Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

I took a foray into screenwriting that lasted about three years. Not unusual for playwrights to undertake film writing. A lot of us seem to be writing for television, too.

I didn’t plan it. It just came over me one evening. A story announced itself in the way that stories do. A story that clearly wanted to be a movie and not a play. And so I wrote it. It’s a strange story, and trust me, no one even wanted to talk to me about it. If I could figure out how to pick up a camera, making it myself is the only way it will get done. As my first film script, it’s highly flawed by the laws of filmmakers. And very ‘talkie’ of course. I wish I knew how to either adapt this to the stage, or how to re-write it as a film. There’s this cat that plays far too an important role in the story. I love the story as it is too much to change it. That is problematic in and of itself.

To someone accustomed to writing plays, screenwriting is something like a foreign language. After much study and humiliation, I’ve gotten I’m better at being more visual on the page. I still miss visual opportunities and talk, talk, talk. While I believe myself to be a highly visual theatre artist, that doesn’t translate into a screen experience. My stage visuals are stark, sparing, and fluid. Sometimes somewhat surreal.

My second film script felt, to me, more salable. Still very much not a story for stage. The story was dark and morose and ultimately an independent film in tone. I realized after some experiences with this script, I was not a writer looking for a job in screenwriting. I don’t want someone else telling me what to write. I mean, I can do that, sure. I like telling my own stories. I want to tell my own stories. To do that….well…I’m not sure I have it, yet, in me to pick up a camera myself. That’s what it will take, I know now.

After my third film script, I realized I had written something that ultimately would make a great play, and returned to my senses and put my energies back into playwriting. The Safe Group was happy to see me leave filmwriting behind, having tolerated this long extended vacation away from playwriting longer than they cared to.

Somehow learning a bit of screenwriting opened up my playwriting. It’s allowed me to be bigger in my stage choices, more complex in my theatrical visuals. And while I’m not exploring filmmaking at this juncture, MBH and I are working on an experiment for the smaller screen. Its slow going, in between all our other individual projects, and lots of fun. I’m not supposed to talk about it. We agreed. Hopefully he won’t kick me for saying even that much.

Act two of the play is not yet done. Almost, almost, almost, almost there.

Act one resculpted. Now, to see how it all tranforms Act two.

There is a complex conversation, or rather, argument, that takes place in my head, filled with a multitude of opposing voices. One voice freaks, “Oh no, you did WHAT? You cut that whole subplot? I’ll never be able to recover from that.” Another one, says, “Don’t worry. Don’t pay attention. Just keep moving.” Others leap up for attention, “Over here, over here! This way!” The first voice is me. The second voice is the story. The rest of the voices are all the characters living in the play.

Thank God I’m a writer and there’s some place for all those voices to go.

All of us, at one point or another, has met The Writer’s Editor. This is the ‘me’ voice, I’m sure. It’s the part of the Writer that tries to retain control over the material. The Writer’s Editor never finishes a play, a novel, a poem, a story. The Writer’s Editor is death to creativity.

In reality, The Writer’s Editor is good for tweaking dialogue, correcting spelling, following format. Remember that.

Tossing ‘me’ arguments aside, and diving back in. Today we finish the re-write of Act two.

Edith Wharton said writing a novel was like:

The beginning: a ride through a spring wood. The middle: the Gobi Desert. The end: going down the Cresta Run.

Something terrifying and exhilerating is going on in the re-write of the most recent play. Something in my process, in how I perceive the writing, has changed. Is changing. Not finished changing. As I’m writing, I often feel the story is outside myself. That is, not of myself. I know many writers have talked about this. You feel as though you’re channelling the words. That is not a new feeling. It’s the crafting of it all that feels different.

Recently, I got pushed out of my safety net into the hands of people who didn’t know my work. A development workshop. They challenged me in ways I haven’t been challenged in a while. I resisted momentarily, and then gave myself over to the challenge. I didn’t do what they wanted me to do. I did what I wanted to do. Made myself dig deeper and reach higher, unsure I could do so. By the end of it, I felt great at what I had accomplished.

During the workshop, I had a moment when I felt very afraid, and felt unfocused, unsure, uncertain of the task before me. I drew myself back in and told myself I had to put all that fear aside. Too many people were counting on me, and they needed me to pay attention and be a part of what we were trying to do together. And so I moved forward, fear in its ‘proper’ place, and glad of the result.

