SEASONS

Quarterly Newsletter of the International Centre for Women Playwrights

Spring 2004

Table of Contents

• Editor’s Note

• Play Doctor: The latest instalment of Rebecca Ritchie’s column.

• Museum Theatre : By Yvonne ‘Mrs Shakespeare’ Hudson.

• Theatre in Wales – Beyond Milk Wood: by R.L. Nesvet

• Why Scripts Don’t Fly: by Roger Gross.

• New ICWP Members

• Three calls for Scripts : March Deadlines

• Call for Translators – Want a one-year ICWP dues waiver?

• Kudos: Members’ recent awards and commendations.

• Contact Information

Dear Playwrights,

Here is this year’s first edition of Seasons. I hope you’ll find it useful and enjoyable. Rebecca Ritchie’s popular ‘Play Doctor’ column is back, and there are several illuminating feature articles as well.

If you’re a history or science buff and have been thinking of applying your playwriting skills to bring life to museums, check out museum theatre solo artist Yvonne Hudson’s report from a symposium dedicated to that art form. Hudson performs shows about such female historical figures as Mrs. Anne Shakespeare (neé Hathaway) and a nineteenth-century American Shakespeare actress.

Additionally, you can read about the vivid world of theatre in Wales, find out from playwright and professor of playwriting Dr. Roger Gross what makes new plays fail, and see which new ICWP members hail from your area of the world. Lastly, scan the listings of opportunities and help circulate ICWP members’ long list of 2003 playwriting award victories.

Wishing you all inspiration and packed audiences,

Rebecca Nesvet

ICWP Literary Director and Seasons Temporary Editor

The Play Doctor is in! All playwrights are welcome to submit questions on structural and craft issues for diagnosis by Rebecca Ritchie, JD, at rtritchie@att.net.

Disclaimer: Please note that the Play Doctor did her residency in The Well-Made Play. All comments reflect that bias.

I have a story where a family member has discovered a photograph of a guy and his wife. The family member did not like the disabled son's wife. The guy died not long ago, so the family member who found the picture is deciding what to do with it. Keep in a family album; toss?

I'm playing with who the central character should be:

• the guy's mother, who has a strong sense of family, but felt her disabled son got a raw deal when he married this woman; or

• the guy's sister who feels that this woman did not add to her disabled brother's life, that the woman was using her brother by marrying him.

How do I decide my central character? The character who is hurt the most by the death of the disabled son? The character who had the most to lose or gain by his death?

Thanks for your help!

Your question goes right to the central nervous system of a play. There are two main ways to get an answer to the question, "Who is the central character"

You either can plan out your play in advance, settling on the central character and sticking with her come hell or high water -- or you can write a first draft of the play. On the surface, the former seems easier, but in the long run it's harder.

It's like the difference between a pediatrician's trying to diagnose a toddler's cold symptoms by listening to her chest -- versus trying to treat a child who hasn't been conceived yet. In the former case, at least there is fluid in the ears to give a hint at the problem; in the latter case, you're just dealing with a twinkle in her father's eye.

Start the first draft with any character in mind as the central character. It really doesn't matter which one, though it's easiest to write the play if you have at least one character who can speak from the heart - your heart. Then explore the relationships among the four family members: The mother and daughter, the disabled son and his wife, the wife and her mother-in-law, the sister and her sister-in-law, the sister and brother.

In your example, let's say you start by assuming that the mother of the disabled man is the central character. Express her emotions (i.e.,your emotions) at every opportunity. Don't skimp on the sister's inner turmoil, either. And let the wife spew her venom on the page. (Hard to have the son speak, unless he's a ghost or a flesh-and-blood memory.) No holds barred. Don't self-censor. Just get a complete first draft on paper.

Now go back and look at what you've written. In accordance with our assumption, you thought the mother of the disabled man was the central character. But have you given her a choice or decision to make? Is she actively working on a current problem in her life, something that will require her to make a choice? Or is she buried in the past, reliving history, with nothing currently churning in her emotional life. Are all her speeches narrative? Is she a font of family history, but without the insight to examine her own present situation. If the answer is that there is no current choice for the mother to make -- no situation she is trying to work out -- then the mother is not the central character. Can't be, never will be, because in dramatic writing, the central character always must be facing a choice - in the moment -- between two mutually exclusive paths.

Look at your draft again. You've ruled out the mother as the central character, but is there another character to whom you've given a current choice? Is the sister, for example, named in the will as the administrator of the disabled brother's estate, having to decide whether and how to spend the assets to benefit the widow? This would set up an emotionally uncomfortable situation between the deceased's sister and his widow. It also would open the window to exploration of all the family relationships. Nothing like a fight over an estate to bring all the puss to the surface.

Maybe the sister-in-law had every expectation that she would inherit everything (Not a lot? A huge portfolio of stock? The remainder of a special needs trust set up when the 18-wheeler smashed her late husband's Jetta to smithereens?) and never intended that she would be forced into a long-term relationship with her late husband's sister. The external conflict over what to do with the money would lead to resolution of the internal conflicts within each family member over the late disabled son. The wife never resolved her resentment over marrying a man with great prospects who became disabled on their honeymoon. The sister never resolved her martyrdom over being born whole when her fraternal twin's oxygen was cut off in utero. The mother never resolved her bitterness/guilt/fear/repulsion over producing a child less than perfect.

Which one of these characters has a choice, now, in the present? Does the sister have to decide whether to resign as administrator of the estate? Does throwing out the photograph of her brother symbolize her decision to walk away from her unresolved conflicts with him? Or, in contrast, symbolize that she finally has come to terms with her survivor's guilt?

Whoever is facing a current choice is a candidate for central character. Suppose you have written two characters with a current choice to make. Ask yourself which one has the choice of greater significance? Significance in this case means the underlying social, political, religious, economic, health, racial, cultural or historical importance underlying the play. If, for example, the widow has to choose whether to remain single (thereby keeping her entire inheritance under the terms of the will) or remarrying (thereby losing her right to the money,) there's no real importance underlying her decision.

It's a money play and nothing more. But if the deceased disabled husband was a Vietnam War veteran who lost his legs trying to save his buddies, and his widow is trying to decide whether to marry a Vietnamese refugee because of the guilt she feels from refusing to adopt her late husband's illegitimate daughter by a Vietnamese woman he left behind, then we have political, racial and cultural issues underpinning the surface money decision. That character, the one with the significant decision to make, is your most likely central character.

If you are lucky enough to have two or more characters, each with a significant decision to make, look for the one who changes, or who has the potential to change, in the course of making the final decision. (Generally, this will be the one who speaks most candidly of the secrets of your heart.) In your second draft, you will give that character central place through rewrites that engage the audience with the character's decision-making. You will hone the change in the central character that occurs right before the final curtain when the character makes the choice you've handed to her. She will choose and change at the same moment.

Rx for the central character

Remember that

• the central character is the character with the most significant choice to make

• the conflict in the central character (the choice between two mutually exclusive paths) may be reflected in an external conflict but must have an internal conflict, and

• the central character must change in the course of making her decision of resolving the conflict.
  
  

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I'm working on a play with several interconnected plots and subplots. How do I handle all these plots? When do I introduce the main plot and each of the subplots? How do I braid them together?

It took the Play Doctor several readings to take the pulse of all the subplots you described to me, and how they relate to the main plot as outlined in your synopsis. That's a structural problem. The issue is not how and when to introduce each subplot. It's how to link each subplot clearly and memorably to the main plot.

Let's go back to the main plot and your central character, MA. She must choose to dance or not to dance. That's the surface decision, and an interesting one, too. But what we don't know from your synopsis is what's going on underneath. What is the real choice she is facing? So what if she chooses not to dance? What will happen to her relationship(s) if she passes on this

production? If she goes forward with it? If her lover advises her not to dance, and threatens to leave her because they both may land in jail, then we begin to care. The play now has a clear underpinning of political/social significance (where significance means a subtext of political, economic, social, religious, racial, health, or other deep meaning among and between the characters and their society.) Or perhaps, if she dances in this production, the world will find out about her affair, and the antagonist who has been threatening all along to kill her and her lover, has promised to carry out an act of homicide as a punishment to the Bohemians who are fiddling while the world burns, and as an act of expiation for his own role in the war. Or something.

Once you have established the surface choice and subtext (preferably in the first five pages of the script,) remember that you must delay the central character's decision until moments before the final curtain. You can't have this decision come at the Act One curtain, for example, or you haven't got an Act Two.

The purpose of each subplot is to drive the central character's decision-making in the main plot. Ask yourself, how can the central character's decision to dance or not to dance be affected by actions or choices of the other principal characters? When do these characters make their decisions? They shouldn't until they've gone through considerable soul-searching, say two acts' worth

The playwright should introduce and reintroduce the subplots - step on it, so to speak - as needed to heighten the pressure on the central character's decision-making. It won't matter when each subplot comes into or out of the play, so long as it pushes the central character toward a major decision.

Having settled on how the choice of the central character in the subplot will affect the choice of the central character in the play, the playwright must insure that the central character in the play must be in or affected by every scene in the play. She must be physically onstage, or offstage only briefly while the central character of a subplot exhibits his ambivalence about his choice and how it will affect the central character of the play. The characters in the subplot, through their ambivalence between two mutually exclusive paths, will either put barriers in the way of the central character of the play's ability to make her final choice or decision, or they will drive her to that decision by giving some assistance. The central character of a subplot must make his/her final decision or choice almost immediately before the end of Act II, giving the central character of the play the ammunition she needs to make her final decision or choice in the last few minutes of the play. Remember, once your protagonist makes her final decision, the audience gets up and leaves, literally or figuratively. If the central character's decision comes eleven minutes into Act One, it will be a very long evening at the theatre.

1. The central character in the main plot must be facing a) a surface decision involving two mutually exclusive paths, and b) a decisional subtext of significance.

2. Each subplot's sole purpose is to help or hinder the central character in her decision-making. Put another way, every decision in a subplot must have a direct impact on the decision-making of the central character in the main plot.

3. All these decisions or choices of the characters in the subplot must come moments before and for the sole purpose of helping the central character of the play make her final choice or decision as the Act II curtain comes down.

History and science meet theatre in programs and scripts developed for the many organizations that comprise the International Museum Theatre Alliance. IMTAL is a professional resource and networking non-profit organization for museum and theatre professionals using theatre as an interpretive technique. Membership to the Alliance is open to professionals using all styles and techniques of this expanding medium.

The 2003 IMTAL Biennial Meeting in Richard, Virginia, drew members from Europe, Austrailia, and North America, playwrights and performers (such as myself) who attended programs and met with museum theatre administrators, directors, and educational staff members. Specialties including science, natural history, art, architecture, applied arts and science, history, children's museums, zoos and aquariums were represented. The work of varied writers,

performers, and directors was featured over the four-day meeting.

Working with Drew Gibson, a storyteller and solo performer, I co-presented a workshop on development of the historical solo show. Other programs featured presentations developed and performed for the host organization, the Science Museum of Richmond, reports on development of museum theatre programs in Ireland, the U.K., and Austrailia, and performances showcasing the various styles of museum theatre aimed at audiences of all ages in diverse spaces. Meeting attendees were exposed to historically based monologues, puppetry, works that demystified science, and much more.Participants spent a day at historic Williamsburg, the "grand daddy" of living history museums.

Having presented my one-woman show Mrs Shakespeare at IMTAL's 2001

Bi-ennial Meeting at the Tower of London and an excerpt from my new piece on Laura Keene, the actor-manager who was working in Ford's Theatre the evening President Lincoln was assassinated, at the IMTAL meeting in August, I have found the energy and specialization of the IMTAL membership fascinating. Like ICWP, it's one of the friendliest and most inspirational professional groups I've encountered (but, like ICWP, probably because it's intent is one of my true passions!).

Membership in IMTAL provides access to events and contacts related to

Theatre in museums and historical settings. If you would like more information about IMTAL, visit the Web site at:

http://www.mos.org/learn_more/imtal.html

"Beyond Milk Wood"

Theatre in Wales

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas. His UNDER MILK WOOD may be the most famous play to have come out of Wales, but it is far from the only play from, by, or about the region and its culture to galvanise UK and world drama.

Find out about many others at Theatre in Wales, the the 'umbrella site' for reviews, interviews, essays, casting calls, and performance art event notices.

Discover the work of some of the most intriguing playwrights and other theatre artists coming out of (or staying in) Wales. These including the playwright Lucy Gough, whose CROSSING THE BAR opens next month at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre; and Dic Edwards, librettist of an opera currently in development in London, that takes place in part at Camp X-Ray.

Read about Wales-based theatre companies, such as Volcano Theatre Company, Torch Theatre, and U-Man Zoo, that are challenging artistic and other boundaries in Wales and on UK, Europe, and world tours. Read about Sgript Cymru, a company dedicated completely to the development and full production of new writing. Engaging theatre for young audiences is produced regularly by Spectacle Theatre and Theatr Iolo, while several companies, including Iolo and Bara Caws, produce new plays in the Welsh language.

Lastly, if you are based in Wales or maintain connections with the region, find out what's playing, where, and when. Add your information to the directory of playwrights and other theatre professionals. http://www.theatre-wales.co.uk

If you have been teaching playwriting, or even studying it for a few years, none of the basic ideas here will be new to you. However, you may be surprised and disappointed to hear the status of those ideas in the work of the upcoming playwrights. If you’re new to the trade, these are the real fundamentals.

I read a lot of new scripts. Add together the submissions to the Kernodle New Play Competition which I manage, the David M. Cohen Award Competition which I shepherd, the applicants to the MFA Program I direct, and the work of my students, I look at well over three hundred each year. It’s not much fun. The gems are rare and they’re buried in a great mound of …sand. One wants them to be better…and, of course, that’s an unreasonable expectation. Playwriting is hard. Surely it’s the hardest writing there is.

The question that nags is "why are there so many scripts that just aren’t good enough?" Given that we have accumulated a very good understanding of what makes a script good, or at least what makes them bad, why do so many seem so bad? Part of the answer is that we’re not interested in theatre unless it is wonderful. We will accept OK cars, OK houses, OK doctors, OK lawyers…OK almost anything. But nobody wants OK theatre.

It is so easy to walk out or to stay home. We want every script to thrill us.

This is a problem, no doubt. But it isn’t the whole answer. The majority of the scripts, I must say bluntly, are not just unwonderful…they are pretty bad. Again and again, I find myself saying, "how could the writer think this was ready to send out?" and "how could the writer not know the most fundamental techniques?". After all, these are not fools; these are not no-talents. These are people with reasonable education and what seems to be good preparation.

I know my questions are unkind, but they come, like it or not. Exasperation is an occupational hazard for new-script readers. I assure you that, by the time I respond to the writers, my thoughts are kinder, more supportive, more useful. But late at night these questions haunt me.

About fifteen years ago, Patricia Relph (the best new-script reader I know and the first reader for the Kernodle) and I began keeping count. We identified the dominant weakness in each script that "wasn’t good enough" and gave a name to it. Using standard Content Analysis techniques, we settled on five major categories.

By now we have accumulated a lot of data. About twelve years ago I gave my first status report of this kind. The saddest news I have for you is that twelve years later, there has been no change. Same flaws in approximately the same proportions. And all of these weaknesses are matters that every good playwriting teacher deals with from the start. Here are the big five playwriting inadequacies, in order of frequency, as revealed by the scripts submitted to us.

Far and away the most common weakness is the lack of a strong Dramatic Action. Nothing happens. Oh, there’s usually plenty of activity…but activity, no matter how abundant or lively does not necessarily make an Action. And audiences care about Action. It’s fundamental to them. If they can’t feel, see, hear the play as An Event, they will be discontent. They’ll see the play as pointless, no matter how loaded it may be with profound observation, or shock, or titillation.

Action is the engine that drives a play. The sense that the play is going somewhere, that it is headed for something, is what makes us feel we need to stay. Lacking an Action, only the most extraordinary fireworks can keep our attention and even then, we’ll start looking at our watches after about 45 minutes, maybe even sooner. A play needs an irresistible beginning, middle, and end, which is another way of saying it needs a strong Action. There’s a line that pops out of the Universal Consciousness into mouths all over the world as we walk out of plays that lack a strong, driving Action: "What was that supposed to be about?"

This is surely the hardest dramatic skill to master. Playwrights tend to get lost in the details of character and dialogue and lose track of the forest in their fascination with the trees. This is why the first term for the new writers in my MFA program is devoted exclusively to the ten-minute play. We work on the problem of structure, again and again on a scale which makes structure more visible, more manageable. My students tell me they think they would never have gotten a grip on structure if they hadn’t started that way.

We’ve known the importance of Action for a long time, yet our new playwrights still struggle with it. This is hard to understand. Perhaps our pedagogic techniques need reexamination.

The third most frequent problem is the script which is an imitation of other scripts. It’s a hazard for actors and directors too: too much time spent in the theatre, one’s consciousness so fully absorbed by theatre, that there is no pool of life experience to draw on. So often we see imitations of imitations of imitations. I have a sign I occasionally hang in my classroom. It says "You can’t make theatre out of theatre. Theatre is made of life." At least the most interesting theatre is. For too many of the scripts we read, it is possible by the third page to anticipate not only the next story turn but actual lines of dialogue. Of course you can do that with most television plays, too. But the TV writers are aware of what they are doing as a calculated effect. Most of the writers we read seem to be reaching for something richer but falling into the cliché trap. The solution is to get out in the world and start using real people and events as models.

The fourth most common problem, we weren’t able to formulate so tidily. When I think of it, the old Peggy Lee song comes to mind: "Is that all there is, my friend? Then let’s go on dancing." We call it "Not Enough". It’s amazing and sad how many scripts have a nice premise, interesting characters, believable, even interesting dialogue, but nevertheless leave you saying "That’s it? That’s all?" Don’t confuse this with lack of a Dramatic Action, lack of a strong ending. These Not-Enough scripts may have a clear and well-earned Action, but it’s just…not enough. The payoff doesn’t seem worth the investment. A play without an Action tends to leave the audience frustrated, even angry. Not-Enough usually leaves us…deflated, disappointed, let down. It’s a milder response but it may actually be more damning. The audience is well aware that going to the theatre is a big investment, no matter what the ticket price. It expects a significant payoff in meaning, excitement, surprise, inspiration or…something.

The last of the big five problems is unlike the others in that it seems less a technique and more a fundamental talent which might disqualify a would-be playwright. It is the very broad problem of insufficient language skill. With the first four problems, I’m usually inclined to think that, if I could just spend a few days with the writers, I could get them to understand and they’d be fine. Presumptuous, I know, but it keeps hope alive. With problem number five, that optimism fades. The difficulty is too basic. It’s not a matter of dramatic technique. It is fundamental to an individual’s way of living. In the time frame that playwriting teachers have to work with, how do you teach an adult to know words, to feel them, to love them, to see how specialized they are in the kinds of work they can do.

There are three issues here, equally important: speakability, characterization, and eloquence. I have tried to help many writers who could write a great essay, a fine short story, a stunning poem, but could not write dialogue because they could not catch on to the issue of speakability: that a line must fit well in an actors mouth, that a line which reads well may speak abominably. And many fine writers write only in their own voice and cannot escape it. But there are ways of helping with these problems. Eloquence, of course, is something else. It seems it is a gift; you either got it or you didn’t. Fortunately, it’s possible to write a good play without the gift of eloquence.

We found little eloquence. We found problems of speakability and characterization in abundance, and, disappointingly, we also found fundamental errors in grammar, diction, spelling. Embarrassing stuff. (Never send a script away without having a highly literate friend check it, no matter how good you are.)

I’m confident that the big five Patricia Relph and I found are representative of what others see. Yes, I know. I skipped number Two. So now I return to my announced sub-topic. The second most frequent underminer of scripts is Over-Explicitness. If you read new scripts, you have seen plenty of this. People enter a room, they face each other, and each tells the other what he or she feels, wants, believes, needs, is. They take turns. And because they don’t immediately persuade each other, they go over the material again…and again. In its most extreme version, exposition is handled by characters telling each other what they already know. "But you did this. But you did that. As you well know…" I’ve described a crude version of the problem but it appears in more refined versions and in the work of writers who, otherwise, have some real playwriting skills.

Over-explicitness shows a fundamental mis-understanding of the dramatic medium. If what you want to do is tell people your ideas and your feeling, drama is not a good medium. It is a very difficult, clumsy, and expensive medium. Compare the cost and difficulty of going to the theatre with reading a paper or an essay or a poem or a novel. They’re all much easier and they all offer their readers the desirable opportunity to control its experience, to take it at a pace and time they prefer.

Theatre asks so much of us. But it is worth the trouble because theatre has a unique way of communicating. Theatre is, of course, sensory and that is very important. But more important is that theatre is particularly good at allowing the audience, in the rush of Action, to discover what everything means. There are few delights in the theatre to compare with the satisfaction, the excitement, of feeling that you have seen through the activity, have fathomed the minds of the characters, have figured it out, have found the meaning.

When a playwright (or an actor or director, for that matter) lays it all out on the plate for us with no indirection, we are not invited to participate and the possibility of participation is what makes live theatre worth the bother. Having something to say as a writer is preliminary to playwriting technique. Here is what a good playwright knows: how to create activity which coalesces as an Action which evokes meaning from the audience.

The overly-explicit writer short-circuits this beautiful process. This writer does not value the discovery of meaning and the experiencing of meaning highly enough. This writer over-values his or her meanings, believes that those meanings, in themselves, are what matters, that they are enough. Well, I must be candid and say that most of the meanings that drama is capable of conveying are not, in themselves, profound enough to justify the inconvenience of theatre. Yes, that includes Hamlet, King Lear, and Oedipus.

Several other media can tell us better than theatre can. The importance of meanings in the theatre is that they can be communicated in a way which brands them on our souls so that we are never free of them again. The value is not in the meanings themselves but in the profundity of our absorption of them when the play provokes us to feel into the event, to discover and experience them. To merely hear them is nothing.

I’m sure there are dramatic purposes for which explicitness can be calculatedly used as a powerful device. I have a proper love for Brecht. Yet I believe this generalization: the more implicit the meanings of a play, the more chance it has to excite, move, illuminate, activate, and mark its audience. The more explicit, the more likely it is to bore us…and this must be the worst fate of all.

Here are a couple of examples to give just a little flesh to this idea. Look at two Lee Blessing scripts: Eleemosynary and A Walk in the Woods. Lee has always been a greatly talented writer but the gulf of technique between these two plays is enormous. His understanding of life, his meanings, are just as profound in the early script as in the more recent one. The impact of the plays, however, is very different. We may value what Eleemosynary is telling us…it is sensitively perceived and the value system is subtle and sound. But the impact of the play is not in the league with Woods, even though the ostensible topic of Woods is esoteric and its apparent theatricality is so minimal.

I believe that, in fact, the theatricality of Woods is amazing despite its lack of flamboyant activity. Two men talk. They sit, they occasionally take a few steps this way or that, and they talk…about missiles, about eye drops, about trivia. But the end, we feel we have crawled under the skins of these characters, we have figured them out, and we have come to understand them so well that we must love them both. We have, by the writer’s indirections, been allowed to find directions out. Eleemosynary is the work of a good writer with great concern and sensitivity to the human condition. Woods is that…and the work of a pure dramatist.

A last pair of examples, from my experience as director of the Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat: in our early years, I invited a writer who was new to the game but whose personal experience and interests seemed to me to compensate for playwriting innocence. She arrived with a 120-page script which resembled my first description of the overly-explicit script. People came in, harangued each other, changed partners and harangued some more. I tried a shock tactic. I asked her to mark each line in her script with one of these symbols: A for lines which tell what has happened; B for lines which tell how the speaker feels about things; C for lines which tell what the speaker wants or needs; D for lines which tell how the speaker feels about the listener; and E for lines which are the normal by-product of people busy doing something other than talking about A, B, C, or D. Then, I said, do the same for your favorite script by a known playwright.

Of course it turned out that she had no Es and that her favorite was about 90% Es. She got the message quickly. And she eventually forgave me for making her go through that drudgery. She later told me to describe her in our promotional material as the writer who came with a novel and left with a play.

And finally, one very good example: the best writer of the implicit I know is Steven Sater. You may remember his Carbondale Dreams. His new musical with Duncan Sheik, The Nightingale, just opened at the O’Neill and his musical version of Spring Awakening, again with Sheik, is due to be seen at the Roundabout Theatre in New York in 2004. Steven’s dialogue is so indirect, so totally consumed with the ongoing petty events of daily life, so like reality in the inability of people to articulate their deeper feelings, so understanding of the fear which makes us say anything rather than what is really on our minds that his plays give me the feeling I am seeing past theatre to life more fully than ever before.

I can’t think of a script more fully of-the-theatre than his Pearl’s Tears, a 25 minute, five-scene play. It uses none of the familiar, sure-fire theatrical devices. We see the male character move from teen-age to his thirties in the course of five visits to his grandmother. They talk. Nothing important. Nothing "meaningful." They talk of butter-rolls and flowers and nothing much more. And at the end we know them, profoundly, and we care for them, and…it seems we know a whole family history, including characters who are mentioned only glancingly. And we can’t resist examining our own lives by this light. Twenty-five minutes of off-the-point talk with no overt struggle, no fireworks. We hang on every inconsequential word. When it is over, we feel…satisfaction. We could all learn something from the pure simplicity and bedrock theatricality of Pearl’s Tears.

I’m still trying to learn how to lead writers to an understanding of the special power of this kind of theatricality and the impotence of the rhetorical style. Frankly, most beginners can’t think of what to do other than speak their meanings explicitly. The best I know to do is call them on it every time it sticks its ugly head up and to brainstorm indirections with them.

So these are the documented five monsters that eat up playwrights…at least the hundreds of playwrights who submit scripts to me. I’m stunned by their consistency over the years. They are old problems. These problems were articulated long ago. They are discussed in the books and in the good classes. The fact that they are still around despite this and despite the fact that these playwrights have, as models, so many examples of well-written plays, movies, and television shows suggests that, with a few rare exceptions, these skills are not intuitive; they have to be carefully taught and practiced to be mastered.

© Roger Gross 2003

Connie Yoshimura ALASKA, USA

Kit Wainer NEW YORK, USA

Jacquelynn Kathleen, CALIFORNIA, USA

Amy Smith NEVADA, USA

Libby Farris ARIZONA, USA

Lydia Ogolceva ILLINOIS, USA

Jennifer Kollmer CALIFORNIA, USA

Terry Gomez NEW MEXICO, USA

Chris Hare CALIFORNIA, USA

Elaine Romero ARIZONA USA

Karen Kinch WASHINGTON, USA

Dr Brenda Shoshanna NEW JERSEY, USA

Polie Sengupta BANGALORE, INDIA

Carolyn nu Wistrand MICHIGAN USA

Jean H. Klein VIRGINIA, USA

Arlene Hutton NEW YORK, USA

June Rogers TORONTO, CANADA

Pamela Monk PENNSYLVANIA, USA

Dylan Guy NEW YORK, USA

Valetta Anderson GEORGIA, USA

Liz Amberly NEW YORK, USA

Cieri Dominique NEW JERSEY, USA

Janice Liddell GEORGIA, USA

Sandra Hosking WASHINGTON, USA

Chris Day TEXAS, USA

Roxanne Ray WASHINGTON, USA

Laura Conrad PENNSYLVANIA, USA

Regina Bova MASSACHUSETTS, USA

Susanna Ralli MASSACHUSETTS, USA

Elena Kaufman PARIS, FRANCE

Kelly Dumar MASSACHUSETTS, USA

Erma George OHIO, USA

Grace Chapman LINDEN, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

Margaret Brian OREGON, USA

Dr Mae Meidav CALIFORNIA, USA

Cristy Spencer ONTARIO, CANADA

Maryjane Cruise ONTARIO, CANADA

For New Jersey Residents Only – Deadline 15 March 2004:

New Jersey Dramatists seeks submissions for the "NJ All Ages

Playwrights Festival." This new state-wide festival seeks to bring together playwrights of all ages, promoting the idea that playwriting can begin and flourish at any stage of life.

The juried festival will offer 3 categories: Youth (19 & under),

Adult, & Senior (60+). Current NJ residents are eligible to submit one play of up to twenty minutes in length. Two copies of the script should be sent to NJ DRAMATISTS, PO BOX 1486, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030 ATTN: ALL AGES FESTIVAL (postmark March 15, 2004). Playwrights must indicate whether they are submitting for the Youth, Adult, or Senior category, and include a SASE for a list of finalists. Scripts will not be returned.

For more information on this and other programs of New Jersey Dramatists/The Waterfront Ensemble, please visit www.njdramatists.org

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FIRST CHANCE FEST 2004 – Deadline 31 March 2004

Orange County's award-winning theatre company, The Chance Theater, is
looking for original works to include in its second annual FIRSTCHANCE Fest
which will take place in July 2004.

In addition to our normal submissions process, we are also looking for plays
submitted by young playwrights who are still in high school.

The Chance encourages challenging, hard-hitting, innovative comedies and
dramas with one set, minimal production needs, and a maximum cast of eight.

• Plays are not to exceed 110 pages. One act plays are especially encouraged.
  All entries must be typed, in 10 point font, and formatted to single spacing within lines and 1.5 spacing between characters' lines.

2. The playwrights' name, address, telephone number, FAX number, e-mail and the play's title should only appear on the first page. On the second page only the play's title should appear.

Please include a short synopsis after the title page. All of the following pages should be numbered.

3. All scripts must be securely bound and covered.

4. Send submissions to: The Chance Theater, P.O. Box 3309, Orange, CA 92857, Attn: First Chance Fest 2004.

5. Submissions will be handled with care. However, The Chance Theater assumes no responsibility for lost or damaged scripts.

6. No scripts will be returned. If you wish to receive confirmation that we received your script, please include a SASP.

7. There is no pay for scripts that are selected for production.

Of any and all languages, to translate ICWP webpage content from English.
Not only will you help ICWP reach a truly international array of women playwrights, but you’ll get a one-year dues waiver.
Interested? Contact Allison Williams, ICWP President, at devilini@gte.net

Linda Eisenstein, finalist, Higher

Nancy Gall-Clayton, finalist, Dead Deer in the Dark

Andrea Lepcio, finalist, Looking for the Pony

Karen Macklin, finalist, Commit Me to Memory

Sandra Perlman, finalist, Washing the Dead

Elaine Romero, finalist, Fear of Extinction

Donna Spector, finalist, Short-Term Affairs

Allison Williams, finalist, Miss Kentucky

Karen Macklin, 2nd prize, full-length, Popping the Cherry

Sandra Perlman, finalist, The Beatrice Factor

Jennifer Kollmer, quarterfinalist, full-length, Base Two

Liz Amberly, quarter-finalist, Whisper Down the Lane

Robin Rice Lichtig, quarter-finalist, Humans Remain

Vanda, quarter-finalist, Screaming in the Wilderness

R. L. Nesvet, winner, The Shape Shifter

Faye Sholiton, winner, V-E Day

Vicki Cheatwood, Best of the Fest, The People

Pamela Monk, June 20 Audience Favorite, Buy and Buy

Francesca Sanders, finalist, I Am a Black Girl

Ludmilla Bollow, semi-finalist, Choke Cherry Corners - Tavern & Dance Hall

Olga Humphrey, selectee

Ljubinka Stojanovic, finalist, Dove-Cot

Nancy Gall-Clayton, winner, Requiem for a Pair of Manicure Scissors

Laura Henry, semi-finalist

Olga Humphrey, semi-finalist

Kathy Coudle King, semi-finalist

Cut to the Chase Festival, The Artistic Home

Linda Eisenstein, finalist, Heart Smart

Dori Appel, finalist, When God Came to Babylon

Vicki Cheatwood, citation, 10:10

Andrea Lepcio, selectee

Larry Loebell, winner - full-length, Memorial Day

Nancy Gall-Clayton, winner - 10-minute, Felicity's Family Tree

Sandra Perlman, 1st runner-up - 10-minute, Something with Fish

Miriam F. d'Amato, 1st runner-up - one act, A Noodle Kugel for Company

Geralyn Horton, finalist - 10-minute, Autumn Leaves

Dori Appel, finalist - one act, Memory Lane

Vicki Cheatwood, finalist - full-length, Manicures and Monuments

Kathy Coudle King, semifinalist - 10-minute, Mourning Coffee

Jewel Seehaus-Fisher, semifinalist - 10-minute, That Stuff

Ludmilla Bollow, semifinalist - one act, Bitsy and Her Friends

Geralyn Horton, semifinalist - one act, What Kind of Life is That?

Emergence Women's Playwriting Festival, Radiant Productions

Francesca Sanders, winner, Rising from the Sugar Bowl

Kathy Coudle King, winner, Shrimp Po'boy

Sandra Perlman, finalist, Washing the Dead

Robin Rice Lichtig, finalist, St. Anthony & the Appendix

Linda Escalera Baggs, Winner, Silent Heroes

Olga Humphrey, finalist, Tea with Pippa

Carole Clement, winner, Paradise Lost

Nancy Gall-Clayton, finalist, Almost Predictable

Karin Diane Williams, finalist, The Present

Patrick Gabridge, 4^th place, God’s Voice

Diane Forrest, honorable mention, China 1938

Olga Humphrey, fellowship winner, Hyperactive

Elaine Romero, runner-up, Catalina de Erauso: The Man Inside of Me

Vicki Caroline Cheatwood, semi-finalist, Manicures & Monuments

Francesca Sanders, winner, Lilac Samba

Francesca Sanders, finalist, I Am an Arab Girl

Robin Rice Lichtig, winner, Humans Remain

Geralyn Horton, finalist, Inquest

D. W. Gregory, finalist, The Million Dollar Fight

Francesca Sanders, finalist, Rising from the Sugar Bowl

Michele Forsten, semi-finalist, Be My Baby!

Carole Clement, honorable mention, Caesar's Wife

Shirley King, finalist, Water on Mars

M. L. (Mimi) Hilson, winner, Columbine Award - Best Stage Play about Non-Violence, Illume, or the Peacemaker's Funeral

Carole Clement, finalist, Where the Sky Ends

Sandra Dempsey, finalist, Enigma

Kristan Ryan, finalist, The Waving Girl

Eliza Wyatt, finalist, Wobbly Goddesses

Penny S. Lorio, semi-finalist, Missing Phil

Jewel Seehaus-Fisher, finalist, Wilde in Leadville

Olga Humphrey, winner, Svetlana's New Flame

D. W. Gregory, finalist, The Million Dollar Fight

Francesca Sanders, finalist, Rising from the Sugar Bowl

Francesca Sanders, winner, In Amber Lies the Glass House

Kathy Coudle King, 1st place winner, Milk Dreams

Linda Eisenstein and James Levin, winner, $5000 award, Discordia

Francesca Sanders, winner, Mergers and Acquisitions

Diane Forrest, winner, ShadowPlay

Linda Eisenstein, finalist, Higher

Nancy Gall-Clayton, finalist, Dead Deer in the Dark

Donna Spector, finalist, Short-Term Affairs

Ludmilla Bollow, finalist, The Girl with Three Arms

Jamie Pachino, Gold Medalist, Waving Goodbye

Vanda, finalist, Screaming in the Wilderness

Patrick Gabridge, finalist, God’s Voice

Monica Raymond, winner, Hijab

Jamie Pachino, honorable mention, Kreskin Be Damned

Donna Spector, nomination, Writing Like Shakespeare

Patrick Gabridge, semi-finalist, God's Voice

Molly Best Tinsley, semi-finalist, Lise Meitner

Mary Steelsmith, winner, Isaac, I Am

Liz Amberly, winner, Blueberry Waltz

Jewel Seehaus-Fisher, finalist, My Sister Underground

Elizabeth L. Farris, finalist, Robert's Rules

Geralyn Horton, finalist, What Kind of a Life Is That

Suzanne Thomson, winner, Tennessee Williams scholarship

R. L. Nesvet, winner

Dori Appel, finalist, Demeter's Daughters

Nancy Gall-Clayton, selectee, The Fish in the Dumpster

R. L. Nesvet, 2nd place winner, full length, The Offensive

Patrick Gabridge, 4th place, full length, God's Voice

Molly Best Tinsley, 5th place winner, full length, Lisa Meitner

Michele Forsten, 6th place special mention, 15-minute play, Ersatz Egg Salad

Tami Canaday, 10th place special mention, full length, The Wind-Up Runaway Girl

Carole Clement, finalist, Paradise Lost

Evelyn Y. Jones, winner, Not On This Night

Francesca Sanders, finalist, In Amber Lies the Glass House

Elaine Romero, participant, Barrio Hollywood

Lindsay Price, winner (1 of 5), Flaky Lips

Linda Eisenstein, winner, Heart Smart

Allison Williams, winner, Miss Kentucky

Robin Rothstein, finalist, Try, Try Again

Ludmilla Bollow, finalist, Moussaka Meeting

D.W. Gregory, finalist, After the Dance

Robin Rice Lichtig, finalist, Squeezing Papayas

Nancy Gall-Clayton, Finalist, The Colored Door at the Train Depot

Diana Howie, semifinalist, Top Dog

Shoshannah Boray, winner, Jerusalem

Elaine Romero, winner

Elaine Romero, finalist, Before Death Comes for the Archbishop

Faye Sholiton, 4th place, V-E Day

Patrick Gabridge, 9^th place, God’s Voice

Kristan Ryan, honorable mention, Pulse

Carole Clement, semi-finalist, Paradise Lost

Carole Clement, quarter-finalist, Where the Sky Ends

Kristan Ryan, quarter-finalist, Strange Angels: The Book of Damaris

Kathy Coudle King, quarter-finalist

ICWP MISSION STATEMENT

To support women playwrights around the world by:

• bringing international attention to their achievements

• encouraging production of their plays, translation, publication, and international distributions of their works

• providing means for communication and contact among the sister community of the world's women dramatists

• assisting them in developing the tools of their craft, in determining their own artistic forms, and in setting their own critical standards

• encouraging scholarly and critical examination and study of the history and the contemporary work and concerns of women playwrights

• supporting their efforts to gain professional equality, and to express their own personal, artistic, social, and political vision without censorship, harassment, or personal danger

More information about ICWP at: www.internationalwomenplaywrights.org

Contact Us

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  Contact the Secretary Margaret McSeveney email: margaret@benhar.screaming.net
  
  

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