February 02, 2009

HAIR! Feb.13-22


SCHOOL OF THEATRE AT FLORIDA STATE PRESENTS

HAIR

February 13-22, 2009 in the Fallon Theatre

 

Tallahassee, FL – The School of Theatre at Florida State presents Hair, book and lyrics by James Rado & Gerome Ragni, music by Galt MacDermot.  Performances run February 13 through 22 at the Fallon Theatre.

Hair is the original American rock musical, telling the story of Claude, his best friend Berger, their roommate Sheila, and their band of Hippies living the bohemian life in New York City.  The tribe is struggling to find balance in their lives between the impulses of their lifestyle, including drugs and sexual revolution, and their rebellion against the war in Vietnam and the conservatism of their parents.  The tribe has tuned in, turned on, and dropped out by burning their draft cards and rejecting the conservative parts of society, but it is Claude that is torn between this new way of life and honoring his commitment to the draft.  Full of singing, dancing, and audience interaction, Hair celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008, and returns to the School of Theatre at Florida State for the first time in ten years.  Join the tribe and experience the wonders of Hair again!

The creative team for Hair is led by Tom Ossowski, director, with scenic design by Ariel Emmerson, costume design by Krissy Sneshkoff, lighting design by Richard Chamblin, and sound design by Jon Shimon.

Hair runs February 13 through 22 at 8:00 PM, with matinee performances at 2:00 PM on February 15th and 22nd.  All performances will be in the Fallon Theatre, located on the corner of Copeland and Call streets. Tickets are $20 for adults, $18 for senior citizens, and $15 for students. This production contains adult situations and nudity. Tickets may be purchased by online now at www.tickets.fsu.edu, or at the Fine Arts Ticket Office, phone: (850) 644-6500.

The 2008-2009 School of Theatre season is sponsored in part by Famous Dave’s Legendary Pit Barbeque and by WCTV Tallahassee.  For more information about Hair, the School of Theatre at Florida State, and the entire 2008-2009 School of Theatre season, visit theatre.fsu.edu.

April 14, 2008

FSU School of Theatre GENERAL AUDITIONS

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School

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Theatre

GENERAL AUDITIONS: August 24
th, 2008

Rehearsals Begin: August 28, 2008

Performances: October 17-26th, 2008

ROLE BREAKDOWN

aMILLIE DILLMOUNT: (Early to mid 20's) MILLIE is a very appealing, honest, feisty, and unique young woman. Undeterred by her Midwestern upbringing & naivete, she arrives in

New York

determined to acquire big city sophistication and a rich husband. She is a pragmatist who dreams big. Must be an excellent singer (soprano & belt), a good dancer, and a superb comedienne.

aMISS DOROTHY BROWN: (Early to mid 20's) MILLIE's best friend, a classic old-fashioned beauty who checks into the Hotel Priscilla looking for life, 'raw and real,' as preparation for a career on the stage. She has lived in a glass bubble of extreme wealth her entire life, but her cluelessness in the ways of the real world is in no way haughty or snobbish; in fact, it is her charm. Seeking an actress with a beautiful soprano voice, strong dancer, & an unexpected, offbeat comic sensibility.

aJIMMY SMITH: (20's) An irrepressible, buoyant personality. Full of the headlines of the era -- classic Roaring Twenties -- he loves to have a good time. JIMMY wants to be MILLIE's beau, but lacks an important credential: money. Despite his lack of finances, he possesses the assurance, savvy, and poise of a well-born young man. Sexy, charming, and tall, he is also a terrific singer (tenor) and dancer.

aTREVOR GRAYDON: (Early 30's - early 40's) MILLIE's boss, a knockout. The original Arrow Collar Man with a yen for efficiency. He falls hard for MISS DOROTHY. Must be a great singer (baritone) and actor.

aMRS. MEERS: (40's) Striking and sinister, with a barracuda smile. MRS. MEERS owns the Hotel Priscilla, Residence of Young Ladies -- a mere front for her highly profitable sideline, white slave trading. Seeking an actress with great comedic skills who can sing.

aMUZZY VAN HOSSMERE: (30's - 50's) Glamorous, big-hearted, fun loving, and wise. Think

Pearl

Bailey crossed with Josephine Baker and Queen Latifah. A diva who knows how to have a good time while never losing sight of what really matters in life: love. Must be a sensational singer. Seeking an African-American for this role.

aBUN FOO: (Late 20's - 30's) One of two henchmen in the employ of MRS. MEERS' white slaving business. The brothers reluctantly help MRS. MEERS in exchange for bringing their mother to

America

. Seeking an Asian man with good comic skills that can sing.

aCHING HO: (Late 20's - 30's) An unwilling associate to MRS. MEERS, CHING HO falls hard for MISS DOROTHY and saves her from a life of prostitution in South East Asia. Seeking an Asian man with great comic skills that can sing.

aCHORUS: 8 women / 8 men of varying talents including acting/singing/dancing/tapping.

Performers of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are encouraged to attend.

April 01, 2008

Graduate Design and Production Exhibition April 2 to April 4

Graduate students in Design and Prodution will be exhibiting their work on the Fallon Stage from April 2nd to April 4th from 12:00pm to 5:00pm.  Drop by and see what they've been up to this semester! 

March 30, 2008

New Horizions: Marla DuMont

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Tell us a little bit about yourself.  Where are you from, where did you grow up, and how did you get to FSU?

Born and raised in Austin, TX.  I decided to come to FSU because their writing program was a joint program in film and theatre.  There aren’t many of those in the country...

What we want to explore with this interview is the process of playwriting from the perspective of the playwright.  Before we expand on that, tell us: why write plays?

That’s like asking “why enjoy yourself?”  Writing is a huge stress-reliever for me, and I love seeing the characters I create come to life.  There is also the theatrical advantage of being able to get away with practically anything because audiences are usually happy to go along for the ride.  Writing a play is like playing the Guess Who game with yourself for hours on end: you always win.  Really, what could be better?

Let’s talk a bit about developing characters.  Where do the ideas come from?  How do you find them or more accurately, how do your characters manifest themselves?  Do you hear a line in your head?  Do you hear a voice?  How do you give the character a voice?

Every person I see on the street or cross paths with at the book store is a chance for me to gain rare material.  People are fascinating, and even someone who is a complete stranger conveys a lot about themselves through their actions and reactions as well as their quirks (because, let’s face it, we all have our quirks).  I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t intrigue me in some way…         

Once I begin to write my characters, they very quickly take over and begin to write the play themselves.  I remember one play I was working on that had gone through many incarnations.   I knew what I wanted the play to say, but I was having trouble finding the correct way to say it.  There had been a character in early drafts whom I had ultimately killed off as I revised, deeming her unimportant to the main story.  One day I looked over what I’d written to find that she had not only brought herself back to life, but had succeeded in making herself the center of the play!  From then on she became my main character, and the story unfolded easily as I began writing from this different perspective.

Hearing character voice is not a conscious process for me.  If the characters are well-crafted initially, then their voices become instinctive, and I won’t have to think too much about them as I write.  Instead, their words will just flow out of me.

What is it that lights that proverbial fire under your butt?

I would have to say the hope of one day seeing my characters come to life on stage (or screen).  That, and the thought of winning a Emmy.

What drives you to create?

I guess I'd have to say I have a soft spot for the odd ball out, the kid who is too quickly judged because he is different.  Writing allows me to advocate for these individuals, leading the audience to empathize with characters to whom they wouldn't necessarily give a second thought if they encountered them on the street.  Every person has a story.  Every person IS a story.  When stories are all around, how can I refuse to write them down?

OK.  You’re in rehearsals and things are moving along.  What happens when the director wants to change or, gasp, CUT part of your script?

I’ve had the good fortune to work with smart directors whenever I’ve had a play produced.  Often if the director asks about an awkward moment, or suggests a cut, it has been something I have been thinking about cutting or changing for days, but because I didn’t immediately know how to fix it, I let it slip, hoping no one would notice.  So I actually enjoy being called on things like that because it forces me to have to fix the problems in my script instead of ignore them, and that in turn makes the script stronger.

Do you have an emotional response?

To the suggested cut?  Sometimes yes.   Usually by the time a show is in rehearsal, I’ve lived with the characters for a long time, and have grown somewhat attached to them.  Cutting dialogue is a bit like hushing someone.  Sometimes it has to be done for the greater good, but I still can’t help but feel apologetic (and a little bit like a jerk) to the person I’m hushing. 

When did you first recognize yourself as a writer? 

I don’t know that there was really one moment of realization.  I took a playwriting class in college and found that I really enjoyed it.  I have never been one to keep journals or diaries or anything though, and I was never that kid in the back of the class writing constantly in a notebook to control the flood of ideas.  As I formed different kinds of relationships in college, I found myself writing plays to make sense of it all, and before I knew it, I had become hooked to the play form as an outlet for my emotions. 






March 26, 2008

New Horizons: Matthew O'Brien

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please
destroy me this way, by Matthew O’Brien, introduces us to a young woman named Rocket who works as a porn star and prostitute in Bangkok, Thailand's seedy sexual underworld.  Through her developing relationship with Brian, an English teacher from America, Rocket's true identity is questioned and she must make a choice ...Is she going to be Rocket or will she become her true self?

Tell us a little bit about yourself.  Where are you from, where did you grow up, and how did you get to FSU?

