Assessment

April is the coolest month.

The come-down from a major project can be very difficult for me. All that energy and expectation and yes, anxiety – when it is gone, my body can feel it, like the after effects of an adrenaline rush. That, and all the spare time.

The closing of my thesis production, Scenes From a Night’s Dream, brought to a conclusion my graduate studies. No other classes this semester, just my thesis defense (it’s not really a defense, we’re just going to talk about it) and then I walk. Three years of aggressive reading and heavy writing, complete.

Rather than loaf or mope (see: My American Poetry Summer, 2021) I decided to be proactive and to use the month of March to change some unhealthy habits. Over the course of the pandemic I have added and maintained some twenty to thirty pounds, and also taken to drinking every single day.

Not heavy drinking, mind. But consistent drinking. And some might argue that is a lot. Certainly it must be frowned upon to drink during class, but Zoom made that not only easy but downright encouraged. I hid my beer in a coffee mug, other students just drank their wine from a glass like it was no big thing.

So, for March 2023 I decided not only to attempt to take a run every day, but also to limit the consumption of snacks, and to drink no alcohol whatsoever. The wife called it “March Mildness.”

And it was, I believe, a success. I dropped ten pounds in that month, presumably those excess calories that were constantly cycling through my system in the form of sugar and carbs from cookies and chips, beer and whiskey.

I was more productive, at work, in the home, in my writing, on the road. There was only one day I did not run last month, due to inclement weather. I documented the experience on my running blog, Daddy Runs Fast.

And speaking of productivity, the first of April marks the commencement of End of Play.

End of Play.® is an annual initiative, created by the Dramatists Guild, to incentivize the completion of new plays, scores, or songs over the period of one month.

Last year, I was working on three scripts, two of them for a class. This year, just the one. Last night I attended an online kick-off event which included some excellent writing prompts and a panel of playwrights sharing insight into their own particular process. 

My own plans for the month involve an adaptation, and not even a very long one. If I were to write two to three pages a day, my first draft would be complete well before deadline.

Anybody want a drink?

End of Play (Week Four)

Yeah, so. #EndOfPlay. I charged into this month fired up to get a lot of writing done. And I did it. The past week I have really wound down, relaxing, taking care of other business. Also, we have residency auditions coming soon. Also, the semester is almost over. Also, this. Also, that.

Scenes From a Night’s Dream: Following the first reading I took the opportunity to expand several moments in the second act. More clarity, more context, more history. Language and slang.

Next Monday this will be read, this slightly revised first draft. I am excited for that!

Falling: Tuesday night we were sent to breakout rooms to workshop our illness narrative, and I received helpful observations from two classmates, one who I only recently met and another who is familiar with my work because he is another playwright.

It was suggested I employ a central metaphor. But there is a central metaphor - the title, falling - but I never included it. That, and many other suggestions will be employed this weekend. Then I will record the entire thing to video.

The Wytches: Work on this script has been interrupted, until I can engage a few more of the participants of last month’s workshop. I believe I will be able to resume in May.

And that’s all she wrote! Pens down.

End of Play (Week Three)

Apparently the best thing for a writer is to have a serious cold. The second week of #EndOfPlay I got hella writing completed. Then I got well, went to Athens for a visit with our eldest, have been suffering headaches and insomnia and generally feeling uninspired and unhappy.

I want the weather to turn. I want to set up the porch and the deck and move my writing outdoors. I want to run.

And yet, work was completed. Here’s the rundown.

Falling (a monologue): Completed edits, turned in my assignment which was due Tuesday. Next week the piece will get workshopped in class. Once I create a final draft, I will begin recording videos of myself reading the text to accompany the assignment.

The Wytches: Not a lot of work on this this past week. I need to write two ghost scenes which talk to each other and reflect the present. They must reflect the present.

Scenes From a Night’s Dream: This was the big accomplishment this week, and it came not without a certain number of tears. My schoolmate (who has not yet read the ending) said the other day that she thinks it’s the best thing I’ve yet written for workshop. She might be right. I have avoided writing about myself in class, it’s the same old: who cares about my issues?

I have scheduled a reading with friends for this weekend. I have successfully held a pre-workshop reading every semester I’ve had a new play. It helps me attend the workshop itself with confidence. I have great friends.

End of Play.® is an annual initiative, created by the Dramatists Guild, to incentivize the completion of new plays, scores, or songs over the period of one month.

End of Play (Week Two)

The reason working on these three different scripts is working is (I believe) because they are each a different kind of process, using a different part of my creativity.

One is purely generative, brand new. New characters, new ideas, new plot.

One is from original source material; a journal. I am not writing, so much as reshaping unedited thoughts into something more coherent and cohesive.

One is an existing piece which I am entirely retyping, and editing in chronological order based on my experience with having produced it as a workshop.

I can procrastinate working on one by working on another. Or doomscrolling Twitter.

