AUTHENTIC - At Seven Devils 2010 Playwrights Conference

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on May 24, 2010 at 5:35pm

Intro to AUTHENTIC

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on May 24, 2010 at 5:39pm

OK, so I can't get the script to embed in this page for some reason, but if you click on the text link above it, you can see it just fine at the scribd website.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on May 31, 2010 at 11:30pm

5/31/2010

So I was puttering around the house this afternoon when I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. I picked it up -- and it was my director for the conference, Christy Montour-Larson! I hadn't heard from her before, and wasn't expecting the call, so it was a bit of a surprise. After I calmed down a bit, we started talking about the play, what my goals were for the week at Seven Devils (starts next Sunday! W00t!), and about AUTHENTIC. It was the first time I've had to talk about the play out loud in quite some time -- most of my interaction around the play has been via e-mail and application forms, so it was funny to have to start talking about it again. It was kinda like riding a bike, though, and I quickly found myself using my old tagline for it: "A play that explores and explodes the idea of identity and story as seen through the lens of media theory. With pirates."

I've found that the "With pirates" phrase is key -- as most people's eyes glaze over somewhere around "idea of identity." Explores and explodes is good -- action, peril -- but idea, lens, media theory -- people tend to zone out.

ANYWAYS.

In addition to after getting me incredibly excited to get back to work on this play, and making me very confident in her ability, Christy asked my two questions, both of which may be standard, but which I hadn't heard before.

The first I had always thought of, but had never heard it outright like this: What do you want the audience to take away from this?

When I write, I generally always think of the audience and their reaction. I'm not one of those people who write in a vacuum, only for myself. I'm constantly asking if it's working, and how does it come across, but I don't know if I've ever thought about what I want the audience to come away with. I guess I'd always assumed that I wanted them to come away from the story with the same thing *I* always came away from the story with: empathy and catharsis. To not only have empathy for my main character, to feel as if they've been through her trials as well, but to understand that there was no other choice to be made. To see and accept her failings, to grieve for them, but also to feel the victory at the end of the journey, and to feel that it was earned. Because that's one very important aspect of the show -- how the audience feels about the main character at the end of AUTHENTIC really will determine if it was successful or not. The play is full of direct address, and my main character -- Margaret -- is very much defending herself. So yeah, I really need the audience to have felt the catharsis of the story, and enough empathy with her to not judge her harshly.

I realize I'm being a little cryptic, but what can you do?

But it was the second question that really got me thinking: How could a theatre troupe get EVERYTHING WRONG about this play? If I were to walk into a production that I wasn't apart of, and watch it, and feel they got everything wrong -- what would that look like?

And the answer -- or at least the one I gave this afternoon -- also centered around Margaret. See, one thing about the play is that video figures into very much. It's central to the character, the plot and the production. There's no way to tell the play without video. But the flip side of that is that I think the video has to be a little grungy. It's meant to look cheap, and sort of slapdash. That was a choice I made in order to make the production accessible to any theatre company, regardless of size of budget. Now, there are ways to make it bigger, and easier, but if it becomes TOO slick, if it becomes too Hollywood, then the point of the play is lost. Margaret is not Steven Spielberg, using video deftly to manipulate her audience. The only reason Margaret uses video is b/c she's cornered. The only reason Margaret is telling this story is b/c she should have no other choice. She's not slick in her choices, and she's not manipulative. So that would be one way people could ruin it -- to make Margaret Spielberg.

So there you go! One discussion of many, I'm sure, and two great questions I'll use to think about my other work going forward.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 7, 2010 at 12:19am

So I spent most of the day traveling. I have a co-worker who likes to pack about a week before his trips. He packs up a bag and just leaves it alone. I should look into that plan. B/c I was up WAY too late last night packing my bag last minute. Early wake up call to make the flight to Boise, then a long drive up into the mountains – and I’m exhausted. A good exhausted though—maybe even a little giddy. I’m staying in an efficiency apartment attached to a garage courtesy of some of the Seven Devils backers. My tremendous thanks and gratitude! It’s a perfect space—everything I need, including solitude. The sky around is dark, dark, dark at night.

