Inkblog!

It's Anne again, intrepid readers, and I'm delighted to introduce another perspective from our recent adventure into navigating the universe.

Mary Watters was the dramaturg for our latest Inkreading of the play Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen.  Mary is a keen observer and as you will see a beautiful writer.  In fact, she herself is a playwright.

She's been working with Rebecca and The Inkwell team on Blue Straggler for more than two years.  She was a fervent champion of the play when she first reviewed it (she was one of our intrepid readers for the 2010 open call for submissions), and she's been watching the play expand ever since.

Here are her thoughts on how the complex universe of Blue Straggler has evolved... and continues to grow.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I just happened across the notes from an April meeting of playwright Rebecca Bossen, The Inkwell's dramaturg supreme Anne McCaw, and me, a playwright learning this new territory of dramaturgy from the other side of the table. The three of us had convened to talk over the next step for this fascinating play, which would be a full reading. Rebecca's first feedback to us: Preparing for and rehearsing the 20-minute segment of Blue Straggler for The Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage refocused her thinking the play. Although she remained true to the initial inspiration and the mad, mad world of black holes, she realized the play was a more universal story about love, loss, and complicated relationships. Since September she'd gotten clearer about her characters. She saw that she must let science serve the story, but not take center stage.

This April draft did what Rebecca said - and more. She'd taken many of the questions and comments from September to heart, or at least to head. She gave us an expanded peek into Lisa and Clarissa's relationship. Rather than hearing the two women reminisce about their first meeting, we got to see a frazzled, dissertation-dazed Lisa enter Clarissa's chocolate shop, then see Clarissa turn into a chemist/pharmacist/artist to prescribe the right chocolate, one that she'd mixed and made into appetizing art. We heard more about Ragged's universe and the rules that must be obeyed. We got a crash course in astrophysics to hear about the real rules that Lisa is bumping against in her quest to reach her dead lover. I was delighted to see that she'd left in a Lisa's monologue where she desperately works on a mathematical formula to connect them. This monologue was written the day before the play was read in September, and it sparkled.

So was the play ready for production? Uh, no. While Rebecca had addressed many issues, this is a deeply complicated play: a relationship that bounced from aphrodisiac heaven to final ultimatums in arguments, a brain-stretching venture into math and the inner workings of space and time, and mother-daughter mismatches that have never permitted these two individuals to understand each other. Throw in a little mythology and the afterlife ... well, it's no surprise this play is probably straining a whole army of muses.

But the rehearsal project worked its magic again. Lots of questions from perceptive director Amber Jackson and the astute cast she assembled... The ambitious desire to truly realize the movement of bodies in space - and how that helped inform the play (or even led to more questions)... And the already-praised meeting of Rebecca and Amber w/the set designer.

Rebecca had planned to call me Thursday night after her meeting with Amber and the designer. She did call, but in a wonderfully charged state. We'd been talking about the past and present, the many layers of relationships to see when time-shifting to the past, and, perhaps most important, the grave effect on the laws of physics that are experienced when Lisa gets closer to the mathematical equation. This threat, plus Clarissa's work on the "other side" to convince Ragged to give them a little room, could actually bring about a collapse of universal rules and the universe itself. So when the designer decided to make the trunks that "spring open" a real action on stage rather than the sound indicated in the stage directions, something clicked with Rebecca. We began talking about these trunks and what they could represent. She thought of them like that trunk in the attic full of secrets or family artifacts not seen for decades (the past). Or a magic trunk of the unexpected or one that is a passage-way. In fact, we talked about the desperate straits that Clarissa and Lisa are in, as they are together, knowing that the universe may be unlocking, hoping that they could find a trunk - a portal to a new universe or new world - where they could dwell together. Oh yes, and we talked about the nothingness before creation of matter. Then she was off to make some revisions.

Friday night revisions for a Saturday night reading? These were not small revisions, either. But Rebecca pulled it off. She came in with new pages and cuts to certain sections. Somehow, Amber skillfully guided the actors through the script changes, and they did a script-in-hand reading that placed the characters in the center of the room and at one of two ends using the back of the room to orbit in and out of scenes, with the audience sitting on either side of the playing area. Unusual staging is a norm at The Inkwell. Dealing with love, loss, and astrophysics demands the unconventional.

So I can't wait to see what Rebecca comes up with for the next draft.

Hello again, intrepid readers.  It's Lee again, I have something to tell you:  I love showcase readings.  Truly and honestly showcase readings are among of the most unique and interesting things we here at The Inkwell do.  More often then not when I tell someone I am directing a showcase reading, they look at me with a quizzical face and say, 'That's really great!  What's a showcase reading?" 

Now you can read past blogs about what the showcase reading is, and how the playwright feels about them, and how the dramaturgs look at them...but there isn't much about the director's perspective.  So here we go... I'm going to share with you my thoughts after directing The Inkwell's last showcase reading -- Rebels, Rabble-Rousers, and Tricksters.

We at The Inkwell are definitely thinking deep right now, intrepid readers, or big, depending on how you think about the universe.  The last four plays we worked on have got us thinking about the behavior of stars, the importance and nature of God, and the ways in which we might be able to bend space and time.

So in this deep, big think about the universe, here are dramaturg's Meghan Long's thoughts about Kristin Idaszak's play, Fugue (for Particle Accelerator), one of three plays that The Inkwell featured in a showcase reading last month.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have had the pleasure of working as a dramaturg with The Inkwell over the past few years and am always eager to collaborate with a new playwright and creative team. I am drawn to The Inkwell's plays that create imaginative, seemingly impossible worlds; plays with offbeat characters; and plays that ask big questions and take risks. It is no surprise that I loved working with Kristin Idaszak - a Chicago playwright, dramaturg, and producer - on her play Fugue (for Particle Accelerator). Fugue was featured in our most recent showcase reading on June 4th.

Kristin is not only interested in turning the world upside down in this play, but also finding those parallel worlds we only hope exist and jumping into the next universe. Hope, a physicist, is building a particle accelerator in search of a parallel universe. Jonas, her boyfriend and EMT, wants her to live in the present. Chris, a hitchhiker with amnesia, and Schrodinger, Hope's cat (who lives in the quantum universe) guide Hope on her search. At the heart of the play is a story about a young couple - Hope and Jonas - at their breaking point as they deal with a horrible decision.

