Inkblog!

But before I tell you all what we have coming up, let me revisit with you our last event... the 2008 Page to Stage Festival.  You have to turn your thoughts back to last September.  Do you remember where you were?

Hopefully, some of you came out to see us at The Kennedy Center, where we produced a showcase of 20-minute nuggets of five intriguing plays, a lively and timely panel discussion, and a staged reading of one wild and raw new play.

To start, let me update you on a couple of the plays and playwrights that we brought to Page to Stage.

Adam Jonas Segaller continues to furiously work on his epic of 17th Century France, Hercule de Bergerac, and in April hosted a reading at the Clark Street Playhouse.  It featured a cast of some of The Inkwell's favorite actors, Sara Barker, Daniel Eichner, John Geoffrion, Heather Haney, and Scott McCormick.  We are excited to see what Adam continues to find in the script.

Kristen de Wulf has also been busy.  Her play, Ignis Fatuus, received a staged reading from the dynamic start-up company The Hub (here's a little more about the reading from The Hub's blog).  We hope to see more of her work, including the latest and greatest version of her surreal and hilarious Lullaby.

Melissa Blackall continues her harrowing journey into the land of bodies with The F Word.  She's in the midst of a new draft that will receive an Inkubator Production at The Inkwell's next Inkubator Festival, to be held at H Street Playhouse from September 19th through October 21st.  Yes, folks, that's a teaser.

Here are some photos from our Page to Stage festivities to help jog your memory... and hopefully to whet your appetite for what's coming up.

Here you see our illustrious artistic director, Jessica Burgess, listening intently to a full house at the panel discussion The Inkwell hosted as part of Page to Stage.  The panel -- Playwrights:  Pampered? Patronized? Pushed Aside? -- centered on a rather provocative article written by theatre critic Nelson Pressley, positing that playwrights are far too coddled in the play development processes that most theaters offer.  Nelson himself (the gentleman in the middle of the photo) joined Ari Roth, artistic director of Theatre J (sitting next to Jessi), Round House Theatre's Blake Robinson (sitting to the right of Ari), and Dramatist Guild regional representative/playwright Callie Kimball for the spirited discussion.

And here's a noted voice in new play development, Arena Stage's David Dower, offering up his thoughts and opinons at the panel discussion.  You can learn more about what he's thinking about playwriting and plays these days at his blog.

We capped off the day-long event with a stage reading of Greg Beuthin's bizarre, edgy, apocalyptic fairy tale, A Time Upon.  Here is Alex Perez as Once, a pet of sorts who only speaks through kazoo.  He's following Niki Jacobsen as Fillette, a wanderer on a mission.

Finally, here's Colin Smith ranting and raving as Slim, a dangerous and devlish shadow, a frightening presence in A Time Upon.  Niki Jacobsen as Fillette looks on.

Next up... a report on the plays we've been reading to get ready for the 2009 Inkubator Festival.

All photos were taken by the multi-talented Melissa Blackall.  You can see more of her work at her website.

Dear readers -

If I (your ever faithful blogger, Anne) haven't whetted your appetite enough to come join us for our FIRST BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION at Page-to-Stage, describing the spirited discussion we are going to have with Nelson Pressley, Calli Kimball, Blake Robinson, and Ari Roth...

maybe I can entice you in another way... with a few tidbits from the plays we will be reading that day.

We wouldn't be The Inkwell if we didn't share with you all some mischief and mayhem leaking out of the brains of talented, up-and-coming playwrights.

At two o'clock (that's in the afternoon, folks) on Labor Day, we're producing staged readings of 20-minute excerpts from five wild plays at The Kennedy Center's Rehearsal Room One... with topics ranging from baby-making to comas to mathematics and threesomes.. as well as a preview of the new edition of The F Word by Melissa Blackall, the crazy collage of a play about fat that The Inkwell has been developing for the last year.

What will you be seeing and hearing?  Here's a tiny taste...

Here's a delicious little snippet from LULLABYE by Kristen DeWulf, directed by Andy Wassenich

LIBBY
I have cows.

TIM
I have a . . . you did say cats, right?

LIBBY
Cows.

TIM
Cows, really?

LIBBY
Six cows.

TIM
That’s . . . a lot of cows.

LIBBY
I had seven--

TIM
At the same time?

LIBBY
They stay outside, of course. They like to graze around the pasture. It’s
very comforting, really, to sit outside with them as they graze on the hillside.
It’s peaceful listening to their mews.

TIM
You mean moos?

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And here's one of my favorite lines from COMA, PATIENT by Shaun Raviv, directed by James Hesla

DR. PUNTOFF
Besides I’m just testing his awareness. That’s all. I’m not
going to torture him. (laughing) Then I’d be no better than
the guys who stuck my thumbs in molten hot motor oil. Don’t
bother looking. They’re still there. But my fingerprints
aren’t.

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Finally, here's a provocative little exchange from SEVEN DREAMS OF HER by Sarah Sander, directed by Christopher Niebling

AUGUST
Do you want to play with your dog?

IVY
What will you call me?

GREY
Do you want to play on the slide?

IVY
I need a name.

AUGUST
She does need a name.

GREY
Not everything needs a name.

IVY
What will you call me? I NEED A NAME NOW.

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After the showcase, we'll take a little break, returning at six o'clock for the panel discussion. 

Then ending the evening is a staged reading of Greg Beuthin's A Time Upon, which I'll just describe to you as a totally cracked-out fairy tale with one of my all-time-favorite stage directions...

