Not for nothing, but...

...You will fail. You will fail a thousand times. Some of these failures will be astonishingly acute. You'll watch your colleagues achieve great successes and you'll feel inadequate, out of the loop. Not one of the cool kids.

But your few successes will be worth both the thousands of dedicated hours spent bringing your visions into tangibility and the disappointments of those awaited emails that say nothing but, Sorry kid, we had this many submissions taken in and we thought a bunch were more worthy than yours. And when these e-notices come from friends, they sting a bit more.

Fact is you will, in all likelihood, not win nearly as many times as you think you should. Your belief in your own work is your greatest strength and your Achilles' Heel; it will keep you afloat during the Dark Ages and serve to highpoint the bee stings that plague your inbox. Your work will take hundreds of hours and miles of internal digging to bring to the surface—if it's to be any good at all. This comes with a mighty cost. But no matter how good it is—intrinsically--someone will not feel it appropriate for their own purposes. This is not you; this is simply bad chemistry.

(And here's the rub: even if your work does“suck”--whatever that means—somebody, somewhere will take a shine to it. Seriously: how much self-indulgent twaddle have you seen sponsors' dollars invested in that the rest of the audience simply adores?)

The hard part is that you have two choices: persist or change your road. Changing one's road means deciding that you're best served in another medium where the possibility of success has lower odds. That's a very hard decision, especially with the time and heart already invested. 

But maybe you do have that other ability within you that needs to be explored. We are annoyingly (and maybe overly-) complex creatures, and many times, like in our writing, we need to head west-by-southwest to crank out those six pages that lead us to that One Glorious True North Beat.

Only fellow artists will truly understand your existential pit of despair. In that, at least, you are not alone.

My own plan is simple: have my somewhat voluble yet momentary pity party, then take up my shovel and continue scraping away at the stony Earth, and to completely mix up metaphors, gallop full speed with head down, ears back, heading straight for Masterpiece Barn.

The Coffee Table of Essential Reading, Part One

We live in troubled times.

But as Sean Connery once opined, “The empire ish alwaysh in shome kind of peril,” a statement some folks may see as a warning against all sorts of Foreign Intrigue Hatefully Directed Against “Our Freedoms.” I take it to mean “We just don't know how to leave well enough alone. And now look at where we are.”

Our species, through the centuries, in order to escape the frightening realities of our failed political policies, has created dream worlds. We have imagined societies that function prosperously, peacefully, and embrace all of its (to be fair, usually selected) citizens with fairness and equality. Despite the attractive brochures, many actual places around the globe come much closer than the United States in achieving such Utopian realities. One might reason that it would be an easy thing to steal the best of those ideas and incorporate them into our own society, but in the current dominant paradigm our wide-eyed jingocentrism teaches that “ours” is the only “true” dream.

I say again: We live in troubled times. Actually, they never seem to end. The Empire is always in some kind of peril.

To wit: the words “only” and “true” have arguably done more to separate us from each other than all other words combined. “Only”: the solitary viable option, all others choices being incorrect, negligible, insufficient. And “True”: that which exists completely without falsity. That which is to be wholly believed, heart and soul, mind and body--without question.

Because to question something is to cast doubt on it, to take it from its proclaimed unassailable pedestal of ultimate perfection, to pull the curtain aside, to reveal the impurities and untruths, and ultimately destroy cherished dreams. When you destroy dreams, you destroy hope. And hope, bless its cancerous little heart, is what keeps the dream machine well-oiled.

Which brings me (finally) to the crux of this screed's biscuit: Since the dawn of writing, people have been inscribing their ideas and viewpoints for consumption by others. Books by the thoughtful and prescient past and present of this rapidly dying planet that explicate, comment on, praise, decry, and render in cold harsh words their views of the effects of our presence here on this criminally abused mother-organism. I've read a bunch that have refused to leave my brain over the years, and it occurred to me to consider what books I would recommend and believed were the best at telling future generations a necessary and essential truth about ourselves as humans on planet Earth. What critical lessons should we pass on? What shared experiences are the most important to be kept alive as lessons or celebrations?

So of course I made a list. It starts immediately below and will follow with subsequent posts. The books are in no certain order, no ranking of importance. I consider each to be critically valuable in shedding a ray of illumination upon ourselves as we have so far evolved (or not). I would say they all have one thing in common: they represent a danger to some part of someone's dominant paradigm merely by fostering that most heretical of crimes, critical examination.

