Twenty-Four Ten in Eureka

Cate Blanchett, who will direct The Year of Magical
Thinking and star in The War of the Roses at the
Sydney Theatre Company. What does this have to
do with the 24 Hour Ten Minute Play event in Eureka?
Nothing. I just don't have any photos in a usable
format from this event and this is quite long so
I'm going to insert photos with theatre news,
or something slightly relevant, to break up the text.
If it bothers you, see the manager for your money back.
This is a great photo by the way--click on it.

24/10: A Gathering of the Insane

You lay it all out there, for everyone to see. That’s what every theatre artist does, every time: every performer, director, designer, writer—including everyone up in the booth and backstage. It’s not something that can be acknowledged in every review or article, but it’s never far from my thoughts when I write one.

Though there’s exposure in writing about theatre, I shared a different risk earlier this month by putting myself in a different place in the theatre process: as a playwright for the 24 Hour Ten Minute Play event conducted by Sanctuary Stage at their new headquarters, the august Eureka Theater.

On the first Friday of October, Sanctuary’s artistic directors, Tinamarie Ivey and Dan Stone gathered seven playwrights, seven directors and enough actors to give each play at least three characters in the upstairs lobby of the Eureka Theater. The mood was buoyant, partly because it was exciting, and partly I suspect because we knew we all had to be crazy to be doing this.

Of course, the whole thing was insane. Even the smallest production takes weeks or even months for directors to refine and express their visions, for the actors to find their roles, for the designers and the tech people to put the physical elements of the show together. And that’s after the playwright worked over the script for months or years. And then chances are they don't get it right even then. Sometimes the play isn't discovered for months of performances.

But when we gathered at 7:30 on that Friday evening, we had no scripts, no roles, not even props. Those of us writing had about twelve hours to come up with ten pages on a particular theme, which we didn’t yet know. And it wouldn’t be until after 9 the next morning that the directors would have any idea what they were directing, or the actors what they were acting in. Nobody got to choose who they would work with, and it seemed a lot of the people involved hadn't worked together before. But the bedrock fact was that the shows would be in front of the public at 7:30 Saturday evening. Welcome to the madness called the 24 Hour Ten Minute Plays.

First an important caveat: I participated in this process as a playwright, not a journalist. I took no notes or even photos, and I did no interviews. People who talked to me didn’t expect to read about it in the newspaper, so I’m going to be general about conversations, except for the kind of things I’d tell friends and acquaintances.

Mikhail Baryshnikov will appear in a staging
of Beckett shorts directed by JoAnne Akalaitis
at the New York Theatre Workshop.

24/10: The Opportunity

As far as why I thought I was a playwright—maybe the willingness to write all night was enough of a qualification. But I had written for the “stage” since the second grade. I had my own rep company in the fourth grade—my Cub Scouts den. We put on a play for every monthly “pack” meeting contest, and usually beat the crap out of the other dens who showed us all the knots they’d tied.

Several of my plays were done at college, and the one I wrote and directed (called—and this was pre-J.S. Superstar—“What’s Happening, Baby Jesus?”) was apparently the stuff of legend for a few years afterwards. I got back into the game in the 90s in Pittsburgh, where I wrote for more traditional ten minute play festivals, had some full length play readings, won a local award for a one act script, and had the wonderful experience of seeing one of my short plays performed by two terrific actors from the famous Carnegie Mellon Drama program (one of whom was seen shortly afterwards on the silver screen), and directed by a new acquaintance named Margaret Thomas Kelso, who eventually I followed to the North Coast when she became director of the dramatic writing program at HSU. I’ve written some scripts here but this was going to be the first time my playwriting—that is, what I was yet to write-- would be brought alive on a North Coast stage.

I was there partly for what I suspect was a common reason, though the specifics were different for each person: we were there to take the opportunity. Actors (I came to learn over the years) take almost any opportunity to act, and in my experience, the better the actors the more willing they are to take these chances, especially on new scripts. An additional motivation was expressed by one of the actors who said that he simply can’t spare the time to attend weeks of rehearsals to do a play, and something like this was his only opportunity. I suspect some of the directors felt the same way. Or, like the actors, they simply want the opportunity to direct, and the challenge of making something of a script very quickly.

There were several young writers (as well as a self-contained high school unit, with their own writer, director and actors who worked together—otherwise I believe they followed the rules the rest of us did.) The experience, the production and the feedback were valuable to them. One of the more experienced writers who gets his plays produced—Ken Gray Scolari, who came up from southern California, and who I knew from his year at HSU—was there partly to help out, and as a gesture of support. I got the sense from another non-younger writer that he hadn’t written for awhile, and wanted to try something different in his writing.

