The Public Theater Blog

The Internet is Killing Writing

2012-01-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

By Mona Mansour, member of the 2009 Emerging Writers Group

Maybe it facilitated Tahrir Square. It’s not facilitating you writing your play.

That’s my thesis. I’m not sure how blogs work, or if they need a thesis, or frankly if I’m even capable of demonstrating a thesis, this many years out of college. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, I’m going to try and write this all in one sitting. I’m not going to go on the internet at all. Except to email two writer/teachers I respect to ask them what they think of all this. I will do that right now, brb.

And I’m back. I was gone for about three minutes. And I really did just send those two emails, nothing else.

Anyway:

Anyway.

Well shit, now I want to go on some other site. I need a sort-of chaser. Just one minute on some site, and then back to the task at hand. You don’t care, right?

The Guardian UK is good for this kind of light trolling; I can still feel moderately good about myself because they cover world political shit. You LEARN stuff! And if a pop culture story happens to be on the site—really, what is the deal with Lana Del Rey?—I can read it, by which I mean scan the HEADLINE of course, and not feel icky about myself.

I didn’t go to the Guardian. I am thinking about it, though. What’s ‘on’ you now, Guardian? What am I missing? Has something happened in the 20 minutes since I checked nytimes.com?

When I first started writing, it was dial-up all the way, pay by the minute. You had to keep track of your time. Unless you did the $25.99 AOL unlimited package. That shit was great. You’d go on, check your email, MAYBE do a chat room for a few minutes, and then sign off. My point is, going on the internet was an event. And then it was back to writing. Now it’s not even worth saying you’re going “on” the internet. It’s not “on” or “off.” As I type this in Word, my gmail window is open the background. If somehow the number goes from 947 to 948, I will have to, yes HAVE to, leave this task and click on gmail to see what’s come in. What if Sabon has another free shipping offer? What if Branden wrote me back, sending me back an emoticon-only reply to the emoticon-only email I sent? [I just tried g-chatting him to see if it’s okay if use his name in this post. Let’s see if he gets back to me.] What if that literary manager wrote back and loves my play?

All right, I’m overstating my point. But rather than retract anything, I’ll overstate it again: The internet is fucking up writing.

Now when I start on this tear, people often say, look at the world: The world being more connected is good for all of us. It’s good for democracy. Tyranny can’t go as unnoticed as it did. Tyrants can’t behave without repercussion anymore. The Arab Spring/Uprising might never have happened if it weren’t for the internet. And look at Russia. Putin is finally getting it from people! Fine. Maybe the internet is facilitating global change. It’s not facilitating you writing your play.

Some teachers are well aware of this and ask you unplug all your stuff in their classes. Karen Hartman does. It was a relief, the last time I took her daylong writing workshop, to just shut everything off. That was about six months ago. The truth is, I don’t know right now if I could hack that. I really don’t. Nothing, for six hours? What happened to me since then? [Follow up: Branden did chat me back. Wanted to know what this was all for. Asked that I don’t use his last name. I won’t. I’ll keep you posted if there’s follow-up.]

Here’s what I think it is. There’s this excitement threshold all of us as artists have. The excitement of finding a new character, of writing a page of dialogue, of seeing the person you have a crush on. There’s that thrill that happens, the adrenalin rush. I think most everyone in theater has some kind of addiction to this in some form or other. Some people get dropped out of helicopters to ski down a mountain; we write plays. Why else would we engage with this strange process of leaping into the unknown again and again?

And I think when we’re writing well, we make those discoveries, get those little bolts of thrill, as we’re just sitting there (or standing, whatever), it’s – well, it’s divine, etc. etc. Many other people have covered that act of creation/creativity quite beautifully, so I don’t think I need to. But here’s why I think the internet is bad for writing: because instead of waiting, sitting, accepting those moments as they come, we click away from what we’re working on. We go into another room, as it were. It’s not hard to see why. Any time of day, far more interesting shit is going on than you writing in your room: Qaddafi sympathizers are taking over a village. Seal is getting divorced. A head is found in a paper bag near the Hollywood sign. Why wouldn’t you want more and more and more of that? Fine, I’ll point the finger solely at myself: Why wouldn’t I want more and more and more of that?

And something gets lost. The ability to sit with, and wait. Jane Campion, who made BRIGHT STAR and THE PIANO, said in an interview: “What I am trying to do is to keep space for the unknown….The unknown is frightening. If you spend all your time in front of the TV or on the computer, you can avoid your mind.”

The unknown is frightening. But that’s where we have to be willing to visit, over and over and over, as writers. I won’t say anything pithy about ‘facing the blank page,’ and all that shit, but you know what I mean. What I’m saying is the kicks we should be getting from engaging in our own work, frankly, we’re getting from outside. From clicking on whatever and whatever and whatever. Javier, a fellow EWGer, told me that just quitting Facebook allowed him to write a play with rhyming couplets. It took him “many, many hours” over three months, he said, and for him, Facebook’s fatal flaw lies in “the constant checking, messages, tagging (like a glorified email) that I find distracting to writing... Because writing needs our full attention, no?”

Yes. Lest we think I’m some sage here, let it be known I am on that f*cking Facebook every day still. Only for a few minutes, total. But still. I’ll end with another quote from another writer. In an article for The New York Times about the perils of teaching in academia while also writing fiction, David Gessner said:

“We must concede the possibility that something is lost by living a divided life. Intensity perhaps. The ability to focus hard and long on big, ambitious projects. A great writer, after all, must travel daily to a mental subcontinent, must rip into the work, experiencing the exertion of it, the anxiety of it and, once in a blue moon, the glory of it.”

I think if all we do all day is stare at a screen 16 inches away, we lessen that small chance for glory, you know?

[By the way, Branden update: He hasn’t gchatted me back to tell me why he’s concerned about me using his last name. But he has changed his gchat status to “eat, pray, Chihuahua.” I like that.]

Mona Mansour lives in Brooklyn. Her play THE HOUR OF FEELING, written during her time in the Emerging Writers Group, will have its premiere at this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

The End of a Gesture

2012-01-19T10:43:00.001-08:00

By Javierantonio González, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

I am in mourning for a gesture; a full-body motion that begins in the legs as they take a couple of steps toward the edge of a Subway platform—sometimes reaching the very end. The gesture then moves mechanically to the torso as it leans into the tracks, twisting, lifting the body’s weight off the rear leg, almost balancing on the front leg, and finally triggering the neck to extend all the way out as the eyes focus—again, mechanically—on that dark inscrutable tunnel, in expectation. Its intention is— in appearance— always the same: to check (often double check) if the train approaches and if so, to know how near or how far it is. Its intensity on the other hand varies, like any gesture, on its doer – on his or her agenda or circumstances.

With the arrival of the platform screens that tell you how many minutes until the next train, passengers have started staring at a ceiling-height, backward-counting monitor instead of at a dark tunnel. We stare at it in total stillness, seeing the future approach in that expectant way that only a backwards count can trigger. Eventually, there will be no need to approach the tracks, to bend, twist or balance, and there will be no need to stare at the dark.

I first became aware of this gesture in the Utica Avenue station in the winter of 2003, as I stepped, lost, out of a subway car in “any station” just to look at a map, (unaware that there are at least two maps in each car). There, I got to see and perform this gesture multiple times, in shivering cold expectation. Months later, my directing professor Brian Kulick asked us to take on a Greek chorus, and my classmate Pavol Liska did a short piece from the Bacchae in which people reclined against a wall, occasionally looking at their watches; then, one by one, sometimes overlapping, they performed the subway gesture as they delivered their lines. (My apologies for not doing the piece enough justice.) Since then, I have seen the gesture performed again and again, in plays, especially of the dance-theatre variety, in movies, and of course in real life. Eventually, it would become the catalyst for a play of mine about a woman who considers continuing the same motion past the platform edge and onto the tracks.

The gradual obsolescence of this gesture can instigate many conversations, from how theatre takes from life to post-modern dance; from how we’ve become a screen-obsessed generation to 1984; from the inside versus outside tension of a gesture to the need for less yoga. It makes me think of reading plays.

I was asked recently during an interview for a directing job to propose three projects. The one at the top of my list was a new play by this fantastic playwright I know. I only needed to describe the very basics of the play to get the attention of the interviewers, who were instantly charmed by the idea. Then I asked, “Would you like to read it?” having diligently brought along a copy. Silence. Looks to the ground. More silence. I think one of them looked out the window? It was up to me to keep the conversation flowing with, “It’s ok. You don’t have to.”

I sense a general disdain toward the act of reading plays, accentuated by how project descriptions and video clips have come to replace full scripts in applications – though perhaps I am naïve and believe that there was a time long before ours when plays were read more. There has been a lot of talk in the emerging writer community about theatres not reading blind submissions anymore, augmented by rumors about artistic directors never reading plays but having them read to them. Yet my interest here is not accusatory and least of all to complain, since as part of the EWG I am very lucky to have people (and not only people, but experts) read my plays, the good and the bad. I for one have always found it hard to read plays, and can even say I don’t generally like it. It is often unpleasant and awkward. There is always a sense that depending on the actors (miracle workers), the director (that charming man or woman who makes everyone feel good), and the space (that elusive variable on which the entire success of the production lies), this thing I hold in my hands that reads kind of terribly could (maybe) make sense; this monster, this tedious bundle or PDF, at times dramatic, often not, quotidian-sounding yet stilted and hard to follow, is a burden.

The problem is, that’s kind of the point. A good play can, though I wish to say should, be hard to read as many wonderful plays indeed are. I once tried to do an apartment reading with friends of Mourning Becomes Electra and we didn’t finish. And we are really into reading plays out loud. Eduardo Machado once pointed this out in a writer’s group and it has never left me. Of course the obvious reason is that plays are meant to be performed, but I think as significant is the fact that many scripts contain not only what is to be performed, but how. A stage direction can define a scene (and in the case of The Cherry Orchard, a play), yet in order to understand that definition I have to read the italicized, cold, mechanical, descriptive, funny-looking sentence. Then I have to imagine, a skill granted to all but maintained by few, how directions such as They stay in silence for three minutes or She picks up the tray with her eyes closed mean something completely different when performed live. Can’t I just read what they say, skipping ahead of the stage directions? Many do. I have heard of design professors who tell their students to ignore all stage directions. I had a wonderful teacher in undergrad who told me he only read the dialogue, without even looking at who’s talking. He said if he could tell who was talking depending on what they said, this was the factor that distinguished good plays from bad ones. He’s an extreme case, but at readings don’t we cut stage directions to a bare minimum, letting the dialogue flow in a snapity-snap ping-pong verbal routine that either ends in a punchline, a button, a cliffhanger, or a blackout?

Stage directions aside, plays are also awkward things because typically they are about human beings relating to each other (or not), expressing their feelings (or not), and thinking (or not) with enough difficulty to be put in front of an audience of, some would say, primarily white, bourgeois strangers who heard about it from a friend or the press or know someone in the show, and now they get to watch him or her and they wonder if the other people—those who don’t know the actor the way they know the actor—like him or her, and if in fact if they themselves actually like him or her. Add the intention of audience interaction, broken walls, occupied spaces, devised theatre—in my eyes, not necessarily at odds with written scripts—and the awkwardness of reading plays only grows.

Lastly, there is that intrinsic dialectic that most great plays carry with them: the hazy zone that links or divides good from evil. At the heart of this lies that duality that makes us care for and disdain Antigone and Creon at once, or take sides with a different character each time we see or read (back on Chekhov) The Seagull, a play that is like a child or a city that we visit every so often, growing more strange as it grows more familiar. To make people argue about political, social, human, moral or artistic ideas is a social threat, more so when in public. To examine in depth our relationship to love, work, death, revolution, to self-reflect is intrinsically political. No wonder a play is hard to read.

Then there are those days when the subway platform screens don’t work properly, when construction, an investigation or even a suicide has made the train schedule malfunction and we are stuck without a clear countdown. On those days I look into the tunnel and wait. I see one or two people dancing their way in and out of this dying gesture, while others stare at an empty screen.

Javierantonio González is the Artistic Director of Caborca. For information on past or future projects, please visit www.caborcatheatre.org

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Keeping it Real: Black Female Playwrights and the Myth of “Authenticity”

2012-01-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

By Sukari Jones, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

One day in our Emerging Writers Group meeting, Suzan-Lori Parks—the beautiful, dreadlock-having, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Topdog/Underdog—came to talk to us. I’d looked up to her for a while, and when she said we could ask her anything we wanted I was very excited because it was her, and also because I love questions. I raised my hand, then felt silly (everyone in EWG is too cool for hand-raising so no one does it but me, because I always forget) so I then I put my hand down quickly and asked, “As a Black Female Playwright, when you walk into a room, do you feel like people just assume stuff automatically about you? And if so, how do you manage those expectations?” She nodded her head for a moment and then said “I’m just myself. Mannerless, ‘bad.’ You have to let people think what they’re going to think. It’s not my problem. And it’s not yours.” Then she asked if that answer was helpful and proceeded to eat salad with her fingers as I furiously jotted down her answer while wishing I was cool enough to eat leaves of baby spinach like potato chips.

Actually though, it was a helpful answer, but one I think I’m going to have to grow into. I don’t know what other writers do, but when I go to see plays by other black female playwrights, I invariably ask myself if what I want to write about and how I want to write it are good enough to be on a stage like this play I’m seeing here right now. And then I realize later that what I’m subconsciously asking myself, at least in part, is: “Is my play black enough? Am I worthy of being known as a ‘Black Female Playwright?’”

Recently, I saw Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop and Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly. The former is a rich new work recounting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last night on earth, interweaving spoken word and magical realism and amazingness. While watching this smart, super-producible two-hander, I found myself equally aware of the plot’s progression as I was of the audience reaction: from wall to wall, the crowd basically looked like my family reunion. There was earnest bellowing laughter, “aaaaww!”s that marked astonishment at a daring line of dialogue, and lots and lots of pondersome “Mm”s. My whole family is from Alabama and the churches sometimes have members of the congregation write plays and put them on there and this audience’s reaction to The Mountaintop was not wholly dissimilar to that for me. I’m a huge fan of awesome last dialogue lines of plays, as well as historical adaptations and smart, “live” writing, so I loved the play for my own reasons. But I feel the audience loved the play because it was unabashedly black. I had to fight my way to buy the last “The Baton Passes On” T-shirt from a feisty, well-to-do out-of-towner, and as I moseyed away, I had two thoughts: “Wow, Katori Hall is so cool” and, “I wonder if any black people will come to my plays ever or like them at all.”

