 So here we are, this is watching a work on the Dalai Lai, and I'm just wondering if people won't mind. This is a man of the action called Free Writing in the Class. It's also a play, and here's how the action and the dialogue goes. First, we're going to have to be able to create the action of a play, which is all of us will be working on whatever we want. And then in the time after we finish working, after the timers, our timers go off, and you're just going to work on your time, we will take, we'll create a dialogue of a play, which will be you asking questions about your work and your creative process. And this is on your work. So is that clear? If you have questions on your work for five minutes, they're going to talk for as long as we need to. These people line up for Shakespeare and choir. And I tell people, oh, they're lined up for you either. Have you seen any of the Russians? Have you seen any of the women? Have you got a chance? Their chance is awesome. And they're very kind. Anyway, so we're going to work for 45 minutes. Oh, yeah. People in the world, people in the world of the interwebs might want to tweet us with their questions. Indeed. You can tweet us at watchmeworkslp with hashtag newplay. Thank you very much. And so here we will go. We will work with some. So that was the action part. Now we're going to get the dialogue part in which you might want to ask questions about your work and your creative process. We're actually working down there. They're doing real work. I mean, ours is pretend work. Ours is play work. But they're working. And right at this moment, every Wednesday, they refill the ice container. Everybody can hear it unless you're like Dan. Is that your name? Yes. Dan can project like a mofo. So I don't know if he has a question, but any of the other of you probably will. So anybody have a question or an answer? Anybody? A conventional question, but also could really use your strategy. Sure. Trying to balance being an artist with all the everyday pull, like do you have any strategies? Yes. What is your name? Yolanda. Yolanda, where are you from? I'm from DC. You're from DC. Are you visiting here? I'm really a New Yorker for like 30 years. Oh right, I'll see you then. You're one of us. Yes. So Yolanda has a question. Everybody pretty much hear her? Yes. So how to balance her artistic life and her artistic commitments with the everyday like everything from maybe I got on the laundry, to I got in the kids to the schools, to I got to move the car from one side of the street to the other, to act like maybe a day job or a night job or something like that. And friends. And friends. Oh friends. Yeah. And good to meet you. Good to meet you. You know like you college your work. You know like you know you know your friends again and don't sit on these things. Right, right, right, right, right. That's good and right. So maybe friends, maybe you know you're going to want to hang out with some good stuff and you want to spend time with them. It's a great major function. It's like that. So just keep it up. You're a friend. You're a perfectionist. You're perfectionist. That's great. This is what I do, maybe some folks out here have some idea also because everybody to be sure gets work done and has other things to do. What I do is I schedule, and it sounds like, you know what I mean? Because we're taught, we learn from the movies and stuff that, you know, the poet, you know, the writer, who's pretty always like a guy, a white guy, with his little friends. And the inspiration comes, it just kind of comes. But for those of us who are different from that, we make schedules. And so, pick a time every day that you're going to commit to working on your art. Okay? Try to pick a time where you feel fresh and positive. You know, so if you're a learning person, maybe choose some time in the morning. If you're a night owl type, choose some time in the evening. If you're a person who really gets going around 3 p.m., you know? I don't know who that is, but, you know, just pick a time around 3 p.m. Okay? So pick a time that's in your favorite time, make it a manageable amount of time. 45 minutes an hour, something that you can manage, something that isn't overwhelming to you. Stick with it, and show up for your work. So if your writing time, for example, is from 6 to 7 in the morning, every morning, show up every morning if you have something going on that day or flying out of town or whatever, maybe move it a little earlier or make sure you're even at the airport or find it, you know, another hour down the plane, whatever, find that hour of charm. Okay? Daily practice, the key. I can't really say enough about it, but I just go on and on. But basically, daily practice can get the work that you show for the work. Even if you just sit for an hour and you're just going for the work. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm lost. I'm confused. And you're just going through the motions. You know? Daily practice can show you the number of day. And your friends, if they need you, say, you know, not between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. You know what I mean? Or if you're a kid, you know what? I have a toddler, right? Where I can, ooh, I get up before he does. And then he started taking off his nightmares. Like, mommy, I mean, this is it. Like, mommy, I'm awake. And I want your attention. So he started taking off his nightmares. So now I go. I've got some nighter pants. Get it on. So, huh, he's in the crib. Right? He's in bed. Occupying himself. Shouldn't he wake up before 7 a.m.? You know what I mean? So you can make the time. Does anybody else have anything to add? I don't think so. Working? Yes, Carol, of course. I find that sometimes people don't realize that you're working. I'll just just talk about it. That people don't realize that you're working. And that they see that you're sitting and staring. That's what I have to actually say. That's really good. Yeah. And also, if you do laundry, you know, some of the chores are laundry stuff. That's good thinking. You use it for part of your work and count it. That's really great. That's really great. So sometimes you have to tell your loved ones, your family folk, hey, I'm working over here. And I just, you know, I'm not just staring at the space. I'm working. And sometimes combining work with a household and children like doing the laundry, you're down there in the basement or at the laundromat watching the laundry go or in your home if you have a laundry, you should go to the laundry. Watching it go, you can go to the laundry. You have a television set. How much TV do you watch a day? Very little. Very little. Good. Maybe cut that back to even less. So if you watch a 30-minute today, cut back to 15 minutes. You'll have an actual 15-hour. Jeremy, do you have anything? I was going to say my schedule is never the same every day. So I count. So whatever hours I do write, I keep track of them so that at the end of the week, I know if I'm writing or if I just read my book. Ah, great. So Jeremy, it's like, so Jeremy has a schedule that's very, every day is different. So what he does is he keeps track. I keep track of it. So you see you have like an hour of writing a writer's poems. Like you want to do like a marathon. If you're training for a marathon, you want to say 40 hours a week or 20 hours a week. So you want to make sure you get to that by the end of the week. That's a really great idea. It's a really great idea. Anybody else have an idea? Actually I have a question. Okay, go ahead. So did you have an idea? Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead Scott. Oh sure. Do you want to go first? No. Me? Okay. Yeah. What I do, I sometimes, I found that if I do something right as I'm about to leave the house, it actually weirdly does this thing where it gives you an internal deadline. Like if you're going out to dinner with your friends and you're like, I've got to meet my friends in 20 minutes. So I've only got five minutes to get this idea down and then you get it. You know what I mean? And so it gives you this like really weird deadline where there are real stakes to it and then you can sort of, so then you can sort of just like, and then somehow because you've given your brain, creative brain a deadline, it sort of answers the problem for you. That's great. If that makes sense? That's good idea. So create a deadline or if you have an event that you're going to, I have to do, I have to do this creative act before I do that. That's a great thing to sort of get something out quickly. Yeah. It kind of puts you in an over a long period of time. You want to find ways to work in a new world. You know, we're trading. We're trading. We're trading. We're Ultramarathon. Artists are Ultramarathon. You know Ultramarathon, they're at the desert. They're at the desert. They're running 100 miles or whatever. And you want to trade to a career like that because that's the artistic life. So while sprinting does help. Yeah. And it's great. Really, you know, get to the finish line. We want to create something that's also in addition to sprinting. We want to create habits that allows to, like everything. But that's good. That's good. Yeah. But no, that's cool. I can create deadlines. We can also create deadlines. Like I asked people, people are working on a draft when you want to be done. And they say, next week I go, okay, let's break it down. Let's see how you can do that next week. That's all, I always create deadlines. I just, I created deadlines in July. And I just finished it. I finished it one day over yesterday. Yeah. Always grab. Always. Always create deadlines. Always create deadlines. Yeah. Okay, your question. Hi. So I'm also from Washington DC. I just moved here a couple weeks ago. So I'm still figuring this out. And in DC, I've created a school. A theater school. It was a volunteer school. Right. So before I introduced materials based on women and women tissue. Right. So in doing that, I used to writing material that is just solely women characters. Right. And maybe in the last year or so, I started writing stuff that introduced men into the pieces. Right. And sometimes I feel like that when I'm writing male characters, and I'm writing the female character in the same scene, for example, that the male character comes always stronger. I don't know if it's just because I'm more excited because I haven't written male characters for so long or if it's something so powerful, whatever the case may be. But I was just wondering if you had any tips or just any insight on that in terms of just making sure that the female characters, male characters, they're not, you know, unbalanced. Right. They're both strong characters. Right. Okay. What's your name? I'm Star. Okay. So Star is from DC. And