It’s also very far up in the mountains. For a long portion of the drive up from Boise the road runs alongside the Payette River, through the canyon forged by the river. It’s a pretty stunning drive. I don’t have any pictures of it because—well, because I was driving. And it’s a twisting road, and because it was raining pretty heavily all day today. I’ll try to get some of the pics my passenger took…

Shortly after I arrived in McCall and dropped my bags, I headed over to Jeni Mahoney’s house here in town. Jeni is the co-Artistic Director of Id Theatre, the company that produces the conference, and artistic director of the conference itself. (Her co-Artistic Director at Id is Sheila McDevitt, and she’s also artistic director of the Playwrights Intensive portion of the Conference.)

Jeni was holding a welcoming party/BBQ, and I got to mingle with a lot of the actors who will be performing in the plays, and other playwrights and directors. Gloria Kohl (http://idtheater.org/7devils/history/2010.php#Gloria) (the other playwright participating in the playwright’s intensive) and I talked about the necessity of stealing time whenever you can to write, the compromises your make for a day job with insurance, and more. She was also pretty wiped out from the travel, since she drove up from Boulder, Colorado.

Also got to talk to Tom Diggs and Mark Gaylord, a musical writing duo (Tom wrote the book, Mark did music and lyrics) whose piece Milo at the Movies is part of the festival. Their sense of fun is contagious, and their piece sounds like a stitch – I can’t wait to actually, you know, hear it.

A lot of the people here are from NYC, but a lot are from all over, too. I met people from Kansas, Nebraska, Los Angeles, across everywhere. It felt like a good group, and the people in McCall really love Jeni, Sheila and everyone else who makes the Fest work. One of the board members gave Jeni and Sheila a quilt the she had made, including lots of pics from previous productions of the Fest printed on fabric and stitched together. They’re beautiful quilts, and Jeni and Sheila both choked up a little when accepting them.

At one point, a playwright (whose name I believe was Berni) also brought some home-made Vanilla Ice Cream over. It was awesome, the sun was setting, reflecting off the mountains (snow still on top – 105 in Vegas yesterday, 55 here in McCall), and a very cool group of people.

This pic is when we all headed inside after the rains returned. I overheard a snippet of a conversation as I was walking through the crowd tonight, and someone was calling Seven Devils “a theatrical utopia.” Both b/c of how awesome it is, and how it seems to exist out of time, in its own world. I haven’t been here long, but if the rest of the time is anything like the welcoming day—well, it’s going to be great. Tiring, but great.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 7, 2010 at 10:36pm

Monday, June 7, 2010 – Seven Devils Playwrights Conference

This pic leads off because I had to stock up a few provisions today…


Today was a weird day. It started out innocently enough. The soft, rosy-tipped fingers of dawn crept through my windows. I cursed and rolled over to sleep some more, but eventually woke up. After checking e-mail and getting up to speed with work, I decided to take a shower, and get functional in my role as a playwright.

Now, please keep in mind that I am at least functional when it comes to technical things, and, in some cases, actually pretty skilled. I resurrected a dead iMac last weekend for example. So I’m not the absent-minded professor/luddite that some of you may think.

So I went into the bathroom and set about cleaning myself up. After I brushed my teeth, I turned on the shower.

And nothing happened. No water came out. Oh, the handle turned this way and that – but no water flowed. I checked the kitchen sink – working. I knew the bathroom sink was working, b/c I just brushed my teeth in it. But the shower? Still no dice. I searched for the supply pipe. I could see the copper pipes leading to the sinks in cabinets under them – those valves were open. But I couldn’t find the valve that turned on the shower. After all, I’m staying in an efficiency apartment next to a storage garage. It’s not inconceivable that the owners had turned off the water to winterize the place. Maybe I just needed to turn it on. Couldn’t find the valves. Great. I had no shower.

I called Paula Marchiel – Id Theater’s Managing Director, and point person for issues here at Seven Devils. She had to take care of a couple issues, but promised she’d be over soon to take a look at the shower. I went back to work on the computer, and she called a few minutes later after her errands. She came on over, and took a look around. Water in the kitchen sink? Check. Water in the bathroom sink? Check. Water in the shower? Check.

Wait, what? There’s water in the shower? How did you do that????

She patiently explained that I couldn’t just turn the shower handle, I had to pull it out from the wall as well. I got a LOT red from embarrassment, but thanked her. That story got me a lot of mileage today, as people gently teased me about being a helpless artist.

