working with, who is wonderful and who has become one of my favorite new New York friends, gave me terrific page-one-to-one-hundred feedback on the first two drafts. But going into the third draft, I asked her if she'd be willing to give me feedback ONE ACT AT A TIME. She was. So we identified what felt "off" about Act One, I revised it, she gave me feedback, I revised it -- then we moved on to Act Two, then Act Three. The nice thing was, by the time we moved on to the subsequent act, we knew the preceding one was solid. This really may only have worked because the (fantastic) reader in question has a big stake in the script -- she, too, wants it to get made -- but it's incredibly rewarding, makes a script very solid very fast, and really makes you feel like you've got someone on your team.
(2) The Kitchen Table Method. I talked about this in an earlier post. I'm working on a new play. No one's waiting for it; it's just one I wanted to write. So once I hit what I *thought* was the last page, I invited a bunch of deeply trusted folks, mostly actors, over to read the thing aloud. I fed them. A few were friends with each other, so it gave them a chance to catch up. It helped us all feel like part of a community. I think it gave them the (correct) sense that I highly value both their talents and their thoughts. And they gave me terrific feedback, informed by all of their time working on other peoples' plays. I wrote a new draft, invited over a slightly different crew (for fresh eyes' sake). And so on. I'm on the third round now (the first I'm willing to call a real first draft) and it's starting to look like a play -- AND I've managed to deepen some friendships along the way, with people I really value.
(3) The Crowd-Source Method. In mid-December, my manager was finally happy enough with my crazy pilot outline that he said "okay, go to script." BUT -- he wants that script very soon. And I want it to be good, because he's never seen me write for TV. Not enough time for kitchen table reads, and I definitely need outside eyes. So as I got close to the end of my zero draft, I emailed a few (3-4) friends around the country, writers with experience in the genre, and asked if they could do a 2-4 day turnaround on feedback. They said yes. I (barely) managed to get it to them when I said they would, and they got me feedback within a few days. I rewrote for five days straight, and did the same thing -- but this time, with a second group of friends, to get fresh eyes. By this third draft, I *will* send it to my manager, but will also send it to a couple of my very demanding writer friends, so that I will have their feedback *and* my manager's to work from when he (inevitably) asks for a rewrite. All told, about fifteen people will have given feedback on this pilot before it hits the desk of anyone in the industry.
I've also found a method that has helped me to move more efficiently through a rewrite. Which is obvious, and which I guess I've done in some fashion before, but with the amount of rewriting I've been doing lately, it's solidified. I've always used a "punch list," a bullet-pointed list of things I need to work on or revisit in the rewrite. But I've started breaking that list out by act (in the case of movies and TV) and scene (in the case of plays), one page per act or scene, with one extra page for the bigger, longer-thread stuff. It helps ENORMOUSLY.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Stealing from Other Art Forms
One of the things I hear, again and again, from more seasoned artists, is to make time to explore/learn from/appreciate other art forms. Lisa D'Amour brought it up in the workshop I did with her, Suzan Zeder and Daniel Alexander Jones talked about it, and I remember being so struck, at Steven Dietz's house, by how much of his bookshelf space was given over to music and the study of music.
I'm prepared for it to seem weird that I'm posting this here, on my playwriting blog, but one of those websites on which I obsessively spend time (yes, more than Howlround or 2amT) is called Houzz.com -- and it's all about home design.
Background: I think I was seven when I asked for my first magazine subscription...and it was to Architectural digest. I started arguing with my parents about how we decorated our house by the time I was ten, I've moved over 20 times since I was sixteen (for those who are counting, that averages about once every nine months), and I've collected and cast off more furniture than I can recollect. I've built tables by hand only to give them away, scattered my grandmothers' antiques from here to California (but I know whether they are -- and I'm going back for them), rolled couches down dozens of city blocks, painted and repainted and repainted...suffice to say, the idea of "home" for me is fraught (and frequently shows up in my playwriting), and I'm someone who cares -- a lot -- about the aesthetics of a space. Which isn't to say my apartments have looked great -- because I've never committed to a space, and thus have always seen everything it contains (myself included) as "temporary." So. Modern Nomad.
