 If online, if you have questions for us, you can tweet your questions online, and it is at Watch Me Work, S-L-P, hashtag new play. It can't lie to me, we need that for us, so we really do want to stick to it. Put your hands on it, it's at Watch Me Work, S-L-P, with a hashtag new play. I've got a free, yeah. Okay, so we're going to work for 20 minutes, and then we're going to... I've got mine set better. This one might be a little different from yours. It's not on the atomic clock, it's into the work that you left months ago. That's a great question. How do you, after an absence, you know, after, say, you take a little break, you know, cause a hiatus from something you're working on, and how do you get back in? She says she starts by reading through the questions. Say, you can't stand reading through it. You can't stand thinking about it, looking at it, you're making a film. You don't even want to adjust for the timing, you know, putting it just for the timing. That's why I love these little tidies. Oh, here's another one. I love these little tidies. I have many of these, and I'm kind of sad to say I went to Radio Shack today, over here, to get a new one. Not like this, like the other one. You don't sell them at this location. I wanted to ask what location was that I was going to get, but they used to. They used to come braxically, because I didn't get it. So you put the timing, 20 minutes is a good amount of time, and it doesn't mean that you have to sit there and do stuff. You just sit there, just sit there with it. And gradually it comes back. I was amazed, because I play the music, and I have a guitar, and I'm always complaining. Oh, it feels like iron, like iron shoes. It feels really heavy. I mean, it is a metal guitar, but it feels very heavy. And then I just started putting the timing in today, a few days ago. And it's like, wow, it's like butter. It's so easy to play. This guitar is hard to play. Oh, the action is just perfect here. Just put the timing, the timing, the timing. I think that solves everything here. Good question. Anybody else? When you're addressing rewrites, I often have difficulty letting the structure sort of emerge. Trying to still be a servant to the characters. I guess my question is, is it my purpose to then implement a structure? Or am I really trying to hear their voices just more clearly this time around? I know, that's good. What's your name? Mark. Mark, have you been here before? I have not. Yeah, Mark, that's a really good question. And it's interesting because you are, is your job to hear the characters or to implement some kind of structure? The second time around. Sure, sure. What did you feel like your job was the first time? To hear. I would go out on a limb and say, maybe that's always your job. But you want to maybe be more specific, hear their story. What do you want? What are you doing? Those are structural related questions. And those are always good questions to ask if you're writing your first draft. What do you want? What do you do? What's going on with you? I get it. Basic questions like that. Theme questions like what does this mean? What's the theme? Those questions are confusing to me, but they're very helpful to me. So I think it's always listening. Because the structure will come from what the characters want, right? In my experience. Yes, that's right. That's a good question. What's your name? I'm Siobhan. Ask them what they want. What do you want? Are you talking about your... Yeah. Yeah. Okay, the main character. Yeah. You wanted to really... Siobhan, I know this. I know about Siobhan's play because we just finished a semester at New York. It's about a roller. Yeah, the flying machine. The flying machine is a beautiful player by a little man who is an athlete, like a top level athlete on a college level and has driven really well. And that's what's interesting is your character, to be who she is for real, has to be really, really driven, right? I mean, if you get up, you know, if you've ever rode a crew over them, any kind of anything that requires anything, it requires like getting up at, you know, wee hours and working really hard. So it's for a paratainer for being an athlete or whatever, a little rider or whatever. So your character, she's really driven. She gets up at four in the morning, takes the boat down to the water and rows. So I would say get specific with it. I would... I think that that's something that you could work on. I mean, the specifics of... I mean, because I used to row and I was not any good, I was one of the short people Siobhan's really taught. But, you know, I was like, well, the short people, I can tell you the specifics of sitting in that row and all that stuff you have to do. All that stuff you have to do. And I ask her, what does she want more than anything? Right? And what is she going to do to get it? So what would you say that she wants more than anything? What does she want? I would feel at home now. Correct. And what does that... What's she going to have to do when I want her to go? What does she have to do She doesn't