The experience has made me want to step even more beyond my current circle. The light over my delightful playwrights group feels dim. I do not know if it’s complacency or familiarity. I do know they will not challenge me in the way I would like. Even when I ask them to do so. I know I still have The Safe Friend, MBH, who is outside this circle. He still tells me when my writing is not up to par.

I don’t know what all my pondering will be conjuring up as we move into the Fall. More always to be revealed. Still, here I am riding down The Cresta, head first, screaming with joy at the prospect of more change, coming to the end of the Re-Write of the re-write of the whatever.

The reading of the play was a very gratifying experience.

It was clear to me in rehearsals what was not working. I fixed little items, but left as it was the larger issue. It would wait to the re-write. I received some insightful, thoughtful notes which sparked new ideas on how to handle things in the re-write. Everyone was moved by the play, despite its problems of, well, being over-plotted. This may be the first time I’ve had Act 1 problems with a solid Act 2.

After blessing the actors, as I wrote earlier, I am grateful for those who are willing to sit through readings, be part of an audience for us all, taking notes or not. Some of these folks have sat through this play innumerable times. My Beloved, who says she hates the development process and fears it may ruin the theatre experience for her, kept the actors supplied with water, and sat through the reading dutifully. Much gratitude from me for everyone. Especially her.

I plan on keeping one thread as a kind of frame for the play. And re-writing everything as much as possible. I’m discovering lately, that when I hold on to certain scenes, pages, lines of dialogue, the re-write is less inspired. Those pages I particularly love must be disgarded. I find holding on to them may stifle something greater which may come forward. Being willing to re-write, not just tweak lines, means trusting the creative process within myself.

In preparation for the reading, the director kept talking to me about loving “the process.” It’s a common theme among us all. A sentiment I understand, yet do not wish to remain “in process” for a particular work. The process (rehearsal, discovery) is illuminating to me as the writer. Ultimately, I love more the play finally coming to life on stage. And writiing a new one.

The preparation for the reading took a lot of time, and so I set aside the new play I have hopes of finishing by the Fall. I’ve also spent a lot of time on a short play, getting ready for it to be ‘showcased’ very soon. Both of these events, I know, will somehow better inform the new play when I pick it back up next week.

While I can write anywhere, on a plane, at my Beloved’s parents home, in the doctor’s office, on a bus, I love to write in a place that makes me feel good.

Sometimes I write sitting on the living room couch. Sometimes at the public library; a favorite place of mine. Often, I write at a coffee house. I’m fortunate to live in a town that loves coffee houses. A few years ago, a brother writer and I would meet once a week at a different coffee house. The goal was twofold, to write, and to see if we could hit a different coffee house each week. We lasted six months before conflicting commitments kept us from meeting. (Maybe I should pick this up by myself sometime.) As it is, I have a handful of neighborhood coffee houses I regularly rotate writing in. I tend to love routine, which I feel can be stifling to my creativity. What’s that saying, “Put me in a rut and I’ll decorate it.”…? Something to that effect. Nowadays, I love to disrupt that part of myself; to shake myself out of routines, mix things up and find new environments. These environmental changes grease the creative wheel. So I think.

Ultimately, I come back to my writing desk. It’s in the basement of our house. Over the years, I’ve gone from elaborate, heavy desks with lots of drawers and hiding places to a simple, open desk, with only one small drawer, and no place to hide. I love my desk.

Cheers.

The “everyone loved it” concept is not a sound method of playwriting. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard this from writers. It’s a mark of amatuer writing. A kind of writing by emotional validation. I have found, for instance, actors are often not a good barameter of what is great writing. I’ve seen in my own workshop, how attached actors can get to characters they are playing, and they will make allowances for the writer instead of pushing the writer to do better. Not all actors. I love actors. Absolutely love ‘em. I just don’t write by how much an actor may love what I have written.

Lately I’ve been delightfully struck how members of my playwrights group have become invested in certain aspects of my current play. And they want a very desolote ending to my tale. Their ideas of where the play should end up, does not reflect what I believe I am writing. Nor would it reflect who I am as a writer. They are expressing how they would write it, reflecting their political, emotional, spiritual bents. In a low moment, I fretted over feeling I was out of sync with my beloved writers. Then I remember I am often out of sync with them. (I am the one, after all, who shamlessly proclaimed Wicked had the best musical book since Gypsy.)

This is the fine, crucial, line. Listening to what works, what doesn’t, and staying true to your own vision.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote,

Hope is the melody of the future. Faith is to dance it.

More me than you, I’m sure. IMHO

Yeah.