Grin's heart bursts into flames.  He's oblivious to the fire.  Slim's head bursts into flame… he's flaming mad.  He beats Grin —  viciously.  For falling in love.  For being an idiot.  For this new wrinkle in their plans. Grin is dead.  Slim returns to his position in the window.

You can learn more about Greg from his blog.

And take a look at what The Washington Post has to say about our Page-to-Stage events, with a quote from our illustrious Artistic Director, Jessi Burgess.

So I hope you can come out and join us on Labor Day at The Kennedy Center.  We at The Inkwell would love you to see what a handful of ambitious playwrights are up to.

Here's the full menu of events in one place:

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The Inkwell invites you to our first anniversary celebration at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Page to Stage Festival

Monday, September 1, 2008

FREE New Play Events from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

in Rehearsal Room One at the Kennedy Center

In celebration of our first anniversary, and in true Inkwell style, The Inkwell offers a full day of the exploration and celebration of new works in the nation's capital!  Join us for staged readings of six wildly creative and innovative plays, a timely and provocative discussion on the merits of the American play development process, and a celebration of The Inkwell's first birthday at the Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival.


2 p.m.  SHOWCASE READINGS of the following new plays:

• HERCULE DE BERGERAC by Adam Jonas Segaller, directed by Lee Liebeskind
• LULLABYE by Kristen DeWulf, directed by Andy Wassenich
• COMA, PATIENT by Shaun Raviv, directed by James Hesla
• SEVEN DREAMS OF HER by Sarah Sander, directed by Christopher Niebling
• THE F WORD by Melissa Blackall, directed by Patrick Torres

6 p.m.  PANEL DISCUSSION - PLAYWRIGHTS:  PAMPERED? PATRONIZED? PUSHED ASIDE?

A provocative panel discussion on how the trend to coddle new work may help it flourish or falter.  With playwright Callie Kimball, Washington Post Theatre Critic Nelson Pressley, Round House Theatre Artistic Director Blake Robison and Theater J Artistic Director and playwright Ari Roth.

8 p.m.  STAGED READING of A TIME UPON by Greg Beuthin, directed by Jessica Burgess

Two old women, Gran and Mum, eke out their lives in a forgotten corner of a giant futuristic metropolis.  They are barely aware of the passing days until a young woman and her strange traveling  companion-cum-pet enter their lives. The young woman, Fillette, is somehow related to the family, but is cagey about her answers.   The pet, only known as Once, doesn't speak — but even he can smell that something else is afoot.  For the entire group is being watched by an evil shadow and his crony, who want to get at what lies beneath the decrepit courtyard in which the old women have made their home.  Perhaps a fairy tale told in the era of Blade-Runner, the play features shadow puppetry, physical theatre, and lyrical language, all hallmarks of Greg Beuthin's future folkloric style.

Readings feature Wyckham Avery, Frank Britton, Valerie Fenton, James Flanagan, John Geffrion, Lindsay Haynes, Lisa Hill-Corley, Q. Terah Jackson, Hilary Kacser, Amy Kellet, Lee Liebeskind, Eric Messner, Wendy Nogales, Alex Perez, Kevin Pierson, and many more!

“The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.” — An excerpt from Samuel Pepys' Diary about a production of William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream performed in 1662

"Too much talk, too academic, too haughty, too unsure of itself, whether it was funny or sad. . . ." — comments in rejection letters about Margaret Edson's play Wit

My apologies for the silence, dear blog readers.  I have very much wanted to tell you all about what's happening with The Inkwell.  It seems we're now knee-deep in a rich and heated discussion about new play development… what's working and not working here in America.

I need to take about back more than a month, when The Inkwell hosted its third and final panel discussion at the Source Theatre Festival.  On July 6th (again, my apologies for the great delay in reporting), we asked Arena Stage's David Dower, Literary Manager for Wooly Mammoth Theatre Elissa Goetchius, The Washington City Paper Theatre Critic Trey Graham, and Source Theatre Festival Producer Jeremy Skidmore to talk about their views about new work in Washington.  The discussion quickly broadened to the way new plays are created, developed, and produced in America… and the search for the perfect model.

David Dower knows a lot about how theaters across America are approaching new plays and emerging playwrights.  He's one of the founding members of Z Space Studio in San Francisco, an incubator for all sorts of new theater work, as well as director and producer. (It's fun to read about his collaboration with monologuer Jeremy Kornbluth, author and performer of Haiku Tunnel…scroll down to "Benjamin Franklin: Unplugged.")  As an Artistic Associate for Arena Stage focused on new play development, he's traveled the country, talking with literary managers and artistic directors.  He thinks that the problem of "development hell" (where playwrights find their work constantly work-shopped and never produced) is old news.  There are millions of dollars flowing into play development efforts, he says.  The problem is that resources aren't aligned across the country.  So a playwright may be invited into a rigorous play development process, see their work produced once, and then it's over.  The problem right now is creating momentum behind a play so that it gets a second, third, and fourth production.  And that the playwright still has time to fine tune the piece along the way.

David has written a lot about a "distributed development" model on Arena Stage's New Play Blog, discussing how theaters are now starting to work together to bring a play along through a series of productions.  He also talks about his experience participating on our panel!