I begin with Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, a book that has been said over and over to encompass all that can be said about the average soldier's experience of war. Wars are inaugurated and set in motion not by average people, but by politicians and global money brokers. Let me clarify: wars are not inaugurated by the ones who will actually fight them.

What All Quiet on the Western Front tells us about the hell experienced by the average soldier is painful and terrifying: The minute by minute fear of injury and death; the heightened, fevered desire to grasp what may be left of the joys of life; the fights with nature and fellow soldiers for morsels of food. What pressures can come to bear to turn a caring young man into someone who visits his hospitalized comrade mainly to see if he can be there at the unfortunate's moment of death in order to take the man's boots, which are in so much better condition than his own?

But the most frightening part of the book for me now that I have seen the run-ups to several wars instigated by my own country is the level of manipulation involved, the ceaseless lies and senseless exhortations that convince healthy, dream-filled young men and women to sign up.

In All Quiet there is a character, Kantorek, a schoolmaster, a respected figure of authority, who exhorts the young men of the village to sign up and fulfill their patriotic duties. While he, of course, does not. (He is later forced to enlist, which he does reluctantly. But not before sending dozens of glory-eyed students ahead of him.)

This Kantorek represents those three of the worst citizens imaginable. First he exemplifies the propogandists, who, throughout history, have passionately preached the righteous glory of war while rabidly extolling nationalistic fervor. They are the hysterical doomsayers who paint the Foreign as direct threats to our “freedoms,” who distort and disregard geopolitical realities and conjure up devils in kaffias or sombreros in order to pursue various economic and political agendas.

Secondly they are the cowards who, while sitting pretty in their own protected nests of luxury, have claimed exception to military service by reason of “bone spurs” or having “other priorities.”

Thirdly, the sideline flag-wavers, such as political mouthpieces masquerading as “news” services who turn the indescribable horrors of war into colorful video game-like displays of technoglitz, showing the fearsome tools of mass destruction as ultracool toys to play with. All you need is a joystick and you can graduate from the Call of Duty killing of virtual enemies on your laptop to virtual murder on the battlefield.

The major lesson to take away from All Quiet on the Western Front, aside from the description of the horrors of war, is this: from whom do you take your information, and why? Who do you trust to tell you the truth? And most importantly, why do you trust others to feed you the information you need? Why do you not seek your own truths, carry your own set of scales and blindfold, and weigh what factors you can find at your disposal?

Last thing: All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books banned and burned in 1933 by the rising National Socialist Party in Germany. Clearly, it was a danger to someone.

Don't Fear the Talkback!

It’s happened to most of us. We’ve just finished the staged reading or performance of our newest play, and we sit next to the director, look confidently at the audience and await the gushing flood of what we hope will be razor-sharp, insightful, critical observations about the structure, validity, and genius of our work. Our director has prepped the audience, most of whom are non-theatre people, by setting a few rules down, the first, and most important of which is “Please do not attempt to rewrite the play for the playwright. We are not looking for fixes, we are looking to find out your impressions of the work.”

An observant playwright-in-the-spotlight will notice the facial adjustments of many in the audience who have now had their brilliant comments nullified. Because we are somewhat, as the famous 1980s book tells us, a Martian society, we seek to apply fixes. Why else would a talkback exist but to ask for remedies? But fixes have no place in a talkback.

I’ll say that again: Fixes have no place in a talkback. Why? Isn’t that what you want to hear?

Let me offer this analogy: How would you, as a parent, respond to the statement “Let me tell you how to better raise your kids. Let me tell what you are doing wrong so little Rainbow turns out better.”

Plays and other creative works are analogous to offspring; depending on an innumerability of factors it’s an extremely personal choice how best to bring either of them to positive, healthy fruition. In polite society one simply does not tell another how to “best” raise their children. (Unless, of course, it’s your mother.)

It’s the same with talkbacks. The play is the playwright’s offspring, the product of imagination, effort, sleepless nights, and sudden bursts of joy. One literally gives birth to a living entity. Every play is someone’s pride and joy.

So. Once we remove the tactic of quick fixes, we leave much of the audience at sea. Because what else is there for an audience member to contribute (aside from bestowing effusive congratulations) except a way to remedy what they see as a fault?

I imagine the talkback after the first performance of Hamlet:

“So, Will. Can I call you Will? Y’know what would make this really cool? Like when, at the end, when Fortinbras enters, Hamlet gets up as a ZOMBIE and eats his brain!” (This is my “Zombie” moment. It almost always happens.)

