 Welcome back to the Latinx Super Friends. I'm really excited to have Herbert Ciguenta here today who's zooming in from San Diego, which is kind of almost my hometown. I was born in Tijuana, but I grew up in San Diego. My dad went to San Diego State and then I moved up to Escondido, so it's sort of like my early childhood home, so I'm really glad to have Herbert here. He almost needs no introduction, but I think most of you know him through Culture Clash as being one of the founding members. He is Salvadorian, is that correct? My parents are, yes. I was born in San Francisco. You were born in San Francisco, Go Giants. But he's also a solo performer and we've crossed paths a few times on Chavez Raveen and on, I think it was the Cantin Flas project. Right, my first solo show, yeah. St. Ann's, I believe. Yes. Right, but you know, I've been following the work for many, many years. Some, someday somebody's got to write a book about y'all. So if anybody has the resources or works at university to do that, get in touch with Herbert after this. Thank you for coming. And I do just want to start out with a few words about what's been going on, and I hope that you are all taking care of yourselves in this pivotal moment. And I am going to acknowledge that, that this, this, this space is for all of you, that we acknowledge that black lives matter, that we seek justice against police brutality against the individuals who have been harmed and killed by police in our cities and our communities. And I just want to offer just for all of you to take this opportunity to find solace in the work that we're doing and if you're inspired to write and inspire to act, which is one of the greatest things you can do with your pen with your laptop to speak out. This is what we were, this is why we started this. So thank you for being here. Let's continue to combat anti-blackness in our communities, especially the Latinx community. And, and if you can, you know, we have, you know, just some thoughts about, just some suggestions I have, which is to read up about anti-blackness in Latinx communities to support policy changes that could help combat structural racism and policing to bring visibility to black Latinx in your lives, whether they're colleagues in the theater or, or elsewhere in your communities, support organizations and activists that fight anti-blackness. And the last thing, and I think it's the most important thing is educate your family members about African roots in Latin America. And I can't say enough about being so much advanced, so much more advanced in my age, finding out about how slave trading happened through Veracruz, Mexico and through South America. And the slave trade didn't just happen in the Americans in the Caribbean, it happened all up and down the hemispheric Latin American continent. So, read up on that if you can. And that's all I have to say, but, and I want to, if you have any other questions, you can always reach out to me via my email, which is what I sent the link to. But I want to give Herbert the time and opportunity to share his knowledge with you because I really think that he has seen and done so much, and we only have an hour. So I want to hand it off to him. Thank you, Herbert, for being here. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. How about we all take a deep breath real quick. Let it out. Thank you. I don't know if you're feeling it, but I feeling, you know, as an artist I'm feeling agitated, you know, emotional. But I think, you know, as storytellers as artists, this is where we have to shine this is where we have to start writing our stories and expressing ourselves, you know, otherwise we go crazy. And that's what I, and that's why I'm here. I'm, you know, I'm a dinosaur compared to you guys, you know, I'm 61. I've been doing theater since 1980. So I was already in my 20 or early 19 or something. I started with a group called at the other gusto in San Francisco. And we did plays in Spanish, and it was also the first Latino gay, I think the first Latino gay group, even though I was straight, I was in this group. And we did plays in Spanish mainly. And then in 1984, Renee Janes from Galeria La Raza had this crazy idea to put together a comedy show, a comedy fiesta for Cinco de Mayo, you know. Nobody, nobody had heard of Chicano comedy at the time, you know, we had Paul Rodriguez on on TV and that was about it. And, you know, that was a kind of a disaster. But, but Renee had this vision of putting, you know, doing a comedy night, and inside a 50 seat art gallery art gallery in San Francisco's Mission District. We formed comedy fiesta. And it was me, Richard Montoya, Marga Gomez, you might know Monica Palacios, and Jose Antonio Bursiago, the late poet. And we did this, you know, we did a night of stand up theater stand up comedy and it was just life changing for everybody for us and for the audience because nobody had heard this type of comedy which was a, you know, about Chicano's, you know, about urban bilingual Chicano's that lived in the city, but were culturally now assimilated, you know, and we weren't, you know, we weren't doing Teatro Campesino. Teatro Campesino was talking about the struggles in the fields, which was great, which was necessary. We were now talking about the neurosis we felt being outside the fields and now we were in a white man's world in a white man's diversity, right. And so I think that's why culture clash struck a nerve early in the 80s because we were the only ones talking about this by by culturalness and this the bilingualness of our existence, you know, and we moved to LA in 1990, and we are, you know, and we went we had a really, we had two great runs at Los Angeles Theater Center first the mission, which is the first play we wrote, which I'll talk about, and a bowl of beans really got us on the map. We were discovered by, you know, Hollywood and we were discovered by PBS, and also the regional theaters came sniffing around. And, you know, by the mid and by 1993, we were now performing at the regionals we were now performing in white spaces, you know, we weren't fringe anymore we were now. We were now playing at white spaces, sometimes which in the beginning with Chicano directors, and then later, we started hiring and collaborating with white directors and white dramaturgs, much to talk looks chagrin, but we'll talk about that later. And so what I'm here to tell you is that I have a lot of knowledge obviously there's we've been, we've been highly successful in the regionals. We