Then I saw Stick Fly: a well-made comedy about an upper middle class black family and the fault lines that lie beneath class and race in America erupting when a family secret is unearthed. I saw this show because both my husbands are in it: Mekhi Phifer and Dule Hill. Also my friend Condola Rashad was in it. I met her at The Public Theater, when she played the lead in my EWG Spotlight Series play “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!” I found myself comparing Stick Fly’s audience to The Mountaintop’s and with Stick Fly, it was a weird and wonderful blend of brown and beige faces and also of classes. All of us in the audience seemed to love it for the same reasons: we were relating to class-stratification and caste tensions within the black community and having a satisfying laugh at a play geared towards people who can relate to being not quite black or not white in the right way because of money. It was an utterly new experience for me, and one that I can only describe as…encouraging. I went to see Stick Fly because I wanted to see a well-made play, and I was extra excited that a Black Female Playwright wrote it. Now having seen it, I feel encouraged because now I know there are other black female playwrights out there who fall, like me, within the nether regions of the spectrum of what is assumed a black female playwright should be.

Seeing The Mountaintop and then seeing Stick Fly taught me a lesson about myself: when it comes down to it, I feel like I’m not worried about being cool enough or who will see my stuff that I eventually somehow get produced; I’m worried about if I’m being true to this myth of the Black Aesthetic that may or may not even exist. August Wilson, Tyler Perry, Octavia Butler—all are great black writers, and no one can or should be able to negate that based on any construct of “authenticity” or choice of subject matter or audience choice or whatever. I am an emerging playwright, and what I find I am emerging from is this fear that there’s nowhere I belong on either end of the black writer spectrum. What I’m emerging into is the strength to get out what’s in my gut onto paper and worry about who’s with me way later on. I do see that there are A and Z, but now I also see there a place for me somewhere in between.

I actually don’t believe I’m just a “writer,” just “American.” I’m an African-American female playwright. I want all the adjectives. They matter to me. And whether I’m writing “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!” about a pill-addicted single black mother and her daughter who create a puppet-filled universe that only they are allowed to live in or my time-travel/Auschwitz play Toy Box with Joseph Campbell-eqsue heroic journeys and magic emblems, I will no longer be looking over my shoulder, worrying I’m about to be kicked out of the “real black girl club.” Because when I walk into a room, all you really know is that my name is Sukari Jones, I’m fine, and anything else you want to assume about me is not my problem, but yours.

Sukari Jones is an award-winning lyricist, an emerging playwright, and a member of The Public Theater's EWG 2011. Upcoming projects: “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!!”, Toy Box, and [Zombie Play].

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Putting the Colored Back into Theatre

2012-01-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

SEVAN K. GREENE, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

Not long after the theatrical firestorm on the Arena Stage blog between Hal Brooks and David Dower comes another theatrical showdown. Tom Loughlin, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Theatre Arts/Acting and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the SUNY-Fredonia, responds to The Broadway League's 2010-11 Demographic Report in a post on his blog that examines what he thinks is the problem with a still-majority white theatre audience. His comments, which partly place the blame on colored audiences, caught the attention of Ron Russell, the executive director of Epic Theater Ensemble who responded via his own post that tears down Loughlin's rhetoric. This topic hits home for many of the EWG playwrights who are artists of color who write for a variety of audiences, including those of their own ethnic and racial background. We've decided to weigh in on the topic from the "other" perspective.

For my own part, I think both men touch on some interesting points. Though Loughlin somewhat mentions the economics of theatre, it IS the more important factor for why theatre audiences are not diversified. Weak general marketing outreach aside (and not knowing how to connect to "those people" or 'those communities" just smacks of absurd racism), the fact is that theatre is nearly unaffordable. I am speaking, of course, of mainstream theatre and some off-Broadway and not-for-profit houses. We’ve started to treat theatre like some kind of elitist activity that can only be enjoyed by the 1%, who are indeed statistically white. Theatre used to be for the people - for all people - regardless of class and race. It was about real life, it was about criticizing establishments, it was about the nitty gritty zeitgeists of the given moment. ANYONE could connect to it because they were living it. It used to be FREE. Does anyone REALLY think the 99% can afford paying more than $100 for an evening of theatre when they have bills to pay and food to put on the table? Believe me, Latinos, African Americans, Middle Easterners, and all "others" WANT to entertained, but not at the cost of their livelihood. I understand it's called show BUSINESS for a reason, and I am not trying to be a Pollyanna about my solutions, but even having ONE free night for "those audiences" would go a long way in reaching out to untapped communities. Or, you know, we could stop with the overproduced spectacle shows thereby reducing production costs and allowing for cheaper or more deeply discounted ticket prices.

On the flip side is the notion of what stories attract which audience. Look, a good story regardless of race and ethnicity will drive ANYONE into a seat (look at Slumdog Millionaire). There is great theatre being produced outside of the Great White Way (which is not the penultimate haven for theatrical experiences) that is viable for and accessible by any kind of audience, but the problem is still that the outreach is lacking. Why assume that "colored audiences" can't appreciate "white stories"? I can assure you that African-Americans do enjoy non-Chitlin' Circuit shows (some don't even like them!). Latinos do watch more than zarzuelas and telenovellas. Chinese people, I am sure, can take a night off from Peking entertainment to cross over to the other side. It becomes a mess of circular rhetoric when you say "those audiences" don't come see our shows but you make no effort to try and get them into your seats. I assure you they don't need a special marketing scheme - they need a modicum of respect and information that doesn't make them feel like they are some kind of piteous community outreach effort to increase funding.

I can understand the argument working for remote regional theatres where the demographics are still heavily balanced towards a white majority, but in New York City, among other metropolitan areas, it is a crime that audiences are still not hugely diverse in 2012.

Sevan K. Greene is still a Brown actor and playwright but is enjoying confounding people with his racial and ethnic ambiguity. NYTW will be producing a reading of his play NARROW DAYLIGHT on March 5 @ 3PM with a stellar cast he has to be hush-hush about for now. www.sevangreene.com

ANNA MOENCH, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

Statistics can be manipulated to "prove" all kinds of things. Yes, trends are apparent in statistical data, but causation is famously difficult to prove with percentages and averages--as my middle school science teacher once said, "correlation does not imply causation." For instance, if you look at the ethnic makeup of immigrants in the 1880s, you'd find no Chinese folks were immigrating. Zero percent. Weird, considering the waves of immigrants who had come over to build the railroads for us throughout the 1800s. You could take that piece of information and conclude that all Chinese people must have gotten into a spaceship to fly off and explore uncharted galaxies. But actually, Congress instituted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the only law in our great nation's history to prevent immigration and naturalization based on race, which was firmly in place until 1943. Ah. That could have something to do with it.

It's possible that Tom Loughlin's conclusions (that theater is a medium for white people as evidenced by the greater percentages of white producers who mostly produce white playwrights who write most of their plays about white people which are then cast with white actors and are seen by predominently white audiences) are correct. It's entirely possible. But if we are to follow his logic in interpreting another bullet point in the report, if 65% of audiences are female, then theater is for (and likely, about) women more than it is for (and about) men. Why, then, are 74% of scripts written by men, and of those scripts, why do 81% feature mostly male roles, according to Emily Glasstone Sands' now-famous paper about gender bias in the theater? Things are more complex than they may seem.

There are many ways to skew data, and even more ways to interpret it. Immediately concluding that people of color do not see theater because they inherently don't like the medium, rather than because there are fewer wealthy people of color than wealthy white people, or because there are fewer plays written and produced that are about people of color than about white people, or because there is a hard-to-eradicate stink of elitism that lingers in most established theaters, or because most people of color blast off into space on Russian spacecraft at 8:00pm, Tuesday through Sunday (with a matinee orbit at 2pm on Sunday) is just bad middle school science.

One more thing. Although Ron Russell's rebuttal is heartfelt, and his company's work and experiences valuable, unfortunately he relies on anecdotal evidence. In defense of Loughlin, he does state that he is speaking about the trends of the majority, and he acknowledges repeatedly that exceptions do exist. Stating that one company's experience refutes on a broad scale the very real trends that Loughlin cites is just as incomplete an argument.

Anna Moench's short play, PULL!, will be produced in the Red Fern Theater Company's upcoming festival later this month. For details on that and other Moench-related things, visit www.annamoench.com.

DOMINIQUE MORISSEAU, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

Some food for thought from someone on the “outside” perspective:

1) Tyler Perry is not the only kind of theater that Black audiences will pay Broadway money for. Black Broadway and the urban theater circuit are an often overlooked part of the industry. The numbers these tours do could kill some Broadway shows on a good night.

2) Storytelling and its traditions are as old and varied as people ourselves. Nonetheless, good strong narratives resonate with all audiences, including people of color. It just simply isn't true that we don't appreciate linear stories on and off the stage. Our settings may be different, but the impact is the same.

3)Most theaters are puzzled about how to approach “audience development”. They haven’t figured out quite how to crack the code (i.e., reach the audiences of color). The answer isn’t because these audiences aren’t interested in theater. In fact, many people of color come from cultural traditions ROOTED in theater. Theater is in their blood. Start with the Performance traditions of West African, Yoruba culture. Then spread it out across the Latin and Afro-Caribbean diaspora.

4) This is the code cracker. Why aren’t audiences of color overwhelming Broadway houses? It’s simple. No one invests in something that doesn’t invest in them. Lack of audiences of color is a DEVELOPMENT failure. Developed relationships come from respecting a people, and earning their trust. That takes a greater effort than mailing and marketing. That takes community involvement and investment. How can you ask a people to come to you if you aren’t ever willing to go to them? You drop a random flier on my Brooklyn stoop and expect me to come to see your random play? I’ve never seen you in my community, but you want me to all of a sudden LEAVE my community, come all the way out to YOUR community, spend my disposable income and then I’m not even going to see anything from my community reflected on that stage? Who’s idea of marketing is that? If you want the people to come to you, you have to go to the people. (But there’s the rub, isn’t it. Do they even really WANT the people to come to them? Or, much like Loughlin, is there some obscure sense of pride and upholding of race privilege that comes from the idea that theater is only for White people? Does that not satisfy some hibernating feeling of superiority? Is that not some racist, classicist, supremacist thinking?)

5) Loughlin mentions Hip Hop and Jazz, birthed in Black culture and how White audiences enjoy it. Similarly, he says that there are some non-Whites who enjoy theater. But a flaw: Unlike Hip Hop and Jazz that are legitimately traced to the Black community, theater is not exclusively traced to White and European communities. There was a time when the commercial viability of both Hip Hop and Jazz was grossly under-estimated by the music industry. They were given a short life expectancy because they were thought to have no audience. The break in traditional music form was considered inferior art and therefore the practice and its audience were deemed temporary. But alas, both art forms and their audiences are here to stay. These styles have made our music catalogs better, re-shaped the world of music, and been imitated and co-opted by continuing generations. And just like Hip Hop and Jazz, Playwrights and Audiences of Color are grossly under-estimated and here to stay. They may be under-represented, but their life will be long and they will make our theaters better. If they are currently missing-in-action from the party, the failure is not theirs, but rather the party-planner. Nonetheless, the artists and their audiences dance on, with or without an invitation.

Dominique Morisseau is alumni of the 2011 EWG, a current member of the Women's Project Playwright's Lab and a fellow in the 2011-2012 Lark Playwrights Workshop. She is currently developing a three-play cycle on her beloved hometown of Detroit. The first of the three, DETROIT '67, received a reading in the Public's EWG Spotlight Series and the 2011 Lark's Playwrights' Week. She was also a runner-up for the 2011 Princess Grace Award. dominiquemorisseau@yahoo.com / or catch her on Facebook!

PIA WILSON, member of 2008 Emerging Writers Group

Let me say this: the idea expressed in Tom Loughlin's article isn't anything new under the sun. In fact, it's a common stream of "logic" used by oppressors around the world.

The physical form of Black people was used as an excuse to keep them out of ballet, with the Black body as a supposed affront to the European aesthetic. Black people have a long history of discrimination in classical music – another rarified art form that may be considered "for white people." Mr. Loughlin took his turn at the wheel, loosely wrapping an old idea in new statistics. And though he's gotten some flack for it, the simple fact is: he's not alone in his opinion.

That's what I find most troubling about Mr. Loughlin's essay. I don't care that he said something that's not true to anyone with a working frontal lobe. Clearly, theater is not just for white people. What I find disturbing is that he (and those who think like him) just want everyone (read: other Caucasians) to sign off on it, so they don't have to be bothered with the uncomfortable truth.

If theater is only for white people, then theaters don't have to worry about cultivating more than two audiences (old and young white people ... with money). Those pesky artists of color will have to resign themselves to writing stories with which the white audience is comfortable, e.g. writing about slavery or the Civil Rights movement if you're African-American, or penning a hot, passionate, sexy play about immigration if you're Latino, or if you're of Middle Eastern descent, well, then, if your play isn't about terrorism or Muslims, hang it up. Oh, and those artists of color can have their battle royale over the one spot available for a non-white play because ... you know ... that one Black/Asian/Latino play did so poorly 20 years ago.

However, if theater isn't only for white people, then a lot of theaters have done a really bad job of reaching out to other communities. If theater isn't only for white people, then institutional racism and a lack of minority representation in arts administration is a serious problem. If theater is not only for white people, then artistic directors of quite a few theaters are going to have to make new kinds of friends. Oh, the implications!

That's a scary proposition to a lot of theater makers who just want to "concentrate on telling good stories, regardless of race." (I put that last part in quotes because that's often the first response to mentions of racism in theater, as though people of color don't tell good stories.)

American theater will not become more inclusive unless there is a political will to do so. And, here's another truth: white folks who run theaters do have to buy into the idea of being more inclusive. Perhaps white audiences need to be educated about all the other types of theater out there. Maybe, though, they don't. Maybe they only go to see the same types of plays over and over again because that's all they're given.

Pia Wilson is a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group. She will be participating in the New Jersey edition of The One-Minute Play Festival on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m., at Mile Square Theater Company at the Monroe Arts Center in Hoboken.

DEEN, member of the 2009 Emerging Writers Group

Sometimes, to want something we cannot have is too painful. So instead we say we don't want it, don't need, could care less about it. The price of going to decently produced theater -- especially the price of seeing something on Broadway -- is astronomical. (Translation: So far beyond your budget, don't even bother.) People are not buying tickets to the theater because many cannot possibly afford it.