Or: “Seriously, dude. Hamlet really needs to get his shit together a lot sooner. Waiting all this time and doing…nothing? And the women in this play are almost window dressing. Gertrude and Ophelia need to get together, pull a Lysistrata move and take control. THAT will make this play interesting.”

If that’s not bad enough, I’ve also received emails from audience members a week later telling me at length how the play could be improved if I did these six or seven rewrites including changing the ending to create a happy, inspiring deus ex rectum moment even a mother would choke on.

And lastly. My dreaded moment is when, as it recently happened, an audience member openly ignored the caveat to refrain from offering solutions: “I know I’m not supposed to do this, but I have nothing to say otherwise…” My director and I glanced at each other. (“Really?” “Yeah.”) Then we said, out loud, in stereo: “Zombies.”

I keep thinking that one day I will write a play called The Talkback. Watch out.

So, what’s the best way to run a talkback and save your sanity as well as further your play? Provide as much structure as you can manage. Experienced teachers know the value of structure, a way to keep activities (and a classroom of hormone-crazed teenagers) on track while at the same time facilitating successful results. Talkbacks are not group therapy. They are potentially useful sessions in which a playwright and director have to prize out a much useful information from an audience as possible. Let me state this for the record: nothing matters except the potential viability if the play. Otherwise it’s a complete waste of time.

As mentioned above, prepping the audience to not provide fixes is a good start. Add to that the following instructions: “We are here to ask you, the audience, a few questions. We’d love to hear your responses, but we need them to be brief, under a minute, please, as time is limited and the playwright wants to get hammered by eleven o’clock. Speaking of whom, please do not address any questions to the playwright; we’re not here to engage him in discussion (you can find him afterwards). We only want to hear your impressions. Please remember this is solely about the play and the information you offer us will be critical and very much appreciated.”

Then you’re ready to go. The first thing is start off with a set of specific questions about the play. Such questions should include, but not be limited to:

“What moments in the play stood out for you?” (What were the highlights? A good starter because it gets the audience into the idea of giving specific answers.)

“Was there a moment in the play when we lost you? When we confused you or you stopped caring?”

“In one sentence, what emotion did you feel at the end of the play?” (Never “Did you like the ending?” It’s never about “like.” “Like” leads to “why I liked” which leads to stories ad nauseum. You hope for words like “satisfied,” “thrilled,” “stunned.” “Confused” is also useful, as is “disappointed.” Not optimum, but indicative of possible work to be done—which is the point of this exercise!)

Questions should be structured to encourage the audience to give concise answers, not opportunities to meander through their as-yet-unformed thoughts. These wanderings are useless to the playwright. He or she needs information, not time taken up by questions that encourage the audience to talk at length (sometimes about themselves).

“Yes” and “no” answers are the shortest and the best. You get what you need in one syllable and then you move on to the next item. Questions that require more syllables in response should be phrased to encourage as much brevity as possible. This is a great way to have the audience respond to a particular question or two the playwright may have about her work. There’s always something that needs a bit of positive reinforcement or clarification.

“Did you feel that Ginger’s decision to throw out her husband Shawn was justified?”

“Was the narrator an efficient facilitator?”

“Did the quadruple icepick murder in act six, scene twenty make you laugh?

“In three words or fewer, what was the play about?” (Seriously, three or fewer. That narrows down the theme and content description.)

Bear in mind the people who attend talkbacks are different from the Saturday night audiences. They know there will be a talkback. They want more than just the play itself; they are almost always theatre enthusiasts and they are looking for a deeper connection to the work. It’s one thing to have a post-event discussion over cocktails with your partner; it’s something completely different to have one with the actors, director, and possibly the playwright in the room.

And of course, there is the theory that the playwright should not be in the room at all for this, that the absence of the playwright will encourage freer responses. No one wants to say something negative about the baby when the mother is in the room. (Unless it’s that actor you didn’t cast.)

This is why talkbacks are a delicate balance; talkback attendees want to be a part of the production. It’s the only real time an audience member can get to interact with the entertainment. Movies and TV do not offer a chance to talk to the creator. And who knows? Maybe one of them will hand you the key to the play’s ending and the eventual Pulitzer will be all due to their perspicacious insight.

Talkbacks do not have to be dreaded. With a little prep and some efficient pre-planning, playwrights can get the information and feedback they need. And still make in time for last call.

