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Theatrical Expeditions

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:02:03 -0500

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):

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?

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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 yet 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!

We are all tethered... thoughts from a playwright on a world premiere

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:36:52 -0500

Intrepid readers, all of at The Inkwell team hope that you are intrepid explorers, too, who seek out productions of new plays. (Playgoers and explorer? We'll be blogging shortly about this interesting way to viewing yourself as an audience member....)

We're happy to point you toward one of those world premieres here in Washington, DC of a play that The Inkwell discovered and helped develop.

The world premiere production of Tether by Julie Taiwo Oni opens on Friday, February 18th, at Studio Theatre Cultural Arts Center at Montgomery College in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Please get your tickets to Tether now!

You can also follow the production on Facebook! Reviews should be coming in by next week.

We're happy to introduce you here to the talented playwright and give you hint about what Tether is about. Dramaturg Jenn Book Haselwerdt, who helped Julie revise the play to get it to production, spent some time asking Julie about the play and her experience in developing it.

It's all yours, Jenn!

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It’s always a pleasure to work with a playwright who likes to engage in dialogue with her dramaturg, director, and actors, and who is incredibly thoughtful about her work. Julie Taiwo Oni, playwright of Tether, is just such a playwright.

After a developmental period during The Inkwell's 2009 Inkubator Festival, Julie continued to work on the script, and recently joined Doorway Arts Ensemble for further development leading up to a full production of Tether.

Emails and phone calls flew between Julie and Jessica Lefkow (the production’s director), and I joined in the conversations after being hired on as the dramaturg.

Julie was amazingly open with her thoughts and her script as she worked toward a full production, including coming all the way from Los Angeles for a week of script work with the actors. Julie is the daughter of a Nigerian father and German-American mother. She’s also an identical twin. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University in 2006 with an emphasis in sociology and a Spanish minor, and her MFA in Dramatic Writing from University of Southern California's School of Theatre in 2009.

Since I’m continually curious about the script development process—I am a dramaturg, after all, and no two processes are exactly the same—I sent Julie a few questions to answer about the play. Here are her responses:

Julie was inspired to write Tether… “for many reasons. I have always been interested in exploring and creating new kinds of language in my dialogue, and as a twin, I felt that it was an interesting challenge to dissect the way that my sister and I communicate, and bring that onstage. I also saw a newspaper article about a pair of mixed-race twins and was fascinated. My father is Nigerian, and my mother is American with mostly German roots, so I tend to explore multicultural and biracial identity a lot. I became excited about the possibility of connecting twin language with a conversation about racial identity.”

In her words, the play is about… “twin sisters who encounter their first separation as young women while simultaneously recognizing that they are tethered to each other for life.”

Is there one character she relates to more than the other? "I completely relate to both characters. It's funny because most people assume that I am EXACTLY one or the other, and that my sister is EXACTLY one or the other, but this is a work of fiction. I have used my experiences and emotions connected to my sister to create a story that is both completely us and completely NOT us. I connect with Lach's curiosity as well as Lam's racial conflict."

What was the script development process like? "I had a great time working with Jessica Burgess at The Inkwell. We spent a few days doing table work and really delving into the script. The reading was a lot of fun, and I gained a lot from experiencing the play with actors who were mature enough to become teenagers even as adults. When I started working with the Doorway Arts team, I was able to work through the glitches of the script even more, especially when thinking about the specifics of the production. I am grateful to The Inkwell for inviting this story to breathe its first DC breath, and thankful that Doorway picked it up and has carried it for the past few months.

Julie's favorite part of the rehearsal process was… “I was able to consider the script in ways that I hadn't before. I understand my plays better through actors and directors helping to bring the characters to life. The collaboration process is priceless. I felt so welcomed to become involved in this production process. A highlight for me was watching a screening of Sister Act II with the crew--lovely!” [Dramaturg’s note: that was truly a special evening.]

Before the audience sees the play, Julie would like them to know… “that anybody who loves somebody very much can hate that person in an instant and then love them again. We're all tethered at some point in our lives.” Julie would like the audience to walk away from the play considering… “that blaming stereotypes and "news facts" for our experiences is the worst thing we can do for our development and that of others. Nobody fits perfectly inside of any box, no matter how similar they might seem to what's inside.”

The photo above depicts the two actresses in Tether who play mixed-race twins. Gwen Grastorf is Lach and Jade Wheeler is Lam. The photo was taken by C. Stanley.

Kisses and Wishes for 2011

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:10:44 -0500

Is it February already?! Is it too late to wish you intrepid readers a Happy New Year?!

What about an early Valentine’s Day present instead?

The Inkwell has a lot to share with great love, affection, and pride, including...

... the opportunity to build the master class series of your dreams...

....an upcoming production of a play that The Inkwell found and helped develop... and

...dozens of raw, new plays to share with you throughout the year!

So here's what we've got to warm the cockles of your heart... all the way to Spring!

THE INKWELL GRANTS YOUR LEARNING WISHES

The entire Inkwell team is donning sparkly fairy godmother wings and pulling out our magic wands (on loan from the props department of Imagination Stage) to fulfill your heart’s secret desires for innovative, affordable classes for playwrights, playmakers, and playgoers!

That’s right. We want to bring America’s most inspiring artists to teach you what you want to learn.

So all you have to do is wish… and fill out our online class survey describing the class of your dreams.

As the resource for new play development, we are committed to giving playwrights, playmakers, and playgoers in our nation’s capital the tools to make bold, compelling new plays. We’ve held some incredible master classes in the past several years with Liz Duffy Adams, Wendy McClellan, Gary Garrison, and Michael Bigelow Dixon.

Now we’d like to know what tools you’d like to add to your toolkit. We also want to know who your current playwright and playmaking heroes are. And we’d love to do whatever we can to make your dream class a possibility.

So wish away for that master class you’ve always wanted to take… and tell us all about it through our class survey.

THE PREMIERE PRODUCTION OF TETHER

We are so proud that Julie Taiwo Oni’s beautiful play about twin sisters (one black and one white) coming of age on the tether ball court is receiving its premiere production right here in the Washington, DC area.

Doorway Arts Ensemble is presenting a full production of Tether as part of Montgomery College Silver Spring Arts Alive Theatre Series from February 18th through March 13th.

