 watch me work and I'm SLP. We've been doing a show for 11 years and we are so glad and so appreciative of the public theater and howl around for joining us in this endeavor to bring it from the lobby of the public theater where we have been for the last 11 years to your homes and your bedrooms, Audrey Fishman, so you can you can work in bed. I think there are a lot of writers who have worked in bed. Winston Churchill didn't he work in bed and Proust didn't he work in bed and I think Maya Angelou would sprawl on the bed and at various hotel rooms where she rented and she would write while sprawled on the bed I think. So the bed is yeah the bed is for much more than loving. So we're going to work for 20 minutes and then we're going to talk with you about your work and your creative process and if you should like to ask a question, Audrey's going to tell you how. That's well Pete. So if you want to ask a question and you are inside of the Zoom all you need to do is click on the participant tab. There's a raise your hand button in it. It's likely at the bottom of your screen if you're on a laptop or the top if you're on an iPad or a tablet and if you're watching on HowlRound.tv you can ask us a question on Twitter by tweeting at at watch me work SLP with the hashtag HowlRound H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D or you can actually tweet also at the public theater which is at public theater NY or write the public theaters Instagram and that's all. That's everything. All right that's everything and it's just the beginning just the beginning. So here we go. We're going to 20 minutes. Here we go. All right. All right, all right. Are there any questions? Yes. Got a question from Mark. Hey Mark. Mark go for it. Hi, hello. So nice to meet you. I love your work. I'm a big fan and I'm very excited for these writing events which have only just started in a couple weeks and I already feel very inspired and it feels really amazing to participate and I look forward to participating in many more. My question is a little bit centered between creative and business today. I took a very long break from writing and ended up more in like the theater administration type work and the furlough has given me an opportunity to explore some creative ideas I've been having and I am sort of working on like a TV comedy pilot or a TV comedy show and I excuse the dog sorry and there's a one what's come up just now that's on my mind is there's a class that I'm about comedy pitches and I submitted a pitch for the show and all I really have is a pitch and some character break break some character development stuff and just like just the beginning of I know broad plot and just the beginning of like what the scenes look like and it was only afterwards that I started to feel a little the dog does definitely have a question very inquisitive. It was only afterwards that I started to feel like nervous about you know putting it out there there was some fine print that the person is a you know an executive and they or other people might be developing similar or identical projects and you know I was feeling like when's like how much do you need and when's a good what's a good time to put some work out ideas out even if you don't have like the thing written so I have like is it okay to talk about a show do tell people your pitch when I don't have a pilot script to you know protect the work or something like that and that's you know around about that's been on my mind. Yeah that's a that's a really good question Mark thank you for asking it it is a business question but it's also like a creative question because you know how do we keep working and how do we protect ourselves and our our creative work you know while trying to open up to people and share our work. I would say since you this experience is already in your rear of remarer do you have any representation I know you were writing then you took a high then you you started doing some production stuff so do you have any any do you have an agent or anything like that. No I don't have anything like that I did go ahead and and register the pitch with WGA. Good great. I just went ahead and did that it was easy just it was only like you know I just pdf'd what I wrote and registered it so. Great that's really great I would say I mean when did you pitch this to the these people. It was um I submitted it like yesterday. Oh okay oh no I mean to the class oh the to the class. Yeah class and it goes to a comedic show runner who works with on a on a Hulu comedy and they may or may not read it out loud and do a live feedback for the writers. Right. So but regardless I think they're all being sent to this executive. Right right right um yeah so in the so it's already out there you know what I mean you registered it with the WGA super super smart I would say going forward um the more the more uh meet you have on the bones of the project you know you want you want I mean to use or to use a baby analogy you want the baby to be a little further along before you pitch it because you know exactly what kind of market it is you know and if if you go I got a great I got a great pitch about two guys they're friends are living in an apartment you know someone could say yeah I have the same I have the same idea to you know so we want to make sure there's more to it than um next next time around you know and and and going forward with this project I think it's great that you've registered it and I think that you should continue to write on it as much as you can to get the specifics out there and the setup of that class um my feeling is my feeling is it's tricky man I mean you're you're paying for this class it was a pay way you can format so okay okay okay I mean it's great to film challenge okay it's it's great to you know have feedback and stuff from people in the business that's one of the reasons specifically why I do not ask writers in this format to share specifically about their work you see what I mean because I don't want anybody to feel like they're giving away their price thing and it's in its rough draft form you know what I mean because we're talking about process