Next up: a reading of THE ALBATROSS

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.

NYC Recap

Just got back from New York City last week and have not had much time to process the trip. Part of that was because of family being in town but another part was just that the five days I was there were a blur of activity and excitement.


I love New York City.

Always have. Always will.

Every time I get off the plane and hit the streets I feel that energy and it revs me up. The city is always moving, even if you’re not. Maybe I love it because its such a contrast to the desert where I grew up, where nothing is moving, I don’t know.

Here’s a quick recap:

Saturday night
Got off the plane, took the Airtran then subway into the hotel on Lex. Then rushed off to eat some quick crab cakes and then saw friends in Henry V at The American Globe Theater, just off of Broadway & 46th. Good acting, great fights, and fun cast party at O’Lunney’s afterwards

Sunday
Brunch at Pietrasanta on W. 49th and 9th ave, nearby where I lived for a summer. Yummy Eggs Benedict and mimosas and then turned to my right only to realize that I was sitting next to Mo Rocca from The Daily Show.

Saw Exit the King on Broadway. Everyone said Susan Sarandon was miscast or not that great. I thought she was decent, if not charismatic. Yet, she pales in comparison to Geoffrey Rush. He is superb! Comic and tragic. Briliant! I love seeing an Ionesco play done well!

Then down to the Village to eat some great Italian food then catch some music at The Bitter End. Saw some kid, must’ve been 16 years old shred guitar like he was Eddie Van Halen. Seriously.

Monday
In rehearsal most of the day (there was a fly-by?! Wtf?! I missed it!). Great actors, great director, talked about the play. Then the panel with Ellen Mclaughlin and Leslie Lee. I spent most of the time trying not to think about who I was sitting next to and hoping that my thoughts on playwriting and dramaturgy sounded coherent and not juvenile. I think the most insightful thing I said about talkbacks; “they should be called conversations and they are always too long”.

The reading of my play THE ALBATROSS was smashing. Got some laughs, maybe a few teary eyes at the end, and the “conversation” was quite helpful and supportive. Honestly, I don’t know what is going on with the universe but I have so far been having great experiences with the development of this play. It’s not always like that.

Tuesday
Went out to visit Stony Brook campus on Long Island. Fun train ride. Had lunch with a gaggle of dramaturgs talking about how to fix American Theater. Good times.

That night saw a experimental show by Alec Duffy, produced by Hoi Polloi called “The Less We Talk”. Very similar to an earlier show I’ve seen. More elaborate in scope but just as heartbreaking at times. Great use of singing to tell stories without it being a straight up musical.

Wednesday
Some meetings, a visit to the Drama Book Shop (again) and then off to the airport.

Phew!

More on the reading later!

THE ALBATROSS Reading in NYC

THE ALBATROSS, recent winner of the John Gassner competition, will be having a reading on Monday, April 27th, at 7 pm in NYC.

In addition, there will be a special panel on "Creating New Works" with myself, fellow playwrights Ellen McLaughlin and Leslie Lee.

Ellen McLaughlin is a playwright and actress, author of Iphiginia and Tongue of a Bird but is also an actress, originating the role of the Angel in Angels in America by Tony Kushner.

Leslie Lee is a founding artist of La Mama and his play Breeze of Summer was just done at the Signature.

It's easy to say I'm honored to be in the room with these two.

Also on the panel will be the director of the reading, Julia Gibson (who has been completely amazing and wonderful and I'm looking forward to rehearsals with her on Monday) and dramaturg Maxine Kern.

For more information, go to the website.

April is National Poetry Month

How could I forget that April is National Poetry Month?

And here I am, rewriting THE ALBATROSS all weekend, a play about poets and teaching poetry...shameful, just shameful.

Well, I'm going to write some poems this month.

They will probably be painfully bad, but that won't stop me.

The Albatross is flying high!

Please check out the Stonybrook website for the news and more information about the John Gassner New Play Competition.

There will be a staged reading of THE ALBATROSS in Manhattan on April 27th and April 28th.

(FYI--The rumors that Ellen Page will be playing Sofia are completely absurd.)

If you are around, check it out!

Occam's Razor (Keep it simple)

My word for the day from Merriam Webster is Occam's Razor.

Yes, I get daily emails with the "word of the day". I'm a total nerd, okay? That's what writers are, they think language is the bomb.

They also use outdated slang words like the "bomb".

I actually first heard about this philosophy (I guess its a scientific reasong thing, too) when I was in a creative writing class in high school. Mrs. Muth, a lovely old lady, gave us some handout on poetry writing and it illuminated the idea that "less is more". That poetry is about distillation of words. Good writing has nothing unnecessary.

I just got done doing a major rewrite on THE ALBATROSS. I'm starting to regret naming it that title as the more I rewrite it the more it's really starting to feel like an albatross around my neck...But the rewrites went well and the play is becoming deeper and slightly different, but in a good way. It went from a 102 page script to 137, which in some ways scares me as I know it will probably need some other cuts, but its exciting because I have a lot of new scenes and an entirely new character (not really new to the story, per se, but he was offstage and now he's more involved).

People have praised my dialogue on more than one occasion and I just got a lot of comments on the readings of THE ALBATROSS about how realistic it sounded (which is nice but to me truthful is better than realistic--I'm not going after slice of life). If there is one thing I do pretty well, realistic or streamlined dialogue is it. This can be a blessing or a curse because sometimes that really great dialogue just hides some other larger issues inherent in the character or plot. (Also, this became extremely problematic when I started writing screenplays becuase that medium tells stories mainly by images, not necessarily dialogue.) But at least I know this about myself.

The key to good dialogue, though, has a lot to do with Occam's Razor.

In other words, simplify. Leave no excess words.