The production team is chock full of some of The Inkwell’s favorite playmakers. Jessica Lefkow is the director (she previously directed the Inkubator Production of Melissa Blackall’s The F Word) and Jenn Book Haselwerdt is the dramaturg, who has whipped many a play and playwright into shape for The Inkwell (check out her last blog entry on her experience with Doug Dolcino’s Monument). And Gwen Grastorf, a favorite actor of ours, plays Lach, one of the pair of twins. She was last seen in The Inkwell’s Miracles and Migrations showcase at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

You’ll be hearing more about this play and the process for taking it to production in the coming weeks. We loved working with Julie during The Inkwell's 2009 Inkubator Festival and we’re just so excited that Doorway Arts Ensemble is showing Tether off to the world.

THE INKWELL’S UPCOMING READINGS: EIGHT BOLD NEW PLAYS!

The Inkwell is excited to present to you more of the daring, imaginative, and provocative plays we have found through our open calls for submissions. We've got two reading series at Woolly Mammoth Theatre lined up this Winter and Spring, and we can't wait to see you there.

On February 26th at 8:00 p.m., we'll present an Inkreading of Henry Murray's Monkey Adored, a truly wild adventure following the lives of Sonny Bonobo, Madeline Kahn, James Rat, and Brown Spot, among other animals on the edge. We're so glad to bring Henry back into town to explore his play about animal love, lust, and experimentation. We first met him in 2009 when we presented an excerpt of Monkey Adored at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival. (Take a look at what he wrote about the process for Inkblog!)

On March 5th at 8:00 p.m., we'll offer you another sampling of excerpts from three plays we discovered through our 2010 open call for submissions. This showcase reading features snippets Tiffany Antone's Twigs and Bone, Katherine Sherman's Cassandra, and Steve Mould's The Body. There's a lot of imaginative material in these plays... an exploding house, a baby made of twigs, a photophobic, adolescent prophet... we think you'll have fun.

On May 28th at 8:00 p.m., we're presenting an Inkreading of Rebecca Bossen's Blue Straggler, a play about love, loss, and the idiosyncrasies of stars. Rebecca is a local writer and we're so glad to be working with her again after showcasing an excerpt of her play at the 2010 Page to Stage Festival at The Kennedy Center. (Rebecca also wrote about her experience with us for Inkblog!)

Then on June 4th at 8:00 p.m., we've got another showcase featuring three more plays we found through the 2010 call for submissions. They are Kit Idaszak's Fugue (A Particle Accelerator), Jonathan Goldberg's Deus Machina Ex or Eleanor Roosevelt versus the God Machine, and J. Stephen Brantley's Furbelow. At this showcase reading you'll meet Schroedinger's Cat, the indomitable Eleanor Roosevelt, a vinedresser and a lacemaker, among other unforgettable characters.

There's much more to share with your from our full hearts, including more on our last Inkreading Series plans we are cooking up for the Summer and Fall. Stay tuned!

As deep as Lake Tanganyika... more on Monument

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 18:59:08 -0500

We march ever closer to a new year, but we at The Inkwell are holding on a bit longer to the last days of this one. We're continuing to look back at our Fall Inkreading Series at Woolly Mammoth, asking our playmakers to provide their thoughts.

So here's more thinking by dramaturg Jenn Book Haselwerdt on Monument by Doug Dolcino, which is definitely a thinker's play. It's got a lot of depth... as deep as any lake you can think of.

By the way, you should take a few minutes to read Jenn's previous blog post her work as a dramaturg on Jason Platt's Strive Seek Find, a reading of which The Inkwell staged last year.

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Here are the things I get to do professionally as a dramaturg:

1. Read scripts. (Great, since I’m a born bookworm.)
2. Think hard about scripts. (Great, since I’m a born nerd.)
3. Talk to people about scripts. (Great, since I like to talk at length about things I find wonderful.)
4. Play nicely with others, and don’t run with scissors. (Great, since safety should always come first.)

It’s hard to believe sometimes that I get hired to do exactly what I love to do, especially with a company like The Inkwell, which really appreciates the work of a dramaturg. This season, I was lucky to be able to work on the play Monument, with a group of extremely talented artists, including director Jessica Burgess and playwright Doug Dolcino.

I’ve been repeating something a lot over the last couple of weeks. “If I get hired to work on a play that doesn’t provoke any questions, I wonder why I was hired. I understand why everyone else in the room is there: the actors, the director, the playwright. But why hire a dramaturg if there’s no conversation to be had?”

There was a whole lot of conversation to be had about Monument, and I’m so glad there was.

From the moment I read the complex script, I was excited for the opportunity to have a hand in the process. The play was absurd, taking place in a house that straddles two worlds, with characters who are now one person, now another. To be perfectly honest, I had to read the script three times before I felt equipped to have any kind of informed conversation with Jessi and Doug. There was just so much packed into 120 pages.

The first conversation with Doug played out like the first conversations with many playwrights: we determined what his goals were, what questions he wanted to have answered about his script, and we got answers to some of our more superficial questions (like, “How do you pronounce the characters’ names?”).

The way Doug talked about his play was very interesting: he spoke as if it was a living being, or words he wrote down from some supernatural dictation. He answered “I’m going to have to think about that” for many of our less-superficial questions. At first, I was surprised by this tactic, but I later realized that Doug is an incredibly thoughtful playwright who wanted to hear how his play was interpreted, rather than imposing his ideas on the team. It was a process unlike one I’d had an opportunity to work with, and I’m glad I got a chance to work this way.

The rest of our conversations about the play were anything but superficial. It was so beneficial to hear the actors read the script at the first table read; although I’d read the script silently several times by that point, I always discover something new when I hear actors. I started to formulate my own theories about a play on which one could write a dissertation. More conversations with Doug and Jessi followed our work with the actors. It was fabulous to have two weekends of rehearsal instead of the standard few days; a play this complex needs real time to parse and (begin to) understand before it’s put on its feet.

What did I get to do beyond in-depth conversations about text, relationships, and transversing worlds? I got to think about how adults “play” when they decide to be different characters in their own lives. I got to learn about immense natural features like Lake Tanganyika and the Quelccaya ice cap. I got to figure out how to say Margot, Janos, and I love you in semaphore. And I even wrote a comic song, inspired by a few of our actors.

One of the reasons I love dramaturgy is that I never have to stop learning…about playmaking, about communication, about relationships, about the ways people use words, and about the world around us. The process of working with Monument gave me an opportunity to continue learning about all of these. In spades.

That's Jenn Book Haselwerdt in the photos above...thinking hard at a rehearsal for Monument. In the top shot, Jenn listens as Andres Talero and other actors read the latest draft of the play, In the bottom shot, Jenn and The Inkwell's Artistic Director Jessi Burgess practice semaphore. These photos were taken by the talented Teresa Castracane.

Endings are hard... thoughts about Clementine

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:39:51 -0500

Beginnings, middles, endings... mid-middles and the beginnings of endings... it's all really hard... meaning it can be really hard to revise a play.

