EXTRA CRITICUM

Recently Asked Questions re: RT Advanced Monologue (Dec. 26-28)

Registration is open for the upcoming installment of my popular workshop, ADVANCED MONOLOGUE.  And over the past week or so several questions have made their way into my InBox that have the potential to become Frequently Asked Questions so without further ado, here are a few Recently Asked Questions about the workshop and my answers.

Q: I noticed that on December 26th, the workshop begins at 4PM and runs for 2 hrs. If there's a chance I may have to miss all or part of this first 2 hour session would I still be able to participate fully?

A: The Advanced Monologue Workshop always begins with a 2-hour session followed by two 3-hour sessions on the following days. Day One is devoted primarily to an introduction to Roland Tec's theory of the case, sharing the 5 Essential Ingredients which I've always found to be present in the strongest most enduring examples of monologue. Days Two and Three then get down to the fun and excitement of you putting these principles to the test through targeted in-class writing prompts. Because all three sessions are recorded in Zoom and made available to you as a participant, you could easily miss the first 2 hours, watch the video before Day Two's session begins and not be at any great disadvantage in terms of your ability to understand and implement the approach.

Q: It says on your website that the last six hours of workshop are devoted almost entirely to participants' writing. How much of our writing will be done in class vs. at home as homework between sessions?

A: Most of the writing you'll be doing will be fast and dirty in response to targeted prompts I've developed over the years to address what I see as some of the most common problems in the generalized approach to the form.  However, you're definitely invited to take something first created in workshop and develop it more fully in the time between Day Two (Dec. 27th 5-8PM, EST) and Day Three (Dec. 28th 1-4PM)

Q: I've taken this workshop before (and loved it!). Would it be silly for me to sign up again?

A: The first 2 hours of the total 8 hours might be similar although I'm always evolving in my remarks. The bulk of this workshop is devoted to your writing in session so absolutely, I encourage people to repeat whenever they like. And, if you are planning to take Advanced Monologue for the second or third time, please first send me a private email so I can send you a repeat offender discount code!

visit RolandTecTeaching.com for more info.

R.I.P. Mr. Sondheim

Join in the evolving remembrance thread on the-avocado.org.

 

 

2021 Gratitude Roadtrip: Day One (or: Lemonade Squeeze)

Thursday November 25, 2021. Thanksgiving Day.

Whenever life serves up lemons, we have a choice. Well, maybe more than one. I suppose first we have to decide whether to make the lemonade or not. Trust me: you'll want to make the lemonade. Rotting lemons are nothing anyone wants to have to handle. Even on our best days.

But once we're in the midst of extracting every precious drop of juice we can and we're well on our way to producing that full glistening thirst-quenching pitcher, we have another choice.

We can choose to see today's misfortune as the unfair punishment of a cruel and sadistic world. Or we can look for all the ways in which, really, if we think on it hard enough... in the end we must admit that every wrong turn was our own damned fault.

Can you guess which of those two tends to be my default?

Stop whining. 

My original plan was to be on the road from NYC to Westport Wednesday night around 9PM. But packing a bag (or two) for 3 nights is seldom as simple a proposition as it maybe ought to be. When I finally zipped up my Tumi and went to grab the bag of fruit in the fridge I glanced at the clock on my cable box.

Needless to say, it was no longer 9 or even 10 or 11. And I would not be on the road to CT for another 5 hours due to a stupid mistake I made regarding the garage and its on-again-off-again Covid schedule.

For a New Yorker with a car and a getaway plan, the only thing worse than discovering your car is being held hostage to unanticipated garage hours is learning you've been towed to some part of New Jersey you cannot locate on a map.

I'd like to interrupt this post with a brief (but essential) Public Service Announcement:

2021 Gratitude Roadtrip: Day Zero

Wednesday November 24, 2021

For as long as I can remember, travel of any kind has always caused me an unusually high level of anxiety. I fret over what to pack. Make lists. Worry that my lists are incomplete. And when it comes time to move from one environment to the next, my body kicks into overdrive and I start moving faster than anyone interested in not bumping into things should ever move. 

So, as I prepare to head out of my apartment, I'm a sweaty zig-zagging mess. Typically I lock the front door three or four times before I'm satisfied that I've not forgotten anything essential. And this is not related to my age. When I was 17 our senior Drama class took a trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon and London to immerse ourselves in 10 plays in 7 days. I forgot my passport and had to shuttle from JFK to my childhood home in CT, missing our flight and meeting up with the group a day late. 

