 We're going to start up as people come in. It's five o'clock. It's watch me work again. It's SLP with the new work development department at the Public Theater. I'm Rita Zoey. Yeah, and we are doing what we do all the time. We're working together. This is the last watch me work of the year, the last formal one, but I know you guys are y'all are working like every day. So, you know, this is the last time we get together. We're going to do what we do every week that we get together. We work for 20 minutes and then we follow that 20 minutes with your questions about your work. So I'm fixing my timer and your creative process and what else we've been doing this show. I got to look it up next time we have the show. I'll have the right days, but we started the show over 14, 15 years ago. And we've been coming and hanging out with you ever since. And now we have been embraced by the New Work Development Department and ours, the New Work Development Department. You want to say some words? Look at them. It looks like Star Trek. You guys look like you're like we're we're on the enterprise. And you're we're going to say, everyone, I'm Amritha Ramanan. I'm the director of New Work Development at the public. Great to see you and so thrilled to be here for SLPs. Watch me work. Hi, everyone. I'm Zoe, I'm the New Work Development Manager and welcome again. Yeah, so we're so we're just going to we're going to hang out and work if you have questions after the 20 minute work session about your work and your creative process while we do not have time for you to like read from your work or share your work or show us your choreography or whatever. We don't have time for that. We don't have the bandwidth for that. But we do have lots of time to talk about process. If you would like to talk about or ask me a question about your process. Zoe is going to tell us how to get. Yeah, when it's time, we will ask you to please use your raise your hand button and then we will get a cue going for questions. Fantastic, that's it's just it's that it's that easy. Again, this is the last watch we work of that we do together in 2023. And we will start now. Oh, OK, there we go. Technical excitement. It's not technical difficult. I couldn't unmute myself. Now I can now I can say, oh, we worked. We work. Who has a question? Yes, please go and use your raise your hand function. And then we can ask you to ask a question. Yes, Crystal, please unmute yourself. Hi, I'm doing good. I'm doing good older. How are you? You have a reading? Oh, it was it was fantastic. It was so fantastic. I couldn't be more proud of it. I it, you know, I'm just. I'm at a loss of words. It was really great. I'm really proud of it. It got great responses and great critiques. And now I'm just like literally just trying to figure out the next step, you know, which is like just to continue to just share it, you know, with people and theaters and stuff. So I'm very excited for what's next. Thanks for asking. Congratulations. That's great. Thank you. So my question actually has to do with that, right? Because I remember I was here last week, but I didn't get to sign on to the to the participate. But I remember you talked about the the sword of. Oh, no, what's it called? For number. Huh? Nation. Yes, yes. And for editing and, you know, for cutting down and everything and and and trimming and I want to own this sword. Um, um, I just I I I have been in question about the like the mindset in which I use it because I feel like I have to trim it. I do have to trim it a bit. But I also am like wondering if I need to after years of hearing their voices so loud and clear, but putting it down and not hearing their voice anymore, because I kind of was saying, OK, we're OK. We're good. Bye. You know, how how do I approach the the the last steps of, I guess, editing or not rewriting, not revising per se, but just polishing, clearing things up. But still keeping the voices clear and the voices as as they were years ago. I mean, I'm in a different place than I was when I first start. Well, you know, when I first started writing it to now. So I sometimes feel like, gosh, like, where do I even how do I how do I do this and still keep them authentic without it looking like, oh, you just cut this to to make it shorter. You just cut this, like, you know, you know what I mean? Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. You want to sort of cut the stuff you don't need, right? I mean, you know, because sure, you I mean, on a certain level, you just cut it to make it shorter. Sure. And that's fine. It's fine. That's fine. And at the same time, you want to be judicious and cut the stuff you don't need, you don't want to cut things that you actually need that are going to, you know, make it hard to understand or whatever. Here's a question. Could you do you have to do that now? Could you I mean, there's the general, you know, lots of notes were about like, great, great, great. And you need to cut it like that. What what what did you feel like? Do you feel like cutting it is the next step? Um, I think I think I've always felt like they're at some point, I would have to trim trim it down, like trim the that a little bit, but like I, you know, it's at like 143. And, you know, someone was like, oh, it should be