THE SOLO PLAY; WHERE IS IT?
THE ARTIST BLOG #1
So I’ve been writing this solo play for almost 6 years now? I think, I guess, something like that. I got the idea and then the title almost immediately. I never get titles right off the bat. In fact, I have trouble with titling projects, anything I write. So why this title came to me first I’ll never know. Except I think I do know. I believe that the title of this project is what kept me going and persevering through all the bullshit I’ve had to wade through just to get this thing off the ground, out of the house and sprung from my head to the page to the stage. And it’s not there yet. I have an almost date set for a preview in July. I have the date but the woman in charge of the stage doesn’t apparently return calls. And this is what I have been dealing with for six years and umpteen number of learning experiences later.
So I have the title right? I have the idea about theme, premise, bits and pieces of scenes, dialogue, action…so I take a solo play class at IO West taught by a guy who runs the Comedy Central Stage or whatever. Everyone can teach around here. I am in class and I am getting ideas about what I’ve already thought about and listening to the other six people or however many, read their plays and talk about their ideas. We read a little bit from our plays every session and get feedback. The problem is no one wants to give me feedback. They just sit there and stare at me as if they can’t figure out whether I am a genius or a moron. The instructor gives me feedback and I take notes but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to put those notes into action. I don’t know, maybe because the instructor is talking in hieroglyphics. He must be because I’m really good at incorporating feedback into my work. I’m not defensive, I’m not argumentative, I really want this to come to fruition in the best possible way, I’ve seen umpteen number of solo plays that I have enjoyed and would like to emulate them but trying to figure this out is like trying to decipher a coded language. All I see is “SOS.” The point, though, of trying to stay on task with a class and bring in pages every week is good for me and I take the next level. Only it’s the same thing: lots of stares, no one who gets what I’m trying to say and worse yet, no one who can actually give me any kind of feedback that gets to the heart of what I want to say, or am trying to say with my piece. The instructor seems irritated that I can’t make this more theatrical instead of like an autobiographical memoir. I’m thinking, um, that’s your job, dude, to help me make this theatrical, to suggest ways of looking at the piece in a more theatrical vein so that I can make the shift from the page to the visceral, visual dynamic stage. Why do all think they can teach, I'll never know. I used to teach and I never thought for a minute if one of student couldn't get what I was saying, it was their fault. You break down and down until the light bulb over their head goes off. And it does if you do your job.
So I stop taking solo play classes. Instead I buy books on how to write a solo play and dig in to their exercises, chapter by chapter. I think I’m enlightening myself and I look for an acting class now because I’m getting withdrawal from performing since I’ve stopped doing stand up comedy and theater and need to flex my acting muscles, feed my soul. So I end up taking an acting class where the teacher allows me to utilize my time in scenes and working pieces of my solo play. I get good feed back there I think. I am realizing some items don’t work, aren’t necessary to the themes, too long, not funny enough, not funny at all, don’t play well, are pointless, are boring, and in short, need rewrites and work. I’m on the right track though and I am understanding how to make the translation to stage for the piece. It’s not there yet, but it’s possible. This is now three years in the making. But, I also get contradictory feedback, this works for some, not others, this doesn’t make any sense and yet it makes sense to me; I should take this out but I think it should stay in and be rewritten. I also get many people who tell me to keep going, they think it’s powerful and I should stick with it. This is rewarding and something that deep in my gut I already know.
I end up quitting the acting class. The teacher is interested in directing it but the teacher is also a woman who has been undermining and sabotaging me from day one in the class. Lest you think this is unspeakable, it is, but par for the course of the world of acting classes in Los Angeles. It is rare to find a class that is really truly supportive and not about the ego of the instructor. So I move on to figuring it out for myself again. I take the notes from class and do a rewrite and from 120 pages, double spaced, I get a 70 page double spaced piece which is still too long but I figure here is something I like that has problems but yet if I maybe take the jump to try to put it up I can work with a good director, dramaturge, to help me whittle it down to a stunning, work-in-progress, piece that can be molded in performance and rehearsal into shape.
Ah, the naïve ideals of the artist. So I set out to get help producing this play. The elaborate tirade on my experience will be for the book of the process of the solo play which I will start working on as soon as this gets to Broadway. Briefly, I will say that after firing two directors, firing the two producers I hired (never use two people who are obviously out of their league to do business with), watching all these people literally take over control of the piece to suit their egos and greedy little hands, I ended up canceling the whole production in the 11th hour and losing thousands of dollars in the process.
