What Next?

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?

Approaching the Beginning of Approaching Eve

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.

Time Enough to Dream

I am knee deep in the planning and research phase for my show in the fall, 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT.

The research phase is relatively easy. It’s just a matter of collecting information. I got books and research going on the atomic bomb, atomic testings, Oppenheimer, the Manhattan project, Kronos, Hesiod, Greek myths, masks, puppets, blues music, folk music, death, time, funerals, rituals, and theories about the end of the world. See? Easy to collect information. Sometimes you can have too much information.

The planning is much more difficult. Planning means making choices and as we all know, making choices is hard but its what making art is all about. Art is about what the artist decides to keep in the frame.

Somewhere in the early process, an artist needs to daydream. It’s hard to find time for that. Do you schedule it on your calendar? Most people think daydreaming is a bad thing. When we’re a kid sitting in algebra class, looking out the window and imagining other worlds (or just fantasizing about playing for the Yankees), we get yelled at by our teachers for not paying attention.

We’re told that dreamers aren’t doers.

Well, that’s all a bunch a crap.

You need to dream before you can do.

It's one of the best ways to get to your inner truth that lies in your subconscious. That's where the gold is. That's where YOU as an artist live. Otherwise you're just scratching at the surface. Playing it safe.

Some of my best work has come out of those times when my mind is left to wander. Times when I’m so bored by whatever I’m doing that my mind has just got to entertain itself somehow. I think this skill was cultivated in me at an early age when our family would drive four hours from Reno to San Jose to visit relatives for the weekend and then drive back again on Sunday night. This was before iPods and DVD players in the backseat. Sometimes I would listen to my Walkman (yes, I had a real Sony walkman with the old cassette tapes, that’s how freakin’ old I am…) and I let my mind wander, seeing images of characters and worlds act out stories in my mind’s eye. In a way it was like I was making mini-movies in my head.

Needless to say, I was not a very social child.

Anyway…

The point is that artists need their imagination. As Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Smart guy.

Take ten minutes today and go find a secret place to daydream. Don’t think.

Dream.

Almost Done

My 21 day journey began earlier this month and the time has really flown by. There was something I just read in this book by Vicki King: that whatever time you give yourself to write a screenplay is the time you will take. In other words if you say you’ll write something in 21 days you can do it. If you say you’ll write something in a year, then that’s how long it will take you. Neither time schedule is better. Some stories take a long time to put down on paper. Some don’t.

Edward Albee claims that he never rewrites. He sits down and a play emerges from him, like giving birth. He works it out in his head (which in itself is really just rewriting without pen and paper) and then starts typing.

As quoted from a recent NY Times article by Jesse Green:

One day he finds himself “knocked up” with a play that had been gestating unbeknownst. Then he merely “delivers” or transcribes it, pretty much intact.
“Literally?” I wondered.

“Creativity is magic,” he said, “don’t examine it too closely.”

Personally, I find it hard to believe.

I’m not saying it’s not true. It's just hard to imagine anyone being that good. The only other person I can think of who did that was Mozart. But Albee is one of the best playwrights in America working today (The Play About the Baby, Three Tall Women, The Goat, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...I mean, c'mon...)so honestly I don’t really care how he says he does it. I’m just glad he does it. And I like the idea that there is a certain magic behind creativity (perhaps its this magic that so baffles those who don’t practice the “arts”, like say…producers).

But I don’t work that way and most writers I’ve talked to don’t. So that’s reassuring.

Here are a few changes that have been made to my script since the rough draft:

Title of “TYA” to “The Honeysuckle Tour” to “Honeysuckle Road” to “Making Time”.
(and yes, I still don’t think that title “pops” and says, “hey watch me!”)

What was 126 pages is now 108 (on the light side maybe?)

Not all of the rewrites were cuts—I’ve added several scenes, between Jack and Eric, between Courtney & Eric, etc.

Added scene of Jack falling asleep at the wheel—hence he doesn’t get to drive the van anymore…

Weak opening is now stronger active image (monologue from the protagonist is now a visual image showing his compulsive behavior).

New favorite lines:

Courtney: “Whatever. It’s not sexual harassment if you’re in the theatre.”

Jack: “People say we live in a male dominated world. I have yet to find the proof.”

Jack again: “If we wanted easy, we wouldn’t be show people.”

So what’s the plan now? I have done my major rewrites and now need to finish with some minor tweaks in the third act (pps 90-120). Then I have my “closing ceremonies”. And I take a break and eat some turkey.

A month or so from now I’ll read through the script and see what glaring ugliness there might be and do my best to beautify it.

I'm looking forward to going back to writing some plays. Or rewrite some plays. Theater is my first love. Screenplays are really just a diversion. Who else but a writer would procrastinate from writing by writing in some other medium? We are crazy.

Here’s this lovely quote from Albee about theatre:

“Theater should be a tough experience like anything else, but it also has the responsibility not to be boring.”

Well said.

The Journey is the destination

Writing is a process.

This is an obvious statement when you’re in the middle of the first draft.

Par for the course (I just love golf clichés), I am overwriting and am now at page 94. But that’s okay because I’m discovering so much about my characters. Of the four main characters, all but one are taking on a life of their own. That’s not bad for now and I know I can go back and develop all the characters further. The beautiful thing is that they are starting to surprise me, and new ideas are popping up that hadn’t occurred to me and that’s going to make the script more lively (I hope).

It’s ironic that I’m essentially writing another road movie, on the heels of Tangled Up in Bob. It’s like I got a do-over on that sub-genre. Which is good, because I’ve already written up cliché situations already in that other script—so I won’t rely on the standard “car breaking down” or “pulled over by cops” etc. Instead, the story is about the actors and the show they’re doing, and the different venues they find themselves in. As well as the main love story.

I think I’m just having more fun with this one, too. And that’s always nice.