Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Theatre

Bad to the bone

Try to be, anyway.

This is a tip about getting past that streak of perfectionism that is keeping you from achieving your goals.

Somewhere along the line, most of us got the idea that doing something badly was–well–a bad thing.  Maybe we missed a fly ball on the softball field in second grade, and the next time teams were chosen, we were one of the last players picked.  Maybe it started earlier–like when we got yelled at for spilling our milk.

Mistake = bad. Dangerous, even.

In the interests of survival, we started to be careful.  We started to try really hard to do things “right.”  Over time, that can be paralyzing.

But, there is an easy way around it.  Just decide to do it–whatever “it” is–wrong.  Announce that intention, if necessary.  After all, how can someone blame you for not getting it “right” if you’ve already told them you are intentionally doing it wrong?

If that sounds crazy, let me tell you a story about the first play I ever wrote.

The first draft was promising enough that Abingdon Theatre Company was willing to give it a public reading.  Jan Buttram, the artistic director, being an experienced playwright and a wise woman, suggested we should have a private reading first.  “If you hear it for the first time in front of an audience, you’re not going to be able to hear it,” she said.

So, we had the private reading, and I got some very valuable feedback.  I went off, with great enthusiasm, to do a re-write.  And promptly froze.  Oh, no!  What if I ruin it?  I wasn’t sure how I’d come to write it in the first place.  It seemed to me there was a good chance that, in re-writing it, I would lose whatever had made that first draft halfway good.

I was so stuck that I went back to Jan some weeks later and announced that we would have to cancel the reading.  In a further demonstration of wisdom, she said, “No, we’re not going to cancel.  We can always read the version you have now.  Meanwhile, why don’t you go back and try again?  If you don’t get anywhere, don’t worry.”

I sighed and groaned and gnashed my teeth–and I went home to try again.  When I got there, I remembered “We an always read the version you have now,” and I promptly saved the file under a new name.  Then, I said to myself, “Okay.  You’ve got the original saved.  Now, you’re going into this version, and you’re going to ruin it.”

The re-write began to flow.  We read the new version, and that is the version that launched my great playwriting adventure.  Once I gave myself permission to do it badly, I did just fine.

Try it.

One of Each

It gets harder.

Had a casting director suggest once that every actor should have an audition monologue from each of the major playwrights.  Prior to that, the accepted wisdom was that you should have a classical monologue and a contemporary.

At that point, classical meant Shakespeare or one of the Greeks.  If you wanted to increase the odds that the actor in front of you hadn’t just done your piece, you went slightly further afield.  Some other Elizabethan playwright–Marlowe and Jonson, for example–or a Restoration writer–Congreve, Wycherly, Sheridan, among them–were possibilities.  There were also the French–Moliere and Racine.

Some people thought Ibsen, Strindberg and Shaw counted as classical while others considered them the first of the modern playwrights.  For some of us, that meant we just didn’t do them unless they were specifically requested.  Why set yourself up with a 50/50 chance the auditor would decide you didn’t know what “classical” meant?

But you see my point, right?

I’ve just listed 11 major playwrights and haven’t even gotten fully into the modern era.  And the modern era keeps growing!  It’s not enough to have Arthur Miller, William Saroyan, Clifford Odets, Philip Barry.  You’ve got to be looking at Lanford Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, Neil Simon, David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, David Rabe, David Mamet and a host of others if you really want a comprehensive set.*

So, this is one of those “rules” that is ‘more honour’d in the breach than the observance.’**

It’s not a bad goal to attempt, however.  If you go searching, you will have read a lot of plays.  If you find monologues you like, you’ll have plenty  to keep you busy between auditions.  Plus, one of the easiest ways to shoot yourself in the foot as an actor*** is to blow off auditions, and one of the easiest excuses is to not have any suitable material to perform.

So, do yourself a big favor.

Have a monologue from each of the major playwrights.

 

* I know I’ve left out hundreds of you. It doesn’t mean you’re not major playwrights. It just means my brain doesn’t always work all that well.

** Hamlet, Act I, Sc 4 (Flapdoodle!)

*** For other ways actors get in their own way, see my book How to Be a Failed Actor: 27 Things Actors Do to Shoot Themselves in the Foot – available soon in the bookstore.

 

Journeying

Structure for writers.

Today’s Friday Find is another book that is an invaluable resource for writers–and fairly interesting for readers and filmgoers who have an interest beyond passive absorption of entertainment.  If you’re interested in structure, you will get a lot out of The Writers’ Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler.

I think so highly of The Writers’ Journey that I bought it twice.  Lent it to someone.  Never got it back.  I hate that.  Sometimes, when that happens, I growl and vow never to lend that person a book again while adopting a zen-like resignation to the loss of the book.

The Writers’ Journey, though–I have to have a copy of that on my shelves.