So for awhile Friday evening we talked and munched and drank a little, marveling at the turnout, lamenting that new work wasn’t done much here anymore. Then the games began.

Patrick Stewart is getting the kind of praise for
his Mac Beth in London that used to be given to
Oliver, Richardson and Gielgud, or O'Toole, Burton
and McKellen.

24/10: All the Kitchen's A Stage

The first order of business was to draw out of a hat the theme we were all to write about—one of four possibilities. What we got was “Destiny.” (The other possibilities, we learned after it was all over, were Addiction, Revenge and ? I’ve forgotten the fourth.)

Then each of the playwrights drew a card out of the hat that randomly distributed the characters by gender. I drew a cast of two males, one female.

That’s what I had to go on: a play about Destiny, for two males and one female. I didn’t know who would play the parts, not even their ages. I didn’t know who would direct. My head was already spinning (and not from the champagne, which I prudently only sampled) and I now had less than 12 hours to write the play. And that's only if I didn't sleep.

Before I left I did one more thing that turned out to give me something else: I went down to the theatre and took a good look at the stage. It was very wide, and looked deep (it turns out I was wrong about that.) Then I turned and faced the auditorium itself: it is immense. While I was there, an actor got up on the stage and tested the resonant acoustics. This was a place for full voice—which would make certain plays more fun (like Shakespeare), and others more difficult.

For the next few hours my head swirled with possibilities that resolved basically to two. The first was a kind of comedy sketch, an elaboration on a particular situation (I’m not going to say what, I may still use it!) I knew that it had a good chance of working on stage, given the constraints and circumstances. I also knew I could write it, because I’ve written pieces like it before.

But there was another idea forming, more elaborate, more risky, more of a challenge to me and to the director and actors. The first thing I thought of when I heard the theme was that I’d once written a song lyric with that title: “Destiny” for my first (and longest-lasting) musical group, which began at the end of high school and continued for a few years after that. Though I wrote lyrics and music both, the three of us collaborated in various combinations. One of these friends (they are still my closest if now physically distant friends), who turned out to be my most fruitful writing partner, composed the music to this lyric. It was one of our last collaborations and oddly, I never learned to play it.

But I remembered what it was about, and I used something in that lyric to get me started. Of course the two men, one woman cast suggested a triangle.

Musing on the topic of destiny, I thought first that it was something that occurs over time, and so that should be part of the story. But could you do a two-act play in ten minutes? Plus I had recently been thinking about fate and destiny—pretty natural for my age, as the third act of life begins. I’d been re-reading James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code, and listening to the audio version, in his voice. I was becoming a fan of his “acorn” theory, which posits that the essence of who we become is in us from the beginning: the tree grows from the acorn. There’s more to it than that, but that simplification became the guiding notion of destiny I used in my play, which I titled “Acorns.”

All of this was still fairly abstract, but I had another idea to anchor it in a place, based on that first impression of the auditorium of the Eureka Theater itself. What if the actors facing that huge echoing space were playing characters facing another huge echoing space—like a gorge? I immediately thought of an actual one, near the campus in central Pennsylvania where Margaret taught before coming here. (A couple of people later noted that there were gorges near other campuses—Cornell, for example.) And what if this was a special place to these characters, and one thing they did there was to shout out phrases—lines from plays or commercials, and so on—that sounded good echoing there?

The idea of characters sending out their feelings echoing into the gorge was the starting point for the actual writing, which began well after 11 pm. After I had a few lines, I found myself doing what I’d forgotten I’d done the last few times I’d written for the stage—I walked through the play I was going to write (this time, in the half-dark kitchen), hearing approximately what the characters would say according to where they stood, especially in relation to each other.

I knew already that the structure of the play would be one scene when the three characters revisited the gorge years after their youth, followed by a scene of their last visit to the gorge when young. As the play evolved, it became their college graduation day, preceded by a reunion visit, thirty (though probably it should have been forty) years later. In other words, in revere chronological order, so you see the trees before the acorns.

I started with the two sets of shouted quotations, one for each time period. But soon the characters were talking, and I experienced that amazing phenomenon of listening to these characters speak, and taking down what they were saying. And they were characters—not based on real people (how could they be? They had to be completely defined in ten minutes!)

There were however a few snippets of dialogue in the first section that came very close to words from a real conversation I'd had, and it was then that I realized that I was using the experience and perspective of my age. Another opportunity! Because there aren’t many counterparts to the contests for “Playwrights Under Thirty.”

Fortunately, by the time I got to the end, I had something like a play. If I hadn't--and of course I realized this risk from the start--there wasn't time to start all over again with another one.

