Next Up: Fresh Ink workshop of Fire on Earth

After a few weeks with mostly farming filling up my time, it's time to head back into the rehearsal room.  I actually spent quite a bit of time last week making revisions to my play, Fire on Earth, based on the Fresh Ink reading back in June.  Now I'll get a chance to hear them and to play with the actors on some of the more physical scenes in the play.

Fresh Ink will be workshop Fire on Earth starting Sunday night--we'll spend three evenings at Boston Playwrights Theatre, reading through the play and up on our feet, playing with piles of paper and stacks of books and Bibles.  This is a chance for us to experiment and have fun with shaping this play while there is still plenty of time for me to make changes.  We won't head into rehearsal until December (for the production in February).  New play development is a long-term commitment, and I'm grateful that Fresh Ink is giving new plays the time and space they need to really grow before they get to production (and that they're giving new plays actual productions, not just workshops and readings).

Huntington Workshop of Flight was a big success

The past two weeks really flew by as I workshopped my play, Flight, with the Huntington Theatre Company.  Talk about intense.  I was in rehearsal pretty much every other day from 10-6, and then on my off days, I was either writing or at the farm all day.  To find the time to make changes in the script, I'd typically get up at 5 a.m. and work until 9 (with a break for getting Noah ready for camp) and e-mail the pages to the producer and stage manager, so they could distribute them to the actors at 10.  I'd typically bring in 20-30 pages with changes every day of rehearsal (many changes were small).

Patrick Curran, Philana Mia, Cassie Back, David Anzuelo

Our cast of Patrick Curran, Philana Mia, Cassie Beck, and David Anzuelo, were immensely talented and hard working.  Led by director Jessica Bauman, we picked our way through the play, scene-by-scene, beat-by-beat.  I wanted them to ask me hard questions about their characters and they did, with the result being a constantly improving script.

Jessica Bauman, Rachel Carpman, Bethany Ford

I'm very grateful to my director, Jessica Bauman, for all her insights and guidance, and to dramaturg Rachel Carpman, for always being ready for a new question (often it was just: "does that make sense to you?"), and to stage manager Bethany Ford for keeping the whole process running smoothly.

We had a final public reading of the script on Saturday afternoon, for an audience of about 50 people.  (Kudos to them, by the way, for being so responsive and attentive.)  I felt like the reading really kicked ass.  The actors were sharp and the audience seemed to really follow the play and the emotional roller coaster of it.  Most of all, it was gratifying to pack the script back up, after we had so thoroughly unpacked and disassembled it, and find out that not only did it still work, it actually worked a lot better than it did before.

I'm grateful to the entire staff of the Huntington for putting this Summer Workshop series together and giving four playwrights the chance to really get elbow deep into their plays, to try to find out how they work and how to improve them.  Thanks to Lisa Timmel, Charles Haugland, and Bevin O'Gara for getting the funding and making it happen, and to line producer Rebecca Bradshaw for running the workshop.

Now I need to keep making a few more changes to the script and find a way land a full production of it.  Some questions about a script can only be answered with a full production.

Huntington Summer Workshop, Day 1

me and my director, Jessica Bauman at the Meet and Greet

Today was the first day of the Huntington Summer Workshop.  I got to meet with my director, Jessica Bauman, who has already given me some great ideas, and also with my dramaturg, Rachel Carpman, who is very smart and a good listener.  My brain was really buzzing by the end of the day.  Which was helped out by stimulating first readings of new plays by Martha Jane Kaufman and John Oluwole ADEkoje.
Tomorrow, we work from 10-6, with my play, Flight, getting its first read through at 10 am.  Sadly, I'll miss getting to see the first read through of Melinda Lopez's play, Becoming Cuba (though I was lucky enough to see a reading of it in March), because we'll be working.  We've got a terrific cast lined up--David Anzuelo, Cassie Beck, Patrick Curran, and Philana Mia--I'm excited to see them in action with the piece.
Also, at one of our planning meetings, I'd asked if the writers could have a quiet space somewhere in the building to write on breaks. So now it turns out that we each get our own dressing room.  With our names on the door and everything!  Very cool.  I spent some time in there today, as a quiet place to read my script again (without the many distractions that I've got just about everywhere else right now).

My dressing room / office. Big enough for a pick up hockey game, perhaps?

Yep, that's my name on the door. (Just need a star.)

Mr. Gabridge's key. Gotta love it.

