On the nature of 'Boo-hooing'

from the mind of Kato McNickle


Who hasn't heard this story?

I can't get my plays done because I don't have a resume.

I can't get my plays done because I'm unconnected.

I can't get my plays done because no one will read them.

I can't get my plays done because of where I live.

I can't get my plays done because no one is producing new work.

And on and on and on.

Boo hoo for playwrights. No one wants to do your plays, or even look at them, or even give you a fair chance or even... you get the idea.

You are a playwright. You are writing works for the theater. So? Get a space (like a church basement, or a rec center, or a gallery, or a room at your library, or your back yard) find some actors (audition or invite them) make some copies, and produce your play.

It can be performed as a staged reading with blocking but no props; as a concert reading while standing at music stands; or as a production, either with minimal production values or with sets and costumes and the works.

Be a maker of theater.

Stop with the excuses and with the boo-hooing and get to work!

Cool playwright Jason Grote interview

Jason Grote's work has been presented and/or developed with The 24-Hour Plays, The 92nd Street Y's Makor/Steinhardt Center, Baltimore Center Stage, The Bloomington Playwrights Project, The Brick, Circle X, Clubbed Thumb, Denver Center Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Flea, HERE, The Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, Manhattan Ensemble Theater, The Millay Colony for the Arts, The NY International Fringe Festival, The O'Neill Playwrights' Conference, P73, The Playwrights' Center, Salvage Vanguard, Sanctuary, Soho Rep, Studio 42, Theatre of NOTE, The Williamstown Theater Festival workshop, and The Working Theater, and published in The Back Stage Book of New American Short Plays 2005 (edited by Craig Lucas). His play, Hamilton Township, will be presented in Slovenia in December 2006, and his play, 1001, will premiere at Denver Center Theater in January 2007. Honors include a nomination for the 2007 Kesselring Prize; an NEA grant via Soho Rep; a Sloan Commission from Ensemble Studio Theatre; The P73 Playwriting Fellowship; and multiple-year finalist for The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, PlayLabs, and The Princess Grace Award. He is co-chair of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and theatre co-editor of The Brooklyn Rail, and has an MFA from NYU.

Current and upcoming projects include his commissions from Clubbed Thumb, Denver Center, and Ensemble Studio Theater, as well as various projects for film, TV, and radio. He teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Rutgers University, is a member of PEN and New Dramatists, and a contributor to Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" blog. He was co-chair of Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab from 2004-07, and currently serves on their Artist Advisory Committee. He is represented by Antje Oegel at AO International, in Chicago and Berlin.

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I got a chance to meet Jason at the O'Neill Theater Center this summer and to see his play BOX AMERICANA, a play that takes you in and out of the Walmart nation. Here's an interview conducted via e-mail:

I'm glad we got to meet at the O'Neill last month, and it was a treat to see such a smart comedy.

Thanks!

Your play, BOX AMERICANA, was presented at the O'Neill this summer. What compelled you to set a play inside and around a Walmart?

It was a commission from The Working Theater, a labor-oriented theater in NYC. I'm generally interested in writing about contemporary issues, and Walmart's labor troubles have been receiving a lot of press lately, especially their systemic failure to promote women into management positions, which is the only way to make a decent living working there. This inspired the largest class action suit in history, which is still pending, but doesn't look good in light of the recent Supreme Court decision reducing Exxon Mobil's penalties for the Valdez oil spill to a slap on the wrist. The play was largely inspired by a book on the topic, Liza Featherstone's excellent SELLING WOMEN SHORT.

This is your second summer at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference -- how did the experience change for you?

I was much more aware of how quickly the month goes, and tried to use the time for efficiently (though who knows if I did or not). I also tried to make more time to have my wife up, which is really important - as I discovered in 2006, a month is a really long time to be apart.

How do you prepare for a workshop experience like the O'Neill's?

I mailed a lot of food and books to myself, and tried to square away as much business back home as I could. As far as the art of it goes, I'm not sure what preparation one could do, other than having written the actual play. Everything always happens in the room.