During the first conversation I had with Kristin, she offered her thoughts on the play and something she said stuck with me throughout the process: scientists and playwrights (and all playmakers, I think) are searching for the same thing -- to uncover the truths about the world. Science -- quantum universes, string theory, and Schrodinger's thought experiment -- plays a big part in Fugue. Strip away the science and there is still music; music is just as important to the story. After all, the play is titled Fugue (for Particle Accelerator). What is a fugue? A fugue, in classical music, is a composition of two or more voices built on a subject, or theme, which is introduced in the beginning and recurs frequently throughout the composition.

What does a fugue look like on stage? What does it sound like? How does it move?

Those are just some of the questions we asked during the rehearsal for the Fugue excerpt reading. In the capable hands of our director - and The Inkwell's Producing Director - Lee Liebeskind the fugue got on its feet and came to life - literally. But how could we describe and replicate this fugue in the future? In conversation after the reading, my Inkwell colleague and fellow dramaturg, Laura Esti Miller told me about the Laban Movement Analysis, or LMA. Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) created and pioneered a system for notating dance; creating a written language for specific movements a dancer can make. While this notation was originally used by dancers, it can be adapted and is currently used by many actors, athletes, and physical therapists. This made us wonder - could we adapt and use LMA to choreograph a fugue? If we choreograph and use some variation of LMA to notate the movement we may end up with something like this:

Classical musical fugue composition → Written words on the pages of Fugue (for Particle Accelerator) → Actors as fugue → Notation of actors as a fugue → Resulting in a written catalogue of what a fugue looks like.

Now wouldn't that be cool?

This is why I love the Inkwell, Inkwell plays, and Kristin's play. We are making impossible worlds possible - even those worlds that don't exist in the one we live in.

Intrepid readers, this is Anne again, sitting in the cool of her home away from the sun, which feels awfully close to the planet right now.

The sun is, of course, a star, and it's behaving as it should this time of year... bearing down the heat, lingering far into the evening before giving way to the small universe of other stars we see each night.

If you've been following Inkblog, you'll know that we've been musing on stars and their odd, erratic ways, having just finished an Inkreading of Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen.

I'm about to share with you her experience in her own words of working with director Amber Jackson and a terrific cast.  But before I give this blog over to Rebecca, I want to share with you a moment that completely surprised and delighted all of us in this process... a deviation in the playmaking orbit.

When we spoke with Rebecca before the rehearsal process started, she was pretty sure that she would not have time to rewrite her play, which is totally fine with us.  This is the playwright's experience, and we are happy to explore a script as is to see what we discover.

And then she surprised us with a new draft the day of the reading.  We were delighted.  But what surprised and delighted us so much was that she was inspired to revise after talking with Collin Ranney about possible set designs for her play.

As part of the Inkreading process, we try to bring on a consulting designer to dream up the million-dollar production for the playwright.  We hope it helps playwrights dream big about their plays and to see how their play will function in three dimensions.

What Rebecca discovered is a whole other dimension to her play, which began to change the rules of Blue Straggler's universe.  Hooray!  It was more than we could hope for and was a teaching moment for all of us.  Rebecca describes it below.  I myself was reminded of how important it is to bring all kinds of playmakers to the table in the early stages of play development.  And, as Rebecca says, a play is quickly owned by many people... in a beautiful way.

Here's Rebecca's Inkreading experience.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A playwright sits at a keyboard, speedily click-clacking her way to theatrical brilliance. She hands her script to the right person and--voila!--her play is immediately produced, a critical and commercial success.

Ah, if only it were so easy. I'm sure that this has happened somewhere, for someone, at some time, and I continue to hold out hope that one day this will happen for me. For most of us, however, the path from the keyboard to a theatre is a bit more tortuous (and occasionally torturous). There is the writing itself, which can take months and months. And then maybe a reading and a rewrite. And a rewrite of the rewrite. And another reading, if you're lucky. Which, naturally, will lead to another rewrite. And so on.

At each step of the way, the writer is grateful for the further refining of the piece, the little bits of diamond that begin to glitter among the coal. Then a strange problem arises--the play becomes a better and better piece of writing, but not necessarily a better play. We can get stuck relating to the words in their two-dimensional format, forgetting that they need to one day live and breathe in three-dimensional space. (Or possibly even more dimensions than that--see Blue Straggler for details.)

Enter The Inkwell to the rescue! In their wisdom, they teamed me up with Amber Jackson, a wonderful director who is allergic to music-stand-style readings. She staged the piece more fully and fluidly than I ever could have hoped for, especially given the fact that she was handed an extensively rewritten script 24 hours before we had an audience. That rewrite was due in large part to another one of The Inkwell's fantastic ideas--they gave us the opportunity to work with a set designer (the very talented Collin Ranney) and discuss how a full production of Blue Straggler might look.

A light bulb went on in my head during that conversation with Amber and Collin. Thinking about the characters acting, reacting, and interacting with objects in actual space helped me solve a fundamental storytelling problem. And when I saw Collin's renderings, they took my breath away. Collin's design and Amber's staging gave me a rush of giddy delight, the slightly surreal euphoria of seeing my internal thoughts becoming an external reality.

Of course, the magic of theatre is that the thoughts are no longer mine alone; they are the amalgamation of the thoughts of everyone involved in the process. That kind of alchemy takes time. Despite my writer's fantasy of the instant success, I know that the time taken for such amazing collaboration has brought Blue Straggler into an infinitely better space.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And here are some of the gorgeous set renderings that Collin Ranney put together for Blue Straggler.  The play takes place in many different orbits, all of which revolve around Lisa, an astrophysicist who finds love and loss tearing her universe apart.

So you'll see in this next rendering all these trunks popped open by Aspen Trees.  This was the idea from Collin that fundamentally changed the trajectory of Blue Straggler.  Collin helped Rebecca imagine another element in the universe of the play, that there are trunks leading to different moments in time and space.  She's taken this idea and run with it in the second act.

One of my favorite musicians is Jack White. His former band, The White Stripes, just features Jack as the front man/singer/guitar player/piano player along with his ex-wife Meg on back up vocals and drums. The White Stripes are known for putting themselves into a small box and pushing the boundaries of that box as far as they possibly can. Because sometimes, when we force ourselves into tight deadlines, or limited resources, magic can happen because we're forced to use that crazy thing that often lies latent within us: our imagination.

