Are there more than 36 assumptions?

June 10, 2011 at 3:05 pm

How many of those articles we playwright’s love to pass around to each other actually impact our work?  Of all I’ve read and excitedly shared, Jose Rivera’s “36 Assumptions About Playwriting” is the one I go back to again and again, the one I refer to in discussion the most frequently, the one other playwrights most ask me to find for them after I’ve excitedly recounted my favorite assumptions.  If I write something where I’ve honored 8 or 9 of these, it’s a really strong piece for me.  I’m inching my through his fabled list with each new play… hmmmm… could I make it into the teens before I finish Illana’s dramaturgy class? Are the 20’s possible if I’m fearless?  Should checking off all  36 be the  last bullet point on my playwright’s bucket list?

If you haven’t yet read Jose’s assumptions, I’m excited to share them with you.  And, please, if you have a magic number 37, post it here!

http://allbleedingstopseventually.blogspot.com/2007/01/jose-riveras-36-assumptions-about.html

By dagirard | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Acting Makes the Playwright Grow Stronger

June 9, 2011 at 10:48 am

It's all part and parcel to working in the theater, and for a playwright, it's a great opportunity in so many ways.

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.

...

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!

By jgf | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

on craft: exploitation, privacy, invasion, philip roth & carrie mae weems

June 8, 2011 at 4:33 pm

a few lines, posted to my bedroom wall and now to your computer screen --

"The serious, merciless invasion of privacy is at the heart of the fiction we value most highly." philip roth

"How you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way." carrie mae weems

philip roth's quote suggests, to a certain degree, that the invasion of the subconscious -- that most private of spaces -- it distinguishes great art. the subconscious -- that raw, uncharted terrain that is both individuated and universal, inchoate and exquisite. how does one open the door to such a place? is it accessed through ordinary means? the artist cannot demand that the subconscious reveal itself, but roth and weems both suggest that a certain brutality is required to access our deepest, most profound work: for weems it through exploitation, for roth it is through the "serious, merciless invasion of privacy".

what does this mean for the writer? what does this mean for the artist? it means that, to some degree, we have to lay our characters and our work on the operating table: to create great work we must expose ourselves and in fact, interrogate ourselves and our characters. who would be game for such a project? very few, i would imagine. in many ways this is why so few people choose to be artists: to be an artist demands a certain brutality -- and with that brutality comes a form courage.

By erh20 | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Mental Illness in Art

June 8, 2011 at 2:01 pm

I, like many people, am interested in the fate of Jared L. Loughner, who attempted to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords and succeeded in killing six others.  Recently, a federal court deemed Loughner mentally incompetent to stand trial. 
 
 
As a human-being, I'm of course appalled at the idea that this man shouldn't receive some type of harsh justice.  As an attorney, however, I know the unique problem of culpability/retribution/rehabilitation as applied to the mentally ill.  When I worked at my law firm, I worked on a death penalty clemency petition in Virginia.  I researched all of the granted and denied petitions in the country over the past few decades.  When you look at the details of a number of these defendants, when you look at their IQ tests and behavior over time, you realize just how many mentally ill people we execute every year.  I wrote a novel a few years back dealing with a mentally ill teenager who detonates a bomb in his school.  The act and the consequences of the bombing for the town and victims were easy enough to write.  My problem was with the perpetrator himself.  Today, we talked about human need as the starting point of stories.  The question is: when dealing with a mind corrupted to the point of psychosis, how do we avoid constructing a mere monster who only functions as a creator of obstacles?  

By aelefano | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Color Blind Casting

June 8, 2011 at 1:59 pm

Today's discussion regarding color blind casting reminded me of the famous recast of one of my favorite plays, August: Osage County.  In the play's second full year on Broadway, in an effort presumably to bring a new audience to AOC, the producers brought in Phylicia Rashad to play the role of Violet Weston.  I remember telling this to a friend of mine.  She gave me a puzzled, almost-horrified look, then said, "Are they recasting the whole thing?" 
 
Here's a review of the Rashad iteration of AOC. 
 
 
The review wisely does not gloss over the nontraditional casting: "Casting an African-American actress as the mother of an all-white family to some degree inevitably requires greater suspension of disbelief. It adds a stagier feel to a production distinguished for the naturalistic work of the Steppenwolf ensemble that was an integral part of the play's development."
 
On the one hand, I bristle at the idea that a Black actress should be automatically excluded from consideration for any play.  On the other hand, I also bristle at the idea of an all-white production of Radio Golf.   
 

By aelefano | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Being a Playwright in a Small Town

June 8, 2011 at 8:19 am

The inimitable Scott Walters (see his two excellent sites, here and here) linked recently on Twitter to two very interesting posts on being a playwright outside the urban sphere.