Elissa Geotchius discussed how Wooly Mammoth — which is entirely focused on producing work that hasn't been seen before in Washington, DC — engages with playwrights.  To put it simply, she gets around the country and sees a lot of plays.  She also keeps a "stalking list" of playwrights that she feels fit with Wooly Mammoth's aesthetic.  Wooly Mammoth is committed to working with playwrights to see their work produced (they won't develop a piece that they won't produce, she said), although she freely admits that the Wooly Mammoth team struggles to figure out how to increase interactions with playwrights in the development process.

Trey Graham wondered out loud about the sustainability of play labs (he cited the famous Eugene O'Neill Center in Connecticut in particular) and how you can fairly compensate playwrights.  If the only real income that comes from royalties, how to split the pie fairly, especially if more than one play lab or theater is involved in the development a play.  For the most part, the playwright is the one short shrifted in royalty arrangements, because everyone takes a cut.  By the time a play is produced commercially (a rare occurrence), the playwright receives no more than 30 percent of royalties.

And what is the role of the critic in the process? Trey believes he's supposed to clarify for the theatre-going audience the choices made by a director and playwright in a production of a new play, not in the writing of the play itself.  He'll leave that task to the dramaturges.

Jeremy Skidmore heaped praise upon the way playwrights are support in Canada (Jeremy is an admitted and ardent fan of the Canucks).  First, the government provides relatively more generous funding to theater than in America, allowing Canadian theaters to take more risk.  Second, every play that is produced is published, so plays are easily distributed across the country.  Third, there's a model for shared theater space for small companies, reducing one of the major expenses of any theatre group and creating a hub for sharing new works.

Asked the question about the state of new work in Washington specifically, all agreed that a basic infrastructure for DC playwrights is missing.  There's no center for practice and there's no advocate for local writers.

(Hmmmm…. I wonder who can fill that role?)

So this is just the start of the conversation.  Since the panel, Theatre Critic Nelson Pressley has written a rather provocative article in The Washington Post, positing the claim that new play development processes merely coddle the playwright.

"Does the American theater treat its playwrights like babies? You might think so, considering the elaborate midwifing infrastructure that has been erected around play development in recent years."

So starts the article, which goes on to quote The Inkwell's Artistic Director Jessi Burgess with a defense of incubation processes.

Well, we at The Inkwell are not leaving the last word to Mr. Pressley.  Instead, we've invited him to join playwright Callie Kimball, Round House Theatre Artistic Director Blake Robison, and Theater J Artistic Director and playwright Ari Roth for a lively discussion about his article at The Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival.

So please join us on September 1st at 6:00 p.m. in Rehearsal Room One for another lively panel discussion, Playwrights: Pampered? Patronized? Pushed Aside?

And check out the other activities we've got planned as The Inkwell celebrates its first birthday at Page-to-Stage.

We here at The Inkwell view collaboration as part of the DNA of theater.  But what happens when you throw some unruly dancers, choreographers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and photographers into the mix?

Something spontaneous and uniquely its own.  Something special.

That's what we found out last Sunday in speaking with a two pairs of artists devoted to creating works that cross boundaries between theater, dance, music, and art. They spoke about their approach to interdisciplinary collaboration at our second in a series of panel discussions associated with the Source Festival (going on now through July 13th).

Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili are the founders of Synetic Theater and have created numerous award-winning performance pieces built from adaptations of literary classics, telling familiar and timeless stories through dance, film, and theater.  Our illustrious artistic director Jessi Burgess and I (your faithful blogger Anne) saw the last performance of Synetic's most recent creation, Carmen.  To depict the life, love, and death of the irresistible gypsy, the Synetic team confined the play within a metal cage.  Throughout the performance, the actors twirled, jumped, fought, and danced around the cage, perhaps speaking 100 to 200 words in total.  I've never seen anything so physically demanding on actors and dancers.  They were literally flipping over scaffolding and dropping to the stage.  I can find no other word to describe the performance but spectacular, in the sense that the imagery and movement always surprised, delighted, and astounded me.

(The photograph above is from Carmen.)

Paata is a trained actor, mime, and filmmaker.  Irina is a ballet dancer, mime, and choreographer.  Together they have developed a method of training actors in movement where gesture, dance, and acrobatics are the primary means of creating dramatic tension and forwarding the story.  And they've created a unique aesthetic for dramatic storytelling.

The collaborative process that Synetic Theater employs is intense and time-consuming.  Each piece takes three months to create, far longer than the usual four to six weeks most theater companies devote to a production.  For the first month, actors participate in a training camp on movement led by both Paata and Irina.  Throughout the second month, actors, Irina, and Paata play, improvising movement and dance as they learn the script.  In the final month, Paata takes the lead in shaping the piece and ruthless editing.  As Paata explained, his training as a filmmaker takes over.  Scenes are shortened to their core essence, so that just as audiences get a feel for the dramatic tension, the play jumps to the next scene. (To get a sense of their pieces, check out the trailers of Carmen and their most popular piece, an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.)

How do two people stay married for 18 years (as Paata and Irina have done) and collaborate so closely each and every day?  Are there knock-down, dragged-out fights?  Of course, admits Irina.  But it's a fight about ideas in order to explore a shared vision.  The struggle and confusion are inherent to the collaboration.  And both feed off the "magnetic energy" of working with a range of different collaborators, from designers to musicians to actors.

Then how do you bring artists from different disciplines together to create something entirely new?  Paata and Irina have formed a core team in which they work.  Colin Hovde and Roy Gross — co-founders of Artists' Bloc and the second pair of collaborators participating in the panel — are creating a space for all sorts of interdisciplinary madness.

