Summer Reading 2013

Fair enough, it's a little late for a summer reading list. On the other hand, it's never too late to read. Here is a quick list of ten reads (plays and non-plays) that will expand the garden of your mind. Read all ten and it will be like installing a skylight in your living room--impressive and illuminating.  

1. THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS - These are absolute gems and you can begin reading them immediately at no cost whatsoever. Interviews with Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Lillian Hellman, and hundreds more. Highly informative and totally fascinating to hear these mythic figures simply chatting this and that. 

2. THIS FROM CLOUDLAND by Kristen Kosmas. You're welcome.

3. A PUBLIC READING OF AN UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY ABOUT THE DEATH OF WALT DISNEY by Lucas Hnath. Obviously the Soho Rep production was excellent, but the script will make for an interesting reading experience on its own. Know where you can get this play? Right here. Also available at McNally Jackson, along with some other excellent Soho Rep plays.

4. THIS AND OTHER PLAYS by Melissa James Gibson. Go read some MJG published by TCG. Her writing leaps out at you with grace and delicacy like the white swan and then sneaks up on you like the black swan. BTW, not the first time we've blogged about MJG.

5. WAAFRIKA by Nick Mwaluko. Leah Nanako Winkler calls this playwright "the real thing" and I'm inclined to believe her. Dude is legit. Find him. Read him. See him. 

6. K2 by Patrick Meyers. This was on the list last year....I didn't read it, but I've always wanted to. I've never even heard of a production of this being done, though I've been dazzled by the setting since high school: two climbers stranded at 27,000 feet. 

7. MODERN DATING: A Field Guide by Chiara Atik. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shameless, you say. But seriously, it can be easy to forget the complexities of the dating world. So often in plays dating themes can become a general wash of dinner scenes and awkward couch kissing. Read this and spice it up. A great book not only for those in need of dating advice, but also those with characters in need of dating advice.

8. THE GREATER JOURNEY: Americans in Paris by David McCullough. Prepare for an avalanche of writing inspiration. You'll be buried in ideas. They'll need to send search dogs for you. 

9. MOOSE MURDERS by Arthur Bicknell. Say you're feeling down about yourself. Rejection letters pilling up, actors dropping out of your reading...well, cancel your plans for an evening, order Chinese and read this play. You'll realize things could be worse. 

10. A MODEST PROPOSAL by Tony Kushner. Read this last, as you've probably read it or seen people cite it in various posts. Typically folks reference it when discussing theatre education. Regardless of what you majored in, MFA or no MFA, the takeaway is probably the same: we all have more reading to do.

Defense Mechanisms, Part Two

Or, "Hog-tying Despair with the Daisy-Chains of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism"

(Or, "Can You Tell That Alex Really Likes Posting Emma Goldman's Face?")

Today's Facts: I don't always like everything I see in the theater. I find myself getting cranky -- about the "bad" work that gets celebrated; about the "good" work that doesn't; about how no one "gets it"; about the muddle I find myself in over how to communicate to the rest of the world, once and for all, my correct opinions on art, truth, life, and everything.

Today's Reasons to Despair: Some "bad" work will always be celebrated. Some "good" work will always be ignored. I'll never actually have correct -- let alone coherent -- opinions on art, truth, life, and everything.

Fuck.

Today's Act of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism (ARSEI): Theater is a bunch of people sweating in a room together. No matter the theater, no matter the people, there's inevitably a lot of heart, a lot of wisdom in that room. Be a craftsperson, sure, and know your craft -- and make the best damn plays you know how to make -- but when it comes down to that moment when the magic is happening, clumsy or exquisite, don't forget to be a person in the room. We don't get anywhere, as people or as artists, if we're nothing but cranks.

Source of today's ARSEI:

We may agree on the premise that each work of art is at least in part perfect, while each critic is at least in part imperfect. We may then look to each work of art not for its faults and shortcomings, but for its moments of exhilaration, in an effort to bring our own imperfections into sympathetic vibration with these moments, and thus effect a creative change in ourselves. These moments will of course be somewhat subjective, and if we don’t see one immediately, we will out of respect look again, because each work contains at least one, even if by accident. We may look at the totality of the work in the light of this moment – whether it be a moment of humor or sadness, an overarching structural element, a mood, a personal association, a distraction, an honest error, anything that speaks to us.

~

(Matthew Goulish, the guy on the right)

BONUS BOOST THIS WEEK: Another balm for this week's Reasons to Despair is to go see the Unfiltered plays at EST. All of 'em. It'll be very easy to avoid feeling cranky about the future of American theater. Trust me.

Defense Mechanisms, Part One

Or, "Castrating Despair with the Lightsaber of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism"

Today's Fact: It's kind of impossible to make a living as a playwright.

Today's Reason to Despair: You're a playwright.

Today's Act of Radical, Starry-Eyed Idealism (ARSEI): Do your work. Do your work. Do your work. You're a playwright, not a salesman. (And all playwrights know what happens to salesmen.) Do your work. Do your work. Do your work. Fall in love. Be generous. Do your work.

