 uh we've been doing this show for like 12 years and for those of you who were just joining for the first time today I'm sure there's nobody like that but I'm gonna say it anyway because we're recording um we were doing it like almost every day in a row when the pandemic when lockdown first started and now we're you know we're taking it easy by just hanging out with you every week um the idea is that we hang out every week we share juice and um then hopefully during the week you can we can all sort of roll the wheel forward as they say and so what this is is basically we just work together and we work together for 20 minutes and I have my old timer here and then we I take questions from you about your work and your creative process very important that it's your work and your creative process and and you know hopefully offer some suggestions solutions tips tricks of the trade if you have a question during the question time Audrey could you tell us how to get in touch got it so there are a couple of ways um if you are inside of the zoom what you can do is right so sorry is raise your hand you can do that by clicking the reactions button which is likely at the bottom of your screen on the laptop or the top of your on an iPad or a tablet click into that little raise your hand button it'll let us know you have a question we won't get to everybody's questions necessarily we kind of go in a in a popcorn you type order but we do our best um you can also ask a question online um by tweeting at at watch rework SLP with the hashtag howl round which is H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D or you can write to the public theaters instagram or twitter as well and we'll get those too i think that is all at the moment i think that's i think that's all okay we will we will begin hey here we are we're back we're back all right all right all right so so um yeah here we are ready to take your questions about your creative process anybody got any questions got a question you got two questions oh my goodness all right Kate all right did you hear that hi okay uh thank you first of all this is only my second time being here i'm really excited thanks for coming up sure so i i have a question that's kind of so in like high school college and grad school i was very active in like theater making communities um and i was writing plays and that kind of stuff and then like the past five or so years i've been focusing on other writing forms and like more active with poetry and then like copywriting day job kind of stuff and i realized that i was struggling to find an entry point back into playwriting because i had these like previously in all of those other communities i had an idea of like what stage i was writing for oftentimes what people i was writing for and like even sometimes i knew the audience i was writing for and um i feel like so often in like writing i'm like trying to figure out ways to take like to get more structure but here i feel like i had all these constraints in my mind and now when i try to write a play i'm like oh my god the whole world is there and i don't know where to start and i i think what's kind of funny is that after so many years of like writing these poems now and like performing and like all of that stuff i end up writing a bunch of dialogue into poems and i'm like does this actually just want to be a play and why don't i just let it so thank you no so that's really cool that you you did a lot of theater work and work in theater and theater writing and in the past several years you've done other kinds of writing now you're thinking maybe i do some more writing for the theater and how do you get back into it i would say you you know you can do one of two things you can imagine you're in your sort of old mindset like i know my you know you can imagine like i'm writing a play for this old audience you know and then once you write it it can be like you said for the world you know um usually i don't suggest thinking of an audience but if that helped you in the past it could be a good thing it could be a good thing to do if you don't want to if you're going no mike because my audience was seventh graders you know i don't want to write for seventh graders anymore for example then um just write just follow the characters i think that's usually the best thing to do follow the characters get really into the characters ask yourself you know what do my characters want what are they doing here you know what are they trying to to achieve you know um is that helpful i mean um are you thinking of like you want to join some playwriting groups or what are you thinking oh hold on one second yeah sorry there you go sorry um i mean i'd like to do that eventually but i think because i i still am like friends with a lot of people who are making theater i guess it's just um i wonder if when you come to an art form of writing which it can be so solitary from like such a like i don't know if i should say community mindset but like where when you're writing you're like well i have to do xyz to serve this purpose now i guess that it feels like i don't have like a purpose to do it um it feels really silly to say this out loud because i could write i could write a poem for you in two minutes and then be like it's done no purpose needed but now that i'm thinking of like how did i get to writing these plays before and it used to be well somebody needs a play or somebody like there you could have this stage for this weekend or something and so i would be like great urgency is here and i feel like there's a sense of purpose and now i'm kind of like well if it's not like serving a particular community it's a hard entry point to get into right right right so your your poems you say don't need a purpose did i hear you correctly yeah yeah so just pretend you're writing one of those okay but you have it sounds like you have to trick your mind a little bit you know we have to sort of trick trick yourself in a good way in a good way by saying like oh it's just one of those poems you know if you want and and with a lot of dialogue you know like you know i don't know shakespeare like those are long poems aren't they you know you can just you