haven't looked back since 93 I mean once once you're in the game you want to stay in the game of course. And in order to stay in the game you have to, you know reinvent yourself every five or 10 years in order to you can't be writing the same stuff all the time you know, you have to start reinventing yourself and start thinking about stuff that you don't know about anymore. So we're going to talk about five different ways of, of writing of material. I'm the kind of writer that doesn't, I don't write every day, you know, I don't, I don't use these methods that that have been really great, you know where you know you open a portal and you want right about a handkerchief. In Argentina in you know surreal you know magic realism I'm I don't I don't write that way I'm very practical I'm very pragmatic. I'm very organized and that's what I'm going to teach you today how to organize all your thoughts, how to outline a play so that it's so ready to write that you probably will write it in a weekend, and that's what really happens with me I, I accumulate this stuff for months, all the knowledge that I need in order to write a play and map it out, so that when I go away for a weekend, I come back with a play that's all organized all, you know, ready, not ready to perform not ready to produce, but certainly ready to read and workshop, and get it ready for people to look at, seriously look at, you know, and give me notes, you know. I'll be talking about writing what you know. The modular model, the modular model is very important I think that was how Bola beans a lot of the early culture clash stuff started where they weren't plays necessarily they were, you know, they were in there and I wouldn't call them sketches either they're just, they're just modular modular until we'll talk about all this. We're also going to talk about, if we have all time, you know, we also, for many years did interview based theater, spikes site specific plays that started in Miami. Then later on we did that for many years and got very famous with that. And then later, later we started adapting classics. We started with Aristophanes, because we felt that. And we believe me we didn't know this, you know, one thing I got to tell you guys is that culture clash. We're in an anomaly we're totally anomaly, we're the most uneducated theater, you know, theater artists that you know we we don't have formal degrees in theater like a lot of you guys did, you know, we came out of a time where we just did it you know we just had to do it out of necessity. You know so we're very non academic, which is probably good because that gave us the style that is known as culture clash style, you know which is a, which is a, which is everything in the kitchen sink. And if it works it works, but I'm just saying it's very non traditional in that sense. We're fiercely independent. We really have no, we didn't, we didn't come out of a click. In other words, we're not, we didn't have writing mentors like for nas, you know, and, and all these, you know, we're not part of that of any of those clicks we formed, we were very independent and we formed our own, our own style without any academic or traditional influences whatsoever. Really the in our influences were pop culture TV, you know, films, those were our influences really. And of course, Teatro Campesino Luis Valdez was always, always always the foundation of where we came from because we all worked with Luis Valdez at one point or another in our careers. And in a sense to our mentor. Then later, we're going to talk about the dreaded to act structure. Now these are all things. Again, when I say I wasn't educated but after if you want to stay in the game you better get your education together right. I, I really, I really came in late late you know I started studying the classic Shakespeare all this stuff, much later, you know, only maybe 1015 years ago I really started examining the classics again and seeing what was so important about them why are they. They're reproduced all the time, you know, and a lot of it to has to do with the structure, the two act structure is very very important that I know now, now that I'm a playwright, now that I'm a playwright that it's a structure that you that that almost everything you see on TV, almost everything you see on TV almost everything you see on movies has follows that structure. You know, so, you know, this is just the way it is. And if you want to get fancy if you want to get artistic and and all that then, then welcome to the fringe, you know, but if you want to seriously get produced, you're going to have to follow that structure. And then later I'm going to talk about solo bio biographical work. I'm really proud of a piece called a weekend with Pablo Picasso, where I, I act and paint in it, because a lot of people don't know this but I'm. I have a degree in art and I taught art for many years in Oakland, California. So acting was really, was really a, you know, a hobby that became a career. I really wanted to be a visual artist first. So a weekend with Pablo Picasso was a was a great play for me to combine all my talents together so so I'm really looking forward to. I might share a monologue with you later about that. So, um, let's go back. If you're a new writer. Yeah, if you're a new writer, you got to write what you know, you know, if you're a dreamer right about being a dreamer. You know if your second generation right about that right about what you know right now. I think. And that'll get you through maybe one or two plays for sure, you know you have enough material enough. You've lived enough life where you could probably write about what you really know, you know, and what you're passionate about. Even, even though we were uneducated. Culture class we did our first play was called the mission. And little did we know and it was a compilation of different sketches that we had, but we formed the play. You know we wanted to get reviewed. And so we form we wrote this play called the mission. We didn't know at the time that we wrote a real good to act structure play, you know, and it was basically three out of town, I mean three out of work actors culture clash, you know we play ourselves. We are so frustrated that we don't get cast in the regionals which was true that we, we, we form a band. We form a group and we kidnapped Julio Iglesias. We can have Julio Iglesias in order to get on national TV so you know this was you know, totally silly but it really worked out it really were the play really got us