 Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining us. We have yet again another week and another incredible artist in the space with us today. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you so much for joining us. Folks are slowly joining in. Andrea Agosto, thank you so much for being here and being so patient. Margo's about to join us. I love seeing folks coming into the space and being ready to participate. And I've just been really, really excited with everyone in the space. I wanted to start by acknowledging that I'm in the presence of traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Gabrielino and Tobonga peoples. I'm in Los Angeles and I'm definitely secret. I also want to acknowledge that we have Gregorio and Naomi who are going to be doing our ASL interpretation, and we have Ori who's going to be doing our live captioning. And I also still wanted to acknowledge that we have the Writers Guild of America is still striking, and as we have writers coming into the room, some of them are members of these unions, and it's important to be supporting them as well, and that the Actors Union is going just voted to authorize Strike as well. So again, very exciting to see if folks come together and fight for everyone's rights. So I just wanted to acknowledge the political climate and everything that's going on right now. And I'm going to pass the baton over to our incredible guest playwright today, Candida Tirado. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to put your bio in the chat. And again, just passing the baton over to you. Thank you so much for being in the space. All right. I know when I was watching, welcome everyone. We're here in Dusty, New York. We have the fires in Canada. Yesterday we had orange. We were in Orange City, so nice to look at, not to breathe the air, obviously, but we had to get into kind of a lockdown, you know, shut the windows and everything. First of all, I know last time you were able to ask Darryl some questions, are there any questions you have for me? And then we'll go from there. He had set me, he had set me, him and I had sort of collaborated. Oops, I think I'm frozen. You can hear me? Okay, good. I see myself as frozen. Wonderful. Thank you for letting me know that. We just sort of came up with some questions and I'd love to ask him. Okay. Of you. Sure. Yeah, I got frozen. Still not perfect. Candida, do you want to start by telling us a little bit about your path to where you are today? See, start with just the dream of becoming a writer and I always knew I was a writer. I just didn't know what that meant. I, and it wasn't until I got into poetry and I said, oh, okay, that's interesting. So I was discovering poetry. I was like, you know, I was in good school. I was really smart. But I had gone through a culture shock when I came from Puerto Rico. I was like the top student in my school in Puerto Rico. I come here and I have to learn a new language and deal with the culture, the cultural elements, which were shocking to me. And so, you know, I kind of be your off education. I got into a lot of trouble in school. But my grandfather has saved $100 when I lived with him in Puerto Rico. And he used to be a sugar cane cutter. I saved $100 when he died, left me the $100. That was my inheritance. And he said, I want you to go to New York so you can get an education. So that was always part of me. And once I messed up in school, I will always bounce back the last two months to pass my classes. When I, you know, so storytelling was always around me. And it wasn't until I was in my third college after dropping out from all these three colleges already my fourth college. You have to declare a major. And at that same time, a newspaper article came that a creative writing major was declared in English. And I said, so I went and signed up immediately. I said, that's my call. And that's when I got into playwriting. A little bit before that I had met this professor in one of my colleges. And he said, I told him I want to be a writer and he wanted, he was a frustrated writer and he said, why don't you go to New York, finish school and that's where writing happens. And that's what I did. So he was like this person who guided me there. And I started taking classes, you know, poetry, fiction. I thought I was going to write fiction. I love fiction more than anything. But then I took one playwriting class. And that was it. You know, that's when I go, oh, it could happen in this room. You know, it doesn't have to get published. You don't have to send it somewhere. It either can happen anywhere. And then the feedback from the students were always so positive about my writing, about my, you know, the scenes I wrote. And then I wrote, as an English major, I had to do a thesis and I wrote a play for that. And in writing that play, the play later on when got produced in a lot of places, Santo Domingo and a bunch of times in New York. And that's my college play. I still think it's my best play because it's all instinct, right? It's all storytelling instinct. I didn't have the technical prowess I have now of that I learned. In that process, I joined the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater here in New York, they had a playwright's unit. And they had two, they had beginners and, I guess, seniors. And they put me in the senior one, but I was, it was too advanced