 lovely ladies would introduce yourselves and tell me if tell us if you are a performer playwright or a playwright performer I am a playwright performer I'm a book writer lyricist performer and my name is Laurie Flanagan-Haggy and I'm the Twin Cities rep for the dramatist guild. My name is Charlene Woodard and I'm an actress playwright. Can I just ask who in this room everybody who started out as an actor and then moved into playwriting wow wow so Laurie why do you think that tends to be the norm rather than the other way around? Well I mean speaking from my own experience and other performers I know that have moved into into writing it seems like a natural evolution of of working as a performer and I think some of it stems from a frustration about material or a need to do material material that you want you want to do and I think some of it is just a natural evolution of kind of having control or interest in working in a collaborative way and I bet a lot of people here were part of companies where that kind of creative work was happening as a performer and so you naturally start to instigate it with your performance ensemble or the people that you're working with and it doesn't even seem like a decision as much as just a an evolution of the kind of work you're doing as a human being. For me when I was in New York City working as an actor I worked on a lot of original plays so a little original work so when you work with you know creating every day with a team of people in the cast you sort of feel like you you that's normally that's your norm that's what you do so when the opportunity came to write I felt like well I'm just going to try this because you know I had already added so many of my characters to people shows and things and creative things on my feet like that. Great. Lisa? Well I had a similar experience in that I wasn't a writer. I mean I told stories on my screen, one story, but we've told you it was more likely I would be a brain surgeon and I would be a writer I had known. I was particularly interested in it. I had no reason to go in by having the ability to do it but I was working with a collaborative theatre company and we wrote together and there were other writers in the company who were, I mean they were writers and I wasn't a writer. But I think as I worked and created work and then was also putting together these shows of anecdotal stories over time I became interested in building, I mean I think in retrospect what I wanted to do was make theatre out of those stories. I wanted to figure out how to do them in dramatic action and I wanted to give them and then you know have resonance. And depth and then magically it just happened. You wanted to be heard. So I started to, painstakingly started to write in order to achieve those goals. Now Lisa, how does one inform the other? How do they inform each other performing and writing for you? Well I think I, I mean I really, you know it's relatively late that I have written work that I haven't been in and I really like doing that. I feel like I can, you can see what's happening when you're not in it and switching back and forth. You know the brains are very different between those two things. I mean when I was working on my play well at Sundance, you know when you go to Sundance Theatre Lab you have one day of writing, one day of rehearsing. So I would spend a day turning out new pages and then we'd sit down to work and we'd read the new pages and I'd be like oh god who wrote this shit I can't do that. You know and Lee Silverman my director would say you have to, you know I'd be like I just have to go rewrite this before I can possibly utter those words. And she would say no you have to rehearse what you wrote and that was really helpful because they're really different, they're really different brains. And the kind of, you know when you're an actor and it was a real transition for me going from when my plays were just me to when with well I had other characters in it to stop trying to perform everybody's parts psychically and make them say the lines the way I wanted them to say them which was serving no one's interests particularly not serving my own interests. So you know when you're a writer you're thinking about the whole and even if it's your own work when you're performing it you can't do that. You have to let the play do what the play does and let the writing do what the writing does and I suppose that one of the benefits is that you can see both of those things. I mean I know when I act in other people's work now I don't need for my part to be the whole play. And I think I know you know when I've seen work by the five lesbian brothers that is performed by their companies there's lines that go by that you know and the actors give them great subtexts and it's like oh you know that line was really just to link those two other things and so that person could do their costume change so probably just say it and move on. So going back for those kinds of things that you figure out. But it is a good practice to meld other people's lines as they're saying them to isn't it? It's true, it's true. Well I've worked with Arthur Miller on The Crucible and when we were doing the read through around the table for the film he was like this. He knew everybody's line. He had written that screenplay and he was saying that. So what feeds your soul better writing or acting or do they feed you in different ways? Well I'm an actor and I write because I wanted something that meant something to me you know and I felt like I had been in the service of all these other playwrights. All my life and when I got the opportunity to write to create