Birth of a Play(wright)

On the twelfth day - signed, sealed, and delivered!

2012-01-03T20:29:00.000-05:00

It's done. It's in the mail. It has been a very intense couple of days. I did not leave my apartment from when I got home after celebrating New Year's (around 1:30am Sunday morning) until 4:30pm Monday afternoon. I did spend some of those hours sleeping and eating, but otherwise, I was in front of my computer, writing away. I got to the end of the play Monday afternoon, and had to get to the gym to get the cobwebs out of my brain and step away from it for a bit. I sent it to some other people to read in the meantime, to make sure it was solid enough to submit. I returned home after dinner to finish writing the rest of the materials needed for the application, and got up early again this morning before teaching to put the packet together and read through the script one last time. I took it to the post office this afternoon during a break between students. And thus, my twelve days of "write fast!" is complete.

I almost don't know what to do with myself now. That's one of the amazing things about having a goal and a singular over-riding focus: you always know exactly what you need to be doing. Now I have this empty evening in front of me with nothing to do and... well, actually, I have tons to do. Did I mention I am moving in 13 days? I have floorplans to draw up, movers to arrange, boxes to obtain, stuff to sort through.... Plus I want to arrange a reading of this new script, so I can hear it out loud. Among other things.

But guess what? I'm not going to do any of that. I am boiling some pasta on the stove, am sipping at a glass of wine, and I'm going to find some sort of netflix diversion to occupy me and I'm going to sit here and enjoy one of the last nights I'll have living alone with my cat in my adorable little studio apartment.

Happy New Year to me.

On the tenth day... HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2012-01-01T10:35:00.000-05:00

It is New Year's Day, 2012. Hard to believe it. A year that seemed impossibly far away when I first heard about the Mayan calendar thing when I was a teenager. And here we are.

And here I am, trying desperately to finish my play by Tuesday morning. The last two days of my 12 days of "write fast!" have been challenging, because of teaching and some very important time spent with friends, and I haven't gotten as much done as I would have liked. I'm still working on Act II Scene 4, with scenes 5 and 6 still to go as well. Ack! Thus I begin the new year as a hermit today and tomorrow as I make this valiant effort to fulfill a promise I made to myself a year ago. Not a bad way to start the year, really, working towards a goal. It's one of my favorite past-times.

Wishing you all a year of fulfilling promises, reaching goals, and getting what you want out of your life!

On the sixth day...

2011-12-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

I finished the first three scenes of Act II. I can hardly believe it. It almost feels like this is writing itself. How I love that groove. Let's hope it lasts: six days and three scenes to go....

Did I mention I am doing this all while preparing to move to a new apartment on Jan 16th? It truly is amazing how all these things seem to come at once. Off I go to look at furniture at the post-xmas sales!

On the fourth day of "write fast!"...

2011-12-26T16:09:00.000-05:00

... I finished Act I! I'm very pleased with myself, especially because the majority of that writing was done on the bus to and from New Hampshire (on which my very pained butt is still sitting as I type this).

I seem to write well while in transit -- even on the subway, even if it is only for 5 or 10 minutes, sometimes I'll find a couple of choice lines or an important turn in a scene. (This was why I made the out-of-character early purchase of the iPad when it first came out, so I could better take advantage of those fleeting moments.) I often seem to focus easily while on the move: perhaps the world flitting by me and the mild (or in this case, not-so-mild) physical discomfort provide just enough distraction to keep the rest of my mind busy so that my writing mind can focus. When I'm home, still and comfy, I think I'm more easily distracted by other things. Or maybe it's my writing-to-a-deadline in miniature: I know I only have x amount of time to write in this confined space (be it 5 minutes or 4 hours), so I best use it well.

Either way, I am delighted with my progress. Now, 8 days to finish Act II....

12 days of "write fast!"

2011-12-23T09:13:00.003-05:00

(If I were my wit-machine friend and colleague Kat Sherrell, I would surely attempt to write this as a parody if the song "The 12 days of Christmas", one line each day for the next twelve days. But I am not so clever nor do I want to put in the time to try to be. But you should check out her blog, currently featuring daily haikus. It's awesome.)

Once again, I have an insane writing deadline to meet: 12 days to complete this rewrite. I have 5 scenes to revise and 2 scenes left to write. That's a scene every 1.7 days. Erp.

This deadline is not an arbitrarily self-imposed one, though. TRU (Theater Resources Unlimited) - an organization of which I am a member and am also very fond, check them out - has a reading series for new plays with a deadline of January 3rd. I wanted to submit last year, but didn't feel the play was ready at that point. So I promised myself I would submit this year. At the time, I figured it would be done many months in advance. Funny.

It's actually not entirely my fault that this didn't happen. Or I guess it was, it just wasn't because I was being lazy. I did complete a rewrite in the spring where I changed the structure of the play, an important step but definitely a transitional one. This summer I was busy writing for a short-forms class at ESPA, in which my writing grew so much that it was time well-spent away from this draft. This fall I enrolled in a rewrite class, confident that I would then have the draft complete by the end of the class in late November. But then I had to go and take on this show (see my last post), which did not allow me the time or mental focus to work on the play for the last month or so.

So, here I am again, writing on a deadline, one of my favorite past-times. I'm actually good at it. It helps focus the mind. Last night I finished the revisions on scene 1, on to scene 2 this morning. I'll keep you posted!

Performing as peanut butter

2011-12-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

A little background on two points:

1) for the past six weeks, I have been rehearsing then performing a show, Dziewczyna, as the sole actress/singer in this multi-media theater/music piece. A huge project that has taken up so much of my time that I haven't written a blog post since October.

2) in Weight Watchers, we identify foods as red-light, yellow-light, or green-light foods. Green-light foods are foods that you can easily control without over-indulging (or that have little impact if you do, like vegetables), so you can go for them anytime. Yellow-light foods are foods that you can control only in certain circumstances -- say if you are out somewhere so you can order a single serving -- so you much approach them with caution. Red-light foods are foods you can't control, ever. You don't just consume them, they consume you. So if you are trying to lose or maintain your weight, you have to avoid those foods altogether.

Peanut butter is a red light food for me. If I have peanut butter in my house, I will eat the whole jar with a spoon. And what that does to me -- the resulting weight gain and feeling crappy about myself -- isn't worth the pleasure I got from eating the peanut butter. So I don't have it anymore.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that peanut butter is bad for you -- it's actually really good for you. But it is very high-impact. If you eat much of that, you can't eat much else all day without gaining weight. So I found a substitute, this low-fat stuff called "Better 'n Pnut Butter", that I can have 2 full tablespoons of for just one WW point. It's not as good as peanut butter - nowhere near - so I'm not tempted to eat it with a spoon. When I need some protein and don't want dairy or meat, it's a great option that I can control and doesn't cause me to sacrifice other things I want.

What does this have to do with performing, you ask? When I gave up performing, it wasn't because I didn't enjoy it anymore, it was because I didn't like what it was doing to the rest of my life. I didn't like all the crap that went with it, the sacrifices, the time away from friends and family, the anxiety, the constant stress, the frustration of not being where I wanted to be career-wise. Performing wasn't inherently bad for me, I just didn't like the trade-offs anymore. It had become a red-light food for me, so I gave it up altogether. And eventually I found some substitutes -- writing and teaching. These things help fill me creatively, and still allow me time and energy to exercise, be with family and friends, and sleep. These are green-light foods, nourishing, healthy, things I can have while keeping my life in balance.

It is not an entirely fair analogy, though, to equate writing with low-fat peanut butter. Writing is an incredible art, and it satisfies me creatively in ways that performing never did. But there is a part of me that is a performer, an actor, that thrives on the stage in front of an audience as if I was born there, as if I was meant to do nothing else. Therefore nothing else will ever quite entirely take its place, just as fake peanut butter will never be the same as real peanut butter. Even if I have figured out how to be quite satisfied with the substitute. Maybe even satisfied enough, given the trade-offs.

And I felt those trade-offs these last six weeks. Doing this show took me away from finishing my play when I wanted. My friends were frustrated with my lack of availability. I wasn't able to put the energy into my teaching studio that I needed to (and since that pays my rent, that is dangerous!). I got sick, twice. Fortunately not for the performances, but it reminded me how much I hate hate hate hate hate worrying about getting sick. And let's not forget exercise and diet -- those things have definitely fallen off track the last several weeks (and I've gained a couple of pounds to prove it).

Is it worth it? Is the joy of inhabiting a character, of being present in the moment, of telling a story, moving people, giving people an opportunity to laugh and cry and forget themselves, and, yes, to hear that I'm "amazing" over and over again, worth all the sacrifices?

Can I apply the Weight Watchers advice I have heard (and given) hundreds of times? That sometimes it is better to have some of the real thing in a controlled, balanced fashion, than to continually try to fill a craving with something that isn't quite what you want? If you are perpetually unsatisfied eating how you are eating, you will not be able to stick with it. Sometimes, you just have to eat the real peanut butter.

I did figure out a way to eat peanut butter once in awhile this summer -- it turns out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the only thing I can eat while on 50+ mile bike rides. Anything else upsets my stomach. So I get to have them once in awhile, but only on days I'm biking more than three hours.

Can I can pursue performing again while maintaining my other priorities, just as I figured out a way to sneak in a little peanut butter without derailing my weight? I don't know. But I think I owe it to myself to try. It's time to make performing a yellow-light food instead of a red-light food and see if I can handle it.

Labor Intensive (or: Playwriting as Therapy, again)

2011-10-21T13:57:00.000-04:00

I feel like I just went through labor. Apologies to all the actual mothers out there - I certainly don't mean to trivialize what you have all gone through - but this scene I just finally finished writing was an intense, prolonged labor. I have struggled with it all week and it just wouldn't come and wouldn't come, I would only get little bits at a time, and I could scarcely believe last night that after several days of working on it I only had 4 pages. 4 pages I wasn't even sure I could use. I was wishing there was some pill I could take to induce labor to speed this along, to get this damn thing out of me.

It's a simple scene, really, and of which I have written at least half a dozen previous versions, so I didn't know why it was giving me so much trouble. Angie is confronting Vivian (her mother) over what to do with Frank (her grandfather) who can no longer live by himself. Two days ago I realized that there was a big gaping whole in my backstory that I thought might be causing the block in the scene. Angie was really wanting to fight with Vivian over her handling of this, but I couldn't figure out why. I knew it had something to do with how Vivian had reacted to Angie's brother's suicide 2 years before, but wasn't sure what. I realized I had never really figured out the full force of the impact that death would have had on them and their relationship.

So I spent most of the day yesterday writing backstory, just free-form writing in Vivian's voice. I figured out a bunch of stuff, including the source of Angie's anger. And when I identified Angie's anger, I realized something else: her anger is my own, a deep-seated issue from my childhood. It's something I am at peace with now (thank you, therapy), but nonetheless it still stirred up a whole bunch of emotions for me. I think now part of my block for writing the scene was not wanting to stir up that pot.

One line emerged last night that summed up both her feelings and mine: "I'm the baby of the family but somehow I always have to be the fucking grown-up!" As soon as I wrote that line, the whole scene unblocked, and I was able to finish it today. Still the most painstaking 10 pages of this draft so far, but at least I got to the end of it. I'm not sure it's good -- I will have to step away from it before I can really tell that -- but I think it is. (And I hope it is, cause I'd really rather not have to do it all again).

People often ask me if this story is autobiographical. It's not. None of these characters are people in my family, none of these events happened to us like this. But there are definitely parts of it, parts of each of these people and their struggles, that are emotionally autobiographical. This was clearly one of them.

Stronger pitching arm

2011-10-21T01:20:00.000-04:00

I pitched this play of mine to 20 producers on Sunday, as part of the TRU writer-producer speed-date I mentioned in my last post. It went extraordinarily well. Last year when I did this I was incredibly nervous. And I will admit that I was having some little anxiety attacks the couple of days before this one, too. But I fully prepared myself, and by the time I arrived at the event, I felt ready and was calm. And I stayed calm. My goal for this time was to have an opening and major points I wanted to be sure to hit, but to NOT have a memorized script. To have it feel like a conversation, to let what I know about my play and what I feel about my play come through more organically. I feel confident that I achieved this, as evidenced by the fact that I rarely got through my allotted 2 minutes to speak before the producer would start asking me questions. (The format was for me to speak to a producer for 2 minutes, then for the producer to respond for 2 minutes). Clearly they were intrigued enough to start asking me questions before I finished my "spiel". This is a great sign. And sure enough, I already have a meeting with one producer tomorrow, and two others expressed interest. It's impossible to know if anything will come of any of it, but to have garnered that amount of interest is definitely a feat in and of itself.

As I mentioned in my last post on synposes (yes, spell-check, I still mean that), I think the main reason these pitches went so much more smoothly this year is that I know my play so much better. I'm so much more in touch with it, at home with it, I know what I'm trying to do with it. And I know who I am better too, and where my play is in its development process. It's not just my play that is growing and changing since its birth last year, I am growing and learning and adapting too. It's fun to have an occasion like this by which I can actually measure that progress. Regardless of where this all takes me, I'm happy to be moving forward.

The Art of the Synopsis

2011-10-12T23:35:00.002-04:00

I'm having one of those moments where I can actually see a measurable sign of growth, both in myself as a writer and in my play. I had to write a synopsis of Breaking Pairs for a writer-producer "speed date" this weekend where I will be pitching my play to 20 or so different producers. (side note: if you are a theater professional and aren't familiar with TRU, the people who put this on, you should be). I only just learned I was accepted into this, so I've been a little panicked that I wouldn't have enough time to prepare. But I sat down to write the synposis this afternoon and it's already done. That is not what I was expecting.

You see, I've had to write synposes (yes, spell-check, I do mean the plural of synposis) before, and always found them incredibly difficult. The first one I ever wrote was a veritable disaster - a two page long blow-by-blow of every little moment in the play (for a one-act script it should have been two paragraphs max) that was boring as all heck. I have since learned a bit more about how to do this crazy thing. The writing of a synopsis is the telling of a good story -- it is not merely a re-hashing of all the events in the play. In fact many events may actually be glossed over. What is important is that it is crafted in such a way as to lead the reader on a journey and give a sense of the tone and style of the piece all at the same time. It's a rather daunting task, actually, and I wouldn't mind if I never had to do one again.

When I first wrote one for Breaking Pairs (then called All in the Shuffle) last year, its litany of tragedies made a Eugene O'Neill play sound like a light-hearted frolic in comparison. There was no sense of the humanity and the humor of my play, nothing to make you think you wouldn't need a double dose of prozac after watching it. With some good advice from my director, I figured out how to change the tone, how to add in a few hints of the hope that is in the story, of the humor that sneaks its way in. But it took me hours. Days, actually. Getting the short one-paragraph version was even harder, and I think that's because I didn't really know what my play was about. I thought I did, but I didn't. I know that now, because now I do know what my play is really about.

And here is how I know that. My first day of class with Josh Hecht, we had to write -- on the fly, right there in class -- three different synposes (yes spell-check, I still mean that): first, all the major events of the play, then a one paragraph summary, then a one sentence "essence" of the play. I was able to come up with these -- albeit in unpolished form -- right on the spot. And they were good enough that when I went back and looked at them, I was able to use much of what I wrote when crafting this polished version. It was almost easy -- well, certainly easier than I expected -- because I have spent so much more time in the last year really deciding what my play is about, really deciding what the story is that needs to be told. So it was merely a matter of summarizing and re-telling that story in prose instead of with my characters' words.

I don't know if I've written a great synopsis, but I think it's a good one (you can read it here if you're curious). I'm sure I'll get ever better at them as I keep doing this. But it's nice to feel the progress, to know that I've really learned something. Now let's hope a producer or two likes my synopsis as well.

The End of an Era

2011-10-06T18:39:00.003-04:00

Note: to get the most out of this post, I recommend you have a glass of prosecco, champagne, or other celebratory beverage in your hand.

I am on a long overdue artist's date tonight. I am at my favorite wine bar, Riposo 46, having dinner and drinks before I see Sons of the Prophet starring Joanna Gleason (one of my favorite actresses of all time). I am also celebrating a little something: the absolute final last little straggly end of a long chapter of my life, and the thing that began this whole process that turned me into a writer. My divorce.

Forgive me for getting personal, but that's kind of what blogs are for, right? Three years and four months ago, I separated from my husband of 11 years. Even though we had no children and it should have been a fairly simple process, somehow it took until now to get the very last piece of paperwork for the financial arrangements settled. But it has finally happened. Except for old photos and memories, and the occasional piece of mis-addressed junk mail, there are no ties of any kind left between us. It is officially, 100%, no questions about it, over.

But what isn't over is the incredible transformation that took place within me as a result of this shattering life change. Almost everything that I love best about my life now -- my writing, my full-time voice studio, my weight loss, my bicycling, my amazing boyfriend -- all came about because of my divorce. The only constants are my relationships with my family and my closest friends, and even these became closer and dearer as a result.

I'm drinking a glass of prosecco in celebration, and as I have no one to toast with here, I toast to all of you. To new beginnings, to remaking oneself at any age, to finding the greatest joy out of the deepest despair. Thank you for following me along this journey - I am loving being on it.

Tell the story, not the backstory (or, the Iceberg Theory)

2011-10-01T20:24:00.000-04:00

Thanks in part to the elucidating teachings of Sheri Wilner in my ESPA Short Forms class this summer, I feel I have discovered a major weakness in the previous drafts of my play: I was too concerned with telling the backstory instead of the current story. When I went back and re-read the draft from last November's "birthday" reading, I could clearly hear myself as the playwright figuring out what had led these people to the point they were in, and trying to share that information with the audience.

Now, it is very important for me to know what the backstory is. Crucial, in fact. All that work was vital. (And don't get me wrong, I wasn't a complete slouch -- I had learned that you can't just have unmotivated exposition, that the backstory has to come out through conflict. And almost all of it did, which is why the play was already pretty good). But my need to make sure I explain that backstory to the audience left the draft feeling a bit ponderous at times, because too much of the conflict was about things that happened in the past, rather than about things that were happening between the people on stage RIGHT NOW.

So in this draft, I am embracing Hemmingway's Iceberg Theory (or the "theory of omission"), which goes something like this: The bulk of a story lies below the surface, as with an iceberg we only see the tip. But just because we don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there, quite the contrary. If the writer knows things, really knows them, the writer may omit them and the reader/audience will know them as if the writer had stated them. (But if the writer omits things because he doesn't know them, it leaves a hole that the reader notices.) The more you omit, the more people will understand the story because they are filling in the gaps themselves. When the audience is trying to figure things out, they are more engaged in the story than when everything is spoonfed. This only works when you know what you are omitting, so that what you are showing on the surface forms a consistent narrative. The tip of the iceberg must be consistent with the shape of what is underneath, though different people may imagine that shape differently in their minds. Make sense?

Therefore, this is the thrust for me in this current draft: to keep the conflict current, on stage, to have every scene have a dramatic action to be resolved, to never have the purpose of a scene be to give a sense of the characters' history. I am leaving a very faint cookie-crumb trail of information about the backstory, which will hopefully be clear enough for everyone to follow me to the end. I guess we'll find out!

Oh, right, it is a great play

2011-09-27T18:41:00.000-04:00

(First off, I am delighted to report that I *did* actually get my miracle on Saturday -- the rain never materialized and I had a glorious, glorious bike ride! It was a beautiful route, 105 miles all told with getting back and forth to the start, and it honestly wasn't nearly as hard as I feared. I felt great at the end, and wasn't even sore the next day. I found myself giddy and laughing with pure joy at how much fun it was and how lucky I am to be able to do something like that. All my training clearly paid off -- I can hardly wait to do the next one!)

After being reminded last week that sometimes I have to keep going even when things aren't as fun, I was then reminded in the last few days that the pay-off for doing that is rediscovering the fun and joy when things start flowing again. I had two great days of writing after my big day of riding, and deeply reconnected with my play. I was excited to bring my pages into class at ESPA last night, and they were very well-received. I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with the first two scenes, and got some good feedback that will help shape where it goes next. I can hardly wait to have time to sit down to write again tomorrow!

I received another pleasant little jolt of encouragement after class last night. I went to the 10-year anniversary party for the Cry Havoc Theatre Company, a great little company whose mission is the development of new plays (in 10 years, they have developed 293 of them I believe). I was invited by one of the primary company members, a tremendous actress who did an informal reading of Breaking Pairs for me last spring. Every time she introduced me to someone, she told them about having read for my play and that it was "great", "excellent", "I really loved it", etc. To hear someone whose talent I greatly respect -- and who I know does not say such things lightly -- speak so highly of my work was deeply gratifying. It helped me remember that I do actually have a great play here. It is easy to get bogged down in the rewrite process, to get so focused on what I am trying to fix that I forget what doesn't need fixing. At its core, I have great characters with a story that wants to be told (and that people seem to want to hear). I can't wait to finish telling it.

Riding/Writing in the rain

2011-09-23T22:58:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I am riding 100 miles on my bicycle for the first time. In the rain (unless the weather suddenly takes a turn). I have been training for this seriously since the spring, biking 100 miles plus each week and consistently increasing my longest rides. I only began riding in July of 2010 and completed my first 50 mile ride at this time last year, so this is all rather new to me. I'm a little scared. And disappointed in the weather -- I so wanted this thing I have worked for so long and hard for to be perfect. Plus, in the last two weeks things have gotten so much busier for me in the other two main areas of my life -- teaching and writing -- that suddenly this thing I've been looking forward to for so long feels a little like a burden, an obligation, something that I am doing because I said I would and because I want to accomplish it rather than something I really want to do. This makes me a little sad (and I am working very hard on an attitude adjustment).

But I am still going to do it. I am going to feel great when it is done. Hopefully it will still be lots of fun even though I know I will be in a fair amount of pain and discomfort by the end.

There is a parallel to writing here, I promise. Sometimes, I just don't feel like writing. Sometimes it feels like slogging through the rain. Sometimes I feel downright uncomfortable because I'm not in the moment, not in the flow, the words don't come easily. But the only way to work through it is to do it, to push myself, to put my fingers on the keys, put my feet on the pedals and ride. I had several days like that this week for writing too. I want so badly for this rewrite to be great that sometimes I over-think it. Just like I have been so worried about being ready for this cycling century that I haven't just been riding for the fun of it, I've been riding because I know I have to in order to achieve the goals I want. This is necessary, one can't always do things just for the fun of it when you want to achieve certain goals. If I only rode when the weather was good, I wouldn't get in shape enough to be able to do 100 miles. If I only wrote when things were feeling good, flowing easily, who knows if I would ever actually finish a play. But I must also try to remember in those difficult moments, even as I am uncomfortable, even as it feels like pushing, like torture, that I am doing it for the fun of it, that I am getting something out of it, and remind myself that I must ride (or write) through the rain sometimes in order to be able to ride in the sun.

That said, I still hope the weather miraculously clears up tomorrow.

Dilemma #2 (resolved!)

2011-09-19T18:23:00.000-04:00

I have a plan!

Last week, Josh Hecht had us do several exercises in class, which culminated in crafting two sentences about our play: 1) what the play is about (not so much the plot, as the main theme) and 2) the major event of the play.

(In theatrical terms, the "event" is the moment something happens that resolves or changes the conflict that we have been watching. The thing you are waiting to find out. Not a happenstance event, like Annette's death as I discussed in my last post, but something that changes from within the characters.)

I had trouble deciding what my main event was, partly because of the trouble I have had establishing whether the play is Vivian's play or Frank's play. If it is Frank's play, the event would be Frank apologizing, and agreeing to go to a nursing home so that Vivian and Angie can get on with their lives. If it is Vivian's play, then it would be the moment that Vivian decides she is not going to sacrifice for her father anymore and is going to pursue her own dreams instead.

Ah, but wait! I had a very enlightening discussion with Steven Yuhasz this morning, the director who took my work under his wing last year and brought the reading to life with such an amazing cast. Rather than either/or, Steven had a crazy idea - perhaps the play does not end with Vivian leaving and Frank going to a nursing home. Perhaps...

Do I tell you how I think the play ends now? Or should I wait? I think I'll wait. But I now have a new major event, and a few twists on the events that will lead us to that moment. I think it is a solid outline and I honestly can't wait to start actually writing - which happens tomorrow!

Dilemma #1

2011-09-15T10:54:00.000-04:00

I am facing my first big dilemma with this new rewrite, and I haven't even written a word of it yet:

I don't know where to start the play.

Every play has an "inciting incident", or the thing that begins the action, that triggers the series of events we are about to see unfold. (Hamlet's father's death, or the moment when Romeo and Juliet's eyes meet at the ball, for example). Sometimes inciting incidents happen before the play starts (Hamlet) or at the beginning of the play (Romeo and Juliet). I can't decide which mine should be.

My inciting incident is the death of Annette (Frank's wife, Vivian's mom). It is her death that unravels the status quo and fundamentally changes the relationship between Frank and Vivian. In the previous drafts, I have started the play when she is still alive, and she dies at the end of the first scene. This does several things for me: 1) it allows us to meet her while she is alive; 2) it shows what her relationship with Frank was like; and 3) it allows us to see a sweeter and more human side of Frank than we usually see with him and Vivian.

But there is a fundamental problem with both versions of the first scenes I have written -- nothing happens in them, except her death. Which isn't really an "event" in the dramatic sense. It is something that happens, but it is not the resolution or escalation of a conflict currently happening on stage -- it is a random occurrence, not something that is driven by the characters' choices. So the opening scene is little more than filler, than exposition setting up who these characters are and what their relationships are like. To be compelling dramatically, that information needs to come out in the course of CONFLICT, not just in the course of daily speech.

So I have two choices. Either (A) figure out how to make the first scene dramatic (give it a conflict and an event other than Annette's death), or (B) start the play at Annette's funeral. I think my instincts are telling me to start it at the funeral. Someone at some point told me a playwriting rule: if you are debating about cutting it, cut it. I guess I just told myself what I need to do.

Diving back in

2011-09-12T23:43:00.002-04:00

I am getting back to what this blog was originally about, the birth of my first full-length play. The play was born last November, and it grew to a toddler with its second draft in April, and now I hope to bring it up to early adolescence, where it will be ready to be shaped and formed by others (actors, directors, producers) the way a teen is molded by her peers. I am eager to document this process again, if for no other reason than to look back on it myself later on to wonder how I actually did it.

I am enrolled in a rewrite class at ESPA with Josh Hecht, a director who works almost exclusively on new plays. I was thrilled with the class tonight; the structure we are going to follow is exactly the kind of class I like, and already in the first night he helped me to discover a number of things about my play that are going to shape and inform the rewrite. Most importantly, I realized that the play is not about what I thought it was about. It is about something that I seem to keep writing about - what may, in fact, be my uber-theme that will permeate much of my writing: when is it ok to be selfish, and when do you sacrifice for other people?

