 I'm eating. Happy May, everybody! It's watch me work. It's all about working and eating. I'm SLP. We've been doing a show longer than I can remember. I love doing this. I love meeting you all on Mondays at 5 p.m. This is what we do if you don't know. We work for 20 minutes together and then I invite you to ask me questions about your work and your creative process. The way it works is that if you ask me a question about my work and my creative process, I'll be like a wonderful human being and make it all about you and turn the question around so that we talk about your work and your creative process. While we don't have time to have you read from your work or show your work or whatever, we do have time to talk about process. If you have a question or anticipate having a question about process, Lolly is going to tell you how to get into high school. Yes, if you have a question, you can use the raise of your hand function, which is in the reactions tab, likely at the bottom of your screen. That's if you're here in Zoom with us. If you have any trouble finding the reactions tab, just let me know and I can help you out in the chat. If you're watching live with us on HowlRound, you can send your questions via the Public Theater's Instagram or Twitter accounts or via the Watch Me Work Twitter account, which is at Watch Me Work SLP with the hashtag HowlRound. That's hashtag H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. All right. Okay, we're going to start. All right. Ready, Lolly? And go. All right. All right. That is time. That is time. It is time to take some questions after I untangle my cord there. Uh-huh. Oh, looks like we have a question already from Kimmy D. Hey, Kimmy, how you doing? Hi, Susan Laurie. It's nice to see you. Hi, Lolly. Hi, everybody. I have a structural question, please. I have two characters that are seeing the same therapist. And while they're at different times for the sake of this scene, they're seeing the therapist at the same time. So their dialogue is kind of split and staggered. And I was wondering how does that look on the page? Is there a mechanism on final draft that helps me split it or how do I do that? So they're basically saying you have two characters who are in the same scene. Yes. I don't care who they're in the same scene with. I mean, therapy, they're talking. They're both talking. I'm sorry. They're each in a session alone with the therapist, but on stage it's all three of them at the same time. Does that make any sense? I'm not making any sense. They're not seeing the therapist at the same time. No. Okay. The scene is the simultaneous scene. They're seeing the therapist at different times. Yes. Right. I'm so glad you're magic and get inside my head and ask the question. I didn't get inside your head. I just imagined that people are in the toilet, actually. They're both taking a shit. They're not taking a shit on the same toilet, but they're both on the toilet. It doesn't look like where, you know what I mean? So that's the kind of thing. So is there a mechanism on final draft? I mean, I use final draft quite a bit, but you're going to have to look at final draft to see. I mean, if you want them to, you know, how to format your page, that I am sorry. Oh, that's okay. Was it worth it? You have to imagine what you want it to look like on the page. You know, columns basically, but you have to look at your word does it? Final draft does it? They all do it, but I that's that's that, you know, there's writing, there's a creative act, and then there's typing. While I'm a really good typist, really, I kind of would allow, you know, you to figure that one out on your own. That's why my play is in a book written by hands. Come on. It's not that. It's not that hard, Kimmy. You just go in and go to the help and you soak, you know, columns. Okay. Thank you. I didn't even know that much. Oh, I'm guessing, but I think that's how you do it. Thank you. You're welcome, dear. All questions are welcome. They're all good. Some of them make us laugh. Thank you, Kimmy. Oh, it looks like Amy is at a hand. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you need to unmute yourself. I just gave you permission. There you go. Hi. So I'm a teacher and I'm teaching a class with students who they're sixth graders. They're devising plays. They're devising their own plays. And we're in a spot right now where they have so each, each cohort has choose has chosen a different play structure, I guess, or group of characters. With one group, they've devised, so they're sixth graders. So they're between anyways, between like 10 and 11 and they're all girls. And they've decided to use the motif of little like princesses, but they want these princesses to be very on princess quote unquote like. So we're in this spot and I'm sorry to bring this, but I'm totally lost with how to guide them. They have they have created dialogue that is just fraught with a lot of just there's there's no there it's just fraught with constant conflict. And I don't want to I don't want to get inside of it and try to tell them don't do conflict. But how, how would one influence resolution without it being without it being genuinely coming from these particular girls are not even resolution but the conflict is it's literally 20 minutes of constant conflict, which is interesting but it's