In an airport or a train station, I'm like a chipmunk checking and re-checking my ticket, water bottle, snacks, bathroom breaks, blah blah blah. And when the All Aboard announcement comes, watch out because I might just mow you down.

A friend of mine once suggested that my extreme freak-out around every transition from here to there can be traced to my mother's Holocaust experience which imprinted on her a simple equation: Packing up and moving = life-threatening danger. I find this theory of the case occasionally persuasive but usually it strikes me as just a little too obvious.

So, it might seem odd then that I've decided to spend the Thanksgiving holiday this year on the road.

Scriptwriters: Beware the confessional monologue.

 

 

Dave Frishberg dies and I miss Blossom Dearie all over again.

Dave Frishberg (Schoolhouse Rock) died the other day. And that sent me looking for video of Blossom Dearie singing some of his great hits like, My Attorney Bernie. Here she is singing Peel Me a Grape.

 

And while we're on the Blossom Dearie train, why not enjoy this brilliant song, not by Frishberg. This one's by Francesca Blumenthal.

My 2021 Gratitude Tour. Boston. NH. VT. Western Massachusetts.

Thanksgiving, 2021.  A largely-vaccinated public is slowly returning to life as it once was. Families all over the U.S. will be celebrating Thanksgiving as they used to -- gathered round the dining table passing the gravy and cranberry sauce enjoying the company of friends and family. 

But I will not. 

I'm not there yet. I'm still too anxious about CoVid to do that despite my booster. And so, I'm taking to the road and heading north to Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont and Western Massachusetts in pursuit of the one thing I most ache for: the company of dear friends.

To keep things absolutely safe I'll be meeting them for 30 min. walks outside. No indoor meals with anyone but myself. When I eat indoors it'll be takeout in my hotel room. But it's powerful to me, the idea that in a few short days I'll be reconnecting physically with some people who have meant the world to me.

In the end we are not what we eat. But we are who we love. Or that's how I see it. I hope you'll drop by. I'll be posting entries on my experience -- written and possibly a bit of vlogging as well. Please join me. And join the discussion by posting a comment.

A Black Teacher of White Children in 1954

I heard the amazing backstory for this poem The Children's Moon by Marilyn Nelson on Krista Tippett's NPR show, On Being. Give this a listen.

 

It's especially moving, I think, hearing (here), both the backstory behind the poem and then the stunning poem itself. 

 

 

PLAY AUDIO CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO

 

 

Marilyn Nelson's book Mrs. Nelson's Class includes the class picture of the 20 seventh graders her mother taught that year and poems written in their voices by a collection of Marilyn Neslon's poet friends. 

Get Outta the Road! You wanna get yourself killed?

It was a mild sunny early Summer day. As my friend David Heath took this picture of me (which I now use as the Roland Tec Inner Circle email banner) a woman walking by shouted that to me with great urgency. 

Get outta the road! You wanna get yourself killed?

I had just asked David to snap my pic. We'd been walking along one of the sleepy blocks around Yale in New Haven, CT, on our way from lunch to a favorite gelato spot. As soon as I saw the stencil along the edge of the sidewalk, I was in love. 

In love with the message.

In love with the image of some transgressive artist marking up the streets and sidewalks of New Haven with a message of peace.

In love with the alignment between this found moment and my overarching philosophy of how to be a creative person in this fractured world. 

And in love with the joy of sitting down on the street for no reason other than the wonder of stumbling upon something that inspires you.

Now that this image has morphed into a kind of logo for my brand, the shouted warnings of passersby take on new meaning.

Get Outta the Road! You wanna get yourself killed?

For anyone making their own way as an artist these days, the road can often feel treacherous. 

We might sit in the road of our careers waiting years for even a bicycle to ride by.

Or we might sit in the road and enjoy a steady flow of pedestrians and traffic coming this way.

Or--god forbid!--we may just have found a spot that suits us when around the bend--boom!--a delivery truck mows us down and we lose everything.

So I suppose you could choose not to get in the road, not to risk rejection, criticism, the disdain or derision of your peers. But I'm pretty sure that getting in the road, at least for a few minutes, beats the hell out of standing at a distance, safely protected from the potential danger of oncoming traffic, never having risked a thing. Until one day you die, never having even tried.

Take a seat. If you're uncomfortable, you can always get back up. But you'll go to your grave knowing that at least you gave it your all.