I never would have figured this out if I hadn't taken the Short Forms class this summer, where I discovered that that was the question my short play-cum-tv pilot was asking. So while I was beating myself up a bit for getting distracted by writing other things than this play, I now feel ready to do this rewrite and I know it will be a far better play than it would have been before I took that class.

Take a deep breath, I'm going back in. I hope you'll follow along with me and Frank, Vivian, Angie, Annette, Arnold and Vera as we all grow and develop.

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?

2011-07-30T23:58:00.002-04:00

I don't know what I'm writing. But I am writing, it is pouring out of me, I can't seem to stop it, it just keeps flowing though I have no idea what it is. Is it back story for a play? A short story? A TV show pilot? A short film? Or, if it keeps going like this, something longer?

A little background: I am currently enrolled in a "short forms" class at ESPA, the Primary Stages theater school, with Sheri Wilner. Sheri gave us a "subtext" exercise a few weeks ago, where each character in the scene had to have a secret. She gave a list of possible secrets, one of which was very serious, the other was very silly. I decided to challenge myself and pick two of the silly/absurd secrets, in the hopes of writing something out of my usual family-drama milieu. After a couple of attempts - and some great input/advice from Sheri - I managed a scene that I actually felt pretty good about. I knew it needed work, it needed to be deeper, but it was a start of something potentially interesting.

Then last week Sheri gave us another exercise, to help us discover the themes of our plays. We had to first identify the questions our play is asking, then draw parallels between these questions and our own personal lives. At first I thought I couldn't possibly apply this exercise to this silly little fantasy play, I would be better off picking the family drama piece I had written the week before. But then I decided to keep stretching myself and just do it. After all, isn't fantasy/sci-fi good when it is based on something very real, so we can look at it in this completely different context? Lo and behold, I discovered that my play was indeed asking a very strong, real-life question that has complete relevance to my life, that is in fact one of the struggles that has been a constant one for me from a very young age. I even got a little teary about it, all over this "silly" little play.

So I began to write about the character and what this question means to her. Suddenly pages and pages - 6 full pages of single-spaced prose so far - of back story began to flow out. I can't stop - I find myself delving deeper and deeper into her, writing details upon details about events that happen many months before my play is set to begin. I feel like I am writing a book or a movie or I don't know what, but she is so alive in my mind and her experiences -- though completely fantastical -- are very visceral and real to me.

I don't know if I should (there is that word I try not to let myself use) stop writing this back story and get to the play, or just let it keep flowing and see where it goes. It seems silly to stop a process that is so clearly having abundant creative flow - but I would eventually like to get to the actual writing of the play! I think, though, that I have to work out the steps that brought her to the moment of the play - a very intense life or death moment, despite the fantastical trappings of it - to really know where she is in that moment. I think then the scene may well write itself.

So back I go to writing this surprise tome -- this woman's history which probably no one will ever read or see, unless I suddenly turn into a fantasy fiction writer.... (as if I need another distraction...)

Process over Product

2011-07-24T23:28:00.003-04:00

I am deploying a new productivity strategy this week. Inspired by my last post on effort plus the concept of time-management in weekly blocks from the book 168 Hours, I have decided to make a to-do list not of things I must accomplish, but rather of areas into which I want to be putting effort and how much time I will spend in each area. For example, instead of saying "bike 100 miles this week", I am saying "bike 11 hours this week" (one longer ride and three shorter rides); instead of saying "transfer all automatic payments to new bank account" I am saying "banking: 2 hours". I think sometimes I don't start a project when I don't think I can finish it, when even putting 30 minutes towards something would certainly be better than endlessly putting it off into the future. I am hoping that by committing myself to time blocks, regardless of whether or not I finish the task at hand, I will end up accomplishing more overall.

I am hopeful for this new strategy particularly for my writing, as I realized today that it is more like what I used to do when I was pursing my singing career. "Practicing" has no definable outcome (except perhaps learning the notes of a new piece or translating a new role) -- it is just something you do every day for a certain amount of time. I would often just grab 30 minutes here or 30 minutes there to practice -- whatever I could fit in. But with my writing, I have looked at it more like "I have to finish this scene" or "I have to finish this draft by x-date", instead of just spending a certain amount of time writing, regardless of how far I actually get. So I have decided to start focusing on the process, rather than the product. After all, the process really is the important part, because in the creative arts, often times the process is all you get.

I have blocked out a total of 10 hours this week for writing, including 2 for this blog, so you'll be seeing me again very soon!

It's the effort that matters

2011-07-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

I did a killer bike ride yesterday. While only 46 miles (no longer a big distance for me), it was incredibly hilly, climbing over 4100 feet. There is one particularly nasty hill that is a full mile long and very steep, as well as many other less-evil-but-still-tiring hills. It is the only ride in my repertoire that actually scares me. I have done it twice now -- I went 10 miles further this time than the last -- and neither time was entirely sure how I was going to make it. But I did.

My boyfriend doesn't find this route nearly so challenging. At one point in the latter part of the ride as I was huffing and puffing and struggling to barely go 6 miles an hour up a hill, I uttered something self-pitying and silly about how he must see me, how ridiculous I must look struggling so hard to do something that is so easy for him. And he said: "I see someone trying very hard to do something. And I think that's great. It's the effort that matters. Which do you respect more in your students? Someone who is a natural at singing or someone who really works hard at it?" Touche.

I wish I knew why that is so easy for me to see and respect in other people, but not in myself. I don't give myself credit for how hard I try at something unless I actually succeed at it. Because if I don't succeed, then clearly I have not tried hard enough, right? Well, maybe not. There are so many other factors that come into play (not the least of which is how one actually defines success). Maybe my body can only take me so far in cycling, maybe I just never quite got the lucky break as a singer.

I am not currently succeeding at the goal I set for myself in June to write in this blog three times a week. I seem to be in a mode right now where my priority is my body. I am spending a lot of time on my cycling, I have added yoga into my routine as a counter balance to that (for which my muscles are very grateful), I have decided to lower my Weight Watchers goal weight by a few pounds. All of that takes more hours in the week and more mental focus, which is leaving me less time and mental energy for writing. But I haven't given it up entirely, I am still trying.

I can't hear the word "trying" and not think of yoda's "do or do not, there is no try". Well, in this case, I'm going to count the trying as the doing. I am writing, just not as much as I would like; I am riding, just not as fast or as far as I would like, yet. I'm pretty confident I'll get there, but either way, I am putting in the effort.

See you again soon, I hope, even if not quite three times a week.

Spinning wheels

2011-06-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

In the creative arts, where almost all measures of improvement and success are subjective and external (e.g. someone else hiring you for a role or choosing to produce your play), it is easy sometimes to feel like all the hard work you are doing to improve your craft and get ahead is getting you nowhere, that you are just spinning your wheels.

I literally spun my wheels yesterday, pedaling my bicycle for 5 hours and 30 minutes, traveling 69 miles. This was the mileage I needed to hit for June as part of my training regimen to build up to a 100 mile ride this September. In addition to gradually increasing my distances (each month I need to add at least 10 miles to the longest ride I do), I've also been working to increase my speed and hill strength. This I gauge by how fast I can do laps in Central Park (I've so far cut my time by about 5 minutes a lap from last year). This is one of the things I love about cycling - there are quantifiable ways to measure how much you are growing and improving, numbers you can look at and say "hey, I did that!"

But despite looking at all those numbers and seeing that I can go longer and harder and faster, I haven't really felt like I've been improving. The hills in Central Park still feel incredibly laborious. I still hate riding into the wind. I still feel incredibly slow next to my boyfriend (who has a bit of an advantage on me since he has been riding seriously pretty much since he could walk). Because the change is gradual, it isn't as noticeable.

But yesterday-- yesterday was one of those moments when suddenly the change was palpable. This was the longest, hardest ride I've done to date (other riders referred to the numerous hills as "brutal"), and yet it was the easiest long ride I've ever done. I had no stressful up-hill climbs where I was cursing and grunting the entire way, nor any complete blood-sugar meltdowns that cause me to crash both physically and emotionally (I have finally learned how to fuel myself for this kind of exercise). In short, this was the most funI have had on a long distance ride. Who cares about the numbers in terms of miles, elevation, average speed, calories burned, I felt great. And that is how I now know in my gut, regardless of what the numbers were saying, that I truly have improved.

So how do we apply this to the arts? Without the equivalent of a bicycle computer that tells us our average speed or how many miles we've done, how do we know we are growing as artists? The one measure we have - other people hiring us or producing our works - is so subjective and elusive as to be almost meaningless in day-to-day life, especially given how little (unfortunately) it can have to do with actual talent and skill.

I say, go for the joy. We do the arts, after all, because we enjoy it (and if we don't then we should get the hell out). I say you will know you are improving when you enjoy it more, because the better you get at your chosen pursuit, the more facile you will be with your craft, and thus more able to actually do the things you want to be able to do. To shoot only for the "job", or only for the distance or speed, is to miss the experience part of the process.

I write because I love the process of discovering a character's story. I love bringing actors in to the sphere to bring my characters to life. I love hearing what a director thinks and can bring out of my work. I love hearing an audience, how ever large or small, react to my words. While I sincerely hope to have plays produced and win a Tony someday - just as I am shooting for that 100 miles in September - I have learned the hard lesson that to do something only for that goal is absurd. The 100 miles is meaningful only if I'm having fun doing it. That's not to say I won't still hate the hills sometimes, or hate it when I am trying to write and can't seem to find the right line, but I have promised myself that I will only continue to write as long as it is bringing me joy in the balance.

For all of you who are attempting a career of some sort in the arts, I challenge you to go for the joy. If that joy also comes with lots of jobs and productions and external measures of success, that is fantastic. But if it doesn't, at least you will know you haven't just been spinning your wheels.

The art of want

2011-06-21T10:23:00.000-04:00

I saw All's Well That Ends Well at Shakespeare in the Park last night. It is really quite a lovely production, excellently directed and with some very strong actors (including John Cullum, who just has to be in my play Breaking Pairs someday). It is probably one of the more simplistic plots of the Shakespeare canon, with the characters not nearly as complicated and/or intriguing as say in Midsummer Night's Dream or Macbeth. And yet is has something that makes it live on, that makes it satisfying and enjoyable to watch: in pretty much every scene, it is very clear that each major character in that scene WANTS something, and they either get it or they don't by the end of the scene. Most of these little wants build up towards the major "want" of the play (Helena wants Bertram to love her); some of them are subplots (the soldiers' desire to humiliate Parolles, the "clown" of the play) -- but each of them is a little nugget that helps you follow what is going on and feel the satisfaction of something being completed. Characters who want something specific are far more interesting to watch than characters who don't (or who might but it is not clear). I never noticed this before about Shakespeare, but now that I have, I would not be at all surprised to find this true of all of his popular plays. I am sure that has a lot to do with why they are still done hundreds of years later and the stories retold over and over.

The presence of a character's want (or "action", as it is often referred to in theater) is something I have been noticing a lot lately. Or rather, its absence. I have seen a lot of theater in the last couple of weeks, from readings of brand new plays to small-scale productions of existing plays to short plays to Shakespeare, and every time one of them leaves me unsatisfied I notice the same reason: I am watching the play and not engaged and not caring about the characters because I don't know what they want from each other. I don't really care about watching two characters talking about global politics -- as interesting as that conversation might be -- if I don't know what they are trying to get from each other by having that conversation. It seems like such a simple thing, really, to set up what your characters want and have them fight for it during the scene, but yet it isn't always so easy to make it happen as a writer. I have been guilty myself of not being clear on this, for sure, though I always strive for it. But I honestly think a lot of current writers aren't even aware of this and thus aren't striving for it.

This is a very traditional view of theater I have, and I am sure many people would say it is old-fashioned and that there are great new forms of experimental theater that don't require this basic building block. I say have at it, to those people, if they enjoy that kind of theater. Personally, I don't. Or very rarely. Even Waiting for Godot -- which is supposed to be a play that breaks all these conventions because "nothing happens" -- has a very, very strong want at its core: they want to see Godot.

My dramaturge pointed out this problem -- the lack of clear action -- with the first scene of my recent rewrite of my play, and I am especially eager now to go back and fix it. Because I do honestly believe that this is what makes theater compelling to watch. After all, isn't that so much of what life is? Don't we as people always want something, even if it is as simple as "I want to eat ice cream"? There can be a whole little drama in that moment, one of internal conflict if you are watching your weight or lactose intolerant so perhaps ice cream isn't the best choice, or external conflict if the ice cream you want is currently being consumed by someone else who wants that ice cream as much or more than you do.

Damn it, now I want ice cream. But it's only 10am and I already over-indulged last night on cheese.... Will I have it? Stay tuned to find out.

Battle with Battlestar

2011-06-16T16:39:00.000-04:00

A recent struggle between my contentment dame and my ambition brat distilled itself down to one simple question:

"Do I want to watch more Battlestar Galactica or take a writing class?"

When worded that way, a seemingly dramatic dilemma -- swirling with weighty questions like "what kind of life do I want to be living?", "how much I want to be pushing myself?", "how much do I allow myself to relax?", "do I really want to be pursuing a writing career?" -- suddenly had a very clear answer. Of course I want to be the person who would chose taking a writing class over watching BSG.

That said, Battlestar Galactica is an amazing show, honestly one of the best things I've seen on television (ranking up there with Buffy and Breaking Bad for my favorite series ever). I only just discovered it, and have already managed to devour the entire first two seasons. It feels a little like a drug - pulling me, calling me, teasing me with "what happens next?" And thanks to Netflix "watch instantly", I can have a hit any time I want. So when trying to answer the question of whether or not to leave my time more unstructured this summer, I looked at how I've been spending my free time lately and feared that I wouldn't use it all to rewrite my play, to research the next play I want to write, to write some short plays, to start writing my blog again. Nope. If recent past was indicator of future, I was going to use too much of it watching BSG.

Now, there is nothing wrong with a little television now and then. We all need a little brain candy sometimes. But I've discovered that I don't do so well when I have free time. The busier I am, the more stuff I manage to squeeze in. While I manage to accomplish a hell of a lot that way, the trade off is that I can end up incredibly stressed and sleep-deprived. But now that my work life is streamlined down to just one job that requires significantly fewer (but more intense) hours, I am sincerely hoping I can actually strike that magical, beautiful balance between getting things done and remaining (mostly) sane.

So thus begins a new phase in the continuing growth and development of Natalie Wilson, playwright/voice teacher. After allowing myself several months of slowing down and demanding less of myself creatively, I am recommitting to my writing and to using my time more productively. Last week I began writing in my morning pages journal every day again (which is already making a huge difference in my outlook). I started a new writing class last night, Short Forms with Sheri Wilner at ESPA Primary Stages. I am, obviously, writing in my blog again (hello!), with a goal of 3 posts per week. I am tracking my time this week to see how I'm spending it (ala 168 Hours, great book if you aren't familiar) and am determined to be able to fit in 20 hours of writing per week (including class time) as well as the 15 hours of bike riding per week I have been doing. I know the time is there if I just choose to use it well.

But don't worry, BSG, I haven't given you up for good. It's just going to take me a little longer to get through all of you. Which means I'll actually get to enjoy you for that much longer.

It feels good to be back.

Of Contentment and Ambition

2011-04-23T08:56:00.000-04:00

My, my how time flies when you are having fun. And fun I have been having, in small and big doses. My absence from my blog has, for once, not been due to stress. I've just been doing other things with my life: teaching, exercising, spending time with my boyfriend and family, traveling with my bestest friend to Madrid. (Why Madrid? Just 'cause). It's been grand.

I realized recently that I am truly content for the first time. Ever. In my whole 39 years. The transition I made to teaching voice full-time out of my own studio has brought me a level of satisfaction and joy that I couldn't have anticipated. While I did spend several years in San Francisco working just as a teacher, then it was just a way to make some money as I was doggedly pursuing my opera career; I didn't look on it as my career. I always looked forward to the day when I could stop teaching. Now, it is my career, and I feel incredibly blessed and grateful to live such a life.

Turns out, though, that contentment seems to dull the fire of ambition a bit. I'm not as driven to write all the time now, perhaps because I'm not sitting at a desk 20-30 hours a week feeling my soul drain out of me. I'm getting creative satisfaction from working with my students. I don't have a pressing need for more; I don't have to figure out a way to make money as a writer because I'm actually making money in a way that makes me happy. Do I still want to win a Tony? Absolutely. Am I going to kill myself to try to make that happen? Absolutely not. Which means I probably won't, but I'm ok with that. Mostly.

The good news is, through the power of the magical self-imposed deadline, I have rediscovered the joy of my play and am frantically finishing the full-scale rewrite in time for a small table read next Friday. I've been getting up at 7am to write before teaching, and choosing writing over exercise some days. I am so excited about where it is going and how it is all coming together. Yesterday as I was looking for a new Angie (my other actresses weren't available), I was reminded of how much I adore the process of bringing together actors and making things happen. So I'm definitely not done as a writer, I'm just probably going to move a bit more slowly.

For once, I actually think I'm ok with that.

Crossing a great divide

2011-02-23T21:29:00.002-05:00

The racial divide, that is. I'll explain.

This week's assignment for my Libretto 1 class at ESPA is to write a musical scene incorporating a pop song, where the characters sing the song as part of the story (jukebox musical style, think "Mama Mia" or "Jersey Boys"). She gave us a list of songs to chose from. Given that I never listen to pop music, the only song on the list I was familiar with was Cee Lo Green's F*ck You. I happen to think that is a great song, and really wanted to use it, but didn't think I could -- how can lily-white me write a scene with black characters? But after listening to all the other songs on the list, I really couldn't stand any of them, and also decided that, heck, this is just an assignment for class. Class is the perfect place to stretch myself and go outside my comfort zone. So I decided to try.

You may be wondering why I feel that a scene incorporating that song has to use black characters. It's not because Cee Lo Green is black, it's because the song contains a certain "n" word that white people don't say unless they are the sort who like to wear pointy white hats. That's a line I certainly am not interested in trying to cross.

But here's the thing. Writing for black characters makes me nervous. I'm afraid of coming off as racist. (Heck, I feel nervous even writing this blog post, that just expressing the fact that I feel nervous writing black characters sounds racist.) Will it seem racist if my characters fall into any black stereotypes? When there is a line like "I lie and beg and cheat and steal" in the song, is it ok to have a character who tried to steal something to impress his girlfriend? Can I use black slang (I kinda figure any characters using that "n" word would probably also use other slang terms)? Or if I try so hard to stay away from any stereotypes that my characters don't seem black at all, will that be it's own kind of racism because I'm denying the black experience?

(I feel a compulsion to try to defend why I am not racist, but to avoid the "some of my best friends are black people" cliche, I will refrain and hope that I am not misinterpreted.)

My discomfort is not only about appearing racist; this is also just something that is outside the realm of my personal experience (and it is always easiest to write what you know). If I were writing something for mass consumption with black characters (as is the case with the full musical I want to write), I would certainly have someone on my creative team who could help authenticate those characters. But for now, I will just have to hope my class of white women and one Asian man aren't offended, or that at least it can spark an interesting conversation.

I wish it were easier to have an honest, open dialogue about black-white race issues in this country. I wonder how long it will be before we get there.

Writing lyrics is HARD

2011-02-19T13:49:00.000-05:00

This week I began my libretto writing class at Primary Stages ESPA. Why? Why aren't I just focusing on the rewrite of BREAKING PAIRS? Why dive into a whole new realm? (I keep asking myself these questions). The main reason is this: musical theater is the art form that has most excited my passions ever since I saw Patti LuPone perform Evita when I was 7 years old. As a musician, a singer, and now a writer, it would seem a shame not to try my hand at this most challenging and yet ultimately transcendent art form where I can put all of those skills to use. I also have an idea for a musical which I think is a pretty great one, but don't really have any idea how to begin writing it. So, here I am, studying the basics of writing a libretto with Kait Kerrigan, a woman who has already (at age 30) reached the highly enviable position of making her living as a musical book and lyric writer.

We had an assignment before the class even began, to turn something we had previously written into a musical scene (complete with lyrics, if possible). The only lyrics I had ever written before were a few lines of parody lyrics for my cabaret shows. I was more than a little intimidated, but I wanted to give it a try. After all, the point was for the teacher to see where we were starting from, so who cares if it sucked?

While the lyrics were no great shakes, the scene didn't completely suck. I knew a few things instinctively -- there is a lot less talking in musicals than in plays, so I had to severely condense the dialogue (a great exercise in economy of language, which is important in playwriting too). Also, the most impassioned, important parts of the scene need to go into the song -- after all, whatever they are singing about has to be important enough that merely saying it didn't suffice. This is an even more extreme exercise in economy of language, as you have to get at the crux of what the character wants/feels in just a few short lines, while following a rhythmic structure and (ideally) making them rhyme. I didn't get to the rhyming part yet, but I did manage to keep the lyrics in a rhythmic structure, thanks to the insipid little tune that popped into my head as I began writing them. (Next time, I will try what was apparently Oscar Hammerstein's trick: using the tune of an existing song as the structure for a new set of lyrics, just not telling the composer what that song was. At least then I'd have an interesting song in my head.)

It was much, much harder and took much longer to put the characters' thoughts into lyric form, and I'm not sure I'm great at it. But while I did find it very frustrating, I also found it kind of fun -- I like working within constraints; I think it can foster more creativity when you have to make something work within a given set of parameters rather than just being free to do whatever. Perhaps as I learn more about this, I'll get better at it so I can enjoy it more.

We shall see where this takes me. I just hope I can organize my time such that I can complete the homework for this class and get my rewrite of my play done by the end of April. Wish me luck!

Short Form vs Long Form

2011-02-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

When I first started my full-length play last year, I was a little nervous about the prospect of writing in long form. All the plays I'd written thus far had been 10-page shorts for my play-writing class; a form I had grown to know and understand pretty well. The idea of writing something 10 times that long was more than a little daunting. But I embraced it and grew to love having the time to develop the characters and to let their backstories creep in, little by little, throughout the scenes.

This week when I undertook a 10-page writing assignment to submit for the new "Detention" series at ESPA, I discovered that I have gotten so used to having time to explore and develop characters, that I was having trouble getting to the real action of the scene in just 10 pages. I mean, I was just barely introducing who these people are! And they don't even really know themselves yet! I wrote too many pages, and had to cut out a lot of things that I really liked, but that only showed character and didn't move the story ahead. In the end, I think I was able to condense most of what I wanted into the 10 pages, by careful choosing words and letting go of things that were fun but not integral. If I had another week, I would streamline it even more, but alas it was due at noon today so I had to submit it as is.

This process has made me realize that I'd like to get back to the short play form -- I think it is a very important writing exercise, to get to the crux of the conflict instantly, to be able to reveal who your characters are in as few words as possible. Plus there are countless places to submit short plays to for festivals and such, and I feel I'm a much stronger writer now than I was a year ago. I need some new material so I can take advantage of some of those opportunities.

And thus I add another goal to my list for the year: to write 4 new short plays this year (one per season). Now I just need some subject matter....

"Wonderful"

2011-02-03T23:21:00.000-05:00

I just had one of those moments: one of those moments when I realized how incredibly wonderful my life is.

This evening sent out an email blast to my mailing list about all the various events I have coming up in February, including an all-new kind of performance for me on an electronic music concert, two different singing classes I'm teaching, and my new writing venture with my upcoming libretto-writing class at Primary Stages ESPA. Within less than five minutes, two people had emailed me back, one saying:

"Congratulations! You sound wonderful"

and the other

"I think you are wonderful."

This coincidence made me pause and go back and re-read my email. Just glancing at it, I noticed the three section headings: performing, teaching and writing. And I realized, my entire life is in the arts. I may not be famous, I may not be making my living writing or performing, but I am living my life as an artist, completely. I'm getting to use all the artistic sides of myself, my teaching, my singing, and my writing -- how incredibly wonderful is that?

If you'd like to share with me in any of these aspects, please come to my performance next Tues the 8th at the Parkside, or check out my free singing seminar on the 16th, or keep reading my blog (and pass it on to your friends) to hear about my writing ventures. Thank you for being part of this journey -- it's truly wonderful to share it with you.

Unexpected bright spot

2011-01-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

So here I was after my demon battle last week, resolute but sad to not submit my play to this reading festival for which I'd been given a personal invitation from the producer. Just to do a dummy check about my instincts on this, I emailed my director and asked if he thought it was worth submitting the script in its current incarnation, or if I was right to think I shouldn't enter it since I know it needs some work. His reply was not at all what I expected:

"Yes, I would send the play. It's a great play and a work in progress."

I guess I had gotten so caught up in processing all the feedback after the reading and subsequently so focused on all the things that need to be fixed, that I forgot that at its core it's a great play. And one of the main purposes of reading series is to help develop works in progress. So, even though I am not going to get a rewrite done, I still get to submit my play. Whether or not she selects it, the producer will see that I can write. And that can only be a good thing.

Funny, is that whistling I hear? I turn and see my demon strolling off towards his favorite demon-watering hole, whistling a jaunty tune to himself. Even he seems content with this turn of events.

Never fear, I'm sure he'll be back to hound me soon enough.

Playwriting meets Buffy (or, my battle with a demon)

2011-01-27T00:05:00.004-05:00

Sunday evening, a mere few hours after I wrote my last blog post, I battled a demon. It wasn't nearly as glamorous and exciting a showdown as those between Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) and Spike (the Vampire), but my relationship with my demon does have some parallels: he appeared early on in my development and keeps coming back, over and over again; we fight viciously most every time we meet, though now and then in a fit of uncontrolled passion we have a good roll in the hay instead. But either way we both always walk away a little battered and bruised, and I can never seem to actually kill him (or him me).

My demon isn't nearly as sexy as Spike, though he can be very alluring. He makes promises of success, fame, fortune, untold doors opening, endless possibilities that might come within my reach if I would only take his hand and tango. But I know this demon and I know the toll he almost always exacts from me if I follow, and thus I must fight him. Again. And again. And again.

Unrealistic expectations.

I had set myself a very, very ambitious goal before the new year of finishing a rewrite of my play by Feb 15th. (I was invited by a producer to submit my play for a reading series she is curating, and that is the due date.) My original plan was to start that immediately after the new year, which would have given me 6 weeks to do it. Highly highly ambitious, but not actually impossible. I was on track -- I met with my playwriting coach on January 3rd, walked away with a whole new vision for how to address the main problem with the play, and was ready to dive in.

