EXTRA CRITICUM

The Difference Between a Consumer and an Audience Member

A friend who is a Tony voter (Yes, I'm that old.) recently sent me a curious text. It read:

Want to see a Tony show June 1?
Trust me. You'll love it cause I'll choose it.

After a brief impulse to press her to reveal which show she was inviting me to, it occurred to me that if I could set aside my ego and my pride which whisper meaningless nothings like: 

You are too important a person with limited hours
in the day to waste an entire evening on
some sub-par work! What if it's something empty and
 heartless and tedious? You'll never get those hours back!

On the other hand...

If I thought about it differently, it is a unique kind of openness we feel when we sit in the growing darkness as the house lights fade and the show is about to begin. Blissfully ignorant of what this thing we're going to witness is about or possibly even what its title might be...

Name America's No. 1 Underwriter of the Arts

At last night's session of this year's Self-Production Boot Camp (for members of the Dramatists Guild of America), I posed a loaded question I never tire of asking because the responses I get always offer new insights into the current state of our culture.

We were in the middle of a session on fundraising when I interrupted the flow to pose a question that I don't think enough of us have ever even considered. 

Who is the greatest subsidizer of the Arts in the United States?

The Zoom room echoed with the sounds of stunned (stumped) silence. So, put another way:

From which sector does the mother lode of Arts underwriting come from?

One of the things that's most thrilling about teaching Self-Production Boot Camp is that I get to swim in the current of where the newest work is taking shape these days. The motivated, focused and endlessly inventive creative artists who are drawn to even consider the possibility that they could (or maybe even should?) produce their next new work give me hope for a better future. 

And so when Wednesday comes around I always look forward to those 90 minutes when I get to absorb as much of their optimism and ambition as I wish.

I'm excited to share another Zoom-based monologue from the pandemic

So, I'm kind of on this roll. Or kick. Or something. I don't know. I've been writing and performing monologues about the past couple years of pandemic insanity... written specifically for the flat rectangular stage that is the Zoom box. 

And I'm loving it.

Somehow it feels like Zoom is the perfect sandbox for me to play in when exploring various aspects of what the hell we've all just been through. 

I first presented one of these in August 2021 when I premiered Danger Round This Corner at Some1Speaking. And it felt cathartic creating a character who felt as stuck as I did—albeit in different ways unique to him—in a new reality defined by pandemic isolation. And because we always have the audience unmute in the Hear Me Out Black Box  it was seriously fun performing and riding the waves of laughter. 

Then, this past summer I gave several performances of A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored, for which I'm now writing a companion piece to be performed in person. But Nagging was also Zoom-site-specific. And I had a blast trying to make a 55-min. monologue feel more like a dialogue with the small audience gathered each night.

Monday I'll present my latest Zoom monologue, Tag, which begins when a sort-of-ex shows up unannounced in this guy's personal Zoom meeting. Join us if you're free. I'd love to hear what you think. 

Dear Creative Soul: Look Beyond Your Own Next Thing

Dear Artists:

When was the last time you showed up to take your place in the audience?

In the Spring of 2020, we were in crisis. And by "we," I could mean everyone cause everyone was. But in this context the "we" I'm referring to specifically are playwrights and solo performers. As the pandemic descended on us all, I created Hear Me Out Monologues with my eye squarely on two goals:

1. To provide a means by which the people who write plays might not lose touch with their audience during pandemic lockdown.
2. To provide theater lovers and theater makers with an online community where we could be reminded of our core values.

And today, we're continuing the mission online because we found unexpected riches to be mined from this unique thing we call the Zoom Black Box Theater. For example, connections across time zones from as far as New Zealand to Alaska to London to Tel Aviv and back again have been made between writers, performers and audiences. And we've all gained a more nuanced appreciation of what it means to see and hear stories unfold in the presence of a live audience, an audience unmuted that we can see and hear. 

I've personally grown as an artist, at least in part, as I've learned to value my own role as an audience member. The most powerful work I've produced as a writer or performer can be directly linked to lessons I've learned watching, listening and responding to the work of others in our Hear Me Out Black Box. 

And I know this is true for so many of you.

Still, it saddens me how for some out there, old habits die hard.

There are some who only show up on nights that they themselves have work of their own to present.

The artist who shows up only to hear his own voice performed is like the human being in conversation who is silent only while waiting for his next opportunity to speak. 

To be in dialogue with a community, an artist needs to want to listen -- to the audience, to other artists, to the world at large.

When was the last time you showed up thrilled to be a member of an audience?

If you can't recall when, it might be time to make a change.

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.