something I just felt like I want to use every chop I developed. I want to play with no rules and take risks and have fun and be limitless. So and what I love about being on stage with your own work, your own movie going in your head is and you stick to the lines every night just like every professional actor does. And all the blocking is all the same but every night it's so brand new and so exciting. So they for me with solo acting it's all one. It's all one. The business of writing it even for me I write it on my feet. I just I'm on my feet I'm telling the story I'm seeing it all you know I'm writing it on my feet. And then after I have been telling that story on my feet for a year the last thing I do is write it down. As a matter of fact when I first started doing these plays I didn't know how to type. I didn't know how to you know so I would write everything on a legal pad and I still do because that's how my thoughts flow when it's time to write it down. I just do it on a legal pad and let them flow. I couldn't even call myself an actor I mean a writer until a few years ago because I really felt like I was just an actor sharing her stories with the audience. Using the audience as my scene partner and just coming out and sharing. And have you used all of your chops yet or do you still have tons more to use? Well I tell you I'm always in class I still take class twice a week sensory and scene study and I'm always spinning and I'm always working to improve my craft. I'm always because this is all I've got. I don't really count on my intelligence and all that I count on my imagination and I count on my body my instrument. So yeah there's for me there's no difference it's all one and that's why I love it. I didn't know that in the beginning I didn't know that's what it would be that was an exploration that was a journey that I had to take. Laurie how do you acting and writing compare in terms of preparation and time consumption and level of stress? Well if my husband were here when I'm writing it's stressful for everybody and when I'm performing it's stressful for me. But you know I'm kind of like when John Logan talked yesterday about he gets up every morning at four o'clock and he has the schedule. I really envy people who work that way. I'm a writer who writes to deadlines and I know I'm not the only one so I won't go into a shame spiral about that. But I will say that that really is how I do my work the most productively. But because of that it kind of puts me in a place. I'm sure there's other parents in the room and I have a 10 year old and it kind of puts me in a place where I'm saying you got to let me get this done. Like I have this workshop coming up you've got to let me get this done or I'm on a deadline and she's starting to reflect that language. She'll reflect that language back to me about mom you have so many deadlines and maybe you should take less projects. Maybe you should consider saying no before you say yes to the next one and it's kind of true because I'm also a person who will track consecutive things and that's why the deadlines are the things that kind of I can't be the only person in the room like that right. There are others among you. But it's treacherous and then you know for me I'm a performer who's I write all the time. I'm all the time working on something but I'm not acting all the time. I don't go from acting project to acting project. I live in a city that I came to 12 years ago and it's full of performers like me amazing women. And so when I get an acting gig and I'm I'm I'm it's like ice cream because there's so many people who are fabulous that that are in my pool and but I always overestimate my ability to write while I'm performing and and so that's just kind of a different kind of stress because I think OK I'll be in rehearsal and then while this is happening I'll be able to finish this when I'm tracking my timeline of how much work time I have for myself. I'm never able to fulfill what I think I'm able to fulfill while I'm performing. I've just it's a flaw in my personality that I underestimate my ability to do both at the same time. So it's not to say you don't continue working when you're not physically working but it's just it's like the balance thing is a big question for me and it's something I'm always working on and it feels like a different part of my head. If I'm studying lines I can't bring myself to write something. I don't know why there's interference. I think I think there is. Is that the case for you. Well you write on your feet. So yeah. So when when I'm sitting down to write I feel like sometimes I'm writing into a void unless it's a commission. Whereas if I'm hired as an actor I know I'm getting paid. Was there a time when you you had that going on when I don't know if I I mean I find it. I guess it depends on the part but it you know it's different being a generative artist and being an interpretive artist. Yes. And I'm you know I'm not you know I think I'm a good performer and there's some things that I do quite well but I'm not a great actor you know so I don't have that level of craft. So so I don't know if you know my experience would be true of other people but the the generation of work is is really difficult. I mean it's difficult for me. I'm not a natural writer and I think you know we as you were as you were talking Lori I was thinking that we do have this feeling I mean it's also like I was just meeting with them. I'm teaching at NYU I taught last semester I'm going to teach next year and Lucas Nath who's a wonderful playwright and also an incredible teacher sort of gathered the people who are teaching there to talk about