Well, I’m from the suburbs of Chicago, where I grew up.  I went to Iowa State University out of high school with the desire to become a computer scientist.  And after one semester of absolutely failure in programming C++ object oriented programming, I decided that this wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  So, I changed my major to English and realized you know what?  It’s kind of pointless to be paying out of state tuition when I can get the same degree in state for half the price.  I left and went to community college for a year because I had to get my grades up since I didn’t do so well that first year.  And I applied to the University of Illinois with the desire to study English.  That didn’t work out.  They told me that they couldn’t accept me because I didn’t have enough credits but I could apply to other school.  They had landscape architecture, agriculture, all the undesirables, you know, and coincidentally, there was theatre.  I had been in a play in my senior year in high school.  It was the only formal play I had ever done but I decided I’d give acting a whirl.  I checked the theatre box and they told me I had to come and audition. All right, so I auditioned.  While I was auditioning, during the interview, they told me – I had asked them how many people get accepted to the program.  I mean, it’s a huge school, forty thousand people go there, it had to be a lot and I really wanted to get into the school.  They were like, “Well, usually seven hundred apply…”  I said, “OK.  How many get in?”  About fifteen.”  So I completely panicked and thought I’m not going to get into this school, there’s no way.  Then they sent me a letter saying that I had a successful audition, so come on down and be in the acting program.  That’s what I did for four years.  It taught me that I didn’t want to be an actor but I think it taught me how to be a better writer.  And after a three year period of living in Chicago after I was done sort of letting things marinate, I realized that I was seeing things, the world, in play and screenplay format.  I couldn’t stop from sitting down and writing how I felt in that way.  And knowing what I knew about acting, I had to do it.  So I applied and that’s what brought me to writing.  I applied here and got in.  I came down to Florida to learn how to be a better playwright and a better screen writer. 

What we want to explore with this interview is the process of playwriting from the perspective of the playwright.  Before we expand on that, tell us: why write plays?

Again, it comes down to how your voice as a person, how you see the world, and because I was in theatre, I was strongly influenced by what it’s capable of when it’s done well.  There’s so much you have to pay attention to to do theatre well.  Those demands…  Having knowledge of lighting and makeup and acting…  All those things together gave me a vocabulary for how to communicate what people go through in their lives onstage.  And you also can’t help but have these questions about how the world works.  And what I love about playwriting and even screenwriting for that matter is that you can have this question, present both sides, and let people see it in a new way.  Whereas before I came here, I think I had a biased opinion that fell on one side of it and wanted to make people see it my way.  So that next evolution in understanding what you can do, especially with plays.  I feel like plays really have a sort of objective essay quality to them if you really break them down and get past the drama, really get focused on what your topic is.  And that to me, is what I really enjoy about playwriting.  Screenwriting is a little bit more action based but playwriting can get more intellectual, thought driven, but still be visceral. 

Let’s talk a bit about developing characters. When you hear them talking to you, at you, near you, through you, how do you handle that voice?  Do you hear, for example, a woman’s voice?

It’s what the character wants.  You have to know what they character wants, what they’ll do to get it, what happens if they don’t get it, and how the given circumstances of their world play upon how they go about getting what they want.  I wait until a character is created that wants something really badly and then I write down what I watch them do to try to get it. And then you create other characters that are helping them or resisting them, providing obstacles.  They want something that doesn’t gel with what the other character wants and that creates conflict.  That is at the heart of it.  I won’t say, well, what was that person’s history and what did they grow up like.  A lot of times I won’t even do that.  I really focus on where they are right now and what it is they want.  And if I’m having a hard time understanding how they see the world or the different tactics they’ll use to try to get what they want, then I’ll start populating their back story with specific events that inform how they see the world.  Whether it was mom and dad got divorced or I was sexually assaulted or I won the lottery when I was twenty-one.  Whatever the circumstance is that has informed who they are as a person and has shaped who they are day to day.  Sometimes the environment will come first.  For this play, I chose beforehand due to a number of influences that I want this play to take place in this sort of seedy underworld that my imagination thinks that Bangkok, Thailand is like.  Part of me says, I can go and do all this research and find out what it’s really like, but I’m creating a world that breaks reality a little bit.  It’s like a comic book a graphic novel, a heightened reality.  There’s always room for research as a writer to get things the way they are but I have more fun playing around with my imagination.  I mean, I don’t care if they don’t have a subway in Thailand.  I don’t want someone sitting there thinking, well, there’s only a tram, there isn’t a subway.  Well, there is in my Thailand.  There are plays where research and specifics of the world have to be there but I feel that this is disconnected enough that I can have the great fun of creating my world.  I don’t have real things, like someone running for office, where I have to really know how it works.  

What drives you to create?  What is it that lights that proverbial fire under your butt?

I think one of the biggest things is keeping…  Sort of the general housekeeping that I feel is required for keeping on task for getting ready to break into a play is staying abreast of a lot of what goes on in the world.  Not only current events.  It’s amazing where influences can come from.  I mean, something like music is sort of a given.  Keeping up with other fine arts, seeing other plays, going to see movies, reading novels, all of those things.  Actively pursuing them not because you’re trying to find something to write about but because I like to wait for things to come to me.  And when that inspiration hits or the voices start talking and you write out a scene between two people and you don’t know what it’s going to turn into but you just have to sit down and write what these two people are talking about.  This guy wants this, this girl wants that and they fight it out or whatever the situation requires.  How it sort of seeps into your mind and becomes something that you cannot resist exploring…  It’s that pull that makes it so you can’t not sit down and get it out of you.  I never try to seek out what I want to write about next, like, “I want to write about the Korean war and what it did to soldiers.  I’m going to sit down and research this because I want to write a play about it.”  That’s a disconnected intellectual choice as opposed to your intellect combining with your gut and how those forces come through you.  And you let them out through the filter of your mind and how your mind works.  So that’s how it finds its way in and finds its way out. 

Do you remember the movie Misery?  James Caan played an author who wrote novels, fiction.  His character had distinct rituals that he went through when he wrote and also when finished a novel: he preferred certain paper, he had the whole cigar and champagne thing set up when he finished the final page…  Do you have rituals?

Oh, boy!  I think my rituals have been rituals to try to figure out what kind of rituals I can have.  (Laughs)  Because I, you know, I always thought that if I sat down to write, I always had to have the television on in the background or I had to have music on or I had to have some kind of buzz in the room when I was working.  But I find that I don’t.  What I realized is that I lock in so much into the world that I’ve created in my mind that as I’m writing, I’m literally watching it in my head and I can type so fast that I type what I see.  So, I don’t really have a ritual where I have to sit down with a certain pencil and the eraser over here with ninety-two pound paper and the computer has to be cleaned off or anything like that.  I just sit down on my sofa with my laptop and I completely put myself into the world and I write down what they say.  Whatever I need to do to get my head into that is different every time. 

Talk to us about writer’s block.

I’ve never had.  I always think that… I always feel that I’ll never run out of things to write about.  I mean, I have lists of film ideas and a lot of ideas for plays that I want to explore.  I fee like writer’s block comes from people who are intellectually choosing to be writers.  That their intellect is in control of what they’re trying to do.  That they sit down and they choose to try to write something rather than being open to how the world works, what they observe, what they see people do, and sort of letting it come to you.  If you do that, you can’t help but having things to write about.  And maybe writer’s block comes from being close off.  Maybe you’ve isolated yourself from the world a little bit?  Maybe you need to go on an adventure.  Take your buddy and hop a plain to Berlin and just get away from needing to be a writer and just do stuff that exposes you to new things.  Because most of the stuff that I’m writing about, I can find the conflict or you can find the characters in situations that I’ve encountered in my actual life.  Combine that with your imagination and all the different things that we do and I just feel that it’s impossible to run out of stuff to write about.  And it’s not like I’m gonna sit down and write this three act play that’s gonna be well made and perfect.  Sit down and just puke this stuff out.  Maybe it’s something that you have to get out and you don’t look at it again for ten years.  Maybe it’s that long ‘til that thing just pops into your mind that brings that old play to life and makes you say, “I know how to solve that problem and bring the play to life.”  It’s when I’m not thinking about it when it all just trickles down from the world.  It gives it to you.  You just have to stay open. 

OK.  You’re in rehearsals and things are moving along.  What happens when the director wants to change or, gasp, CUT part of your script?

As far as collaboration goes, it’s something that when you’re a writer who has a very clear vision and who’s been trained in all of the different aspects in theater…  Not that you’re an expert; I mean, I couldn’t go and do a lighting plot for one of Shakespeare’s plays tomorrow but I do have an understanding of how lighting works.  I’ve never staged a play but I can say, well, now I think you’d move over there because you want a drink.  Working with a director and understanding what they have to do…  They’re reading your play and latching onto something that resonates with them and they are forming a concept of your play.  Knowing what your play’s about and what your characters want, it can be difficult at times when a director’s working on something.  Not that they’re getting it wrong but that they’re seeing it differently.  Sometimes you really crave the ability to just give them the answer but that sort of gets into telling a director how to get it right.  Then the director isn’t an artist and is just doing a job.  Respecting and loving what your collaborators are capable of…  Fortunately, the directors that I’ve worked with have been able to get inside what I’ve written.  They can channel their own personal experience and their voice.  And they can tell me, “I think this part is distracting from what the play is really about and I think we can get rid of it.”  If they explain it to me, I won’t go ten rounds with them.  If they can make me see that and we watch it in rehearsal and they say, “See how it takes the energy down?”  You can’t deny that that’s how it is.  But there’s other things that I’ve written where a character says something because of this and maybe you’re not seeing what’s behind her dialogue.  Talk to me and we’ll work it out.  It may be something so minute but that little thing is very important to that character.  It’s constant negotiation and just really wanting to be in that collaboration process.  I don’t want Candace to just do a job.  She has her expertise that she’s bringing to the table and I don’t know what I’m doing as far as movement and choreography and all that.  I’ll tell ya if I don’t like it.  (Grins)

When did you first recognize yourself as a writer?  Do you have any words of wisdom for new playwrights?