But it's a challenge we love here at The Inkwell, and here are some terrific insights from one of our dramaturgs, Laura Miller, on the challenge of finding the right ending.

She's reflecting on the development process for Krista Knight's Clementine and the Cyber Ducks, one of the plays we stages at the Fall Inkreading Series.

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I am a relative newcomer to the Inkwell process, having been inducted into the "Inky ways" just this year as a script reader and dramaturg for the Inkreading of Krista Knight's Clementine and the Cyber Ducks. A phrase the wonderful Anne McCaw mentioned during my initial training session (and one that has played on a continuous mental loop ever since Clementine rehearsals) is something I believe is a tenet of The Inkwell's new play development viewpoint: beginnings are hard, middles are hard, endings are hard.

SPOILER ALERT: In this post, I will discuss the current ending of Clementine and the Cyber Ducks.

Krista Knight burst into the rehearsal room at Woolly Mammoth Theatre bubbling with energy and exciting ideas for revisions. She was troubled by the play's ending, finding that it lacked the visual punch she desired. The play is inspired by the Gold Rush tune, Oh My Darlin' Clementine, in which the miner '49er's daughter Clementine drowns, so Krista had a clear image of the final moment of death in the play, but the journey towards Clementine's demise was a bit murkier.

During discussions with Krista and our marvelous director, Shirley Serotsky, we agreed that three events needed to occur in order to establish that Clementine's tragic death was inevitable. Clementine needed to lose her father, her money, and her independence -- the three pieces of her life she emphasized the most. Once these three pieces were gone, she would be emotionally rent and, literally, unsteady on her feet. As the necessary losses took shape, we turned our attention to the final scene.

Krista wrote a few versions of the closing scene for the reading, incorporating the honest and useful feedback from Shirley and the incredibly dedicated and focused team of actors, but during our last rehearsal, she found herself torn. She said that it is easy to know when something is completely wrong, but much more difficult to make a decision when two choices feel right, albeit for different reasons.

The first version was exciting and bold, and included Clementine's famous song right at the end. It was also more familiar to our team. The actors read through this version more often throughout our week of rehearsals. We felt comfortable using it. The second version was rawer. It was written towards the end of the rehearsal process and satisfied the need for visual punch. In this version, a veritable sea of oranges pours over the miner's sluice gate, overwhelming the landscape , and intensifying Clementine's drowning scene. Clementine's song is interspersed throughout the scene, prolonging her death. As a group, the team discussed choosing one or the other ending, and Krista and I proposed the idea of presenting both versions, Choose Your Own Adventure-style, at the reading.

Eventually, someone mentioned the word risk. We were reminded that the point of the Inkreading is to be brave, bold, and try something new. Krista and I agreed that both endings could work, but the one to use for this particular reading was one that was a bit scarier, the riskier choice.

Working on new plays is a brave endeavor. To be part of the process, it requires the understanding that it is, in fact, a process, a journey, and it will not always be easy. Beginnings, middles, and ends are hard, and making risky choices takes a lot of guts.

Here are some more photographs from our Inkreading Series taken by Teresa Castracane. In the first shot, Joe Thornhill, Megan Reichelt, and Stacy Wilson connive as the devlish ducks. In the second photo, Jim Brady imagines the death of this beloved daughter Clementine, played by Betsy Rosen.

The Leibert Family Haunting... more on Monument

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:12:31 -0500

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, intrepid InkBlog readers! Are you still digesting the holiday food and drink?

We at The Inkwell are still digesting the experience of our Fall Inkreading Series...and we continue to share with you the thoughts of all those involved.

Here's Doug Dolcino, author of the momentous Monument, digesting his experience working with Artistic Director Jessica Burgess, dramaturg Jenn Book Haselwerdt and an incredibly talented cast in teasing part and putting together his layered, elusive, and complex play.

Thank you, Doug, for coming along for the ride and providing us such an honest insight into the playwright's struggle to understand his or her own work.

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More than two weeks since the Inkreading of Monument, I have been haunted by the Liebert family, by mailmen and lepers. It wasn’t that long ago when they first appeared, chattering and lollygagging long enough for me to write the play until (I suppose) they were satisfied. Now they are back, more real and insistent than ever before—but at the same time a little too pushy, like long forgotten companions one never expected to see again. For me the sensation is a weird combination of excitement and trepidation.

No matter. Although these characters have served as my constant and perhaps unruly guests since the earliest drafts, clamoring to be heard before their time is up, it is good to have made their acquaintance again. They mean no harm, after all, for they have something to say, a message to deliver....

So I find myself once again plunged in the countries of Arbythnia and Tarzania—of mail that goes unopened, of choruses, wigwagging and a luscious cascade of voices speaking all at once; of memory, the past and future merging into one; of questions like “Who is this character?” or “Why does she say that?” or “What does he want?”. All of this has followed me home, scribbled down in the margins of my script, and it’s altogether a good thing.

But could it be a play like Monument promises too much, raising more questions than it could possibly answer, much as life does? And did those who attended the reading leave with their own questions about the play, nagging them all the way home like a cloud of gnats? Whatever the case, it was truly an honor to have worked with such a dedicated group of artists as we gently coaxed Monument out of hiding.

I say coaxed because a “finished” script, no matter how polished, is a timid creature.

Or to put it another way: its inner sovereign realm is just as much terra incognita for the playwright as it is for the cast and director—in that sense we are all trespassers on a royal estate filled with lush gardens, baroque fountains, pavilions, twisting paths leading into dark woods and iron gates left open for us to pass through...

What delighted me during the rehearsals was when we stumbled across the mysterious and elusive, the sense that some elemental truth was within our reach, locked away in Monument. We pulled back the dialogue in each scene to see what might be there, pulsing under the surface. In many instances the discoveries were a revelation to me. This was the main theme, the leitmotif, played out in a variety of ways, in each scene and by each character. What was the other theme? A sense of disintegration and impermanence as the Liebert family made its long journey to Tarzania—while at the same time the play sought its own identity and purpose, as complex and multifarious as the human mind.

When I write a play the experience is, more often than not and in some way, incomplete. The process draws heavily on hunches and intuitions, a sense of shape and what a scene wants to sound like. Sometimes the results work and other times they don’t. But this is why opportunities like the Inkwell’s Inkreadings are so invaluable because they highlight where a scene stumbles, where the play has gone astray or lost its central focus. By listening closely to the insights and observations of the director, dramaturg and actors, the playwright learns far more during one rehearsal than from a month of late nights sitting alone puzzling over the script. For this very reason a playwright should mostly keep his or her mouth shut during rehearsals. Other playwrights may take issue with me for saying such a thing but that really doesn’t change the matter....

