EXTRA CRITICUM

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.

Writing Requires Listening... to everyone including yourself.

Although people looking for a writing teacher often find their way to me, the truth is I don't know that writing itself is something that can be taught. The skill of good (or great) writing starts with listening. Listening to the deepest part of you where the truth of your intentions lives. Sometimes there's a lot of noise coming between a writer and the successful execution of the idea. 

Common Sources of Distracting Noise Coming Between You and Your Vision

Imagine you need to write a synopsis of your latest screenplay. What might be some of the most unhelpful sources of noise, noise that distracts you from effectively coming up with great language to describe your new screenplay? Here are some examples of noisy voices that live inside your head and keep you up at night.

There's nothing original about your ideas.

Nobody is going to want to see this.

You better not get too specific or you'll scare off half your audience.

Your work on this latest script has taken a lot out of you and people need to understand that.

If I was really talented I wouldn't have to waste time writing marketing copy. There would be an army of professionals rushing in to do it for me.

My original impulse for starting this project dominates my view and keeps me from seeing just how far I veered off of my original idea.

I'm not honestly sure what this movie is going to be about in the end.

Someone in my writers group told me I must not forget to emphasize X, Y, or Z.

My Approach to Teaching Writers Starts With You

I have no interest in teaching you how to write like me. Nor do I imagine you want to write like anyone other than yourself. So, the primary focus when I work with a writer is always digging our way down until we uncover your deepest goal for whatever project you've brought to the RT Private Studio.

It all comes down to listening. I listen carefully to what's on your pages as well as what's not on those pages. And eventually a picture of an artist (you) comes into view. My job is to help you see what I see at the core of everything you write.

Now through Thanksgiving Day, Enroll in Advanced Monologue

Dec 12, 17, 21 and 28.

“So many playwriting development opportunities focus on the forest rather than the trees, leaving playwrights stranded with a solid idea but the inability to communicate it effectively. Roland sees every tree in the forest and meticulously helps playwrights communicate precisely and artfully.”
— Laura King, playwright

“No one understands the fundamental engine that drives all monologue better than Roland Tec. His vast experience as a theatre maker and as a filmmaker give him a unique ability to keep any writer honest. Study with Tec and inevitably you’ll begin to understand your own work better than you ever have.”
— Jared Katsiane, filmmaker

“I performed my monologue that night and I heard the laughter and immediately felt relaxed and focused. I emailed a link to the YouTube to a friend and he asked: ‘Where did you get that audience?’  I got it from Roland.”
— J. Lois Diamond, playwright

FULL SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION INFO

"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:

When is communication most meaningful or memorable? The most powerful monologues contain within them: evidence that we are not alone.

What makes for the most compelling monologues? The same thing that makes for the most compelling dialogue. Anything that points to actual human communication.

All Dialogue is Action. We Speak in Service of Intention.

I open my mouth to speak to you. I have an agenda. Something in mind I intend to communicate with you specifically. And being human, of course, your reaction to my words as they spill out of me will never be entirely predictable... never quite what I may have expected.

Before. When I rehearsed or imagined the conversation and how it might go, I may have braced myself for resistance. Or I may have imagined my logic to be so airtight that as I plan what I'd like to say I may actually imagine any resistance simply crumbling or dissolving in the face of such powerful and indisputable wisdom. The possibilities for what we might hope for or expect or seek from others' reactions to whatever we have to say are virtually infinite.

But perfect frictionless agreement? I suppose if I were addressing a mirror, I could hope to be met with that kind of predictable assent. 

The Response to Our Words is Never Predictable

The beauty of writing scripts is that, like life, they are populated with individual human beings, each with their own lived experience which continuously feeds into a set of evolving world views, ideologies, moralities, priorities and areas of reactivity. Put two of your characters in a situation in which they're both emotionally invested and there's no end to the mayhem and mischief that may ensue.

The Roland Tec Inner Circle Transitions to a Patreon Membership Tier

As I thought about whether to move the RT Inner Circle to Patreon I had to stop and think about everything I'd been producing, presenting, performing or hosting over the past few years. 

Would the offerings stack up and strike all of you as worth it?

Patreon offers artists a reliable revenue stream (albeit a modest one) by inviting members of the artist's sphere of influence to make a monthly financial contribution to the general health and well-being of the artist and by extension everything they create and offer to the world each year. 

It's a tiered model so, those most casually affiliated contribute something you may hardly notice. In our case we set the lowest tier at a $3 monthly contribution.

$3 per month amounts to a little more than $.09 a day. Hopefully anyone who has found joy or value of any kind in any of my workshops or the Hear Me Out programming won't hesitate to join us.

I decided to simply keep the three existing benefits of RT Inner Circle membership as has been the case for free for all these years: subscription to the semi-monthly RT Inner Circle e-Notes, priority notice of contests and other submission opportunities and the exclusive RT Inner Circle Comp Ticket promo codes which allow you to pay zero at many of the online events I host.