Just when I thought I’d completed the re-write, new moments revealed themselves. I realized I had let the play get away from Itself. There was a scene I wrote, early on, which changed an important underlying element of the play.” Everyone loved” this scene. And so it stayed. I tried to trust it. Yet a voice inside tugged at me: “It’s too on the nose. It’s over the top. It’s cheap. It’s too easy. It changes everything.” On and on. I ignored it, temporarily taken with the wisdom of the group over the voice that’s beyond the ego and from someplace else.

Finally hearing something, as the actors read it, knowing that scene had to go. And so it goes. Ripping out that scene and everything related to it. Bringing this particular element back to where it began. Grateful.

So, thanks for asking. The re-write is still in joyfully in progress. For the moment.

There was once a time in between my first discovery of theatre, that moment when I fell in love with it, and the period when I committed myself to my writing. There was once a time when I hated or resented every play I saw, good or bad. This was a kind of limbo time, gestation as a person time, when I did not allow myself to express my art, or when I did, still didn’t believe in myself as an artist. The time before I dared to “own” myself as a writer. That was a painful rite of passage for me, as it is for many of us. These days, I learn more, appreciate more, love more, am interested more, in what I see.

This month’s issue of The Dramatist finds Theresa Rebeck proclaiming, in a sea of mainstream playwrights’ articles, “My interest in storytelling has been, at times, sadly controversial.” I am not in any particular playwright camp about what kinds of play, what kinds of theatre are better than others. The divison among playwrights, or theatre folk, was neatly laid out in the NY Times article, You Must Go On After Beckett. I Can’t Go On After Beckett. Go On. I’m not vested in debating forms, although I also believe it is helpful to “Theatre” when those who desire to enter the fray, to do so. Myself, I believe the proper style, form, length, language for a play is the one the play dictates. Whether we like it or not, the play and its form dictates the audience it receives, as well, for good or bad.

I love a broad range of theatre. I love musicals. I am a Sondheim freak. I broke my teeth on Beckett. I will see anything written by Albee. Or Caryl Churchill. Caridad Svich makes me sit up and take notice. I believe August Wilson is our generation’s Eugene O’Neill. And as much as I love O’Neill, it would take a lot, today, for me to sit through a production of one of his plays.

And why do I insist on writing “theatre” when that’s the anglophile version of “theater?

There’s one thing I find unforgiveable. Okay, two things. What I find unforgivable in a play is a playwright’s reckless disregard for its audience, whether that be, simply enough, poor writing (did he or she not listen to anyone?!), or worse, a belief the audience is too stupid to “get it” and not worthy of the writer’s attention. Again, the play and its form dictates the audience it receives, welcome or not.

I love new work, and I sit down in a theatre believing no ill will is intended by the playwright. It is always my desire to be taken in by the play, and to suspend my “self” and writer’s brain. Often I am pleased. Often I am forgiving, especially if I feel the writer is still finding his or her way through the process. When I cannot suspend myself, it is usually (though not always) the fault of the writer. We are not always a good match for each other. And, I feel, that’s how it should be.

My current play is in re-write mode. Sometimes, for me–as I am always talking only about me-me-me and my process, the re-write is feeling painfully slow at the moment. Painful for me, the writer, who wants to be done with the play, so that it can be seen on its feet again in its new shoes. My characters feel differently, hanging on too tightly, refusing to let (me) go and be set free.

And so tomorrow I begin the week with a self-imposed deadline for these guys to pack their bags and move out. I love them, and it’s hard to say good-bye. And I know its time because there are new characters knocking at the door waiting to be let in…or out, depending on your perspective.

Okay, I’m going to quote Albee again. Well, paraphrase, anyway.

He has said playwrights must be very careful who we show our work to when we are developing it. First drafts are so easily crushed by the well-intentioned critic.

Many years ago, I found my first ‘master’ teacher. He was the first person I found, who would tell me clearly, unsentimentally, and directly what worked and what did not work in the plays I was writing. He was an aloof, almost cold guy. He was a brilliant teacher. If I’d met him ten years earlier, I would have been crushed by his clarity. Perhaps would not have written another word. Ever. As it was, I met him at the right time in my life, where I was open and ready and craving his kind of truth telling. He taught me everything he knew about playwriting. I found out, later, it was as much as anyone really knows, and those teachings, sometimes disgarded, sometimes employed, have served me well.