I’m NOT! ☺

But that doesn’t matter, because the story is making its way around the Conference, and people find it amusing. Oh well. If people like it, so be it.

In terms of actual writing work today:

Someone responded to me on Twitter about my play’s blurb:

Margaret obsessively tapes every moment of her collegiate life for copyright protection. But when a fellow student enlists her help in tracking down the end of a long-lost Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, Margaret finds herself at the center of an international battle that forces her to confront her own past and asks: What is the value of our stories, and what do we lose when we insist on owning them?

And they asked me: How do I feel about copyright law? Am I for it, or against it?

A question like that needs more than 140 characters. And there’s a reason that I used to end my original elevator pitch [“AUTHENTIC” is a story that explores and explodes ideas about identity and selfhood based on modern media theory”] by saying “With pirates.” Because look – anytime you have a peg-legged guy with two eyepatches walking around and saying “Arrrggh” a lot – well, that’s comedy. And questions about copyright generally do not fall under the category of comedy. Or even interesting to most people.

Still, at the risk of boring everyone, here is my somewhat short (but still longer than 140 characters) response to that question.

I think that copyright law is very useful, and very important in helping artists and creatives make a living off of the art they create. However, I also think that large corporations pushing for “copyright reform” have generally gone too far in restricting access to, and denying fans the enjoyment of, the work from artists that they (the corporations) have built their empires on exploiting. I don’t think it’s just to let corporations decide who a criminal is, and let them choose a punishment that is based on nothing other than their own greed. In short: artists need to be compensated for their work, but current copyright law gives too much power over civil liberties to corporations, with no recourse for citizens to fight back. Still, I’m somewhat to the right of Cory Doctorow in this debate.

Now – onto the writing bit, which is supposedly why I’m here. After I got the whole shower ordeal figured out, I took a drive into town, and hunkered in at the Fogg Lift café. I went over my notes of my conversations with my director and dramaturg, to pull out the most important things, and develop a plan of attack for my time here.

Here’s what I came up with:

Ending: Both the director and my dramaturg thought that the ending was not as strong as it could be, and a little surprising (in a bad way). While they could see what I was trying to do as they went back and re-read, it didn’t quite have the payoff that it should. So I need to figure out how to strengthen the strands of my story that support my ending—because I think it’s the right ending.

Cleaner: It’s a reading. And potential directors will be reading this. I need to figure out how to convey exactly what is happening onscreen, or in real-time on stage, without annoying the reader with too much excess text on the page. But still, it needs to be done. Even if it’s crystal clear what’s happening in performance, if they can’t see what’s supposed to happen on the page, it doesn’t matter.

Languages: And THIS is where I really started to have some fun today. It’s a fairly major plot point that my main character speaks a little Danish. But it’s also introduced in an off-hand way (in a joke), and then kind of left alone. So as is, the reader might be confused as to whether or not she really can, and then, when it’s revealed she can, how that happened. B/c, let’s face it, not everyone takes Danish in high school. Anyways, this led to a great couple of ideas about how I could weave this into the story AND help prop up the end of the play. I don’t want to talk about it here, b/c it’s a very fragile soap bubble of an idea right now, but I think it could be really good.

Lake Payette. There were clouds over the mountains all day today, but they never came into town. A bright, beautiful day here. Supposed to rain tomorrow, we’ll see…



So there you have it. Fogg Lifter shut down, and Jen Silverman and I took a walk down to the lake. She talked to me about her play, GILGAMESH’S GAME, and I explained my bit about pirates.


Company members gathering outside the Alpine Playhouse before the company meeting. The community donates use of the space, as well as others around town.


After that, it was time for the company meeting, where Jeni Mahoney told us about the philosophy behind the Conference, and she had a couple a really great quotes, which I’ll mangle here a little, but the thought behind them is real:

Why a “Conference?” How is it different than a Festival? It’s a Conference because we’re working a lot. (That was a joke… kind of.)

The philosophy behind the 7 Devils is to allow and enable to the playwright to take their work to the next stage. To make their work easier. The goal of the conference is not to have a “finished” play at the end of it, but to have taken it to the next level.

Everything is free and open and transparent at the Festival. Town members can wander in and watch every part of every rehearsal. There is no “house opening” because the house is always open. Also important, the playwright and artists don’t have to focus on “entertaining” the audience, or presenting a finished work for them. The audience is there to work for us, to tell us where things in the play work or don’t work. And, after engaging in this process for 10 years, the audience is very intelligent, and insightful. There are talkbacks after each play that speak to this truth. What also speaks to this truth, about how much they love engaging in the process, is how much they open the community to us. And it’s true, they totally do. As a playwright, I have several coupons for free meals and free drinks from places all across town. The town donates the theatre for us to use, as well as spaces in the high school and other buildings. One playwright was stopped on the street today by a business owner who wanted to explain to him why his shop was closed this weekend, telling him a long story about how he had to go to a wedding, and how he was getting there, and who was getting married, and generally his whole life story. Plus, there are a lot of us here. About 40, I would imagine. And each of us is put up in a local’s home, or RV, or guest house. It’s a welcoming and generous feeling, and Jeni asked us to reciprocate that generosity by wearing our nametags at all times, and letting people know who we were, and why we were there, and responding to their questions and excitement with engagement. In short, don’t be an aloof jerk.

Gathering inside the space for the meeting. A great quote from the meeting: “There's only one thing that can destroy us: snarkiness.”

Jeni also said a couple really great things about process, and working each other. One great quote:

“There’s only one thing that can destroy us: snarkiness.” So be open and receptive to ideas in rehearsal, give yourself permission to listen, and be supportive, and create a good environment for everyone to work in. This was followed up by a request to leave your egos aside. We’re all trying to work for the good of the plays. If there is a problem, talk to appropriate people, but try to put it aside. After all, “you can’t stop being good at what you’re doing—you’ll just be unhappy.” I’m getting that quote wrong – I’ll have to go back and listen to the tape. But to me, it was tremendously empowering. Leave your ego aside, do the work, and if someone’s being a jerk, talk to the people responsible for making sure it stops, and then let it go. You’re good enough that you’ll still produce good work, you’ll just be unhappy doing it and hurt yourself. I’m still not doing it justice, but I’ll have to end there for tonight.

So let me close by saying that I’ve felt incredibly welcomed since I first got here, and incredibly grateful for the community who has been so generous. So I hope I can reciprocate. Because let’s face it, even if Jeni says we don’t have to have a perfect play by the time we leave, or that we don’t have to worry about entertaining the audience—I really want to do both.

But maybe that’s just b/c I’m an over-achiever that way. ☺

More tomorrow. And I’m sorry I can’t be tweeting more – but my cell phone service on my AT&T iPhone up here is HORRIBLE. You know those ads about how tiny AT&T’s map is compared to Verizon’s? Yeah, after a couple days here, I’m totally willing to believe it, especially as I watch everyone else’s phone work perfectly well…

Anyways, more tomorrow!

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 8, 2010 at 11:22pm

Tuesday, June 8 at Seven Devils

The view from my front door this morning. It was hard, but I did get some work done.



I’m going to keep this brief today, because I really want to get back to writing my own stuff, but let me say that Seven Devils continues to be, well, awesome. I took some time off from writing this afternoon to sit in on rehearsals for Jeni Mahoney’s Kandahar and Jen Silverman’s Gilgamesh’s Game. They were both at different stages in the rehearsal process, so it was a lot of fun to get to see both.

Rehearsal for Kandahar.

Kandahar was already up on its feet in the Alpine Playhouse, with actors moving around, experimenting with blocking and intent. I sat in for about an hour and watched them play with the script, and talk to each other and the director about intent and choices, refer back to the stage manager and her intern for placement, then have Jeni chirp in with some line changes, which she ran by the dramaturg to make sure she didn’t lost the plot thread—it was the well-oiled machine of a working theatre, and it was a delight to watch.


The stair set piece for Gilgamesh’s Game, with a pool table set piece in front of it, I believe.



Then I walked down the street to the Central Idaho Historical Museum to watch a little bit of Gilgamesh’s Game rehearsal. They were still at the table stage, just finishing it up, in fact, so I caught them as they read through the last scene of the play. I don’t know much about the play, and its been a long, long time since I’ve actually read the Gilgamesh epic, but even with those barely caught and barely remembered impressions, it feels like it’s going to be one heckuva ride. After they finished the reading they went outside to check out the stairs that the crack tech team had made for the play. Apparently it’s a pretty important set piece.

And at this point I should mention a fun little idiosyncrasy of the tech here at Seven Devils. At the company meeting yesterday the Production Manager Ed Baker said he liked to refer to the design style of 7 Devils as “understated.” You’re not here for the tech, you’re here for the plays. As part of that aesthetic, all props, stage cubes, furniture, set pieces – everything – is painted a silvery-gray. Not black. Partly because I think black does tend to disappear against a black stage with black walls, but also because I think black is just a little too self-consciously “theatrical.” It screams, “I’m being theatrical and experimental!” I could be wrong, but that’s my guess. And yes, this does apply to everything. Lawn darts – actual, dangerous, sharp-pointed lawn darts – are a prop for Kandahar. They’ve been covered over in gray duct-tape to make them color-coordinate with all the other gray props, including books, cups, letters, etc. It’s a fun little motif. I almost want to write a play for the fest that features “Silver Man” – one of those “living statue” street performers who dresses in all silver and doesn’t move until its really funny.

The Festival also produces readings of one-acts written by local high schoolers. This is the rehearsal for Andy B’s production of One Flew. (I think? I walked in on it in the middle of rehearsal. I’ll get more info on that soon, I promise.)

Anyways, good night! If you want to catch up on previous Seven Devils posts, you can click the links below, follow me on Twitter (@stagedirections) or just keep checking back.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 10, 2010 at 12:38am

Wednesday, June 9 at Seven Devils

The beer I had with my director this evening. Yes, you can taste the seaweed. Not a lot, but it's there. Instead of a hint of lime, there's a hint of kelp.


OK, so as the week goes on I’m not only getting less time with these blogs, I’m getting less coherent, too. Oy.

The Conference’s first play reading happened tonight, Eric Coble’s The Velocity of Autumn. It’s a fabulous play, but since this isn’t a review, I’m not going to talk about it so much, I’m going to talk about the process around it.

A caveat. This is my first playwrights conference. Perhaps they do things this way at all such conferences. If this is true, then, frankly – AWESOME! Why don’t more people?

What made the reading process so frickin’ sweet?

1 – Before the reading began, Jeni Mahoney, A.D. of this whole process stood on stage and said that the applause at the end of the show was for the playwright alone. But, having said that, there are many people who make the show happen—actors, directors, SM’s, tech staff, interns, etc.—so let’s all give them a big round of applause before the show starts. So the show starts with applause for everyone involved in it, and ends with applause for the playwright.

That seemed tremendously classy to me.

Jeni and Eric onstage during the talkback.



2 – Part of the process of the reading is that there is a talkback section after the reading. And I know a lot of people hate talkbacks, but a few things they do here really helps the process.

One, the talkback section takes place in two parts. A) People can comment or ask questions about the play, and a dialogue opens up between Jeni (who moderates). What’s important about this section is that the playwright CANNOT RESPOND. They cannot defend their work, they cannot explicate their work, they are only allowed to listen. I don’t know if its tradition here or not, but when this part happened, Eric Coble put sunglasses on, so not only could he not respond, he couldn’t even see the person in the audience who was talking once the stage lights hit his face. I thought this was a really great way of de-personalizing the comments for a playwright, helping them come across as questions about the work, and not about the playwright, or even judgements. And B) a section where anyone can ask Eric anything—about the play, about his life, about his career, anything—and Eric will answer it.

Secondly—and here’s a really important part about the talkback—there was a 2 page insert in the program about how to contribute to the conversation helpfully. How to take a comment like “I didn’t like the dialogue” and turn it into a more focused comment about what specific area of the dialogue you had questions about, or felt strongly about. It was a really clear, succinct, way of educating the audience about how to ask intelligent questions of a play, and even of their own reactions to a play. Jeni has always said that the people in McCall have very good questions for playwrights, and very intelligent observations, and with guidance like this for the past 10 years, I can see why. I kept the pages, and with Jeni’s permission, I will post some of her examples.

3 – The reality of stage directions being read allowed cannot be understated. I don’t know WHY it was suddenly so stunning to hear stage directions from a play being read aloud by a professional actor, I can only tell you that it was. I am sure that they DO this at other conferences, but for me, tonight, it was a visceral revelation. I’ve heard stage directions read aloud during readings before, so I don’t know what made tonight different. Maybe I was just shocked that my own play was going to be subject to this treatment, I don’t know—but hearing the stage directions read gave them a greater weight, and the play itself a greater reality than I would have assumed before. Maybe I need to start up a podcast that’s just actors reading stage directions. “He opens the door, turns, and leaves.” Yeah, doesn’t that send goose-bumps up and down your spine? I know this one sounds lame, but hearing them really didn’t cause something in the production to shift for me.

I’m sure there’s more about the readings I’m missing, but the good news is that there’s many more to come, so I will have lots of opportunities to tell you more about what I like in the process.

Two things before sleep. I have a lunch meeting with my director and dramaturg tomorrow. SWEET! My director came in today, and I had a drink with her at dinner (the kelp beer from the top of the post), so we’ll be getting together tomorrow to talk strategy, and how I’m incorporating their notes from the phone conversations we’ve had.

And crap, I forget what the second thing was. OH! I finally moved into writing pages today. Wrote a scene between Margaret and David where they do a little flirting. It was fun. I know I tweeted this earlier in the day, but it’s still true, so here it is, my favorite line I wrote today:

David: I don’t know a lot of Danish.
Margaret: How the fuck do you know any of it?

I can assure you that it though it may not look like much right now, but in context—yeah, hilarious.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 11, 2010 at 12:19am

Thursday, June 10 at Seven Devils

OK, no pics today because I’ve spent most of it locked in a writing haze. I’m writing this while I wait for dinner to get here. Two big things happened today:

1 – Turned in my “Starting Script.” My actors will be done with their first play this evening, so Paula will be printing them a copy of my script tonight so they can start looking it over. We don’t start rehearsal until next week, but this will still let them get oriented in it, and have some idea of what to expect. And, while I do have massive, massive, rewrites ahead of me, this should still be the bones of what gets read. Gloria Kohl, who is a fabulous writer and also a part of the playwrights intensive with me, said she spent all day re-writing her first act from the ground up. From the wild, spaced-out look in her eyes – I believe it. She was handing off her script to Paula before she headed out to dinner with Eric and Christy. I can understand her need to re-write everything -- because I had lunch with Eric and Christy, and that takes me to number two.

2 – Well, no suspense here, I had lunch with Eric and Christy. And they blew my mind. I have lived with this play for a long, long, time. I thought I knew it inside and out. And they asked some questions about things that threw me for a loop. There were some things that stunned me, but after a moments reflection I could still say, “No, wait, I remember that character exploration, I remember how we did that. This is what’s happening character-wise. OK, I just need to bring that out more.” But some things just – popped. Here are a few of my notes from the conversation:

“Does the story end differently than she thought.”

My main character is Margaret. She’s the narrator of the piece, and also takes part in it in certain places. But b/c she’s “in charge” of things, where is the room for her to change in the moment onstage? She’s telling a story – a very important story. And it’s clear where she changes in the story, but how does she change as a person in the middle of telling this story? In the moment that the play is taking place. Does she? I’m not sure of the answer yet, and not sure how important I want the answer to be. But it flipped my brain on its back when they asked it.

Another question they asked was something I’ve been dealing with since our first conversations—Do we see David falling in love with her? Do we know when that moment happens? Frankly, in this revision period David has really been occupying my brain. For so long the piece was all MargaretMargaretMargaret that now I need to beef up who he is, and what he wants. So yeah, I’ve been thinking about when he falls in love with Margaret, how he shows it, and how Margaret does, or doesn’t, see it.

Alright, food’s here. So I’ll end with one bit of practical reading judo. I asked Eric and Christy how this process works exactly – how do I use them, what does the rehearsal period look like, what can I do, etc. I asked them to get as basic with me as “Put the car into drive.” And one of the things that Eric said was, feel free to answer any questions the director, or the actors put to you, but also feel free to NOT answer any questions. After all, if the goal is to find out how much information the play on the page conveys, so that anyone, anywhere, could produce this play without me in the room, then sometimes I need to not answer a question, and see if they’ll figure it out. If they don’t – then perhaps I need to go back and put more info on the page.