The sole purpose of Artists' Bloc is to find ways to encourage artists of every genre — painters, photographers, dancers, writers, actors, musicians, sculptors — to initiate collaboration and develop new work.  For the Source Festival, Colin and Roy curated seven new pieces made from all sorts of pairings of artists — a photographer with a playwright, a dancer with a filmmaker, an improv troup with a dance team, to name a few.

So what the heck did these folks create?  Is it theater? Is it visual art?  Is it film?  Is it dance?  None of the above, say Colin and Roy.  They have in fact thought long and hard about what interdisciplinary work is and have come up with the following definition:  the blending of media and perspectives from different artists from different disciplines that forms something entirely new, something that, if one artist or media or perspective is taken away, falls apart.

In addition to their work on the festival, Artists' Bloc runs the "12x6" series, six performances each year of 12-minute pieces created by collaborating artists.  Pieces are first viewed by fellow artists for feedback.  Then a number of selected for public performances.  The company also hosts The Lounge, a casual get-together of artists to discuss collaboration, hopefully sparking new projects.

One of the overriding messages of the panel discussion is that these interdisciplinary collaborations take time, much more time than is usually alloted for rehearsing a play.  It takes time to find the rhythm of the collaboration, to build trust among collaborators, and to hash out various aspects of a piece.  And all agreed that a successful interdisciplinary collaboration take more than two artists, especially when disagreements occur.  A third collaborator can diffuse tension, move the project away from a conflict that bogs it down, or simple create a majority voting block.

So are you ready to dive into an interdisciplinary collaboration?  Clear your calendar, open your mind, and join the Artists' Bloc.  Who knows what you'll create!

And don't miss The Inkwell's third and final panel discussion, New Works in Washington, this coming Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the Source Theatre.  Trey Graham of the Washington City Paper, David Dower from Arena Stage, and Wooly Mammoth's Elissa Goetschius will talk about the virtues and challenges of creating new plays here in the nation's capital.  For more information, go to The Inkwell's calendar of events.

We at The Inkwell just couldn't get enough of ten-minute plays this weekend.

First, we held a class on how to write a kick-ass ten-minute play with the incomparable Gary Garrison.  Then on Sunday night, we hosted a panel with three experts on the form.  And we got an earful on the ten-minute play, from its origins to the benefits of the ten-minute play festival to the topics that seem to be on the minds of playwrights across America.

Gary stuck around to spread his wisdom and opinions.  In addition, award-winning playwright Marco Ramirez (also literary manager of Miami's City Theatre, which produces nothing but short plays) and Source Festival Producer Jeremy Skidmore chimed in on the discussion.

From left to right, Jeremy Skidmore, Marco Ramirez, and Gary Garrison discuss the merits and problems with the ten-minute play at the newly renovated Source Theater.
Where did the ten-minute play come from?  The origins of the form trace back to John Jory, who served as the producing director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of new plays.  In the 1980s, he introduced a festival of ten-minute plays to complement the longer works performed as part of the festival.  Today there are hundreds of ten-minute play festivals across the country.  And they generally sell out.

So why is the ten-minute play so wildly popular?  For a theater producer, a festival of ten-minute plays provides the opportunity to showcase the work of dozens of playwrights at very little cost.  For Jeremy in particular, the showcase of ten-minute plays that he is producing as part of the Source Festival allowed him to match area artistic directors with a bevy of talented non-equity actors who they might not ever meet otherwise.  For the theatre-goer, such a festival provides a chance to hear many diverse voices, see many different forms, and meditate on a wide variety of themes and issues.

The problem?  As Gary stated so emphatically in his class, very few playwrights actually write true ten-minute plays; most festivals are full of sketches and character scenes.  Another issue:  the form is very seductive for the playwright, since it's the easiest way to get your work seen and heard.  So what happens to the full-length play?  Gary worries about this.  Marco — who won the prestigious Heideman Prize for best ten-minute play awarded by the Actors Theatre of Louisville — admitted that he feels most comfortable with the form and isn't sure he's ready to write a longer play.

Here are some other random facts, thoughts, and observations offered by the panelists:

• There are more than 400 different festivals and/or venues showcasing ten-minute plays, representing explosive growth over a short period of time.  When Gary Garrison wrote the first edition of his book on ten-minute plays (Perfect 10) eight years ago, he listed 30 festivals.

• The producers of the Source Festival received 910 plays to consider for its showcase of 25 ten-minute plays.

• Some of the major themes of ten-minutes plays that Marco, Gary, and Jeremy have read include various perspectives on Aghanistan and Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the difficulties creating and sustaining intimacy in our time and age.

• Topics and situations that panelists were totally sick of reading and seeing:  coming out plays and conversations set in coffee houses.

• Marco Ramirez is always waiting for King Kong or Godzilla to enter that coffee shop in a play.

All agreed that the form provides everyone — theatre artists and audience alike — a chance to see a snapshot of American culture through the eyes of the playwright... and all in ten minutes.

If you're here in the Nation's capital, check out the collection of ten-minute plays produced as part of the Source Festival.  I (this is Anne, by the way) saw the first night's showing and there's some interesting work from some very talented actors, directors, and writers.  A collective favorite — the monologue about a soldier and his epic battle with a horse in Afghanistan.

