belonging

Recently, I participated in the one-year anniversary of an improv nightclub. I'm not much of a clubber, wasn't even when I was age-appropriate, but this was more fun than I've had in years.

The evening opened with a sweet young singer, followed by the headliner – Marc Jaffe, what an amazingly funny man. There were a couple of videos produced by an improv group – sound antithetical? but very funny – a monologue and song from a let's-seed-improv-with-written-material group (yes, that's where I fit in) - and then short-form and long-form improv by veterans.

Read through the list of my plays, musicals, and operas, and you might get the idea that the improv world is not my métier – by a long chalk. But when I was invited to write a 3-5 minute riff on a word-prompt some months ago, I jumped at the chance, not only to meet a new audience, but also to absorb a new set of techniques and skills, not to mention, to experience a new community.

For the anniversary, I gave the producer near heart-failure by running in at 5 (for the uninitiated, stage managers generally call "five minutes" to warn performers of an imminent curtain, meaning that I got there at just about the last possible moment) and was greeted by a regular with, "Vintage Deb!" "Do I do this?," I asked, and a whole row of people laughed.

I've worked hard, most of my life, to belong – in the opera world, the theater world, at a national laboratory – and find that, without even trying, this fish-out-of-water is welcome in the improv pond.

What a gift.

in the know

In celebration of the devilishly complex blocking that I'm achieving by way of a very talented, dedicated, dear group of actor/singers, here are some of my favorite bits of advice.

“You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don’t bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday.” Noel Coward

"Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself." Rodney Dangerfield

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Woody Allen

"There's a rule in acting called, "Don't play the result." If you have a character who's going to end up in a certain place, don't play that until you get there. Play each scene and each beat as it comes. And that's what you do in life: You don't play the result." Michael J. Fox

"Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience." Jean-Paul Sartre

"Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly." Rosalind Russell

my best audition story

Early in my career, I was auditioning in New York for the chorus of a summer tour of "Kiss Me, Kate."

At the final callback, they grouped us and it was pretty clear that there was an A-team and the alternates. I was in the alternate group. They danced us again, and asked us to stand in our groups while they talked. I knew I was in the group to be cut - you just know these things.

I put my biggest smile on my face, looked at the auditors, and thought, "You want to hire me! I'm a lot of fun to work with! I'm the sort of person you want on tour!"

As it happens, my counterpart in the other group was someone I'd been up against before – sometimes she'd get the job, sometimes I did - and she was having a bad day, scowling and slumping.

The stage manager said, "Thank you very much," but the director immediately said, "Just a minute, if you don't mind." He switched my counterpart and myself, dismissed the group I'd just left, and congratulated the rest of us as having booked the show. I went on to book the only female chorus role (Hattie, the maid) and the Kate understudy.

My audition advice?

Know your material cold.

Be responsive to the "rules" (if they ask for 16 bars or a one-minute monologue, give them that and only that, they can always ask for more - and have more ready just in case).

Don't waste their time (they're looking for a middle-aged Asian person and you're 16 and Caucasian? don't go).

If you're given a dance combination or music to read, learn quickly.

Listen listen listen to the auditors.

And never underestimate the power of a smiling face.

AMERICA: NOW AND HERE

9/11 destroyed Americans' complacency, our adolescent sense of invincibility, of immortality.

What has replaced these things?

A disintegrating society, the Internet’s illusion of intimacy, the disconnect between reality and virtual reality, and the prominence and power of political splinter groups.

America's problems aren't limited to our habit of putting on blinders where the rest of the world is concerned, tunnel-vision we indulge in unless some mega-celebrity televises/streams a big benefit show and asks for donations, in which case we ante up, at least until the next big show, or until we get distracted by some awesome app.

Hang on, what is socio-political rhetoric doing in a column about theater?

Theater is a major component of one artist's solution to this country's fragmentational ills.

If Eric Fischl wants to tilt at windmills, he isn’t alone. 150 of America's most prominent artists have banded together with him as AMERICA: NOW AND HERE. Together, they mean to heal the rifts that threaten to sink us.

Spurred to action by the level of animosity that has gridlocked American civil discourse, Fischl is using art as a method of engaging people so that they will see and talk about the American experience in a new way.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing more about ANH, and how we can all get involved in its journey.

For now, suffice it to say that artists, even otherwise nonpoliticized ones like myself, have a responsibility to give back and pay it forward to the land that made us. We illuminate and amplify mundane existence, we draw people together by exposing frailties and strengths, and yes, we can help this great nation heal.

“The idea is simple. Let's explore a theme that everybody shares and build a dialogue around it: America. We'll start by sharing our idea and experiences through the art that we make. Now, it's your turn. Let's use art to have a dialogue about America.” ~Eric Fischl

In the coming weeks, I'll write about a myriad of topics such as the initial installation of the ANH Tour and the crucial role playwrighting serves in this initiative, including my interview with Marsha Norman, co-curator of playwrights.

