Community: Other Writers

The last three posts I've written have centered on the subject of community. I know that without a community of writers, supporters, friends, theatre artists, professional colleagues that it's very hard for me to be productive. Writing is such a solitary experience and it's hard to get up every day and work on something new. I'm experiencing that now. I went out last night to see some old friends who were gathering nearby because it's hard to just be in a room focusing on my goals all of the time. I'm about to head to an annual pool party that The Playwrights Union holds to see friends and to socialize. I often undervalue the need to be out and about and to socialize. I'm so focused on the things I need to get done, that it's easy to forget about the people around me. I need to get together with my friends and commiserate and to encourage and to laugh. So this post is about those people in the Playwrights Union who inspire me and keep me going. I have plenty of other writer friends, but it's something about playwrights who are a little different.

I've written about not having a community several years ago and being surrounded by a bunch of aspiring TV writers. Nothing against them. But I felt like most of the people I was meeting were not particularly well-read or well-informed on the business they were pursuing. People would tell me that they didn't watch a lot of TV or read a lot. I had friends who worked in development who didn't have a wide spread knowledge of TV and film - and forget about literature or plays. I never understood that. The great cultural philosopher Bethenny Frankel has a chapter in her seminal book A Place of Yes where she says that everyone should "Know Your Business", whatever that particular business happens to be. And while I don't make it a habit to take advice from reality television, Bethenny speaks a lot of truth here. If you want to be in an area of business, you should know it well. I'm a writer because I'm an enthusiast. I'm an enthusiast for knowledge and experience. I read a lot. I watch a lot of TV. I watch films. I read and see plays. I listen to a shit ton of music. I go to museums. My mind sponge is constantly absorbing as much as I can take in. So when I meet people who don't know "their business" I get a little tripped up.

To explain, I grew up with a best friend who is the ultimate enthusiast. She has been raised by a mother who's a serious enthusiast. I was shamed when I didn't know something. Out of that embarrassment, I realized that I should be learning or absorbing information at all times so I wouldn't have a quizzical look on my face every time she would mention a book or an author or a public figure or a painting. It's impossible to know EVERYTHING. But to be familiar with most things is an incredible skill. It makes you seem smarter than you actually are and it makes people think you are interesting. 

It can also be a serious turn off. My ex-boyfriend was incredibly intimidated by this trait. He felt like I thought I knew everything. He may have not had a pathological need to know everything, but I do. And if you can't hang with that, then you can't hang with me. It should be more exciting than intimidating. I've taken a lot of things from this way of growing up, but I haven't taken to shaming people for things they don't know. And that's only because I'm not an adult trying to impart information to a young child with a curious mind. I have three young minds who I might be shaming in the near future because I want them to keep their curious minds open and free.

There are people who tend to be informed and excited - playwrights. Yeah, we're all a bunch of smartie pants. Yes, we're a little pretentious at times. Yes, we like to rattle off what we know. But I always feel like I learn things from them. I like the feeling of not feeling like the smartest person in the room. I might have an area of expertise of specialized interest, but I don't have that expertise everywhere. But it's not just knowledge and information that I get from my fellow playwrights. It's difficult doing something that feels like a dying art and that you can't make money from. It's difficult having a passion that sometimes prevents us from making gobs of money. We have a talent and a skill - and that's story telling - there's a way to monetize that. There's a way to exploit that. And as writers who want to survive and save for the future, we need to exploit that from time to time. But to keep my voice alive, I also have to ignore the instinct to always cash in. 

When I write a new play, my primary instinct isn't how to get it produced. At this point, I don't even think about the "American Theatre." To me, the American Theatre is a narrow target. It thrives because it continues to feed itself things that support it. That's fine. But I can't write something commercial and expect it to fulfill me creatively or to satisfy my soul's instinct. I write things that I write and if people get on the train, great. But I'm not writing things to get people to like me. That might seem like it's antithetical to getting produced. I don't want to be produced for things that don't represent me. I don't want to put that out there. I write things that answer a question I need answering or that explore something I don't understand.

Yet, I work in TV. And not all of those jobs are about creating something of my own. Writing in TV for me is about going to ballet class. I'm re-enforcing my technique and working on a movement vocabulary. It's like learning your rudiments in music. It increases how well you're able to articulate something. It's pure craftsmanship. Working as a writer on someone else's show is about apprenticeship and developing skills. It's about being in a writer's room and learning from how others communicate their ideas. It's about learning how to handle yourself in stressful situations. It's about managing personalities. It's about being on set and sitting behind a director. It's about learning a visual language that you can incorporate into your textual language. I love working in TV and I want to do more of it to learn that way of telling stories. But being a TV writer is about being a writer/producer/showrunner/director/project manager/negotiator/mentor/cheerleader/politician. That's a different job than just being a playwright. And the trick is not to get the two confused. Being a playwright or a novelist or a poet to me is solely about being a writer.

I keep getting distracted, but where I want to get back to is here: Being a writer is difficult and working on one key skill involves a ton of sacrifice and solitude. Those of us who do that - part-time or full-time - need encouragement and need to know that we're not in it alone. We also need to encourage each other to keep it interesting and innovative and individual. So when someone who's not a writer tells me that a theatre won't produce my family drama that has six characters, I say FUCK YOU. That's not why I'm writing it. Don't get in my way. When I'm discouraged from writing an eight character play about the effects of school shootings and those eight actors have to represent a community and a consciousness - I say that every one of those actors is necessary and useful. There is no dead air and wasted energy. I'm using every part of the animal to make this happen. Yes, there might be a ton more two, three or four character plays that take place in one room in continuous action. Absolutely. But that doesn't excite me. I'd rather have the freedom of multiple locations and direct dialogue that TV or film provides. Writing an "easily producible" play doesn't teach me anything. I'm chasing the wrong thing. Yes, I might have a two-hander in me. But it's got to be born out of a question or a challenge. When people call my plays cinematic, they're calling them big in scale. Angels in America is cinematic AND theatrical. What about Execution of Justice or Arcadia or Lydee Breeze? These are much larger plays than the one I'm writing and they cover a lot of ground. I'd much rather learn to write plays on that scale. But that's not necessarily where I'm at either. I like the restriction of a certain amount of characters and I like to double and triple cast. But again, that creates a different sort of theatrical language and challenge.

I keep going back to my aesthetic when I'm trying to talk about community. But those are the traits I admire in my friends. I admire their desire to push. I admire their desire to remain true to their own vision of the theatre. They aren't writers who are getting produced everywhere. But they're all brilliant. And there has to be a place for those of us who went to Northwestern, Brown, Yale, NYU, Columbia, the New School, UCSD (I mention these because they're the "big schools") and are still not household names. We're in the arena. We're ready to play. Maybe there's a different stadium that needs to be built.

My intention is to feel supportive by my community today.

My intention is to have fun.

My intention is to stretch the possibilities of what I can do.

I am grateful for a supportive community.

I am grateful for Madonna's greatest hits.

I am grateful for great weather.

I am grateful for great legs.

I am grateful for great outfits.

I am grateful for summer pool parties.