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George Sapio’s book, Workshopping the New Play: A Guide for Playwrights, Directors, and Dramaturgs is published by Applause Books.

It’s the White Privilege, Stupid.

So I'm in my tavern of choice, shooting a few games of pool with an acquaintance. There's a huge crowd filling the rest of the place, and I mean wall-to-wall. As I scan the Joneses and Millers I noticed one... wait, two, no, three . . . six (?) . . . nine (!) uniformed officers of the law present. Fully armed, too, I may needlessly add I have an uneasy awareness of guns. I do not have a great respect for people in general. I fully believe that our biggest flaw as “thinking, reasoning” human beings is that we habitually create things we cannot control.

(By the way, I'm white.)

Never been particularly comfortable with armed people nearby. I have this nagging, worrisome micro-phobia about possessors of weapons of possible mass destruction: their capability, outlook, judgment, and plain old personal attitude problems.

Today's soireé turns out to be a retirement party. Another moment's thought and rationality and rationalization kick in and I shrug it off. And I ignore the plethora of armed men nearby. Because, of course, I can. 

And then I see my buddy (let's call him “Mike”) at the bar, squeezing in to grab a beer. The bartender gives him a big smile, shakes his hand (Mike is a regular and, in ineffable Willy Loman style, well-liked), and hands him a pint. Mike sips, eases languidly back against the bar, casually eye-sweeps the crowd. Once across, once back. Then his eyes narrow, hand stops in mid glass-raise, and his body tightens. He stiffens because he realizes he's the only African-American man in a bar full of partying cops, cop families, and cop-shop staff.

My game's done (six ball undid me), so I pack the cues away, shuffle over and snag the seat next to him. A quick “Hey buddy, whazzup?” and we settle in, facing the bar, eyes away from the gendarmes and entourage.

I know this guy for a few years; he's on one of my pool teams, always been easy to get along with, excellent sense of humor, and has a lovely, kind heart. So, yeah, I've seen him pissed off because he's playing like shit one night or maybe he had a shitty day selling Hondas. Mostly I've seen him cheerful, joking, and suavely flirtatious. But I have never seen him like this: truly and sincerely frightened. And not just frightened; part of what his face is saying is the knowledge that this is now a day gone really bad.

We have an African-American man (the only one in the whole entire bar) amidst a raucously white--and armed--party. Seriously: what could go wrong?

Spoiler: nothing did go wrong. We hung out while he drank his beer, talked casually about how his job sucked, spent some time on the somewhat back and forth of the local weather, and of course the way some of our cohort shoot pool. And all the while there was this bigass shadow over his head, and you could see it in his face the whole time: ONE black guy in a white cop bar.

At one point, after a change-of-topic silence, he turns to me. “Ever walk into one of your top ten nightmares?”

I can see the effect this situation is having on him. I can't know it intimately cuz I, purely by benefit of my skin color, can do almost anything in this bar and probably walk out on my own steam. I've seen the numerous videos of black men and boys (and women and girls) beaten and/or killed by white cops. By virtue of genetic roulette I'm safe and sound, completely without the daily onus of being a walking, shopping, breathing, talking, running, driving target. His face is telling me different things, but the craziest of all is the look that (I think) says “I'm fucking tired of feeling this way. I'm fucking sick of being scared. I'm fucking had it with having to have this possibility hanging over me every minute of my life.”

Maybe the cops in this bar are the good ones. Who knows? I'd like to think so. Our small city is a very forward, progressive town. Hell, our mayor wants to provide our town addicts with a safe place to shoot up instead of having them OD in a playground. But then again, wait . . . two years ago the police used heavy duty military equipment to raze a family home with a depressed guy inside, all because they were trying to serve him a summons he didn’t want to accept. In his own home. The guy, terrorized, committed suicide. African American boys have been accosted and beaten by our local cops; a lesbian, hands cuffed behind her, was deliberately jostled around in the back seat of a cop car. She had not committed a crime.

Cell phone cameras capture more and more instances of police act in over-the-top ways. I just rewatched the video of the Chicago cops shooting black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times.

So maybe we're both a little justified in being suspicious and uneasy.

The guy I was playing pool with is a cop. Good guy, from what I can tell. Don't know him all that well. Good shooter, plays fair. Dunno what he'd do if it came down to having to either protect Mike or side with The Brethren. (White cop, by the way.)