Here's the first, from Laura Axelrod, who talks about how the slower pace buys her time to think.

She follows that post with another, here, about how the land itself -- its geography, and sometimes, its destruction -- becomes part of the artistic process.  It's a fascinating piece on how when your environment changes, so do you, and thus, so does your art.

By Ilana Brownstein | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Playwright as Teacher (LA edition)

June 8, 2011 at 8:11 am

So many of us in the professional theatre choose to teach as well as practice our craft. For some, I'm sure it's stopgap, a necessity, something that takes them away from their art. For others, it invigorates the art, making the teaching and the doing two halves of the same whole. Here's a post from playwright Jose Casas, who teaches playwriting in LA, posted on the blog Playwriting in the City.

By Ilana Brownstein | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

So much blood, so little pain

June 7, 2011 at 1:54 pm

The interpretation of Richard III at the Huntington brings quirky humor, an all male cast, and so much blood to Shakespeare's story (according to an overheard remark from a cast member, 50 British pounds worth of stage blood per performance).  The acting is layered and masterful, and the concept is worthy.  Even the all male cast works in the sense that using men dressed in women's clothing (but without wigs or female make-up) to play female roles creates a much stronger focus on the words and ideas rather than emotional content.  Yet, despite the drills through the eyes, the disembowelment, the chopping up of children, the finger bitten off and spit out on the stage-- you don't feel anything below the brain.  It is exciting and intellectually stimulating-- clever, risky, a rethinking of the text through a masochistic lens.  For avid theater goers, those who have seen several versions of Richard III, it is something new.  What we lose in the buckets of blood, however ,is any sense of relationship, of pain, of pathos, of caring, of relating.  I readily joined in the standing ovation for the actors because their performances were astonishing and I was excited to have their work brought to Boston.  As I was standing I thought of my friend Terry Byrne, who I think writes the best theater reviews in Boston.  When she analyzes a play, she always starts with the relationships and works out from there.  In this version of Richard III, Shakespeare's words felt like a series of beautifully delivered monologues strung together with over-the-top gore and violence, with no relationships at the center.  Without this center no emotion can spring, we can't really care, and, at least for me, can't feel the power of Shakespeare in there at all.

By dagirard | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

American Theatre Wing: Tons of Videos

June 7, 2011 at 7:44 am

Did I stumble on a goldmine of videos on the theater or what? Yesterday when I found and posted the video of Annie Baker, Rinne Groff, Karen Hartman and Alfred Uhry talking about playwriting at the America Theatre Wing site called The Characters Start Talking I was a bit mystified by the title, but now realize the video is just a small piece of a huge series of videos on people who work in the theatre.

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.

By jgf | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

The Characters Start Talking: Playwrights 2011

June 6, 2011 at 2:51 pm

The Characters Start Talking: Playwrights 2011

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.

By jgf | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

The Art of Immersion

June 6, 2011 at 10:47 am

As I mentioned in my last post, much of my interest in playwriting lies in the emergence of new forms of storytelling that are emerging on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Now, there aren't exactly a lot of books on this subject, and it's probably no accident that one of the few that explores this territory has been written by a friend and a longtime colleague of mine at Wired, Frank Rose. We worked together in the New York offices of Wired for many years, and both covered the evolution of the culture industry as it struggled to contain, and even exploit the digital technologies threatening to upend the whole shebang.

Rose's book is called The Art of Immersion, and the thesis is nothing short of revolutionary: Storytelling has adapted to many new mediums over the past several thousand years, but the linear narrative structure itself has remained unchanged—until now. The rise of video games (which fractured narrative into countless "branches" of possible outcomes) and the widespread use of the Internet (which privileges interaction between many users), have lead to the emergence of a new form of narrative. Here's a quote from the Booklist review:

Creators, in essence, are losing some control of their stories as fans take them over. Star Wars fans maintain a Wookieepedia of detail beyond anything envisioned by its creator, fans of Mad Men began unauthorized tweeting in the role of characters from a show set in the 1960s, and the Potter Wars have erupted over control of the popular series as fans start blogs and websites. Rose asserts that in the new world of immersion storytelling, stories become games, and games become stories. Completely fascinating.

By jeffhowe | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Writers’ Block

June 3, 2011 at 9:49 am

The focus of this blog has shifted. Or maybe the better word is expanded, now that summer semester has started and a new class--the dramaturg/playwright relationship has started. I'm not sure I'll ever call myself a dramaturg, but no doubt I'm a playwright. And right now I am in probably the worst places any writer finds himself. Blocked. Frustrated beyond belief. Mad as hell.

