Careful What You Say

I am very careful about what I say in a theatre or in the lobby during intermission if I don't like the play. I have overheard things about my work that I wish I hadn't more than once. I remember seeing a show 15 years ago in I think the Royale, one of those old great Shubert houses on 45th Street, and I was with my parents. We were sitting in the orchestra very near one of the boxes. I'd been backstage in that house. There is a curtain hanging underneath the box, and if you go behind it, you are backstage. At that time there wasn't even a door. At intermission my mother starts- ranting would be the right word- about how she hates the acting. I'm begging her to shut up or lower her voice because at best she's entertaining the stage management staff, and at worst she's undermining the actors' confidence. Which I told her, and which, of course, didn't stop her.

In Manhattan, there's the ten block rule. You have to be ten blocks away to say Anything negative, however much you're dying to, to whomever you saw the show with. I really try to stick to this rule, which it's always easy if you've sat still for three hours and had your head brimming with what you want to say. An old boyfriend of mine extended the ten block rule to include cars with the windows closed.

But once in awhile when you're the target, you hear something good. I worked on a 24 Hour Play Festival in Kansas when I was playwright-in-residence at the Inge Center. It was not the best of circumstances. I'd be there 36 hours, my divorce lawyer was having a hard time with my case, I had bronchitis, I was on antibiotics and had a raging fever. My play was in the first half, and the lead actor had far from mastered his lines so there was a lot of the other actors milling around onstage and trying to feed the lines to him. So the only thing for me to do at intermission was go out for a smoke. There was a family already out there- mother, father, adult son. They talked about what they'd just seen. The more obvious and cliched the situation, the more it was like a TV skit, the more they liked the play. So then they got around to mine. "I didn't like it," the son said. "Why?" asked his mother. "Because you didn't know what was going to happen next," he said. Which to me is the the best thing he could have said. If you do know what's going to happen next, then what's the point?

Smith & Kraus felt otherwise; it's coming out in their "Best Short Plays for Three or More Actors" this year. It's called "Body Shop."

The Great Brooklyn Theatre Fire

On the 4th of July, we did not go away, since my boyfriend and I had to work Tuesday and Thursday. Instead, we made a short trip to Green-Wood Cemetery, , which is about ten blocks from where I live. It's enormous, has four lakes (some bigger than others), a Gothic-looking chapel, hilly, lots of trees, great view of lower Manhattan. Really interesting funereal statuary, not to mention more mausoleums than I've ever seen in one place in my life.

We did some walking, and some slow driving (it kept raining). The nice guard at the entrance gave us a map, and we hunted down former Gov. DeWitt Clinton, but had less luck with Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the first important classical composer in the U.S.

One monument I noticed was what I thought was a memorial to the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire. There was a large theatre called the Brooklyn Theatre; it looks like it was what's now in the southwest corner of what's now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. On the evening of Dec. 5, 1876, a kerosene lamp ignited a stage drop in the middle of a performance of "The Two Orphans". There were no fire escapes. The fire went up the drape to the ceiling of the theatre, and turned the building into a conflagration. Over 300 people died. Underneath the monument in Green-Wood are the victims whose bodies couldn't be identified. I thought I knew a lot of theatre fire history- in the 19th century, there was a massive fire at theatre Barnum rented (the menagerie was in the basement) on 14th Street and Irving Place (later the Academy of Music and then the Palladium), killed people and animals. And I've read about the Ringling Brothers fire in Hartford in the 1940s- the whole tent went up. But I'd never heard of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire before.

For contemporary newspaper accounts, go to:
http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Newspaper/BSU/1876.Bklyn.Theatre.Fire.html

My P.O. Pals

Eudora Welty wrote a story called "Why I Live at the P.O." Which if you used to use Eudora mail in the olden internet days, is why it was called that. I don't spend as much time as I did at the p.o. as I did, say, three years ago. More and more theatres let playwrights submit electronically. But most still don't.

My boyfriend was very pleased to tell me this morning that he had mailed two (2!) items using first-class stamps in the past month. I was lugging mail that came to $40+ when I got to the p.o. That's this week's take- I was there last week as well. You can't mail a manuscript in a mail box anymore- I think it was the Atlanta Olympics scare that brought an end to that. You must hand your envelope to a person in a post office. And if you already have the postage on it, the post office employees don't always agree who should take the envelope. It can be an elaborate game of "keep away."