it's very helpful what this producer can offer you feedback and stuff that can be very helpful so for that it's it's it's well worth it um but also you might in going forward get also super helpful feedback from a community of friends and and known colleagues you know what I mean yeah so yeah yeah yeah and um do you think it's worth asking sorry about that do you think it's worth asking them if to not read it in this class sure sure that if that's what you feel I I would feel more comfortable if you know in your position if I don't read it you know it's um it's uh you know um you know the work whatever you say just I'm comfortable not to read and not to share yeah yeah thank you I I appreciate I appreciate it and there's yeah and there's nothing wrong with that you're just you're just uh being very selective about who hears your work in its early form and I think that's a good thing um and also just that kind of feedback again you you can get from from a closer circle of folks um because you never know you know these executives I mean I work in Hollywood a lot these people get ideas all day long and who knows you're a negative not your idea but a negative idea X from writer Z can come by with a negative from writer R and then put it together and they could think oh that's an original idea and maybe it's not they don't necessarily mean to co-op people's stuff but it's good that you're going to take a little step back thanks mark okay thank you um all right we actually don't have a question at the moment so time to just pose how's your day going so far Audrey um you know my day is good it's I I worked from my bed as you all saw how's your day going it's good I had a lot of zoom meetings of course of course we live on zoom we actually have a question oh there you go see we're vamping we vamp we did it Lou hi hi um thanks so much last time I asked a question it was after a vamping run too I think that must be when I feel like ready to get in there um I asked a question a few weeks back um it's a little bit of a related related to that and a little bit of what I'm sorry if the person before me mark it's a little business it's a little businessy but I'm going to go for it I actually just finished the process of writing a book proposal which was the way I was sort of guided by various people that I'm working with to try to sell an idea for this book which is a memoir that I've been writing about my life and advertising which we had spoken about and um it's so interesting because my life and advertising has made me so much more interesting on the selling of the art than the art and this is something we talked about last time ironically my confidence in the proposal and the confidence in the person that was representing me in the proposal has been sort of um holes been sort of punctured in and I think it went out right at the beginning ish of the virus and I think the publishing industry is so disrupted and probably there's some problems with the proposal itself I don't want to only blame it on the world um but it's not getting the response that I think we at all hope for so it's not over yet but it looks like it might be and there was a lot of enthusiasm for it previously and I worked on it I should say for six months so there was about 120 pages of sample material but then lots and lots of pages explaining the concept and the theories and why I was doing what I was doing it really was a sales pitch to pay me money to spend a year to do the art of writing the book so I think my question is how do I sort of recover from that I have not been feeling great this is this place has been great because I think I already know the answer which is probably just to keep going and maybe it's going to be a blessing in disguise because I put the selling in front of the making but I was just wondering your take on it because it's been a little disheartening and has sort of put me in a funny place as I think about what I want to do next it's a very difficult place I mean you put in a lot of work um it's not getting the reception that you had hoped um can you still write it though I can I could and in fact the person who's working with me representing it thinks that could be a solid next plan that it could maybe go back to some of these places that it went in its fuller form when it's when and if it gets finished yes yeah because they can't take that away from you you know what I mean and that's we have to we have to remember I mean they can't we can remember we have to think about when it comes to times like this we got to go okay what can they take from me and what can they not take from me they can take from me the opportunity of getting published at their firm this year what you know what I mean they can take from me some maybe some other things they can take from me a wonderful feeling like hurrah I wrote it and it sold immediately okay great but they can't take away they can't take the writing of it from me and that's when you enter the zone see what I mean you know what I mean ooh it might hurt a little bit guess what join the club here we are rolling with the punches baby right right they knock us down like a weevil they knock us down we get back up or like the like my I used to take traditional Japanese karate you know that my kaitra would say you knock down seven times you get up eight times you know what I mean like like what you know I'm saying bring it on like we're doing yesterday Christ the Redeemer bring it on bring it on come on what what are you gonna do right so Lou write it and and do it in in manageable pieces you know it sounds like you've got so much of the architecture already outlined or worked out already you might want to really divide up the piece of the chapters maybe I don't know how it's organized but you know the pieces into manageable pieces so that you can keep your momentum keep your spirit and and collect stories about other writers who might have been rejected by every publishing house like JK Rowling I mean you ever heard of her she wrote this book about this wizard kid nobody wanted to do it right think about those people people who were told that they shouldn't