for me. So I decided, no, that's when I decided to talk to someone to start a beginner. So I was one of the persons who started beginners. And after a while, the beginners' unit began to shine the professional unit. We had our talented writers. So we had Richard Rosario, who wrote Ariano, that was a big hit in New York. We had Federico Fraguada, who wrote Bodega, that was a big hit in New York. So all these playwrights came out there, then Carmen Rivera came, my wife came out of there and, you know, she's Brinda Gringa and La Lupe. We co-wrote Celia together about Celia Cruz. So the unit began to produce all these New York Rican writers. And I was part of that. I also got selected for NES unit very early. And that's when I wrote my, I think my second play, a third play, King Without a Castle, that was workshopped at Sundance. It was produced later by the Puerto Rican Travel and Theater, a couple of other places. So that was my early trajectory. Then I got a TV job in 1993, I believe. I wrote for the children's show called Goat Rider. And then I kind of, you know, when you write for TV, it's tricky because you kind of lose your playwriting. You know, it's a different technique, it's a different world. And it took me a couple of years to get back into the playwriting world and being able to write a play again. You know, the way I had learned. I met a guy who became a mentor, and his name is Guillermo Guillantile, who was Argentinian. He passed away, I think, 2011. And he taught me everything. He was a superstar. He had created his own theory of theater, all inclusive. He was for writing, directing, and acting called The Theater Fantastic Realism. He was an amazing actor. He worked in movies here. In Argentina, he had a play that two-thirds of the country saw, and the Argentinian dictator should try to kill him when he spoke against them. So he had to leave Argentina, went to Spain, became a star in Spain. Then he decided to come to the United States, and he kind of hurt his back. So all the money he had, you know, he lost. And then he ended up in Farnese's lab, and we were able to build this friendship and this mentorship. And he taught me so many things. You know, he wanted to teach everyone. So he said, have all your friends from the PRTT come to the house, we'll cook dinner, we'll talk about writing, but no one else took this on. You know, like people said, you know, I mean, there's an ego part of the business that really hurts people. They think they know. So, you know, they said, I read somewhere that the definition of genius is being able to get mentorship at the right time. Being able to be your mentor. That's one of the definitions of genius. Because if you don't find your mentors, how are you going to lift your art? You know, so mentorship is such an important thing. And people take that for granted or they think I know because I read a book or I already have my teacher, whatever. And that's a problem that I see a lot with the young writers where they don't want mentorship. They want to get produced, they want to become famous or known or whatever. And you know, and it's hard because Guillermo was interesting because I would write my play, rewrite my play, and he would take it and start laughing at it because he thought it sucked. He would, you know, he was, he was like, Oh God, you know, you're making me read this crap. And then, then he would leave me with like 20 pages out of 80s at least 20 happy math, have a transformation. The rest is just imaginative writing anybody can do that. You know, so me being competitive, I play baseball, I was playing sports in my life. I said, Okay, I want to learn by he knows. And I used to challenge myself to the next time he'll leave me with 30 pages. And then he'll leave me with 40 pages. Either that was my challenge until he could say, Well, now he just could give me feedback on elements that are not being developed, or I'm having trouble in the play minus stuff. And I got to that stage where he said, Okay, now you joined the club. And that's a whole process though that was a, if people don't like being laughed at, then, you know, he wasn't for you. He laughed at me. I don't encourage me to keep pushing to learn structure to learn how to historically says, you know, people might not like your play, but they can say your place bad. That's the goal of your, that's your goal. Now they don't have to like it, you know, even when you write a good, very good play that's a set that's people some people not gonna like it. You know, and that's part of it's not about liking or it's not about loving and hating. If you write a good play, it's a structured well, doesn't fall off when you take off when you put in bad actors in it. You know, so he said, I place have to be bad actor proof, meaning that if you have bad actors and bad director your place you have to survive. I agree. I agree. I think that is so important such an, and I think sometimes we forget that like, and, and myself as a director it's very clear and you've become a director as well you've been doing a lot of directing lately. And I wanted to recognize that you just received a lifetime award from premier Latino, you received you and Carmen received the lifetime achievement awards I wanted to recognize that and congratulate you on this as well. But the important of like, I can tell as a director if it's a good play when