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Playwright/librettist E. M. Lewis

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Finding (and Losing) a Theatrical Home in New Jersey

Jeremy Stoller asked me to contribute to the series on New Jersey theater he's curating for HowlRound, and I was glad to have the chance to share. I ♥ NJ! And appreciate the friendship, support, and community I found there.

Finding (and Losing) a Theatrical Home in New Jersey

Artistic Innovation Essay

Caridad Svich curated a series of essays for the Theater Communication Group for the 2013 TCG National Conference.  She asked me to write about Artistic Innovation... and this is the essay I wrote.

"This is me, trying to take control of the narrative..."

Reveille Revisited!

Here are some pictures from Moving Arts production of The Car Plays, now running (extended!) in San Diego, at La Jolla Playhouse.  I'm proud to have my short play "Reveille" included.  "Reveille" is about a young man who has signed up for the military on the morning he is supposed to leave for Basic Training, and his father, who despite being a vet himself, doesn't want his son to go.

Reveille by EM Lewis
Directed by Sam Woodhouse
Featuring Will Tulin and Michael Zlotnik

Will Tulin as Leonard, and Michael Zlotnik as Linny.

Will Tulin and Michael Zlotnik.

Mike Zlotnik as Linny.

February 24-26 -- "Partners" in the Briefs Festival in St. Louis!

From February 24-26, 2012, my short play "Partners" will be showcased in the Briefs Festival in St. Louis, Missouri, produced by That Uppity Theater Company, in partnership with Vital Voice Media.

"More than a traditional theatrical production, BRIEFS is a community event, innovatively bringing together a diverse audience from the LGBT community, straight allies, local businesses, and local artists and involving eight different directors and playwrights."

"Partners" is one of my most popular ten-minute plays. It's a comic little piece about a cop who brings her male work partner home to meet her female *partner* partner, and the fireworks that ensue. It was most recently seen in Boston, at Another Country Productions' SLAMBoston event. I'm proud to have it included in the St. Louis event.

For more information, check out this article by Vital Voice Media or this feature in West End Word or this article in Alive Magazine.

Paris, Day 12 -- Random thoughts on a rainy Paris evening

I have caught a little cold.  Don't you hate it when that happens on a trip?  I ventured down to the Pharmacy with my carefully Google-translated query on my phone, and displayed it for the pharmacist.  He looked kindly upon me and my fractured French, and set me up with some cold medicine.

Now I'm sequestered with Pepito and Bout de Zan in the flat, listening to the rain and with firm plans to go to bed early and wake up well and ready for more adventures in the morning.  I decided that I'd give you a few random thoughts on Paris, to tide you over, Dear Readers.

• It's fascinating how each culture has its preferred distance that people stand away from each other.  I think France's is closer than the United States'.  I'm curious to see what Britain's is (I have my suspicions).  And the two young Korean women who I met in line at Sainte-Chapelle the other day threw their arms right around me when I agreed to have my picture taken with them.
• Man-purses are acceptable here, and French men tend to dress well enough in general that they don't look at all odd.
• I've never used the word "cosmopolitan" to describe anyone before, but it came to mind while watching the French men come and go.  They really do dress well.  The only people I know back home who I might describe as cosmopolitan are Gay Talese (his father was a tailor), the character of Patrick Jane on "The Mentalist," and certain handsome gay men of my acquaintance.  You know who you are...
• I love cities with rivers running through them.
• I think of Jim, Dan and Erica, who are taking turns taking care of my cat back home, as Team Paris. I love and appreciate Team Paris.  This trip wouldn't have been possible without them.
• I wonder how people managed to travel without all the cool technology we have now.  They must have carried little French/English dictionaries in one pocket, and their maps in the other.
• I loved the movie "Ratatouille."  If you haven't seen it, you should.
• Not knowing the language of a place, and walking around in it, must be a little bit like being deaf. Words wash right over you.  It's a strange feeling.  