also I just right, right, right. That's really great. I mean, first of all, thank you for teaching, you know, writing to sixth graders. I have a sixth grader. I can send them to you. Oh, well, and this is an all girls school. Okay. And so like, they're really particular to, I don't know, it's, it's just really interesting. I mean, it'll be the whole class and it's just all conflict and pushing and and obviously I let it go to violence because I couldn't and I wouldn't want it. But there's just so much inside of it. And I'm lost with how to help them shape it. So yeah, so how long is the play going to be? Well, we have a 40 minute class. And so I'm looking at a half hour, you know, scenes of just yeah, great. And is it one long scene? I mean, what do you imagine them? Well, I really wanted it to come from their writing. Do you know what I mean? So like, I can have a vision of it. I could but the way that the writing has has they're on a Google doc. So they share the Google doc. And they just they've been typing in working together in terms of creating scenes. So right now, the first scene they have is them arriving at this preparatory school, if you will, they're all Disney princesses showing up, they each have their own voice. And one girl, the girl who's Mulan, she also plays piano, and she doesn't talk in class at all. And she's very shut down physically. So her whole dialogue is on the piano, her whole it's just all piano. Worked for her. But I guess I guess I don't know what the plot is. Ask them. I mean, just because they haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean that by asking them questions, it won't come from them, right? So why said, well, how long is it you can set a limit? You're allowed and that's and then they're going to fill it. You know what I mean? Like, you're going to give them a container, meaning it's a 15 minute play or whatever you're going to say, which means it's going to be about 12 pages, you know, 15 pages, I don't know what Google doc, I don't know how it types out or anything. And then you can ask them each, what does your character want? And how is she going to get it by the end of those 15 pages? You know, and what is so they can they can have conflict. That's that's fine. That's great. But what does she want more than like, I just want to like snap at the other characters say like, you're dressed as this pretty as mine or whatever they're going to say, you know, but what does she want more than anything? You know, what what does she want when she walks into the room or like you said, arrives at the preparatory school? What would she like to have happen by the end of the play for herself? What would she like to have happen for herself? And how is she going to get it? You know, so so the desire that the urge, the dramatic trajectory of the character is more interesting than just some what you call conflict. It just sounds like it's not really going anywhere. That's what it sounds like. But is that helpful? It's very helpful. And they can list the things like I want, I want people to listen to me. I want to feel so comfortable that I can, I can speak aloud and not just speak to my piano. I want to make a friend. I want to make sure that no one knows how crazy my parents are. Or I want to, you know, I want to invite everybody to the party by the end. By the end of the first day, I want to have everybody's whatever that whatever it is that they want, they can write those things down in a separate document. And then they can check in with themselves or you about like, am I am I getting what I want? You know, it's like a regular conversation. Like, what did you want? Amy, you wanted some someone to answer a question about, you know, what you're teaching in class. And, you know, that's that's the basic, you know, it would help. And if we can create a separate document about what my character wants, then they can understand that they can sort of have a reference point to look at, like a guidepost, if you will, that could be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, but thanks again for for teaching, you know, student, you know, sixth graders, you're, you're heroic. No, not really. Come on. Come on. It's great. It's really great. We love teachers, love teachers. So thank you for doing doing the great work. Thank you. Thank this helps so much. Sure. And please come back and we ask about your own writing because, you know, thank you so much. It looks like we have will you should be able to unmute now. I will. Hi Susan, Laurie, I want to ask you about how you think about depth. One of the things I'm working on a piece right now looking at fat ham and they talk a lot about softness. And I know in your recent work, the harder they come, you talked, you really had to dive into these characters. I'm curious, how do you think about adding that depth? I know you just asked about think about what does that character want? How do you try to find that balance while not just trying to think about what you might want and portray that onto a character? Right. Depth like the the deepness of a character. Sorry. You're okay. Right. Okay. I just want to make sure I understood. I don't really think about what I want for a character. That's me. I think about what the character wants. So, you know, so that's how I deal with a depth and getting