Category: Theatre

  • Balancing Writing and Parenting:A Conversation with Playwright Isaac Rathbone

    Here is an interview with my friend, Isaac Rathbone, who is a playwright and screenwriter, conducted by Boomerang Theatre Artistic Director Tim Errickson. Their discussion is about the balance of writing and parenting.

  • New Thought: New Blog

    As I have been playing around with this blog, and thinking about earning an income from writing, I keep running into the same advice; write about what you are passionate about.

    Sometimes, easier said than done.

    But I don’t think the advice is inaccurate.

    I like writing, clearly as I am doing it as we speak, but writing about writing is not something I am passionate about. Writing is like breathing; I will be doing it no matter what, and rather involuntarily.

    But what to write about, say, in a blog form, that I can come back to day after day, if not at least once a week, that I could earn an income from?

    This blog serves the purpose of being limited in the number of words per post, and subject matter is open to just about anything. Confessional and Personal? Yes. Informative? Not so much. And following the rule of good marketing, the product has to be either the “best.,” or the definitively “only” source of said product. My personal blog is not the “best” blog, nor do I hope that it would be, but it is definitively the “only” source of me.

    What does that leave me with?

    An idea!

    As far back as March of this year, I was still working in the world of theatre, but being that the world has come to a crashing halt, that no longer is possible. Not only me, but a great number of other people. Also, because of the end of the world, a huge number of theatre artists have moved out of The City. And this is one of the few cities in this country where you can make a living in theatre. It stands to reason that at some point it will be safe to go back into a theatre, right? Theatre will begin again.

    My corner of the theatre world was puppetry and object movement theatre, and it will start up again. I know that to be true because a good number of people who do it, are still in New York, waiting for things to become safe. What if I were to blog about the puppetry and object movement community as it starts up again?

    An idea, that I don’t think anyone else is doing.

  • Comedy, Inside Jokes, and a First Draft

    When I was in college, and I was a theatre major, I had a running debate with a good friend, which was, are Shakespeare’ comedies funny? He said yes, and me, to be a jerk, said no. My main reason for the stance I took is that comedies are full of inside jokes that the audience never notices, and what Elizabethans found funny, no one gets anymore. Yes, the puns survived, but puns aren’t funny.

    Also, for comedy to work it needs context and surprise; context established the frame work for a surprise to be funny, and the surprise is funny because context says the surprise shouldn’t be there. Hence, if we don’t understand the context, how can the surprise be funny, or even to be understood as a surprise in the first place.

    Then there are inside jokes, which no one gets except a handful of people, having been orchestrated by the writer. I had a friend who recently had their screenplay produced and released. He had put several inside jokes in the screenplay, most of them honoring quirks his wife has which he loves. All writers do this, which is why I say that Shakespeare’ comedies are full of jokes we will never understand.

    I bring all of this up because I am trying to hammer away at a first draft of my novel. I know full well that my first draft will not be good, and I am really trying to get it down so I have a starting point to begin crafting the story. So, as I rush through it, I am seriously cramming it full of inside jokes, to the point that I started to get self-conscious about it. I know my wife will read the draft, and most likely roll her eyes at me. Most of it will find its way out of the story, as the characters start to stand in their own, and not need the crutch of me anymore.

    But, I always wonder when I read a novel, if the name of the street that a character lives on is actually an homage to author’s mother’s maiden name.

  • Enablers

    I was nervous that Harvey Weinstein wouldn’t get convicted. I hadn’t been following the case closely, as I felt that it was only a 50/50 shot, he would be found guilty, and I had already decided that I believed the survivors. I didn’t need a jury to justify my stance.

    But Harvey is going to jail, and I hope that this brings about the beginning of the end of the idea that there are “untouchable” men in any industry that take advantage of their position.

    Now, it’s time that we start addressing the enablers that helped Harvey. The agents who sent women to his hotel room, and office. The directors who were ordered to put women in, or take them out of their movies, the assistants who heard what was happening and did.

    I know that there are people out there that want to punish all of these enablers, and I understand where they are coming from. And that may or should happen.

    From my experience, and I have spent some time in theatre education, it needs to start in all theatre classes, and be reiterated again, and again, all the way up to grad school, and supported by all the unions in the entertainment industry. There needs to be an ethical standard that everyone needs to understand and follow. And I’m talking about simple things like no more one on one meetings between actors and producers or directors. Actors/artist have the right to have an advocate present at all times.

    Harvey didn’t create this world of casting couches, and treating women as if they are disposable. And it is wrong for us to believe that even if these few men that have been outed by #MeToo all go to jail that this issue will go away. We have to start building the new acceptable culture of the entertainment industry today.

  • Flashback

    I was checking a shared work folder in my DropBox, when I saw a folder of documents that I haven’t looked at for over a year. It was a protection folder that I had from my last job in New York, which contained email and documents that I could use as evidence of the unprofessional behavior and harassment that I was receiving from people in the theatre department. Funny thing was that I thought that the “company” would want this information when I filed a complaint, but at the end of my time there, it became clear that the Exec’s decided that I was the expendable one. Not that I was fired, but no one wept for me when I left for California.

    And when I looked at these documents again, I had a pure flashback of the anxiety and stress of that time in my life. The whole situation tested my moral center as this was a situation where people were clearly doing unethical things, bordering on illegal, but nothing happened to them. I had believed, and still do, that if you behave badly, it will come around. Somehow, it still hasn’t happened. And it might never happen to those two guys.

    The other awful part was that people aw what was happening to me, and no one said anything. People looked the other way and didn’t want to get involved. That’s how bullying works; it the fear that bully will turn on you.

    And I thought about deleting all of it. Just clearing it out of my life.

    But, I think I need the reminder. I don’t think it’s healthy to never remember that situation.