And a little bit of story:

It was a dark and stormy night in Paris. The playwright leaned out her window, through the geraniums and fuchsias, and let the water wash away her fever. The neighbor's dog barked at the thunder, the pickpockets and prostitutes ducked into doorways, handsome young men in artfully tailored clothes lit each others' cigarettes. "You can see the whole city from here," she thought. She closed the window, and poured another glass of wine, and began to write.

Bonne nuit, mes amis!

Enjoying the edges of Williamstown

A talented director friend of mine, Laura Savia, is working at Williamstown this summer.  While the big slots were filled by bigger playwrights than me, Laura gave me a call when she was looking for material for the apprentices to work with.

Maybe some day one of my full-lengths will be on the mainstage at Williamstown (I can only hope!).  But for the moment, I am delighted to have student actors working with my words at that fabulous place, where old plays are revived, new plays are revered, and audiences receive the best of summer theater experiences.

A short play by EM Lewis in rehearsal by apprentices at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

Young actors in rehearsal.

Alcyone 2011 Blog Post, Part II

The Art of Adaptation

In the last year, I've had two opportunities to practice the art of adaptation.  They were my first tries, and I learned a lot as I went along.  The first thing I learned was that any adaptation is a sort of marriage of two minds -- and like any marriage, though it can be extremely rewarding, it ain't easy.

ENTANGLEMENT

The first adaptation project came to me through a playwriting colleague.  A book publisher was looking to add multi-media content to its offerings.  A first attempt had been successful for them, so they decided to branch out -- asking four dramatic writers to create new fictional stories for the screen, using the books of four of their non-fiction writers as a starting point.  Each thirty-minute film would ideally showcase the ideas of each of their writers, but be compelling stories on their own -- and able to stand together or apart, depending on how the publisher chose to market them.

I was getting ready to leave Los Angeles when this opportunity came my way.  I'd received a playwriting fellowship at Princeton University that was taking me to the other side of the world -- well, to New Jersey, anyway -- to work on my new play for the 2010-2011 academic year.  I'd already decided to quit my sensible day job at the end of May, in order to give myself a real-live summer vacation back on the family farm, in between.  I liked the director when I met him, the project sounded like an interesting challenge, the money they were offering would pay for my moving expenses... and so I signed on.  I now had a project for my summer vacation!  Here's how it went:

• I read the source material.
• I thought about the source material.
• I came up with half a dozen possible story scenarios, and then discussed them with the director and lead writer.
•  For the three favorites, I came up with rough outlines.
• With the director, we chose one scenario to be my project.
• After discussions with the director and head writers, I refined the outline, changing some key features to make sure it fulfilled the needs of the over-all project.
• Upon turning in the refined outline, I was paid the first of two installments for my work on the project.
•  I left for Oregon -- and began to write the script.
• There was angst and wrestling with the source material and some tearing out of hair.  But doesn't all writing feel this way sometimes?  There were also moments when it was fun and fantastic.  I liked the characters I'd created.
• I turned in my first draft.
• I took an hour's worth of notes on the first draft over the phone, scribbling as fast as I could.
• I struggled to figure out the notes, and how to implement them. 
• I turned in the second draft.
• I took another hour's worth of notes on the second draft.  But I'd clearly been writing in the right direction, despite that seeming evidence to the contrary.
• I struggled to figure out the notes and implement them.
• I turned in my final draft.  (We were contracted for three.)
• I was paid the final check for my work.

I'm very glad I did the project.  It gave me the chance to work with a bunch of smart, creative, hard-working people on a type of project I'd never worked on before.  I was paid -- well -- for my work.  I was proud of my finished script, even if it was a different kind of pride than I have in a creation all my own.  I used some skills from my graduate program at USC that I hadn't had a chance to before -- outlining the screen story with Frank Tarloff, and screenwriting classes with Ben Masselink and Jason Squire.  And I got a hint of what writing for television must be like -- something that I'm interested in, like a lot of playwrights these days.

Last week, the director sent me a promo for the film.  It's done, it's in the can, they're almost done editing it.

It looks gorgeous.

I hope it's good!

I'm glad I did it.

As a general rule, I’ve found that any time someone offers me the opportunity to work really hard at something I love -- I should say yes.  Which brings me to the second adaptation project I said yes to this year.