Houzz is a place where I can live vicariously, where I can collect and store a huge number of images for "someday."
And sometimes it occurs to me that there might be a connection between the art form I practice, and my extracurricular obsession. Check this article, for example.
Note the principles this landscape architect talks about using to communicate abundance:
Color
Views
Timelessness
Layers
Intimacy
Focal Points
Movement
Ornamentation
Spontaneity
Pattern
The minute I saw that list, I thought "Viewpoints" and "Aristotle's Poetics."
I think every one of the principles Jeffrey Gordon Smith talks about here has an application on stage -- and, by extension, in playwriting. I think that if we look at our scripts and ask whether we've created room for Color (diversity, yes, and also vibrancy), Views (perspective), whether we've created layers of meaning, whether we've created an experience with focal points (what Dietz called "stop moments") and intimacy between the people on stage and for our audience, whether our play moves, whether it has ornamentation (perhaps what Aristotle referred to as "spectacle"), spontaneity (what all actors work for, I think, and something that's huge in Viewpoints training) and Pattern (call it story (Dietz), call it Harmony (if you're Aristotle).
Anyway. Another interesting set of questions to ask of your plays, when you're looking at a draft.
I'm prepared for it to seem weird that I'm posting this here, on my playwriting blog, but one of those websites on which I obsessively spend time (yes, more than Howlround or 2amT) is called Houzz.com -- and it's all about home design.
Background: I think I was seven when I asked for my first magazine subscription...and it was to Architectural digest. I started arguing with my parents about how we decorated our house by the time I was ten, I've moved over 20 times since I was sixteen (for those who are counting, that averages about once every nine months), and I've collected and cast off more furniture than I can recollect. I've built tables by hand only to give them away, scattered my grandmothers' antiques from here to California (but I know whether they are -- and I'm going back for them), rolled couches down dozens of city blocks, painted and repainted and repainted...suffice to say, the idea of "home" for me is fraught (and frequently shows up in my playwriting), and I'm someone who cares -- a lot -- about the aesthetics of a space. Which isn't to say my apartments have looked great -- because I've never committed to a space, and thus have always seen everything it contains (myself included) as "temporary." So. Modern Nomad.
Houzz is a place where I can live vicariously, where I can collect and store a huge number of images for "someday."
And sometimes it occurs to me that there might be a connection between the art form I practice, and my extracurricular obsession. Check this article, for example.
Note the principles this landscape architect talks about using to communicate abundance:
Color
Views
Timelessness
Layers
Intimacy
Focal Points
Movement
Ornamentation
Spontaneity
Pattern
The minute I saw that list, I thought "Viewpoints" and "Aristotle's Poetics."
I think every one of the principles Jeffrey Gordon Smith talks about here has an application on stage -- and, by extension, in playwriting. I think that if we look at our scripts and ask whether we've created room for Color (diversity, yes, and also vibrancy), Views (perspective), whether we've created layers of meaning, whether we've created an experience with focal points (what Dietz called "stop moments") and intimacy between the people on stage and for our audience, whether our play moves, whether it has ornamentation (perhaps what Aristotle referred to as "spectacle"), spontaneity (what all actors work for, I think, and something that's huge in Viewpoints training) and Pattern (call it story (Dietz), call it Harmony (if you're Aristotle).
Anyway. Another interesting set of questions to ask of your plays, when you're looking at a draft.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Love's Labours Lost
...is the latest blog I wanna follow. RVCBard (real name I don't know, but when I learn it, I'll change it here) has some good stuff. I found her on an older post from Josh Conkel over on the Youngblog about class in theater. This post, in particular, is one I want to both think about and use.
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