Thanks again to the Huntington, especially Bevin, Lisa, Charles, Rebecca, and the development staff, and all the other staff, who are working to make this all happen.  It's a special thrill to get this sort of time with this high level of talent to work on my play.

update (is June already over?)

cast of Fire on Earth reading

Wow.  Okay, June was a bit of a whirlwind.

I had a blast writing for the T Plays, which just wrapped up this weekend.  My play, will/did/is ended up being a short little two-hander (plus extras) about a time traveler who misses the time traveler's convention and the woman who's been riding the T waiting for him for the past seven years.  Dakota Shepard and Brett Milanowski were brilliant in it.

Just as the T plays were getting underway, I attended the TCG National Theatre Conference. I couldn't afford to buy a ticket (they were something like $250-400 for individual artists), so I volunteered to help out (which got me a free pass).  Seth Godin gave a kick-ass plenary speech, which was followed by a stimulating panel on residencies for playwrights in large theatrical institutions. It got me thinking a lot about what I need as a playwright, versus how the business seems to be working right now.  Yes, I need money and benefits, but I also really, really need help from theatres in developing an audience for my work in my own community. And this doesn't happen without productions.  (More on all this when I have a spare minute to breathe and think and write.)

Speaking of local productions of my work, on the 26th I had a reading of my play, Fire on Earth, from Fresh Ink Theatre, in preparation for a workshop and production of the play.  The cast, of Omar Robinson, Bob Mussett, Chris Larson, Kevin LaVelle, and Kevin Fennessy, totally blew me away.  I hadn't seen the play since its last reading at the Huntington about a year and a half ago.  I'd made some changes since then, and these guys just completely devoured this script with intense energy and humor, all for a receptive (capacity) crowd at the Factory Theatre.  My excitement level for this workshop and production is a bit nuts, but it feels matched by my director, Rebecca Bradshaw.  Very cool.

During all this, I've been farming at our Pen and Pepper Farm in Dracut, and selling our produce to the World PEAS collective CSA and at a Thursday farmer's market in Jamaica Plain.  My capacity to do work, both physical and mental, has been stretched pretty hard this month.

I have a lot to think about and write about from all of it, but not quite yet.  Because July promises to be equally intense, with more farming, a production of my short play Organic Seed from Boston Actors Theatre (July 20-28), and a two-week workshop of my full-length play, Flight, at the Huntington Theatre (talk about excited!).  We'll have a reading of Flight at 5 pm on July 21.

Here we go!

Fire on Earth reading tonight!

Tonight, the Fresh Ink Theatre will be presenting a reading of my play, Fire on Earth, at the Factory Theatre in Boston at 7:30 pm (791 Tremont Street).  It's free.  It's fun (well, "intense" might be a better way to describe the play than "fun", but it depends on what you call fun.  It's the kind of play that I find fun.).   It's got a terrific cast.  And I'm baking brownies.

This is the start of the development and production process with Fresh Ink, which will continue with a workshop in August and a full production in February.  I've been working on this play for a very, very, very long time, so it's extra sweet to finally see it work its way onstage.

Here's what the play's about in a nutshell.  If you're around, I hope you'll join us.

1524. John Tewkesbury is a savvy trader and smuggler, smart enough to know William Tyndale's illegal translation of the Bible will be a hot commodity. But, to sell the good book, he must elude the spies of Sir Thomas More and escape the fires of the Catholic bishops. In this true story about the struggle between dangerous information and powerful knowledge, one man journeys from merchant to martyr.

Off to write my T Play

Last night we had our match-up meeting for the T Plays festival produced by Mill 6 Productions.  I met my actors, Dakota Shepard and Brett Malinowski, director Chris Anton, and got assigned the Orange Line.  So now I have until 5pm on Saturday to come up with a new short play inspired by and set on and written on Boston's subway system.  I'm heading out right now to ride the rails and see what sort of inspiration will strike.

I have a busy day tomorrow, so basically I have the next five hours to come up with something, or else I'm in trouble.

No pressure.

One thing I really like about this festival is getting to write for specific actors.  I always come to these meeting with lots of questions and a camera, to try to get a sense of what they're like and what they can do, in a very short time.  I just hope I can come up with something good.

Here are my actors:

Everyone involved with the production will meet Saturday night and have a read-through of what the writers have scripted.  By Wednesday night, the shows will be up and on their feet for a pay-what-you-can preview at Boston Playwrights Theatre.  Opening night is Thursday, June 21. 