My brother and I, ever since we were kids, made home movies.  We wouldn’t write the scripts but we would talk out the scenario and then improvise what the scene was.  There was that creative foundation.  I always sort of thought in a writerly way but I never actually sat down to write anything aside from what was going on in school.  But when I was in high school, I felt that there was so much going on that I needed to communicate and it did find its way out through journaling.  I called it my manifesto.  Minus the world disruption.  (Laughs)  I would just sort of barf out what happened during the day and how it made me feel and it taught me a lot about what I would do to get what I want, in hindsight.  It really culminated into writing when series of events in my life and what I had absorbed from the world when I was in undergrad made me just sit down one day and literally within twenty-four hours, I wrote a ninety page play.  It was a disaster, a total mess.  But it was just, you know, this is what I have to say.  Knowing that I could completely get into that world…  I was in acting at the time and I just couldn’t grasp acting.  I couldn’t understand how to disconnect who I was and put myself into that character’s skin and go about balancing me, the actor with my training, with the visceral connection I had with this character trying to get what he wants.  My director was always asking me, “What do you want?  What does your character want?”  And I would say, “I just don’t know; I’m just trying to get my lines right!”  I couldn’t get it done as an actor, but I feel I’m able to combine the intuitive and the intellectual and visceral aspects of who I am in the writing.  As opposed to when I’m onstage, nervous, and want to throw up. 

Do you have any advice for writers?

I think the biggest thing that upsets me is writers who spend too much time not writing.  The idea that…  There definitely is a process of marinating your ideas and what you want to do.  But I don’t feel like you can sit there and wait until it’s all perfectly constructed in your mind before you do it.  I scribble notes; I keep a little notebook with me.  I write down stuff in class.  Whatever I have to do to get information down.  Just get it out.  Get up, have breakfast, write, have lunch, write, girlfriend comes home, take a break, she goes to bed, write.  Get it out.  You can always revise it.  You can always fix it.  You can have people read it and tell you I’m not getting this or I’m lost here.  You take those things and plug them in.  Even as you’re working, ask yourself, what does the character what?  What is the point of this scene?  How does it move things forward?   Oh!  Take a keyboarding class.  If you can’t type thirty, forty, fifty, sixty words a minute, writing is going to be such a chore.  Some people can do it by hand and I can’t.  It’s slower for me that way.  But I can type for twenty hours straight and never miss a beat.  And when you have an assignment, don’t wait until the last minute.  People can tell. 

March 24, 2008

New Horizons: Shannan Johnson

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Stars No Stripes,
by Shannan Johnson, shows us that children are taught to live in a color blind society.  But their eyes are still subject to racially charged images that inform and construct their view of the world.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.  Where are you from, where did you grow up, and how did you get to FSU?

I am from Houston,TX.  I was born there, raised there.  I went to undergrad at Texas A&M University, which is in College Station,TX, which is about an hour and a half from Houston. After that, I actually worked at Texas A&M University for about a year until I realized that my energy was being stifled because I knew I wanted to be a writer.  And my second love is helping teenagers who are between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, getting them ready for college.  As I worked at TX A&M, I was a recruiter and I got to go into high schools and do that which was great because it helped me fulfill my second love, but it wasn’t doing anything for my creativity.  SO, I quit and moved to LA and started interning and taking classes, things like that, to get to know what this whole film thing was about.  It was in my senior year in undergrad that I decided I wanted to write for film and television.  I’ve always wanted to be a writer.  My teacher, when I was like, eight, my third grade teacher, had us write a descriptive story.  You know, like a page, and she told me, “That’s good!  You should be a writer.”  And I said, ok, I believed her.  Teachers are supposed to know what we’re good at and I believed her.  Since then, when anyone asked what I wanted to be, I would say an author.  When I got to undergrad, I knew that authors didn’t make money overnight so I had to have some kind of nine-to-five.  What am I going to do?  I still wanted to write, so I went into journalism and did magazine writing as my specialty.  I got with one degree in journalism and one in English.  When I got to my senior year, I was interning at a magazine and so I spent a lot of time in front of a computer.  I was also researching because at that time, I still didn’t know, well, what job I wanted to do in between times.  Because even with magazine writing, similar to the film world, you start from the bottom and work your way up.  I was thinking, how do I get in?  I spent a lot of time on the internet and that’s how I learned about programs in film and television and theatre and all this other stuff.  So, as I was working for the university the next year, I signed up for UCLA Extensions….kind of like a retreat, a workshop they have for four days.  And you go and you learn how to do the structure of a feature length film.  How to lay out the bones of a film.  And I went and we were in class all day.  It was very intense.  We were in class all day and we only broke for lunch and when we went home, we were expected to come back with notes.  It was a group feeling and everybody was making comments on everything and that’s when I really realized how much how everyone else has a say so in what you’re doing and I love it!  I was like, ok, I need to be in LA.  When am I going to get here?  So I gave my boss a kind of ultimatum, you know?  I was like, well, the summer’s coming and since I worked in scholarships and recruiting, my job was kind of done.  So for the summer, I was just kind of sitting there.  I was like, there are reasons I want to go to graduate school but I was going to go two years later but I said, “For this summer, if you let me go and take a class in LA, you know, and intern for a month, I’ll come back and finish out my next year.  That way you won’t have to hire anybody or whatever.”  And they said no.  So I quit.  I had said, either way it goes, I’m leaving.  I went to LA and I lived on people’s living room floors and there was even one moment where I thought I was going to have to sleep in my car because I was living with one of my sorority sisters and I was there with her for maybe a week or two.  Then her boss called and said, ok, we’re moving you to Missouri .  I was like, uh-oh.  Where am I going to stay?  You know?  I was like, what is going to happen?  But I eventually found some people that I knew through and through from Texas.  I didn’t…I couldn’t even tell you their names but I ended up living on their living room floor for about a month.  Then I got into film school and drove from LA to Florida and here I am. 

What we want to explore with this interview is the process of playwriting from the perspective of the playwright.  Before we expand on that, tell us: why write plays?

I think plays give me the opportunity to really talk about what I want to talk about.  I try to write about things that are gonna matter, that are gonna make a difference, that are gonna make people think.  I like to write about social, political things.  Not political as in politics but you know, things of that nature.  The theatre gives me a very good medium to do it.  Number one, you do get to have a lot of dialogue whereas in film, it’s more about the action.  In theatre, you can add in heavy handed things without it looking heavy handed.  Like, you know, in film, if I pick the camera and I make you look at the United States of America’s flag, then I’m making you realize that I want you to look at this.  Whereas in theatre, it’s just hanging there, so some people will get it and some people won’t.  Some people will realize a deeper meaning but it’s not like the writer’s going, “Look at this!  I want you to know this!”  And I think that’s why I like it the most.  I actually get to work with the actors to help them get their beats and all these other things and I just feel that the audience can go away with so much more.  Without telling them what they need to go away with. 

Let’s talk a bit about developing characters.  Where do the ideas come from?  How do you find them or more accurately, how do your characters manifest themselves?  Do you hear a line in your head?  Do you hear a voice?  How do you give the character a voice?

The hardest part is finding their voice.  I tried for the most part to give each character a distinct voice.  Not sure if I succeeded.  I try to sit around and listen and so I tried to make their voices very different.  I mean, who am I to say that I know what it’s like to be a white man?  How can I write his voice?  I mean, I’ll never know.  All I can do is the best I can and maybe that won’t be good enough.  That’s something that I struggle with as an African-American writer, too.  I don’t want to make my people look ignorant.  Yet, I don’t want to not be authentic with their voices.  Because I know that as an African-American, someone can come in and talk to you and they might sound ignorant when they’re really extremely intelligent; it’s just the way they talk.  And it changes when they’re at home or with their friends.  My audience, nine times out of ten, is not going to be one hundred percent African-American, especially if it’s something I’m putting on here at Florida State.  Do I want those people to come and hear the authenticity and then go home and think we’re ignorant?  Or do I try to make the voices less authentic?  And it’s the same thing as when I’m trying to write for an Asian female.  I don’t know why they choose to say the things they say because I don’t know what it’s like to be an Asian female!  Or what makes a Spanish speaking person speak in English in part of a sentence and then speak Spanish in another part of the sentence?  I usually try to write for an African-American audience but while I’m here, I’ve been trying to expand.  I’m not sure if I’ve done it right.  I’m not sure if I’ve gotten their voices.  We’ll see.  I mean, I try to put myself in situations where I’m not with my people all the time and listen.  I like to go and hear how other people speak and why they speak. 

What is it that lights that proverbial fire under your butt?  What drives you to create?

