EXTRA CRITICUM

The Artist Who Was Afraid of Taking Up Too Much Space

So, that would be me. Big time.

In case you were wondering.

Put me in a line at Starbucks and you'll see a human being using the power of his brain to imagine (and instantly resolve) every possible way in which he might be, well... in the way.

I imagine I may be a breath of fresh air in some public spaces -- a person intently focused on not interrupting anyone else's flow, even if inadvertently. But take that same skill set and bring it to a career as an artist and...

Well, let's just say there might have been more helpful adaptive behaviors I could have picked up in childhood. 

A deep and ever-present fear of being a bother, a disruption or simply in the way has held me back in more ways and in more arenas than I care to name. The most recent manifestation of this pathology of mine (and, oh, is it ever a pathology! Trust me.) reared its ugly head in February when I decided I was ready to share the earliest version of a solo show I'm writing and will be performing (god willing).

I invited about 50 people I know and trust to attend the reading of A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored. And, to be honest, I can't complain because when I invite people to new work of my own, I get a pretty great rate of return. The majority of folks I invited did actually show up.

3 Broad Principles Courtesy of some RT Online Writers' Scripts

Reviewing scripts for tomorrow's Roland Tec Online Writers Workshop and three common problems I see in many many early drafts caught my eye. So I figured I'd post 3 videos to explain them. 

Take a look and see if you recognize any one of these in your own work.

 

 

 

 

 

This play has legs: THE INTERVIEW by Faye Sholiton turns 25.

In 1997 a modestly titled little play by Faye Sholiton was a winner of Dayton Future Fest. If you just heard the title, THE INTERVIEW, it's possible you'd make the mistake of expecting a simple narrowly focused piece about an interview. But Faye Sholiton's play is full of surprises and runs deep and wide. It reminds me a bit of another Holocaust play, Ida Fink's brilliant one-act, also modestly titled, THE TABLE. Both plays will creep up on you and will not let go. That may explain why today, some 25 years later, THE INTERVIEW continues to be produced all over the map. 

On the occasion of the latest production, at Sarasota Jewish Theatre, I wanted to celebrate the accomplishment of this play by putting a few questions to the author. Sholiton was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to speak to some of the elements of THE INTERVIEW that caught my eye.

My not-so-hidden agenda here is that this quarter century success for this play might remind all the writers reading this of two important truths:

1. The play that we care most deeply about will usually be the one that outlives us 
   and...
2. There are plays being produced all the time that are not playing in Broadway houses and those plays can have long lives making a lasting impact on thousands of theatre lovers all the same. 

brief synopsis:

Fifty years after her liberation from the Nazi death camps, Bracha Weissman still suffers the  aftermath of her old trauma. When she allows Ann Meshenberg, the child of other survivors, into her suburban Cleveland home to take testimony for an archival video project, Bracha reviews the legacy she has left her own daughter. THE INTERVIEW is a story about mothers, daughters and memory – about forgiving and being forgiven.

The Interview took top honors in three national new play contests and won a coveted Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence grant. It is featured in Gene A. Plunka's book Holocaust Theater: Dramatizing Survivor Trauma and Its Effects on the Second Generation (Routledge, London) 2019. The play has been performed more than three dozen times around the U.S. since its premiere at the 1997 FutureFest in Dayton, Ohio.

Questions for the author:

Tec
You wrote this play in the 1990s? And it's been produced dozens of times in theatres of different shapes and sizes. Now, for the first time we are entering a world which pretty soon won't have any Holocaust survivors left. How do you feel that fact changes the way the play is understood?

Feeling like the only one in the room.

*by Yvonne Delet

In these days of being PC and 'picking a political side' as opposed to talking about what one is actually seeing and knowing as true is befuddling to say the least. I find my comedy, in writing and performing even further from the mainstream than it's always been. I just watched the documentary, "Can We Take A Joke" and I was pleasantly surprised at comics discussing what Lenny Bruce and George Carlin did for us back in the day.

When I write or perform comedy I take George Carlin's advice: Find what the line is, cross it, take everyone with you and make them be glad they went. I recently hosted a comedy gig in Brooklyn NY where I came onstage wearing a jacket covered in 'boosters' and flashed my V passport which went all the way to the ground while saying, "this should be good for a month". I am happy to report there were both V'd and non V'd people there (I assume, I don't know for sure because you know 'mandates'), and EVERYONE LAUGHED. How wonderful that humor is alive and well, sort of.

I crossed the line and that night all or most of the audience came along for the ride. THAT is what creativity is supposed to be about. Inspire, stimulate, awaken to more than one idea. It reminds me of the movie "Quills' where the Marquis de Sade wrote with feces in a windowless cell at the end of his life, because he had to write what he was inspired to write no matter what the 'authorities' did to try to silence him.