the pedagogy of playwriting and it was me and Chris Diaz at this last meeting and Annie Baker. And we were talking about how you teach playwriting and sort of what we came up against was this. I mean I actually do believe that there are great ways to teach playwriting and I think that Lucas is going to help me to figure out some better ones than I've had but but there is this thing which is you know the first year that I didn't because I didn't study playwriting I didn't really have a method for it you know I would just sort of hurl myself at it and then hit the wall and then slide down the wall and then crawl back up and do that a lot of times. And I feel like I became a writer when you were talking about when you called yourself a writer and it was the moment when I realized that this horrible feeling that I felt when I was writing was what it feels like to write. I kept thinking that was going to go away and then I realized no that's what it feels like to write. And so but that you know when I first taught at Yale I was like you know after the first year I was like oh I really figured out a lot of things you know and so next time I sit down and write my play I can use those things which I and I sat down I was like oh forget it that doesn't help you. You know you're always trying to invent the world and so I do think that we and I'm guilty of this as well but we always feel like particularly with the people who are like oh I get a bit full every day and I write and I have a schedule I just I just want to that just irritates me I mean I'm sure that's a good thing to do but but I do think that we feel also because we live in the society that has this kind of work ethic and this sort of commodified world where we're supposed to have all these secrets to productivity and organization but there is no structure to writing there there is no you know we walk into the wilderness and we claw our way through it and we make a mess and then we create that thing and then little by little we use our craft to shape it and hopefully make something good and maybe we'll make something good and maybe we won't and the fact is that none of us ever know truly none of us ever know there's not a great artist that you admire who you can't look at their career and see a hideous humiliating failure I mean it's just part of the game and so we want to we feel like we should be able to go at it in an organized sane way but it is not an organized sane pursuit. So do you have rituals around writing or around playwriting? All three of you, what are your rituals around playwriting or writing and acting? Do you have them? For me I find myself doing everything at night for writing because like I have auditions and I have to prepare for auditions I like to do this TV and film thing so that I can then take time off and do my plays and other people's plays I love to do other people's plays but I have auditions added to things that really can really wreck the week because you have to learn these lines and then you have to put yourself on tape and you have to do all that stuff and that was supposed to be a day you thought you were going to write and so for two days you're trying to get this job for two or three days and then okay didn't get the job now you have to get back to your work and so I find myself sort of you know writing on the on the go just writing I've written all these plays in my spare time it feels like because I don't there are things that come in the making of a living comes in there and ruins any routine that I might have I don't think I have a ritual really but again that's my flaw you know but I mean when I say a deadline I collaborate I almost strictly collaborate that's mostly how my process goes and so one of my favorite things about that is that you're in relationship with other people and so with each project we kind of come into our own ritual and our own agreement about how that's going to go so it's kind of dependent on where we are in the process and in terms of whether it's the back and forth moment I'll spend a lot of time in normal daylight hours in relationship with my other and then a lot of time in my cave on my own so until I come back out with stuff that we have to go back and forth on so I don't know if that Lisa? I don't I don't think you're having flaws Lori it sounds to me like you're doing great It sounds to me like you're doing fantastically Child? I know I guess my favorite way to work my favorite situation is to be in workshop with a cast and a director and to have every day or every other day to bring in pages because I think because I was a performer before I was a writer as soon as I hear words coming out of people's mouths I can I know so much more than I ever can when it's on paper and so I really like to when I'm in that situation to get up really really early like even though I'm a night person to get up really early like four or five o'clock in the morning and then write for a bunch of hours and then send those pages to the stage manager take a shower go to rehearsal and then work work those pages with actors and a director and do the thing the next day and that's my my favorite favorite way to work I wish I had thought of that because that's actually my favorite part of the process is to be with other actors in the room especially ones that I trust that you're or have are writing with them in mind and the workshop process is great because when you get into the workshop process that's all you're doing you're not auditioning you're not running around trying to do anything else you're some place and you have two weeks and or three weeks and something has to happen and you're