But now here’s the rub. It all worked out. Well, we really don’t know that yet but I think that it did even if I haven’t presented it yet for public forum. That’s coming soon. In the process of all these tries and trials, I met a wonderful gal who had the courage to tell me, when I was looking for a director, that she didn’t think it was ready, that it needed a lot of work, that there was a story there definitely that needed to be told and was waiting to be told, and that she couldn’t in good sense and conscience, consider taking on the piece as a director. She could, however, help me bring it to fruition and guide me through the creative process of turning it into a worthwhile play ready for production.
I cried for three days and like the resurrection, on the third day, I knew she was right and at great humiliation and expense, I told everyone connected with this play to go home and go take a hike. You could say, well, she was just trying to drum up business for herself. She was and at the same time, I felt that she wasn’t just trying to get my money. I felt she really had to speak her mind and offer her thoughts upon reading it and help me get to the right place. I didn’t have to call her back. I could have sat on it, been resentful, bitter, and decided I wasn’t going to do it at all, but like the title, I kept coming back to it. I called her and after a year of working through this piece, I can honestly say, it’s tremendous. lt is way more than I thought it could be, it’s beyond anything I could have imagined I would accomplish and I can’t wait to bring it out into the open and the world. This has not been an easy process. It has been frustrating, difficult, disappointing, doubtful, uncertain and I have thought of quitting many times. I can’t do it though. It was necessary for me to stick it out and keep going and see what happened. I learned so much about myself and my resilience, my talents, my ability to work with others and especially I learned how to work with someone in a creative capacity and that even though we have our differences of opinion, I know that this woman has my best interests at heart, that she supports me and the project and that she truly cares about this work, me, and what happens to it. She also knows that she can only hold the space for me to create and do the work, she can’t do it for me.
Who knows what will happen in the end? If I will do that one performance and decide thank you, that’s it, or maybe the world will decide that for me, I don’t know. I do know that no matter what you do in life, you have to believe that it all matters, that there’s a place for all you do and want to do in the world. Whether it lasts one minute, one day or 80 years is not the point, it’s how you get there. And I’m getting there. And I will get there, I know it.
And a slew of good reviews and ticket sales couldn’t hurt either.
MM
P.S. Title of solo play: Genius From A Blue Collar Neighborhood.
P.S.S. Name of Coach/Director: Karen Aschenbach, Creative Process Coaching
So I’ve been writing this solo play for almost 6 years now? I think, I guess, something like that. I got the idea and then the title almost immediately. I never get titles right off the bat. In fact, I have trouble with titling projects, anything I write. So why this title came to me first I’ll never know. Except I think I do know. I believe that the title of this project is what kept me going and persevering through all the bullshit I’ve had to wade through just to get this thing off the ground, out of the house and sprung from my head to the page to the stage. And it’s not there yet. I have an almost date set for a preview in July. I have the date but the woman in charge of the stage doesn’t apparently return calls. And this is what I have been dealing with for six years and umpteen number of learning experiences later.
So I have the title right? I have the idea about theme, premise, bits and pieces of scenes, dialogue, action…so I take a solo play class at IO West taught by a guy who runs the Comedy Central Stage or whatever. Everyone can teach around here. I am in class and I am getting ideas about what I’ve already thought about and listening to the other six people or however many, read their plays and talk about their ideas. We read a little bit from our plays every session and get feedback. The problem is no one wants to give me feedback. They just sit there and stare at me as if they can’t figure out whether I am a genius or a moron. The instructor gives me feedback and I take notes but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to put those notes into action. I don’t know, maybe because the instructor is talking in hieroglyphics. He must be because I’m really good at incorporating feedback into my work. I’m not defensive, I’m not argumentative, I really want this to come to fruition in the best possible way, I’ve seen umpteen number of solo plays that I have enjoyed and would like to emulate them but trying to figure this out is like trying to decipher a coded language. All I see is “SOS.” The point, though, of trying to stay on task with a class and bring in pages every week is good for me and I take the next level. Only it’s the same thing: lots of stares, no one who gets what I’m trying to say and worse yet, no one who can actually give me any kind of feedback that gets to the heart of what I want to say, or am trying to say with my piece. The instructor seems irritated that I can’t make this more theatrical instead of like an autobiographical memoir. I’m thinking, um, that’s your job, dude, to help me make this theatrical, to suggest ways of looking at the piece in a more theatrical vein so that I can make the shift from the page to the visceral, visual dynamic stage. Why do all think they can teach, I'll never know. I used to teach and I never thought for a minute if one of student couldn't get what I was saying, it was their fault. You break down and down until the light bulb over their head goes off. And it does if you do your job.