into the character. Because once I start thinking about what I want, I mean, shoot, I want to sit on the couch and eat some chocolate ice cream. You know what I'm saying? The character wants to, you know, build a bridge to Narnia or whatever, you know what I mean? But I want to sit on the couch and eat. So, I'm very clear, like the character wants that. And if it's share, share, you can say the characters come from me. Of course, of course, of course. But in the moment, I'm, I am the character. I'm not thinking like, like, top dog or dog. Like, what is, what does Susan Laurie want for Lincoln? Who cares about Susan Laurie? I mean, I've never met him, but I hear he's a really good writer. Shakespeare. I don't know how he wrote, but I can guess that that writer put all of themselves into the character consistently. You know, and I think the, I think the wonky writing comes when we're, we don't give in to the character. We don't get, you know, really walk around in their shoes, live in their skin. We're all, we're sitting outside commenting on that kind of thing. And then, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's not, in my opinion, that's not a strong, a strong way of writing as one might do. So if you think of what does the character want, that's all you're thinking about. That's it. What you want for the character. Who cares? Okay. The character wants to know whatever the three said they want to go to Moscow. They want, you know, Willie Lohman wants a promotion, you know, whatever. Hamlet wants to figure out who the Frick killed his daddy or whatever, you know, I don't know. These things. King Lear wants to have a nice retirement, whatever. You see what I'm saying? I don't know what Shakespeare wants for King Lear. I don't really care. Does that help? Yes it does. It requires you, so you, well, you got to get out, meaning you got to walk around in the character's shoes, you got to walk around the character's skin, meaning you got to get out of your own shoes. Both of them. I mean, I'm sorry, assuming that you have two feet, we're just sorry if I, that was offensive to anybody. Deposit your being in their being and take it from there. Perfect. Thank you. Good question, man. Thank you. Timothy. Hey, Timothy. How are you? I'm well. Good to see you, man. You too. You too. I have a small announcement and then, which leads to my question. When I was having trouble getting off first base and we were meeting, you know, in here in like August or September and you helped me out. Well, I finished a draft of that play. So yeah, so I was happy for about five minutes and then I was like, thank you everybody. And then I was kind of seeing like where it's funny because it's sort of like what Will just asked, where, where like the character didn't, I couldn't get out of the character. I needed to get out of the character in order to like establish that strong want. Does that make any sense? Yeah. So I was sort of, you know, I guess what I'm saying is, I guess what I'm asking is like what you were just saying before about like, you know, find the characters want. I sometimes just like write a lot of stuff about the character and expect it to just emerge. And I was wondering if there was anything that could goose that process along. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I mean, we could activate the, the, the, the question we could activate the writer, Timothy. I mean, if you're writing stuff and did you say hoping that it would emerge or thinking that it would emerge? Usually something emerges if I kind of just start writing down everything I know about the character and, you know, what does she, what does she think, you know, what happened to her when she was 10 that, that's like, she's here now, that kind of thing. Right. So could you be a little more, so I think you need to lean into it a little more. It sounds like you need to be more pointed, like, you know, what happened to her when she was 10? And she's, and you have an answer for that, right? I mean, you write it down. Yeah, I could, yeah. Great. Okay. What really happened? You see what I mean? You see, you're, I think you need to be like, you're, you need to be like a sort of more of a lean into your reporting a little bit more, you know, lean into your question and a little bit more, dig a little harder. You know, I think you're digging really well, but maybe you're digging with a, I don't know, a, a hand, a trowel, you know, out of a spoon. You're not, you're not, you're not digging with your hands. You're not digging with a spoon. You're digging with a nice trowel. You get a shovel in there. You know, really, I mean, like, let's, let's move some earth. You know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe just, you know, what do you want? Well, I want to go to Moscow. No, really, really, what, what do you really want? Why do you want to go to Moscow? What's wrong with where you're living now? I can't, I forget the town where they live in. You know what I mean? You know, you can be a little more assertive with your questions, with your desire to get to know them. If you've ever talked to a relative or a spouse or a child, you know, how was school? I was okay. Yeah. No, really, I was, you know, I was, how was math class? Tell me, how do you, you know, did you talk about parallelograms? Yes or no? You can lean in a little bit more. And I think that your, then your characters will be perhaps more, tell you more of what they need to, and that will actually bring the two of you closer together, you see, instead of, oh, okay, just tell me about your day, you know. It's funny that I think it was Kimmy, she mentioned therapy, you know, a lot of, there's styles of therapy that just let the, the person talk, you know, and oh, that, oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's interesting. And then there's styles or the therapists really get in there and start to, you know, why'd you do that? What's going on with you like that? You can be a little bit more aggressive in a good way, you know, not bullying, just leaning. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, actually. Thank you. But congratulations on finishing your first draft. Thanks. Yeah, try being happy, you know, being happy for another five minutes, tack five minutes. You're only happy for five minutes. Oh my goodness. You guys are helping. So yeah, I'll give myself 10 more. There you go. There you go. Okay. Thank you. Good question, Timothy. Thank you. Thanks. Who's next? Uh-oh. Was Lolly here? So you're not, you're muted. I think you have to unmute yourself. I see your mouth moving. I can't hear you. Lolly, are you still on? I don't see you. Host, yeah, host has to unmute. I think one of these wonderful, this is the moment where we say we love technology. Don't we just love technology? Lolly might have had some technical difficulty because, oh, she made me the host. Okay. I'm going to not roll my eyes. This might take a while because I am in several things right now. Hold on just a sec. Okay. If we could hold on just one sec, I'm going to check some of my settings. Okay. Okay. Lolly's going to come back on in a sec. She has some, she's having technical difficulty. We'll just wait and talk about the weather until she gets back on and can unmute people. In New York, it's kind of cloudy and the spring that we thought, oh, we missed spring. It went by too fast. I think it really came back in the last couple of days and it was raining a lot and it was like, wow, really cool. So it's been very exciting weather-wise. Hello, everyone. I'm so sorry. My computer just randomly shut down and then it started screaming at me like at full volume. Yeah, it made this really loud beeping noise in my headphones. It was so crazy. But I'm here now. Apologies for the brief hiatus. I know that we had Al wanted to ask a question, I think. So I will ask you to unmute and then we've got a couple others in the queue. Hi, thanks a lot. Hi, everybody. My big issue that I'm dealing with right now is having a couple of decades worth of creative U-turns, a lot of disappointments professionally, finished projects that never saw the light of day. And I'd like to be able to somehow cheerlead myself to keep moving on. You can read tons of stories about people who finally published it 70, their first novel or whatever. But I wanted to know if you had any kind of thoughts on, I'm not asking you necessarily for your own personal, anything that happened to you that you were able to just kind of turn things around or just really focus on the work instead of worrying about the intended audience. So I guess I could just use some cheerleading. Oh, sweetheart. Yeah. That's part of what we're here for. And I mean, while we're all cheering you on, because yeah, we're all running the marathon and we're all simultaneously watching from the sidelines, cheering each other, the other runners on all the time. You can be mindful. I mean, I love the way you're talking about your work. So it sounds very, very sort of forward thinking and positive. And, you know, I think just continue to be mindful about that we do this all the time. All the words that come out of your mouth are going into your ears. So you're hypnotizing yourself constantly. So anytime, and it doesn't sound like you do this often, but anytime you catch yourself saying something, let's just say down about your work. You know what I mean? You can refashion that so that you're constantly thinking of yourself in a positive light. That sounds corny, you know, because it's not corny. So just think of, you're an amazing hypnotist, right? So you've done the work. That's the most important thing. And that's something that a lot of people never do. So pat yourself on the back for that. Pat yourself on the back for anything. Pat yourself on the back for coming here. Pat yourself on the back for if you, even if you were, what, do some work 20 minutes a day. Pat yourself on the back. Being in a state of like congratulations. Good job, you know. Also know that you're a hypnotist, things that come out of your mouth are going right into your ears, right? So that's the kind of thing. And also continue working. So maybe, you know, maybe sometimes we say, I wrote this, you know, 10 years ago, I made this pen 10 years ago and no one likes it yet. I'm just going to keep trying to get someone to like this pen, you know what I mean? I mean, that's okay. That's good. So that might only take one hand. And with the other hand, you can start to develop your sharpie, you know what I'm saying? And you can do things, you know, so that you can have tons of work. You know, I mean, lots of finished projects