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)

 

Adding Music to Our Some1Speaking Brew

Pinching myself at all this talent: Barbara Kessler, Rev. Yolanda, Ann Klein, Anke Summerhill, Patrice Haan and Sloan Wainwright!  (What?!)

Our first Monday of the month monologue series Some1Speaking has been running almost three years now. It began as our finalist judges arrived at the very first slate of prize winning monologues for the Hear Me Out Monologue Competition and I took a look at the dozens of brilliant pieces that hadn't won and realized we needed you all to experience the magic of a few minutes in the presence of these unforgettable characters for yourselves.

Now, almost three years in and I'm so excited that some absolutely kick-ass singer-songwriters have agreed to swing by and start each show with one original song performed live with no fancy equipment, just an acoustic instrument and their naked voice singing directly into the Hear Me Out Zoom Black Box. 

On March 6 we'll be joined by fabulous singer-songwriter Ann Klein.
https://annkleinmusic.biz/home

01 Tango Wrangler

April 3rd, when Janet Kenney will be performing her own monologue (which she developed in my most recent Advanced Monologue Workshop) her dear friend, the super-talented songwriter

Barbara Kessler will be our special musical guest April 3rd.
https://www.barbarakessler.com/

And I have to pinch myself as the talent just pours in with their generous sharing of their gifts. Here are some of the other amazing singer-songwriters who have already said yes to my audacious request.

Sloan Wainwright
https://www.sloanwainwright.com/

 

 

 

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.

Rest in Peace Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach has left the planet. Upon hearing the news this morning, my breath caught in my throat and I found it hard to move. I've never met the man. I know very little about him as a person. But I'd be hard pressed to name a composer in my lifetime who approaches his reach and there's something else about Burt Bacharach's music that ensures his legacy will be felt for generations. Bacharach is like the 20th C. Mozart. His craft was impeccable. His compositions all held together so beautifully without any need of duct tape or super glue. Like the finest furniture maker whose tongue and groove construction just holds together on its own, his songs were the closest thing to perfect construction since Mozart. 

And he was almost as prolific as Mozart. 

Here for your listening pleasure is one of my faves, which I remember singing along to in my pajamas at age 7.

 

Now more than ever: Discomfort is your friend.

In the Age of the Algorithm more and more of our waking lives are quietly being orchestrated by machine learning that seeks above all else to clear a path of least resistance between where each day begins and where it's most likely to end.

Given this new paradigm, we would all be wise to make  a conscious effort to introduce a little more discomfort into our daily lives. 

What happens when you stray a ways away from your comfort zone?

If you're like most of us, you may experience some anxiety at first because if, for example, you're attempting to learn a skill that doesn't come naturally or working on a project way outside of your usual milieu, you might worry about... well, about falling flat on your face and the shame that surely would follow.

But if you find a moment to pause and breathe chances are you may consider the possibility that since this isn't really your area of expertise, the world at large very likely isn't expecting much of anything from you.

The freedom that can fill us suddenly when we recognize we're doing something that no one (no person/no algorithm) would ever expect us to do at all, let alone do well, is like no other.

Several years ago, at a Producers Guild Conference, I had the opportunity to sit at a small round table with David Eick, Executive Producer of the brilliant television series, Battlestar Galactica. And I asked him how it happened to be that a TV show was able to weave in so much truly profound and deep thinking on the subject of what it means to be human. His answer surprised me.

"Simple," he offered without skipping a beat. "We were on the SyFy Channel. No one was paying attention. So we did whatever we liked."

When you try something new or something you're not even sure you have the ability to do or you try something on a whim without even knowing for certain why it is you want to attempt this... your uncertainty, your discomfort, the endless horizon of question marks you face can often deliver gifts you had no idea were a thing.

Recent Off-Path Experiences of Mine

That's one reason why I try to take a workshop or a class at least once a year that will encourage me to get out of my comfort zone. Just before the pandemic I took a glass blowing class at Brooklyn Glass and discovered pretty quickly that 2,000-degree flames scare the hell out of me and make it very difficult for my creative juices to flow. 

Every since I saw her astonishing performance in The Fighter, I've kind of been in awe of Melissa Leo so when I heard that  a film festival for which I sometimes serve as a juror was offering a 3-session Zoom acting workshop taught by Leo with a class size of 12, I grabbed my credit card and signed up. What a wonderful little respite in the midst of the first year of the pandemic this was. Leo proved to be every bit as intense, intelligent, funny and insightful as you'd expect and despite her frustration (and ours to a lesser extent) with the idea of acting on Zoom, I learned quite a bit. And I enjoyed meeting some wonderful actors from all over the world.

I would never say this to your face but know this: If someone's produced your work they notice how your do or don't promote.