But then... life happened.   Between work I had to do for my voice studio and being horribly sick, by the time I was ready to start writing, I was faced with a ludicrously unrealistic deadline of completing a full-scale rewrite in just three weeks. Rather than feeling motivated to get cracking, I found myself resisting writing at all. I was at a standstill, neither moving forward nor content with taking a break. It was time for a showdown between me and my expectations. It went a little something like this.

Me: It's just not possible. There is no way I can finish a rewrite in just 3 weeks.

Demon: Of course it's possible, if you just devote every waking minute and many of those minutes you waste sleeping to it. What happened to the woman who got up at 6 am to write before going to the gym before going to work?

Me: That woman burned herself out pretty badly -- remember how sick I've been for the last few weeks? That's what happens when I go long stretches -- like a whole YEAR -- without enough sleep. I can't do that again, at least not yet. I'm still recovering.

Demon: You're lazy. You clearly don't want this.

Me: Yes I do. I just have other things I want too, like--

Demon: If you really wanted this, you wouldn't be wasting time on other things. This is a big producer, she likes you for some strange reason, she is interested in your work, how can you possibly miss this opportunity to send her your play?

Me: Even if I do what you say and I somehow manage to finish a draft, I won't have time to hear it out loud to make sure it really works; to polish it and make sure I'm sending her something good. I don't want to ruin this opportunity by sending her something that isn't ready.

Demon: Now you're just making excuses.

Me: No I'm not! Part of being professional in this business is knowing when your work is ready to be seen. She'll respect that and I'm sure there will be another chance.

Then my demon leans in close and whispers in my ear, his fangs piercing the skin just above my jugular:

Demon: You're sure, are you? What if this is your one shot? What if this was the universe opening a magic door for you that you were supposed to walk through, and if you don't, it will close forever and you will never get to be a real playwright and you won't even know what your life could have been if you had only--

Me: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!

Because at this point my demon has reduced me to a self-deprecating, depressed, pathetic puddle of inadequacy, "shut up" is about the sharpest rebuttal I can come up with. He's a little startled by my sudden adolescent outburst, and steps back, long enough for me to get behind a barrier and regroup. I hold a cloth to my neck to staunch the blood flow, gather what little bit of strength I have left, and look him wearily in the eyes.

Me: Then I guess that's just the chance I'm going to have to take. I'm only human, unlike you, and there is only so much I can do.

I walk away, wounded, weary, and not entirely sure even I believe myself. I look back over my shoulder and see the demon following me, but he keeps his distance. He looks a little dejected himself -- perhaps he doesn't like it when I remind him he's not human. Or maybe he just feels sorry for me.

With the demon temporarily off my back, I was actually able to face the blank page without a well of anxiety filling within me that I'd never finish in time. Thus it was that Sunday night and Monday, I completed an outline of the next draft of my play, and sent it off to my coach for feedback. I like some of the discoveries I made, and I think the rewrite will actually flow pretty quickly once I begin writing it. I'm also left with room now for seizing other opportunities, like writing a 10-page play incorporating a Grimm Fairy Tale for a cooperative project at my new writing school, ESPA. If selected, I'll get to work with actors and directors from the school, and my writing will actually be seen by people at a real theater company. I've already chosen a fairy tale, have the 4 characters named and pictured in my head and have a basic idea of the outline of the story. I'm really looking forward to writing something completely new for a bit.

I slyly pick up a rock and quickly turn and hurl it at my demon. See? There will be other opportunities.

The demon catches the rock. You haven't been selected yet. Heck, you haven't even written it yet.

And we both trudge on into the night.

Human again

2011-01-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

After 2 solid weeks of being sick, I finally feel like myself today. My boyfriend and I were able to go out to eat last night, and I even put on makeup, fixed my hair and dressed in something other than jeans. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to want to do that. Then, for the first time since I got sick, I was able to sleep through the night without medication and without being propped up on a princess-and-the-pea-worthy stack of pillows. So, today I hope that, along with feeling like myself again physically, I will also feel like myself again motivationally, and can get my ass to work on my rewrite.

First it's off to the gym (again for the first time in awhile) and then to the grocery store to pick up some provisions for the week. My new self-imposed schedule is to use Sundays as my day off and errand day, so that Mondays can be entirely devoted to writing without having to leave the house for anything. I think it's important to structure my own time now that less structure is imposed from the outside. So that's my plan. I'll report back after tomorrow and let you know how it's working for me.

Missing: Drive, maniacal. Last seen 11-2-2010 in the vicinity of my brain.

2011-01-17T17:33:00.000-05:00

Well hello, blog. Sorry I haven't stopped by in awhile. I've been a little preoccupied settling into my new self-employed life, and dealing with a whopper of a respiratory infection the last week and a half. My immune system apparently decided to relax a bit along with the rest of me -- and I guess I can't really blame it. I managed to make it through most of the last insane year without really getting sick, for which I am very grateful. Though I'm ready to be better now. Any day now. Yes, please.

I am looking at 2011 and wondering what is in store for me. I don't feel nearly as focused as I did at this point last year, when I had just begun this project and was blogging almost every day. But I do have some goals for 2011, and since I find that publicly stating goals helps me stick to them, here there are:

finish a rewrite of Breaking Pairs by Feb 15th (if possible!)
grow my studio by at least 5 more regular students
write one or two new short plays to submit to festivals
explore the idea I have for a musical
train for and complete a 100 mile bike ride next fall

I've set a few things in motion already: I met with my playwriting coach and I have a clear idea of where I want to go with my rewrite; I have workshops and free seminars scheduled for my voice studio; I've signed up for a Libretto 1 class at Primary Stages to help teach me how to get started on writing the book for a musical; I applied to two artist residencies for the summer; I'm exercising regularly (when I'm not sick) to keep in shape until the weather warms up enough to bike again. So I know I'm on the right track. And yet....

Where is my drive? That crazy the drive I felt all last year, the drive that got me out of bed at 6am to write for an hour before going to work, that kept me up til 1 or 2 am writing many nights, that wouldn't let me turn on something on netflix instead of being creative. It, like my immune system, seems to have gone on vacation. I miss it. I want it back. My boyfriend assures me I haven't lost it, that I'm still just recovering from the craziness of last year, that I'm still exhaling from holding my breath for so long. I sincerely hope he's right. Otherwise I'm going to find myself in the position of having to figure out how to do the thing that so many people assume I do all the time: kick my own ass. But the reality is, I rarely have to kick my own ass. It's historically a much bigger challenge for me to slow down than it is for me to gear up.

So, here I go. I begin with this humble blog post, and hope to slowly ramp up to full drive-mode over the next few days as I finally recover from this stupid cold. I'll keep you posted.

2010: my year

2010-12-31T17:54:00.000-05:00

On the TV and radio, from friends and family, I keep hearing the same sentiment about this New Year's: may 2011 be a hell of a lot better than 2010.

I understand why -- this was a hard year in many ways. Many people are still struggling financially, with unemployment and foreclosures. There were also a lot of cataclysmic disasters, both natural (Haiti) and human-caused (oil spill). Politics seemed to reach new heights of absurdity (the likes of Christine O'Donnell and Carl Palodino) and the chasm between left and right grew deeper than ever. Unfairness abounds -- Wall Street is now more profitable than ever after having all-but-destroyed our economy, and yet few new jobs are coming with those profits. So I can definitely see why people are glad to say goodbye to 2010.

But for me personally, it's quite possible that I will look back on 2010 as one of the most notable years of my life.

Always a goal-setter, I outdid myself this year not only in the setting of goals, but in the attaining of them. For those of you who've been reading my blog, little of this is news. Creatively, I set out to write a play, and not only did that, but had a public reading of it with top Broadway talent (and raised almost $4000 to make that happen). Of all of my creative endeavors so far, this is by far the most monumental thing I have ever done.

I also set a career goal of being able to quit my office job and just teach full-time by the end of 2010. I started off the year working 3 jobs and now I can proudly (and a little nervously) say I am entirely self-employed. A major life goal accomplished.

About half-way through the year I set a smaller personal goal for myself: to participate in my first-ever organized athletic event (a 50-mile bike ride). I am proud of this because it represents a significant change for me: though I've always been active, exercise has historically been the thing to get sacrificed when there wasn't enough time. But with my boyfriend's help and inspiration, I managed to squeeze that in. Not only does this bring me joy, it also helps keep me healthy -- which I desperately need to be to accomplish all the other things I want to do!

On a more personal note, after several years of relationship drama worthy of an opera plot, 2010 found in a calm, supportive, stabilizing, delightful, and loving partnership with my best-boyfriend-ever. We inspire each other, we support each other, we challenge each other, we make each other better people and we help each other reach our goals. I don't know if I can say that I would never have accomplished my goals without him, but it sure as hell would have been harder and even if I had managed to, I certainly would have been far less sane. I'm glad I have finally recognized that theater (and my own crazy brain) give me all the drama I could ever want or need -- I don't need it in my relationships too.

I am immensely grateful for all that I have in my life, and for this incredible year of growth and accomplishment. To feel as if I am starting anew creatively, career-wise, and personally at age 38, is remarkable and encouraging: to know that there are always other options, different paths to be taken if you just keep looking and follow your truest desires. That makes me very hopeful for my future, wherever it might lead me.

So, thank you 2010, I will always remember you fondly. And for those of you to whom 2010 wasn't so kind, I wish you a 2011 filled with growth, change, accomplishment and, most importantly, joy.

The other side of "if only"

2010-12-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

Today is a monumental day: my last day as someone else's employee. I have been an executive assistant at this little consulting firm for the last 5 and a half years -- longer than I have been at any other job. As far as office jobs go, it was the best I have had and the best I could ask for. Nonetheless, it was still a "job" and not a career. I realized after my divorce that I didn't want to just be working "jobs" anymore -- things to pay the bills while I was biding my time to get famous and "make it" as a artist. I wanted to make my money doing something I was trained to do, something I loved and that brought me fulfillment. The thing I love most - and am best at -- other than performing and writing is teaching. As of 1:30pm this afternoon, I am proud to say that I am now entirely self-employed as a voice teacher.

I am about to finally, finally see the other side of if only. I have spent so many years of my life waiting, hoping, longing, telling myself if only I were hired at the Met; if only I were famous, if only I could make my living solely as an artist, then my life would truly really begin. In the last two years, the narrative changed a little: if only I didn't have to work my office job, if only I could have more time to write, if only I could just teach to make my money, then I could live the kind of life I want, no longer ruled by my time trifecta where I must sacrifice either my writing, exercise or sleep on any given day. Suddenly, after today, I will be living that life. I will actually have 2-day weekends again, for the first time in 2 years. I will be able to get more than 6 hours sleep a night. I will be able to exercise and write. I'll have time to go grocery shopping and do my laundry. I can hardly believe it is really happening.

It is also more than a little bit scary -- the freedom of being completely self-employed is accompanied by the vagaries of students canceling, going on vacation, or quitting, plus my own needs for time off (as I felt keenly last week when I had to cancel a day of students because I was so sick). Taking a sick day or a vacation takes on a whole new meaning when you know exactly how much it costs you. I'm learning to set aside money, to plan, to create my own vacation/sick day/retirement fund, but it isn't easy. And there is no safety net. I have no one to rely on but me.

As scared as I am sometimes, I am immensely proud of myself for taking this step. At the beginning of this year, I set out two goals for myself: to write a play in 9 months, and to build my studio to the point where I could quit my office job. Amazingly, I accomplished both of these goals. After years of feeling like my fate was always in someone else's hands (those who might hire me as a singer), I finally, finally feel like the author of my own story. Having embraced creating my own art for the first time in my life, it feels eerily appropriate that I am now also creating my own life.

Productivity Paucity

2010-12-09T19:52:00.000-05:00

I set aside the evening last night, completely free of distractions of friends, boyfriend, and other obligations, to get some work done. To write a blog post (I still owe 3 blog-by-request topics), to upload photos from the reading to the Breaking Pairs website, to begin gathering materials for my applications to some summer writing residencies, to update some script edits. Exactly how much did I get done?

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I began a topic-by-request blog post, but I just couldn't seem to write. Everything I wrote seemed clumsy, boring. The other tasks all seemed too long and involved to begin. I just could not seem to motivate myself to get anything done, other than cooking myself a nice, healthy dinner and watching more episodes of Lie to Me on Netflix (my current Netflix addition, though I fear I may be tiring of it and in need of another one... suggestions?).

Some of you may be thinking something along the lines of "gee, that sounds like me most days". I know and love many people who struggle constantly with motivating themselves to get things done. But this rarely happens to me. It is far more common for me to have to talk myself down from continuing to work, or to convince myself that it's ok to take some down-time to relax and watch something mindless. When I get asked -- as I often do -- if I can teach someone how to stay focused and get stuff done, I honestly don't know what to say. Because I rarely have to kick my own butt. My main thought is a Nike slogan -- just do it. I'm used to struggling to decide which thing I will do, not with trying to get myself to do anything. So I was at a complete loss last night, not having many tools for how to get myself out of my funk and into working.

I guess it's understandable -- I was working at such an insane, feverish pace for the first 10 months of the year that it shouldn't be surprising to me that I'm a little worn out and in need of some time to reset. My boyfriend assures me that my productivity isn't gone forever, it's just on a little bit of a hiatus. I'm sure he's right.

But for now, forgive me for the scarcity of my blog posts -- I had really hoped to pick them back up again with more consistency. But I think that will have to wait until the new year, when I am once and for all free of my office job and will have an extra 20 hours a week to get stuff done.

Anyone want to wager how long before those 20 hours are scheduled right back up again?

for Roger: Vera interviews her creator

2010-12-01T10:40:00.001-05:00

One of the perks I offered for contributing to my play shower was a blog post on a topic of the donor's choice. A creative request came in from Roger in Switzerland, a "big brother" to my play and the sponsor of the character of Vera. He wanted to interview me in the voice of Vera, and supplied me with the following questions:

Where do I come from? Have I been inspired by a real person that you know, do I represent a personality trait of yourself or am I just a figment of your imagination?

You are a figment of my imagination. You bear my grandmother's name, but you are nothing like her. You are the complete opposite of Frank -- your bubbly, nosey, super-talkative perkiness was inspired by needing a foil for Frank's taciturn, stubborn curmudgeonliness.

Have worked out backgrounds for all your characters? And if yes, what does mine look like?

Backgrounds emerged for my characters as I needed them. I have not fleshed out an entire life story for you from childhood, but I do know that you married young, had only one child (though you wanted more) and lost him in WWII as a very young man. You yourself were not from a large family either, so you now find yourself alone since your husband died a few years ago. But you don't let all that loss stop you from reaching out to other people.

Have I been part of your play from the beginning or did you add my character later to liven up the narrative bring a fun and color to it?

You were there from the very first scene I wrote, long before I even knew I was going to turn this into a full-length play. I wrote the scene with you and Frank in the nursing home, watching Lawrence Welk and bickering over the remote, as an exercise for my playwriting class. You've come a long way, baby.

Why would a young thing like you write about getting old? Mind you, I know I bear it well, but I would anything to be your age again. That was so much more fun.

You must have been a riot when you were footloose and fancy free! I can just see you, dancing up a storm in your flapper dress, sneaking drinks and smokes, egging on your friends and the boys for just one more dance. But as to your question, honestly, I don't know why it is that I seem to tap into truths about what it feels like to age -- my mother asked me the same question, "how do you know how it feels to be you trapped inside an old worn out body?" I guess my empathy stretches far enough for me to be able to imagine that. I was also very close with my grandmother and my great aunt Rue before they passed, and perhaps I gleaned something from them.

Your boyfriend looks very handsome, do you think he would take me for a ride on his motorbike when we have our next free afternoon at the retirement home?

You bet! Nothing would please him more. He is great with passengers (in fact, he might be too cautious for your tastes!) He'll make you wear a helmet though, he's very strict about that.

I have loved working with you. So when you start working on your next play, you might consider writing a sequel or prequel focusing on my character. I think that would be just fabulous;)

I will keep that in mind. You are an awful lot of fun. Thank you for coming into my life.

A dia-blog on success vs. merit

2010-11-29T23:04:00.001-05:00

A blog post responding to a blog post. How very meta.

My friend Brian Rosen (a like-spirit: driven and multi-talented as a performer and creator) picked up on my post-partum depression post on his blog ("Music vs. Theater", what a thought-provoking title) where he writes insightfully about the distinction between success and merit:

"I think the trick for the emerging creative is to keep a rock solid wall between the concepts of merit and success. You need to be able to look at your output and see its merit without the coloration of success (or lack thereof). It’s the internal voice that defines your creative output, not the external. .... That’s the voice that needs to look at your work and say, “'Yeah. This is good. I need to make more of this.'"

(please read the whole post, there was too much for me to quote here).

To separate "merit" from "success", ah, but what a challenge that is! To recognize and believe in the merit of your own work irrespective of what the outside world has to say about it (as well as to see clearly when the merit is NOT there) -- is this a challenge unique to artists? Certainly an athlete has measurable goals - you know how fast you are or how far you can throw compared to someone else. Doctors know if they make patients feel better, business people know if they make a profit, carpenters know if the house stands on its own or not. Is there any other field where there is so often so little direct connection between merit and success? (I'm open to being corrected on this by the way, it's an honest question).

And certainly one must look at what others say about your work, to some degree. We've all known those artists/performers/writers who think they have this amazing talent, but they just... don't. I can think my play is great, but if no one wants to hear it, or if when they do hear it, no one responds to it, then I don't think I can really call it great. I do rely on what other people think - not to the exclusion of own instincts, but along with - because my goal is to create art that speaks to people, that touches people, that causes them to look at something in life a bit differently than they did before. To me, my instinctual feeling that my work has merit can only be validated by achieving that goal. Which I can't know unless I put it up in front of an audience and observe their response. How do I get my piece in front of an audience without some degree of commercial success? I can only do that so far as my resources allow me to produce my own works, which is in a very limited fashion.

So while I believe my writing has merit -- and I'm actually very critical and picky about my own work and will futz over a single line for hours til my inner voice tells me it's right -- those instincts are only validated when the work is in front of an audience. Most of the time my instincts are right, but sometimes they are wrong. I need at least some outside voices to be in accordance with my inside voice. For me, that's the rub.

Post-partum Depression

2010-11-27T17:29:00.000-05:00

Forgive the silence - these weeks since the reading have been a bit challenging for me. After such a long build-up -- almost 10 months of striving towards such a momentous goal -- I crashed and needed to step back from it for a bit. I also needed to devote some time to my friends and boyfriend, whom I had by necessity neglected during the weeks leading up to the reading.

I now find myself in a place that is all-too-frustratingly-familiar. Everyone is asking me what’s next? Have you heard anything? Is anything happening? To which the answers are I don’t know, no, and not yet. I did such a good job of getting people excited and (literally) invested in my play, that they all want to know what’s happening. It’s wonderful to have so much support and interest, but it is difficult to not be able to say, why, yes! I got a call from a Broadway producer yesterday and they will be mounting a production next fall! To have no answer, and no real idea of where things are going to go from here, is very painful. It is the reason why I stopped ever telling anyone about auditions I had as an opera singer, because it was just too painful to continually have to answer no when asked so have you heard anything yet?. Perhaps painful isn’t the right word -- it feels more like shame. I’m ashamed -- I feel like if I haven’t landed anything then it must not be that good. Or at least that is what people must think, because the only way to know in the arts that something you have done has merit is if other people give it a stamp of approval. Without the mark of commercial success on something, what you have created (or what talent you may possess) is all so much drivel. At least that is how I feel. I can say my play is good until I’m blue in the face, but without an external stamp of approval no one else has any reason to believe that.

Can I do this again? Can I get my hopes up and strive for yet another creative career that very well may never happen? Regardless of how good my play may or may not be, there are no guarantees that anything major will happen with it. I used to believe (hope?) that if you are good enough, and work hard enough and stay in the game long enough, you will make it. That the cream rises to the top. But I know now that it is not that simple of an equation. There are plenty of mediocre talents who somehow manage to rise to the top by their sheer dedication and the luck of what connections they have. There are many great talents who don’t succeed because they don’t have the stick-to-it-iveness to fight the fight. And then there are even people who have the talent and work their asses off and still don’t ever get the big break. I felt like one of those people as an opera singer. Am I prepared to risk being that person again as a playwright?

It is far too early to give up and I know that it is a long road for any work to get produced. When I started this journey, I was fully prepared that my first play might very well suck -- I mean, who writes a great first play? The fact that this actually seems to be good doesn’t change the fact that it will need more rewrites, that I will need to submit it to probably several dozen places and keep pitching it and slogging and working to get it out there. And just because a producer didn’t walk up to me after the reading to hand me a check doesn’t mean my play won’t get produced someday.

So now begins the less-fun part. The diaper changing, the late night feedings, the calming of the un-soothable infant. All the un-fun stuff of parenting. Do I have what it takes to see this through, to try to nurture this baby to grow up to its fullest potential? I know I do; motivation and drive are never in short supply for me. The real question for me is, do I want to. I think in another month or so, when I have a little distance and can look at things a little more objectively, the answer will clearly be yes. Because to let my play languish, to not even try, would be a bigger regret than trying and having nothing happen.

I just have to ask the world to be kind to me. To not look down upon me as a failure if nothing major happens. To tell me I’m still loved and respected for having tried, no matter what the outcome. Or maybe I need to learn to tell myself that.

A note of thanks!

2010-11-25T17:11:00.001-05:00

I wrote an entry earlier today summing up some of the post-partum depression I've been feeling lately, and was about to post it, but it somehow didn't feel right to be wallowing on this day of thanksgiving. There is so much I have to be grateful for, and how much better is it to focus on that? I will save the other post for another day.

In no particular order, I am grateful:

for the love and support of my family
to have been so warmly welcomed by my boyfriend's family
to have such a supportive, understanding, patient, and encouraging boyfriend
to be blessed not only with my actual family, but also with the most wonderful chosen family of friends
that my cat recently spontaneously decided to become a lap cat
that I have this incredible drive and need to be creative
for all the energy and motivation I have to get things done
for my studio full of talented and lovely voice students, and that it has grown enough for me to leave my office jo
for the new and improved version of me that emerged out of the darkest time of my life
that I discovered a love - and apparent talent - for playwriting
to live in the greatest city in the world
that, as screwed up as our politics are, I live in a country where at least I can listen to the likes of Rachel Maddow and John Stewart
that, as difficult as my money situation has felt at times, I have had the luxury of choosing work that allowed me to pursue my creative endeavors
for this amazing and wonderful internet that allows me a forum for expressing myself and connecting with people

And more, there is always more. What are you grateful for this year?

Post-partum

2010-11-07T12:12:00.000-05:00

I hardly know where to begin to tell you what happened on Tuesday - what it felt like to hear my play acted by six exquisite actors; to hear two full-house audiences laughing and sniffling in reaction to my words; to witness them riveted for two hours - no papers rustling, no shifting in their seats, no throat-clearing - as they watched the story of this family unfold. The most surreal moment of it all was the very beginning of each reading, as the actor reading the stage directions said "Breaking Pairs - by Natalie Wilson". Hearing my name as the author - I can scarcely wrap my head around that fact. My play isn't the only thing that was born on Tuesday: Natalie Wilson, playwright, was also born.

Something new and wonderful has happened to me through this journey - there is an authenticity that comes through in my writing that I always struggled to find in my singing. Randy, my last opera teacher and dear friend, told me he was very surprised by this play - surprised by its darkness and depth. He said he felt like he had been at a "major cultural event" (and this is a man who was part of some of the greatest operatic performances of the last century, so that means a lot, coming from him). He said he had no idea I had that in me - he had never seen it in my singing. I always knew it was there, ever since I was very young, and I have wanted nothing more than to find a way to share it with the world. But except for a few rare, exquisite moments, I felt like there was a wall between that part of me and the outside world that I couldn't break through. I finally have. In creating these other characters and telling their story, I have found me.

Everyone keeps asking me "what's next?". I don't know right now. (My director and I will be coming up with a game plan very soon). The response on Tuesday was overwhelmingly positive, both from my friends and from the industry people and producers who were present. I am fairly confident that someone is going to want to produce this, somehow or another. My director and I - and others - both feel it is worthy of a Broadway production with a star-studded cast, followed by an option for a film. That's what we're going to work towards. We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, this newly born playwright has to get back to actually writing - this play needs some siblings.

The night before

2010-11-01T23:17:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the official birth of my play. As of 9pm tomorrow night, my play will no longer just be my own -- it will be out in the world and beginning to take on a life of its own. Some of that has already begun -- my director has already shaped the work for this reading, and even the actors have had input during rehearsals for some small line changes and tweaks. Though I still maintain creative control, I am no longer the only influence over my play. And this will only get more and more true, the further along in this process we go.

I am remarkably calm at the moment -- I finished my to-do list about a half hour ago, so my metaphorical bag for the hospital is packed. To draw out this metaphor, I'll go into labor at 10:30am tomorrow, as the final rehearsals begin. The first delivery will be at 4pm, then another at 7pm (so am I having twins?). 75 people have signed up to bear witness. It will be a long, exhausting, exhilarating day -- which, unlike an actual birth, will be followed by a big party to celebrate. Thank god for that.

My emotions swing from excitement to anxiety, from hope to fear. My fears and anxieties are not from wondering how it will go (I have utter confidence in the amazing talent assembled), or even if people will like it (I am confident enough that the play is good) -- but whether or not the big producers who said they will come will actually come, and whether or not anything will actually happen after tomorrow. Will someone get excited about my play and join me and Steven in trying to get it produced? I never expected to get this far -- never expected this reading would turn into what it has -- and thus the specter of hope has reared its head. Hope never comes alone -- where there is hope, there is always the risk of disappointment. I've tried to protect myself from that somewhat since I gave up my opera career, having suffered so many years of hopes being dashed. Every time I thought something major might happen, it never did, and I grew weary of it. Yet here I am again, daring to hope. It's scary.

But it's also exciting. And, as I tell my voice students all the time, the physiological response to fear is exactly the same as excitement -- your heart races, your breathing gets shallow, your arms and legs tingle. When you feel that, it is up to you to decide whether you are about to get in a car accident, or if you are riding an exhilarating roller coaster.

So, I choose the roller coaster. Look out world, here comes my baby. I can't wait for you all to meet her.

New title, new cast, new website!

2010-10-25T13:07:00.001-04:00

So many things have been happening, I haven't had time to write. Do forgive me! But I'm sure you can imagine how hectic things are with the birth just around the corner on November 2nd. And so much is changing!

