How to Date a Playwright 8 April, 2009
Posted by StingWriter in Writing.1 comment so far
Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve posted on my blog I forgot my login and password. Bad sign . . .
As any smart playwright should, I receive Gary Garrison’s ‘The Loop’ newsletter for, yep you guessed it, playwrights. For any fellow playwrights interested, it is a wonderful resource with submissions, workshops, writing lessons, just about everything you’d need. You can subscribe at Gary Garrion’s website.
Anyway, the point of this being an article in this month’s issue, on How to Love or Date a Playwright. After I stopped laughing becuase I wanted to rub it in the face of every exboyfriend I have in my collection (most of which only lasted two weeks), I decided it had to be shared. Personally, I’m printing it and having it framed. So here it is, exerpt from The Loop Issues #89 written by Gary Garrison:
TO DATE OR LOVE A PLAYWRIGHT
• When you ask me what I do, and I say I’m a playwright, it’s probably not conducive to the great start of a relationship if you say, “I hate the theatre,” or “who goes to the theatre anymore?” Essentially, you’re stabbing me and my art between the shoulder blades. You can hate squash or beets, but you can’t hate theatre. I mean, you can. You can hate anything you want. But I can’t love anyone who says they hate a large part of who I am.
• For the record, and to get this out of the way EARLY on, being a playwright means months and years of waiting/waiting/more waiting. The only real control I have over my career is to be the best writer I can be and to pursue fruitful business relationships. So you can bust my chops for not writing or not getting out there in the community, but you can NEVER bust my chops for not succeeding any faster than I do.
• When I give you something to read (because you’ve hounded me to read something I’ve written, or, I’ve hounded you to read something of mine), regardless of the fact that I tell you that I really want to know what you think, the deep-down truth is, I want you to like it and by association, like me – particularly if you want to have a second or third date or another year of marriage.
AMMENDMENT: The truth is, I really do want your sincere criticism, but if we don’t know each other very well, it’s a tender area that we both have to be mindful of. So you may have to pretend to like work in the moment, and when the time is right, tell me what you really think.
AMMENDENT TWO: If we see something I’ve written on stage together, just understand that I’m in an altered state after the curtain comes down. It’s probably not the best time to talk to me about much of anything. Just hold my hand; that I’ll probably respond to.
• I am artist of words, so chose yours with sensitivity
and care when talking about my work, my career or my dream.
• [this one is especially important] When you ask me out and I say “I have to write,” I really mean I have to write. I’m not blowing you off. It’s my job, regardless of the fact that I work eight hours a day at Walmart [Nino Salvaggio] in the produce section [café] and then come home to work again. That means, you’re probably going to have to be all right with someone who spends a lot of time either writing or in rehearsal.
• I am designed to be a multi-tasker: I can be passionate about my writing AND you without either of you suffering.
• Don’t look for a pedophile in my personal history if I write one in my play. Just because I can make a sound like a duck doesn’t mean I’m a duck; it means I’m a good study.
• I’m probably going to cringe if you tell me how to rewrite a line. I’d like to be open to it, but you know, I’m just not. Don’t offer.
• Yes, you do have to go the reading of my play that you’ve already heard two readings of. I want you there. I need you there. I don’t want to have to ask.
That goes for any writer worth his/her salt. Spread the word. And in the meantime, I’m off to the slavepits of Ninos. Caio, babies!
Giving In 3 September, 2008
Posted by StingWriter in Writing.1 comment so far
I am a writer, which means I’m not terribly at home with technology. When I sit down to my first draft, it’s at my 1937 Royal Portable Typewriter in all it’s key-jamming, ink-smearing glory. I have noticed of late, however, that my stubborn technological ignorance is become a drawback.
When I sat down to the Detroit News in the break room Tuesday, I read a fascinating articled titled ‘Boldly Going On’ (by Eric Henrickson) detailing the endeavors on the part of some die-hard Star Trek fans to write, direct and film their own web-based series. Apparently this sort of thing has been going on right under my nose (and just a few miles from my work). The question is, how well is this sort of thing catching on? Well, if such phenomena as You-Tube and videos of dancing gerbils are any indication, I should think its going to be all the rage. Even American Theatre magazine has recognized that audience attendance is dwindling because most Americans prefer so sit at their computers and dick around on Facebook or watch some kid lip-sinc to ‘Numa Numa Yei.’ Alright, I’ll admit, there’s not much theatres themselves can do about that. But what about us, the writers?
