How to make historical plays relevant

Among my secret vices is reading Westerns and watching re-runs of The Big Valley. I’m so into it that my daughter says when I’m old and need to be taken care of, she’ll simply set me up in a room where I can watch Westerns and write.

I’ve been reading novels by Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey bc I figured I’ll never write in this genre, so maybe I can get lost in the story without studying the writing so hard. Lo & behold, I started visualizing Westerns on stage and have launched into a series of plays that take place in the 1860s.

My Westerns aren’t the typical storylines of the 1950-1960s films, though. There were lots of ppl affected by the westward move besides str8 anglo-saxon men. These other characters whose stories are generally unknown may generate interest for an audience not typically intrigued by Westerns. So that might make this series of plays relevant.

But what else is needed? In a world looking to the future and rapid changes in technology and ease of living and continuous cultural clashes and folks who don’t want “change” and folks who say “changes aren’t happening fast enough” – what would draw an audience to an 1860s setting?

Romance: people in relationships in the 1860s and 21st century all have fears to overcome and miracles to embrace

Risks: still relevant today is how to step out of our comfort zone, whether it’s our domestic life, neighborhood, job, debt –

Survival: still relevant is how to navigate natural disasters

Politics: how to maneuver through the powers-that-be grabbing it all for themselves

Stretch our thinking: how to interpret others’ actions

From Wikipedia

Bechdel Test in reverse

In my play Home Economics, Mali Spighel focuses on establishing independent living for intellectually challenged adults while 2 men in the play talk about their relationships with girlfriends.

Why theater instead of YouTube?

A physics graduate student asked this. Her question surprised me. But I bounced back with how the performers interact with the audience in real time, which you don’t get from YouTube.

Here in Pittsburgh - now! PIPELINE

Here’s the info.

Best plays read in 2018: PIPELINE

Playwright Dominique Morisseau brings us home when mother & son take front and center:

 NYA: I will take a bullet for you. I will suffocate the sun for you. I will steal the sky for you. I will blind Moses for you. I will strip the wind and the rain and the forests for you. Before I let you die or rot or lose your freedom, I will surrender my own….Tell me how to save you….Because I have listened to everyone else. I’m ready to listen to you. Guide me…. … … … I’m going to sit here. And wait for instructions.

 Nya is raising her son Omari in the US culture that is so stacked against him that even the language his family uses overlooks that he is a teenage boy growing into a young man. The language is subtle, sometimes Omari points it out, and other times, among other characters, no one points it out. Objectifying Omari is so inherent in US culture that Nya calls the rage it elicits as his inheritance.

In a brief sentence, without giving away the story: Omari got in trouble in school and is at risk of going to jail. This is the pipeline Morisseau refers to.

For us mothers, the battlefield is here at home where we raise & protect & teach our children to love & enjoy life while they navigate this quagmire of weapons that they can’t see.

Pipeline shows this family (USA).

Sweat shows another (USA).

And The Ghosts of Lote Bravo shows another (Mexico).

In 2018, I’m so proud of Pittsburgh theaters for producing Sweat and Pipeline.

Maybe next year, one can produce The Ghosts of Lote Bravo – and continue broadening our horizon.

What I learn from artist CARTER REDWOOD

Go to several auditions every single day.

 Carter lives in nyc and has been getting parts in mainstream tv shows and cable ones. Constantly. I’ve read that actors need to regard auditions as part of their job description. The job isn’t only when you get cast, it includes auditioning to get cast.

 As an emerging writer, I’ve got to be my own agent. I’ve got to pound the internet, answering the call for submissions constantly. I’ve joined playwrights binge so that every March and September I send out a script a day. This helps me to organize so that I can send scripts during the in-between months, too.

 I’ve got to do the same with poetry and my other writings.

 That’s not to say I’m already doing it. It’s to say that I learned this from Carter.