I think we achieved a spark of magic with the Blue Straggler reading. And I think it was because we were lucky enough to have a team of collaborators who weren't afraid to keep pushing to the dark corners of our little box of four rehearsals. When artists embrace fearlessness in those dark corners, you start using the word "yes" a lot. Can the playwright hand the cast and director a 30% rewritten/reordered script the night before a reading? YES. Can you rough block a full-length ever-evolving play over the course of three rehearsals? YES. Can you choreograph a dramatic suicide scene with scripts in hand? YES.

People don't always like being pushed to those dark corners though. It's scary... when I collaborate as a director either in my theatre or film work, I often say, "You can say no if you want to...." (to offer people a way out) then I follow it with "...BUT, I think this moment could be even stronger if we explore the possibility of changing X to Y." Good ideas don't always follow your deadlines. Now I'm not saying that it's a good idea to push too hard too late. There is a certain point when you have to give your play away to the audience, or release your film. You can't keep changing it forever. But you CAN push until every little granule of sand in that hourglass is gone. And sometimes you have a dream team of collaborators that aren't afraid to say "Yes" with you and ride that last bit of sand to the bottom, and I feel lucky to have had that with this team.

Here's to pushing to those dark corners and saying yes when most people say no!!!

That's Anna Quiggins on the left as Clarissa and Esther Williams on the right as Lisa in the Inkreading of Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen.  Thanks again to Melissa Blackall for the incredible photographs!

Hello intrepid readers.  It's Lee.  Do you know Katharine Sherman?  If you do, that's 10 bonus points.  If you don't, you should.  

Jenn Book Haselswerdt and I (Laura Esti Miller) had the opportunity to dramaturg the three 20-minute excerpts presented at The Inkwell's Blood 'n Guts showcase reading this past March. Jenn dramaturged The Body and Twigs and Bone while I dramaturged Cassandra.

Included here are reflections on our work during the process:

Jenn: I was happy to be an Inkwell reader last year; I love new plays, and I love the coffee-shop debates that follow the individual play-reading from my couch. Which plays fit The Inkwell's aesthetic? Which have beautiful and challenging language and evocative visuals? During the reading process, I absolutely fell in love with the three plays that ultimately wound up being explored during the Blood and Guts Showcase -- The Body, Twigs and Bone, and Cassandra. None of them were like anything I've read before, and when I was asked to dramaturg excerpts for two of them, I leapt at the chance.

Having an opportunity to look at a 20-minute excerpt is advantageous both to the playwright and to The Inkwell. The playwright gets a chance to work on a small snippet that they think needs the most work, whether it's in the middle of the play or at the end. It gives us a chance to take a concentrated look at the relationships and circumstances in the play, along with the structure. It gives The Inkwell a chance to get to know a new playwright, his/her work, and what s/he is like to interact with. And it gives an audience a small taste of a new play, which will hopefully intrigue them enough to want to see a full production later on down the line.

It's an exciting part of the process, and one that I relish. Of course, I like these three plays a great deal, and can't wait to work with them further (a fact proved during the talk-back session when I started talking at great length about what we didn't get a chance to see in The Body -- though I will point out that I didn't spoil the ending).

Laura: Since I came to the Inkwell during the open call for submissions this past year, I've had the chance to be part of the development process from an early stage, which has been an incredible joy. Watching and interacting with other artists as we make progress on our own artistic journeys will never cease to inspire me and I am thrilled that, as an Inkwell dramaturg, I get to be a part of so many fascinating adventures.

One part of the process I find especially illuminating and helpful is a phone call between the playwrights, director, dramaturgs, and an Inkwell staff member -- in this case, the remarkable Anne McCaw. Not only is it a way to introduce ourselves before spending a few hours together in a rehearsal room; it is a way to make sure the team members are working towards the same goals during the rehearsal and reading.

Anne encourages the playwrights to discuss what they are currently working on within the plays, what they might be stuck on, what areas they might want to focus on for the reading. This call gives each playwright the chance to speak candidly about their work, and it gives the team the opportunity to focus on a manageable chunk of the play for the 20-minute excerpt. 

Dramaturgs also get an unusual opportunity when working on these showcase readings for The Inkwell.  We get to introduce each play to the audience and gush about what we love about them.

Below are the notes Jenn and I shared with the audience on March 5th about The Body by Steve Moulds, Twigs and Bone by Tiffany Antone, and Cassandra by Katharine Sherman.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The Body
by Steve Moulds

What would you do if you were stuck at home alone with your anxiety-ridden stepdaughter? What if she wouldn't stop reminding you that you weren't her "real dad," and that you don't follow her mom's rules? What if you have trouble sleeping, a trait that slowly begins to creep into your day?

In this play, Joe faces a tenuous relationship with his stepdaughter, Abby. His wife, Lauren, is out of town, and he is unemployed, left to care for Abby during her summer vacation. One day, a life-sized rag doll with no face and an enigmatic instruction manual arrives on their doorstep. Joe and Abby set to work trying to decipher the instruction manual, but soon find more differences than similarities as the doll begins to wreak psychic havoc on their waking and dream lives.

We love the growing sense of dread in this play, and the constantly blurring line between dreaming and reality. Steve's exploration of the tenuous stepfather-stepchild relationship is one that doesn't appear often in dramatic literature, and one that immediately presents actors with a sense of tension. His use of language and pacing lends a sense of near-gothic dread to a very real-life situation. One of our readers gave the compliment, "It's like a horror film on stage!"

Tonight's excerpt explores Joe and Abby's shifting reality after the doll has been in their home for several days. Dreams have started to invade reality, and the world around them is changing. We find ourselves asking the question, what happens if we enter the dream and don't wake up again?

Twigs and Bone
By Tiffany Antone

They say you can't go home again...But what happens when you do? In Twigs and Bone, Moira returns to the home she hasn't visited in eight years, to find her parents are different from the people she left behind. Moira is a big-city lawyer, and her parents live in a small country house, surrounded by trees, dirt, and the smells of nature. And then nature starts encroaching on the house...

