EXTRA CRITICUM

Transcription of my Zoom classes provides me a fresh perspective on the content and structure of each workshop.

via GIPHY

About a month ago or so, my business consultant Marcy Stahl told me about a new platform that provides virtually instantaneous transcription of Zoom meetings in progress as well as audio recordings of past meetings. [It's called Otter.ai ]

I wasn't sure whether I actually needed this service but the entry level subscription was inexpensive enough to allow me to sign up for a service I wasn't sure I needed. 

As luck would have it, one of playwrights in this year's Self-Production Boot Camp which I'm teaching again for the Dramatists Guild Institute came to me with a request for transcriptions of each class. It's long been understood that some of us learn best visually, others learn best by participating in a group discussion and there are still others among us who will retain new concepts most readily when they're presented in written form. 

And so thanks to Otter.ai I'm not only able to provide my students with a group discussion in class, a video recording of each class, my usual handouts and homework assignments but also now... for the first time in more than 25 years of teaching, I have the luxury of providing a written transcription of every word that is uttered in every Zoom class.

I am so grateful this came up!

And you may be surprised when I tell you why.

"Of course, it's not really about Zombies..."

Has this happened to you as often as it seems to happen to me?

Some friend who I respect for their taste in culture or their wisdom in general will feel compelled to recommend I watch the latest film or television show that happens to contain an apocalyptic zombie storyline and as they embark on an inventory of all that makes it a must-see they fold in this line:

Of course, it's not really about Zombies.

Recently, I started watching the HBO series, The Last of Us, which has much to recommend it but...

I find myself wondering, episode after episode, why shouldn't this be about zombies? And if it weren't, well, what would that mean, exactly?

Can you imagine someone recommending Schindler's List and offering:

Of course, it's not really about the Holocaust.

It would be jarring to hear someone say that because, for starters, it's hard to imagine a subject matter with less of a need to justify its existence. No one has to explain why the Holocaust is a subject worthy of our human attention. It simply is. 

Baked into it are universal human obsessions like: freedom, oppression, hatred, violence, displacement, identity... the list goes on. 

So, then, why should it be so important to the selling of a zombie drama like The Last Of Us to qualify it as Not Really About Zombies?

Is it because zombies aren't real?

But aren't they?

Janet Kenney: One of my favorite people and one of my favorite playwrights.

Tomorrow, Suze Allen welcomes playwright Janet Kenney to share a few passages from her forthcoming memoir, What Else But Grace. If you read this blog or are an RT Inner Circle member, you know that on the first Sunday of each month at 4PM EST/1PM PCT you can find me tuning in to soak in the good work as a regular audience member and parishioner at Suze Allen's Memoir Church. 

We Go Way Back... 3 Decades!

Janet Kenney happens to be one of my oldest friends.

We sort of heard of each other before we ever met. The first workshop of my solo show, A Better Boy was presented at the Boston Center for the Arts on a dark night on the set of Janet's play, Lucy's Attire. So I felt even though we had not yet met that her spirit was somehow holding me and my tough little play. As it happened, a few years later I would choose to adapt A Better Boy into my first feature film, All the Rage which we shot in Boston in about 20 different locations tapping into the deep reservoir of performer talent for a film with 40 speaking roles.

So long before we both showed up for the first meeting of a writers group we helped found we'd heard of each other but never met.

She Lived Up to All the Hype

I looked up to her as a big shot among Boston playwrights and if I'm to believe her version of events, she was intimidated by me and my fancy feature filmmaking (sic). It didn't take very long for the seeds of an enduring loving friendship to take root. Week after week in that writers group above a Burger King I found myself delighted by the pages she brought in.

And I think she may have liked some of my pages too.

Truth Teller

I would say that Janet Kenney is certainly one of my favorite playwrights for a simple reason.

She writes characters she loves and wants to understand and so she tells the truth. Her ego doesn't get in the way of her characters. There's always something at the heart of her writing that needs to get out and it has nothing to do with a writer's ego and everything to do with her awe and wonder at the human condition.

A New Monologue at the April Some1Speaking

On April 3rd, Janet will be performing a new monologue she created in my most recent Advanced Monologue Workshop just a couple months ago. Like most of Janet's work, the piece invites us to take a look at a character we might be tempted to overlook, assuming (incorrectly of course) that we see everything there is to know about her at first glance. And oh how wrong we'd be! I've read and/or heard some version of the piece about a half dozen times and each time I discover something new and surprising. 

A couple years ago as I was wrapping up another session of my 6-month RT Online Writers Workshop, Janet was one of the workshop members who responded to my request for a video testimonial. And what she sent in tickles me still.