at 90. But I'm like, it's a play told in three parts. And each part happens within that time in real time. So it's like, if I cut it too much, it's not really going to be believable that what happens happens because it happens in real time. Um, and so my temptation is I cut and then I'll just add, you know, yeah, what what if you just I mean, you had a reading of it, it went it went really well. It sounds like you got a lot of good notes, yeah, once cutting it, but you could just wait, you know, because if you it finds a home, it finds a theater or a space that wants to do it, then you might just take on board, you know, the awesome producing staff at that theater, that venue to help me with. I mean, I mean, maybe the right time to cut, maybe it's a time to like, very mindfully type up the notes that you got, circle the ones that you think are helpful. You know what I mean? Keep them all, circle the ones you think are helpful. And then just just wait, you know. Have to cut. It's like, it's not like we go into rehearsal next week. It'd be great if you cut 20 minutes, you know what I mean? It's it's not that kind of a situation. So why don't you just you can just wait if that's okay. Does that sound like it's helpful? Yeah, yeah, I yeah, I think I, you know, a big part of me is like, well, all of me is like, I really I I it's one of my only plays where I'm like, I love this play. It's very close to my heart. It's very it's not, you know, I mean, again, you were there for the process. It was a it was it was a lot of work and very hard, but I just loved it. And I felt like I needed to continue with it. Right. And so like when I finally came to a point where I was like, I think this is it, you know, I feel like the souls of the voices kind of quieted. So I didn't really hear them as much as I did when I was writing it, you know what I mean? So like, I don't know if that means that it means like, okay, hands off, hands up, or if it just means that, you know, I don't know if I have to do work in the future as the actor to hear the voice in a different way that will kind of leak into writing again. You know, I've been I've been I've been hearing a different voice now, you know, so I I'm very, you know, again, because it's so close, I want to handle with care. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I totally hear you, Crystal. I think the best way to handle with care right now is just to, again, type up the notes and just think, okay, so where would I like it? Where would I like it to be performed? Where cool places, you know, maybe get into your sort of, I'm going to send this out to places, I'm going to start dreaming about where this might find an artistic home. You know, and not worry about the script so much as now put on your producer, your sort of agent producer hat and find a place for it. And then you'll be ready, you'll probably be ready to come back around and start to trim it down when it's felt, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can do that. How's your shoulder? Okay. Yes, you know, it's functioning. Thank you. Yes, Aibatari, please ask your question. I'm sorry if I put your name. Hi, I'm very close. It's Aibatari. So I'm pretty young and I decided that I should just start writing seriously. And so this is like my first time like editing a play and I guess I wanted to know like what you recommend, like I feel like I'm falling back into the same trappings I did with the same plots, beats I did with the first draft. I'm just like wondering how do I, how can I force myself to veer into a new direction and not fall into what I did before? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's great. So I'm just listening to the words. So you're, did you say you're pretty young? I can't, I don't know why I said that. I'm not pretty young and actually. No, no, no, no, I just, I'm just listening to your language and you start, you decided to start writing seriously. And so you're forcing your, I mean, the word's like serious and forced. I'm like, oh, I never, I don't know. Did I ever decide to write seriously? I don't know. But, you know, just gentle is always probably the long-term effective way to keep writing, right? Just be gentle and kind to your writing self. And so here we go. You've written a draft or something, right? And you're gonna work on the rewriting. Is that, did I understand you correctly? Yes. Okay, great. And you said, you seem to be falling back into the same plots and beats that you had before. Is that what you said? Yes. Okay, so rewriting, the good, I mean, I'm trying to, I'm understanding what you're saying. Rewriting, you can fall back into the same beats and stuff that you've had before. You're just making them better. You're just sharpening them, you know? Like if your play is about Cindy Lou and she goes to the store to buy some pink high-heeled velvet shoes and she meets Mary who wants the purple shoes and they buy one of each and become a couple and they're in love. It's a rom-com. But you know what I mean? So that's the first draft. And then the second draft, you wanna refine that. You don't wanna toss out the whole story. So I wanna understand what your concern is about the way you're rewriting right now. Yeah, I think for right now, I noticed that I would