Writers Room

Have you guys heard of the Writers Room? It’s on Astor Place, and is exactly what its name purports it to be: a room for writers. It is my dream of dreams to become a member.
The Writers Room offers New York writers two vital things: a quiet area to work, and a place to congregate with other freelance writers. This doesn’t mean that The Writers Room is a social clubhouse; from what I hear, many writers choose not to interact with the others. Still, their membership proves that for even the most surly, reclusive authors, sometimes it’s nice just to SEE other faces, even if you aren’t in the mood to chat.
Of course, if you do want to chat (I would!), there are places to do so, namely the kitchen, where you can complain about your agent while waiting for your coffee to brew (cheaper than Think Coffee, the defacto Writers Room for the newly graduated), or the meeting room, which you can rent out to work with collaborators, hold meetings, etc.
It’s always interesting to learn how writers write. I have a friend who works with two separate scripts open in Final draft. She’ll write a line or so in one, then switch over to the other, all while holding conversations on AIM and watching Bravo. It may sound like a precarious system, but this girl’s no slack: she’s able to write a play every two months.
From what I understand of Julia’s writing process, she burrows in her room or in the library with a concentration so fierce that mealtimes will go by unnoticed. (This would NEVER happen to me.) She’ll resurface after hours, forcing herself to take a break, but already itching to go back and write more.
I can’t write with the TV, and I can’t write alone. I concentrate for 20 minute bursts; after twenty minutes I need to text message someone and remind myself of the outside world. I can’t write without some sort of food or coffee or soda. Sometimes I need to take a break and just look around the room. In college, when it was time to study for finals or write essays, I would go to the library, and always sit at the same desk on the 8th floor, near the window which looked over the main atrium of the library. From there, I could look up from my paper, my mind clouded, and take solace in the view of hundreds of other students bent over their own work, taking breaks on the phone, sipping coffee from the vending machine, taking naps. It sounds weird, but it was that communal experience that I relished most about college.
The Writers Room is open 24/7, and in my naïve fantasies, I imagine arriving, harried, at 1 am, no longer able to concentrate in my lush SoHo pad, I make my way over to the writer’s room where I find four or five other kindred spirits, type type typing away with equal concentration and frustration. They maybe glance up from their screens when I slink in and give me a sympathetic smile…maybe at 3 one of us decides to order pizza. At five, when I pack up, a good 30 pages under my belt, I wave.

I’m a long way off from being able to afford a membership to The Writers Room, but the second I can, you can bet I’ll be at Astor Place most days of the week.

WHEN YOU DIE, YOU GO TO TARGET

icbins Play Reading, In Numbers

5 actors reading 10 characters

1 casting director, 1 dramaturge, 1 director

94 pages in the script, read in about 70 minutes

2 pizzas

3 phases in the talkback

1 completely disastrous joke about birthing dogs (don’t ask, but it was even worse than it sounds.)

5 retail horror stories shared

2 last names, accidentally given to the one family

1 perfect bengali accent

1 passive protagonist

15 suggestions on how to make protagonist less passive

2 underdog characters everyone seemed to like more than I expected

3 pages, front and back of notes taken during the discussion

100 visions and revisions that I now plan on doing.

Thank you so much to everyone for generously donating their time and talent today. Next step: new draft. I’ll keep you posted!!

In the meantime, does anyone have any funny/interesting/depressing stories from working corporate retail? Share them in the comments!

Right now the table reading is scheduled for June 28th. The actors will be sent their scripts on the 24th, a week from Wednesday. That means that I have ONE WEEK to do what I hope will be a significant rewrite of the script….

I always find it helpful to have specific goals in mind while doing a rewrite…otherwise it’s easy to lose yourself in other, less important specifics without actually fixing the things that need to be fixed. My goals for my Target rewrite are:

• The play, as it is right now, has around ten characters….quite a lot crammed in to a relatively small setting! In general, I don’t have a rule against large casts, but in this play, I do think it gets a little crowded, and some characters are developed more than others. So I might (gasp!) cut or consolidate a few people.

• Story Arc: this play is a comedy, and a lot of it was written for the jokes. There is definitely pathos in the play, but I think it probably needs a stronger basic story line to propel both the comedic and tragic elements.

• My weakness as a writer (well, not weakness, but trap I often fall into at first) is to overwrite the dialogue. I need to go through and make sure things are as snappy and succinct as possible!

So those are my three goals for this rewrite. I had a playwriting teacher who suggested focusing on one character for each rewrite, and really making sure their arc was sound. I think that’s solid advice, and maybe later on I’ll try that (provided I’ve cut some characters!)

If all goes well, I will be able to fix those things in time for the table reading, so that I will be able to focus on other aspects of the script that need attention. There’s nothing worse than going into a reading already KNOWING the problems with a script…it’s completely unhelpful because people will just point out issues you were already aware of, and you won’t be able to do anything except say “I know, pacing, I know.”

So, wish me luck! By the next time I blog for ICBINS, the reading will be over, and I’ll let you guys know how it went!