want... There's a character in the play who's her father and she calls him a coach. You find out that he's your father for the end. But she doesn't... So her primary thing is she wants to win the Olympic gold medal. It's not to convince her father. Right. So... then think about the end. And that's when she passes. She's like, she gets hurt and it's horrible and she kind of lets go. She wants to win the Olympic gold medal more than anything. She's going to find a way. Right? She'll find a way. And maybe it's her dad that is trying to talk her out of the tree or off the ledge. You see what I'm saying? I mean, I don't know, but she's got to fight against something. Right? I don't know. Can we talk more about this? And it's true, but... You know, just keep... What does she want more than anything? What do they want more than anything? What do they do here? What do they do here? You seem to see. That's a really... It sounds like a dumb question. What are they talking? What are they doing? Are they knitting? Are they sewing? Are they cleaning a floor? You know? Are they trying to thread a camel through the eye of a needle? What are they doing? And how does that show us what they want? That takes them one step further down the road to their goal and their set. Right? Action. Lots of action. I think of Shakespeare. They're all, like, doing things. You know, in the Greeks, they're all there doing things. They're all doing things. I mean, sure, they sit around and talk. They talk a lot. But they're also doing things. Right? Actively engaging them. I mean, that's what's funny about Hamlet. He says they're like, oh, that's good. You can't do anything. But he almost does a lot of things. He does a few things. He does a lot of great lines. Anybody else? So I guess I have a question about letting go of a play. Right. I guess the short answer is probably to just have to look at the play. Right. I mean, when... So, I've written something. I guess when things go into production, I often have a lot of time problems. Like, just letting go. Right. Like, something opens and I want to either spend all my time loading it or obsessing over it or, you know, and I find it difficult to focus on other projects. Right. When it's open and running? When it's open and running, especially. But even in the lead-up to it, you know, when it's like, when the script should be really locked and frozen, when there's really nothing else that I can do, but I'm going insane because I'm, you know, because as a playwright, at some point you have to lock up, right? Right. So it's just, yeah. Grappling those feelings, battling those feelings and figuring out how to allow myself to work on other work has been increasingly difficult. Right. So, I mean, I guess the short answer is just to do it, but I was wondering if you could... I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't do you like that. Well, I know. But yeah, just go ahead and let go. Yeah, get over it. No, I mean, no, what's interesting to me is when do you feel like you can start working on another work? At any point. No, but how soon after the opening and all that, do you feel like now I can work or the closing? How, when naturally, or, you know, you feel like now I'm ready to work on something new? I didn't know that I could discern a pattern. Do you have a playwrighting right now? Yeah. Okay, so your experience of like, I can't let it go? Yeah, pretty much. Okay, so what if, what I'm going to say, what if we, you know, we are the makers of matters, Kate. You're not Kate. I'm not here to finish. But what if we were? And we are the makers of matters. So what if we said that maybe obsessing about your play while you're in production is wrong? And good. And go ahead and obsess. What if a play be frozen is just so you don't drive your actors crazy, er, than they are already? So you're not slipping their new lines, you know, after the opening. You know what I mean? When you break a review and that joke, you know, been real, they really like that joke. I'm going to repeat it in the second act. You know what I'm saying? So that's just, you know, drive your people crazy, er, than they are already. Because they're already crazy here before you met them. But, so that's the whole frozen thing. It's funny. Oh, I've had it. This is Joe's picture. You know the music of the little Disney thing? You know, it's frozen and there's that song, let it go. It's not funny. Anyway. So you can sing that song to yourself and you can let your hair down and you can take off your cape and switch around like this. Right? So let's say it's normal and natural and good to obsess about your play while it's running. How is there a problem? I just don't want it to stop me from doing, you know, other work. Well, you should. Just because it's open doesn't mean that you think it's open. I give birth to it. Now I'm going to just walk away from it. Right? It seems like, it needs you around. I went to pretty much every, not every day, but maybe every other day I was in the arena hanging out with my athletes. Why? Because it was fun. I was