And because to discuss this properly, we would need to have a much larger discussion about generational oppression, race and economics, who has privilege, and hope (or the lack of it), I will start by saying the following courses are required before we can continue:

Race and Economics in the US - 101
White Privilege - 101

Okay, so let's assume you've now taken those courses. Then I will continue this way: Tom, to say non-white-non-rich people aren't interested in the theater is a bit like saying, "Only rich people are interested in having fabulous health care and winter homes in Tahiti." Certainly, if you look at the evidence, you won't find many poor people purchasing homes in Tahiti, nor will you find many poor people purchasing the gold star health insurance that members of Congress are given -- but one could scarcely say that was because the poor of this country aren't interested in those things. (Then again, maybe they aren't interested in those things -- if you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to make it to your next mortgage payment or how to put food on the table, you may not give a damn about going to the theater. You can't afford to.)

(And because you've taken the required course load, you understand that not having the cash to afford it is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg: We're talking about institutional, systemic disenfranchisement which means everything from a lack of expendable cash, to the lack of educational opportunities, to the lack of exposure to theater and art, all the way to the lack of hope for a better future. It's quite a wide swath. And this is part of White Privilege -- the luxury to be oblivious to this.)

And to take it further, it's a vicious cycle isn't it? There aren't a lot of stories about brown people on the Broadway stage, are there? But if more plays about brown people were produced, who would be able to afford to see them?

But do not mistake me, Tom Loughlin's article is valuable: It brings to light White Privilege in the theater. And though Ron Russell rails against it, I think it's better that White Privilege rises to the surface where we can see it for what it is. Tom is quite right -- the majority of Broadway theater goers are rich white people (you'll forgive me for the gross generalization, won't you?). It's important to see that fact and ask, Why is that appalling? In my opinion, it's appalling because it does not reflect America's actual ethnic diversity. It does, however, reflect the concentration of wealth that exists in our country. And if it is indeed so appalling, how come it hasn't changed? Maybe it's not so appalling to many, many people. (And that, truly, is appalling.)

(Occupy Broadway, anyone...?)

And in Ron's scathing response to Tom's article, I sense some White Guilt. Tom's research is flawed and lacking, but it strikes me as honest and sincere. The problem with White Privilege (the luxury to be oblivious) and White Guilt (the constant burden of feeling responsible) strikes me as similar -- though they are radical ends of the spectrum, both find it difficult to look at what is actually there. And both are a bit self-centered: It's all about you, isn't it? (Trust me when I say, both White Privilege and White Guilt are burdens on those of us who aren't white, though if I had to choose, I'd prefer you feel guilty to oblivious.)

There is one theater that I know of which has been truly inspiring in it's desire to make a change. Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, MN, under the leadership Jack Reuler, has declared theater free for all -- they call it Radical Hospitality.

That is truly revolutionary, and yet I can't help but think that it's a shame that I think so.

Deen would like to acknowledge his privilege as an educated, seemingly cis-gendered man, as well thank his immigrant parents for being in the place to give him both opportunities and hope. His solo play, DRAW THE CIRCLE, will be produced at InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia) in April. For more info, please visit deentheplaywright.weebly.com.

DIY: The highs of self-producing. A message to theater-makers.

2012-01-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

By Jerome A. Parker, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

Recently I sat with a director friend and producer friend over dinner as we performed the ritual of a post-mortem for a show we put up together in New Paltz, NY. This show had a very healthy rehearsal period, though a very short run, and featured talent from actors and designers from Off-Broadway and Broadway. Everyone involved was paid... Let me say that again - everyone involved was PAID for their time and work. When will we be able to do something like this again together? I hope soon. Because we ended our dinner with a HUGE feeling of accomplishment and pride at what can be achieved when you have ambitious and talented people in your corner.

And in this business, which depends upon a lot of waiting – waiting for an “in”, waiting for an artistic director to schedule your play in their season, waiting for a space to open up - it IS very possible to create your own opportunities and have your play produced with quality now.

There are some things you can't get around. A producer IS necessary - especially if you want your artists and artisans to get paid. The good news is – playwrights can make good producers. As an artist who has self-produced a lot in the past, I've also been lucky enough to work with some great up-and-coming producers. Andre Lancaster who recently headed the production in New Paltz, went above and beyond the responsibilities of a producer - raising money, organizing, booking spaces, hiring crew, artistic staff, getting press, etc... – to help bring my three character play to life and share it with a community starving to see black characters on their stage.

Though he’s young, Andre is a veteran and self-made man in this industry. He’s not only the founder, artistic director and manager of Freedom Train Productions, but he also just finished interning in the literary offices of the Public and is now at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a spell. This past fall, as he finished his degree, he wanted to bring a story to the SUNY, New Paltz campus that would respond to racially charged incidences that occurred there.

Working under the guidelines of union rules, and starting the process with the intention to honor all the artists monetarily for their work and time, the amount of money that needed to be raised seemed astronomical. Still, Andre pressed forward and saw us all through to the end. It was his vision and hard work throughout that carried us.

New York is filled with the Andre's of the world, who are not only passionate about their theater and giving with their time once they find something to get behind, but also creative with solutions to the problems that come with the territory of producing.

I was so excited to see the emergence of not only the New Black Fest, but also the igniting of the Harlem 9, and the continued growth of the Fire This Time Festival. Each of these entities is composed of creative producers who find the time, energy and money to invest in the plays and artists they believe in. They are a blessing in that they show us what is possible when we take our artistic destinies into our own hands.

I challenge you, playwrights and fellow theater makers, to seek out these rogue producers. Andre is one. Our very own Pia Wilson and Jesse Cameron Alick, both playwrights, also belong to this bunch. As a Public Theater EWG alum, Pia runs the Ghostlights, a semi-annual festival of plays by EWG members; and Jesse, an Artistic Associate at the Public, heads the Subjective Theater Company. So, you may find these independent producers inside more established places like the Public, Roundabout or at Arena Stage. But you may also find them at your local church or bar, people ready for a more independent model of putting on plays. You may find them at a young, emerging theater company in your neighborhood whose rules and methods are created as they create.

But I challenge you to not only see that play (it may or may not be your own) come to life but to also have an active role in making it happen. Have the audacity to demand means and the tenacity to raise those means. Seek out non-traditional spaces/venues and make the effort to find audiences to fill those spaces. Take your art into your own hands. Occupy your own space as a theater maker and set high standards for yourself and for those in your circles. See your play as it was meant to be seen.

Jerome A. Parker is an award-winning playwright, a lyricist, and a member of the Public Theater's EWG 2011. Upcoming: DIG (with the Fire This Time Festival), BLISS, STRANGE FELLOWE, SUITES FOR SAD MEN, THE DINAH SESSIONS and MIRACLE ON MONROE.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

The audience: Friend, foe, or innocent bystander? Or, questions about the intersection of art and community

2011-12-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

By Leila Buck, member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group

I think a lot about the audience when I write. In fact, I’m thinking about you right now. Well maybe not you specifically, but my ideas of who you might be. What made you start reading this? Are you a creator of theater? A part of its audience? Both? Do you like me – I mean, my blog post – so far? Will you keep reading? Why or why not? Do you prefer wit or sincerity? (I can do both, I swear…) How much should I base what I say about audiences on what I think may or may not interest you?

I’m also wondering: Will you judge me if I use “they” instead of “it” when referring to the audience? Do I need to prove that I understand it’s a singular noun but really it refers to a group of people and I don’t like talking about people as “it”? And come to think of it, doesn’t that say a lot about our dilemma with audiences (did you notice how I snuck in the plural there to avoid the whole it/they thing?): When should we treat our audience as an “it” -- an object or recipient of our work, and when a “them” -- a group of living, breathing beings whose active participation in that work makes it possible?

Which brings me to the real question on my mind right now: How can I stay true to my own voice(s) in creating my work, and actively committed to engaging others in that process?

I am thinking about this question in particular these days as I have recently been offered an opportunity for my first real commission - to develop my latest play, HKEELEE. The commission supports the development of projects at the intersection of critical citizenship, creativity, and civic dialogue --work that asks a question to which the public’s response directly affects the creation of the work itself.

Asked to articulate how I would like to develop this piece in dialogue with communities, I find myself grappling with questions that I feel – or hope – resonate beyond my own personal choices:

How can we engage not just the audience that comes to our shows, but the wider communities that rarely do?
Is it possible to remain committed to real community engagement without compromising our integrity or needs as professional artists – whatever they may be?
And what do our responses to these questions say about what we do and who we are? You know – details.

Let me be transparent here: My beliefs about the intersection of art and community are shaped by many years of training and work as a teaching artist based in the philosophies of Augusto Boal. Boal saw and practiced theater as a “rehearsal for revolution”. (Yes, I’m a lefty. Go figure.) I won’t try to describe his many processes here, as they are complex, and many of you, I’m sure, know them well. The elements of his work I think most relevant to this discussion are:

a) the use of theater as a space for exploring different responses to injustices or problems in our daily lives.
b) the role of audience members as “spectACTors” in that process–partners with professional actors, whose active participation changes the course of the performance itself, with
c) the ultimate goal of sparking dialogue between audience and performers about how to move that change beyond the theatrical space and into their lives.

My own practice of these ideas has evolved over years of work with students and teachers of all ages in the NY public schools, followed by some burnout, some break time, and more years of teaching as a guest artist in a range of communities from here to Australia and back again. The one thing that has emerged as constant for me in my teaching is the balance between owning that I have something unique to offer those gathered, and opening to what they have to share with me. And it is that same balance I find myself seeking in my creative work and process.

I began my writing career, as many actors do, by creating and touring a solo performance about my own life. I developed my commitment to the audience as partner through years of performing that work in community settings – universities, conferences, cultural centers -- even one high school auditorium back in the day, complete with bells going off mid-performance as bags were fetched from lockers. Some of my best moments on stage and off occurred in shows and talkbacks from the International School of Beijing to Dickinson, South Dakota’s second annual diversity conference.

My favorite aspect of these experiences was the opportunity to engage directly with the audience both during the show and afterwards. One blessing of performing one’s own work is the chance to sense how your words are landing in the moment, and if you choose to, change them on the spot (much to the chagrin of those operating one’s sound cues) to speak more directly to the energy of the people in the room. After all, in solo performance your only partner out there IS your audience. And when it clicks, that connection is unlike any other. The vulnerability and honesty of sharing a deeply personal experience with a roomful of strangers can be profoundly beautiful, powerful, even - dare I say - spiritual.

So why did a part of you cringe when you read “solo performance”? (Admit it, it’s ok. I understand.) Because too often writer/performers get swept up in the catharsis of telling a story that means something to us, and forget to ask ourselves the most basic acting question in deciding which parts of that story to tell and how: Why am I saying this? What do I want from you, the person – or in this case, people – I’m saying it to? And what do I hope YOU will gain in the process?

To stay engaged with the importance of these questions, as I began developing my second full-length solo piece, I would make sure there was a discussion with the audience after every reading or performance, since I wanted to know how the play was affecting people and have a chance to dialogue with them.

The story was a very personal one - about my experience with my husband in Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war – a subject about which, not surprisingly, many people have strong opinions. Most of the audience members who stayed to talk afterwards would share what moved them or their own connections to my experience. But some were hurt, shocked, even angered, by what they saw. In spite of my best efforts to include a range of voices and viewpoints-- in particular the genuine warmth, humor and caring of my Jewish in-laws or Israeli friends -- some audience members felt my story to be one-sided, biased, even irresponsible, and asked, suggested, or demanded that I alter it to include perspectives beyond my own and that of my Lebanese family and friends. Other audience members, and many friends and colleagues, even those who didn’t necessarily share my political or personal opinions, would tell me to ignore those demands and stick to my own voice: “Just tell your story.”

I soon realized that what I wanted, and needed, to do lay somewhere in between – and that the struggle to find that balance was both the conflict, and the heart, of my play.

So for the better part of three years, I experimented with ways of writing that journey into the piece. I tried representing everything from voices in my head to angry audience members literally interrupting what I had to say. Many other voices helped me along the way -- an incredible team of actors, dramaturgs, EWG and other writers, countless generous artists and audiences far and wide, all with the constant guidance and insight of my incredible director Shana Gold. After more drafts than I think any of us can count, we finally settled on a combination that felt like it worked. But even with three other actors now representing multiple viewpoints on my story, I soon realized it was impossible to write something that represented even a fraction of the many perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict– or for that matter, how they had shifted according to what happened in the world that day.

So since my audiences and collaborators had already helped shape so much of the play, I decided to let them do the rest of the work for me: I turned the second act into a staged talkback. Partially scripted based on past audience responses, it has built-in moments for audience members to ask questions, share responses, and challenge the actors in role, the play itself, and the political and personal issues it raised. The result is part storytelling, part theater, part town hall, and part structured improvisation, and it continues to evolve each time we perform. It’s messy, and terrifying, and doesn’t always fully work. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Because it reminds me, every time, of what I love most about what we do – the thing that makes it so unique, and powerful, and bold: The fact that performer and audience are in the same space, at the same time, together, sharing all the discomfort and danger, beauty and possibility of that interaction.

In the end, isn’t it this very relationship with the audience, this sharing of space together, that makes theater what it is? I mean, if a tree falls and no one unwraps a candy… Yet at times I have felt myself, and other theater artists, take a kind of pride or refuge in the inaccessibility of our art form -- The idea that it is a loftier art because it is not a medium for the masses like our more mainstream competitors, film and TV. Or we feel torn between catering too much to our audiences, producing more successful or lucrative but sometimes less fulfilling work -- or too little, producing work we love that is not seen as widely, or paid as well.

Recently I’ve been excited to see more and more work experimenting with audiences in new, direct, provocative ways. I’m also inspired by artists and companies who successfully balance their work in professional theatre with an ongoing engagement with students and communities. But there remains a division between works created in community, outside the mainstream theatrical establishment, and those created and performed in more traditional or “professional” settings. And in all the work produced outside of community spaces (that I know of), including my own, the audience’s role is primarily in response to a story or experience, rather than actively shaping it.

So it seems then that the larger issue is not whether it is possible to truly engage our audiences in a fulfilling creative process that produces successful work. It’s how to convince both audiences and artists that there is something to be gained in doing so.

And from there, new(ish) questions arise:

Is it possible to approach communities of strangers not as audiences but “spectACTors” -- integral parts of the creative process – and create work that will be seen beyond those communities? By doing so might we expand those audiences themselves – forging new alliances with communities that do not otherwise feel connected to what we do?

Could making our audiences more active participants in our creative process help to broaden and deepen not only our connections to communities, but the relevance and immediacy of our entire art form?