The mother/daughter relationship that you and the cast conjured at the O'Neill was mesmerizing and very real. What brought you to creating that duo? What were you channeling?

Thanks!

I was channeling lot of different things, actually. Partially, my own life - while my mother has achieved great material success, when I was born she was 18 and single, and we were on welfare for the first 4 or 5 years of my life. I also worked at an elementary school by the Farragut Housing projects in Brooklyn while I was in grad school at NYU, where I got to observe a lot of mother-child interaction in a largely poor, African-American community. I also listened to a lot of colleagues who would tell me things like, "black people would never say that in front of white people," and stuff like that - the playwright Marcus Gardley was a great help when we were both at The Lark. I also took a lot of inspiration from authors like Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, and George Saunders, as well as various nonfiction sources, including documentaries.

The first summer you were at the O'Neill with your play 1001 was also the second summer led by NPC director Wendy Goldberg. What changes, modifications, or growth happened during the interim conferences?

I think Wendy (who started in 2005), and Preston
Whiteway, Martin Kettling, Jill Mauritz, and the many other people working there have done a pretty amazing job of righting the ship. Playwrights are thankfully shieded from these kinds of details, but the problems the O'Neill was undergoing have been pretty well-publicized. I don't know enough to say where the problems came from, or even what they were exactly (other than the fact that they were financial in origin), but it was clear from my experiences in 2006 and 2008 that things are much more stable now. It's a process that was clearly underway when I was originally there - but these
things take a while.

Other than that, theater is an extraordinarily social art form, and so the experience is very often shaped by the people there. I'm very lucky to have had a number of close friends in residence in 2008 (some of whom, like Irish playwright Ursula Rani Sarma, actor Daoud Heidami, and props master Scott Melamed, I had met in 2006).

An integral part of the O'Neill experience is the month-long residency of the playwrights. What on earth did you do all month long?

Wrote, read, went to the beach, drank, went bicycling, looked for places to get real food, emailed, downloaded music.

Where do you go from here?

I'm opening another show, Maria/Stuart, in Washington, DC - it's starting the season at Woolly Mammoth. I'm also developing a new play with Clubbed Thumb in NY, a process that will include some of the actors from the O'Neill (some from other projects). After that, 1001 is going up at Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis, and there will be a student production at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I'll be teaching a workshop.

What do you think are some of the finest opportunities for playwrights in
> the US right now?

Well, I'm pretty partial to the O'Neill. Other than that, I love the Soho Rep Writer-Director Lab (which I ran for three years) and had a blast at Portland Center Stage's JAW/West Festival. The former has an
open submission process but looks for very, very specific kinds of work, and the latter is invite-only, though. In terms of open submissions, New Dramatists is an amazing organization, and I've
always wanted to go to Sundance (but never have).

How do you answer the oft asked question, "Where do you get your ideas?"

I steal them.

What's a recent good read that made you rethink or inspire your work as a playwright?

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk, a truly amazing piece of criticism. A few other must-reads for playwrights are Story by Robert McKee, The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, New Playwriting Strategies by Paul Castagno, The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, and the film criticism of Slavoj Zizek.

If I had to pick ten playwrights with whose work everyone should be familiar, they would be: Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht, Beckett, Churchill, Paula Vogel, Maria Irene Fornes, Mac Wellman, Naomi Wallace, and Suzan-Lori Parks.

I'm on a puppet kick right now. At the O'Neill they have some pretty inspired puppets and puppet art around the place, and they host one of the finest puppetry conferences in the nation. What do you think about puppets showing up in serious plays like Vogel's LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME or larger pieces like the work of Julie Taymor?

Great, I'd like to see more of it. I recently turned my play Moloch and Other Demons into a puppet play, though that hasn't seemed to increase interest in it. I have a theory that really uptight older rich people hate puppets, which makes me love them even more.

Where do you recommend a fledgling playwright set her/his sights?

