In For a Penny: Of Olympic Proportions – My Twitter-fied Script

“Right side and with intensity, okay?”
“Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.”
– Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation

There’s no way I’ll be able to top yesterday’s anecdote about Meryl Streep dreams, but I empathize with the plight of my fellow ‘Pub columnist. As you read these words, I’m mere hours away from the first rehearsal for my Poseidon-based script, The Adventures of Neptune: In Color! It’s one of the few things I’ve written for which I’ve felt genuine optimism once it was done. And I think that’s earned, considering I spent several marathon sessions over the past five days trying to edit the damn thing.

My play was selected to be a one-act, which I’ve written for the festival before and had every confidence I could do so again. Then I started researching. A lot. I never stopped researching, but once I began putting words into these characters’ mouths, I couldn’t make them shut up. To further complicate matters, the post-audition casting process resulted in me getting a truly kick-ass roster of Bay Area actors. So naturally I wanted to write material specifically for each of them.

The result could easily be the length of Once Upon a Time in America, but all I need is a “GoodFeathers” sketch. Realizing that my way-too-long story would require a bit of pruning, I found inspiration in a rather unlikely source: Twitter.

I remember years back when the late Roger Ebert joined Twitter. In fact, I remember years before when he specifically said he would NEVER join Twitter. He already had his regular long-form blog and implied that Twitter’s truncated form made real discourse all but impossible. He wasn’t entirely wrong: at its worst, Twitter is the medium for the sort of oversimplified opinions and patronizing platitudes formerly reserved for bumper stickers, fortune cookies, and novelty t-shirts.

When he finally joined in 2009, he would say months later, “Twitter for me performs the function of a running conversation. For someone who cannot speak, it allows a way to unload my zingers and one-liners.” That stuck with me. I forget what year I joined Twitter, but there was a period of months – maybe even a full year – where I just forgot about it and didn’t use it. (It’s this non-desire to “keep up with the Joneses” that has kept me from joining Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, etc.) But since I was a teenager, I’ve always held an appreciation for the democratic way the internet gives everyone a voice, even those with which I do not agree. If I was going to be on Twitter, I’d try to follow Ebert’s example and try to put some thought into what I typed. Short thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless.

This has proven an invaluable practice when editing scripts. Not every line needs to be “The Aristocrats,” some can just be dirty limericks on bathroom walls. Still, my biggest fear is that when the edited version is read aloud it makes no sense, but I can always say I planned it like that.

It takes me longer than others to finish a script because I usually write on a typewriter. I bought on a whim in college in 2000 and have gotten great mileage out of it since. Obviously it has a few disadvantages – no SpellCheck, errors have to be corrected manually, people in other rooms complain of the noise – but I feel those pale in comparison to the advantages I’ve gained from it – I’ve become a better speller, I predict and stop grammatical errors, and when I don’t hear the noise, then I know I’m not writing when I should be. I also can’t just take out a single line or page at my whim, because typed pages don’t self-edit. If I want to change something, you’ll likely have to change the entire script.

I’m reminded of a quote by John Milius, a writer I’ve always admired. In a 2003 interview, when asked about writing new drafts, he said that he “look[s] at a script like a gunstock [..] it has to be shaped right, and the finish has to be right, and you have to bring out all the qualities that are in the wood.” I agree with that. When I rewrite, I don’t think of it as replacing one LEGO piece with another, I think of it as playing Jenga or moving one ace without bringing down the entire house of cards.

I won’t know until this evening whether or not I’ve succeeded, and I’ll still have one more rehearsal and an actual reading left. For now, I’ll just finish hole-punching these 280 FedEx-copied pages whilst all you good people do the right thing and blow up the hashtag #SFOlympians6.

Charles Lewis III deprived himself of food and sleep to edit his script, so you should all come see it on Saturday – Nov. 7. To pre-order tickets and find out more info, please visit www.SFOlympians.com

In For a Penny: Everyone’s a Cricket

Charles Lewis III, opening the new year with a chirp!