This choice, I hope, sends a clear message:

That thing you were getting for free all this time now has a $3 price tag but no one is going to force you to jump on board. You can choose to continue in the RT Inner Circle without signing up on Patreon but I really hope you'll seriously consider enrolling at Patreon, thereby contributing to a community that chooses to honor the value of what I've been making happen for people with a small outlay of cash each month. 

 

It's never simple when something you've been getting for free is suddenly protected by a Paywall. I remember the first time I clicked to read an article in the New York Times online only to be suddenly asked if I had paid for a subscription. It felt like a betrayal.

That's the last thing I want to make you feel. So, if you wish to remain in the RT Inner Circle and avail yourself of certain opportunities, announcements and bits of professional advice contained in the e-Notes and on the YouTube channel, no one's going to be policing you, waiting to stop you.

But, some of the things I've been giving away free of charge, like Wednesday Gathering, for example, have never been free of cost to me. So, in order to continue to drop in on the occasional Wednesday, all we ask is that you set aside $36 a year for the privilege. I hope you'll agree that that's negligible compared to what it means to you to know that the gathering is here. Because of course, the Wednesday Gatherings are not a writer's workshop, like the Roland Tec Online Writers Workshop in which an instructor (me) has carefully constructed a course in order to result in a specific result (your completion of a specific goal for your work over a six month period).

As I said, before launching on Patreon, I thought it might help for me to make a comprehensive list of all the things I'd offered the community since the start of this pandemic.

Here's what I was able to remember:

Only URL You'll Ever Need to Access All Things Roland Tec on the WWW

If you're one of the dozens of folks who've emailed in frustration at not being able to locate a project, deadline, video, schedule or anything else related to a Roland Tec enterprise, you're in luck. As of today, you need only ever remember one address.

R O L A N D  T E C  U M B R E L L A  .  c o m

Navigating the Season of Submissions

Late Running GIFfrom Late GIFs

Every year around this time, as we start to notice the days growing shorter signaling an end to Summer, my teaching schedule fills up with writers eager to meet the moment. What moment is that?

It's that time of year when lots of submissions are due for development opportunities, grants and competitions. 

Recently, a favorite student of mine, someone I'll call Hal had booked time with me to prepare a major submission. This involves us reviewing writing samples together as well as the dreaded Artistic Statement. (I'll be the first to admit, by the way, that I suck at writing artistic statements; and yet people seek out my help so frequently that it almost proves the old adage: Those who can't do, teach.)

Seriously though, there's no magic secret to all this. It's simply a matter of reading someone else's material with care and then reflecting back to them what it is you see. We all have the capacity to do this. It's just that most of us lack the patience and curiosity to do it well.

The other day Hal reached out to cancel their appointment with me. It was a surprise to me because I know Hal to be a supremely hard-working and detail oriented writer. 

It was Hal's reason for canceling that inspired me to write this post. Because it contains within it what I consider to be one of the biggest challenges most artists struggle with.

"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.

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And now he's bringing half his office.

#thepowerofvideo #naggingfeeling #spreadtheword #jan6july6

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.

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.

3 Broad Principles Courtesy of some RT Online Writers' Scripts

Reviewing scripts for tomorrow's Roland Tec Online Writers Workshop and three common problems I see in many many early drafts caught my eye. So I figured I'd post 3 videos to explain them. 

Take a look and see if you recognize any one of these in your own work.

 

 

 

 

 

The sign reads: Welcome. You are safe here.

When Ukrainian refugees first disembark into the train station in Przemysl, Poland, the first thing they see is a huge sign that reads:

WELCOME. YOU ARE SAFE HERE.

The sign is meant to be a comforting gesture of goodwill. And for the time being it most certainly is. But if the tragic history of Europe in the last century is any indication, safety will surely ebb and flow like the tides.

When my father was in medical school in the Polish city of Vilna, the rising specter of a Nazi-fied Germany was troubling but not an immediate threat. Then in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and WWII could no longer be wished away, an unexpected thing happened to Vilna. 

It found itself suddenly the capitol of the newly independent neutral country of Lithuania. A kind of a trade off had occurred. Lithuania would be given its sovereignty and Hitler would be allowed to plow through the rest of Poland with impunity.

And suddenly Vilnius (as it was referred to in Lithuanian) found itself welcoming wave after wave of panicked Jews from Poland. They flooded into Lithuania because Lithuanian neutrality would protect them from Hitler's brutality. And they came to Vilnius referring to it as Vilna (its Polish name), perhaps also clinging to its informal nickname as "The Jerusalem of Lithuania."

In 2007 I had the rare opportunity to live and work in Vilnius for 3 months while assisting Edward Zwick in the production of the film adaptation of my mother's book, Defiance: The Story of the Largest Armed Rescue of Jews by Jews during WWII. My parents and sister Leora came to visit the set for a weekend. On my day off, Dad gave us a tour of the parts of the city that were still recognizable 70 years after he had volunteered as a waiter in the pop-up soup kitchen of the Jewish Relief Agency.

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.