Thanks to The Inkwell for giving me the chance to take up Monument once again. I was shown every courtesy and kind indulgence by the creative team during six days of intense rehearsals, as exemplified by Jessi’s keen direction, Jenn’s insights as dramaturg, Collin’s bold set designs, and the enthusiastic, wonderfully talented cast who gave their time and energies to Monument. Now that I’m back at my desk, the journey to a distant border (not unlike the one dividing Arbythnia from Tarzania!) continues for the next few weeks and beyond, possibly without end. It is my hope that the choices I make will serve Monument while preserving—perhaps as symbolized by Herman Liebert’s scale model—that inner sovereign realm of the play: a fragile mystery, a wobbly wonder.

In the photograph above, Fatima Quander and Andres Taleros rehearse a scene from Monument. Teresa Castracane is the talented photographer.

Showcasing miracles and migrations

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:29:36 -0500

Let me tell you, readers, what great fun I (the I is Anne, your faithful blogger) had as the dramaturg of The Inkwell's Miracles and Migrations showcase.

I got to study up on miracle plays, religious iconography, cicadas, and North Korea. Yep. That's the kind of stuff that three playwrights gave us to play with... and we only presented 20 minutes of their plays.

As I may have mentioned to you before, our showcase readings are The Inkwell's way of getting to know a playwright... and to introduce Washington, DC to a number of playwrights in just one sitting. We first choose plays that we want to showcase through our open call for submissions. We then work with the playwrights to choose 20-minute excerpts that we can rehearse and explore, parts of the play that we hope will illuminate the rest of the play for these writers. We then bring together a director and a dramaturg with some actors to put these excerpts up on their feet, and then before an audience.

So what exactly did I do as a dramaturg? Well, first I read the plays a couple of times and formulate some questions, more for myself than for the playwright. They are questions like: "What are the rules of the world of the play?" or "Is there anything that's confusing to me?" or "What is the arc of this character?" Then I asked the playwrights some questions to jumpstart a conversation. I ask them how long they've been working on the play, what did they learn from previous readings and/or workshops, and what are the big questions that they have about the play right now. I then help them pick an excerpt that I think will help them answer those big questions.

Then we rehearse, and when I'm with the director and actors, I provide some background research that I think would be helpful. For example, when we rehearsed The Ordained Smile of Saint Sadie May Jenkins, I brought in Bible passages from Revelations that describe the Book of Life. I then listen and respond to the questions the actors may have about the script, taking notes on those questions that might be useful to bring back to the playwright. Finally, I observe the ways in which the director and actors take apart and put together the excerpts. I try to help clarify any questions actors may have about a character's intentions. I also listen for the rhythm of the script and scenes, taking notes on pace and structure.

My next step is to talk with the playwrights, sharing what the director, actors, and I learned in rehearsal. Hopefully our questioning and our observations help the playwright dive back into the play to experiment, structure, and sculpt.

Oh, yeah... there's one more thing I do as a dramaturg. I introduce each piece at the showcase reading. Below are my notes (and some photos) from our most Miracles and Migrations showcase.

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The Ordained Smile of Saint Sadie May Jenkins
By Reginald Edmund

This play is an allegory of a trapped soul inside a would-be saint. It’s a miracle play, much like those performed in Middle Ages, that has a surreal, timeless, and thoroughly modern feel.

Sadie May Jenkins has been living in a decaying and soot-covered shotgun house in Houston for God knows how long. She scrubs the walls of what once was her home, trying to decypher the strange words she finds beneath the soot, while also looking for the remnants of her smile. She befriends Ro, a girl hardened by the neighborhood's twilight streets, and together the two of them confront an ominous stranger named Smiles and Sadie Mae's dead-but-just-returned-from-Nawlins husband, Clarence.

Our readers loved the imagery that riffs off of religious concepts and icons that are familiar to us… of a purgatorial place, of prophets and fallen angels, the book of life and the end of days, of a tired and broke down body letting go of its mortal coil.

And they loved the extraordinary Sadie Mae, deeply moved by her struggle to let go of her pain and find peace.

This excerpt takes place after Sadie has just been confronted and tempted by Smiles, who is trying to coax this strange young girl, Ro, out of the house. Sadie May now receiving an unwelcome visit from her dead husband, Clarence, who is keenly suspicious of Ro and her origins.

Great Eastern
By Anna Moench

The "song" of the 17-year cicada has crescendoed to the proportions of a "din," or at least a "racket" in Central Maryland; cats and dogs are snacking on them like potato chips and their discarded shells and rotting bodies are piling up.

This is the introduction to a news article in the Baltimore Sun about the emergence of the Great Eastern Brood of cicadas, who as many of you know, burrow deep into the ground and sleep for 17 years. Suddenly, by some mysterious cue, they dig out from the dirt for a matter of weeks, climb the trees, sing and screech, mate, lay eggs, then die.

The cicadas are singing throughout Anna Moench’s Great Eastern, which takes place at John Hopkins University during two of the 17-year emergences – 1987 and 2004. There is someone else who emerges every 17 years, and that is Cora, a renowned entomologist who studies the mysterious life of the cicada, one of her many research projects around the world. Every 17 years, she returns to John Hopkins University to Douglas, a sometimes friend and colleague. As the events of 2004 move forward in the play, the events of 1987 move backward, and we see how two lab assistants, Jane and Evan, become entranced with the cicadas, and how they join and are forever changed by the cycle of reconnection and betrayal between Cora and Douglas.

We at The Inkwell love Anna’s writing. We presented an excerpt of her play Pillow Book last year, and we are always so quickly drawn into the emotional dance she choreographs between her characters. And we love how she plays with structure to reveal secrets and desires.

We are presenting two scenes from the play — one from 1987 and one from 2004. In 1987, we see how one night among the cicadas changes everything between Cora’s lab assistant Jane and Douglas. In 2004, we see the ramifications of that one night.

You for Me for You
By Mia Chung

You for Me for You presents a most harrowing, heart-rending journey from one alien place to another.

Yuna and Wunnie are two women suffering from the starvation and sickness that is prevalent throughout North Korea. But they have each other… until it looks as if Wunnie herself will succumb to illness, just as the rest of the family has done. In a desperate attempt to break the cycle of repression, sickness, and death, Yuna makes a bargain with a Smuggler to make The Crossing with her sister out of North Korea to the “free world.” But Yuna has no idea what she is bargaining for... and what she might lose.