Here’s the story behind The Writers’ Journey:

Christopher Vogler was (may still be, for all I know) a Hollywood development executive.  Inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell, he created a legendary 7-page company memo for screenwriters.  Expanding on that work, he developed the book, The Writers’ Journey, and continues to teach classes based on these ideas and techniques.

The basic premise is that there are archetypes and stages in every hero’s journey–and that a successful story (movie, book, play) is a hero’s journey.

As a director, I have used these principles to help me help playwrights analyze and rewrite their plays.  As a writer, I’ve tried to do the same with my own work.  (Always a little harder to find the objectivity there, of course.)  As a movie goer, I have been fascinated to watch these archetypes and journeys play out in almost every good movie I’ve ever seen.

You can get an overview of the stages of the hero’s journey on Mr. Vogler’s website:  here.  Just click the link to “Hero’s Journey.”  The text of the original 7 page memo is there, as well as an adaptation called the Heroine’s Journey.

It’s fascinating stuff.  And the whole outline is there.  All the basics.  The book, however, expands on this outline and offers a wealth of examples.  It’s well worth a read.

Happy journeying.

The play’s the thing*

And good actors don’t hurt

Today’s Monday Miracle actually happened yesterday when I went to see the last performance of The 5 & Dime’s production of Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts.

Now, I’d seen Next Fall previously, in New York, in its Off-Broadway incarnation, produced by Naked Angels.  That production moved to Broadway–with the help of some perceptive commercial producers who recognized a good thing when they saw it.  Clearly, they were not the only ones, because it was nominated for two Tonys:  Best Play and Best Direction of a Play.

I’m on a mission to see what kind of theatre is being produced in and around my new home in the Jacksonville, FL area.  Google led me to The 5 & Dime, among other theatres, and they were the first one with a show currently running.

I’ll be honest and say that my expectations were not high.  (They weren’t especially low, either.  I suppose they were non-committal.)

The 5 & Dime is a nomadic company.  They don’t have a space of their own, and they mount their productions in various spaces in and around Jacksonville.  At best, that says to me that they are a young company.  At worst, it conjures up memories of the seediest of black box theatre off-off-off-off-broadway.  (I’ve worked in some of those off-off-off. . .offs.  The quality of the work can be very high.  Or not.  The spaces, though, are almost uniformly in a state of what we might describe as “run-down.”)

Their name. . .well, I loved Woolworth’s and the other five-and-dime stores. . .but you have to admit calling a theatre company The 5 & Dime doesn’t give it the same aura as calling it, say, the Nederlander or the Schubert or the National.  A rose by any other name. . .,** however.

In addition, it didn’t appear from their marketing material that the cast is made up of Equity actors.  Again, this does not mean it can’t be good.  There are some very fine non-union actors.

So, I went–hoping for good theatre but prepared for the possibility of something somewhat less.  I knew it wasn’t going to be bad.  After all, the script is terrific.  But was it going to measure up to the version I saw in New York?

How wonderful to find a little gem of a show in a great space with high production values and a very strong cast!  Deserving of special mention:  Antoinette D’Amico was really terrific as the mother, and Kevin Roberts and Joe Walz  turned in excellent performances as Adam and Luke.

And I can’t remember her name, but the president of their Board gave what is possibly the best curtain speech before a show that I’ve ever heard.

It was a lovely afternoon at the theatre — funny and moving and thought-provoking — and I am definitely going back to see their next show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. 

In fact, I’m looking forward to it!

 

 

 

 

* Shakespeare again! It’s always a good day when I get to quote Shakespeare. This one’s from Hamlet, Act 2, Sc. 2.

** And again. Another Act 2, sc. 2. This time it’s Romeo & Juliet.

 

 

Leveraging the technology…

…to multiply your chances

Sometimes we don’t put our work out there because we don’t want to cope with the rejection.

There are two things I’ve learned about that.

One is that if you don’t submit, the answer is definitely “no.”

The second is that it’s easier to take a rejection letter if you know you have other submissions in play.  This theatre, publisher, art gallery, gate-keeper-of-choice turned you down.  One or more of the others might say, “Yes!”  That thought makes it easier to keep submitting when the rejection comes and is the best reason I know to have multiple submissions going at any one time.

Anything that makes it easier to submit is a very good thing.

So, today, I’m thankful for the growing number of theatres that accept electronic submissions.

I know a lot of playwrights who have been wary of sending out digital copies of their work.  Maybe some of them still are.

The concern is that a Word document or a PDF is so easily copied.  And so easily edited.  Some are worried about losing control of their work, and some are worried about outright plagiarism.

All of that could happen, of course.

But let’s be realistic.

With the availability of scanners, what’s to stop determined plagiarists from loosening the little brads of your report cover, taking your script out of it, and digitizing it themselves?  Yes, it’s harder.  But not that much harder.