she's writing right now, she's writing a piece of male female characters in it. And she notices that her male characters seem to be stronger in the scene. And any tips you might have to sort of make the characters more balanced, make the scene more balanced. I would say this. Maybe it's not about males, female, maybe it's about what the characters want. If you just take it out of the, you know what I mean, for a moment to spin, you really need to spin your disbelief, like the great Ford said. Right. Imagine that maybe you have more of a hook into, or an understanding of what your male character wants than you do of what your female character wants. You see what I'm saying? So he can go, oh, where your female, because he knows, oh, I want to connect with my left arm, oh, to the wall. Right. And she doesn't really know what she wants to do. So she's kind of like this. Okay. So go back and look at that. Because I imagine that you can write strong characters if you know what they want and, you know, sort of move them in the direction of what they want. Because there's no sort of secret in writing stronger men or weaker women or stronger women or weaker men. It's not about that. It's really knowing what your characters want and allowing them to go there. But we said the other, the other week, two points make a lie. That's a, if you forget this, if you can't measure it, it's a given in geometry. Someone knows geometry. Do you know geometry? No. Don't ask me any one question. I said it before. So two points make a lie. So it's the same thing what's in playwriting. Your character, where is your character at point A? Where does your character want to go? Point B? Those are the two points. Make a lie and die long. Okay. So you're probably, so check out, am I strong? Am I clear about where my female character is? And am I clear about where she wants to go? And see if that helps. You know what I mean? See if that helps you. Maybe it doesn't, I'm trusting you on this. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Um, it's made, it's made. Oh, what's that? Oh, what's that? Is that all? Oh, can it be? Is that okay? No. No, is that not good? All right. All right. Sorry. I'm from that, I'm sorry. I'm from that techie generation I'm sorry. I'm also from, I'm from Maryland. Well that's like almost. What part of this, what part of that, what part of that? It's Alex Timina. I'm original. I'm original. Um, I just wanted to know like what, what kind of music do you listen to right now? Right now? Yeah, like what are you into? Because I'm learning, I was just actually looking at that. I was learning, I'm learning a, a record here, this is me talking about a world which never happens, but I'm learning a, a song called 12 Pages of the City. So I'm listening to it a lot. He's a great guitar player and it's really hard to, it's a hard song to learn. Yeah. Are you learning to play? Do you play guitar? I do. Do you find, do you find that helps with your writing? No, no, no, because when I play it's also hard and tight, you know. So, I know that, I got to, I know it, yeah. Yeah. You're probably going to, I don't know. I love it. Are there any non-writers? I'm a, I'm an actor. Yeah. Yeah, so, but it's, it's interesting, life is interesting. Because, you know, I ran into you a week ago on the street and so I wanted to look to see what's happening at the public and I saw that you were doing something online and so I came and I didn't know what to expect. because I knew I had this time in my child care's cover. So I wanted to just come and check it out. And I thought maybe it was gonna be like that, where we would serve you writing, or talk or something like that. The computer's in the writing, and then I texted him like, is there a theme? Because I assumed, okay, this is right. Everyone is writing, it's not, you know. And he said, no writing whatever you want. And so writing for me as an actor is something that I figured wasn't my lane. I've been avoiding writing. I'm not gonna say how old I am for a long time, because I figured, you know, okay, that's not my lane. And so what I wanna share with you all is that, okay, this is what the project is, and I'm going to sit here, and I'm going to write something. And instead of like, okay, oh my God, what am I gonna write about? I was like, let me write about just how I'm being right now. And because I actually painted with a stomach ache, and I decided to write about it. And now my stomach ache is gone, because I had to deal with the source of why I was having a stomach ache. And so I'm just grateful to be here and to observe and to hear when writing. I love writers, and I don't know, what's in store from that? The St. Theater is one of the healing arts. Yes, it's so true. So there you go, thanks for writing. You know, and the theme, actually, there is a theme. The theme is write whatever you want. That's actually the theme. Straight up, do your thing. There's that quote, who said that? Do your thing so that I may know you sometimes. The rover ever said, I don't know, I get confused. Do your thing so that I may know you. Anybody else have a question? Thanks for all of it. It's interesting because writing is one of the stuff that's stuck in the subject. Where do we live? Do it. He wrote a symphony. Can anybody hear you? Oh. Right, okay. I just want to tell you what I'm interested in, to know that the story I've written