First of all, my play now has a new name: BREAKING PAIRS. I am quite enamored of this new title, and am glad that my director prompted me to change it. While All in the Shuffle was fitting for the play once you had read/heard it, out of context it connoted something very different -- something much lighter, or even a tap-dancing musical (like "shuffling off to Buffalo"). I searched and searched and searched for something that captured the essence of the play, indicated its weight, and was a card reference (this was very important to me). Thank you to google for turning up dictionaries of card-playing terms, which led me to BREAKING PAIRS. (To "break a pair" is to discard one of a pair, in the hopes of getting another card that will make something else work). This phrase was incredibly apropos of my play (I won't tell you why -- some things need to be a surprise). It landed with Steven, my director, and thus my play had a new name.

Then a few days ago, the cast finally came together! I can hardly believe the level of talent my director has been able to secure -- all save one are long-time veterans of Broadway (and one from London's West End). You can read all their bios on my spanking new webpage: www.breakingpairs.com!

All the details for the reading are on the webpage as well. I hope you'll take a moment to check it out. If you would like to attend the reading, please email info@breakingpairs.com and I will do my best to fit you in!

for Jessica: my "cathedral made of fire"

2010-10-19T11:16:00.003-04:00

One of the perks I offered for contributing to my play shower was a blog post on a topic of the donor's choice. The first such request to come in was from Jessica, who became a "big sister" to my play (and the sponsor of the character of Annette). She asked me to react to this comment in the NY Times by author Michael Cunningham:

"Many novelists ... will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent.... It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire.

But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it’s never the book that you’d hoped to write. ... It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire."

Jessica asked if I felt I had conveyed the play I wanted to write; if I ever felt frustrated at not being able to capture thoughts on the page. A very interesting question.

I suppose I was very fortunate in writing this play the way I did. I imagine many people who begin writing do so because they have had, "for months or years", some idea in their mind, some story burning inside them, screaming to be shared with the world. That is not how I began this play. I had no idea what story I was going to tell. I actually feared I didn't have a story to tell. I knew I wanted to write a play, but I didn't know what play. I started with a character I loved from a short play I had written, and I knew a little about his conflicts and struggles, but I didn't know how it was going to end until I was probably about two-thirds of the way into it. Even my playwriting teacher was a bit amazed by my writing process - how I would begin a scene with no idea where it was going to go, and with no idea of what the next scene was going to be. He always writes to an ending. That ending may change a dozen times or more along the way, but he is always heading towards something. I was writing blind. Many pages got thrown away in this process - probably nearly as many as remain in the play. But the only way I could discover the story was to keep writing, letting the characters talk to me, until I began to see the shape of their story.

So unlike Mr. Cunningham, I had no "cathedral made of fire" in my mind. I was even kind of prepared for the play to suck - I mean, shouldn't a first play suck? Who gets something like this right on the first try? It does happen (Crimes of the Heart was a first play, for example, and there are others), and it may even have happened here. At least there are some people who think so. But I barely dared hope for that.

Since I had no idea what to expect, and had no vision in my mind to live up to, my little play had nowhere to go but up. Since I basically had no expectations for it, it could only exceed them - not fall short. This was truly a blessing for me, I'm sure. And I'm sure that it will be difficult if not impossible to repeat, because now I have expectations. Will the next play I write be anywhere near as good as this one? Will it take me longer to write, or less time, since I have a little better idea of what I'm doing? Haven written something good the first time out, my next play will have a precious, prized older sibling to live up to - it will be the younger sibling always striving to achieve what the first born did.

I think I may have a way around this problem though. I have already conceived of my next big creative idea, and it isn't a play. It's a musical. Stay tuned.

Day 266: D Day

2010-10-08T22:57:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it. Day 266. The original projected due date for my play. And I did it. I wrote a play. And not only that, it's good.

This project may well be the furthest I have ever stretched myself. I never wrote creatively before a year and a half ago -- I was always a good writer of letters, reports, commentary, that sort of thing, but I had never sat down to attempt to tell a story. To make up a story, at that. To create an entire universe out of thin air - a family, a history - is something I really didn't know I was capable of doing. While I had successfully written a dozen or so short plays before attempting this full-length, telling a flash of a story in 10 minutes is very different from creating an arc over 2 hours. 104 pages! I've never written anything close to that long, not even my Master's thesis.

When I began this project on January 15, 2010, I may have fantasized that I would be where I am right now, but I certainly didn't expect it. To have completed 2 drafts, to have a play so strong that I have secured a director who is bringing in top notch talent in for the reading and inviting all of his industry contacts. To have already pitched my play to a number of producers, and to have several of them interested in reading it and/or attending the reading. To have raised over $3,500 from my community of friends, family, blog followers, theater lovers, and even some strangers in order to put on this reading at a caliber worthy of those producers' attention. I think I figured I would put on a reading with actors I knew, for my friends and family to come see what I had done, and hope against hope that one or two of the producers I'm fortunate enough to know might attend. But this? This is so much more.

There are no promises, no guarantees. Schedules change, people might not come, and even if they do they might not be interested in my play for any number of reasons. So I'm not holding my breath yet. But it feels wonderful to be so excited, to be so hopeful. I think not having the expectation is allowing me to enjoy this feeling all the more, because I am not clinging so desperately to the outcome. Oh, if only I could have had this balance in my opera career, I would have enjoyed the process so much more. But then I might not have quit, and I wouldn't have written this play.

This play, this baby of mine I love so dearly. My characters are so real to me. I know them so well, and yet they still surprise me every now and then, just like real people. I can't wait for you all to meet them.

Happy almost-birthday, little play! Thank you for coming into my life so that I can share you with the rest of the world.

Day 262: from the pitcher's mound

2010-10-04T08:43:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had the opportunity to pitch to about 20 producers, from Broadway to Off-Broadway to non-profit theaters, at a writer/producer "speed date" held by TRU (Theater Resources Unlimited). note: if you are in the theater business and don't know this organization, you absolutely should. They do amazing things and have been so helpful to me. TRU sets up producers at stations, and then writers each get 2 minutes to pitch their play, followed by 2 minutes for the producers to ask questions. A whistle blows and the writers rotate to the next station. It's completely relaxed and no pressure at all. NOT.

Participating came about very much at the last minute for me, so I only had since Friday to prepare my pitch and put together a packet of materials, including a one-page synopsis (which is much, much harder to write than you might guess). I completely lost my entire weekend to this task, as it is surprisingly difficult to distill a 2 hour play down to a couple of sentences, all the while attempting to capture its essence. How does one capture the essence of a play whose strongest quality is how real it feels? How familiar the characters are, how true the dialogue sounds? When I drafted my pitch and tried to say that ("with strikingly honest dialogue and hauntingly believable characters"), I was advised that I can't just say that, I have to show it. But how do I show that? It's not as if I can quote a few lines from the play, especially not in 2 minutes. I still don't know the answer to that question, and I kind of had to just let that go. I attempted to just say enough about the play to pique their interest to want to know more -- the goal was not to get a producer to sign right then and there, but to hope they might want to read the script or attend the reading in November.

With the help of the comments from the folks at TRU and my director's input, I ended up feeling as well-prepared as I could last night. I learned a lot -- most importantly, that the plot summary I felt I had shortened as much as I possibly possibly could was still way too long. While a few producers wanted to know more about the story, almost all of them wanted to know right away what kind of piece it is, where it is in its development, and what I want out of them -- so they know whether or not to bother being interested. Then they can hear more about the story if they want. I so wished I could have had a few minutes to think between producers, to try to shorten my plot summary after I'd heard that a few times, but there just wasn't time to think. Fortunately, the whole process is intended to be a learning experience, a place to practice pitching and to learn what works and what doesn't. And I definitely did.

The very, very best part is this: even with my imperfect pitch, 3 of the main producers (and 2 of TRU's producers-in-training) expressly asked to be invited to my reading on November 2nd!!! 2 of the 3 are Broadway producers at that. Who knows if they will be able to come, but the fact that they were interested enough to ask thrills me. It means I did manage to get something across about my work, I managed to present myself and my project in such a way that they want to learn more.

When I began this project 262 days ago, I have to say I never dreamed I would be at this stage already -- that I would be pitching it to Broadway producers and actually having them be interested. Who knows what will come of it, but it is a very auspicious beginning for my little baby.

Day 254: Monday progress report - 2nd draft

2010-09-27T08:57:00.000-04:00

(Exciting news: my play shower is now a featured project on indiegogo.com's home page! Visit www.indiegogo.com and you'll see it there. If you don't see it at first, just hit refresh once or twice and it will appear. This is very exciting because it means that thousands of strangers will see my project! Thank you to everyone who made a contribution, wrote a comment, made a testimonial, or referred it to a friend -- all of that activity is what inspired them to feature it!)

Last week I had a table reading of the second draft of the play, with my director Steven Yuhasz present. It was a chance for him to hear the play out loud for the first time, and for me to hear if the rewrites held together and accomplished what I wanted. I also invited a couple of people who had never heard it before, as I have found in the past that asking for feedback on rewrites from people who heard the original version isn't always productive. (Having heard the story before, it is hard to assess whether their impression is left over from the first time they heard it or if it is truly what they heard in the new version.)

The feedback was tremendous. The two guests, as well as my boyfriend, were crying at the end. One of them said "that was so satisfying". The actors loved the script and felt the rewrites made it much tighter and set up the story better. Several of them mentioned how much I had rewritten, how much work I did -- but to me, hearing it, it didn't feel that way. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of work and it wasn't easy, but it just sounds like that was the way it was always supposed to be. I imagine that by the time I get to the final version, whatever that looks like, it will feel that way as well. I've used this analogy before - it's like the sculptor who says they aren't creating the statue, they are merely revealing the statue that already exists in the marble. I feel like this play, this story, already exists and I'm discovering, or uncovering, it.

This week my director and I will be making some important decisions about November's reading. I'm very excited about the prospects, and will keep you all posted!

Day 248: I have a birthdate!!

2010-09-21T19:13:00.000-04:00

It is official: my little play, All in the Shuffle, is going to be introduced to the world on Tuesday, November 2nd at 7pm. The reading will be held in a most auspicious location: the Frederick Lowe Room at the Dramatists' Guild on Broadway and 43rd. So, in the very literal sense, my play will be born on Broadway. (If you'd like to come, send me an email!)

I realize November 2nd makes my play 25 days overdue. But the delay is not because my play won't be ready by my initial due date of October 8th -- it is merely when I could get everything to come together the best possible way, which is what my play deserves after all this work. The right space, the right director, the right actors. November 2nd is the date all those things came together, so that is the date my play is going to be born.

I can scarcely comprehend that this is happening. 9 months ago I didn't have any idea if I could write a full-length play. A year and a half ago, I had no idea what it meant to write a 10-minute play. 2 years ago, I had never even written a single line of dialogue. Now, I have written a full-length play, and it's going to be performed. Not in a full-out Broadway production, just as a staged reading, but still. A really good director loves my script. Really great actors love my script. People who have heard or read it so far love my script. I wrote a play, and it's good.

Like any expectant mother rapidly approaching giving birth (I imagine), I am filled with a combination of excitement, fear, and hope. I am excited for a larger audience to hear my play, a little nervous as to what their reactions will be, and hopeful for the play's future. I don't know what will come of this reading -- I almost don't even know what to dare hope for. I am going to invite some producers I know -- will any of them come? Will any of them want to sign on to help make it happen? Will this reading take me straight on into another opportunity, or will I begin pursuing another path of submitting it to festivals? How does one get a play produced? I really don't know. I have been so focused on the pregnancy part of this journey, that I haven't really begun investigating where I'm going to send the little tyke to school.

Fortunately, there is time to figure that out. This is not a play with a shelf life -- while I'd like it to become a smash hit in the next couple of years, it'll still be meaningful if it takes 10. So for now, I'm going to enjoy the process, of hearing actors bring my characters to life, of watching a director shape my vision into something more concrete. I'll worry about the rest later.

Day 241: The art of writing vs. rewriting

2010-09-14T23:40:00.000-04:00

First a quick blurb: There is a very exciting new addition to my play shower page: a movie trailer-style preview! The 3-minute video clip features audio and still photos from the first reading. This will give you a feel for what the play is about, for my writing style, and for how talented my actors are. There is also a great new video testimonial about my play from a fellow writer/director (look under "updates"), with more to come. Stop by and check it out! If you like what you see, please leave a comment on the indiegogo page and forward on to your friends. The more comments and referrals my page receives, the more likely indiegogo is to feature my play on its home page - meaning thousands of strangers would see it!

The process of writing this second draft -- which is now, thankfully, complete -- has been very, very different from writing the first draft. Before I started this whole playwriting thing, if someone had asked me which I thought would be harder, writing a first draft from nothing or rewriting that draft to make it better, I'm pretty darn sure I would have thought writing a first draft would be harder. I mean, how do you pull something out of thin air? How do you create something from nothing? How do you even begin on a journey when you don't know where it's going to end? Surely, it must be much simpler to fix something you already have than to create something completely new.

Boy, is that not true! While writing a first draft certainly isn't easy, there is a beautiful simplicity to it, an opening of yourself to not judge or try to be perfect. The biggest struggle is not filtering -- just letting it flow, getting thoughts out on the page and seeing where they go. That is not at all the case with a second draft. Rewriting is much more surgical, more precise, more effort. It requires a delicate, precise tool -- you don't want to lose the good stuff in the process of changing the bad stuff. There were pieces I wanted to keep, and new pieces I wanted to add, and I had to try to fit them together. I felt like I was putting together a complex puzzle where I only had some of the puzzle pieces, and had to actually make the other pieces to fit in between.

Of course the great thing about the second draft is that you do already know what you have. You know that you have a play, and, hopefully, you know that it's good. So there is a confidence in the work that you don't have when you are writing your first draft -- where all too often, you can write something you think is great, only to have it fall completely flat when you hear it out loud.

I get to hear this second draft out loud next Thursday, where my director will also get to meet all my actors and the real work on bringing this play to life can begin. I can scarcely believe it's almost here.

Day 238: The "struggling artist" stereotype and me

2010-09-11T10:52:00.001-04:00

I was a bit stumped for a blog topic, so I put out a notice for ideas on facebook. An old childhood friend of mine, Gina Fraser Hoppa, replied with a couple of great ideas, including "the stereotype behind struggling artists and your personal journey". It got me wondering, how typical has my experience as an artist been? Do I wear the mantle of "struggling artist"?

First, what is the stereotype of the struggling artist? I picture a young kid who comes to New York with big dreams and $20 in her pocket, gets into an arts college of some kind, slaves away taking classes all day and waiting tables all night, and lives in a dingy, cramped, cockroach-infested 2bd apartment in the east village with 5 other roommates. She graduates school, ready to conquer the world, and now instead of being in class all day and waiting tables all night, she is standing in line for auditions all day and still waiting tables all night. On top of that, she still must squeeze in dance classes and acting classes and voice classes whenever she can, only now she has to pay for them out of her table waiting money because student loans are over (except for having to pay them off now). The apartment gets smaller, and she lives on top ramen and peanut butter. She lands an acting/dancing/singing gig here or there, and sometimes they even pay enough that she can take herself out to dinner or even, if she's really lucky, stop waiting tables for a few weeks til the job is over. Lather, rinse, repeat. This goes on indefinitely - possibly for many, many years - until she either can't hack it anymore and gives up the dream to take some kind of soul-sucking corporate job, or she gets lucky and actually gets the kind of break that allows her to change her mantle from "struggling artist" to "working artist". Sound about right?

My journey has had some similarities to this, certainly, but also a lot of differences. I was too intimidated by NYC to come here for college (it was a very different city in 1990), so I stayed out west for both college and grad school. I did work a few stints as a waitress, but I largely paid my way with my computer/admin skills and teaching skills (I was also fortunate to have scholarships, teaching assistantships, and some family help). I didn't escape student loans altogether though (I am still paying them off, 13 years later). I still didn't come to New York right after grad school, instead getting married and going back to California, first to San Diego and then to San Francisco.

After school, instead of waitressing, I went right into the soul-sucking corporate day job, squeezing in voice lessons during my lunch hour and dance classes on Saturdays and acting classes at night. I was eventually able to leave corporate life and teach music instead, both privately and at a college (this is the one leg up that my grad degree gave me). I auditioned - always, always auditioned -- and I got a lot of small-time gigs, but they rarely paid much more than the gas money it took to commute the long distances to get to them. I traveled to New York City every couple of months for bigger auditions and to study with teachers and coaches here. Almost every dime I made teaching went right back into my own lessons, audition fees, and travel expenses to New York. I could never have done this if I hadn't been married. Eventually, finally, I was able to relocate myself, my then-husband and our two cats to THE BIG APPLE.

To be an artist in New York, one has to be scrappy. I've worked a lot of different jobs here, including walking dogs. Seriously. Eventually I landed a great part-time office job (as great as an office job can possibly be), which I still have 5 years later. When I was still singing, a large amount of my income went to private lessons, workshops, and audition costs. Since I gave up trying to get other people to hire me and started putting on my own shows -- first as a singer and now as a playwright -- that same money now goes to producing those shows.

The last two years are when I most keenly felt like a true "struggling artist". Upon getting divorced, my part-time income was close to impossible to live on. I took on additional part-time work, reluctant to strap myself into the full-time-soul-sucking corporate job, as it is almost impossible to leave that once you are in it. At times, I have juggled as many as 3 different jobs, all the while taking classes and writing and performing and producing shows. Those of you that have followed my blog have heard me bitch and moan about this.

Finally, in just the last few months, I feel I have gone beyond "struggling". Now that my voice teaching studio is firmly established and growing, I make enough money between that and my office job to actually save money as well as enjoy some meals out and some vacations -- no more buying groceries on credit cards for me. Soon, soon, I will even have enough students to let go of the part-time job and then I will have that most precious of all commodities -- more time.

But beyond money, I think the main reason I no longer feel like a struggling artist, is that I am no longer trying to make a living from the art I create. Sure, I would love for that to come to pass, but I know it very well may never happen. I know that I have to create in order to be happy, so I am finding ways to create that are fulfilling to me regardless of whether or not they make me any money. I only demand that they make me happy.

I think rather than a "struggling artist", I would call myself a "striving artist". As I described myself on my indiegogo profile for my play shower, I am: "an opera singer - turned cabaret singer - turned producer - turned playwright, a woman forever striving to inspire, touch, and connect with people through her art.

And that's my story.

Day 233: The art of vacation (or a vacation from art)

2010-09-06T23:43:00.000-04:00

Do forgive me for the radio silence the past two weeks. I was on a John Denver-inspired vacation along the country roads to and from the Shenandoah River and other parts of Virgina, including the quaint Chincoteague Island famous for its wild ponies. (I guess I'll have to try again to actually make it to the Blue Ridge Mountains and West Virginia). I embarked on the vacation with thoughts of lots of time to do things like write blog posts and second drafts, but somehow, that isn't what happened.

Vacation is a funny thing. Before you go, you envision all these endless hours stretching in front of you, free of the encumbrances of work, bills, pet-feeding, etc, giving you limitless time to sleep, eat, read, lounge, take a walk or a swim, and (if you're like me) get lots of creative work done. And yet, there is a little problem with that equation. The endless hours of sleeping, eating, lounging, reading, and walking don't also allow for endless time of getting creative work done. One must still choose between biking to the beach to play in the surf and staying at the condo to work on one's second draft. A difficult choice.

I'll admit it -- I don't vacation well. I don't weekend well. I don't take-a-day-off-well. I don't relax relax well. I have a very hard time doing any of those things without feeling conflicted about the creative work that I am not doing. This is not always true -- and I am getting a bit better, especially with my boyfriend's help -- but it is definitely a large problem of mine. Because I must take days off and weekends and vacations - from my creative work as well as from the day job and voice teaching work - in order to have the energy to do my creative work at my best. Not to mention in order to not give myself ulcers or high blood pressure.

My boyfriend always tells me, pick one or the other. If you decide to work, focus and work. If you decide to relax, then just do it and don't beat yourself up about it. (Oddly enough, I often find myself telling him the same thing). Because if you don't, you have the worst of both worlds -- you didn't get work done and you didn't really relax because you were too busy feeling guilty. I've gotten better at doing that in the moment, but unfortunately the guilt over not working often still comes back to bite me the next day like a bad hangover.

All this is not to say that I didn't enjoy my vacation. By and large, I really did, and didn't feel guilty for taking it. But I also had days where I got very frustrated, where I felt like the world was passing me by, that I was losing too much traction on all my important projects by not being able to really work on them on the road. I found myself wishing there were a cosmic pause button where everything could stop -- not just me -- so that I could relax without losing any time. And now that I'm back, I have to figure out how I'm going to catch up on everything.

Yet, I must also admit, I do feel more relaxed and recharged. I am not dreading going to work tomorrow -- I actually feel ready to dive in and take things on again. Despite feeling the need to get caught up, I also feel like I now have the inner resources to do that. So perhaps that is the secret -- vacation isn't the time to get things done, it's the time to recharge your batteries so that you can get things done when you return.

It sounds so bloody simple when I put it that way. How come it doesn't feel that way in the moment? I must learn to start managing my expectations. I need to allow myself not to take a vacation only from my day job work life, but also from my art work life. Will someone please remind me of this before my next vacation?

Day 219: on collaboration and being my own artist

2010-08-23T10:22:00.000-04:00

(if you notice that my day count seems off, I noticed that I somehow got a couple of days off somewhere along the line so I'm catching up.)

Last week, I secured a director for the staged reading I am planning for my play's birthday in October. His name is Steven Yuhasz, and I have to admit I am a bit humbled that someone of his caliber and experience wants to work on my play (especially for virtually no money). And it is not for any reason other than the material itself -- he doesn't know me, I wasn't recommended to him by someone he trusts, he merely saw a posting sent out by an organization I belong to (Theatre Resources Unlimited -- great organization you should check out if you are in the theater biz in any capacity). The description of my play's subject matter intrigued him, so he emailed me. I sent him the script, and he loved it. My writing style, the characters' arcs, my knack for dialogue, the emotional weight of the play, all resonated with him. I feel like I'm entering the big leagues here -- we're even signing a contract that connects him to the play for the immediate future. This is a gamble I am willing to take to work with someone like him.

The process of finding a director was very interesting for me. Though I've done this several times before for my short plays, this is (obviously) the first time I have searched for one for a full-length play. I felt like I really didn't know what I was doing, especially as I received so many responses (apparently my birthing project intrigued a lot of people). Do I send the whole script to everyone who responds? (I decided no, since I don't want a whole bunch of copies of my play floating around for people to steal from.) How do I screen them *before* sending out the script to decide who gets to read the whole thing? (I decided to send out excerpts and then talk with people). Then, once I have found someone I like and who likes the material, how do I engage someone as a collaborator without giving up my artistic integrity and control over the script?

I was worried at first about that last one, but I discovered something really important about myself in the process of figuring all this out: I have become my own artist. In a way I never could as an opera singer, and only started to as a cabaret artist, I trust my instincts. I believe in my work, I stand by the things that are important to me. I received a fair amount of (unsolicited) feedback on my script from some directors, and I was able to hear what they had to say and not let it make me doubt myself or my work. I even turned down a couple of offers of feedback because I didn't want to confuse the clear ideas I already have for the second draft of the script. Even in talking with my playwriting teacher, I didn't take every suggestion he had, as there were some things I really liked and felt worked that he thought could be changed. I am learning to trust myself.

Let me be clear -- I want feedback, I want input. I want to know what is working for people and what isn't, I want to hear what other people see in my play that I may not. The greatest joy for me in this process of creating theater is collaboration: working with a great director and actors and seeing what they bring to my work and having them help me shape it. But I filter their input and weigh it against my own vision for the play, against my own intuitive sense of what works and what I want to see happen. It is not possible to write a play that everyone will like, or that people won't think would be better if I'd done xyz instead. In the end, it is my play, my story that I am telling, and I have to steer my own rudder through the currents of other people's opinions.

It is difficult to express how satisfying it is to realize that I have finally become my own artist. That I have more utter confidence in my writing than I ever did in my singing, even though I've only been doing it for a year and a half and have very litte formal training in it. Arrogant? Maybe. But I just feel like I've finally grown up.

Day 211: A Play Shower!

2010-08-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

I am very excited to invite you all to participate in my Play Shower! If you would like to help me bring this play into the world, in the form of a public, staged reading, I hope you'll visit my project at indiegogo and give whatever gift most resonates with you. You can buy a copy of a script for an actor ($10), some rehearsal space ($25), sponsor an actor for the performance ($100-$300), and much more.

This was an idea I had way back on Day 3 of this project, when I went to one of my best friend's actual baby shower. I found myself musing about the fact that this play is the closest thing I'll ever have to a baby (other than my cat), and wondered if I could throw a play shower instead of a baby shower. Now, 208 days and a completed first draft later, I'm doing just that. It's kind of hard to believe how far this project has come -- and how far I have come -- over the last 7 months.

Self-producing is a bitch, and asking people for money, especially in times like these, is always hard. It is the part about being in the arts I like the least. If we lived in a different era (or country), I might have a patron (or government) who would fund all of my production expenses so would not have to ask for money. But, we don't. And what helps me get over my discomfort is the knowledge that art is a community endeavor -- people create it, perform it, and enjoy it together. In order for the arts to happen, people have to come together and decide to make it happen. Everyone donates to the arts in their own way, whether donating labor in the form of time or talent, or money in the form of taxes, buying tickets or direct cash donations. I am asking my community to come together and give whatever you can to help make this happen, so that the community may enjoy the fruits of all this labor. (If you can't give in the form of money, but would like to help some other way, please let me know -- I can use help of all sorts.)

So I humbly ask you to give whatever you can, and to pass this along to all the theater lovers you know who might enjoy knowing they were part of the village that helped raise this little work of art. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Day 207: Reading Redux

2010-08-13T09:54:00.001-04:00

It's hard to describe what it was like to hear my whole play out loud on Monday: to hear my words coming from the actors' mouths; to be aware of other people listening to them; to feel the attention and interest in the room. With no rehearsal, staging or sets, just actors sitting at a table with scripts in their hands, the small audience was held rapt for a solid 2 hours with no break in a hot room. There was almost no shifting in seats, rustling of papers, coughing, or throat clearing -- all the little signs that indicate when people have gotten bored and aren't paying attention. Even I found myself engaged and and involved in watching the drama between these characters unfold. It took me awhile to kind of step outside the play and just listen, but about a third of the way through, I felt like I was able to (at least to some degree). It was definitely a moment of "wow, I did that?!"

But I think my favorite part was the feedback after. I loved hearing what people's favorite moments were, and what held their attention. There was one scene (between Vivian and her married lover Arnie) that I really wasn't sure was going to work or not. I half expected everyone to say it seemed completely outside of the story and unnecessary. One person did feel that, but most everyone else actually cited it as one of their favorite moments in the play (it is one of mine, too). It was very reassuring to know that my instincts are by and large right on target: many of my favorite moments were their favorite moments, and the things that needed to be fixed were mostly things I had heard myself as being problems.