I go see it play a show I'm like that's a really good play but maybe the acting wasn't that good but the play is really good, or my God the direction wasn't that good. The actors were great and the writing was fantastic. And so, you know, I'm always able to recognize that and you're absolutely right. I'd love for you to lead us on this activity that you and I were talking about this exercise that you want us to do so that we can have some time to write and maybe create the scene that you're talking about and maybe this follow up scene. Okay, so this is an exercise I do a lot to get the students kind of warmed up because when you go to the schools as you knew as you know, you always ask how many people like to write. Maybe one person raises their hand out 30. And I said, Well, you're gonna love this exercise so much. You won't want to stop writing. Right. And so then we do in the class we do pass the paper same situation but it's two students passing the paper back and forth, and they writing to a situation. And then they don't want to stop writing. They want to have the last word you got to use, you know, the old week this is I guess the you know they will have the last word. So here what we're going to do what I like people to do is to, if you have writing material out is to choose a setting a place. So, I think, you know how they say, what's more important character, or a plot, as I always say setting is more important. Because, you know, before humanity was here, this planet had existed, you know, for billions of years. So the setting was important without the setting. So I would say the setting is there, and then people walk into the setting, and the setting creates a certain. It has certain demands. So choose a setting. Think about something that's different about the setting if you say like a kitchen. What's different about that kitchen. The setting in detail doesn't have to be major could be minor. That usually helps. I think setting also helps with the poet, the poetry of a piece. And now you're going to put two characters into that setting that characters do not have to be. They don't have to know each other. They don't have to. They could know each other, but they're going to inhabit this setting. And now the last part, you're going to give the characters a conflict. Now when I work with students and and they too young to try to say well one person wants to leave the setting one wants to stay. We all been there before where we feel oppressed by this where we are. One person wants to leave another person wants to stay. Right. And that becomes a conflict. So that conflict I give you can have it, but it could be any other conflicts that you like. Now, the, the one of the challenges I'm going to give you is that in the first four lines, we have to know where the setting is something about each character and something about the conflict. Okay, you could fit it all in one line. Great. I know we're in a time crunch here so you don't have a lot of times as time to think. But in the first four line we should know these characteristics of these characters. And then I'll give you like, five minutes or, you know, seven minutes to write a scene. And then we'll come back, we'll read some of these scenes and then I'll give you the second part of the exercise. Cool. Love it. I'll start a timer and let's say seven minutes just to give folks a moment to settle down. And in seven minutes, I will come back and and see what scenes y'all have created so seven minutes y'all. We have about two more minutes, two more minutes. All right, folks, the seven minutes are up. Do you want us to, do you want, do you want to give us our second thing or do you want us to share out loud? What's, what's the next thing that we're doing? I like to share out loud. Awesome. Are there any volunteers that want to share their scenes out loud? Stephen, is that a maybe yes. Yes. Yes. Well, then we'll do Margot after Stephen. So this is, I just came up with like a daughter and father kind of like at a, should I just read it and it'll allow the line. Okay. Let's go on this one dad. Iris, you can go. You know, I don't like writing things that go upside down. But we used to write the Hulk at universals all the time. That was moons ago. I'm not the same young chicken I used to be. One day you'll understand. I don't want to write alone. Think of it this way. You can go on this single writer's line and get as many times as you want. But it's much funner with you dad. My sweet girl, one day you're going to have to go on this ride called life all by yourself. Well, not by yourself, you'll have me and your grandma watching over you. You know who else will watch over you to the one up above. That's right. And if he's up there, when will he come down to watch to ride with me. And the same, we got to learn very quickly, the relationship and where they were at. That's great. Yeah, in a short play and one act play or 10 minute plays or one minute plays, you know, the conflict has to start right at the beginning. Yeah, time to set them up. So that was, that was great. Thank you. Marco, you had your hand up to share please. Okay. The setting is an old 19th century church with very ornate stained glass windows that include depictions of the Virgin Mary, saints, et cetera, cathedral ceilings, very ostentatious. Two ladies are in the chap in the church. Of all the people