In my adventures in theatre, the people I found I could trust to tell me the truth have been few. Mind you, there are always people available who will step up to tell you what’s wrong with your work, and what they would have done instead. Or people who will complain about you. People who will rip you apart behind your back. People who say things to you and now matter how many words they use, or how many questions you ask, you stand there wondering, “What the fuck was that?” because they’ve said nothing in their attempt to be unoffensive.

Cheerleeders, too, are nice. Cheerleaders make you feel good about yourself. They lift your spirits. They get you over a slump. Cheerleaders do not help you write great plays.

It’s the true friends who will tell you, without relish, what works and what doesn’t who are to be cherished. One in particular, MBH, I met through the first master teacher. MBH has read every first draft of mine, stage or film script, for several years now. He is the one who will tell me that a line, an exchange, a scene, an act, a script, “is not up to your usual.” Of course, too, MBH cheers me when he thinks I’ve been particularly brilliant. We have watched each other grow as playwrights. We’ve read each other through our attempts at (oh how my Group, which MBH does not belong to, shudders at this) screenwriting. He will be a great screenwriter. On his way, I’ve no doubt. He is a beautiful playwright. A masterful re-writer. Totally different from me in style and focus. We have pledged to always challenge each other to be better than we are. So far we have kept that pledge.

There is an art to feedback. Real, constructive feedback. And it’s not me telling you how I would write your play.

Once MBH and I were part of a theatre group, founded by a handful of playwrights. I will never forget the day, we all answered the question, “What happens when you don’t write?” MBH said something like, “If I don’t write, I’m not happy. I become impossible to live with.” Writing akin to breathing. A brother afflicted, just like me. The other writers could write or not; no skin off their noses, as the saying goes. Writers who don’t care if they write? Are they aliens? There was at least one or two certainly with more innate talent than we; just without apparent ambition.

MBH and I are the only ones from that group still writing.

Just interesting to note. I try to note without judgment. Still it seeps through.

I’m appreciating MBH tonight. Every writer should have an MBH in her life.

It’s the third anniversary of another friend’s death. Another artist, a songwriter, performer, and eyeglass collector. One of those “Connectors” Malcom Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point. He was the only person I knew who understood what I meant, when I said, “Sometimes I’m afraid of my own power as an artist.”
Kevin McQuarrie,
Love you, guy.
Miss you.

P.S. Not afraid anymore.

Last night an actor in my playwrights’ group, exclaimed a familiar refrain: “I love the process.” Something so many of us have said, writers, actors, directors, whatever our theatrical role may be. We love the creation and the discovery of what we all bring to the play and beyond.

I am blessed to be in a regular workshop. The workshop meets weekly, with time off in the summer and for the year-end holidays. The originating idea of the workshop was for each playwright to bring in a maximum of ten pages a week of whatever project the writer was, uh, well, writing. Actors read the pages cold, so that we can hear if the dialogue, narrative, or lack thereof, are generally working. The workshop has been going on for around twenty years, with some of the originating members still participating.

Feedback by writers and actors alike ensues in between readings of a playwright’s pages. When a playwright has a complete draft, an evening is set aside for that play only. Again, there is little, if any, rehearsal. These evenings are for development, and while they are not “public” these evenings are not necessarily completely private. Actors, after all, love an audience. (Okay, we do too.) The point is, there is no pressure for the writer to perform for outsiders, per se. It’s our place to stumble, fall, create, revise, and ponder. There are other avenues for staged, AKA rehearsed, AKA public, readings. Our workshop is truly a home wherein we discover our plays.

The writers pay the rent for our meeting room, and we bring food for the actors. A writer’s membership is gained by some basic criteria: (1) You must have been produced. (2) You must attend a couple of meetings and ‘audition’ your pages. (3) The mystery of chemistry with the other playwrights. I have been a member of this workshop for a mere three years and counting. I was invited by a long standing member to attend with my ten pages of current material. “Hmmm…” they said, “why don’t you come again next week?” And so it went. And so it goes. Week after week, we all show up, writers and actors alike.

The group contains less than ten playwrights, and more than a dozen actors. I am the youngest playwright, and I do not mean young by age. I mean young in experience. My fellow writers have been at this process for a lot longer than I, and I have been writing plays for over ten years. Some of them with Off-Broadway credits; all of them with a preponderance of Regional credits. The group, for me, has been like playing tennis with great players. There is a quiet confidence these playwrights exude about their work. Within the workhshop, they are not competitive, vying for time and attention. Everyone gets their say; all pages are read. Feedback is to the point, truthful and uncallous. Playing with them week after week has made me a much better, and, yes, even confident playwright. The workshop is a great gift.