The surprise came when people started psychoanalyzing the characters, particularly Vivian. Hearing them trying to puzzle out who she is and why she does what she does, talking about her like a real person, seeing things in her that I hadn't even known were there. That is always the most amazing thing to me about playwriting: having people find layers of depth in my writing that I wasn't conscious of when I wrote it. For a moment I'm back in high school English class, dissecting every line of Shakespeare or Steinbeck, and asking my teacher if the author was consciously thinking those things as he wrote, or if we were just making it up. I know the answer now: if other writers are like me, they aren't consciously thinking all those things, but you also aren't making them up. If you see it, it's probably there.

Now it's on to the rewrites -- I can hardly wait to get started.

Day 205: It's a PLAY!!!

2010-08-11T12:24:00.000-04:00

I am delighted to announce, with 61 days to go before its due date, that I am having a PLAY!!

The feedback from Monday's sneak preview as to what this little play is going to become was overwhelmingly positive. There are also no major developmental flaws or concerns, which means I am confident I will be able to do the necessary rewrites in time to present a strong public reading for the play's birthday in October! Please stay tuned for info about that, and as well as about the virtual play "shower" I will be throwing to help make it happen.

I'll write more about the reading later, I just wanted to share the exciting news!

Day 203: The Anxiety of Hope

2010-08-09T08:50:00.001-04:00

I'm starting to hope that something could actually come of this play, and that scares me.

Tonight is the first reading of the first draft of this play. Tonight, for the first time, people (including me) will hear this whole story out loud. It's starting to seem real, now that I actually have a finished draft. And, I honestly think it's good. That makes me want. That makes me want to hope, to dream, to strive to take this play somewhere. Unfortunately along with hopes and dreams comes the risk of disappointment, and there are few things in this world I like less than being disappointed.

I like this bubble I've been in, just doing my art for me and not being overly invested in where it takes me. So far, this "birth of a play" project has felt more like my own personal growth can-I-do-this project than the striving-for-a-money-making-career-and-fame kind of project my opera career was. I won't lie and say I haven't fantasized about winning a Tony for best play -- or even thought about what I might say in my acceptance speech -- but it has been a playful fantasy rather than an aching need. I'm afraid if I start working towards actually making that happen, I will start to want it, to need it so much that it will make my writing less authentic, the way I think my need to be successful got in my way as a performer. I'm also afraid of experiencing the death of another dream; afraid of being crushed again; afraid of losing the pure joy of doing art for art's sake.

But I don't want to just let my play languish on a shelf, satisfied that I wrote it and content to never have it heard or seen. Can I work towards the goal of getting my play produced and stay unattached to the outcome? Is it possible to be driven and work towards goals without being overly invested in them? It was a balance I was constantly striving to achieve (and rarely succeeding) in my opera auditions: to be committed and invested and not attached to the outcome. I honestly don't know if it is possible.

I am hoping that the greater balance I have achieved in my life in the last couple of years will help me to navigate these treacherous waters more smoothly. I need people and things other than my art more than I did before. I could still never be content without it - I will always be creating and striving towards one creative goal or another - but I have learned to place greater value on other things than I used to. Perhaps those things can keep me afloat even if this new dream of a successful play never sets sail.

Here's hoping.

Day 200: How lucky are you?

2010-08-06T11:58:00.001-04:00

(Since I don't have any progress to report on my play while I'm waiting for the reading on Monday, here's a random topic).

My sister was preparing for an important job interview recently, and shared with me a question she had heard of a company asking in their interviews:

How lucky are you?

This question gave me pause. How would I answer that, if I were asked that on the spot with no time to formulate an answer?

On a very basic level, compared to much of the world, of course I have to say I am unbelievably lucky. I was born white and middle class in the most prosperous country in the world, I have excellent health, I have the love and support of tremendous family and friends, I can afford to pay rent on my very own apartment in the greatest city in the world, I get to be creative. These are no small things. And there was a time in my life when I wouldn't have hesitated to say "tremendously." Things came easily to me, I felt like I got most everything I tried for, I had a great and easy relationship.

But time and life have tempered some of that feeling of luck. Having two major life dreams - an opera career and a marriage - fail despite years and years of diligent hard work and effort, can make one feel like you are not at the top of the luck pyramid. Although, if I hadn't stopped singing opera and hadn't gotten divorced, I wouldn't be writing now. I wouldn't have written this play that I am so deeply in love with and which has brought me so much pleasure and creative satisfaction to write. So, perhaps those things were their own form of luck.

I think being in a field like the arts - where luck is such a huge determining factor in one's success - can skew one's perspective on what it means to be lucky. It's hard to feel extremely lucky when, despite having the requisite talent and drive (and thoroughly busting my ass for it) I was never able to get the lucky breaks to make a career out of singing. Nor have Kat & I - despite creating a great product and hustling like mad - been able to get producers to fall at our feet to produce our brilliant (if I may say so) concept for a time-traveling musical kids show. And most recently, crappy actors who forgot half of my play robbed me of a very real chance to have a short play produced, or maybe even developed into a larger work. When you work really really hard but still don't get the breaks, it is easy to feel unlucky. One really has to take a step back and look at the larger picture to remember just how incredibly lucky I am.

Because truly, I am. Beyond the more mundane I-have-clean-water-and-a-roof-over-my-head kind of luck, I have passion (and talent) for creative pursuits. I have something I love to do - nay, need to do - that gets me out of bed every morning and keeps me constantly striving to do more and be more. I have the drive and focus and mental acuity to accomplish the things I want. Not everyone has this. So yes, I am incredibly lucky.

Of course, to give myself a little credit, it's not all luck. To share one of my favorite quotes:

"I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. " - Thomas Jefferson

So, how lucky are you? I'd love to hear.

Day 196: Monday Report: "A Very Strong First Draft"

2010-08-02T16:55:00.000-04:00

That's what my playwriting teacher said. "It is a very strong first draft." Not "it's perfect, don't change a thing", which I never expected and know isn't true, but very strong. I like that.

We focused the session on what I should listen for in the reading next week, rather than on specifically what and how I should rewrite. He felt I didn't have enough distance yet; that I need to spend a little time away from the play before I'll be able to see clearly what is working and what isn't. I'm glad he gave me this advice, as I was planning to dive right into rewrites. But instead my homework is to immerse myself in other plays, reading or re-reading good scripts. This exercise will not only fill my head with examples of good material, but also get me into the mindset of reading a script that someone else wrote. That way, hopefully I can look at my script -- and especially hear my script on Monday -- as if it were a play someone else wrote. When it comes to the prospect of killing some of your babies -- i.e. cutting lines or scenes or characters you are attached to -- it definitely helps to have some distance. So this morning I cracked out one of my very favorite plays: Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare.

Whatever shall I do with a whole week of not writing? This weekend I was almost at a loss. But somehow I managed to fill the time. Amongst some more mundane tasks, I rode my bike; I took myself to the most fabulous little local Italian restaurant where the owner fawned over me and made me feel like I was back in Italy; I got my toes done; I took myself to a movie (the Kids Are All Right - great acting piece); I watched more Veronica Mars. I look forward to a week of more of that kind of thing: of reading, of seeing friends, of bike-riding, of beach-going (and of course working and teaching and preparing for the reading next week). Of spending a week basking in the knowledge that I have written a very strong first draft. Damn, that feels good.

Day 194: On the other side

2010-07-31T12:53:00.000-04:00

I did it. I finished my first draft. At 6:40pm on Thursday, July 29th -- the evening before my 10 day deadline expired -- I emailed the completed first draft to my playwriting teacher. I meet with him tomorrow morning to get his feedback. I now have my entire cast lined up for the reading of it on August 9th. I can scarcely believe I'm here. Having never written a full-length play before, it was a goal that seemed so distant, so fuzzy and hard to picture, that I'm not sure I ever truly believed I would get here. Or I suppose it would be more accurate to say I just couldn't imagine what it would be like.

And it is a strange feeling, being on the other side of finishing my first draft. I almost don't know what to do with myself, not having to spend every spare minute writing. Of course that will start up again shortly, as soon as I start working on my rewrites. But until after the reading on the 9th, I won't be writing. I will take in my teacher's advice tomorrow, and then wait til after I hear it out loud myself the following week before I start rewriting. As much as I respect and value my teacher's opinion and skill, I want to trust my own instincts and ears when I hear it out loud, to see if I agree with his assessment.

While I am prepared to hunker down and have to do a lot of rewriting, I will admit I have a fantasy of meeting with my teacher tomorrow and having him say: "Natalie, this is one of the strongest first drafts I have ever seen." And then only having to make small tweaks, adjust and tighten up a few things. But I know that isn't realistic. First drafts rarely resemble final drafts. But I'm going to savor this brief amount of time where I get to feel like "I did it!", and let myself feel the glow of accomplishment.

What's next? My current plan is to have another informal reading in September after I do a second draft, allowing me time to do one more round of rewrites before the formal, public reading I want to have in October for the play's birthday party. I'm thinking now I might like to try to do a staged reading, though that may be overly ambitious. It will depend a lot on how extensive the rewrites are.

I'll let you know on Monday how my meeting with Stuart Spencer goes. I can hardly wait.

Day 192: 3...2...1...

2010-07-29T08:26:00.000-04:00

My self-imposed first draft deadline is tomorrow. On Sunday evening, I didn't think there was any chance I was going to finish it. I was still stuck in the middle of the big conflict scene, and felt like it was going to take too much work to get that and everything else done by Friday. But I finished that scene on Wednesday (and actually kinda like it), and have tweaked both that and the Frank and Angie scene before it to the point where I really have to hear them out loud before I can revise them anymore. Last night and this morning I plugged in a previously-written scene (the very first scene I wrote for these characters -- funny how the first scene I wrote is ending up at the end of the play). I thought it was going to need a lot of rewrites, but I just trimmed and stream-lined it a bit and I think it works. Again, at least enough to have to hear it out loud before I can really decide.

So that leaves me with two, fairly small tasks: plugging Vera into the opening scene instead of a nurse (to eliminate the need for another actor, and to introduce the audience to her character right away), and writing a small final scene for Frank and Vivian. I actually honestly think this will be done by tomorrow. I can scarcely believe it.

I'll report in tomorrow. As my playwriting teacher said, this is a drama in and of itself.

Day 189: Monday Progress Report

2010-07-26T19:43:00.001-04:00

It's official, I'm insane. I have scheduled a reading: booked a room, lined up actors and invited a few select attendees for a small, informal reading of this not-yet-finished play on August 9th. Two weeks from today. I'm sure most people would say it is complete insanity to schedule a reading of a play you have yet to finish, but this is how I work. My performing partner Kat and I did this with all the cabaret shows we have written -- we set a date and then had to write the show by the date. It's a great way to make sure you get shit done and don't get distracted. Like I said in my post about deadlines, it makes decisions a lot easier. So even if I don't make my initial deadline of this Friday to finish the first draft, I have a drop dead deadline of August 7th (in order to get it to the actors ahead of time). Impossible? Surely not. Insane? Surely.

I made a lot of great progress this week. I finished a scene I didn't know how I was going to write, and am now deep into the meat of the culminating conflict scene of the play: a confrontation between Frank and his daughter Vivian. I have written to the point where Frank actually apologizes, something I wasn't sure he was ever going to do. I know it needs more finessing and tweaking, but I think the arguments are solid. At least I hope so.

I scanned through the whole play today, as I was looking for scenes to have an actress read for me tomorrow. I was a little scared to do so, as I didn't know how it was going to hang together. I haven't read the whole thing for quite sometime, so I feared I might have gotten off-track. I have to say, I think it works. Some scenes even surprised me -- I had forgotten a few things I had written, and I have to admit I liked them. I saw a few things that need to be tightened up, worked out a little better, but overall, I really do feel this holds together.

I can't wait to hear this whole thing out loud. I want to finish this so badly, it is a palpable ache in my chest. I may not finish it by Friday, but I am hell bent on finishing it by the end of Sunday. Wish me luck.

Day 187: Water works

2010-07-24T09:55:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I accomplished what had initially appeared to be an impossible task: I got Angie to convince her grandfather to come home for Christmas even though he can no longer walk. When I finally hit upon the argument that tipped him over the edge, I burst out sobbing. Again. This seems to be becoming a regular occurrence. Which leaves me wondering: do other playwrights experience this? Do moments of emotional truth in their writing leave them in a puddle on the floor? Or is this something about me and my connection (or dis-connection) to my own emotions? Have I kept things so bottled up and buried for so long that now they are starting to come out in my writing and thus causing this big reaction in me? Is this just my own personal catharsis happening? (see Day 97: Playwriting as Therapy). Any playwrights out there who can chime in? I really am curious.

The reason Angie's task seemed so impossible (other than the basic fact that I think it would be tough to convince anyone who had just lost the use of his legs to go anywhere) is that Angie wasn't able to convince Frank to go in the previous incarnation of this scene. It was the second scene/short play that I wrote for these characters, before I ever started the full play. Angie came to the nursing home to take Frank home for a birthday surprise, only to discover that he couldn't walk anymore. In that scene, he won't budge and she agrees to stay and celebrate with him there. But now in the full play, I couldn't leave him there -- he has to come home for Christmas so that he and Vivian can have a huge fight. But I honestly didn't know how I could make that happen -- Angie not only had to convince Frank to go, she also had to convince me that her argument was good enough to make someone agree to do something he really didn't want to do. I honestly didn't know how I was going to do it, and it was not easy. But somehow I did it; I came up with a series of arguments that escalated, getting stronger every beat, until she hit upon the big whammy that he just couldn't say no to. It was very exciting and satisfying. Now let's just hope everyone else finds it believable too.

I wonder how many kleenexes I'll have to go through when I'm writing the big fight scene today and tomorrow....

Day 185: Why?

2010-07-22T12:25:00.001-04:00

There are times I really wonder why I do this to myself. Like last night.

I had cancelled plans with a friend last night in order to be able to write (see Monday's post re: decisions and deadlines). But between being out very late for my boyfriend's rockin' electronic music show on Tuesday night and the hour and a half long bike ride I did yesterday afternoon between the office and teaching, I was POOPED. It was 7:45, I had just finished dinner and was staring at the computer, exhausted. I didn't know how I was going to write in that state. And I started to wonder, why am I doing this to myself?

Because, verily, no one is making me write this play, and certainly not finish the first draft in the next 7 days. This insanity is completely self-imposed. I could have just lain there on my couch/bed last night, watched a few episodes of Veronica Mars (my latest netflix obsession, can't tell you why), and gone to sleep. No one would have been the wiser, and certainly the world would have kept turning. Only I would have been mad at myself.

After a little pep talk with my boyfriend, I decided to give myself 20 minutes in legs-up-the-wall pose to see if that would help me revive enough to write (I've been told 20 minutes in this pose is the equivalent of 2 hours of sleep, and it has worked wonders for me in the past). As I lay there, I thought through why it is I am doing this to myself. I mean, do I really need to have this done by the 30th? What if I don't? Then I won't be able to meet with my playwriting teacher before he goes, and (more importantly) I won't be able to have a reading in August. So, what happens if I don't do that? Then it's going to be hard to get rewrites done in time to submit the play in September to a company I know. So, what if I don't do that? That would be a missed opportunity. But even if I were to let that go, I still want to have a solid script (which means with rewrites) by October. I have been talking this all up for so long to so many people, and now have a number of possibly-important people who really want to read this play. On its public birthday in October, I want to introduce to the world a really solid version of the play, not a half-formed premie. It will still need rewrites, I'm not naive, but I want it to be really good. That means rewrites. That means having readings so I can hear what's working. That means finishing this bloody first draft stat.

So I got up from my 20 minutes and felt like a new woman (seriously, you should try it). I made some popcorn and poured myself some diet rootbeer (please, body, forgive the chemicals, but I just couldn't bear to have the sugar of the real stuff), and sat down at my table -- not on my bed -- to write. I spent a solid two hours going over the material I had been writing on the fly the previous two days, sculpting it into stuff that flowed. I didn't get a lot of new material down, but it was important work that had to be done. I am into the meat of the scene that I am writing now, where Angie has to somehow talk her grandfather into coming home for Christmas dinner even though he can no longer walk. This is not going to be easy, but it's a good challenge.

In the end, I feel so much better that I wrote. I feel so much better about myself, about my project, about doing something that is important to me. Even though it's hard and tiring and frustrating and difficult and sometimes makes me feel like I'm crazy, I do this to myself because it makes me happy. That's why.

Day 182: Monday Progress Report: 10...9...8...

2010-07-19T21:38:00.004-04:00

The end is in sight. I actually know now how my play is going to end, at least in this first draft. I only have 3 more scenes to write and - if it hangs together - I will have a completed first draft. I can almost taste it, and I am so excited that I am carrying around my iPad with me everywhere I go, writing snippets on the subway, on the bus, sitting on some steps on a street corner when I have a few extra minutes. I so want to have this story told.

I now have a penultimate deadline of July 30th for a first draft to be done, to allow time for rewrites before the public reading I am planning for this play's "birthday" in October. July 30th also coincides with my playwriting teacher's schedule: my last chance to have a private session with him to get guidance for my rewrites is August 1st, and he needs the play a couple of days in advance in order to read it before we meet. Which means--

I have 10 days to finish the first draft of my play.

Gulp.

Though they can be a little intimidating, one of the things I like about deadlines is that they make decisions so much simpler. Do I go out and be social or stay in and write? With only 10 days to finish the play, easy answer. (My friends will have to forgive me, please). Do I veg in front of the TV to give myself some downtime or keep working? Easy answer. No guilt, no wasted energy trying to make decisions. For the next 10 days, my choices are clear. After that I can start agonizing over them again.

Now that you know where I'm headed, I suppose I should tell you where I've been this week. I wrote in small spurts rather than in one big push, as half of my energies this weekend went towards the pursuit of another, personal goal: to buy myself a bicycle and begin training for my first ever organized athletic event. Exercise is an area of my life that has not been getting enough focused attention, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should set myself a specific goal and deadline the way I do with my writing to help keep me on track. The goal? Ride 65 miles on September 25 with the Escape New York bike race. I'm very excited -- and a little bit scared -- about doing this. (Of course, the trouble will come when my two goals conflict with each other, but what else is new.)

What I observed in the process of writing in shorter spurts is that I censor less. When I don't have a lot of time, I just write down whatever comes to mind. When I have a whole day in front of me, I mull over each thought or line, debate about whether or not it will work before I write it. I craft a lot more. That's important, too, but sometimes it's really great to just let stuff flow and not worry about whether or not it works; to write it down even if you know it's not the right line, but it is the right feeling, and go back and sculpt the words later. I think it will be useful for me going forward to remember this, and not feel that I need to wait for a day when I have all day to write, but rather take advantage of even those fleeting moments. I don't have much of a choice these next 10 days if I'm get this done!

This week should be a fruitful one -- I will keep you posted!

Day 178: Memories

2010-07-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

When I was writing in my morning pages yesterday and wrote down the date, July 14th, I realized it was Bastille Day. Which instantly brought me to a memory from my childhood, when my family was in Paris on Bastille Day. It's one of those travel memories you never forget.

It was 1984, I was 12. it was the first time any of our family had been in Europe, and we were on one of those 23 cities-in-14-days kind of tours. The half day we were given in Paris happened to be Bastille Day (bad planning). In the early evening, we decided to take a boat ride on the River Seine, not knowing that we would get an extra special treat: the boat stopped in view of the Eiffel Tower to watch a spectacular fireworks display. That was the good part.

The bad part was, we hadn't eaten dinner yet, and by the time the boat let us off, we had trouble finding any place open to eat. (You'd think this wouldn't be an issue in France). By the time we ate at a place that would serve us only things they already had prepped in the kitchen, like soup and salad, it was almost 2 in the morning. We headed to the subway to return to our hotel. Turns out on Bastille Day, Paris' normally 24-hour metro service also stops running. By now it had also started raining. So here we were, a bunch of clueless Americans tourists who spoke no French, stranded in the middle of Paris at 2am on Bastille Day, in the rain. A bunch of punk teenagers (I mean that in the literal sense -- dressed in black with spiky hair and dog collars), found us highly amusing and began throwing firecrackers at us. I was afraid my umbrella was going to catch on fire. No taxis would stop for us, until we finally saw that the word "taxi" was painted in a square in the middle of the road: the taxi stop was in the middle of the street and you had to stand there to get picked up. When a taxi finally stopped, the driver wouldn't let the 4 of us share a cab, insisting that the front seat was "only for dogs" (I swear that is what he said). So we had to split up into separate taxis (which terrified me, to be separated in that situation), but finally made it back to our hotel. That experience ruined me on big cities for many years. Thank god I got over that.

After this memory flooded my mind yesterday morning, I was filled with a sense of sadness, thinking of how much of my life I don't remember at all. There are these moments, these highlights, these memories that stand out that you keep reliving, leaving the other ones to languish and be forgotten completely. I don't have a great memory for events as it is (I can memorize a 3 hour opera in a foreign language, no problem, but ask me what happened 2 weeks ago, forget it!). For a moment, I wished there were some way to recapture all that, to sit down and watch the DVD of my life, to remember all those moments I can't remember anymore. If I don't remember the things in my life, it's as if they didn't happen, right? What's the point of experiencing something if you don't remember it?

Ah, but I think not. Living is, after all, the present moment, this exact moment you are living now. That is the only moment that we actually have. Whether I remember an experience or not, I experienced it in that moment; I lived it, and either enjoyed it or (hopefully) learned from it. Even if no one is there to hear the tree fall in the forest, the tree still falls. Those experiences, remembered or not, bring you to the moment you are living. Memories remind you of how you got here and give you clues as to where you want (or don't want) to go in the future. I'm guessing that most of the memories that do stick are of moments where we changed direction, however slightly. The moments when we took that left turn at Albuquerque (or didn't), whether we chose to or it was chosen for us. The endless hours in the car going the same direction meld into one another and fade away. The pivotal moments are the ones we remember.

How does all this relate to playwriting, you ask? It does, I swear! That is what theater is, a stringing together of the pivotal points in a character's story. To quote a friend, "theater is life, with the boring parts cut out." No one wants to watch 2 hours of people sitting in a car, sipping a soda and listening to bad songs on the radio. We want to see when the car breaks down, or they take an exit and end up lost in a town overrun by zombies, or they miss their exit and end up driving straight into the path of an approaching tornado. I have written a few scenes for my play that I thought were important because they showed some aspect of a character's life, gave some texture for what it was like to be that person. But the scenes didn't work because nothing happened in them. Each scene has to show something happening to the character, or the character changing in some way in order for it to be interesting. (Unless, of course, you are Sam Beckett and can absolutely brilliantly break that rule, as in Waiting for Godot). The kinds of moments people usually remember are also the moments they want to watch on stage. Imagine that.

Day 176: Monday, er... Tuesday progress report

2010-07-13T08:50:00.002-04:00

Alas, it's Tuesday and somehow my blog update didn't happen yesterday. I blame my boyfriend. My plan was to write my update last night before I went to bed, but we ended up being out late with some friends visiting from San Francisco. My boyfriend thus insisted that I go home and get immediately to bed so I could get a decent night's sleep. I dutifully obeyed, forgetting at that point that I was supposed to write in my blog. So here it is Tuesday morning, and I am once again faced with my time trifecta. Because I went to bed last night, I didn't get writing done. And now in order to do this this morning, I have to skip out on my walk to work. 2 out of the 3: sleep and writing. No exercise. I have to choose which one of my promises to myself to let go: either my promise to update my blog or my promise to walk 5 miles every day. This makes me sad. I suppose if I could rewind last night, I could have cut the time with my friends shorter. But then again, these are people I get to see maybe once a year when they are in town, so that seems like a lousy choice. It just isn't possible to do it all. But enough whining. Let's get to the progress report.

Sunday's writing yielded 5 new pages, a new character, and a huge new conflict. After the last scene I wrote, I had a strong feeling that Vivian (Frank's daughter) needed some kind of confidant, some person outside of her family to talk to, if for no other reason than to give her some way of voicing her feelings. (Unless you want to write big soliloquies, the only way to reveal a character's thoughts in a play is through dialogue with another character. In a novel, you can write what the character is thinking, but not in a play.) But I also felt she needed some kind of life outside the family unit, to give her more texture, to allow the audience to learn a bit more about who she is. And thus, Arnold was born: a married, traveling salesman who hooks up with Vivian when he's in town on business. Boy, is this broad's life a mess.

Of all the relationships I could have chosen, why did I choose one so, well, pathetic? First off, I don't feel like I chose it. As I went through various scenarios in my mind, when that one popped in - for whatever reason - it was just right. I just knew that was it. Not the gay hair dresser friend, not the coworker at the diner, not the bonafide boyfriend. Vivian is the sort of person who has been so hurt and so damaged that she would only risk intimacy with someone who isn't truly available to her. (I find it helpful sometimes to "therapize" my characters - it helps me understand them better and see what choices they would make).

I also know that Vivian will try to make some sort of change in her life in the course of the play, and have been trying to figure out what that is -- what a woman so blocked and so stuck in endless cycles of bad choices would be capable of doing to help herself. I think I hit on it in this scene. As it is something that will create a huge amount of conflict for Angie and Frank -- making for good drama -- I'm going to go with it and see if it sticks. (I won't tell you what it is right now, I need to save at least a few surprises!).

So while 5 pages doesn't seem like a lot, it was a very fruitful day. I have a lot of good ideas for what scenes are left that I need to write, and where this whole thing is going. I even know what the big final conflict scene will be. In fact, I think that is what I'm going to write next, even though it's not next in the play. Sometimes it works to write out of order and then go back and fill in the connective tissue.

I am loving this process so much! Who would ever have thought. I can't wait to get back to it.

Day 174: Test run

2010-07-11T13:31:00.000-04:00

I am about to take my iPad for its first test drive. I have packed a bag with all I need to spend the entire day in Central Park, since my iPad is supposed to have up to 10 hours of battery life. So while I normally can only spend a couple of hours there with my laptop, I could potentially be there all day with my new toy.

I am eagerly anticipating diving in to the play again today. When writing in my morning pages journal this morning, I had several moments of inspiration for what I want to write next, as well as for a possible ending. When the image of the ending came to my mind, I actually burst out crying. I usually find that when I have that reaction, it is because I have hit upon a deep truth for my characters - something that just is. (I believe I've written in my blog before about how writing often feels like I'm revealing a truth that already exists rather than creating something out of thin air -- the way sculptors say they are revealing the statue that already exists in the marble.) It is thrilling to have an ending to write towards -- this is the first time I have seen one so clearly. If only I could just take the week off from work and do nothing but write -- I feel like I could finish this thing in a few days if I were uninterrupted. Alas, I must be patient.

