Category Archives: writing

convergence, F&F, the chorus, writing

back in the saddle

Directing, that is, or travel – both. Spent the weekend between Red Bank and Philly, exploring the NJ Transit system. (Penn – Red Bank – Rahway – Trenton – Septa to 30th St.) Saw Aaron’s gory and wonderful MACBETH at TRTC, and met to talk SAGN choruses.

In Philadelphia, I visited Eileen and Danny, and achieved the rewrite of 13 Ways of Looking At The Chorus (which I’ve retitled “The Chorus Complex” in homage to Oedipus, for this draft, at least…) between 4 and 8 am. It felt creatively productive to see those guys again, but I also think it was just time to get it done. It’s funny how when you’re really ready to write something, you just wake up, no matter what hour of the day it is – and write it.

The new script has way more rhyme in it than I had imagined it would.

Today Susan and I saw Stoppard’s ROCK N’ ROLL (loved the second act, could have done without the first) and this evening I had design teleconferences with David (video) and Chris (piano.) I fly to Indianapolis tomorrow morning for pre-production on the Convergence and this flexibly titled chorus project. Rehearsals begin 1/31.

This has been a really wonderful stay in NYC, and unless something else comes up, I plan to be back in this city in April, May, and June – seeing lots of theater, and working on a script.

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politics, writing

64 crayons

After a day between Astoria and the Astor St. Station, I went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle, and we discussed the 1973 Antioch College student strike. The Antioch alumni association is now trying to raise money to save the college, which has suffered more and more from low finances and low enrollment since then. (It was almost shut down in 2007.) They told me a number of stories about the actual strike.

From the Yellow Springs News Online:

” During the winter quarter of 1973, cutbacks in education spending by the Nixon administration seemed likely. Antioch allocated $300,000 for student loans, but students in the New Directions program, which was created in 1970 to increase the enrollment of minority and low-income students at the college, felt Antioch wasn’t providing sufficient guarantee that they would be supported until graduation.

On April 18, 1973, the New Directions and financial aid students said that they would strike within 48 hours if the Antioch Board of Trustees didn’t guarantee financial support to keep the students at the college.”

The campus was effectively shut down through the beginning of June, and my aunt was involved both in the strike itself and the actions to reinstate expelled students after it was over. I’m crazy, but I think there’s definitely a play in it – a big, messy, historical play about America, the 60s aftermath, education, financial aid, social class, and everything else you want a play to be about. I’m going to come back in April to interview her, and try to talk to some of the other major participants around the country. I may go to the school, too, assuming it stays open – even if it doesn’t. This feels like one of the most significant ideas I’ve ever come across. I feel the way I did when I first read LYSISTRATA. It means something. What remains to be seen, but it’s something unwieldy, large, exciting. (Adjectives.)

We also talked about governments subsidizing the arts, and they pointed out what I should have thought of before – that nonprofit status is effectively government subsidy within this country, and our tax code. The European countries that have more direct government subsidies of the arts take that tradition from a history of monarchy or theocracy, and patronage systems. Since this country doesn’t have that tradition, it doesn’t have that system.
Boy, does that shake up my brain’s opinions on the arts in the US and Europe. Color me having too many different ideas at once.

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directing, film, style, theater, writing

Noun Modifiers

In the course of the Convergence teleconferences, I mentioned to a friend of mine, who’s a filmmaker, that I make a distinction in my mind between directing and writing – directing is about allowing more freedom to other people in the process, being open to new possibilities, and writing is about total control over a limited sphere. They are very different. I didn’t use to feel this way, but I certainly do now, since I’ve stopped being such a controlling director.

Coming from the POV of film, however, he said that “everything is writing – directing is writing, editing is writing.” Because he does still have total control over every sphere. Because you can select the take, and you can get exactly – EXACTLY – what you want.

This is probably why film stresses me out as a medium. I can no longer imagine wanting that many things that specifically. I tried it, and it was exhausting. There’s so much freedom in being able to share those wants with others – to let them want things, and let that inform the process and the result.

And I think I’ll look to writing for control, and to directing for the absence of it. This came to my mind again as I was working on/with an actress with/on a monologue from Measure For Measure this afternoon. If I had gone into the session knowing what I wanted to see from her, I never would have been able to see what she had to bring to it.

The only way I would make a film again would be either an animated one (which is all writing) or else something like Chris Guest, with improv-based writing – where the film captures the final result of a process which is more theatrical.

Maybe writing isn’t even “writing” in that controlled way. Maybe the best writing is when you surrender control, as well, to the characters, the words, the sounds. Maybe everything is directing.

I am so unlike the artist and person I was at seventeen that I can barely recognize myself. At least I still use too many adjectives and adverbs. It’s still a problem, but at least it’s a problem that’s familiar. I can say, “Oh yeah, that’s me – I use too many adjectives.”

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workstyle, writing

Shared Studio for Writers?

I was emailing with a friend of mine in a Calarts MFA, and she talked about spending long nights “in studio.” MFA students in art and design work together in a shared lab space, working on their projects simultaneously at their desks. We’ve seen a dramatization of this in PROJECT RUNWAY, where all the designers are draping and cutting at the different tables, just a few feet away from each other.

I wonder what it would be like to try the same thing with writers, or with directors. There are three new plays simultaneously being put up at the DCTC now, and I wonder if anyone has gotten the 3 directors together.

I suppose the Internet is the writers’ shared studio, of sorts.

When Meredith and I were working on our theses, senior year, we would go together to coffeehouses with our laptops and write at the same time. That was one of the most productive writing experiences I’ve ever had. If I had a bad sentence, or a tough transition – just like if I was having trouble draping a sleeve, I don’t know – Mere could help me.