Our excerpt takes place during act 2 of the play. By this point, nature has invaded the house to the point where the entire ground floor is filled with dirt. It has literally buried Moira's father, William. Moira is left alone in the storm with her mother, Bonnie, whose only goal is to protect a bundle of twigs she is raising as a new daughter, Maeb. The bundle of twigs has replaced another daughter--also named Maeb--who was weak for most of her life, and died in a hospital years ago, leaving Moira a bereaved only child.

The Inkwell's readers were fascinated by Tiffany's use of language and the organic, natural qualities of the play. The script has brought gothic melodrama into a modern milieu, and has given us characters and relationships we can understand as actual people. Tiffany's scope, vision, and grasp of things dark and scary were incredibly intriguing to us. The feeling of dread as nature makes its presence increasingly known in the house is very creepy, and the structure of the play gives the audience just enough information as they need it, leaving a delicious sense of mystery around who William, Bonnie, and Maeb are.

Twigs and Bone raises many interesting questions surrounding family and the larger world around us, as we explore mother versus daughter, science versus spirituality, modernism versus the traditions of the old world--specifically, fairies and paganism. And ultimately, we find ourselves wondering: even amidst family, is anything we do ever not selfish?

Cassandra
By Katharine Sherman

Katharine Sherman's Cassandra is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth from Cassandra's perspective. As a young, beautiful princess of Troy, Cassandra caught the eye of the god Apollo. They make an arrangement -- Apollo grants Cassandra the blessing of foresight in exchange for sex. When Cassandra breaks her promise, Apollo retaliates by poisoning the gift he has already bestowed upon her. She will be able to see the future, but no one will believe her prophecies.

Inkwell readers loved this fresh take on the story through Katharine's eyes.  We were fascinated by the way that others in the play relate to Cassandra and her perceived madness and mesmerized by just how far into the future Cassandra can see.  Cassandra has the unique ability to see her own current events and future tragic events in one moment, and though she knows the inevitable outcome, she still fights for even the tiniest difference -- she holds out for hope.

In this excerpt, we focus on key moments when things "get twisted," as our playwright says.  First, Apollo and Cassandra attempt a gift exchange that goes sour.  Cassandra then reveals, through perhaps the-not-so-familiar tale of Cinderella just how overwhelming and devastating seeing the future can be. Cassandra has another psychological test of wills with her would-be lover Apollo, and finally, on the brink of tragedy, she is able to enjoy a few moments of unlikely friendship with her sister-in-law, Helen, the only person she knows who has been treated as badly by the gods as herself.

I'd like to share with you all, Intrepid readers, a new concept that was just introduced to me (this is Anne, by the way) last night by the lovely and mischievous Rebecca Bossen, playwright and wordsmith.

That concept is the FUNKNOWN.

The Inkwell has long embraced the FUNKNOWN, although we didn't have any clue that's what we were doing.  But the FUNKNOWN is at the heart of playmaking.

I'll stop with the mystery.  The FUNKNOWN and just another way of looking at the unknown.

Why coin a new term?  Because the unknown can feel really, really scary.  It's what you don't know about a play.  It's when you don't know what the heck to do when you don't know what you don't know about a play.

So why am I bringing up the FUNKNOWN right now?  Because we just put together a team of playmakers to work with Rebecca on her play Blue Straggler.  They met last night for the first rehearsal of our Inkreading process.  We just sent them into the FUNKNOWN for a week, from which they will emerge for a stage reading of the latest draft of the play. (That staged reading is next Saturday, May 28th at 8:00 p.m. in Woolly Mammoth Theatre's classroom.  We hope you can come on down to see it.)

Do you remember Rebecca?  If you look back at Inkblog!, you'll find that we first met her through our open call for submissions, and we started work with her last September, when we presented a 20-minute excerpt of Blue Straggler.

Rebecca's play is a musing on loss and the rules of the universe.  Yes, she's writing about characters wrestling with the rules of that big universe that's full of stars and phenomena that bend the rules that we think we understand.  Her play is all about our compulsive, desperate search for knowing all that is unknowable.

So it seemed so easy to begin a conversation about the FUNKNOWN at this first rehearsal.

Why talk about it all?

What we've found is that the actors, directors, and dramaturgs we work are looking forward to and working toward moments of epiphany in the rehearsal room.  They put their brains and hearts to work to help the playwright find something out -- the motivation of a character, the right momentum of a scene, a critical choice that changes the course of the play.

But what they don't expect are the moments of unknown... the moments when an actor has absolutely no idea why he/she is on stage and why they are talking to another character or why they are ready to hang themselves one minute and go to a wedding the next.  These are the moments in the rehearsal room when everyone looks at each other and realize that they don't have an answer.

It's the unknown.  It's the FUNKNOWN.

And we at The Inkwell love those moments.  Because those moments of not knowing -- of the FUNKNOWN -- are just as important as any other in making plays. 

If we as playmakers can help playwrights find what they don't know about their plays, if we can encourage actors to ask questions that a playwright can't answer, and we can push dramaturgs to feel as clueless about structure and pace and character arc as the playwright... then we've created a really successful play development process.

Scary?  Sure.  But we hope it's scary in the way that a funhouse is scary, or a haunted house at the boardwalk.  We hope it's the kind of scary where there's a surprise around the corner and a question that makes us all think harder and more deeply.

So good luck, Rebecca, Amber, Jason, Sheila, Anna, and Esther.  We at The Inkwell hope you enjoy your weeklong journey into the FUNKNOWN.  And we can't wait to hear more about the things you just don't know about Blue Straggler.

Let me share something with a small piece of advice with you all, intrepid readers.  You need to get to know Gary.

That's Gary Garrison, who is a teacher, mentor, terrific writer, and the executive director of the Dramatist Guild.

There are so many ways in which to praise Gary, but let me let one of The Inkwell's founding members, Dan Ennis, do all the work.  He and I (Anne, your faithful Inkblogger) attended a master class taught by Gary this past weekend.  This is the second master class that Gary has taught for The Inkwell, and we hope to bring him back again and again and again.

Here's heaps of praise from Dan... as well as some tidbits of sage advice from Gary on the fundamentals of a writing life.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gary Garrison inspires me. I knew this three years ago, when I took his course on improving the 10-minute play, hosted by The Inkwell.

But a lot can happen in three years. One might become disenchanted with theater, stop writing and move to Alaska, for example. Just saying, it can happen.