I am so grateful to my best-boyfriend-ever for taking off this morning to leave me the day alone to write -- his support of me in this endeavor is more meaningful than I can say. And on that note, I'm off to the park! I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Day 172: Investing

2010-07-09T18:19:00.001-04:00

I made a big investment in my writing life this week. I bought an iPad. I feel like this will free me greatly to write on the go, out in the park, on my lunch break, when I'm traveling, etc. I've never been an early-adopter of the latest gadgets, but this one seemed like something that would actually greatly improve my quality of life writing-wise, so I did it. I'll let you know if it lives up to my expectations.

It's intriguing to me how much I have already invested in this relatively-new passion of mine. I could probably tell you exactly how much money I've spent so far on my playwriting if I cared to pull out my tax records (I don't), but aside from this latest expenditure I've spent money on playwriting classes and on rehearsal spaces, costumes, props, and fliers for productions of my short plays. I've also invested so much more than money -- how could I count the hours I've spent writing, creating these characters and the worlds they inhabit? But even more than money or time, I've invested my hopes, my plans, my self in this endeavor. I am putting such great effort into sculpting my life so as to allow me more freedom and time to write. My biggest life goal at the moment is to have enough voice students so I can quit my office job -- largely so that I will have more time to write. I plan my time off and my vacations, and schedule my time with my boyfriend and my friends, all while trying to figure out when and how I can write. Writing has become my master.

How did that happen so quickly? I only discovered writing plays about a year and a half ago. How have I so whole-heartedly thrown myself into this thing that is so new to me that I scarcely feel I know what I'm doing? Or perhaps I should ask why?

I'm sure one reason is that this feeling is familiar to me -- for many years I was even more heavily invested in my opera career than I am currently in writing. I've learned a little better balance now, so that I am not sacrificing everything else in the name of my art. Perhaps it's also that I like having something be my "master", to give me focus, and far-reaching goals to always work towards. I am never just drifting aimlessly in the ocean with no land mass in sight -- I am always rowing towards something, even if what I'm rowing towards always remains elusively just beyond the horizon.

I think, though, that playwriting is tapping into something within me in a way that nothing else ever has. A truth comes out of me and onto the page, a truth that resonates with people. I seem to have found a way to share my authentic self, to connect with people through my writing in a way that was elusive to me as a performer. It definitely happened when I was performing, too, but those moments were fleeting and far too few. I won't go into the myriad of reasons why I think this might have been the case - but I love that I don't seem to be fighting that same struggle anymore. When I write, it just happens. And so I want to do more. And more. And more.

And that, my friends, is why I bought myself an iPad. How's that for a justification?

Day 168: Monday progress report

2010-07-06T00:24:00.000-04:00

Uh oh. It's technically not Monday anymore (since it is 10 minutes past midnight), and I haven't written my Monday progress report yet. This is what happens when I go camping and am away from my computer for a few days -- I actually unplug. I probably could have managed to thumb-type a brief post on my swanky new MyTouch phone (I have finally joined the ranks of people walking around with constant access to their email and the internet), but I actually kept my phone off all weekend, only checking in 2 or 3 times. It feels good to unplug, disconnect for awhile.

I thought I might write over the weekend, but in the end I only spent maybe a half-hour to an hour going over the last new scene I wrote and making some edits. I didn't feel in the space to sit down and really write -- especially by hand since I didn't have a computer with me. (oh, how all this will change when I get my iPad -- Apple, are you listening?). I do also have to admit that I find it hard to write in the presence of my boyfriend. This is something I am going to have to work on, for both of our benefits. We both need to be able to work in each others' presence, so that we can have time together and get our creative work done. I know couples who do this -- spend time in the same space, but each doing their own thing. I have to learn this skill if I ever want to live with someone again (which I do). Not to the exclusion of having time alone to write (or even just be), but as an additional mode. If anyone has any tips on how to do this, I would love to hear them....

Alas I will have to make up last week's writing on other days this week. I will sit down and look over my calendar in the morning and plan out when that will be. Until then, buona notte.

Day 165: Time Trifecta

2010-07-02T11:50:00.000-04:00

I've come to the conclusion that my time-management struggles most days come down to a fight between three things: exercise, sleep, or writing. It is impossible for me to do all three in any given day. I can sometimes manage to do two of those (though sleep almost always loses out to some degree). So I am in a constant battle to decide which thing is going to get neglected. All three are important to me; all three are good for me. Two are necessary for my physical health; one is necessary for my mental state. So how do I choose between them?

I am attempting to think of them in a bit of a rotation -- if I have exercised a couple of days in a row, then perhaps I'll choose writing in my blog (and/or my morning pages) the next morning. If I haven't slept well in several days, I'll buy myself an extra 30 minutes of sleep by taking the subway instead of walking an hour to work (though I love that so much, I will rarely choose not to do that). It is an imperfect system that usually leaves me feeling frustrated. I haven't found a way to feel truly ok with choosing to not exercise or not write (while I don't feel bad emotionally about not sleeping, I just feel tired and cranky which doesn't help me get the other things done).

I really need to learn how to not feel inadequate for not getting everything done I want to get done. I do hold myself to a rather impossible standard. But it isn't just that -- it is also these things make me happy and I feel frustrated that I don't have time to do them. I keep saying "if only I didn't have to work" - if only I could be earning my money from doing what I love to do. Oh-so-fortunately, I am more than halfway there. I make more than half of my money now from teaching voice lessons, which is something I love doing. My goal is to have enough students by the end of the year to be able to leave my office job and only teach -- which would allow me so much more time to write, and sleep, and exercise. While I hate to live for the future, I have to admit that I am eagerly awaiting the moment when that happens. (To that end, if you know anyone who is looking for a voice teacher, feel free to send them my way! Info on my studio is on my website.)

And now, I'm off for a lovely three day camping trip - triple the amount of weekend I normally get. I plan to do some writing on my play, and will report how it goes on Monday. Happy 4th of July!

Day 161: Monday report: up to 64 pages!

2010-06-28T13:59:00.000-04:00

Here is my every-Monday progress report that I promised as part of my renewed focus on finishing my play:

I devoted about 9 hours yesterday to writing. I wrote a new scene, incorporated a pre-existing scene (one of the short plays that inspired this work), and also went through the whole script so far and did a fair amount of editing and reconciling to make the old stuff make sense with the new stuff I've written. I am now up to page 64. I am aiming for 90-120 pages, although I'm trying not to worry too much about the length and just write how ever much I need to tell the story.

Oh how glorious it felt to get back to my play! I had missed my "family". It was wonderful to hear them speaking and watch them moving through their imaginary world again as they unfold this story for me. This process feels a little different now, though, then it did before. While I do still hear them saying things, I'm also noticing that my "craft" is coming into play more -- instead of just writing whatever comes out, I am now shaping things more, like when I see that I need to set something up better in order to give it a better pay-off, or when I catch myself writing too much exposition and need to weave in the back-story through conflict instead. (You see, one of the cardinal rules of playwriting is to avoid the phrase "remember when...". Audiences don't want to watch characters reminisce; they want to watch them act/react in the moment. The past has to come through their current actions.) Often times scenes will come out of me that are nothing but reminiscing -- this is the characters' way of telling me their backstory. Those scenes are useful for me as the writer, but they don't get to stay in the play. Instead I have to find a way to weave the back-story into the present story. One of the ways I am accomplishing this is by using a ghost. She isn't really a ghost, she is an external manifestation of an inner dialogue that the characters are having. (If you've ever lost someone important to you, you have probably had imaginary conversations with them after they passed. That's what I'm talking about.) It's an interesting device that the people who have read the play so far have found effective.

But the best part about yesterday's writing is that I am over-flowing with inspiration right now! I so wish I could have stayed home from work to just write all day. I got all sorts of ideas as I was walking to work this morning. A bit of an outline is coming into my head, which is very exciting. Up until now, I have been writing completely blind with no idea of where this was going to end up. But enough pieces of the puzzle are in place now that I am starting to be able to see what is missing.

I can't wait to sit back down to write again as soon as possible. I think an iPad may be in my future so I can sit down to write anywhere and everywhere....

Day 160: Diving back in

2010-06-27T12:16:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday, the first full day off I've had in awhile. I have set aside the day to write, no other expectations. I should probably also do laundry and clean my apartment, but I really don't want to take away from my time to write. So I'm going to put even those things aside.

I've enjoyed an all-too-rare relaxing morning with my boyfriend, relishing that I didn't have to run off to work or teach. But now that it is time to get started writing, I find I have a pit of anxiety in my tummy. My mind has no label for this anxiety -- it is purely physical. I'm not sure if I'm just having a hard time letting down after having been running so non-stop, or if I'm subconsciously nervous about getting back to writing, afraid I won't be able to come up with anything. Or maybe I'm not nervous, maybe I'm excited. I always tell my students with stage fright that the physiological response to anxiety and excitement are exactly the same - it's up to you to decide whether you are mentally on a roller coaster having a great time or if you are about to get in a car accident. This seems like a good time to take my own advice and tell myself I'm not nervous, I'm excited to get back to writing my play.

Whee, how exciting! I get to write on my play today! Time to kick the boyfriend out and get to work. I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Day 159: Why I love NY (or how not to be precious)

2010-06-26T14:40:00.001-04:00

Last night I found myself in a little park at the corner of 2nd Ave and 10th Street, eating a frozen yogurt and listening to someone play a very out-of-tune piano. Yes, a piano, outside, in the park. It is part of the Play Me, I'm Yours art project going on in NYC until July 5th (click on the link for more info). These pianos are located in various places around the city, for anyone to come and play. The pianos will be donated to schools and community organizations after the project is over. This is exceedingly cool on more fronts than I can count.

So there I was, at 11pm on a warm summer night, outside listening to a couple of very talented pianists taking turns playing songs they knew. There wasn't a line of people waiting to play, so they kept switching off and trying to remember more pieces, sometimes more successfully than others. There was a nice, shifting crowd of people around, thoroughly enjoying the free entertainment (despite the rather dismal quality of the piano itself). I finally got the guts up to play the one song I know by heart (Solfeggietto by CPE Bach, which I learned in probably 4th grade and is, sadly, still the only piece I know by heart on the piano). I was wishing that I knew the accompaniment to some of my own songs so I could play and sing something. My boyfriend then reminded me that one of the pianists had been playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow earlier, so I asked him if he'd be willing to play it for me while I sang. We negotiated keys for a moment (which proved to be completely pointless, given how far off from true pitch the piano was), and then performed together.

As soon as I started singing, everyone from the sidewalk moved in and gathered around closer to listen. Despite the tempo being a mile off from what I normally do, and god only knows what key I was actually singing it, it felt wonderful. My voice was easy and free, the pianist and I were listening to each other and making music together, and the crowd was rapt. It was a glorious moment, and one that is hard to imagine happening anywhere besides New York.

It is only in the last couple of years that I have found the freedom to sing spontaneously like that. I took my singing so seriously and was so self-conscious about it being "perfect", that I was uncomfortable singing off the cuff. Now, it is one of my favorite things to do. Having taken the pressure off of myself to make money as a singer, I can truly just enjoy the art for the art's sake, and rest comfortably knowing that even if it is not "perfect", it is pretty damn awesome and people enjoy it. Including me.

I don't ever want to become as precious about my playwriting as I used to be about my singing. I met someone recently who will be going to grad school for playwriting in the fall, and I thought "wow, people go to grad school for this thing I'm just doing." For a moment, I thought perhaps it was a bit arrogant of me to think I could do this thing - and do it well - without more formal study. But I actually think my lack of formal training is a big leg-up for me: I am not "in my head" about my writing, not over-analyzing, over-working, trying too hard. Which is - I know now - a lot of what held me back as an opera singer. But with my writing, I go by instinct. A life spent in the theater has taught me what makes good theater, so I know if what I'm writing works or not (and trust that). I am also writing purely for the joy of it. While I won't lie and say I don't dream of winning a Tony for best play, my main drive for writing is not fame and fortune. I know all too well how elusive those are regardless of how talented and driven one might be. And little moments like last night are a great reminder for me of the most important reason why I do this crazy thing called art: to bring people together.

Day 155: Refocus

2010-06-22T08:28:00.001-04:00

Hello, blog, I've missed you. I hope a few of you are still there.

The last several weeks I have been occupied/distracted/side-tracked with wonderful, important projects that have done a lot for me as an artist. I had the 48 hour play festival, a recital for my voice studio as well as a voice teaching seminar, a performance of my own with Kat, plus curating last weekend's Ladies Lab of short plays by women playwrights as well as producing my own short play within that. It has been intense and crazy and exhausting and exhilarating and rewarding and frustrating and wonderful and promising. I've developed relationships with a talented (and connected) director, wonderful actors, and producing organizations that have expressed interest in my work. I've even been asked about possibly writing the book for a musical. So I don't regret any of it (though I wish maybe they hadn't all happened quite so on top of each other). But my blog and my full-length play (not to mention my boyfriend and my friends) have suffered from a lack of attention during this time. It's time to refocus.

Looking over my blogging habits and my writing habits, I was more focused on the play when I was also more dedicated to blogging about it. It is a form of accountability. I have a number of people who are now clamoring to read and possibly work on this full-length play, as well as some opportunities to submit it places, and I really need to get it done. More importantly, I miss Frank. And Vivian, and Angie, and Annette. I want to talk to them again. I feel them dancing in my head, in the background, patiently waiting to tell me more of their story. I can't wait to get back to hear what they have to say.

Since the playwriting class I was going to take this summer may not be happening now, I have to find my own form of accountability. I'm going to start here. Every Monday, I will report the progress I made on the play during the previous week, and I will post at least two other times during the week as well. That is my commitment to myself, and to you. Feel free to call me out on it if you notice me slacking.

I look forward to reconnecting to my play, to this process, and to all of you.

Play-fully,

Natalie

Day 149: My next short play!

2010-06-16T11:22:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I've been so insanely busy that I haven't even had time to post about my next short play! Performances are this Saturday and Sunday (details below). This is probably my favorite short play I have written, Spirit Dust, set in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I'm working with a superb director, Paul Stancato (who just came from directing the national tour of the Lion King), and two beautifully talented actresses, Suzee Dunn and Sally Burtenshaw. Tickets are completely sold out for Saturday, and Sunday is filling up fast, so get your ticket online ASAP! Details below.

I'm trying an experiment with this play: after finishing the rewrites from the first 2 rehearsals, I have now stepped back and will not be attending the rest of the rehearsals. I will just show up on Saturday and sit in the audience and see what they have done with my play. While part of my brain says "eeeek!", the other part trusts that the wonderful people I have chosen to work on this will do great work and is actually excited about this. I know I'll still be nervous the night of the show (have I mentioned how much more nerve-wracking it is to watch someone perform my play than it is to perform myself?), but it is refreshing to let go of some control. I'll let you know how I feel about the experience when I come out the other side of it.

The other interesting part of this performance is that I have taken on the role of "curator": I selected all of the playwrights and their plays, and am basically doing all of the coordinating of the event without assuming the financial risks or rewards of producing it (though I'm still paying for the rehearsal and production of my own play). I seem to be really good at this sort of thing, and am wondering if perhaps I'm going to end up being a producer.... Though I loathe the thought of dealing with the money side of things, so I don't know. But given the success we are having with selling tickets for this run, I am considering producing another run of it myself, perhaps in partnership with one of the other writers. We shall see.

In the mean time, come on down for what promises to be a lovely night of theater! Did I mention that all the plays are by women? I didn't start out trying to make that happen, but all the writers who responded to me at first were women, so I decided to make a thing of it. In a world where only 17% of plays produced are written by women, it is exciting to put together a program by so many talented women writers. I hope to see you there!

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John Chatterton's Short Play Lab presents:

Ladies' Lab: Short Plays to Amuse and Amaze

Seven women playwrights bring you seven smokin' hot new plays, curated by Natalie Wilson.

7pm Saturday June 19th
4pm Sunday June 20th

Roy Arias Payan Theatre
300 West 43rd Street, 5th Floor (@ 8th Ave)

Tickets: $18 (available online at SmartTix.com, or by calling 212-868-4444)

For information about the plays, visit my website.
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Day 141: Where oh where has my blogging bug gone?

2010-06-07T18:06:00.000-04:00

I'm a little surprised at myself that I missed my half-way mark. Day 133 came and went without my marking its passage. That's a little nerve-wracking, both because it's an indication of how much I've been slacking on the blog and because of how much work I still have to do on my play to finish it by October.

I feel a little sad that I'm not as motivated to write in my blog as I was before. Though it's not just a matter of motivation, it's more that I don't feel the impulse or the need to write in it as often. I am still completely dedicated to my project - I have no desire or impulse to abandon that - I just feel like I have less to say about it all lately. Sometimes I feel that what I want to say is now always a variation on themes I have written before, so I feel less compelled to write. And, as always, my time is so divided that writing in my blog most always has to come at the expense of something else. If I have to choose between writing in my blog or fitting in some exercise before work, right now the exercise wins. (my waist band certainly knows I need it, after all the glutonous eating I did on my vacation...)

The next two weeks are another whirlwind of events for me, covering all areas of my creative life: a voice teaching seminar at Actor's Connection on Thursday, my own singing performance with Kat for a benefit on Saturday, and performances of one of my short plays ("Spirit Dust") the following weekend (not to mention that my parents will be visiting for the first time in 3 years). I was going 100 miles an hour before my vacation, stopped for 6 blissful days, then had to jump right back on the 100 mile an hour treadmill again. It's been a bit of a rough re-entry.

I promise you haven't seen the last of me. My impulse to blog may pick up as my summer slows down in a few weeks (I hope, on both counts). Certainly my play writing will pick up again, as I've signed up for another playwriting class to make sure I keep producing every week.

In the meantime, I hope you all are enjoying the beginnings of summer, and that perhaps I'll see you at one my plays coming up on the 19th and 20th!

Day 131: Being

2010-05-28T19:11:00.000-04:00

I am on vacation, staying in the most comforting, charming, soul-soothing house in the countryside that you can imagine. I am incredibly blessed to have chosen-family who offer me the use of this house (and their car to get there) when they are off teaching at opera programs. I am sitting on a lounge chair on the deck, over looking an expanse of green fields and trees and the catskill "mountains" (having lived in California and Colorado, these earth-pimples will never be mountains to me), listening to a cacophonous symphony of birds. I'm on my something-or-other-th glass of wine. I've been here just shy of 48 hours, and I've already finished one book and plowed through most of a second. I am trying, desperately, to relax, to shake off the wonderful and painful and grueling and exciting and disappointing and satisfying craziness of the past few weeks. The doing nothing is helping, the wine is helping, the best-boyfriend-ever is helping, visiting the guy with the chicken-duck-rabbit-pigeon-guinea fowl-pheasant bird farm who sells fresh eggs practically straight from under the chickens butts is helping, seeing the deer in the grass at the edge of the property is helping, watching neon-yellow finches feed from the bird feeder 5 feet from me is helping. But there is a knot in my chest that still hasn't loosened.

As I relax, and my engine revs down, and I continue to push the incessant to-do list that runs non-stop in my brain far enough into the background that I only barely hear it screaming at me, other things start to come up. Emotions, longings, fears, dreams, doubts. Some of it is good, some of it is uncomfortable. And I am made aware again of something I learned about myself long ago: I keep myself so busy in part so that I don't have time to stop and feel things.

Ah, but I want to feel things! The good things, of course, but even some of the bad things. I know I can't have one without the other. As wrenchingly painful as the first 6 months or so after my separation were, I also had never felt so alive in all my life. I felt a range of emotion - from grief to excitement to anger to happiness to love to loss to fear to liberation - that I had never allowed myself to feel before. It was horrible and wonderful all at the same time. It transformed me, and I know I am a greater person -- and a much greater artist -- for it.

But unfortunately it is a life-long habit for me to suppress and avoid my feelings. I am trying to learn to just sit with where I am, to just be sometimes; to have a day where I'm feeling off and be ok with that instead of trying to fix it. But voices in my head fight that. My tendency is to view everything as a problem to be fixed. That doesn't always serve me as a person, especially because not everything can be fixed. Though, it suddenly occurs to me, perhaps I can put that habit to good use in my writing, as every scene and character in a play needs an "action": something they want or a problem they need to fix. No one wants to watch a character who is content to just be where they are, that doesn't make for good theater. But my life isn't theater, and I'd like to learn to be content where I am. Sometimes. Not always, as I want to continue to grow and change and learn and better myself, but sometimes I need to just -- be.

On that note, I think I need to go "be" with some Vermont hickory smoked maple cheddar cheese and another glass of wine.

Day 127: Letting Go

2010-05-24T16:38:00.002-04:00

(Forgive the radio silence for the last week. Between the play festival and finals, my students' recital, and my boyfriend's music show and birthday, I have scarcely had a moment to breathe.)

There is far more to process and learn from the experience of this last week's 48-hour play festival than I can possibly fit into one blog post, so I'll start with its biggest - and most painful - lesson: how to let go.

As a performer, I am used to being in control of what happens during a live performance. Granted, I can't control what the other performers do or how the audience reacts, but I can control my own performance and trust myself to put on a good show no matter what else happens. As a playwright, I have discovered that it is far, far more nerve-wracking for me to be in the audience watching someone else perform my play than it is for me to be on stage myself, because I have absolutely no control over what happens.

As a playwright for this festival, it was up to me to decide how much I wanted to be part of the rehearsal process. I chose to be part of all of it, as I love watching the process and also want to exercise control over any line changes that might be needed once the play gets up on its feet. I think the collaborative part of creating theater is the most satisfying part: seeing what other people bring to the work I have created, and how they can help mold and shape the final touches on it.

So I was there all day last Sunday, until after their tech rehearsal, at which point I decided I had to leave. It was too nerve-wracking for me watching the actors continue to struggle to learn their lines, and I knew that, with only 3 hours til the performance, there was nothing I could do to help. So rather than hover over them like an anxious stage mother, I left and came back just in time for curtain. This was the first step I took towards letting go. It paid off in this case, as the actors pulled through reasonably well -- there was a lot of paraphrasing of my lines, but they got the story across and the audience loved it. And of course, the play made it to the finals, so I was very happy.

Then during the week I had to let go again. There was no time when my director and I were both available to rehearse with the actors, so I offered to rehearse with the actors once to help them with lines, and then have the director work with them. The director didn't want me to do that, though, as she wanted to have input on the rehearsal process. As this is her job, it made sense and I agreed. It was very difficult for me, though, to trust the actors and director to do their jobs without me. But I did. And it was actually kind of nice to be able to show up at curtain time on Saturday with no extra rehearsals or anything, and I was excited to see the work they had done on the piece without me.

Unfortunately, it did not pay off this time. The actors froze and ended up skipping over almost half of the script. As such, my play made very little sense. With 14 people in the audience who had come because of me, I was mortified. Not to mention more than a little angry. I really believed my play had a strong chance to win, and I felt like that had been ripped away from me. Not by anything I did, but by something completely out of my control.

Having spent my life in the theater, I understand that these things happen. There is nothing I could have done to prevent those actors from jumping ahead. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if we'd had more rehearsal, maybe it would have. Given that they did better with less rehearsal the weekend before, it's pointless to wonder. If I continue on this playwright path, I am going to have to deal with directors and actors and set designers doing things that don't always please me. And sometimes just plain screwing up. (Unless I decide to write one-woman shows for myself to produce and perform, in which case I will only have me to blame.) I will have to continue to trust and hope that my work can shine through regardless.

And that is what has happened. Out of the disappointment and frustration comes a shining light: the producers of the festival told me how highly they think of my work and that they want to work with me in the future. Even though no one really got to see it, I did, in fact, write a damn fine play.

That's all I have control over. I have to let go of the rest.

Day 120: ON TO THE FINALS!!

2010-05-17T00:18:00.000-04:00

My 10 minute play, 'S Mothering, created for the From the Hip 48 Hour play festival, was chosen to move on to the finals! If you missed it tonight, you can come see it again on Saturday (this time with a full week to rehearse instead of a day!).

8pm Saturday May 22nd
Wings Theater
154 Christopher Street
Tickets: $15

More recollections about the experience and all later, too exhausted now, but I wanted to share the amazing news!!!!!

Day 118: Ready, set....

2010-05-14T14:28:00.000-04:00

Here I am, about to embark on one of the craziest things I've ever done: write a play - for public consumption - in only 24 hours. I just met my director and two lovely actors, saw them do an improv, and was given my "surprise theme" that has to show up somewhere in my play. I have until 10pm tomorrow night to create a 10 minute play for them to memorize, rehearse, and perform on Sunday evening. This is a terribly exciting adventure and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

If you want to see what I come up with, reserve your tickets ahead of time -- reservations are piling up!

Reserve your tickets by emailing tickets@lefthipproductions.com and mentioning the date, time, title of show, and number of tickets desired. Group rates of $12/ticket are available for parties of 8 or more.

"From the Hip"
Sunday May 16 at 8PM
Wings Theatre
154 Christopher Street
Tickets: $15

About to unplug my router so I'm not distracted while writing. I'll see you on the other side.

Day 116: Mind your Manners

2010-05-12T21:48:00.001-04:00

I have so little going on these days (hah!) that I have decided to produce another of my short plays (cause I'm INSANE!). More details to come, but save June 19/20 on your calendars! As such I am back on the "other side of the table", as we performer-types like to say, meaning I am sitting behind the audition table doing the casting rather than being in front of the audition table doing the auditioning. I really love this process, and know that if I ever do return to the auditioning side of the table again, I will approach it very differently now. My auditions aren't for a couple of weeks yet, but I have been in the process of gathering resumes and headshots and scheduling audition slots. (It's actually a fair amount of work to get people to come audition for you, it turns out.) In this process, I ended up doing something I've never had to do before: I canceled someone's audition. If you ever thought that your cover letter/email doesn't matter, let me assure you: it does.

It turns out I form an almost instant, subconscious opinion of each actor or director who contacts me based upon my email (or, rarely, phone) correspondence with them. The professionalism, clarity, and promptness of a person's messages all get filed in my brain. For good or bad, I have the 12 actresses coming to read for me organized into a loose hierarchy in my head, largely based upon how they have interacted with me over email (the only thing that can trump this is a personal recommendation). A person who has impressed me with their professionalism has to disappoint me with their acting to not be cast. A person who has not interacted well with me has to really impress me with their acting in order to be cast. Which column would you rather be in?