obsessing. I was enjoying myself and I was enjoying the people who I worked so closely with for so many months. I just sat back and watched the show on the monitor and like, Joe's playing part to the arena. It's fun. It's okay to obsess about your play as long as you want. And if it's closed and if it's published and it's still obsessing about it, that's when maybe, you know, people think, okay, now maybe it's time to go. A lot of times, the problems we have are because there's a model of behaviors that serve institutions or the producers, which is great, but it doesn't really have, it wasn't committed with the writer in mind. It was created from an institution and that's fine. We can make our own rules. My question was actually about the exposition. Would you agree that exposition is really only at the moment of necessity for the audience and do you get that sense better through readings and so on and so forth? Exposition is really only necessary for the audience? No. Yeah, I'm sorry. The exposition basically, you're revealing any sort of exposition at the moment of necessity when the audience absolutely needs that information and do you find that you're able to pinpoint those moments through readings and things like that? Oh, I see. I see. So, where do you put the exposition? Where do you stuff it in like a turkey? You're going to cram it in. You know, it's, I think, the easiest way to find out where it needs to be stuffed in or crammed in or sprinkled. It's great and you're going to be in the audience as long as you can save a lot of money. You can just do it by yourself in the room in your office or anywhere. Where does the character need to say something? The character needs to. So, if you attach it to a character of me, then you're rarely off track. Do you see what I mean? It's our character needs to remind you that, you know, on the mountainside exposition, on the mountainside, I found the child and his ankles were and I didn't know what to do, so we took him home. That's not because the audience needs to hear it. Yeah, they do, but who cares right now? The character needs to say and he comes in and he just has something to say. It works every time. And it's also then urgent. You get energy and it's attached to the character's thing. What do you need, what do you want, more than anything you want to tell, the story you want to explain, how we found this child, on the hillside, all the fun, right? Yeah, it's good. It's a trick. It's not a trick. This is what they do, what they do, what they've done so well. Do you look at any new Shakespeare that brings all of them? And they have a lot of exposition. You think about, you know, what's that play with the latest show on yourself? Pedro. You know, the guy comes in and he's like, oh man, I just saw Poseidon in a shape of a monster come up out of the sea and get the guy off his chariot. Exposition. The audience isn't going to do it. And it's exposition. Right? The character has a burning knee to come in and talk about. This is just awesome. Amazing. Any questions? Yes. What's your name? Ale. Ale. Oh, you were here. I met you at the lobby. Hi. I'm just wondering about where you start, how you usually start. Do you start with like two characters in place? Or do you start with a need? Or is it usually called an idea? Or does it really depend on the play? Yeah. But where do you start? I put two characters in place. Always two characters? Never like three? Sometimes three. You look always, all your, they're all two character plays. I'm really new at this. It's okay. No, I'm just asking. So you take two characters and you put them in a place. And then what do you do? They need something from each other and then they start talking. What are they doing? Aside from talking. From where they are. Well, they're in a, they're in a... Right, so one of my characters is a hitchhiker and the other one is a truck driver and she keeps in and she wants to go, she wants to go home and he murdered someone and is trying to run away. So she just comes up. So they meet in like a truck stop? No, she grows her shoe in his car and he stops. Oh, murderers comes? Yeah. Okay. You have the car on stage? Yeah. Okay. That's good. You have a title? So you start by having two characters in a place and they both want something. Very strong. She wants to go home and she wants to get away. That's, that's how I start sometimes. Sometimes I start with a title. But if you don't have a title, what good is it to, you know, get to tell you what a title is? It's like, oh, shit, I need a title. You don't really, unless, you know, you have one. I mean, it's good to hold on to it. You can hold on to your characters. I think another thing is like, I have a storyline in my head that I doesn't really have before yet. So then I'm having a hard time. It doesn't really work. I have a story that I, like, the storyline is almost complete in my head, but it doesn't, like, have a form. Yes, it is. Like, it's all here and it's on. You have a story in your head? Yes. But it doesn't have a form yet? I don't know. It doesn't, like, it's