I think what drives me to create is that the media is powerful.  I figured, how can I reach more people?  You know, without being a preacher.  That’s been driving me a lot.  When people watch movies, they really do leave and take something with them in their soul.  A lot of the stereotypes that people have about other people come from what they see on TV.  You know, if you see the same stereotype on TV or in the movies and you’ve never had any personal experience with that particular group of people, that’s what you’re going to think they’re like.  You know?  And I figured if it’s that strong when it comes to stereotypes or other beliefs, then maybe I can have that kind of influence on the world.  Authors that I grew up reading…  I read Arlo Stein, but not the Goosebumps, that’s the generation right after me.  I read the Fear Street novels with the cheerleaders that were killing each other.  I read those and I read Pam Jansen and Beverly Cleary.  When I was little, I always had a book.  I always had one in my purse; I was always into reading and my book collection was huge.  And because I liked to read so much at that age, I thought that everybody else read.  I thought, well, I can write something that everybody else will read.  I wrote my so-called first novel in the fifth grade and I read it to my class during our after-recess time.  You know, the time when everyone’s cooling down.  And they would be excited about what was gonna come the next day, excited about the next chapter.  That just made me happy.  I was just kinda riffinoffa that.  And when I got older and I saw that the McMillen books were being produced into films, I was like, wow!  My books could be turned into films!  It wasn’t until my senior year in college that I realized I didn’t have to write the book, I could just write the film.  I can’t say that I have any playwrights that I looked after.  I took as many Shakespeare classes as I could because I actually like Shakespeare, not because I was trying to write like him.  I have some at home that I really like.  Koreshi.  I like his stuff because it’s cultural.  Everyone can read his stuff and get something out of it.  But this particular piece, I’m trying to remember what happened.  I was either walking through the campus or I was riding in a car, one of the two.  And I saw a Confederate flag.  I see them quite often in Florida.  I started thinking to myself how different Florida is from Texas even though they’re both Southern states.  In Texas, if someone has a Confederate flag up, then they are racist.  They are boldly and bluntly saying that they feel a certain way.  Therefore, you don’t see many Confederate flags in Texas.  Because everyone knows you can be in trouble for having it up. On my college campus, a boy had a Confederate flag hanging in his window and the administration made him take it down because it was causing a negative effect on the campus.  Whereas, here, they’re selling them in the Student Union.  Or almost one out of every five pick-up trucks or even cars that drives by have one on it and so I’m thinking to myself, all these people can’t be racist.  They can’t be selling these negative images on the campus and thinking that they’re selling negative images.  There must be something bigger.  And so I started talking to people about it.  I remember my friend told me about a conversation she had with her boss who said, “I hate when people judge me and think that I’m some kind of racist just because I have a Confederate flag.  They can’t judge me; that’s my right.  This, to me, is about the South.  It reminds me of the old South and I’m just really into Southern pride and that’s why I have it.  I don’t have anything against black people or Asian people or Jewish people.  I’m just really into Southern pride.”  And so the comment back, from my friend, was, “But you don’t seem to care how it makes me feel, so therefore, I can judge you back.  I can judge you for having it because you don’t care how it makes me feel to have to look at it.  It might mean one thing to you but it means another thing to me.”  And so that, basically, is where this play came from.  I have six students in a classroom, it’s a history class where they learn about Apartheid and how Apartheid is similar to our Jim Crow laws and things like that.  In between that, they’re talking about their own racist experiences.  So even though they’re only sixteen and seventeen years old, they already have these prejudices in their heads or people are prejudiced against them because you know, they assume that they’re bad people.  One girl sews Confederate flags.  That’s what she does.  She loves to do it.  So people think that she’s a racist because she sews Confederate flags.  But really, she sews them because that’s what her family does.   It’s their tradition; they just kind of hang around and sew flags.  If she was sewing another kind of flag, would you not like her?  Is it because she’s sewing a Confederate flag the reason you don’t like her?  And then, how they interact with each other in between the monologues is just like any other kid.  Hey, how you doin’?  You wanna hang out, blah, blah, blah.  And then they’ll turn around and tell a story about how they hate Asian people.  But two seconds ago, you were just talking to and hanging out with this Asian person, hanging out with her after school.  What I’m doing with this play is showing that everyone might have their prejudices but it doesn’t mean that they’re not human.  And what can you think of to make it positive to the next person.  And that’s basically it. 

Have you run across the whole “it’s heritage, not hate” argument?

I’ve heard that a lot in Florida.  I do not hear it in Texas.  In Texasthere are cities where, if you’re African-American and you’re driving through them, do not stop your car.  Those are the cities that are hanging the Confederate flag.  In Houston, you might see one Confederate flag but you’re definitely not going to see them on bumper stickers.  When I first got here, I definitely thought it was hate because that’s what it was to me there.  But here, the more I asked people about it, the more I heard, “No, it’s my heritage; it’s the old South.”    But even here, if you still look at it from an African-American’s point of view, in the old South, I didn’t belong.  It still comes off as if I don’t belong.  You know what I’m saying?  But at the same time, these are the same people who have black friends and who hang out with black people, who do all kinds of things with black people but they hang the flag because it’s cool and it reminds them of their heritage.  I’ve heard that a lot.  Does everybody really know where the Confederate flag came from, though?  Like, the one that we see now is kind of a knockoff of one of the earlier versions that they tried to have represent the entire Confederacy which didn’t make it up because it got voted down.  You know?  And the one that we see now is not the actual Confederate flag; it’s one of the Army flags, one of the battle flags.  So we don’t actually see the flag of the Confederacy but everyone looks at it and calls it the Confederate flag.  But it’s not.  So just doing that research and just talking to different people and also realizing that like the movie, Crash, even though people are racist on the outside, it doesn’t mean they’re not human.  It doesn’t mean that they don’t have their lives and that you can’t have any sympathy for them.  And a lot of people do have prejudices in their minds but that doesn’t stop them from doing their day to day business. Someone may go home at night and scream and scream that they hate white people and they go to work the next day and they have lunch with them and talk to them and to all the things that they have to do to get through the day.  If that’s happening out in the real world, then it’s probably happening in the high schools.  Because no one would expect a fourteen year old person to say, oh, you know, I hate black people.  But they’re learning it from somewhere.  It’s either coming from home or from their friends or from wherever. 

Do you remember the movie Misery?  James Caan played an author who wrote novels, fiction.  His character had distinct rituals that he went through when he wrote and also when finished a novel: he preferred certain paper, he had the whole cigar and champagne thing set up when he finished the final page…  Do you have rituals?

Not at all.  I am a just do it kind of girl.  My ritual is to not think about it and just do it.  But at the same time, in every other aspect of my life, I’m very OCD.  So it’s weird that I get to this part of my life and I don’t have an outline.  It’s usually just anything that sparks me; something that just got me and I think, you know what, I want to write about that.  And I just start writing.  As I write and as I rewrite, it becomes molded into this piece that looks like it came from this great structural thing.  Now, it does help, especially in screenwriting, that they do make us do some kind of outline because when I go to write, I know exactly this thing is that, this thing is that, and this thing is that.  But if it were strictly up to me, I would just write.  None of my theatre pieces came from an outline or an exercise…

OK.  You’re in rehearsals and things are moving along.  What happens when the director wants to change or, gasp, CUT part of your script?

That actually has not happened this year.  Yet.  When it happened last year, I was just in awe because I didn’t know the process.  So I didn’t know if that was right or if that was wrong.  And after speaking to my instructor, I found out that that was wrong.  But again, because there was no chemistry between myself and my director, it was kind of like, it became his baby and not mine.  And he cut it and that was the end of it.  It ended up being a war of e-mails with my instructor trying to have the back of the playwright saying, you know, that if this was real theatre, you couldn’t cut something without the playwright’s this or that.  I haven’t had that happen this year.  If anything, my play this year is very minimalist.  It’s a monologue play and so she didn’t really add or cut anything when it came to the lines because she had so much action to give.  There was none.  There were just words and people.  And so she just got really creative when it came to moving them around.  What are these people going to be doing while this person’s doing their monologue?  So I think that’s where her attention has been.  We really haven’t had that problem [of cutting].  At least not yet. 

Do you have an emotional response?

Well, again this year has been different because the writer’s aren’t in theatre this semester while it’s happening.  Therefore, we are working on other things.  And we haven’t necessarily looked at this thing every day since we turned it in in December. As attached as I was to it in December, it’s not so now.  And the other thing I try to do when I come to the theatre environment is realize that I can’t be attached.  In the film world, you walk in to a room and someone else is going to buy it.  They can do whatever they want to with it.  In [the theatre], I kind of have that same feeling except they need my permission.  I’ll come in and say feel free to change, let’s try it all.  We can try anything you want to try but if I don’t like it, let’s have it come back.  So I don’t mind if [the director] comes and says, “You know, Shannan, this just doesn’t make sense.  I can’t get it, the actor can’t get it, why is it here?  Let’s try it without it.”  So, sure, let’s try it.  But if there was something that I wanted to be there and I feel like it’s missing, I would hope that she would just put it back and listen and kind of trust me.  And the other thing is that we have three nights to do it and that’s one of the reasons I’m just so open to doing it.  We can just try something and we can see how it works on the first night and see the audience reaction.  And because we have a talk back afterwards so we can just ask the audience what they felt about this or that.  Then you can go back into rehearsal and change it for the next time.  So I am pretty open to additions and subtractions.  When I first brought it up to class, though, I received a lot of animosity from my classmates and from my instructor because I don’t think that they could see past the Confederate flag.  The way the play is set up now is totally different from the way it was set up in the first draft.  At first, I had a big Confederate flag fly in and the six students turned around and said the Pledge of Allegiance to it.  My instructor and classmates pointed out that it seemed as if I, as an African-American writer, was pointing out and saying that all white people are bad.  My point was that no one will even know that I am the African-American writer until I go and stand up there.  Another point was that I just wanted to make you think.  If you were offended, then maybe you should think and try to figure out, deep down, why you were offended.  Am I offended because it’s true?  Why does this bother me?  Are they gonna storm out?  Are they gonna go home and talk about it?  And I really didn’t care as long as I evoked an emotional response.  In the beginning, I was very married to having that Confederate flag up there.  I was married to it because that’s where the idea came from.  And that was the whole point because that particular thing means so many things different things to so many different people.  Who’s to say that in Florida people would be offended?  If we went to Texas

, you wouldn’t see that flag hanging up there.  But, I mean, I don’t know because I’m not from here…  I was told that donors are going to be here and elderly people are going to be here but I don’t think they’re going to be offended.  They probably have one at home or on their car.  So I didn’t think they were going to be offended.  And I’ve read several theatre pieces for this school that offended the hell out of me but I still had to read it; I still had to watch it.  I don’t understand why it can’t be reversed.  Why someone else can’t be offended if I have to be offended all the time.  What I was told is that this is for educational purposes and this is history and this is how things were and I say, well, this IS for an educational purpose because this IS our history.  The way the play has changed and how it’s been molded, it isn’t like that anymore so it’s probably not that big of a deal anymore. 

Are you familiar with writer’s block?

Yes. (Grins)

How do you deal with it?

I write something else.  I realized that if I move on to the next project, maybe something will trigger you.  At least you’re being creative as opposed to just being stifled and not writing for a week!  What’s hard for me is going back to things that I’ve already started.  I’m in a creative writing class right now and we just got a short story back with comments and the professor said that she’d be ready for rewrites and all I could think was, “Rewrites?  I am so done with this!”  I had to make myself sit down and work on it. 

Do you have any words of wisdom for new playwrights?

I’d tell them the same thing everyone tells me: just write.  If it’s what you want to do, then write.  Find a group of people who have the same goals as you.  Because once you’re out there, sure it’s competitive but you need that support base.  Most of the time, you’ll find a group of people who all want to be writers but they don’t all want to be the same kind of writers.  You’re not gonna be going for the same jobs, you know?  I think that what scares people about being in a writer’s group is that their competition is going to know what they’re doing and steal their ideas.  Writers don’t steal each others ideas; we give them!  If I’m writing and I’m stuck, then one of my classmates will say, hey, why don’t you do this?  Even if I don’t do that, it triggers me to do something else.  You get to take your credit and keep walking.  Write all the time.  Take classes.  Try to hone your craft just like you would do if you played football.  You would go to practice and you would have a teacher or a coach.  Write all the time so you get better at it.  Study it.  Learn what’s pleasurable to the reader.  I mean, for you it might work, but what’s going to make the next person want to put it onstage or on film?

