 to watch me work it's um what day is it amber what day it's earth day oh yep it's earth day it's wednesday it's earth day it's the 20 whatever it is the 22nd of april and i'm slp we've been doing j julian christopher has the best backgrounds sorry it's something great every day um and we've been doing this uh i've been doing this show uh for 11 years in the lobby of the public theater at the public theater i'm the master writer chair i write plays and movies and novels and tv shows and songs and blah blah and everything pretty much everything uh every kind of thing and um the public theater has been kind enough to host this this this thing for the past 11 years howl around came on a few years ago to help us livestream and now has the public theater and howl around have generously come together to provide us this platform so that we can come to you every day at five p.m where we work together for 20 minutes and then for the remaining 40 minutes we talk about your work and your creative process and that's what watch me work is all about it's about your work and your creative process and i offer you some encouragement uh some you know things like that what we don't do is give you specific feedback on things you've written we try to keep it open for everybody and talk about your process and not your product and anything else amber amber's gonna tell us how to get in touch oh the good stuff um yes if you would like to ask a question during the questions portion and you are inside of the zoom please click the raise your hand button it should be um in a participants tab that is more than likely at the bottom of your screen if you're on a computer or laptop if you're on an ipad more than likely on the top of your screen if you are watching the stream on howl round dot tv you can ask questions via the public theaters twitter or instagram you can also ask questions via the watch me work twitter which is at watch me work slp don't forget to use the hashtag howl round which is h o w l r o u n d tis all fantastic okay so uh we're going to get some work done for 20 minutes and then we'll get to chatting for the rest of the time here we go all right there we are that's our 20 minutes of work together time now let's do the rest of the time with questions from you guys if anybody has one let's do it we have nancy nancy are you there can you hear me i can hear you now all right so sorry um i i'm writing a comic memoir and most of it is true uh however i'm at a point where i have to i could bring in information about um other people who are still living and i don't know whether to fictionalize it at this point because i'm sensitive to how they if it ever if they would hear it or know about it but on the other hand it is really a part of the dilemma of the protagonist and so uh i know people come up with this you know if yeah how how how daring can one be um sounds um you you want to tell it like it happened or you want to fictionalize it because you're mindful of people who are still living who you know would be what have their feelings hurt or uh you know which is no small thing or maybe say defamation of character or i mean what is your concern with well i would be bringing in their private story i don't know what they experienced i can only imagine but i um i was you know yeah so fictionalized so fictionalized i mean that's a really good point um it's like you would be bringing in their private story you don't know really what they experienced so i would say take steps to fictionalize it somewhat um okay because uh yeah yeah because you're talking about at the point where you start talking about other people i i think you have a that's good to be somewhat concerned you know maybe change a name i mean it's have you written a first draft of it already nancy um i've written a great deal of it i'm at a at a critical point where i'm uh speaking about well you know it's it's about a relationship and the and the backdrop to them to the to to the to the partners other life and um not yeah it could go so many ways and and and because i'm a feminist i have all those issues and yet you know when you're really in something you're really in it and that's basically how you feel so to be emotionally honest with the writing i i i don't know whether to write from the place that uh she i was in at the time it all happened or from this abstracted view where i am a lot more critical and i you know it's it's hard because it doesn't it's a little more it's not as juicy but i'm i've aged and i've i've thought about things over the time so it's finding that balance i guess i'm trying to find the balance so that the tone is correct right well there are a couple of different questions you're asking now it's like how much do i you know how do we keep it uh just we fictionalize to sort of save the real people uh some face should i should i find the right tone all those things so maybe just tell it as you remember it get the first draft out nancy and then again with your publisher like we were telling someone yesterday with your publisher um with your editor you know then you can take a look at it and see what it needs to take to go to the second draft um you say if you want it to be juicy so go ahead and write it in the juicy interesting way that you think it should go and if you need to step back a little bit uh after you've written that first draft then maybe the second draft is the time to step back and rewrite and edit great okay thank you thanks very much for all this thank you thanks Nancy all right next we have Ramona hi um thank you so much for doing this you have no idea how wonderful it's been to have a group to come to um i've had a writing practice for a long time but i've never i've never written very long pieces and i'm not used to creating on my own i used to do improv and improv sketch writing and so for me i've always had the what to me has been very liberating of not having to come up with a full idea you show up to the performance space with one element i'm a watermelon and your partner is going to rip off that and your only duty as an improviser is to make your partner look good it's about nothing else i recently i've had a character that has been following me for