On whatever makes them happy. There's really no other reason to do this - a lot of people will try to make you feel like they're doing you a huge favor or that you owe them something because they're
working with you in some capacity, but that's almost never true. Work gets difficult sometimes even under the best of circumstances, but there's no reason to suffer through anyone treating you badly or to do something you're not enjoying. Life's too short and the rewards are far too meager. If you want to get an MFA and work at commercial or nonprofit theaters, do it. If you want to produce your own work, do it. If you want to write poetry or screenplays instead, or a comedy video on YouTube, or go to law school, or do community theater because it makes you happy, do that.

Who drew that caricature of you on your Facebook profile (it's pretty awesome)?

The amazing Neil Numberman - his website is www.neilnumberman.com.

Cool playwright Gregory Moss

Gregory Moss is a playwright, performer and director from Cambridge MA. He is an MFA student at Brown University's Playwriting Program, and he runs Independent Submarine Productions, a DIY production company dedicated to presenting challenging artistic content in various media (www.independentsubmarine.com). Gregory is a recipient of the Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship for 2006-2007. Recent and upcoming productions of his work include Play Viewed From A Distance at The Empty Space Theater in Seattle; The Yankee City Theater Project at the Firehouse Center For The Arts; The Accident at Theatre Limina's Double Vision Festival in Minneapolis; and No One Remembers When as part of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. Recent solo performances include 1000 Proms at The Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge MA and "let's pretend" (adults only) at P.A.'s Lounge in Boston. His latest play, House of Gold, debuted in February as part of Brown University's New Play Festival. Gregory is a member of The Dramatists' Guild.

I met Greg in Florida at the Atlantic Center for the Arts where we were both part of a seven person playwrights bootcamp for 3 weeks with Paula Vogel. Since then we've both be seeing each other around the Brown University campus for the past two years; he is completing his masters in playwriting, and I am working on my undergraduate degree. This has given me a chance to see some of Greg's latest work, and to watch him create it. I am always amazed at how he he gets me hooked into such absurd and disturbing stories-- but he does GET ME HOOKED on impossible people. Impossible! Greg revels in the grotesque and bizarre and always manages to scratch away at those levels to reveal something deeply human and deeply desirous of love. Magic. Weird. But magic.

Here's a few questions for Greg, just after the presentation of his new work PUNKPLAY at the Brown New Play Fest:

Where'd 'Punkplay' come from?
Punkplay came from a couple places. Last year I wrote a play called House of Gold which upset some people when it was done at Brown, which I found oddly surprising, and caused me to think a bit about my approach to making plays. Not so I could change it, but to figure why I was in fact I seem to be so intent on upsetting people. My default mode, as a writer, is to write from a position of aggressive provocative and irony, and I realized that attitude came from early exposure to first and second wave punk rock. So in part I wanted to explore my base assumptions about the world and art, which were so heavily influenced by an adolescence spent absorbing punk music and culture. But also House of Gold had been about growing up as a girl in America, and I write mostly female protagonists, so I wanted to do a boy play. I did the first draft in a class for Paula Vogel in which we studied Jacobean and German Expressionist drama, so some of that got in there too - this imaginative relationship of the individual to History. There's a lot of my own life in there.

How important is music to your stuff?
I am not a musical theatre person, but almost every play I write these days has at least one song in it, like new original songs. But music is one of the Aristotelean elements and I am nothing if not Aristotelean. Using the right song at the right moment can add inflection to a dramatic moment - ironize it or make it creepier. I don't want to use music to underscore (I hate that in theatre) or manipulate emotion, but it's a good way to linger in a moment without slowing a play's momentum.

Where do you go after Brown?
I will either be in Providence another year, or I will be in New York. Probably teaching, definitely writing, hopefully continuing to act and find other creative outlets as well.

What's the difference between being an educator and being educated?
Uh, I don't know. I learn as much or more teaching as I do as a student, cliched as that sounds. Educating, especially in writing and theatre, I feel, is mostly about presenting different approaches to students in a non-threatening, practical and contextualized way. To cultivate their curiosity and ingenuity, so they can write the plays they wanna write - and also to help them delay that reflexive "bullshit!" reaction so many people have when confronted with new or challenging work.

Are you ever compelled to fix people's spelling?
Not in like emails or whatever, but as a teacher, yeah, sometimes. I don't like misspellings, and if it's something glaring I will draw their attention to it. I try not to be a composition teacher - the spelling can get fixed later, once the play is in place.