In good plays, characters don't say anything more than what they need to in order to get what they want, or if its applicable to the reality, or the truth, of those given circumstances.

So, for example, if your script has a line that starts, "As you know..." or "You know you've been friends for three years and..." you probably don't need it. It's there for you the playwright, not for the characters.

But won't the audience get confused? You say.

Look, first, most people that go to theater are pretty smart. Second, even if they haven't gone to the theater a lot, most people have seen so many movies, tv shows, and whatnot that they immediately get so much information from a few lines and the actor behavior than any amount of your awkward phrasings. So just cut it out and see what happens. Don't worry, the audience will fill in the blanks. Just show your characters behaving truthfully given their wants. That's where the real playwriting is...creating those events and circumstances that make for brilliant drama. Once that's done, you can cut the dialogue down to the bone and still have a great scene.

And if the audience does get confused...just say you're inspired by Harold Pinter.

And now for Fun Facts! (courtesy of Merriam-Webster):

William of Occam (also spelled "Ockham") didn't invent the rule associated with his name. Others had espoused the "keep it simple" concept before that 14th-century philosopher and theologian embraced it, but no one wielded the principle (also known as the “law of parsimony”) as relentlessly as he did. He used it to counter what he considered the fuzzy logic of his theological contemporaries, and his applications of it inspired 19th-century Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton to link “Occam” with the idea of cutting away extraneous material, giving us the modern name for the principle.

How Long Does It Take?

“How long does it take you to write a play?”

When John Guare was asked how long it took him to write Six Degrees of Separation he told the reporter “51 years”.

Or so his story goes. (He was 51 at the time).

He wasn’t just being flippant. It’s hard for anyone to say specifically, this is how long it took me, from beginning to end. There’s a matter of age to consider, as Guare says—for instance, I could not write The Albatross ten years ago. I had neither the technique nor the life experience, and let’s face it, no interest in teachers, students and gender relations. But without having written some of my early plays (most of them Shepard, Pinter and Beckett rip-offs), I wouldn't be able to find my own style and voice and what matters most to me.

So now here I am almost thirty-six and I can safely agree with Guare that it’s taken me 36 years to write this play (or any other I’m writing now).

When did I get the initial idea for The Albatross? That was probably early last summer, when I actually saw the characters and heard some dialogue in my head. (Honestly, if anyone other than a writer said they heard voices in their head, wouldn’t they lock me up by now?) But some of the thoughts and ideas in the play I was actually grappling with a year or so before, when I was teaching. And some other material was dug up from when I was an undergrad, many, many years ago. But I wrote an actual “draft” last year around June or July. I remember that initial draft coming quite quickly (Like within a week).

Of course, as I’ve said before, writing is rewriting.

I spent the next few months rewriting scenes and trying to figure out what to do with these characters, then looking back and asking, “what do I have here?”

I’m still asking that.

This is all to say that I’m rewriting the play again, after these two readings I had, one in May and one in June. At first, I didn’t anticipate a whole lot of rewrites, but I’ve realized, after much distance from the material, that I have yet to create the world of the play. The characters journeys are not specific enough. Really, the characters are not specific enough. You only learn that kind of thing after taking time off from the project for awhile, then going back to it. And instead of being discouraged by the fact that I haven’t yet achieved the story I want in this play, I’m inspired to keep working at it. Actually, I’ve added a new character and having some fun with it (he’s injecting some humor into an otherwise heavy script).

As I always say, “Rewriting is the promise of perfection”.

I know it will never be perfect, but it’s living in the promise that makes writing so much fun. It’s like rehearsal on paper. I met an actor once who said he loved acting, but he hated rehearsal because it was so boring and I thought, “How can you hate rehearsal? Rehearsal is like the actors job—you spend more time in rehearsal then in performance, usually”. It’s what I love about being an actor or director—playing in the sandbox of rehearsal.

I think the same goes for rewriting. You have to love that act of reworking stuff, because that’s where you spend most of your time. It’s your job.

Okay, so now back to some rewriting…

The Albatross at NPA reading in Tacoma

This Monday night I'll be heading down to Tacoma for a reading of my newest full-length play THE ALBATROSS, presented by the Northwest Playwrights Alliance. It will be directed by Darian Lindle (she who directed the bachelorette party play in 14/48) and will feature the acting talent of Erin Kraft, Chris Bell and Malcolm Womack.

Plus, there is wine for a small suggested donation and a cheerful discussion of the play afterwards.

http://www.northwestplaywrights.org/upcomingevents.html

It will be at 7 pm at Theater on the Square rehearsal hall, Broadway Center for the Performing Arts (905 Broadway).

Yes, I know its Tacoma but really its not that far...yes, traffic does suck so leave early, but it'll be fun. Come hang out and tell me what you think of the play. I really do want to know.

This is the same play that was read last month down in Portland. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I have yet to get cracking on the rewrites, of which there may be some substantial and some minor changes. But this reading will be slightly more rehearsed and directed (though the cold reading in Portland was pretty darn impressive, I must say--thank you Andrew!). And I'm curious to see if the feedback and discussion of this draft might garner different results.

Then, in the month of June and July, I will get to work on those rewrites. In addition to working on 7 Minutes to Midnight.

I'm going to be a busy boy. But then, aren't I always...?

Back from Laramie...

And I see a letter from the O'Neill Theater Center.

Fully expecting the rejection chimes of "We're sorry, but..."

Instead I see, "We are thrilled to inform you that The Albatross has been selected as a semifinalist...from a field of 735 scripts, yours joins the narrowing pool..."

I swoon. I feel lightheaded.

I try not to think about the fact that only about 10 playwrights get to experience this wonderful workshop of their play in the month of July. It might be me. It might not.

I try not to think at all...

Besides, I'm too tired from a long day of flying across the country.