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.

By jgf | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Dramaturg Maxine Kern

June 2, 2011 at 10:49 am

Check out this interview with long-time dramaturg Maxine Kern. Right now, she's working on the 10th anniversary production of As it is in Heaven, by Arlene Hutton. The blog this comes from is maintained by Works By Women, which advocates for equity in the theatre, and organizes outings to plays by female playwrights in NYC several times a month.  If you're interested in this cause, also check out 50/50 in 2020, an advocacy organization aiming for total gender equality in the professional theatre by 2020.

Here's a great excerpt from Maxine's interview:

When someone outside of theater asks you about being a dramaturg, how do you describe what you do?

I speak about the nature of dramaturgy as attention to the script, to the deep structure and meaning of the script and to the world of the play. I also talk about facilitating bridges between directors and playwrights in the rehearsal process. Ultimately, the dramaturg is a guardian of the deeper structure of the script from an objective point of view, and of the ongoing collaboration and creative process between many people and many visions as a script is realized. If the artists in the rehearsal room are both creative and true to the script, the dramaturg is a second eye to everyone; an advanced and informed audience member. If the artists are clashing and the creative process is thwarted, the dramaturg can be a bridge and sounding board to help keep rehearsals productive. A dramaturg is best when she is behind the scenes and supporting the artists, and when she is a step ahead of a script as it’s being written or as it’s being produced. Basically as a second eye, the dramaturg is engaging early on with the plays reception by an audience and giving attention to the structure of the storytelling during the creative process of creating a show.

By Ilana Brownstein | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Laura Linney & Cate Blanchett

June 1, 2011 at 1:22 pm

These are two of my favorite actresses.  I first saw them in film: Linney in You Can Count on Me and Blanchett in Elizabeth.  But I didn't really understand the enormity of their talent until I saw them onstage.  I saw Linney in The Crucible, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sight Unseen and Time Stands Still.  I saw Blanchett only once in a Brooklyn Academy of Music performance of Hedda Gabler.  There are a number obvious reasons why a stage performance is simply more electric than a cinematic one: there's the thrill of sharing the same physical space with the performer as well as the risk of live theater.  There's another, more nuanced thrill, though, that speaks to theater more generally: the feeling that this performance, this moment, this particular iteration of this character in this play exists only here and now.  It will come and it will go and it can never be repeated exactly, can never be edited or refined.  And it's mine to share with the others in that particular audience on that particular day for that particular showing only.  Everyone I know saw and loved Elizabeth and You Can Count on Me.  But that particular Elizabeth Proctor, that particular Hedda Gabler: they're mine and mine alone.  

By aelefano | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Introduction to Creative Writing

June 1, 2011 at 1:18 pm

This spring I taught an Intro to Creative Writing course.  In the beginning, I asked my students how many had seen a play in the last three years.  An alarming number kept their hands down.  By the end of the course, however, I was surprised when three of my very best writers told me how much they preferred playwriting to fiction writing.  (One had even signed up for Advanced Playwriting next semester.)  I wondered how this happened, and this is what I came up with.  Students writing fiction for the first time invariably have a problem with overwriting.  They try to sound literary instead of just telling the story, and in so doing, doom themselves with stuffy, nonsensical sentences that result in stuffy, nonsensical narratives.  Playwriting gave them the freedom to use their own voice and the voices of people they knew.  The shift in the quality of work was rather astounding.  I'm teaching another Intro course in the fall and I'm considering switching the order of my assignments and beginning with plays, then shifting to fiction.  I want my students to realize sooner rather than later how much value there is in their own natural mode of expression.  

By aelefano | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

What if…

May 31, 2011 at 9:19 pm

Here are two what if scenarios about theater today.

The first one is about the notion that theaters and playwrights take "deep-dives" together...that the theater commit to producing a number of the PW's plays over a season or more. The second one is a broader treatise on theater, the kind of thing that points to directions for the production of new works, as well as the business model for the venues. It's all good reading.

By philschroeder | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Kushner on Theater

May 31, 2011 at 8:50 pm

This is a really good and fairly short interview with Tony Kushner from Time Out Online. He discusses his new work, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (or iHo), being performed at the Public/NY. Be sure to read it to the question, "How do you divide your time between Theater and..." You may be surprised (and saddened) by the answer.

