Denmark Anyone?

Check out this post on Parabasis about the current (pathetic) level of national arts funding in the U.S. (versus that in Denmark) and also the impact the decline of the NEA will continue to have on the future of new plays in the U.S.

Sheep to Shawl (and May Day Play Day)

I'm going to take part in a fun event over Memorial Day weekend: the May Day Play Day, produced here in Boston by the South City Theatre Company. I did this a few years ago and it was a blast (these types of 24-hour festivals are becoming increasingly popular).

What happens is this:
At 8pm, five playwrights are brought in to be randomly paired up with directors and actors. The writers are given a common theme or props or some unifying element that they have to include in the script.

After this, the writers go off and write all night long. (Or they just stay there in the theatre, which is more fun.) This is exciting at first, then scary, when it gets to be 2am and you realize that the idea that you've been working on might not seem quite so brilliant anymore, but there's no going back.

In the morning, the director shows up at the theatre, ready to read a brilliant new 10-15 minute play.

The actors show up and rehearse all day with the director, memorizing the lines and blocking the show.

Around 5pm, the tech director arrives and finds out what sorts of light and sounds cues are required.

At 8pm, the shows are fully mounted for an appreciative crowd.


The whole event has kind of a crazy energy, and the audience tends to pick up on it right away. The play I wrote in the first May Day Play Day, The Sky is Falling, has gone on to be published and gets done by lots of students.

If writing plays isn't your thing, you might want to check out the Sheep to Shawl Contest at the Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Festival in Waynesburg, PA, on May 19th. (You just missed the one in Maryland). In just about three hours, teams will shear their sheep, card the wool, spin the yarn, and weave a shawl. That makes putting up plays seem easy.

What I'm Reading: The Well of Lost Plots

Jasper Fforde's first book, The Eyre Affair, left me laughing, saying, "Wow, that is a very, very, very clever guy." His main character, Thursday Next, is a literary detective in a British alternate reality in which literature is a critical part of existence. Even if you're not supremely well read (I'm not, but Fforde certainly is, though he doesn't rub your nose in it), it's fun because there's a real detective story at play, led by a fascinating lead character, in convoluted world where people are able to go into books and characters in books are able to come into the real world.

The Eyre Affair was a big hit, rightly so, and Fford went on to write more Thursday Next books, and also a loosely linked spinoff series of Nursery Crime novels (starting with The Big Over Easy) which I liked very much.

Sadly, The Well of Lost Plots, the third in the Thursday Next series, was not nearly as good as the first two. I was awfully close to just giving up on this one. The first 100 pages are mostly exposition (the world is so complicated that it takes a lot to catch the reader up) and clever jokes. But no story. He's a self-aware writer, so at one point, Thursday even comments to one of the other characters, when asked how it's going, that her day has been mostly exposition so far (she's living in a book at this point, in hiding). Fforde is so inventive, but as a reader, I'm don't want an author to give up plot for cleverness.

Luckily for me, I brought the book with me on the bus to New York, determined to see if I could finish it. The second half of the book jumps into high gear, like any good detective story, once people start getting killed (and a mispeling vyrus gets loose, which is very bad news is you're text-based and living in a book).

I suppose it's a relief to know that even my favorite writers mess up sometimes (they are human after all) (I'm struggling with some very similar plot/story issues on my new novel right now). I'll still pick up his other books, very soon. If you haven't read any Fforde yet, The Eyre Affair is definitely the place to start.

P.S. Definitely check out Jasper Fforde's web site. It's a hoot. (And I just saw that he's coming to Brookline in July. I'll have to go to the signing of his newest.)

Theatrical Joy

Just got back from the annual PTO play at my kids' school. This is an annual event that both serves as a fundraiser and a way for the grown ups in the school community (mostly parents, but the principal had a role, too) to get up on stage and entertain each other. We're new to the school, but I've been told that this event has been going on for years and years (20 plus?). Two parents write the script and another directs.

We're talking a two-hour show, with a seven piece band (who were great!), a cast of about two dozen (some of whom had to sing). The energy and enthusiasm of the performers came through so clearly, as they performed for their peers and children, in a story that was pretty complicated (about the namesake of our school and a time machine, and two love stories (one between a cave man and an ad exec and another between an exec and a19th century woman)).

The show had joy and music and bristled with the raw human energy that makes theatre feel vital. Sometimes I feel like these qualities end up getting squelched in small to medium professional theatres, where we sometimes take ourselves too seriously and ask the audiences to take us too seriously. And we can't afford a band with three electric guitars and a base and a keyboard, bongos and drums. I got a rejection from a company last week accompanied by submission guidelines that state that they're not considering any plays that require more than four actors.

I know that constraints aren't all bad for artists, but sometimes it's good to be able to just cut loose and play. That's the business we're in after all. Tonight I got to watch a whole bunch of people playing. They had fun and so did I.

