End of September

Today is the last day of September, and there's lots to do in the month to come.

Over the weekend, I caught up with some necessary chores, theater-going and sanity. I washed some dishes, did laundry, cleaned up and watered my poor, neglected garden. I saw a couple plays, both great! Speech & Debate was at the Blank -- an absolutely delightful play about three teenagers in Salem, Oregon who begin a speech and debate team, which helps them deal with their problems. Did I love it because it was a great play, or because it was an exact re-creation of my own geeky teenage years? Hard to say. But I think it was pretty awesome, and well-directed by Daniel Henning and well-acted by his troupe of actors. In a total change of pace, I saw Long Day's Journey into Night at Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon on Saturday night with Michael S., Stephanie and Cece. We picnicked beforehand, then sat outside with the crickets and a big audience for the show. It's an amazing play about a family that loves each other and tears each other apart in equal measures. It was directed by Heidi Helen Davis, who is directing Song of Extinction, and I appreciated seeing her great work with a great play. Saturday morning, I hit the Santa Monica Farmers' Market and the used bookstore run by the Friends of the Santa Monica Library. Melons and books and coffee! A lovely way to spend a morning.

I'm heading to bed now. Must get up early for work, as our entire division is having our quarterly breakfast meeting together. Being there between 8am when they start serving and 9am when they start talking is my goal. Oy vey. Mornings have not been easy lately, and I've been feeling a little under the weather, which makes it tougher to rise up and charge into the day.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. There's a ton of stuff to do this week, before I leave on Sunday for a week in Ashland for the Ashland New Plays Festival. I am really, really looking forward to that -- a week to concentrate on my play (Song of Extinction), hang out with other playwrights, and have the added bonus of seeing my whole, wonderful family, who are all (it looks like) going to be there. How lucky am I? Perhaps while the Powers That Be are talking in the morning, I can work on my to-do list under the table...

Pictures, violas, rehearsals -- oh, my!

Oh, what a busy week it is, when you're making theater! Here's an update on recent events.

Rehearsals are well underway, now, for Song of Extinction. Relationships are being explored, characters are being investigated, and I'm sitting in when I can, watching my little play come to life. What a delight!

My cast consists of the following outstanding souls:

Darrell Kunitomi as Khim Phan, the biology teacher
Will Faught as Max Forrestal, the boy composer
Michael Shutt as Ellery Forrestal, a biologist and Max's father
Lori Yeghiayan as Lily Forrestal, a writer of science text books and Max's mother
Tristan Wright as Joshua Dorsey, a young doctor
Trey Nichols as Gill Morris, a land developer

The first set of publicity photos was taken this last week. Some were of Khim and Max in the classroom where most of their battles take place. The rest were of the Forrestal family, taken out in Griffith Park (standing in for Bolivia!).

I had my own publicity photos taken on Tuesday evening, after work. Tom Sanders was hired by LA Stage Magazine to take my picture, so it can go along with a little upcoming article about me and the play and such. He was very nice. I was very nervous. I felt the need to get new clothes, lipstick and unmentionables the night before, and to wear boots, for courage. I always feel more courageous in boots. Perhaps I should become a biker... Whether or not he was able to do anything with ME remains to be seen. But I like the photos on his website -- particularly the series on WWII vets.

Hmm... what else? I had lunch this week with Darin Anthony, who directed HEADS last year at the Blank. Another night, I had dinner with Jeremy Gabriel, who starred in HEADS last year at the Blank, and was also in INFINITE BLACK SUITCASE at Moving Arts. Great to see both of them, and catch up. Darin has been directing in Santa Cruz, and now is working on US DRAG for Furious Theater Company in Pasadena, and is about to have his first kid. Jeremy got married! I'm very happy for them both. They are good guys.

Tomorrow, I am meeting with Jack the violist (as opposed to Jack the Ripper, Geoffrey the composer told me on the phone, laughing). I'm very excited about this, because Geoffrey has written an entirely new draft of "Disembarking," the piece of music he wrote for Song of Extinction. Now I get to hear it! If I have notes, Jack will interpret them back to Geoffrey in musician-speak and rewrite. Then we plan to record the piece, so it can be used in the production. There's been all the requisite back and forth, trying to coordinate schedules and details and needs. It will be lovely to spend time listening to the music and thinking of it in terms of my character, young Max, who "composes" this piece through the course of the play.