I’ll admit the growing industry of webisdes and web movies poses an interesting new market for today’s writers. Okay, so you still need all the equipment and computer-savvy (which I lack) required for the actual filming, but it is now so much easier to get your work out there. Who needs distribution rights and film festivals when there’s hundreds of thousand of bored couch-potatoes surfing the web looking for mindless entertainment? And who knows, maybe some looking for slightly more intelligent entertainment.
And what of formatting? Every time a new market for writing comes out the format changes. Just playwriting in itself has a dozen different ones to choose from. Screenwriting has its own format, as does telewriting. How will webwriting change our industry? I obviously don’t have the answer, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you lot. In the meantime we’ll just have to attach ourselves to some privilege children producers and computer nerds (fortunately they usually come in the same handy bespectacled package) and get our work out there. Exposure just became that much easier.
Happy hunting, all.
Art Cannibalism 16 October, 2007
Posted by StingWriter in Art, Education, Writing.add a comment
Well, well. So I kept my promise (for the most part) and came back for another treatise on the wonderful world of art. Brownie points for me. Today’s topic: Artists and the consumption of art. Inspiration: a conversation with my father, painter Tom Jensen. I love my father, I honestly do (and nothing good ever follows those words, no matter who is saying them), but we have very different approaches to art. This past summer we got into a debate over whether or not artists should bother exposing themselves to their forebearers’ and contemporaries’ work. My father would have it that no, one should not bother. In his opinion it not only wastes time but is, in fact, counterproductive in that it invokes a feeling of inadequacy and redundancy. He tells me that he often comes out of museum or gallery saying to himself ‘I’m no where near as good as Sargent or Klimt. So why does the world really need another one of my paintings?’ All right, I confess, I go to the theatre or just sit in workshop to critique the work of a certain friend of mine (who shall, at this time remain anonymous as he is very shy) and say to myself ‘Well that just blew me out of the water. Besides, only an argued 1% of America actually attends the theatre, so why bother?’ And then I shake that sort of defeatists attitude and go home and write. Along with a string of other arguments which did not hold much water with me and therefore I cannot remember, his side of the argument came to an end. I love you, Dad. Every offense meant.
And now my side. Yes, seeing a fellow artist’s work that is far superior to your own does hurt. It can be disheartening. We have all experienced it, as well as experience abject failure on a daily basis (not by any outside source but our own harsh criticisms, don’t you dare lie to me and say you’re haven’t). This is, in fact, incredibly important in our area of work because it urges us to improve. It also helps to remember that each of us has a unique style which suits the taste of difference audiences. Even if you don’t know what your style is, yet, it’s still your own.
Apart from competitive reasons to consume the art in your field, it can also be quite therapeutic. Without constant stimulation our work becomes stagnant. We simply produce the same thing over and over with a little variation. To speak to a problem we all face, we all get stuck. Muse is finicky at best, down right stubborn at worst. Mine has learned to answer to ‘You Bastard.’ Perhaps the composition isn’t right here; there needs to be a point of light there; the staging isn’t engaging enough; these notes are discordant but can’t be any other way; the description is cumbersome in this paragraph; the stitches are too bulky and give the whole thing a rather lumpy quality. Well then, go out and explore. Your answers are somewhere, and they will come unexpectedly. One of my favourite lines in Stranger The Fiction is from Emma Thompson’s character, when asked how she came across the solution to the key problem in her novel, says “like anything worth writing it came inexplicably and without method.” For no better reason can I stress the importance of consuming art. For that matter, don’t limit yourself just to your own area. All art evokes emotion; that’s what it does. That’s what makes it art (granted my philosophy of art class would debate this point for hours while congratulating themselves on being insufferable know-it-alls). Every piece of art has a story to tell. It is up to the individual to interpret that story through the filter of his or her emotional state, background and own demented mind (once more, a debatable point). I had no idea how to start a play I was working on until I was reading a short novel, an bit of fluff reading between Faulkner and Hemingway (sorry, I don’t even own a Tolstoy), when the answer just hit me in the single sentence I had just read. It wasn’t a replica of the situation or the dialogue–it barely resembled it in fact–but it was there. The fact that I have thrown the play out entirely is irrelevant.