noticed because it had a real clear story, you know, and it you and it used us as a protagonist. And when you write your first story yeah you can use yourself, or somebody like you, an avatar, you know, of yourself in order to tell the story. That can be the protagonist for example, you know, I think Josefina Lopez is real women have curves is an excellent, excellent first play, or second play in this case, because she's basically writing about herself and her relationship about with her mother and her mother. So that's why it's so successful and it keeps getting produced again because it really, it's, it's a perfect kind of, you know, what I know play. Now, another way of another way of the way I start a play. I don't know what if it's not you know what I'm trying to say is a lot of plays that you're going to be writing after you write what you know are things in subjects that you to have not much that you don't know much about, you know, when I didn't know much about Chavez ravine, for example, when Gordon Davidson says hey, would you like to write guys write about a play about the Dodgers come into LA. We said sure but, and you know we didn't really know about Chavez ravine we knew that some Mexicans were kicked out in order to make a room for the stadium but we really didn't know all the specifics. So what I do what we what I do personally is I, I compile a database of knowledge that helps me write the play later on. I compile a database of ideas that all relate under one, one subject. So the can you bring up the slide that says immigration story. Yeah, of course. You guys seeing that right. Yeah. So this is, this is just a basic. Now I, this is the modular system. And this system works good if you're going to write a modular play, or if you're going to write a traditional to x structure because you're going to need all these things to interact with each other at one point or another. The main story here is an immigration story. See that in the red. That's, that's what the stories about okay. I'm going to keep everything real general right now. You can be more specific but this is we're just going to I'm just going to write about an immigrant story. Now on the right of that you'll see the immigrant right, the immigrant is my protagonist, for example, we're going to follow their story. Now, where is now you have to ask yourself questions where is this immigrant from how old is he, or she, do they have children. And they'll and that and that creates another circle inside that inside that circle in other words if that immigrant is watermelon, right. Well, then just don't say, then you have to then you have to do research about Guatemala, you should know everything possible about Guatemala, the history. You know, what's the capital while I'm out of city. What's the national bird that gets out. Guess what the kids all dies. If it's in cage, it's a bird that literally dies when it's in cage so isn't that a nice, you know, isn't that a nice connection right. So in other words if you do research on Guatemala. A lot of the Guatemala history is going to maybe help is definitely going to help flesh out the character, right. So that's, you know, that's one way of looking at it and then. And of course, the immigrant comes to comes to the United States, that journey that might be another, that might be another bubble, you know, the journey itself in other words going through Mexico and all that. That's a whole another kind of worms, but let's say this. Let's say this immigrant gets caught gets caught crossing over. Let's figure out. Okay, now you have a whole government ice thing. You have to learn about how that how the government works how ice works. What is the history of ice, you know how long have we been deporting people you know what is the, what is the wetback. You know, was that called the, the, you know, when they. Back Mexicans in the after the war, you know. So there's a whole history of government and ice right and immigration in general so that's really important to know. And then later in the play, you have a support you can have somebody that supports the immigrant. Well then you have to find something that you know somebody who has who's a maybe an attorney, an immigrant rights attorney maybe somebody who's an activist. So all you know, and if, if it's an activist then you have to go out and do some research and see what how do they do it how do they defend people that come in undocumented right. And then the conclusion, the conclusion. Oh, where I should have started actually I should have started with past history, I'm sorry, past history would have been the first one. But if you want to talk about immigration you have to know in the all the, yeah, the operation went back you have to know about the history of migration, and it probably starts with the is probably starts with the Mexican American war right. America took one third of Mexico's land and created a border right. And so you need to know these things because all these things are going to feed are going to be the soil they're going to be the soil of your play. And then, and then you have to come up with the conclusion what happens to this immigrant. Does he get out, does he get deported back, that's up to you that's create that's really up to you. But you see that you needed all these real practical knowledge in order to write this story. Thank you, Thea. So, so this Herbert is like research but it's not you're you're not trying to write a history play you're you're using that information to inspire. Yeah, you're going to be. But I just feel like the history and all this real hard facts are going to give your creative writing a lot more weight. Yeah, I'm not talking I'm not talking about creative writing here I'm just talking about real nuts and bolts data that you're going to need that gives everything you say validity, right and authenticity because you know your shit. You've done your research, you know what I'm saying. Bola beans was a was a great. Once we wrote what we, you know, Bola beans was about Chicanismo, we'll get into that model. But if you're, if you're a new writer if you're a poet, if you're a musician, maybe a two act structure play is not the way to go for you. You know, I recommend the modular system, where you're able to put different tones different things different themes, different, different, yeah, different tones into one play under one umbrella, you know. So let's, let's, I love, I love what's to Zaki Shangue says let's bring up that that slide. Yeah, of