EXTRA CRITICUM

"Have you got a video?" vimeo.com/pinkplot/nagfeel

Have you got a video, he asked.

And then I showed him this.

Nag_Feel_3min from Pinkplot Productions on Vimeo.

/p>

And now he's bringing half his office.

#thepowerofvideo #naggingfeeling #spreadtheword #jan6july6

How'd They Do It? 2021 Hear Me Out Winning Writers Share Their Secrets: Patrick Mulcahey

Over the next few weeks several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Patrick Mulcahey, author of Ecce Mom (winner of the Silver Ear for long form monologues)

Here's what Patrick had to say about the 2021 Festival Theme: Borders.

For at least twenty years I’ve been carrying around a character and a story I didn’t know how to tell. A close friend who’s a physician told me about a patient of his (anonymous, of course) whose life ended in tragedy, and tragically alone, because her children refused to believe the illness she complained of was anything but a cover for alcoholism. Since then I entertained the vague notion I’d write something about her someday — which became the day Roland announced the theme of the next Hear Me Out Monologue contest would be “Borders.” 

 

Why did that bring the character into focus for me? I’m not sure I can explain it even to my own satisfaction. Yes, “Borders” as a theme had some political currency at the time, but I wasn’t thinking politically. In my own life I’ve always had an awareness of the boundaries we draw between each other, even — or especially — in our closest, most intimate, most enduring relationships. And when we make a conscious decision to breach those boundaries, those borders, we do so because we want to accomplish something: revelation, persuasion, a provocation to a response which may or may not be the response we want. What else is drama is made of?

 

I struggled with the writing at first. In the real-life story told to me, the woman didn’t conceal her illness from her grown children: they just didn’t believe her. I had no room for them and no way to explain their skepticism; maybe the reason I never could write it in another form was the prospect of creating a character group with no function but to be wrong.

 

So I invented another boundary, a full and fully concealed intimacy in which the character’s diagnosis was understood and appropriate measures taken. Which became another loss, another secret to tell, another border to cross. 

Watch Mulcahey's winning monologue as performed by Alley Mills at the 2021 Hear Me Out Labor Day Festival & Awards Ceremony. 

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.

Title treatment for: A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored

So... what do you all think? How does this make you feel? Would you buy a ticket to this thing? 

If a script lands in a forest with no one to read it, can it make a noise?

In 1922, an unknown composer who supported his family by working as an insurance man, did something audacious. He self-published a collection of songs he'd been writing over several years and proceeded to mail out complimentary copies to practically everyone of some importance he could think of. His name was Charles Ives and today, thanks to the efforts of another composer of a younger generation who championed his work, he is widely regarded as one of American music's greatest composers.

It would be easy to take this little anecdote as evidence that all we need in order to succeed is perseverance and a touch of audacity but the sobering truth is that of the hundreds of copies of Mr. Ives' 114 Songs that he sent out, most sat on desks and languished unopened for years, if not decades. Had it not been for the passion of the young composer Henry Cowell who made it his personal mission to get the establishment to recognize the great leaps of imagination made by the older man, we might never have heard much of this groundbreaking music. 

Those of us who write for the stage do so in an environment in which the discovery of something wonderful and new is well on its way to becoming nothing short of miraculous. With virtually no meaningful governmental support of our theaters, there is no place really to which a playwright can send his or her script and be assured of a thoughtful read. 

The sad truth is when you send your full-length play or screenplay to the literary department of a target theatre or the development department of an independent film production company the odds are stacked against you.

It's Monologue Season.

It's that time of year. 

Time to start polishing your monologue writing skills.  On Mother's Day the 2022 theme for the Hear Me Out New American Monologue Competition will be announced along with all the submission guidelines. Now in its third year, the Hear Me Out Competition seeks to celebrate and elevate the art of unforgettable monologue. Top prizes put thousands of dollars into the hands of gifted scriptwriters.

The next RT Advanced Monologue Workshop will provide participants a 9 hr. deep dive into the craft of creating powerful character through monologue with a focus on this year's competition prompt. 

May 6, 7 and 14

Join us at our monthly showcase, Some1Speaking. On the first Monday of each month we introduce you to 5 characters through 5 monologues written by 5 outstanding writers. 

Up Next:

Delightfully surprising documentary on a much misunderstood figure

David Geffen is so maligned. And there's so much more to him than meets the eye. I highly recommend this documentary which opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of his contributions. Too often in this culture we have a knee-jerk negative reaction to bald ambition and ego. But consider what this larger than life figure has managed to do for the culture. It's inspiring.

Jean-Paul Yovanoff Interviews me for the BE OUR GUEST show on Musical Theatre Radio

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Jean-Paul Yovanoff to talk about my approach to teaching, my philosophy about the performing arts and a whole lot more. I had such fun talking with Jean-Paul for his podcast BE OUR GUEST. I wanted to share the interview with you all here. 

 

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.

 

 

A funny thing happened on the way to the Bodega.

I'd run in to grab some peanut butter (confessed addict. I know, I know...) and there was a woman on a cell phone having a conversation.

