On Procrastination

This is how I always point at Jeremy.

Saturday afternoon, I moderated a panel discussion at Cleveland Public Theatre called Considering the Source: Creating With Existing Material, presented by the Dramatists Guild as part of CPT’s annual Entry Point festival of new works.

Panelists included Nina Domingue, Eric Schmiedl, and Jeremy Paul, and we picked apart their creative process for (among other works) Nina’s The Absolutely Amazing True Adventures of Ms. Joan Southgate, Eric’s work adapting the novels of Kent Haruf, and Jeremy’s recent interactive production of Dante’s Inferno.

Nina Domingue

The panel itself went well. I felt a little stiff, but at least I was prepared, and providing equal time to each panelist, and between the four of us there was a wide variety of material to be discussed.

I had been invited to moderate this panel a few weeks ago, a few days before mother died. I said yes. I thought it was crazy, I was fairly certain her death would come very soon, did I have any business committing to an event I may need to cancel? Would I have time for this? Where would I be in my headspace in two weeks time? I said yes.

As it turned out, it was a good decision to have made. I would have regretted saying no. Ever since January 2017, when CPT first produced Entry Point, the weekend has been a creative oasis in the midst of a dark time.

That first year I acted in someone else’s work, my eleven year-old son attended and has strong, positive memories of the works he experienced there -- and he was there because the female-identified members of our family were in Washington, D.C., taking a stand for women’s rights. To paraphrase Emile M. Cioran, “A new play is a nation’s suicide, postponed.”

Shortly before the panel began this past Saturday, Molly Andrews-Hinders, CPT Artistic Associate, asked me how my Test Flight piece was coming along, which is to say my new script The Witches. Test Flight is in April, and rehearsals begin soon. It was a perfectly supportive question, we were catching up, it was not an inquisition. But for the briefest moment, I felt like the teacher had asked about my progress on a term paper that I had not yet started.

The truth is I haven’t written a word for The Witches since November. And I do not feel guilty about that. I had made a promise to myself to complete the first draft by the end of calendar 2019. Tragedy intervened, and I told myself to leave it on the shelf awhile or else I would go mad. It will be there when I am ready to return.

When I have two assignments looming it can be difficult to concentrate on either one. When I have three, I’ll just scroll Facebook for eight hours.

Sometimes I will procrastinate on the next thing due by writing the thing that is due later, which can be very helpful as when I finally do bear down on my immediate project, at least I know I’ve made headway into the next one.

This winter I have concentrated on the very next deadline, fully aware there was one final deadline to meet before I could think about spring. These included:

• The November Witches reading draft
• The production draft of Sherlock Holmes
• Scripts for the Christmas Carol writing contest
• The Sherlock Holmes teacher resource guide
• The grad school application
• Adapting three chapters of a children’s book
• The source material panel
• The eulogy for my mother

Cleveland Public Theatre (2022)

I have thought about my mother’s eulogy for months. Even before we knew she was dying. Yet by yesterday morning I had only jotted down a few phrases, and I woke with a hangover. I had one, painful morning to create a public declaration of who I believe my mother is. By 10 AM I was writing it. At 2:30 PM I was reading it. They tell me it was good.

Another deadline met, another promise kept.

UPDATE: Following a two year delay, "The Absolutely Amazing and True Adventures of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate" written and performed by Nina Domingue and directed by Nathan Henry opened at Cleveland Public Theatre on Friday, April 21, 2022. 

Who Owns the Story? (panel discussion)

From left: Bobgan, Ortiz, Coble & Salter

My friend and colleague Eric Coble sat charmingly tilted to one side between playwrights Milta Ortiz and Nikkole Salter during last Saturday’s panel discussion on appropriation and authenticity, Who Owns the Story?

Presented as part of Cleveland Public Theatre’s Entry Point weekend of new works, and produced in association with the Dramatists Guild and HowlRound, the event was moderated by CPT artistic director Raymond Bobgan.

Ortiz is Outreach Director for Borderlands Theater in Tuscon, AZ, and a playwright whose work-in-progress Water (co-created by Marc David Pinate, a co-production between Borderlands and CPT) was presented in part at Entry Point this year, one of the plays for which I helped facilitate post-show discussion. I have also read her powerful and timely work Más on New Play Exchange.

Salter is an Obie Award-winning writer and Pulitzer finalist (Continuum) who is currently working on a commission from CPT and the National New Play Network titled Breakout Session, a play inspired by the Cleveland Police Department consent decree from the U.S. Justice Center.