As pointed out by one of our readers, “This playwright is striving for something new - a new aesthetic and a new way of using language.” The imagery of the play — of The Crossing itself, of the “bargain” that Yuna brokers, of the ways in which Mia depicts the Western world as both entrancing and overwhelming — is remarkably imaginative, as is the language of love and loss and bewilderment as Yuna leaves all that she knows behind.

And at the heart of this play is a deeply moving story of two sisters that is also a portrait of the plight of women in the repressive regime of North Korea. As another reader said after reading the play:

“I was compelled to read more about the challenge of immigration and the perspective of a North Korean woman alone in the West.”

In these scenes, we are introduced to Tiffany, a frenetic and officious agent of the free world, attending to the needs of the bureaucracy that envelopes Yuna once she makes it to New York City. We are also introduced to The Smuggler, as Yuna and Wunnie try to navigate The Crossing.

The photos from the showcase reading were taken by the talented Teresa Castracane. In the first photo above, Vince Eisenson is the lab assistant Evan, explaining why he is desperate to stay in Baltimore in the excerpt from Great Eastern. In the second photograph, Gwen Grastorf plays Tiffany, an imperious bureaucrat who intimidates North Korean immigrant Yuna (played by Amy Quiggins) in You For Me For You.

The Designer's Imagination - Monument

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:57:19 -0500

What can a designer bring to a really complex, layered play?

In the case of Monument by Doug Dolcino— a beautiful, hilarious, surreal, epic, and mysterious play about a mythical land and a very strange family — the set can clearly define the rules of a made-up-place that's entirely askew.

The Inkwell was so excited to have Collin Ranney work with us and Doug to imagine the real and imagined landscapes of Monument.

Monument takes place in the imagined land of Arbynthia, which seems to have been deserted by its populace. All that remains is the Liebert family, their house, and a chorus of mailmen who are desperate for the family to open piles and piles of forgotten packages and letters. The head of the Liebert family, Herman the Civil Engineer, is ignoring the disintegration of Arbynthia and his family, focusing on the ultimate commission for a Civil Engineer: A Monument to the Nameless Forgotten to built in the imagined land of Tarzania.

Herman promises that everything will change once the family travels to Tarzania, once he is able to build his monument. But that's not good enough for his family, who in desperation imagine themselves as different people with their own lofty aspirations.

The house where all this stagnation, machinations, and imagining occurs is critical to understanding the play... this is a house where anything can happen, including a plague of frogs and the appearance of a mine field.

Here are Collin's renderings of this house in three key moments in the play... when the world changes as the characters imagine and act out more and more outrageous events.

This is the House of Liebert at the beginning of the play. Collin creates many different levels in the house where the characters can imagine themselves in different situations. And you can see the ever-present mailboxes in the background. Those are shelves of canned vegetables along the left-hand wall. The cans are stolen at one point by a chorus of Lepers who intrude upon the Lieberts.

This is a rendering of the house in the middle of the play, when it is curiously transforming into a sandy beachside landscape, like the one that the Lieberts imagine they will find in Tarzania. Sand is pouring in from the rafters as palm trees magically appear. Mail is also falling from the sky.

This final rendering is the house in the second act of the play, when the Liebert family has suddenly made the move to Tarzania, and everything seems to have changed. Herman Liebert's half-made model dangles from the ceiling.

What's so wonderful about this set rendering is that it captures an important rule of the play... that you are never really sure if the family is imagining this mad world or if all they are imagining is really happening. The skeleton of the house never changes, like a monument and perhaps the lives of the Lieberts, but all around the bones of the house, anything seems to be possible.

Many thanks for Collin for his terrific work both two plays presented as Inkreadings this Fall at Woolly Mammoth. Make sure you check out Collin's full portfolio at his website.

Maddy and Q and their showcase readings

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:17:49 -0500

So let's wrap up the chronicle of The Inkwell's showcase of local writers with commentary provided by one of our fabulous dramaturgs, Meghan Long, on two plays presented at the reading: Maddy Lee: A Southern Tragedy and We Fight We Die.

Meghan Long is now a seasoned veteran of The Inkwell showcase reading. She has worked on three of our showcase over the past year (where we present 20-minute excerpts of plays) and dramaturged six plays in total.

At the presentation of The Inkwell showcase readings, the dramaturgs introduce each excerpt, explaining a bit more about the play and why The Inkwell team of readers found it to be intriguing, exciting, inventive, compelling... and how the play pushes the boundaries of theatre.

You'll be hearing more from Meghan in Inkblog! as she shares about her experience as a dramaturg for the Inkreading of Beautiful Province as part of The Inkwell's Fall Inkreading Series at Woolly Mammoth.

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Introductions to two excerpts of plays by local writers presented at The Kennedy Center Page to Stage Festival, given by dramaturg Meghan Long.

Maddy Lee: A Southern Tragedy
By Stephen Spotswood

Maddy Lee is a bold, modern adaptation of Medea set in the Depression-era South, deep in the bayou forest.

In the playwright’s words, Maddy Lee is “a highly theatrical play mixing music, magic and spectacle, yet revolving around a strong narrative core.”

Scenes in the play travel between the past and present. In the present, Maddy is on trial for a heinous crime. Maddy has had a troubled past, but her fortune seems to change when she meets Jason, the good-looking golden-boy. Maddy and Jason begin a secret relationship, hiding their love from Maddy’s father’s watchful eyes. When Maddy’s father learns of their relationship he threatens to kill Jason, and in an act of desperation, Maddy turns on her father and kills him.

We fast forward 14 years and Maddy and Jason are married and have a daughter, Charlotte. Jason begins to stray from their marriage vows and finds himself in the company of Abigail, the town beauty. When Maddy learns of Jason’s infidelities she vows to regain her power and alters their lives forever.

Maddy Lee asks us - What lengths are you willing to go to, to reclaim who you once were?

Inkwell readers were excited by the modern re-telling of a classic story. I was struck by the lyrical descriptions of character, time, and place – transporting the reader to a mythical place embedded with magic and spirits. I was struck by one stage direction in particular. To quote the play:

“A dark branch reaches out and wraps itself around Sissy’s arm: roots rear up and snake around her legs; the forest comes alive to bind Sissy’s limbs, gag her mouth, squeeze her throat shut. They strangle her, crush her, and pull her into the darkness of the swamp.”

The scene we have for you tonight comes towards the end of the play after Maddy has learned of her husband’s infidelities.

She pens a letter in the guise of her husbands’ handwriting and sends it off to his mistress, Abby. Following the notes instructions, Abby goes to Jason’s house expecting to find him there alone while the rest of the family is at church. What happens next? Only Maddy knows.

