EXTRA CRITICUM

A funny thing happened on the way to the Bodega.

I'd run in to grab some peanut butter (confessed addict. I know, I know...) and there was a woman on a cell phone having a conversation.

In 2021, no less!

And she was not happy. But she was taking great pains to appear calm while her thumb and forefinger did a little dance which seemed to be more about chipping the nail polish off of her thumb than anything else.

It was clear she was talking to a man. One she'd slept with. A lot. And also one that she clearly regarded more as a boy than a man. 

And he was really asking a lot of stupid questions.

Dear Radio, Television & Podcast Producers: Please take your jobs more seriously. Do the work.

It has become routine to see/hear/read an interview with the same book author/film director/songwriter etc. etc. on not one, not two, but 5-7 supposedly independent unique shows or columns. 

You know what I'm talking about.

Terry Gross will interview the author of X book.

Two days later I'm hearing Allison Stewart interview the same person.

Another day or two go by and--oh, look who's being interviewed again! (Will I learn something new this time?)

What does this tell us?

Producers of these shows are either lazy or underpaid/over-extended or both. 

The programming producers of radio, television and podcasts need to step it up a notch.

This is ridiculous. We live in a country with thousands and thousands of artists and projects and there is no reason (other than casual semi-conscious sleepwalking through your job descriptions) for us to be learning of 3 or 4 new projects when we could be discovering 40 or 50.

And while we're on the subject I would like to report that having just promoted a production of my own, I was repeatedly amazed at the degree to which coverage I read in newspapers or online sites simply repurposed entire paragraphs from our press releases with zero editorial input.

This is all yet more evidence of the fact that we have allowed our media outlets to be starved to near extinction.

What the hell are we prepared to do to save them?

At the Core of Every Workshop I Teach is a Choice

One of the many workshops I've offered over the years to playwrights and screenwriters is a weekend intensive called Cracking the Producers Code. The goal of the 11-hr crash course is to arm script writers with some of the most important questions a producer will ask as she gets acquainted with your script and thereby comes to see it as more than a script but actually a property.

What do we mean by "property" in this context?

Something that can inspire the public to purchase tickets and thereby form an audience for the work. When talking to distributors or foreign sales agents regarding a small indie film, the most common question any writer/director will have to contend with is: Who is the intended audience for this film?

Most people who read between the lines of any one of my course descriptions understand a fundamental core of my approach to empowering writers.

I believe that writers are some of the most mistreated taken-for-granted unappreciated artists on the planet.

And because of this fact (and it is a fact) most of the structures that hold our theatrical ecosystems together are built on the assumption that writers are a dime a dozen and anyone who produces your work is doing you a huge favor.

Of course the opposite is true; writers do the world a huge favor every time we put pen to paper. Sadly, most writers (myself included) who are fortunate enough to ever write something remotely commercially successful generally don't recognize this fact until it's way too late for them to make requests or demands remotely in line with that value. This pattern continues from generation to generation for reasons which are deeply important and alarming and beyond the scope of this post.

Suffice it to say, the world is built with countless hidden (and not so hidden) signs which say to writers:

Edward Albee wrote Zoo Story as a 30th birthday present to himself.

A couple months before Edward Albee turned thirty, he decided to write himself a birthday present. He sat down at his kitchen table and typed the first lines of dialogue of the play that would become ZOO STORY.

I've been to the Zoo. I said, I've been to the Zoo. MISTER, I'VE BEEN TO THE ZOO

I take a few lessons from this turning point in this man's life.

1) If there was a shift, it was a shift in his approach to writing plays and a shift in his thinking about himself, not a shift in his relationship with the world. The world didn't change overnight. He did. He took himself seriously. Seriously enough to get out of the way of his characters and let them speak and also seriously enough to doggedly pursue getting the attention of people who might be able to help him get this play up on its feet.

2) One of the first VIPs he sent the play to was Thornton Wilder who, I think, later admitted to being ashamed of his utter inability to see the importance and mastery of the play he'd been sent. His letter to Albee in response serves as a useful reminder that not everyone will understand what it is we're attempting and if we take one person's "meh" for an answer, we may be making a terrible mistake. 

3) Edward Albee did not stop sending his play to VIPs for comment in the wake of Wilder's disappointing lack of enthusiasm.

4) Edward Albee did not stop sending his play to VIPs for comment in the wake of even less enthusiasm from William Inge.