the motor so the workshop that process is fantastic I mean you know playwriting is your writing work that is it's a blueprint to create something alive on stage and I think that that is a advantage that people who were performers and became writers often have that they know how dialogue how action works on stage they know what that is and so this thing of writing on your feet in this way is and I'm sure many of you do that as well I mean it's it's tremendously productive and it is to the point you know it is exactly what we're trying to be doing you know Alan Aikburn's plays are the delight of theatrical action that they are because he has been writing on his company for years and he writes those plays and then they put them in front of an audience and they see them in the world you know there's no that's what that's what playwriting is for and that's what it's about and I think it's a very fortunate if you have that connection in you I think it's very difficult for playwrights who only have readings or only imagine hearing their work coming out of actors mouths if you have in you already because you are an actor because you work with actors that connection if that connection is inherent in you I mean that's that's a huge part of the deal and writing solo I you know before I even get to the workshops I go to people's houses and say you know I bring them a little bit of wine I say you got two hours I brought my music stand and I'm going to read this to you and I do that just so I can keep going with it and I do it periodically before I even get to the point of having a workshop because I hear and I'm standing also I'm standing and trying to you know physicalize it but it's very important to hear it that sounds like a fun evening come over to my house and if you're an actor and you're ever in a play where you're dressed as a clown at the end of scene two and then you have to be in a tuxedo at the top of scene three then you kind of know that that playwright was never an actor I like to open it up to the audience and give you all a chance to ask questions do we have someone to use a microphone or should I just repeat questions you have a microphone awesome so does it sound well you could also ask a question and I can repeat it so that hi so I think that this is a continuation of what you've been talking about right now but I'm curious to know presuming that we're never satisfied and just putting that aside what is your ideal amount of time to bring a work to a point where you would be as satisfied as a person can be meaning in months or years like what is the development process that you think brings your work to a fruition you can be happy with happy enough to present it into a workshop situation or happy enough to I mean you know you say okay I'm moving on to the next project because I feel that I have realized this project oh my god that takes years it takes me years because for me I talk it for a year and then I write it down and send it to my director and then I get a workshop for Sundance or the page of the stage at La Jolla is excellent oh hi playwrights conference excellent and you get a workshop and you go away from that and then once you have the work the first workshop you have a whole you can rewrite totally total rewrite and to into another workshop you know another rewrite and then I go to say Seattle where they're used to seeing early work and they're used to seeing the first version of the work and they know it's the first version it's not you know they know how to how to even handle that and after that then you rewrite again and and now you're thinking hmm I guess I'll go and do that that all Broadway production and you are working in production every minute of every day and even then when you get to the actual run of the show you actually know you're not done you know you don't I don't feel like I'm ever done you know I just let it go at some point you know I then I always end up doing it in LA and after that then I I say okay that's that but I get about three real productions before I think I've done it this each audience each production is telling me something I'm monster and I hate it when the director leaves and you have to like it's frozen for that production especially the first one and you and I'm I'm up in Seattle doing a play limping but I'm doing it because it's frozen for now you know I don't change lines or any blocking or anything until I have rewritten it and get it to the next part but I live a long time with it limping yes right here one second if you could wait for that hi you talked a lot about the difficulty of like switching hats between being a writer and being a performer I find that often when I'm writing like and you know you're writing you're like in love with this character and you might not be writing for yourself but how do you how do you navigate the space between creating a character that people can fall in love with and also giving the actors enough space to create something themselves that's to all of you just anybody who has to answer I mean characters should be actable I would think but but that doesn't mean that everybody is the right actor for it so I think when you have you know you have the experience of knowing that you've got the right person and I think with every collaborator in the theater the dream is when you have the thing in your head that's perfect and then the person does it and it's not what you pictured it's better than what you pictured and it's the things you couldn't have pictured and yet it is true and then you start to write for that character and then you know once you start to write on an actor you write on that