course. I'm looking for poets and people that are, you know, yeah, as a poet in American theater. I find most activity that takes place on our stage overwhelmingly shallow still did an imitative. That is probably one of the reasons I insist on calling myself a poet or writer, rather than a playwright. We're solely in the poetry of a moment, the emotional and aesthetic impact of a character or a line for too long now Afro Americans in theater have been duped by the same artificial aesthetics that plague our white counterparts, the perfect play. As we know it to be a truly European framework for European psychology cannot function efficiently for those of us from this hemisphere. So, I think we can snap on that one right. We can go back to your solution of the perfect play the two act structure all this, it's a European concept, it is a Eurocentric concept. But guess what folks, we live in a Eurocentric society. So, here we are. That doesn't mean you as a writer have to stick to those norms, you know, there are very successful modular plays, like, like her play, like Bola beans, like, you know, he would be Newton, a lot of a lot of different, you know, a lot of different plays have reached, you know, success, even though they did not follow that structure. Let's bring up the. I'm sure you guys are are familiar with Ebola beans if you're not shame on you but let's bring up. Let's bring up the Ebola beans idea bubble. So Ebola beans is about Chicanismo, right. And that's a big big subject. Right, where do you start. Well, first, we started by using ourselves as the protagonist culture clash, three Chicanos right three Chicanos on a journey to find out what she means in, in the night in 1992, in this case. The first sketch. The first sketch starts with Columbus. Why Columbus well, because that's when in a sense, Americas, you know the American, you know, when Chicanos started in other words our journey starts there. When the Europeans came to America. We've mixed with the natives with Native Americans. And that's really the first Chicanos right. So we have this sketch, we made this sketch that's almost like the Godfather where where Columbus comes to America and he has a bastard son, the first Chicanos right. And so we start with that. Now let me make something really clear, all our plays, almost all of my plays. There's a lot of history in them. I think history is very, very important for many reasons because everything that's happening now, even the riots that are happening now right now is because of history. And it all, and it all goes back to colonialism, everything, almost everything, every problem in the in the world right now stems back to colonialism. From the 1900s to the 1900s, white people went crazy. The English, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, they conquered half of the world. Right. They conquered the southern hemisphere of the world. They exploited the resources, changed the religions, changed their language, all kinds of crazy shit. And then the Americans jumped into the colonious imperialistic thing in the 1900s, right. And so for 500 years, colonialism has was among us and then just recently just recently have the chains been broken. And of course this is the mess that we're in right. All this collective hurt is coming out now. You know, slavery is now the memory of slavery is now biting us in the ass, right, and that's what's happening out there on the streets right now. You know, the immigration is not a problem. That's a problem that happened many years ago when, when the United States took Mexico, you know, so you don't say so, all this is very, very important history. So then we get personal in Bola beans where Rick. Rick was almost, he was almost killed in San Francisco. He was shot by a gang member in San Francisco, just, just out right outside his doorway. And so he talks about La Muerte and how La Muerte is part of our culture right how what what a fine line it is right so that's we felt that that was important. And then one of our most probably the most famous sketches ever is called the return of Che Guevara. You know, because she kind of knows you know we're all about Che and about the Revolution right 1992, but who really is going to go out there with a gun and confront the system no way right, you're dead man. And so this Chicano brings back Che Guevara from the dead and Che Guevara is like ready to come you know it's like okay let's do it where you know where are the troops where the guns. He says I'm sorry. What happens at the party will the parties overhomes you know, there was no Communist Party, you know the basically the right wing had had, you know, basically the left was was dead right the left was dead by the 90s. And that's what our that's what our common was you know, and so Chicanismo was really, you know, really barking up the wrong tree as far as we're concerned. And then Richard had a Richard had his own monologue. Confused and full of rage was what it was the motto of that monologue, where it's basically a modern day Chicano just raving about being Chicano in the United States you know it's beautiful. It's a beautiful aria and that lasts like 20 minutes and so that's in the play. And then we end the play with Stan and deliver pizza. Now Stan and deliver was a very popular film and the 90s late 80s. And so we spoofed it, and we adapted it and made it ours. And you know it was another way of spoofing our culture and also making a political point. So a bowl of beans was a modular play, but it was all under the guys was all under the umbrella of Chicanismo. Okay, yeah. I'm going fast here guys but we got to now. Why don't we take five minutes. Why don't we take five minutes and you guys come up with your own come up with a theme. See how many circles, you know see how many other themes that relate to that theme you can make, and you can also make little ones you know you can make ones that are the offshoots of this one, you know saying, like Guatemala history you know or slavery you know boom, you know. So just have a, just for just to practice put, put down, yeah five minutes, right down your theme, which is pretty general. And then see what what comes out of that. History of that thing. Do you want to start a timer for you. Yeah, I have it. Yeah. Cool. And this compilation of data will help you in any kind of play not just a modular play but even the two x structure that you'll see later, but how that works. This is just a compilation of data. One minute. I always said that you