That was something that never would have occurred to me, who wants to rush around and help everyone all the time, so it was good to hear.

P.S. – After dinner went to check out the evening’s readings, which were two of the student’s short pieces from the high school here in town. They partner with a writer from the conference, and get a director and actors, just like everyone else invited to the conference. They were both very funny plays. Vastly different, but very funny. They were: One Flew Over the Chick’s Nest, by Andy Barsness and The Stork, by Sean Kirkpatrick. Very talented kids, and great casts in both. Brain and Sharon, the two actors with whom I share a car and who are married in real life, played a married couple in the The Stork, and it was a hoot to watch them get sitcom crazy with each other.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 17, 2010 at 11:01pm

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Jeni Mahoney, one of the co-artistic directors of Id Theatre, who put on Seven Devils, had a bonfire at her house at the end of Sunday, the company day off. Hot dogs, s’mores, and the Milky Way Galaxy. Very nice.


A few quick words. I’ve been a good playwright these past few days, but a horrible blogger. I’m not going to write a lot tonight, but I do want to say a couple things, and I also want to post a few pics.

So one – I’ve only added one scene to the play so far. But I’ve written approximately 7. I write them, and they don’t work. Now, I don’t think this is a bad thing—they’re not not working because of poor skills on my part, they’re not working because my structure is sound. Everything is emmeshed very tightly. And that’s good. You want (I want) a finished play to be that tight. That doesn’t mean the problems these scenes are meant to solve don’t exist—on the contrary, some of them still do, which is why I keep writing scenes. BUT—the lesson I learned the past two days was one that anyone who knows me will laugh at. Namely: Jacob, sometimes you just need to relax, dial it back, and do less. Doing less will actually get you more.

I spent yesterday writing about 3 scenes. I say about because I only actually wrote 2.5. The last half of a scene was superfluous—I’d already seen that adding the scenes was causing more problems than it solved. So they got canned. So I pulled back. Rather than try to install a new wing on the play to fix other questions and problems that my director and dramaturg wanted, I did less. I tried to fix it in a line. A joke. Threw some more info in during a flirting scene. Then I sent the pages off to my D&D. We met for lunch today, and they loved it. The changes absolutely answered a lot of questions and streamlined the action of the play, so you weren’t distracted. That’s a good thing. I did less work (though it was still enough to keep me up half the night), but the work went farther. Anyone will tell you that’s a good trade-off.

And then today, over lunch, we were discussing the problems that still exist, and a simple solution presented itself. The problem was some language in ONE LINE. One line. I haven’t gone back and re-written that line yet, but seriously changing one line means I don’t have to wrack my brains trying to come up with 2 or 3 new scenes to fix the problem. So there you have it folks—listen to your dramaturgs.

This is Peter, on of the actors, taking off on the highest and longest of the zip lines on Sunday. This one was more then 1000 feet long and more than 250 feet up over a canyon. It was superb.



And, to prove I’m not chained to this ocmputer every day, here’s some shots of other Conference members out on a zipline tour I took part in. There’s none of me because I was working the camera. I’ll bug one of the other guys out there for some from him.

OH! And one last thing—tomorrow is my second, and final, rehearsal before the reading on Saturday. A full day of rehearsal. I have NO IDEA what it will be like. This is the first time my play will be subjected to that long a period of intense study and collaboration. Eight hours in a room with professional actors. So yeah, I’m a little nervous—but in a good way. So if you’re in McCall, Idaho on Saturday, June 19, and wanna see a really cool reading of a play, stop by the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference! It’s FREE!

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jacob Coakley on June 24, 2010 at 12:45pm

Seven Devils – Postshow Post 1

This was dusk in McCall—approximately 9:30 at night. No lie.

OK, so yes, I’m no longer in McCall, Idaho, but there was a lot that happened, and a lot to write about, so I’m going to write a couple more posts.