Two more random bits:

Go check out my talented friend Johnna Adams' myspace blog, and read Herb Gardner's "On Playwriting" missive. I really, really liked it. It felt appallingly true.

I got one of Those Letters yesterday in the mail. One of Those Letters, that's from a theater. I did my usual mojo -- "It's a rejection, it's a rejection, everybody hates me" so it wouldn't bother me so much when I open it and it IS a rejection. But it wasn't! Well, it wasn't an acceptance either. But Stage Left in Chicago wants to hold HEADS for consideration for their upcoming season. So I e-mailed them back today, and told them by all means to consider it, and sent them all our nice reviews from the LA production. They look like they'd be a good fit for the play, from their website. Fingers crossed! I think somebody should put Heads up again, and soon. It's going to have a reading in Detroit in November, too, which could lead to something. We shall see.

Thursday, thursday...

Just a quick update today.

Had a nice lunch with Darin Anthony (who directed my play Heads last year at the Blank). Great to catch up with him and all the fun stuff he's been up to -- including directing in Santa Cruz during the summer and his upcoming show in Pasadena -- US Drag, produced by those passionate, fabulous folks at Furious Theater Company. (I've been wondering if the Furious folks in Pasadena know the Gangbusters folks in NoHo. They should. I like their theater-making in similar ways.)

Tonight, I'm off to Write Act, attending their company auditions for my play The Edge of Ross Island, which will be part of their Freeway Series of one-act plays this fall. Bennett Cohon have tried for a while now to find a project to work on together. I'm glad this is happening, and appreciate him making it go forward!

Rehearsal for Song of Extinction went well last night. Heidi worked with Darrell Kunitomi, who will be playing Khim Phan, and Will Faught, who will be playing Max. It's fun having the chance to dig into these characters at a deeper level, at last.

One more thing... Gold star for the day. I did my yoga tape this morning.

Now, off to Write Act, if I can find it. If I remember correctly, this is the theater that's off a parking lot, near the 101, behind a church... Ah, the joys of small theater! Oh, the places you'll go!

A Wednesday Update

The last few days have been busy, but very fruitful. Preparations for Song of Extinction are moving boldly forward!

The First Read-Through
On Sunday, September 14th, we had the first read through of the play. Our producers and director and design team and I and the actors all sat around a table. We introduced ourselves and talked with each other. We read the play out loud. The designers talked a little bit about their ideas for set and lights and sound. Measurements of actors were gathered by our costumer. It was a good afternoon. These are the people who will be working to make my little play happen.

I was reminded of a story that Edward Albee told, when I saw him speak at the Great Plains Theater Conference. It went something like this. When Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was slated to open on Broadway, Mr. Albee went to the first read through -- and there were 43 people in the room. He went over to his director and asked him what all these people were doing there -- and if they realized that there were only four characters in the play. But the actors were there, and the actors' agents, and the producers and the producers' assistants, and people from the theater, and designers, and... Well. It takes a lot of people to make a play happen.

The Post Cards
Falling under of "things that you didn't realize you would have to think about," I've spent a good bit of time this week going back and forth about the postcard that Moving Arts is going to be sending out for the show.

Brochuers have already gone out -- more than 40,000 of them, amazingly -- sent by the Ford Theaters to all of their mailing lists, plus the mailing lists of Moving Arts, Circle X and Ghost Road, who are represented in this 2008-2009 [Inside] the Ford Winter Partnership Season. Those were season brochures, though... we also wanted to create a postcard/image/design that spoke specifically about our show. The three winter partnership theaters decided to go in together with the design money that is part of our grant and hire a designer who would be able to do postcards for all three groups. This will be great -- creating a consistency in the look of the pieces that will be good for all of us. Josh Worth was selected as our designer.