not flowing. It doesn't move. It doesn't seem like it's, like, coming together. Are you right, what are you writing on? What do you, do you write on that thing right there? That notebook right there? That's a great notebook. It's like a perfect notebook. You can add, you can go out and get some 3x5 index cards. Do you have any of those? Yeah. I got them here. Oh, you can, you can go, you can get the wall links across the street. If you don't have any. And you can write your story, like, beat by beat on the index cards. And you can get movement and flow just by moving the cards around. See what I mean? Sometimes we think, oh, I'm stuck. You know what I mean? I'm stuck. Maybe sometimes we just need to shuffle them around. To actually physically move the paper around. And it'll start to move. That's what I do. And buying your foot is optional. I like buying my foot. You know, and you can carry it around in your bag. You can sit on it some way and, like, turn the scenes. A lot of people tell me like that. I do it. You know, like 5 index cards. I just put it through. Run the story over and over and over in my head. Just like, because it was nice, it was fun. The title will come. Yes? I mean, when do you have to play? Uh-huh. Physically, do you do that? I can do it, right? Do you type? Do you have something to type on? Oh. A lot to type on. How do I freeze down? I can do it at home. How do I change minds and rehearsal? When we're actually rehearsals? Yeah. I just say, wait, how do I change that? You say, like, butter instead of what? Say butter. Yeah. Right in the range. Yeah. Butter. Is it been somebody else? Yeah. So do you have to write and type on? No. Somebody else did. That's what you get. You know, you get to the thing where people are hanging out everywhere and they're talking about being silly. But, no, I usually have to write it in my script. I'm usually out of conversation with the director. And then I say, hey, hey, hey, wait, wait, well, hopefully the reaction on the actor's face because if they're like, butter, butter. Then it's not a good life. Then I'm really forcing something on them. Because they're in it. They're in the pockets, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but you can say it, I mean, usually the stage manager, she's gonna write it in, you know, or you can write it in and hand it to the stage manager, come on, get up. It's all very easy. It doesn't have to be a big, or you can sit the actors down, if it's a lot of new stuff, you sit down. It's one word, it's three words. But if it's a lot of new stuff, can we sit down, we get new pages, it's more formal. We're sitting down. But it's always fun. Like, you know, pulling the rug out from on the way. Yeah, it's really fun. It's very, it's very reassuring. Yeah. So, yeah. So, oh, yeah. And sometimes the actors will come to you. Yeah, but sometimes the actors will come to you and say, can I say, yes, I know. I don't know what this question is, but I'm struggling with the end of the line. Yeah. And I'm, like, writing, like, a discovery draft that I can figure out, stuff about, and then normally I've got, like, some ideas or something. This is great. It's a great question. What do you do and don't do? You know where you're going in your life, right? You make it. You know, but no. Right. But yet, yeah, right. And it's okay. It's okay. And that's a tricky thing. It's just a really good writer. So, you've got this thing. It's really hard, guys. So, you guys, in the core, you know the end, and this time, you don't. Right, so it's like if you play a game or if you play a game or whatever, it's like you think that, okay, maybe the first day of yoga you were doing the basketballs like this, you know what I mean? You're doing this, you're holding it for like an hour and you're like, whoa, what's up? It's a rough day, right? It's the first day you're like this. So you just have to difficulty on yourself. You just advance to the next level. And the boys come out. Just keep writing. Man, that's what I'm doing, so. You're a warrior knight, go forward to them. Okay, what do you do when it's due in like three days? Two words are magical. They are the end. Stick them on. So you what? I got to the end. Right, so if you write, and, and, you know, if that might not be the end. I mean, I changed the end before, please don't. I'm going to now try my best. Ten minutes, one more, three minutes in a row, so I changed the end. You can say it, I just know the end. I think that I'm just the end. I knew the end. I thought it was the end. But, you know, I'm just scared that it's going to end. The end will reveal itself. It will reveal itself. But if you don't put anything there, and you sit around waiting, thinking of the perfect thing, it's going to be torturing. Instead, just act. Or something like that. That's the end of the question here. Is that the end? Is that the end? Is that the end? Well, that's the end. Okay, well done. Thank you guys so much for coming. And then we're going to take a break for the whole day. Miss Caroline, thanks for my time. Thank you.