I had my script at around five in the morning. I was due back at the theatre at 9, although I was supposed to arrive with copies for the director, actors, adjudicators and the administrators, which meant an extra drive (Sanctuary had a deal with Staples so we didn’t have to pay to get them copied there.) So even if I had been able to sleep, which I couldn’t, it wouldn’t have been for long. I may have managed to doze for part of an hour before I was on the road again, sleepless in Eureka.

Walter Koenig, no relation to Joshua.

24/10: Sleepless in Eureka

I thought I’d forgo the extra drivetime and pay for the copies at the Kinko’s nearby in Arcata, but it was Saturday and it didn’t open until 9. I suspected the same would be true of Staples, but if I had to wait, I may as well get the copies free. So I drove out there and parked, as it turned out, next to Ken Gray Scolari. We caught up on news of our lives, but I still felt pretty weird, groggily standing and waiting for the Staples’ doors to slide open.

Back at the theatre, some playwrights were still out getting their copies, so I drank coffee, devoured Danish and got into a couple of conversations, one of which suggested another theme: feedback. People who put on shows get reactions from audiences, but often they don’t get much in the way of articulated response. They were looking forward to working with different people and getting different feedback, as well as the responses of others in the “talk back” session after the performance that night. I also got the feeling that the responses I articulate in my columns have some value for them. (And I also heard some give clear-eyed assessments of productions that would bring down an avalanche of letters on me if I’d written in those terms—but I knew that already, that theatre people have to realistically assess the work they’re part of and the work they see, in order to get better.)

When everyone was there in the main lobby, the next round of random drawings determining our destiny began. Each of the playwrights drew for a director. I held back—there was a director I felt really didn’t want to work with me, and I wanted to wait until that name was called. Finally, it was. (Later we had a brief but hopeful conversation, so maybe I was wrong. In any case, I wouldn’t feel that trepidation now. ) I picked next.

I drew someone I didn’t know, a young man named Joshua Koenig. I think he earlier had asked me if the cap I was wearing bore the Star Trek emblem. (It did.) So now I asked him if he was related to Chekhov (not the playwright—the Star Trek character played by Walter Koenig.) He said he wasn’t. This actually could have been a much funnier coincidence if I had gone with that first comedy sketch idea.

Josh had a few minutes to glance at the script before he and the other directors drew for the names of actors. Josh got in there early, and drew three actors who were more the ages of my characters in the first scene. He was delighted.

He and I went upstairs to that lobby as he read the play through. I noted where he laughed. He had one question, easily answered. He talked about the script in a way that told me he grasped its essentials immediately. It was pretty astounding.

Then our three actors joined us for a couple of read-throughs. After that, Josh and I talked about the script some more and about the actors. Again, I was gratefully surprised at how quickly he caught on to the dynamics of the script—of who was really talking to who, what they were really saying, and so on. And he knew where the jokes were.

I was also gratefully relieved. It looked to me that all he had to do was work with the actors until they shared his vision, discovering and contributing more (including stuff I didn’t know was in there) as they went along. They would have from then—roughly noon—until about 6pm to rehearse and get it together.

They also had to figure out how to accomplish the main structural challenge—how they would indicate that in the blink of an eye, the characters would drop 30 years and return to their college graduation day for the second half of the story. (My imagined solution had involved the actors moving far upstage before turning to come back--which turned out to be impossible, because the stage just wasn't that deep.)

Josh had an additional challenge. There had been one more hat drawing before we went upstairs—every director would be required to use one of three props. They all had to use the same one, but they could use it—even alter it—in any way they chose. The prop was selected by a drawing, and the prop we all got was a big slab of cardboard. (It could have been an inflatable raft.)

I left them to get to their work, and thought I should go home and get some sleep. I did drive home to Arcata, but I did not sleep, which didn’t surprise me. I’d probably be president of the world by now if I had only learned to nap.

Novelist Steven King, no relation to playwright
Steven King

24/10: Showtime

I returned to the theatre a bit after five. My first impression was that everyone I saw looked bleary with fatigue, and also high on the process. Josh and I talked about how rehearsals had gone, and he showed me how the cardboard would figure in their solution for the thirty-year switch: part of it would be a sign (“thirty years earlier”) and part of it was cut up into mortarboards, which the characters would throw into the gorge to signal their graduation—a very theatrical moment, as they floated above us.

Everyone assembled in the theatre auditorium at 6 pm for the last drawing, to establishing the order of the seven plays being presented. Mine was going to be the opening act. We had about 40 minutes before it all started, and I walked down to Old Town to get a big Café Americano, and was amazed at all the people out for Arts Alive. I hadn’t been over to the Eureka version for awhile—it had become quite a trendy activity.

By game time, I sensed that the event had changed a bit. There was no more mention of any competition, and the judges (teacher/director Jyl Hewston and actor/director/teacher James Floss) were now going to lead a play-by-play talk-back. Both Tinamarie and Dan spoke, and I believe it was Tinamarie who stressed that this event was about the process—it was essentially for us.