March 22, 2008

New Horizons: Adam Lucas

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Flood Story
, by Adam Lucas, is a modern retelling of the religious myth, The Great Flood. Like the telling, the flood comes to us, again and again.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, where did you grow up, and how did you get to FSU?

I grew up in a small town in PA. What a very appropriate question for this play. It’s a sort of dying coal and steel community that when I was a kid, it was prosperous enough to be a great little hometown to grow up in. Um, you know everybody, everybody was pleasant. A lot of bars and churches, one of those towns. By now, it’s just boarded up windows and despair. Which town? Portage, PA. Even though every time I put it down in a production bio I write Tacoma, PA. It’s…I can encapsulate my childhood, my memories and who I am and where I came from in that town if I can make up the name and control it and package it; it’s mine. Tacoma, PA. It’s, it’s, it’s (laughs) that right, I’m half crazy. So every time I write a production bio, including now, I written down Tacoma, PA. It sounds like Steelton, a little town outside of Harrisburg. It’s probably very similar, like Allentown and all of those. It’s kind of what the plays about actually. It’s where it’s set and it’s where all of the….it’s actually where the play came from. There’s one small grocery store in town called Cherbeni’s and the Cherbeni family ran it for three generations I guess. And it was the one grocery store in Portage, this little family store, and uh, over the course of time, the children moved away and wanted nothing to do with it. It was Mr. and Mrs. Cherbeni and he died and she was running the store by herself. She was like, eighty-seven years old and two Christmases ago, right before I went home, um, someone went in to rob the store. With a gun; at gunpoint. There was five dollars in the register and eighty-seven year old Mrs. Cherbeni told him no, I’ve worked really hard for this five dollars and she talked him out of the store. I thought it was this great little juxtaposition of old despair with new despair. They were the exact same people since it’s what the play’s about. It was kind of sad because by the time…that time I went home, that Christmas, the milk was in the vegetable, the fruit crisper because she couldn’t afford to keep both coolers on. And only like, one quarter of the lights were on and it looked closed but she was still open. All the shelves were bare because she couldn’t afford to buy anything new and she had changed the expiration dates on the milk and it was just really sad. And when I went home this Christmas, upon writing this play, I wanted to just sit in the store and kind of absorb it but it was completed closed, they had already shut it down. And, and, you could look through the windows and it was just this barren store with a brand new neon open sign in the window. It was really…it’s just heartbreaking. That’s Tacoma.

So how did you get to Tallahassee?

I went to…I actually went to…my undergrad was actually at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Johnstown was right outside of Portage, it was a half hour away. I stayed close because I was in a band at the time and had no idea what I wanted to do. So I thought I’d stick around here and go to school here so we can still play music. We played for the rest of the time that I was in college. But uh, wanted to do film the entire time but there was nothing in the immediate area to do it so I ended up going for pre-med and the first day it came to when everybody seemed to understand what the hell the teacher was talking about and I didn’t, I just walked out of class and changed my major to psychology. (Laughs) Graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology. I did very well and it was a great major to study that I wanted nothing to do with for the rest of my life. So as soon as I was out, I just moved down here in hopes of attending Florida State for film school and worked for two years just to make some money.

We’ve talked a bit about where you’re from. Now let’s talk about where you’re going….

(Cracks himself up) A bridge? A cardboard box under a bridge!

What we want to explore with this interview is the process of playwriting from the perspective of the playwright. Before we expand on that, tell us: why write plays?

(Laughs) To be honest, when the writing portion of the film school shifted us over to theatre, I didn’t know a thing about theatre. And I had no idea what it was going to be like or how I was going to do it or if I was going to enjoy it. By the end of that first semester in theatre…I absolutely love it. To be honest, I could be a playwright for the rest of my life and be completely satisfied. Why do theatre. My God, I wish I had some great Herzog answer for that… (Fake accent) Theatre, it’s a part of the soul… Jesus, that’s a great question. Why do we get into any of these artistic fields like film or theatre, fiction or poetry? I guess it’s like anything, it’s for the selfish reason: because we have no idea how to cope with life. (Laughs) And, and, we just, it’s a continual process asking ourselves the questions… It’s very much like being Ingmar Bergman. Whatever the reasons, I mean, why he did it was because he had no answers to anything. This is the particular framework that he had, the questions that he needed to address. Ultimately, it’s selfish, I guess.

Was there something you needed to address with Flood Story?

Yeah, I was just remembering what it was. Actually, it was last night and we were going over…we were going over some of the changes we made to it and uh, I had this horrible vision of me at ninety, or thirty, whatever old age my body feels like… With my particular lifestyle, three more years may be a whole lot to ask of my body. But I had this vision of me at ninety years old still rewriting this fucking play because I just…this one, especially, it’s been such a struggle. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself and I don’t know what it is. Because I can still see myself rewriting these characters because, as the question changes in my mind, I just need to address this thing. And I… Man, if I had an easy answer, I would understand my play much better. To some extent, it’s very much about… I can understand how it’s, how I’ve put it on some hanger of me growing out of the town that I came from, beliefs that I had. It’s very much a piece about (sighs) the despair that I kind of grew up in. That sounded incredibly overdramatic. The despair of the town that I grew up in. Um, I grew up very strict Catholic. I went to Catholic school. My parents are Catholic. Everybody in the town is very religious, primarily Catholic. And a lot of what this play is about is where are we…where am I now that I don’t necessarily know what the hell I believe in. And, yeah, it’s a large jumbled question of what it means to exist when seemingly, there’s no reason to do it. It’s like Camus- what’s that great Camus quote that ended up in the plays? After all those years of studying, Camus’ answer was why don’t we just kill ourselves? I really don’t have an answer to that but anyway! (Laughing) Ponder. Talk amongst yourselves!

Let’s talk a bit about creating a piece and developing characters. Where do the ideas come from? How do you find them or more accurately, how do your characters manifest themselves? Do you hear a line in your head? Do you hear a voice? What drives you to create a piece at all?

Absolutely everything, everything that I’ve done starts with a question. I’ve never been in a place of….we all steal from everything around us, you know. You end up eventually watching people that you feel would turn into a great character. You overhear dialogue that would be great dialogue or things that amaze you or situations, things in the news that you think wow, that would be a great situation to write about. Things that lend themselves, I think, to setting a character…elements. But I’ve never had one of those particular elements drive me to actually want to write something. It’s always started with a question and then, around the question, I can build a framework of to-answer-this-question-for-myself, what characters do I need to populate this world with and what world do I need to set them so that they can bump and grind up against each other and hopefully, as they start to take on lives and as they start in interact, they can start to answer these particular questions for me. Provide me with some insight. But you know, all of my inspirations are musicians. We’ve had that conversation before. All of the people I’m obsessed with are musicians. I think ultimately…. Ultimately, I wanted to be a musician. I mean, I still want to be a musician. I’m just not that good at it. (Laughs) All the people I gravitate towards are musicians. People like Tom Waits and Joe Strummer and Neco Case and…. Or poets. It’s all about lyricism and music to me.

Are you familiar with the phrase “writer’s block?”

(Cracks up) Yeah.

What does that mean to you?

Time to go to the bar! (Laughs) I think…The only way that it’s frustrating to me is in regards to a deadline. Writer’s block doesn’t really frighten me. There are definitely times that you get jumbled up. What’s that phrase, “Paper’s cheap, ideas are free?” You can go through ten drafts of something terrible and the worst thing that happens is that you have to pick them up off the floor because they wouldn’t go into the garbage can the first time. So it doesn’t really bother me. It’s always the process of working through it. You write horribly and eventually you find out where you’re supposed to be. There’s always the option of going to another project and letting another gestate. It doesn’t really bother me. Except the fact that I have a whole bunch of deadlines for everything. Other than that, it’s all a part of the process and if it’s not coming, it’s not coming and if I don’t have answers for a particular set of questions, I move on. It’s time to go to the bar, meet new people, find new questions. This play that I’ve wrestled with, it’s not so much writer’s block. It’s… I’m thirteen official drafts into this play and it was a very different play when it started and it was a very different play in the middle and a very different play that’s sitting on my computer now versus what’s going to end up on my computer tomorrow after the conversation that me and Joel had last night trying to figure out what this play’s about. I’ve never struggled with a piece as much as this damned play. I really feel like… I feel like I’m some weak younger brother and just I have to wait until I get big enough and strong enough but it’s taking YEARS. I can’t quite get it and it’s like the play is standing over top of me on the playground going, “I know what I wanna be; why don’t you know what I wanna be?” And I really feel like the play is living somewhere. It knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s known what it’s wanted to be from the very beginning and it wants me to figure it out. And it’s pissing me off! Because normally, you end up a few drafts in where – it’s gonna sound strange, but you start to have an open dialogue with the piece that you’re writing and it starts to take on a life of it’s own. You know what you want it to be but it’s communicating to you and you’re able to kind of shape it? This one, the entire time, has just been out of reach. It’s really been the most frustrating piece I’ve ever written. Because of that, because I can’t get my hands around it… Because of that, it’s so much more exciting. I have worked on it so much more, so much more diligently. And I’ve obsessed over it much more. I’ve thought about it much more because it’s been difficult. But at some point, I’d really like to just pin the damned thing down on a mat and you know, walk away. By April 3rd.

Do you remember the movie Misery? James Caan played an author who wrote novels, fiction. His character had distinct rituals that he went through when he wrote and also when finished a novel: he preferred certain paper, he had the whole cigar and champagne thing set up when he finished the final page… Do you have rituals?