Obviously film actors often possess an incredible talent and subtlety of expression which allow them to convey an emotion with a mere glance. But theater acting is sort of a specialized art; it goes beyond expression, it’s about body language, about projection, about voice. The recent surplus of Hollywood actors doing theater in New York has made me wonder: 

Besides being box-office draws, are Hollywood Actors as good on-stage as theatrically trained actors? Or is good acting good acting? 

 ”A lot of people think you can just saunter onstage after doing film and TV, but you can’t. Stage is far more technically demanding than doing film. Vocally, especially. I did a lot of training to go on stage. It’s a much tougher discipline.”-Daniel Radcliffe, 2007

Ok, I swear this isn’t going to turn in to an “I Love Daniel Radcliffe” entry. (I have a separate blog for that.) But I think Daniel’s point is a good one. Filmmaking is a process notorious for its amount of downtime: actors often have hours between shots, and can utilize this time to learn lines for an upcoming scene, rehearse, or just nap. Theater isn’t just artistically demanding; it’s physically draining to have to be onstage 8 shows a week, often for two hours at a time with very little break. Theater actors often complain about having no life during the run of the show, not for lack of free time (call isn’t until 5 or 6), but for lack of energy. Hollywood actors unaccustomed to the demands of a run may, like Jeremy Piven, come down with a mysterious case of mercury poisoning… 

According to gossip rags, however, it wasn’t just mercury poisoning that led Piven to leave Speed The Plow early. Rumor has it that Piven, despite getting ok reviews, couldn’t bear to compete with Raul Esparza’s captivating and technically impressive performance. Piven was good, but is it possible that Esparza’s training and experience as a theater actor gave him an advantage? Piven, after all, has received an Emmy award for playing a very similar role on television. Perhaps what works well on tv just doesn’t in front of a live audience. (Esparza, btw, will be starring alongside Hathaway this summer as Orsino).

In the fall of 2007 I saw a production of Pygmalion which was nearly perfect except for one major flaw: that flaw was Claire Danes. Her voice was terrible. She overacted. Her accent was incomprehensible and unreliable. It’s a pity she had to play against the incomparable Jefferson Mays, whose pitch-perfect performance only made Danes look more amateur.

Look, I love Claire Danes, and I LOVE Angela Chase. But Danes’ biggest asset lies in her expressive face. She wrinkles an eyebrow and you want to cry. But you can’t see her eyebrow from the back of a theater. You just hear her grating, grating, faux-English accent.  

 And then, there’s Carla Gugino. Gugino, who, from what I gather, had very little theater experience before taking on the role of Abby in the Goodman Theater’s production of “Desire Under The Elms”. This production was weird, included a strange Bob Dylan musical break, and closed three weeks early. And yet, I left in awe of Gugino’s performance. Her lines were delivered poignancy, vulnerability which easily carried to the back of the theater.

So will Annie be a Danes or a Gugino, a Piven or a Radcliffe? She’s playing against some pretty big heavyweights: Audra McDonald, Julie White, and Audra McDonald. Will she be able to hold her own?

And am I oversimplifying by differentiating between film acting and theater training? What do you guys think? Actors, especially, I want you to weigh in on this one!

Virginia Woolf, in her infinite wisdom, said: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. (What do men need, by the way?)

I have a room all of my own, and (some) money. And yet, Mrs.Dalloway is hardly pouring out of my fingers. Especially when I’m working a lot to be able to afford this room of my own with (some) money left over.

I’m definitely in a writing rut. There are no teachers to impress with my latest pages (or actors, for that matter), no meetings with directors or agents to polish up a script for, certainly no plans for productions. There’s just….gulp…me. And, in the immortal words of Andrew Lloyd Webber, “Sometimes it’s very difficult to keep momentum when it’s you that you are following.”***

Anyway, partly for the benefit of the readers of this blog, but mostly for my own, I have compiled a list of ways to keep motivated during what we will some day fondly look back on as our “pre-Pulitzer” days…(after the jump)

***I am aware, that, in general ICBINS is not big on musical theater….but if anyone out in the blogosphere knows what that is from, WITHOUT using google, I will be so impressed….

• Find someone you really really really want to impress. Casually mention to that person that you are having a reading of your newest play in a month and he/she should come check it out. They will say yes, and then you will have one month to writing a play and put together a staged reading, or look like a total ass.

• Write out an acceptance speech for your first Oscar. It’s poignant and modest, isn’t it? It’d be a shame if you never got a chance to use it.

• Don’t pay your internet or cable bill for a month. I know, it sounds torturous. I know! But what coffee shop in New York City doesn’t have internet? And you KNOW you’ll be more productive without it. 

• Remember the last thing you wrote that went well? No, not that one, the one that went WELL. Can you think back that far? Ok, good. Now: wouldn’t it be nice to recapture that feeling? The fame? The glory? Get typing.

• High School Reunion coming up. What’ve you done lately? Not much? Oh, that’s impressive. Break out the moleskine.

• Take out a calculator. Time for some fun math! Quickly calculate how much money you spent getting your theater or writing degree. Ouch! Good thing you’re using it for something worthwhi—oh wait. START WRITING!