So can I enthrall you in a world of intrigue, love, loss, conflict, and high stakes in just ten minutes?  Well, a group of us writers, actors, directors, and designers found out how very difficult that is over this past weekend.  And we had the most wonderful teacher and guide to help us understand and grapple with the challenge... Gary Garrison.

On the cusp of the Source Festival, a group of fearless theatre artists, including myself (Anne, your intrepid blogger) joined Gary Garrison for a two-day intensive class exploring one of the most popular forms of theater today... the TEN-MINUTE PLAY.

But the truth is, as Gary pointed out at the onset of the class, there are very few ten-minute plays out there.  What do you mean, you gasp.  Haven't I sat through evening after evening of little plays, with people shouting, laughing, fighting, crawling around, clowning, revealing deep secrets?

NO! Gary will insist.  What you've seen are skits, character sketches, and scenes... but NOT ten-minute plays.

SO WHAT ON EARTH IS A TEN-MINUTE PLAY?  Just that... a play like any other that involved interesting, complex, surprising characters in a high-stakes conflict.  It is a play like any other that resolves in some manner and leaves you feeling complete.  As Gary puts it, a good ten-minute play "is a gorgeous, intense story that dissolves and is gone." 

You have all the elements of any good play... but you have to set up the characters, the dilemma, the stakes, the complications, the climax... very, very, VERY quickly.  In fact, if the audience doesn't understand the basic conflict of the characters in the first page, then you as a writer have failed.

Certainly not as easy to make such a thing as you might think.  But Gary provided a road map for success, one that's helpful in formulating any well-made play.  Here are a few gems from our  wickedly funny, pointedly honest, and endlessly thoughtful teacher:

• Don't be afraid to write complex and surprising characters in a ten-minute play.  Human nature is infinitely complex, surprising, and fascinating.  There's no reason not to explore that in a ten-minute play.

• Drop your characters in the center of the conflict.  You don't have time to build up the tension in ten minutes.  You and your audience need to be there on the first page.

• Make sure the needs are clear and the stakes are high.  Each character must need something desperately... or wouldn't they just walk off the stage?

• Keep it simple.  You can't explore the whole of geopolitics in ten minutes.  There's nothing wrong with picking a simple, keenly dramatic conflict between characters.

• Be theatrical.  You're in the theater!  Make your play an immediate, visceral, imaginative experience.   A character can float to the moon.  Godzilla can enter a coffee shop.  It's all possible.

So how does Gary know so much about this, you may ask?  Well, he's an accomplished playwright himself and has been teaching playwriting for more than 20 years at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.  What's more, he's written the definitive book on ten-minute plays - Perfect 10: Writing and Producing the 10-Minute Play.

So Gary has given us a charge:  Make a true and compelling ten-minute play.  Each student started one as part of the class.  Now we are off to revise and remake with Gary's help and guidance.  Stay tuned to see what we all come up with!

That's the beloved Gary Garrison above, giving us all the lowdown on the ten-minute play.  Just between you and me, it took me less than ten minutes to fall for Gary.

Hello all -

It's the ghost of Anne returning to tell you about the latest goings on at The Inkwell.  While we all needed a bit of a rest after the January Inkubator festivities, Inkwellians soon revived and we have been busy scheming and planning.  And now our latest plot is coming to fruition!

Over the next three weeks, we are teaming up with the folks of the Source Festival to offer a series of panels that explore various aspects of playmaking.  And we've brought some rather distinguished theatre artists from out of town to join us in the discussion.

Here's the lowdown (you can also take a look at our calendar for more details, including more detailed biographies of each of the panelists:

Award-winning teacher and theatre artist Gary Garrison and Heideman Award winning playwright Marco Ramirez head up the first of three panel discussions hosted by The Inkwell as part of the Source Festival (June 23rd-July 6th) at the newly renovated Source Theatre.  This first panel, Ten-Minute Plays in American Theatre (held on June 22nd at 8:00 p.m.), focuses on one of the most innovative and popular forms of theatre in America Today.  Jeremy Skidmore, the producer of the Source Festival, is the third panelist.

Garrison, Ramirez, and Skidmore bring a wealth of experience, knowledge, and insights into the discussion of this important theatrical form.  Gary Garrison is renowned teacher, playwright, and author who serves as the Executive Director for Creative Affairs of the Dramatists Guild of America and the Artistic Director and Division Head of Playwriting for the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts.  Miami-based playwright Marco Ramirez won the prestigious Heideman Award for this short play I am not Batman from the Actors Theatre of Louisville and is the literary manager for the City Theatre that produces the Summer Shorts American Short Play Festival.  Jeremy Skidmore is the producer of the Source Festival, a Helen Hayes nominated director, and the former artistic director of DC's Theatre Alliance.

In addition to participating in this first panel, Gary Garrison will teach a weekend playwriting master class, How to Write a Kick-Ass Ten-Minute Play (June 21st and 22nd at Flashpoint, culminating in a viewing of ten-minute plays at the Source Theatre on June 23rd).  Sorry, folks, the class is sold out!

The second panel, Collaboration in New Work (held on June 29th at 5 p.m.), features Synetic Theater's dynamic and award-winning collaborating team Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili.  The third and final panel, New Works in Washington (held on July 6th at 5:00 p.m.), features David Dower, Associate Artistic Director at Arena Stage and head of its new Cradle program, as well as noted Washington City Paper theatre critic, Trey Graham, exploring the role that the Nation's Capital plays in the emergence of a new generation of playwrights.