actor if you were writing on a different actor things would go in a different way but that's part of the that's part of the collaboration and what it means is that in you know if you're lucky and you get a production that is exactly what you want it means the subsequent productions will never or it will be a long time before somebody will figure out how to make a production that feels as right as that one because all the parts aren't going to fit in the same way you're also writing into your set at a certain point you know you're writing timing based on and also story based on what is seen and what is not seen theater is ephemeral but I think that's I don't know if that answers your question or not Laurie, what are you going to say? Well I was about to say the same thing I mean I always have people in mind not as I'm writing I'm writing on people and also when I'm in the room with them in a workshop situation or even just discussing things with them I personally never feel this conflict of their contribution because I learn so much from them and I don't know if it's that I have luck or it is a relationship it's a collaboration with the people that I work with so I don't have that struggle but I think it is because they're from the beginning The other thing I would say is that sometimes you don't have the right actor and sometimes the things that you want an actor to do you've written a part that actually asks somebody to do some demanding things and you know in my plays a lot I write action that is about the progression of people thinking and in my experience American actors have a hard time doing that as a generalization they can play the progression of feelings but thinking as a passionate emotionally connected action that's something that British actors can do very well and then there are some American actors who do it really well so I have been told sometimes this is too long this is too boring there's nothing happening when I have known there is something happening and the actors even good actors who are looking at it are not they don't they can't see what that thing is and you can hold out for the right actor if you know that there's something there and then when you have that right actor then you might find out oh that part actually is a little boring and then you have to change it you know and then the other thing I would say is that sometimes there's work that's based on a pace and a sound of dialogue and the life of it has to do with that particular certain kind of character things and it's not in the content of what's said it's in the manner of speaking and if you don't have an actor who can hear that rhythm in their head and convey that rhythm again people will might say to you this writing isn't working because you don't have the right match of actor to bring that mechanism that's in your writing to to a loop to activate that Lisa and Laurie I appreciate both of you recognizing the messy sometimes conflicted reality of navigating that wilderness of the blank page all of you talk about the usefulness of being in the moment of the rehearsal floor and of the workshop to see how your words are actable and what is happening and learning from that you may all be talking about situations where you're commissioned for something so you're not being precious with it but I guess my question is is there any sense in the timeline of this isn't ready to go in front of people or is it I don't have time to be that delicate if it is on the page I need to hear it out loud and then I'll work out whatever I got to work out it's for me it's such a crucial aspect of the process that whether it's in the room or whether it's in a living room I have to hear it I have to hear it whether it's a table read whether it I couldn't skip it I couldn't skip that part of the process of having the words in people's mouths if I wanted to in terms of my process yeah no I feel the same and I think you you know the the thing to try to do is to make those situations where the expectations of the people watching meet the place where you are but you you I mean I think you're right you can't you can't be precious and make you know you have to just I mean I do I have to just sort of let the mess be what it is right and I guess I was I meant more not that you would skip the workshop process do you find yourself ever rewriting before you get it to people to read out loud or is it basically once you've gone through it and you know what you're aiming for then it's time to hear it out loud I'll rewrite every single second until somebody rips the pencil out of my hand yeah that's right yeah that's right and I have somebody that read that I it happens to be my husband who's an actor and he's kind of functions as my de facto dramaturg but nothing goes even to my composers until he's seen it and says he doesn't tell me it's good or bad but he'll ask me questions and there's always there's always a feedback portion for me that's right here enviable position and advice for those of us who'd like to get that percentage expanded for me I acted in plays all over New York City for 16 years just I worked in in all these shows for 16 years which is and may have different theater homes you know the public and playwrights and MTC I had these I created these theater homes so when I came to LA and and you know got the keys to the theater I actually had theaters that I could send it to because I had put down 16 years of groundwork so that's how I that's how I got in there because I did those musicals and I did I would be doing rehearsing a play in the day and doing the performance at night for 16 years so they you know they've read my plays