5) Edward Albee took a risk and sent the play to a David Diamond, a composer with whom he'd had a rocky and bitter history, someone who would have had every reason (given their history) to have tossed the package into the trash. And Diamond surprised Albee with what anyone who's a true artist hopes will greet their next work: generosity and urgent action. 

6) Community was responsible for getting Zoo Story up on its feet (first in German translation, by the way!) as was Edward's dogged pursuit of every potential avenue for the work. 

Don't give up on yourself. Take bold risks. Know the value of your work and honor that value with action. 

Inaction is an insult to the characters you've birthed on the page. If they're going to breathe air in the world, you're going to have to be there to smack their behinds to set them on their way.

How do you do this? Start by picking up the goddamned phone.

 

Roland Tec and Tammy Ryan are accepting work sample submissions for the Roland Tec Online Writers Workshop until Saturday October 23. https://www.rolandtec.com/rtoww-22

My RT Inner Circle Emails are way too long. What should I do?

It's a problem.

I know it.

I don't deny it.

Yet month after month I find myself starting out to compose the RT Inner Circle E-Notes with the clear intention of sending out something light and breezy and easy on the eyes.

And month after month I fail.

Why might that be?

I have some theories.

Because I'm weaning myself from all social media (I decoupled from Facebook after the 2016 election and have occasionally wondered whether I'd made a marketing mistake and so have allowed people to promote my workshops on the platform with serious reservations and angst). Twitter remains a mystery to me. LinkedIn, as I've said before, feels like the Cinderella to the wicked step sisters of social media (FB & Twitter) in that it's more transparent, less sexy and therefore gets most of my attention. Despite the fact that I don't know how many of you actually go there.

So every time I set out to send information about things I think are important in the world of theatre and filmmakers (including but not exclusively limited to workshops of my own) I feel a kind of burden cause I doubt folks are stumbling upon posts of mine on social media.

So that I think contributes to my unconscious need to put every possible dish on the menu on the table. Just in case. God forbid the one person who doesn't eat meat or gluten forgets that I always prepare a rice veggie medley no matter what.

Possibly the most overlooked and essential step in creating each new work. (or: What's my play about?)

Anyone who knows me well, anyone who's been in workshop with me has heard me say that I firmly believe that:

Writing is intuitive.

Rewriting is analytical.

What does this mean? Well, I can say that when I start writing a new play or screenplay, I may have a kernel of an idea but I don't yet really know entirely where I want to go with it. 

I'll give you an example by way of the origin story for my play, Bodily Function.

The idea began stirring within me during a brunch with my dear friend Jerry and some friends of his I didn't know too well. One of them was working for a multi-national corporation headquartered in Boston. During the brunch this person casually described one of his middle level  managers who was visiting the restroom so often that it had started to raise eyebrows among other members of his team. And he was in the process of strategizing for ways to limit this employee's time spent in the john.

For whatever reason I was just bit by this offhand remark, for it really barely took up more than 2 minutes of our brunch conversation. And I found I could not shake the idea of a corporation monitoring the bathroom schedule of its employees.

For weeks this idea haunted me until one day I sat down to write what would become the backbone scene of the play, a one year review of a midlevel employee, a scene in which Suzanne Goodman, V.P. of Human Resources sits down with Donald Trieblasser to deliver the delicate news that some of his colleagues have noted his frequent bathroom breaks and the threat they presented to overall workplace morale.

Now that was all I had at the time and as I wrote I had no idea who the protagonist of the play would be.

As it turned out it grew to be clearer and clearer to me (only through writing the first draft of the play) that it had to be Suzanne. She became my obsession and the focus of the play. But when I began I may have mistakenly assumed it was Donald.

My friend Molly is giving up playwriting. After three decades. And I'd like to understand why.

First of all I should probably mention that Molly's a pseudonym. And she gave me permission to blog about her situation on the condition that I not reveal her identity. And so I've changed her name.  But the facts of the case I present as they came to me.

So a few weeks ago my friend told me she'd decided after much soul-searching that after nearly thirty years writing plays she was going to quit. 

Naturally, because I love my friend and also happen to have loved  a lot (not all but a good portion) of her work over the years, I took the news hard. Why? Why would you feel you need to make such a drastic change?

She said it was a lot of things.

I asked her to be specific.

She rolled her eyes at me.

I asked her for a list.

She balked. A list? For what?

I told her I would only let the subject go if she could provide me a list of four reasons she was giving up writing for the theatre.

In about seven minutes an email flew in with her list. Here's her list, exactly as it came into my InBox.