You’re not really protecting your work by sticking to hard copy.  You’re killing a few more trees, making the submission much more expensive to you (report cover, paper, ink, envelope, postage), and making it more difficult and time-consuming to get it out the door.

Contrast that with what happens when the theatre allows an electronic submission.

You collect your digital files:  the script, the bio, the production history, and whatever else this particular theatre wants.  (You should have all of this sitting in a folder on your hard drive, ready to go.  If not, why not?  Don’t have any way to create a PDF? Try CutePDF, a good free solution.)

You make any adjustments necessary to fit the submission guidelines.  (Maybe they want a blind copy or a longer or shorter synopsis than the one you usually use.)

You address and compose your email, attach your document, and click “Send.”  (If your email program allows it, request a Return Receipt so you know the transmission is received.)

You’re done!  It’s a half-hour, at the most, instead of the other way’s half- to two-day process.

And the poor literary manager at the other end can read scripts on her eReader instead of lugging them home in back-breaking bundles.

There’s no contest.

More of my stuff gets out to more places because a lot of the friction has been removed from the process.

When I first began submitting electronically, I was a bit hesitant.  Now, I love it when they offer that option.

 

Organized lightning*

“The peril the wind sings to in the wires on a gray day.”**

Today, I am wondering about electricity.

As Dave Barry says, ““We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.”

I sometimes think–

On second thought, that’s not really true.  I almost never think about electricity.  It just works.  Or it doesn’t–usually during a big storm or, inexplicably, on  three consecutive sunny Saturday mornings last May.

However, today, I was thinking about electricity, because it is Wondering Wednesday, and as I was wondering what I was wondering about enough to write about today, I remembered something that happened many years ago during rehearsals for the Women’s Project’s production of Heather McDonald’s Dream of a Common Language.

Dream…is a beautiful play.  Set on the eve of the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, it explores a topic that was relevant in 1874, relevant at the time of the production on which I worked, and still, sadly, highly relevant now:  the way in which the work of women artists is devalued and marginalized simply because they are women.

Anyone who has been following the resurrection of the sense of outrage felt by women playwrights at their drastic under-representation will be both appalled that such organizations as 50/50 in 2020 and the Women’s Initiative at the Dramatists Guild are still necessary and thankful that these organizations as well as the Womens’ Project and New Georges still exist and still work to redress the balance.

All the philosophical, political and societal underpinnings of the play, however, are not really the point of this post.  (So that’s a rant for another time.)

What I found myself laughing about yet again, all these years later, as I was digging through my brain for material, was this single event early in rehearsals.

See, the Dream… cast includes a child actor.  In our case, J. R. Nutt — who I am happy to see has continued his career into young adulthood — no easy task — way to go, J. R.!

He probably doesn’t remember this.  I think he was only 10 or 12 at the time.  It is, however, one of my priceless memories of the experience.

It was early in rehearsals.  Talented, creative actors with good hearts wanted to make sure that the child among them felt comfortable and at home.  They took special pains during a break to reach out to him and include him in the conversation.  He had done some work previously, but he was relatively new, still, to the theatre.  It was entirely possible that he would be confused by some things.

Our leading man assured him that we were all there to help him out.  If he had questions, he should come to us.  We would happily answer anything he asked.

J. R. said, “We-elllll…….” and we all cast our minds back over Equity rules and theatrical procedures.  Would we be asked to explain the break schedule?  The stage manager’s role?  Or would it be craft related?  The best way to learn lines, perhaps?  Given the leading man’s fatherly tone, I even considered the possibility of a question about sex–which would have presented certain problems, I guess, of appropriateness and, even, jurisdiction (his mom was around, of course)–but none was forthcoming.

What he actually said, after gazing speculatively around the circle of actors and crew, was “We-ellll…….you know…I don’t really understand electricity.”

I wish I had a snapshot of the faces in that circle at that moment — although I guess I don’t really need one, because I have never forgotten it, and it makes me giggle even now.

We were all so sure of ourselves, armored in our superior age and experience, and then this kid comes up with “I don’t really understand electricity” and a hopeful, anticipatory air, certain that we would explain it to him.  After all, we’d just assured him he could ask us anything.

Seven or eight people then had to confess, sheepishly, that none of us really understood electricity either.

I did go home and look it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Perhaps it will come as no surprise to you when I tell you I still don’t understand electricity.

I do now have a Master Electrician lined up to do some work on Casa Lagarto.  I have hope that he has, at least, a basic understanding.   And I wonder if J. R. understands electricity these days, or if he has given up wondering and just flips a switch like the rest of us.

 

* George Carlin – “Electricity is really just organized lightning.”
** Janet Frame

Mowing your script

Landscaping and writing a play—something in common?