I suppose we all do. But now I have to pull myself out of it and look at the ritual from above. Yeah. I mean, a simple thing, I write better at night. I have a lot of problems writing during the day. I get distracted. So, usually I spend my day running errands and thinking about things. I don’t actually put words on paper until eleven o’clock or later. I usually write from eleven to six. Um… I wouldn’t know how to write without coffee and cigarettes. (Laughs) You know, little things like that. I don’t think I have anything that I would say is ritualized. I end up writing anywhere from… Whenever something comes to you, which can be, sometimes, at incredibly inappropriate times. Bar napkins and Denny’s placemats. I’ll write on anything. I do like to write with pen and paper before I ever address the computer. I usually write a draft or two in longhand.

Why longhand?

It feels more moldable. I can’t rationalize it. I guess it makes no sense. It’s just as easy in a computer to erase something and go back but there’s something about being able, I think, to also… It feels more like a piece that I have my hands on, that I’m crafting and molding, that I’m pushing around. I really like being able to see the mistakes on the page. I like to see… I like the flaws being present. It’s like a particular of mine…seeing the seams in theatre or hearing the flaws in music. I like not-highly-produced sound and images. So I like to see the flaws and the scratches and the notes and the erase marks and the rips and tears. For some reason it helps. It feels more organic to me. It’s kind of like, it’s a part of the piece living on its own, maybe. I’m not really sure. That way it can start to take kind of the life of itself as opposed to being deletes and deletes and deletes and it starts out as a third draft.

OK. You’re in rehearsals and things are moving along. What happens when the director wants to change or, gasp, CUT part of your script?

Joel is great because Joel is… Joel is like another archaeologist trying to dig up the bones of this damned piece and figure out what it used to be and put them together. Finally see the dinosaur. Working with Joel’s great. We share very similar sensibilities. We… I think immediately, from the moment we started working on this thing together, we both had a very similar experience. You know, I think we both understand the play. We know the question is that we’re addressing. We know ultimately the story that we want to tell. Now how do we phrase it, what’s the framework for it, how do we get this question to be addressed so that by the end of the play, at the end of the question, there’s at least, if not some kind of an answer, I feel like we’ve appropriately asked the question. I feel like Joel has been incredibly helpful in helping me sort out the million ideas that come to me. It’s great because a lot of our rehearsals are what-if sessions. You know? And we work within the play itself but it becomes a what-if-he-doesn’t-do-this-but-he-actually-does-this and we had some major breakthroughs last night, actually, which was wonderful around two o’clock in the morning. I’m being serious. Of just completely changing our understanding of the characters and how they interact. And that’s been great. He’s wonderful because he’s come on to… He’s accepted this piece which has not been easy and has undergone many changes and could be completely fail miserably if I can’t get this damned play under wraps and have it up and running. But I think he’s been exited by that.

Do you have an emotional response?

It’s less difficult for me. Actually, I have no problem with it in theatre. Everyone I’ve worked with, I’ve had a… Luckily, I’ve had a great experience with everyone I’ve worked with. I worked with Rob Ek on the New Horizons piece last year and had a great time. Love working with him. He was a great director. I got to work with Greg Lemming in Sarasota. Thought he was fantastic. We had a great relationship. Working with Joel has been absolutely wonderful. And it always seems like these people that I work with… I respect their…I respect that from them. I’m not offended by it. Because I feel like everyone that I’ve been working with…it’s always been a question of…it’s always been…the nature of it has always been that we want to make it the best piece possible. We’re not fighting for our own stake in the project and I don’t feel like they were overstepping me going, “Your words don’t work,” and I don’t feel that I have to overstep them going, “Your blocking doesn’t work,” or, “You don’t understand the scene.” Everyone I’ve worked with has been…they’ve approached the project like it’s the piece that matters. And that’s completely the way I see things. I feel I have a very open dialogue with Joel when he says, “Let’s try it without that line.” I have no problem with that because nothing is set in stone. I don’t think he has a problem with me asking, “Can we try it a little bit differently onstage? I just like to see it.” Again, the whole rehearsal process with us has been what-if. Let’s try something and see if it works. Ultimately, it’s gotta be the piece that you’re fighting for not yourself. Otherwise, there’s no point to being in this field or medium. And that’s been different sometimes in… I haven’t had that working experience necessarily in everybody that I’ve worked with. I’m speaking generally over the course of my time in these fields. I mean, I’ve co-written with people multiple times, in and outside of school, both. Not necessarily just for school projects and there are always those times where, because you don’t get along, you end up fighting for yourself and not the piece. And that’s not what it should be about. It’s always the piece that lives on after you. There’s no reason to put yourself in it.

Do you have any words of wisdom for new playwrights?

Advice for young writers? Why the hell are you doing this? Live a normal life! Have a family! Get out to the suburbs, man! Get a fence, get a dog, enjoy yourself! Go to work, come home, watch Everybody Love Raymond, eat dinner, go to bed and sleep like a normal human being. This is dumb. We only do this because we can’t cope. Be normal… (Laughs) Enjoy it. There are so many times I feel we get into this position where we’re beating our heads against the wall for something and I think what a horrible way to spend a life. The reason I do this…the only reason I do it is primarily because there is just so much that I don’t understand. I just have… There are so many questions that I have to ask. Otherwise I would suffocate in them. This is a way for me to frame those questions and explore the issues that sometimes end up like a weight on your shoulders. Yeah. Enjoy it. It’s a horrible way to spend a life, beating your head against the wall for something especially when this is supposed to be one of those jobs where you’re living the dream. Enjoy it. If not, get out and do something you can enjoy even if it’s working at Wal-Mart. I like working construction. I’m like, do I really wanna do this? Can I ask these questions if I worked construction? Probably not, dammit. I gotta stay here. (Laughs) It’s true. I’ve always wanted to work construction. For me it required absolutely no mental energy because I was just shoveling road off the back of a truck. But it was good exercise, I was outside, it required no mental energy, and every time I went home at the end of the day, I felt like I was really awake. It was good. Oh! Final advice for young writers, only surround yourself with people you enjoy working with. Find those people, hold on to them and create an established relationship with them because those are the people who are struggling for the same thing you’re struggling for. Whatever it is. Find people who share the same sensibilities and stay with them. They will keep you sane.

Is there anything that you wanted me to ask you that I didn’t?

Um…no. Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head. I’m not that talkative. No. Not really. “You wanna sell me your script?” That would be a great question to hear. Or, or I’d even take one as simple as, “How ‘bout I buy you a beer?” I mean, I have answers for those. Those questions I’m ready for.

March 19, 2008

New Horizons: David Laughlin

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Next up is David Laughlin, author of The Bagelers. 
This dark comedy will leave you laughing and hoping you never have to be in a police station.  Two teenagers turn themselves in after a late night shenanigan involving bagels. Left in the hands of a frustrated dispatch officer, the night turns out to be comically disturbing.  The bagel is exploited in a whole new way.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.  Where are you from, where did you grow up, and how did you get to FSU?

Sure.  I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas.  I…did, like, some theatre in high school and got interested in theatre that way.  Went to college in Durham,NC, at Duke and ah, got interested in film there.  Spent about four years, almost four years, doing my undergrad in English and a minor in film and video.  Decided around junior year that I wanted to go into screen writing.  Yeah, so then I graduated, spent a couple of years making money and ah, did some writing to build up a resume to apply.  So I...stayed there and did that.  I looked a some schools and FSU had this split theatre/film writing thing which actually  I didn’t know about until I got down here.  I just thought it was screenwriting with this tiny little theatre component.  But yeah, a little after the interview, I discovered that and somehow they were cool with that and, yeah, I got in here and it was great!  Awesome.  I was very excited.  Came down here, did the semester with the production students over at the film school and came over to the theatre school not hugely jazzed about it.  But I really rediscovered how much I like it.  It’s been great. 

What we want to explore with this interview is the process of playwriting from the perspective of the playwright.  Before we expand on that, tell us: why write plays?   

Uuuh, well there area lot of reasons.  I think one of the primary ones we all think about is the amount of control a writer gets in theatre.  When you’re writing for the screen, because it’s only distributed, like through the film, this one time rather than done in multiple productions.  You sell off a screenplay and then it’s somebody else’s and they develop it however they want and you lose control in a really frustrating way.  And the culture in theatre is much more supportive of what it is you’re trying to do as a writer.  Ah, much more respectful and a lot of times, a lot more intelligent about how it’s produced.  I mean, case by case but…but then there’s a lot of things about doing a play which are interesting  There are…it presents challenges.  You get to just sit with characters in a room for along time and play with dialogue whereas in film you have to get in and out of a scene very quickly.  In theatre it’s expected to linger on well, not linger on, but you can spend a long time to get at the meat of what it’s about.

Let’s talk a bit about developing characters.  Where do the ideas come from?  How do you find them or more accurately, how do your characters manifest themselves?  Do you hear a line in your head?  Do you hear a voice?  How do you give the character a voice?

If they start talking to me I go to the doctor!  (Laughs)  How do my characters…..  You mean, like, how do I originally get ideas for them or…?  (Where does that voice come from)  I get my stuff  can you strike that from the record  oh my god….I tend to come up with more of a concept for a plot-centric view.  So I tend to have a couple of characters at the beginning of an idea which are just sort of, I know I need someone in this role and I know I need someone in this role.  Like, my current play, I knew I wanted to do it around an interrogation and this kind of...well, bageling.  People can find out what a bageling is if they come.  So I knew I was gonna have a cop and I knew I was gonna have someone being questioned.  I thought well, it would be interesting if there was this team so I thought alright, so I’ll have a girlfriend and a boyfriend and I’ll make them teenagers.  And well, then I’m gonna have a lawyer, so I got a lawyer and I though aright, so I’ve got five characters which is a very….  It’s not the most organic way to create characters but I tend to start with little bits of people I know and then…just see what am I going to need them to do.  Try to create situations that would bring them to do that.  Based on how they do that, it starts to influence what the plot is.  So, I mean, I’ve got one of the less character-driven mindsets of the playwrights, being plot-driven.  It has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

What is it that lights that proverbial fire under your butt?