• Remember how everyone reacts when you tell them you want to be a playwright? How they’re always like “oh boy, that’s a hard life!”, as if no one had ever told you that before? And how you KNOW you won’t make any money and you KNOW you probably won’t be famous, but you still want to do it, because you think, despite all the crap that you usually produce, that every once in a while you manage to pull off something that is entertaining, that people like, that people would want to see? 

Page one.

Scene one.

Write.

Sure, it’s bad that the Tony Nominations consistently favored Hollywood, big-selling, money producing names and shows over their more talented New York counterparts….

Sure, it’s bad that out of the nominees for Best Musical, the only one that is completely original is Next to Normal, and it might not beat out its competition in the form of a farting ogre.

Sure, it’s bad that [title of show] got snubbed.

Sure, it’s bad that Carla Gugino’s overall excellent, wrenching performance in Desire Under The Elms went ignored.

But that’s not really the issue.

The ISSUE, the category in which the Tony Committee REALLY f’d up, the oversight SO unforgivable I cannot even bear to post it on this blog’s main page, is….

DANIEL RADCLIFFE WAS ROBBED. ROBBED!

There, there, Dan. I know it hurts. It hurts me, too.

Of course, even impoverished playwrights need to afford their self-indulgent pity binge drinking sessions, so over the past five years I have had a variety of different avenues of income, all with varying degrees of profit, success, and humiliation. In no particular order, I present to you:

Jobs I Have Had, That Weren’t Playwriting…

· Super Nanny Extraordinaire

High: Getting paid $15 an hour, plus tip, with no money taken out for taxes. Sometimes dinner included too! Sometimes kids pick a leaf off a tree and say it’s for you and it’s cute!

Low: Sprinting down Sixth Avenue, chasing a kid who is a lot faster than I am as he races away from me and towards what I imagine to be inevitable death by oncoming Taxi Cab.

Quirks of the Job: You have to be a fast thinker for this job, ready to make up perfectly valid sounding reasons as to why one cannot have M&Ms for dinner/take off ones pants in public/go ring all the neighbors doorbells.

· Sales Associate, Gap INC

High: 50% discount. Ok, it’s not Zac Posen, but for the two years I worked at the Gap, my wardrobe increased more than it probably will in the next 20.

Low: Tricking people with limited English into applying for Credit Cards with abominable APR, which will probably ruin their credit. It’s gonna take many years of being in debt myself to make up for those lost Karma Points.

Quirks of the Job: Being so consistently perky and enthusiastic, as if there is no place in the world you’d rather be on a Saturday evening than in the fitting room watching a homely woman try on 7 pairs of jeans can definitely take its toll. On the other hand, the high of catching someone stealing clothing, even if you’re not legally allowed to do anything about it, makes up for the job’s usual lack of intrigue.

· Temp Receptionist

High: So you overfill the coffee machine, accidentally hang-up on the Vice-President, leave the phones off for half the day until you realize it’s odd that you haven’t gotten any calls for the past 3 hours. You never have to see these people again.

Low: They never have to see you again either, so they often won’t bother being polite.

Quirks of the Job: In the best temp situations, you get paid to surf the internet all day, and maybe even get some writing done. But it can be boring and weird and awkward coming into an office for such little time, too.

· Barista, Starbucks

High: The trend of tipping your barista has finally started to take off! (Even though, honestly, I still don’t.)

Low: You smell like steamed milk all day.

Quirks of the Job: You get to sound like a real coffee snob when you go on coffee dates, and people assume you got your taste from Cafes in Vienna rather than slaving away in a black polo shirt and green apron.

  I do manage to go to a fair share of readings and workshops, but, if I had all the money and time in the world, here are the five current shows I’d want to see first:

       1. OUR TOWN

    I’ve loved this play, ever since Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper did it as their school play on “The Wonder       Years”. This production had me at hello, or rather, the Stage Manager’s opening monologue, that you can         see here. Yeah, everyone has seen it/read it a billion times, but…doesn’t it still sort of make you cry every      time? Just me? Ok.

2. DISTRACTED

It’s supposed to be a funny, interesting look at a fairly taboo subject, namely, are we over-diagnosing and over-prescribing ADD/learning disability medicine to kids? And anyone who saw Rabbit Hole can attest to Cynthia Nixon’s ability to forget all about Sex and the City once she’s onstage…

3. CAITLIN AND THE SWAN

An SAT tutor experiments with bestiality. That sounds like it would be so…..like, eye-roll, college theater-y, doesn’t it? But supposedly it’s a smart, well directed show, written by recent Yale Drama grad Dorothy Fortenberry. Under St.Marks theater, by the way, is a TINY theater, so it would be interesting to see how the cover such uncomfortable subjects in such a small space. (Bestiality is uncomfortable, right? That’s not just me…)

UPDATE: It closed!!! Sad!

4. MARY STUART

Because, I’m pretty sure that after seeing this play, I would be like “Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansen who?”

5.  THE FANTASTICKS

It’s the world’s longest running musical, and I haven’t seen it. It’s in that little theater off of Times Square, and I think I’ve *almost* seen it about six times, and then for whatever reason decided not to at the last minute. But I really should.