STRONG VOICE

Not long after finishing my summer vacation and film adaptation project and moving east, I received an e-mail from Tony Adams, artistic director of Halcyon Theater in Chicago.  He’d produced my play "Heads" in his Alcyone Festival of works by women a couple years before.  And he and his associate artistic director (and wife) Jenn Adams had decided to do something extra crazy and bold for the 2011 Alcyone Festival.  They were asking five women playwrights with whom they had worked before to either adapt, riff upon, or otherwise engage with the work of a woman playwright from 1870 or earlier.

I said yes.

I also said I didn't really know the work of any women playwrights from 1870 or earlier.  (They weren't deterred by this -- it rather proved their point, that there was a canon there, ripe for retrieving.) 

Tony suggested I give Hrosvitha a try.  She was the earliest of the women playwrights whose work survives to this day.  She was a Tenth Century Benedictine canoness who lived in an abbey at Gandersheim in Saxony (now Germany) and wrote odd little comic plays and serious poems about the early Christian women martyrs.

I still don't know why Tony suggested her to me.  But as I read her work, and read about her, something pinged inside me.

It's hard to say what.  Maybe it's that I was raised Catholic.  Maybe it's that I remember reading books about the early Christian martyrs as a child (along with every other book I could get my hands on) that intrigued and disturbed me.  Maybe it's that I have struggled with issues of faith and philosophy and spirituality as an adult.  Or maybe it's that the notion of martyrdom seems so much more overwhelmingly complicated to me now than it did when I was a child.  It's not that I don't think there aren't things worth dying for (terrified as I am of mortality).  It’s that the practical application of so-called martyrdom seldom lives up to my expectations, and seems to frequently take a lot of innocent people with it.

So I ended up writing a play about 9/11.

Hrosvitha is known as (in fact, she called herself) the "strong voice" of Gandersheim.  So I called my play "Strong Voice."  Halcyon promised to produce it in their Chicago theater if I wrote it, so I set the story in Chicago.  Halcyon's mission includes producing plays that reflect the beautiful diversity of their city, so I made my heroes an African-American woman and a Latino man -- two Chicago police detectives who are investigating the disappearance of a nun and the desecration of a mosque in the wake of 9/11.

I've always liked detective stories, since the first Sherlock Holmes stories I devoured when I was in elementary school.  And what I ended up with was definitely a detective story.  But it was also the story of a bunch of people re-evaluating what they believe in the wake of events that challenged everything they knew to be true.

Hrosvitha herself became a character in the play, literalizing my own struggles to come to terms with her and her work.  And in some ways, it became a play about storytelling.  How we tell our own story, how we frame our lives and beliefs in words, and who will have the strongest voice in the most difficult times.

It hasn't been an easy play to write.  And even though it's playing now in Chicago, I'm not sure I'm done wrestling with it.

The process was helped along, though, by input from others.  Much of my work as a writer is done alone in my room, muttering under my breath in all my characters' voices in a strange, solitary, noisy literary schizophrenia.  But I love getting feedback.  I value being part of a writing workshop.  I want my course corrected when I veer and to be called on any and all bullshit, sentiment and overwriting I might allow to creep in.  Encouragement doesn't hurt either.

I received good support and feedback on pieces, parts and drafts of this project from the folks in my playwriting workshop at Passage Theater in Trenton, fellow playwright Jami Brandli (who kindly gave me notes on an ugly early draft), and my smart and capable director Margo Gray.  All mistakes remaining are, of course, my own.

Margo was casting the play before I'd figured out its ending.  The play changed drastically during rehearsals, as I refined the characters and figured out what the play was about.  (Because that's never something I know going in -- always something I figure out as I go along.)  Everything about the play happened very fast, in play terms.

When I sat out in the audience on June 12, watching the first performance, I wondered at it all.  Me, a dead Benedictine woman, and a bunch of blank pieces of paper.  Add research and work and time.  Temper with creative criticism and infuse with the talents of director, committed actors and a theater company that stands behind its promise to produce new work.  And you have a play.