Besides deadlines?  It was based on some past experience.  There was a …I knew a bageler and I always thought his story was very funny.  It was one of my brothers and his friends did this activity called bageling and I always thought it was absolutely ridiculous.  And then I drew also on previous legal experience which I always had passionate thoughts about.  So it was an interesting way to explore all those things which a lot of people encounter at some point ‘cause everybody gets into trouble and most people, at some point, have to deal with the police.  So it was interesting to see the police’s perspective and I think the most rewarding part of it was…  I realized, I’ve got this police officer and I need to send him here because that’s what’s going to happen in this play.  How can that happen and still portray someone who might actually be a police officer and might be a real person and so it’s like digging into what would create a person like that without letting them be some sadistic conventional dude.

Can you be more specific about your past experience without incriminating yourself?

I’d rather not. (laughs)  You’ve got that thing pointed at me like it’s the barrel of a gun!(talking about the recorder)

What drives you to create?

I don’t want to sit in a cubicle.  And I figure I can get paid to just sit around?  What drives me to write?  I, ah, I really, I always appreciated when I was little just how powerful being in the audience for a story could be.  Um, and I when I watched when I was little, I’d think oh, shit, that could change just a little bit there.  That’s what got me interested initially.  And like, nowadays, I find the process of creating that experience to be a very powerful psychological experience itself.  Um, and when it works out, it’s very rewarding.  So I guess that’s a very general answer.

Do you remember the movie Misery?  James Caan played an author who wrote novels, fiction.  His character had distinct rituals that he went through when he wrote and also when finished a novel: he preferred certain paper, he had the whole cigar and champagne thing set up when he finished the final page…  Do you have rituals?   

Do I have rituals?  Let’s see…  I often write, look, I mean, as far as in grad school, I’ve been writing for deadlines often enough that my rituals tend to go out the window.  But when I’m, when I’m, at best I have… I always like to get away from home and have my apple and my cashews.  I have this habit of just sitting there at my computer, at my little laptop thing… I have this habit of like, I have an idea and suddenly I’m pacing, and five minutes later, I realize I’m pacing and I think everyone in the film school’s like (gives a l) No, I don’t really have a lot of rituals.  I’m not very set in stone.  I should, though.  I should.  I like that champagne thing.  (pauses)  I go to sleep.  Maybe that’s mine.  I just don’t want to think about it.

Are you familiar with the phrase “writer’s block”?

I am.  I’ve never had writers block per se.  I’ve never written as much as I have in grad school so I always have three projects going at once.  I’ve definitely had times where I’ve been very unenthusiastic about pieces.  I mean, even with Bagelers, wrote the initial draft back in the beginning of the fall and I had about three months I was working on the full-length [version].  By the time I came back to looking at it, it was just so far from my mind and I was like, oh, God, I have to go back to this play?  What am I gonna do with this?  But as soon as the production came on board, I started talking with my director and they started asking questions about it, um, my enthusiasm just went through the roof because it’s like…  There’s just something great about the production experience that makes it all very real, very quickly.  And suddenly, you have to answer for something outside of your head.  It’s great.  It really brings this huge amount of energy.  I found that with New Horizons last year, also.

All the New Horizons plays are in rehearsal right now.  Most people know that the director of a play drives the artistic vision of the show.  But you wrote the show.  Tell us what it’s like working with a director; how it feels to have to give up control of your “baby.”

Um, I think it’s just, you know, I’ve been trying to learn to maintain that division of labor.  To leave them to their job and when I do that right, everything tends to go better.  They know what they’re doing, so…  Yeah, I mean, once it’s in rehearsals, I don’t see it as my role to manage the energy.  I think if I was doing that, I would be overstepping my bounds greatly.  Which, anyway, I try not to do.

OK.  You’re in rehearsals and things are moving along.  What happens when the director wants to change or, gasp, CUT part of your script? 

Oh, yeah!  All through the first New Horizons, Alison Frost had a…..very pointed questions about…after the first act, she was like, I just don’t get this first act.  Why is this happening here, here, and here?  I was like, yep, you’re right.  It’s not working.  As a writer, you’ve got what’s on the page and you’ve got this whole kind of world of ideas that are supporting this whole invisible structure in your mind of what’s on the page and you don’t often realize what’s there, oftentimes.  You read that, and it just triggers whatever’s in your head about what’s on the page.  And someone who reads it just as it is can often call you very quickly on what’s not working, if it’s just not working at all.  Suddenly, you’re seeing it the way they’re seeing it; it’s really weird.  I mean, you can’t know it without them asking it.  But yeah, she challenged that and after she was done, she was like, ok, now, this third act?  That doesn’t work either.  I don’t mean acts, I mean parts, you know?

Do you have an emotional response?

Yeah, um, like, there was one choice I made with Bagelers that I was gonna have the police officer’s internal characteristics drive the ending of the story.  He was going to make a choice internally and it really wasn’t working.  Anthony was having a hard time, like, man, I don’t really know what’s motivating me here and the director was giving me the same note.  So was my playwriting teacher.  And so eventually, I was like, alright, I’m going to have to create an external event to drive him into this and it was very difficult.  I was very proud that I had created, you know…because I tend to have plots drive the characters, I was very happy because I thought I had created a character that was driving the plot along.  I was like, yeah, look at me!  And so that wasn’t working.  So yeah, I made this big change and that was really difficult.  But I mean, as far as, I get attached to the overall work just in terms of accomplishment.  But I don’t tend to get emotional about a particular character.  I don’t cry when my characters cry.

When did you first recognize yourself as a writer?  Do you have any words of wisdom for new playwrights?

I’m giving advice?!!  The first time I recognized myself as a writer.  The first time I knew that I had knack for it and wanted to do it was for screenwriting class.  I was getting very positive feedback and I was very…  I was excited about it in a way that I had never been excited about doing anything else.  I pretty much knew what I wanted to do.  Because I already knew I wanted to go into film.  Any advice???  I would just say…it takes a long time and a lot of planning.  Life planning.  You know, if you wanna go to grad school you’re gonna need a bunch of stuff so you need to spend the time writing it.  You don’t want to turn in a bunch of crap.  You have to get up before work for a while and write.  That’s what I did for about a year.  Got up at like, six am and write for two hour\s and go to work.  And there are practical things like you’re not going to make a whole lot of money.  So if you want to come out of grad school and not be in a huge amount of debt, you should consider making some money before you go in.  I’m still gonna be in a huge amount of debt.  That’s terrible advice.  I don’t know!  Just be practical; it’s a cool thing to do but you’ve still got to feed yourself.  I haven’t really accomplished anything as a writer yet, I mean, professionally, I mean, I’ve had a lot of student and personal success and I feel really uncomfortable advising.

Now that I've run you through the ringer, is there anything that you wished I had asked but didn't?

I have to think about that.  (long silence)  You didn’t get that did you?  I dunno, I always like technical questions.  I’m always feel comfortable talking about technical stuff, like answering a question about a particular plot point then I can give a really definitive answer.  I guess it’s like if you were interviewing an engineer about how he makes an engine…that’s terrible.  Let me give you another example.  An airplane engine.  It’s like, what advice would you give to an aspiring engineer, and you go I dunno, man, just watch yer turbines and make ‘em right.  I don’t know.  That just makes no sense at all, does it? 

I can edit that out.

Thank you.  (laughs)  I can’t really think of any questions.  Um…..  No.

March 17, 2008

New Horizons Original Works Festival: Clayton Henry

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Welcome back, y'all!  I've just returned from Spring Break and have I got some great stuff to share with you.  Before the break, I was able to interview all six playwrights who are featured in this year's New Horizons Original Works Festival at the Lab Theatre, April 3 through 13.  As my bent is towards education and sharing, I thought it might be interesting to see what goes into creating a new play.  Ladies and gents, I'd like to introduce you to Clayton Henry, author of (0,0): On Points of Origin.

It's an absurdist, anachronistic comedy where an American baseball legend and a French philosophical legend attempt to out-legend each other by means of prognostications, put-downs, and pretentiousness.  Caught in the crossfire are two innocent bystanders, a couple on the verge of marriage consequently manipulated apart by extremely hypothetical circumstances.  Monitoring all the chaos is a well-natured bartender who wants nothing more than to meet a nice girl he can play Dungeons and Dragons with.  As a warning, this show contains an ample amount of bad to worse puns.  How about I let Clayton tell you a bit about himself and the process?

Tell us a little bit about yourself.  Where are you from, where did you grow up, and how did you get to FSU? 

Ok.  Well, my name’s Clayton Henry and I’m a second year graduate student playwright in the FSU program.  I’m originally from Pensacola,FL, and I did my undergrad at the University of South Florida in Tampa.  From there, I had an internship through my junior and senior year out in Los Angeles.  Originally, I was gonna go with psychology but after I got that internship...  It was an internship in film, actually, out at Universal Studios.  It was a month long internship. It was really cool and I decided no more psychology.  I’m gonna try to take a chance in film, you know, film and playwriting.

What we want to explore with this interview is the process of playwriting from the perspective of the playwright.  Before we expand on that, tell us: why write plays?   

Well, it…. (laughs)  The thing is, I work in a number of mediums, obviously, with this program being film, screenplays, theatrical works and things like that.  I guess the reason I write plays, though, specifically is, I dunno.  I really enjoy the process of having a conversation with the audience, you know?  I mean, that’s what it feels like a play can be- a really long conversation and you know, you can follow how it builds and how it moves throughout…the logic behind it, the discussion you’re having.  I don’t know; I really enjoy that process.  And plus, there’s the interaction of having the audience there.  I know that’s talked about a lot but still, that’s one of the great things about the whole process.

Let’s talk a little bit about your influences. 

Are you talking about in reference to this particular play or just overall?   

Yes.  All of it.