be writers because they didn't have what it takes me that was a note that I was given early in my career yeah right I great you know what I'm saying so that's okay it doesn't it doesn't mean anything but that the timing's not right yet but the timing's right for you to write okay so keep coming here we'll just keep encouraging you okay to cross the finish line and then it'll be time to send it out again yeah that's right thank you thanks very much thanks Lou um all right up next we've got Cody oh Catherine sorry your first last time was Cody I messed up oh yeah yeah oh that's okay I go by Cody so much this is so wonderful it's my first time attending oh great thank you um I'm a big fan so my question is probably it may be a little broad um but I have primarily worked in fiction and short stories and I'm writing my first play right now which is my first love my background is in acting and I wondered if you could just speak a little bit um to a shifting genres and kind of what your experience has been with that or sort of any advice with that and then the second part of that um is you know obviously with uh playwriting internal monologue of course isn't there in the same way and that's something I've sort of been struggling with how I um come to that same language that normally I'm sort of used to exploring um someone's internal thoughts yeah the maybe the second one first good question so we're shifting genres and what you don't have is you say the internal monologue but you do have the external monologue the soliloquy or the speech or the rant you know what I mean the long the diatribe all you know so many plays have these long speeches to the audience or if you fuel it with a desire of a character it can be something that they're actually saying to another character okay so you can get that information that that passionate stuff out just as effectively in a play right um also I would say in in john's take what you what you know already from writing short stories or from writing novels is a transferable skill so you know how to build character right you're gonna need to know that you know how to craft dialogue right you're gonna need to know that you know how to describe things you're gonna need to know that but it's different now because in a novel I've written one novel only so that's I just know about one novel but in a novel I felt like I had to you couldn't just say she was a beautiful you know in a in a play you can write in a state direction she's gorgeous and tall you know in a novel it's like tell me more how gorgeous is she you know like that or you know you need to you need to elaborate which is maybe why novels have more words than plays do I don't know but so it's it's it's more you need to give more detail in a play you need to just set the table for the detail to be arrived on and it's decided upon collaboratively because you're going to work with a team you know designers and actors and director and what producers and all that kind of stuff so you just it's it's basically setting the table and um preparing for the it's like making space for your team more stage directions you know and in a novel you've got to do all the heavy lifting yourself so that the play can happen where does the play happen in a novel in the imagination of the reader right first it happens in the imagination of the writer and then it happens in the stage the most underutilized venue in the universe the stage up here right so you want to you want to in a novel you have to allow it to happen in my head and in a play it's happening right before me I don't need to imagine so much in that moment because you're showing me everything so just know that the skills you learn in novel writing are going to be very useful short story writing are very useful also the other thing timing is very important in the theater when you start a scene and when you exit a scene that's very very important so in a short story or a novel you have chapters and where they begin and where they end is very important in a in a play or a teleplay or a film what's the first thing you see in a scene and what's the last thing you see so keep those things in mind too and read lots of plays also yeah yeah or if you can see them online you know that's helpful too these days but read lots and lots of plays digest a lot of plays it'll help and since it's your first love you got it you know yeah thanks Catherine thanks let's hope we're gonna go to Giselle yay hi hope you're doing well hi Audrey hi everybody oh okay um I am currently starting a healing business I'm a healer and I'm also a writer and a director and for a long time I have kind of like hid my spirituality or just like my spiritual perspective for fear of being judged or for fear of I don't know being treated um being felt smaller by people who feel like healing is not intellectual or realistic or real um so I finally got to a point where I feel ready to put my healing modality out into the world but I'm now experiencing this fear of um it threatening my artistic career or I don't know like closing doors to publishers or producers who know that I'm also a healer and don't agree with that um my healing modality is the Akashic Records I don't know if people have heard of that it's sort of similar to Shamanism um where you're channeling spirit and telling folks what fear is telling you which feels a lot like writing to me um so I think my question is just how do I move forward um having these different parts of myself suddenly be um out in the open for the world to see and for in a world where people might not um see them as being um I don't know compatible right well thanks for letting us in on who you really are I think it's beautiful I think it's gorgeous I mean you've been here for like how many weeks you've been kind of I know right and you haven't told us right you haven't told us who you really are thanks to that I think it's beautiful I mean this is the deal you guys already know the answer to this one the people who don't want you around fuck them right you don't want to be around them anyway Giselle you really don't if they say Giselle you're a brilliant playwright