But those who write rarely stop for good. And when I decided to start writing again after returning to D.C. permanently, I could think of no better way to motivate myself than to take Gary's master class on the fundamentals of the writing life (again thanks to The Inkwell).    

Two things struck me, and I'm sure that's because of where I am in my writing career. One is that there are an awful lot of small theater companies asking for submissions, and with so many options, it may be hard to know what's best. The second is even more fundamental to theater, and I'll save it for later.

Gary always seems to be espousing the "personal." Indeed, the first half of the class was less about what we write than who we are, and yes, our insecurities, strengths and influences.

So it should come as no shock that Gary would suggest, in the submissions process, pitching who we are ahead of what we write. Don't pitch the play, pitch the writer. Theaters are much more interested in investing in a line of work, he says, rather than just one piece.

How to do this? (And this is music to my inner dramaturg's ears) Research.

Instead of taking a "shotgun approach" to submissions -- scattering scripts far and wide, applying to every opportunity -- he suggests investigating the plays that theater companies produce. Do you write to similar themes? A similar style?

Find five or six theaters (and not necessarily local ones) and try to form a personal relationship with them. Write them. They may not be currently seeking submissions. Write anyway.

"I'd like to introduce you to myself as a writer."

"I notice you do plays about this."

"I notice you did so-and-so's play. Here's how we're similar."

Sure, not every company will respond. But the potential benefits of forming a relationship with one will last a lot longer than one production.

My second discovery here is even more about the personal -- or rather, interpersonal. Theater is collaborative, after all.

I've resisted networking for the better part of a decade. Several years ago, while interning at a large regional theater, my mentor gave me an ongoing assignment: Have lunch with 20 people whose careers interest you (roughly one a week). I failed horribly. Not because I couldn't do it. Because I didn't want to. I wanted to write. I wanted to research. I wanted to get everything on my own merit. How twentysomething.

Gary made it clear to me how small the world of this business is: During the course of the day, he mentioned my former mentor by name. (This is without him knowing where I interned.) I realized that I already know several people who know people who know people. This is after years of not trying, just working. House-manage here, direct there. And I thought, "Imagine what I could do if I actually tried."

Shoot. Within the past two months, I went to see a show to support an actor I knew, and I never let her know I was there until days afterward. That won't happen again.

Gary covered more ground, too.

Ways to improve your resume (Lack experience? Don't hide it. Put a one-sentence synopsis under the plays you've written. That one-day master class? That's experience, too.)

Agents (They go for writers who are not going to make them work.)

Publishing (They have to be able to promote something. Submit reviews with your play.)

Writing synopses (Get an objective source. Hire an MFA grad to read your play and do it.)

One great thing about writing is, it's never finished until you say it is. There can always be a new draft to. I'll just consider this class the primer for the next draft in my writing life.

Hello intrepid readers.  I know I haven't blogged much here, so introduction time.  I am Lee Liebeskind and I am the Producing Director here at the Inkwell.  I am really excited to have my first blog post on Inkblog!!!

I want to talk and introduce you to Steve Moulds.

Steve wrote a play called The Body.  The play has been described as a suspense thriller, a horror play, and just plain different than anything else.  One of our readers said of it, "I literally was on edge trying to figure out what was happening and at the same time wanted to cover my eyes because I knew something was coming."   I kinda fell in love with this play.  It's something so simple, but so beautiful that takes the audience on a roller coaster ride, and we're all dying to see what could happen next.  During our last submissions process it came to us, and since then was a finalist for the Wordbridge Award.

Now the first step in our process is a 20-minute reading that we call a Showcase Reading.  We work with the playwright to find a 20-minute section of their play in which they are having the most difficult time with or feel the most confused about.  We spend a night working solely on this 20-minute section with the playwright, dramaturg, and actors in a room, which will ultimately be presented with two other 20-minute selections on a Saturday evening.  The process has often times been referred to as a "First Date," something we at The Inkwell embrace entirely.

So when we offered a showcase reading slot to Steve, we were very excited that he was able to come up to DC for a couple days and work on a showcase reading of The Body with director Amelia Johnson, dramaturg Jenn Book Haselswerdt, and actors Jonathon Taylor and Chrstin Siems.  Below you will see Steven's thoughts about having a "First Date" with The Inkwell.

------------------------------------------------------------------

In the weeks leading up to The Inkwell's showcase reading of my play The Body, I got into a funny habit.

Whenever I'd describe the event to friends or colleagues and it came up that The Inkwell would be reading twenty minutes rather than the full script, I would reflexively offer, "It's like a developmental first date." Surely the play development process has been compared to a romantic relationship before... but then again, everything's been compared to a romantic relationship. It was an easy shorthand, one of those sentences that sums up without actually explaining a thing. But the more I said it, the more convincing it sounded. I was going to go on a developmental first date!

What I realized, however, was that there was a reason I kept offering this unnecessary justification: I was skeptical. For a full-length play, I thought, twenty minutes is a snapshot. It's like trying to tailor a suit for somebody when all you have are the measurements for their arm. Yes, I got to pick the twenty minutes, and yes, I was going to use those to focus on something I wanted to discover, but deep down, I wasn't expecting much. I thought this would be a fun evening, maybe even the launch of something better to come, but was I going to learn anything? Hence my metaphor. If your first date with someone ends badly, you might be disappointed, but it's tempered by the fact that it's only one evening. "It's a developmental first date" might as well have been, "If it doesn't go well, what's the harm?"

Let me immediately cut off all this negativity by saying that my experience was like no first date I have ever had--and yes, that's a compliment. First, there was the amount of care that everyone at the Inkwell took with the play, especially my dramaturg, Jenn Book Haselwerdt, and director, Amelia Johnson. Their operative question for me was, "What will help you, the playwright, understand your play better?" This was just a piece of the play, but they always worked with an eye towards the big picture, and made sure that even if the audience couldn't hear all of it, the people on the creative team would understand the play thoroughly. You always want to feel that you're in good hands when you collaborate, and I felt that way in spades. Contrast that with a scenario where you're simultaneously trying to prove yourself while checking everyone else out, and you'll understand how great I felt.