“In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.”
– Edgar Allan Poe, in a letter to Joseph Snodgrass, 17 Jan. 1841

Considering the Theater Pub theme for January was supposed to be “downtime and balance”, it’s been… interesting to read how my fellow ‘Pub writers have interpreted that. I won’t pretend that I’m immune to the same anxiety – if you read my “Running in Place” piece from November, you know that isn’t true – but I’ve forced myself to take some deep breaths and enjoy some well-earned relaxation. Case in point: last week was my birthday and I successfully avoided a lot of headaches by cutting off social media, stopping at a few bars, and heading to The Castro to finally see Birdman. I was surprised to see that it was a film about theatre. Yes, I know, Will wrote about it, but – whether for film or theatre – I tend to avoid such write-ups before a show so that I can go in as “fresh” as possible. And given that all the advertising sells it specifically as the story of a washed-up film star looking for a comeback, you’ll understand if I wasn’t exactly expecting A Midwinter’s Tale. Besides, I still liked it. I didn’t find it the masterpiece everyone else has, but I thought it was well-performed, beautifully-shot, and had an ending that some are calling ambiguous, but I’m calling beautifully tragic.

Still… there was one thing that didn’t sit right with me as I watched it; one character really. And it’s a damn shame that with so many great characters that were over-the-top, yet ground, this one damn-near ruined the whole show for me. It’s a character that personified one of my most hated tropes. No, not The Magic Negro, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, or the emasculated husband whose spirit is killed by his shrewish wife. It wasn’t the socially awkward intellectual, the “ugly” pretty girl with glasses, or the woman in the refrigerator either. No, dear reader, it was that was that one character you expect to show up in every clichéd “artist story”; that foul creature who brings only pain and misery wherever s/he goes. That’s right, folks, I’m talking about The Evil Critic.

Now don’t get me wrong: I understand the Fountainhead-esque urge to include such a caricature. Artists to put a lot of themselves into their work, so it only makes sense that they take criticism of said work personally – I say that as someone who has been singled out in reviews as being the weak link in a production. But putting aside the fact that this clichéd character has been done to death, its mere presence suggests that 1 – artists are beyond reproach simply because they’ve created something, and 2 – anyone who would criticize said work would only do so out of spite from not having created any of worth. Those ideas don’t just bore me, they offend me.

Say what you will about the overall increase or decrease of critical quality over the years, constructive criticism is invaluable to the artistic process. When done right, criticism isn’t really about the appeal of a work to public at large, but rather what the work says (if anything) beyond its surface interpretation, how it compares to other works that have done the same, and what it adds to the legacy of work that has come before. As Roger Ebert often said “It’s not what it’s about, but how it’s about what it’s about.” So when I so when see so many one-sided artistic interpretations of critics, it offends me because it implies that artists are just cry-babies who want to lash out at anyone who doesn’t go along with what they say (y’know, kinda like the way they show critics).

That’s not to say that critics are above getting personal in their reviews – they’re human beings. There are critics that hold personal grudges or just flat-out refuse to take seriously the work of a dedicated artist for petty reasons known only to the critic. In the near-decade I’ve been involved in professional theatre, every artistic director I’ve known (along with a few writers and directors) have shown me legitimate examples of critics with obvious axes to grind. They exist. We’ve all seen them.

But the critics can also be the ones to see the value of your work when you’re not bringing in the big audiences. In fact, I think that’s what gets me about Evil Critic characters like Ratatouille’s Anton Ego and Birdman’s Tabitha Dickinson: they come from the minds of two artists who once had nothing but critical praise when their films weren’t box office successes. I mean, I get when it comes from someone like M. Night Shyamalan (who had, then lost, the love of critics) or Roland Emmerich (who never had it), but seeing it come from critical darlings Brad Bird and Alejandro González Iñárritu strikes me as incredibly hypocritical.

Who is this supposed to be? Everyone who actually liked The Iron Giant?