add new things, which I love doing, but then I would always go back to the first draft. And when I felt like I was stuck and take scenes there and add it to the new draft, which were scenes that I wanted to change, but I just don't know how to let go of what I've already written, I guess. Okay, okay, cool. So when you write, are you, when you're doing this rewriting, are you, so you open your document, you have your document and you're actually writing lines and sentences, characters, the whole thing. Are you doing it? Yes. Okay. Okay, so how about try this when you're rewriting? Try using an outline form. You know what I mean by that? I don't mean Roman numerals like some of us may have learned in school. I mean, just open a document. So you have your draft, right? Your written draft. And you're gonna open up a second document. And you're gonna start just doing the story beats. You're not gonna write lines of dialogue, character descriptions, elaborate, you know? You just short, like shorthand. So again, if the first scene is, you know, Cindy Lou, she's going to buy those pink high heel velvet shoes. And she might be talking to the mayor about all the reasons why she wants the pink shoes, right? I'm not gonna rewrite all that. I'm just gonna say, Cindy standing in front of the mayor talking to herself about pink shoes. Next scene, Cindy goes outside, it's raining. Oh my God, she's gotta go inside. I'm just doing bullet points. Do you understand? Yes. So it's basically a short version, an outline form of your play. So that it's easier actually to imagine and swap in and out scenes, new scenes for ones that you don't like so much because you're just doing little bullet point descriptions of them instead of writing the whole scene. Okay. So that when you get, and you can write an outline version of the whole play that way. Yeah, and then when you feel good about, hey, this, and you can read it through and see if it flows nicely. And then when you feel like you've got a nice new flow or a more polished take on the flow that you started in the first draft, then you can commit to writing scenes, lines of dialogue, all those kinds of things. I like that. Thank you. Yeah, try it. See how it works. See if it works. Yeah, it's really fun. Awesome. Thank you. You're laughing. See, we got you smiling. Goodie, goodie. Check back in, we'd love to see how you're doing or hear how you're doing. Yes, yes, Val and Marie. Please ask your question. Hi, I'm Val and Marie. How are you? I'm good. How are you? This is my first time here. I also have a question about revision. I'm like, were he on this play that I started like three years ago and has gone through like two or three different drafts and it's still not feeling. I have this like idea in my mind of what it could be and it just kind of isn't there yet. But I'm also, I feel like I've had an experience with another play where like I revised so much to a point where I feel like I lost the original spark had when I first started it and kind of not made it worse but made it something that I didn't want it to be in. So I just have this, I feel like every time I go to revise it, it's just so I'm not actually doing the big overhauling I need to do. I feel like I have all this like fear about what I need to do. And there's this relationship I think I need to like totally start from scratch with but then it's hard for me to let go of what's already there because I'm scared I'm gonna lose, how I'm scared it's gonna start this whole thing where it's like once I change one thing then I have to change a bunch of other things. And I don't know, I guess I'm looking for advice so I'm like dealing with that fear and maybe going up I don't know, I feel like I've taken a lot of distance from this play and come back and I thought the distance would help but I still find it probably maybe even more scary going back to it. Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's sort of a question. Curious to see what you think. It's a great question. I love rewriting questions. It's a great question, Vale-Marie. And it's like, I really appreciate that you said you know, from the last time you did a rewrite it kind of became not worse but it became something that you wanted something else didn't quite become the thing that you were hoping for. So there is some sort of concern or fear or trepidation or you know, like, how do I do this? Anyway, okay. So yeah, have you, I'm looking around on my desk. Let me see if I have it. I'm not gonna get up and get them. No cards. Do you have like index cards? Yeah, I do have index cards. I haven't used them for this play but I do have, yeah. Five or larger? I don't, I think the regular ones. Are they the big ones? Are they, I'm not gonna get up, sorry. Bye. I'm gonna be right back. Yeah, those size. Little kind, little small, I mean the three by five. Yeah. Right? Yes, yes. No bigger than your hand, okay. Great. Okay, great. You haven't used them yet? Yeah. Good. Try them. Get a bunch of them. Look, I have so many of these. I have clips. Because what it does is you're gonna do what we talked about a second ago. You're gonna take a big view but in small pieces. So these are gonna be, you're not gonna get in there and start page one, new dialogue. A whole new character. Oh