Fighting the Void

What Next?

2011-10-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

7 Minutes to Midnight
Rehearsal at Bellevue College

I think its reasonably safe to assume that I must be having problems writing if I'm back on this blog.

My apologies for the hiatus of a few months off but its been a busy year...what with moving into a new house, juggling the new job, and also being absorbed by the show CAMINO in September.

But I promise to be once again more vigilant in posting my random thoughts on all things theater.

As for my writing, well, its not so much that I'm blocked as I have many ideas, but I feel that ever since the end of the run of CAMINO, I have been contemplating, what next? If you saw me on facebook, I contemplated between doing the epic big show (aka the shows I really love to write just for me) or doing a single set, four character show, which is basically more likely to be read by and produced by theater companies.

Then I thought to myself, yeah, but, I want to write a play about robots. Real robots. Real scientists working on robots and how our relationship to technology (cell phones, computers, etc) is changing at an ever rapid pace.

That's probably not an easy sell, regardless.

I also think there is a balance there somewhere...between writing the play we love and care about and writing a play to get it produced. It's ideal when both of those things get combined.

Somehow, many of my short plays I wrote "just for fun" ended up being produced several times over, which should be a lesson to me. Even BURNING BOTTICELLI got produced and that has dozens of characters, a talking parrot and someone gets burned alive on stage.

Burning Botticelli
PR image for NYC production

I feel like as I've grown older and grown as an artist, I get choosier with my projects and my time. The danger is that I end up avoiding the difficult choices. The life of an artist should never be the easy route. It never has been.

So. What's next?

Ghosts in the Room

2011-10-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

I could’ve called this post “Why I like the TV show Slings & Arrows”.

Mostly I love the conceit of the presence ghost of the former Artistic Director, an old mentor of the current Artistic Director, Jeffrey Tennant. The ghost haunts him, literally, by commenting on his rehearsals, his interactions with people, and basically is in conversation with him.

This is a wonderful visual representation of something that is very real, yet intangible.

(And isn't that the point of good drama, bringing a metaphor to life?)

With each new production and play, there are always ghosts in the room. I don’t just mean that there is the ghost of Shakespeare or Chekhov when we do Hamlet or Three Sisters, although, there is that. There also remains the ghosts of all those great actors that have played in those roles, all those great directors, designers, and other artists, as well as the ghosts of all our own teachers and mentors.

We walk into a rehearsal room with not just our own experience and knowledge but also techniques and experience that has been handed down to us for generations.

When we do theater, we are not just in conversation with the rest of the world, we are in conversation with our own past masters.

I don’t know that you can say that about other activities outside the arts. Perhaps, in science, when you’re experimenting, there is the ghost of Einstein or Oppenheimer, but I don’t know that it feels the same.

And I’m pretty sure scientists don’t leave a ghost bunson burner going in an empty lab the way we leave a ghost light in a theater.

Add the play Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger to your Solo Show Reading List

2011-08-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, a newly acquired friend and prominent actor/director/writer in the Pittsburgh area turned me on to a little solo show called UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL by Glen Berger.

Glen Berger also wrote a short play I directed years ago called "I WILL GO...I WILL GO..." about a man trying to cross the English Channel and going deaf by the end of it from the cold water. I loved his writing and loved the theatricality and style of that play. So I knew I would probably like UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL.

And I must say I'd put it on my required reading list for solo plays--right up there with KRAPP'S LAST TAPE or KICKING A DEAD HORSE or THOM PAINE (BASED ON NOTHING) as well as the others I mentioned in an earlier post.

Why do I love it? One, it's not your usual confessional solo show of "Why I hate my father" or something god-awful like that. It deals with existential questions about the existence of god, of faith, and tells a story of the everyday events and how they collide with the universe. A character goes on a true journey, not just physically but mentally and spiritually and the audience can't help but be swept up in the magnitude of the story. The writing is lyrical and at times quite funny.

Actually, I was hooked even from the description of the set. It takes place as a lecture in an auditorium or stage between shows, saying:

"props and other detritus from other shows can litter the back of the stage...Over the course of the evening the 'lecture' should imperceptibly turn into "theater". The detritus, unnoticed and seemingly unimportant at first, can unexpectedly take on significance, alluding to scenes and history mentioned in the play. The lighting can become warmer, more "theatrical", etc, and what seemed like a random strewing of objects, or a random water stain on the wall, for instance, can turn out to not be so random after all."

I knew just from reading this that this playwright was clear of his vision for the story and for the journey he wanted to take his audience on. I knew I was in good hands.

(And the writer side of me was envious of Berger's clarity and focus and his damned talent at his craft!)

What's also quite lovely is that Berger takes a small thing--an overdue library book--and explodes it into some with greater meaning. We always talk about "high stakes' in the theater, but we forget what that can actually mean. Sometimes even the smallest actions could lead to bigger consequences. It all depends on how it affects the characters and disturbs their world.

Here's the plot summary from Alexis Soloski of the Village Voice:

On an inauspicious morning at a Dutch library, a librarian makes an unexpected find in the overnight return box. ...a much mistreated Baedeker's guidebook 123 years overdue. Even without compound interest, this tardiness merits a tidy fine, and in UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL, playwright Glen Berger's latest, our librarian hero determines to track down the miscreant. Berger's monologue, subtitled The Mystery of the Abandoned Trousers, hardly slacks. Mailing a fine to the long-lived scofflaw in question proves difficult, as the borrower listed his name only as `A'. In an effort to run him to earth, the librarian, who has never left his native town of Hoofddorp, zips to China, Australia, Germany, and America. He eats sweets, greases palms, sees Les Miserables in three languages, and fritters away all his accumulated vacation days. He has the time of his life, or perhaps for the first time actually has a life.

CAMINO Rehearsals Begin

2011-08-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

As I stated in my last post, I will be acting in an upcoming show which will premiere in mid-September. The play is called CAMINO and its been written and developed over a few years by writer/director Anya Martin. She and co-founder and designer Michelle Carello have formed the company The Hiawatha Project to develop shows that explore specific social questions through myth and movement.

Here's the brief show description:

Set within the context of an imagined near future, we follow the journeys of two seemingly unrelated couples:one immigrant couple fighting to reunite despite jails, red tape, and oppression, and one American couple struggling to break through personal and digital boundaries, both seen and unseen.

CAMINO is inspired by true stories of the immigrant detention centers in Arizona. If you have never heard of the private and government partnerships where law is dictated by the flow of money, then check out this NPR article. The play also deals with civil rights, where all U.S. citizens can be tracked by GPS and people can be ground up and spit out by a bureaucratic machine. Some scenes of the play are positively Orwellian, in fact.

I'll be playing a character who works for this large corporation and "watches" the action via satellite images and security cameras. I also play a guard in the prison and a translator. For the latter, I'm learning some French.

It is an honor to be part of this show with such a talented cast and crew and I'm looking forward to the rehearsal process. I'll post as often as I can about my discoveries in the next few weeks.

For more information about the Hiawatha Project, click here, and for more information about the issues that CAMINO is dealing with, click here.

What I'm Reading: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

2011-08-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

Summer seems to have gotten away from me and this blog has been neglected. For that, I apologize.

I have no excuses for not maintaining this blog, but I do have my reasons--first being a new house (yay, I feel so grown-up!) as well as a new job (yay, I have a regular paycheck!) and a new creative venture (Yay, I'm acting in a show again!).

I've also discovered the world of grilling in my back yard.

But I digress.

I just finished reading Steven Pressfield's little book THE WAR OF ART. If you are an artist/writer/poet/creative dreamer or just someone who wants to start a diet/exercise program or frankly anything that might be good for you in the long run, then you must read this book. In fact, it should be required reading for everyone in college. Any college, not just those studying the arts.

Without giving too much away, Pressfield delves into the idea of "Resistance". What is Resistance and why does it always rear its ugly head when we desire to change, grow or create something good and unleash it into the world?

This isn't a book about writer's block. It's a book about how even professionals face this Resistance, sometimes in the form of fear or procrastination, but they persevere. Every day. This is not a "how to" book. This book doesn't give you tips and tricks for overcoming your daily dose of Resistance. It does give guidance and wisdom from the guy who was written many books (including The Legend of Bagger Vance).

The book was a nice reminder to me to get to work. If you are an artist, you define yourself by creating art, not talking about it, not thinking about it, but doing it.

So, like that Nike ad says...just do it.

Wa(s)te Reading in LA at The Road Theater Next Sunday

2011-07-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

There are plays that you write sometimes just for fun and you think, no one will ever probably want to do this play. This is not really marketable in any way, shape, or form. Or so you think.

Such a play is Wa(s)te, which is really a play about two waste-oids in an apartment waiting to find out about a party (and maybe they're writing a screenplay in the process, but most likely they're surfing the net, playing videogames and watching TV).

Here's the show synopsis:

With the promise of tomorrow lingering under the rain clouds of today, Doug and Val waste time playing word and power games with each other in a cluttered Seattle apartment, waiting to hear about a party. They are joined by Paulie, a temp in a rumpled suit, who one day claims it’s his apartment and the next day is a silent slave to the enigmatic Lulu, a songstress turned corporate power-broker. But is it Paulie’s apartment? Will Doug and Val ever finish their screenplay about nothing commenting on nothing? Or are they merely characters themselves? And there’s the ultimate question: is God the Pizza Boy?

I've only really sent this play to friends who I like and might appreciate its references to Beckett or pop culture and only a handful of small theaters. And yet, through a circuitous route (ie in the hands of a real-life clown), the play has found itself in a reading at The Road Theater in LA in their annual Summer Playwrights Festival.

See the details here.

Sadly, I won't be able to fly out to the west coast for the reading but after talking with Judy Weldon, I feel I'm in good hands. I'm just disappointed that I'll miss this first public reading in front of an audience, especially seeing as how its a comedy and it might be nice to know when folks laugh and all.

Here's hoping this is a sign that more opportunities will arise for this little fun play of mine.

Fun or Serious? Or Serious Fun?

2011-06-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first day I've had in a long time with no commitments. No social engagements. No rehearsals. No auditions. No meetings and no errands to run.

And the weather was cool and cloudy, a nice break from our heat and humidity.

A perfect day to be anti-social by staying indoors and writing.

Which is what I did. I had every intention to start writing that serious play about the feuding sisters, but kept toying with this radio play instead. I spent a couple of hours hammering out a not-quite-thought-out plot of a western with sci-fi elements and by the end of it, I felt satisfied in that "I just had a good writing workout" way, but then looked over the script and thought, hmmmn, not all that great. It was a fun diversion, but somehow not fulfilling.

So I have my writing group tonight and I think, bring the fun radio script or bring in the first scene I wrote awhile back for my serious drama about feuding sisters?

I've noticed in me a difference of investment in terms of thought and energy. There are plays that are fun whims and plays that actually take a lot of time and energy. Not that fun whims can't be good plays and highly successful. My play LOVE & DEATH IN THE TIME OF CRAYOLA literally only took me a day or so to write and was quite fun and that play has been done over a dozen times across the country.

I guess what 'm talking about is the meaty kind of dramas that Odets, O'Neill and Miller would write. Plays that tackled complex characters in situations that mirrored the times.

Those kinds of plays aren't usually written casually on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They are forged over time.

There's a great line in the Hugh Grant movie "Music & Lyrics" where he tells Drew Barrymore that as a pop musician, he writes dessert while someone like Bob Dylan writes dinner.

Sometimes I get tired of writing dessert. Dinner takes a lot more preparation, but its also a lot more fulfilling.

(By the way, that photo is my wife's paella, a very fulfilling dinner!)

Next up: a reading of THE ALBATROSS

2011-06-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

As part of the Underground Readings, my play THE ALBATROSS will be having a reading next Monday, June 20th at 7:00 pm at The Grey Box.

It was directed by long-time collaborator, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, and features some pretty amazing Pittsburgh talent like Jeffrey Carpenter (Bricolage) and Mark Clayton Southers (Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater and The August Wilson Center) as well as up-and-coming talent like Laci Mosly and Fred Pelzer.

As those who know me and read this blog, I'm the guy always saying "self-produce, self-produce, self-produce". So when Bill Cameron, the writer-director of Violet Sharp which is being produced by Terra Nova Theater, said to me and some other playwrights, "hey, we've got some dark nights at Violet Sharp, do you want to do something with them?" I jumped at the chance. I hate seeing a dark theater.

So, I teamed up with playwrights Ginny Cunningham and Jeanne Drennan and we decided to do a series of readings and found some playwrights with some stuff to read--all of them of high calibre--and they got some great directors and celebrated local actors and next thing you know, we got us a great mini-festival of new works.

The first evening, Monday night, we heard Gab Cody's new play, The 2nd American Revolution and had wonderful turnout of about forty to fifty audience members.

On Monday, I'll be hearing THE ALBATROSS again. It's been a few years since the last reading and I'm curious to dive into it. It's the right amount of time to be away from the material, I think, in order to see it with an objective eye. I hope I can see some new things or be proud of the things that I know are working. Either way, I've got a fantastic director and talented actors to take care of the play.

For those of you wanting to know more about the play, or any of my plays, please click here.

Playwrights in Mind Kicks off

2011-06-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

Playwrights hard at work in the "Haiku" workshop this morning

It's about 10:30 am and I'm about to head over to the Mason Inn Conference Center for Day 2 of the first ever national Dramatists Guild conference.

Last night kicked off with some workshops and panels in the afternoon--I went to one about getting a Fulbright--and then a "Conversation with Christopher Durang", followed by the first keynote speaker, Molly Smith, Artistic Director of The Arena Stage.

To say that she was inspiring and eloquent in her praise for writers is an understatement. She seems to be the ideal artistic director--committed to theater as a social practice, as something the community needs and something that needs the community in return. Her ideas are somewhat revolutionary and require a shift in thinking across the country. She also made a call to us playwrights to be revolutionary in our thinking as well. We should not shy away from blossoming our own ideas and alternatives to deal with the economic issues of developing and producing new works. We should make our own partnerships and connections. In short, we should hustle.

Today is Todd London's keynote, author of Outrageous Fortune. Then more panels, workshops and later a conversation with Edward Albee and Emily Mann.

The only problem I see with this conference right now is that there's too much going on--not enough time to hang out with all these fabulous playwrights!

Can't Make it to DC for the DG Conference? Watch it on your TV!

2011-06-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

So this is cool...if you're a playwright in the middle of Arkansas or Kansas or wherever and you don't have access to Edward Albee or Marsha Norman but want to watch them on TV talk about their craft...then check out the Arena Stage's New Play TV!

http://www.livestream.com/newplay

For schedule of what might be broadcast from the conference, check out the New Play blog.

If you watch, maybe you'll see the back of my head!

(Ooooh, I know, I know, so exciting...)

Can You Make a Living as a Playwright?

2011-06-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

There’s an old joke about playwrights. They say “you can make a killing, but you can’t make a living”. And it’s true.