years and i finally figured out what that character means to me and i've started exploring the idea but i find myself it's like being in a very large garden all of the sudden i can see all sorts of elements around me but i don't know how i don't know how to play with those ideas with the same level of freedom i used to be able to just take in an idea to my group and i could see it reflected back immediately and that immediate contact it let me test my idea oh i hadn't i hadn't thought about it from that perspective i hadn't thought it could contrast this way because it's not just me i'd be seeing it reflected in all these other people around me and i'm having trouble i don't know i feel like i'm in my head which i obviously am but i've never i've never been in a position where i'm creating something where i can't immediately reflect that out and so now when i'm facing all of these potential ideas that i could follow i don't know one should i be trying to differentiate between them or just play with as many of them as i can i i don't know how to create on my own which sounds like a very strange idea but i feel very i miss my buddies i don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of and i don't know i don't know how to test myself without that that makes that's cool well i mean sketch comedy is really really hard so you've been doing stuff that's really difficult on a whole nother level and a whole nother kind of difficulty um because you have to come in there and be ready to ready to play with your people you know i'm a watermelon and then what do they got you know that's kind of great that's really it takes a lot of daring and courage and artistic chops to be able to do that so that's cool so you got that down you know how to do that and now you're trying something a little different which is playing by yourself yeah creating things by yourself which is a whole nother level of hard you know a whole nother level of difficulty um you know there's a couple things one yeah you could you could call a couple of friends and cut a spitball ideas with them you could um or you could uh like you said just try out different things i mean you those of us who write a lot by ourselves are trained in the uh do you have any imaginary friends yes which is strange to say at my age but yes no no what i'm saying is the writers have a lot of imaginary friends that's that's who we talk to all the time so it's um but you can do improv with your imaginary friends i mean you have the one character that means a lot to you and what about is there another character in the room do you see what i mean and they're they create a dialogue i mean it's you're not really alone you're as alone as you are on stage by yourself with your idea of i am a watermelon you just have to throw yourself into it and try out your ideas it sounds a little simplistic but think of what your character wants what they're doing just make it don't worry about being stuck inside my head why it's or you can if you want to i mean you know what i mean it just feels weird it feels weird to be well what do you mean stuck inside your head like you don't look like you're maybe you are inside your head right now it looks like you're in your living room or something when you're improvising i've managed to create characters i never would have thought of because it's so quick and when i'm writing on my own i have so much time that it feels like i'm i'm writing from a much more logical practical perspective and so i'm setting up like i'm actually setting up scenarios before i write and i don't know how to find that same level of freedom writing as you can when you just walk out to out onto that stage and just decide you know what i'm a piece of fruit and that's all you have to do and off you go yeah and then but then what what if you're also the other person i'm a piece of fruit okay then what you have to be that other person i'm saying Ramona do you understand you have to actually embody your partner that's what we do when we write we embody multiple characters so we're not just in our head being logical we're actually in but we're actually able to transport ourselves into the shoes or to the the space of the other characters so it's not just coming from like my head i am actually kind of like not teleporting i don't know what the word is but you're actually moving around and being other people so you are yourself and you are your improv partner at the same time if you want to try working fast give yourself do like one minute sprints or something write standing up do you know what i mean do you write sitting down or standing up i've tried actually writing on my feet so i'm walking around and just speaking it out great do you actually when you're doing your improv have we actually written stuff or is it just like you're out there talking no i used to do sketch writing as well so actually writing great okay well did you do that alone or did you do that with others i did it alone but they were always very short pieces great so right right short pieces like i said right really short pieces right so just keep exploring and see what comes of it yeah just keep exploring see what comes of it you know if you try you know you don't need to label it like oh i'm in my head you know you're sort of right on your feet walk around when you're get into your body you know i mean get more into your body like you would if you were performing you know all ideas are good or interesting you know but if you've done sketch comedy writing then you you know and you've done it alone you know how to do this already i know i'll keep going you're like Dorothy you've already got the shoes Ramona just look down you're there you're already there all right okay thank you thank you thanks manna next we have brandon hi um i just want to say thank you so much i've been part of this for the past um i guess my question comes with a bit of a confidence thing i decided for the first time in like maybe a year and a half to pick up and it's already like a complete draft but as i'm reading it the piece itself just jumps around in time too much and i feel like there's a lot of whiplash between it's like three lines of dialogue and then different