EXTRA CRITICUM

Promise me you'll hit PAUSE before ending another relationship.

Tell the truth. 

Within the past 6-9 months how many times has a close friend or family member irritated you to the point that you thought it might just be time to be done with them?

If I'm honest, I'd say I've had that feeling a handful of times over the past year. 

And chances are if I sat quietly and closed my eyes to really make an inventory, the actual number might be quite a bit higher.

I was walking with an old friend today and we got to talking -- as one does, or should, in the presence of a loved one -- and he reported a recent series of interactions with a family member that had pissed him off so much he wondered when, if ever, he'd pick up the phone again.

At the end of the 30 min. walk we both agreed that writing anyone off for their callous behavior, self-absorption, insensitivity, etc. etc. at this unique moment might not be wise.

Bottom line?

CoVid has fucked with all of us, specifically with our ability to self-modulate.

Now would be a time for us all to hit PAUSE before ending any relationships. Because, honestly, I don't know about you but lately I find myself feeling like certain social interactions are my first bike ride without training wheels. I feel a bit wobbly, unsure of my balance and bracing for an imminent fall.

Let's all take a deep breath, close our eyes and force ourselves to give each other just a little more wiggle room... for a little bit longer.

When I make my mental inventory of the folks who did something to seriously piss me off I'm so grateful NOT to have followed my impulse to sever ties. Cause nine times out of ten, there's something I really love or value deeply there. And life is better with than without. 

Peace & Love, as my pal Merle Perkins likes to say. Peace & Love. :)

And here's some music to match this sentiment, courtesy of harpist-singer-songwriter Patrice Haan.

01 We Must Be Arrows (feat. David Morris & Arrow Choir)

 

Don't ever let me hear you say: "Oh I leave those details to the experts."

Too many artists are passive about stuff that matters to their bottom line.

I recently learned of a friend's book launch and I wanted to go to show my support and buy a book. (By the way, when you do go to a book signing, not buying a book is kind of tacky. IMHO. Just sayin')

I hopped on over to the website of the sponsoring org and found...

oh wait, it must be here somewhere...

Wait a sec. 

Not one word about my friend's book launch, which is in less than 3 weeks. 

Then I clicked on the calendar page and it was empty even though I know for a fact the organization has events all month long every single month of the year.

Taylor Swift Ticketmaster Controversy Points to a Dangerous Thing No One is Talking About: The Slow Narrowing of Our Culture

 

 

The Six Most Likely Reasons Your Excellent Piece of Writing Did Not Take Home a Prize

Anyone who's ever been anywhere near a writing competition of any kind -- be it as a contestant, an audience member or a judge -- knows the sad fact that it's almost inevitable that really terrific work will somehow fail to capture the adoring attention of enough judges in just the right way and will be overlooked. 

I was curious  to take a closer look at this year's entries to the Hear Me Out Monologue Competition, specifically to examine the pieces that were really great pieces of writing that somehow failed to accumulate the high scores needed to advance to the finalist round. Specifically I wondered if I might be able to identify some patterns, common flaws which were working against some really terrific writing getting its proper due.

What I found may surprise you. It certainly did me. 

For any writer preparing work to submit to a seriously competitive opportunity of any kind, these 6 flaws could make the difference between taking home the gold and barely seeing the light of day. 

I suggest you copy this list and hang it somewhere in your workspace as a reminder so that every time you’re prepping a submission, you take some time to try and eliminate these obstacles.

I like to think of these as six guests you really don't want crashing your party cause they will work against your ambition for your submission by distracting the judges from the power and brilliance of what you've created. Show them the door and your chances of success will greatly improve.

We’ll count down from 6 to 1, saving the most important one for last.

#6: Typos and punctuation problems

It may not seem like in the grand scheme of things your brilliant powerfully moving work should be penalized for the odd misplaced comma or incorrect use or their, there or they’re. But here’s the thing. I know our judges are trying to look directly into the heart of each monologue, to understand its central character, to feel its pulse and not intentionally penalize you for typos. But we’re human. And if there are enough misspellings, incorrect or confusing uses of punctuation or incomprehensible sentences, the effect is this. The reader of the piece has to work harder to feel it as they read from start to finish. They may have to stop, go back a couple lines to figure out your intention. And when that happens, guess what? Their emotional investment in your piece suffers. 

#5: Layout on the page

Let’s imagine there’s a major explosion in the middle of your monologue. How you decide to place that interruption on the page is going to make a difference in how your reader spots it as the major interruption it is or whether they potentially miss it entirely.

Also, it may strike you as absolutely trivial but I was surprised to discover that submissions with hard-to-read fonts or inconsistent line spacing or line breaks tended to get lower scores. Now I know this is unconscious on the part of the judges because I am so specific about how the pieces are to be judged. Still human beings are not computers (thank god) and anything that makes it a little harder or more complicated for me as the reader to imagine and hear and see the monologue from start to finish is competing with your chance to grab a judge where they live -- to make an emotional impression. 