I know I didn't expect to see you here. What are you talking about. They told us to come here if we didn't have an air purifier and air conditioner. They, who's they, I didn't hear any such announcement. Besides, you could have gone to a library. Isn't that your favorite hang out. The library was closed. I freaked at the notion of walking in here too. I haven't been in this place since mom died. It gives me goose bumps steals all this pomp and stop it before he strikes you down, which wouldn't be such a bad idea with all the blasphemy you've been doing like me. I'm still here. That's it. Also, like, how exposition kept happening in action. So it's, you know, it's an exposition that we went Oh, you give us information and kind of lights up a brain versus someone who gives up too much exposition right away. The way you broke it down. I thought it kept it as a mystery. I want to know more. So, you know, that's great beginning. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else. I can share I wrote a scene. And I rarely ever write. All right, this will be funny. And I cheated. Instead of four lines, I needed five lines, you're setting a conflict so I had to go one more line. All right, okay, ready. Hey, yes. That's my spot. This one. Yes. I came to the park early and place my stuff down. Don't you see them. It's right there. And I just walked away for two seconds to get some water. You're in my space. It's a park. You can sit anywhere you want. Yeah. But my things are here. So, so that's not fair that you just you just move them over. Okay, okay. Yeah. No, no, no. And the scene. Right. Very nice. One thing that I like from this exercise is the setting and how the setting dictated that conflict for all of you and here I was thinking about Central Park where you brought that up, you know, by the, where's the lawn. That's exactly that's exactly where I place that's exactly what I put that's that's that was it that was exactly where I placed it. I love that. In the lawn that you get a lot of energy. Right. Yeah, maybe as this develop that's where we're going to that's why you choose that spot. And somebody comes and takes it or, or moves your stuff. That was great. That was great. Um, So the next part of this is that you write either a scene that happened before this before getting to that spot. Again to that setting that you were at could be a whole different setting it could be even the same setting or something that happens after a scene that happens after this it could be a week later it could be an hour later it could be a continuity of it. But so you have the scene is the middle. Right now you have the end or the beginning, something that happened prior to this. So we'll do seven minutes. Perfect. Time those seven minutes. We'll start now. Everyone has about one more minute. That's about one more minute. All right, we are back. I'm looking forward to hearing the follow ups to the scene. Margo. Margo you're going to go. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Seeing this happen before. I don't know if I need to tell you this better not but anyway. Let me tell you people. Now that moms in hospice, I think I'll ask Father Clemens to go see her and have her accept Jesus before she dies. Why she didn't accept him before now. Well it's never too late. But that's not who she is. That's who you are. I'm just looking out for her. I mean, if she wants to enter the kingdom of heaven. There's no such thing as heaven. Where do you think we go when we die. Well, you see we're made up of these things called atoms and molecules and they go back into the earth. What. Yeah, and our consciousness goes back to the collective consciousness of the universe. I don't understand all of that. Figures. What's that supposed to mean. It means I wouldn't expect you to. God made the earth and all the creatures and man in six days and he rested on the seven. Everyone knows that. But you, it appears. Sure you're right. He. How do you know it's a he and not a she. What are you daft. The Bible says so. Look, I'm going to go visit mom. And don't you go sending Father Clemens over to her. I have a power of attorney over her and I will do as I like. Steven. So this is the scene before between Tom and the mother of Iris. Hey, Cindy, is Iris ready. Oh, she's in her room, packing a bag. You know you can tell me what's going on, Tom. I just want to spend more time with my daughter is that okay. Fine. Okay, fine. You won't bring it up then I will. You know, you still have me listed as your on your medical record. Your doctor called me. Are you okay Tom. I'm fine Cindy. What did they tell you. You have a brain tumor. You were going. When were you going to tell us, keep your voice down. When are you going to tell her this weekend. I wish she would have told me I need to be there for her. I'm Cindy, I'm. I don't know if I will. So what just one day you're just going to Cindy, I don't know. Iris comes down the stairs. Daddy. Tom and Iris embrace. Come on, let's go. Bye mom. Be careful at the park you to come don't go on any rides. Okay. Okay. At Starbucks. And this is before looking at his phone while waiting on a really long line looks at his phone. Looks at his phone. Scrolls through the phone. That line slowly moves. Finally it's time to make an order. Hi, can I have a venti dragon mango lemonade with two pumps of sugar. Thank you. That will be a venti dragon fruit lemonade with two pumps of sugar. 