time period three lines of dialogue period it's it's essentially like a memory play i guess i'm trying to emulate i just i'm like little timeline whiplash between going from point a which is like towards the end okay um you're you're the sound cut in and out a little bit so let me just repeat what i think you said um you're you've written a play you're rereading you've had the whole draft you're rereading it and what concerns you is the sort that it jumps back and forth through time because it's kind of a memory play now which is pleasing to you and sounds like a cool idea but what's tricky is that the kind of whiplash thing you've got going it feels like because it's three lines of dialogue and then it then in another time period back and forth and back and forth so it seems like the jumping around in time isn't bothering you so much which is fine but the the whiplash feeling is bothering you a little bit is that correct yes that's correct okay okay so can you flesh out those story beats you know so because it's like it's too fast right like that right my sister my mother my sister my mother whatever right okay so what you want to do is allow yourself allow your story allow your play to settle a little bit in a little bit more maybe in one of the time uh one of the story lines so if it's whatever 1940 and 1912 what i'm just picking shit you know so 1940 what is happening in 1940 that we need to see are we seeing it great how does that influence what's going to happen in 1912 what is happening in 1912 now what is it you see what i mean don't just pop back and forth like a ping pong okay um again it sounds like that might help just allow yourself a little more time in the in the various time zones all right thank you you're welcome thanks friend and next we have alexandra hi um so i have a question in regards to the kind of play that i've been trying to write um when i was in high school um we read uh the death of the last black man in the whole entire world which is incredible thank you for writing that piece but the something that's always struck me about it is that it's so i don't want to call it abstract but that's the only word that is coming to my brain right now um but it's not a traditional linear play um and i've always been writing plays that are like two characters walking to room and they're in real time and they're talking and whatever um so how do you go about writing a play that that's that's so rich but abstract and not exactly um written in a traditional way all right um that's a cool question alexandra um those of us who write abstractly or poetically or whatever um aren't trying to write poetically or abstractly um so i think it's just when you're aware of things you know um i ran into somebody who's a really uh one of the fashion anyway some fashion icon person and i said gee what is it about you know people like you look at you you're all dressed you know she said you're born with a fashion sense she says you know which is interesting you know she says i can't go outside with anything but certain kind of shoes or so you know so it's it's just like the sort of how she orients her life and the things that are attracted to her so if you write poetically those are the kinds of things that are attractive to you um that's also what you're feeding yourself you know so maybe if you want to write more poetically read more poetry watch less television or whatever it's called you know what i mean you know um if you want to write more like a tv writer watch more television read less poetry you know um so feed yourself the thing that you want to you know if you want to be a better basketball player get out there and practice your you know your dribbling or whatever you know so practice that read that read your poetry read your uh abstract writers look at the world and realize that you know we're living in the matrix you know i know or all the world's a stage you know what i mean um there's something going on behind the to happy earth day by the way everybody but there's you know 50th anniversary but you see what it means you got to feed yourself appropriately alexandra um do you feel when you're writing that what you like for instance with that piece did you feel that you were writing hyper specifically or were you writing i'm just curious as to what you're what you felt in terms of you know writing what you know what what was that you that you knew writing that piece so when were you born alexandra what year what year just generally just just kind of like 2000 i'm going to be 20 in a month oh congratulations okay okay so i wrote that play in 1990 so i cannot remember i mean i could say some you know i cannot really remember what i was feeling you know although i was hearing and i was feeling the play you know i was very much feeling the play i wasn't trying to write abstractly i could hear the play in my head i was trying i was writing about a real a very real thing that i knew to be true some shit was going down you know um and when we redid the play at signature theater a few years ago it resonated even more profoundly than it did back in whenever we did it back in downtown 1992 whatever we did it so you know but for you again because this is about your work and not mine it's very important to again we're not trying to be interesting poetic important on broad way all these people this grasping that's going on is very unfortunate i think in the art world whatever kind of work we do these days the grasping is unfortunate i think um you you just need to focus on what feels true to you and if you white two character plays where two characters are in a room there's plenty of great two character plays with two characters in a room i've written plays with two characters in a room yay for two characters in a room you know what i'm saying you should come by all your artistic choices honestly right instead of not this is what you're not doing this but instead of i want to be i have so many students who would say i want to be more poetic i want to be more easy i want to be more successful i'm gonna you know and you need to write your your play and another one and another one and another one and and other things too not just plays you know you see