is that Beethoven also did a sym, he wrote music, imitating how he wrote a symphony, imitating the voice that was started in May, because he had a lot of core issues. And he wrote all his happiest music, and he's lying on the side of his road, which is quite interesting. But I don't remember which one it is. I mean, not that he'd necessarily stop this. Right. He'd have to be broke and play guitar, right? Anybody else have a question? So I often find it difficult to know when you turn off the critical voice. And as I was sitting here writing, I definitely, I tend to edit as I go and have those moments where you're like, eh, no, new world. But sometimes I find that that, particularly in these kinds of exercises, can get in the way where it makes you want to go back and try the whole first paragraph again, or rewrite that whole thing. And I'm just wondering if people have thoughts about, I haven't really come to a conclusion about whether it's better to edit as you're going, or to step back and not touch anything and just let it be sort of brainstorming with extra structure. So I'm just curious about what you and others feel about that. I think I have strong feelings about this. I would suggest to write and then rewrite. I said before, the two kinds of courage, the first to write and the first to rewrite. Okay? Writing in the garden where anything goes, everything grows. Be writing there on that white paper. My voice is white today, or the white horse with a sort of discrimination and your favorite Beethoven music playing. And you're going to feel cutting everything that doesn't fit, right? Two separate acts, okay? I would suggest what we have. And this, the exercise for today is a replication of what you could be doing every day in your writing process. So it should be no different than a writing process. You try to make it, I mean, you can imagine us all here. I imagine you here, and I'm writing it, but okay? So I would suggest write, and then rewrite. And what happens is you have that inner critic in your head and they come up in a variety of forms and you'll hear people saying things like, will hear people saying things like, gosh, my mother always calls when I'm writing, or gee, I get nervous about the dry cleaning when I'm writing, or I don't know if my writing is good enough, you'll hear people say all these kinds of things. Resistance to doing your work, okay? And resistance to basically some form of fear, which is basically a form of lack of faith. So it's all the same thing, no matter if you're with or you're always not in some of the doors and say, hey, maybe come back to bed, we're not waiting for this, whatever. It's all a form of the same thing. And your job is to just continue regardless, okay? So practice, part of your practice can be just keep going. Come on, you're an ultramarathoner. What do you wanna do? Oh shit, I gotta be running around 47, come on, come on. There you are, through the desert, through death family, you got the number eight dollar, you got the spiky, you got the sun, the sprain, all the whatever, you can take your work. You'll be right later. When I get to the end, then I go back to my work, okay, that's what I do, right? You know, and people have other takes on it, that's sort of the right thing to do. What's your opinion on the playwrights' change, right? And have a message or like to write something that like, you know something like, I'd like to write, but like sometimes I don't wanna fucking have a message about what I'm writing. Sometimes I just wanna tell a good story. What's your take on it? Yeah, yeah, what's my take on the playwrights' or artists needing to have a message? Keep it to work, because I make kind of a face, I say, ah, what's your take on it? I say, I think messages are great, great, great. Things for the audience to think about after they've seen your play. That's the audience's job, where the critics, scholar, people, right? They'll go and they'll say, oh, here's a play, what's your name? Chris's play, it was about the author, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. You didn't get Chris to say, yeah, or really, you know, I could tell a story of my mom and dad, that game in the 70s or whatever, you know what I'm saying? So whatever, that's cool, but again, this is just me, I lean on the side of telling this story. If you tell a good story, if you tell a good story really well, it will have a strong, important message, because that's how we understand it, you know what I mean? I find that when things have a strong message that's kind of all they have, when you think of a place I really love, like King Winger, got lots of messages about fathers and daughters and kingdoms and Royals and fools and blindness, you name it, there it is, or Hamlet, you know, right? And I think if it had been written as a message, that's all they would be getting, just one message, which is kind of, you know, meter. So I like to tell a good story and they just let people go, why do you think it's about this? Well, I think it's about this, you know what I'm saying? What do you feel the differences between TV writing, film writing, and play writing? And like, I mean, not just in terms of like, like from a business standpoint, but like in terms of like what you can do with all those, artistically, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, it depends what kind of TV writing, difference