Both of these projects were the broadest sort of adaptations.  I'd like to try my hand at a closer adaptation, perhaps of a young adult novel.  I'd also like to write a spec television script -- mucking about with someone else's characters for a bit.

I'm busy working on some original plays now -- entirely in my own head again, for better and for worse.  But I haven't seen the last of adaptation.  It's a challenge I'd like to take on again. 

Working hard at something you love is always good.

The Pseudonym

Carmela Ciuraru has a small photo-essay in the Huffington post about writers and their pseudonyms -- and the reasons behind the pseudonyms.  Her tone is a little snarky for my taste, but the mini-biographies are interesting.

Perhaps the first character we invent, as writers, is ourselves.

"EM Lewis" isn't really a nom d'plume -- it's just my initials and last name.  And I didn't decide to use it to hide my gender, or because I am a convicted felon (as one of Ciuraru's writers did).  But I do like having my own alternate self.  Somewhere between me and her and all of my characters lies the real me.

And... that's enough psychoanalysis for now.

Hot off the press: "The War Museum" goes to NYC!

Since I moved to Princeton, I've been trying to get to know the theatermakers in New York City, New Jersey and Philadelphia.  One group I've connected with is the fantastic Passage Theater in Trenton, NJ.  Another is Flux Theater in New York City.  

A few days ago, the folks at Flux asked if I'd like to write a new short play for their "ForePlay" Reading Series -- plays written by ensemble members and friends to riff upon and support the mainstage show that is now in production.  Even though I'm in Chicago at the moment for the opening of "Strong Voice," I said yes.  Of course I said yes!  I'm so pleased to have the chance to play!  

If you're in New York City on Sunday, June 12 -- I hope you'll pop over and see the readings.  They should be lots of fun.  I rather like my little contribution!

THE WAR MUSEUM, by EM Lewis:  2,000 years from now.  This is the moment when everything changes.  Vennah's looking for Meller.  Meller's looking for answers.  In the War Museum.

FLUX THEATER ENSEMBLE'S FOREPLAY READING SERIES: NEW WORLD ILIADS

Sunday, June 12 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Flamboyan Theatre at CSV Cultural & Educational Center

107 Suffolk Street

______________________

Join us on June 12 for ForePlay #2, New World Iliads: Afghanistan

Featuring four short plays by Aja Houston, EM Lewis, Mac Rogers, and Isaiah Tanenbaum

Directed by Jordana Williams

Featuring: Carissa Cordes, Ken Glickfeld, Lynn Kenny, Rob Maitner, Debargo Sanyal, and Kathleen Wise

______________________

FREE! 

Join us for the second evening of ForePlay, our exploratory play reading series where playwrights riff on the themes of our mainstage production,

New World Iliads will take place on three nights with each night treating a contemporary war from a mythic perspective. In the same way that Ajax in Iraq re-imagines a war from thousands of years ago, New World Iliads will imagine what our contemporary wars may look like from the same distance: the gods, the heroes and villains; what details will be erased by time and what will remain? How will the art inspired by today's conflicts inform the myths of tomorrow?

That art is provided by Carrier Pigeon: Illustrated Fiction and Fine Art.

How it works: Carrier Pigeon has provided us with artwork for twelve collaborating playwrights use as source material.

We are excited that this second ForePlay will be inspired by art from Kristy Caldwell, the illustrator of our Season 4 postcards!

Alcyone 2011 Blog Post, Part I

Halcyon Theater Company:  When It Comes to Supporting Women Playwrights, Their Actions Speak Loud

There has been a lot of talk lately about the number of productions women playwrights receive, versus our male counterparts.  The numbers fall out at about 20% plays by women to 80% plays by men.  It's a complex problem.  Perhaps you've read something about it from the 50/50 in 2020 folks, or from the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, or by reading Todd London and Ben Pesner's book "Outrageous Fortune."