that haven't seen the light of day and make, you know, the word yet, one of your best friends that haven't seen the light of day yet. I have started reading Shakti Gawain, who is amazing, but no but, and yet, the negative talk is pretty loud. So it's, I assume that everybody goes through this, but it's just, you know, you get to these points is like, I want to get out of this. I just want to be able to keep going. Yeah. But just saying that out loud is really great. It's helpful. Thank you. Even say I'm finding a way out of this. I always find a way to keep going. Just what, you know, you just, we all have to be really aware of the ways in which we're, we're, I mean, I'm not saying we can control everything as we control the weather or whatever, but I'm saying that we become more and more aware of the things that we do have some say over and just focus on those things as much as we can. Because what happens then, I remember maybe a year ago or something, someone who was writing a screenplay was on Watch Me Work and and they said, yeah, I've written this screenplay, but I don't have a team. I don't have anybody who can help me with it. I just said, just why don't we frame that differently? And then they started talking about the people they did know. And I was like, well, it sounds like you've got a team. So reframing things can help us see what's there in a different way in a different light. And then maybe we might start to recognize some possibilities that have been there all along. We just kind of haven't noticed them. You know, so and keep coming back here because we will cheer you on. Oh, thanks. Yeah, sure. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Awesome. Okay, I think we'll have Veronica next and then we'll go to Nicole and then Lisa pending time. I'll talk fast. So my question. Oh, hi. It gets back to the what we're talking about with characters, but I tend to lean on the side of memoir and nonfiction and autobiographical. And so I was wondering how you really approach doing deep work when the character is part of yourself, similar to how you kind of had to probably do for like plays for the play gear or other works like that. You ask yourself, what's the story? Like if you say you were 100 years old, right, which you might be, you never know what with the filters that are used these days. But say you're 100 and you want to tell me the story of your life. Okay. So Veronica, what's the story? You can say I'm going to tell you from the time from when I was five to when I was 10. That's the story. I'm going to tell you when I was 20 to when I was 27, when I just moved to New York City. That's the story. Even if it's your own life, you're telling a piece of it. Or I want to tell my entire life story. Great. Cradle the grave. That's the story. You see what I'm saying? What's the story? What are we looking at? What are you asking your audience, your reader to look at? And whether it's plays for the play gear or whatever, top dog, underdog. It's all the same. What's the story? What am I talking about? It helps you frame the subject, helps you edit. Okay. I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to from when I'm 19 to when I'm 22. Great. So I got my dog, you know, Fitzwilliam, when I was 27. Well, Fitzwilliam isn't in the story. You understand? Fitzwilliam, what a name for a dog. Lord have mercy. Okay. You get it? That makes sense. Okay. So just keep asking yourself, what's the story? What story am I telling? So I'm talking fast because I'm looking at the clock. Okay. So is Nicole next? Awesome. Hi, Nicole. You should be able to So I guess I was thinking about the different ways that theater can be consumed. And I was, I realized that like, for example, I read Father Comes Home from Wars, like as a printed version, I wasn't able to like see it on the stage. And so I guess I was just curious about when in the writing process, you think about how it fits on the stage or how exactly like the genre lends itself to a new or different type of writing? So how it looks. So when do we decide, are you saying when do we decide if it's going to be a play or what or how is it going to look on the stage? I'm sorry. I guess like, if you're, if you already know that you're writing a play, um, how do you balance like thinking about plots and characters, which I guess are not unique to theater to thinking about like, okay, well, this needs to like appear on stage at some point. And for these reasons, I need to specifically think about these elements. Does that make sense? These these need, I'm sorry, plot and character, which aren't unique to theater, right? And then at some point you need to think about these, what you cut out? Like, if you were to think about how to take like the creative like aspects that you've created, and to like put them on a stage, right? Is that something that you're constantly thinking about? Or does that, or do you need to like establish plot characters first? All at the same time. Okay. We'll think about it all at the same time. So it's just like, if you were, you know, creating a little film about yourself right now, you know, it's like, well, okay, here I am. I'm talking about these things. I'm doing these things. This is where I'm sitting. You're thinking about it all at once. It's all of a piece. That that's kind of the fun way to