And Sari has a kind of shared studio environment in her paper, where all the reporters’ desks are right near each other.

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acting, criticism, writing

“Acting — good, bad and indifferent — can lead you down some strange and regrettable byways of opinion.”

Charles McNulty writes for the LA Times about whether the merit of a performance is found in its acting or its script, particularly in reference to the Ahmanson-based productions of DOUBT and HISTORY BOYS.

“Separating the player from the play, to paraphrase Yeats, is never easy. And critics themselves aren’t always adept at distinguishing where fault and virtue lie. An ambitious drama given an uneven premiere is flicked away like a piece of lint while a mesmerizing performance in a silly trifle can translate, as it did for Douglas Carter Beane’s giggly 2006 comedy “The Little Dog Laughed,” into not just raves but a Tony nomination for best play.”

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books, quotes, style, writing

He was…elsewhere. “Il est ailleurs.”

“I am dying but the universe goes on. I can’t bear being separated from you. But if you are my soul and you live in me like a second body, my death will not be as inconsequential as a stranger’s.”
– from INEZ, by Carlos Fuentes

Sarah Rose and I were talking yesterday about dialogue and narration in fiction style. She read me a short story of hers which contained a dialogue scene without dialogue. The narrator told the story of the conversation without quoting any of the words.

It’s a device that I wouldn’t have thought of, being so stylistically geared towards plays and spoken words, but I’m curious to see if I can do it.

Reading INEZ this morning made me realize, too, that when the narrator’s voice is distinct, all narration is dialogue.

Off to a props meeting and first rehearsal for LYDIA.

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workstyle, writing

On writing and being wrong

I’ve been working on a fiction project which is pretty loosely fictionalized memoir. It’s drawn from my own life. It’s a catalog – Amina was doing a catalog story when I was with her in Ithaca, too.

Every time one of a particular kind of event happens, you write about it. But you don’t have to join them together. So you could do a catalog of the best meals you’ve ever had in your life, and write only about them. Or every time you’ve thrown up from drinking. Or every injury or major sickness.

I’ve been having a lot of success writing this catalog so far, but as I catch up to the present I find myself having a lot of trouble continuing it.

I tried to write in my journal first, but that meant acknowledging something had happened and it affected me personally, which hurt. So then I tried to write in the Word document on the computer, but that meant distancing myself from it, which felt cold and detatched. I don’t have the right medium in which to write about these things. Paper is too personal. The computer is too official.

And now I’m blogging about the difficulty of writing about it. Which feels like the perfect combination of journaling and typing.

If you don’t write about something, can you make it disappear from your memory? Does the absence of a record make it less real? And as a writer, do you ever get to forget? Will I ever be satisfied until I manage to write about this? Why do I end my blog entries with questions I already know the answers to?
(No, or at least I can’t. Yes, it does. No. No. And, to avoid answering them.)

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L'Internet, TV, writing

That and fifty cents will get you a formulaic television series

My father, who is more up on his entertainment industry news than I am, due to living in Los Angeles, informed me of what the world has known for two days – Quarterlife has been picked up by NBC.

TVSquad:“This isn’t a realistic portrayal of twentysomethings (at least I hope it isn’t). It’s merely an interpretation of twentysomething lives as seen through the eyes of fiftysomething producers.”

And, from the comments on that same post: ” “I only see one relevant sentence in that NY Times article. “The series … will not be affected by the current writers’ strike because of its ownership structure.” I think NBC just jumped at the chance to have any kind of scripted programming on for the spring.” “

So, since Herskovitz is a producer – and like all the producer/writers on reality TV and otherwise, is avoiding the WGA by claiming not to be writing – and since he’s writing QL, making it bad, but also making it scabbable – he’s managing to not only sell out the indie-cred of the Internet, but also work around the WGA strike (which is ABOUT getting WGA members paid for Internet work) thereby undermining the strikers even further. His rhetoric about working outside the studio system has played back into the studio system’s hands.

Now THAT – a producer tries to be indie and ends up selling out days later, through a model of creating scripted TV that removes the need for striking Guild writers – would be an interesting concept for an Internet television series.

WGA negotiations resume Monday.

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UpstageProject, workstyle, writing

Planama

Amina and I are at Gimme, working on more UpstageProject documents. Everyone in the world in Ithaca is coming through this coffeehouse – in their variations of dressing for thirty degree weather.

She’s writing on big sheets of newsprint and I’m typing, and we’re dividing up editorial responsibilities between the blog, articles/essays, and reviews/interviews departments.

I feel like a broken record continuing to say this, but I had always assumed that we would launch this site like a baby bird and just let it struggle and sink or swim – but, with Amina’s help and her planning brain, we’re giving it so many good resources. We’re being planned parents. Very responsible.

So we’ve divided up the site into three major sections – Blog, Reviews/Interviews, and Articles/Essays – and we’re listing frequency of posting, editorial responsibilities, writing responsibilities, and resources needed for each one.

I sometimes am intimidated by making planning documents. I would rather just start working and realize what planning we haven’t done later, when it stabs us in the back.

But it’s nice to try doing something the right way for once.

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travel, workstyle, writing

Don’t Be A Stranger

I fly to Ithaca this morning. Like Odysseus. I’ll never return to Ithaca without thinking about him, and the way that he takes so long to return. My pilgrimages aren’t quite twenty years apart, but every time I go back there, it feels like it’s been too long. I have nothing but pleasant anticipation about all of it, except for transferring between airlines when I switch planes.

Packing gets easier every time – if you never unpack, you never have to pack.

Here’s something interesting my Gmail text-ads popped up: Six Sentences, a weblog of very short stories. I’m going to submit one soon.

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