between TV writing, film writing, and play writing, it depends. If you're writing for a network like a sitcom, it comes down to time. You know, you've got to write in certain time, sort of seconds to actually fit in the form, okay? There are certain restrictions on what you can do in that, was those time buckets, you know? With cable shows, there's a lot of room now when there was like five years for you. There's a lot more freedom. Theater, yeah, you know, it's a lot more. And there's, to me, nothing more interesting than a living person having a little bit of a relationship with somebody that we're not. It's just all of like, it is actually, it's like, oh, there it is again! Life, you know what I mean? I mean, that's kind of fun. And then of course, sitting next to somebody, and somebody's over there, or just standing, if you're watching, you know, your life's not just standing up. You know what I mean? There's something that you said for the live action. But TV and film are cool? Yeah. I mean, it's all good, it's all writing, it's all hard. It's all difficult, you know, it's all the same kind of thing, the process is just so exciting. Sure. That's several discussions. Can everybody hear me? Yeah. Where are you from? Are you from? Yeah. Chicago. Yeah, I was there. Can everybody hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can everybody hear me? Can everybody hear me? Yes, go ahead. I've had several discussions of people here and other places about form. Yeah. I've had discussions with people about how it, it's somewhat harder, this is all in theory, but it's harder to be Lemon Anderson at the Public Theater than it is to be Macklemore and achieve grassroots success. So can you talk a little bit about before you were Susan Murray Parks and when you were trying to get the plays made about like bringing, yeah, I mean, I mean, it's just really like bringing new form and thinking about theater because even though we're doing theater in front of a live audience, we often lean back on how things have been done. So about bringing new ideas and not only new stories, but new ways and how, like that struggle and or if you're doing the commission, how do you kind of fit within the compound? Right, right. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, yeah, I mean, kind of bringing new forms I mean, you're a new artist, I mean, you're a new artist who's interested in new forms. Yeah, just in how we move, I mean, everything from one extremes, let's give it more, right? One extreme is improv everywhere. One extreme is in and of your stuff. One extreme is the conventional plays, you know. Gats and, right, so talking to new ideas, what do you struggle with and what do you find is a process when you're trying to take a new idea to a theater and want something that says like, oh, well, this is universities, here's a hip-hop player, here's from the genitalia, here's a black player, here's a black player, when these boxes are constructed, I can deal with that and even as an established writer, we have a new idea when we do something new. Right, well, because I have two questions. One, what do you do when you're starting out or you're sort of making your way in your career and you are interested, I'm sorry, I'm trying to think of... I gave you the wrong answer. No, no, no, no, no. It's, this is a couple things. One, I never tried to write anything that, oh, nobody's ever seen before. I never thought, I'm gonna write something nobody's ever seen before. I've never tried to do that. But it depends on your career. Yeah, but I just tried to tell the story to the best of my head. You know what I mean? So I saw reality as I saw it and tried to write the story as I, the best that I could. And then people said, that's such and such and this is how they labeled it. And then it was able to get produced where it could, okay? I'm one of those people who doesn't spend time trying to control what she can't control. So people labels for things, oh well. People want to put things in boxes, oh well. You know what I do? I write the best writer that I can. And I'm trying to figure out, oh, that's what I can control. I can't control what so-and-so and such-and-such theaters and stuff like that. I can't. So I just focus on my writing and my craft. You see, you're saying- You're writing out the size that you can find for what anyone else expects of you or even if it's a brand new show. Yeah, you think you're right. Sometimes you're writing and people don't expect it because they think you are, they put a label on you. You should be writing like they put a label on you. And your job is to write the best, do the best writing that you can do. And it will find its way. It will find its venue, it will find its home. I have no doubt. You see what I mean? So it kind of takes them out of the equation and forces you or us to focus on us. We have to think about what we're doing. We can't be thinking about them. That's like thinking, what will the audience think of my play? The audience. The thousands of people who will see your play. They will think, I just focus on me. What does this work right here on this page? See, it's a little, it's basically controlling what you control and kind of letting the rest go. Drew's waiting as he's speaking out to the audience. And I have to get the mic back. Oh, you have to get the mic back? Thank you. Okay, we'll see you next week.