Whether it's Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, The Marquis de Sade or the like speaking their truths, it seems like we are again in a time where the visionaries (used to be 'witches' as well), are trying to be silenced by the 'authorities'. Don't agree with my views, but please please please don't silence 'our voices', because we'll find a way and in the end it's very likely much of what we say you will find was / is true.

Your Mission (should you choose to accept it)

Certain fundamentals touch us so deeply that it's possible to sort the actions of humans (our own and those we observe around us) into two simple columns: Productive vs. Destructive.

Take, for example, the situation in Ukraine. Sometimes there's no better remedy for murky indecision than bombs falling all around you. I don't mean to compare the topic at hand to real life war and war crimes. But we can learn from the split-second decision-making we're now witnessing on a day to day basis. There are no guarantees that the road uphill will take us to safety but choosing a road and following it always beats staying in bed and fretting.

I don't know how exactly it came to pass but somehow over the past 25 years or so the American playwright has been tamed into believing she is wholly operating at the mercy of an elite and opaque cabal of gatekeepers who will decide what is and what is not worthy.

I am here to tell you that this is one of the most dangerous and destructive transformations ever to have overrun an entire art form: theatre.

And American Theatre (Yes indeed, with a capital A and T!) will continue to circle the drain of disposable fungible ephemera until the people who write for the stage stop playing the part of humble servants and instead learn to embrace the responsibility that comes from being the wellspring of everything else.

That's right. It all begins with you, the writer. And until you accept responsibility for the role you play in shaping the future of our theatre we will continue to face ever dwindling interest from a distracted and ambivalent audience.

It's not easy to acknowledge our power. But we must.

What makes so many writers feel powerless?

This one's personal. Some1Speaking tonight.

In November 2020 one of the most important people in my life finally lost what had been an incredible 11-year battle with Stage IV Ovarian Cancer. At the time of her initial diagnosis one of the docs she consulted urged her to "get your affairs in order. I give you six weeks."

And so I've been remembering things I either overheard or that she confided in me about various battles she fought and have been turning them into monologues. Jenny Bacon read one of the first ones at a Some1Speaking last year and I must admit that sometimes when I miss my friend just a little too much I head on over to Hear Me Out YouTube just to spend a few minutes with her words, her energy, her fire. 

I don't think I've ever quite had this kind of intense umbilical connection to a script of my own. The only thing that sort of comes close was when my play The Wreck Behind Us filled the upstairs space at the Duplex for a summer. The play explores the impact of the sudden death of actress wife and mother, a family I grew up with, the mother of my best friend growing up. I guess it felt like it was a tragedy I knew in my bones. I'll never forget how David's older brother came up to me at the end of a performance, shook my hand and suggested that I had given him an extra 30 minutes with his late mother. 

It's a strange thing for me now. In a way I feel I'm still having a relationship with her, although unfortunately her ability to surprise me has suddenly vanished.

If you're free tonight, please come by and check it out. The fabulous Marnie Andrews will be breathing life into the text. And for that I am already grateful beyond my own understanding.

House opens at 5:45PM which is when ticket sales stop. Some1Speaking usually runs about one hour from 6PM to 7PM and a ticket'll set you back $5.  Click here for tickets and more info.

The sign reads: Welcome. You are safe here.

When Ukrainian refugees first disembark into the train station in Przemysl, Poland, the first thing they see is a huge sign that reads:

WELCOME. YOU ARE SAFE HERE.

The sign is meant to be a comforting gesture of goodwill. And for the time being it most certainly is. But if the tragic history of Europe in the last century is any indication, safety will surely ebb and flow like the tides.

When my father was in medical school in the Polish city of Vilna, the rising specter of a Nazi-fied Germany was troubling but not an immediate threat. Then in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and WWII could no longer be wished away, an unexpected thing happened to Vilna. 

It found itself suddenly the capitol of the newly independent neutral country of Lithuania. A kind of a trade off had occurred. Lithuania would be given its sovereignty and Hitler would be allowed to plow through the rest of Poland with impunity.

And suddenly Vilnius (as it was referred to in Lithuanian) found itself welcoming wave after wave of panicked Jews from Poland. They flooded into Lithuania because Lithuanian neutrality would protect them from Hitler's brutality. And they came to Vilnius referring to it as Vilna (its Polish name), perhaps also clinging to its informal nickname as "The Jerusalem of Lithuania."

In 2007 I had the rare opportunity to live and work in Vilnius for 3 months while assisting Edward Zwick in the production of the film adaptation of my mother's book, Defiance: The Story of the Largest Armed Rescue of Jews by Jews during WWII. My parents and sister Leora came to visit the set for a weekend. On my day off, Dad gave us a tour of the parts of the city that were still recognizable 70 years after he had volunteered as a waiter in the pop-up soup kitchen of the Jewish Relief Agency.