Then there was the matter of listening to my twenty minutes. Would I be able to glean any insight from this chunk? Or would this just be a jaunt into D.C.? As I sat there listening to my excerpt read in front of a wonderfully attentive audience, I found myself making all sorts of other connections to other places in the play. I wondered how that bit would work with an extra scene in the mix. I questioned whether I needed one of my scenes at all. I even realized something the play as a whole was missing, and started thinking of how I would address that in the next draft. The entire evening was presented so clearly, so free of anyone's ego, so straightforwardly, that I could just listen to my play. Throw in a really insightful comment from my director at the bar later that night, and the evening was a success.

Because here's the thing--you're never rewriting the entire play. You're always looking at this one scene, this one page, this one line. Meanwhile, you're holding the rest of it somewhere in the back of your head. Twenty minutes is plenty to chew on.

What was I ever so skeptical about? Consider the first date metaphor debunked.

Though if The Inkwell calls me up and wants to see a movie, I'm definitely going.

We're a pretty enthusiastic bunch over at The Inkwell.  And you probably have gotten the idea that we might like plays... just a little bit.

And I hope that something else is becoming clear to you intrepid readers.  We really love playwrights, too.  We love the journey they take us on.

And I'm really excited to introduce you to Mia Chung and the journey we're going on with her through her new play You for Me for You.

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that we presented 20 minutes of the play in the Fall, and you'll have a sense of how fascinating this play is.  It's about two women living in North Korea and the bargain they must make to escape.

Mia is coming back in August to work with us on an Inkreading of her play, and we'll present the whole darn thing at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival on Labor Day weekend.

I'll be Mia's dramaturg for the Inkreading, and I'm so looking forward to diving back into the world that Mia's creating.  It's a world where a smuggler and a paper balloon can shape a woman's fate.  It's going to be so much fun to help her reconfigure the boundaries and discover new wonders in the map of this play.  I've just read the latest draft, and she's definitely filling in boundaries.  "The Crossing" has its own space in the play where it didn't before.  This is a really, really important anchor point on the map of the play.

I hope you enjoy getting to know Mia as much as I am.  Here are her thoughts on her journey so far with The Inkwell.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

You know that feeling of discovering the city you live in when someone comes to visit?

And if that someone is an experienced traveler, perhaps with some experience, say, in urban planning, then taking a walk with this visiting friend can compel you to re-think how you relate to your neighborhood, where the roads connect, what places are worth exploring again.

During my play's rehearsal for The Inkwell's Fall 2010 showcase, I was blessed with several "visiting friends": a great team of actors comprised of Gwen Grastorf, Steve Lee, and Amy Quiggins; Amber Jackson, an imaginative director with strong movement experience and visual vocabulary; and Anne McCaw, a gifted dramaturg and savvy play-world traveler. With the fresh eyes of visitors to a new country coupled with the nuanced insight of seasoned explorers, the group found new routes into and around the ideas of the play.

So much of my play is about border-crossing and overlapping time, space, and identities. There are moments of deliberate confusion as my goal is (often) to underscore a world's foreignness. Nonetheless, for Anne McCaw, my play seemed to be familiar ground right away. Her assured step and questions signaled to me that the play had some traction. On more than one occasion, she found a shorter, more effective route to a scene's destination. What was most helpful, however, is when the intrepid Anne got lost... because then she began to draw. She was drawing a map. With cartographic instinct, Anne drew a quick scheme of the play's worlds and how they relate to each other. Immediately, I could see that I still had work to do to clarify the rules of an important border in the play, as well as the spaces immediately on either side.

By the end of my Inkwell experience, I had that rare and unmistakable feeling I have whenever I have a good travel experience: I'm happy to go home, and I cannot wait for the next trip.

Happy Spring, intrepid readers, from all of us at The Inkwell.  I don't know about you, but that urge to roll in the grass all day long is taking me (Anne, your humble blogger) over.  Is this animal instinct?

Which of course turns my mind to that most wonderful play Monkey Adored that The Inkwell team recently explored with its playwright, Henry Murray.

Henry shares his thoughts about his experience with us below.

To refresh your memory, The Inkwell first discovered Monkey Adored in the pile of plays that were sent to us during our first national call for submissions.  We fell in love with the world of Henry's play, where animals reflect upon their tenuous existence, search for true love and loyalty, and fight the oppressive acts of man.  It's a romantic adventure, existential comedy, and political treatise all in one.

Henry came out for a week to work with an incredibly talented cast -- Adrienne Nelson, Steve Lee, Frank Britton, John Delaporta, Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, and Toni Rae Brotons -- and with Forum Theatre's Artistic Director Michael Dove.  They seemed to have a blast, and we all sad to see Henry head home to Los Angeles.

We're very excited about where this play is going.  There will be a premiere production in Los Angeles produced by Rogue Machine.  I've read the latest draft, and it continues to change in wonderful ways.  There's now a star-nosed mole that makes an appearance to join Sonny Bonobo the amorous and mischievous monkey, Brown Spot the every loyal dog, Madeline Kahn the love-starved cat, Penguinito the philosophical penguin, James Rat the revolutionary rodent, and Elaine Ostrich the put-upon ostrich.  Trust me.  It all works beautifully.

Before I give you Henry, let me remind you of The Inkwell's upcoming events!  We'll be presenting a staged reading of Rebecca Bossen's Blue Straggler on Saturday, May 28th at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.  (Learn a little more about Rebecca on this here blog.)  Then on June 4th, we're presenting a showcase of play excerpts featuring rebels, rabble rousers, and tricksters.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where are you with this script? What was its genesis? What do you still have questions about? What would you like to accomplish in the coming week?  These were some of the prompts Anne McCaw used to open the weeklong workshop of my play Monkey Adored. It was a good way to jump in and to be fair, she had asked me in private if I minded being interviewed in front of a cast, director, and stage manager I had never met.  Meghan Long, my dramaturg, I had worked with on a previous encounter with The Inkwell.  But a week is actually a short period of time to try to work a full script and I expected and welcomed the intensity.  Besides, I knew from my previous experience with Anne, that she is a person of great clarity and insight and the focus of the process was to be playwright centric.