Our illustrious Artistic Director, Jessica Burgess, will moderate each of the panels.

Designed to complement the programming of the Source Festival, each of The Inkwell's panel discussion focuses on a different aspect of playmaking that relates to the festival's showcases of ten-minute plays, interdisciplinary projects, and one-act plays.

So please come out and join us for the conversation.  And if you can't, please check back here as various Inkwellians (and maybe a few special guests) share with you all the juicy details.

Happy Tuesday, folks.  It's Anne here, resting up a bit from the closing weekend of The Inkwell's first Inkubator Festival.  I'm tired, happy, and busting with pride for everything that team did over the past four weeks.  Jessi let me know this weekend that we employed almost 40 people to get this festival off the ground.  I don't know what else to say about that but WOW... and thanks so much to everyone who put their blood, sweat, and tears into this thing (yes, we had some of each).

But I also wanted to add a bit to Cindy Marie Martin's thoughtful blog entry by providing the lyrics to the song that she is talking about, Makin' Time.  It's rather beautiful and deeply moving in the context of the play.

It's hard for me to pin down one life lesson impressed on me in the past month while working on Underground, but the title of the song my character, Mindy Lee, sang called Makin' Time, does a good job of summing it up.  Make time for the things and people who are important to you. 

My name's Cindy Marie Martin and I hail from the small town of West Union in North Central West Virginia.  Not a coal mining town, like the town of Mindy Lee, but just as small and just as community driven.  As a very little girl, I grew up with my daddy workin' in Weirton Steel and my mama at home.  Both their families were from good ole' Doddridge County, and when my father retired from the mill, we moved back there.  I was in sixth grade.  I spent the rest of my schooling in West Union... and couldn't wait to leave.  Everyone knows everyone else's business.  And if they don't, they think they do.  Which is just as good and probably more interesting.  It felt suffocating to this young girl. 

But, distance lends perspective, and after five years in Northern Virginia where neighbors don't know your name and the traffic eats up a good quarter of your day, sometimes I miss the slow pace and close knit community of the mountains.  I certainly have a healthy appreciation for it now that I lacked as a teenager. 

And that Appalachian mindset is what I love about West Virginia and why I wanted to do this show so badly.  Folks there never seem to forget to take their time and smell the daisies.  Honestly, they pretty much forget to move fast at all.  And family is always on the top of their list — everything else can wait.  James McManus' script really captures that.  I felt he had a show that honestly portrayed West Virginians and their values, as well as the hard lives of coal miners.  I felt proud of this script and wanted to help put it into the world so others could experience what I knew about West Virginia, instead of the punch line of someone's stereotypical joke. 

And what all went into putting Underground onstage, at least for me?  Makin' time for some intensive training on the guitar from my husband, Lonnie, for one.  I had to play the guitar (at least a little) while I sang Makin' Time.  I took lessons in high school, but I haven't played since then.  So, that was a fun adventure for both he and I.  Thanks are due to fellow actor, Clay Steakley, for the loan of his guitar for the past month.  That was a lifesaver. 

The biggest challenge was just making a decision, making an acting choice and going with it.  The rehearsal process was so fast that there wasn't time to try out many different ideas.  But, ultimately, I think that made for some very strong choices for the whole cast.  There wasn't time to question a bold decision too hard — just go for it.  It was actually liberating to be free of the deeply intellectual process that actors normally go through for a role.  Table work, endless discussion of characters and motivations, and my personal favorite — the analysis of each line and it's subtext.  My script usually looks like a gaggle of children were turned loose on it with highlighters and pencils.  The time constraints of the Inkubator Festival forced us to boil down the process to essentials only.  In the words of Sir Lawrence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman, "Just act, dear boy.  Just act." 

And, we did.

Inhabiting Mindy Lee has been so much fun.  And it's reminded me to make time for what's important.  And maybe the process itself has reminded me to take less time creatively.  Because isn't it sometimes better to go with what feels right over what's analytically the best choice?

The great theatre director Peter Brook called it Rough Theatre.  I call it Punk Rock Theatre.  Theatre produced on a shoestring both in money and time.  Raw theatre, no-apologies theatre that confronts, challenges, mocks, laughs at itself, weeps, and hollers.  All of the work The Inkwell has produced over the past month has been just that — honest and direct with writing that's in your face and action that happens practically in your lap.

Although The Inkwell's primary purpose is to incubate new plays and to give playwrights an opportunity to see and hear their work with hopes toward future revisions and drafts and productions, I've found that this process has also been transformative for the actors involved in bringing this work to light.  I know it has been for me (I'm Clay Steakley and I play Bones in James McManus's Underground, by the way).

As our director Chris Niebling said to the cast last week, we've done two months of work in three weeks.  That's what Punk Rock Theatre is all about.  Get it up on its feet, don't give it time to get self-indulgent, and throw it in people's faces.  That's just what we've done, getting a complex play about the lives of West Virginia coal miners and those they love up and running, blocked, off-book, lit and designed with minimal opportunities for full runs, dress rehearsals, or the niceties of previews or — God forbid — table work (for those of you less familiar with the rehearsal process, table work is when the actors gather around the table to read and talk through a script moment by moment).   

