Sometimes you hear The Call and are compelled to your destiny. And sometimes you hear The Call and hang up on it —because the message sounds garbled and the Voice of Destiny bears a strange resemblance to Phyllis Diller the morning after she went through all the cheap champagne alone. That’s pretty much […]
Let’s just get this straight from the top: I have nothing against Steven Barker. From everything I’ve seen he is a perfectly nice person, teaching drama to kids at Camp Lejeune and generally staying out of trouble. Except that he caused me untold misery over the past 10 days by suggesting that if I wrote […]
On March 15, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey will feature a reading of Salvation Road as part of its ‘Forum Soundings’ series, focused on youth-centered theatre. This is the latest step in an ongoing development process for the play, which originated as a one-act at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2009, was workshopped at New York University and […]
On Saturday Feb. 23 I crossed something off my bucket list–and was a keynote speaker at the 2013 Theatre in Our Schools Mini-Conference in Richmond, a project of the Virginia membership of the American Alliance for Theatre & Education. Organizer Steven Barker invited me to speak on the topic of incorporating the arts into other […]
We’re back with my series on feeling my way through a draft of a new play. How to break through the block? In this installment, I’m looking at laying the foundations for an exploratory scene that might not necessarily make it into the play. This is my play about a man with an amazing memory, […]
Sometimes you just have to open the Jack. Tamara Federici’s production notes show why some playwrights ought to write fiction and be done with it. I particularly liked this one: Regarding pauses: short pauses are short, three seconds or so, like the time it takes to sneak out a little fart, i.e. Lucia’s line “No, […]
Some years ago I came across a funny yet utterly serious book called “Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook” by Joshua Piven—a guidebook on how to survive a series of unlikely disasters—from an avalanche to a shark attack to the crash of a jumbo jet. So I immediately bought a copy for an artistic director who has […]
While I’m off on a holiday, I get by with a little help from my friends. One is Mike Diehm, a songwriter and poet who accomplishes what I can only dream of—he writes music. As someone who has no musical talent, I stand amazed by anyone who can pull a few chords together, let alone […]
Last week I wrote about an exercise from Michael Dixon to help raise the stakes in a scene. And here it is again: 1. Put two characters who share something in common in a place neither can leave. Write a scene in which the obstacles and stakes are high and clearly presented. Working […]
An invitation arrives in my email to consider writing a new play about a topic so current that taking it on at all seems to be almost irreverent, given the anguish that many of the players still feel. But I am not about to pass up an opportunity to work with the theatre in question, […]
Eric Barker asks us to consider whether we are more creative when forced to work – or whether we ought to wait until inspiration strikes. Citing Daniel Akst’s book Temptation: Finding Self-Control in an Age of Excess, he concludes that pressure to produce actually results in productivity. No surprise to me—I’ve long known […]
Barking Up a Wrong Tree is one of my favorite blogs and here is why: Eric Barker routinely compiles fascinating observations about all aspects of human nature and experience, with the stated purpose of learning to live life to its full awesomeness. But me being me, which means predisposed to moments of dark ruminations, […]
One of the pleasures of stealing away to a theatre conference such as the American Alliance for Theatre in Education’s (AATE) gathering in Lexington, Ky., last week is meeting theatre artists with a distinctly different view of process. Such an artist is Steven Barker, who currently teaches at Camp LeJeune High School in North […]
The prolific Adam Szymkowicz is famously prolific in another way—interviewing other playwrights for his blog–and today he honors me as writer No. 484 on a venerable list that includes, among others–yes I’m bragging, yes I am, so what?–Liz Duffy Adams, Lonnie Carter, Kia Corthron, Julia Jordan, Rajiv Joseph, and of course my lovely and wonderful Jacqueline E. […]
Working on a new play is always a challenge in isolation. After successive drafts, you reach a point where you lose the path forward—or worse, where the path splits into a dozen different trails and there is no clear indication which one is the right one to follow. That is the point, for me, when […]
Plays have to be lived to be written. This much I know. If a character’s heart is broken, the playwright’s heart must be the first to go. So be willing to live and relive the struggle and loss and hope that drama is made on, because if you refuse to feel these things, you […]