Here's a little preview video for the festival:

The Juggler Interviews, #12: Diana Renn

Diana Renn and I have been in the same fiction writer's group since 2005.  She's a prolific writer and reviser, and will tear a story or novel apart and rebuild it from bottom up and make it seem all so easy.  She's also a mother of a young, son, now 5 years old.  Her debut novel, Tokyo Heist, a YA mystery, will hit the shelves this week.  We saw many drafts of it in our group, and it's a thrill to see it finally published and have a chance to reach a well-deserved broad audience.  For those of you in the Boston area, she'll have her book launch this Saturday, June 16, at 2pm at Newtonville Book.

She took some time to answer questions in the midst of all the book launch preparations:

It feels like you started bringing in pieces of Tokyo Heist to our writers group quite a while ago (perhaps before I was even a member), how long have you been working on it?

I started writing Tokyo Heist (with a different title, and as an adult novel) in the fall of 2004. From first word to publication, the journey has taken almost eight years!

One thing I’ve always admired about you as a writer is your ability to rewrite, and rewrite some more, and fearlessly tackle anything that wasn’t working. Did this talent come in handy in the process of working with your agent to find a publisher, and then working with an editor?

Thanks! This book was revised extensively, including three times starting over almost from scratch. Revision doesn’t scare me; drafting does. When I’m revising, I have something to work with. I love the feeling of making something stronger.

I actually didn’t do too much revising for my agent. I did revise extensively for my editor. When I got my first edit later (several single-spaced pages of notes!), I admit I was daunted, but then I threw myself into the job. I was glad I’d had so much revision experience; I knew I’d get through it and the book would come out better. Also, I’ve worked as an editor and a writer in educational publishing, and I’m sure that experience trained me to be a good reviser, especially with deadlines in mind.

You had your son when you were in the thick of writing the main drafts of Tokyo Heist, and then were busy being the parent of a pre-schooler during the sale and subsequent editing. How did you manage to get it all done? What’s your writing schedule like? Do you have a certain routine?

I pushed to finish my first complete draft in the months before my son was born; I finished with just a couple days to spare. I was terrified that once he was born I would never write a complete novel. (I’d written two other attempts at novels, but with many missing scenes – they didn’t feel “complete” to me). At one point I didn’t even care about selling this book. I just wanted to see the words “the end.”

For the first few months after my son was born, in 2007, I set the novel aside. I worked on short stories and essays. One night, in a sleep-deprived haze, I looked at that “finished” novel manuscript of what would become Tokyo Heist. I realized much of what I’d written – 80% of it – really wasn’t working. I’d reached “the end,” but in the wrong way. I nearly trashed it, but I still loved the premise, and some characters, so I started over.

I was fortunate to have some babysitting help, and a son who loved to nap. I worked those naps. Sometimes he only slept in the car, though, so I’d drive to a remote location and work on the novel in the car, on my laptop. I think that’s how I pushed through the next draft. Feedback from my wonderful writing group also kept me going. Some people like to wait to show a complete draft to beta readers, but honesty, if I’d had no sense of audience, I’m not sure I could have pressed on. I was very isolated in those early months of being a mother, and isolated as a writer; I’d given up my teaching job by then. Writing group feedback was a huge motivator and got me banging out more pages.

By 2009 I felt the novel was ready for querying agents. I did that for the better part of a year, with no luck – lots of partial and full requests, but no takers. I got two fresh sets of eyes on the manuscript and some good advice. I revised YET AGAIN. My tireless writing group read the novel YET AGAIN. I queried YET AGAIN. Now my son was napping less, and my babysitting help was less reliable. He wasn’t adjusting well to an attempt at daycare. I had fewer hours to work with but kept querying, spending any available time researching agents and sending the thing out. Finally I got my agent in April 2010. I revised a little for him and he sold the book to Viking in July 2010.

Revising for the editor, which happened in waves over 2011 (mostly last spring and summer) felt harder, time-wise, than drafting. My son was in preschool, which should have given me more time, but he had some health issues and other things going on, and missed a lot of school. It was scary to have real deadlines hanging over my head and a kid who needed to be out of school, or needed to be ferried to various appointments, or just needed attention. I switched to the night shift a lot as I revised.

I don’t remember sleeping much in 2011.