For an actor, there's something both terrifying and exhilarating about this.  The limited time and the shaky, changeable nature of a new work force you to strip everything down to its essentials.  You can't waste time with narcissistic character exploration.  Instead, strip your character to his or her core attributes.  With my character of Bones, I found that he is honest, innocent, ambitious, and fiercely loyal.  That's enough to begin with — especially since some of these basic attributes have their own inherent conflicts.  Next, you identify the basic actions within the individual beats of scenes.  Bones, for example, defends, deflects, attacks, protects, retreats, and pleads.  Find the simplest, most playable and straightforward impulses and intentions, and trust them.  Trust your fellow actors.  Listen.  Communicate.  Sure, you're not positive just which line comes next, and yeah, you have no idea which scene follows this one.  But, if you relax, trust yourself and your cast mates, let the language do its own work and just go out there and act, listen, and communicate like a human being, all those other pieces fall into place.

In other words, rather than complicating or destabilizing the actor's process, the limitations of the past month's work have served, for me, to distill it to its basic, most honest and direct components.  Honesty is the key.

And having fun.

This, combined with our director and stage manager's shepherding (and cajoling and arguing and exasperation), our designers' brilliant, intuitive work, and, most of all, our playwright's beautiful language and rich characters, have made these plays produced by The Inkwell burst forth into real, gritty glory.  Call it Rough Theatre, Punk Rock Theatre, plain old Theatre or old-fashioned Entertainment — it works.  And, as Peter Brook described it in The Empty Space, it is by its nature, "anti-authoritarian, anti-traditional, anti-pomp, anti-pretence.  This is the theatre of noise, and the theatre of noise is the theatre of applause."

Hey Q. Terah Jackson, actor from The F Word, here.  A couple things came to me after the staged reading today that I wanted to share and perhaps spark a little discussion. 

So for the greater part of a month we have been on this journey exploring fears about body image, and I noticed that as I got dressed today I did something that I have never done for a role before — I made sure all my "fatty" parts were clearly exposed.  I wanted to make sure that I could act with my round, plump belly.  As we performed, I noticed that for me — and I think this is true for some of the other players and audience members — that the play became a kind of celebration of bodies.  I can recall looking at the audience during the talk back after the reading and seeing that people for the most part were sitting more open than I am used to seeing, no longer crossing their legs or covering their stomachs, or even folding their arms.

Listening to the audience, it seemed they had a clarity about the work that was surprising and unexpected.  I think being a performer in the circus you can't see the whole performance. Listening to the audience really brought home how theater is a community experience where the essence of the play is revealed not by one person or a few people but really is owned by all of us.  And in a way that is a metaphor for bodies in general.  We live in our bodies but we never truly ever get to see them.  We obsess over the appearance of something we will never truly see.  We obsess over what other people will think and what "they" think changes based on what "everyone else" thinks.  I think Melissa has truly found something in her exploration of the American obsession with and fear of fat.  Perhaps she's found a window to let all of us breathe a little easier.

So I'm Q. Terah Jackson, one of the actors involved in the development of The F Word, and it's 1:28 a.m.  I have gone over my final review of the play before going to sleep.  And I have to admit I am excited like Christmas — about the staged reading tomorrow and what playwright Melissa Blackwell has accomplished with this script.  I know if you are up late or up early reading this message before the show, you may be making up your mind whether to come to see the show.  Well, for all you independent-minded people sitting on the fence, here is a special gift. 

I have collected all my favorite lines from the play that have been cut and will never be read again; these are the bits and pieces those close to the project who came to the open rehearsals over the last few weeks were privileged enough to hear.  Now you get to read them in the comfort of your living room.

 

page 5: "As my health improved and naturally I gained back some weight, people slowly stopped complimenting me. Silence is approval lost."

page 5: "I admire the will power of anorexics."

page 11: "Excuses are for irresponsible cowards.  Two years ago I was on a tour of an old historic home...I stood in the hallway... The look of my friend's face as she turned to see where I was.. it's a look I'll never forget.  She knew why I wasn't standing next to the group.  She knew I wouldn't fit through the smaller-than-usual door frame."

page 17: "Slow down. Enjoy your food, for Christ's sakes."

page 36: "...make me feel alive."

These are a few of my favorities for they really struck a nerve when I read them.  But by cutting back, Melissa has exposed the truth explored in each scene — the heart of what drives us personally and socially to be dysfunctional about body image.  Patrick's direction breathed life into Melissa's words. He is truly a rare talent who leads with his mind and heart. It has been a pleasure working on this staged reading. 

Now its time to go to bed or pack your bags and come to the staged reading today at noon at H Street Playhouse.  See you at the there!

Hi folks - It's Anne at about 11:30 p.m.  I've just come back from the second performance of OK.  It was even better than Tuesday, and we had another great discussion after the show.

So please join us in the discussion through Inkblog!  If you see the shows, we'd love to have you post your comments.  Here are a few questions that are helpful to all of us, especially the playwrights, in understanding your reactions to and perceptions of the plays (Oh, and please let us know which show you saw):

• What moments engaged you, moved you, or captured your imagination? Why?

• Is there a moment, idea, or a theme from the play that you have been reflecting on since leaving the theater?  Why do you think that moment stuck with you?

• Of the characters, to whom did you relate to the most?  Why?  Who was the most enigmatic to you?

And finally, we'd love to know more about what you think about The Inkwell experience. We're developing what we are calling a "draft aesthetic" for our Inkubator productions of new works by emerging writers.  But we ourselves aren't quite sure what that means.  So helps us figure that out.  After having seen this production, how would you describe an Inkubator production?  Were there any production elements — from lights, costumes, props, set, performance, etc. — that helped build a draft aesthetic for you?