I believe the answer to all these questions is yes. The challenge for me is HOW. That one, I’m still working on.

So in the spirit of collaboration and connection (and because I just need some help thinking about this), I’d love to hear your questions, ideas, and challenges in response to what I’ve shared. How do YOU navigate or respond to the questions raised here? What are your ideas on how we might rise to these challenges? Do you even feel that we should?

Whatever your response, thanks for reading and engaging. I hope this little post will be just one small part of an ongoing conversation between us and beyond.

Leila Buck has thought far too much about what to say to you here. Her play, IN THE CROSSING will be produced by the Culture Project in Fall 2012. Her latest piece, HKEELEE, an exploration of language, memory, and what it means to be(come) American is produced by MAPP International Productions and commissioned by The America Project, to be developed developed in community dialogues across the U.S. and internationally with support from the Ford Foundation and Nathan Cummings Foundation. Please spare her choosing what else to say by visiting http://www.mappinternational.org/artists/view/496/ (for the brave in URLs) or www.leilabuck.com.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

PUBLIC FORUM ONLINE: America’s Wars, a Year Later

2011-12-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

On December 14, 2010, The Public Forum considered “Afghanistan After America, America After Afghanistan.” Hosted by Alec Baldwin, the evening featured a tribute to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who had died the night before, by David Rohde, the journalist whose release from Serbian captivity he had negotiated, and who was later kidnapped by the Taliban; a roundtable of development experts on the future of Afghan society; and a conversation among young veterans of the Afghan war about the future of the U.S. military.

The Forum recently caught up with two of these veterans to talk about the last year in America’s wars: the death of Osama Bin Laden, the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and their own efforts to readjust to civilian life.

Matthew Hoh served as a Marine Corps captain in Iraq, then joined the State Department in Afghanistan, resigning his post to protest U.S. policy there. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Matt Pottinger left a journalism career after 9/11 to join the Marines, serving a combat tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan, and receiving the Bronze Star. He is now the CEO of the advisory firm China Six LLC. Their conversation was moderated by Jeremy McCarter, the director of The Public Forum. An edited transcript follows.

JEREMY McCARTER: Seven months ago, Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden. Matt Pottinger, you were supposed to have breakfast at Windows on the World [at the top of the World Trade Center] on the morning of 9/11. How did you react to the news that he was killed?

MATT POTTINGER: I got a text that night saying that he was dead, so I immediately walked down to the World Trade Center site, because I’d heard that people were congregating there. It was surreal: I ended up bumping into David Rohde.

JM: No way.

MP: It was bizarre. He’s there reporting, he’s taking notes, and I remember saying to him, “You know, out of this huge crowd of people here” -- of young people especially, there were a lot of college kids there who were little kids when 9/11 happened – “you and I are probably two of the people whose lives were most affected by 9/11”. It sent both of our lives in completely different trajectories from the direction we would’ve gone in.

I was glad Bin Laden was dead. His would-be followers have to ask the question, “What did Bin Laden achieve?” He killed thousands and thousands of people, most of them Muslims, but what strategic goals did he achieve? He didn’t turn over any governments. People who demonstrated in Tahrir Square and other Arab Spring states accomplished more through relatively peaceful protests than through his idea of terrorism.

So it was surreal to be there, but the jubilation I saw around us, I didn’t share in that. I had a real sense of how much was sacrificed over the previous ten years in trying to stop and kill him.

JM: The way that we’ve conducted that war has shifted lately. You famously quit the Foreign Service, Matt Hoh, because you objected to our strategy in Afghanistan. Have we gotten any smarter about what we’re doing there in the last year?

MATTHEW HOH: Well, I think collectively we have, because we’re recognizing that it makes more sense to go after terrorist organizations as they exist. Understanding them as groups that share an ideology, but that operate as individuals and small cells – I think we’ve seen that shift collectively. I think everyone points to the Bin Laden raid as the right way to do it.

But in terms of the big picture, Afghanistan is worse off now than it was a year ago -- in terms of the fracturing of the country, in terms of how far we are from a political process to end the war. Our relationship with Pakistan has been continuously deteriorating over the past year. We had that terrible incident a week or two ago where we killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. So now we’ve gotten to the point where the Pakistani troops on the border have missiles that can shoot down an aircraft, our aircraft, that are patrolling over an unmarked border, and miscommunications happen, etc., etc. So now we’re in this situation where, my God, the Pakistanis may shoot down one of our aircraft. And what level will that take us to next in our relationship with the Pakistanis?

MP: The way that I’ve been talking about this with friends is that the best-case scenario now is what we termed the Soviet defeat in the war. That was the Soviet Union pulling out of Afghanistan but leaving in place a government that was able to survive for a few years.

JM: Let’s talk about the other war: Iraq. U.S. military involvement is supposed to end in a couple of weeks. You both saw combat there – what does it mean to you that we’re leaving?

MP: It’s amazing to me that we’re going to be completely gone. What was the grand strategy for going into Iraq? As it was explained to us, it was to transform the Middle East. Now that transformation has happened, but I don’t think it had anything to do with our going into Iraq.

MH: This isn’t a period that we should just walk quietly away from and try to forget, as much as I would like to forget it, and I know Matt would, and lots of other guys would, and lots of families. I mean, this is a war that, when you stretch out the consequences to Americans, it’s pretty astounding, you know? 4,500 dead, over 30,000 physically wounded, a rate of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] somewhere in the range of 200,000, and that’ll only get worse with time. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the suffering that the Iraqi people sustained.

This week you had that terrible suicide bombing in Afghanistan, and The New York Times ran a very vivid, very stunning photo of a child standing amidst the carnage. It shocked a lot of people in the U.S. And I was shocked by it too, even having seen that stuff in person. But the fact that it was shocking ten years into this war shows the level of shielding that Americans have had from the conflict. The fact that most Americans don’t know anybody who has served, the fact that less than 1% of the country has served in the military during this time, that the war just doesn’t really come through on our television sets that much -- that’s another thing we should look at: how involved and how connected we as a public, as a community, as a nation are to these wars that are being waged overseas in our names.

MP: My proposal for that would be to get more veterans in the government. I’d like to see way, way more vets of these wars in Congress, in the White House as advisors, just trickling up through the executive branch and the legislature. I’m disturbed by the disconnect between the country’s military and the people that it is protecting.

JM: All right, so which – or both – of you guys is going to run?

MP: I would support Matt!

MH: Same thing– I will go door-to-door for Matt Pottinger any day.

JM: So if you feel like talking about it – okay if you don’t – but you were both in some hairy situations over there, as we discussed last year. How are you guys feeling now, just personally, about what you went through?

MH: I’m certainly a different person. I was overseas 7 out of 10 years, and when I was “home”, it didn’t really count. By the time I came back from Afghanistan the third time, I knew what it was like to come back. A friend invited me to go to a U2 concert, but I’d only been home for about 10 days, and I knew I couldn’t handle being in a building with that many people in it. A couple months later I was fine.

You know, I struggle with PTSD. It comes back every now and again. The best way I can describe what PTSD is like is it’s this wave that comes over you that puts you in a place of despair and depression that you’ve never dealt with before, and that’s very difficult to work through. But what I find is that those waves come far less frequently. It happened for me, over the last year, maybe once or twice. But I also know it’s going to continue to happen for the rest of my life.

I don’t like opening up what’s happening inside of me. That’s not a normal thing for me, or for most guys who joined the Marine Corps, but if it helps some guy or gal who’s reading this. . . . And I do think talking about it does help me. It still sucks, there are still things that hurt. Mine is all guilt-based.

MP: The PTSD that people feel, more often than not, is related to feelings of guilt.

JM: Survivor guilt?

MP: That’s definitely part of it. And other forms of guilt, about things that would’ve seemed inconsequential when the stakes weren’t really high. But whatever emotions you feel when your brain is bathed in adrenalin and stress hormones get hard-wired into you, and it becomes much harder to deal with what should, in hindsight, seem like minor incidents. Those cling and haunt you for a long time as well, the feeling that you failed at something.

MH: That’s exactly it. In my case, it’s a feeling of guilt based on my perception that I failed. Men are dead now because of that, in one specific instance, and every once in a while that comes up. You’re a guy, you’re a captain in the Marines, you don’t think you’d ever let people down, and then you find out that you do. And whether or not that was actually the case, that’s how I perceive it. I look at it objectively, and know I did everything that I could, but emotionally, that’s what I’m tied to.

It’s a whole gamut of different reasons why men and women suffer from it. But regardless, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s a wound from going to war that warriors have experienced forever. You can get past it, you can make yourself whole, and you can continue the mission -- whether it’s still in the military or outside of it.

THE PUBLIC FORUM is a high-profile series of lectures, debates, and conversations, now in its second season. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, the Forum features leading voices in politics, media, and the arts. Alec Baldwin, Anne Hathaway, Cynthia Nixon, Sam Waterston, and NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman have hosted its programs, which have featured the insights of Kurt Andersen, Carl Bernstein, David Brooks, Arianna Huffington, Bill Irwin, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, Francine Prose, Stephen Sondheim, and young veterans of the war in Afghanistan -- plus performances by Anne Hathaway and Michael Cerveris, among others.

The Artistic Identity: The Intersection of Art, Spirituality and Social Justice

2011-12-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

by Bridget Kelso, member of the 2009 Emerging Writers Group

Who am I? Why am I here? Artists use their gifts to explore these questions and more, but the issue of identity can still be complex. I have struggled with my various identities, like someone dressing for different events: Today I’ll wear the mother outfit; tonight I’ll wear the writer’s hat; tomorrow I’ll be an actor... What about the teacher, friend, political activist? How can I fulfill all of these roles? Can I be more than one at a time?

I realize now that my art, spirituality and desire for social justice are not mutually exclusive. My interests/identities are interdependent, fluid, working together, lending and borrowing as necessary.

My responsibility as an artist is reflected in my social justice outreach efforts, which are in turn an extension of my spiritual practice. Let me explain the “artist’s responsibility” thing. Many years ago, I went to a workshop/lecture featuring Ossie Davis Jr. He talked about many things, but what stood out was this: Art, and in this case he meant acting, should be connected to social justice. His life was an example of this. His work as an actor was intimately tied to his efforts within the Civil Right Movement. He instilled in us the idea that if you’re going to call yourself an artist, then you have a responsibility to advance the cause of social justice.

Whether it’s the Occupy Movements going on across the country or voter registration drives – find an outlet that suits your gifts. It’s your responsibility as an artist. I believe it grounds you, and makes your art that much more creative and fulfilling.

I am no longer surprised at how easily the different parts of my life blend together. My interest in slave narratives finds its way into my discussions with my son on the train, and with my students in the classroom. My passion for social justice (i.e. access to basic services for everyone, providing arts education for young people, helping those who have the least), also dovetails with my spiritual practice. My church is very involved in social justice issues, so I often find myself engaged in conversations about political issues and events, and strategizing, on a Sunday. My poetry has been used as an opening prayer for various church services, so naturally one of my new plays, Leah’par, tells the story of Lucifer’s fall from grace from the perspective of a newly arrived slave on a plantation. The picture of who I am, and what I have to offer – in effect, what I am here for – would be incomplete if even one of these pieces was diminished, lost, or ignored.

The playwright Suzan Lori-Parks said writing is “holding the hand of God.” I hold onto that hand as well, and keep my eyes on the world around me. It is at that crossroads – that intersection of art, social justice and spirituality – that I am most fulfilled. Join me there and let’s change the world.

Bridget Kelso has been active in the Living Wage Campaign at her church, First Corinthian Baptist Church, and is a teaching artist for Judith Sloan’s EarSay Project at the International High School in Queens, which helps Immigrant Youth by transforming trauma into art. She is currently working on a solo performance piece entitled SLIDE SHOW: THE EVOLUTION OF RADICAL FEMINIST THEOLOGY.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

A Big Wet Kiss

2011-12-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

By Deen, member of the 2009 Emerging Writers Group

In a recent email, I told a friend of mine off-handedly that I had writers block. (She's the lead guitarist and songwriter for her band, the Scamps.) In reply, she described her own experience of being abandoned by the muse:

“It can be the worst. Nothing makes me question myself more than that. To me, it feels like less of a block and more of a spiraling pit of self-loathing – the harder it gets to write, the more I doubt anything I write is any good...”

I thought that was a pretty spot-on description. I once heard Kate Winslet in an interview say that at the beginning of every new project she felt a terrible anxiety that finally everyone was going to realize she had no idea what she was doing. I can relate. It is sheer faith that reminds me that I've done this before, that leads me to consider the possibility that I am not actually an abject failure and impostor.

I have begun to wonder of late if I don't in fact hate writing now that I have become a Writer. There was a time when writing was my solace and my redemption, and more than that, a blessing: Through the transformation of my own struggles, others could also find refuge. Now that I am a Writer, it is the struggle to write that brings me misery. I must produce constantly (or at least be miserably dedicated in the attempt) in order for me to deserve the luxury of not working a soul-sucking job, deserve the title of Writer, deserve even the very air I breathe. So where does a Writer turn for comfort when the act of writing is no longer a balm for the soul? If you're me, you bake a lot of bread. (If I was a professional baker, I'm certain I would have “bakers block” and be a prolific writer. ... though I do make a lot of dough.)

So here I am, a Writer (with a capital W). I'm sitting at my desk with my laptop to my left and my pad to my right, an assortment of pens in front of me on top of my journal, and I'm thinking to myself: What do I want to write about? Well, I definitely want it to be meaningful. And political. And important. And also good. Something new, something to broaden my horizons a bit... There's the inequity of wealth in this country and the Occupy Wall Street movement – I've marched a few times, I could write about that. Or there's the horror of being entangled in family court (I worked a day job there for a year, I have an insider's perspective). Or there's Africa and child soldiers and genocidal wars. The poor treatment of the lowest castes in India or the Hindu-Muslim riots (I am from India after all). I've always wanted to write about whales...

It's about at this point when I get up, move to the kitchen, and start tossing flour in a bowl to feed my pet yeast.

This may be controversial to say, but I am not convinced that plays change the world. I am not convinced that seeing a play makes anyone change the way they act towards other people. I cannot think of one single play I've seen that's changed my behavior about anything. I have seen plays that have made me think about slave labor in China, but I have not stopped buying the products that employ that labor. I have seen stories about immigrants, people with AIDS, and 30-something people with relationships issues – and I still have sympathy for those with AIDS, still believe in immigrant rights, and still think 30-somethings with white privilege who moan about life being hard are spoiled.

