EXTRA CRITICUM

A December Tradition: The RT Holiday Email Stuffer

As the end of the calendar year approaches, members of the Roland Tec Inner Circle are treated to my longest email of the year full of cultural content and career opportunities for anyone who cares deeply about the performing arts, specifically theatre and filmmaking. Here's a glimpse into this year's. If you haven't yet signed on as a member of the RT Inner Circle, membership is free, you may unsubscribe at any time and since March of 2020 (as of this posting at the end of 2021) RT Inner Circle members have saved a combined $1,250 on workshop tuition and online ticket sales. 

 

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What Makes the Difference Between Disposable Entertainment and the Stories That Endure?

Name Your Haunters

Think about those works of fiction, drama or film that haunt you, that pop into mind again and again regardless of how many years it's been since you last encountered them on the page, stage or screen.

We all have at least a couple. Some of us may have a handful. I like to refer to these as haunters because they do haunt us and it seems we will carry a connection to them all the way to our graves.

What are some of yours? Take a moment to jot down one or two titles. 

Right now. (Don't worry. I'll wait.) Here's a little video for inspiration.

No matter what form your stories take, if you have an artist's ego, you probably hope that the stories you write will be the ones your audience never forgets.

If you think about it, the stories that you just never tire of all have certain characteristics in common. 

What might they be?

Can you name them?

Let me venture a guess. (And if I'm wrong, I hope you won't be shy about posting your corrections in the comments section right here.)

Whenever my work is about to be read, I work overtime. Here's how and why.

You're having a new play read, or part of a new play. It's a script. What is a script but a tool used by artists who make theatre or film. The artists we should always consider first, middle and last as we go about our planning are of course the actors.

Because actors are reading your script aloud rather than performing the play with full production value, the reading by definition cuts many of your creative collaborators out of the equation. Set designer? Sorry. Lighting? Nope. Composer. Hell, no. Director? Not really, if we're honest. The direction of readings of new work is actually more like a hybrid of casting and stage management.

Essentially, 90% of readings -- regardless of whether they're private, in a writers workshop or public -- are carried entirely by the actors who read your dialogue aloud.

Bringing Your Pages to Workshop: How Not to Squander the Rare Opportunity.

Your script is starting t0 take shape. I mean, sure, it's nowhere near finished but lately you're starting to kind of love it. Or think at least it has the potential to fascinate you for years to come. So at the next opportunity to bring pages into workshop you brace yourself, you put on your big girl pants and you do what takes a bit of courage: you take space on the schedule for one of your own.

And you wait. 

Or do you... wait?

What for, exactly?

Well now that all depends on who you are and who you think you are or suspect you might be every time you hear yourself announcing it -- your name alongside the title (working, of course) of this as-yet-to-be-fully-formed something. 

Well, at least you can be sure what you've put to paper so far is.... something. Surely you didn't just dream it. Last time you checked it was still waiting for you right where you left it on your hard drive. And, oh, by the way, now that you've uploaded part of it for the rest of the circle of writers to review, well now there's no way out. No denying it. This something you've started to build is now real. Because other people can confirm its existence.

And that may be the most frightening thing of all.

Secret writing that you never share with humanity can be delicious in its way. But the writing you dare to share with the world is something you can never ever take back. It really is a lot like a child you've birthed. You can't stuff it back into the womb. The cat will never get back into that bag.  So once it's out and read aloud by people who are not you, you must resist any compulsion borne out of fear, insecurity, or whatever to deny this something its own place in the world.

Never pretend you can take it all back, stuff it backwards down into the proverbial bag, down your throat and into your unconscious.

Must-listening-viewing-reading: David Foster Wallace 2005 Commencement Speech at Kenyon College

Every now and then the opaque inner workings of the YouTube algorithms points us to something we feel so privileged to have discovered that we almost want to thank God for algorithms. This is Water is the title of this commencement speech given to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College by David Foster Wallace.

 

As I listened to this speech I kept wondering how it could be that the same man who's delivered this message of hope and wonder and love for a life spent looking outward is also the man who in three short years would be dead by suicide at the age of 46.

Perhaps that too might be some piece of the central message of this incredible speech. Bottom line: we may imagine we know or understand who someone is at their core but we must never forget that we are always simply engaging in speculation courtesy of our imagination. That impenetrable wall that separates us all from the rest of humanity is both unbearably painful and miraculous and everything in between. It's how we look that forms the frame.

And I suppose that's a big part of why we write.