What I learn from artist MONTEZE FREELAND

Year of Yes

Gotta read it. The premise is to say yes to every opportunity we’re afraid of.

Since Monteze read it, he’s in the theater news nonstop! Just google his name!

Best poetry read in 2018: The Undertaker’s Daughter, by Toi Derricotte

What I love about Toi Derricotte’s poetry is her raw honesty of what most people would protect as “family secrets.” Every night, I turn one page after another because I want to see what Toi will let us know next, and what connections and insights she makes of it.

“Family secrets” insinuates something is wrong. Something is certainly troubling; but in the world of poetry whose essence is to open up the complexity of our experiences, I marvel at Toi’s perseverance as she zeroes in on the doll; on the pet fish, Telly; on the concept of memoirs; on the photo of a dad holding his baby girl which appears on the cover of the book where love, harm, and the mangle of actions and emotions are untangled, revisited, re-explored, over and over again.

Perhaps Hollywood movies and sound-bites on the news like to present our lives as here it begins, this is what is good & evil, and here it ends; poetry—especially Toi’s—lets us think, ponder, and wonder, and Toi’s poetry in particular makes it easy for us as the readers. That is to say, Toi’s poetry is accessible for a complex subject.

I want to ask Toi whether she put in hours of turmoil to write this book. I want to ask whether she woke up in the middle of the night, often, to continue the writing, and whether she stopped at times because she couldn’t yet get to the right word, and whether at times the rush of adrenaline had a symbiotic relationship with what she was discovering as she wrote. Or if Toi’s process is very different from my imagination. I’m trying to understand how poets wrestle with this type of complexity, then make it so clear.

I saw Toi at several poetry events in Pittsburgh these past few weeks, but was too shy to ask.

Maybe another time I can talk with Toi about her process of writing. For now, I ended this blog piece with the word “Respect,” then deleted it; with “Honor,” then deleted; with “Thank you, Toi” and deleted.

I’m still searching for the right word to match my emotion and the life changing within me.

Books by Toi Derricotte

The subtleties of Wilson’s “Ma Rainey”

Theater productions of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom could portray Ma Rainey as this tough woman to not be messed with—as the lines offer. The play allows for the obvious racist comments from Rainey’s record producer and manager who, ultimately, have to “give in” to Rainey’s demands, and it allows for the long-time musicians in her band to tell a newcomer (Levee) that “Ma decides” what versions of the songs they’ll play: she’s the boss of this recording, don’t mess with her.

But performance artist Vanessa German brings out the subtleties in Wilson’s script. Ma Rainey, in this brief episode of her studio recording, is disrespected by her manager, her producer, the members of her band, and her lover: Each one—at some point of the recording—treats her as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Furthermore, while Levee’s story clearly takes front and center—upstaging the featured woman character—director Mark Clayton Southers expertly draws out the various stories, which is fundamental in all of Wilson’s scripts. Rainey’s & Levee’s stories take place in different spaces of the stage and, depending on where you’re seated, different parts of their stories will jump to the fore. When Rainey and Levee are on the same side of the stage, however, Ma stands in front and doesn’t look back.

Vanessa German knows that Ma knows what she’s created as an artist, and that Ma knows how to stay the course.

Come see this superb production by Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company.

Here’s an interview with Vanessa German on how she prepared for this role.

More on Ma Rainey.

Mark Clayton Southers, founder and artistic director of Pittsburgh Playwrights, playwright, & director!

ALL-STAR CAST! (Photo credit: Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co.)

Foxfinder, the script by Dawn King

I got the script in time to read b4 I see the play tomorrow!

How to choose a play to see in London

With the great abundance of plays, this is not as easy as it would seem. With this long running list, we need to pare it down to ones playing during the dates I’m in London; and of the ones playing while I’m here, there is no such thing as going to a play spontaneously—front row seats for The Prisoner, for example, are sold out for the preview which runs on my last night in London.