I don't think I have ever seen a play that has made me change the way I live. What I do think plays do is open our hearts to possibility, and this is no small thing. Because we are exposed to different people, human fallible people who struggle against overwhelming odds, we are moved, we are opened just enough... so that when a comparable life experience happens to us, we are in a place to receive it and to be changed by it. But make no mistake, it's the life experience that changes us, that changes the course of our life and of this world.

Writing is something I do, but I sometimes mistake it for who I am, for the most important part of me. When I'm sitting at my desk, I often think my greatest contribution to this world is the play that I have yet to write, the one that will change everything, the play that will make me famous and be taught in colleges around the country. But this is a mistake.

I once wrote a story about an architect who ended up homeless and living on the streets. He was loved by all who came into contact with him and he even changed the life of a young boy, giving him hope when there was none. Yet the homeless architect died thinking he was a failure.
I wrote the story, but I find myself learning that lesson over and over and over again. The best thing I have to offer this world is me, the plays are secondary. The play I write is a projection of how I see the world, a picture of what is possible – but it's me, this person writing this now, I am the virus that infects this world for good or ill, to spread rage or beauty. Do I want to spread self-loathing and despair (because I can't get past my writers block), or do I want to spread something else?

So this is my humble advice to other writers with writers block: Be a good writer, but be a better human being. What we write about is the human condition, but how tragic if we aren't fully living it. How tragic if all we can see is the script we are not writing and nothing else. Our characters aren't loved and remembered and embraced because they're Nobel Prize winners – they're loved because they are flawed and because they struggle, and they do so with others. That's life – the messiness of human relationships, the difficulty of figuring out how to be in this world when everyone is focused on what to do.

Every time I get writers block, I must die again to remember who I am. Over and over and over. It's like I have a very thick skull or something. How to let go of something I am grasping not with my hands, but with my very being – this sense that in order to be worthwhile, I must be successful? How ironic is life that in order to have something, we must let go of it.

If you will indulge me, I'll end in the manner of an old Sufi poet I'm fond of:

Deen says, go ahead, challenge God to a duel like I did. He'll knock you on your ass for sure, but He'll pick you up with a big, wet kiss.

Deen hopes you had a splendid Thanksgiving and ate lots of pie. His solo play, DRAW THE CIRCLE, will be produced at InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia) in early April 2012. For more info, please visit: deentheplaywright.weebly.com.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Sorrow, Depression, and Desolation in the American Theater, or How To Be a Sad Playwright in 10 Easy Steps

2011-11-16T12:59:00.000-08:00

By Don Nguyen, member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group.

Greetings. This is your unreliable narrator speaking. Right off the bat, I've already lied to you. You see, this post is titled "Sorrow, Depression, and Desolation in the American Theater, or How To Be a Sad Playwright in 10 Easy Steps." Yet this post is not limited to just the American Theater. This could very well apply to community theater in the Ukraine or children's theater in Switzerland. Also, there are only 5 steps. And they may not be so easy, depending on who you are.

Let me explain. Two weeks ago, on October 31st, I launched a website called sadplaywright.com based off of my semi-popular sad photo series (sad office and sad umbrella). This new website is a collection of sad playwright photos. Prior to launch, I urged all my fellow playwrights that I knew personally to submit their sad photos. The site started with just thirty photos and within two weeks it jumped to over one hundred playwright photos from all over the world. Playwrights from Russia, Prague, Norway, Scotland, England, Australia, and of course, the United States. Not only that, we've had over 5,300 visitors to the site!

But why would I want to be a sad playwright and how would that better my life?

I would, as any playwright worth their weight in gold, answer your question with another question: Why does Christopher Shinn want to be a sad playwright? Or Natalia Antonova from Moscow? Or Johan Herstad from Norway? Because we all are sad at any given moment in time. We are sad because we are human. But even more than that, why has sadplaywright.com become so popular amongst playwrights that it would cause them to come out in droves to submit their own sad photos? I think Sheila Callaghan said it best when she sent her photo in: "Thank god a venue exists in the world for playwrights to express their sadness publicly." You see, there is simply a need, and we as playwrights probably didn't even realize we needed it until it was there. Like Angry Birds.

Why are you so sad, Don?

Blame it all on Christopher Durang. Early in his career, he wrote a play called The Marriage of Bette and Boo, which in my opinion is one of the funniest saddest plays ever written. In it, he talks about the concept of laughing and crying and how they go hand in hand. That's the beauty of Durang's humor. He finds the funny in the sad, and the sad in the funny. Durang's sense of humor has enormously influenced my own work, be it plays, or sad photos of playwrights.

So, you're saying it's actually good to be sad?

I think sadness has gotten a bad rap, and I think it can actually be good for you. Even Joseph Forgas, a psychology professor from the University of New South Wales, found that being sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory. His study showed that people in a negative mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told. The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodating and ultimately more successful communication style.” See? Being sad actually helps playwrights to communicate better. Who wouldn't want that?

Again, why would I want to be a sad playwright and how would that better my life?

Because I believe sadness and happiness can't exist without the other. Do you really expect a playwright to not be sad? Why, when our profession is based on drama? And if we agree conflict is the basis of all drama, then we as dramatists are creatures of conflict. And conflict is sad. But in a good way. Even British philosopher John Stuart Mills claimed "it is better to be an unhappy Socrates than a contented pig."

Fine, so what are these five not so easy steps to being a sad playwright?

1. First, admit that you're a playwright. I don't mean to yourself. I mean to your friends, family, neighbors, boss, etc. You get extra points if you come out as a playwright at your high school reunion. But brace yourself as they give you "the look." You know the one. It's the same look people give when they smell bad cheese.

2. Admit that you sometimes feel sad. As I stated, there's nothing wrong with that.

3. Instead of wallowing in your sadness, hoping for something or someone to make it to go away, EMBRACE IT.

4. Take a picture of your sadness.

5. Share it publicly at sadplaywright.com/sad-submissions And know that by sharing your sadness, you are actually spreading happiness around the globe (via the internet). I'm not claiming sadplaywright.com will change the world or better your life, but it may very well make your day. And that does not make me sad.

Don Nguyen is a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group, The Civilians 2010 R&D Group and the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. His play "Red Flamboyant" was recently developed at the Ojai Playwrights Conference this past summer and he is currently working on "Sound: A Sign Language Play." For more information on Don, please visit his website: thenuge.com.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Craft Beer, Farm to Table, and Theater.

2011-11-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

By Aaron Wigdor Levy, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

I like beer. Probably a little too much. I spend a lot of time trying different beers and seeing what new styles breweries are releasing. If I find a beer I’ve never had before or a brewery I particularly like I could easily end up spending a little too much money on it. This whole beer thing has become a minor obsession of mine. So why is a member of the Emerging Writers Group writing about beer on the Public Theater Blog and what does it have to do with theater? A lot actually.

Most of the beer I drink would be categorized as craft beer. It’s made by small breweries that have a much different product and operate on a much different mentality than mass-produced commercial breweries like Budweiser and Miller. Fundamentally it’s still beer, but a wheat beer from a brewery like Sixpoint in Red Hook, Brooklyn is in no way comparable to a Bud Light. They’re technically the same thing, but completely different.

I see theater in the same way. It’s craft entertainment. Most people who go to the theater are looking for an entirely different experience than they'd get from a movie or TV show. It’s not to say one is better than the other; they’re just fundamentally different. Yes, they’re both forms of entertainment. You go to a theater and sit down with an audience to watch both, but they aren’t the same. And they shouldn’t be. Too often I see theater defining itself by what it’s not rather than what it is. Theater markets itself in the same way movies and television do. But it shouldn’t. Someone going to see a play is looking for an entirely different experience. They’re looking for a craft experience.

In the last few years there’s been a craft movement in the United States. It’s not just with beer. There’s an entire slow food movement based on regional cuisine. Farmer’s Markets have been popping up in more cities. Articles and blogs espouse the virtues of slowing down and finding out what we’ve lost in our go-go non-stop world. Old school butcher shops and barbers have popped up in trendy neighborhoods. Pickling and making soap is cool.

Why shouldn’t theater be included in this? So much of what I see in various craft movements are already in place in the theater world. A brewery is based in regional taste and pride. It’s outside the mainstream. Theater operates in the same way. Brewers come together to try to create their vision of a beer they want. It may be a lager or ale, a porter or a stout, but they’re trying to create the best beer they can. Breweries, like theater, mostly serve a local audience. They become a point of pride for that community. Theater should be the same. It’s a group of people creating something different outside of major corporate institutions in accordance with their own taste and style. Maybe producers think that they have to draw their audience away from television and film. But the moment they set themselves in direct competition with TV and film they miss what makes theater different. How about we, as theater artists, remember that.

Aaron Wigdor Levy is a member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group and holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU. His plays include This is Not a Time Bomb, The Ball Player and Hunky Dory and have been developed or produced at The Public, The New Group, The Lark, and The Source Theater Festival.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Manifest Destiny’s My Co-Pilot or Who Gets to Write Indian Plays

2011-11-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

By Vickie Ramirez, member of the 2009 Emerging Writers Group

I’m about to lose a lot of friends with this one but here we go!

Most Indian* people believe that only Native writers should write about Indians. This applies to plays, films, literature and television. I’m about to get in serious trouble when I say, with qualification….I’m not one of them.

There are many reasons why Indian people reject the idea of outsiders telling our stories. We were aggressively colonized, Nations were eradicated, populations decimated and many lost tribal lands, languages, traditions and identity. Lest you think that I’m whining about the past, I would like to remind you that the residential schools, famed for their policy of “Kill the Indian and Save the Man,” were active until 1969. Children were taken from their homes, hair was cut and they were beaten if they showed signs of “Indianness” (e.g. speaking their language, or practicing ceremonies, etc.). Many of these kids are still very alive and part of modern Native society. My own people, the Haudenosaunee, still have clashes with both the Canadian and U.S. governments over land claims. When I say clashes, I’m talking about physical confrontations with armed government troops. The most recent of these clashes happened in 2009*. Last year, our lovely Mayor Bloomberg suggested that Governor Patterson “get a cowboy hat and a shotgun” to explain the law of the land to the Seneca Nation. Colonialism is a very tangible and immediate reality for all of us.

When a member of an invader culture picks up a pen to write about Indians, it gets very dangerous very quickly. The pen IS mightier than the sword and we know this because storytelling has a long-standing and revered place in our societies. It’s hard not to feel under attack when others pick up a pen in our name. Especially as many folks cherry pick the parts they like (ceremonies and way-cool buckskin accessories) and forget about the parts they don’t like (poverty, racism, highest suicide rate of any ethnic group in the Americas, etc.) Insulting pieces (Sitting Bull in Annie Get Your Gun) have evolved into paternalistic (Christopher Seldon’s adaption of Black Elk Speaks), prop-like (Johanna in August, Osage County) or historically inaccurate and offensive (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson). We’re like a seasoning – if you want a little tragic flair, a little “magical” flair, toss in a little bit of NDN.

So why do I believe its okay for non-Indians to write Native plays? Well, each of the above-mentioned plays inspired plays to answer them. The pantheon of Native plays is richer for the dialogue. This is the essential nature of theater, is it not? It’s how I started writing.

I would go to “Native plays” and not recognize anyone. I started writing because I wanted my people to have a chance to speak. I have some nameless writer with very little awareness about Native culture to thank for this.

I’ve written white characters. I’ve written black characters. I probably got it wrong, but they’re out there. I have yet to write a Latino, Arab or Asian character but if their voices creep up in my head, I’m gonna write ‘em too. I don’t expect any other playwright to do otherwise. Maybe it is my traditions but I believe artists are given their stories the way they are for a reason. Whether “Good Mind” or “Bad Mind” inspires you, your play is there to shed light on the human condition. We can’t be afraid to offend, nor can we be afraid to be offended.

However, I’m not saying call yourself “Running Deer” and you too, can write a Native play! I’m saying if you write a Native play – be ready. We will respond.

Sherman Alexie said it best:

“Well, artists can follow whatever path they want to, but they should also realize that they’re gonna be held to close scrutiny by the people they’re [making] work about. They have to expect it, but it also should be seen as what it is. When non-Natives write about Natives, that’s colonial literature. It can be great literature…it can be wonderful, amazing, but it’s still colonial literature…I think the United States forgets it colonized the Native Americans, and you know, I should say, by and large, it’s white liberals that forget that. I think white conservatives are happy they colonized Native Americans, but white liberals forget that and don’t think of themselves as being colonial.”

Let’s see if the dialogue can flow both ways.

*Let me apologize, I have to lose the “P.C.” label – I have no emotional connection to the phrase “Native American” so I find it difficult to use when I’m writing
* See Seaway Bridge dispute and Caledonia/Six Nations land claim dispute

Vickie Ramirez is a Tuscarora playwright,a member of the Emerging Writer’s Group 2009 and a member of Amerinda Theater and Chukalokoli Native Theater ensemble. Her play SMOKE, will be produced in April 2012 by Mixed Phoenix Theater Group in New York City.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

They Were The Ones

2011-10-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

By Akin Salawu, member of 2008 Emerging Writers Group

Another sobering 2 hour depiction of yet another crime against humanity allows us all to shake our heads and feel superior as lights fade on actor friends whose Law & Order under 5s were grossly overlooked by the Emmys.

20something guy and 20something girl banter over how they are not right for each other and then lights go down on 3 hours of masturbatory but witty repartee covering the confusion of love and being an adult.

Lights fade on 3 hours of a spooge covered one-person-show that never bothered to be about anything other than that one actor on stage.

We’ve all seen and read these new plays many times and I’ve certainly written variations of these old standards. Haven’t you? While we are all technically proficient craftsmen (& women), most new plays I’ve come across in the past few years are quite underwhelming.

We gripe about the lack of new plays being produced, but I wonder if we are not aspiring to create work that is so piercing that it warrants a theater taking a chance on. If we are honest, our generation of emerging playwrights is fairly underwhelming.

Are we just aspiring to be commercial?
Are we aspiring to be socially acceptable?
Are we aspiring to be digestible?
Are we aspiring to be accessible?
Am I just projecting?

Is it really enough to just be saying something in a world being raped by chaos? Artists have got to be doing something; or at the very least trying to do something.

When you tell someone a joke you have 2 objectives:
1. You want them to be affected in some way.
2. You want your contribution to the dialogue to somehow alter the dialogue.

While there are certainly plays that do aspire to have an impact & are part of some dialogue, a lot of plays fall into that “it’s good because I made it” category.

