The play I’m working on is called Turtles and I’m sort of swimming around in its theatrical world the same way a turtle might meander underwater. (Is it randam or is it highly selective?  Who knows!) But the feeling of these images made me think about the pacing of the play. Why? I have no idea. And I don’t want to know. That’s for the dramaturg to figure out. (And I know Ilana is going to say, why don’t you try being your own dramaturg? Am I right, Ilana?) Right now I’m only concerned with the feeling.

Anyway, check these out. If for any other reason than because it’s kind of a cool idea.

But she’s using the right buzzwords, isn’t she? Online reading experience like no other. The reading experience will be built by you, the reader. The digital generation.

I know this is a stretch and also kind of grotesque (for God’s sake, woman, where’s your artistic integrity?) But it’s also a clear indication of where the world of storytelling is moving.

Pottermore.

This video was posted by someone on my Facebook page today. You’ll see the easy segue I made from pictures to storytelling. I think the point I’m trying to make is how powerful images, especially photographs and paintings, can be because they are static, like sitting ducks, and they allow us storytellers to just work them. As an example, August Wilson was influenced by at least two of Romare Bearden’s paintings for The Piano Lesson and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

In the world of things, images are very giving.

Anyway, unfortunately, here is a description and a rant of something I suspect happens a lot in the life of a playwright. It’s happened to me once. It’s a horrible, horrible experience where you’re sitting captive in the audience and just want to crawl under your chair. This is the other side of that collaboration that we talk so much about, that we pine for, that we treasure.

So many traditions are breaking in the theater: the fourth wall, the straight narrative. Why not just break the whole physical building?

T: An MBTA Musical || FlashMob || The Bro Song

I’m talking about the acting gig, or in this case, reading a staged reading.

A friend emailed me and asked me if I’d read a part in a staged reading tomorrow night at the BCA. Lately I don’t always have the time because of school, but if I do have the time (and the energy) I jump at these chances. First, it keeps my acting chops oiled. Second, I’m participating in the development of a new script. Third, I’m working with some people who I truly like and respect and like to be around. What number are we on now?–Four: I’m hearing a new script and getting insight into another playwright’s work in ways that aren’t possible any other way.

If you’re interested, here’s a shameless plug of the event and also my own blog: Read more about it here.

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This is Ilana jumping in here on your post here, John.

I wanted to point you and the other readers to DC playwright Gwydion Suilebhan’s recent blog posts on just this issue. First, read this.  Then, read this.  Interesting intersection with your own thoughts, John!

Go to americatheatrewing.org and check out the left hand nav column. Yeah, that’s about eight links that lead you to pages that are filled with videos of interviews with people who work in the theater. Prop mistresses and stage managers and directors and actors. Sort the playwrights, and you’ve got a marathon of video.

A playwright at the playwrights’ get-together the other night at Stoddards asked Phil Berman and me if he should take some acting classes just to better understand the stage, and of course we both piped up with a resounding Yes! I know I’m going to be digging into these videos. Anything you can know about the working of the theater or the stage is helpful in what we do. This is a huge resource. Bookmark the site.

Taken from the site:

The panel of playwrights - Annie Baker, Rinne Groff, Karen Hartman and Alfred Uhry – talk about their writing process; the role of the dramaturg; writing adaptations; collaborating with directors; whether they have a specific actor in mind when they’re writing; and how they see the role of the playwright in theatre today.

(Somewhere around 20 minutes they talk about working with dramaturgs.)

I think writers are a special breed for artist, and playwrights are a special breed of writer. It’s interesting to listen to these accomplished writers talk. Writers are writers, no matter what they write, they all have similar characteristics and personalities (and it was E.B. White who said no one gives a damn about writers except other writers.) So much is familiar to me–what they are talking about–especially as they begin to talk about the obstacles, the trials and tribulations of writing plays and collaborating. For me, a long-time writer entering a new phase of his life and career, this was a particularly eye-opening video, well worth the time it took to watch.

I’m working on a play that’s about three-quarters finished–too far in to just chuck it aside.Can’t do that anyway because this play is an integral part of the classwork I’m now doing. And it’s actually coming along really well. I feel like a rock-climber who has navigated up a particularly steep and perilous wall, and now finds himself–stuck. But there is nowhere else to go but up. But how? All I see are overhangs blocking my way.

I try logic. What is the next logical next step for this character. This happened, this happened, it’s only logical that this will happen next. That doesn’t work. So I try illogic. If you’re trying to figure out human behavior, the first thing to do is throw logic right out the window because humans aren’t logical. Logic is just a construct of the Greeks to make sense out of this reality called life. (And dare I say, if you want to write new theater, you have to throw out the old ways of viewing life, which means logic is one of the first things you jettison.) But illogic doesn’t work even though you’d think it would because in the world I’ve set up, logic is a rather iffy issue anyway. But worse, illogic really doesnt’ take us to a real dramatic place.

Did I mention deadline? The pressure to actually have something substantial written by Tuesday is hanging over my head.

It makes you (me) mad as hell because I know I can do this. I go back to the original idea of the play. Why did I write this play to begin with? I know the answer to that question, but even that doesn’t help because plays, like all pieces of creative work, have lives of their own. They start out one way and you merrily follow them along until they are wildly off track and then they look at you and say, you’re the playwright, get us back on track. And the playwright says, well, I was just being open. I was being organic. I was following you. The play responds, tough noogies. We’re lost and doomed and it’s your responsibility to find our way back, and if you don’t do it I promise to drive you insane.

Which is what Turtles is doing to me right now.

I’ve written out the characters’ needs. What do they desperately crave and that will show me the path. Nope.

And here’s where I am. It’s not even a crossroad. There is no road in sight right now. No path.

And here is where I laugh. In some circles (although not all) when I say I’m a writer the response is generally interest. Oh cool. No, it’s not cool. This is why so many warnings are given to new writers. In just about every  So You Want To Be A Writer How-To book, there is a warning in the foreword that basically says being a writer is sometimes pure hell, and you’re absolutely mad to pursue the life. Today I would agree.

Second, “deep dive”?  Wait, is that like “hooking up”? I’m always a bit leery about using words and phrases that I suspect require a visit to the urban dictionary.

David Dower is the Associate Artistic Director at the Arena Stage (I’m sure Ilana knows him) and here he’s wondering what it would be like if theaters produced not just one play, but a few plays by a single playwright in a season.

It’s an interesting read and it’s also the dream of more than a few playwrights: To have an audience hear their voice loud and clear. Of course, that means you have to have a substantial body of work to pull from, but that’s just details.