Here is where everything hinges on a synopsis. Foxfinder:

"England is in crisis. Fields are flooded. Food is scarce. Fear grips the land.
When the Coveys’ harvest fails to meet target, the government sends William Bloor to investigate. William is a Foxfinder. Trained from childhood. Fixated on his mission to unearth the animals that must be to blame. But as the hunt progresses, he finds more questions than answers…"

As I am very invested in the holocaust, this description links me to the “Jew hunter” from the film Inglourious Basterds. See how subjective it is to choose a play? I have high hopes, too, because Christoph Waltz’s role is among the most tense I’ve ever watched.

I’ve listed Foxfinder among a bunch of plays that sound interesting. Now I’ve got to look up ones where I can read a copy of the script ahead of time. (Being hearing-impaired, I read scripts first so that I can follow the story on stage.) Foxfinder is still in this group.

Next, as I’m in London, it’d be great to see a play by a UK playwright who is new to me. Dawn King wrote Foxfinder, and she is a definite up-and-coming British playwright—I’m now eager to read her other works, too!

The final determination: Can I get front row seats at a discount for my hearing impairment? If not, I’d be seated too far away to lipread the actors.

To be accommodated for a disability in London theaters is incredibly seamless! I’m in!

So when did you cross the line from gospel to pop?

R E S P E C T to Aretha Franklin (1942-2018)

Homestead Bridge (Pittsburgh)

When asked how she crossed the line from gospel to pop, Aretha said, “I didn’t cross the line. Gospel goes with me wherever I go. Gospel is a constant with me. So I just broadened my musical horizon.”

When Aretha Franklin was honored with the “Portrait of a Nation,” Gwen Ifill interviewed the Queen of Soul about her music.

This past week, we heard that Aretha was in declining health and knew this day was coming. August 16. I’m spending the day listening to the Queen of Soul.

Way back when, I looked forward to the once-a-month job I had billing patients bc the folks I worked for had an audio tape of Aretha’s songs which I listened to the full evening.

One of my favorite comedies was Murphy Brown, and this episode was a great thrill!

Looking up and out: “Thank you”

Won’t be long – 1964

Best plays read in 2018

Kiss – a lesson in structure

During this time of war in Syria, Guillermo Calderón presents a show where a US theater is producing a melodrama they found that was written by a Syrian playwright, then brings her in by phone for a Q&A with the actors and the audience. The play that the theater company then finishes takes a very different turn from the melodrama they had interpreted, now that they have context into life in Syria. I think the structure of this play works cleverly to show what we in the US know and don’t know from our shielded point of reference.

Degas ballerina sculpture … and meandering storytelling

Photo by Edie; sculpture on display at The Frick Pittsburgh, July 2018

I know Degas’s paintings for his ballerinas but I never knew he also made this sculpture – bronze with cloth for the tutu and hair ribbon. Cloth for the tutu and hair ribbon. It seems it would’ve been very unusual in his time period (1880s) to step outside the usual all-bronze cast.

When I googled the sculpture, it turns out that Degas did use an unusual medium, but not what I thought. His original sculpture was made using a real bodice, tutu, ballet slippers, and real hair – and cast in beeswax. The full sculpture was covered in beeswax except for the tutu and hair ribbon.

Apparently the bronze version (a number of them) was made afterwards by his heirs.

The sculpture by Degas received mixed reviews at the time, for numerous reasons.

I’m fixed on the cloth. I imagine an artist who sidestepped the classics because he had to go his own way, bringing the texture to life.

This makes me think of Nikki Giovanni who sidesteps the classics of poetry books when her writing moves among poetry, prose, mail correspondence, a movie:

From Whence Cometh My Help*

It should be a movie. Starring S. Epatha Merkerson as Ethel Smith. She would be driving down I-81 right before the Hollins exit. There would be some smooth jazz, a Coltrane piece from Giants Steps or maybe something by…

and then more poetry (Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems). Giovanni and Degas both had to do their own thing, which makes great art.