Please stay tuned.

inspiration –> collaboration ––––––> mutual inspiration

Imagine a theater company where everyone – playwrights, directors, designers, specialists, performers – has a voice in the outcome of the work. Imagine an audition process that demands not only personal excellence, but also group improvisation on a theme with only five minutes to prepare and then, another five minutes to prepare something completely different. Imagine a re-imagining of classic tales told in story, song, drumming, puppetry, movement, mime, any imaginable discipline (and maybe some newly minted).

Well, you needn’t imagine any longer, because Alison Garrigan has founded Talespinner Children’s Theatre.

Here’s their process.

The source material – a lesser-known story by a major children’s writer, a folktale underlying a classic opera or ballet, an original idea by an area playwright – is chosen. The playwright pens a “guide script.” A stage director comes on board, casting is done, designers and specialists are hired – no big difference from ‘regular’ theater, so far. Everyone gathers around a big, round table and the guide script is read aloud in the ubiquitous “bench read” or “table read” that begins every rehearsal process.

And then, the fun part.

The company is given five days for each person to work up a 5-minute pitch, how they would create the story from the vantage point of their discipline. The company meets again, everyone makes their presentation – and I mean everyone, director, designers, playwright, specialists, actors.

At the meeting after that, all of the presentations are discussed, chewed over, pulled apart, and integrated by everyone in the room – this is the part that so excites me. For instance, the final piece may comprise two minutes of A’s presentation and ninety seconds of Y’s and the full five minutes from M or L – it’s possible that instead of speaking lines the playwright originally wrote, characters will sing or dance or mime or drum or or or – in this truly creative process, every piece of theater that the team cultivates, well, that’s the point, isn’t it, creation and evolution via collaboration.

Ultimately, the buck stops with the director, but not until everyone’s “fair voice” is heard. The ensemble develops works of theater by respecting, complementing, celebrating each others’ disciplines, gifts, and ideas, an absolutely inspired process.

In today’s world of I-me-mine, Talespinner Children’s Theatre is proving the dictum I’ve spouted since the age of eight: Theater is a Team Sport. Many of us try to make that happen within the current competitive structure of professional theater: Garrigan is upping the game by creating a professional theater based on teamwork.

She’s also laying the groundwork for a collaborative future world by offering classes that cover ages 3-18.

How inspiring!

Talespinner Children’s Theatre
Reinberger Auditorium, 5209 Detroit Ave. Cleveland, OH 44102
216.264.9680 talespinnerchildrenstheatre@gmail.com http://talespinnerchildrenstheatre.org

deborah magid, private eye

So you got a commission – hooray!

So your specialty is fluffy modern pop musical comedies, and you've been tasked with – and will be paid for – generating a play about/related to a centuries-ago political figure.
So what do you do now?

I'm exaggerating slightly about my recent experience – my plays and musicals run the gamut from modern to historical, from jargon to prosody to verse. I'd actually read a few novels set in the required period and had picked up a titch of history along the way, I was already fascinated by certain aspects of the very long period the commissioned play was to encompass.

I came up with a terrific idea that would permit one character to span the entire 150 years… and the folks commissioning the play hated it. Time to scramble. In a collaborative conversation, a character was found, or rather, insisted upon. No clue as to how I'd stretch her to three times a normal life span or elucidate the history I was hired to help teach, but they were happy, so I was happy.

Fortunately, I love research. When I was a kid, I would read the dictionary for entertainment. I have files and files of words, just words, their etymologies, their sometimes antithetical meanings, synonyms, antonyms, concepts, idioms.

Writing a piece set hundreds of years ago, I added word origins to many of my files, researching almost every word in the first draft, refusing to use words that hadn't yet been coined. When the play was read aloud for the first time, some words "sounded" modern, so I couldn't use them despite their historical accuracy.

The puzzle aspect of playwrighting is one of my most favorite, so finding le mot juste became a lovely game. Adding layers of complexity to a basic story is likewise hugely fun, I love rewriting, there, I've said it, I love the whole process of meeting new people who wouldn't exist if I and then the actors didn't give them breath.

I can get curious about anything. This is a weakness when under deadline, as you might imagine, so many interesting paths to pursue! But it's also a strength, and in these halcyon Internet days, I was able to find letters written by that pivotal historical figure. I'd already decided to have the only character onstage read letters from various others to help progress the action, and the missive dispatched by this pivotal character – a rather long letter, the denouement of the play – is made entirely of phrases from the real person's correspondance.
Oddly, it's the best scene I wrote.

Research led me to the right path and gave me a familiarity, an appreciation of people and places I wouldn't otherwise know. And helped me to give air and form to a whole new person in the world. Just last night, the actor and I were discussing the character's forebears and history, as if she had truly existed. And who knows, maybe she did, and I've just channeled her.

But I couldn't have done that without researching her words.

working you into a lather

Good Sunday morning!

Each Sunday morning, I'll be posting a writing prompt, for your delectation (and use). I'd love to see what you come up with, either as a comment on the post or in an email <magicdsm@gmail.com> or or or!

–– 31 May 2012 –– A doll's house in the twilight zone ––

Aaaaaaannnnnnddddddd................. GO!

how to get writer's block

Early in my career, a woman opened a door for me, one that has permitted me to open many others. I have always been very verbal in my appreciation of her, both in public and in private.

Opening that door was an action she regretted. I base that assumption on the subsequent twice-yearly phone calls in which she vented, dumped, and instructed me to behave in such a way that she imagined would garner her all of the opportunities I’d earned or created for myself. She also made the rounds of our mutual colleagues, feigning hurt and woe at imagined slights, enlisting them in believing that I'd done anything but show my gratitude.

The last time she phoned me, there was a new demand: that I stop thanking her. After more than two years, I found myself increasingly irritated with her full frontal rudeness and backstabbing whispering campaign. I'd always been able to breathe away or laugh off her shenanigans, but this time, I agreed to her demand.

And had my first bout of writer's block.

I was plenty busy with all of the ancillary playwright tasks – submissions, readings, workshops – and tried hard to allay my worries and fear of never writing again – is anything ever so intense as the first time? Writer's block was no exception, heinous, hideous, horrible.

After what seemed an eternity, one morning I awoke with an intense, unstoppable need to thank this woman again, and realized that I had constipated my soul in response to her demand. The next time her name came up in conversation, I talked about my gratitude.

That day, my writer’s block lifted.

Coincidence?

So, onward to a free flow of gratitude, now and forever.

And the moral of the story is, a little radiography never hurts the soul.

collaboration

Maybe my generation has such a tough time with the word "collaboration" because we learned it in connection with those who helped the Nazis in and around World War II.

Yes, I'm dating myself. Even that phrase – dating myself – dates me, and no, I'm not going to dinner and a movie and hoping to have sex, I'm placing myself in the context of what is now ancient history, having been born in the 1950s and raised in the 1960s.

But back to collaboration.

As I embark on artistic collaboration number three, a huge undertaking between myself (playwright/lyricist/composer-arranger), a dance company, and a video artist, I'm looking back on previous collaborations in the hope of doing this one really, really well.

My deep-seated mistrust of the word surely colored my very bad adventure with a "director" who, in 60 hours of rehearsal, couldn't manage to block a one-person 50-minute play. But perhaps the fault was my own.

That was my second collaboration; the first was glorious! I decided to say 'yes' to everything, with the idea that it might be the fastest way to find out what did or didn't work. Luckily, my writing partner agreed, and the result, tho not art (we wrote overnight for a 24-hour theater project), was fun not only for us but also for the director, cast, and audience.

So, two rules:

If one believes in the power of "yes," it's crucial to find collaborators who also choose to say yes, rather than those whose methods are contrarian. I'm not dissing the contrarian standpoint, a lot of art is made that way, but if I'm saying 'yes' and only being told 'no,' and if I'm finally saying 'no' and then only being told 'yes,' nothing is going to get done.

And,

As with most things in life, the clearer one is about what one wants and what one is doing, the more likely that the outcome will be positive.

Wish us all luck!

why 'mise en théâtre'?

An almost-life-long theater professional, Deborah Magid suddenly started playwrighting and composing four years ago, and has written more than 20 operas, musicals, straight plays, short plays, and commissions, so far*. She has performed in venues including Broadway, Santa Fe Opera, and the Melbourne International Fringe Festival, and has done pretty much every theater task (acting, singing, dancing, directing, producing, teaching/coaching, costumes, sound, lights, props, box office, grantswriting, PR, choreography, musical arrangement, puppetry, ushering, house management, reviewing, and, of course, attending).

This blog addresses every aspect of theater through "the prism of a very contemporary psychology"** and invites a lively discourse. Welcome!

For more information on Deborah Magid's work, please visit her website.

*Her first 10-minute play was a Heideman Award finalist and won two competitions (one local, one national), the second seeded her first full-length play (recently read at Remy Bumppo Theatre Company in Chicago), her chamber opera won her first Cleveland Public Theatre workshop grant (CPT has granted her work five times thus far), and she was invited into the Cleveland Play House Playwrights' Unit on the strength of the second draft of her first musical.

**Seth Gordon