The Wytches: Working in order, from beginning to end, retyping the entire script. Sections that need to be entirely rewritten I am skipping, and will come back to those. Not a surprise, they are all scenes that take place in the past.

Scenes From a Night’s Dream: I was very pleased when my professor mentioned Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls when discussing the new pages for this piece. The first act is a dream, it follows dream logic, but characters are introduced and something like change occurs for the protagonist.

The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki was originally on the team that produced the film Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland, but was dissatisfied with the entire project. One of his main issues was that a dream is not real, and therefore holds no consequence, for anyone, including the dreamer. “A film that professes to be set in a dream world will only make the audience blank out.,” said Miyazaki

When I wrote a stage adaptation of Little Nemo for children, I took this challenge head on. There are three dream sequences (he wakes up twice in the night, it is, after all, Christmas Eve) and each time he learns something about himself and wakes with a fresh awareness.

The first act for my new work is also a dream, and then the audience is presented with a real world setting and situation, and they may be confused at first how the second act relates to the first. This is why Top Girls is relevant, as the first act is a coming together of women from throughout history for a luncheon. Only the host, the founder of a women’s employment agency, continues through the rest of the play, which is based in reality.

One revelation in the second act is, who is the dreamer? The actor who plays the boy (who for the moment I am calling Nemo) in the first act has not yet been seen. He will be, I promise. That doesn’t mean he is the dreamer.

Falling (new working title): I have transcribed those elements of the notebooks I kept while my mother lay dying which are relevant. They are written in present tense, as though they are diary entries from over the course of two months. Having set myself on this project, I am pleased so far that I was even able to do it. I had no idea what I would find in these notebooks. I was surprised by what was there. I was surprised by what was not there. My wife is looking it over, not only for style but also for errors. I want it to be accurate.

No, It was not easy to read these notebooks.

End of Play.® is an annual initiative, created by the Dramatists Guild, to incentivize the completion of new plays, scores, or songs over the period of one month.

Source: “Hayao Miyazaki's illusory US debut "Little Nemo" Withdrawal in the middle of planning, many encounters and "masterpieces" are born …” Magmix, 12/2/2021

End of Play (Week One)

Because I have to be so completely extra, I am not working on a script for #EndOfPlay but three scripts.

End of Play.® is an annual initiative, created by the Dramatists Guild, to incentivize the completion of new plays, scores, or songs over the period of one month.

Every day I am producing several pages. It’s crazy! I am currently crazed!

The Wytches: I am not only editing the piece, I am retyping the entire thing. As I type, I can hear the voices of the actors who performed the workshop last month, and am able to incorporate their subtle (and not so subtle) changes in syntax. Also, I have plentiful notes to work from. Having written the original script piecemeal, redrafting in order from start to finish allows me to be more aware of repetition inherent in the original draft.

Scenes From a Night’s Dream: The first act just rolled out, no outline, just a stream of consciousness thing which coalesced rather neatly. The second act stopped me short for over a week, but Ikept writing ideas if not dialogue. This weekend I was able to situate the second act in place, define the characters, imagine something like an outline, and scene work started arriving yesterday. Huzzah!

The Notebook (working title): No, I’m not calling it The Notebook, nor am I calling it Mother. Transcribing and editing these notebooks from late 2019 and early 2020 is of course very affecting for me. When I drop the next big section for my classmates to workshop (due in two weeks) I have to make clear what I would like them to look for.

Are you a member of the Dramatists Guild? Maybe you should be.

Process LX

Last week I said I was on track to complete my Dream Play. Ha ha, no. I finished the first act this week. That’s right, it is no longer one, ninety minute play. It is now a two-hour piece with an intermission.

The “first draft” is due on Monday. Ha ha, no. That won’t happen. However, I have a much better idea of what will happen. The reading last Monday night was swell. Once more, people appreciate my ability to write dialogue for young people that is neither too advanced nor too childish.

Folks dig the magic, the transgression (my professor loves the word transgression) how the pre-adolescent mind confuses sex with fear, and fear with death. The hormones which are burbling to the surface, and the deep dark secret for which the class is expecting a satisfying revelation.

Ah-hah. Well, yes. That. And that’s why I have fully embraced my wife’s idea of a second scene, and it will be one which both takes us away from the world of the first scene, while at the same time very much in the same world. I can say no more. Let’s just say my inspiration comes from the works of Caryl Churchill (we read Far Away last week) and, as much as I hate to say it, a play I saw once, written by Neil LaBute.

Creating a proposal for my illness narrative was one thing, actually writing it is another. When I say writing it, I really mean editing it. That’s not correct, either. Regardless, I have these notebooks. I have been reading them, and highlighting the relevant parts. It’s what David Sedaris was referring to when he titled his book of diary entries Theft By Finding.

Reading these notebooks makes me emotional. I am not surprised that it could, but I am still surprised that it actually does.

Finally, End of Play, a month of composition and playwriting promoted by the Dramatists Guild of the United States started yesterday, for which I have decided to compose a new draft of The Witches.