So I stop taking solo play classes. Instead I buy books on how to write a solo play and dig in to their exercises, chapter by chapter. I think I’m enlightening myself and I look for an acting class now because I’m getting withdrawal from performing since I’ve stopped doing stand up comedy and theater and need to flex my acting muscles, feed my soul. So I end up taking an acting class where the teacher allows me to utilize my time in scenes and working pieces of my solo play. I get good feed back there I think. I am realizing some items don’t work, aren’t necessary to the themes, too long, not funny enough, not funny at all, don’t play well, are pointless, are boring, and in short, need rewrites and work. I’m on the right track though and I am understanding how to make the translation to stage for the piece. It’s not there yet, but it’s possible. This is now three years in the making. But, I also get contradictory feedback, this works for some, not others, this doesn’t make any sense and yet it makes sense to me; I should take this out but I think it should stay in and be rewritten. I also get many people who tell me to keep going, they think it’s powerful and I should stick with it. This is rewarding and something that deep in my gut I already know.
I end up quitting the acting class. The teacher is interested in directing it but the teacher is also a woman who has been undermining and sabotaging me from day one in the class. Lest you think this is unspeakable, it is, but par for the course of the world of acting classes in Los Angeles. It is rare to find a class that is really truly supportive and not about the ego of the instructor. So I move on to figuring it out for myself again. I take the notes from class and do a rewrite and from 120 pages, double spaced, I get a 70 page double spaced piece which is still too long but I figure here is something I like that has problems but yet if I maybe take the jump to try to put it up I can work with a good director, dramaturge, to help me whittle it down to a stunning, work-in-progress, piece that can be molded in performance and rehearsal into shape.
Ah, the naïve ideals of the artist. So I set out to get help producing this play. The elaborate tirade on my experience will be for the book of the process of the solo play which I will start working on as soon as this gets to Broadway. Briefly, I will say that after firing two directors, firing the two producers I hired (never use two people who are obviously out of their league to do business with), watching all these people literally take over control of the piece to suit their egos and greedy little hands, I ended up canceling the whole production in the 11th hour and losing thousands of dollars in the process.
But now here’s the rub. It all worked out. Well, we really don’t know that yet but I think that it did even if I haven’t presented it yet for public forum. That’s coming soon. In the process of all these tries and trials, I met a wonderful gal who had the courage to tell me, when I was looking for a director, that she didn’t think it was ready, that it needed a lot of work, that there was a story there definitely that needed to be told and was waiting to be told, and that she couldn’t in good sense and conscience, consider taking on the piece as a director. She could, however, help me bring it to fruition and guide me through the creative process of turning it into a worthwhile play ready for production.
I cried for three days and like the resurrection, on the third day, I knew she was right and at great humiliation and expense, I told everyone connected with this play to go home and go take a hike. You could say, well, she was just trying to drum up business for herself. She was and at the same time, I felt that she wasn’t just trying to get my money. I felt she really had to speak her mind and offer her thoughts upon reading it and help me get to the right place. I didn’t have to call her back. I could have sat on it, been resentful, bitter, and decided I wasn’t going to do it at all, but like the title, I kept coming back to it. I called her and after a year of working through this piece, I can honestly say, it’s tremendous. lt is way more than I thought it could be, it’s beyond anything I could have imagined I would accomplish and I can’t wait to bring it out into the open and the world. This has not been an easy process. It has been frustrating, difficult, disappointing, doubtful, uncertain and I have thought of quitting many times. I can’t do it though. It was necessary for me to stick it out and keep going and see what happened. I learned so much about myself and my resilience, my talents, my ability to work with others and especially I learned how to work with someone in a creative capacity and that even though we have our differences of opinion, I know that this woman has my best interests at heart, that she supports me and the project and that she truly cares about this work, me, and what happens to it. She also knows that she can only hold the space for me to create and do the work, she can’t do it for me.
Who knows what will happen in the end? If I will do that one performance and decide thank you, that’s it, or maybe the world will decide that for me, I don’t know. I do know that no matter what you do in life, you have to believe that it all matters, that there’s a place for all you do and want to do in the world. Whether it lasts one minute, one day or 80 years is not the point, it’s how you get there. And I’m getting there. And I will get there, I know it.
And a slew of good reviews and ticket sales couldn’t hurt either.
MM
P.S. Title of solo play: Genius From A Blue Collar Neighborhood.
P.S.S. Name of Coach/Director: Karen Aschenbach, Creative Process Coaching
posted by Maria @ 12:16 PM
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