But if you take the word of playwright-turned-screenwriter Aaron Sorkin – a writer whose work I admire, but whose ego is notoriously easy to bruise – the problem isn’t what is said so much as who is saying it. From The West Wing to The Newsroom, he’s used his characters to express his belief that giving the masses a voice through the internet is nothing but a detriment. That’s funny coming from a guy who claims to pride himself on freedom of speech.

Yes, the internet has made it possible for an anonymous troll to have his/her opinion heard as well as any established scholar. Yes, it’s created a Möbius strip of scrutiny in which everyone’s opinion about an opinion is subject to someone’s opinion. But in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the price one pays for living amongst human beings and their ability to string together (mostly) cohesive thoughts. Everyone with a voice has the right to use it, just as YOU have the right to IGNORE them, if you so choose. That’s the not-so-hidden secret of receiving feedback: it isn’t the end. You take the feedback, digest it wholly, and take away whatever is necessary for you to improve. If a particular feedback source isn’t providing that, choose another. Choose several. Choose however many it takes for you to show improvement, but don’t complain just because someone exercised their human right to speak out. Every time I hear someone complain that their work “didn’t have the right audience” or “was presented to a public that wasn’t ready for it”, I always think back to one of my favorite quotes from Theater Pub’s own Cody Rishell (bold emphasis mine): “You are an artist. An artist cannot control his or her audience. You want people to talk about your work, good or bad. If you do not, you are a hobbyist.”

When I finally decided that this would be my column topic for this week, two incidents immediately went through my mind. The first was a memory of when I was offered a really, really great role in a classic play, but had to decline due to a previous commitment. When I went to go see the production, they guy they got to replace me was… well, he wasn’t the best thing in the play. At all. The only thing better than watching him crash and burn on stage was how all the critics singled him out as the downside to the show. In private moments of schadenfreude, I would boast to myself “That’s what happens when you don’t cast ME!”

The second incident that came to mind is one that regular ‘Pub readers know all too well. I actually love this because it’s the perfect example of what I’ve been trying to say: that the things we do and say don’t exist in a vacuum. A playwright didn’t like public perceptions of women, so she responded to it with her art. Her art was performed publicly, so a critic responded to it. His criticism was made public, so it too was responded to. And then that response was responded to. And so on and so on. That’s what’s so great about what we do as artists, we create something intangible that has a lasting effect on all who experience it.

I’ll admit that the older I get, my reaction to can be equal parts Zen and hair-pulling. On the one hand, I’ll hear that there’s a critic in tonight’s audience and think to myself “I’ve spent the last few months putting together something that you want to destroy with a two-star rating? Bring it on, muthafucka!!” On the other hand, even when I’ve seen my name mentioned positively in print I tend to fall on the Barton Fink reaction of “Well, they’ll be wrapping their fish with it in the morning.” I don’t know how others deal with it, this is just what works for me. This is why I’m not partial to straw man interpretations of critics; they come expecting the best, but your definition of that might be completely different than theirs.

At the end of the day, there’s only one thing I take away from every review I read – which I hope is similar to what every critic takes away from my work – what did you learn? Did you learn about the lives of characters like the ones in the show? Did you learn how to arrive early before the show starts? Did you learn that a black box production of a 17-person play might not be the best idea? Did you that the artistic director of this company is only interested in putting on productions that represent his/her myopic worldview? Hell, did you learn that the bar down the street from the theatre has the best garlic fries in the city? Above all, what did you learn?

If you can answer that question, then a two-star review might just be worth your trouble.

Hi-Ho, the Glamorous Life: Script Evaluation 101

Marissa Skudlarek reveals what she looks for in a good play.

Earlier this week, a friend emailed me asking: “I am really curious: what do you look at when evaluating a play script? Are there any books you recommend on this? I’d like to glean some of your knowledge.”

(I know that people think that advice columnists make up the letters they respond to, and that I’m probably inventing a story about “a friend emailing me” in order to have a subject for this week’s column. But I assure you this is 100% true. I can hardly believe it myself, but I do have friends who write to me asking to learn the secrets of script analysis. What can I say? It’s a nice life.)

What follows is a modified version of what I wrote back to my friend.