Last Ship to Proxima Centauri (revisited)

Kennedy Kanagawa, Marcy McGuigan, Tom Ford
(Portland Stage, 2022)
Photo by Mical Hutson

For five years, I read a full-length play each day in April, selected from those available at New Play Exchange. This year I have too many other obligations to make that commitment. I am drafting two new pieces for school and will be re-drafting an existing script for End of Play, a writing initiative created by the Dramatists Guild.

Reading one hundred and fifty new full-length plays, though … and during the Trump years? It was inspiring, and in no small part stimulated me in my own craft. Rarely, however, have I had the chance to see any of these works on stage, in development or in production.

So, I was thrilled when playwright Greg Lam posted photos of the set for his play Last Ship to Proxima Centauri being constructed at Portland Stage, and when it was announced that the piece would be available for streaming near the end of its initial run!

In brief, Proxima Centauri is about that time in the not-too-distant future when Earth has become uninhabitable and hundreds of ships set out on a two thousand year voyage to reach a potential new home planet. That this last ship is the only one to arrive that launched from the United States, arriving over a century after everyone else, complicates their arrival.

The concept works very well as a play (as opposed to a film or any other media) as it has one set – the deck of an interplanetary vessel – and only five characters.

Spoilers Ahead

Octavia Chavez-Richmond, Jamal James
(Portland Stage, 2022)
Photo by Mical Hutson

The inhabitants of this new world, descendants of those who arrived from nations historically oppressed by the American empire, are not happy about being inundated by 100,000 largely white newcomers. Having survived and created a thriving system of shared sacrifice, what would it mean to admit a vast number of new residents who would no doubt insist on things to be the way they were back on Earth?

The philosophy behind this saga is a nightmare for many white Americans, what they might deride online as “the future that liberals want.” And it points up the errors in the logic of American exceptionalism. Freedom to do or say whatever you choose is a decadence that can only be afforded the powerful, and being white in America is power.

Our so-called freedoms, of speech, of religion, of guns, these freedoms exist so long as there is a power structure to defend it. Without that, no one would survive. Civilization defines humanity, and without that white Americans are just animals; screaming, crying, angry animals.

The performance is available online through Sunday, April 3. For those in the Cleveland area, you might be excited to learn the acting company includes Tom Ford, who has been a much-beloved player on the stage at Great Lakes Theater, where he played Sweeney Todd, Henry Higgins, Monsieur Thénardier, and so many others memorable roles.

"Last Ship to Proxima Centauri" by Greg Lam continues online from Portland Stage through April 3, 2022

One-Page Plays

The theme for this month’s issue of The Dramatist (magazine) is “About the Craft.” Not casting spells, mind you. This is about writing plays.

There’s a Q&A with Adam Rapp. Here’s one:

Q: Do you have a routine? A regular time when you write? 

A: With plays, I don’t have a set routine. I feel like I’m stowing away from the rest of my life when I’m writing a play, so a lot of it is stolen time, early in the morning or late when my mind isn’t focused on other things. A lot of long sessions. Sometimes an entire day just dissolves away. It’s pretty reckless, but I love the feeling like the play is holding me hostage.

And I thought, an entire day? Must be nice. I do not like feeling churlish, but it took long enough to realize how much I desire to just write plays all day long, and at the same time had to accept that that is simply a thing that will never happen for me.

I write in the morning. I wake up at five o’clock so I can write a half hour. Sometimes it’s a play, often it’s like a journal, and I hate that because that’s not what I got up early to do, write about me, but I have to write something and so solipsism it is.

I’ve tried writing prompts, but many of the books my wife has lodged on her bookcase are about emotional free-writing and just lead to more journaling. SO in desperation, last week I just Googled “writing prompts” and found the most most basic, clickbaity site, 365 Creative Writing Prompts which is like, write about food! Write about animals!

Why not. If it’s good enough for David Byrne.

So I have been faithfully following its lead, free-writing on the subject, but also writing a very short script inspired the subject. Every morning.

Last year, I was interviewed by Tyler Whidden for his Don’t Talk To Strangers podcast, for which he expressed interest in Guerrilla Theater Company and the entire concept of one-page* plays. In their manifesto of 1915, Italian Futurists state, “It’s stupid to write one hundred pages where one would do,” that it is unnecessary to play out an entire story of character and plot if your aim is simply to make a point.

Writing for You Have the Right to Remain Silent, I not only had to be constantly creating scripts to feed the beast, but I became attuned to thinking about writing, all day. To coming up with ideas.

While I haven’t returned to that state, just putting down my thoughts as dialogue every morning has been a refreshing break and mentally satisfying. And I have begun to post these at New Play Exchange.*

Read the first of these short plays, Welcome or Friends at New Play Exchange.

*The plays I have been writing are one written page. In script form they take a few pages. Don't give me a hard time.

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: