Open Wardrobes

Two of my plays, The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal and Eponine, are now available through Heuer Publishing. It's always exciting to see a play reach this point; it feels as if the play has "grown up" and is now finally off in the world on its own. I look forward to seeing how they now do in the wider world.

And I know, I know, it's been quite awhile since my last post! (Fortunately I get the plead the excuse of a young son for awhile. ) But I haven't been entirely idle. I've been working the last month on sketching out a new mystery play (my first since 1998!) which I hope to start the actual writing of soon. I'm also trying to get back into doing some submissions, sending The Princess and the Moon to publishers and looking for an initial production for The Captain's Treasure.

This morning at 6 AM I left Saint Paul and drove to Bismarck, North Dakota for the premiere of The Princess and the Moon. I arrived in Bismarck in the afternoon and, walking around the town center, came across this as I passed the theater.

I don't know that it gets much better than that (unless of course they added my name up there as well. In lights). Several hours later I went to the theater to meet with the cast and crew and spent awhile signing programs and chatting with everyone before the performance.

It was a fun show. The kids clearly had a good time with it and it was exciting to finally see this play up on its feet, after almost four years since I first sat down to start to write it. There are some things in the script that I want to fix for the future, but I appreciate Shade Tree Players taking on a new play and all those who poured their energies into this production. In talking with the kids, some were old pros having spent years with Shade Tree, while others were stepping onto the stage in front of an audience for the very first time tonight. It was humbling to have written the script that gave them that opportunity. I wish them luck for the rest of their shows this weekend and I now enjoying having seen another play take flight.

So once again I've neglected the blog for awhile, owing mostly to the fact that Kelly and I are learning just how much time it takes to raise an infant. (You wouldn't think something that little would take up so much time, would you?) But I have over the past month been working on another rough draft, one I started just before the little guy was born back in April. I've been wanting for awhile to write a play based on a series of folk tales. Actually, I've had an idea to do a series of such plays, each based on the folklore of a different continent. And, of course, me being me, I decided to start with the continent of Antarctica. Now, you're probably thinking that's an odd choice since Antarctica doesn't actually have any indigenous folk tales. And you would be right. Which simply meant that I had to make them up. Which is much harder than it sounds. So the process has gone in fits and starts, as while I came up with a general through line awhile back, I tended to get stuck each time I came to a new story-within-the-story. But it's been fun to try and create something like this from whole cloth. The characters are all animals from the Antarctic region, and so I started by doing some research on that which gave me a base of potential characters to draw from. It also makes for a relatively simple set. I mean, creating a barren land of snow and ice doesn't exactly scream high budget, does it? At any rate, while this first pass at the idea (finally finished not ten minutes ago) is a bit rambling, but the end I started to get an idea of the general threads and how things fit together towards the end. It will need a lot of work (much as The Princess and the Moon did after its first draft), but I think it has the potential to be a lot of fun.

I haven't been keeping up with the blog much lately, owing primarily to the recent birth of my son. It has been a fairly eventful spring though in terms of writing, especially on the 10-minute play front. Circus of Fate was recently performed by The Renaissance Guild in San Antonio, Texas as part of their ActOne series, and has also been accepted by the MN Shorts Festival in Mankato, Minnesota this September. NUTS! was recently used by a class at Belleville Mennonite School in Pennsylvania and will be performed this summer as part of Summer Shorts 5: In the Garden in Williston, North Dakota. And a theater in the Philippines is planning on staging a Filipino translation of Look Mom, I Got a Job! this fall as part of a theater festival, that play's first production. My play Stalled Kiss is part of the Big Kiss Off, an event created by the Playwright Binge list, and I know it (along with many other Kiss plays) has already been used by one school so far. That project I am sure will bear fruit in its target date of Valentine's Day weekend, 2011 thanks to the efforts of Paul Barile who has spearheaded the project.

On the full-length front my mystery play A Slip in Time was recently performed by the International Academy of Suriname, my first South American production which means I have now had plays performed on six out of seven continents! (Now to find a way to be performed in Antarctica...) And lastly The Princess and the Moon is due to receive its premiere this summer with the Shade Tree Players in Bismarck, North Dakota (which I will be attending the opening night of), plus I just had an email the other day from a theater in Iowa that wants to produce the play this December. My published plays also have upcoming performances in Nebraska, New Mexico, Michigan, etc.

It feels good to have so much going on with my plays, and right now especially to finally be finding some success with the 10-minute ones. I've said this before, but in the end it comes down to just plugging away. Most of the above productions are the result of me sending plays out to various festivals and contests, and in the case of The Princess and the Moon, sending out on the order of 200 cold queries to theaters. The two upcoming productions gives me a success rate of 1% on those, which sounds low but for me just reinforces that it's a numbers game. As long as the play is a good one, send it out enough and you will eventually find that person who loves it and wants to put it on. And to hear that "Yes!" it what makes it all worthwhile.

On Friday night I finally had a chance to catch Walking Shadow's closing production of the season, The Transdimensional Couriers Union. An original script by company member John Heimbuch, Couriers is an ambitious go at a rarity in theater: science-fiction. I'm not sure why sci-fi is so rare in the theater (perhaps as the gentleman seated next to me pointed out, it so easily becomes camp), but as something of a time travel aficionado I was instantly intrigued. In Couriers time travel takes place with the Impulse Device which, like cell phones, needs to find a receiver at the destination point to function, limiting its use from the years 2012 (when the system goes online) to 2589 when an unknown event causes the network to go down. (Here Heimbuch keeps one foot firmly grounded in actual physics, as current theoretical methods of time travel do in fact limit travel to the period of time the proposed device is running.)

The story begins with Sophie (Melissa Anne Murphy) and Peter (Sid Solomon), a couple just starting their day when the Impulse Device is released and the sudden ability of anyone to return to the past and rewrite history wreaks havoc upon the world's original timeline (referred to as Iteration 1). Enter the Couriers Union: using the Impulse technology they rebuild and maintain causality allowing the rest of the world to go about their normal lives and still enjoy the benefits the Impulse Device provides. The plot follows Sophie and Peter as they are pulled apart by future versions of themselves as pawns in their own schemes. Peter helps Renee (part of the original research team that developed the Device, played by Anna Sundberg) found the Couriers Union, while Sophie ends up with Quentin and his Enforcers, who work for Duinn Tech, the company who developed the Device and wants to take back control of the network from the Couriers Union.

Despite the frequent time travel Heimbuch keeps the non-linear storyline remarkably coherent. A projection onstage tells us the date and location for each scene (a definite necessity), and with that as an aid I was rarely lost as to where (and when) characters were coming from or going to when they popped in or out of a scene, courtesy of their Impulse Device. What starts as a scattering of myriad dots does grow into a definite picture by the end as all of the pieces of each character's timeline become clear. This is a story where the pieces need to ultimately come together and Heimbuch does so deftly.

I felt however that in taking such care with the structure and making it comprehensible, the characters and story themselves were lost in the shuffle. For me all of the characters came across as flat, and I never quite understood what was driving them. The performances too felt wooden (and having seen several of the actors in other productions I know they are capable of better). Sophie and Peter were supposedly driven to repair time to restore their relationship, but I never felt that either really cared that deeply about the other. There were some nice, sweet moments with Eleanor Morgan (Jean Wolff) and Dr. Savien Mercure (Alan Sorenson) as we learn how their relationship began, beginning the sequence of events that lead to the Impulse Device, but this subplot was sadly underdeveloped. Sorenson's Dr. Mercure, the scientist behind the Device, was the best performance of the night, which made me wish we could have seen more of him.

