Julie Taymore on TED Talks

Julie Taymor talks about the power of theatre, its magic, and the role of technology in creating the theatrical experience.

A must-watch for anyone who wishes to stage my work in any capacity.

Happee Burfday to Me!!!!

Here's what I want:

1. No drama
2. Quality time with people who think I'm fabulous
3. Cake - check
4. Ice cream - working on it
5. Raunchy times with Spock
6. Airplane - check
7. Pony

What I'm reading now - David Cole's "The Theatrical Event: A Mythos, A Vocabulary, a Perspective"

Right now I'm reading The Theatrical Event: A Mythos, A Vocabulary, A Perspective by David Cole. Considering the work I'm doing now, it's downright eerie. I'll post quotes and what not when I'm done.

Courtesy of Matt Freeman

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha!

Where the Ladies Are

I can't believe I missed this!

Anyway, I should just get down to it and answer some of GreyZelda's questions there.

I've noticed, as of late, that it seems like only men get into the exchanges on a lot of the theatre discussions, particularly. Why is that? Why are we women backing off lately?. . . Where have all the lady bloggers and commenters gone? I know they're out there reading but they're staying mum and I'm not sure why. Any ideas?

I hadn't noticed, but that may be because theatre blogosphere comes off as a bit of a boys' club anyway. So I sort of expect mostly men to be the voices being heard. Not like I agree or think it's a good thing. As for why I'm backing off, read on.

I can only speak for myself but I've definitely backed off from getting into philosophical discussions with the guys online. I realized it was making me emotionally weary and, at the same time, bored and irritated . . . I was still reading the theatre blogs, but I didn't want to join in the discussions anymore. . . . I realized that my comments didn't seem to aid the discussion. The talks appeared to retread the same issues and, to be quite honest, started to reek of a lot of hot air and wind. . . . I wanted to focus on my family and my life.

This is it in a nutshell for me too.

I touched on this in a previous post as well.

Now my circumstances are such that I want to devote more energy to activities that reward me, so I'm devoting more time to Playsmiths, the big copywriting gig I'm working on, and doing more to prepare myself for a bat mitzvah.

Contrary to Scott's accusation that I don't want real interaction, I do enjoy genuine exchange. But the interactions I enjoy is not the kind that it seems people are interested in - at least not interested enough to actually engage in me with it. I'm introspective by nature. I'm most comfortable with focused, personal discussion that digs beneath our surface personas. I require a certain intimacy to feel deeply satisfied by interacting with others. Otherwise I just feel drained. From my experience, it's very difficult to get depth of discourse in theatre blogosphere. It's sort of like I explained in Beyond Religion 101:

I frankly think the way Isaac presents his post (particularly the part quoted above) is kind of a set-up. It presumes a lot about my reasons for calling myself a person of faith or the role religion plays in my life. It also presumes a lot about how I experience God, especially how it undermines the depth and complexity of that experience to one or two cliche variables. And from there, I'm forced to engage with the discussion on those limited grounds (limitations that don't necessarily apply to the people involved) or not engage at all. So, even without meaning to, the way he frames this discussion excludes and marginalizes the very people who could enrich it.

Now, in theatre blogosphere terms, I could easily say the same thing (albeit slightly edited):

I frankly think the way theatre blogosphere discusses things is kind of a setup. 'The talks appear to retread the same issues' (quoted from GreyZelda). And from there, I'm forced to engage with the discussion on those limited grounds (limitations that don't necessarily apply to the people involved) or not engage at all. So, without even meaning to, the way theatre blogsphere frams discussions excludes and marginalizes the very people who could enrich it.

Let's be frank: theatre blogosphere is not exactly a safe space for divergent perspectives. And by this I don't mean simple differences of opinion. I mean different ways of being - different ways of experiencing and understanding the world.

And before people start setting up false dichotomies, it's not that I want Don or Scott or Isaac to shut the fuck up. That's not it at all. But it would be nice to discuss smaller, more personal things a hell of a lot more often.

The fucked up thing is that this has been brought up before: by me (here and here), Laura (there and there), Adam, Mac, DevilVet, and Nick.

But, as always seems the case (especially in discussions about how gender, race, and class intersect with our day-to-day interactions), it gets mentioned but shit never changes.

Breakthrough (aka All About My Grandmother)

One of the struggles I've had with my play so far is making Orixa interesting. In a movement-based piece, you can't rely on witticisms and other verbal tricks. It's hard to convey quirkiness in a play filled with spirits, demons, ghosts, and other beings.

At first, I was kicking and screaming against the idea that my character had to want something, had to be a personality at all.

But as I was working on the play, I had a revelation. It started as I was sitting in the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble reading Jeffrey Sweet's The Dramatist's Toolkit. In it, he cautioned against making characters too autobiographical. "Change it up!" he says, in so many words. "A different age, different gender, different social class - find at least one way to make the character not like you!"

I resisted the notion at first, for several reasons. First of all, as each play is my own creation, there's nothing in it that's truly outside of me. And even when you do reach a point beyond yourself, you're still the starting point. Second of all, the idea sort of struck me as coming from a privileged perspective. It's easy enough to apply when you're dealing with a demographic that dominates today's theater landscape - but when it comes to authors whose voices are typically marginalized, it's a little bit harder to justify taking that advice full-stop.

But my resistance faltered as I was eating breakfast today and I suddenly - like out of the blue - thought about my grandmother. And I had so many questions! What was Grandma like? Not the Grandma I grew up with, but the one who raised my mother, aunt, and uncles? How did she see and interact with the world? These questions hounded me so much that I called Mom on her job to ask them.

The conversation was revealing in itself, but now I've solved my main problem with this play: I didn't know anything about my main character. As a result, everything seemed generic and nebulous. While what I had was imaginative and potentially very interesting, there was no visceral, emotional connection to it because it wasn't rooted in something concrete for me. So everything I wrote felt bland, trite, and meaningless.

All the feelings surrounding my relationship with Grandma - the joy of recognition, the sorrow at parting, the regret for things unsaid, the yearning to reestablish a connection, the love that needs no words, the humbling respect for a remarkable human being - suddenly surged and bubbled up to the surface, and it's so overwhelming I'm almost crying.

I now know who Orixa is. And her name is/was - Linda Ray Thacker.

Flowcharts rule!

That's all I have to say, really. But to make it more pertinent . . .

I'm really digging the non-linear format. It lets me note simultaneous action and offer choices to everyone without having to spell it all out in "chronological" order (which means actors, directors, designers, etc. have to hunt down the information instead of just see the parts that apply to them). With all the shapeshifting and transformations that happen in the story, it makes it a lot easier to keep track of things.

Of course, I'll probably have to submit to standard script format eventually - which I'll likely do kicking and screaming. But at least I'm putting up some resistance.

After the first full draft is hammered out, I'll probably invest in some index cards.

But that probably means I won't be able to let you be as close to the process as you were earlier. :(

BTW, I'm now involved in a playwrights' group called Playsmiths. This ain't your Too Cool For You type of group, for which I'm thankful. I won't pimp them too hard, but if there are actors and directors who want to work on interesting new work. Did I mention interesting and new? Oh, I did? Well let me remind you again. These are new works by new playwrights that are really fucking interesting. None of the American Family in Crisis crap. No Theatre of the Great White Man. And definitely no motherfucking Broadway revivals of popular (and often mediocre) films! So . . . No Transformers: The Musical. No Pirates of the Caribbean: Beating the Dead Horse. No Matrix: Regurgitations. OK, there are occasionally talking animals, but nothing ripping off Disney.

So if you're in New York City during the weekends, shoot me an e-mail or reply to this post if you want to get involved.

Richard Nelson's speech

Read it here. (H/t Isaac at Parabasis.)

The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some gems:

• The profession of playwright, the role of the playwright in today’s American theater . . . is under serious attack. Some who attack are simply greedy, some ignorant, some can’t understand why theater isn’t TV or film. But perhaps the greatest threat to the playwright in today’ s theater comes from . . . those who want ‘to help.’

• . . . I am not saying that a playwright should avoid and ignore comments and reactions to his work . . . But I am saying that our mindset toward playwrights should be this: 1) the playwright knows what he is doing, 2) perhaps the play as presented is as it should be. So that the onus for change is not on the playwright but on others, on the theater . . . How to improve a play should be the domain of the writer, with the theater supplying potential tools, a reading say, or a workshop with clearly delineated goals. These are tools that should evolve out of a need, as opposed to being a given.

• . . . I have watched actors and directors approach classical plays that have massive contradictions and address those plays not as works to be fixed, but rather to be solved. So I am arguing for a theater where the mindset is not to fix new plays, but to solve them.

• Rules for writing plays. My god. One hears young playwrights being told what a play ‘must do,’ or ‘how a play works.’ One hears writers being told that a character’s ‘journey’ isn’t clear enough, or that the writer needs to determine a character’s ‘motivation.’ One hears how a play has to ‘build’ in a certain way, or how ‘the conflict’ isn’t strong enough. These are terms that seem to suggest a deep understanding of what a play is and how it is put together, but in fact they tell us very little. Perhaps a particular play might be helped by one of these suggestions, but they (and other ‘rules’) are too generally prescribed . . . The playwright doesn’t write out of ‘motivations’ but rather out of truth and reality, out of people and story and worlds he or she wishes or needs to create for us.

Theater and Immanence

Back in the main post and comments section of Beyond Religion 101, I contradicted the assertion in Isaac's Coherence, Theater, God post that a religious approach to theater hinges on the coherence of a performance or text rather than its aliveness.

I initially answered by saying that it's a difficult thing to communicate at the drop of a hat, and that the best way to understand the mystical experience of theater is to, well, experience it.

But after a few days to think about it, I have a more coherent (ha-ha) response to the idea that a religious approach to theater is more about what it means than about what it is or does.

When a lot of people talk about the purpose of religion or the God experience, they often talk in terms of transcendence. Going back to Isaac's post, the coherence of theater is closer to a transcendent religious experience. You know that point where we've figured something out, that we know what it means, that we see how all the parts fit together? That's what I'm talking about.

But there's another God experience that often gets overlooked: immanence.

The aliveness of theater Isaac talks about is more closely linked to the immanent religious experience. Have you ever experienced the fullness of a moment, that feeling of wonder at the simplest and most ordinary things, that feeling of being overwhelmed at the vastness of existence. This is what I mean.

The scope of this blog is insufficient for a full exploration of these concepts. Entire religious traditions have been built around them. But at the very least, I hope that I've opened up a way to explore a different understanding of a religious approach to theater.

I miss words now

I've been wrestling with this piece for a few months now, probably closer to a year, and I can't seem to progress, only write in circles.

In the meantime, I've been neglecting some other stories I wanted to work with, stories that use - gasp! - dialogue.

I feel that right now, my persistence is working against this piece. Perhaps I'm just not ready for this play yet, and I need time to work on other things first. Rather than force the play through (which results in the play feeling forced), I'm going to set it aside and come back to it later, when there's something I feel compelled to write with it. Then at least I'll be working with something real instead of something I squeezed from my brain out of sheer determination.

So don't be surprised if the next bit of writing is a bit different.