Am I the only one feeling as though most new plays are page after page of grand scale cold busting. (In Central New Jersey - and I think most everywhere else – cold busting someone is calling them out on their shit or putting them down.)

It’s like we’re all on the playground at recess applauding the kid with the best witty cold busting comebacks. Could it be that we are simply following the wave that has newscasters and reality TV stars vying to be the best cold buster? If we are part of this wave, it is that much more urgent that we theater artists break away from the tide and offer up some vision.

Where would the world be if instead of saying, “I have a dream”, Martin Luther King had said, “I’ve some witty repartee”?

Albert Camus has this gorgeous quote:

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

What if we aspired to awaken that light on the faces surrounding us?

One Public Theater EWG reading quite succinctly awakened a light in me. It was a story that showed each of us in the audience something about ourselves. It lit that inner candle every human being prays never goes out.

And that’s why we go to the theater. We go to the theater because we sense there is something more to us. And we sense that artists will help us stroke that itty bitty flame.

Imagine if that was what set this generation of “emerging writers” apart from the pack? They were Bat-Shit-Crazy Cold Busting Champions of Witty Repartee, but…

…they were also the ones.

The ones who flicked the switch.

The ones who opened the window.

The ones who stroked the flame.

The ones who awakened that light…

Akin Salawu revised his EWG play I Stand Corrected in Rising Circle Theater's InkTank Playlabs. Akin is currently working on a new stageplay about sex trafficking in New Jersey and a screenplay loosely based on the experiences of this brilliant & revolutionary doctor up at Harvard. Akin publicly endorses 5AM bike rides, Sabon bath salts, & honest mistakes.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Colorblind Casting or Color-Consciousness?

2011-10-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

By Dominique Morisseau, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

It’s time for an Equity Principal Audition (otherwise known as an EPA) for a new play. Actors of color are skimming the breakdowns. They see something like the following:

KAREN – Black, Latino, or Asian woman, 35, quiet, shy, and a loving heart.

All of the Black, Latino, and Asian women from their 20’s through their 50’s strongly consider attending (unless they’re already among the masses who have completely given up on EPAs, and with good reason. It’s gotten them little to no results.)

Now, rewind. Let’s do that again. EPA for a new play. Actors of color are skimming the breakdowns. They see something like the following:

KAREN – 35-year old woman, quiet, shy, and a loving heart.

Most of the Black, Latino, and Asian women from their 20’s through their 50’s will not consider attending that EPA (even if they are not among the masses who have given up on them completely).

Why? Because there is an un-spoken rule in the theater that no one is talking about. Character descriptions in plays, which may eventually be shared in casting breakdowns, are coding a tone of racial inequality in the theater. Unless race is specified, we actors of color (yes, I am also one of them) know that we are most-likely not going to be seriously considered for the role, because no racial specification usually translates to “white”.

I mentioned this to my fellow EWG playwrights recently and there was an uproar in the room. Half of them couldn’t believe it. The other half could and had just never considered it before.

Am I jumping off the deep end here? Making a blanket accusation? You may think so. But I ask you to consider where there may be truth in this claim. Think about the casting breakdowns you see. (If you rarely see a breakdown, try skimming through some on the various casting websites.) Is race specified? And if not, then why are those racially un-specific characters often cast white? Does that not subconsciously send a message that the “everyman” is white? Is that not some un-intentional (or intentional- you be the judge) upholding of race privilege?

I challenge my playwriting peers to think about the ways in which we are describing characters. How specific are you in your descriptions? If I am writing a play about my community in Detroit, I’m crystal clear about who those people are and what they look and sound like. Therefore, my descriptions are often going to indicate “Black man” or “Black woman”. If you are basing your character off of a woman from a predominately white community, do you have a preference for her race? If so, be unafraid to own that. If your character is white in your mind and that’s what you intend, I don’t think there is any shame in that. We are writing real people, after all. I say, OWN it. Could it not encourage playwrights to be clear and specific about the kind of people they are writing? Distinguish the race of the character. Think about their speech and their dialogue. Is it reflective of a particular cultural rhythm? Or is it intentionally neutral? And if the character is truly not any particular race, try noting your descriptions something like this:

KAREN- Any Race. 35 year old woman, quiet, shy, and loving heart.

See what may happen. Let that get into the casting breakdown. See if you get a different pool of actors at your audition. If a white character is envisioned, then state it in the breakdown, just as people of color are specified. If the race is truly any race, then let’s stop making the unspoken “everyman or everywoman” white. And then strongly consider allowing the casting to reflect the diversity of the true everyman/woman.

If theaters and its practitioners are charged to “specify race” rather than “hide from race”, then we will all communally be responsible for acknowledging some major racial disparities in the theater. It will be blaring in Black and White (no pun intended) that a theater is or is not supporting actors of color in the work that they are producing on their stages. It will be undeniable because the breakdowns will show it. And if we are sincere in the EOE statements at the bottom of casting calls that state “We do not discriminate based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc”, then let’s put some real action into standing behind that statement.

We are all a part of this continuum of theater, and ensuring that it reflects the accuracies of the changing world around us is our collective responsibility. In NYC especially, I do not know of one place that you will find a community of exclusively white people that do not have to engage on any work or play level with people of color. Playwrights, let’s write the truth of the world around us, and put it in ink, so that the rest of the theater community can respond in-kind.

Dominique Morisseau is a member of the 2011 EWG and the Women's Project Playwright's Lab and is a fellow in the 2011-2012 Lark Playwrights Workshop. She is currently developing a three-play cycle on her beloved hometown of Detroit. The first of the three, DETROIT '67, received a reading in the Public EWG Spotlight Series and the 2011 Lark Playwrights' Week. She was also a runner-up for the 2011 Princess Grace Award. dominiquemorisseau@yahoo.com / or catch her on Facebook!

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Weighing in on Dower vs. Brooks

2011-10-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

By Sevan Kaloustian Greene, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

Hot on the heels of starting this blog another wildfire of conversation has sparked over on the Arena Stage's blog stemming from a panel discussion at the PlayPenn Conference led by David Dower in which Hal Brooks, a well-established director, wagged his finger over the issue of Arena's elimination of their open submission policy.

At the heart of Dower's argument is that, essentially, open submission policies are pointless because of the lack of manpower to read through and properly respond to all the scripts coming in. Instead, Arena has decided to continue and pursue relationships with playwrights they already know or those that are recommended to them. He goes into further detail in his post "Dear Hal Brooks."

Brooks quite astutely calls Dower on the holes in the argument in his response where he quite rightly asks: Then how do we find the emerging and new voices? He provides airtight anecdotes and arguments over the need to find and support the next voices of the stage page.

This is exactly the kind of issue/debate I wanted the EWG section of this blog to be around for. It's an important, even vital, issue for emerging playwrights. It's essential that we not only respond to the Arena postings (and please feel free to share your thoughts here as well), but also that we spread this conversation because all people in the business should have an opinion about this.

Hop on over to the Arena blog, check out what Dower and Brooks have to say, comment, spread the word. Have an opinion and make it known - on this blog or that one - otherwise, things won't change.

A Pre-Mid-Career Playwright's Response to David and Hal

By Chris Cragin, member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group

Is a theater company’s value determined by the quality of work they produce, or by their contribution to the artistic growth and development of the American Theater? If the former is true, a theater that only produces work by established and mid-career writers, but does it well, is valuable because of the inspiration and creative engagement it offers its audiences. If the latter is true, then a theater’s ability to discover, nurture, and deliver new voices to the dialogue of American Theater will determine its lasting impact. I’m not a theater historian. You tell me.

As a playwright, I appreciate the transparency of David Dower’s new closed submissions policy at Arena Stage. Personally, if no one on the artistic staff of a theater is going to read my work, I would rather redirect my submission efforts elsewhere. Why would I waste time trying to muscle my work into an impenetrable institution when there are smaller theater companies chomping at the bit to align themselves with a playwright they believe has the fresh talent and drive to rise to the top?

The needy artist in me loves Hal Brooks’ passion for opening the American Theater’s kingdom gates to new voices, new writers. Thank God for directors who get a thrill from the grueling process of directing new plays. Where would any of us be without them?!

When I write plays, I don’t think about what they will contribute to American Theater, so perhaps I shouldn’t hold this same standard to producing organizations. I write stories that move me, change me, open up some hidden part of my soul. Why shouldn’t producers be allowed this same pleasure? I can only offer that part of what allows me to find those gems that become my plays is a certain amount of openness, a belief that gems can appear in the most unlikely places. If I only searched for gems in jewelry stores, I doubt I would ever find anything unique and special enough to write a play about. Theater is about the delight of surprise. That’s what makes the magic.

Chris Cragin is a 2008 member of the EWG. Her play, A GIRL NAMED ESTHER (developed with Emily Zemple and Jonathan Roberts) is opening in Baltimore this fall at the E.M.P. Collective's new multi-media performance space.

Cinderella Solutions

By Pia Wilson, member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group

I am Cinderella. Sort of. I had self-produced a play and been involved in a few small festivals before I applied to The Public’s Emerging Writers Group. I was looking at The Public’s website because in my naiveté, I thought The Public would just love to produce the play I was about to finish. It was a great, political play, right up their alley. I thought they’d read it, love it, produce it, and I’d go down in the annals of playwriting history. Then, I saw a blurb about the inaugural EWG, and I thought it’d be easier to get into the group than to get The Public to produce my play outright. Again, naive.

My references for my application: my best friend (who also happened to be my supervisor at work) and a fellow self-producing playwright (because I figured I needed to have someone theatrical as a reference). Still, I got into the group (and I beat out more than 700 other applicants to do it)! I didn’t have real connections, just hope and a really good play. Thank goodness The Public and Time Warner wanted to develop a program that gave access writers who didn’t have traditional access to the broader theater world. Thank goodness they had an open submission policy. Thank goodness I didn’t have to be vetted by developmental conferences and readings and the myriad of other things I only learned about as I entered the inside of the theatrical caste system.

I was one of the great unwashed playwrights. That’s why I get so disappointed when I hear about exclusionary policies at theaters. The latest disappointment came when reading about Arena’s closed submission policy. It’s exclusionary and a step in the wrong direction.

Here’s an idea that is revolutionary in its simplicity: the purpose of theaters (big and small) is to present theatrical works of merit on the stage for an audience. That’s it. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “What about making money?” What about it? Would a theater that existed solely on the gifts of one mega-patron and never sold tickets be any less of a theater than one that earns money through more traditional manners? No, not as long as they presented theatrical works of merit to an audience. Would a theater that never presented a single play and instead held a bazaar every day and twice on Sundays be less of a theater? Yes. It wouldn’t be a theater at all but rather a theater-like edifice.

So, if a theater’s sole purpose is to present artistic works of merit, then logic would dictate that finding the best new work would be an imperative, not a nuisance. It would also seem to dictate using as many avenues as possible to find fresh, intelligent, new work.

If I was looking for all the diamonds in the world, I wouldn’t start at the diamond mines. Those diamonds are easy to find; everybody knows where those are. By searching high and low in strange places, by letting communities know I was on the lookout for rocks, sure, I’d get a lot of worthless rabble, but I would also get the shining stones I was seeking. I’d take those stones and combine them with some I found in the diamond mines, and boy, would I be rich!

Theaters need to invest in different systems for finding new work. Scouting at smaller venues is great. Combine that with reading submissions, talking to communities, competitions, theater circuses, playwright wrestling matches, whatever it takes ...

Perhaps instead of shutting submission down, a better solution would be to ask for more. Perhaps we need a new centralized, national submission center as big as the library of Alexandria where every play is read and evaluated. Perhaps we need to have a theatrical congress that meets and exchanges information about exciting new plays that have come into their mailboxes, been put up in community centers or the local pubs or favorite indie theaters.

Let’s do something new.

I know it is hard to divest from the status quo, especially when you benefit most from it. But artistic directors needs to invest in ideas, not just friends of friends or the chosen few. We need to end the culture of scarcity we have and add some place settings to the table. Let’s innovate. Let’s diversify. Let’s invite the barbarians into the house.

It’s not easy reading piles and piles of plays. But if it is your purpose to present artistic works (and you haven’t decided to only present plays from 30 years ago or longer), then reading plays needs to be a higher priority. Systems are invented all the time. It’s not enough to say something is difficult and give up on it.

What would have happened if Cinderella’s fairy godmother had closed her wish submission policy? There would have been one lame ball, and the prince would have married one of the town’s accepted socialites. It could be a happy ending ... sort of.

Pia Wilson is a member of the inaugural Emerging Writers Group, and her first book report was on Cinderella.

Why We Matter

By Sevan Kaloustian Greene, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group

Look, let's be real, reading plays is not always fun because there are a plethora of less-than-ideal writers and plays out there (or to be blunt, shitty writing). I've been a reader for a couple of different programs and I have the utmost respect for literary managers and their departments. I do not envy their jobs because it truly has to be a labor of love. I've walked through the Public Theater halls enough times to be astounded by the sheer volume of scripts that have been read and are waiting on the docket. Sure, it's a lot easier to go to the script that a peer recommends. I get that logic; it helps weed through the chafe. But if all we do is support established playwrights with a short eye to upcoming ones then we are forcing theatre into a vapid stagnation.

I'm a new voice in every single way. I came to NYC as a professional actor and very accidentally fell into playwriting. I was not known as a playwright and had no street cred as one when I was accepted into the EWG program. But they saw something there in my neophyte little play (ugly writing warts and all) and took a vested interest in getting to know me and develop me as a writer. Very few people do that. Our business is one of relationships; it has to be. With an overabundance of actors, directors, and writers it's hard to figure out who has the goods without feeling like we are wasting our time, so I get the desire to cut out the extra time and just work on jumping on previously built bridges.

But there has to be a balance of some kind. Most new playwrights, look to regional theatres and new play programs to cut their teeth and to get their work out there. In New York it's become a Sisyphean task to get produced or recognized without a celebrity actor or director attached or without direct heavenly intervention. Most of the exciting new work is being done off-Broadway (thought a little less each day), off-off-Broadway, and in regional theatres where the fetishism of gimmicky theatre has not reached.

Yes, there are a lot of new playwrights popping up every day, but taking the time to look through and find those gems has to be worthwhile. How else will we ride the zeitgeist of theatrical revolutions if we keep bringing the old war horses out repeatedly? God knows I have an uphill climb as an emerging playwright who is also a playwright of color, but it would certainly make it a little easier if I knew that I could rely on relationships AND programs that are seriously interested in meeting someone they have no awareness of at all.