It's more convenient for me to go to my old post office on 85th Street in Manhattan (it's on my way to work and near an express train), than it is to go to my new post office in Brooklyn. So I see all my old p.o. clerk pals. The sweet lady who hums to herself; the harried lady who doesn't like having to write out "Bound Printed Matter" on my play envelopes. And my own personal favorite, spray-on-hair guy. I'm not sure I knew you could get spray-on hair anymore before I met him. He never doesn't use it. It always covers exactly the same amount of his scalp. Does he think people won't notice that it's spray-on?

You have to have a p.o. strategy to beat the lines. I have a pretty good idea of when the shifts change. Mondays and Fridays are not so good. But if I can get there before 9:15, Tuesday through Thursday, there's no one there. Except between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then you'd just better bring a book.

Dramahound Dramaturg

In school, I learned that the first dramaturg was Schiller. He was helping Goethe out on a play. But they had a difficult time figuring out exactly what Schiller should be doing, so he only had the job a few months before Goethe let him go. In German, "dramaturg" is "dramaturg" (the "g" is hard). In French, it's "dramaturge" (the "g" like a "j"). In Polish and Romanian, dramaturg actually means playwright. In English, people seems to spell it without the "e," but pronounce it either the French way or the German way. Which is strange. It's like when I was a kid, the accepted spelling was "theater." But somehow, by the time out of college, all these theaters were spelling it the French way (or aping the Brits, spelling it that way).

Dramaturg means different things to different people. Some theatres say it's the equivalent of a literary manager. Others say a dramaturg is the person who helps the director with his research- both the history of the era in which the play is set, and the production history of the play if it's a revival. To me, being a dramaturg is more like being a copy editor. You have a piece, you want to keep the writer's voice in in and your voice out of it, you want to keep it accessible and clear. You don't want to leave big black paw prints all over it.

Particularly if I'm working on a good play, being a dramaturg is fun. You get to observe somebody else's writing process, you're the second set of eyes, you help them make the play better. Very rewarding, emotionally and intellectually if never financially, but that's okay. Very like teaching, actually.

But if it's my play, dramaturgs make me really nervous. I had a bad experience with one early on, who insisted a comedy of mine really needed marijuana-induced jokes in it, and I couldn't get away from her fast enough. Would have totally undercut who the characters were, and the world they were in. Or as David Chase had Carmela say to AJ when he was smoking dope at his confirmation party, "You're an animal!"

In the best of all possible worlds, to steal from M. Voltaire, I am blessed with a good director who has worked on new plays before and knows what he or she is doing. That is a complicated enough relationship; adding a dramaturg is like having a third person in bed with you. Of course if it's not my play, it's totally different.

More Drama, Less Hound

Over the past few days, I’ve noticed this blog is more “hound” than “drama,” and I’ve asked myself what’s up with that. I’m not unqualified to write about theatre. I went to college, then grad school, joined The Dramatists Guild (http://www.dramatistsguild. com/), wrote plays, wrote more plays, taught, dramaturged (not a pretty word, certainly not when used as a verb; it basically means helping the playwright shape their play into what they want it to be, either before or during rehearsal), wrote the libretto and lyrics for two short musicals, taught, wrote, etc.

Part of my reticence is never wanting to sound like the voice of God. I can’t get a roomful of students to agree on “what a play is”- nor should they. A playwright without opinions can’t be much of a playwright. Some years ago, I had an incredibly talented student who kept blowing off my class. He didn’t even bother to be sneaky about it- I’d see him hanging out in the hallway with his girlfriend. When I confronted him, he said, “You’re trying to tell me how to write.” I was astonished. Really. I said, “I’m trying to give you tools to help you write. I’d never tell you how to write. What would be the point of that?” He never missed a class again.

Writing plays is sort of a strange process. Unless you write with a partner, it involves a great deal of solitude; the discipline to not let the rest of your life (blogging, friends, bills, email) distract you for blocks of time; the continuing act of will to keep at it, despite the fact you will invariably be rejected many more times than accepted (I mean, of course, the work being rejected, though it often feels infinitely more personal than that); and the willingness to commit something of yourself to paper. A very smart director friend said to me once that the act of writing a play means that you believe that something that is emotionally true for you is true for everyone else. She was right, and I’ve never forgotten that.