Josh designed a beautiful card around an image of a viola -- distressing it, so it looked appropriately battered, but still beautiful and rich in color and tone. Talking it over with Heidi and Kim, we all felt like there needed to be something more added to speak to the other layers of the play. It's definitely about music, and young Max's journey -- but it's also about Khim, and how he survived a childhood that was ravaged by the Cambodian genocide. And the play is also about hope, and survival, and transformation, and how you make it through. Which is maybe a lot of ideas to try to cram into a little postcard.

After a whole lot of discussion (how? how do we get all this across?), and with a deadline looming from the Ford folks for turning in our design, we decided to keep the viola, but have Josh change the background from the butterfly/jungle to bones.

If you've read anything about the Cambodian genocide, you know that the "killing fields" were quite literal. There are still places there where bones are scattered, whole fields of the dead. To me, this play is very much about the struggle between death and life. When do you let go? How do you hold on? In fact, I remember at one point (when I was struggling in the writing) making a chart about who was on the side of death and who was on the side of life.

Josh revised the postcard design for us, and I'm very excited. It's much darker. You can feel the conflict of death (bones) and life (music). As soon as it's finalized, I'll post it here.

The Viola
Young Max Forrestal is fifteen years old, composes music, and plays the viola. For the play, then, we must procure an actual viola. Another thing I did this week was help with the search for a viola that would fall within our budget. I asked over at USC's Thornton School of Music. (It's handy sometimes, working here, as I can usually figure out who to talk to about things.) They couldn't loan a viola to someone who wasn't actually taking viola lessons at USC (go figure!), but when I told Mr. Huffman why I was looking for a viola, he had some great recommendations of other places we could look. I wrote them all down and sent them to Kim Glann, our producer, who started making phone calls. She was able to rent a viola from a fellow who fixes them in his workshop for a very reasonable rate! The actor playing Max is supposed to go over there on Friday morning to be "fitted" for his viola. Apparently they come in different sizes for different people. The things you learn!

Interview
Yesterday afternoon, I was interviewed by Laura Hitchcock for an article in the LA Stage Magazine. She was very nice. Hopefully I sounded moderately articulate, and as passionate as I feel about this project!

Music
Tonight, I'm going to try to put together a playlist for Song of Extinction for our sound designer, and the rest of the team. This play is full of music -- the song of extinction itself, written by Geoffrey Pope specifically for this play, but also classical music, sounds of the jungle and the hospital, Cambodian music... There were a few pieces that I listened to while I was writing, and several that I discovered as I went along, like the Flower Duet from the opera Lakme. I-Tunes makes this a much easier task. I have to say, I really love my little I-Pod. Finding music, purchasing music and enjoying music are much easier with this tiny little machine that fits in my purse or hooks on my belt.

Health and Fitness
Yesterday, I did Power Yoga with Rodney Yee before work. Today, I walked around campus, briskly and with I-Pod, during my lunch hour. Two gold stars. I'll try to earn another tomorrow. Every hour cannot be spent making plays. Oh, balance! You are hard to achieve. But I'm trying.

Butterflies and Promotion

Last night, Steve Lozier (Moving Arts' managing director) and I went up to the Ford theaters to pass out season brochures and flyers that I designed, Cece reworked and printed up, and Steve brought over to the theater, promoting our play. The folks at the Ford had suggested we come and offered us a table, because they were having a big event -- a Phillipine music concert -- that was sold out in the big 1,241 seat outdoor amphitheater. They thought, and we agreed, that it would be a great place to hand out flyers and promote our show. Not only does the play have a lot to do with music, it also has a main character who is Asian American (which doesn't equal Filipino, but isn't too far away geographically). Steve and I passed out flyers right and left. I think that most people took them because they thought they were getting programs for the evening's event -- but I hoped that once they got back to their seats and were waiting for the music to start, they'd read it anyway, and think that it might be an interesting play to see. Fingers crossed!

I'm drinking coffee this morning, and trying to quiet the butterflies in my stomach. We're having the first read-through of the play today, which is a rather formal event -- playwright, director, actors, producers and tech people all attend, if they can. Everyone introduces themselves and meets each other, often for the first time. The play is read out loud. Maybe the director and maybe the playwright say a little something. I'm nervous, but I'm excited. This is the real beginning of the work we're going to do on my play.