A past winner of the Hear Me Out Monologue Competition recently sent me an invite to an upcoming production of their work and I immediately went to the theater's website to check it out because once I'm struck by an artist's talent, I'm interested for the long haul.

I was delighted to find that in the brief bio paragraph for the writer, the Hear Me Out prize history was included prominently.

But this is not always the case. And of course, I would like to think that I'm a big enough person that such things wouldn't matter to me but I'd be lying if I said that when the opposite happens--if, for example, I find myself seated in the audience waiting for a new play to begin by an author I've worked with and my theater date informs me that we're nowhere to be found in the bio--it does bother me. 

I still stay for the play. But I can't help but feel a little stung.

So... take it from me. Everyone cares whether you remember to acknowledge collaborations from your past and it matters that you use the most complete language.

How Do You Protect and Nourish the Most Precious Commodity Any Artist Has?

The most precious commodity we have as artists is our ability to see things differently. The artist looks at a pile of junk hundreds of others have absent-mindedly walked around on their morning commute and finds within it whole universes. The artist hears the same middle-of-the-road slogans we all bathe in all day every day and finds deep within them or around them or because of them new and amazing discoveries about what it means to be human.

In short, to be an artist of importance, you need a mind of your own and in order to cultivate a mind of your own it is essential that you disconnect from the prevailing narratives which grow narrower and less remarkable every day.

I hate to be the bearer of  bad news kids but as far as I can tell we are living through one of the swiftest and most efficient periods of cultural and intellectual closing ever experienced in modern human history. If the Renaissance was a period of extended and unprecedented opening the early 21st Century is most certainly the opposite. In fact, it's difficult to identify even one controlling force in the construction and organization of our modern lives which does not in ways sometimes subtle and sometimes clumsy nudge our collective unconscious toward greater predictability and mediocrity. 

If you care about your work, about the culture at large and about managing to carve out a satisfying existence in the Age of the Algorithm, you have no choice but to consciously choose everything and anything which might support your quirky, unpredictable, independent and often inconvenient way of looking at the world. 

How do you do this?

Prioritize any input yet untouched by the Algorithms. 

What do I mean by this? Whatever you feed your mind will ultimately nudge your way of thinking in this or that direction. 

Here are some examples of choices you may find yourself making. Get in the habit of asking yourself how each potential use or your precious time came into your consciousness. Chances are, if mass media played a role in it at all, it will lack much in the way of nourishment for a mind that finds inspiration in the most unexpected places. 

I'm not saying avoid mass media entirely. But I am saying a diet consisting of nothing but mass marketed culture will do much to mold you (slowly over the years) into an easy uncritical consumer of whatever it is the machine would prefer you consume. And, let's face it, when you accept such a bland and safe role for yourself the Algorithms and the corporations who control them will reward you immediately and handsomely. And your rewards will be widely shared via social media so as to encourage others to follow in your footsteps. Because of course, corporations are  not in the business of ensuring the survival and thriving of an idiosyncratic unpredictable and less efficient culture. No, no, no. Unpredictability and inefficiency are fast becoming dirty words in the lexicon of our brave new world. 

SHAKE UP YOUR WAY OF SEEING

vs.

BUY WHATEVER IT IS THEY'RE SELLING

REPOST: Attention Playwrights: That Monologue Does Not Belong to You

This post originally appeared in September 2021. Reposting now in conjunction with:

2022 Hear Me Out Monologue Fest - Nov. 25 & Dec. 5

+

Advanced Monologue Workshop. Dec. 12, 17, 21 and 28

 

So, if you read this blog much you know that since the dawn of this pandemic I've been on a kind of OCD Mission Impossible to encourage playwrights and screenwriters--really anyone who writes scripts, who tells stories this way--to give monologue a closer look because, well... as the pandemic shutdown demonstrated so well, when the expensive and time-consuming elements associated with productions disappear and the community at large finds itself communicating via Zoom, the unique work of the playwright becomes more essential than ever. 

No lights. No sets. No costumes. No stage. Yet still feels like theatre. How come?

If people are waiting for something akin to theatre (as we once knew it) to find them and move them through the Zoom box, then who is more equipped to provide this than the playwright?

After all it's the playwright who engineers our catharsis. If I am pummeled to my core at the final curtain that's because the playwright wanted it. It's the playwright who understands, perhaps more keenly and more viscerally than any of us, the bond between life as we live it and life as we wish it to be. Our refusal to acknowledge that there might be a difference between these two things has been selling theatre tickets since man discovered fire and gathered everyone around to talk about it.

 

The Festival of Playwrights Making Lemonade from Lemons

The 3rd Annual Hear Me Out Monologue Competition Finalist Winners will be presented over two nights this year: Nov 25 and Dec. 5.