On the technical side Andrea Heilman's scenic design was perfect, supplemented by E. Amy Hill's costumes, Paul Epton's lighting, and Michael Croswell's wonderful sound design. The set was kept simple, mostly two rolling (and internally-lit) tables (nice touch to the futuristic atmosphere) that could be rearranged to represent different locations in space. "Time travel" was accomplished with a few simple touches of lights and sound: when a character is jumping in or out the lights dim and the rest of the actors freeze, giving the time-traveling actor a moment to enter or exit. Strategically placed lights with specific colors (yes, I did notice the subtle difference in the two networks) and sound effects finished the effect. Once complete, the lights return to normal and the action resumed. The simplicity of the effect was perfect, although I did wish it could have been accomplished more quickly. Because of the non-linear nature of the show scenes were often short, which meant that scene changes were frequent. Even keeping things simple, changing the set pieces often required a lengthy pause. I'm not sure how that particular problem could be solved, but it significantly slowed down the pacing and contributed quite a bit to the 2 1/2 hour or so run time (with intermission).

All in all I did enjoy the show, as I always love to see a well-crafted time travel story come together, but the show doesn't rise to the level of last year's brilliant sci-fi production, Robots vs. Fake Robots (still one of my favorite Walking Shadow offerings). The Transdimensional Couriers Union runs through May 29th at the People's Center Theatre in Minneapolis. 3 out of 5 stars.

I finally got around today to adding my new commedia play, The Captain's Treasure, to my website where the full script is now available as a PDF. Every now and then on the Binge list the question comes up as to how much (if any) of a script people put on their websites. I seem to be in the minority in that I post the scripts in their entirety (my unpublished ones, at least). This certainly increases the odds that someone can download the full script and perform it without my permission (and indeed I have had that happen). Most playwrights in the Binge seem to go the route of posting selections of their plays, then sharing the full script upon request (and still, as much as I can gather, for free). Everyone had to make their own decision here as to what they feel comfortable with, of course, but my own personal decision is that I like to make it as easy as possible for someone to read my scripts and to do so for free. (If someone decides they want to put on a production, then of course I do charge for royalties.) Interestingly enough I think I've had more productions from people coming across one of my plays on my website than I have had from submissions I've made myself. It's never a huge number, but it always amazes me as to how far plays can travel just being out there on the Internet. Here's hoping The Captain's Treasure will find some interest out there as well!

I've written before about how playwrighting can be a numbers game - each "Yes" usually requires experiencing dozens of "No"s. They're never fun (even when you knew it was a long shot you still hope), but it's just part of the game. Fellow PlaywrightBinge member Jack Dyville wrote recently of receiving 5 rejections in one day. Claudia Haas replied that she had once received 3 rejections in one day, at which point she turned off the computer (very wise). All this to say that when you do get a "Yes," it's something to savor. Which makes today very much worth savoring and I learned that Heuer Publishing has accepted not one, but two of my plays! (The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal and Eponine) It's always exciting to place a play with a publisher and know that through it the play will find a greater reach, but two in one day... well that's something to smile about.

As someone with this unique combination, I am always interested to find others who find ways to synthesize science and the arts in their own lives. Below is a link a friend (also a physicist and playwright) forwarded to me with wonderful thoughts by astronomer and actor/director Virginia Corless:

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201002/backpage.cfm

This past month, in my goal of trying to write five rough drafts in 2010, I've been working on an idea with the working title of My Wife the Dictator about a couple that goes to visit their friend in a reclusive (and fictitious) Eastern European country ruled by a ruthless dictator, only to find that their friend's wife is the dictator. This was one of those pieces, however, that didn't end up going at all where I thought it would. I started it with the idea that it would be a comedy, but it didn't take long into the piece to realize it just wasn't very funny. At this point I'm not quite sure what exactly it is (and I could tell while writing it that it was suffering from a lack of identity). And now, having reached the end of it this evening, I'm not even sure if there's much there.

That happens sometimes. You start a piece with high hopes, but somehow the idea fails to gel. I spent awhile before starting the draft sketching out ideas for characters and all of the various motivations. It felt like there was plenty of material, but then while writing it just didn't feel very interesting. If nothing else it was an exercise and good practice, but I'm not sure that anything will ever come from it. It may end up just being one of those rough drafts that gathers dust, never to see the light of day again. Or I may come back to it with a fresh vision on where it could go. I've learned that sometimes you have to write a lot of bad stuff in order to sift through and find a few bits worth saving. Certainly in writing Illinois Jane and the Rainforest of Retribution I went through pages and pages of truly atrocious stuff before I finally figured the piece out and ended up with something I'm very proud of.

