Arthur Laurents shows us the money, literally

"You win a contest, and then what?  Most theaters are not impressed that you won a contest.  They are impressed by money.  This is an inducement.  The object is to get the play on, in addition to giving the playwright some financial help.  What most playwrights want is to get their play onstage, and it's so hard to get new plays on."

This quote is from Arthur Laruents, a Tony Award-winning Broadway director, playwright & librettist (you may recognize his name for WEST SIDE STORY or GYPSY).  It's from the recent article in the New York Times announcing his new annual playwriting award.

Why do we need another playwriting award?

This one is different.  It gives $50,000 to an emerging playwright (hey, for playwrights, that's like 3 years salary), and he's giving $100,000 toward the production costs to mount the recipient's plays.

This is one of the best awards to happen to playwrights in a long time.

Laurents knows that "money talks and b.s. walks" and is trying to have an award with a built-in incentive for creating new works.  We need more awards and development programs like this.  (We need more people like Arthur Laruents, too, really.)

I especially appreciate the comment about not wanting to have a writer's colony because that decision would involve too much bureaucracy.  If there is one thing playwrights and the new play development process doesn need, its more bureaucracy.

This Land is Your Land

“I don’t know that song.”

Those are the words my niece Taylor said to me.  I had just started playing and singing the Woody Guthrie song, “This Land is Your Land” and she and her sister Emma were sitting on the living room floor of my sister’s house, listening.  I think they really just wanted me to play “I’m a Believer” since they knew that song from Shrek.  But I thought they may recognize the Guthrie tune since I remember singing it all the time when I was in elementary school. 

“Don’t you guys sing this song in school?”

“No.  We’ve never heard of it.”

For some reason, this incident has stayed with me for the past several years and I’ve wondered how many children out there don’t know about Woody Guthrie or any of his songs? 

So I decided I was going to write a children’s play about Guthrie using his songs.  And then I decided I wanted this to be a puppet play.  So now I have a new project for the coming year or so.  It may transform into something else, not necessarily about Woody himself—this is not going to be a biography.  It will be a snapshot of the depression-era and a look at this travelling folksinger who gave working-class people hope, joy, power and inspiration. 

Now I just have to convince my puppet friend to make the puppets.

The best part of this project is that I have such a specific target audience: my nieces Emma and Taylor.  I may have to use them as test subjects as I write the story.

Where Are You Going?

Yesterday I was having drinks in celebration of my wife who just became a PhD and I got into a conversation with a fellow playwright.  He also happens to be a PhD candidate and is struggling with writing his prospectus—which is like an outline of what he is going to write for his dissertation.  He feels this exercise is a waste of time because the prospectus is due before he takes a six week trip to delve into archives.  Who knows what he may find there that will change the argument of his dissertation.  So why bother?

I told him it’s a helpful exercise even if he decides to change everything.  Which seems like foolish advice, but here’s why I say this.  

I used to hate outlining plays and screenplays.  (He says he never outlines his plays when he writes.)  An outline is like having a map.  You don’t need to use the map or follow your plans.  You can take detours, but its nice to know there was a plan that you could use if you needed to.  

I love getting derailed.  I love when characters surprise me, but I can’t always count on it.  The writing process is particular to each project so you never know how it will unfold.  

Yes, you should dig into the archive (both literal and figurative) and see how that changes your story and changes your plans.  An outline is not meant to be prescriptive.  It’s a tool to help you frame your thoughts and ask yourself:

Where do I want to go?  How will I get there?

If you don’t ask those questions in the beginning, you might just end up lost.

(And not like LOST the TV show.  I mean, lost.)

Seriously, you use Google maps to plan your drives, why not use some of that energy to plan your writing?

If you imagine it, you can do it--even walk on water

Do you teach subjects? Or do you teach students?

Just finished reading THE ELEMENT and had to post this great excerpt in the last chapter here:

"The Element has implications for teaching.  Too many reform movements in education are designed to make education teacher-proof.  The most successful systems in the world take the opposite view.  They invest in teachers.  The reason is that people succeed best when they have others who understand their talents, challenges and abilities.  This is why mentoring is such a helpful force in so many peoples lives.  Great teachers have always understood that that real role is not to teach subjects but to teach students.  Mentoring and coaching is the vital pulse of a living system of education."

How many of us remember a great course in college by the syllabus or the tests or the papers we wrote?  Or do you remember the teacher?  

I think of some of the great teachers I've had in my life (like the amazing beacon of light Davey Marlin-Jones or the ever prescient William Esper) and I remember not just their personality or wisdom but how they saw something in me and found a way to use my natural talents.  I aspire to be that kind of teacher.

Teachers teach students.  Not subjects.

Are you out of focus?

I’ll be honest.  I don’t feel like writing today.  There have been a lot of days like that in the past year.  A little less lately, but they still come and go.  

These are the days that separate the writers from the dabblers.  Writers don't have the luxury of choosing to work only when they feel inspired.  They show up and do the work.  

There are many days I’m sure you don’t want to get up and go to work, but you do any way.  It’s the same with writing.

(Oh sure, some days you might call in sick and call it a “mental health” day--I mean, I'm not knocking anyone who wants to get their Ferris Bueller on).  

My wife has just finished writing a dissertation.  This is like writing a book.  And writing a book is like writing anything else, like a play or a screenplay.  In order to write this giant academic masterpiece she had to have two things:

•   Incredible focus for a length of time
• A plan

Focus is what gets us up in the morning and drives us through the hard times, through the days when we don’t want to work.  Focus is what allows us see the final outcome.  Focus is our energy put to good use.

A plan is just that--a plan.  It’s not just saying, “I’m going to get up at 6 am and write for an hour every morning” but that’s part of it.  A plan is saying I’m going to write an abstract today, a summary tomorrow, a chapter this week, a chapter next week, etc.  When I did the exercise of writing a screenplay in 28 days, the best thing about it was how it laid out a plan of writing.  One day you write a paragraph outline, next day you write 10 pages, then the next 10, and on and on.  Next thing you know, you have a screenplay.

You have to have a plan and focus.  Okay, maybe not you.  Maybe you have that already and good for you, but I don't.  I haven’t had a plan or focus in a long time.  So I’m doing a lot of planning right now.  I’m planning out the things I want to write about in this blog, for example.  I’m planning on my projects for the coming year and after.  

I’m planning on doing a lot of writing.  

Of course, planning about writing isn’t writing.  Only writing is writing.

But I’ll save that topic for later.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Here's the TED video that I watched where I first became introduced to some of Dr. Ken Robinson's ideas on creativity and education.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com