Two of my biggest deadlines happened to hit on two separate weeks when we’d scheduled family vacations last year. This meant our Cape Cod summer rental turned into an office and my husband took on more of the childcare. This meant our family reunion in Seattle was spent with me working in a hotel room a lot while other people entertained our son. In retrospect, I feel lucky these deadlines hit at vacations because I had family around to help and didn’t have to hire sitters.

How did I manage to get it all done? I don’t really know. I think I just scavenged for time whenever I could, and sacrificed some other time-consuming things, like watching TV. Like sleep.

I no longer have a routine. I feel like any time I set a schedule, the rug gets pulled out from under me. Something will go awry in the house, or a school vacation will hit. (Why are there so many school vacation weeks?) In general, though, I have gone back to that night shift, drafting new material from roughly 9 pm to midnight, and using any daytime hours I have to edit/revise that work, catch up on email, and work on promotional activities, including keeping up with my mystery writers blog. The night shift works for me for drafting; it’s the only uninterrupted time I can absolutely count on these days.

You’ve completely leaped into the world of YA publishing and YA mysteries over the past year or so, with your blog, Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis, and Apocalypsies, plus your own personal blog. Plus rewrites. Plus being a mom. And writing new stuff. How are you juggling all of it?

Honestly, I’m in awe to be included in your “Juggler” interview series because when I read about the other people you’ve featured, they seem to get SO much done, juggling SO much more than I do. But then I have to remind myself not to make comparisons, and to remember that some days and weeks are more productive than others. And even if I took something out of the equation – motherhood, rewrites, my mystery blog, whatever – I’d still be juggling, because I’ve always had too much on my plate. I think that’s just how I am. I take on a lot.

I’ve learned to put different weight on different activities and forgive myself if some things slide. My personal blog gets updated weekly, if I’m lucky, and I’m fine with that. I’m involved in an amazing debut author group, the Apocalypsies, with 160 authors, and I try to support this group and participating as much as I can, while accepting that I simply can’t respond to every email or post, or wish every single person a happy birthday, or some weeks I’m on Twitter and some weeks I’m not. I’m starting to pull back on social media (even though with a book launch I know I shouldn’t) so that I can focus more energy on writing the next book. A few years ago I used to try to work harder to get more things done. Now I’m feeling a shift of energy, like I’d rather get less done, but do less better, and not feel so scattered.

I used to set weekly or daily goals for productivity. Now I don’t. I inevitably fail to make those goals – often due to circumstances beyond my control – and then I just feel bad. I make modest lists of morning and afternoon goals.

I’ve seen the book since its early forms. When you started out, you weren’t really writing a lot of YA material During the editing process, how have you and your editor worked to shape the book to make sure it would be a book that met the expectations of young adult readers?
I made the conscious decision to make the novel a YA novel back in 2006. But I didn’t actually read a lot of YA until a couple of years ago – until after the novel sold. In a way that’s a good thing. People say the book is “original” and “unique” in the YA market, and I think it’s because I had no idea what was out there. My editor and I did do some work to add more exciting scenes that would appeal to YA readers. We changed the title from the original one to have more teen appeal and to allow us to use an edgy cover.

Now I read almost exclusively YA novels – partly because I love the genre, partly because I know many YA authors now, and partly because I love participating in the community of children’s fiction, and keeping up with current and classic YA books helps me to do that.

Now that you’re a mother, did you find that some of your sympathies towards your characters shifted a little? Or was it a good escape from being a mother to inhabit the character of Violet for a while every day?

It was easy tapping into my inner teen and getting into Violet’s head. And refreshing. An escape. My daily life is filled with responsibilities, so it was fun to hang out with Violet in her world -- getting into trouble, sneaking around, outrunning mobsters, etc. However, being a parent does enable me to sympathize with the parent characters. I can’t think about them too much. Sometimes I’d read over a scene where Violet’s grousing about her dad, and I’d think, “Hey, he’s just doing the best he can! Nobody told ever told him how to parent!” But it’s Violet’s book, not her dad’s, and so she gets to grouse.

What’s next? I love the character of Violet—any chance we’ll get to see her in another book someday?

I’m currently working on another YA mystery, with very different characters and a different setting. Tokyo Heist sold as a standalone, but I’d love to write another Violet mystery someday, and have lots of ideas, so we shall see!

Thanks, Diana! And good luck with the release!

Thanks for the interview; it’s great to be in the company of such amazing jugglers! 


Here's new book trailer for the Tokyo Heist:



You can visit Diana's web site at:  www.dianarenn.net.  You can also follower on Twitter at @dianarenn   or on Facebook.