I was actually thinking about this the other day, obviously, with the New Horizons thing.  I’ve written a comedy of sorts and I was thinking what are some of the, you know, influences.  One of the big things for me is well, it’s cross word puzzles.  I’m a huge cross word puzzle fiend and like, I guess what one of the, ah, just the way they structure their clues and their jokes and their humor, I found, like, I can see how I’ve kind of developed jokes in that same type of way.  You know?  As far as a lot of different influences, just people in general.  I’ve had a lot of teachers influence me as well.  In particular, it’s funny because this came up just the other day, an eleventh grade English teacher I had, Lucia Holichuck was really passionate about English, just the ideas behind it…  One of those teachers you have that really just takes it beyond the subject matter.  Really gets passionate about the material.  And it was funny, the other day, there was a Facebook group “Fans of Lucia Holichuck” and they had this cross generational thing where I guess these kids that have her now started this thing.  I mean, back when I was in school, they didn’t have Facebook (laughs) what they found is that they started this group one day and within, I dunno, a week, there was like 200, 300 members from people just spanning her twenty years of teaching.  And I’m like, where did all these people come from and of course, it’s from she’s just such an inspirational and influential teacher. 

What drives you to create?  What is it that lights that proverbial fire under your butt?

Deadlines help.  I don’t know, it can usually just be like, I don’t know.  I think it’s different every time I start, where the inspiration comes from.  Sometimes it’ll be just like…  For the previous New Horizons work, there were a number of influences.  One of them was the idea of this photographer, the story of Kevin Carter and the situation in Darfur.  And I was curious about that.  I was like, how can I work the ideas of this particular artist into a play?  On the other hand, I had this idea like, it was the first play I had actually written and it was going to be staged and I was thinking well, what’s an interesting setting?  Well, a dark room visually would have a lot of interesting dynamics.  And so, you know, there are these ideas and you’re just trying to find a place where you can put them together, um, and find those points of conversion.  I mean, that’s one of the most fascinating points of playwriting to me.  I’s finding and taking all these interesting ideas and finding where they converge.  Um, so yeah, it’s always a myriad of sources.  It’s never one particular thing that’s really the impetus for the plays.

Do you remember the movie Misery?  James Caan played an author who wrote novels, fiction.  His character had distinct rituals that he went through when he wrote and also when finished a novel: he preferred specific type of paper, he had the whole cigar and champagne thing set up for when he completed the final page…  Do you have rituals? 

Um…maybe?  Well, you know, it’s interesting.  I guess as far as rituals, I guess I have a, aaah, a Starbuck’s that’s…by happenstance, it’s right across the street from where I live.  And I spend probably four to five hours a day there, you know, just working.  Like an office.  And you know, I bring my laptop up there and I know all the baristas there and it’s really just a nice place to work.  As far as ritual, I don’t know.  I like that thing you mentioned about having the stuff ready for when you finish.  (laughs)  I don’t know of any work, you know, where I’ve ever felt like it was done.  You know?  Like, I can put this away now.  It's in it’s finished form.  There’s always more.  There’s been stuff where I’m like, I’m not ever touching that again but uh, that’s interesting.  There’s no process; it’s just doing coffee shop work with my laptop. 

What do you drink at Starbuck’s?

Venti peppermint mocha.  (grins)  Sometimes I mix it up and get the peppermint hot chocolate. 

What does the phrase “writer’s block” mean to you?

Yeeesss, yesss…  Um.  I don’t know.  Like, yeah, I mean, it changes definitions the more you write and the more you expand.  When I first started to write, I felt it was just this thing you know, hey, it happens and I didn’t know what to do to avoid that particular…to get around it, you know?  But now I’ve found other…other tactics that, you know, work a little better in trying to you know, deal with it.  Other avenues to explore, other ways to get at the character, or the theme, or the premise.  What I’ve found really helps is – and this program really helps with this – is that you’ve got so many other projects that you’re juggling at the same time.  I mean, if you’re stuck on one, you can say well, I’ll just go work on this other thing  and when you’re doing that, you might find a solution to that first um, piece of work you were trying to create.  And, you know, the other forms that you’re working on screen writing, theatre, creative writing even, they all feed into each other.  You know, as far as the different techniques and stuff.  And I’m a big believer in, at least I’d like to be, in the, you know, the unconscious mind kind of solving problems for you when you’re least expecting it.  You know, when you’re not concentrating on something.  Solutions kind of filtering in. 

Let’s talk a bit about developing characters.  Where do the ideas come from?

I’ll be honest; I steal from my friends a lot. As a writer you pick up certain traits and characteristics that are just very intriguing that you just want to explore.  You know these are very….they can just as easily come from people you meet randomly, too.  Because the more you write, the more attuned you become to personal traits and characteristics.  The more they stick out and the more you wanna explore um what the roots are or the genesis behind that behavior is and um just naturally that shows up in y our writing and that’s part of the exploration process and I sometime I just steal from my textbook stuff.  This particular play is working with, ah, with Babe Ruth and Rene Des Cartes and uh, dunno, sometimes I feel like I’m just trying to justify my high school education by just incorporating these characters.  It comes from a plethora of sources. 

How do you find them or more accurately, how do your characters manifest themselves?  Do you hear a line in your head?  Do you hear a voice?  How do you give the character a voice?

Not at first.  What I’ve kind of learned, I don’t really know my characters until about the fifth draft of a particular script.  At that point, then, you know, they kind of, you know, you’ll have that thing where this character wouldn’t say that.  Before that, for me personally at least, it’s just trying to figure out where the story’s going and what I’m trying to say or indicate with the piece.

All the New Horizons plays are in rehearsal right now.  Most people know that the director of a play drives the artistic vision of the show.  But you wrote the show.  Tell us what it’s like working with a director; how it feels to have to give up control of your “baby.”

Well, I mean, I think with like, theatre especially, it’s always a give and take with whatever departments.  Whether it’s with the actors and the director…  I mean, the actors are obviously trying to create the characters and the director’s like, I’m shaping the show and there’s that battle. Even when you get to the lighting designer says I have this particular beat….  I think in particular with the writers and the directors.  For me it’s always been this positive experience, the interchange.  It’s always been a finding out process. You know, last year, I suppose I was little bit less secure.  Just because of limited exposure to theatrical process.  It was my first one act that was being staged and so I was a little bit ah, more apprehensive about the whole process.  Less likely to assert something.  As it’s gone on, I mean, I’m on my, geez, my fourth play produced through this program; this is my second one act.  And so the rapport has been a lot easier to find.  I’ve been a lot more comfortable personally as far as approaching the process.  And David has been fantastic.  I think our sensibilities really aligned in what we’re trying to achieve with the script.  We’ve really found a happy medium with just, you know, whether it comes to you know, the process of how we give out notes and how that process goes, versus even just overall script issues.  What’s working and what’s not.  It’s a really nice interchange that we’ve had.  I’ve just been really lucky to work with directors in my time here who’ve never had, you know, big issues…

OK.  You’re in rehearsals and things are moving along.  What happens when the director wants to change or, gasp, CUT part of your script?  Do you have an emotional response?

Um, interesting.  I got to work with Ryan Clark last year.  He was a great director.  To be honest, he was really open to the experience. He understood my back ground as a playwright was very minimal and he was able to work my changes and stuff.  Of course, at that point I realized, geez, the play had only been constructed just a month before we had actually gotten it into the, ah, hands of the director and then it was cast and we had the first read thru like in two weeks.  So I understood that there had to be changes.  But as far as changes go I was very...  I’m always very open to them as far as the script is concerned.  Just because of the fact that I feel there’s always room to enhance the ideas.  You know, I joke to people that a line can be made more dramatic through the process of exploring it.  So I’ve never been really adverse to it.  Now that’s not to say there’s changes that I fight.  You know, that’s not what I’m going for or…  But I think once you get to that point, once you realize there are changes that go against…that’s when you find out what the meat of y our script is. That’s when you really know what you’re trying to say or not way with a particular piece.

When did you first recognize yourself as a writer?

Um…..  I didn’t consider myself a writer and still waver back and forth on this… I guess maybe sum or fall of last year.  like I said, as USF, I majored in psychology and when I got into this program I was really excited but even then, I felt kind of like an intruder into the program,  You know, I don’t know how I slipped thru the cracks but I was just really grateful for the opportunity and still am, you know.  Just the fact that this psychology student has somehow weaseled his way into the program.  Every time you create a work, you’re putting yourself out there and thinking is this going to inform my identity, is this the person I’m going to become?  As I’ve progressed thru the program, I’ve become more comfortable with my identity as a writer

Do you have any words of wisdom for new playwrights? 

As far as advice…I don’t know, man….um…I guess I would offer advice around the same idea.  Regardless of what background you come from, you know, academically or whatever background really…  If you want to write, don’t let that stop you or hinder you in any way. 

March 04, 2008

Blogumentary 9

Let's finish up, shall we? 

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Side by side, here they are: the design rendering and the acetate-lined-with-cotton-coutil overbodice.  I'll show you how all the pieces on Ryann for this fitting in just a second.  First, take a look at a close-up of a sleeve.





Below, you can see the dark rose silk dupioni I mentioned in Blogumentary 8.

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I don't know about you, but I find it amazing that someone made this complex sleeve out of a paper pattern!  Check out the pattern to the right.  That's only a portion of the entire sleeve but what a difference, right?







Now let's get Ryann into all of the clothes.  First, there's the petticoat and the corset.  Next, the skirt of the wedding dress.  It's made of white satin polyester to match the wedding dress bodice.  Third, the bodice.


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At this point, the garment is still a work in progress and that's why the bodice and skirt are pinned onto Ryann with safety pins.  The closures will be added later.  While we're here, I wanted to show you the detail on the front of the bodice, too. 





The next step is to hem the skirt.Blogpics213_133_2 Blogpics213_135_3 Rather than put Ryann up on a step, Kelly simply uses the floor as her guide.  The skirt falls naturally to the floor and Kelly uses safety pins to mark the length.

Kelly then adds the organza partlet.  That's the little ruffled thing around Ryann's neck.Blogpics213_147Blogpics213_149 Blogpics213_150 Blogpics213_151 





And now for the almost finished product.....drum roll, please!

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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what goes into creating a period costume piece.