Playwright Diana Burbano has recently written a blog piece about why fewer women than men seem to send plays out for production—even when invited, “qualified women will say no.” Burbano notices a number of wonderful plays by women that don’t follow “a strict narrative structure” (or classic structure). “Why isn’t it OK for these plays to change the way a story is laid out?” Burbano says; “I wonder if trying to shoehorn themselves into a rigid structure isn’t half the reason so many women feel uncomfortable submitting? Perhaps they feel they will never get it ‘right.’”

I agree with Burbano that we’ve got to keep sending out our plays, written our way. I’m ever optimistic that great art prevails. “The narrative is starting to change,” Burbano says: “People like me LIKE your meandering storytelling, and we are starting to be the people who will be the first to learn of your work.”

*From whence cometh my help: the African American community at Hollins College

Coming to Pittsburgh this year! SWEAT

Here’s the info!

Best plays read in 2018

Sweat & The Ghosts of Lote Bravo

I pay no attention to NAFTA, as the world of economics is someone else’s specialty. However, these plays that share the same side of the same coin, yet exist across the border from one another, bring NAFTA down to the gritty real world. Sweat by Lynn Nottage steps into a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania right at the time the factory workers find out a good amount of the equipment was snuck out at night-time and moved across the border. Nottage’s play goes beyond “down-and-out factory workers”; her main characters, because they encompass both people of color and Caucasian, bring complexity into the story that has rarely been seen in mainstream news or on the Broadway stage. Add to the mix where middle-aged women and their teenage sons are front & center, we get a vibrant moment in life since all the front & center characters get to speak more than 100 words. My favorite line: “Sometimes I think we forget that we’re meant to pick up and go when the well runs dry: Our ancestors knew that.”

Hilary Bettis knows this in her play, The Ghosts of Lote Bravo. Her characters haven’t yet gotten comfortable; they’re still looking for the right well. They search near the border upon the arrival of the US factories called maquiladoras; but the maquiladoras offer far, far, far, far less than a livable wage in a community where control is gained by those who levy the most violence. I read that the play was written in order to shed some light on the hundreds of women who, over decades, have turned up murdered. This play shows a community of people striving to work in an environment that the production notes write, “The stench of sweat, shit, and decay is so constant that people no longer smell it.” Hundreds is numbing. So this play brings us into the private lives of one mother and her teenage daughter.

Favorite line: A virgin knows nothing about the sins a woman must endure for survival.

If I were a theater, and if I could get the rights, I would produce these plays in repertoire where the audience could see either one of these first, have dinner to sit quietly and let the feelings surface in all their mess, then see the other one.

The character I most want to see on stage: La Santa Muerte, the Saint of Monsters and Ghosts.

Double Rainbow over Niagara Falls

In this photo I see 2 turning points, turmoil, and a resolution that leaves us longing for what's next.

Holocaust theme: Best books read in 2016-2017

I constantly go back to this theme. I find very well written books, and I find books published, I think, for the information regardless of the quality of writing. I care about the quality of writing when addressing this topic.  My favorite book, now, of all time is Ida Fink’s A scrap of time. This is a book of short stories, and I didn’t find any more books by Ida Fink until I did one more search, recently, on amazon. The short stories are, I think, autobiographical, and written not for the purpose of stating what happened so the world will know, but to re-experience what happened in its complexity in order to understand it. I read the book in 2016, couldn’t put it down. I came across it again in 2017 and, again, couldn’t put it down. Here is the opening of the book:

I want to talk about a certain time not measured in months and years. For so long I have wanted to talk about this time, and not in the way I will talk about it now, not just about this one scrap of time. I wanted to, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how. I was afraid, too, that this second time, which is measured in months and years, had buried the other time under a layer of years, that this second time had crushed the first and destroyed it within me. But no. Today, digging around in the ruins of memory, I found it fresh and untouched by forgetfulness. This time was measured not in months but in a word—we no longer said “in the beautiful month of May,” but “after the first ‘action,’ or the second, or right before the third.” We had different measures of time, we different ones, always different, always with that mark of difference that moved some of us to pride and others to humility.

Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi. I’m constantly drawn to how people survive. Like Elie Wiesel’s Night Trilogy, this particular book of Levi's is very well written and insightful of what life was like in the death camps and what type of decisions people made in order to survive even though the act of survival was “by chance” with no rhyme or reason based on what people did to try to survive. I did learn, however, that anger helps us live. When the Kapos beat the prisoners, they actually saved their lives because the anger in response to the beating produced energy which was vital to extending life.

All that I am, by Anna Funder. What a fantastic novel of everyday life at the time Hitler became chancellor and the first resistance group that tried to tell Germany and the world what a danger he was. Again, a story of courage in the face of life and death by people who couldn’t sit still. While we may all like to think we’d do the same, this book brings us to the reality and fears, unlike the Hollywood movies that make us feel victorious because we already know the ending of the movie where we survive. I also read this novel as Trump entered the White House and Facebook was filled with dread and horror and questions of “am I over-reacting” etc. Beautiful writing—here’s the opening:

When Hitler came to power I was in the bath. Our apartment was on the Schiffbauerdamm near the river, right in the middle of Berlin. From its windows we could see the dome of the parliament building. The wireless in the living room was turned up loud so Hans could hear it in the kitchen, but all that drifted down to me were waves of happy cheering, like a football match.

Best non-fiction read in 2016-2017

An uncommon soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 1862-1864, edited by Lauren Cook Burgess. I read this book for the collection of letters written by a woman soldier who snuck into the Civil War as a man, which was apparently common for women looking to get paid for their work. As research for a series of one-act plays I’m writing that takes place during that time period, this book is very insightful for the culture as well as for how people talked.

Best poetry read in 2016-2017

Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin: The editors Philip Cushway and Michael Warr first proposed this book of poetry in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, and as they were putting the book together the Black Lives Matter movement took off, so the editors redirected the focus. Each poet provides a statement of her/his evolution and purpose as a poet, followed by one poem. The editors chose an image to go with each poem. In choosing top, dynamic poets, and providing “historical and cultural underpinnings from which these poems arose,” the editors created a book of art accessible to poetry readers as well as non-traditional poetry readers. The editors noted that many of the poets cited Gwendolyn Brooks as their influence and mentor. I noticed that many of the poets began publishing with Cave Canem, which makes me infinitely proud of writers who make a home for voices otherwise not heard. For an anthology, 18 women poets to 25 men poets could be improved, but it’s better than most. The poets, also, are across generations. Too many favorite poems for me to call out a favorite, but I do tend to gravitate to the Emmett Till poems.

The nerve of it: poems new and selected, by Lynn Emanuel. My favorite thing about this book is that Lynn mixes up old poems with new in order to make for a new reading experience. That’s the first I’ve seen this done, and it works beautifully. Lynn creates various projects, writing poems vastly different from one another. My favorites: “inside gertrude stein” and “Halfway through the book I’m writing.” I studied the opening lines of each poem to understand how Lynn pulls us in:

(a) In the cooking pot my aunt's long spoon pets the lamb's

In the cooking pot [INCITING INCIDENT] my aunt's long spoon pets [ACTION VERB] the lamb's [UNEXPECTED, TENSION]

(b) in the teary windows, the woodlands heave

in the teary windows [INCITING INCIDENT; METAPHOR] the woodlands heave [ACTION VERB, TENSION]

Dear All, by Maggie Anderson. Favorite poems: the title poem, and “The Sidney Lanier Best Western Motel in Gainevsille, Georgia, I think of the great Polish poet” – because what I learn from each poem actually changes my life. This is what the poets Judy Grahn, Pat Parker, and Adrienne Rich did for me when I was in my 20s, and here Maggie is doing it for me now. Wow.