A Must-View Interview with Victoria LaBalme on Write Out Front

I met Micheline Auger when she was putting together a fun and kind of audacious experiment: placing a desk and lamp and chair in the window of The Drama Bookshop to be a weeklong installation which she called Write Out Front. Installed in the window in 2 hour time slots playwrights were invited to just do our thing... allowing our playwriting to be projected above our heads for all passersby to stop and read if they liked.

Micheline is one of those artists who can't or won't stop asking probing questions, challenging our assumptions about how things are supposed to go. Everything she touches seems to call upon us to ask ourselves why we do and how we do what we do. The result is there's often a lot of interesting and inspiring stuff swirling around her. And lately the form this takes online is her delightfully positive interviews with super smart and generous writers on her website.

This one I just stumbled upon really hit me at just the right moment. I needed to hear Victoria Labalme's clear-eyed reassuring message. And the questions Micheline tosses at her friend are pretty wonderful. Take a look.

 

 

Quiz: Name 3 or 4 musical or dramatic elements of this song that make it amazing.

Put your songwriting know-how to the test. Listen to this song 2 or 3 times and then either post a comment or shoot me an email with your thoughts on what might be a few of the most interesting, smart, special or unforgettable things about this song.

I happen to think it's a pretty wonderful song. 

What do you think?

And why do you think I love it so much? And am I right or am I wrong? Be opinionated!

Memo Roland vs. In-person Roland

Tomorrow Tammy Ryan and I have the first session of the 6-month Roland Tec Online Writing Workshop. Although I've been offering some form of this online workshop for scriptwriters all across the country for years, each time I find I need to slightly revise the rules of the road. 

And because experience has taught me that workshop participants need clear rules of engagement for the simple logistics I create documents with answers to questions like:

How many pages can I have read each time?

How do I offer feedback on other people's work?

When will my work get read?

etc. etc. etc.

And as I've been revising this year's documents to adjust for this new format -- this is the first time I've invited another writer to co-lead the workshop with me -- I've noticed something interesting.

I sound like a bit of a prig in my Rules Memos. And I've been told my in-person persona is pretty welcoming and upbeat.

Why is this?

I think it's cause my number one concern when running one of these workshops is:

Fairness

And I've had too much experience in the world watching pushy people elbow time and attention away from the shy among us and it really pisses me off.

So I've made a bunch of rules intended to protect the mild-mannered among us from bullying -- overt or inadvertent. 

And probably my tone in these memos reflects my fear of letting any one of the shy or less confident among us get railroaded.

So to all you who may be reading one of these memos tonight and wondering: What have I gotten myself into with this guy?

Please know this: I've got your back.

The Ebb and Flow of Full Days and Open Days

I'm just finishing up a 4-day run of almost back-to-back appointments, each day having been just a bit more fully booked than the last. And I've noticed a few things.

I have a natural resistance to tightly scheduled days. I find that when I have a day composed of 8 or more appointments, there's a part of me that starts to feel a bit stressed. The stress probably comes from the natural human tendency to arrive at any encounter with another human being (one that isn't our lover, brother or mother) with a touch of apprehension. Fear of the unknown. After all, we humans are reservoirs of the unexpected. Put two human beings in a room together and there's no predicting exactly how things will unfold.

So a day full of appointments can be stressful even if not on a purely conscious level. It can take its toll just beneath the surface.

And yet, I find, because at my core I do love other human beings and always emerge having learned something, if I power through, if I ride the waves from one to the next and the next that in the end I may be exhausted but I am inspired.

And that's when I think--especially for writers--it's essential that we schedule a day or two of space. Space in the calendar. Space in our heads. Space for quiet time with nothin' but me thoughts.

After a couple days in isolation with me and my inner voices, the next time I see another human being I arrive hungry. Hungry to absorb anything that isn't borne of my unconscious. Hungry for the unexpected unpredictable sound and fury of another human being with their own history, their own biases, their own passions and obsessions.

And it's off to the races again. 

When life's working, there's a natural ebb and flow to all of this. One that works well to support my own creativity and happiness. Sometimes it feels as though I'm forever tinkering to find just the right balance. But sometimes if feels like I'm almost there.

How 'bout you?

My Flip Phone Experiment

A few weeks ago, inspired by another smart phone failure, I decided to try a return to the flip phone.

 

Here's what I've noticed so far.

Day 1:

 

Day 5: