Extra Criticum

How I Read New Scripts

I really should have titled this post: How Do You Read New Scripts?

So how do you? Please post a comment.

Apologies to you if you were waiting for this for a few weeks. I just realized I made this video in response to a question asked in one of my writers workshop. And I made the video weeks ago but forgot to post it. Oh dear. Well, here it is at last. Great question, by the way. I'd never have thought to ask it. 

 

 

Overspecialization has been choking our culture for decades. CoViD_19 offers us a way out of this mess. A way to take back our agency as people who write new plays.

 

Pandemic Pause has taught us many things. Sometimes I think hardly a week goes by without some lesson arriving at my feet. And as I live alone, I feel a responsibility to bend down and pick it up. Take, the business of playwriting, for example. 

I bet if I were to poll all the playwrights on my "inner circle" email list and ask them for a job description, we'd get a lot of talk of drama, the blank page, dialogue, script format, etc. etc. And the American ones at least, would take pains to steer clear of anything remotely related to the directing, designing or performing of their scripts. Heck, many of my friends who are playwrights wouldn't dream of allowing their new play to premiere without first consulting a trusted dramaturg. I remember during my tenure at the Dramatists Guild hearing Mr. Edward Albee on more than one occasion rant against the American Theatre's conspiracy to convince playwrights that they needed help writing their plays.  I must say I always enjoyed that rant and felt he had pretty much nailed it. 

But the problem lives in all corners of life and work in the 21st century and it's literally killing us. It's gotten so completely virulent.

Kia Corthron, Gary Garrison, Tammy Ryan and Sophfronia Scott on How to Reach Us in a 140-char World

Over the past several months, I've had more than one student working on a full-length play or musical that starts out seeming to be one thing only to eventually reveal itself to be something entirely different. And in each, the moment when it becomes clear that we've been toyed with, that the real story is here not back there, the shift is thrilling.

I should say that my writers workshops never banish questions of ambition. I want participants to show up with their real-world dreams for their material out in the open for all to see, up for discussion.

And, when it comes to these types of pieces, I can't help but worry a little. And so I've been wondering.

How is a writer working on material that takes more than 10 pages to reveal its true nature going to have a chance of being picked up in a world of ever-shrinking attention spans, where gatekeepers may not stick around long enough to discover the hidden treasure beyond page 19?

I put this question to four clever writers who all happen to care deeply about teaching and paying it forward for the future of our shared culture.  Here's what each of them had to say:

The Fuel Getting Me Through Pandemic Pause is You

It's taken me a good six months but I think I've finally landed on one of the most effective antidotes to Pandemic Pause Malaise. Since March my teaching activities have slowly increased week by week by week. And in a less direct way, perhaps almost unconsciously, I've been increasing the various opportunities for encountering the creative work of colleagues. 

Some of you have joined us for the monthly celebration of monologue we call Some1Speaking. It's been one of the most important means of staying sane for me. And it wasn't until last night when we heard some amazing work from John Yearley, Sara Israel, Sherry Friedman, Alonzo Lamont and my dear old pal from the days of Naked Brunch, Mr. Rick Park. Rick's piece, by the way, closed out the hour with a riveting performance by a Minneapolis-based actor I'd never met before,  Andre Shoals. Wow. So, yeah, one of the things that keeps me sane these days is the work itself. It's inspiring to hear writers like Yearley and Israel who are really working at the top of their game.

And then the other thing that's huge for me is the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I can see first-hand that simply making the space for this is having an impact. Now, more than ever, I feel we artists need each other. We need to see and hear each other and be reminded of others who, like us, may occasionally fall into deep dark despair but manage against all odds again and again to sit down and make new work.

When I see you creating something powerful it renews my faith in my own ability to do the same.

That's why, as it became clear that this Thanksgiving was going to contribute to bigger hotter fires of infection all across the country, I knew what I had to do. I had to make room in my week for more opportunities to bump up against your new work.

And so from now through the end of February (at least), I'll be hosting a free online Wednesday Gathering from 8PM to 9PM, EST. This will be a kind of open mic but I really hope that visual artists will join us too. Take 5 min. to show us some slides or film or just talk about your practice. We'll gather weekly and in so doing, I have no doubt, we'll each, in our own way emerge renewed and energized.

For security reasons, if you want to join us, you'll need to sign up in advance. Please join the circle.

More or Less... A Year of Challenges & Serendipity

My pants are all tight.

My neighborhood bodega has survived.

I don't sleep through the night anymore.

My notebook of tune ideas is full.

There are friendships I fear may be slowly disappearing.

I've reconnected with people I love in distant time zones.

Productions have stalled.

New voices have found me through Zoom.

My apartment's a mess.

I clean when I want to.

My dear friend has died.

We said what we had to.

I talk to myself prolifically.

I don't care if they hear me.

Tomorrow's uncertain.

Today's more alluring.

An Hour and a Half

After my first sleepless night in my apartment after having been away for awhile, I noted, first the sound of gentle rain out my open bedroom window. Then I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. 

8:00 AM

I debated. Should I get up despite the late hour and enjoy a walk in the rain (as is my thing), or skip it and get to the business of the day ahead.

I opted for the walk.

On my way out of the building I noted with surprise that the overnight doorman was there chatting with a woman with a gorgeous dog waiting patiently.

I turned back toward them and asked a question we don't ask much these days in a world where "smartphones" are ubiquitous.

"Excuse me."

"Yes," they both answered in unison.

"I'm sorry. Do you happen to know what time it is?"

In Memoriam: August van der Becq

My friend August is dead. And it's going to be a long time before I really feel that news. 

We met 40 years ago at an outdoor concert in Connecticut. I don't recall who was playing. Two groups of friends with little overlap had gathered together. She from one group, I from the other. We'd grown up in the same town but had attended different schools and so our paths had not crossed until that warm summer night when, as we both preferred to describe it, we met over a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. 

It's funny. It never dawned on me before but Kentucky Fried Chicken really did loom large in my childhood. The earliest recording I've ever heard of my own voice was, I think recorded when I was two or three years old. Certainly pre-nursery school because in the recording I can be heard saying (with great glee and enthusiasm) "Can we get Kentucky Fried Chicken?" And we're sure the recording was made before I crossed the threshold of any school or daycare because I am asking for this chicken in a decidedly Polish accent. 

But I digress. August and I were both legendary eaters. And so, naturally, when confronted with a bucket of KFC, we lingered. And so, naturally, we started talking. 

Turned out she'd heard a bit about me from one of the older boys who apparently had his eye on me as his next conquest. And, well, it was clear to me even then as the seduction was unfolding, that my new gal pal was meticulously orchestrating the entire affair. She thought I was unaware. But I was rarely unaware. Especially when it came to her machinations.

What to do When All You Wanna Do is Curl Up in a Fetal Position and Cry

These past few weeks have not been easy. I have a very sick friend. We have a very sick leader and a very sick country and the key to survival feels like it goes against the grain of everything we humans are built to do -- touch, listen, show affection, bathe in the warm glow of others.

So, I can't say I've been terribly productive. Because I really haven't. In fact, I found myself so stressed last week that I decided to postpone a show I'd advertised for Halloween night. Bottom line is I recognized about 36 hours ahead of time, that I was pushing forward with the show in order to not allow myself to feel the stress and sadness and anger that's just part of where I am right now. 

And if you've ever tried that sort of self-deception, you know it doesn't really work. So I was starting to resent this little solo musical I'd conceived of as a wholly improvised bit of horror and instead of opening my mind to possibility all I felt was dread. So that was good. I'll do the thing in a month or two and it'll probably (hopefully) be better for it.

Hear 5 New Monologues on the Eve of Election Day 2020

The quest for something closer to the live theatre experience continues with our November 2nd Some1Speaking lineup. Five writers will share a new monologue and then we'll chat for ten or fifteen minutes about what we've just witnessed. Because we encourage our audiences to UNMUTE, the experience at Some1Speaking is a bit more reminiscent of sitting in an actual theatre and becoming part of an audience. 

It really is true. A random collection of strangers gathers together. And by witnessing the same thing -- be it a concert, film or play -- we become one. When all is said and done, we are transformed into an audience. A unit. With a specific shared experience that binds us. That's powerful. 

Here's the November 2nd lineup. Hope to see you there!

Reading Other People's Work Productively

Here's a confession. For years, with the exeption of a handful of favorite writers, when I would pick up a new script to read, nine times out of ten, I'd hate it. And it took me years of reading and hating to finally figure out that it actually wasn't true that nine out of ten scripts I read were awful. The problem was me. 

What I figured out (about a decade ago or so) was that if I open every script I read with a load of unconscious expectations that are based on my own personal style and approach, chances are my disappointment will come quick and forcefully. The silly thing is, I'm convinced many writers I know suffer from this same skewed view. 

Once I recognized that my frustration with many scripts had more to do with individual stylistic choices at odds with my own than with actual bad writing, I was able to relax and find much to admire in many of the scripts I read. 

What are these biases? It took me awhile to recognize them and there may in fact be more than the few I've been able to identify but I will list them here.

Get away from me! Where are you going?! Don't go. Go!

Possibly with the exception of freshmen orientation, those first days at college when I actually believed I might go four years without making a single friend, I have never been as lonely as I am these days. I suppose it's understandable. I've been dividing my time between my apartment in the city and the house I grew up in in Connecticut. 

I generally feel better, happier in my one-bedroom apartment than I do in the creaky quiet of a house that for years so easily absorbed the fits and starts wit and ambition of four pretty big egos. My sister and I each in our own way with a style of our own did manage to fill our share of rooms even if compared to Mom and Dad we might have seemed mere knock-offs. These days to me, the house speaks almost entirely of absence. This is where the quiet engine of my mother's carefully tamed ambition once seethed as she wrote and cut and scribbled out more and cut and stapled and wrote again. Shhh!!

My Larry Kramer Goggles

Couple nights ago the skies above Manhattan opened up to release a veritable deluge. As an unrepressed (or irrepressible) pluviophile I immediately dropped what I was doing, ran to put on my sneakers (in the country flip flops do well in a storm; not so much on the streets of NYC where the water sweeps up fecal matter from birds, dogs, humans... blech!), rip off my glasses (no one wants to try and navigate with streaks of water obscuring one's vision), don a cloth mask and fly down five flights of stairs, past the bewildered doormen and out into the joyful noise of water pouring down hard and fast and everywhere.

I had a marvelous 20min. deluge stroll. The streets emptied (as they generally do when it rains in NYC; even a drizzle can inspire even the toughest New Yorker to cancel dinner plans) and with Sixth Avenue all to myself I pulled my cloth mask down below my chin, tilted my face upward and breathed in the clarity.

It was fabulous.

Until I rounded a corner and came upon the outdoor tent of a Brazilian restaurant where I saw about 50 people dining out under the tents in tables crammed together so tightly that there was barely a foot between each table. I saw not one free spot. And the entire tent was abuzz with laughter, shouting, drinking. And I could not help but view these 20-35 year-olds as one big boisterous pre-funeral party.

The Power of Monologue at this Unique Moment in History

When I decided to launch a nationwide monologue initiative I hoped that writers would be inspired by the call to take the lemons of pandemic shutdown and make some serious lemonade. I hoped. Maybe I'd say I even suspected that the 'Me & My Masks' prompt we used in our call for submissions to the 'Hear Me Out' New American Monologue Competition would inspire writers to write and send us their pieces.

Well... more than 350 submissions (from 43 U.S. States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia and New Zealand) later, the verdict is in. Writers everywhere are ready willing and able to take hold of this unique historical moment and forge a viable path forward for making exciting theatre happen again, one talking head at a time.

And naturally, the infrastructure of this competition has been challenged by the overwhelming flood of entries. [Recently, I shared about the frustrations of having to say "no" to last-minute requests for "a few more minutes" past entry deadline.] Although I'd spent months inviting a hand-picked collection of seasoned actors, directors and writers from both stage and screen to serve on our National Circle of Judges, the circle was not going to be big enough to evaluate so many entries.

So I did what I've done since the beginning of this initiative. I reached out to some trusted leaders in the field, people like Gary Garrison, Kate Snodgrass, Faye Sholiton, Vicky Pittman, John Wooten, Paul Outlaw, Jeremy Dobrish, and Teresa Coleman Wash. And boy have they delivered!

Submission Deadlines When Life is Lived Online

Yesterday we closed the submissions window on the first annual 'Hear Me Out' New American Monologue Competition. And while I felt thrilled and humbled by the number of entries we received from writers in 43 U.S. States, Canada, Europe, South America and as far away as New Zealand, I have to admit I found it heartbreaking having to refuse what amounted to an avalanche of last-minute requests for special exceptions to our strict Noon deadline. 

First, I feel it important to explain our rationale for refusing to accept post-deadline submissions. I'm here to testify to the fact that for every one person who may send a request for special treatment after having run up against the submission gates swinging shut, there are always at least a dozen reticent folks who feel the same frustration and disappointment yet accept the result as simply an unfortunate fact of life, something to use as a lesson and hopefully avoid in the future. For those of us accustomed to taking "no" for an answer swiftly and and as quietly as possible, the idea that only those few who are quick to complain about spotty internet, incomplete social media posts, or competing life challenges would be let in feels cruel and unfair.

The only way to make a deadline meaningful is to stick to it, no matter how painful it may be.

And this brings me to my main point.