What do you think every playwright should read?
Sheesh. I feel I should advocate for someone no one is gonna read on their own here. Fornes is my first and favorite, but I'm gonna say everyone should read the "Little Theatre of The Green Goose" plays by Konstanty Iidefons Gaiczynski. They are very short, absurd and hilarious sparks of resistance to socialist realism written by a crazy Polish writer post WW II. I directed 'em as a student project as an undergrad, and I've loved 'em ever since

Also everyone should read Ann Marie Healy.

What's the beverage that keeps you going?
Whey protein smoothie made with vanilla soy milk, a banana, and frozen blueberries. Every morning and sometimes again in the afternoon.

Why puppets?
Anyone who grew up in America with a television set grew up surrounded by talking frogs and anthropomorphic furniture. These things are our friends as kids and then we are very quickly asked to forget that world of living objects. Puppets and object with souls remain a fixture of my imagination, like dolls and toys and dead people coming back to life.

Got a personal mantra?
Work work work.

Anything else?
Naw. Thanks for asking though.

Workshopped to Death

from the mind of Kato McNickle

There have been rumblings and articles and a lot of talk about the "workshopped to death" syndrome plaguing playwrights of late. At the O'Neill Theater Center, which boasts the most prestigious workshop experience in the United States, it is not uncommon to see a list of five or six, sometimes ten or eleven, previous workshops and development processes that the play and playwright have been thru. All of these workshops were worked thru by the playwright with the hopeful expecation that someone would see it, get connected to the play, and want to produce it.

No such luck.

Onto the next workshop.

Here's the thing...aren't playwrights complicite in this trend? If you're a playwright who's done workshopping the play, then hold out for a production and stop sending it to workshop opportunities. If that isn't working, produce the damn thing yourself.

Look back at the careers of all of the great or succesful (or both) playwrights. Everyone knows Shakespeare wrote, produced, directed, yada yada yada; but so did O'Neill; so did Gurney; so did Bullins; Vogel; Brecht; Becket; the list goes on and on.

This is one of those "push comes to shove", "will there's a way", "I'm a playmaker, dammit" kinda things.

Yeah, yeah, theaters get money for doing workshops, and the more readings, the less production money goes into the list of "here's what we did this year" that they have to hand in to get their grant money. It's a non-profit world that the theater exists in, and numbers are very, very important.

It's up to the playwright to be sure their play becomes more than grist for the non-profit mill. It's up to the playwright to push for production. If the theater won't do it, then the playwright needs to find a space and make their play a reality. Be a playmaker.

Creative Creatures: Writer's Retreat with Susan Piver

A Writer's Retreat

May 11-16, 2008 (5 nights, Sun - Fri)
with Susan Piver

Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health
in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts

What do writers want more than anything in the world? Time to write! Yet, even when precious time can be found, it's not always easy to settle into the writing groove. Yoga and meditation can help synchronize the mind and body in a way that truly supports the creative process.

The focus of this week is on having plenty of personal time to write. To support our writing, there will be meditation instruction and practice, and you are encouraged to attend one of the Kripalu Yoga classes offered each day. There will also be opportunities to read and discuss your work. Guiding and weaving the week are award-winning writing teacher Sanford Kaye, who teaches at both Harvard and Curry College, and Buddhist meditation teacher and best-selling author Susan Piver.

The retreat-like atmosphere at Kripalu offers a peaceful and supportive setting for a writing retreat. No previous experience in yoga or meditation is necessary. The retreat is open to dedicated writers of fiction and nonfiction, published and unpublished.

Susan Piver is an authorized meditation instructor in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and the New York Times best-selling author of The Hard Questions series. She has practiced meditation for more than 10 years. Her most recent book is How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life.

Featured Playwright: Dominic Orlando

I met Dominic two years ago at the Atlantic Center for the Arts when we both participated in a three-week bootcamp residency with Master Artist Paula Vogel. Since then I've seen his name all sorts of places, including American Theater. He's an aritist to watch.
-Kato McNickle

BEST QUOTE: Great (and useful) theatre serves one of two
purposes--to celebrate or to mourn.