While the playwright sits alone to craft out the pages, plays are, ultimately, works which are brought to life by a collective of people. We have to hear our pages to know if the play is working. I have come to call our cold readings of entire plays a kind of “proof of concept” reading. It’s when I learn if what I have laid out works dramatically or not, in the plays entirety. Even in cold readings, the actors worry over their performances. They do not understand the ears we have developed for hearing if the play is working, regardless of the performance. We can afford, because of the private nature of the workshop, to suffer an “off” reading. We can hear when an actor elevates the material, and know the dialogue is not up to par. I cannot explain how this has happened to the playwrights in my group, or if it happens to all playwrights. I only know we have sat through hundreds and hundreds of cold readings, staged readings, rehearsals, good plays and bad, and somehow the ears are honed to hear the writing and not the trappings.

The trappings are great, mind you, and I do not mean to diminish them by even any means. For this moment, I am focused on the initial birthing of our plays into something whole. The trappings, the actors, directors, staging, the physical theatre, on and on, are the point, after all, down the line, and it’s the getting there that contains so much fun, joy and trepidation.

August Wilson said,

If you want to be a writer, you must own it.

For many of us, the process of writing is omnipresent. We are either writing, or thinking about what we’re writing about. (That’s why so many of us are, well, boring to the outside world, eh?) I have learned not to compare myself to other writers, anymore. We all do it slightly differently. How I write is only that; how I write. It may not work for you. Just as, how you write may not work for me. There have been only two writers’ processes I have identified with–Tony Hillerman (a mystery writer) and Edward Albee (if you’re reading this, do I have to note he is a playwright?). As different as two writers can be, aren’t they?

A friend gave me the book, Talking Mysteries: A Conversation with Tony Hillerman. Back in the days I read a lot of mysteries, I loved Hillerman’s. In answering the question of “when” do you write, Hillerman said the question is difficult to answer.

The way I put a book together, as a matter of fact, sounds on the surface like an argument for writing as a way of life….I write..while driving…during those endless committee meetings…at cocktail parties, at the cost of sometimes nodding at the wrong time…I write in bed…on an old sofa playing a solitaire game…Thus is absoutely impossible to tell whether I am writing or loafing.

Yes, indeed. Recently, as I sat in my neighborhood coffee house, my favorite Barista came up to me, as I stared out the window, and said, “You look bored out of your mind.” “Me? Oh no, I’m just working.” In fact, I was working quite intensely, while I sat there, to all appearances doing nothing.

Edward Albee has described his process of writing a play, as one which gestates for a very long time, sometimes years, in his mind before he ever puts a word on paper. By the time he begins to put his words down, the characters are alive in his mind; formed into people he can place in any situation. He does not feel he needs to rewrite, as he writes what he means to write.

My variation from Albee is that I feel re-writing is a fun part of the process. The first draft finds its way to a conclusion, and the foundation of my play has been built. The play is then resculpted, tweaked, stroked until I feel I can take no farther.

A play is never finished. It is only abandoned.

A key element for me, when a new play is forming, is I have an image or a feeling that becomes a strong focal point. Actually, it is often the end point; the last moment of the play. When I have a basic idea of how to get to that end point, that’s when I begin writing the play.

From that moment, when I begin putting the words down, I write every day. Weekends are optional, unless I’m on a deadline of some kind. My goal is five pages of dialogue. If I churn out more, ten or twenty, I certainly don’t stop myself. I know myself well enough to know I can always churn out five pages. They may not all make it into the play. Even so, no pages are ever wasted pages. I do not censor or edit during this period. Long gone are the days when I agonized over a single word, which could take all day, or weeks, to discover, and keep a draft from seeing completion.

Lately, I have taken to writing in long hand. Usually in the morning. Long hand feels more natural, and there is less staring out the window during a writing session. The PB is engaged when the story is coming too fast to maintain by long hand. And I will go back and forth between long hand and typing. In the afternoon, I do chores, errands, or type the long hand pages up in The PB. Some editing occurs as I type the into The PB. The heavy editing comes after the draft is completed.

I read a lot of plays, and see as much theatre as I can. I know there are writers who do not engage in the medium they write in. They don’t see plays, see films, read novels, whatevah. I don’t understand these kinds of writers. I learn as much from a bad play, as a good one. Remember, I said somewhere on this blog, I’m easily entertained. My mother used to call me a sponge. This is how it works for me. Period. Enough said. Feel free to expound on how it works for you, okay?