Category Archives: writing

style, writing

PaperForm

I
Talking with friends about methods of writing papers:
– writing and letting the structure emerge as you go, vs outlining in advance
– using bullet points and section titles (which I have gotten more into lately) vs. letting other paragraphs serve as transitions.

These days when I write, I write something six times too long and then slash it into shreds. I don’t outline, or if I do, the outline emerges as part of the writing.

II
I wonder if there’s a way to do things like this within a play: section headers, paragraph transitions. Probably in a very simple manner, with something like Word For Word, just by having one actor read them out to announce another’s speaking.

III
If you direct SPOON RIVER, do the actors say their own names? “Lucinda Matlock,” and then the monologue?

IV
Sort of like what was going on in LARAMIE.

V
The Elements Of Style: The Dance-Theater Extravaganza.

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writing

The Hybrid Tomato

Aaron and I brainstormed yesterday, and I had a hard time explaining to him that I see myself just as much as a playwright as a director. It’s something that I take for granted, but I don’t articulate often.

There’s nothing to be done about it except to keep writing, and to be more up-front about the centrality of writing in my work. I hope this is something that working with Juliette and Octavio in Denver will help me unravel more.

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Golda, writing

Tech: The Game Show. Tech: The Lunch Box. Tech: The Action Figure…

We teched very rapidly today, going through over 22 pages of the script. I particularly enjoyed being able to do some quick on-the-fly research on why mushroom clouds are mushrooms and the font of the floor of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance. (Definition: Theater artists are people with extremely detailed knowledge of an assortment of unrelated things, linked only by their factual presence in an imaginary narrative.)

I want to write a play called “Ten Out Of Twelve” which actually takes place during tech.

“Oh well – ten out of twelve ain’t bad…

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writing

Intellectual Disgrace

I want to write an article on my worst intellectual digression, counting phonemes in poems, and the value of going way off track. On the ideas that go nowhere that you follow for so long, and that seem, through retrospective-colored-glasses, so dumb.

But it taught me one thing – which is that you never know whether or not the idea is going nowhere until you do follow it.

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interviews, quotes, writing

Give Room and Foote It, Girls

The NY Times has a great long article on the prolific writer Horton Foote, still getting plays and screenplays produced at the age of 91.
(Via ArtsJournal.)

I still think the best naturalistic directing I’ve ever done was of that scene from his play Courtship, with student actors, for the Summer Workshop at Harvard-Westlake. With the lovely Lauren Schaffel, who was in the Mr. Show episode “Sad Songs are Nature’s Onions!”

Foote on the writing life(style) and the lack of proper habillements:

“I’m so glad that Hallie and Devon don’t mind when I write all night. When I’m working, I’m not lonely. I was always this way. When we first went to New Hampshire, I’d start writing right out of bed, in my pajamas, and then I’d get so excited I’d never get dressed. Daisy would bring friends home after school, and I’d be in my pajamas, and she’d say to her mother: ‘Daddy’s got to get dressed. They think he’s an alcoholic.’ ”

And on the untimeliness of death:

Foote spent two years developing a script of his 1979 play “The Widow Claire” with Robert Altman. Just as the money was raised, the director died. “I was so impressed with Altman,” he said. “I feel a little cheated.”

CurtainUp also has an overview of Foote’s career here.

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a propos of nothing, writing

Open the pod bay door, Hal

Shiyan’s car talks to me, and I obey, having over 80’d myself on Bay Area freeways – losing the 680 en route from the 880. In the sweet voice of “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again…”

Camry:
Turn left at the next intersection.
Get in the left lane.
Stay on this road.
Exit in two miles.
Get in the right lane.
Turn left in (pause) one half mile.
You are (pause) now at your destination.

It’s like God giving you directions. GPS = God’s Personal Satellite.

I’d like to write a play with the automatic voice as a character.

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interviews, theater, writing

The Crossover Interviews

I began my series of short interviews with a bunch of theater professionals, mostly folks from my days with Bill Rauch, today.

The first one was with Tony Taccone and it went very well. He’s had such an interesting career (here’s more about him in Ellen McLaughlin’s 2006 American Theatre interview), and so many of his projects have been explicitly political. One of the anecdotes he shared was about the Eureka getting burned down by an arsonist who objected to an anti-apartheid piece they were staging.

If the others are half as interesting as him it should be a great article. I’ve read a lot of interviews with Tony before – he’s a great communicator on behalf of the field – but I’ve never heard this stuff about him directing his very first show at Colorado Shakes before, or his transition from acting to directing. I love it.

The moment of time at which we transition from one field to another, one skill to another, from amateur to professional, defines us for the rest of our careers.

I’m hoping this can be a springboard for THE FIFTH WALL or for some other, longer series.

Here’s my warmup spiel:

As you know, I worked as Bill Rauch’s assistant for two years, during which time I observed a lot of working theater professionals, and also came into contact with many of Bill’s students and younger people in the field. Working as an assistant director at OSF, I felt that there was an interest in and need for some anecdotal research in what I’m calling “the crossover period” – moving from being a student or early-career professional to a fully professional theater artist.

So I’ve put together a couple of questions on the subject, which I’m asking to a wide variety of folks in the theater world – designers, directors, educators, administrators. I’m hoping to put this together into an article which is anecdotal and interesting, but also just reveals the wide variety of paths people take towards careers in our field. I want to dispel the idea that there is just one path or timeline towards a fixed point, and show how much change is inevitable.

My goal is to eventually have this reach publication, but I will send your answers to these questions back to you before they are shown to anyone else, so you can correct anything that doesn’t seem right to you.

These are the questions I’m asking. Kersti helped me narrow it down.

0) Where are you from (where were you born), and where do you live now?

1) What is your current job or profession, and what is a typical day for you? (Also mention what production you’re working on now, if any.)

2) What was your first professional job in theater – the point at which you were able to support yourself from your theater work? How did you get this job, and how long did it take you?

3) Talk about one interesting change or setback you encountered on the path from that first job till now – something you didn’t expect. Did you ever work in other fields, or have to take non-professional work after first crossing over to the professional world?

4) If you could give yourself one piece of advice as a young theater artist, what would it be? Is there a particular city or company you would recommend, or a strategy – or just a piece of information you wish you had?

These next are the bonus questions, which I didn’t get to with Tony and I don’t expect to have time to include with most folks.

5) Did a particular mentor or teacher play a role in your becoming a professional theater artist? Do you teach now, yourself?

6)) What is a project you would like to work on in the future, or an area of the theater world into which you would like to cross over?

I was supposed to speak to Jeff Hatcher this AM but we missed each other, and I’m going to call Cliff Faulkner in half an hour.

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books, theater, writing

The Step-Daughter Lives

I got a copy of Eric Bentley’s translation of Six Characters In Search Of An Author from Bloomsbury. I’m going to be working on an adaptation of it. There have to be more contemporary translations – I’ll have to go to the Stanford library while I’m there and get the rest of them. Amazon has a Mark Musa version published in 1996. But this is a good translation. It’s the one I first read the play in and it has a lot of dramatic power.

The original Italian is available here via Project Gutenberg.

I’m going to have to make myself my own Ashland text bible – original language, classic translation (Bentley) and modern translations (Musa, etc.) side by side.

T minus 3 days till leaving Ashland, Oregon.

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