can just yeah but you can just you can just i mean i think the thing is is just to maybe maybe you can it sounds like you need a place for it you can create a place or you can create a place for it you can say this needs to be done by x date you can give yourself a deadline you can call up a couple of friends or or text them and say hey i want to show you a play that i'm writing by this date maybe you have other friends who are also writers and you guys can have like a a hangout time a presentation it can be informal you know it can be over zoom you don't have to leave the house you know hi i want to read to you a monologue from one of my plays that i'm writing you know you can create a community and so it will be for that like i'm writing it will be in service of that purpose i have to show up on your next wednesday at five o'clock on a zoom and read three pages to some friends of mine you see what i mean she can you can be you know and like we learned from beijing the snow can be artificial it doesn't have to be like a real thing it can be like a fake it can be fakes fake snow works just fine i guess i'm not watching the olympics but i just read the little headlines um but you know what i mean yeah you can sort of create a community and and i'm sure you said you you're still in touch with some theater makers yeah okay well that could that help like yeah that's a really good point yeah and you can each share so it's not just all about you you can say hey i'm going to read three pages you read three pages you read three pages and then we you know hang out and talk you know thanks yeah that framework of like this is in service to this yeah these parameters is helpful thank you so much oh sure sure sure thank you thanks for showing up okay um all right let's go to crystal they play crystal how you doing i'm good how are you i'm fine how are your barbies so look at you you're laughing oh this is good this yeah because your um idea of making them talk to the dolls has opened a whole conversation that i mean i don't even think i've thought about like how powerful sub-tex is when you're when you have dolls talking and you get to really hear what people are thinking behind the mask of the dolls so it's it's been kind of like mind-blowing um so it's and like now i'm almost i'm kind of i'm almost done but i'm not done um because i'm kind of like it's it's almost gone in a completely different direction as to when i began the play and the whole you know when we were talking about like um if it was from my voice it's okay you know um and so i'm like okay so before this whole thing with the dolls being a part of this play um i think i had a clearer voice of what i was trying to say through one of the characters and now like these dolls have kind of like possessed these people that like i'm kind of like lost as to what the the uh the argument is that the arc is the like kind of getting to the i think i lost some some voice or maybe of my own voice maybe i needed to be not there but like i'm i'm kind of having some trouble um kind of while solving the situation of um of of some hard truths with ken and everything like that like ha ha ha that's really funny i kissed off some hard truths okay so so what so once you quit you know let it rip girl because last time you were like i don't want it to be too much of my voice i'm like let the dolls talk play the dolls now you're like oh no it's not i don't know it's not my voice so i don't know where it's going on just go with it look you're laughing you're smiling it seems like you're having fun writing it's yeah one you're having a good time you know they're trying on lots of clothes i hope i hope for those barbies they get to be like i have a date tonight or whatever i think one it was one barbie you should always have a date i'm like dang girl you know i have a date tonight so um you know let them have a good time yeah maybe it ain't about kin maybe they kick kin to the curb it's time to kin is you know kin is the patriarchy i don't know i'm being silly but have fun i mean gee it's barbies i mean really if you and if you spend that much time like walking like that on your on your feet like what's that about right does anyone have any back problems i don't know like you gotta walk like this all the time have fun you know and just you know you can pick like 10 like you can make a list 10 stupid things that can happen by the end do you have a not end already no i have nine you just write a list just make a stupid list 10 stupid things have to be stupid it can't be good it can't be good or profound it can't be deep it can't be meaningful um they have to be stupid like stupid in a good way right do that make a list make a list oh it's fun and like and and pick one and say oh i like this from the best and then just write toward that and and not worry about the time because it has to be 10 uh 10 maybe maybe you won't do the assignment okay it's okay okay you're free my sister is let me worry you don't have to do the assignment not now not here run come on now's the time yeah i mean you know i mean sometimes you know you need to well you know what i'm saying yeah i do have to admit it to a place yeah when when i uh in like in like a month and a half okay and if it's you know what i mean if it's 20 pages just take the first 10 and submit those and oh you never know don't don't worry about don't don't don't you know enjoy your laughing you're having fun okay okay okay thank you you're welcome thank you crystal all right and we have got lu go brother hi hey good to see you hey good to see you again great seeing you i wanted to report the last time we talked i used the word tortured to describe how i was feeling uh oh and similar to crystal i'm actually having fun which is like what so that's like a breakthrough yay so further to this fun i wanted to bring this question to you because i'm writing memoir mm-hmm i'm writing about my mother mm-hmm she's been gone for 25 years yeah and the tentative title of this work is uh fat ghost she was a very large woman and i'm a large woman and only became large after she died and i'm trying to try and figure out how we're connected and where i begin and where she