or you're a brilliant writer but you're also a healer oh I don't think so we're not going to produce you in our theater fuck you have them call me and I'll say fuck you stupid idiot person how dare you right or whatever we don't want to be part of your season anyway I mean honestly right honestly the people who don't want you around you don't want to be around yeah they don't deserve you it's the people who want you around and who get you and jive with you I mean just think of think of the math and just just on a piece of paper people who do not want you around because you're a healer I mean okay so I would I would say you know inhale some of your courage and love that you so often give out to other people because you're healer you're you're giving giving goodness and love out to other people take some of that in for yourself right and know that you can be both right you can be a great writer and a healer you can be you know the the god the spirit is big enough to embrace you as you choose to present yourself it's the small minds that are fucking up the shit let me tell you all right people who are like no it can only be like this you can only use that bathroom and you can only do this and you have to be in before curfew you can only have that job and you know I'm saying okay yeah okay so yeah keep make sure you have your writing practice together though so don't you know if you're if you're spinning you now I have to be all this you know make sure you have your writing practice to make sure you keep time that time putting the time into that I'm sorry go ahead you said something else yeah thank you so much for that that's that's already just so good to hear but the other thing I'm thinking is like do I even have to like make a pseudonym for myself to separate the identities um my instinct is no I don't I feel like I contain multitudes and like fuck that and I just want to come out as myself but then there's yeah yeah quote wall Whitman there you go when in doubt I contain multitudes yes ma'am yes yes yes challenge us with yourself you know what I'm saying and give us the chance to grow by being in your presence okay cool thank you so much thank you so much thanks chisel we've actually got a couple of questions from social media um this person named Emma writes hey SLP I'm writing a play with a single character alone on stage I don't want to use direct address so she talks on the phone a lot is that boring is there a better vehicle for monologues oh boy well it's it's only boring if what she's saying is boring I mean here I am just talking well I know you guys are really there but no it depends what she's talking about I would say if you don't want to use direct address you're sure of that and you only want to have her talking on the phone I think it's all in what she's talking about you know and how you imagine her physicality I would say try it I would say have you written the whole thing yet I would say you're looking for an excuse to stop I would say I'm not going to give you an excuse to stop I would say keep writing how would be on the phone make it a really long play yes a long right could she be on more than one phone like I don't know just a question I love this great answer I accept this answer there's another social media question actually sorry it's like goes into the void of my face okay um how much important this is this was named Gavion and Gavion says how much importance does formatting in writing plays matter I have never really been schooled in writing plays and I have developed my own style that isn't a standard format question mark well Gavion as long as it's readable you know I mean if you're going to send it to a reader or send it to your friends and they go gee you know you turn the pages all upside down and we can't make head or tail of it you know I would say that's not a great format but if it's a format that is that where people are able to read it off the page then I'd say it's a fine format I like making my own format just because I want it to look a certain way on the page but I think it's fine that you you use your own kind of format I would say so but if it gets in the way of people reading it then I say it's a problem because then it gets in the way of your play um maybe we all said maybe yeah um and now we actually don't have any questions so I'm wondering how was the rest of your day you had a lot of zoom calls I had a lot of a lot of zoom calls and you know these days I'm sure for a lot of you guys there are sort of multiple tornadoes swirling and maybe they're intersecting you know I'm involved in sort of multiple or tornadoes being polite shitstorms multiple shitstorms swirling around and um and the we're we're being uh invited to look at our lives and some of us have that opportunity and sometimes we work in circles that are taking that opportunity and it's not always easy um and some of the places where we work aren't taking the opportunity at all and that's not easy either so very we we're living in some interesting times here um definitely but I I keep writing every day you know it's like you know even if it's a little bit you know what I mean if it's a tiny smidgen keep it I just keep it moving wow we have two questions two we did it because it's like don't let her just talk all right we've got about 11 minutes left and we're gonna go to Julia um hi hey um this isn't so much a question is a big uh thank you um I started coming to this about a month ago and I was having a lot of trouble with this piece like a one character play thing that I've been writing on and off for like a year and a half and in the last four weeks it's been so intense um every question that everybody asked it had to do with you know writing as um uh it just it was like icebergs started breaking and the like uh like just showing up and what do you do when it hurts and like that thing I'm gonna cry that thing you said about like I want to embrace it and when I eat it and pay attention to your muse and well it was so amazing but I still was having trouble writing but I was I constantly kept getting inspired because I kept coming back to this and I had this thing