my God, that's a lot of work. No, no, no, no. You're gonna take your index cards and I'm not, I'm failing to brush my eye, butari. You can also use index cards, okay. Index cards are great. You're gonna take an index card. Scene one. Hey, scene one. And I use, you know, pencil probably better because then you can reuse it, you know. Scene one, blah, blah, blah. What is it? Right? Then you can, scene two. Look, it's a card game, right? And you just imagine your play. And if you write a scene down here and you don't like it, you just tear it up and throw it away. Or put it off to the side. You'll get to it later. Or the scene like, oh, I have a great idea for scene 53. I'm not there yet. I have to write all the dialogue and the characters and figure out the costumes, all that for scene five. I don't know. You just write a piece of it. Scene 53. Magically here they are ready. You know, right? They go dancing in their high-hill shoes. Oh my God, it's amazing. Right? But that doesn't come until all these other scenes come before it. I don't know those other scenes. Sure you do. You just haven't, they haven't come to mind yet. Okay? So use index cards to create an outline. You can write it on paper and then put it on index cards. You can just start dreaming it up on index cards. It's really great. And then you put them in a pile and then you start putting them in order. And then you start going, okay, scene one, scene two. And then you start reading it to yourself and letting it roll in your head as if you were watching a play, right? Or as if you were, if it's a movie, you watch a movie or if it's a novel, like you're reading a novel, right? It works for any kind of writing that you do. Could work for songwriting also, but then you've got lots of different things. But it really works really well. And you just kind of reimagine your play that way. And you also, Vale-Marie, you watch what you're saying. When we talk, when maybe it's your first time here, we talked about how you hypnotize yourself all the time. So you hypnotize yourself by words come out of your mouth and they go into the next nearest whole, but not this one, but this one. So when you say things like, I don't know, I'm not sure really how to do this. I'm afraid, right? So you're hypnotizing yourself all the time. So, and it's free. This is free, right? I mean, you just start saying like, I know, I know how my play is gonna go. It's coming, it's a little clearer. Every day it gets a little clearer to me. I'm putting the time in and the play is like talking to me. The characters so wanna be in my play. The characters are on my side. They've come all this way. They're there for me. You see what I mean? I'm hypnotizing myself. I do it all the time. And we do it, we all do it all the time. Just sometimes we're hypnotized ourselves into some bullshit like, I don't know. Oh my God, why did he say that to me? He hates me. They don't like me. They don't like me. Right? I'm gonna have to go a little bit. No wonder, right? So we got, if we just hypnotize ourselves into some more like, you know, positive you can call them more positive thoughts, then that's, and really, I mean, okay, I'm not saying we can, you know, well, we could actually, if we really did this, we could actually move the needle on some world events in the appropriate direction. But when it comes to your work, it's definitely a slam dunk. It's like a slam dunk like with no problem. Cause it's your work. It's not somebody else doing something out there on the news. It's your work. It's you making up something out of your head. Who else is in there? Nobody. It's just you. You're the only one talking in your head. So why not hypnotize yourself and say, I know how this play goes. I know if I do the work, I know if I do the work, the characters, the story it's gonna come through. I'm so happy with my play. I love my play. Like that. Do that. I know it's funny, right? I love that. Yeah. It's easy. It's really easy. And it's fun and it's free. We love free things. We're at the public theater. Free. It's just like Shakespeare in the park but it's not Shakespeare and it's not the park but it is free. And it's, yeah, it's here. We're here for you, okay? So as you see your monitor, watch yourself. Watch yourself the way you talk to yourself. I mean, this is everybody. Just be mindful of the way you talk to yourself. The way you're constantly hypnotizing yourself. And especially when it comes to your own work or how you feel about yourself or those things, those are things that are in your control, okay? And it makes the work so much easier. Thank you so much. That's awesome. You're welcome. And work every day. Put some time in every day. Even if it's just 20 minutes. Put some time in every day, okay? Thanks. Thank you. Awesome. Great question. Great question. Hi, Jay, Liz. Hi. Hi there. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Couple of things I want to say. The first one is thank you so much. The year's ending and this has just been a fabulous year being able to participate and listen to you and watch me work. So thank you so very much for that. Thank you so much. I could never tell you how important it is to me. A lot of times I'm just quiet, but believe me, I'm taking it in. So I have some questions now that I want to add and that I want to ask. And I think they're quite different from what you usually get. And that is, how do you feel and how do you decide what to put in your acknowledgements? I ask that because I run a film festival. I write, but I run a film festival and I just decided to make some adjustments to the thank yous at the end because I decided that I really wanted to, first of all, thank the three people that have really pulled this one off for me this year. Because we didn't get the funding that I usually get for it and these people, I mean, these three people, they are amazing. So that's what I'm thinking. I mean, that's what I have done that I've just written to include in the acknowledgements and then I acknowledge other people. I acknowledge people who just, friends, it's just hard to see how I'm doing. But anyway, I'm just kind of curious about what you think about doing acknowledgements when you're writing something or when you're working on a project. I love that question, Jay. And I, because I love opportunities to say thank you. So I think, I thank everybody and it might look silly or people might judge you for it but you can even say, I love the idea that you have these three people who pulled it off and you can say, you know, a huge enormous thanks to this person, this person, this person, this person. Give them a special position and then maybe the people you always thank, you know, thanks always, thanks again this year too. You know, give them, frame the people. I don't know if you're thinking of a poster or in a part of a film reel or something like that but you can give each little section, its own special title, you know, to make people feel like, oh yeah, I'm in the group that, you know, pulled it off. I'm in the group that she thanks every year. I'm in the group and that makes people, you know, it's a really wonderful thing to appreciate people. I would thank everybody you want. There's less thanking going on these days. Well, that's the way I feel. And, you know, this was a very difficult year for me in many ways. People just, they just came through and say, oh, I'll do that. And it's a lot of work, you know, doing a one month festival is a lot of work. I'm sure you can deal with that with that. And so I've just been working on the, on revising the, you know, the thank yous and I started out by saying special thanks to superb volunteers who designed and published, publicized the year's festival and then have their names. Without these three people this year's Heritage Film Festival might not have happened. So that's how I start off with the thanks and then I mentioned all the people. Fantastic. No, but, you know, I do this festival, this is the 18th year for this particular festival and it's free and it's online. So I'm going to go ahead and post the information so people can sign up. And I hope you do, you know, like I said, it's free, it's online. You can put in a password of your choice and I'll put my email address in there too, which is pretty easy. That's awesome, much appreciated. Yeah. But this has been just a, you know, it's my time, the Mondays are my time to just kind of play back and listen and to think and listen, you know, and it's a real energy booster for me in it, you know, and with all this other stuff that's going on in my life and in the world. So once again, thank you. Oh, much appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. How about iPad 9, Ms. Drake? I think that's Mitch. I wanted to say, oh, you're, oh, please, yeah, please unmute yourself. There you go. Okay. It'd be funny if my name was really iPad 9 and not Mitch. Thank you so much for doing this and for taking questions. I'm coming from a place where I write a lot of short stories, a little bit of poetry and one of my strengths is writing dialogue. And I've been asking myself, I've been, you know, listening to all these interesting questions and all your very interesting and thought provoking answers. How do I know when I have a play on my hands rather than a short story? Like how do you decide that this is a story that needs to be told as a play rather than as a story or a novel or a poem? That's a great question, Mitch. It has a different feel, you know? It's a feel thing. It's a feel thing. For me, it's like the difference between velvet and corduroy, for example. They feel differently. So you feel, I mean, a play, and like a play feels different than a movie. The experience, when I'm watching it, I was saying, oh, to Villain Marie, like you're doing your cards and you're seeing it in your mind's eye. So when I'm seeing the experience, I'm having the experience of the story in my mind's eye, a novel is gonna feel like I'm reading a novel or it's gonna feel like a very elaborate film, too elaborate for a film, really, you know? A film is gonna feel like a film. It's gonna be like a big picture on a screen. A play is gonna look like a play. So you have to, if you're feeling like you've got a play on your hands, you might well have a play on your hands and do a big reveal party and start writing a play. You know, go for it. I would say go for it. If you love dialogue, if you've got some characters that are really talking a lot and moving around a lot, it sounds like a play and you'd like to