We may sound rather intellectual sitting in the restaurant discussing the show we all just saw together but make no mistake as it is unfolding in the theatre and we are sitting in the dark, it is an emotional experience. We're not thinking our way through your story, we're feeling our way through it. And every little interruption to provide a footnote or reveal the need for one is an interruption in my emotional journey with your characters through the story you're telling. 

#4: The Last Line

There were several gorgeous monologues this year that felt unfinished or incomplete because although the writer had a beautifully wrought idea that really kept us engaged, it felt as though they had not figured out how the ending should feel for the audience.

Any piece of theatre (or literature for that matter) can end in a number of ways. Think about your favorite pop songs. Some end with a bang. Some peter out. Some end with a hiccup. These choices make a world of difference in how an audience is going to feel about the overall piece and your choice should be carefully aimed at the emotional content of what preceded it. It’s human nature that no matter how you end your piece, we are going to use that end as a final lens through which to revisit the piece in its entirety. Choose the wrong type of end and you risk potentially getting in the way of your audience appreciating the depth and gravitas of the whole piece. Or on the other hand, sometimes an  ending too formal and sharp can risk throwing a lighthearted charm piece into unwanted (and unhelpful) comparison to other pieces with more natural heft. The last line also does something else in monologue that’s extremely important. And that is it signals to the audience something about the main character’s likely future beyond where we leave them. Last lines can hint at hope for some much needed change. Or they can confirm our worst fears about this person and the world that lies ahead of them. 

 

The problem is clear: Social Media is Antisocial. It is not prosocial.

First I left Facebook. Then you convinced me that my bottom line depended on my return. Now I'm leaving Twitter.

Here's the inconvenient truth. Social media is fundamentally antisocial. And by that I mean the very architecture of social media does not support prosocial behavior. And when society is under threat of collapse, we all need (now more than ever) to find ways to access those parts of ourselves inclined toward acting in support of the needs of others first. 

My mother, Nechama Tec, embarked on the first comprehensive study of the Polish Catholics who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In her first book on the subject, When Light Pierced the Darkness, she uncovered some surprising traits shared by most of the hundreds of Righteous Christians she interviewed. Turns out the usual categories by which sociologists would first embark on a comparative analysis of large groups such as religiosity, social strata, gender, etc. seem to have been largely inconsequential. Instead, she found some less obvious deeper qualitative traits that were shared by a majority of these individuals. And one of them was a pre-war established habit of prosocial behavior. 

Stop to offer help to someone who appears to be lost, dig into your pockets for some spare change to offer to a homeless person on the street, rearrange your schedule to help a friend who's being discharged from the hospital...

The people who habitually (easily, casually, even unconsciously) consider the needs of others important and interesting just might save us all when the shit hits the fan.

Social media encourages us to look inward, not outward. And it does this for one simple reason. 

It's public.

"Where do I fit?" And Other Questions Writers Ask in the Wake of What We Commonly Think of as Rejection

This Year's Hear Me Out Delays

On August 20th of this year I happened to be in Milwaukee for my nephew's wedding. It had been a rough summer on several fronts with the pandemic hitting several members of our National Circle of Judges hard with family emergencies, hospital visits and personal crises such that the Hear Me Out Monologue Festival and Awards Ceremony which usually happens on Labor Day was going to be pushed back to November 25th, the day after Thanksgiving.

August 20th had been widely advertised as the date by which this year's competition finalists would be announced. (That date has now been revised to tomorrow, October 25th.) And for that reason almost from the moment I checked in to my room at the Hilton Garden Inn Milwaukee I was attempting to access the hotel's WiFi to send out an email the 400+ writers who had submitted to this year's competition. A simple heads-up to let them know that the announcement would be delayed this year. 

But weddings and travel and hotel WiFi being the unpredictable things they are, our heads-up announcement did not go out until the following day, August 21st. (Yes, folks,. you may occasionally imagine that I am surrounded by a dedicated staff of highly paid professionals but this competition is pretty much run by two people with the help of an army of volunteers.)

Writers Seeing Rejection Everywhere No Matter What

In the roughly 16 hours before our e-blast was sent, I received more than one message complaining bitterly about Hear Me Out having rejected work without even so much as a thank you. Here's one example of something someone (a former student no less) emailed me at 7pm on August 20th:

It's Official. We Must Defeat the Algorithms. (Our Humanity Just May Depend on It)

I'm in the middle (well, probably only 20% of the way in if I'm honest) of a steep new learning curve around social media algorithms, Search Engine Optimization and the very powerful and quixotic (not-to-be-overlooked) chill of audience disinterest.

And yesterday I came upon this paragraph in a pretty interesting (albeit somewhat depressing) post I'll link to here. 

 

 

Naturally, this got me thinking.