The topic was who owns the story. But the real question is who tells the story. Ortiz, a Salvadoran American, and Salter, an African American, told several nuanced, relevant stories about their experiences with appropriation, including those where they themselves were the appropriators; which is to say, where and when they were telling someone else’s story.

I myself have appropriated. I mean, anyone who has a retold a told has appropriated. Right? Like Eric I sat charmingly tilted to one side.

Further, the more important question may be not who owns the story, but who gets to tell it. Today, if a white man tells a story, any story, it is much more likely to get produced -- and to get attention -- than that from a person of color. So if a white person chooses to tell the story of another race, walk, culture, or so on, you must ask not only why they are telling the story, but why isn’t a person from that race, walk, culture the one telling it?

It is, as Salter pointed out, about the power dynamics in our nation. As writers, we must ask ourselves, "why am I writing this?"

Take the recently-announced Academy Award nominations, which include Black Panther and Green Book. The first is an Afro-Futurist adventure created prominently by Africa-descended artists, the other a story of segregation created by a white director and screenwriters which has been criticized for being a typical “white savior” movie.

More people came out to see Black Panther, but Green Book has already won a best drama award at the Golden Globes.

Does that mean that one is limited to writing only characters from their own ethnic, racial, cultural background? I don’t know. Maybe? Why are you writing that character?

Coble wrote the outrageous satire Fairfield, about the worst Black History Month pageant ever, to examine issues of race in the American middle-class, and by his own account his first draft was criticized by African American readers as being too kind to the black characters, that he needed to be an equal opportunity offender.

This is my basic criticism with Clybourne Park, the acclaimed, unauthorized sequel to A Raisin In the Sun. It is ostensibly about race (for which its white playwright received a Pulitzer Prize) but the script is peopled with terrible white people who talk too much and blameless black people who talk very little.

I would like to write about the world around me, and include all the people in it, be they black, white, Latinx, gay, straight, trans, Muslim, atheist -- everyone. So, how does a playwright like myself know when what we are writing is appropriate or appropriating?

“Are you asking for a rule book?” Bobgan deadpanned, which got a laugh. Because it’s true. We want guidance and permission. We want a rule book. And we can’t have one. Why should we? How is it someone else’s responsibility to train me in sensitivity, to tell me it’s okay, or worse yet, to do the work to fix my play?

It is the white playwright’s responsibility, any playwright’s responsibility, to know their job, to know what they are doing, to be in the world and to be aware of what it is they are writing, and why.

Watch the entire panel discussion here:

Entry Point (2019)

Writing down the words.

For the third year, Cleveland Public Theatre has produced Entry Point, a kind of weekend fringe festival where you can experience anywhere from one full length to maybe five, fifteen minutes vignettes in the course of a single evening.

These are all new works, or work in development, staged simply but professionally, and an important part of each of the three nights (Thursday through Saturday) are the tightly curated and brief post-performances feedback sessions.

Two years ago I was an actor at Entry Point, in someone else’s piece. Last year I wrote a piece with Chennelle. This year I was invited to facilitate a couple evenings of post-show discussion.

The post-show talkback, for better or worse, has become a modern theatre event, or perhaps I should say add-on, or thing. The pre-show discussion (usually more like a lecture than a chat) is a staple at companies like Cleveland Play House, Great Lakes Theater and Dobama, providing context and knowledge for the show. These are quite popular even though they can turn a three-hour evening into a four-hour one.

The post-show talkback is for the die-hard theatergoer (one who would could to sit some more rather than immediately grab a drink, which is what I usually need to do) to discuss the issues raised in the production, or in the case of a new work, to provide a response which the creator may find useful.

The post-performance discussions I managed on Thursday and Friday evenings were very different experiences. There were fewer folks in general on Thursday night, and the moment I stepped out to begin at least half of the audience got up to dash onto the next thing, which is fine, you can do that, but I was left reaching for a response from a small number of people.

I’m okay with silence. My job is teaching actors how to lead discussions with reluctant or disinterested children. But I was taken aback by the large number of those who did not even choose to remain.

(Full disclosure: I, too, will dash from post-show discussions, especially when the audience is mostly white; confirmation bias is a thing and I don’t need to sit among a bunch of middle-aged Caucasians affirming their own personal goodness. But, I digress.)