And then, if you’re lucky, you go into rehearsal, and everything changes. You talk (to the producer, the director the designers); you take notes; you ask the director questions; you rewrite scenes that don’t work. You listen (to the director, the actors, the designers, the producer). You rethink characters. You rewrite lines that assault your ear like a car alarm. You invite someone you trust professionally to rehearsal, and listen to what they say. Finally, you reach the day that the script has to be frozen (no more changes, not even moving a comma), or the actors will rise up and kill you. And then, you can’t do anything. Which in its way is the hardest part of all.

Sodom by the Sea, Part Deux

So my friend Mark, my boyfriend and I made the pilgrimage to Coney Island on Friday afternoon. The breeze made it a little cool, so there were no old, roly-poly Russian guys wearing Speedos smaller than a dinner napkin, marinating on the sand. There were people fishing from the pier; several crabbers with traps baited with fair-sized chunks of raw chicken; and lots, lots of little kids with their parents. The seagulls were competing with the crabbers- they'd swoop down to the water, catch a crab in the beaks, and then fly back to the paved parts of land to smash the shells and feast on the meat.
I tried to envision it all gone- the food places (there's a great place called Ruby's with amazing fried clams), the bars (there aren't many other places in NYC where you can drink a margarita and walk at the same time without risking arrest), the Hit the Freak game (the freaks never seem too freakish- I look at least that bad awoken from a deep sleep), the bumper cars, Nathan's Famous. I couldn't do it. Those pieces of Coney Island seem inextricably linked to the land they're on. My understanding is the Cyclone is landmarked (I don't think anyone builds wooden rollercoasters anymore), but that's the only piece that is.
There was an article in the "Times" this week, and another in "The Brooklyn Paper" about the developer's new plan. He won't build condos, since there was widespread criticism of the condo idea. He'll build ... three luxury hotels! Three? I'd have thought one was a dicey idea. Unless he can build them as luxury hotels, and then convert them to luxury condos once he can't fill the hotel rooms. Pretty clever, eh?
Won't the Mermaid Parade have lost something if they promenade in front of luxury condos? Hardly seems an inspiring setting for live theatre, does it? Because I think that's what really gets me about Coney Island. You got the ocean, the boardwalk, the little businesses, the rides, the games, and then all of these people, as different as you can imagine, interacting in this setting that isn't like anywhere else. And for the most part, everybody gets along.
It's pretty miraculous, if you think about it like that.

Guernica

I had a busy day today- Mondays, you know. Setting up meetings, a stack of scripts to read for a contest, a residency proposal to write, asking friends if they’d let me give their names as references- normal playwright activities. So when the day is finished, when I’ve stopped the activities and the dinner dishes are done and I’ve talked to my boyfriend, I settle down to watch Simon Schama on Channel 13. I like Schama on TV- I always learn something and never feel like it’s hard labor. But it’s Schama on Picasso. I certainly have painters that I love, that I look at over and over again, but I really don’t much like Picasso. Most of Picasso I feel about like I feel about most of Egon Schiele- the narcissism leaps off the paintings in waves, and there’s often misogyny in there, too. Plenty of craft, sure, but I don’t like what they’re saying.

But Mr. Schama had beat me to it; he described Picasso’s “sad, thirty year decline… as a poster boy for Stalin.” The centerpiece of the TV show was “Guernica,” which in some ways is so unlike Picasso I can forget that he painted it. The first time I came to New York, I was a senior in high school. My parents brought me to audition for the acting program at SUNY Purchase (I would’ve gone to school with Edie Falco- imagine that!). We went to MoMA, and I saw “Guernica.” After that, every time I came to New York, I’d go to see that painting until it was sent back to the Prado. There was a bench in front of it, and I would sit on the bench and stare at it, sometimes for an hour, just trying to take it all in. Every time that I’d leave it, I knew I’d missed something in the painting. But it’s never left me.

I’ve written speeches in plays about it, which I invariably wind up cutting, because it’s too much me and not enough about the character. My latest attempt was in a play about two Hungarian immigrants who fought in the 1956 revolution, and then fled to Austria (very loosely based on the life of a friend of mine). In “Geography,” the sister (Katinka) wants to become an actress, and the brother (Brown) wants to make films. They’re telling each other about their new lives in New York in 1957, and he says to her:
“I go to Museum of Modern Art. I see Picasso "Guernica". Lucky there is bench by painting. My knees tremble, I cannot stand. I read in books about shaking knees, but I never can feel it until that day. So much- so much in painting. As much as in a film.”