just a shift that happened because I kept sitting down and I kept like I don't have a timer I know you're not supposed to do it but I've been doing it um but it kept sitting down and like this this like subterranean shift happened like yesterday and and now I kind of can't wait to sit down and write and and I think that like the things that you kept saying and that I kept hearing was you you just show up and listen and I kept thinking I don't hear any voices in my head I don't hear any voices but I guess I had to listen to my heart instead of my head and anyway oh my god it's just so great thank you that's it thank you it makes me so happy that's why here that's why I'm I show up that's why I'm glad to see you folks you know yeah because in the energy the muses know we're here the muses know Julia that you sit down every day and wait they see you like I see you like we all see each other there's power in that even when we're sometimes in despair yeah so now that you're in triumph go sister you go write your thing thank you welcome thanks Julia all right we're going to go to Gerald hi hi thank you so much for this um I'm just so profoundly grateful I um my question is first of all I'm so I'm taking a play I wrote and turning it into a novella and my character um goes back and forth from uh from be an adult to a child and I worry that it's not clear I have references and I try to make her sound like a child but I wonder if there's a way to do that effectively I'm worried that it's going to be confusing the other should I wait for my part to ask my part to another time it's okay okay my part two is that with all that's going on I find and I know you've addressed this that it's harder than ever to feel that my writing matters and I'm really struggle I'm embarrassed to bring this up that I'm struggling because I think there's so much going on right now in the world that I don't deserve to tell my story I know that's intense and it's forced me to go deeper but it's really a struggle to why because I think I don't my story doesn't matter we'll do those are great questions and or comments and statements Gerald and we'll talk about both of them the first one you're going from a novella to a play or from a play to a novella from a novella to a play play to a novella a play to a novella right okay so it's the same thing that in a play you might think it's easier because you have an actress who's obviously a woman and obviously a child you know you know and it's easy to distinguish um but if you can think of specifically what they are saying and what they are going for these characters right and I think desire what if you were I don't know let's just say a child 12 I know how old is the child she's she's different she's five years old okay she's seven okay okay so a five seven twelve a child uh I think I would guess wants different things her desire is different her desires are different than the desires of say a 20 30 40 70 year old woman and desire again I tell you know have this funny state saying based on geometry two points make a line okay which is a geometric rule um two points where you are and where you want to be make a line of dialogue I know it just became about playwriting so what she where she where she is now and where she wants to go can help you create the lines of dialogue that you need okay and where the five-year-old is and where the five year old wants to go is going to create a different kind of dialogue than say for the woman version of this character does that make sense so what she's doing what she's doing is going to be different I'm I look at my son running around granted he's a he's a boy but you know what he's doing is very different from what I'm doing so their day-to-day activities are different okay so you distinguish your characters in terms of what they're doing what they want their their circumstances so that's that's one thing okay now do if you're if you're wondering if you have the right to write right the answer is yes of course you do okay because uh if you know so many of us at any times of our lives are told that our writing doesn't matter and our lives don't matter you know which is substance you know this black lives matter uprising is having us all again look at our lives in a very um deep and significant and necessary way and of course you have the right to write you know what I mean of course you have you have you have something to say okay I don't know if it's going to be a best-seller list you know on the best-seller list of the New York Times or on Broadway running like cats or Hamilton cats Hamilton cats you know you know I mean I can't promise you that Gerald but you do have the you do have the right to tell you truth you know I would maybe say you have the obligation um what else are you doing in your life see what I'm saying well you're gonna wait till you till you feel like you have the right I mean you know sometimes you know we can help you open the door here but you gotta walk through it yes you know and the door is open and why is the door open because you are alive and and advantaged enough to have the means to sit in front of a computer you have the mean you know I mean right now we all I mean and you know we can talk about privilege some of us are more privileged than others hello right now we all have means to this thing and at least 20 minutes a day if you show up in this class so you've got the obligation to do something with that I don't know what your story is I don't know what you need to talk about and tell but it is your obligation to do that right beautiful okay thank you you know don't cop out Gerald we need you we need you to help us through okay we need everybody here all right thank you thanks Gerald thanks for being here thank you um all right we've got about 30 seconds left and we don't have any questions so I would like to say it's pretty much six o'clock thanks everybody Monday to Thursday 5 p.m here we are and if you sign up by 3 p.m eastern every single day I will send you a link between 3 and 4 30 p.m eastern and then you can come zoom on in or watch us on howround.tv and that's the plan we'll see you tomorrow