Sevan, an NYC actor-playwright, is a 2011 EWG member. And he's a foreigner. His plays babel, Doon,Say Something and Narrow Daylight will have readings this fall. For more info: www.sevangreene.com.

The Emerging Writers Group is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

My Foray Into the World of the Rock Musical and What it Did to Me

2011-10-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

By Chris Cragin, member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group

I am a playwright for a reason. My talent is words, story, character. I took ten years of piano, two years of guitar, four years of private voice, and I never achieved above average competence in any of them. From this I had long concluded that I should limit my writing to straight plays. But then I found out that my favorite singer/songwriter, Don Chaffer, was looking for a book writer to collaborate with him on a rock musical, and before I could talk myself out of it I had vigorously thrown my musically incompetent hat into the rock musical ring. Five minutes into our first creative session I was struck with the painful awareness--Don and I were speaking completely different languages. Don would offer, "you know it's like early eighties funk meets Eastern European electronica." I would reply, "that sounds great," not knowing what the hell he was talking about. We continued like this for over a year.

It was fun, though. We discovered that for all our differences, philosophically we had a lot in common, which allowed us to move forward quickly on story and character. But when we talked craft there remained a chasm of artistic form, lingo, and process between us. We both found that in order to bridge that chasm we would have to trust each other's artistic instincts. I surmise that this was easier for me, Don's fan of over a decade, than for him, the fanee.

For example, I sent Don the first draft of our climactic scene in which Cowboy Jesus, (an odd sort of God figure handed down to Danderhauler, our protagonist, by his eccentric alcoholic father), challenges Danderhauler to let him dig out the bullet in Dan's stomach with a "rusty ole pair of pliers." "Do you want me to leave it in, or dig it out?" Cowboy Jesus asks him somewhat unsympathetically. On instinct, Don wrote a song to replace this dialogue. He sent me the lyrics and a demo. I thought they were brilliant--except for the second verse which detailed the three steps to putting down a dog. I couldn't, for the life of me, understand why Cowboy Jesus was talking about putting a dog down in what could be the last few seconds of our protagonist's life and so I suggested Don might consider re-writing the second verse. Don affirmed my confusion but offered that the digression was intentional and potentially great if I could properly set it up with dialogue. So, I had a chat with Cowboy Jesus and here is what he and I came up with.

COWBOY JESUS
You want me to dig it out or leave it in?

DANDERHAULER
Huh?

COWBOY JESUS
The bullet.

DANDERHAULER
You mean with that rusty old pair of pliers
there?

COWBOY JESUS
Only thing I could find. Sorry.

DANDERHAULER
Will I live? If you do it?

COWBOY JESUS
WELL THAT'S A FUNNY QUESTION WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, ISN'T
IT?
CAUSE LIFE SEEMS LONG WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG BUT YOU GET OLDER
AND IT STARTS MOVIN' LICKETY SPLIT
YOU START OFF FEELIN' LIKE YOU GOT ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
JUST TO SIT AROUND AND THINK
BUT THEN IT SUDDENLY SEEMS IT PASSED YOU BY
BEFORE YOU EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO BLINK
THIS IS JUST ASHES TO ASHES
THIS IS JUST ALL FALL DOWN
SO DO YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE IT IN
OR DO YOU WANT ME TO DIG IT OUT?

DANDERHAULER
What I mean is, I'm wonderin' if you've ever
done anything like this before?

COWBOY JESUS
You mean like a doctor?

DANDERHAULER
Exactly.

COWBOY JESUS
Well, no. But I did have to put down a dog
once.

COWBOY JESUS (cont'd)
THERE'S ONLY THREE THINGS THAT YOU NEED BEFORE YOU PUT AN OLD
DOG SIX FEET DEEP
ONE YOU GOTTA GET SOMETHING THAT'LL TAKE A POOCH FROM WIDE
AWAKE TO SOUND ASLEEP
TWO, YOU GOTTA GET SOMETHING THAT'LL STOP THE HEART FROM BOOM
BOOM-BOOMIN' LIKE A BIG BASS DRUM
AND THREE YOU GOTTA GET SOMETHING THAT'LL MAKE THE BODY RELAX
SO THE MUSCLES DON'T SEIZE AGAINST THE REAPER WHEN HE COMES
THIS IS JUST ASHES TO ASHES
THIS IS JUST ALL FALL DOWN
SO DO YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE IT IN
OR DO YOU WANT ME TO DIG IT OUT?

As I wrote that scene, Cowboy Jesus evolved into a character that is both utterly simple and utterly complex. This became his defining characteristic.

Don and I's musical, SON OF A GUN, (with additional music by Don's insanely talented wife Lori Chaffer), has now been in development for about three years. It was given an initial stage reading through a grant from The Drama League, a subsequent abridged concert reading at Joe's Pub, and further developed at the Eugene O'Neill National Music Theater Conference this past summer.

The process of collaborating with Don and Lori on SON OF A GUN fulfilled artistic cravings I never knew I had. Granted, I was lucky. My collaborators were smarter, more gifted, and more experienced in their field (rock music) than I was in my own. But it wasn't just about my pride in the quality of work we produced together. Working with a songwriter, a really good songwriter, changed, or maybe I should say enhanced, my own writing process.

Good songwriters are microscopically precise, yet mysteriously indirect. They understand the power of subtext because their music breathes in it. The space between the words rises and falls as much or more than the spoken language. And there is a yearning in music--at least in Don's and Lori's music--a reach, and occasionally a leap or even a fall, that extends beyond words, beyond image. I'm not saying this doesn't exist in plays without music, it's there in the brilliant ones. I'm just saying that collaborating with musicians challenged me to dig deeper into the human heart and mind, and reminded me that there is an entire universe of the soul that exists without words. That universe can be captured, at least fleetingly. And it can transcend the limits of my own creativity.

Chris Cragin is a 2008 member of the EWG. Her play, A GIRL NAMED ESTHER (developed with Emily Zemple and Jonathan Roberts) is opening in Baltimore this fall at the E.M.P. Collective's new multi-media performance space.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

On Creating Enchantment or Hamlet and Pork Rinds

2011-10-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

By Pia Wilson, member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group

My grandmother was sitting on one of the hard wood pews at little Canaan Baptist Church in Fayette, Alabama. The church secretary was reading the sick list, asking the congregation to lift up prayers for health on behalf of each member mentioned. As the secretary rattled off one name – Bob Hughes – my grandmother felt the flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. She couldn’t imagine who would put this man on the list. Bob Hughes was not a member of Canaan Baptist Church. More importantly, Bob wasn’t a real person: he was a character on a soap opera.

That’s the power of character.

As a playwright, my aim is always to write incredible characters that carry on in people’s consciousness. I believe vivid, 3-dimensional characters bring a play to life and give us better insight into humanity. They are at the center of great plays – any impactful art, really – and the artist’s number one task is figuring out just how to create powerful, lasting characters.

I like to ask myself a series of questions about a character, like “Where is the character right now?” or “What is the character’s favorite childhood memory?” And once I answer those questions, I ask deeper questions, based on what I discovered. Let’s say the character’s favorite food is pork rinds, the next question I’d ask is “Why is the character’s favorite food pork rinds?” Maybe the answer is that the character’s grandfather would let her teethe on hard cracklings when she was little, and the hard pork rinds she gets from the bodega around the corner from her apartment in Williamsburg are the closest approximations she can find to the homemade, salty treats she had when she was knee-high to a bullfrog.

The reason for all the questions is simple in my mind: to create complexity. Memorable characters are hardly ever simple people. If Hamlet was just a good, ole boy, never meaning no harm, I doubt his namesake play would be so popular hundreds of years after its creation. Every time we see HAMLET, we have the opportunity to see a new aspect to the Prince’s character.

Great characters are relatable too. Not many of us can be the Prince of Denmark but all of us know what it’s like to grieve a loved one. Finally, great characters are clear in goal. Hamlet wants to avenge his father’s murder. He hems and haws about what action to take, but he knows what he wants.

Did I say finally? Because there are other things that contribute to the creation of a standout character. Great characters also have:
•Well-drawn backgrounds
•Distinct speech
•Flaws

One of my favorite quotes from Blanche Dubois is, “Oh look, we have created enchantment.” That’s how I like to feel when I’ve typed “End of Play,” after a long journey with the characters I’ve listened to, argued with, loved, and maybe even hated for weeks on end.

Then there’s that secret dream of having a character of mine inspire a call to prayer.

Pia Wilson is a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group. She does like pork rinds but does not live anywhere near Brooklyn. Her short play, TURNING THE GLASS AROUND, is a finalist for the 2011 Heideman Award. www.piawilson.com

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights. The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

Introducing The Emerging Writers Group Blog Series

2011-09-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

By Sevan Kaloustian Greene, member of the 2011 Emerging Writers Group.

They (whoever the self-appointed tech-pundit naysayers are right now) say blogs are dead. A form on its way out the door - prone to a quicker extinction than the dinos. But I disagree.

Despite the overflow of armchair critics blog spotting their way through our modern society, there are a few gems in cyberspace that actually create and contribute to discussions whether they be political, artistic, or about the latest tiff between the Real Housewives. Blogs are important. They are our contemporary Socratic circles that extend to all corners of the globe. They can institute change, report news faster than most media outlets, and allow for a self-entitled space where people feel free to say whatever they want.

Halfway through my tenure as a 2011 EWG writer, I realized that we didn't have a blog and found it odd. Having talked with many of my group's writers, as well as alums, I found that our conversations were rich, heated, and honest. Sure, we sometimes just whined about the current state of theater (inclusive of playwriting), and there was a lot of tipsy commiserating about rejection letters, but we were discussing important topics. Lest I leave an impression that we were like grad students hanging out at the local dive talking about Proust, we also talked about the Real Housewives on occasion.

What really sparked my drive for this blog was the Matt Smart post on Howlround which started a wildfire of discussions on that blog as well as playwrights' personal blogs. I was amazed by the range of responses and the kinds of discussions it generated. And I thought - that's what we're missing.

Playwriting, for the most part, happens in a vacuum. We sit, we write, we sometime share, but we rarely sit and talk about our processes or our business - at least not as frequently and, often, as openly as other artists in the industry. But when we do it's a maelstrom of creativity, intellect, and passion. I only wished it happened more often. I brought the idea to the powers-that-be and they happily opened the doors to our own little space on the Public Theater Blog where we could let our brain cells play while offering a glimpse behind-the-curtains to theater audiences.

It's important to make these conversations - dare I say it - public because they won't do any good if they only happen in our little circles. We should be compelled to allow audiences into our world. To share what we feel works and doesn't work in this business based on our experiences. To respond to issues raised by other blogs and writers. To expose, as it were, the inner workings of what being a playwright is like. And, sometimes, to just bitch about things that annoy us. My hope is that the EWG blog sparks conversations, makes people ask questions, and make changes, however small.

The EWG writers are a ridiculously diverse group from a wide demographic range. Some of us went to name schools, some didn’t major in theatre or writing, and some never even graduated. There are no commonalities in life experiences and upbringing. And of the 33 writers not one's style or bag is the same as another.

What I hope this blog does is put a little power into the playwright's hand without the need for a power struggle. Though we may write the words, as emerging playwrights we often play backseat rider to directors, producers, casting directors, and actors. We feel the need to staunch our urge to speak because we are worried about being the problem child in an industry where just getting a reading can be a trial by fire. We often forget that we do wield some power as the creator of whole lives, worlds and universes.

This blog is a remedy of sorts. A chance for us to talk. A chance for you to hear. A chance for a revitalization of an art form and an industry that we all have a deep love and affection for. So I invite you to read, to invite others to visit, to contribute to the conversations, and to be unabashedly and unapologetically honest in your responses to what we have to say. The EWG writers have arrived - and we have something to say to you.

Sevan, an NYC actor-playwright, is a 2011 EWG member. And he's a foreigner. His plays babel, Doon,Say Something and Narrow Daylight will have readings this fall. For more info: www.sevangreene.com.

This post is part of a weekly series from the Emerging Writers Group community of playwrights.The EWG is two-year playwriting fellowship at The Public Theater seeking to target playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights.

The Emerging Writers Group Spotlight Series

2011-05-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

By Marianne Broome. Marianne is a literary intern at The Public Theater.

Many people think about playwriting as a solitary endeavor. A writer sits alone at a computer and creates a play, before sending it off to various theaters in hopes of obtaining a staged reading or production. The Public Theater created the Emerging Writers Group to provide space for a community of writers to build and share their work in a collective. Now in its third cycle, the EWG gives eleven young playwrights the opportunity to make The Public their creative home for two years. The writers gather at the theater for dinner every other week to read and discuss their work. Any other time they can be found around the office, working on the computers, using the copiers, or meeting with staff members about their plays and for career development advice and assistance. Throughout June, the Public will host the EWG Spotlight Series, a free reading series where each writer presents a new play they have been developing with the group for over a year.

Liz Frankel, the Literary Manager at the Public, runs the EWG program and explains, “The Spotlight Series is effectively a big coming-out party for the writers. This is a time when they will have the opportunity to showcase their work to literary managers, agents, and members of the New York theater community. After spending so much time writing with each other, now is the time when these writers get to go on the radar of the entire industry.”

Current EWG member, Dominique Morisseau, recently reflected, "I never thought I would work so long on a piece, but I see how much my work has grown, given the time and opportunity for trial and error in my writing. It will definitely feel good to get my play in front of other people. To see how the audience responds is a great way to gain a fresh perspective on what works and what doesn’t."

Besides working on their own plays, the writers read and give feedback on each other’s work throughout the year. Through this process, they have developed a personal investment in each other’s work. Current member Laura Marks explains, "I feel like we've been each other's personal trainers throughout this process. The group is clearly passionate about the collective work."

Dominique says, "I really like how we know each other's voice and know how to listen to each other's work. I understand the true unique gifts people have as writers. When you feel like you’ve laid a handprint on someone else's play, it makes it all the more exciting to see their work go up."

Characters in these plays range from Cuban drag queens to lesbian crickets, and settings include Detroit during the Motown craze and contemporary rural Appalachia. Some of these pieces feature life-sized puppets and live musicians. The plays included in the series are almost as diverse as the writers themselves! Jocelyn Prince, the Artistic Associate at the Public, works closely with the EWG writers. She also coordinated 70 script readers and over 350 scripts in running the selection process for the current group. Jocelyn comments, “The plays that were selected stood out as great examples of writing but the playwrights themselves were also very compelling as people. My favorite part of being involved with the EWG is sitting around a table of writers with such wildly different backgrounds as they break bread together and share work that is so personal to who they are, their lives, and their family histories. It’s amazing to watch the relationships that form between the writers, which, as we’ve seen from previous groups, are long lasting. The community building aspect of the EWG is what makes it so special.”