What I'd like to talk with you about today is a theater company in Chicago that is taking action, producing five world premieres of brand new plays by women playwrights in June and July, 2011.  Halcyon Theater's Alcyone Festival is one of the boldest correctives to the dearth of productions of women's work I've heard about, and I am absolutely delighted to be one of the lucky participating playwrights.

Halcyon is run by Artistic Director Tony Adams and his wife, Associate Artistic Director Jenn Adams.  This is their fifth season of production. 

I met Tony and Jenn two years ago, when they produced my play "Heads" in Alcyone 2009.  I remember being shocked to see their call for plays; the theme that year was Women Writing about Terrorism.  And I was!  I had.  I flew out to Chicago to see the festival, and was tremendously impressed with the scope of Halcyon's vision.  They produced six plays in that year's festival, by playwrights from around the world.  Beautiful, bold plays.  By women playwrights.  It was exciting and it was exhilerating and it was PRODUCTIONS. 

(May I take a moment, here, to explain that having a reading is to having a production like riding a tricycle is to driving a Mustang convertible on the Los Angeles freeways.  I'll let you decide which experience taught me more about driving, required more of me as a driver, and took me farther, in all the best ways.)

I've kept in touch with my Halcyon friends since then, but was surprised and delighted when they contacted me, and asked if I wanted to take part in this year's Alcyone Festival.  They were doing something different -- asking five of us, with whom they had worked in previous years, to rework, adapt, sample or remix the work of a woman playwright from 1850 or before.  They couldn't afford to make it a commission -- but they would commit to producing what we wrote.

I said YES.  ABSOLUTELY!  YES!!  And so did J. Nicole Brooks, Jennifer Fawcett, Coya Paz and Caridad Svich.  Wrestling with the work of Hrosvitha, Pauline Hopkins, Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes, Anna Cora Mowatt and Maria de Zaya y Sotomayor, respectively.  If you haven't heard of any of them... well, that's part of the point.  We are retrieving the female playwriting canon.  We are speaking with our sisters across time and space.  We are standing together to tell strong new stories for the stage.  It's a festival of our own.

I can't wait to get to Chicago and see what my fellow playwrights have come up with, and see my own play come to life on Halcyon's stage.  This has already been such a rich and rewarding challenge, just in the writing!

I'm hoping that you'll join me.  I'd like to invite you to take part in this year's Alcyone Festival.  How?

• If you're in Chicago, please come and see the festival!  Tickets are available here.
• If you produce plays, and are curious about our adventures in adaptation, ask us for a copy of our work.  I'm sure all of us playwrights would be glad to talk with you about future productions of these plays that started at the Alcyone Festival.  E-mail Tony for our contact information, or feel free to contact us directly.
• If you want to help Halcyon Theater to produce work by women playwrights, click here to make a donation.  Every cent will go to making this festival happen -- and letting women's voices be heard.  You have the power to tip the scale.  YOU can make a difference.

Thank you for reading!  And I hope to see you in Chicago!

**Next up, in Ellen's Alcyone 2011 Blog Post, Part II:  Wrestling with our Forebears -- The Art of Adaptation! followed by Part III:  STRONG VOICE -- Faith, Heroes and Boldness

A Little Article about Agents in "The Dramatist"

The March/April 2011 issue of "The Dramatist" -- the Journal of the Dramatist Guild of America -- is all about agents.  "The Agents Issue" is an appropriate moniker, as the question of whether or not you need an agent to be a successful playwright in today's world is one that comes up regularly.

From "Agent Free" in the Mar/Apr 2011 issue of The Dramatist.

Writing from the "Agent Free" perspective, dramatists who are "surviving, even thriving without an agent."

• Margaret Baldwin
• Evan Guilford-Blake
• EM Lewis
• Matthew Bennett
• Jeanne Drennan
• Topher Payne
• Valetta Anderson

"Starting Out" offers "personal tales from established dramatists about how they first signed with an agent... or came close to."

• Michael Korie
• Doug Wright
• Micki Grant
• Susan Birkenhead
• Tina Howe
• Craig Carnelia

Get your copy today!