Playwright Centric... The Inkwell got it exactly right!  I could rewrite as much or as little as I liked. I could be as vocal or silent in "the room" as I saw fit. And in fact, trust is something that grows over time, but The Inkwell has done some serious thinking and put guidelines in place that optimize the chance that valuable progress will be made on a script. It could come in the form of a fortuitous comment by Meghan about how a particular sequence captured the essence of a relationship, just at the moment when I was wondering if I really needed it. Or it could be the great gift of listening in as my director, Michael Dove asks sensitive and probing questions of an actor about a character's motivations. Michael told me that his attitude toward the script and rewrites is that they are perfect when they reach his hand and his job is not to question the playwright, but to figure out how the play works. Still, some of Michael's questions had the sly effect, intended or not, of making this playwright question the clarity, the story logic or the organization of what's on the page.

And so rewrites happen. I'm still rewriting. Because a reading has a different effect than time spent rehearsing with a talented and dedicated cast in the hands of a gifted director. Things that seem to work in the microcosm don't necessarily work when presented as a whole with the playwright listening to the audience breathing. I'm still pursuing my stated goals, most notably the one about getting out of language and into action. The good news for Monkey Adored is that it will go into production here in Los Angeles next Fall.

The Inkwell's integrity and insight into the development process places them at the top of the field. The workshop raised Monkey Adored to a new place. It brought refinements and compression and new scenes. The Inkwell's clarity about not trying to "fix" the play for the playwright is an extraordinary gift I will always treasure, along with my new friends in DC. Thank you Jessica Burgess and everyone associated with The Inkwell. I hope to see some of you in Venice Beach, the sooner the better.

Clearly, all of us at The Inkwell are inspired by new plays.  We love what they reveal to us, the conversation they create, and the connections we build through them.

And we love when these conversations linger.

That's why we're so excited to continue to share with you the conversation that the new play Tether by Julie Oni Taiwo has sparked around family.  When we read a draft of the play in 2009, we loved the way in which Julie captured the secret language of sisters and the surprising ways in which she tackled race, religion, and identity with an unusual pair of twins.
 
Jenn Book Haselwerdt, the lovely, lively, and thoughtful dramaturg that helped bring Tether to the stage at Montgomery College's Studio Theatre in Silver Spring, has more to say about what the play has to say.  And we hope some of you can make it to the world premier production, which is running through March 13th.  (Here's a review from DC Theatre Scene.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There have been a lot of words exchanged recently about why the arts are important, especially as the budget is being argued in the House and Senate. The words have spawned round-table debates, newspaper articles, countless blog posts, and even Twitter trends. As arts advocacy becomes more and more important, we are constantly asked to complete the sentence "I believe in the power of the arts to..."

Usually, because I work in theatre education, my sentence ends with some form of "...to teach, no matter the subject." But right now, because of my work with Tether, I would absolutely say that: I believe in the power of the arts to facilitate conversation and strengthen community.

Tether has brought up a lot of interesting conversation through the development process and weeks of rehearsal; it deals with issues of race and identity as teenage twins make their way to womanhood. The twins are biracial, with one presenting as white, and the other presenting as black. (This actually does happen, although there's a one-in-a-million chance in the genetic lottery.)  As the twins grow -- and grow apart -- they are forced to ask themselves questions about how the world perceives them, from issues of relationships with boys to recognition of race.

In the emails I shared with Julie and Jessica (the playwright and director, respectively), questions flew about the twins' apparent ethnicities -- how are we representing them to the audience? How do they see their race and how the world looks at them? These questions continued during our week of table work, and through the rehearsal process. We tracked the ways the girls talk about being multiracial, and looking as different as strangers to people who don't know them. We discussed the ways people outside of the family talk to and about them. We talked about important plot points which seemed to center around race.

As part of the opening weekend of Tether, I had the opportunity to facilitate a panel discussion after the Sunday matinee. The panel was titled Multi-Cultural, Multi-Racial: Growing up in the New Modern Family. Panelists included Julie and her identical twin sister Jessica, married couple Diane Martin and Wardell Townsend, and Executive Director of Community Bridges (a nonprofit organization that provides multicultural empowerment and leadership programs for young diverse girls in the Silver Spring community) Ana Lopez. The conversation was eye-opening, as we talked about topics from how to talk to our children about race, to educating multi-racial children about their backgrounds, to empowering young women, to whether or not we judge our youth based on their outward appearance--including race. The discussion lasted for 45 minutes, and could have gone on much, much, much longer.

Ultimately, after discussing a "plot twist" in Tether -- one that Julie, Jessica, and I discussed in depth before rehearsals began, and one that could certainly be taken a number of ways -- the panel agreed that one of the important things about this play was that the plot twist spawns conversation. It allows debate to be had. This is one of the most important things a play can do, and one of our most important responsibilities as playmakers. We can facilitate conversation, which can be difficult to do in the absence of a piece of art. This, I believe, is the power of the arts.

(That's Jade Wheeler above as the twin Lam in the world premiere production of Tether.  Photograph by C. Stanley Photography.)

Intrepid reader!  The winds of March are upon us (even though we're not quite out of February) and so is an incredible year of playmaking at The Inkwell.  Here's a little summary of what's happening right now.

We're extremely proud to present the latest draft of Henry Murray's Monkey Adored (98% Human), a riotous play about a motley crew of creatures searching for love and purpose.  Henry has been in town since Monday night, working with dramaturg Meghan Long (a regular with The Inkwell), director Michael Dove (Artistic Director of Forum Theatre who is stepping away from the company's Naomi Wallace festival to work with us), and a talented team of actors:  Adrienne Nelson, Steve Lee, Frank Britton, John Delaporta, Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, and Toni Rae Brotons.

I sat in on the first reading and was laughing my fool head off.  Monkeys are always funny, but so are dogs that fall into epileptic fits, existential penguins, a cat that croons like Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles, and a Jello mold with an imprint of Elvis' face.  It's all in the play.

The reading of the latest and greatest draft of Monkey Adored (98% Human) is on Saturday, February 26th at 8:00 p.m. at the Woolly Mammoth classroom.

If you can't make the reading, tune back here to Inkblog! to hear more from the playwright, the director, and the dramaturg about the exploration of the play.

Next up for The Inkwell will be a showcase reading featuring excerpts from three plays that chill the spine and leave a lingering sense of dread in your soul.  This Blood and Guts showcase (happening on March 5th at 8:00 p.m. at the Woolly Mammoth classroom) includes a menacing doll, a house that fills with mud, and a photosensitive girl who sees visions of the future.  One of the three playwrights will be in town for the reading... Ms. Katharine Sherman who is the author of Cassandra.