I is that oh I'm sorry I was just gonna say that artistic home for me was how I started writing for a specific theater I was working at a theater that did all original work beautiful theater in Door County Wisconsin that it's called Northern Sky Theater the guy who wrote Spitfire Girl Fred Alley originated that theater and I said to Fred one day would you write a woman's show and he said why don't you do it and that's why I wrote my first play and why it got produced well it was it was written for that company and that's where I discovered my joy of doing that but I was part of this company and it gave I learned through this process that this was what I could do but I think having an artistic home is an important place to start and I also think supporting other people's work you cannot ask people to support your work if you do not go see their plays go to their readings offer constructive feedback do not tell them how to fix their play but ask them questions that they might want to hear you have to be there for other people it's only through serving other people that you can ask people to do that for you and that's one of the reasons I'm proud to be a rep I'll just say a plug for that it's a joy to serve other people so we have time for one more and I see you have a microphone so make it good your honesty your vividness has just been wonderful and I think a lot of us are writing from things that are emerging in our own life our lives grow we change and so on but we're expressing something that's happening at a certain time in our lives and it may feel very vulnerable to express it or do those first readings in someone's living room how do you handle that vulnerability and what's me and what's a character and people's reaction to early work and vulnerable work I don't make a judgment on it if I could keep them awake sometimes they fall asleep then they say it was divine I just have to have them listening and I need to hear it for myself and I'm in the moment you know and when they fall asleep it lets me know uh-huh there's something wrong here you know but I'm watching them too everything means something and I have a thick skin you know I have a thick skin I have been in shows I mean you know when you're working in the theater you just you know you all know I have a thick skin I don't make any judgment on it at all it's not supposed to be judged at that point I'm just working on it I'm in process I don't even feel vulnerable they don't like it you know and if they say oh it was wonderful okay alright but you know what I don't believe that either you know well a long time we do a show and people come back you know it was your worst show thank you you know but I think this is not a business for you know that vulnerability for me it just holds me back I always say I can never get a good job when I'm Alfred and Dorothy Woodard's daughter but when I become the person that has been created from all these years of working in the theater I can get a job I think that what Charlene says is very key it's a key answer to your question years ago I heard somebody say they were asked the question what's the difference between autobiographical solo performance and therapy and their response was therapy is for you and autobiographical solo performance theoretically it's for the audience and I think that what what if I'm interpreting correctly Charlene was expressing is that I wrote shows that drew on things from my family but I created a character of myself and used that material to make a piece of theater in which something would happen for the audience and if you are trying if what you are doing is really you know performance art sometimes happens in real time and there's not that artifice but theater is always created from artifice and for me taking things that happen in my real life and turning them into theater I was focused as Charlene was just describing on the craft of doing that in a way that would connect with the audience and I don't have quite as thick of skin as Charlene does but I will say that I never felt like it was like those stories I was telling that I was vulnerable inside of those stories those stories had by the time they made it to the stage they had happened a long time ago and they had been converted for the purposes of that show I mean then I had my own private which is actually not what I put on stage but I used that material and then I worked it with my craft to make something so when I'm telling these stories about being lost in Auschwitz and the audience is feeling that I'm reliving that what I'm thinking is I'm you know inside of performance conveying making you know Mark Broko when he was directing that show said to me you don't have to feel it you have to make the audience feel it and that's what I would be doing so that's how you I mean that's just a natural that's what your focus is that makes you your personal stories are yours you should keep them yours if you want to use them to make theater then do that but you shouldn't probably I wouldn't make myself vulnerable by throwing my my essential self on stage although I would try to make something essential and true theatrically for an audience but it's a different thing and you know that acting acting they always say if you're going to use an experience try to get something seven years ago or more so that you can have the objectivity and you can see it in a certain way so that you're not really just having this major moment on stage is happening right now my father died last week you know you're using something that you have some distance on thank you everyone thank you so much for coming and have fun thank you everybody