Source of today's ARSEI:

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

~

Stand up for yourself, playwright!

In Mat Smart's post about emerging playwright laziness, he offers a portrait of the non-lazy playwright:

"Every day you spend six hours writing, eight hours temping, three hours sending business emails and you know it’s not enough."

I'd like to point out something about this ideal day of "work".

It's all sitting down.

Although I haven't heard anybody talking about it, there's a serious problem here. It's a problem for our whole society built around white collar desk jobs and blue collar automation-monitoring jobs, but it is also a problem for writers. Apparently, in order to make it, we have to spend 5 days a week sitting for at least 17 hours (plus sitting on our hour-long commutes to and from work). On the weekends we'd only have to sit for 9 hours each day to write and email, but we'll probably spend the other hours relaxing by watching a movie or some television or reading a book, also while sitting. We also sit while we eat our meals, we sit at meetings of our playwriting groups, we sit at the theater, and we sit at bars and restaurants to socialize.

The British Journal of Sports Medicine recently published an editorial linking prolonged sitting to increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other health problems such as cancer, obesity, and early death. There is an Australian study that came to similar conclusions, and a great Olivia Judson article about the molecular machinations at work in your body while you sit. Essentially, sitting for long periods of time shortens your life expectancy and your quality of life while you're living it. Even people who go for a run every day but otherwise are sedentary are screwed. Thinness doesn't indicate healthiness either.

I know, I know. Playwrights are indoor children. We had our periods every single week in middle school so we wouldn't have to play dodgeball. These days, as adults, we tell ourselves we live in New York, so we "walk all the time" and eat organic vegetables so therefore we don't need to actually exercise. These are lies. Face it. A couple blocks to and from the subway is not "all the time."

Do we really need to kill ourselves to prove our dedication to our work? Certainly, you have to put in quite a few hours writing if you want to be a writer. And you have to work a dayjob, to pay the rent. And the best paying jobs, the most buck for your hour, if you will, are usually sedentary office jobs...you're not going to find some gig digging ditches for $20 an hour.

There's no simple way to change this, as it's a problem deeply ingrained in our current cultural and economic identity. But it's also a problem in our professional identities as writers. We're told that we are lazy if we don't chain ourselves to desk chairs for our entire lives, that our failings are our restlessness and interest in the physical world beyond the office. Is it really a surprise, then, when we go to the theater and see lots of plays about people sitting in chairs and talking about stupid, internal, neurotic, naval-gazing bullshit? Does playwriting really have to be such a prison?

I'd like to advocate for balance, for remembering that we are bodies as well as brains, for caring for ourselves as physical beings. Stand up for yourself! Take time to walk, run, or bike around, be in the world and in your musculature, and do it regularly. Get up from your desk for a few minutes every hour and take a break. Even if that means taking an extra few days to send those "business emails." Even if it means only writing for a couple hours each night instead of six. (Uh, by the way, six? Maybe I'm just a lazy piece of shit, but I cannot write for six straight hours every day. And I feel good about the rate and trajectory of my career. Smart must be winning Pulitzers every week or something.)

This week I'm getting rid of my sitting desk and chair and building a standing desk. I've been trying it out on my kitchen counter piled with books, and I find I am more productive, less likely to get distracted, and more likely to notice when I do get distracted, so I can walk around, refocus myself, and get back to work sooner. Hopefully I'll be able to have a career, an apartment, and a long and healthy life. Because I sure as hell don't have health insurance. But that's a topic for another blog post.

Hot Playwrights II

Obviously Will is an amazing writer. But I also think playwright Will Eno is sexy, even though I once got rejected from a workshop he was teaching. (Don't reject me... I hold grudges!)

He's sexy in a serious, introverted kind of way, like that kid in high school who read Nietzsche and always hung out in the art room. The kind of guy who grows up to be a hot Park Slope dad (which is how he looks in this photo.)

It's hot, but it can also go too far. I'll bet he'd want to go shopping for used books at The Strand on a first date, which is cool, but then he'd spend the whole time "teaching" you about his favorite books and making you feel lame for not being as well read as him. Plus, I'd worry that he wouldn't laugh when you tell a funny joke.

You're not so cool, Will Eno! What a jerk! WE'RE BREAKING UP. Wait, what? Sorry. I'm sorry.

Anyway, Will Eno is brilliant and pretty.

Hot Playwrights

I was at an event for playwrights last year (it wouldn't be nice of me to say which one) when I had a realization: in general, we're kind of fugly. I looked around at these pasty, pudding people with their bad skin and jacked up outfits and thought, "I might as well be at a Dungeons & Dragons convention."

I know I'm generalizing in a way that's not very nice. I'm doing it on purpose because it's fun. I've written about it elsewhere, but Martin McDonagh is a massive exception to the uggo rule. Check it out:

Oh snap! He's one hot silver fox. Can't you just picture smoking a cigarette with him in bed? I don't even smoke!

I can only think of one playwright who I think is hotter, but I actually know him so I won't post his name here. What do you think? Who are the hip, stylish, sexy, cool playwrights?