So why did I cancel that actor's audition? Her emails to me had always been a bit flaky and unprofessional: too conversational, not well-written, no signature file or link to a website, nothing to tell me she was a potential collaborator rather than just a friend dropping me an email (even though I had only met her briefly at a networking event). I was going to give her a chance to impress me with her acting anyway, until she emailed me on two separate occasions to ask me questions she had already asked and that I had already answered (and that she had confirmed receiving the answer). At that point, I knew I would never cast her, so rather than wasting everyone's time I simply told her that I needed any actor I worked with to be more on the ball than that. If you can't remember your audition appointment, how can I trust that you will remember the rehearsal schedule? There are too many incredibly talented people out there for me to waste my time with such nonsense.

I now feel like I haven't been crazy all these years for spending so much time making sure my professional emails are just that: professional. Remember that old expression, you never get a second chance at a first impression? Well, nowadays, many of our first impressions are electronic. Whatever your field, it is worth the time to make sure that impression is a positive one. And that's my unsolicited advice for the day.

Day 112: Of Gods and Babies

2010-05-08T19:52:00.003-04:00

I saw Sondheim on Sondheim last night, a theatrical/musical evening's worship of the greatest living creator of the American Musical Theater. (I contemplated using the word "arguably", but I'm not sure I think that is actually an arguable point). They even had a song in the show singing about how Sondheim is "god".

Interspersed between the mostly stellar performances of his music are video clips of Sondheim talking about his life and work. At one point he says that he regrets not having had children, but that art and teaching are the other ways to fill that need; that the shows you write are your babies that you send out into the world. (He stole my line!).

I decided I didn't want children several years before I started trying to "give birth" to a play. There were many reasons, one being that I feared I might resent a child for taking time away from my opera career, and another being that my teaching satisfied a lot of my urges to have an effect on future generations. Inherent in our human nature seems to be a desire for our lives to have meaning; to feel that we have made a difference; to live on past our death somehow. Having children is a very clear way to do that. But if you don't have children, how to accomplish that is a little more nebulous. How do you know that you living has mattered? For me, teaching is the best way to do that -- I am able to influence and shape other people, without having to change any of their diapers.

It is very egotistical to want to leave a mark, to want our lives to have meaning. My boyfriend is fond of reminding me that the world will continue to turn without me (when trying to convince me it's ok to take a break). Indeed, the world will continue to turn without me, just as it would without Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey or even Stephen Sondheim. That's what the world does, it keeps turning. Life goes on. People adapt. That is what has allowed us to take over the planet - along with rats and cockroaches and pigeons - our incredible ability to adapt.

Given that on a very fundamental level the world will continue to turn without any one of us, I think the real question is how do we want to feel about how we live our lives? I can't control whether or not people will remember me. Even if I had children, I couldn't be sure the world would remember me much further down the line. The one thing that is within my control is how I feel about how I live my life. If I have the opportunity to look over my life from my deathbed, I want to feel I lived my life big: experienced a lot and gave a lot; fed heartily from the buffet but also planted a lot of seeds. I'm glad to say that even now, I feel that way (most of the time). In the midst of my pangs at not being on the stage last night, I remembered I got to perform the role of Desiree (in Sondheim's masterpiece A Little Night Music). Not on Broadway, but I did get to perform it. Not many can say that. I've had so many amazing experiences, and I have done my best to give a lot -- with my teaching, my performing, my Reiki, by trying to be generous with my family and friends and even with strangers. Is the world any different yet for my having been here? Maybe not, but certainly some individual people's lives are different. Just as mine is different because of certain people.

Who in your life has affected you the most? Don't think about it -- just blurt out the names of the first people who come to your mind. When I did this in my journal last night, my list only had one famous person on it. Far more than half of them are teachers. Even if I'm never famous, maybe, just maybe, some day I'll have the honor of being on someone's list. There is some ego there, sure, but it is also my way of feeling that I have earned the carbon footprint I take up on this earth. It's how I want to feel about my life - that I've not only lived well for myself, but that I've made other people's lives better.

Day 107: from verb to noun

2010-05-03T22:37:00.000-04:00

I met with a director the other day who told me she also writes, but doesn't call herself a playwright. She feels that word is sacred somehow, and doesn't feel she qualifies.

My boyfriend always makes a point to distinguish between himself as someone who "sings", rather than someone like me, who is a "singer". It is something he does, but not something he has cultivated enough as a craft to feel he deserves the title of "singer".

When does one graduate from doing something to being something? Or, if one does something, is one by definition an -er of that thing? When does the verb become the noun?

What does it mean to be an -er of something? What does it mean to be a writer, for example? Does it mean I make my living at that? (I don't). Does it mean I spend a large portion of my time writing? (I do). Does it mean that I choose writing over everything else? (I don't). Does it mean I always walk around with a notebook? (I do). Does it mean writing is my primary mode of expression? (I don't know). I haven't felt like much of a writer the last couple of days. The only reason I even started writing this blog post was that the sudoku puzzle I was doing at the wine bar was too hard, and I got frustrated and pulled out my notebook instead.

When I gave up my opera career a couple of years ago, I put a lot of effort into redefining - no, UN-defining myself. I had been "Natalie the opera singer" for so many years that I didn't know who I was if I wasn't doing that anymore. I bristled every time someone introduced me and said "she's an opera singer", or when someone called me by my long-held nickname "diva" (which I earned for my singing, not my attitude). When someone asked me what I did, I didn't know what to say -- I didn't want to be defined by how I was earning my money (at an admin job) but wasn't sure I deserved the title "singer" anymore. I turned this self-consciousness outward, and stopped asking people "what do you do?" and started asking instead "what keeps you busy during the day?"

We are living in the era of the "/" - where everyone you meet is an actor/singer/waiter, or director/writer/yoga instructor, or musician/IT guy/biker. Hardly anyone has a single career throughout their lives anymore, and amongst artistic types, few have a single career at one time even. Even in this era of the "/", we still have an incessant need to label ourselves, to define ourselves by what we do, to turn our verbs into nouns. I'm guilty of it as well -- I'm a singer/actress/voice teacher/playwright. (And that doesn't even include my admin job, or my currently-very-quiet Reiki practice.) It's enough to give a person split personalities.

Can we just agree to eschew the titles altogether?

Hi, I'm Natalie. I do lots of things. But I am me.

Day 105: The Art Doula is born

2010-05-02T00:29:00.001-04:00

I have my first column!

Today (or what was today only 20 minutes ago) was the launch day of BigVisionEmptyWallet.com, a new one-stop blogazine for the independent film community in New York. I am excited to be one of the feature writers on the site, with a column entitled The Art Doula: helping you give birth to your art through practical pointers, motivational mantras, and creative compassion. You can read my first column here!

The inspiration for this goes back to my post on Day 73: The Art of Happiness (or the Happiness of Art), where I was musing about how I can give more back with my writing (and my art in general). In the days and weeks following that post, it came to me that I'm really good at getting lots of stuff done, and at taking an idea and figuring out how to bring it to fruition. I wondered if perhaps I could help other people get their own stuff done, so that they can make their creative dreams a reality. When one of the founders of BVEW approached me about writing for the site, at first I didn't know what I could write that would be relevant to the film world. But then I realized that this kind of advice would apply to any creative field, and she heartily agreed and brought me on board. While I have other visions for where the Art Doula might go eventually, this is a great place for her to start. Come and visit me over there and let me know what you think!

Day 103: Good enough

2010-04-29T22:51:00.000-04:00

I feel like I "should" write a blog post, but I'm not really sure what to write about. And if you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know how I feel about the word "should".

But I also feel like there is a really important transformation happening in my life, which is part of the reason I haven't been blogging as often. It is an intentional transformation, yet the specifics of how it is manifesting were not necessarily what I thought would happen.

I have been striving for more ease in my life: a better balance between my personal, creative, and financial needs. I didn't know how to achieve that, and in many ways thought it would be impossible without some kind of deus ex machina from a patron or winning the lottery.

And yet... I seem to have found it. It's not perfect, and I wish I could do more (and certainly hope to be able to as I continue to grow my voice teaching studio and eventually work less at the office). But I suddenly don't feel myself frustrated and exhausted every day, and almost always find myself responding "I'm great!" when people ask how I am. And meaning it.

How have I done this? For one, cutting down from 3 jobs to 2 has most certainly made a difference. Spending more and more time doing something I love, that I'm really good at, and that helps other people (my teaching) has made an even bigger difference. But the most important thing, I think, has been letting go of some of the expectations I had on myself.

I was expecting myself to do so much: write 4 to 5 blog posts a week, write at least an hour 6 days a week (and many more hours on several of those days), exercise 4 to 5 times a week, do my morning pages every day, see my friends a lot, and spend time with my boyfriend as often as possible (and of course this doesn't include all the more mundane tasks like going to work, cleaning my apartment, grocery shopping, etc etc etc). I was operating under such a huge weight of guilt at not being able to get all these things done, that I was being even less productive. Worse, I wasn't able to enjoy the time I was spending doing any of those things -- my time writing I was frustrated because it wasn't longer, my time with my boyfriend wasn't as joyful as it could be because I was feeling guilty for not working. I was living from a place of scarcity instead of a place of abundance.

I've decided to let go of some of those expectations. As much as I would love my blog to become an international internet sensation, I don't have the time required to continually promote it to get it to that stature. That being the case, does it really matter if I write 2-3 posts a week instead of 4-5? Verily, it doth not. The world will continue to turn. Deciding to dedicate one full day a week to writing instead of an hour each day has also released me from a huge amount of pressure and stress -- I squeeze in all the little things I need to do during the week so I can keep my Sundays clear to write, and thus have very productive days all around. This has also meant letting go of spending some time with my boyfriend, as Sundays are the only day we could potentially have an entire day free to spend together. But he understands and is supportive. Plus, as he pointed out, the time we do spend together is better this way because I'm not cranky and frustrated and feeling guilty for not writing. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit more exercise in, but it's not like I'm sitting around on my butt all the time. In addition to the gym a couple of times a week, I'm working in a lot more walking now that it's warming up.

I guess I'm learning to be content with "good enough" and to stop demanding "perfection" of myself. Some - including myself not too long ago - might call this complacency, and a sure road to not becoming famous or making a living as an artist. Maybe so. (Though me at "complacent" is still far more driven than most people I know). But you know what? I don't care. I'm happy. And that's worth more than anything.

Day 100: Meditation attempt #2

2010-04-26T16:47:00.001-04:00

By George, I think I've got it!

I organized my week again to have the full day on Sunday to focus on writing. I squeezed other things (like website updating, email sending, and blog writing) into those little one hour blocks during the week, instead of trying to squeeze my playwriting into those blocks. The rewards I am reaping from this new approach are tremendous.

I got started around 1pm, after - for the first time in ages - managing to sleep in and spend a leisurely morning with my boyfriend. I then cleared my writing environment, lit a candle, put a pillow on the floor, and set my timer for 20 minutes of meditation. I began my meditation with an image my therapist had helped me find: a "protector" persona on my left shoulder, holding the cable with which my "emotional depth explorer" persona could repel down into my core, searching for whatever emotions she might find without the fear of getting lost there.

I sank so deep so fast, it startled me. Almost instantly images of the characters in my play were flooding my mind, and a scene started to play itself out for me like a movie. I broke into sobs at several points as the emotions flowed through me like waves. I realize that normally one strives for a quiet mind while meditating, but the work my subconscious was doing for me was not to be dismissed. The 20 minutes were gone in a flash, without the customary crick in my back or numb and tingling foot. I went instantly to my computer and began writing down everything I had just seen.

The scene itself completely took me by surprise. Suddenly Frank is in the kitchen, contemplating a palm full of pain pills and talking to the ghost of his dead wife. Where did that come from? It feels very deep and very real to me, as if it were something I had experienced, even though it is not at all inspired by real events in my life.

I am excited (and a little nervous) to hear my class' reaction to the scene tonight. But mostly, I am just delighted that I have found a way to approach my writing that brings me so much satisfaction. I seem to be finding a much better balance in my life right now, and everything from my work to my personal life to my creative life is benefiting.

I want to remember this feeling the next time my life falls out of whack, as I'm sure it will. But these tools I'm acquiring will help me get back in balance all that much faster.

Day 97: Playwriting as Therapy

2010-04-24T00:07:00.000-04:00

I doubt it would make for a best-selling self-help book -- since writing a play would be highly impractical for and of no interest to most people -- but I have to say playwriting is proving to be really great therapy for me. I learn something new about myself most every day.

When I realized last week that I wasn't going deep enough with my characters -- that I wasn't letting enough of their emotions come through -- I stopped to ask myself why this might be. Was there something about me as a person that made it difficult for me to do that? The most emotional moments I had written so far in my play scared me when I first wrote them. That's always a sign, isn't it? When something scares you, there's usually something going on.

I think I may have held myself at a distance from a lot of my emotions in the past. I never wanted to be anyone else's "problem" -- I felt I had to be strong, that I couldn't need or ask for anything. It wasn't that I didn't feel anything - I certainly felt my fear and anxiety incredibly deeply - but I tried to suppress my feelings a lot. Any feeling other than happiness was a problem to be solved, something to overcome or control.

I can be a great actress and hide those feelings I'm suppressing from much of the world. While there have always been people in my life who could see through the scrim I put up, many could not (including my ex-husband, who had no idea I spent our entire honeymoon in a panic attack until I told him years later). My best-boyfriend-ever, on the other hand, sometimes can tell I am feeling something before even I have recognized it. It's a whole different universe, not being able to get away with pulling the wool over someone's eyes.

I wonder now if I was drawn to the performing arts because it was a safe place I could express myself, because they were other people's emotions. It was a way for me to release those feelings without being vulnerable or fearing that someone would react negatively. Or, perhaps even scarier, that I would express an emotional need and the other person wouldn't be able to fill it.

So where am I now? I've spent a lot of years working on bringing my walls down, on making the Natalie-behind-the-mask more closely match the Natalie-the-world-sees. I appear to have succeeded - sometimes to my chagrin - as I can't seem to get away with anything around the people closest to me now. Either that or I've chosen more perceptive friends. Certainly the turmoil of the last couple of years has put me in touch with my emotions on a level I rarely - if ever - have previously experienced. They sometimes come upon me now whether I want them to or not (see Day 84: Cry Baby). My deeper feelings have begun to speak, and they will not be ignored.

Exploring the deeper emotional lives of my characters will inevitably, I believe, involve me more deeply exploring my own emotional life. I am trying to retrain myself to simply experience my feelings as they come and move through them, rather than trying to suppress, control or "fix" them - as if they were a sign of something wrong with me.

I clearly am not only "giving birth" to just a play anymore. It's is ever clearer to me that a different Natalie is going to emerge at the end of these 9 months as well. I look forward to meeting her.

Day 96: Exciting News!

2010-04-22T10:17:00.002-04:00

File this under "what have I gotten myself into"....

I have been selected to be a playwright for Left Hip Productions' "From the Hip" Festival! This is a 48-hour play festival in which actors, directors and playwrights are randomly cast into groups to collaborate on the creation of a short play. The actors will first improvise a scene, which I will then use as inspiration to write a ten-minute play -- in only 24 hours! (gulp!) The actors and directors then have 24 hours to memorize and rehearse the play before performing it before an audience, which will vote for their favorite play. The winners move on to the finals to compete for a place in Left Hip Productions' play development program, so please mark your calendars to come out on Sunday May 16th and support me!

8pm, Sunday May 16th
Wings Theater
154 Christopher Street, NYC

More details (and reminders) as it gets closer, but I had to share the exciting news!!!

p.s. You can read an article about this tremendous organization here.

Day 93: Observer Effect

2010-04-19T11:49:00.002-04:00

It is so very interesting how often in life as soon as we observe a phenomenon, that phenomenon changes. It is as if the act of observing actually changes that which is being observed (sometimes called the "observer effect").

The day after I observed that my excitement and motivation for writing my play had waned, I had the best writing day I can remember having. Regardless of how others may respond to the material, my experience writing yesterday was the least frustrating and most rewarding I have had in a long time. Today I feel satisfied, rested, and calmly excited (as opposed to nervously excited) to bring the fruits of my labor to class tonight.

What made the difference, you ask?

First of all, I set aside the entire day. I woke up alone, went to bed alone, and didn't contact or speak to anyone other than my boyfriend all day. From 10:30am to 11:30pm, my top priority was writing. I did accomplish a few other tasks, like laundry and cooking myself a nice dinner, but I asked myself continually -- am I just doing this to procrastinate or because I need to move away from the computer and breathe a little? By doing so, I struck a good balance.

I unplugged my wireless router. I don't mean turned off my Airport on my computer, I mean I actually disconnected the ethernet cable from the box, so I couldn't wither away time while I was trying to come up with an idea by alt-tabbing over to Firefox.

I asked for help. There was an evening event I was possibly going to attend with my boyfriend, but when at 6pm I was not at all frustrated but rather still feeling the creative juices flowing, I told him I was going to take him at his word that it was ok for me to stay home and write.  Not only was he not upset, he was actually glad that I was taking time for myself, to be with myself and to nurture my creative self. (This may be the top reason why he is the best-boyfriend-ever.)

I filtered less. Lines would pop into my head and I would just type them, even if they didn't fit where I was in the scene at the moment. I ended up essentially writing emotional high points or pivot points, and then filling in the connective tissue after to string them together.

I meditated. I think this may have been the most important thing I did. While certain things are active meditations for me, like Reiki and yoga, I haven't really meditated for years -- I mean actually sat my butt on a pillow, legs crossed, before a lighted candle with a timer running. I spent much of the 20 minutes thinking thoughts like "gee, I'm not very good at this anymore" and "I wonder how many minutes it's been now", but I continually turned back to watching myself breathe. Just before the twenty minutes were up, I did find a bit of a deeper, quieter place, where it actually occurred to me to use my Reiki to help open up my creativity. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read a little about it on my very-outdated reiki website).

The ideas to set aside an entire day to write and to try meditating first were both inspired by my playwriting classmates.

It had become very clear to me last week that I was only skimming the surface of the intense emotions that the characters in my play are feeling. The emotions are there, under the surface -- people have actually commented on how much is there, even though it is unstated -- but I didn't feel like enough was breaking through. I knew I needed to dive deeper, but I wasn't sure how. There are a number of reasons I think this may be the case - that I have trouble allowing my characters to really express the full depth of their emotion - which I want to expound upon in another blog post. But one very simple reason was pointed out to me by one of my classmates when she asked me after class if I wrote every day. I said no, but sometimes I tried to do an hour a day. She said "it's hard to get deep in an hour".   Hence, the full day to write.

With another classmate, I had been discussing a scene he had written that was incredibly emotionally powerful. I asked him how he managed to do that. He said it was very hard to write, to go that deep -- that he would end up curled up in a ball on the floor from the depth of the character's pain he felt.   One of the ways he was able to get that deep was by meditating. While I didn't end up in a ball on the floor, I did find myself crying on at least two occasions. I felt like my filter was down, that the emotions were bubbling up to the surface in a way they don't often do.

So I've learned some important lessons this week about my relationship to my writing. Like all long-term relationships, it will not always be roses and happiness and excitement, but there are tools you can use to help you get back to that place. I found a few new tools yesterday. I'm not naive enough to expect that if I did exactly those things again I would be guaranteed to have another day as satisfying as yesterday. But certainly I will try.

Day 91: Second Trimester

2010-04-17T17:44:00.000-04:00

I am now 91 days into this birthing project, which I guess officially puts me in my second trimester. I hadn't realized that until I went to title this post today, but it explains a lot about how I've been feeling lately.

The "bloom is off the rose" as people say. The initial excitement of beginning this project -- both the play and the blog -- has waned. I am at the toughest point in the journey in many ways: no longer at the beginning, all fresh and motivated and excited, but also not close enough to the end to feel that added momentum you feel when the finish line is in sight. I'm at mile 9 of a marathon, and I feel the temptation to stop and walk sometimes.

I'm finding it harder to prioritize writing, both the play and the blog (as you have no doubt noticed the last couple of weeks). Sleep needs and relationship needs are pulling at my already heavily divided time. I have to admit though, I'm mostly ok with that. My life is going remarkably well these days. My voice studio has gone from 1 student to 17 in the last 6 months. I am absolutely loving helping these talented people become better versions of themselves, and can't wait to see them perform at the recital I am planning for them in May. While I still want to double that number over the next 6 months so I can be entirely self-employed (ping me if you are looking for a teacher!), it is an immense relief to be able to breathe financially. On top of that, I have incredible friends, am more in love with my best-boyfriend-ever every day, and keep meeting more amazing artistic people to collaborate (or just connect) with all the time.

There are times I am not ok with it, when the BEAST I wrote about on Day 83 gnaws at my insides and tells me I'm not doing enough and I'm wasting time (and therefore my life). But I think I'm getting better at accepting the fact that my beast will always want more, will always make me feel like I'm not doing enough, and to actually be glad of that. My performing/writing partner Kat sent me an article called Welcoming Desire that really helped bring this home for me:

"What if we could welcome desire? We could view it just as an invitation to move in a certain direction, an invitation we are free to accept or to decline. Isn't it nice to receive an invitation for something you want to do, even if you can't make it?"

So while I had hoped by my second trimester I would be further along in my play than I am, I am so grateful that I have had the desire to do this. I have known people in my life who never really knew what they wanted, who had no strong pulls in any particular direction, but yet who also weren't happy with where they were. As I have witnessed, that makes for a miserable person. I would so much rather be troubled by too much desire than not enough.

Maybe I will get my play done by October. Maybe I won't. Fortunately this isn't a real baby so it's ok if it stays in the incubation chamber a little longer. And who knows, I still have another 175 days to go. A lot of writing can happen between now and then.

Thank you for being a witness to this process. I look forward to sharing the fruits of my labor -- whatever they may be -- with you.

Day 87: Lessons no one could teach me

2010-04-13T23:37:00.001-04:00

I found myself advising the mother of one of my teenage students today, in regards to her daughter's struggles with deciding how/if to pursue acting as a career. A few days ago I was consoling and advising another young student -- this one college age -- as to how to explain to her parents that the fact that she isn't working on Broadway after auditioning for 8 whole months doesn't mean she should give up. What to tell someone at the beginning of this long arduous journey? How do you prepare/advise someone for a path completely unpredictable except for the fact that it will include heartache and frustration and financial insecurity and self-doubt and loneliness, along with the far-too-brief moments of transcendent artistic, spiritual joy?

The truth is, you can't. There is no advice, no formula, no words one can say to the young one consumed by the beast of artistic ambition to spare her suffering. I often hear myself say "I wish someone had told me [blah] when I was young", but of course they probably did, and I just didn't hear it.

Nonetheless, here is some of the hard-earned wisdom I try to pass on to those who seek such advice from me, in an attempt to at least clear a few brambles from their path and steer them away from a cliff edge or two:

Don't go to school for the performing arts. No one truly cares where (or whether) you went to school; they just want to see what you can do. You will get far far better training studying privately with teachers and coaches and designing your own curriculum than you will get in pretty much any program. With few exceptions, the best teachers don't teach in universities, because they can make far far more money teaching privately in a city like New York (while also side-stepping the politics and hoop-jumping of academia).
Do go to school and study something that interests you. Study philosophy, psychology, art history, political science, biology, whatever. Broaden your world. Make yourself a more complex, well-rounded person. This will all serve you as an artist, and help prepare you for my next piece of advice:
Prepare for a parallel career. I was always told I would need a "fall-back" career, something to do if I didn't make it. Well, of course, I was going to make it, so I didn't need one. In fact, I didn't want a "fall-back" career, because then I knew I would end up falling back on it. If I gave myself no option except to make it, then I'd have to make it right? (wrong) Here's the reality: except for the most miniscule percentage of people, even highly successful performers -- those who have had national tours, performed on Broadway or at the Met, have made blockbuster movies or been on Law & Order -- have times when they are not making money as performers.* Even if you "make it", you will have to support yourself by other means at times. If you don't want to spend the largest chunks of your life temping or waiting tables, figure out something you would like to do that allows you some flexibility for your artistic pursuits and train yourself for that. I have found that for myself with my teaching - the only reason I'm glad I have a master's degree in voice performance (even though nothing of what I learned in grad school gets passed on to my students).
Make time for friends and family. It is so easy to say "I can't, I have rehearsal" (my mom actually bought me a t-shirt with this on it once, and I wore it with pride), and then wake up years later when your career is stalled to realize you have no friends and your marriage is on the rocks. There is no one audition, no one show, no one opportunity that will be the deciding factor in your career. You can't always sacrifice your career dreams for your friends and family, but you also can't always sacrifice your friends and family for your career dreams. In the end, your relationships are what sustain you, what nourish you, what make you a whole person, and are what you can count on when the dream eludes you. Besides, who are you going to thank when you win your Tony?
Lastly, if there is anything else in life that will make you happy, do that. It is rare that the moments of joy outnumber the moments of pain and frustration in this business, so it is only worth doing if you are miserable not doing it.

*A statistic for you: According to Actors’ Equity Association, just 18,000 of its 47,000 members were working in 2006–07, with the average number of work weeks at 17 weeks per actor in a year. Nearly 70 percent of these working actors earned $15,000 or less from work on stage; just 6 percent earned more than $75,000.

There is assuredly more advice I could wax on and on about, but I need to follow the advice of my best-boyfriend-ever and get myself some sleep now.

Day 84: Cry baby

2010-04-10T23:30:00.000-04:00

I found myself sobbing uncontrollably this afternoon. I have no idea why. This is not a common occurrence for me.

This was supposed to be a blissful weekend of relaxation, nurturing company, and creative output in the form of 20-30 new pages on my play (because I always set my expectation so very low). This was not supposed to be a weekend where I would feel frustrated and sad. My friend/mentor/former-teacher/surrogate mother even asked me if I was ok; she said I seem sad this weekend. But there is nothing wrong. I have nothing in my life right now to feel sad about. So many things are going so wonderfully well! And yet, sad I am. I don't understand this.

I always assume there must be a reason for every emotion -- a thought pattern I have been working to deprogram. This was a big problem for me with my anxiety disorder -- I would sometimes get what my therapist called "free-floating anxiety", where I would feel the physical symptoms of anxiety (accelerated pulse, numbness/tingling, upset stomach, obsessive thoughts -- imagine a really bad overdose of caffeine) without knowing why. I would assume there must be a good reason for it, so then my brain would search around for a something worthy of being anxious about and BAM: within moments I would have discovered the disease of the month to be convinced I was dying of. I cannot express how glad I am that I no longer experience this.

I felt myself start down a similar path today with my sadness. Why am I sad? What's wrong in my life that is making me sad? Is it something connected to my divorce? What would be stirring that up? Or is it my frustration over not getting as much writing done as I wanted? Does that mean I really don't want to do this? Should I quit the blog, stop trying to write the play? Is this project making me sad? How do I fix this?