ends and it's also very funny like my mother was a hilarious person mm-hmm and i forgot how hilarious she was because i like she was sick my whole life but i'm this is my question i'm channeling dialogue for a person who's not alive anymore mm-hmm and i'm finding myself really having some complicated feelings about it but but also having fun and i think as i'm sitting here with you and an opportunity to talk about it i think i just wanted to talk about giving dialogue to people who are gone and what you think about it or maybe what i think about it um again i'm having a great time it feels like i'm talking to her for the first time in a real way in a very long time and i'm making myself laugh with the work which is like but it's hard i mean it's hard and deep work i'm trying to do um but she had this bite and so i use the humor to kind of cut it and some of the things i'm having i'm putting them in quotes but i don't know if she said that she said those things but i know she would have said those things if i put her in that position so it's also this dull thing you're talking about so i guess i just wanted to talk about dialogue with people who aren't here anymore and how we represent them and i don't know if i have a more pointed question than that i think that's lou i think that's a great question to ask if you're talking about respect you're showing up with respect and it sounds to me like you're showing up with best intentions right so um and that's you know when we when we uh write about people who are whether we know them knew them well like you had a great relationship with your mom or we don't know them at all there's someone from history you know or or an historical figure you know um i feel like if you show up with respect a lot of heart and best intentions then and get lucky it sounds like you have they will be behind you i mean she is behind you but she is behind you in spirit as well you're laughing you're enjoying you're feeling a lot of feelings you know you know and i'm sorry for your loss and it sounds like an amazing person but she's behind you she's you know giving you a lot of great energy yeah i i don't know i mean you would you will determine if you need actual the quotes again i mean it's not only you know i mean black history month the great thing about black history month is that we're all we all get to remind ourselves that we're free and we can be the vanguard of like we're free but when we say we're free we means all of us hello we remember you're free um if you come to it with with a good heart and and and respect and best intentions you are free you girl you run with it you know what i'm saying run with it she's so proud of you oh thank you and so grateful you know i mean come on you're putting her in a play i don't know she likes plays and whatnot but but what an honor what how proud she must be and again again i say at 100 times you're approaching it with respect and best intentions so i feel like she's talking i feel like she's talking to you because she told me last week you better make me famous that's what she said see see you're gonna make her famous she's gonna be played by someone fabulous right and she's gonna be like dang i never looked so good mom i mean really mom who do you want to play in the theatrical version of yourself who do you want to play you you know and she right what a what a delicious beautiful gift um so you get to be free um you know all right yeah all right that's perfect thank you so much thank you you're welcome so much what a beautiful question it's lean all right we got about 20 minutes left and we're gonna go to matthew go for it matthew hey matthew hey how are you first question i've been doing this for two years thank you so much for everything you've done it's been really just uh such such a boon such a wonder um early on in the pandemic while you were writing plays i was writing poetry wrote a few hundred um and then let them sit for about a year and for about four months i've been editing which i've learned is going to ultimately take me probably longer than than the uh the writing um but in what i've been doing is sweeping through the drafts um about 150 poems uh over 30 times and then only last week um did i decide a new approach uh which was just drilling into what is the meaning what is the purpose what what can people get out of this um last week when you were talking with crystal about having the doll speak that was a bit of a transformation for her just a chance for her to look at the work differently a new way so um now i've done my past looking at the purpose and i could go back to uh the incremental approach but just wondering are there in in the edit process general ideas about how to break out of one's mindset and be able to see a work in a new way approach it from a new way that's a great question matthew um how are you we we talked someone else let's talk about uh how how are you uh doing the rewriting are you reading them silently to yourself are you standing up and reading them aloud are you sitting and reading them aloud how are you going about it uh different ways uh on different times but i've definitely been reading them and and certainly how the words sound is is a very haven't stood up i mean it's it's of course it's optional i just i just think getting the body into it is is a great uh way to hear it um in a more in-depth way sometimes i was talking to a student because i teach at nyu today he was had a a character who's a tennis a former tennis pro and i read on stage and i pretended i was holding my racket you know there you are with the tennis racket and sweat you know i said have you done this you're writing no not yet you know so that that kind of thing get get get your body into get your body into it as much as possible and are you thinking about like um where it might for lack of a word go what you might do with it um because please we can think of what we can find people to perform them have you have you've been thinking about that yeah rather extensively actually um in some ways i'm a little concerned about the idea of having poetry readings because people tend to feel a little bit withdrawn from the idea of going to things