Floating in a Sea of Deception. Who are we and what are we doing here?

In early 2017 I made the decision to #unfriendfacebook. I decoupled. I changed my profile picture to this.

At the time I thought I understood my reasons. It seemed to me quite indisputable that the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election had been handed to Trump by Facebook. ///HOLD IT! STOP THIS BLOG POST RIGHT THERE!

As I write that last sentence, there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind tap-tap-tapping for attention. And I have just interrupted this post to hear it.

It says:

Hold on there, Roland, are you sure you want to let your political position muddy the waters here? I mean, we are a country divided and suppose one of your students or potential students is reading this. With that little bit about the 2016 election, you may have just eliminated 50% of your potential target market.

Regardless of how one falls on the many sides of that strange interrupting worry, what concerns me most, and what I need to address here is the kind of landscape in which such a worry even makes any sense at all.

And by that I mean, an online world which through the powerful and slowslowslow moving and largely imperceptible forces of corporate interests has grown and continues to tilt further and further toward a kind of malignant embrace which play acts connection but at its core is really just pretty much always trying to sell you something.

Because if this blog is seen to exist to serve two masters -- my human desire to dig down to the truth and the promotional needs of my business -- aren't we fooling ourselves just a little bit? I mean, if we actually try to convince ourselves that these two impulses can live under the same roof? Without killing each other?

What do you do when you wake up one morning to discover that the world you've helped build is pretty much one enormous billboard?

Don't Throw Our Baby Out with the Bathwater (or: Why We Still Need Zoom)

As we enter Year 3 of the early 21st century pandemic, it's understandable why we might all long for nothing more than a life outside... outside the walls of Zoom.

The last couple years were dominated by stories of loss -- loss of income, loss of job security, loss of essential routines, loss of friendships, confidence and, of course, the worst loss of all: loss of life.

But scattered here and there, tucked behind and alongside the wreckage lie some unexpected gifts.

You conceived, nurtured, birthed and edited your baby. And now it's up to you to share it with the world.

For too many years I held onto a childish myth about show business that cost me dearly. 

The myth goes something like this:

Artists create the work.
And the marketing and PR folks promote it to the world.

To occupy yourself with the dirty business of promoting the new works
you've had a hand in creating would be unseemly and make you appear desperate.

The truth is: there never has been, nor ever will be a show, book, movie, song, or other cultural commodity that soared to popular success without the tender loving care and devotion of its original author. The fact of the matter is there never will be another living soul as fiercely loyal and devoted and confident of your original work than you. And the sooner you get comfortable with this fact of life, the easier life as an artist will be.

You see, we can waste an awful lot of time and energy waiting and hoping and wishing and praying for someone (anyone!) to show up one day displaying the same absolute confidence in the importance, the beauty and the power of your work that you do.

Once you stop holding your breath with your ear to the wind waiting for a sign, the sooner you'll be able to see and hear the genuine and more objective enthusiasm for the work that many among your team come by honestly.

For this reason alone, you should resist the temptation to convince yourself to sit out the necessary and time consuming process of figuring out a path to bigger and more passionate audiences for each particular work.

The Artist Child. Your Career Requires Adult Supervision.

There are people who help bring art to the world who are not artists but what they do is essential nonetheless. They are producers, lawyers, agents, publicists, managers, etc. They often create a framework upon which the artist-audience relationship is built.

Unfortunately, some of them are invested in seeing artists as children. It may be understandable in a way. To make art, the artist must be at home with play. And it's too easy for observers to conclude that the adult who is at ease with play is also less an adult than the rest of us.

Playwrights have been infantilized in recent years in countless ways. We are told not to worry our pretty little heads with details of production. We are encouraged to seek help in structuring our scripts from dramaturgs. Some even believe they cannot finish a script without the assistance of someone to offer outside wisdom.

And so some of us internalize this childlike way of being and we simply wait for corrections from "the adults in the room."

I wish all playwrights would understand that taking responsibility for every aspect of your writing will free you as an artist. You will only be free to bring your vision to the world when you stop behaving like a helpless baby and take responsibility for what you actually put on the page. 

What does this mean?

 

Here's a handy list of Absolute Musts.

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.

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?

All these years of accomplishments under my belt and still can't stop humming that familiar tune of self-denial

The other day I hosted the first session of Demystifying the 10-min. Play with Gary Garrison, in which 12 scriptwriters (and me) get to learn the essentials of the craft of writing the 10-min play from my friend and colleague Gary, who happens to be the authority on this form. The workshop is turning out to be even more fascinating and eye-opening than I imagined and I'm confident we'll all come out the other end much better craftspeople. Remember. The word is playwright, not playwrite, for a reason. Plays are wrought. With much blood, sweat and tears along the way. That is one key to their unique alchemy.

But I digress. 

What I wanted to address in this post is my annoying and sad little habit of reflexively retreating to self-denial in the face of praise.