you just got to keep writing and keep feeding yourself now's a good time to catch up on your reading it has been yeah okay thank you you're welcome thanks alexandra all right next we have bella you there yes hi hey bella um so i have been thinking about history or historical context in theater a lot recently and i'm thinking about this in relation to well specifically i was thinking about your play father comes home from the wars and i guess i just wanted to get a little bit of your perspective on approaching something as uh enormous and grand and sometimes impersonal as the idea of history um and how how you sort of break that down into something that is meaningful and immediate instead of sort of uh like a ploy for emotional tension or something like that right right bella history is about people i mean that's how i experience it anyway right history is about people for me for some writers it's about concepts and ideas and issues and things to say for me it's just about a whole bunch of people doing stuff trying to do stuff you know stay focused on the people and what they're doing given a certain historical context you know whatever you did today that's history you know isn't it yeah that's part of history so just again stay focused on the characters i think i mean that's what i do i stay focused on the characters right and how can i ask uh there seemed to in that play specifically there seemed to be a particularly um contemporary lens that you're applying to these characters um and and they seem to have sort of contemporary awareness is filtered through their uh historical context what what is i mean do you have a process of joining those two um paradigms writing writing you know i mean you know again it's i think it's it's yeah people read things and then they go yeah i want to do that and then it becomes it's it's a very organic thing i wasn't trying to do something i was just listening to what was going on and how do we know that these people had to have a a contemporary understanding of things i don't know i wasn't alive back in 1860 whatever how do we know what they were like right really really we assume that they were more clueless more something more religious more interesting something you know um we assume these things about people that we uh see from a distance whether it's people in the past or whether it's your you know the other whoever they are so again seeing them as people focusing on what they want um but it was but it's uh yeah it opened up a whole sort of you know yeah people wanting to i don't know it's it's it comes from an honest place and not an attempt to put something on a historical moment thank you yeah sure thanks maila we have about 10 minutes left and next we have jacob jacob hello um so i'm uh curious about uh like picking projects to work on and specifically i feel like i always struggle with this but especially in a moment like this where there is so much sort of chaos um in terms of both like how do think like prioritizing new work versus prioritizing like rewrites of old things um and also prioritizing work in the theater versus work in film and tv work that is for like you know that feeds the soul versus work that is for payment um and i guess i'm curious if you have any thoughts about your in your own practice of like how you attempt to find balance uh among those many sort of competing notions great question jacob and i know jacob from way back so it's really good to see you man and i know you're you're really disciplined and working hard all the time um it's great that you have so many things going on now it's good to hear that really good to hear that um i would i don't know i would say go where you're you know unless you have something that producers for example are saying hey where's the latest draft right if they're saying hey where's the draft we need it right now because we're even in this hiatus time we're going to be sending the script around or whatever trying to set it up somewhere whatever they're doing um if they're that's the case then i would say man maybe you should work on that and fulfill your contract right um but other than that i would say go where your gut leads you go where your heart says hey this thing over here you know it might be a good time to just bring some projects to completion and then start on that new thing because then you will have would have at least finished those outstanding projects you know but um sorry the sun's coming in making this really weird but um but um yeah i would i would think i like to get things sort of off my plate before i start new things you know that's my preference but everybody's different so i would say if there's an outstanding project that you owe somebody something maybe just get it done if you can get it done quickly then you look around and you say okay now that i've sort of satisfied that requirement you know uh i paid the bill now i'm going to look around and say wow maybe there's that project that i want to finish or if there's nothing there then you go i really have a jones again a desire to uh do this other thing you got to follow your gut it's a great time to do it if you can you know totally the sun here i am oh here this is better yeah the sun comes in at five it's six o'clock yeah so you know so you think like yeah what really pulls me you know what excites me um and go with that you know what delights me maybe what seems like fun or you know it could be kind of cool you know does that make sense yeah um yeah i mean i think when it's it's that tricky thing of that balance between on the one hand trying to finish things and on the other hand because if i feel like if you follow just what if i follow just what delights me i'm only ever working on new things and i never finish anything okay so finish so go ahead and finish some finish something you know maybe trade off finish one of those outstanding things just to get the fucker out of the way you know and then go back and then say well maybe i'll think about something that delights me you know but get those things done it's a good feeling when you got the things done and then you're free you can do whatever you want you know that's what i'd say okay it's great to see you man