New York daydreams

When I was in New York this weekend, I got a call at lunch from my director saying that we needed some paint in order to finish off the pumpkins in Pumpkin Patch. So all of a sudden I'm down in the West Village, scrambling to find a hardware store. The Chinese woman at the restaurant tried to give me directions, but I didn't really understand what she said. So in my wandering, I stopped into a cool little bookstore on Bleecker Street.

The guy behind the desk helped me out, and of course I happened to remember that I had a copy of Tornado Siren in my bag. So I said, "I'm a novelist down from Boston for the weekend. I have a book that just came out. How can I get you some info on it?"

He asked me what it was about. I told him and he seemed genuinely interested, so I offered him a copy, which he took, saying that he was heading out on vacation next week and would take it with him. Then he asked, "So, who would play the main characters in the movie?"

I imagine most first time novelists have speculated about this very question, with spouses, siblings, friends. I know my wife and I have passed more than a few minutes in the car brainstorming answers.

So, I had a ready response: "Halle Berry and Viggo Mortensen."

"Oh," says the book seller, "Viggo comes in here all the time. I'll have to mention it to him."

So that's it, right there. The start of a whole series of events, that will include the book seller reading and loving the book, passing it along to Viggo, and him loving it, the book being made into a really cool movie, turning the book into a best seller. You read about it here first.

(You gotta have fantasies, right?)

Points Off the Board: contract tales

Had an odd experience this week. I was doing a little self-googling, and found out that a company had decided to produce a script that I'd sent them, although they hadn't let me know yet (their web site made it apparent that it had already been cast). I got an e-mail the next day, informing me that they'd picked my play.

I didn't make a big deal out of the fact that they should have waited to be sure I agreed on terms before making plans. After all it was a pretty low-key festival, just two performances.

However, it's my policy not to allow my work to be done for free (unless it's a reading or charity event). So, when small theatres send me those e-mails, saying "congratulations, we want to do your play," I respond: "thanks, I'm very excited. Do you have a contract that you usually use, or do you need me to provide one? Oh, and how much are you paying the writers?" Or something like that. (This is usually just a problem for short plays. I haven't had this happen for a full-length play yet.)

Often, they write back and say, "Oh, well, we're a small theatre and hadn't planned on paying the playwrights." Now, these companies are used to paying royalties to produce "The Odd Couple" or "Fences" or "Oliver!" But they thought they might not have pay to this time around.

Almost every time, the company agrees to pay me a small, nominal royalty. Often they end up realizing that they should pay all of the writers. We're talking $25 for a weekend, or sometimes $50 or $75 for a two-week run. Vastly underpriced. But I'm a professional playwright, the work is good, and I should be paid. Only a few times have companies decided they won't pay, and when that happens, I say, "well, then you can't produce my play." (This has happened three times so far.)

I think playwrights need to think of themselves a lot like landlords. (I've been one.) Landlords rent out their property to all sorts of people, who then add their own furniture and gear and make it into a place of their own. But it's still the landlord's house. And the landlord gets paid first. He doesn't care if you have money for food or your car payment or your electric bills. The rent comes first. And if you don't pay, you can't live there anymore.

Theatre is not a collaborative art, when you're talking about playwrights and completed scripts. Sure the developmental process is heavily collaborative (including the first production or two). But after that, the playwright is generally removed from the production process. She rents out the script upon which the theatre company will build its production. She gets paid, no matter what. If the play is published, the publisher collects the royalties from small companies before the curtain even rises on the first performance.

Anyway, back to the story: so this small company responded to my standard response, saying that they'd consider paying me, but they never sign contracts for one-acts. I thought that perhaps they were thinking that I meant a complicated legal document, rather than a fairly simple licensing agreement, whose sole purpose is to state what rights are being licensed and state clearly that we both have the ability to enter into this agreement (it was a Dramatists Guild simple agreement), so I sent a copy.

I have no idea if they even read it. But they reiterated, they don't sign contracts. I responded that while the terms might be negotiable, the use of a contact was not.

They decided not to produce the play.

I still haven't figured out why they'd be unwilling to sign. I was pretty disappointed. Sometimes it really gets me down to have to haggle with small theatre companies over these fundamental issues. I'm not trying to get rich, I'm just trying to get treated professionally (and at least help cover my costs). I've been doing this for a long time, and I'd sure like to be negotiating over slightly larger issues.

Good News: Lost Oasis in Central Park

I just got a signed contract for my one-act play, Lost Oasis, to appear for 16 performances in June in New York, in Central Park. I don't have all the details yet, but it'll be produced by Ciona Taylor productions.

This is a script that I wrote for my theatre company, Chameleon Stage, in Colorado, quite a few years ago, for our initial site specific series, Theatre in the Wild. It's a play that I've always enjoyed, but I really haven't sent it out (it can be done inside, but it's best performed outdoors) (and thus it hasn't been produced). This seems like a good match for it. I hope I'll have a chance to get down to NYC to see it. There's just something cool about saying, "my play will be produced in Central Park."