Because this is a creative process, and a creative evening, which Raymond, the artistic director, makes very clear at the beginning of the evening with an opening speech in the lounge which has become a delightful tradition. The audience is here to bear witness. It’s why you drove in this weather to get here.

Friday was much different, with full houses, and even at those performances at the end of the evening that had fewer attendants (folks were ready to get that drink on) they stayed and responded with enthusiasm and spirit. There’s a part where the facilitator is to write down words that the piece inspires (see photo, above) and I could barely keep up, they just kept coming at me. The playwrights must have been delighted.

The biggest challenge for me was the taking in of commentary without offering my own viewpoint. In the residency program we engaged the comment, and then play devil's advocate, pressing for alternate viewpoints of challenging assumptions. The job here was to encourage thought, field response, and move on. I deeply hope these post-performance events were helpful to these artists.

Yesterday afternoon Cleveland Public, in association with Howlround and the Dramatists Guild presented a brace of panel discussion in the James Levin Theatre, and it was exciting to see how full the audience was, especially with the impending storm.

Next up: Who Owns The Story?

Entry Point (2018)

Rehearsal for "The Lost Diary."

One of the happier surprises last year was Entry Point at Cleveland Public Theatre. When they proposed the idea of inviting audiences to attend a weekend of short scenes from new works, unfinished works, only recently started works -- and then provide feedback, I was skeptical. Who would want to see that?

A lot of people, as it turned out. Better than that it was amazing, exciting, adventurous, like a miniature fringe festival all in one building on a frigid winter’s evening. With free beer!

My participation was as a performer in someone else’s new work, work that has moved into the Test Flight phase (story for another time, perhaps) and also as an audience member. I also got to enjoy the experience from the point of view of my (then) eleven year-old son, who really enjoyed all the different works he experienced, as well as hanging out and having soda pop in the temporary yet cozy lounge that had been created in the downstairs “storefront” space.

Also, and perhaps most importantly for the writers and creators, each brief scene concluded with a strictly moderated feedback session which provided the kind of audience response that was direct and, so it appeared to me, extremely useful.

So, of course, I wanted to get involved this year as a writer.

But not alone. So much work I witnessed last year was collaborative; collaboratively written or devised, with movement and music. I can write a play, host a reading, take notes, edit and move forward. What would justify participation in this unique and uniquely visible process of creation?

Collaboration, of course. To that end I entered into this process with a partner. For a couple years now I have worked with Chennelle Bryant-Harris; she directed one of the scenes for our immersive Love In Pieces, she directed me in a refreshingly new performance of I Hate This, and I directed her in Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio).

Now we co-write. And I am so glad.

I am glad, not least of which reasons is because the material is dark, and plunging into a world of paranoia, hate and violence is not an adventure I wanted to wade through alone.

And where are we going? What is this dark material? What is The Lost Diary? Yeah, we’ll get to that.

It’s enough today to report who I get to work with, which includes Kelly Elliott as our director and two splendid actors, Bianca McElroy and David Obney.

Now here’s the thing; right after out first rehearsal, my co-writer, director and I headed to the bar next door to the theater to talk. What happened, exactly? What was the incident? Why was he found like that? Who is she? There is a mystery, and we don’t know the end yet but we were actively figuring it out.

On Sunday, Chennelle and I met for coffee and bagels and hammered out even more of the history. What was the plan, and what is the goal? Traditionally, this is a discussion I have entirely in my own head. It was like a whole new world.

One rehearsal, and we have picked up the writing from where we left it when we handed the Entry Point rehearsal draft to Kelly. It’s not even work that will be performed next weekend, but that’s the thing, we’re not even waiting for the event to move the script forward, the work is already continuing.

Entry Point will be presented at Cleveland Public Theatre, January 18-20, 2018.

Twenty-Eighteen

Boxing Day, a day to assess, to look, forward, to make plans, to try and figure out where it’s all going.

I need to return to the regular habit of writing by hand every morning for thirty minutes. I used to think I need to create blocks of time -- hours, say, on a Saturday, to accomplish the writing. This is not practical, however, and was only rarely successful.

When I began writing longhand a little bit, every single day, the work mounted up. It was a highly productive time. But it takes discipline, and sleep, and each have been lacking the past two calendar years.

I have always written but since I began writing in earnest -- ten years ago -- the productions have begun, the publications followed, and the opportunity to engage and collaborate with numerous companies in town.