By philschroeder | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

on marnie weber

May 31, 2011 at 7:57 pm

marnie weber is an artist i encountered a few months ago, roving the internet late one night... the gifts were immense and immediate. weber is an artist in the broadest of senses: she is a singer, a performance artist, a video-gal, a photographer... she uses multiple media to address the singular concern -- principally, how females navigate the dark waters of adolescence. she takes her subject -- the female body -- and then explodes it in multiple forms.

one of the elements of great art, for me, is the distillation of contradiction and weber so precisely marries desire & shame, beauty & repulsion, childhood & horror. weber enters the home and then haunts it, or maybe the american home has always been haunted and it is only weber who illuminates the ghosts...

philip roth said, "the serious, merciless invasion of privacy is at the heart of the fiction we most highly value." i think this is also part of weber's project: yes, she invades but she also seduces, draws you near, if only to smack you down.

check her work out for yourself in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC6H7-u00pM

or scroll through her website: http://www.marnieweber.com

By erh20 | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

1Book140, And What It Has To Do With Drama

May 31, 2011 at 7:42 pm

A few days before our first class I started a Twitter-based book club called 1book140. The name is a play off the popular city-wide reading programs like One Book, One Cambridge; One Book, One Chicago, etc. I've partnered with The Atlantic as host, and as of this moment the 1book140 Twitter feed has 5,439 followers from all over the world. That's a pretty big book club, and after June it will become a monthly feature on the Atlantic site. Ideally, we'll pick up readers every month until we become—note my tone of humility here—the largest collective reading experience in human history.

The 1book140 project is the descendent of a similar effort I conducted last summer for Wired Magazine called One Book, One Twitter. Over the course of eight weeks last summer some 12,000 people read Neil Gaiman's American Gods. That book was chosen by the participants using an overly complex three-part voting system (Don't ask.) This time around we simplified the process. People nominated some 300 titles; we winnowed these down to a five-book shortlist, then put that up to a vote. Readers chose Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin by a decisive margin.

And what the hell, to got to the title of the post, does that have to do with drama? This: As a Wired writer I've spent the last ten years documenting how digital technologies affect the culture industry. Now I've begun to focus my research on how those same technologies are affecting storytelling—in whatever medium, book,  stage, or film—itself. For the next 30 days Margaret Atwood will take part in a sort of social experiment. By reading her own book along with thousands of people, does it change the nature of interpretation? Of authorship? How will her Twitter "performance" change the experience of people reading the book for the first (or second or third) time? When an author has the opportunity to interact so spontaneously with so many readers at once, do we need to question what constitutes a "book?" Could we consider her tweets part of an extended text, and the hard copy work itself merely a temporary physical manifestation of her ideas?

Heady stuff, I know. Ultimately, I'd like to use the space in this blog over the next several weeks to look even more specifically at the sort of storytelling—much of it being conducted by theater professionals—that purposefully employs technologies like Twitter and Facebook, exploiting their structural characteristics to advance a new form of narrative.

To be continued ...

By jeffhowe | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

“sometimes a writer’s failures are the most distinct part of them.”

May 31, 2011 at 7:18 pm

i read interviews obsessively, with the gusto of a hungry child. the latest & greatest is zadie smith in harper's from way back in february of 2011 -- that blustery month i would have loved to pass over...

what strikes me most about smith's approach to criticism is how she is at once generous and sharp, well-read and open-minded. she knows the canon but she sees beyond it; more than anything, she reflects and ruminates on her own process as a critic and as a writer: it is her ability to reflect and revise -- that is to say, the ability to grow and transform -- which i most deeply value.

why is it that most writers & critics fail to aggressively investigate their own canons and their own book shelves? what is it that is missing from yours? what's missing from mine? it seems that we become better writers when we are exposed to as wide a range of material as possible -- when we are as deeply influenced by shakespeare as we are by mos def... i could rail **for-ever** about the ways in which the american education system priveleges a certain male eurocentric curriculum at the expense of the truly dynamic world of arts & letters that exists out there: and a whole generation of children (and adults) suffers!

... alas.

and some dope quotes, for the black-white-and-green among you:

Yeah, I have a kind of—I just feel suspicious of the idea of pure writing, of something that never embarrasses you, which is completely clean. It’s just, in my experience, writing which is completely clean is writing that has had shorn from it almost everything that’s of interest.

And that another thing I suppose I’m looking for in the books that are sent to Harper’s: people who are able to write genuinely out of their own sensibility, not out of nostalgia, not trying to sound like somebody else, not fearful—people who write frankly, and Geoff’s certainly one of those.
But then again, my instinct is to defend the novels that I love, and to try to see the—sometimes, I said in Changing My Mind, sometimes a writer’s failures are the most distinct part of them, and not just to be thrown away or discarded. It’s kind of what interests me. That might be a vocational defense, because I need to be interested in my own failures. But that engages me, I think.

By erh20 | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)