like that it's a very very eclectic and small group um so i've been exploring the idea of using an autotune uh in in how how i read and and i play music so i have a a looper on order and might be building up some loops which could go with music but also with the words so yeah i certainly want to experiment um i've learned because i've also done video art that um building works uh while you're still editing means sometimes you end up creating something and only to find that uh the work is changed and then it's just a matter of whether to start from scratch but yeah no that's that's certainly something i love those ideas i mean you you play music you're or you're getting a looper you're you've done some video work i mean it would be a cool project to have online too you could just like post i don't know one a week and just kind of do it differently every time um that would be really cool to to watch you know there you are like i don't know where in washington square park doing it and someone's filming you with you know their iphone um and then you could do a lot of i don't know it could be a really cool way to get the work um out there can be really beautiful and fun since you do that that kind of work already you know the video stuff the music stuff right that's great it could be fun and the thing about uh you know editing if you're you know shaping it and shaving off you just you know where you sort of like feel like oh this one's dragging you know maybe it needs that one's a poem that needs work you know or this one feels like it's really happening okay that's are there different lenses that you've used to uh revisit the same works if you're going back time after time to revise i i mean i get i use the body for for me it reading aloud and i prefer standing up but you know it's just me reading aloud and getting my body into it is the best way to feel it so that i'm not just operating from the neck up going that's great i'll try that yeah it's just it's also kind of fun and you're practicing performing it you know and performance poetry you know online is kind of cool true facts right thank you so much thank you matthew great question thanks Matthew we've got about 15 minutes we don't currently have a question oh god so we can enjoy checking on twitter just to be sure oh rebecca go for it hi everyone hi susan lori hey rebecca hi all good to see you sis yeah it's good to be here thank you for for making time again i sometimes walk past the public theater thinking longingly of being in person someday again right yeah yeah but this is this is almost uh it's good in a different way i you've you've written plays that have historical content and i i was writing along today and once the timer went off it was like i wonder if there's ever too much history in something that's historical like i i talk with people and i'll mention something and they have no idea what i'm talking about so then i think well i've got to explain it in order to get to the point i want to get to so and i i'm having a little trouble there's one section took a really long time to write that i i sort of knew i had to explain it um but now i'm in a section where it's like do i have is this necessary so i'm not quite sure how to tell i'm trying to remember is it you were writing a novel that was just dork i'm trying to remember no it's it's um memoir no tell me it's part memoir part um why they did it um i mean it's it's set in the jim crow period okay okay okay okay yeah so okay so right so there's a hmm it's sort of you mean bringing people up to speed who might not be aware of some historical event or situate or context yes well so the example i can use so you know during last summer i was writing about um cotton gins the only reason i was writing about cotton gins is not that i didn't know what they were is that they were used to torture people and enslaved people and that was an that's an important thing for later in the piece the manuscript so i understood that well now i'm in a trying to contextualize 1937 kind of Memphis Tennessee i just don't know how much i i should i can say or you know at what point are my readers going to go please stop i hear you know i i know i totally understand um in when i think about and this might be a similar thing with with um dialogue and exposition in a play sometimes there's a big a whole hunker bunch of information that the audience needs to hear to to to understand what's going on um and the characters either know it already or right so that's tricky and when we don't do it as well it's the characters just talking and then i went to the store and then you know she's like no i move it along move along move along but in in my experience if you tie the exposition and this is again with with dialogue and if you tie the exposition to the character's need or to a character's need so i have to tell you i went to the store because then you'll know that i was out in the rain okay you see what i'm saying so this character has a need to tell this because there's something else to understand so if if with historical information if you tie the historical information to a character's need make it part make it an integral part of the character's journey dramatic journey or story journey you see then it will be part of woven into the fabric of the story instead of just a piece of historical information that you kind of got right it'll also be juicier and you might find oh i only need to tell like half of it because these three these three things you know that makes sense yeah it it does and um yeah i think trying to figure out how to i'm trying to figure out how to introduce a journalist um but i feel like i have to go all the way back to john brown and explain kansas um okay well it's because memphis in 1937 didn't have any black newspapers they all came from kansas okay yeah so okay so in my mind it all is really important and i so so tying it to one of the recurring characters is probably i hope it would help me make it interesting and and necessary to i think so and then and then we will most of us won't even feel that we're being you know told something that isn't necessary because it's necessary to the character and the