do it. Because then you're saying, okay, I've got a character. She's baking a raspberry tort. She's in a kitchen. She might have on an apron. She's got some ingredients. You see what I mean? It's all, it all kind of comes together as one thing. Instead of I've got a character, her name was Mary. You can do that. The character, her name is Mary. What is she doing? She's baking. What is she baking? I don't know. Raspberry tort. Great. Where is she? Is she outside at a campfire? No, no, she's in the kitchen. She's in a test kitchen. It could be a TV show. Do you see what I mean? It all kind of comes together. Does that make, does that make sense? It does make sense. Thank you. You're welcome. It's more fun that way too. Kind of whip it up all at once. Thank you so much, Nicole. And lastly, we have Lisa. Lisa, good to see you again. Good to see you too. Good to see everybody. So this is a question that sort of grew out of something that happened in this workshop maybe five or six weeks ago, maybe when I first joined. And it's, I'm in a program, a writing program where we workshop a lot. And I'm really convinced the more I workshop, the worse I'm getting at it. Because it just feels like whatever your reaction to the comments in the workshop are, it's never the right reaction. And on one hand, I'm of course very grateful to people who have read my work or thought about it and are offering comments. And that's great. But on the other hand, I have like, literally lost a job when supposedly I did not take comments well for an outline of a television episode I was writing. When all I did was sit there and write down the person's comments. So I'm convinced we should all like take workshops on how to workshop. We should like have practice rounds or something. Or I'm just doing it completely wrong. So what are your thoughts on that? That's really rough. Well, yeah, it's tricky when we expose ourselves to the kindness or unkindness of strangers. Or it's a little tricky. I think that's unfortunate that you say you lost a job because of the way you took some notes. You know, that's unfortunate, maybe. Rejection is God's protection. Or, you know, would you really want to be in a writer's room or whatever with somebody who like was treating you like that? No, and actually the show got canceled. So. Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for not getting you into that mess. Because that's very difficult that you didn't want to smile at the right time. And so they didn't like you. I mean, it's okay. Good. Good. Good. You dodged the bullet. It sounds like. But at the same time, it sounds like a it sounds like a workshop situation that's fraught with a lot of attention and ego. And it might, I mean, if you're at this point, if you're just writing down what they say and, you know, nodding, and that's not the right way to do it. You might benefit from pushing pause on the workshop and finding other ways to get feedback for your work or having a second opinion set up or having like, you know, after the workshop, I don't know if it's on Zoom or if it's a person or is it on Zoom or in person? Zoom. Great. Great. You can have what you can do is you can have a friend, like a trusted colleague who's smart or a spouse or, you know, somebody that you like and who loves you dearly. You can have a check in with them before you go in and then right after you come out. And if, you know, or you can just push pause and be absent, go every other week, you know, and it doesn't it's like if we say I'm so grateful for people that people read my work, not if they're stupid and assholes. I mean, it's like, oh, I'm so grateful that I'm going on like 10 dates this week. Well, not if they're assholes. I mean, I don't know if you like, I'm assuming that we like nice people who treat us with respect. So, so, you know, does that does that make sense? It's tricky, but definitely get some other people to workshop either formally or informally with get another workshop, either in addition to this one, or, you know, in place of this one. Because you know, you know, the world is is is rough enough, you don't need to be you don't need to leave a workshop feeling like crap just because you didn't smile or thank you so much for your note. I mean, please, people who need their ass kissed, you know, okay, that makes sense. It does. Thank you. I actually had my husband sit in my last workshop, I put him across the room, and he said no, they really liked it. I said no, they really didn't. He said yeah, they really liked it. So maybe it's just me not hearing it. Okay, but also take a little pop, push pause on a little bit, get some space from it, you know, skip a couple classes, skip a couple workshops. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're not so dependent on their opinion. It might be hard to to take even if they love it right now. So, just, you know, step away a little bit and get some fresh air. Come back in a couple weeks or whatever. I feel better. It's 601. It is. That was perfect timing. I loved our little rapid fire questions up there. All right. Thank you. So when are we we're not back next week or the week after that? We are. Yeah, we are back on May 22nd and the sign up is already on the website. So go and sign up and we'll see you then. Thank you all so much. Great questions everybody. Bye.