Onward!

We are cast! I am writing!

Song of Extinction has a cast. Yay!!! They are being informed of their selection today, and we're going to try to have the first read-through of the play on Sunday (people are being called, schedules are being checked). I am delighted to have the play cast, and am excited to be moving forward into rehearsals with a great group of people. As soon as I can, I'll let you know their names. But I think they're going to ROCK.

I'm changing gears now, temporarily, and working today on writing new pages for the new full-length play I'm working on. I have workshop tomorrow morning at 10am, and would like to have something to bring in. I've been thinking about the play, and doing a bit of research -- reading a rather dry book on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's not great, so I've begun to skim. I've pulled out two other books to re-read that I know will be a better help to me -- one is called Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman, and the other is An Evil Cradling, by Brian Keenan. T&R is an excellent book on the psychology of trauma, how it affects people and how they work to find themselves again afterwards, very accessible for a layperson like myself and great for character work. An Evil Cradling is Keenan's story of his five years as a hostage in Beirut in the 80's. It was a book I found and read when I was doing research for Heads, and it feels appropriate to return to it now. Not only is it a wonderful, powerful book -- but what I'm working on is a sequel to Heads, the further adventures of Michael Apres, who is trying to come to terms, so it seems right to read this book again, which is about being a hostage, but also about trying to become human again after. He begins the preface this way:

I think it was DH Lawrence, speaking about the act of writing, who said that writers throw up their sickness in books. So it is with this work.

and later said:

During my captivity I, like my fellow hostages, was forced to confront the man I thought I was.... Ultimately, not everything can be told. Each man experienced his imprisonment in his own way. Each man selected and chose his own truths.

But enough of this writing about writing. It's time to WRITE. See you soon.

Auditions tonight, and a few other things today

Tonight, we have the last set of auditions for Song of Extinction from 7:30-10:30pm over at Howard Fine Studios. We have to move into auditions (not to mention making the postcards), so we have to finalize our cast. Not an easy thing -- finding just the right people to bring a play to life for the first time. Not to mention, people who it will be a pleasure to spend an awful lot of time with over the next four months! I know we can do it. We have some amazing people selected, some amazing people in the running, and a few new faces that we'll be seeing for the first time tonight. I'll be bringing all my decisiveness to Hollywood with me when I go.

Throughout the day, e-mails jet back and forth between me and the producers. Today, I've talked with Kim about my fee. I've talked with everybody about dates for the talk-backs, which we'll be doing every Sunday at 5pm, between the 3 o'clock matinee and the 7pm evening performance throughout the run. I made a flyer for the play that emphasizes the Cambodian character, Khim Phan, and the journey he takes in the play, because the Ford Theater e-mailed us about a Philippine musical event on Saturday that usually gets a large Cambodian audience among its sold-out crowd. They told us we could have a table there to tell people about the play (and try to get them to buy tickets), so it looks like Steve and I will be doing that from 6-8pm on Saturday evening. I e-mailed a Cambodian associate in Long Beach, to see if our producers can meet with him about bringing groups from there to see the play, as there is a very large Cambodian community in Long Beach. And I e-mailed a man about a viola -- we're going to need to take a picture of one for the postcard, I hear, and also will need to use one for the whole run of the play. I'm trying to see if we might be able to rent one from USC's Thornton School of Music.

The playwright doesn't usually do all this. But... my home theater company, Moving Arts, is producing the play. So I'm acting not only as a playwright, but also as a member of the company. I'm also very invested in making this production a success.

It becomes clearer and clearer to me as time goes on that I absolutely cannot wait for things to happen, but must MAKE THEM HAPPEN, when it comes to my writing. I need to work as hard as I can, not only to make the play the best it can be, but to make the production the best it can be, to help with marketing, to roust up audience, and whatever else is needed. It takes many, many people working very, very hard to produce a play. I want to hold up my end of the deal, doing everything I can to make this a success. I owe it to the people who are working so hard, I owe it to the company who is investing so much time and effort into producing my play, and I owe it to myself.

Now... Off to auditions!