We Fight We Die
By Timothy Guillot

We Fight We Die is best described in short by the playwright, Tim:

“The mythical Q, a homeless virtuosic graphic artist, is forced to license himself to the government in order to avoid jail. With his harrowing past bearing down on him, Q must decide: defiance or conformity?”

Set in a non-descript urban environment, We Fight We Die tells the story of two brothers, Q and Wits. Q, the eldest brother, is a talented artist who tags the city with striking images and stories from his life and imagination. Q is well-respected and revered in his community while remaining anonymous to those that admire him.

A recent brush with the law lands Q in the office of the city mayor who believes that all graffiti is vandalism. In an effort to curb such destructive artistic expression, she organizes the Cooperative Arts Council and offers Q a commission to paint a mural at the local elementary school. Q must decide to sell-out artistically to protect his brother, or continue tagging on his terms and risk the only family he has left.

The playwright was inspired to write this play after frequent trips on the red line Metro near Catholic University past the expanse of graffiti-covered walls. A musician himself, Tim moves the action in the play forward through the use of music and rhythm, along with spoken word and poetry. All of these create a dynamic urban world in which the play lives.

Inkwell readers loved the heightened language and theatricality of the play, as most evident in the Chorus scenes. I was captivated by the punctuated language and bold, graphic images of Q’s work.

The plays Greek structure –with a Chorus helping to tell the story – gave the play a classic feel while being modern at the same time. The playwright effortlessly transports us to world where music, art, and language seep into our urban environment.

The scene we have for you tonight is the final scene of the play. Q has started the mural at the local school under the mayor’s supervision. Now Q faces a decision that will determine his future. What are you willing to give up for those you love?

Evolution: The Directors Take on Darwin's Cousin

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:53:58 -0500

You've heard a lot from dramaturgs about the playmaking process on Inkblog. But what about that all-important director?

You can't put a play on its feet without them, of course. They are another incredibly important interpreter of plays and a critical voice in playmaking. Their choices in staging, in coaching actors, in driving the action in any given scene can tell a playwright so much about what's working, what's not working, and what's working in a way that they never imagined.

We've been working with Amber Jackson on two showcase readings this year, and we love how she approaches them. She quickly moves away from putting actors in front of music stands to put a play on its feet.

Here are some of her thoughts on staging Christin Siems' Darwin's Cousin for our local showcase reading, which we put up at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival.

Darwin's Cousin is an extremely visual piece about a mother, Layne, who must decide on whether to allow her husband, Dr. Kitcher, to intervene to save three of five babies that she is carrying as a result of in vitro fertilization. Revelations from an eccentric Aunt Cate influence Layne's decision. There are several choruses in the play, one of talking puppies, one of Dr. Kitcher's guy pals, and one of Layne's five unborn babies. Amber talks about how she used these choruses to better understand the play.

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All artists evolve and change as they grow.

My style and approach change with every show I direct. I didn’t always think it would be like this…when I first went to graduate school for directing, I thought that I would develop “the Amber Jackson style”…my method/approach for directing…I would either come out of it with an “inside-out” approach like Stanislavsky or Lee Strasberg, or an “outside-in” approach like Anne Bogart, Tadashi Suzuki, or Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold.

But the more I grow and evolve as a director, the more I realize how impossible that is and how those methods do not have to be mutually exclusive (they weren’t for those directors either)…because every play—along with its corresponding family of collaborators—is different…so the approach then must be different as well.

For Christin Siems play, Darwin’s Cousin, my approach turned more towards the “outside-in.”

When I first read the play, I saw it as a thing in motion…and wondered how the pressures that influence Layne, Dr. Kitcher, and Great Aunt Cate, could be demonstrated physically. I asked questions like, “How could the peer-pressure of The Guys on Dr. Kitcher be felt if they weren’t only pressuring him with their words, but also with their close physical proximity?”

You don’t always have the luxury of exploring physicality with a staged reading, but luckily, under the collaboration of a company that supports the idea of pushing the envelope, and a bold playwright that wasn’t afraid of taking chances, we did. And I think we learned a lot about the play by doing so.

Every project lends itself to a few key “take-aways” or lessons that you learn through the process…for Darwin’s Cousin I learned to trust my gut reaction approach to a play, and not force a method or approach. If we listen to the play, it'll tell us how to get there in its own unique way.

The Designer's Imagination - Clementine and the Cyber Ducks

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:54:43 -0500

It's been so fun for all of us at The Inkwell to bring designers into our collaborations with playwrights as part of our Fall Inkreading Series. And we want to continue to share with you what's coming out of their heads as they talk with playwrights about the scenic aspects of their plays.

Below are some images and sketches from Lisi Stoessel, who worked with Krista Knight to imagine set elements for Clementine and the Cyber Ducks.

This play is a thoroughly original and inventive riff off of the folks song, O My Darlin', Clementine. To be honest, I hadn't ever heard all the lyrics to the song until I saw the reading of the play that director Shirley Serotsky staged on November 6th. Here are those lyrics, which are rather dark and morbid, even though the tune itself is pretty upbeat:

In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a mine
Dwelt a miner forty niner,
And his daughter Clementine

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine

Light she was and like a fairy,
And her shoes were number nine,
Herring boxes, without topses,
Sandals were for Clementine.

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine

Drove she ducklings to the water
Ev'ry morning just at nine,
Hit her foot against a splinter,
Fell into the foaming brine.

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine

Ruby lips above the water,
Blowing bubbles, soft and fine,
But, alas, I was no swimmer,
So I lost my Clementine.

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine

How I missed her! How I missed her,
How I missed my Clementine,
But I kissed her little sister,
I forgot my Clementine.

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine

In Clementine and the Cyber Ducks, Krista imagines three nasty, conniving Cyber Ducks, greedy for cash and credit, betting on the tragic fall of Clementine, a young girl who is desperate to make her way in the world, to overcome the curse of her folks song, and strike it rich. Somehow she travels through time to the 1990s to meet Brian, an ambitious tech geek who wants to get his piece of the action during the Dot Com Boom. Spurred on by the ducks, by Brian, and by her own deep desire for some kind of success, Clementine develops an elaborate scheme to make money off of lonely men...including her father.

There's such an interesting interplay between Vaudeville and folk legend, time and love, greed and longing in this play. Lisi came up with all sorts of imagery to show how these threads might begin to weave together visually. You can see from the two collages the color palate that Lisi would likely use in the set... blues and sepia tones, evocative of a period piece, of the digital age, and of the river in which Clementine eventually drowns.

She also drew some sketches of the set itself, inspire by her collages. She also sketched out one of the most important set pieces, a cabinet in which Clementine's dead mother's silver tea set is kept. Brian steals the tea set and sells it to a pawn shop, pushed by the Cyber Ducks.