In the past year I had my third publication (The Secret Adversary at YouthPLAYS) revamped by website (Thank you, Dreamhost Remixer) and created work presented at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage and Talespinner Children’s Theatre.

There are only a few things in the coming year that I am able to report, though I am in negotiation to revive previously produced works, and have made a few proposals for the coming season.

Chennelle Bryant-Harris and I are co-writing a new play, The Lost Diary, inspired by a notorious piece of white supremacist fiction. A fragment of this new work will be workshopped as part of Entry Point at Cleveland Public Theatre, January 18 - 20.

Also, this coming month, the Chattanooga Theatre Centre will present a three-week run of my adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, January 26 - February 11.

In addition to new writing (and there exists new writing) one thing I have wanted to do is return to old writing. It is not necessary, of course, to bring every old idea to some kind of fruition, you could go mad doing that.

But there are certain pieces which went through considerable revision and even successful workshops which were abandoned for other projects. These Are The Times was one of these, and I was very happy to return to that this past summer. There are one or two of those abandoned piece to which I would like to return.

Best wishes to you in all your endeavors in the coming year.

Entry Point (2017)

Rehearsal for "Set Fire and Start Again"

New play development is a thing. It is as though almost every theater in town has its own playwrights ensemble or presents some new plays festival. Convergence-Continuum has the NEOMFA Playwright Festival, Ensemble Theatre the Columbi New Plays Festival, Dobama Theatre has a playwrights program called Playwrights’ GYM, and the Play House the Playwrights’ Unit, that last of which I am a member.

Reaching back twenty years, I was an actor for Cleveland Public Theatre’s new play festivals. That event included a prize for best play, the Chilcote Award, which would go on to receive a full production the following season. I was in the world premiere production of Lucy Wang’s Junk Bonds in 1995, and performed in both the festival (1997) and premiere (1998) production of Sarah Morton’s Love In Pieces.

In more recent years, when they produced an annual festival of works-in-progress called Big Box, I was afforded the opportunity to develop my own plays, including solo pieces I Hate This (2003) and And Then You Die (2009) among others. Each had life outside Big Box, but the assistance provided by CPT made them happen.

Of course, there are a wide variety of ways to develop a new script. You can invite friends to your house and read it. You can stage your own public reading, or submit it to a celebration of new works like the Playwrights Local Annual Cleveland Playwrights Festival or attach yourself or gain membership to one of our local theaters’ playwright collectives. You can even declare your script completed and submit it for production, here or anywhere, really. The internet has made it much easier to find companies across the country that actively seek new work.

This year, CPT is trying something new, by producing a trio of events designed to progress dramatic works at various stages of completing. The first stage of these, Entry Point, takes place this weekend. Over the course of two and a half hours, audience members can move between over a half-dozen locations on the CPT campus to witness - and comment upon - new works at various stages of development.

In addition, they are featuring panel discussions on Saturday afternoon. A number of my favorite artists and CPT stalwarts are presenting as part of this project, you can even sit in on a brand new work from Eric Coble. Also, there's free beer.

My friend and colleague Carrie Williams is working on a script titled Set Fire and Start Again, since the beginning of the year she has been directing our company of five to create a script-in-hand, twenty-minute performance of what she calls “fragments” of a larger piece that she’s working toward. I have had a wonderful time working with this crew, a lot of positive energy devoted to developing Carrie’s work, giving her what she needs, we hope, to drive this piece forward.

This is the project I was referring to when describing those of us who go into the cold to create. For some reason my sharpest memories of participating in the creation of someone else's work, generally as an actor, with highlit and marked up new pages in my hand, take place in deepest winter. During the rehearsal process I was standing in the wings, and turned to face the black wall of the Levin Theatre. Painted black, and repainted many times over, how many layers of paint dating back how many years. I touched its surface, which has born witness to so much new work.

When I was a youth, when I was in college, even, I was not interested in new work. My ignorance of the classics placed a premium upon them, they had staying power and pedigree, they had been endorsed by time and I assumed therefore those were “real” plays. And I considered myself a writer!

Since that time I have come to an entirely different conclusion. New writing is the lifeblood of civilization, and that working as a collaborator (even as an actor! yes!) in the pursuit of original plays is vital to the progress of culture. The open, creative exchange of ideas in a public venue. You like movies? You like TV? It all begins with the basic, local act of crafting the words to be spoken from one person to another, on a stage, before an audience. That is the basis of understanding.

Entry Point will be presented at Cleveland Public Theatre, January 20-22, 2017.