have to be, you have to be an expert of what you're writing about, you know, one more minute, 30 seconds. So hopefully doing question and answer you guys can, maybe one of you guys can share one with us. Feel good. Let's keep going because we have a little time. In the 90s, we started. In the 90s we saw Anna Devere Smith's play Twilight about the LA riots, and that really impressed us we really thought wow this is cool this is modular right. It was all under one theme, the LA riots uprising, but she used different characters right different races in order to tell the story and overall story. We went to, we went to Miami, and the Miami Light Projects commissioned us to write a play about Miami. Now I had no idea. No, I had no idea what what Miami was about. All I knew is that there was retired Jewish people and there was Cubans right wing Cubans. And that was my stereotype of Miami, which is not far from the truth. We went deeper and deeper we we interviewed Jamaicans Haitians activists. You know, Queens and you know Queens in Miami Beach I mean we just, we interviewed like 6070 people and transcribed their their interviews, which were like an hour long. Then found, then we tried to find what's the theme about well the theme was Miami, but what was the, what were the connections. So the can you bring up the radio mambo idea please. Got it. Yeah, so radio mambo culture clash invades Miami. Even though it's, it was a modular play because we had all these different monologues right. What are we going to do with them, you know, and so you start finding out connections and stuff. So again we up on top, we cast ourselves as the protagonist culture class Chicanos going to Miami not knowing anything about Miami, right. When we go to Miami, we, we find out through black academics and black artists and whatnot that Miami was is a black city, it was founded by African Americans, you know, and it has this rich history. It had these rich neighborhoods that were decimated after you know, urban sprawl and all that and after, you know, the freeways and highways, cutting through it, much like LA. And so we also interviewed Cubans, you know, we interviewed the Cubans that left, left Cuba in the 1959 we wanted to know well why did they leave why did they come here to the United States. So those were all very interesting, you know, stories. And of course as Chicanos as political Chicanos we didn't see eye to eye with them but, but this was good for us it was good for us to see a new point of view, a new human point of view that maybe you're not necessarily agree with, but you have empathy for you know, anyone leaving their country for whatever reason, you have to have empathy for you know, whether it's, you know, for whatever reasons right. We also interviewed New Yorkers retired New Yorkers that went to Miami, and they gave us rich history of you know, of New York and why they came and the gangsters you know in Miami Beach, and Fred Ross and that all that history which is really great you know. And then we were, we, we were in South Beach. And you know we, we went around and interviewed the gay culture there the, you know, the club culture, did a lot of cocaine and whatnot. And so we put that into play you know, we're you know we were honest about our visit there. We interviewed other people Haitians Dominicans. You know, Jamaicans, all these people that rounded off rounded out even Mexicans that work were farm workers down in Homestead they were the orange pickers there. And we interviewed them so we had all this material, and we were able to construct a play called culture clash invades Miami, which was like a postcard it didn't have to have. It didn't have like a narrative necessarily right, but it was all under this nice you know umbrella that described this town and what it's going through right now. And sometimes that's enough, you know, it doesn't have to necessarily have to make sense in that sense it makes a lot of difference once you see the whole thing in its entirety. Okay, so don't be afraid to write a play like this that has, you know, different tones different themes in it. They can all work hand to hand if it's under one gigantic theme. Okay, thanks. Thanks, the, um, I mean I could talk about interview base but basically what we did is we went around to, I don't know, 40 to 50 people per city, and then transcribe their, their interviews. And then what you're trying to do is you're trying to find a nugget something that's that you want to say, because, you know, a, a documentary, it's like documentary theater in a documentary it's never, it's never a subjective you know it's always you you're always going to put your, you're always going to put your stamp in it you're always going to edit it the way you want to edit it, you know. I mean, we edit a lot of stuff out that we weren't weren't agree with or we didn't like, and we put in the stuff that we did like, because you're you're the artist so you're you're you're you're you're in the power of editing it in order to say what you want to say, you know. And that's a whole another class of how to edit it down and how to find five, you know, from one hour interview is finding five minutes that are the nuggets are the gold nuggets of the interview. And that takes three interviews, combined into one to make a character, sometimes that happens to, you know, but the amount of research on the amount of material that you're able to get through interviews is great. I really, I really recommend it for anything you do, you know, when you start doing your research and whatever you interview people because the way they say things the way they express themselves is very peculiar and and that's, and it gives you it opens up to listen to people. So, so I really recommend that you do that. I mean you can go go home tonight and interview your grandparents or somebody, and you'll see that you'll, you'll, you'll get a whole another perspective. Once, once you see it on paper you'll you'll see that it's very powerful. Okay, we're already in the 44th minute. So let's just talk about to x structure real quick. A lot of you guys went to school you know about it so I'm not going to bore you about it but let's, let's bring up that to x structure Thea. Now, from the most unacademic guy I'm giving you this very academic chart. Don't worry about this chart all you really have to know that the two x structure is composed of three things, the exposition, where you take off. The conflict is in the middle, and then the resolution at the