And you still have time to catch the Doorway Arts Ensemble production of Tether in Silver Spring (which runs through March 13th).  This play about interracial twin sisters and their life on and off the tetherball court.  Here are a couple of production photos to whet your appetite for the play.  Gwen Grastorf and Jade Wheeler play the twin sisters Lach and Lam in the production.  The photographs are by C. Stanley Photography.

All of us at The Inkwell are proud as punch to make a contribution to launching new plays... largely as playmakers. But there's another important group of people that make playmaking possible... our playgoers.

If you're not already tuned in, there's been a rather robust discussion about audience participation in playmaking. It started with a major convening of the new play community  -- entitled "From Scarcity to Abundance" -- hosted by Arena Stage's American Voices New Play Institute.  At the end of January, Arena brought playmakers from across the country to their spiffy new space to talk about all the ways in which the theatre community is supporting new play development and how this work can be taken to a new level.

There's so much that was discussed (with much blogging and tweeting afterward...much of the after-convening conversation can be found at www.2amtheatre.com) but there was one particularly splashy moment. The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Rocco Landsman suggested in remarks and in a back-and-forth with theatre folks that there were two many theaters in America, especially given that audiences for theatre is shrinking. (The entire conversation was recorded on video by Arena Stage.)
 
Huh. Well, lot's of people have had something to say about Mr. Landesman hypothesis, including the following (just in case you want a short list of the responses):
 

• New York theatre critic Charles Isherwood,
• New Dramatist's Artistic Director Todd London,
• Kirk Lynn, Co-Producing Artist Director at Rude Mechanicals,
  
• Jeremy B. Cohen, Producing Artistic Director of the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis,
  
• Actor, scholar, and former Artistic Director of San Francisco's Crowded Fire Charlene Smith, and
• NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman himself, who has stayed in the conversation.
  

One of The Inkwell's newest supporters (and our newest board member), Manny Strauss, offers the following thoughts on what an audience member really is... and how we might want to rethink the nomenclature.

We'd love to know what you think. Please join in on our discussion about the role of the audience in new play development. What do we need to do to energize and engage audiences in making plays? What do we need to do to help audience members to become active explorers and collaborators in new play development?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is Manny Strauss and I am honored to be blogging for the first time on Inkblog! For five years, Betsy Karmin and I published Washington Theater Review. It was a labor of love and, in some ways, a chronicle of our personal journey with the Washington theater community. While that particular journalistic journey came to an end a few years ago, our theatrical expeditions never ceased and our passion for new play development recently led us to The Inkwell.

Since attending the Inkreading of Monument in November, I have had the opportunity to chat several times with Jessica Burgess (The Inkwell's Artistic Director) about The Inkwell's plans, aspirations, and ambitions and can easily say it appears headed toward becoming (if it isn't already) an essential resource for new play development in our flourishing theater community.

I have been particularly impressed with the strategic thinking being applied to all aspects of the organization's development. Let me give an example here. In our first conversation, Jessi described a nomenclature issue with which she was grappling. As you know if you have been reading this blog, The Inkwell is a resource for playwrights, playmakers, and playgoers. She was concerned about the inadequacy of the term "playgoer" to describe the unique kind of audience experience offered by Inkwell for people who want to be part of the play development process. She preferred "playgoer" to "audience" or "spectator" as the latter both imply more passivity but was still dissatisfied and thought "playgoer" did not go far enough.

I fully understood the root issue here. Playwriting begins as a very solitary activity. That said, the end result of the endeavor is a play - an interaction with a live audience. At some point during the process many playwrights and plays benefit greatly from exposing the work in process to sentient others to experience the piece. Ideally, the audience in such situation will be engaged, thoughtful, interactive, and participatory. Jessi challenged me to come up with a more descriptive term that better characterized this role of an Inkwell audience.

This was not an easy assignment! After the challenge was delivered in an in-person conversation, the e-mail exchange began. My first two suggestions were "collaborators" or "partners in crime." Jessi politely rejected those while encouraging (humoring?) me that I was on the right track. She feared that "partners in crime" would send the wrong message. What was the crime? Playwrights might get nervous and fear that the crime was the "heartless murder of their nascent work" and while that might happen at other institutions that was certainly not the Inkwell way. She shared her vision of Inkwell in general as a "think tank" for new plays and indicated that she elicits much eye rolling from her Inkwell colleagues when using the term "Ink tank" to describe the interaction between the Inkwell team, including the audience, and a playwright.

It was time for more contemplation. "Navigators?" "Rudder?" That doesn't sound right. What self-respecting person is going to want to be called a "rudder?" "Midwives?" While a midwife has a certain applicable nurturing characteristic, the term just doesn't work.

After further mulling, I propose referring to Inkwell audience members as "explorers." The essence of exploring is to go to a place that is by definition unfamiliar. Explorers approach whatever they are doing with a keen sense of adventure and excitement and isn't that what new play development needs? The goal is to develop new voices and new methods of expression; otherwise we would all be happy staying at home watching another reality show on television. Inkwell matches new voices with an audience that seeks adventure and facilitates a lively discussion and interaction between playwright and explorer.

I participated in the exploration of Monument. Playwright Doug Dolcino's piece included a fascinating Greek chorus of postal workers. I must admit that I have never seen that before and found myself thinking about his use of the chorus many times since then.

Are you qualified to be an explorer? Exploring sounds like an advanced course. Are there prerequisites? These questions are rooted in an incorrectly perceived snobbishness embedded in some playgoers. Betsy and I are both "self-taught" explorers. We always have loved going to theater and using a play as a springboard for a post-show conversation. The only materials needed for this type of course are inquisitive, open, and thoughtful minds - characteristics that are in quite large supply in the Washington area.

You might be wondering how Inkreadings are different from play readings presented by any number of other organizations around town. I haven't put my finger on that quite yet. I do know that Inkwell's work is unique and exciting. Alas, further contemplation on this subject may lead to a future blog.

In the meantime, should you choose to join the corps of explorers for future adventures, you might not fall in love with every new piece you get to know but you undoubtedly will enjoy the ride. Plus, you will have the opportunity to interact with many amazingly bright members of our theater community. I know that Betsy and I look forward to participating in many future Inkwell expeditions!