In 2021, no less!

And she was not happy. But she was taking great pains to appear calm while her thumb and forefinger did a little dance which seemed to be more about chipping the nail polish off of her thumb than anything else.

It was clear she was talking to a man. One she'd slept with. A lot. And also one that she clearly regarded more as a boy than a man. 

And he was really asking a lot of stupid questions.

Dear Radio, Television & Podcast Producers: Please take your jobs more seriously. Do the work.

It has become routine to see/hear/read an interview with the same book author/film director/songwriter etc. etc. on not one, not two, but 5-7 supposedly independent unique shows or columns. 

You know what I'm talking about.

Terry Gross will interview the author of X book.

Two days later I'm hearing Allison Stewart interview the same person.

Another day or two go by and--oh, look who's being interviewed again! (Will I learn something new this time?)

What does this tell us?

Producers of these shows are either lazy or underpaid/over-extended or both. 

The programming producers of radio, television and podcasts need to step it up a notch.

This is ridiculous. We live in a country with thousands and thousands of artists and projects and there is no reason (other than casual semi-conscious sleepwalking through your job descriptions) for us to be learning of 3 or 4 new projects when we could be discovering 40 or 50.

And while we're on the subject I would like to report that having just promoted a production of my own, I was repeatedly amazed at the degree to which coverage I read in newspapers or online sites simply repurposed entire paragraphs from our press releases with zero editorial input.

This is all yet more evidence of the fact that we have allowed our media outlets to be starved to near extinction.

What the hell are we prepared to do to save them?

At the Core of Every Workshop I Teach is a Choice

One of the many workshops I've offered over the years to playwrights and screenwriters is a weekend intensive called Cracking the Producers Code. The goal of the 11-hr crash course is to arm script writers with some of the most important questions a producer will ask as she gets acquainted with your script and thereby comes to see it as more than a script but actually a property.

What do we mean by "property" in this context?

Something that can inspire the public to purchase tickets and thereby form an audience for the work. When talking to distributors or foreign sales agents regarding a small indie film, the most common question any writer/director will have to contend with is: Who is the intended audience for this film?

Most people who read between the lines of any one of my course descriptions understand a fundamental core of my approach to empowering writers.

I believe that writers are some of the most mistreated taken-for-granted unappreciated artists on the planet.

And because of this fact (and it is a fact) most of the structures that hold our theatrical ecosystems together are built on the assumption that writers are a dime a dozen and anyone who produces your work is doing you a huge favor.

Of course the opposite is true; writers do the world a huge favor every time we put pen to paper. Sadly, most writers (myself included) who are fortunate enough to ever write something remotely commercially successful generally don't recognize this fact until it's way too late for them to make requests or demands remotely in line with that value. This pattern continues from generation to generation for reasons which are deeply important and alarming and beyond the scope of this post.

Suffice it to say, the world is built with countless hidden (and not so hidden) signs which say to writers:

My RT Inner Circle Emails are way too long. What should I do?

It's a problem.

I know it.

I don't deny it.

Yet month after month I find myself starting out to compose the RT Inner Circle E-Notes with the clear intention of sending out something light and breezy and easy on the eyes.

And month after month I fail.

Why might that be?

I have some theories.

Because I'm weaning myself from all social media (I decoupled from Facebook after the 2016 election and have occasionally wondered whether I'd made a marketing mistake and so have allowed people to promote my workshops on the platform with serious reservations and angst). Twitter remains a mystery to me. LinkedIn, as I've said before, feels like the Cinderella to the wicked step sisters of social media (FB & Twitter) in that it's more transparent, less sexy and therefore gets most of my attention. Despite the fact that I don't know how many of you actually go there.

So every time I set out to send information about things I think are important in the world of theatre and filmmakers (including but not exclusively limited to workshops of my own) I feel a kind of burden cause I doubt folks are stumbling upon posts of mine on social media.

So that I think contributes to my unconscious need to put every possible dish on the menu on the table. Just in case. God forbid the one person who doesn't eat meat or gluten forgets that I always prepare a rice veggie medley no matter what.

This is why I would never have made it in the ad game: Before and After on my latest online ad for RTOWW

I had acquired some credit on my Dramatist Magazine advertising budget so decided to run a small online ad for the upcoming RT Online Writers Workshop which is now accepting applicants. In case you hadn't noticed, the RolandTec.com empire is pretty bare bones so I figured I'd design the ad myself. I mean,. how hard could it be? Having worked a number of years in the Conde Nast Traveler Production Dept. I know my way around the Adobe suite. 

I was sort of surprised that I hadn't heard anything since the ad is suppose to run September through October and imagine my surprise when I found that some very caring and generous staff members at the Guild saw my ad and felt it was not quite up to snuff. And so they remade it and in so doing taught me a thing or two about ad design. (Although, truthfully, the greatest takeaway from this is that hiring a graphic designer must be moved out of my "optional" column and into my "necessities" column, tout suite.

Take a look.

Before:

And