Dominic Orlando is a former Jerome Fellow to The Playwrights Center and was last year awarded a McKnight Advancement Grant. His plays have been developed and produced at The Guthrie Theater (commission), Here Arts Center (NYC), The Samuel Beckett on Theatre Row (off-Broadway), The Lincoln Center/American Living Room (multi-year), The Ontological at St Mark's Church, The Aurora Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Teatro Del Pueblo (commission, multi-year), The Jungle Theater (multi-year), Stage Left Theater, The New York International Fringe Festival (multi-year), The Edinburgh Fringe, The Prague International Fringe, and The Pasinger/ Fabrik in Munich, among others. In NYC his work was supported by The New York State Council on the Arts, the Alliance of Resident Theatres, The NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs and The Puffin Fondation. He has been a writer-in-residence at The MacDowell Colony (three-time Fellow), The Edward Albee Foundation (multi-year), Ucross, The Djerassi Resident Artists Program, The William Inge Center for the Arts, and The Atlantic Center for the Arts (a residency with Paula Vogel). His writing is published by Playscripts and Dramatics Magazine. Recent productions: "Juan Gelion Dances for the Sun", Crowded Fire Theatre, San Francisco ("electric with dramatic, physical and intellectual energy"-The Chronicle); "A Short Play About Globalization", Workhaus Collective, Minneapolis ("daring and idea-packed, one of the most original nights of theatre in recent memory"-City Pages). He is a Core Member of The Playwrights Center and a founding member of The Workhaus Collective.

What's the most interesting/fun thing you've done as a playwright?
Prague/Munich/Edinburgh/The East Village + meeting
other species of artist at colonies around the country--

Where's the best place for a playwright to live/work nowadays?
NYC/Minneapolis/San Francisco (or maybe HBO)

Who are you reading right now?
The Diaries of Rilke

What's your favorite (or most effective) beverage of choice to consume either before or while writing?
Coffee, coffee, coffee

What's your latest project?
Producing for the Workhaus Collective, writing the book for two friends in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, trying to figure out why I'm reading Rilke

What are you doing for New Year's?
What else? getting drunk with a bunch of playwrights

Find out more about his Plays
Buy his plays from Playcripts.com


Dominic at the ACA in Florida taking some R&R on one of the bikes.

Classy

from the mind of Kato McNickle

Finding a good playwriting class takes a little work. Classes can be offered at colleges, community centers, or private tutoring sessions. Most of these options will mean spending some money, anywhere from $50 for a local recreation class to hundreds or thousands of dollars at a college or university. Your first job is to figure out what you need and if a classroom is the right place for you.

Are you a first-time or novice playwright looking for a class that will provide structure to your writing regimen? In that case check out what classes may be offered through your local parks & recreation, community center, or library. Oftentimes these classes are run by playwrights residing in your community who teach workshops to supplement their income.

A class like this will introduce you to the basic concepts of theatrical storytelling and provide you with a peer group of similarly interested community members. It will also provide a structure whereby you will have to write each week in preparation for each week's class. Many first-time playwrights find this kind of class very helpful.

If you've been writing a while or are seeking a more focused environment, then you may want to look into college or university programs. How do you find a good one? Step one - you read new plays. Why new ones? Because you are seeking out emerging artists whose work engages you.

Next, start Googling. Where did they study and with whom? Better yet - are they teaching anywhere? Maybe they're running a two-week workshop at a conference or a guest lecturer somewhere. Find out.

Start targeting their former professors. Read those professor's plays. Did you really dig them? If so, find out how you can study with them too.

Along the way, read interviews and articles, download podcasts, sit in on lectures and talks, and take notes. These sorts of resources can be as valuable as sitting in a classroom. You can use an interview in The Dramatist like a forty-minute master class. Think of it that way and there's no limit to who you can study with, anywhere, anytime.

It is possible to find a good playwriting class. It's up to you to do your research and find where that classroom is.

Visit the Playwright Zoo Archive.