First thing I want to tackle is my nagging suspicion that the hidden agenda behind Jeni Mahoney, Sheila McDevitt and Paula Marchiel’s commitment to the conference isn’t so much to create theatre as much as it is to create an unstoppable army of dramaturgs from Idaho. The talkbacks at each of the readings were incredibly insightful (as I’ve mentioned before), and while there’s always a couple comments that make you wonder what that particular audience member was watching, for the most part the talkbacks were extraordinarily helpful. It always amazed me to go see a show after sitting in rehearsal for that same show, and listen to an audience member tease out some nuance of the story that the creative team worked hard to uncover, or had struggled with. And part of why the audience is so attuned to the work onstage is due to the very clear instruction Jeni or Sheila gives after each reading about how the talkback process works. There’s also an insert in each of the programs that gives some guidelines about how to interact in a talkback session.

Now I know that there are people out there who HATE talkbacks. To them I say, “Great, you’re probably going to want to stop reading now. But I think you may want to stick around for a bit. Because even though, yes, this is about talkbacks, I think it’s also a good basic outline of how anyone can think a little deeper about how they interact with a play.”
And it’s true—this talkback instruction form is not just useful for helping a playwright, but it’s also a great cheat sheet to interrogate anyone’s reaction to a play. It takes basic reactionary feelings all of us have about a play, and suggests a couple questions to get you to think a little deeper about your reactions. Will you be able to write a Ph.D. thesis using these prompts? Probably not—but it’s certainly a gateway to a more nuanced response and appreciation other than “That sucked,” or (better, but not tremendously helpful/insightful) “That was great.”

So, without further ado, here is the Seven Devils guide to “Discussing the Play,” reprinted in full with the permission of Jeni Mahoney. If you wish to use this, reprint this, or share it, please get in touch with Jeni.

DISCUSSING THE PLAY
(what we do after the play & you’re invited!)

Like all events at the Conference, the discussion is a tool for the playwright, so we use a format that is designed to benefit the writer.

First, the director and mentor/dramaturg will make some brief comments about their work on the play – so you know where they started, and what they were working on all week – then the floor will be open for comments.

THE PLAYWRIGHT IS NOT ALLOWED TO RESPOND. We do this so that the playwright can listen without having to answer or defend himself or his choices. We want him to just take in what we all have to say. Feel free to ask questions … just know you won’t hear answers. Your questions are always useful for the playwright to think about for the future!

HOW WE TALK ABOUT THE PLAY
It’s a delicate balance. We want to remember that we are talking about the play – not about the writer. We don’t want to talk about the lack of props, costumes, or set pieces. These things are not the focus of our work. We don’t want to talk about whether or not the acting was good. It’s not about that either. SO what is it about? What did you like or dislike? What moved you? Was there something you didn’t understand?

LET’S LOOK AT AN EXAMPLE OF A COMMON COMMENT:
“I didn’t like it when you said that the cow was too short to play basketball.”

1 – Try not to address the playwright with “you said” – remember, the character was talking, not the playwright.

2 – “I didn’t like it.” – here is an opportunity to ask yourself a question – why? Why didn’t you like it? Was it that you didn’t believe it, or did the story take a turn that you weren’t prepared for? Maybe you didn’t understand why the character was saying what he was saying – and you didn’t like not understanding.

So, how might we say that differently?

“I was confused when the lead character said that the cow was too short to play baskeball. I thought the play was about soccer.”

HERE IS ANOTHER:
“Your dialogue was really bad.”

1 – Again, we don’t put the character’s words into the playwright’s mouth.

2 – Why was it “bad”? What does “bad” mean? Unbelievable? Confusing?

So how might we say it differently?
“I didn’t believe the dialogue between the cat and the moose – I didn’t believe they would know what Pac Man was, and when the moose was cursing I kept having to ask myself if a moose would really use that kind of language, so I was distracted.”

AND FINALLY:
“I liked when you made them dance. What did it mean?”

Okay, this is a trick example. It’s a fine comment – and bonus points for asking a question – but you might want to refer to the play, rather than the playwright … and expand a bit…

“I like it when the moose and the cat danced, it was touching and funny at the same time, but what did you want us to get from that? I wasn’t sure.”

OF COURSE – Your participation is much more important the perfect phrasing – it takes a while to get used to phrasing your comments this way – SO DON’T BE AFRAID TO MAKE YOUR COMMENTS – and know that I may ask you a question about your comment in order to help you clarify what you are trying to say.

Thanks for your help. This is an important part of our process and your contribution is very important to us!

▶ Reply to This