That's the thing: who knows? I'm not black, nor am I a cop. I have no inside info on either camp. I'm a middle-aged white dude whose most deadly brush with the law was wearing a set of handcuffs and having some over-the-top bravado screamed into my ears because of a nickel bag in Ewen Park. I don't put myself in daily danger because my job requires that I possibly go up against dangerous criminals. I don't have to worry about getting home in one piece . . . simply because I have white skin.

But I do know we need to change some economic and sociological bedrock issues before we can stand behind some of the things our jingoistic schoolbook rhetoric claims to already have in this country . . . like equal protection. Because hard-working, honest, law-abiding people should not have that look on their faces when all they want is a fucking beer and some downtime.

To Feed or Not to Feed. That is the Question.

I hate giving line readings.

Here's my mindset: When I cast a certain actor I do so because of a dozen different things: detected affinity/correctness for the role, the promise of them bringing something unusual and/or new to the part, physical appropriateness/gender (although I'm not a stickler on these points), and just plain old heat-of-the-moment WTF. (I go with instinct sometimes; it pays off more than it doesn't.)

So when I put YOU in the role, I do so because I think you are exactly who should be in it. I like who you are, what you say, how you say it, whatever discernible affinity you may show for the role in a short audition, and I balance that with whatever knowledge I have, if any, of your previous experience. If I've seen you before, it helps. If I've worked with you before, even better (usually).

So, with YOU in the role, I expect several things. I expect you to know the script backwards and forwards. I expect you to read it for continuity, wholeness, and grasp the scope of your character's (and other characters, too) journey. What would thrill me to no end is if you took the script and noted every single thing in it that pertained to your character. Honestly, I fully expect you to do the research. What I hope for is that you will unlock the script's mysteries on your own.

So. Line readings. Theoretically an actor should walk in having most, if not all of the answers. I say “should” and this depends on several things. Is the actor of an age to have the life experience needed to portray the role with truthfulness, or did some college professor decide to put the high school prom king and queen in “The Gin Game”? Does the actor have the specific knowledge of, say Jewish arc welders in Lithuania in the 1930s, needed to fully inform the character? Is it a Becket play?

I write this as a director. It is not my job to tell you how to do each and every line. That, dear actor, is your responsibility. You are the one who will portray Hamlet or whoever up on that stage and you need to have the story arc down solid.

I know this makes me sound as if I believe that all the responsibility of script work is on the actor. Not true in the least. While I do expect my actors to work, do the research, and come into the rehearsal ready to make it happen, experiment, and change my life forever with their brilliance, I fully realize there will be times that certain lines and beats will just be difficult to get. It happens a lot. And, while I loathe forcing the actor to do something not of his or her own invention and thereby limiting his or her ability to mold the part to fit his or her interpretation, I will do it when necessary.

As an actor of some limited ability, I have asked for line readings myself. Case in point: In David Mamet's American Buffalo, when Teach enters the junk shop for the first time he mutters “Fuckin' Ruthie” a number of times. We did the show 12 times, and each time I entered I tried it a different way. Not one of them felt right. The script made it clear what Teach's intent was, but I was never able to put down a reasonable interpretation to my satisfaction. My director left it to me to figure it out. (Bastard.)

When one of my actors asks me for a line reading, or I feel that their reading of a certain line is off the mark, I usually throw one of several requests at them:

“Try hitting the first noun in that line. It's her name and I think you need to accentuate how you feel about her right there”;

“Give the verb more inflection. It shows that you're shocked at the method Claudius used to accomplish his goals”;

“Which part of that line is the part with the real bite? The intro or the prepositional phrase? I think it might be the prep phrase, which shows the absurdity of the current situation.”

Giving the actor an explanation of the line's function is always better than saying “Do it this way: To/be/or NOT!!!!! to/be; ThatistheQUESSSSS...tion.”

And yet, for all my qualms of doing the actor's job for them, limiting the actor's ownership of a role, etc, I have from time to time seen line readings reveal the answer to actors who, only when they hear the line read with intent, are able to grasp the function and meaning of it.

In this case, the ends justify the means. What matters is a true and consistent portrayal of a part, and if lines have to be demonstrated, then so be it. I used to completely abhor line readings as cheating and taking the easy way out, but now I understand that not every project comes to fruition perfectly, and if the end result is what is best for the production and the audience believes the performance to be consistent and true, then I say do what needs to be done by opening night. Audience will never know the difference, anyway.