A Lovely Gift from Lee

As I leave Los Angeles and head back east for a year-long writing residency, my teacher, mentor and friend Lee Wochner gave me some lovely words, in lieu of flowers.  You can see the article here in the LA Stage Blog.

A big thank you to Lee, who has helped me so much through the years -- opening doors and encouraging me through them.  His "Words That Speak" playwriting workshop is one of the things I'll miss most about Los Angeles.  What am I going to do with my Saturday mornings without that rigorous criticism, delightful theater conversation and donuts???

Another year older, and deeper in...

...well, no.  Actually, I'm feeling pretty good about things.

Birthdays, for me, have always felt like a good time to try to make a clear-eyed assessment of where I'm at, versus where I want to be.

Where do I want to be?  Writing the best possible plays I can figure out how to, preferably while making enough to keep a roof over my head and my cat in cat food.  Working with great people, if possible.

Where am I at?  Writing plays.  Making enough to keep a roof over my head and my cat in cat food.  Working with great people on a pretty regular basis.  How cool is that?

The last year has brought some lovely readings and productions of my work, awards, residencies and publications.  I've written some new short plays, and am deep into researching and writing a new full-length.  And I've been given the opportunity to quit my stable, sensible day job here in Los Angeles, and go write full time -- from September 2010 to May 2011, anyway -- as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.

I'm taking it.  I am seizing the freakin' day.  New Jersey, here I come.

Several things make this decision possible.  The love and support of friends and family.  The odd blessing of owning nothing.  The financial cushion that the Primus and Steinberg awards gave me (and may I thank them once again for their generosity!).  And a keen sense of my own mortality.

I have no idea what the coming year will bring.  Challenges and opportunities both, I'm sure!  But I'm ready to work harder than I ever have before, write lots, see new things, see some shows, meet new people and make the most of this new adventure.  (I think I'm ready.  I hope I'm ready...)

Onward!

If the year to come is half as rich as this one has been, I'll count myself lucky.

~Ellen

PS:  If you're in New Jersey next year, please stop by and say hello.  I don't know anyone there, and I'm a little nervous!

PPS:  A special thank you to Samuel French, publishers of "Song of Extinction."  They've made me their "featured playwright" for the month of April.  Click to see an interview with yours truly, and to buy a copy of the play.

Syzymkowicz/Walsh

Look here for playwright Adam Syzymkowicz' interview of playwright Malachy Walsh, whose play "Beyond the Owing" is headed to the Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis. I liked what he had to say, especially his advice for other playwrights.

Don't wait.

Amen.

Off to EcoDrama

Good lord, I've got a lot to do. I'm taking off for the EcoDrama Festival in Eugene, Oregon tomorrow morning (yay!). Today I have:

1. Discussed my Friday night talk-back on the phone (at 9am) with Jose Cruz Gonzalez, who will be moderating (and seems really nice).
2. Returned a couple dozen e-mails.
3. Checked on the ticket situation for my Mom again. Called her, and e-mailed her, to reassure her that there will be tickets and all will be well.
4. Looked up and e-mailed parking information, directions and a map to U of O to my folks (who will be coming with an entourage of relatives and friends to Friday night's performance).
5. Passed keys and cat care information to my awesome friend Stephanie, who has agreed to take care of Joe.
6. Highlighted important events on the EcoDrama schedule. Lots of fun stuff to do! And hopefully some time to walk by the river and write and hang out, too.

I still have to pack (washed clothes last night, though), wash dishes, wash car, put registration stickers on car, talk with YPF mentee, talk to a man about a reading, load final draft onto laptop, find sleeve of final draft disk so I can load software, and probably seven other things. I watered the plants last night. What am I forgetting? I love being other places... but the "getting out the door" part makes me a little crazy.

Soon! I'll be there soon! I can't wait to spend the whole long weekend BEING A PLAYWRIGHT. It's not that I'm not a playwright the rest of the time. Now, finally, I do think of myself that way, even if I AM a playwright with a day job. But... the gift of time and immersion into one's passion, alongside other passionate, immersed people, is tremendous. Thank you, EcoDrama people! I can't wait to meet you, and work with you, and be part of what you're making happen.