character is necessary to the story i mean i mean you know shakesburg that it's kind of it's a it's a it's a technique you know mm-hmm you know um there's a lot of exposition going on in in a lot of these plays and novels that we think oh wow this is such a great detail the novelist is just being you know smart about giving you the vitamins with the ice cream right you know yeah yes mm-hmm yeah and see yeah just maybe also write down the sort of um maybe three things that you really need to cover to to understand the period three things boom boom i say okay is there a story a little story there mm-hmm is there something that happened to somebody who's a relative of somebody already in the story you know mm-hmm and when they see this with memento from this person they think of those those things that what when that happened to so-and-so you know and then you'll also it's a really effective way for the audience to understand or for the readers to understand the historical information because you put it in the context of a story you know we think about like um uh the iliad you know and the history of the trojan war you know it's not trojan war history it's the iliad you go wow the iliad is rocking you know you know we know a lot about history but it didn't come to us like in historical text you know mm-hmm came to us like a story yeah yeah well i have to say some of this has gotten clear because i i actually did what you know you have told us to do in the past yay so there's only so much you can jam into a index card three by five right yes right yeah so yeah and i was talking to someone today who said um you can take it to another level and use one syllable single syllable words on the index card so you really have to be like it could be fun just as a game you know not a you know just a focus even more yeah uh the wordal the wordal way to a historical memoir i love it sounds like it's really coming along rebecca it is it's got to because i want to be done so there you go that's important yeah i want to be done i hear that yeah thank you thank you thanks great questions thank you nice to see you all right we've got about five minutes left and we are going to go to lin go for it lin i'm doing oh go ahead there you go now i can say god i've missed you hey likewise how's your fam how's my family yeah your sister uh she's gone i'm sorry that's okay yeah sorry yeah um i've been writing i've been i've missed you so much i've missed the group and and you know it's so nice to see crystal you know coming along and you know and so many others carol is here and just you know anyway anyway i've been writing ten minute plays right on you know because uh i took i took the play i was writing and i i started just writing um i thought i'd find out more about it if i wrote it in um you know as a story you know somehow it gets deeper if there's it's like you said about that writer who you know has all of these um um as the specificity and and the who the language of of uh sometimes sounding pompous but you know art and uh you know um and it's really helped in terms of going deeper into the story and the characters just to to write it as as literary rather than a play and then i started just writing ten minute plays just to get away from the play what do you do with ten minute plays right you know these little sort of uh mind burps plays you know what do you do with them how do you submit them where to submit them that's a good question crystal knows i think she knows i think they're i think that's like an online question i think google would know you know i think there are a lot of ten minute play festivals out there because what with um you know people want to theaters wanting to be as inclusive very very inclusive in communities and people having short attention spans they want to include lots of different kinds of people lots of different writers i feel like there are a lot of people interested in doing ten minute plays these days i don't know off the top of my head you know i i mean not that they have to be seen it's just that it was a great exercise in in finishing i guess the word is finishing you know the beginning middle and end and um can you think of like if would it be fun to have you know even zoom readings of them no that's fun no what i mean just like because you you know folks in theater you know invite your friends to just have like again like a weekly like hey let me read even let me read some of my plays and someone else read some of their work and like that do a a zoom like that or bring in some people to read your work that would be really fun you know it's so funny because i've done so many zoom readings over the last what is has it been two years yeah yeah god god and zoom readings are so very strange because uh uh they're good to hear hear the the words and the and the play but they're not a performance in the sense of uh interacting you know it's it loses something i mean it's sort of like what we all miss which is communal hellos you know uh this is being here is kind of like getting a great big hug from you you know what i mean and we miss that you know it's two years that hugs i hear you i know i know but that's a good idea i i could do that yes but really congratulations on writing those and getting to finish because there's something really um amazing and it feels so good to write you know type the end you know um and then go on to the next one yeah some of them i actually start with the end oh i mean i know that sounds terrible but i'm the 10th at the end and it makes me somehow finish it right right right right it doesn't mean i have no um judgment of it you know bad good or indifferent it just like you said you know i put a timer i have an idea i babble and the end it's a wonderful feeling it's great to see you learn it's great sorry i'm sorry about your sister yeah me too thank you sure i love you i love you too well it is six o'clock can you believe another perfect day great scene you know yeah we'll be back we'll be it's gonna be valentine's day next day it is okay we'll be here we'll be here maybe we'll be eating chocolate mmm yes let's do it yeah see you all next week okay thank you thank you so much thank you