So, I was mowing the lawn yesterday.  And it occurred to me that writing a play is a little bit like creating and maintaining a beautiful yard.  (Full disclosure:  I don’t have a beautiful yard.  Yet.  But I’m working on it.)

Your first draft is the planting stage.  The grass seed goes in, the sod gets laid.

Second and third, maybe even fourth and fifth, are the cultivation stage.  This is where you do the watering and fertilizing—and the cross-pollination of submitting the script to theatres and producers.

Once it grows to the point where you are having readings, however, you’ve got to get out the weed-whacker and start trimming.  Clear out the underbrush, cut down the weeds.  Put things in order.

If the audience can’t navigate around that lovely flower bed of a plot complication you planted in scene two, you’ve either got to lay some paving stones and make a path, or you’ve got to dig it up and throw it out.

If the sub-plot has turned into an invasive plant, sprouting seedlings all over the place and distracting people from the point you were trying to make, you might want to get a machete and chop it down.

Even if the landscape is looking pretty good, there are going to be a few weeds sprouting up here and there.  Some judicious trimming never hurts.

I don’t know.  Possibly it’s a pretty obvious metaphor.  Maybe I’m in danger of pushing it too far.

But there’s something in it.  It seems to me that I might have an easier time cutting some of my favorite lines, if I think of it this way.

I want the grass to grow well.  And lavishly.

But I still have to mow.

Play Readings

Two ways to go

When you get a reading of your play, and it’s close enough for you to attend, there is an inherent dilemma for a playwright.  Do you go to the rehearsals?  Or stay away?

The first thing to know, of course, is that the writer has the absolute right to attend rehearsals.  If you want to go, you go.  But should you?

The benefits to going are pretty clear.

  • You can answer any questions and head off any misinterpretations.
  • You can see for yourself where actors’ tongues trip over your finely crafted phrases.
  • You’ll be prepared.  If things aren’t going so well, it won’t be such a shock during the reading itself.
  • You get to hear the play multiple times–during rehearsal as well as during the reading—and that can help you enormously with an understanding of pace and plot and Thespis knows what..

On the other hand, you can make the cast and the director nervous.  When I was wearing my acting hat, there was always a little extra anxiety when the playwright showed up.  Often, for readings, the writer hasn’t been involved in the casting process and may have been assigned a director, as well.  So, they can, and probably will, be wondering if the playwright is happy with the choices.  They’ve probably got enough to handle without that.

Even if the actors are comfortable with you and eager for the writer’s input, you might be taking time that the director could more profitably spend on something else.

And, if you aren’t used to readings and the process, you can panic.  OMG, will the leading man ever get that laugh line right?  Why does the leading lady insist on whispering during the fight scene?  Chances are the director sees and hears all these problems and is biding her time to deal with them.  Good directors have an internal priority list.  Often they know the actors and know what will right itself and what needs their intervention.  It doesn’t help for you to be sitting there chewing your fingernails and tapping your foot until you get a chance to speak up.

Staying away allows you to avoid those pitfalls and offers you one invaluable upside.

You’ll hear the play fresh—or as fresh as is ever possible when you’ve written and rewritten and read and reread.  You’ll be less inclined to think the reading is going well when all that’s really happening is that it is going better than it did in rehearsal.  Your objectivity will not be compromised by familiarity with the participants.

In the end, you’ve got to make up your own mind in every situation.  I’ve done it both ways.  Early in my adventures with my play, it seemed so important to be there for every minute.  And I’m glad I chose to attend rehearsals for the early readings.

I’m also glad I chose not to go to the rehearsals for the latest readings at the Penobscot Theatre.

I think I was less distracted by my internal actor and my internal director, and I was better able to focus on the writing.

I think.

The thing about choices is that you have to choose.  Once you’ve chosen, you can’t have the other choices.  And you’ll never really know what would have happened if you had.

 

The stuff that’s going well!

Thankful Thursdays

On Thursdays, I think it might be good to talk about what’s going well.  Since it’s all too easy to focus on problems and challenges.

Today, I am thankful for all the people who have done so much to support and encourage my play.  Right now, I am grateful to the latest cast who are working so hard:  Julie Lisnet, Katie Toole, Randy Hunt and Arthur Morrison, directed by Marcia Douglas.  And Mary (whose last name I cannot remember — oh, no! — but I will find out).  Mary is doing a fine job with the stage directions.  [Update:  Mary’s last name is Clark.  Mary Clark!]

Don’t let anybody ever tell you that reading the stage directions is no big deal.

It’s a huge deal!

And, of course, I am grateful to the Penobscot Theatre Company.  Artistic Director Bari Newport, Managing Director Marcie Bramucci, and the indefatigable and unfailingly cheerful Jasmine Ireland who is the Director of Education and Outreach and the curator of this Northern Writes New Works Festival.

We’re having a blast here in Bangor!


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