Maybe they had also begun to wonder if we would get an audience. By the time it started I wasn’t in much shape to observe the audience, but we did seem to have one. The problem would be that theoretically, seven ten minute plays would equal a 70 to 90 minute show. But ten pages doesn’t always translate into ten minutes, and it sure didn’t that night. We started at 7:30 and were still going strong at 10. So by the end, there was mostly just us.

As if we cared! I have no idea what my show was like (the wisdom of the process at the O’Neill Center came back to me—all of their new plays have two performances, because the playwrights commonly blank out for the first one.) But going first meant I could enjoy the other shows, and I did. At times they were surprisingly polished, and there was always something funny or poignant or otherwise delightful in all of them. Seeing them and hearing them discussed by those concerned during the talkback (which began in the auditorium but eventually adjourned to the lobby upstairs, where the wine, beer and food was) revealed the intelligence, care and creativity brought to bear by everyone involved; the individuality of the talent, and yet, the warm collaborative atmosphere.

My play and hence my talkback went first, and I learned more about it from comments by Jyl and James, and by Josh and the one of the actors who participated. I can only recall snippets from the rest of the evening. Like… Alton San Giovanni--the “teen playwright”-- describing how he concentrated on the rhythm of the dialogue in his dramatization of an Internet conversation between teenagers and an online predator.

And JM Wilkerson (a recent addition to the North Coast and its theatre community—he’s the spouse of HSU theatre’s Rae Robison and acted in last year’s HSU production, The School for Scandal) revealed that his piece was more autobiographically based than anything he’d previously written for the stage. He acknowledged that he’d drawn the perfect cast and director to bring it to life in so short a time. (I was really excited about his piece, and started babbling at him about it when we ran into each other after the show—just as he was babbling at me about elements he liked in my piece. I suspect this sort of thing was happening a lot that night.)

I recall Ken remarking on the consistently nurturing atmosphere. Gretha Omey talked about how she came up with a simple staging device (directors had only a few pieces and platforms to work with) that served the script she directed remarkably well, brought out its comedy and pathos while giving the actors the physical grounding they needed to elaborate their parts.

I think it was Joshua Stanfield Switzer who talked about the crucial decision all the directors had to make: should they do the play with the actors carrying their scripts and referring to them, or should they take the time for the actors to try to memorize their parts? He decided to try memorization for one hour, to see if it would work. I recall one actor talking about the freedom to improvise, especially in rehearsal, without carrying the script. But eventually many if not most of the actors in most of the plays wound up carrying scripts, or needed to.

I personally am a big fan of script-in-hand, as it’s called. I’ve seen it used in new play productions where there is much more time for rehearsal. Even at the O’Neill. Except in certain circumstances, where physical theatre is called for, I think it should be standard for situations like this. I’ve found that audiences quickly adapt to seeing scripts, and actors adept at using them make you absolutely forget that they are carrying them. Script-in-hand as the standard saves a lot of time that can be used to work on the other aspects of the production, especially characterization and movement. Plus more of the playwright’s actual lines get delivered.

On the overall process: the 24 hour part of it is clearly a gimmick, and this all was mostly a game—fun and productive, but limited and, as I may have pointed out, insane. It may be that Tina and Dan expected the short writing time would result in skeleton scripts that mandated more improvizational acting, but that's not what seems to have happened. It just made it really crazed. I also can see the potential for a new niche in contemporary theatre: the 24 Hour Playwright, adept at just the right combination of elements in a simple, “actor-proof” script to dazzle judges and audiences. No harm in that, I suppose. But I’m glad that most of us appeared to take the opportunity we had to push ourselves creatively.

This kind of event, so compressed and concentrated on process, often creates bonds that outlast the event itself. It would be an important but additional payoff of this experience if it happens. We’ll see. Maybe it will also lead to more new work being done here. As for now, I'll remember it as a lot of fun.

Once again, the organizers and administrators of this insanity, who worked themselves silly, were Tinamarie Ivey and Dan Stone (he also directed JM Wilkerson’s piece.) I don’t have a list of the actors, but here are the other participating playwrights: Morgan Beck, Steven King, Craig Klapman, Alton San Giovanni, Ken Gray Scolari and JM Wilkerson. Besides Joshua Koenig, the other directors were Gretha Omey, Rhy Corral-Ribordy, Zachary Rouse, Dan Stone, Joshua Stanfield Switzer and Laurene Thorpe. My thanks to everyone involved, including Margaret, who showed up to watch.

If any of the other participants (including audience) would like to comment on their experience, it'd be great if you did so hereabouts.