What they mean is, if you have the good fortune of the theatre gods smiling on you (a big IF), then perhaps you will get a BROADWAY production which may garner good reviews and a Tony award. This play will then be published and consequently produced in every regional theater for the next two years and then possibly be performed in some summer stock and/or community theaters for a few years after that.

It is the playwright equivalent of winning the LOTTO.

And you have about the same odds.

There has been much blog buzz about the recent statements made by Tony Kushner in a Time Out interview.

Mr. Kushner is perhaps the greatest American playwright living and working today (Angels in America, pt I & II) with major productions going on, on Broadway, and off, with tons of commissions and has garnered many awards.

Here’s the comment that brought about the buzz:

“I make my living now as a screenwriter! Which I’m surprised and horrified to find myself saying, but I don’t think I can support myself as a playwright at this point.”

This comment was picked up and commented on by Seattle playwright Paul Mullin

And then also responded to by the Arena Stage New Play Blog

First of all, we have to ask, is this even an accurate statement for Mr. Kushner? What does he mean by make a living? Yes, he’ll make more money writing for HBO, but Mr. Kushner has done quite well for himself solely as a playwright with Broadway productions, publications, grants and commissions.

Second of all, why should we expect that playwrights could make a living? There are far too many actors out there who don’t “make a living”. The average take home pay of a professional Equity actor is probably not more than $20,000 - $30,000 a year (from theater, not from TV and film, mind you). And I would gather that’s a high albeit rough estimate.

Is that making a living? And let's be honest, there are many professional actors who aren't making anywhere close to $20,000/year.

I think all of us would agree that all artists should be paid for their work and should be paid well enough to not have to have a full-time or part-time job doing other things besides their art. Unfortunately, we live in the U.SA. which is not a nation that believes in or supports the arts. I would love to change that, but don’t see that happening any time soon.

Many people in this country are surprised that you even have to pay for royalties for a play. What? You pay the playwright to do the show? And you pay your actors? People don’t just do art for free? For the “love of it”?

Having a playwright on salary and giving them health benefits is a radical idea. Thank God for Arena doing something just like that. They have five mid-level playwrights on salary for three years each. They will produce at least one of their plays that they write during that period. That’s pretty awesome.

But again, that’s like a mini-lottery. Who decides those five playwrights? There are thousands of writers to choose from. The amount of playwrights in the Dramatists Guild is somewhere around 6,000. Now, we have to admit, not every playwright deserves to be on salary, just like not every business major graduating from college deserves to be a manager or CEO or a corporation. No, let’s say only about %10 might be really good and/or mid-level. That’s still 600 playwrights. If you had to choose six people out of that, you’d have a 1% chance of getting a salary position.

These are the odds.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t make money. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get paid for our work. I’m saying maybe we should reevalaute our expectations given current circumstances. Would I like to live in a country that pays playwrights and other artists decent wages? Yes. Will I make efforts to change that in our country. Of course. Will it happen over night? No.

There's been a lot of discussion in the theater world about this very topic--especially given the recent publication of Todd London's book Outrageous Fortune. Molly Smith, of Arena Stage, will be at the Dramatist Guild national conference, as will Mr. London, so I'm sure it will be a topic if debate this coming week.

A few years ago, I was interviewing an established award-winning playwright, who was also writing and directing movies, and said something about making a living as a playwright. He responded, "That's like saying you're going to make a living as a poet. No one makes a living."

So it's not just Tony Kushner saying these types of comments.

I don't believe we should think of writing plays in the same terms as playing the LOTTO. I do feel there should be more avenues to make money doing theater, in general. But for now...well...If you’re writing plays because you think you can make a living, I’d have to say to you….um, don’t give up your day job.

Playwrights in Mind: A National Conference June 9-12

2011-06-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Looks like June will be almost as busy a month as May and to kick things off, I’m traveling to Washington D.C. to the first ever national conference of The Dramatists Guild of America.

I’m fortunate enough to live close enough to D.C. so that this trip is not too expensive for me. I’m sure we won’t see to many playwrights from west of the Mississippi coming to town. The idea of this conference, though, is that it will travel from coast to coast, city to city, thoughout the years, so that all members of the Guild will at some point make it to a conference.

I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, both academic and professional, and this is exciting just for the fact that it’s the first one ever for this almost 90 year old organization.

Guests planning to appear and/or give workshops include Edward Albee, Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang, David Ives, Julia Jordan, Doug Wright, and Jeffrey Sweet. Plus, I’ll get the chance to see an old faculty member from my UNLV days, Julie Jensen, in addition to other Dramatist Guild Regional Reps.

While some skeptics may be wary of this gathering, as playwrights are known to grumble about not enough productions, I think it will be a positive and empowering experience. As I’ve said before when I was a regional rep in Seattle, never underestimate the power of a group of playwrights in a room.

After the DG conference, then we move into The Underground Readings at the Grey Box in Lawrenceville. My play THE ALBATROSS will be having a reading on June 20^th, directed by Lisa Jackson-Schebetta and featuring Jeffrey Carpenter and Mark Southers. More on that later.

And at some point, I’ll be working on a new full-length play. Not the robot play. A new idea of a story set in the Pacific Northwest about two feuding sisters.

Black Kerchief Coming Soon!

2011-05-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Check out the trailer to the short film "Black Kerchief", coming out soon! This is my one-eyed cowboy movie!

What I'm Reading: Tell Me a Story by Roger Schank

2011-05-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

To say that May was a busy month is an understatement.

After a successful run of Shining City at Off the Wall Theater--which critics called "provocative, well-acted and the "perfect cast" by the way...) I’m ready to do a little relaxing and actually read something that I'm not trying to memorize as part of a performance.

I just finished reading Sherry Turkle’s collection of essays The Inner History of Devices. This book is part memoir, part clinical textbook about how we related to objects and technology—how it literally changes our lives or affects us, in some ways we don’t even notice. It looks at the obvious like addictions to online fantasy games or chat rooms, but also looks at people who are living with internal cardiac defibrillators or prosthetic eyes or being hooked up to a dialysis machine. Written before the rise of Facebook, its startling to think about how we relate to the cyber world and technology, in general.

Why am I reading this book? For robot research, of course. As prosthetics get better and better, how will we related to our artificial limbs or tehnologically advanced companions? Like our robot nanny?

For instance, imagine if Facebook wasn't just a two dimensional interface on a screen, but an actual robot and you could ask it, "So what are my friends up to today?" and it could tell you instead of you having to read it. How would you start to relate to that robot? Even if it didn't have a personality?

Now I’m reading Robert Schanks’ Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence. (Yes, another book about artificial intelligence for my robot research.) In a nutshell, this book basically says “Humans are intelligent, as opposed to computers or animals, because we relate and store information in the forms of stories. Our stories are linked to our memories and its how we communicate and relate to each other. Stories are who we are. It’s the best argument for art and culture I’ve ever heard. Why else do we go to the theatre and movies and read books? It’s not just a form of entertainment.

John Shepard Talks about Shining City

2011-05-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Steeltown Film Factory Final Event

2011-04-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Today is the final event for the Steeltown Film Factory competition. The three final scripts will be read by Carnegie Mellon University Acting Students at the Rauh theater at CMU.

Who will the winner (or winners) be of this $30,000 to make a movie here?

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to find out because I'll be in tech.

[Cue tired sigh now.]

I had to leave the last event early, too, so I really feel like I'm totally missing out - how can I get prepared to write my script for next year?!

Ever since the news that the next Batman movie will be filming here this summer, the blogosphere is all abuzz about how Pittsburgh is Hollywood's best kept secret. Will it become the next Hollywood...Well, we can dream, can't we?

Check out this great video on the Film Factory site about the history of art, culture and film in da 'burgh, featuring Rob Marshall (Chicago), Shirley Jones and John Wells (executive producer of The West Wing and ER).

Shine on, you crazy...ghost

2011-04-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that it was only two weeks ago I was sitting at a table for the first read-thru of Conor Mcpherson's play SHINING CITY with director John Shepard and the phenomenal actors Karen Baum, FJ Hartland and James Masciovecchio.

And even harder to believe that in just over a week, on May 6th, our show will open at Off the Wall Theater in Washington, PA. (Hint, hint...get your tickets now, hint hint).

We had a run-through last night and are just about to head into tech. Usually that period fills me with a little bit of panic, but not this time. We're in good shape and even though this play is complex and nuanced, we're mining deep into the emotional crevices and digging out some dramatic gold.

That's the poetic way of saying...we're working our asses off.

It's amazing to me how much I learn about playwriting from acting in a show. This is true of all my roles--whether I'm directing, acting, teaching, writing--everything seems to feed and illuminate aspects of the other. There's no better way to analyze a script, to examine the characters and story then being in rehearsals, learning lines, getting it up on its feet, and seeing how the play works on a stage.

To be honest, when I first read the play for auditions months ago, I was unimpressed. The play didn't read that well to me. A lot of great plays don't, though. Shakespeare and Chekhov certainly don't "read" well. They're meant to be worked on and heard and acted out.

Now that I've lived with this play for these past weeks, I admire McPherson for his use of language, among other things. The text in this play has so many levels, emotionally and intellectually, and the rhythms of the dialogue and the specificity of character and story is brilliant. As an actor, a lot of my job is done for me by the playwright just from the given circumstances and the lines--just play your character's needs and hang on. Not that this is easy--his given circumstances and what happens in the play are not a walk in the park (well, one of them is a walk in the park at night, if you know what that means, and if you don't, then come see the show to find out.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is...this play is illusive in that there's so much more going on than you think at first glance (like Chekhov or Pinter or Beckett).

It's the kind of spare writing we all aspire to, or should anyway.

Oh, and McPherson knows to give you a good ending that will leave you talking about it on the way home.

Hunting & Gathering and Finding "Alice"

2011-04-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

There might be folks out there who think Pittsburgh is some kinda wasteland of culture. They may think of soot and smoke stacks and a city covered in grime and smog, dirty, smelly and grey.

But they’d be wrong. Oh, sorely wrong.

Other than the fact that the city has been written up by Forbes as one of the best cities to live in the country, it also has several theaters and museums of note (and for a boy who grew up in Reno which is a city that definitely has a cultural deficit), I surely appreciate it.

Tonight I’ll be heading to Bricolage yet again (I know, but I like their stuff, what can I say!) for the opening of Hunter Gatherers by Peter Sin Natchtreib. I’ve seen a production of this before out in Seattle, so am curious to see what Jeffrey Carpenter, also Artistic Director, will do to it. True to their aesthetic, the play is a brutal satire, but also darkly funny.

This video by Matt Hildebrand might scare you or entice you, but gives you an idea of what's in store.

Hunter Gatherers - Actors from Matt Hildebrand on Vimeo.

Will there be a different sensibility and aesthetic between da ‘burgh and the Pacific northwest? I'm curious.

Speaking of curious.

"Curiouser and curiouser..." as one young lady said...

"The Alice Project"
(photo: Louis Stein)

Opening this week is “The Alice Project” at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama.

Developed as a collaborative piece over the past year by director Marianne Weems with designers, dramatic writing student and technicians, this multi-media performance tears apart the Alice character from Lewis Carroll and examines identity through a prism of technology. This is just what you’d expect from such an innovative research university that houses such diverse programs in performing arts, the fine arts, computer science, robotics and media arts.

Top Reasons You Should Join a Writing Group

2011-04-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently joined a fantastic group of writers, directors and actors who meet regularly to read new works (as well as eat baked goods and enjoy an adult beverage or two).

It’s been several years since I’ve been involved with a regular writing group and I’d forgotten how beneficial it can be.

Some writers don’t want or need to be part of a group and I think I was okay for a few years to be writing a bunch of stuff on my own. But other writers find some real benefit with the sense of camaraderie and the feedback.

Here’s my top reasons why I like writing groups:

You have a sounding board of like-minded writers who may be familiar with your work and can give some specific and immediate feedback on rough scripts, instead of waiting to get a formal reading up.
You have a deadline and an audience who expects you to deliver your pages
You have the chance to hear your script read aloud and since plays are meant to be performed, this is a valuable way of discovering if what you think is on the page actually exists, or if there is more work to be done. (I just rewrote a ten-minute today based on valuable feedback and now feel its ready for submissions.)
You can rely on a supportive environment so that you can bring in more risky and experimental work and push yourself out of your safety zone
You get to hear rough drafts or first drafts of amazing scripts and then watch them get rewritten and get better from week to week.
You have the opportunity to support your fellow playwrights work by listening, reading, evaluating and giving supportive feedback
You can learn a lot from what other playwrights are writing—what they are doing well and what they are struggling with (in fact, sometimes it’s encouraging to recognize that even the best writers have the same second act issues and then witness how they overcome them)
You get a chance to talk about theater in your community (what you’ve all seen lately) as well as what’s going on in New York and other places.
You get to eat and drink and joke around with some talented people.
You get your own secret handshake.

Tomorrow night I’ll be starting rehearsals for Shining City by Conor Macpherson at Off the Wall, which is exciting but sadly means that I’ll be missing out on a few weeks of the writing group. I've already been inspired to start writing two new full-lengths, though, in addition to my other projects.

How will you celebrate National Poetry Month?

2011-04-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

"We speak of memorizing as getting something 'by heart,' which really means 'by head.' But getting a poem or prose passage truly 'by heart' implies getting it by mind and memory and understanding and delight." —John Hollander

As I've probably mentioned, I'm signed up for the Poem A Day email from Poetry.com. It's comforting that in the mix of spam that I get in my email (from Golf discounts to viagra...), I get a little bit of joy and beauty and wonder in the form of a poem.

As writers, we should enjoy and celebrate the experience of the word. Since April is National Poetry Month, why not do something fun? Go to a poetry reading. Grab a book of poems from the library from a poet you've never read. Or go crazy and write a poem. Some ambitious folks are even writing a poem a day.

Theatre is unique...or...Fun with Stats!

2011-03-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

I’m not really a stats guy.

When I’m in a bar and hear two guys talking about the wins/losses and player stats for the Stillers (The Steelers for all you non-yinzers), I get lost in the haze of numbers.

I’m also not the kind of person who likes to stare at charts or deal with Excel.

I do, however, like to track what gets the most hits on this site and see what the most popular posts are.

And here’s the fun thing, the most read post is "What Makes Theatre So Unique."

In fact, here’s something fun to try—open up google and type “What makes theatre unique”.

Fighting the Void is the first hit.

Crazy? Right?

Of all the sites in the world, this place is the go to for how theatre is unique. What's even more interesting is that this post is a recap of Thornton Wilder's essay. And Thornton Wilder isn't even the first hit--this site is...

Which does make me feel like I'm cheating and perhaps I should write some posts with my own thoughts about the uniqueness of live theatre in the future.

So stay tuned for more content on that topic...

What I'm Reading: Plays, plays, plays and some more plays...

2011-03-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

It may be a compulsive habit, but I seem to be unable to walk out of a library empty-handed.

Recently I grabbed a bunch of play scripts that I were not on my reading list but were just too tempting to pass up.

In between studying my part for the upcoming production of Shining City at Off the Wall and filming this cowboy short film, I’m not actually sure when I’ll have time to read them, but rest assured, I will get around to them at some point..