Thanks so much, Lisi, for helping us all imagine the world of Clementine and her Cyber Ducks. And make sure you check our Lisi's portfolio of work at her website.

Page to Stage Indeed!

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:17:12 -0500

Greetings, loyal reader. We at The Inkwell are taking a breath after completing our Fall Inkreading Series at Woolly Mammoth. We had such a blast working with all of our playwright and exploring some incredibly fascinating plays. Thanks to all of you that worked on the Inkreading Series with us and to everyone who came out to explore these plays with us.

We'll be catching you up on all sorts of play making over the next several weeks, as we post reflections from the playwrights, directors, dramaturgs, and designers who have worked with us over the past several months.

And here are some more thoughts from the lovely and thoughtful Rebecca Bossen. We produced an excerpt of her play, Blue Straggler, at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage festival on Labor Day.

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I am not someone who is comfortable just throwing my work out there. I’m more of the “I’ll show you after the next draft. Or maybe the next one” variety. Writing is about 11 percent of my process; the rest is tinkering, editing, deleting, staring out the window, deleting more, doubting myself, moving scenes around, editing more, singing to my cats, and eating chocolate in the name of research (or so I tell myself).

Like most writers, I will do almost anything to avoid the actual creative process of writing.

For me, this aversion comes not from laziness but from a deep primal fear of the blank page. For the showcase reading of an excerpt of my play, Blue Straggler, we were encouraged to choose a scene that was interesting and problematic and required more investigation. Very good advice. Using my own private set of criteria, I chose the scene from my play that had the most favorable “actual writing” to “eating chocolate” ratio.

Then something very strange happened.

People started asking me good questions. My director, my dramaturg, my actors, the Inkwell staff –everyone who had devoted time to exploring the emerging world of Blue Straggler had something insightful to say. Their curiosity sparked my own set of questions, so there was only one thing I could do.

Moved by this spirit of supportive and nonjudgmental inquiry, I wrote.

Despite all of my perfectionist tendencies, I brought an unedited, two-hour-old monologue into the rehearsal room. A few days later, it was performed in front of a packed room at The Kennedy Center. Page to Stage, indeed!

As I’m writing this new draft of the play, I’m finding that something has fundamentally changed. The play itself, certainly. The relationships are a thousand times clearer, the rules of the world more established. The biggest change by far, though, is in how I feel when I sit down to write. My heart still speeds up, I still fidget before my fingers hit the keys, and I have a brownie next to me (it really is a crucial aspect of the play, I swear!). But there’s only one question in my head today, and it isn’t whether or not what I write will be good, or will it be produced, or should I have gone to law school like my uncle told me to. It’s simply, “I wonder what’s going to happen in here today?” And I am genuinely excited to find out.

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This is the monologue that Rebecca wrote while working with The Inkwell crew.

In Blue Straggler, Lisa is a grief-stricken astronomer, paralyzed by the loss of her lover, Clarissa. She's trying to find a way to gain access to the multiple universe, to find where Clarissa may have gone, to get an answer to why Clarissa left.

LISA

124. One two four. If you add 9 plus 13 plus 15 plus 22 plus 5 plus 25 plus 15 plus 21, you get 124. Which is interesting. Because the next obvious number in the one two four series is eight, which is exactly the number of letters in the phrase itself. And every number in the one two four eight series is a power of two. The power of two.

I worry sometimes that you don’t understand me.

I don’t understand everything, either. I didn’t understand the power of two before you. And I didn’t understand how infinite infinity is until I felt the infinite difference between two and one.

You asked me to write you a love letter once. Now, I keep trying but all I have is the numbers. It’s elegant the way they fold together like that, though, isn’t it? You liked it when I showed you things that worked out that way. You know what I mean. When the numbers seems to be in a million pieces and then bit by bit, rule by rule, they get organized into one shining answer. That’s what I’m looking for now and this silly code is the closest I can get. So I keep saying it over and over to myself. “I” is 9, “l” 13, “o” 15, “v” 22, “e” 5, “y” 25, “o” 15, “u” 21…over and over again like a mantra. Over and over and around and around and I hope to God you’re hearing this somehow. 124. I’m no good at love letters, but maybe you’ll take a love number instead?

Looking back on a Blue Straggler

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:29:50 -0500

Faithful, indefatigable readers, I had promised you some looking back.

So here we are... looking back at our showcase reading of local writers that The Inkwell hosted at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival in September.

Yes, it's taken us a while to gather our thoughts... and observations from some of the 36 people that worked on that project. That's right, there were three dramaturgs, four directors, four playwrights, and somewhere around 25 actors helping to put four excerpts from four plays on their feet. We attracted quite a crowd on Labor Day, filling the South Atrium Foyer at The Kennedy Center.

Here are some observations about one of the four plays we showcased -- Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen -- from Mary Watters, the dramaturg for this excerpt and play. She is a huge fan of the play, championing it as she helped us review plays submitted to our second open call for submissions.

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I was intrigued by Blue Straggler from the first page. It begins without words, which is uncharacteristic for word-loving playwrights.

The scene is just simplicity and one action. A young woman, Lisa, enters the stage. Nothing happens. Still nothing. More nothing. Then, a feather falls and Lisa catches it and curls up on the floor with the feather in her hand. Hmmm. I was ready to read more.

Those of us lucky to be involved with The Inkwell ask, “What makes this play Inky?” or how does it fit with the aesthetic of Inkwell scripts. Well, just looking at the scene locations for Blue Straggler gives you an indication that it’s not going to be theatre-as-usual. One of the locations is “at the edge of a black hole.” Blue Straggler is about astrophysics, multiverses, and grief.

While playwright Rebecca Bossen could have gotten caught up in all the cool science and played theatrical tricks, she crafted a play with four disparate (and desperate) characters; she crafted a play with an incredibly rich center because the driving force of this play, its very heart, is love.

Lisa, a young woman who should be completing her dissertation in astrophysics and teaching university classes, is dealing with the death of her lover, Clarissa. To attempt to process her grief, she turns to the only language she really knows: math. Her mother, May, comes to Lisa’s apartment because Lisa hasn’t been seen for days. May, a self-made, can-do Southern woman, wants to help Lisa return to normality – or May’s sense of normality, which is having your hair done and getting on with your life.

Clarissa, who is not of our universe, confronts her keeper, an entity of the universe named Ragged. Clarissa pleads with him to let her into Lisa’s world, but the universe, or multiverse, has rules – rules which Clarissa seems determined to break. Ragged allows Clarissa one chance to reach out to Lisa, but she absolutely must stay within the bounds of the universe’s rules.