Members of the artistic and administrative staff here at The Public have been planning for months to make sure each reading is a success. One of Liz Frankel’s main tasks in preparing for the Spotlight Series is to match each script and playwright with the perfect director. “I start by thinking if there’re directors who have done similar work or who I feel would get along well with a writer. If a writer has a director they’ve always dreamed of working with or a director with whom they have an established relationship, I also take that into consideration. For the Spotlight Series, we often look for directors whom the writers might not necessarily get a chance to collaborate with at this point in their careers, without The Public reaching out to them.”

Eric Louie, Director of Special Projects, is producing the Spotlight Series. His job is to tackle all the nuts and bolts, coordinating between departments to make sure everything goes smoothly and every writer gets the most out of the experience. For example, he works with the Marketing Department to publicize the readings. He facilitates communication between the Casting Department and the writers, so they stay involved in who’s cast in their plays. He also maintains RSVP lists, making sure anyone with a potential interest in these writers and plays is encouraged to attend.

Eric is also charged with preparing the space, a unique challenge this year. He explains, "Normally we have five operating theaters at the Public, but since we’re in the midst of renovations, their status is constantly changing. Fortunately, sprinkler system installations in the Martinson were moving ahead of schedule, so we are able to hold all of the readings there. The writers were especially happy since it’s the same space we used for An Evening of Excepts from their new plays in April.”

Eric is also planning receptions that will be held on the stage immediately following each reading. He explains., “Not only are the receptions a chance for us to celebrate the writers, but they also create a forum for immediate feedback on their work, as well as a chance for them to network with members of the industry who attend.”

The Spotlight Series is not only a milestone for the EWG writers but a proud moment for everyone here at The Public who has gotten a chance to know this incredible group. We hope you will join us in June to meet these amazing playwrights.

Photo by Zach DeZon.

Shakespeare's Birthday Giveaway Winners Announced!

2011-05-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

In honor of William Shakespeare's birthday last month, fans far and wide wrote couplets and sonnets to the Bard in the hopes of winning tickets to the Opening Night performance of Shakespeare in the Park. We received so many wonderful submissions that it was difficult to choose a winner... so we chose three!

Congratulations to Gary Cabana, winner of two tickets to the Opening Night performance of MEASURE FOR MEASURE, and to the runners up, Alan Steele and Ryan McCurdy, who receive tickets to a preview performance of Shakespeare in the Park! Check out their winning entries below:

Shakespearians UNITE, join'd cheek by jowl,
To wake dozing drones with your Birthday howl!
- Gary Cabana

On the occasion of your blessed birth,
Oh, Will what can I say that's not been said?
What brilliance from within can I unearth
And will you hear it? After all, you're dead.

...You've written awesome characters to play,
That brought me so much joy upon the stage,
But when time came to dole out actor's pay
Why did I make below minimum wage?

Let's put aside the lack of money made,
In the service of iambic leg tapping,
And thank Lord Papp for his gracious crusade,
To fill the summer night with such clapping.

I hope you feel at home in Central Park
Like Hamlet did in Elsinore, Denmark.
- Alan Steele

All parts of me in heat and much will wait,
for hours countless til op'ning of the gate,
to see a world where love issues as spate,
but to have tickets now would kind of be great.
- Ryan McCurdy

Thank you to everyone who submitted verses! Stay tuned for another opportunity to win coming soon!

KNICKERBOCKER Speaker Series: Naptime in the City That Never Sleeps

2011-05-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, May 17, 2011, the Public LAB Speaker Series continued with Naptime in the City That Never Sleeps: A Conversation About Parenting in New York. Lisa Belkin, author of the New York Times’ “Motherlode” Blog, talked with Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free-Range Kids movement, and Steven Mintz, President of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, about historical and contemporary parenting trends in New York City and the dynamic of the modern American household.

The Public LAB Speaker Series consists of engaging post-show conversations with the artists and notable panelists. The May 17th event was presented in conjunction with the Public LAB production of KNICKERBOCKER, a new comedy by Jonathan Marc Sherman, directed by Pippin Parker.

Click play below to hear the discussion.

KNICKERBOCKER Speaker Series: Naptime in the City That Never Sleeps by internmarketing

Shakespeare's Birthday Giveaway

2011-04-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday, we’re giving away the chance to experience Shakespeare in the Park like an insider on one of its most star-studded evenings. Show the greatest dramatist in the English language some birthday love! Write William Shakespeare a birthday message and you could be the lucky winner of two tickets to the Opening Night Performance of Shakespeare in the Park.

To enter:

Write at least one couplet in iambic pentameter to Shakespeare in honor of his birthday. Entries can be two lines (one couplet) or fourteen lines (a whole sonnet!) Post your entry in one of three places:

- As a comment below

- On The Public Theater Facebook page wall (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/publictheater)

- On Twitter, using the hashtag #bardpark

Submit your entry by 11:59pm on Wednesday, April 27^th to qualify.

One lucky winner will receive:

Two tickets to the Opening NIght performance of Shakespeare in the Park (MEASURE FOR MEASURE) on June 30, 2011 at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

Rules:

1. Entry must be at least one couplet in length and follow the rules of iambic pentameter.

2. One entry per person. You've got one shot - give it your best!

3. Entries must be posted by 11:59pm on Wednesday, April 27th to qualify.

4. Be creative and have fun!

For questions please contact marketing@publictheater.org. Please do not submit contest entries via email.

URGE FOR GOING: Transforming history into theater

2011-04-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

By Dana Tanner Kennedy. Dana is the Dramaturgy Associate for the production.

Mona Mansour’s Urge For Going opens with a cacophonous explosion of disputed facts and figures as a Palestinian refugee family attempts to construct a cohesive narrative about the history of Palestine and its relationship to their personal history. As anyone who has studied this subject can attest, the story of Israel and Palestine is a Gordian knot of wars, borders, alliances, reversals, and competing narratives about the same piece of land. The challenge for Mansour was how to make this ongoing conflict palpable as theater.

When she began her research, Mansour sifted through these conflicting details and was confronted with the problem of how to translate the facts of Palestinian history into a dramatic language when, as the character Abir remarks, “each and every point is open for interpretation.” This opening barrage of dialogue, Mansour said, grew out of a need to submerge the audience in this world of contested information. Even the family cannot agree among themselves how to tell their own story. It is a dramatic rendering of a larger debate about which Dr. Edward Said, Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights wrote:

…the problem of writing about and representing—in all senses of the word—Palestinians in some fresh way is part of a much larger problem. For it is not as if no one speaks about or portrays the Palestinians. The difficulty is that everyone, including the Palestinians themselves, speaks a very great deal….At this point, no one writing about Palestine—and indeed, no one going to Palestine—starts from scratch: We have all been there before, whether reading about it, experiencing its millennial presence and power, or actually living there for periods of time. It is a terribly crowded place, almost too crowded for what it is asked to bear by way of history or interpretation of history.

The al-Awahni family embodies Said’s observation. The family speaks a great deal, and their conversations throughout the play are peppered with arguments about what exactly happened. Also spinning around Mansour’s mind were the voices of her Lebanese uncles during a particular argument in which they vociferously and simultaneously dissected the finer points of Lebanese identity. The soundscape of this family debate and her research experiences merged and grew into the opening section of the play entitled “The Noise,” in which the characters continually interrupt and challenge one another’s statements in a tumble of overlapping dialogue. The scene both introduces the characters and immediately establishes the difficulties of pinning down the facts.

At the heart of the play’s noisy debates is, as the title suggests, a longing to leave, and its central conflict between the teenage Jamilla and her father, Adham, stems from opposing ideas about where the various characters should go. Jamilla refuses to be defined by the struggles of the older generation and fervently hopes to leave Lebanon and go to college abroad. Adham and the rest of the family fervently hope to invoke the Right of Return and go back to Palestine. They decide they must remain in the horrific living conditions of the camp on the slim chance that they will once again see their beloved homeland. At the Public’s April 12^th Speakers Series post-show discussion, NYU Associate Professor Dr. Helga Tawil-Souri, who shot a documentary in Lebanese refugee camps, explained that this simultaneous sense of hope and hopelessness is especially prevalent there. In Lebanon the refugees have no rights; there is “a political poverty as well as an economic poverty,” she said, and clinging to the hope of the Right of Return is a survival strategy. Mansour said that the conflicting feelings of the characters reflect her own conflicted feelings on the subject, and she assigned those various voices to different members of the family.

As significant as how the story is being told is that the story is being told at all. During the discussion, Barnard Associate Professor Dr. Bashir Abu-Manneh remarked that it is a sign that attitudes are changing in America when one can hear a play about Palestinian refugees in which 1948 is presented as the year of the Nakba, the first devastating mass expulsion of Palestinians from their lands. The events of 1948 are probably more widely known in America as the Israeli War of Independence, and resolving the problem of 1948, Abu-Manneh said, is central to a future peaceful co-existence of Israelis and Palestinians. “The themes of the play are welcome,” he said.

In Urge for Going Mona Mansour transforms a dizzying amount of political history into a compassionate family drama. While the father-daughter struggles of Adham and Jamilla transcend their immediate circumstances, it is Mansour's heartfelt rendering of their relationship that ultimately deepens our understanding of history's effects on the everyday lives of Palestinian refugees.

In the photo above: Tala Ashe and Ramsey Faragallah in URGE FOR GOING, written by Mona Mansour and directed by Hal Brooks. Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.

To hear the full April 12th Speakers Series, click play below:

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The Belarus Free Theatre returns to New York with three shows in rep

2011-04-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

Together with LaMaMa, we are thrilled to welcome the Belarus Free Theatre back to New York for an extended run of their sold out hit, BEING HAROLD PINTER, which will play in rep with two other BFT productions, ZONE OF SILENCE and DISCOVER LOVE from April 13 to May 15.

This groundbreaking company, led by Artistic Director Natalia Koliada, narrowly escaped imprisonment in Belarus in December of 2010 and came to New York to perform BEING HAROLD PINTER to sold-out houses in our Under the Radar festival. Ben Brantley of The New York Times said of the piece, “Truly passionate, truly political theater... Being Harold Pinter isn't just admirable, it has virtues beyond its relevance and bravery.” We are so proud to be able to collaborate with these artists and to aid in bringing their work to the public eye.

We, however, are only one piece of a growing movement to aid the Belarus Free Theatre in their fight for human rights in Belarus. Such renowned artists as Tom Stoppard and Jude Law have joined the cause, travelling the world with Natalia to speak out against the dictatorship in her country. In January of 2011 Tony Kushner joined Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis in leading a peaceful protest of the human rights violations in Belarus. Click here to see their powerful statements from the protest. Mr. Law says of the company, “the theatre has become a symbol of what's happening to the country, and Natalia has become a symbol of the theatre. She's been thrust into the spotlight because she's eloquent and charming, but what they're so good at is getting attention for their work, and then turning that back on to the country." To read the Guardian article about those involved in the fight for human rights, click here.

Natalia herself says of the company’s mission, “We gathered together to make drama, and to say whatever we thought, wherever and whenever we felt like, performing in front of anyone we cared to. We wanted our spectators to think – this, of course, is the most terrifying part for any dictatorship. As Vladimir Shcherban, the BFT's director, says: ‘We speak the issues that the audience keeps silent on.’” You can read her full statement here, on the Guardian Theatre Blog.

Join us this spring at La MaMa to not only see incredibly moving theatre, but also to support fellow cultural soldiers in the struggle for freedom and the truth. Click here to get more information about the company, the shows, and to see videos.

Update: THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE... in previews

2011-04-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

By Alix Milne, Marketing Intern at The Public Theater

Here at The Public Theater, our new production of THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES by Tony Kushner is in full swing. We opened previews on March 23rd, and we're excited to see all of the transformations the play is going to make during the preview period. We're already getting great feedback from some of our audience members via email and social media. Here's what some of them have to say about the show:

@akpierce: still thinking about last night's play (#iho PublicTheaterNY) and I love that. Much to process. Want to go again.

@AvaFeuer: #IntelligentHomosexual @PublicTheaterNY was brilliant. Also the longest thing I've ever sat through. Conclusion: I officially don't have ADD

@AliciaPants: @PublicTheaterNY wish I could go tonight. Saw #iho on thurs. It was brilliant. I will be seeing it again soon for sure!

@csantamaria: Tonight was everything I hoped for and more. @PublicTheaterNY you've got a great show on your hands. #iHo

@pipsqueakyoda: @Dramaturgs Go See iHo @PublicTheaterNY. Excellent storytelling. He knows just when to scale up and down.

Do you have something you want to say about the show? Say it here or visit our Twitter feed (@PublicTheaterNY) or Facebook page (PublicTheater)! We'd love to hear what you think.

In top photo: Michael Cristofer and Linda Emond in THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE... Photo by Joan Marcus.

In bottom photo: Stephen Spinella and Michael Esper in THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE... Photo by Joan Marcus.

Putting the Social in Social Media

2011-03-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

By Alix Milne, Marketing Intern at The Public Theater

On Saturday, March 19, 2011 The Public Theater was proud to team up with The American Theatre Wing and 2AM Theatre to host our first Theatre Tweet-Up. Theatre professionals, bloggers, and enthusiasts gathered at our downtown space for an hour and a half to talk shop, this time in more than 140 characters. We were pleased to put faces and full names to numerous friends who we could previously only recognize by their Twitter handles. Light snacks fueled excited conversations about current theatre offerings around the country and much-anticipated upcoming productions.

Among those who joined us for the festivities were theatre blogger (and unofficial event photographer) Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater), President of The American Theatre Wing Howard Sherman (@HESherman), and 2AMt blogger David J. Loehr (@2amt). Mr. Mandell covered the event on The Faster Times, and blogger The Resident Artist (@residentartist) composed a great post about the Tweet-Up, available here.

After the event, Mr. Sherman tweeted that it was “Fascinating to see people connect in analog world,” while @TheNYGalavant commented, “It was really nice to humanize the twitter experience with the theater professionals & aficionados with whom we tweet.”

As an added bonus, attendees caught a glimpse of the cast of THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL’S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIAL ISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES passing through the lobby on their way to rehearsal. That’s the great thing about our space: theatre lovers and theatre artists from a wide range of projects cross paths here every day.

Thanks so much to everyone who attended and made the event a great success. We look forward to continuing the conversation online!