I grabbed Julie Jensen’s The Harvey Girls, a brand-new play she wrote last year. I met Julie at UNLV when I was doing my undergrad and sat in on all the MFA playwriting workshops, acting in them or just watching them. She’s not just a brilliant playwright, but a brilliant teacher, as well. I was introduced to her work by acting in The Lost Vegas Series and have since become a big fan of her quirky and intelligent wit. If you’ve never read her stuff, go do it now.

I also grabbed David Mamet’s Race, a recent play of his which is being down at the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theater.

(No, David Mamet is not Irish and no, a play done on Broadway a year or so ago does not make it “classical” so I’m just as befuddled as you as to why PICT is doing it…)

The other exciting gem I grabbed is a collection of plays from the Royal Court Theater. This is full of playwrights I’ve never heard of but have been doing tons of stuff across the pond. Playwrights include David Eldridge, Roy Williams, Mike Bartlett, and Lucy Prebble. There was one play in the collection that piqued my interest by Simon Stephens called Motortown, about a Iraqi vet returning to London. One critic hailed it as a modern day Woyzcheck, which is high praise.

Why are "emerging" playwrights so darn lazy?

2011-03-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

“So all together, how about we “emerging” playwrights stay away from the defeatist attitude? It’s bad for business. Let’s stay away from it by thinking about companies like 13P and Workhaus Collective—theaters like Playwrights Horizons and City Theatre in Pittsburgh—organizations like New Dramatists and the Playwrights’ Center. Defeat defeatism by opening up your laptop at the beginning or end of the day…”

For the first time in its 80 year history, the Dramatists Guild of America will have a national conference in our nation’s capital at George Mason University. When I mentioned to a renowned playwright that I would be attending, he was a little uncertain in his enthusiasm, saying, “Yeah, I hope it doesn’t become a bitch fest.”

This was after a dinner conversation we had on the terms being thrown out in the theatrical world (and the world of funding), terms like “emerging” and “budding”. We didn’t really know the difference, but I imagine the definitions are more clear to funders and development directors. I’ve seen playwrights who have had a show on Broadway get an “emerging” playwright grant which just makes me think, when do we “arrive”? When we have the same house-name status as Shakespeare or Neil Simon or Sam Shepard?

Complaining is always easy.

It’s especially easy for playwrights. Let's face it, sometimes we like to complain. Who doesn't?

We generate our own material to work on, which is a distinct advantage over the actor, designer or director. On the other hand, we spend a lot of time waiting for someone to put up our play. Unless we self-produce, which is becoming more and more an attractive option.

The quote above is from a recent post by "emerging" playwright Mat Smart. The post is not a rant nor a critique of the play development system, but an insightful and provocative statement about emerging playwrights being lazy.

Read his post here.

I agree with some of his comments, but not all. The bottom line is that we must focus on what we as playwrights can control—our work and how we choose to get that work out there. It’s also about how we can support each other, which I think we could see more of in the general playwriting community.

We can start by going to each other’s readings, workshops and productions.

As my favorite theatre teacher Davey Marlin-Jones once said, "If we don't support each other...who will?"

Writing the Solo Show, Pt 9: Page to Stage

2011-03-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Plays are peculiar things. Sure, you can read a play, but the truth is that a script is a blueprint. The performance is the building.

I’ve said this over and over, but I firmly believe this more and more as I work on writing this solo play.

So where am I in the process?

After many months of writing various stories, notes, observations, I have to compile these pages into a binder.

This binder is becoming the “script”.

It's still a complete mess, of course. It's like a taking the clay and getting the shape and size right for the sculpture with only hints of what form that sculpture will take.

The problem here is that I want to write a play. Not vignettes. Not the facsimile of a therapy session. I have no desire to get up on stage and just tell personal stories about my pain and grief and hope the audience “gets” me. My desire is the universal truth of storytelling, finding the metaphor for the story and relating that to my audience in an entertaining way.

I’m not worried about whether or not the story seems personal or not. If it comes from my sense of truth, it will be inherently personal, as all great stories are.

What’s funny is that I’ve already written a solo play before—And I completely forgot about it. The play is called Material Girl and its about a 15 year old girl waiting in line to get an autograph from Madonna because this will logically prove the existence of God. Okay, it’s a short play, but still…I’ve done it before.

In fact, if you’d like to read it, go to Original Works and take a look.

Love, Art & Sexual Perversity succeeds with "oomph" at the Rogue Festival

2011-03-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

It's official.

I've got a "quirky sense of humor."

At least that's what the Kings River Life Magazine says about my show, Love, Art & Sexual Perversity, directed by Nicolette Tempesta in the Rogue Festival in California.

You can read the whole review here.

Love, Art & Sexual Perversity is a performance of four of my short plays--Painting by Numbers, Green-Eyed Monster, The Lift and Dog Park or Sexual Perversity in Magnuson. All but The Lift have been produced and I'm disappointed I missed the debut of this little two-character gem because it sounds like the director and actors really did well with it.

Here's a quote from the review:

The third scene, about a couple ending their relationship on a ski lift, really takes the action of the scenes to a second level. Brian Pucheu and Ashley Hyatt begin the scene with a quiet verve that quickly turns into some snappy insults delivered with just the right amount of acid. And then, just as quickly, that anger turns again into a soft kindness and regret that is palpable in the actors’ capable performances. Tempesta’s direction of this scene ensures that it doesn’t wallow in this turn too long or too fiercely, ending the scene with a very loving feeling at its core.

Being choosy with your projects

2011-03-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks I got off track on keeping the blog posts up to date. This is due to a convergence of jobs and projects suddenly arising (like a Perfect Storm!).

I just started a new job in external relations in the School of Drama at a prestigious private university, an opportunity that was just too exciting to pass up. At the same time, I was invited to a wonderfully supportive and fun playwriting group that meets every few weeks. I’m still also working as a teaching artist for an after-school program. This weekend, I’ll be acting as a deranged cowboy for a short film that’s shooting on Sunday and a few days in April. Right after that, I’ll be acting as Ian in Off the Wall Theater’s production of Conor McPherson’s Shining City.

Phew.

There are, of course, other auditions on top of that, as well as my own personal writing projects (which, sadly, I have been neglecting). One of those projects may be a public reading in June (more on that later). Even maintaining this blog is a project that takes time and energy.

All of this is exciting and I’ve met a lot of talented folks, but now I’m at the point of overload. There’s only so much time in the day and now I need to be more careful of what projects I devote my energy to.

So how do you choose what projects to work on? There are some key factors to consider.

Is the project awesome?

I don’t mean “awesome” in the blasé sense, but the accurate definition of the word. Is it a project you would kill for, something you’ve waited to do all your life, something you would work on for years and years and never get tired of it. For instance, I’ve been working on this robot project for months and I’m still reading books and interested in the ideas and fascinated by what’s out there. Every time I think about the project, I’m energized. That’s the kind of work you should look for.

Are you the best person for this project?

Sometimes you have to ask yourself, is this really the best fit for me? Do you have the right skills, background and personality for the project? Some projects are a no-brainer. If you’re in doubt, it probably isn’t a project that’s right for you. Recognizing that early on will save you headaches down the line.

Who do you get to work with?

Are they amazing and talented people? Are they collaborators that you’ve worked with before and or new artists that you would kill to get to know? You have to love the people you work with—life is too short and the pay is not enough to tolerate jerks or fools.

Does the project pay?

In general, theater is not a money-making endeavor, but there are paying gigs out there of various levels. Sometimes it’s a factor and sometimes not, but it can make a difference. I probably wouldn’t pursue writing the book for a Broadway musical but if Julie Taymor asked me to and Disney fronted the money, I don’t know that I could turn down the production of “Iron Man: The Musical”*. Well, on second thought…

(*As far as I know, there are no plans for this project, but I could be wrong. Let’s hope I’m not.)

How much time and energy will this project take up?

If you have too much on your plate, then logistically, you may not be able to do it. Sometimes you have to turn projects down because you are “too busy”. Or you have to let go of another project to make room for it. This is where time management and knowing your limits comes into play.

Is it something you’ve never done before?

Will it stretch you creatively? Bring you out of your comfort zone? I stay passionate and interested in projects that force me to learn or be on my toes—that’s the kind of work I want to be involved with. If it’s a project that is really everyday, then why am I doing it (unless it pays really well, see above).

There are of course, other smaller factors to consider, as well, and your priorities for taking a project will depend on your own unique goals and where you are in your life. Either way, you should always think about how your project should add value to your life (ie whether its worth it or not).

Know thy enemy

2011-03-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

As I’ve posted before, I submitted a short script for the Film Factory competition, hosted by Steeltown Entertainment.

They announced the finalists and unfortunately I didn't make the cut (hey, them's the breaks but there's always next year).

True to the Film Factory's aim of education, they've posted the scripts that were selected as finalists online. This is great to learn about what others are writing but also to see what kinds of scripts the judges liked or didn't like. They do range in style and story but the southwestern Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh region is central to all of them in some way.

Read the competition here

On March 26, next Saturday, the semi-finalists selected out of this group will pitch their scripts (now rewritten based on feedback) to three Hollywood producers, right here in Pittsburgh at Point Park University downtown.

Precious Little and Circle Mirror Transformation

2011-03-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

There are two great Pittsburgh premiere productions of new plays going on this month and I'm planning to see both of them, though I'm not sure when.

The first is Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation at Pittsburgh Public Theatre. Aside from the fact that I love Jesse Berger's directing (from seeing his work with the Red Bull Theater in NY), the play is written by a young woman playwright who has been hailed by critics to be a voice of a new generation. The play is set in a small Vermont town's community center and we watch six characters go through acting exercises. This doesn't sound like the stuff of drama, but from what I hear Baker explores the minutiae of daily life in a quirky way.

Then there's Precious Little by Madeleine George (another exciting young female playwright) at City Theatre in the South Side. All I know about this play is its about motherhood, language and a talking gorilla. Sounds good to me.

And there's a "trailer" for it. See below.

It seems to me that video trailers of play productions are popping up more and more as a marketing tool. This one is actually the most interesting and cinematic I've seen of the bunch. I remember that Theatre Schmeater in Seattle used to do these types of trailers and I know I've seen them done by other companies as well.

As far as marketing goes, it's pretty savvy. We are a YouTube and Facebook generation.

And yet...I shudder when I see theater squeezed into that box frame. I don't know why.

Will the trailer phenomena go away or will we see more theaters do this kind of marketing?

Love, Art & Sexual Perversity Opens this weekend!

2011-03-03T06:17:00.000-08:00

Nicolette Tempesta directs a stellar cast in a collection of short plays opening this weekend in the Rogue Festival in Fresno, CA.

Plays in the show include:

Green Eyed-Monster (origin of the infamous Miss Piggy monologue)

Dog Park or Sexual Perversity in Magnuson

Love & Death in the Time of Crayola

Painting by Numbers

And the world premiere of The Lift

If you're in the area, get your tickets!

Three Things I Learned about Playwriting from my B.U.S. Ride

2011-03-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve had a few days to decompress (and get some sleep) after the wonderful success that was the Bicolage Ubran Sprawl. It was a such an illuminating evening of theater that it’ll keep my engine running for a long time.

After some reflection, I realize that in the crunch of time that I had to complete a play, some of my bad writing habits were revealed and some lessons learned.

I was proud of the ten-minute play that I wrote, and even more proud of what the actors and director brought to the performance. I credit their talent and hard work with much of its success. I know that the play had great characters and balanced moments of comedy and drama in a real way, and this reflected the inspiration of the neighborhood I visited.

But, because I’m a writer, I can’t help thinking about what to work on in the rewrite. There’s only so much you can do in 24 hours, after all.

Below are the three main lessons learned from my agonizing evening of writing. They might be lessons to remember, regardless of the deadline.

Lesson #1: Conflict can be tricky

There’s a sneaky habit I saw in my writing (and I’ve seen in other playwrights as well). It’s when playwrights create characters with negative outlooks or are always contrary to other people (and I don’t mean in an interesting way like Jacques from As You Like It). I realized, though, this is not a character problem. This is a story problem. It’s an easy way of creating the illusion of conflict when your story is lacking a major dramatic conflict--a strong protagonist with a goal and obstacle. Your natural playwriting instincts kick in with this absence, but instead of doing the necessary and most difficult process of looking at the overall story, your characters start acting like trouble-makers—to create conflict, even if only minor struggles.

It’s ironic that last week I wrote about objectives and obstacles and passive characters because the four characters I wrote for HALF FULL are not all that active. Their activity is waiting for a bus (passive) and their main conflict is about an idea (intangible). I’m honestly not even sure who the protagonist would be, which would be okay if I decided that was a choice, but at 3:30 am, I was driven not by clear choices but the desire to finish ten pages of a play and make it work.

Part of the driving force of the play was this idea of the water glass being half full or half empty. So, obviously, I have two characters at the beginning and one is definitely a half full kinda guy and the other is a half empty personality. Thing is, that only works for about the first page. The character needed to be more about what wasn't going to happen--he needed hope (aka wants and dreams).

A negative or contrary character is like an actor that only plays negative choices (“I hate this person”, “I don’t want to be here”, etc.). Everyone has hopes, dreams and wants positive outcomes. It’s what’s in our way that defines our life and our stories. It’s bigger picture stuff. When we don’t see the bigger picture clearly, we get lost in the weeds.

This is why having time to rewrite can be so helpful and informative. You start to see the big picture.

Lesson #2:When in doubt, throw it out

You’ve heard that maxim before, I’m sure. After hours of pounding out a comedic story that I was tied to, I finally decided, enough is enough. Even though I already had nine or ten pages of the play, it wasn’t working. The ending wasn’t coming at all. There was no conflict. There were four characters talking and it was boring the hell out of me. So I ditched it. I didn’t delete it (just in case!), but I did open up a completely new blank document and started over from scratch.

Not entirely from scratch, mind you. The nine pages I wrote gave me a lot of clarity on what story I wanted to tell and who the characters were. Once I let go of some of my preconceptions, I was able to find my story.

This has happened to me before, on other plays, by the way. It happened once before when I was doing a 24 hour play festival, actually. It’s also happened many times on full-length plays. You discover that you’re writing the wrong play. It’s a tough realization, but every time it’s happened, I’ve never regretted it.

Again, this is why time and space can be helpful in the rewriting process

Lesson #3: Leave space for your actors and your director

In the late night/early morning thralls of creation (aka agony), I was so mired in my creative flow and finishing the damn thing that for awhile there I forgot about what my director and actors would bring to the table. The director shapes the story with the staging and by directing the actors. The actors truly bring it to life and make it their own. They give characters life and can make clunky text seem natural. I’ve seen many bad scripts made bearable by the talents of a great director and actor.

While I wanted to give my collaborators the best script possible, I needed to remember I was not alone in the storytelling process. For instance, the pages I threw out had a lot of exposition. I wanted to make sure the audience, and the actor, knew exactly what they felt and were doing in the play. Boring. Give the characters less to say and watch the actors fill in the hidden life behind it. It’s more interesting for the audience and the actor.

There are actually more than just three lessons learned from my night of frenetic playwriting, but those were the three biggest ones. Next time I do B.U.S., I’m going to put those reminders up on my bulletin board.

BUS 6 Photos/Video by the amazing Jason Cohn

2011-02-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Jason Cohn was the photographer who followed me and rode my P68 bus for awhile out to Braddock Hills. He got some great dramatic shots of me taking notes and looking really serious. I mean, really serious, like thinking deep existential thoughts, like "Why are there hardly any people on this bus at 5 pm?' or "how am I supposed to anonymously observe the humanity of Pittsburgh commuters with this guy sticking a camera literally right in my face and taking a hundred photos?"

He took great shots and video of the actor parade then came back in the morning to take shots of the directors reading plays and the actors rehearsing. Then he went home for just a few hours to put together this amazing video that they showed right before the 8 pm performance.

It's a beautiful recap of how it all went down over a 24 hour period. Bravo, Jason!

By the way, the actors were told to bring in a prop, a costume item, tell a story of the worst trouble they got into, and sing a little bit of one of their guilty pleasure songs. That's why I used Peter Cetera in my play. But we had a little bit of everything going on Friday night.

B.U.S. 6 - Pittsburgh's Best Night Of Theater - Performance Version from Jason Cohn Productions on Vimeo.

What just happened?!

2011-02-27T09:36:00.000-08:00

Theatre is a transformative experience. It transforms our ordinary world into art that happens right in front of our eyes. Sometimes theatre even transforms the audience, the players, or the artists behind the scenes like the directors and playwrights. It can galvanize a community or a country, whether it takes 24 months, 24 days or yes, even 24 hours to create.

And a transformative cultural event was created at last night’s B.U.S. at Bricolage.

Bricolage is all about “making artful use of what is at hand” and the whole 24 hour process was a true test of that philosophy.

At 7:30 pm on Friday night, the twenty-four actors, six directors and six playwrights all met at the theatre and we began the process of putting a show together around the theme of “abundance”.

Actors brought in props, costumes and stories from their real life to be used for the show. Playwrights brought their talent and inspiration from their bus ride through a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Directors brought their talent and experience. And Tami Dixon and Jeffrey Carpenter, the brave leaders of Bricolage, created an environment of safety and support, where everything happened so smoothly and without any hiccups or backstage drama that they’d make you think it was easy!

(Which if you have ever produced any evening of one-acts know, it is so not easy even when you have weeks and weeks of time to juggle all the logistics of 36 artists rehearsing in six different spaces, adding the sound and light cues and organizing the opening night festivities--all without losing your sanity).

Six new plays were born, each distinctive to the playwright’s voice, all using some of the material and inspiration given us from Friday night, and all executed with clear storytelling by the directors and top-notch performance by the actors.

Of course, I’m biased being part of the experience, but honestly, these artists put together a show that looked like it took weeks to put up, not hours.

I was honored to be included with the other local playwrights last night: Wali Jamal, Tammy Ryan, Gab Cody, Peter Roth, and Gayle Pazerski.

We had a play about vampires riding the “T” and a play about ghosts. Another was about excessive Italian passion and the American tourists who witness it. One of my favorites was the play about Mother Nature getting her drink on to deal with a breakup with Poseidon.

My play HALF FULL was directed by Brad Stephenson and featured the acting talents of Mark Southers, Mark Staley, Matt Henderson and Don DiGiulio. The story was about perceptions of abundance, using the metaphor of a glass being half empty and half full. Two guys argue about this as they look around the neighborhood at a bus stop in Braddock Hills when a father and son enter. We find out the dad lost his wife last year and has a whole other perception of what a full life is and how they see the neighborhood. It was a character-driven piece in every way and I was really inspired by the actors I wrote for. I thought the only bits of humor would be the gold top hat and the Peter Cetera references. Turns out the play is funnier than I thought, but mostly due to the actors churning out such great performances in such little time. The director and actors just hit it out of the park and nailed the comedic moments but without losing the sense of gravitas, creating a nice balance of joy and suffering that lifted my play up to new heights.

I was reminded how wonderful it is to have talented people working on your plays—it can change everything (see, its transformative).

One thing about going through the 24 hour playwriting process is that the pressure can bring out the best and worst of your writing habits. I learned some hard lessons about my process. And lessons learned at 3 am you don't easily forget.

But I think I’ll share what I learned in another post.

Right now, I’m just going to enjoy the buzz of success that comes from being part of such a transformative artistic event.

It's almost showtime!

2011-02-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

At about noon I dropped on my four actors and my director to chat about my bus ride and the inspiration for the play and watch a quick run-through.

I'm in good hands.

I left them to their excellent work and went home to try to take a nap but it's a bit like trying to sleep before Christmas Eve.

With a 24 hour play, you're literally dealing with the buzz of inspiration that drives the first draft and the nerve-wracking opening night jitters all at once.

I'm three and a half hours away from watching the debut of my play that I thought of about twelve hours ago.

What I'm also excited about, though, is seeing what the other five plays will be.

Did I dream all that?

2011-02-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

I woke up just about an hour ago around 9:30 am as if in a daze. Perhaps that's how people usually wake up after only four hours of sleep.

Or perhaps it was because I was feverishly writing and when I woke up I had horrific nightmare thoughts creeping in my head, like "Did I really write a play last night? Did I remember to send it? What the hell is my play really about?"

After some coffee and breakfast, I've got my bearings.

Yes, I finished a play.

The title is HALF FULL. Remember, the theme this year is "abundance".

I'm disappointed my original idea and location didn't take off they way I wanted to. I'm glad I scrapped it when I did, though. I think it was for the sake of a more complex and interesting play. When I first began writing at 11 pm last night, I thought I was going to write a comedy. The actors I choose had some great, funny stories and I knew the characters they would inhabit would be funny.

Turns out I didn't really want to write a comedy. Or that particular story I was working on just didn't want to come out last night in any easy fashion. It's too bad, as some of the funny lines and images I wrote won't be used, some of them inspired by my bus ride. Luckily, the new play is not all that dark and heavy and the actors have great comedic timing so will add some humor and warmth to the play.

My favorite image from my bus ride was a sign I saw at the Fairway's Lounge.

Thurs. Karaoke. DJ Josh
Sat. Deliverance

The first play idea was located inside the Fairway's Lounge, of course. Needless to say, there was a DJ Josh character and some references to Deliverance, which just started to get really weird. (See clip below).

But alas, a funny sign does not always make a funny play. Or a good one.

So I went back to the theme of "abundance" and focused on the neighborhood that I got off the bus at. I created a space and environment that was tangible and interesting and let my characters be informed by that place. Once I had clear characters, the story came together. I'm still unsure of what works and doesn't work in Half Full, but then, that's what the performance tonight will tell me.

Let's back up.

So, what happened is that all the playwrights had until 8 am this morning to send their play in. The six directors read the plays (with the names of the authors taken off the title so as to be a blind read). The directors choose their plays. Then the actors arrive and they rehearse. They have until about 5 pm tonight until the tech rehearsal where each play gets about 15 minutes of tech time (for our play that's great, because there's hardly any technical requirements). Then the curtain goes up at 8 pm and anything can happen.

I'll be heading down in about an hour to drop in on rehearsals and see if I can shed any light on what I wrote. Or maybe the actors and director can shed some light for me on what I wrote. Probably will be more the latter, as it usually is.

Starting to feel sleepy and I ain't done yet

2011-02-26T01:30:00.001-08:00

It's about 4:30 am right now and I've scratched the first nine pages of a play I was writing because it just wasn't working.

This was a hard decision to make at 3 am, but it had to be done.

So now there's a new play.

Same four actors. Totally different play.

But it's not done yet. So off to finish it now.

Here we go!

2011-02-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

It's almost 11 pm right now. I just got home from Bricolage in downtown about twenty minutes ago and have made some coffee and had a snack and am looking over my notes from my bus ride.

I took the P68 out to Braddock Hills. I have to actually look on the map to really know where that is. All I know is its in east Pittsburgh.

The actor parade was great--there is A LOT of talent here in Pittsburgh! Part of me was enjoying the performances of stories and songs, and another part of me was checking my watch, thinking, "okay, I gotta go write something."

The funny thing is, my bus ride was the most boring bus ride ever.

Usually, without fail, I'm stuck on an overcrowded bus with lots of diverse characters, a cornucopia of dramatic fodder to use. Tonight I was on a bus that had about ten people, all on their phones or listening to their headphones. The bus ride back had two people in it, both of whom were asleep. The scenery was mostly the East Liberty busway until we got closer to the Braddock Hills. Then I started to see some images and ideas that could be used. An indoor tennis court. A boxing gym. A graveyard. I noted some of the names on some graves I saw. There weren't a lot of people out and about since its a bit chilly out there.

And our theme for the evening is "abundance".

Perhaps my play will be about the lack of abundance...

Okay. No time to procrastinate. The clock is ticking...

B.U.S. Begins Tonight!

2011-02-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'll be heading downtown (or dahntawn if yinz from da burgh) to the Bricolage HQ to get my schedule for the bus ride that will inspire the new 10-minute play I'm about to write.

Nervous anticipation is in my belly right now, which will be promptly replaced with a grande latte and maybe a red bull later.

After my bus ride, I'll get a preview of our acting pool and choose the actors for the play I want to write. And then off I go.

More later.

What do you want?

2011-02-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

"The difference between a good playwright and a bad playwright is caring about every single word that comes out of a character's mouth."

-- Tony Kushner

Jude Law and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Hamlet.

In my teaching and dramaturg-ing, I've often talked to playwrights about “passive characters”.

This notion floats around but maybe we all don’t know what it means. I’ve certainly been guilty of writing a passive character. Sometimes its easy to see and fix, but other times, not so much.

What are they really saying when a director or dramaturg says your character is passive?

I equate it with a director giving me as an actor a note of “I don’t know what you’re doing in this scene? What action are you playing? What do you want in this scene from the other person?”

Which, as an actor, clues me into the fact that I’m not playing an objective, or it isn’t clear what objective I’m playing, and also that the obstacle is not clear. Characters want something and are defined by HOW they go about getting through the obstacles to get what they want (ie behavior and actions).

So when a dramaturg, director, or fellow playwright describes a character as passive, that’s really what they’re saying. It’s not just that the objective/want is unclear, its that the conflict and obstacles are not clear, either (or completely absent). Or it may simply be that the objective/conflict needs more at stake.

Every character in your play, whether they have one line or a hundred, must have a driving need to be there. They cannot be a mouthpiece for you as the playwright. They must serve a function. It can be a simple need but it needs to be dramatically active. Of course, the more complex the need and the more conflict, the more dramatically interesting its going to be. A messenger with one line should have a relatively small need compared to say, Hamlet, right?

But if Hamlet’s only need is to “grieve his father”, we wouldn’t get past the second scene of Shakespeare’s play. His overall need is to avenge his father’s death. Once he hears from the ghost his father was murdered, a whole series of actions gets set into motion and he starts DOING a lot of things. Hamlet is not just a “gloomy dane”, as some English profs would like to believe. He’s on the move and quite active.

Most of the time, I find myself walking into the “passive character” zone when I have a character that is quite similar to myself, or I’m using a real situation. This is natural. In real life, most of us are quite passive. Yes, we do things, but on the whole, most of us avoid conflict. Few of us enjoy confrontations. We deal with them when they happen, but if we can get what we want without pissing off our neighbor, that’s great. And it’s rare when we run into not getting what we want in a big way.

Theater is a truncated version of real life. As soon as a real story or situation is put on stage, it needs to be leaner. We don't want to see the moments of non-conflict (usually). We want to see people at their very worst or their very best, overcoming obstacles.

So if people are telling you that your character is passive, you need to reexamine the wants and needs in a big way. Are they as dramatically interesting as you think they are? Is there enough conflict or do your characters get what they want pretty quickly? What are the actions that your character is doing to get what they want?

Sometimes it’s just a little tweak here or there. Other times, you might rewrite the character completely in a whole new and exciting way.

Rest assured, you’re not alone. Everyone lands in the passive zone eventually. Good writers just know how to rewrite their way out of there.

Getting ready to ride the B.U.S.

2011-02-17T06:39:00.000-08:00

The B.U.S. is coming!

B.U.S. (otherwise known as the Bricolage Urban Scrawl) is a 24 hour play festival extravaganza put on by Bricolage Theater in downtown Pittsburgh. This is its sixth year running and I am fortunate (or unlucky) enough to be invited to participate as a playwright.

Last night I ran into Tami Dixon and Jeffrey Carpenter, the dynamic duo that run the theater company and I told her I was psyching myself up for it and getting into training.

Cue Rocky Theme Music and workout montage now.

Okay, the thing with this 24 hour play festival, as with others, is that you can’t really do any prep work. They give you a theme on Friday night. You go ride a bus and observe people. You don’t even know who your actors or director is yet. Then you have twelve hours to write a ten minute play. The beautiful thing about this is that you will probably end up riding a bus through a new neighborhood, seeing different people and literally getting of your comfort zone.

But just because I can’t do any prep work for the festival, doesn’t mean I can’t get myself ready.

Ballet dancers do physical drills. Musicians practice their scales. Actors do voice, movement training and work on their monologues. We playwrights and screenwriters should be exercising our creative skills in the same way.

B.U.S. is like one giant writing exercise—like a test. Here are your parameters and limitations—make something out of it and oh by the way, the clock is ticking. This is not just a fun whimsical idea, but a task that can develop real world writing skills. It prepares you for on-the-spot rehearsal rewrites or trying to polish up a script before sending it off for a commission.

You don't have to do the madness of B.U.S. to workout your writing muscles, though. There are plenty of exercises you can do, even if all you have is a spare fifteen minutes.

For instance, my favorite has and always will be the six-line play. The rules are easy. Write a play using only six lines. You can have two characters or six, but the goal is to create a real situation, real characters, with a story that has a beginning, middle and end.

A great book, chock full of playwriting exercises on various techniques is Playwriting in Process by Michael Wright.

For you more advanced playwrights, check out New Playwriting Strategies by Paul Castagno.

Or just make up some of your own. Like any workout, it should be fun, right?

A ticking clock is always more interesting

2011-02-15T14:33:00.000-08:00

Wait, no...not that kind of clock...

(That's the Doomsday Clock, if you didn't recognize it.)

My next post will be a little bit more about the progress of the solo show I’m working on. I have many new pages, all random thoughts and scattered stories right now—it’s a big mess basically, and perhaps even a possible title: Dreaming to Fly.

However, what I really need right now is to give myself a deadline.

I had a wise, old theater teacher named Davey Marlin-Jones who used to joke with us that the reason he got into the theater was because he was so bad with deadlines and this profession forced him to confront that weakness. There’s no pushing back opening night. Once a date and venue is set, the clock is ticking.

So I realize I need a deadline. That means setting a date and time and getting a space (even an informal one) and doing some kind of reading of material.

This really scares the hell out of me, actually. But in a good way.

The deadline needs to be realistic, by the way. It’s no good saying “I’ll have a 70 minutes of material ready in two weeks” if you have only a few pages of random thoughts.

Also, think of your workload and other projects you might have in the pipeline.

For instance, I have been cast in a production of Shining City by Conor Macpherson and therefore, will want to wait until after that show closes in mid-May.

Now that the clock is ticking, time to write more pages.

Write about what you love

2011-02-14T05:03:00.000-08:00

World premiere of Measure of Love in 14/48, Seattle

It’s Valentine’s Day but I have a different kind of message about love for you today.

There have been times I wrote a play because I thought it was funny, or a good idea, or was intellectually stimulating, but if I lacked any emotional connection to that play, the idea or story would never really take off.

This has happened more than I would care to admit, actually.

Which is why I want to stress to you the importance of writing about what you love. They say you should write about what you know (and I think that’s true to some degree, as well) but what will really pull you through the dismal days of rewriting or writer’s block will be the emotional connection to your characters and material.

This idea to “find the love” is true of all artists, actually, from actors to designers to directors. I make a conscious effort sometimes to start conversations about a show I’m working on by saying, “What I love about this play is…”

If you can’t come up with one or two things you love about the play, you shouldn’t be working on that play.

If there is no ache inside your gut to tell a particular story, then walk away. This is not an easy decision to make, of course, but you’ll know when you need to just let it go. For instance, if you started writing the story but a year later you just can’t get interested in finishing it, you probably didn’t have the emotional connection you needed.

Although I’ve never run a marathon, I imagine that writing a play or screenplay is much like that arduous activity. No one wakes up one idea and says, “I think it might be a good idea to run a marathon”. Most marathon runners have some kind of inner drive, or compulsion. There is a deeper need. That’s what gets them through all the training, and the pain, and the psychological hurdles they have to overcome. There's a deep love there. Either that, or they're just masochists.

If you are passionate about what you’re writing, that will be evident to the audience. They will pay attention. And then, once you have their attention, tell them a damn good story.

Spalding Gray, I wish I had known you

2011-02-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

Tonight we're off to see the show Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell at the Warhol Museum.

If you don't know of Spalding Gray, I'm sorry.

Look him up. Now.

Especially if you're reading some of these posts about building a solo show. Everyone from Eric Bogosian to Mike Daisy who are doing autobiographical solo shows or performance works are standing on the shoulders of his groundbreaking work.

I remember seeing the video of Swimming to Cambodia years ago when I was in undergrad. At the time, I'm not sure I fully appreciated the scope and power of it, the audacity and the genius of it. I did know though, that I was completely mesmerized by the electricity of his writing and performance.

Spalding Gray is one of those performers I wish I had seen in person. Although I'm looking forward to the presentation tonight, I know it won't quite be the same.

And Everything Is Going Fine Trailer 2010 HD

2011-02-12T14:01:00.000-08:00

Love, Art & Sexual Perversity at the Rogue Festival

2011-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

For those of you who might be able to check out my plays next month in the Roque Festival in Fresno, CA, you'll be able to see some funny, short plays, including the ever-popular Green-Eyed Monster, Love & Death in the Time of Crayola, Painting by Numbers and Dog Park.

Get more info and your tickets here.

(Photo: original NYC world premiere of Painting by Numbers at Brass Tacks Theatre, directed by Lisa Jackson and starring Matthew Wilson (of Cyberchase fame) and Judy Jerome.)

Put yourself on the map

2011-02-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought, "If only I were on the map as a playwright?"

Now, you can be!

So this New Play Map is kinda fun, and informational and could be quite helpful, though I'm not exactly sure how unless everyone uses it (and by everyone, I mean all theater companies and labs and workshops and such).

Hit the tab and find me on the map:

This new play map is developed by American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage (in DC). The goal is a visual mapping of where new plays are being developed and by who, from playwrights to ensembles to other theater organizations. First thing you'll notice is that theaters center around cities, of course, and also, that the information is few and far between. I do hope that others will put themselves on the map and see if we can track data on how many new plays are being developed.

So, what are you waiting for?

Take a few minutes and put yourself on the map.

Writing the solo show, Pt. 8: Reading and Research

2011-01-31T07:17:00.000-08:00

If you're anything like me, you might find yourself avoiding the act of actually writing by going to the library to look up books about writing.

Or perhaps, using Google or otherwise procrastinating on the internet?

(Curse you, Facebook!)

Now, we know that research is often a necessary beast we must wrangle. We may need a sense of what has come before us, or to be inspired, or to simply get away from our own projects. But after awhile, there is that scary moment when reading takes the place of writing.

That inner voice inside says, “No, not yet…I still haven’t read this yet…so how can I write something about it…nope…gotta do some research…”

This usually happens when whatever it is we want to write is daunting and fearful.

For me, that is this solo show.

I could go on and on about why this particular show scares the hell out of me (gee, other than the “solo” aspect of performing alone on stage? Or the intimate, more personal conection with the audience, or…)

I have been reviewing some great resources on solo works, though. The most interesting, and highly recommended is Extreme Exposure, edited by Jo Bonney.

This book is like a sampler of some of the greatest and most exciting solo performers fron the 70s to today. (Well, not today, since it was published about ten years ago.) You can sample through seletions from Spalding Gray, Jessica Hagedorn, Lenny Bruce, Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Bogosion, Lisa Kron, Danny Hoch, John Luguiziamo and Luis Alfaro. What you get is a lovely panarama of the possibilities of what solo shows can be. They can be political, personal, epic, or deal with the every day. They can be sexy and fun or dangerous. I recommend this for everyone’s shelf, actually.

The other book I’ve looked at is The Power of One by Louis E. Catron.

It has a more mainstream selection (not quite as radically charged as Extreme Exposure) including examples from Jane Martin and Lanford Wilson. It’s got some great quotes about theater and some helpful examples. What’s particularly amusing, though, is the argument of how different solo plays are from other plays. Yet, as he describes what makes a great solo play, he then says how you also need those same things for a great play—conflict, drama, characters, spectacle, etc.

It’s in reading this book, though, that I’ve had my breakthrough.

Don’t think of solo plays as this "other type of play".

A solo show is a play.

It’s not much different than any other play. It’s theater. It just happens to be performed by one actor.

Suddenly, I don’t feel so daunted by it.

I know how to write a play.

Sheesh.

Oh, Mamet, how do we love thee...Let us count the ways...

2011-01-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

There was a memo recently (or a letter or email or some other form of vitriol from David Mamet, world renowned playwright, film-maker, TV show producer/writer and man about town).

Mamet wrote it as a “guide” for the writers of THE UNIT.

It is pure Mamet and though I sometimes think that Mamet is Mamet’s biggest fan, he is also 98% on target with his thoughts about dramatic writing and action (especially for TV).

But his advice goes for writers of any dramatic form, whether it’s TV, film, or plays.

Does it apply to experimental or movement-based works? There’s the question, right? I don’t know how the works of Richard Maxwell, Robert Wilson or Young Jean Lee would stack up in his estimation, but the memo has sparked a lot of debate.

And since everyone else has seemed to put it up on the web, here it is for those of you who haven’t sent it.

FYI, Mamet is responsible for those caps and asterisks. And fair warning, he swears a lot. It IS Mamet and that's his thing.

TO THE WRITERS OF THE UNIT

GREETINGS.

AS WE LEARN HOW TO WRITE THIS SHOW, A RECURRING PROBLEM BECOMES CLEAR.

THE PROBLEM IS THIS: TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN *DRAMA* AND NON-DRAMA. LET ME BREAK-IT-DOWN-NOW.

EVERYONE IN CREATION IS SCREAMING AT US TO MAKE THE SHOW CLEAR. WE ARE TASKED WITH, IT SEEMS, CRAMMING A SHITLOAD OF *INFORMATION* INTO A LITTLE BIT OF TIME.

OUR FRIENDS. THE PENGUINS, THINK THAT WE, THEREFORE, ARE EMPLOYED TO COMMUNICATE *INFORMATION* — AND, SO, AT TIMES, IT SEEMS TO US.

BUT NOTE:THE AUDIENCE WILL NOT TUNE IN TO WATCH INFORMATION. YOU WOULDN’T, I WOULDN’T. NO ONE WOULD OR WILL. THE AUDIENCE WILL ONLY TUNE IN AND STAY TUNED TO WATCH DRAMA.

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, *ACUTE* GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES *OF EVERY SCENE* THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT? 2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT? 3) WHY NOW?

THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE SCENE IS DRAMATIC OR NOT.

IF THE SCENE IS NOT DRAMATICALLY WRITTEN, IT WILL NOT BE DRAMATICALLY ACTED.

THERE IS NO MAGIC FAIRY DUST WHICH WILL MAKE A BORING, USELESS, REDUNDANT, OR MERELY INFORMATIVE SCENE AFTER IT LEAVES YOUR TYPEWRITER. *YOU* THE WRITERS, ARE IN CHARGE OF MAKING SURE *EVERY* SCENE IS DRAMATIC.

THIS MEANS ALL THE “LITTLE” EXPOSITIONAL SCENES OF TWO PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD. THIS BUSHWAH (AND WE ALL TEND TO WRITE IT ON THE FIRST DRAFT) IS LESS THAN USELESS, SHOULD IT FINALLY, GOD FORBID, GET FILMED.

IF THE SCENE BORES YOU WHEN YOU READ IT, REST ASSURED IT *WILL* BORE THE ACTORS, AND WILL, THEN, BORE THE AUDIENCE, AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE BACK IN THE BREADLINE.

SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE SCENE DRAMATIC. IT IS NOT THE ACTORS JOB (THE ACTORS JOB IS TO BE TRUTHFUL). IT IS NOT THE DIRECTORS JOB. HIS OR HER JOB IS TO FILM IT STRAIGHTFORWARDLY AND REMIND THE ACTORS TO TALK FAST. IT IS *YOUR* JOB.

EVERY SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. THAT MEANS: THE MAIN CHARACTER MUST HAVE A SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD, PRESSING NEED WHICH IMPELS HIM OR HER TO SHOW UP IN THE SCENE.

THIS NEED IS WHY THEY *CAME*. IT IS WHAT THE SCENE IS ABOUT. THEIR ATTEMPT TO GET THIS NEED MET *WILL* LEAD, AT THE END OF THE SCENE,TO *FAILURE* – THIS IS HOW THE SCENE IS *OVER*. IT, THIS FAILURE, WILL, THEN, OF NECESSITY, PROPEL US INTO THE *NEXT* SCENE.

ALL THESE ATTEMPTS, TAKEN TOGETHER, WILL, OVER THE COURSE OF THE EPISODE, CONSTITUTE THE *PLOT*.

ANY SCENE, THUS, WHICH DOES NOT BOTH ADVANCE THE PLOT, AND STANDALONE (THAT IS, DRAMATICALLY, BY ITSELF, ON ITS OWN MERITS) IS EITHER SUPERFLUOUS, OR INCORRECTLY WRITTEN.

YES BUT YES BUT YES BUT, YOU SAY: WHAT ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF WRITING IN ALL THAT “INFORMATION?”

AND I RESPOND “*FIGURE IT OUT*” ANY DICKHEAD WITH A BLUESUIT CAN BE (AND IS) TAUGHT TO SAY “MAKE IT CLEARER”, AND “I WANT TO KNOW MORE *ABOUT* HIM”.

WHEN YOU’VE MADE IT SO CLEAR THAT EVEN THIS BLUESUITED PENGUIN IS HAPPY, BOTH YOU AND HE OR SHE *WILL* BE OUT OF A JOB.

THE JOB OF THE DRAMATIST IS TO MAKE THE AUDIENCE WONDER WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. *NOT* TO EXPLAIN TO THEM WHAT JUST HAPPENED, OR TO*SUGGEST* TO THEM WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

ANY DICKHEAD, AS ABOVE, CAN WRITE, “BUT, JIM, IF WE DON’T ASSASSINATE THE PRIME MINISTER IN THE NEXT SCENE, ALL EUROPE WILL BE ENGULFED IN FLAME”

WE ARE NOT GETTING PAID TO *REALIZE* THAT THE AUDIENCE NEEDS THIS INFORMATION TO UNDERSTAND THE NEXT SCENE, BUT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO WRITE THE SCENE BEFORE US SUCH THAT THE AUDIENCE WILL BE INTERESTED IN WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

YES BUT, YES BUT YES *BUT* YOU REITERATE.

AND I RESPOND *FIGURE IT OUT*.

*HOW* DOES ONE STRIKE THE BALANCE BETWEEN WITHHOLDING AND VOUCHSAFING INFORMATION? *THAT* IS THE ESSENTIAL TASK OF THE DRAMATIST. AND THE ABILITY TO *DO* THAT IS WHAT SEPARATES YOU FROM THE LESSER SPECIES IN THEIR BLUE SUITS.

FIGURE IT OUT.

START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE *SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC*. it must start because the hero HAS A PROBLEM, AND IT MUST CULMINATE WITH THE HERO FINDING HIM OR HERSELF EITHER THWARTED OR EDUCATED THAT ANOTHER WAY EXISTS.

LOOK AT YOUR LOG LINES. ANY LOGLINE READING “BOB AND SUE DISCUSS…” IS NOT DESCRIBING A DRAMATIC SCENE.

PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR OUTLINES ARE, GENERALLY, SPECTACULAR. THE DRAMA FLOWS OUT BETWEEN THE OUTLINE AND THE FIRST DRAFT.

THINK LIKE A FILMMAKER RATHER THAN A FUNCTIONARY, BECAUSE, IN TRUTH, *YOU* ARE MAKING THE FILM. WHAT YOU WRITE, THEY WILL SHOOT.

HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS. ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

DO *NOT* WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT. WRITE A RIPPING THREE, FOUR, SEVEN MINUTE SCENE WHICH MOVES THE STORY ALONG, AND YOU CAN, VERY SOON, BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR *AND* HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.

REMEMBER YOU ARE WRITING FOR A VISUAL MEDIUM. *MOST* TELEVISION WRITING, OURS INCLUDED, SOUNDS LIKE *RADIO*. THE *CAMERA* CAN DO THE EXPLAINING FOR YOU. *LET* IT. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERS *DOING* -*LITERALLY*. WHAT ARE THEY HANDLING, WHAT ARE THEY READING. WHAT ARE THEY WATCHING ON TELEVISION, WHAT ARE THEY *SEEING*.

IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.

IF YOU DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE CRUTCH OF NARRATION, EXPOSITION, INDEED, OF *SPEECH*. YOU WILL BE FORCED TO WORK IN A NEW MEDIUM – TELLING THE STORY IN PICTURES (ALSO KNOWN AS SCREENWRITING)

THIS IS A NEW SKILL. NO ONE DOES IT NATURALLY. YOU CAN TRAIN YOURSELVES TO DO IT, BUT YOU NEED TO *START*.

I CLOSE WITH THE ONE THOUGHT: LOOK AT THE *SCENE* AND ASK YOURSELF “IS IT DRAMATIC? IS IT *ESSENTIAL*? DOES IT ADVANCE THE PLOT?

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY.

IF THE ANSWER IS “NO” WRITE IT AGAIN OR THROW IT OUT. IF YOU’VE GOT ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME UP.

LOVE, DAVE MAMET SANTA MONICA 19 OCTO 05

(IT IS *NOT* YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW THE ANSWERS, BUT IT IS YOUR, AND MY, RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW AND TO *ASK THE RIGHT Questions* OVER AND OVER. UNTIL IT BECOMES SECOND NATURE. I BELIEVE THEY ARE LISTED ABOVE.)

Stories left to tell

2011-01-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

I seem to have done nothing but post about reading this month.

Is January the month for reading? I don’t think so…

So now time to announce the show I’m going to see at The Warhol next month. It’s called Stories Left to Tell and it will be at the Warhol on February 12, starring David Conrad, celebrated actor and Pittsburgh native.

Here's the info:

Spalding Gray’s autobiographical monologues were filled with the neuroses, fears and joys that resonate deeply with audiences. Co-conceived by Gray’s widow, Kathleen Russo and director, Lucy Sexton, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell interweaves his well-loved stories, unpublished letters and journal entries into a funny, poignant and life-affirming evening of theater.

Are readings good for you?

2011-01-21T05:55:00.000-08:00

Actor Brett Fetzer and director Jose Amador, at a table reading of Resurrecting the King by Dennis Schebetta at 14/48

A few years ago, a renowned playwright who I admired and looked up to, said to me about public readings, “I can never hear my play.” She hated them. She thought they were a waste of her time. If some hack said this to me I might shrug it off, but this was a widely produced playwright, as well as an actress who had performed many times on Broadway.

Of course, she said this to me on a panel right before I was about to have a public reading of one of my plays.

And it made me wonder, are public readings helpful to playwrights?

You might have seen this article in the New York Times recently about the plethora of readings in New York City. You’ve probably been to a reading, either a small intimate affair or a big staged reading. Maybe it was for a benefit or fundraiser, or maybe it was because of theatre company’s reading series, or because the theater company was either going to do it later that year (so it was a preview) or they were thinking of doing it (so it was an audition for the play). I’ve also coordinated readings of new or alternative plays, since readings are quick and easy to put up and you can introduce audiences to new writers without the danger and risk of a full-scale production.

This article seems to infer that many plays from the readings get productions. Given the amount of readings there are and low amount of new plays being produced, this seems highly unlikely, though no one has ever done a quantitative study.

(Oh, wait, no...TDF did a study and published a BOOK on the ires of new play development, called Outrageous Fortune.)

My main concern with readings is when they take the place of an actual production.

And I’ve seen that far too often.

Readings can have serve several purposes. Sometimes it’s for me, the playwright, and for that I don’t always need an audience (and I usually don’t need a discussion afterwards—please, let’s not call them “talkbacks”, because who in the right minds wants to be talked back to?). If the reading is used for promotion, or for audition for producing funding, I understand that.

What annoys me is when the reading is obviously for some other purpose (like raise the profile of the theater company) but masquerading as “developing a new play”. This usually occurs with young companies who have no development background, no dramaturg on board, and no experience doing that kind of work.

Also, with more presentational readings (reading as cheap production), theater practitioners and audience members often seem to think that this is a polished product. If something doesn’t work in a reading, it needs to be cut, rewritten or dealt with. This is sometimes the case, but not always. There is rarely discussion of how something might need more work in rehearsal, (ie, more emotional life, blocking, etc.)

It’s funny, but whenever it’s a new play, suddenly we see it as “imperfect”. We never do this with Shakespeare, even though many of his plays are quite flawed and make no sense. But I digress…

In a time when theater is more and more moving to some kind of “Hollywood” model, I would hate to see theater using test audiences or surveys.

Writing a play is not done by committee. It’s part of the collaborative endeavor of theater, but in the end, it is the Playwright’s vision and voice that will endure.

So, what do you think? Do you hear your play in a reading?

What You Should Be Reading: Golden Globe scripts

2011-01-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

Is it ironic or just coincidence that it was on Facebook that I noticed this link to the script of The Social Network (which is about Facebook)?

I was never all that clear on the whole irony v. coincidence thing.

And you really can't trust Alanis Morrisette to straighten that out.

I discovered a new website today, though, and that always makes me feel somewhat intrigued, considering that after awhile the internet starts to look like the same old neighborhood, seeing the same pages over and over again... Raindance is a UK-centric site for promoting indie film and there are some great tips and resources for writers, directors and artists of all kinds dabbling and working in the film industry.

And they have made it quite easy to read all the nominated scripts for the Golden Globes, including the winner, of course, that being The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin.

It's a fine year for brilliant screenplays, I must say. Simone Beaufoy's 127 hours (hot on the heels of his amazing Slumdog Millionaire), and Christopher Nolan and Lisa Cholodenko, not to mention David Seidler's The King's Speech, which is the best movie about a guy with a speech impediment probably ever made.

If you want to write great scripts, you have to read great scripts.

So, what are you waiting for? Go read them. I did. Okay, not all of them, not yet. But I will be.

Goodbye Great One

2011-01-16T06:55:00.000-08:00

When this is all over, my writing will add up to the sum total of me. The choices I make with my writing have a lot to do with myself as an unfolding personality, so that in the end your writing is really your destiny. It’s a question of finding that central thing that’s yours to say and yours alone.

Most theater audiences will not know, or remember, the name of Romulus Linney. Or you may only think of him as Lara Linney's dad.

He was a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, and one of the principal reasons for my wanting to work there when I arrived in New York City many years ago. (That and other playwrights like Horton Foote, Wendy Wasserstein, Shel Silverstein, John Guare, countless actors and even my acting teacher, Bill Esper.)

Perhaps he'll gain a little more fame and recognition now that he's gone. I know that I feel like I've neglected this great writer and am only familiar with a few of his works (though Gint, Childe Byron and Holy Ghosts are amazing works).

Time to head to the library and read a few of his plays.

B.U.S. is coming! (What the heckfire is B.U.S.?)

2011-01-13T06:41:00.000-08:00

B.U.S. stands for Bricolage Urban Scrawl and it's Bricolage Theater's most fun event of the year, a 24 hour play festival that kicks off with putting playwrights on a random bus ride through the streets of steel city.

On February 25, I will be among many other local playwrights along for the ride.

Any other questions?

Surely, this video will explain it all for you.

What I'm Reading: Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys

2011-01-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

I decided to take a break from robots and Descartes over the holiday break and give Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon another read.

Wonder Boys was the first book of his I read. I picked it up shortly after seeing the movie when it came out in the theaters. (I also refer back to Steve Kloves' screenplay adaptation many times, which is a really fine piece of work, as well.)

I followed that by reading his collection of short stories and bought The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay when it first came out (and still think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, ever, and yes that puts him up there with other folks I admire like Paul Auster, Milan Kundera, Michael Ondaatje, Ernest Hemingway, and Samuel Beckett).

Now that I live in Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys resonates with me in entirely new ways and not because I live a mere few miles from where most of the action of the story takes place.

It’s also the culture and the people. When Chabon mentions that Sara Gaskell grew up in Greenfield, got a PhD and married a guy from Harvard, I know why that might be a big deal (and cause some friction in her marriage). I have a better understanding of the different neighborhoods (as well as Grady’s in-laws which are in the book, but not the movie).

Of course, Chabon’s excellent story is universal—it doesn’t matter what city you are in. His world is filled with interesting characters that seem so specific and genuine (and lovable) that you’d swear they were your neighbors. His prose is never superfluous, always graceful and illuminating, with a poetic everyman quality.

On reading his novel, I think, this is why I don’t write books. I tried once. No one will ever find that lousy manuscript, I swear. I’ll stick to the dramatic form, thank you very much. No way I’m going to compete with Chabon.

Now that I've finished Wonder Boys, it's time to join Kavalier & Clay and their amazing adventures of the Escapist.

Your script is a blueprint, not the building

2011-01-09T14:21:00.000-08:00

In my earlier post, I mentioned the Film Factory competition and the fact that I entered my own short screenplay into the contest. I also mentioned you can watch last year’s movies. (see below).

What’s really helpful is that you can also read the original scripts submitted, which, of course, I did, months ago. What was wonderful about the two scripts (actually, there are three finalists and you can read all three of them) is not that just the fact that they’re good scripts, but that each seems to have a unique point of view and a distinct voice.

After the short films debuted at the Three Rivers Film Festival, they were available to watch online. What's so great is to see what changes were made to the scripts before (or during) filming.

Part of the Film Factory’s goal is to show the filmmaking process, and rarely does a script stay the same thing on the page as it goes through the development process. There are issues like set locations, numbers of actors, and other logistics which can influence the type of movie you’re making (especially when it’s low budget).

Of course, the main goal of rewriting is also to make the story more clear and compelling.

This is why when I write a play, I never consider it “finished” until its gone into production. A reading is helpful and workshops are fun, but there’s nothing like the process of a rehearsal period. There’s only one way to test if the play works in front of an audience—and that’s to put it out there on stage .

A play is a blueprint, a code for instructing actors how to tell this particular story in a particular space. Theater happens on stage, not on the page.

For an exercise, try this: read a script then watch it. This is easier with movies (or with Shakespeare because God knows someone in your town is probably destroying his words right this very minute).

Another fun exercise to try is to watch a movie and while watching, try to write down in script format what’s happening.

Both of these exercises are excellent ways of training your mind to think in three dimensions, so that when you’re writing your script, you’re imagining what will happen after the words leave the page.

Roll The Dice from Film Factory on Vimeo.

Anywhere But Here from Film Factory on Vimeo.

A New Year, a New You?

2011-01-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

All my life, I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific. -- Jane Wagner

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions but as I get older (and the ticking clock of life seems to speed faster), I find myself reviewing my goals and expectations at the end of a year and making plans for the next year.

I have to decide what projects to devote my time and attention.

I have no shortage of ideas (plays, screenplays, etc.) or projects to work on. It’s a matter of deciding which story beckons and aches to be told immediately.

So what’s on the books for 2011?

I think it’s going to be an exciting year. In a few months, a production of some of my favorite short plays will be produced in the Rogue Performance Festival in California. I’m going to participate as a playwright in the Bricolage Urban Scrawl. I’m also going to (hopefully) finish up some longer projects, like the solo show and the robot play, Approaching Eve. Maybe I’ll sneak in a full-length screenplay, too…why not?

At the beginning of each year, it feels as if I’m constantly writing and rewriting my “artist statement”—the core of the work that I do, what sets me apart from other theater artists.

Making art is about making choices and those choices are a result of your goals, dreams and plans.

So what choices are you making this year?

Pittsburgh is the new hollywood?

2011-01-06T10:19:00.000-08:00

Well, not quite...

Despite Pittsburgh magazine's article this month (which is where that fun pic comes from), the sad truth is that only Hollywood is Hollywood.

Let's face it, you do have a much higher chance of working in the movie biz if you live in L.A., just as if you really wanted to work as a country singer-songwriter, you go to Nashville.

Or as I like to think of it, its hard to be an Alaskan crab fisherman in Utah.

BUT...

It doesn't mean there aren't any opportunities outside of L.A. In fact, there are many.

I do believe that talent is rare and if they want you, really want you, it won't matter what zip code you call home. Everyone in Hollywood is clamoring for a great script, so write a great script (assuming you can do that, which is probably one of the hardest things you really can do).

But speaking of opportunities...I was happy to discover that Pittsburgh has a growing film industry, due in no small part to the incentives instated a few years ago. Last year, 2010, I think six major movies were shot in the area and in 2009, there were at least three shot here.

There are also organizations that help promote Pittsburgh as a place to live and work in film and TV. Steeltown Entertainment Project exists to promote the film and media industry in Western PA, and there is also Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

(FYI, one really cool thing at the Steeltown site is their "list" which shows all the entertainment folks who came out of da burgh, including the well known Jeff Goldblum and Michael Keaton but also others ranging from Gene Kelly to Christina Aguilera. I didn't know theatre performer Sutton Foster, or composer Stephen Flaherty were from here...take a look and be surprised.)

Last year, Steeltown started its Film Factory competition, where they offered $25,000 for a short screenplay that could be shot in Western PA. The deadline for the 2011 Film Factory Competition is tomorrow. This time they're offering $30,000 to the winning 12 minute script. There are a bunch of other events happening, as well, including workshops and panels with professionals in the industry.

For more info, check out this video:

Win Up To $30,000 To Make Your Short Film from Film Factory on Vimeo.

In December, I finished up my short screenplay and sent it off right before the end of the year. I hadn't written anything for film in over a year, so I felt a little rusty, but after a few rewrites, the story and script seemed to come together.

What's really great is you can watch the short movies that were made last year. They split the award between two films, one a comedy named Roll the Dice by Hustlebot and the other a dramatic piece called Anywhere but Here by Ross Thomas.

The movies are definitely showing the city and people of the region in two totally different types of stories, which I'll write more about next time.

Now for an animated video - Changing Education Paradigms

2011-01-05T07:42:00.000-08:00

I've always been a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson (as I've posted before) but I especially love this newly discovered video from YouTube. It's not just the visual representations of the ideas, which are particularly appropriate for the content, but for the several nuggets of wisdom.

What is important to me here is not just the paradigm shift needed for education but how he isolates art and culture as an important product of those educational strategies--and how art and culture suffers when we continue to teach children to conform to certain standards without recognizing individual talents and abilities.

My favorite quote though is, "Collaboration is the stuff of growth."

I'd like to have a plaque on the wall with that quote.

Fare thee well, old 2010! Hello 2011!

2010-12-31T08:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Enjoy the last day of the rest of the year and I'll see you in 2011.

Cheers!

Be like Jenna

2010-12-29T13:48:00.000-08:00

As 2010 comes to a close, I’d like to thank all of you, my readers. I'd like to especially thank all of you who have made comments or asked questions on the posts.

This year I asked you all, what do you want to read about?

Many of you answered.

In fact, if it weren't for a reader named Jenna who asked about the process of writing a solo show, I may never have even thought about writing my own solo show and writing about the process here in this blog--so thanks, Jenna!

For 2011, I will continue the Writing the Solo Show series. I’d also like to introduce some other exciting new posts about dealing with rejection, following your passions, marketing your writing, writing grants, and I am even tinkering with the idea of a contest! You’ll have to stay tuned as that develops. Another new addition will be some interviews and guest blogs from other playwrights, writers and theatre-makers.

Here's what I'd love from you at the end of this year.

Do you have other suggestions or questions you’d like to see answered?

These can be about the writing process, about sending off plays, about proper etiquette in the rehearsal room, what have you...no limits.

(Of course, math and biology questions are off the table.)

So how ‘bout it? Got any suggestions for me?

C'mon, be like Jenna. Maybe your question will spark a whole new bunch of ideas for others, or a whole new series of posts for 2011.

Your ultimate vision (setting goals and writing them down)

2010-12-27T08:15:00.000-08:00

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” – Bruce Lee

I’m not a big planner.

It's not that I don't ever plan. I'm an organized guy and I do think ahead, but the organization skills I have acquired I have literally forced myself to learn out of necessity (and because it does make my life easier in the long run). I’ve worked against my freewheeling and footloose personality, a supreme effort to balance my dreams with reality.

I’m mostly successful with that balancing act, though I must admit, when I met my (future) wife, she shamed me in her abilities to make five year and ten year goals that were not only ambitious, but ultimately attainable.

People who excel at that kind of goal-setting are inspiring to me on many levels.

Once, many years ago, while still a fledgling theatre student in my undergrad days in Vegas, I went out to eat at Planet Hollywood in the Caesar’s Forum shops.

As many know, these restaurants are littered with film memorabilia of all kinds, from fake missiles used in a Schwarzenegger movie to the Blues Brothers’ hats (or is that at House of Blues?).

There was one particular historical artifact on the wall with immense substance. It was only a piece of paper and it was never used in a movie. Few know it exists. Most of the diners walked right by it without ever noticing. Inside a frame on the wall was a note by Bruce Lee in his own handwriting, dated in 1970 with the words SECRET and below:

"By 1980 I will be the best known oriental movie star in the United States and will have secured $10 million dollars. And in return I will give the very best acting I could possibly give every single time I am in front of the camera and I will live in peace and harmony."

Had he lived until 1980 and seen the success of ENTER THE DRAGON, Bruce Lee would’ve accomplished those goals.

What I admire, though, is not just the ambition, but the specificity. It’s not just that he wanted to be a movie star and make millions of dollars. He also wanted to give the very best acting and live in peace and harmony.

Which makes me ask, what is your secret goal? Have you written anything down for yourself for your life and what you want to do as an artist?

As 2010 comes to a close, I start setting goals for the year and for the next decade.

What do you want to accomplish next year? In the next ten years?

Go write it down.

(If you want to see this note, I believe the letter is now at the Planet Hollywood in New York City).

Over the river and through the woods...

2010-12-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re packing up the old wagon and heading up north for some holiday cheer with the family.

And yes, we really are going to grandma’s house, which is over the river (several rivers) and through the woods.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Where do you find scripts to read?

2010-12-23T08:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, you read that last post on reading, and you think, that’s all well and good, sir, but you worked in a theater company in New York so you had to read a ton of bad and good plays.

I’m a [blank] and I live in the middle of nowhere in [blank] and I don’t have access to a bunch of plays and screenplays.

Ah, but you do…

First of all, we live in this wonderful country with free access to libraries, either public libraries or the one in your closest university. They have plays there, good and bad (yes, even bad plays get published and produced). They have screenplays there, as well. Of course, they also have a ton of novels, magazines, etc.

Also, we live in the wonderful age of the internet. There are many, many, many websites which host access to screenplays. If you look hard enough, you can even find screenplays in production or pre-production (I read an earlier draft of Mel Gibson’s new movie THE BEAVER a year ago when it was on the black list).

Another great resource—join a writer’s group or find another writer and read his/her stuff. You can learn a lot by being involved in your colleagues’ growth as a writer (and they can definitely help you).

If you are near a theater and this theater takes submissions, ask if they need readers. They may get back to you and say yes, or they may not. Or they may not get back to you at all because most literary departments are swamped, overworked and underpaid. But they will appreciate the offer (usually).

Go to Poets.org. You can sign up to receive a poem a day. Reading Robert Frost or some new poet I’d never heard of at the start of my day reminds me of the beauty of language all around us.

Do your research.

Read.

It’s part of your job as a writer.

(Of course, there is no substitute for actual performances--one must also go to the theatre, go to readings, be involved with your local theaters as much as possible--but that's for another post).

Read. Read. Read. Then read some more...

2010-12-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

You might’ve noticed that every once in awhile I post about what I’m reading, which you might think odd for a blog about writing and making theatre.

I’m a big believer that in order to write well, one must read.

A lot.

If you want to write scripts, then you must read scripts. Read the bad. Read the good. Read everything in between. Read novels. Read short stories. Read poetry. Read magazine articles and the New York Times. Read for content (story). Read for interesting characters. Read for language. Read. Read. Read.

Last week I was at a holiday party chatting with another playwriting teacher and we got to talking about this phenomenon of wannabe writers, usually screenwriters, who’ve never even seen what a screenplay looks like on the page, much less read one, and yet, they boldly dive into writing a screenplay. Because they’ve seen a lot of movies and how hard could it be, right?

This is crazy.

This is like thinking since you've seen surgery on T.V., you think you can pick up a scalpel and do a heart transplant, right? How hard could it be?

Of course, picking up a pen or writing on your computer isn’t as bloody as surgery. No one dies when people write a bad screenplay (but wouldn’t that be an interesting way to prevent bad writers from ever getting started?).

Why is it so important to read scripts while trying to write your own?

When I worked at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York city, my job was to read the unsolicited manuscripts. There was always a pile of scripts that literally went up to the ceiling. In fact, there might have been two or three piles. We’re talking thousands of scripts a year. I read a lot and I read quickly. Some of them were from agents. Some from students. Some from retirees. Most were really bad, with an occasional gem. What I learned from reading those scripts, though, I instantly started to apply to my writing.

I also learned how important those first ten to fifteen pages are in any script. But that’s another post.

If you’re a writer, you love a good story. But you should also love words. If a good story is the foundation of your house, words are the bricks.

Maybe commas are the mortar…

(Nope, went too far with that analogy…sigh…)

This photo is from the Andre Kertesz exhibit at the Carnegie "On Reading".

What I'm Reading: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

2010-12-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I saw this amazing production of The Elephant Vanishes, an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short short stories by the innovative and experimental theatre company, Theatre de Complicite. Ever since then I’ve been meaning to read this writer’s work and finally, I checked out some of his books at the library.

Unfortunately, they didn't have any of his short stories, so I grabbed two of his novels.

The first one I read was After Dark, and frankly, I was not as impressed as I’d like to be, especially since the librarian who checked out the book told me how amazing he was and how she’s read everything he’d ever written.

Perhaps something is lost in the translation, or maybe this just isn't his best book.

The story follows several characters in the course of an early evening in Tokyo, settings and locales ranging from an all night diner to a “love hotel” to an office. Characters ask each other a lot of questions and give a lot of exposition and somewhere Murakami sneaks in some post-modern critique of civilization (I think) which reminded me of Paul Auster’s work, only not as stimulating.

I’ve now begun reading the other book I got, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and so far its slightly more interesting, but still not grabbing me by the shirt collars or anything.

Maybe Murakami just isn't my cup of tea.

I’ve also been reading the radio scripts of the BBC broadcasts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This was part fun, part research for the radio scripts I’m writing right now. It’s exactly the kind of cynical and witty scenarios you’d expect from the series—and none of it really adds up to any logical sense. Just like life.

Next up are a few plays like Paula Vogel’s A Long Christmas Ride Home and Brecht’s Galileo, as well as my continued robot research and a biography of Descartes.

Nothing like some nice light reading 'round the old Christmas tree!

How do you tell your story in 2 seconds?

2010-12-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

How do you entice someone with your logline?

Everyone knows the idea of the “elevator pitch”, right? You’re stuck in an elevator, say with Steven Speilberg or Julie Taymor, or more likely, you’re at a holiday party with friends and you finally meet that director or Artistic Director of the big-fancy-theater-company who asks you what you’re working on. How do you talk about your work (and sell your work) without it sounding like you’re a snake oil salesperson?

Well, you have to know how to market it (be a little business savvy) and you have to write and rewrite your idea in something that could go on a website or press kit.

I’m a big fan of being your own agent and P/R person (maybe that’s because like thousands of other playwrights, I am my own agent and P/R person), and I’ve also been a producer.

You’ve got to be able to identify what makes your project unique and why your audience should be interested in it. This makes two assumptions, of course--one, that your project is unique and two, that you know your audience. Both of those questions must be answered before you can construct a good blurb about your show.

One tactic I’ve used in my writing classes, or when chatting with a playwright (or going to a reading) is taking a hard look at the logline, blurb or how they’re trying to advertise their play. It will reveal a lot about the play itself and what story they're trying to tell—who is the play about and what are they doing? It also reveals many faults in the script, if there are any. And you’d be surprised how many playwrights are quite bad at writing a good blurb about a play they've been working on for years.

I’ve made it a habit to write a logline before writing anything now. Before any synopsis or outline, before writing a scene, before doing any other actual difficult work. I see it as creating a vision of what the show will be (transforming a vague notion into a tangible result). The idea better be good and better be simple enough to fit into a two or three sentence blurb. If it doesn’t, then I might be in trouble—there’s more thinking to do about the story—stories at their core are usually very simple in nature. To achieve a simple story takes a lot of work—you have to get rid of the excess.

I’ve been having fun lately writing radio dramas. It’s a totally different medium for me and I relish the challenge of planting visual cues in the audiences minds solely through the use of what they hear. I’ve found it quite freeing, unleashing the inner teen-ager and therefore, the inner sci-fi/fantasy geek. (I’ve been listening to old school radio adaptations of Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein for inspiration.)

Here are the loglines for the two different radio scripts I’ve written:

Vanishing Point(Thriller/Suspense)

After robbing an adult nightclub in Las Vegas, three women on the run take a shortcut through the Mojave Desert and find themselves lost in more ways than one.

The Adventures of Johnny Elektro Across Space-Time! “Episode 19: Attack of the Atomic Robot” (Action/Adventure)

Johnny Elektro, the bionic boy from the 1950s who has been teleported to 2050, discovers that Dr. Zero has returned and plans to use the atomic robot, Destructo, to blow up half of Pittsburgh at the robo-boxing match 4^th of July Spectacular at Heinz Stadium. Can he and Hank Hammer stop Dr. Zero in time?

What I like about these loglines is that you know the protagonists and you know their Major Dramatic Questions right after the bat. The title, as well as the story, reveals what kind of genre we’re dealing with (even without the tag I put in). What I don't like about the first one is the cliche "in more ways than one". This isn't specific enough and although vague enough to pique interest, I know I can do better.

Do I need to include all of my plot points? No. This isn’t an outline or synopsis. This is a teaser, a trailer, a way of enticing interest. Will I go back and rewrite it after I finish writing the script? Probably. In fact, I'll rewrite the logline several times before I feel it accurately tells the story and also sells the story.

Writing a logline is part of the plotting process--its as essential as writing great dialogue, great characters and all that other nitty gritty work. It's not fun, not glamorous, but hey, most of our writing life isn't.

So how's your logline?

Approaching the Beginning of Approaching Eve

2010-12-16T06:28:00.000-08:00

The other night I met with two of my collaborators for this new project and it sent my mind reeling in all sorts of directions. This is the beautiful thing about beginnings. Sure, I have ideas and some assumptions, but mostly, the play and performance as I know it is still just a glimmer in my eye. Even more exciting than that is the prospect of other smaller and/or bigger projects related to this new one.

So now I'm looking at the overall idea and synopsis and I think, well, how well this change? What can change? How can I make this more interesting and exciting? How can the story be further developed?

Questions, questions, questions. It all begins with questions.

What's also fascinating is the similarities and differences of creating a performance and the process of creating a robot. We're both solving problems and dealing with bodies in space, among other things.

And for greater context (and in effort to be more concise and hopefully to help me get better in talking about my latest project) here’s a rough synopsis:

In 1994, Dr. Ichiro Kato begins a final project to create the perfect woman, named “Hadaly”. Already a successful roboticist at Waseda University, he pioneered the first bipedal robots (precursor to Honda’s walking robot ASIMO) as well as robots that could play piano. Yet Kato’s ultimate vision before he dies is to create a robot that could fully cohabitate with humans. When Cynthia Matthews, a grad student from M.I.T., enters into his laboratory, she questions him about his projects for her own research on creating a social robot that could learn from people, much like a toddler. As a young scientist, she struggles with the ethics of her work, her research trip masking her real journey through her own doubts and fears about creating an anthropomorphic machine. Following Cynthia to Toyko is an American in a dark suit, a man who won’t give his name but his intentions are clear—to recruit Cynthia to work for DARPA (the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense). Technologies like facial recognition and advanced social skills could be used in combat humanoid robots and save human lives. But Cynthia struggles with the question of how far should we go in creating a robot that behaves and appears human? As ideological differences clash, the audience is taken on a journey of exploring an obsession as old as humanity. As Cynthia tries to uncover the secrets of Kato’s final project, she encounters a world where Descartes’ wooden android daughter intersects with master karakuri engineer Hosokawa, and Thomas Edison collides with Pygmalion in a quest to create the perfect woman.

Real Steel Trailer

2010-12-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

They don't look much like Rock'em Sock'em Robots to me!

Scooped again!

2010-12-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

A few years ago (okay, many years ago), I wrote a play about a high school shooting as a response to several of the incidents that occurred--not just at Columbine but elsewhere. The play was workshopped and a respectable downtown theater and was even optioned for the movie rights.

Then Gus Van Sant started showing ELEPHANT to various film festivals.

And the project died a slow death...

As a playwright, I was pretty inexperienced and I'm actually not bitter or surprised that the project didn't get off the ground. I learned a lot from that experience, and I know that my play was a lot different than the Van Sant film.

Yet, this kind of thing happens to writers again and again. It's true that trying to come up with something completely original and unique that no one has seen before is pretty much impossible. What is unique about your story, is that YOU are the one telling it. If I gave the Three Little Pigs story to ten different writers, I'd have ten very unique plays.

It is with mixed feelings, then, that I saw the recent trailer for Hugh Jackman's new movie (coming out in 2011), the robot boxing movie REEL STEEL. While it looks cool, its also a very similar premise to the radio script I'm writing right now, which features a robot boxing match set in the future of 2050. Of course, my story bears more resemblance to Astroboy and Futurama and Jackman's just looks like Rocky with robots.

Am I going to see the Jackman movie? Um...yeah! In fact, I'm hoping that any buzz on that movie and robots in general will help with the new play project I'm doing next summer.

Will 2011 be the year of the robot?

One can only hope.

ROBOTS need love, too

2010-11-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

ROBOTS by Dan Mangan official music video directed by Mike Lewis

I don't know why, but this is song is so darn catchy...

The video is fun 80's style goofiness, too.

Amazon will steal your soul...I mean, your movie

2010-11-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

Everyone is talking about this new Amazon studios thing on the web right now. I must admit, when I heard about it, I checked out the site and watched the little video about what and why they are doing what they are doing, read a little of the “rules” and “regulations”…

And then vomited in my coffee cup.

Okay, not really. Well, I threw up a little in the back of my mouth.

Because it’s disgusting, for several reasons.

Mostly, you can get the working and professional writer’s opinions from John August on his blog, or Craig Mazin, who lays it out perfectly why this idea is doomed to fail, and who they are really targeting (weak, inexperienced and hopeful writers who probably have more chance of winning the lottery than getting their script made).

The big problem I have are the assumptions that

1) Hollywood is a just a bunch of old fools that make schlock

and

2) Writing by committee (like writing source code) is a better way to do things.

Okay, everyone knows Hollywood makes some bad movies and errs on the conservative side. Yet, look at the grosses for Harry Potter. Look at Star Wars. Look at Batman and Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Spiderman movies. People like those kinds of movies (I like those kinds of movies). Hollywood also brings us Academy award-winning fare and independent movies, like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno and In Bruges and the Wrestler, etc.

So it’s a little insulting (and pretentious) that Amazon proclaims “we don’t know jack about movies but we have a lot of money and we write code, so darn it all, we can do better…” What they are actually saying is, we can have a whole bunch of people write it for us and we’ll steal it.

And second, I’ve seen too many talkbacks at play readings to know that Ibsen is pretty dead on about how the “majority is never right”. The more writers you have working on things does not necessarily make it better. In fact, the reason Hollywood churns out such schlock is usually because they fire so many writers and a script gets rewritten and rewritten until it’s a tepid, cliché-filled cardboard cut-out of a real movie.

And yet, that’s exactly the model Amazon is proposing. If you write a script, any moron with time on his hands, from Ohio to Mongolia, can rewrite it and rewrite it, and guess who owns the final project? Not you. Not the guy or gal in Mongolia. Amazon. Hmmn, that sounds fair…yeah, not really.

I do believe that there is going to be an alternative to the old Hollywood system. There will be a revolution of sorts that will happen, mostly due to the way media is being streamed now on computers and iPads. It’s getting easier for the average guy or gal to make a movie and distribute it all from the comfort of their own home. All you need is a great script, a DV camera, and a Mac, really.

(I mean, you could do it on a Windows computer, too, I guess, just factor in another few weeks of editing and production time...)

I’m going to bet that this new model and new way of thinking about making and selling movies isn’t going to come from a large corporation like Google or Amazon. It’s going to be coming from someone new and upcoming, like some young upstart who’s probably bored in class at Stanford or Harvard right now.

And that’s what scares Amazon and why their new deal stinks of desperation. They’re desperate and appealing to other desperate people.

Just stick to shipping my books and dvds, Amazon. Christmas is coming and I don't want you getting distracted.

So, whatcha working on?

2010-11-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

Every writer dreads that question at cocktail parties. A lot of times we can't always clearly articulate the story or the reasons why a particular question fascinates us.

For instance, I was asked a few weeks ago what I was working on and with excitement I said:

"It's an adaptation of Pygmalion but its about robotics and robot-human relations, but with puppets, and actual robots, and it'll be nonlinear, with movement, y'know, like a big ensemble piece, spreading out over several centuries of time."

I realized that the person I was talking to probably thought I was adapting the play Pygmalion by Shaw (which I'm not), rather than going straight back to the Greek source of the Pygmalion myth. Not that it would've made my project less confusing.

I really have to get better at talking about my work. Seriously.

The problem is, whenever I start a new idea, I'm nervous and excited and not sure how the project will evolve over time. This newest project, Approaching Eve, is only a few weeks old. I’m knee deep in research, reading books about robots (real robots, not sci-fi robots), and Descartes, and about karakuri (which are mechanized puppets). And yes, it's about the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Not entirely, but its present.

See, here’s the thing—we’re going to increasingly see robots interacting with humans, moving out of the manufacturing plants and into our daily lives, becoming healthcare assistants, cleaning houses, or driving cars. My mom already has one of those little vacuuming robots (aren’t they cute!).

As scientists get closer to robots resembling or behaving like humans, what are the dangers and what are the benefits? How has the science of robotics already transformed our lives, and what will the future hold?

These questions are no longer questions reserved for science fiction writers. These are questions scientists are grappling with right now. Today.

(By the way, that photo is of a real robot that mimics emotions, called Nexi.)

The idea of robots were “invented” almost a hundred years ago. The word “robot” actually comes from a play by Karel Capek, a Czech writer (the origin of the word actually relating to the word “worker” or “slave”). That play, Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) debuted in 1921.

Since then, in the western world, the story of robots taking over and killing us all has dominated. This is evident in movies such as Terminator and The Matrix. In Japan, they actually don’t have the same fears, mostly due to religion, but also their view of animatronics and automatons (as evident in the very cool mechanized puppets, the karakuri, which was invented in the 17^th century).

Robots have gone from a sci-fi idea to a reality.

The only comparison I can have to that phenomena is for me to imagine a vampire or a werewolf being discovered as a scientific fact. If humanity learned that the Twilight series was based on true events, and then we actually met real vampires and had to find a way to coexist with them, there would be a lot of fear and anxiety about that. They’re not human and they’re quite dangerous.

So far, we don’t have that problem. Vampires and werewolves are not real.

Robots, however, are very real. And they’ve been around for decades. And soon they’ll be in our homes. So how will they act around us and how will we act around them?

And these are the questions for my show.

More to come.

The Humans Are Dead

2010-11-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

Just a sneak peek at my more fun research on robots...Here's a clip of Flight of the Conchords, "The Humans are Dead."

How far have we really come?

2010-11-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

I’m a big fan of the show MAD MEN.

When we first moved to Pittsburgh, we watched the first season back to back (thank you, Netflix), and are now working through the end of the second season.

We're fascinated by how things have changed. Back in the early 60s, people drank and smoked like there was no tomorrow, littered in the parks without a care in the world for the environment, treated minorities like garbage, and women (being one of those minorities) were left to pick up the messes of the badly behaving men. If women worked, they were secretaries, but usually they were moms and trophy wives. So in the offices on Madison Avenue, its fascinating to watch Peggy try to survive and thrive as a copywriter, a women in a man’s world.

The sad thing is that I don’t know that we’ve come all that far when it comes to the theatre world.

Granted, I’ve got a limited perspective seeing as I am the wrong gender here. I really can’t complain. I look around in rehearsals and in the theatres and I see replicas of myself—middle-aged white men. If women are in the theater they are mostly education directors (women can always be teachers, right?), literary managers, dramaturgs, or stage managers.

I’m generalizing, of course. There are women directors and even a few women Artistic Directors, but not a large percentage. Women are present, but not as influential as they should be.

But I’m digressing.

My beef today is with the Wasserstein Prize committee. They have do a do-over because evidently they had nominees for women playwrights to win the prize and narrowed it down to 19 women and then decided that not ONE of them deserved to win the prize.

Excuse me?

Not one?

Really?

Did we not just have a discussion about the recent Sands study of the large bias against women playwrights? I mean, just from a PR standpoint, that’s embarrassing, but I also have a hard time believing there is not one worthy female playwright.

This is part of the problem. This is why we need to keep talking about how there are more male playwrights being produced and studied in school then women.

This is a fun game I like to play in my playwriting classes.

Name 10 male playwrights.

Easty, right? You got maybe Shakespeare, Moliere, Mamet, Albee, Simon, Shepard, Beckett, Chekhov, O’Neill, Odetts, Wilder, and on and on…

Now name 10 female playwrights.

Most can name three or five, tops. But then they struggle.

But why?

They’re out there. Go find them. Read their plays. Put the plays on your syllabi and talk about them in your classes. Do scenes from them. They’re good and they deserve awards.

Okay, so now I’m off my soapbox.

By the way, here’s a few women playwrights:

Wendy Wasserstein (of course), Paula Vogel, Maria Irene Fornes, Lillian Hellman, Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill, Teresa Rebeck, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Sara Ruhl, Beth Henley, Jenny Schwartz, Kia Corthron, Suzan Lori Parks, Liz Duffy Adams, Carson Kreitzer, Ellen McLaughlin, Young Jean Lee, Brooke Berman, Neena Beber, Julie Jensen, Sheilagh Callaghan, Tammy Ryan, Stephanie Timm, Joy McCullough-Carranza, Ruth Margraff, Cynthia Hopkins, Erin Courtney…and that’s just a small sampling…

Never Forget Rule Number 6

2010-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

My favorite boss, Heidi Guest, who I worked for years ago in New York City in the education and training department at a major cosmetics company (yes, you read that right, a major cosmetics company), is now running her own mentoring and consulting business, as well she should, because she is inspiring and amazing and recoznises beauty and talent in everyone and…I’m digressing…

She recommended to me this wonderful book The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

In it he tells this lovely story about Rule Number 6.

Two politicians are having a meeting when they are interrupted by a man, shouting and stamping and one of the politicians says to him, “Remember Rule #6”. The shouting man is restored to calm and leaves. They are interrupted again by a hysterical woman and again the politican says, “Marie, remember Rule #6”. She is calm, apologizes and leaves. A third person enters and the same thing happens. The other politican says, “what is this Rule Number 6?”
The politician says, “Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so g—damn seriously’”.
The other politican says, “that’s a fine rule” and then asks, “what, may I ask, are the other five rules?”
“There aren’t any.”

This is just one of the wisdoms this book gives us, and there are many. This one is one of the most important, though, for me at least. I find myself always being serious about the work—the play, the writing, the ART!

Not that I’m saying it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Art is not frivolous. But it’s about life and life can be fun. Life can be goofy. And its important to know what’s really important in life.

Some people get really bent out of shape when a production doesn’t go the way they want it to. Some productions will be bad, due to forces out of our control, or just because we’ve failed. To recognize that we are fallible, though, and then to laugh about it, is part of Rule Number 6.

For instance, the other day, I walked into a glass door at the library.

Seriously, I did.

And I would like to say that I instantly got the joke on myself and chuckled about it.

But I didn’t.

I got really mad at that stupid glass door right away! How dare it make me run into it and look foolish!

Then I felt really stupid about it. Two hours later, recalling what I must’ve looked like, I laughed. I mean, honestly, if I saw some idiot do that, I'd show no restraint.

My goal is to skip all that wasted anger and go right to the laughing bit. Rule Number 6 is not always so easy to apply, though.

Approaching Eve, a new project

2010-11-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

As you can see from this photo, I've got myself a little bit of a reading list.

It's not that I like doing research, its just that I seem to choose projects that require a lot of it.

So I've started research for a new play. It's a big "pie in the sky" kind of project, so I'm collaborating with a puppeteer, a dramaturg and a roboticist.

Yes, a roboticist. She makes robots. Social robots.

Think C-3PO or Data from Star Trek.

The future is nigh, folks.

More about this project as it unfolds.

Email a playwright

2010-11-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

The world is getting smaller and smaller.

(That photo to the left is actual size, no really.)

This means we live in an age where everyone is accessible by email or phone (or even Facebook). The degrees of separation are shrinking from six to three. This means that emailing a playwright is easier than you think. It doesn’t matter if it’s a local small-town playwright or Tony Kushner.

Chances are if they're still alive, you can probably get in touch with them, especially if you’re nice, normal (ie not crazy), love their work and want to talk to them about their plays (and/or produce them).

It’s so easy, why wouldn’t you?

Some folks seem to prefer to work on plays by dead playwrights: Shakespeare, Chekhov, O’Neill, etc. And some folks have gotten so used to working only on these old dead guys that when a playwright actually does enter the room they don’t know how to talk to him or her.

As many people know, I'm a big fan of playwrights being in the room. I love rehearsals, whether I'm working as an actor, director or a playwright. I don't always want to watch the painful but necessary process of actors getting off-book, but I like to be available, and not just for the mentality of being a "playwright cop" making sure they "do it right". I'm not Beckett, y'know.

Just imagine for a second how nice it would be if you were directing or acting in Hamlet and you were having trouble with a particular scene, or line, and you could just email good o’l Billy Shakes and say, “What the heck is Hamlet doing with that whole “To be or not to be” speech, Bill?” And he could tell you. And it would save a lot of time and heartache and guesswork.

Why wouldn’t you just do that? With a living playwright, you can.

And guess what? Playwrights like to be included in the process—it sure beats hearing about a production after the fact and finding out the director and/or actors missed the boat completely. And that happens. A lot. Playwrights also like to see how actors and directors solve some of the same challenges they’ve been struggling with—and playwrights might even be able to learn and grow from your production. Everybody wins!

So take five minutes to email your playwright.

It’s the right thing to do.

Like voting!

(By the way, did you vote today?)

Is it November already? Time to write a play!

2010-10-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe a whole year has passed since the last National Playwriting Month (or Naplwrimo, for short), but it's November, so you know what that means--its back!

Tomorrow begins the first day for all those adventurous souls who have always thought, "I've always wanted to write a play in only 30 days!"

As a participant last year, as well as a guest blogger (Follow Your Digressions), I can speak from experience that its not the easiest task, but it can be done. You just have to make an effort to write every day (yes, every day, but we've already talked about that many times in this blog). Set a schedule of a couple of pages a day, or a scene a day, and get to work!

(By the way, a great book despite its awful title is How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
by Viki King--although its for screenplays, it is really helpful for structuring a story and giving you a schedule of what to work on and when.)

One thing to remember is that it's not called National Write a Brilliant Play Month. Although, I must say, some of the best plays have been written in only a few weeks or a few days (at least according to Albee or Shepard or McDonagh, but can we really trust that?). Who's to say you won't write something brilliant, that the pressure of finishing so quickly won't bypass your Inner Critic and let the true artist inside pour out onto the page? It can happen.

So go forth and write a play you suckers for literary masochism!

(And for those of you who are bothered by so much white space on the page and want to write a novel, go to the NaNoWriMo site and check that out).

On a side note, I have put the solo show on the backburner for now as I develop a new project, which sadly, due to its element of research on robotics and its necessary element of collaboration with live actors and live puppets, will most likely not be able to be completed in a month.

And I also have a short screenplay I want to work on, as well.

(Call it a poor excuse if you like for non-invovlement, but it works for me.)

What I'm Reading: The Woman Who Walked Into Walls by Roddy Doyle

2010-10-30T06:27:00.000-07:00

I should’ve paid more attention to the title of Roddy Doyle’s book when I picked it up in a used bookstore months ago. The author of The Commitments and A Star Called Henry, has written one of the most moving portraits of a woman enduring hardships, yet its not for the faint of heart.

A Star Called Henry is one of the best books he’s ever written, and one of the best books I’ve ever read (although that list is quite long).

The Woman Who Walking Into Walls is a far more intimate look at an abusive and long-term relationship, though the ending does have an uplifting and upbeat feel (as upbeat as one gets for an Irish tale of woe, that is). It begins with the death of her ex-husband and then precedes to enlighten you about the main characters relationship in flashbacks. It’s not really summer reading and not the kind of reading that will take your mind off your troubles, but if you’re looking for a great character study, pick it up. You won’t be disappointed, but the images and words will stay with you for awhile.

Now I'm off to read some research on robotics and brush up my Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick for an exciting new project which I'll write more about at a later date.

Rube Goldberg would be so proud

2010-10-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg, as some of you may not know, was a cartoonist. He was famous for creating complex machines that performed simple tasks. So famous, in fact, that these devices are now named after him. You see these kinds of wacky inventions in movies all the time (from Doc Brown in Back to the Future of in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

But watch this video below. It is the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine (and the music is awesome, too).

It confirms my belief that "anything is possible", whether that's in theater, or engineering. You only need to imagine it and stick to your vision.

And have a lot patience, I think.