end. It's really important. The first scene. The first scene is so so so important in my in my mind. If you look at all the classics if you look at all the plays that keep getting produced again and again. The first scene is probably the longest scene. It's an important scene because what you're doing is you're establishing the characters, first of all, the main characters, you're talking about other characters that you might see later on in the play. You're talking about, and somewhere along the first 15 pages or so you, you better, you better tell us what the hell, the play is about. What happens with you cannot end your first act your first scene, and not tell me what your play is about. And then the second half of the play well that gets more creative because then that's more, that's the obstacles, you know, those are the things that happen to get, you know, the, we know what it's about now. There's a difference to that plot, you know, there's there's there's conflicts there's this there's that there's twist and turns and all that. And then it was, and then at a certain point three quarters into the play that plot, that theme gets really complicated, or almost dies, and then something happens that brings it back to life, and that is the resolution. And in a nutshell, that's what is that that's Star Wars, that's every, every goddamn film you see has that structure yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah. I just wrote a play called bad hombres good wives. I think I have five minutes to read. I just want to read you the first few pages and you're going to see how effective a first a first scene can be and how it can lay out all the cards. Let's bring that up. Hey Max, are you doing an Estle. Can you bring up Max. Can we unmute Max. Yeah, absolutely. Max is unmuted. Max, go ahead and I'll do Armida you do Ernesto. Armida, get the door. Armida, Armida the door. See who's at the door. Okay, I want to stop right there. We haven't even seen this guy and we already know his status right, we know that he is the patron of the house just by his voice, just by the fact that he's telling somebody else to do something. We haven't seen him yet. That's called docking a character. Go ahead. Can't you hear the door. Go down to you. Okay. This is Armida the servant. Oh, I think someone's at the door, and then don't Ernesto opens the door. Okay. Go ahead, Padre. Alberto, go ahead. Don Ernesto, I didn't think you were home. I'm sorry I kept you waiting Padre, I was upstairs getting dressed. What a pleasure to see you. You smell so good. It's Aramis. Can you see it? Do you see it Max? Oh, it's not Padre. It's Aramis, I haven't seen you in mass lately. No, I know you haven't since we moved to this new apartment. Padre. She hardly works at all. I don't even know why I hired her as a housekeeper. It's because you feel guilty. Yes, I felt guilty that you lost your hearing when I bombed your boss's car. It's all your fault that I can't hear. Armida, he didn't know you were in the best seat. That's true. Yes, Padre? Bring us brandies. Yes, señor. Here's your mail, Don Ernesto. Gracias Padre. I hope you understand why I have my mail sent to your church instead of here to my apartment. I understand perfectly Don Ernesto. Yesterday, a DEA officer disguised as a postman came by the church and you should have seen the look on his face when he realized that Don Ernesto Quezada, head of the largest cartels in the state of Sinaloa, is coming next Catholic Church. I hope I make it worth your time, Padre. Thanks to your kind generosity, the orphans have new soccer uniforms. Aquí están. Am I buying my way into heaven? You have a VIP suite waiting for you with a bucket of cold coronas. Then Armida enters. Aquí están los brandies. Ah, los brandies. What the hell is this? The candies you wanted. I said brandies, not candies. Don Ernesto, read your mind. I read lips. I don't know what you're saying unless I see your face and read your lips. Muy bien, Armida. Read my lips. Bring two brandies before I shoot you in the face. Okay, go down. We're going to go. Yeah. Speaking of a heart attack, did you hear the news? Don Mario Grande died last night. Yeah. What? Mario senior and I go way back. When we were younger, we worked for the bloody alliance cartel. And then we went our own ways. And inevitably we went to war against each other. Those were bloody years. Those were bloody years. I'm sorry. Now I lost my. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know, Mario signed a peace agreement before he died. What is the funeral? All right. Anyway, we're going to. I'm sorry. We're going to waste too much time like this. But basically what I want to say. In this first scene, we're establishing who don Ernesto is. Who's a, who's a narco guy. The padre is in cahoots with him. Armida is a maid that doesn't listen to him whatsoever. Right. And then we're going to go to the third part of the story. And the, the, his arch rival, Mario has died. And his son is going to take over the, the, the cartel. We also find out. That don Ernesto has a young woman. In a monastery that he's training to be his loyal, subservient wife, the perfect wife. Right. And this all happens in the first 15 pages. that's going to go on. So of course, of course, he's not going to get the subservient, perfect wife that he wants, right? That's the comedy, the whole thing, you know? And, and, you know, we, and Armida, Armida's a maid that doesn't pay attention to him. So of course, she's going to go against him, right? And later on, we find out that Mario Jr., the kid who came, who comes to overtake his, his father's nautical office, business falls in love with the young girl that he's been training. So there's going to be, so the nautical war starts, you know? And of course, it gets resolved with two marriages at the end, just like the original, just like, like the original Moliere play. So this is based on, this is a riff on a Moliere. Yeah, this is a riff on the Moliere and, and how school for wives, the importance of being earnest, a little bit of two. So I took these Eurocentric classic stories and just made it very Mexicano, you know, very novella, and it works, you know? So again, if you're going to adapt a classic, don't just, you know, don't just trans, you, you should translate it to your language at first. That's your first draft. But after that, you have to think out of the box and really just make it yours. So it doesn't even look like the original anymore, you know? It sounds and it looks