I set myself the ambitious goal of five rough drafts in order to keep myself writing, to try out different ideas, and of course just to see if I could. After all, every word we put down on paper in the end makes us better writers.

So today I came across (thanks to a Facebook friend) a link to an article by Tim Gihring in Minnesota Monthly which mentions a proposal to ultimately eliminate the Minnesota State Arts Board. Gihring puts this in the context of discussing some of the actions our current governor has taken on arts-related matters, but I think it brings up a broader question which has been nagging at me for some time. And this latest article has led me to finally put my thoughts in writing. What I am about to say will undoubtedly be considered highly controversial, especially among the Twin Cities arts community. But at the risk of offending the broader arts community of which I am a part, here it goes:

WHETHER OR NOT THE GOVERNMENT DOES OR DOES NOT FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THE ARTS IS ULTIMATELY NOT THAT IMPORTANT

Now before my fellow artists all rush for their pitchforks, let me be clear: I am NOT saying that I think the government shouldn't support the arts or that such support is a bad thing. If such money is distributed wisely it can be a boon for artists and arts organizations, especially smaller ones, and may indeed make the difference in some cases between an organization staying open or closing its doors. But all of us in the arts know that if nothing else state arts funding is a fickle, fickle beast. Arts are usually one of the first thing to be cut in difficult times and we ignore this historical lesson at our peril. There will always be politicians who increase arts funding, and those who will cut it. This is the reality in which the arts live, and while it is often a frustrating one I think in the end it is a matter of secondary importance.

What I am trying to say is that we all too often emphasize government support of the arts over what is truly important: the support the arts and artists have in their communities. Gihring makes a great point in his article that the arts are a major factor in what draws people to Minnesota and that to lose our vibrant, thriving arts scene would be a major loss. I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly, but I would argue that what has created such an amazing place for the arts is not (primarily) the degree to which the state government has provided the arts funding. Just looking at the Twin Cities, here is a community that contains countless theaters, including one of the largest Fringe festivals in North America, not one but two world-class orchestras, several major art museums, dance companies, a major opera house, small publishers, a thriving local music scene, and arguably the best public radio station in the country. And we got where we are not because of state funding (for we all know that it has often been in spite of such funding), but because of the broad support of the arts this community enjoys.

Simply put, Minnesotans love the arts and that is why they thrive. No arts organization, large or small, can support itself without creating a base of support in the community in which it lives. Very few arts organizations, in fact, can support themselves on ticket sales alone (at The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra where I work on staff only about a fifth of all revenue comes from ticket sales), which is why any ticket you purchase is likely to soon be followed by a letter asking for your further support. If we want the arts to continue to grow in Minnesota then we need to first be asking ourselves how to win over the people who don't yet support us (i.e. the people who think that money should be taken away from the arts so that we can build a new Vikings stadium), how to teach them the importance of the arts, and how to grow and mentor a new generation of both artists and audience members. The Minnesota Fringe Festival is a great example of how artists can create beautiful work on a shoestring budget, and when they do people come. I would argue that arts funding itself should be focused primarily on organizations that are seeking to build this very support (for example, the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (CHAT) has as part of its mission to create community support for the arts within the Hmong community where it has not traditionally existed).

In the end neither the current governor nor any other politician has the power to either create or (more importantly) destroy the arts community we have all built. So yes, by all means let us rightfully resist the elimination of the Minnesota State Arts Board and continue to ask our elected officials to support the arts (and parks and libraries, while we're at it), but let's remember that whether arts funding is at a high or low, odds are it's a temporary state that may easily do a 180 in the next election cycle. The arts community that we have built goes deeper than that. If we want it to thrive, then that lies entirely within our control, even if state funding shrinks to nothing. We are the ones who buy tickets, volunteer, give donations, and most importantly create the art itself. The government may play a supporting role, but the responsibility for the arts is ours, and as a playwright, actor, and lover of the arts, may I say I know that we are up to the challenge.