But perhaps there is nothing to fix. Perhaps the moon is in the seventh house of the purple dragon and I'm just sad. Or maybe I just needed to let go of some of the stress that had built up over my crazy month of March with hardly a day off. Or maybe, maybe I was just tired.

I took a walk outside and at one point just collapsed onto the grass and sobbed. After about five minutes of this, I suddenly felt lighter and more open. I spent another half hour or so walking, and then took my laptop and coat outside to start writing again. Things started flowing. Not Amazon-river flowing, but a nice gentle stream.

Perhaps I need more downtime without pressuring myself to write. Perhaps I need to tame my beast a little better. Perhaps I need to stop expecting myself to be superwoman.

On that note, I'm going to go take a bath.

Day 83: Beast-Feeding

2010-04-09T15:05:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I feel like I have a beast living inside of me with a voracious appetite all its own. There is the "normal" Natalie, the "getting through life" version of me that needs food, shelter, sleep, relaxation, time with loved ones, exercise, sex, a good book and maybe a movie every now and then. Then there is the BEAST.

The beast has its own hunger: an endless, insatiable need to sing, to write, to perform, to create. To be immersed in the creative process on some level at all times. To be surrounded by other artists. To bear witness to great art. To express. To make itself known to the world. To create. To create. To create.

The endless aching need of the beast can wreak all sorts of havoc in normal-Natalie's life: sleeplessness, depression, crankiness, the piling on of too many self-imposed projects and deadlines which leads to more sleeplessness, depression and crankiness. Its need gets confused sometimes with other hungers, and I'll end up eating giant bowls of popcorn or entire pints of ice cream while sitting frustrated at the computer, unable to write. Sometimes I try to sedate my beast with multiple martinis, distract it with empty entertainment or placate it with promises of projects to be done tomorrow. But the need, oh the need never ends.

For even when the beast is fed, even when I've written a successful piece, or had a fantastic performance, the beast is not satisfied. Unlike my stomach which will tell me after a good meal, "ah, now I'm satisfied, thank you very much", the beast instead says "yes, that's what I'm talking about! Now give me MORE!" It is the cookie monster. It has never had enough.

It seems the best I can do is to give it a lot of snacks. To not let it go too long between meals. To always give it something to chew on. And, to gently tell it that sometimes it is going to have to go to bed hungry. But I promise that I won't ever let it starve.

I fed my singing beast a delightful snack by singing at Opera on Tap this week. Of course, it immediately said "MORE", and another singer and I spent 20 minutes after the show brainstorming about duets we can do together at future performances. This weekend, I've planned to give my writing beast a substantial supper. I'm in the country with some dear friends, away from all the distractions of work and home, with three days to devote to writing my play. My beast is fairly chomping at the bit.

But normal-Natalie and Natalie's Beast are already in conflict, as normal-Natalie desperately wants to take a nap before I start writing. I think in this case, normal-Natalie is going to win. After all, I house my beast and have to be functional to actually be able to create the beast's supper. So, off-line I go.

Day 81: Plans Change - or How to Write a Play

2010-04-07T17:39:00.000-04:00

Remember that roadmap I was so excited about on Monday? Well, guess what.

Out the window.

Plans change. My current playwriting teacher (Stuart Spencer) said that could be the title of a book about playwriting: Plans Change (or How to Write a Play). It seems to be kind of the number one rule, nothing you start out with hardly ever stays the same.

It's a good thing, though. Spence was pointing out that the scene I brought in on Monday night might be more dramatically effective if I set it six months further down the road -- that if instead of being the first time Angie had to bring Frank to the doctor from a fall, it was the tenth time. If this was the final straw, the day everyone had to face the fact that Frank had to go to the nursing home. Everything Spence said made so much sense, and I saw how that would increase the dramatic tension of the scene, how it would "raise the stakes" as we like to say in playwright land. But there was one little problem in my mind: if this is the moment they decide he has to go to the nursing home, and my first act was going to end with that, then my first act is only 39 pages. That's too short.

Ah, but is it? Spence went on to challenge the notion of acts and structure and expected length altogether. He said acts are totally arbitrary, they are just a place where the audience goes to the bathroom. Tennessee Williams didn't indicate an act break in either Streetcar Named Desire or Glass Menagerie - productions generally add an intermission but the drama doesn't need one. Fortunately, these days there is a lot of leeway in what audiences will accept for a length of a play -- from an 80-minute one-act with no intermission to a 3+ hour three-act with two. Spence said to just write to the end of the story -- the play will be as long as it needs to be. I may end up with 72 pages and decide to flesh parts out to something longer, or I may end up with 150 pages and have to trim it way down. But those are all problems and decisions for further down the line. Maybe in my third trimester, but certainly not my first.

I am actually very relieved by this. I have been unfettered from the chains of "should" that were restraining my creativity -- the play should be so long, it should do this or that. I feel like I can start writing in earnest now, and just let it flow. I can hardly wait to dive in. But first, I am going to feed my singing beast tonight by performing a couple of numbers with Opera on Tap at the Parkside Lounge (check out the link or my website for details if you're interested in coming!).

Day 79: Road map

2010-04-05T13:30:00.003-04:00

Forgive my less-frequent posting this last week. The time I had to write I used for actually writing my play more than for this blog. I have a nine-page scene for class tonight to show for it, though! So I'm happy about that. Hopefully this week I can manage more of both.

This week, I stumbled upon a road map for my play. I still don't know the final destination, but I know one place where I'm stopping for the night, and the direction I'm driving off in the next morning. I'm also going to be picking up another passenger along the way, which could make the trip more interesting.

It's funny how these things come to you. The first big lightbulb happened while I was journaling about my doubts about even continuing with this project . It went like this: "Why am I writing a play? Just to say I did? Because I like it? Do I have a story to tell? Frank has a story to tell. An end-of life story. Maybe it's about Frank and Vivian. Can a ---"

And then it happened. I got a chill. Which told me I was onto something.

"Can an estranged father and daughter heal after the death of the mother?"

Suddenly I was inspired again, excited about writing again. I don't know where exactly that question will lead me, or whether it will remain the main question of my play in the end, but at least I know what highway I'm driving on for awhile.

The second flash of inspiration came after a passing comment made by Robert, the actor for whom I am writing the role of Frank. I was telling him about some of my struggles trying to figure out where I was going with this, particularly not being sure at what point in the play Frank will end up in the nursing home. We know he's ending up there (since it's starts there, and then does a flash back), but how much play do I have to tell before he's there? Or is most of the play about him being there? Robert said, off the cuff, "maybe act II is in the nursing home". "Good idea", I thought, and just kind of filed it away.

Then a couple of days ago I was walking along the river, thinking about my play when -- boom, lightening bolt. I had to stop and make a note in my palm pilot to make sure I wouldn't forget. Act I ends with Billy (Angie's brother) returning home from his own hospital stay and Frank entering the nursing home. Act II opens with the very first scene I ever wrote for Frank: a few months later on New Year's Eve, Frank is in the rec room with a fellow nursing home resident, Vera, grappling over the TV remote. This way both acts open with Frank asleep in front of the TV in the nursing home. I love this -- I'm a big fan of parallel structure.

Who knows if any of these decisions will end up in the final product, but it feels so much better to have a shape, to have a few turns and stopping-points marked on the map. Now if only I could figure out where I want to end this thing....

Day 76: Synchronicity (or Philosophical musings on a Friday night)

2010-04-02T22:04:00.002-04:00

I was at a networking event for actors last night: Act Outside the Box (it was great -- check it out if you're in the biz and in NYC!). I was invited as an "industry" guest, which made for a very interesting experience: all these actors approaching me as someone important. I'm used to being the one trying to do the schmoozing, not to being the one being schmoozed!

I met a very interesting fellow there, and we got into a deep discussion about the life of an artist: the endless struggle for balance; how to relax and give yourself space to be able to open up to fuller, more vulnerable artistic expression; when it is worth it to work for free because of what else a project gives you. He said several times "this is an important conversation we are having." Indeed it was. It was wonderful to meet a kindred spirit. We both had kind of dragged ourselves there and ended up with a delightful new friend. At some point I said "this is clearly what this evening is about tonight."

I always kind of wonder at myself when I say things like that: "the universe is clearly trying to tell me something", "I was meant to be here tonight", etc. As an atheist, I don't believe in an invisible sentient hand that is trying to direct me down some kind of divine path. But sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if I did, if there were some way to make sense of everything, if there were one right answer out there for me to find.

In the Artist's Way (I swear I'm not getting a commission from her, I just love the book!), Julie Cameron talks at length about synchronicity. Some people chalk it up to coincidence, others call it fate or the universe's master plan; some people call it God. She gives several examples, like: "a woman admits to a buried dream of acting. At dinner the next night, she sits beside a man who teaches beginning actors." That sort of thing.

Ms. Cameron calls this synchronicity God. She goes to great lengths to explain that it doesn't have to be the Christian god, just some kind of all-powerful, all-knowing force. She feels that belief in such a force is empowering: "If we do, in fact, have to deal with a force beyond ourselves that involves itself in our lives, then we may have to move into action on those previously impossible dreams." She says that not believing in such a power is a way of disempowering ourselves: "If there is no God, ... we can feel quite justified in declaring certain things impossible."

I feel quite the opposite. Despite my temptation to believe in it, belief in a divine force with some kind of master plan is quite anxiety-producing for me. Perhaps that is because I am not a person of limiting beliefs: I have always believed the sky was the limit and the world was my oyster (by age 16 I had written my campaign slogans for when I would be running for election as the first woman president of the US). Even if I don't call it god, but instead something like "the universe", it leads me to thinking there is a master plan, one right thing I'm supposed to be doing, one path that will lead me to greatness -- if only I could find the damn road map. It makes me doubt my choices, makes me second-guess, makes me afraid of doing the wrong thing. Or rather of not doing the right thing. Which leads to the paralysis of trying to push through too many doors at once (and not being able to open any of them) instead of just putting all my energy behind opening one door and actually opening it. 'Cause what if it's the wrong door?

However, I do believe in the power of positive thinking. I do believe in "putting things out there" -- that if I state out loud to the world something I want to happen, it is far more likely to happen. But I don't think it is because some external force hears me utter those words. I think it is more likely that by stating a goal or intention, all of the inner workings of my brain are primed to help make that thing happen. Having a clear intention helps the brain to pick out the relevant opportunities amongst the infinite data bits it takes in everyday. We process things on a level more complex and deep than anything we can break down consciously, the way a baseball player doesn't need to know calculus to figure out the speed and trajectory of the ball hurtling towards him in order to be able to hit it out of the park. If I tell "the universe" what I want, I'm more likely to make the infinite little choices that might take me down the path that actually has the metaphorical pot of gold at the end.

Of course, even this thinking can be a little dangerous sometimes, because if I don't end up getting what I want, does that mean i just didn't believe hard enough? I didn't say it loud enough? I somehow screwed up? I wrote "I am a famous opera singer" in an affirmation journal every day for 5 years or more. I definitely put what I wanted out to the universe, but it didn't happen. Is that because it wasn't supposed to happen? Which would mean I was doing the wrong thing all that time? Which means I wasted all those years? I don't think it would do me a damn bit of good to think that.

I choose instead to just believe in the power of me. That is something I can (almost) always be sure of.

Day 73: The Art of Happiness (or the Happiness of Art)

2010-03-30T07:40:00.000-04:00

I've run across a couple of quotes the last two days which seem to be trying to tell me something. The first, on Chris Guillebeau's brilliant blog The Art of Non-conformity:

"Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience."

Spoken by none other than Luciano Pavarotti, the opera singer in me naturally took note of this. Chris was highlighting how writers (bloggers specifically) are always asking "how can I get more" (attention/readers/money) instead of focusing on "how can I give more". Having gone through a few days of feeling discouraged that my blog hasn't yet become an international internet sensation, this really struck me. Instead of thinking about how can I get more audience, I might do well to think about how I can give more to my audience. I started to wonder about this beyond my blog, to how it might apply to my playwriting, my singing, all my art. Have I been too selfish as an artist? Has it been too much about what I get out of it? Why I need to do my art? Is that was has been holding me back? Then this morning, this quote was on my yogi tea bag:

"The art of happiness is to serve all."

As an artist who is trying to figure out how to be happy, the particular phrasing of this quote struck me. The art of happiness. Not "happiness comes from giving" or "you serve yourself when you serve others" or any number of other ways this could have been expressed, but "the art of happiness." Which implies of course that happiness is an art, a craft, something to be cultivated, finessed, mastered. And that one accomplishes this by serving others.

Ah, but art can be such a self-indulgent enterprise! And it is so easy to get lost in the "I" of it all, especially when you are hoping/longing/dreaming of actually having a money-making career at it.

I don't want to sell myself short here -- while I love applause and adulation and good reviews and lots of blog hits as much as the next artist, I am most deeply moved and humbled when someone tells me that my singing or writing has changed them in some way, has caused them to feel something, think about something differently, or even just delighted them. Those moments are why I do this. Those transcendent moments when the art breaks down the barriers between you and other people, and you all become one in an experience. That is what I live for. While I hadn't forgotten that, I needed the reminder. I think I have been focused too inward. Focused too much on how can I get more. Time for me to remember and reexamine how I can give more.

Perhaps that is not only the art of happiness. Perhaps that is the happiness of art.

Day 71: My hour of discontent

2010-03-28T13:20:00.001-04:00

(for the Shakespeare scholars, I know it's "winter" of discontent, but "winter" seemed to imply something more than what I wanted to say.)

I went to a most delightful cabaret show on Friday, called The Kid Inside, conceived and performed by the fabulous Alissa Hunnicutt (I only wish she had more performances of it I could steer you all to!). Her song selection, arrangements, singing, use of puppetry (yes, cabaret with puppets) were all top-notch. I enjoyed it so much that I left the club in a fit of depression.

Yes, depression. It brought back the ache of missing singing with such force that I felt like someone had just unplugged me. All my sense of purpose with my writing, my goals to get this play done, to see where this blog will take me, all the clarity I've felt about pursuing this new path -- poof. Gone. And left in its place a giant, gaping, still-smoking hole in the ground.

I miss singing.

When my boyfriend asked me what my plans were for last night, I told him "drinking myself into a stupor is sounding pretty good about now." He encouraged me to spend the time in a way I would feel good about, whether just playing the piano for an hour, or doing something fun (instead of just wallowing in my misery, was the implied second half of that advice). I remembered back to a therapist who helped me discover that singing the songs I most loved as a star-struck teenage musical theater nerd was a great way to get me out of anxiety attacks. I thought perhaps it might help for this fit of depression (with a lower-case 'd') as well. So I came home, put dinner in the oven, poured myself a martini, and pulled out my music.

I started with some opera arias. It's nice to know that I can still do that. Then I pulled out some of my favorite old cheesy heart-wrenching musical theater ballads: Tell Me on a Sunday, Someone Else's Story, Send in the Clowns.... My voice felt in better shape than it's ever been (though it's possible there was a little bit of the martini talking there). I started to get ideas about auditioning again, because my little ambition brat doesn't know how to sit in the corner and be still. While that is a question for another day, at the moment I am duly reminded that I love this, I need this in my life. Plans are already in the works for some kind of cabaret show with some other phenomenal singers in the not-to-distant future. Because I am the crazy woman who can't stop giving herself projects. Because I always want more.

"It's good to want more" my best friend told me yesterday. Yes, I suppose it is. It keeps me moving, keeps me striving, keeps me living. But what about when it keeps me from being happy where I am? I would love to be content with where I am, and still want more. Is that possible? Doesn't contentment breed complacency? I think I've always looked at contentment as a cop-out, the easy road, boring. I remember writing an essay in high school about preferring a life of exhilarating highs and devastating lows to a life of even contentment. Because then at least you get the exhilarating highs. I held on to that belief for many many years and made a lot of my life choices based on it. That belief was a lot easier to hold at 16 than at 38. I've had a lot more of the "devastating lows" now (especially in the last couple of years). Contentment is looking a little shinier to me these days.

Even if I do find my way to embracing contentment -- and I'm working on it -- I know I don't ever want to be complacent. I will always be striving for something, that is who I am. I also know that unless (until?) I somehow end up with a career as a singer, I will always have this ache, the way I will always miss my grandmother. It won't always be at the surface, and I'll go long stretches without noticing it or shedding a tear. But just as every once in awhile I will feel my grandma's presence and miss her as fiercely as I did when she died 13 years ago, so will I also feel the little 8 year old girl inside me who is watching Patti LuPone on stage and saying "I want to be Evita when I grow up". I think she will always be there, egging me on. She's egged me on to a lot of incredible musical experiences in my life, if not to an actual money-making career. Maybe I can learn to be content with that.

Day 69: Spring Cleaning

2010-03-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

Today, I cleaned out my closet.

No, this is not some metaphor for purging a lot of skeletons of old ideas or characters or worries or dreams, I mean literally. I had 2 free hours between my photo shoot this morning and my students this afternoon, and I got possessed with an overwhelming need to clean my closet now. I could have taken that time to write, but the closet cleaning had to be done sometime, so after a momentary pang of guilt (assuaged in part by the knowledge that Gretchen Rubin lists clean closets as one of her personal top 10 secrets to happiness), I did it.

This has kind of been a week for that. I also spent several hours preparing my tax deductions for my accountant. These were both things that had to be done, though the time I spent on them I certainly would have preferred to have used for something creative.

But I made a choice. I decided not to resent having to do these things, but instead to just do them. To recognize that no matter what particular hours I chose to do them, those hours would always be hours I could wish I was spending doing something else. I could be frustrated at the lack of time either this week or next week or the week after, and in the mean time spend all that time feeling itchy and annoyed with myself for not having gotten done these things I had to get done. That's energy wasted.

And the reality is, I haven't wanted to write this week.

There are probably lots of reasons for that. I was so sick for several days, I just couldn't summon up the mental focus or energy to write. I was also feeling a little discouraged on Sunday that the scene I had written last week turned out to be superfluous and not really taking the play anywhere. And I was tired of feeling so much pressure on myself to use every spare second of every day to be doing something important.

On Wednesday, when I was still home all day but feeling well enough to teach a few students, I used the extra time I had to get the bulk of my tax work done. I completely took all pressure off of myself to write (except for my blog). It felt so good. I had this moment of clarity where I thought: wow, this is what my life would feel like if I didn't keep giving myself these projects and deadlines. I could just work, get done what I need to get done, and then relax. Be with my boyfriend. Be with my friends. Go out sometimes. I felt all this time and space opening before me and surrounding me like a warm yellow light, and began to wonder if I want to keep going with this project.

But.

I've been here before. My experience tells me this is one of those moments where the grass is greener no matter which side of the fence you are on. As soon as I find myself without a project, I give myself another one. I can't help it. My creative drive is so strong, it won't nap quietly for long.

But I think I do need to let it nap. I think I need to take "life breaks", even in the middle of my projects. A few hours, a day, a few days, maybe even a week where I take myself off the hook and just take care of my life for a bit. No excuses, no guilt, no justification, no endless agonizing over how I "should" spend my time. (if you don't know how I feel about the word should, read Day 47.) I sure like the sound of that.

So, I guess I took a life break this week. Maybe there was a little metaphorical closet clearing going on after all.

Day 67: Health Care and the Artist

2010-03-24T22:53:00.002-04:00

As I have been laid up sick with the stomach flu the last 3 days at the same moment that the health care reform bill was being passed and signed into law, I can't help but reflect upon our nation's health care system and the effect it has upon its artists.

Since my divorce, the greatest overriding factor in deciding how to support myself has been health care. Not income, not what I am best at, not what I most want to be doing, not even this lousy economy: health care.

For a country that values choice, freedom, and entrepreneurship; that believes in the ability of anyone to grow up to be whatever they want to be; and that has an insatiable appetite for arts & entertainment, we don't make it easy for people in this country to live as artists. Given the fact that about the only way to afford decent health care is to be tied to a 40-hr/wk corporate job, and the miniscule percentage of artists who make anything close to a full-time living at their craft, the artist (or entrepreneur of any sort) has few options for actually making their art. Some of us are fortunate enough to get on a spouse's plan, or be a part of a union that offers benefits we can buy more reasonably, but many of us go without health insurance all together. Either that or we take the full-time corporate, non-artistic job and try to squeeze in whatever art we can in the spare time left after the grocery store, laundromat and vacuuming.

What choices we might have if there were universal health care! Or even, say, an affordable public option anyone could buy into! I would gladly live on a lot less money in order to have more time to pursue my art. But right now I have to hang on to a certain number of hours at my corporate job so that I have the option of benefits there. And I'm one of the lucky ones -- I at least have an option for coverage. I have too many friends who are completely without health insurance and have no way to get it.

I am not putting the artist's plight on par with the people whose lives are devastated (or even ended) by our shameful health care system that denies so many people medical care for themselves and their loved ones (though certainly many artists are amongst those folks as well). I'm also not looking for any kind of special treatment or hand out -- I work, expect to work, want to work. The artists I know who are trying to make a career of it are incredibly hard-working people, many of whom work the equivalent of two full-time jobs trying to pay their bills and be creative. I am saying that I think we all deserve to have more choices.

Whether you are an artist or someone who has hobbies you are passionate about, what kind of life would you choose if you weren't locked into working 40 hours a week in order to have health care? Would you choose to work fewer hours and live on less in order to have more time to do the things you love? Would you start your own business? Take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine the choices you might have before you if you didn't have to worry about health insurance. Would your life be different?

Day 66: Balancing act

2010-03-24T00:30:00.001-04:00

Once again I find myself in a place where my life is out of balance. I have been so caught up in my own world, with my own stresses of my work/teaching schedule and my self-imposed creative deadlines that I haven't been giving the people I love in my life what they need. I've been here before. It scares me. I don't want to drive people away because they feel like I don't have time for them. I want to be the partner/friend/family to the people in my life that they are to me. And not out of some sense of fairness: I like being good to the people I love.

But I honestly wonder if it is possible to live a balanced life when one of the pieces you are trying to balance is as unwieldy as Sisyphus' boulder - the never-ending (and impossible) attempt to "do enough" to become a successful artist. No matter how much you get done, there is always more. Every day, you push the boulder up the hill. And for most of us, the boulder just rolls back down and you start again. Even when you're lucky enough to get a gig, as soon as that one is over, there you are, pushing that boulder back up that hill again. Or maybe you get really, really lucky and the boulder doesn't roll back down, but instead you discover there is now a giant mountain in front of you you have to push it up if you want to keep going. Very, very few of us ever get to rest at the peak. Many of us just keep pushing that boulder up that damn hill, determined and forever hopeful; many others of us decide that maybe we'll just leave that boulder at the bottom and go hang out at nearby stream instead.

How do you balance other things in your life when you are compelled to pursue such a sisyphean task? Do successful artists have good relationships? Wait, I'm not sure I want you to answer that.

I know I can be a selfish person (and I have been accused of it before). But I can also be very giving. And I really, really try to balance my personal needs/desires with those of the people in my life. I think being a artist requires a degree of selfishness, though. It takes a lot of time to study, to train, to create. And, when you are so deeply passionate about something, when there is something that defines you more than anything (or any person) in your life, that is as much a part of you as your arm, and as much a need for your survival as breath, that is the thing you will choose. Not in every individual moment, but in the balance.

I cannot choose between being an artist and the people I love in my life. As my marriage counselor said at the last therapy session my ex and I had, that is like asking me to choose between killing my mother and killing my father. So how do I balance the two?

There are times I wonder if maybe the word I need to examine here is not the word "artist" but the word "successful". Successful, which really means money-making. And, I'll admit it, famous. Not famous for fame's sake - the kind of fame reality shows and the like offer has no appeal to me - but famous in the sense of having my talent recognized. For how else do we consider an artist to be successful? Van Gogh was a brilliant artist long before he was ever famous (one might argue more brilliant since he was, well, alive), but he never got to know anyone else felt that way. Did he feel successful, looking at his own paintings? (I'm guessing not, with the whole suicide and all). Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave, never to know his music would still be revered the world over almost 250 years later. The most glorious tenor voice I have ever heard is on an obscure recording of a masterclass taught by Maria Callas - and no one knows that man's name and he never had an opera career. I'm guessing he didn't feel terribly successful as an artist either.

What would it mean for me to just be an artist and forget trying to be "successful"? Can I be satisfied with reading the comments I get on this blog about what an inspiration I am, about how much people relate to and enjoy what I'm writing? Can I be satisfied with the occasional singing performance in a bar with Opera on Tap? With producing my own little no-budget productions of plays I write? With the incredible growth I see and hear in my voice students? Can I give up the ghost of trying to be famous, damn it?

I don't know. But if I don't want to short-change my relationships any more than I want to stop being an artist, maybe that is the secret to the balance: just be an artist in whatever capacity I can, live my life, enjoy it, take the pressure off myself to try to be "successful". I wonder if I can be happy with that.

Day 64: Voices

2010-03-21T13:07:00.002-04:00

One of the things I find most fascinating about the playwriting process is figuring out a character's "voice": the way they speak, the words they choose, the pace and rhythm of their speech. I have always kind of wondered how playwrights did that, as I don't feel like I walk around consciously observing the differences in people's speech patterns. From the first scene I wrote in playwriting class, I was worried about how to do that. I still don't know "how", really, but it seems to be something that I am learning to do by instinct. I start to hear the characters talk in my head, and sometimes I'll just write a line and realize "no, that's not how they would say that." Then I'll try something else and feel in my gut "yes, that's a Frank line".

This was something I started noticing even before I officially started studying playwriting,, when I was writing the book for the family cabaret show Kat and I created and performed together (I've posted a our demo reel at the bottom of this page if you're curious about it!). I was writing dialogue for the two of us to perform, but as the show developed it became clear that the characters of Nat and Kat were not the real Nat and Kat. They have their own distinct "voices", distinct not only from the real Nat & Kat but also from each other. There were many times in the rehearsal process where we would realize, wait, that's a Kat line, not a Nat line. It was hard to say why, but it was something both Kat and I could just tell. And as soon as we would switch the lines around, a previously troublesome scene would suddenly work.

The Frank scene I wrote this week brought back Vera, a fellow nursing home resident character I had originally written almost a year ago in the very first scene I wrote for Frank in playwriting class. As I was going back through the rough draft of the new scene, I noticed that Vera's voice didn't seem quite right. She wasn't distinctive enough from the other characters, and wasn't quite coming across like she had in the first scene I wrote for her last year. So I went back and re-read that old scene, and immediately was able to hear her voice in my head again. From that moment, I felt like the scene began to write itself. I'm quite enamored with it; we'll see what my class thinks when I have it read today!

Speaking of which, I must run or I will be late to said class!