to see you thank you good to see you thanks jakem all right we have about six minutes left next we have karla karla are you there i hear me can you hear me now yes yeah i will have these headphones that the microphone doesn't work and hello hi hi um i actually i've been here for a while um and i actually work at the public theater oh it's really great i work front of house so yay public theater family um my question is uh um i'm writing something uh that lately has become more of a it's basically my own story and it's very personal um and i am trying to write it just because i want to write it in a way of healing and finding a way to heal through it but i'm having trouble getting some things out i'm writing it down i'm a writer that writes by hand first and i write first person and then i'm trying to like pass it on and write it as to a person to kind of see it you know see it over there and try and like figure it out sort of for myself so i don't know it's like a lot it's like a lot of stuff it's very heavy and i don't know what is the best way to kind of comfort mentalize it in a way i'm trying to take it step by step and i tried to do like uh at least i'm writing it in novel form so i'm like focusing on like chapter number one and like what i need to put in that chapter and it's it's coming together but i at the same time i feel like i'm flipping so like pages and like what's the other thing and like it maybe i'm like overwhelming myself and it could be that is the the the content or maybe not i'm not sure so i'm like it's like stressing me out a little bit and so i didn't know if i should i don't know i don't know how to compartmentalize it or try and get my emotional part of it out anyway i don't know if that makes sense it makes total sense it sounds like a really beautiful project and it sounds really necessary if kind of difficult to write and there are things you got to do to sort of give yourself a chance to chill so you're it's like you're crossing a river and you want some stones you know some rocks to step on you know what i mean so you want some rock so you could you have sort of an idea about what each chapter is going to talk about um sort of at least right now i it's it's based on something that happened to me when i was in college so i in like i've been even talking with a therapist about it because you know i talk about how writing is a good way to think things out right and so i was like that's always where it starts for me that moment in times where everything happened or everything started so i start from there but now like for example today in our 20 minutes i started writing about well when i start the story nobody knows anything about my character they just suddenly you're coming into the action and she's on the phone crying and like freaking out maybe i need to dig more into this character that is me but yeah i don't know it i think it would be helpful again to build yourself some stones to get across the river okay because it sounds like you're you know you're like you start you're not sure if that's the right way to start you might go back you might do so just build yourself get some maybe some index cards or pieces of paper that i don't have my census card oh yes i do my handy oh you know little pieces of paper right and you can write on the piece it doesn't have to be actual index cards okay you can just get pieces of paper and fold them and write you know what's in each chapter in this chapter i want to show this in this chapter my character does this in this so you keep it small you can write by hand on these little cards but they're bite size they're manageable yeah yeah you're not sitting there going okay i have to write the whole thing from page one here i go in this chapter my character does this in this chapter i want to talk about this okay so you have maybe i don't know 10 of these cards because it has the stuff of every chapter and then you can go through and say okay today i'm working on chapter whatever it is this chapter do you want to do it in order this is a chapter i want to work on great i'm going to sit down and work on this one uh tomorrow yeah i can't really work on that chapter anymore let me go to this other chapter here and write a little bit on that one okay it gives you the ability to flip around yeah flexible um while at the same time keeping to some kind of organizational principle hmm yeah okay yeah i just more ideas you can add more cards go ahead yeah yeah because i exactly i just keep jumping and even in the same chapter like today i was like i'm going to try and focus on chapter one but then i was jumping between talking about one character and then another i was like ah no i have to focus on specificity oh i can't hear you i just said exactly exactly i'm trying to keep the i'm trying to the sun sunscreen in my on my camera but exactly okay so you just just try to keep it manageable with little things like index cards allows you to take a breath it's not a huge notebook full of things right yeah um and just and also take breathers sometimes and type up what you've got that's a good thing to do too yeah i've been i've been trying to do that whatever because i had a i started a new notebook because i finished my other one thanks to the day so everything i had in that one i typed it all up and put it and like you know it looks like a real thing it's so nice i'm now i'm back here with a new notebook and am i okay it's too many flipping and going back and forth and so i don't want to add more stress to something that it's already a traumatizing experience that i want to talk about you know i hear you i hear you but yeah thank you so much it's been amazing and it's nice to have again a connection to the public since i'm so far away i know great to see you carla yeah nice to see you thank you thank you hello okay what time it's six oh one it is six oh oneth uh shall we come back tomorrow i think that we should i think that's a grand idea s lp okay um just a reminder everyone you can sign up to be an each day zoom class at public theater dot org by three p.m a student standard time each day and we will email the link out by three and four thirty p.m and we will see you all tomorrow see you