totally different. That's okay, Thea. Thank you. But that first scene is what you're docking the characters. Everything they say has to have a consistent, consistent theme, not theme, but, you know, the want, the want has got to be consistent. Right. That's the first time I've ever heard that word docking. Yeah. Mark Bly the dramaturg from Yale Rep and a bunch of theaters. He, he's a good friend of mine. And he gave me that, that I thought that's a great idea, docking the character, especially in the first scenes, you want to be consistent, you know? You know, a character should not say something that does not consistent to their, to their overall journey, you know, especially in the first scene, you know? Because we're just getting to know a character. So whatever they say has to be very revelatory. Right. Don't waste time on the small talk. Just no, no, no, you know, small talk is just to get you there. Small talk is just to disguise the expository nature of the play. The position is very boring, of course. It's very obvious. So you're, you're, you're, as a writer, what you have to do is disguise the exposition somehow by, by making, you know, by being slick, you know, by hiding it with other stuff, you know, but you're still getting it out there. Come on, Matt. Do you find that, that, that comedy, that the subtext is really, there's, there's no, there's no subtext because it's like right there on the surface versus drama, which is. Yes, yes. Yes. I'm, you know, I'm still right. I'm still beginning to write drama, you know what I'm saying? But I find, you know, comedy is my thing, is my forte, and I just find comedy a lot easier in that sense that there is no subtext. It's, it's on your sleeve. Well, I want to make sure we get some questions in from. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay. Thea, do you want to moderate? Absolutely. We have a hand up here. Viviana, you are unmuted. Looks like there's a bit of filet. There we go. Well, can you hear me? Hi. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it. I know I've been doing these workshops and I know you've been doing a couple of them too. A couple workshops you said that you see from a lot of young writers that there's a lot of problems, problem structurally. And I want to know like what specifically do like young writers have problems with the structure and how is there a way to specifically get, move away from that problem? Question. I think a lot has to do with, and this takes a while, you know, economy. You know, I think a lot of times when we're, we're young, we think, oh, wow, everything I wrote is beautiful. It's great. It is, it is, but guess what? The more you, the more you're into this, the more you write, you're going to learn and the more you collaborate other people, you're going to, you're going to kill a lot of babies, you know, you're going to kill a lot of babies. You're going to, you know, if it's, if it's, if it gets in the way, or if it's taking too long to get to what you want, what the story is about, what you want, what the story is, then you probably have to cut it, you know, and it might be beautiful. Believe me, I've cut some beautiful stuff, but guess what? It made the play better because I got to the point. And I'm, but that's my, that's my, but that's my style, you know, my style is, I get to the point fast and move on, you know, people are more lyrical, more poetic. I respect that. I love that, you know, but that's not my style. But again, I think I have to go back to the, if the, if in the, in the first 15 minutes, if I don't know what your play is about, then, then something is dreadfully wrong. How much? Appreciate it. Yeah, don't hold back. Absolutely. The next question is from Deanna. You are unmuted. Hi. Yes. Hi, Herbert. Hi, Deanna. How are you? My question is about your interview techniques. When you are interviewing subjects for that kind of work, how do you approach them? What do you, what do you find is effective just if you could speak just a little bit on that, that would be great. Well, we, you know, I mean, sometimes you enter their homes, you know, sometimes you enter their businesses. And so, you know, there has to be, there has to be trust, you know, there's, they have, you have to be really honest and say, listen, I'm writing a play about this. And I want to interview and get your opinion about it. But I don't know, but I'm going to tell you right now, I might use your words, I might not. And if I do use your words, I'm not going to use your name, right? So if you're comfortable with that, can we proceed? I don't want to, I don't come in with a paper, you know, a legal, you know, release form. That just, to me, that just creates red flags right there, you know. I just, one-on-one, you know, it's a handshake. Are you, are you cool with that? You know, I might use your words, I might not. Because that's the truth. You don't know if you're going to use them or not. And if you do use them, well, they might be another character with another name. Are you okay with that? You know, is that, is that answer what you wanted to know? Okay. We have one more question on the list. Yeah. Just really quick, by the way, Diana, Diana's play was selected for the San Diego New Play Latinx Festival. Congratulations. Any questions? It's from Amanda. You are unmuted. Hi. I'm a baby writer. I'm an undergrad. I have some really bad first drafts under my belt. Because I tend to do the thing where I don't know what I'm writing about. Like, I don't know the story completely all the way through or at all, really. And just, it just happens. And so think, because what inspires me, the usual moment is like a character or a relationship or like one tiny interaction or something like that. So what do you think about when you have that kind of inspiration? Where do you go from there to get a story in any of these kind of like more structured plots? Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah. Ideas like that come up, you know, dialogue to people talking about certain things. Yeah, definitely write that out, you know, write that out. That's, that's, you know, make that happen. Definitely make that happen. But yeah, it has to be in context of a story. And that's where, yeah, that's where that's the hard part. What you have to put that, that discussion or that moment in some housed under something, right? So what is it? What do you, you know, what is the theme? Again, it's back to the general theme. What, what do you think they're talking about? If they're talking about, I don't know, I'm just saying the, what are they talking about? What is the overall thematic theme they're talking about? And be your central, that should be your, your middle circle, right? And that, that dialogue with that, that scene that you have is just one part of that bigger dot, you know, of that bigger play, right? So hopefully that'll help you there, you know, just come up with the theme and then you're going to think of other, other, other scenes that are off that same theme, you know, you know, if it's about family, then you know, yeah, then the sister, the mother, the history of the family, all that stuff comes into play, you know, and then you'll start seeing that, oh, there's a world here. What you're doing is you're creating a bigger world than that, than that just that little scene that you have. Thank you. Thank you. You wanted to see the bubbles. Yeah, anyone want to share a bubble? Wow. That's awesome. I'm not going to show because, wow, tons of tons of little sub bubbles and everything, huh? That's awesome. Was that helpful though, that exercise? I haven't done that since the high school. Pretty basic, but will you forget about it, you know, how, how important it is. Yeah. Absolutely. Any other questions? I'm afraid to toss them in the chat. Oh, I see one more from Danny. And all these documents are going to be available, right? Yes, yeah, you can find and download all of the documents on the HowlRound announcement page after the session, along with a recorded version of this event. Danny, you are unmuted. Yeah. I might be opening a kind of worms, but what do you do with one scene like plays or one person show where it's like continuous and it's not necessarily breaks and stuff like that, but what do you involve in the beginning, middle and end and stuff like that? That's a great, great question. I think that the rules still kind of apply. They're just a little, they're just modified a little different because, yeah, you don't have another character to interact with, right? But still, the rules still apply that you're, in the first 10 or 15 minutes, I want to know who you are, right? I want to know what this place is about, talk about and give me some hint of where you're going. And so that when we get there, I go, as an ox, I go, oh, good, he got there. Great. You know what I'm saying? Okay. He said he was going to fight the dragon. Here's the dragon. He's fighting it. Great. He told me he was going to do that and it's happening. It's very satisfactory. When we know something's coming up and it does happen, you know? Now, things happen and you didn't tell us and that's good too, you know? Surprise, right? But that's the twisting and turning of the second act, you know, where you give your protagonist surprises, you know? And hopefully, in your solo piece, within an hour or hour and a half, there's something that really is very dangerous or that really just can ruin, you know, the day for that protagonist, you know? Something dreadful will happen or something. Something that's very climatic, very dangerous that you get out of somehow, you know? And then a solution happens. So those things still apply, even for solo shows, you know? Even for solo shows, they have to have some sort of dramatic structure, some sort of speed, you know? Speed to get there. Otherwise, it's just a monologue and it just drags and drags and drags because it doesn't have the structure that we need as an audience to be with you. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. So, guys, thank you. I mean, I've been checking in on these too. I love these because, again, I'm not an educated writer. Whatever that means. Yeah, whatever that means. But it just shows you that you don't need necessarily an education to be a writer. It just shows you that you have to go just do it, you know? Yeah. But these have been really good. I've gotten a lot out of them, too, you know? Yeah. It's just like, you know, this is like grad school. Everybody sits around in the table and just talks about plays and what to write and how to write and sharing ideas. It isn't a prescription to, like, you can see that if you've been to all of these sessions, that everybody comes in with a very different way of thinking about process and writing. And I'm so glad that you were here, Herbert, to share the modules because I haven't thought about modules in a long time. One of the things that I admire about you is that you and Culture Clash really pushed the boundaries about what can be said and what can't be said. I mean, in a way, like, just pushing those boundaries. And I'm curious if is there a line that you won't cross in terms of the work that you do? And I'm sure this comes up a lot. Like, do I really want to tell that joke that, like, makes fun of Edward James Olmos or Selena? Like, is it like too far? Because I know that you love those moments where everybody goes, oh, que asco. But is there, like, I'm sure there are, like, personal lines. But in terms of, you know, that's a line that you won't cross. It's trial and error. You know, we sometimes we cross the line. And back when we were young, it was like we crossed the line, oh, good, you know, we, well, that means we're doing the right thing. But, you know, as you get older, you're figuring out, no, you know what, that was, that was pretty got you. We should probably stop saying that, you know what I'm saying? And so, you know, like Linda Ronstown? Yeah, I haven't said anything about Linda Ronstown. But I think as we've gotten older, we've, you know, we just got more respectful as well. And, you know, we don't, you know, when we were young and brash, yeah, it was fine. But now we don't, you know, we're a little more careful, you know. All right. So you're basically saying while you're young and brash, just say it all right now. I think so. I think so, why not? Diana is going like do it. We didn't have anything to lose, you know? We didn't, you know, now it's, you know, you know, reputation, legend, you know, all that shit gets in the way. We're young, we didn't care. Okay. Well, Herbert, keep coming back because, you know, we love having you. Thank you. And speaking of coming back, come back Friday because it's Diana Berbano. Yeah. I have no idea what she's going to do Friday, but I'm sure it'll be awesome. Thank you guys. So Herbert, thank you so much. We'll discuss Latinx directors another time. My email is at gmail.com if you have any questions. You heard the man. Bye. Thank you. See you next week.