see it on stage, it sounds like it's a play. They used to say in avant-garde theater on the lower, in the East Village, poets theater, they had this saying, they said, call it a play and it is. So like, if it's a play, if you want it to be a play, it's a play and go ahead and write it like a play. Thanks. Sure. Thank you. Yes, Jennifer, please unmute yourself. Cool to hear me okay? Yes. Good, ask you. So I have a kind of an odd question, but there's a local opportunity where I live where they, it's like a performance series where they want you to connect with the community and they choose like five artists each year. And I recently applied for one of the opportunities to get feedback and so you could do it to get it better. And one piece of feedback was, this is where I'm kind of stuck because on the one hand, there is a little bit of a risk to it and that's kind of what they encourage is risk taking. So I want to be able to get the opportunity and pacify them, but at the same time, I want to be true to the vision. And the vision is it will be a play, but it will have improvised elements. Ella, I'm thinking like forum theater style where there would be audience where they, like the play would be like posing the problem of lack of communication isolation and the audience could become these spect actors because it's something I've been wanting to do. We don't do it in the city where I live. And I think it would be a great opportunity, but some of it is like, how are you going to get the audience to participate in? And some of this is a risk. I mean, I have some answers of how, but I also can't predict what the audience is going to do either. So I think they want to be pacified that like, this will work, but at the same time, there is a risk to it. And I'm just not sure how to say that in the application. So they accept me, but I don't want to lie either. If that makes sense. No, that's great. That's great. So let's see. I love your idea for your show. You could say, will you be there every night? Are you going to be in the show? Yes. I hope to be like the facilitator or Joe for a while. Great. Great. So you can say, as facilitator, I could encourage people to participate. I would be on hand or encourage people to participate. You could also say, I'm not above. You could say, I could also have a few plants to get people started. I mean, like musicians, when we play, when you bust, you call it salting the cup. You put a little money in the cup to give people the idea that they can give you some tips. So you can say, I'm not above. Do we use a few plants to get it going? Different plants every night. You can also cultivate the audience before the show, pick out a couple of people and say, hey, you seem awesome. How about you be one of my people? You can cultivate the audience before the show too. I like that. Yeah. It's just an important part because they really want the community to be a part of it. They're just like the risk of it, I guess. No, no, no. People, if you cultivate the audience beforehand, they'll be into it. Think of it, you're a magician. People are always going to be coming up on stage. They want to, people want to be in the show, especially if they're made to feel safe beforehand and made to feel special beforehand, you pick them. How would you like to? And they say, well, okay, what do I do? Well, when I call on you, you'll just talk or whatever. You know? It's like you're talking to the making them feel safe beforehand. Right, they want to feel taken care of. Maybe not safe, but I use that word, I'm sorry, but maybe they want to feel taken care of. Like you got their back. You're not going to make a fool out of them. You're going to just involve them in your wonderful show. I like that. Thank you, that helps. I will put that in my application. I just wanted to be upfront about it, but, you know, and I didn't want to change my idea either. Perfect, perfect. Thank you. Thank you, it's 5.59. I have a suggestion for your digestion for today. So the last one of the year, I was talking to a friend and we were talking and I was thinking a true lifeline goes both ways. So if you're feeling like you're, someone's storing you a lifeline, know that it goes both ways. And especially in the season of, you know, Hanukwanza, Christmas, Christmas Hanukwanza, know that this is a season that we're giving a lot of gifts and we're also receiving a lot as well. Or we're receiving a lot, we're also giving a lot as well. So a true lifeline goes both ways. It's six o'clock. It's the end of Watch Me Work year and we're gonna be back in January. And Newark Development, fabulous folk, wanna say things, Amritha, Zoe. I will just say that we are still working on dates for January. We know that we will be back, but please look at the website for updates and what a great year. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you so much. We love you. Have a happy holiday season. However you celebrate it and do a little work every day. I know, horrible. But I'm gonna be doing a little work every day because it brings me joy. So I'm bringing you all joy. Hey, Rebecca. Hey, Lou. Everybody who been coming for so many years. Hey, Kimmy. And everybody else I didn't mention, but love you, love you. We'll see you in 2024. Okay, thank you.