That’s where our scene begins. It’s the second scene, or orbit, as the playwright calls them.

Talented playwright Rebecca Bossen tells us that this orbit beings in a place that’s no place. Lisa is in bed. It is Lisa’s dreamland….

So that’s how I introduced the play for the showcase. That’s all I really needed to say because Rebecca’s characters and their emotional interactions took off after that. And just like a good script, a good story, should sweep you into its orbit, the audience was quickly pulled into the play’s gravitational field.

Dramaturging this play was a bit of a nail-biting experience for me. I was actually coming to this task as a playwright who liked to read and comment on scripts; I’d never been a dramaturg. I’d taken the eye-opening course on dramaturgy the Inkwell offered last year taught by Michael Dixon. But I was taking in the class almost as much as a way to “be my own dramaturg” and to better refine my work.

Okay, there’s definitely more to say about this process – the fun and the learning involved in working with the great people the Inkwell assembled while delving into our Inkwellian work. But that will have to wait for another posting.

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Let me add a little bit here about Mary and her keen dramaturgy skills. She did come into the process with a lot of trepidation, but she was driven by such a strong love of this play and innate ability for thoughtful analysis. I served as a sounding board for her and discovered that she just needed a little help to release her inner dramaturg, which in this case was to point out to Rebecca the strengths of the play (like the beautiful language), the challenges that Rebecca was facing (weaving difficult scientific concepts around a story of love and grief), and encouraging Rebecca to experiment and explore through this first step in a collaborative process.

It was a terrific collaboration, and we at The Inkwell can't wait to see the next draft of the play. And we can't wait to work with Mary again.

The Designer's Imagination - Beautiful Province

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:08:15 -0500

Dear readers, we are so excited to share with you another way to imagine a play... through the mind of a scenic designer.

Designers have so much to offer to the development of new plays. They help the playwright put their play in three dimensions as much as actors and directors do. A scenic element, whether it's the color of the moon or the shape of an outrageous costume, offer many, many hints into the mysteries of a play in progress, just as an actor's performance does.

For our Fall Inkreading Series at Woolly Mammoth, we've brought designers on board to talk with the playwrights and directors, to help visualize the world in which these plays live.

So without further ado, here are the most beautiful designs that Collin Ranney rendered for Clarence Coo's Beautiful Province... with some additional commentary from your intrepid blogger, Anne.

The play takes place in a classroom in upstate New York, on the road to Quebec, and in the imaginations of the two lead characters -- Jimmy, a 15-year-old boy and Mr. Green, a high school French teacher. Here, Collin renders the first scene of the play, where Mr. Green has a breakdown that leads him and Jimmy on an adventure to the most beautiful province.

The next rendering is for the fourth scene of the play, where Jimmy imagines that he is the Last of the Mohicans and undertakes a great journey with a new companion, the long lost chief of the Mohicans (who looks suspiciously like Mr. Green.) Collin imagines that the classroom transforms into the great forest in which these two Indians, the last of their race, meet.

The following is a rendering from the next scene, when we see that Mr. Green and Jimmy have taken to the road on a journey to Quebec. The classroom further transforms into the open road, the road of possibility for Jimmy and Mr. Green.

This rendering is from the eighth scene in the play, when Jimmy and Mr. Green stop for the night at a hotel, after a long day at Niagara Falls. As you can see here, the blackboards project different images to help depict different places. Here we have the windows of the hotel room.

And here is a rendering of the next to last scene of the play, when Jimmy and Mr. Green have reached the end of Quebec and the edge of their imaginations. Here they meet the explorer Henry Hudson, see the Aurora Borealis, and feel the shift of tectonic plates as Quebec separates from the continent. But this is also the end of the line for them both, as the law catches up to them.

What I love about these designs is that the set elements shift and transform and break apart, just as Jimmy and Mr. Green shift and transform themselves in different places and in the space of their imagination. But with these elements ever present, you have the visual sense that Mr. Green and Jimmy are always tied to the place that they came from.

We'll share more from the minds of designers as they help us imagine the worlds within new plays.

Lolita, Last of the Mohicans, and Quebec... an interview with Clarence Coo

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:38:49 -0500

Hello Inkfans!

Inkwell member Andy Wassenich here to bring you some tasty morsels from our current reading series happening at Woolly Mammoth between now and November 14th. I’ll be checking in here with interviews with some of the fabulous artists involved in these readings — the playwrights, directors, actors, et al —to provide a little insight as to what is going on in the rehearsals leading up to these readings and what the process is like and where the play is in that process.

First up is playwright Clarence Coo, whose ambitious and thought provoking play, Beautiful Province (Belle Province), kicked off our series with a staged reading on Monday.

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Where are you from originally?

CLARENCE: I'm from Washington. I moved to New York to get an MFA in playwriting at Columbia University, so it's great to be back in my hometown!

How do you generally work as a writer? What's your process?

CLARENCE: I like to take a bunch of things I'm obsessed with and challenge myself to see if I can cram them all into one play. This is a technique from my teacher, Charles Mee, who likes to write in collage form. It's also a great cure for writer's block. In the case of Beautiful Province, my obsessions were Lolita,The Last of the Mohicans, and Quebec.

What was your Inkwell collaboration like, where you got to work with actors, a director, a dramaturg, and a designer?

CLARENCE: I worked with the director (Randy Baker) and dramaturg (Meghan Long) to create specific goals that I wanted to accomplish during the rehearsal period. We structured our rehearsals in a way to tackle those goals. It was a great having a final reading without too much pressure, since the understanding was that the process took precedence over the performance. Working with the designer (Collin Ranney) was great too, since he was able to render the themes of the play into three dimensions. Now I can imagine my characters walking through a set, relating to the themes in a spatial way. (Check out the next blog entry, where we show you Collin's beautiful designs for Beautiful Province.)

What are you able to take away from this Inkreading that will help continue to shape the piece?

CLARENCE: The most amazing part was when I was talking to my director (Randy Baker) and dramaturg (Meghan Long) about how I wasn't happy with how the play ends. Randy suggested cutting one action that the characters perform, causing the beginning of one scene to flow continuously into the end of another scene. For whatever reason, I had never thought to do this before, but now the play suddenly makes so much more sense to me. It was a simple but major change that will be the key to how I keep developing the play.

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Many thanks to Clarence for taking the time to answer our questions. And many thanks to him for his wonderful play. If you missed it, make sure you don’t miss the next one, Clementine and the Cyber Ducks by Krista Knight, this Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Woolly Mammoth Rehearsal Hall.