In many respects, I feel like evaluating plays is the same as evaluating any other kind of narrative-based art (books, movies, etc.). No one feels like they need to have special qualifications or training in order to write a movie review on IMDB or a book review on Goodreads, and if you feel comfortable doing that, you should also feel comfortable evaluating plays. Maybe that’s one reason that, on my blog, I discuss plays, books, and movies according to what I feel like writing about that day — rather than limiting myself to one type of art.

I am very fond of Roger Ebert’s First Law of Film Criticism, which states “A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.” The corollary of this law, then, is that a critic’s job is to determine whether the movie (or book, or play) accomplishes what it sets out to do. If it’s a comedy, did it make you laugh? If it’s a suspense thriller, were you on the edge of your seat? If it’s a vehicle for a star performer, does it allow that performer the best opportunity to showcase his/her chops?

But perhaps there’s an even more basic question than “did the work of art accomplish what it set out to do?” That question is, “Did it hold your interest from start to finish?”

Ask and answer these two questions, and you’ll have an elementary method of distinguishing good plays from bad ones. To distinguish really excellent plays from merely competent ones, additional questions are needed. “Does the play accomplish something I’ve never seen before? Does it say something important about the world and/or display thematic complexity?”

Of course, evaluating a script isn’t exactly like evaluating a book or a movie. For instance, movies are a more visual medium than theater, so film critics often forgive a movie if it has a weak or silly story but stunning visuals. It’s much less easy to get away with that in theater. In my opinion, the strength of theater lies in complex characters, well-structured storytelling, and the back-and-forth of dialogue — and a good play will take advantage of that. Thus, I’m not very fond of plays that mostly consist of monologues or narration; if you want to do that, maybe you should write prose fiction instead of drama?

You asked for book recommendations; my favorite book for this kind of thing is Backwards and Forwards by David Ball. It’s so short that you can read it in an evening. But it gives you a very clear idea of how to read a play and determine if it’s well-structured or not. In Ball’s opinion, a play is a series of actions, and everything in it must propel the story forward. Good plays will have plots that proceed stepwise, each action kicking off the next; bad plays will be full of unmotivated events or red herrings. Ball’s theories also offer an explanation for why I am annoyed by excessive use of monologues or soliloquies. I don’t mind monologues that advance the action or bring the character to a new place — in that case, the monologue is dramatic and necessary. But I feel that many monologues exist merely because the playwright is in love with the sound of his own voice and wants to write something “lyrical” or “meaningful.” Cut those monologues out, I say — and David Ball would say that, too.

If you’re serious about learning how to evaluate plays, one additional skill you’ll need to develop is a sense for what will work well onstage, rather than on the page. There are plays that play better than they read — and plays that read better than they play. I recall enjoying Sartre’s Dirty Hands as a work of literature, but the script is so long, with so many extended philosophical conversations, that I suspect a theater audience might get bored before the end. Meanwhile, big scenes that involve lots of different characters can be very confusing to read, but clear and lively onstage (with the right cast and director). The “silent” Act II of Noises Off is a pain to read — a long list of stage directions describing how all of the characters pop in and out of the set’s many doors — but, staged, it is one of the funniest scenes in all of theater.

One caveat that applies to all of these tools and methods for judging plays is that they work best for traditional, realistic scripts, or, at the very least, scripts that attempt to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. These rules may not apply to the most experimental or avant-garde plays — although I believe that even an experimental play should accomplish what it sets out to do and hold your interest, right? I was on the Cutting Ball Theatre’s literary committee the first year it ran its competition to seek new experimental plays. So many of the scripts that we received struck me as dull, meandering, and humorless. The only submission that I really enjoyed was a play called Sidewinders, by Basil Kreimendahl. This script was definitely experimental in terms of language, character, and ambitions (it’s a Wild West, gender-queer riff on Waiting for Godot), but it also told a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and made me laugh out loud while doing so. Cutting Ball is producing Sidewinders this fall.

Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright, arts writer, and all-purpose opinion-slinger. Find more of her thoughts on plays, books, and movies at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.