The only reason these two things occur is by the simple fact that in consuming art, we learn. With an analytical mind one can discover new techniques and make them his or her own, not simply emulate an example. That is how our work escapes stagnation, that is how we find fresh ways out of the pratfalls we stumble into.
So once more I have taken up an entire page to say one little thing: we as artists must expose ourselves to as much art as we can to become better artists.
Words Well Spoken 1 August, 2007
Posted by StingWriter in Art, Writing.add a comment
Greetings all! Still on holiday here in lovely Seattle. Just arrived yesterday from my family in Portland. Remind me when I get back to dreary ol’ Michigan to gush about the Decemberists.
I’ll make this one brief, as I don’t have much internet time available to me. I was flipping through the news section in the latest edition of The Dramatist, which mum was kind enough to send along from home, when I came across a quote that I thought I just had to pass along, especially considering my rant from a couple weeks ago.
“What disturbs me is a perverse and ever increasing populism that sabotages the specialist expertise on which any art form is built. … One of the most dismal public statements made in British Life was by Richard Luce, a Thatcherite minister, who said of the arts that ‘the only test of our ability to succeed is whether we can attract enough customer.’ … While ultimately the arts are answerable to the public, I think it highly dangerous if creators and critics surrender to the capricious tyranny of popular opinion.”
– Michael Billington, The Guardian (21 Feb. 2007)
I know I already went into detail on that argument but I felt this quote summed it up in a way I couldn’t. So with that I will leave you until a week and a half from now when I get home. Until then, dear readers, good night.
Music, the insult of ‘Indie,’ and the art of Art 16 July, 2007
Posted by StingWriter in Art, Music, Technique, Writing.2 comments
Well, just like me. I start a blog and then I go on holiday for a month. What will you all do without me? All one of you that reads this, that is. Live in quiet, I would assume. Anyway, I leave tomorrow to drive to Chicago, the first stop in my summery ventures. Why Chi town? The Decemberists concert. Why am I seeing two? Because this one comes with a full orchestra. Now you will witness me melt into a shivering pile of jelly. However, before I go, I would like to engage in a small tirade on indie rock. Or indie anything, for that matter. Writers, do not immediately discredit this entry as having nothing to do with our favorite topic, I assure you it has words of wisdom for all artists!
Once a very long time ago ‘Indie’ was a respectable word. All it referred to was one’s label or production company. And let’s face it, mainstream anything, be it music or movies, is just plain terrible. It spends too much time pandering to critics and audiences. While yes, we must sometimes bow down to the powers that be because, let’s face it, they pay our bills, we must not make art for them only. In comes Indie.
Too oft do I read a new play or see an indie movie or listen to some hip new indie group and they are all trying too hard to be as unconventional, off-the-wall and/or existential as they possibly can be. I think I hit an all time low when I was handed a play that actually spelled out ‘this is an existential play.’ We had a student being quizzed on schools of thought from Keirkegaard to Camus and then later were all reenacted to the last dotting of the ‘i.’ Another great example would be music that tries so hard to be different that it usually ends up sounding like a toddler let loose in the instruments room. If I were a music group I would be insulted if anyone called me ‘Indie.’ Now there are some categorized in this group (a lot of people still call the Decemberists indie even though they are now on a major label) who are perfectly wonderful and I find them a joy to listen to. These are all groups who don’t try. They just are. They have found a sound that suits them, something they like, something that impassions them, not something they think is going to be the next big thing. They are creating something that moves them and have allowed us to be a part of it. We should be so blessed.
I implore each and every one of my fellow artists to follow this example. Too often I come across plays that could have had magnificent potential if they’d been approached from the right angle. ‘Message plays,’ are a common term for these. They are plays that try to be an allegory, try to make you listen and learn. Okay, it’s an admirable thing to teach through art, I’ll admit that’s one of its functions. Just don’t do it consciously. I promise you if you just write your story, pay attention to your characters and your plot rather than your message, it will all come out they way you’d hoped it would.
Just create. Don’t try to make something, and for the love of the deity of your choice don’t try to make something unconventional or poignant, just create.
Side note: This has nothing to do with The Decemberists, if I have given the impression I was complaining about their style. The Decembersits are gods. They are the perfect example of what I have been trying to illustrate art should be.