We look forward to hearing from you!

P.S.  If you're having trouble figuring out how to post a comment, shoot me, Anne, an email.  I'll work through it with you.

Hello, guest blogger Lisa Hill-Corley here. I'm Voluptuous. Well.....the character anyway, for Melissa Blackall's play The F Word. I was involved with the show at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival and I've loved watching all of the changes, from whole scenes gone to speeches being reassigned to two words chopped off of a line right in the middle of rehearsal. The version of the script we performed at Page to Stage was much more abstract, with the characters ("bodies") representing types as the play commented on the bizarre relationship our society has with body image.

This time Lean, Voluptuous, Toothpick, Blimp, Belly, Stout, and Huge are individuals. They are still described as "bodies" in the script, but I'm not sure if that label is accurate now. I think people who saw the earlier version and come on Saturday will see a real arc for each character, and how they cope (or don't cope) in particular. So to me, it's less about the topic of fat and body image itself and more about how these seven people deal with it. I guess that's ultimately what it has to be, it's always a little dangerous to start with a "concept" rather than a story about well-defined characters and plus, it seemed to me that the two casts and audiences responded the most to those personal moments and were more confused by the sort of grand abstract things. But I hope it doesn't lose all of the abstractness (is that a word?), because that's what made the earlier version of script felt so universal. I think I would be a little sad if I went to see the full production and it was about this pudgy guy Bill and his slightly plump wife Linda and their too skinny daughter Tara, etc....rather than body types standing in for all of us.

We're getting very spoiled having the playwright right there to ask about what things mean. However, there are some things I actually don't want to know because I'd rather just make a decision and see if something I said or did ends up in the next version. Really, how cool is that?  At any rate, the experience will make me much more understanding when my next show has that inevitable moment where we'll have to go from being in the main character's living room to Disney World with only one line of text for a massive costume change for both leads, and we're all at the production meeting going, "Seriously? What the hell?"

As for Saturday, half the time I forget it's a reading we've been rehearsing for because Patrick Torres has had us moving around in scenes and letting us really play with moments. I think people are going to forget we have scripts in our hands during some of those group scenes we've fleshed out. I like those parts the best; it's just too much of a physical, lively play to sit there and just read. We don't even start by filing in and sitting down behind our little music stands, but in a big pile on the floor. It's a very lovely pile though, you'll see. Saturday will be lots of fun; we'll have the energy of a performance. And any mistakes? Well...they'll just be "new discoveries we made in the text Melissa!" Yeah....that's it...

And don't call me Sweetie. (You'll understand what that means if you see the staged reading on Saturday at noon at the H Street Playhouse).

In the photo above, we see the pile of bodies that Lisa describes in her posting.  And the woman at the bottom of the image is Lisa as Voluptuous. (photo by Melissa Blackall)

Hello, folks, how are y'all?  It's Anne here on this fine Thursday to tell you a little bit about the opening night for The Inkwell's second Inkubator production, Underground by Jim McManus.  The play takes us to a small West Virginia mining town and into the lives of those who spend most of their waking hours in and around the coal seams.

We have another outstanding group of actors breathing life into this script — Clay Steakley, Andrew Price, Cindy Marie Martin, Steve Beall, Frank Mancino, Ben Shovlin, and Charlotte Akin.  As one audience members pointed out at the post-play discussion, this is a world that many of us urban folk don't see too often.  Jim's harshly poetic language, as well as the contradiction between each character's dreams and the seemingly mundane details of their lives (church, sweet tea with gin, poison ivy found in unusual places, pails of blueberries, dirty fingernails), quickly draw us into the rituals of small town life.  But we're also pulled into the mine itself, thanks to clever thinking by the design team.  It was a reminder to me about how theater can create magic with very simple effects.  I felt the darkness and cold around me just watching the actors in nothing but the light from their mining helmets.

What I've enjoyed most about witnessing the process of bringing Underground on its feet is the way in which the actors have worked with changes in the script that have put their characters on new and surprising courses.  Many of the actors were involved in the Page to Stage reading at The Kennedy Center this past September, and they were startled and a little uncomfortable with the revisions that Jim made over the past several months.  Steve in particular — who plays Tracks, the father of two young boys trying to get out of this town — has had to struggle with some dramatic changes to his character, including a drinking problem that surfaces halfway through the play.  It's been fascinating to see how these actors absorb these twists and turns and to see how it deepens the stories interwoven into the play.  Bravo, guys.

Unfortunately, Jim has not been able to come down to be a part of the rehearsal process, but he'll be here this weekend to see the show.  If you come on by on Saturday, you might get a chance to ask him a question or two about the play and where it's going.  It's so cool to see this play at this particular moment in time; it's likely to be entirely different after Jim sees it and continues his revisions.

And please, don't be shy about sharing your thoughts and impressions with us about these plays.  In the next posting, I'm going to throw some questions out there that you might want to think about before, during, or after the performances.  Please post your thoughts here at Inkblog!  You are a part of the play-making process.

Here's a shot of Cindy Marie Martin as Mindy Lee, a girl in love with a miner but with big dreams of heading to Nashville to start a singing career.  We learn a bit more about her struggles in this revision of Jim McManus' play than we did in earlier drafts. (photo by Melissa Blackall)