475. A name. Name. Thank you. Waits back again on the line. Long line and waits and waits and waits. George. George. He gets his drink. And it's to the park where he finds a spot and sits down. But as he sits down, he spills his drink. Very descriptive, but. I'm not sure how we see the world. Margot has a lot of exposition. His story requires that like accordion. The lines is the setting itself is the character. Not saying anything. Not saying much. And, and, and that's a style. You know, that's not a. And, and then you have the term where, you know, he says for head which creates a problem later. It's almost the same problem with the spot. You know, like. It's a great setup. So. That's a. That's great. Anyone else would like to share. Anyone else. Alicia. Okay. I wrote a scene before. My scene. In the previous exercise. And so you hear keyboard keys are, are tapping inside a school trailer. Can you get off the computer? Come look at this. At what? My Valentine's Day box. Didn't you grab yours from the classroom still before coming into the trailer? Yeah. Where is it? It's right there. I only see your rolly bag and a shoe box. That's it. Your Valentine's Day box is a shoe box. That's what yours is, isn't it? It was, but I decorated it. See pink paper, stickers, glitter, and I printed my name on it. Yours is missing your name. Victor enters the trailer hearing the last line. That's because he doesn't know it. I do too. What did you forget? Did you forget to put your name on this time? Your underwear? Gross. No, he didn't decorate his Valentine's Day box. Not even with his name. That's because decorating is for girls. Oh really? What does your box look like? Victor reaches under his arm and holds about a cereal box. That's a cereal box. The children. Voices there. And it's interesting how conflict could come from so many different angles. In this very quick scene. Since you're forced to deal with a conflict right away, like if you do a longer piece, you know, it takes more time and you try to perfect it. But here you have to start with a conflict and you all chose conflicts. Very direct conflict that we could see and philosophical. So. That was a very. I love these pieces. I love the world. And I know when I teach and I say this seriously, we always start with the selling. You know, if you go to a baseball game, that's a loud selling that that dictates the characters that are going to be there. If you're in a church. It's a more quiet, you know, selling or library. So the pen, the setting depends. It allows for the action of the play. So I think that's a, that's one of the wonderful things about selling. You want to write a quickie, like a three minutes of the one you did not do, like a three minutes of the one after. Three minutes and then we'll open it up for questions. Three minutes, folks, three minutes. All right, everyone, you got three minutes. To write the next part, the after or the before, if you wrote it before. Three minutes, y'all on the clock. Go. About one more minute, folks. All right, folks. Finish up that final sentence or two. Okay. Kind of either that we want them to share really quickly. They have like a minute to share. All right, who wants to share. Margo and Steven, I love it. Margo. And then we'll have Steven, you'll go after Margo. This is the after real quickly. Sister one here, sister two, what's this? I never got a chance to hug you. I mean, you left so abruptly. I never knew you wanted to hug me. So why did you come here then? I didn't see an announcement. I got an emergency announcement on my phone. I swear. Look. She shows sister the phone, but the announcement isn't there. I swear to God it was there. You swear to whom? So this is seen after between ex-wife and Tom. She calls him. I cannot believe you, Tom. What? So after you told her some ominous message about you and your mother and God wanting to watch over her one day, she tells me that you took it all back and said that you don't actually know if you'll be watching over because you don't actually know what happens after we die. Well, do you? See, this is why I needed to be there, Tom. Unbelievable. Okay. This is after it's still the same three kids in the school trailer. Do you think we'll be on the computers today? Why are you gay for that Arthur program? No. Can't you just be nice for five minutes? Can't you just be nice for five minutes? Oh, that's very mature. Just repeating everything I say. Oh, that's very mature. Just repeating everything I say. This is why you're in the trailer and not in the classroom right now. Well, I know why I am, but why are you? Why am I what if you're so smart? Why are you in the trailer? All right. They continue after they continue staring at each other. While a squirrel comes in between them. Holding a nut. The squirrel stares at them both. Eating the nut. Eating the nut. Eating the nut. As they stare, stare, stare. Situations. I love the, like how quickly you develop characters that are interesting and. Situations and conflict. Very powerful in all of them. So you wanted to give a couple of minutes a few minutes for questions or yeah, we have like three minutes for questions y'all any questions any questions that anyone have any questions that they would like to ask me though. And it's not, you could talk about how this. Exercise work for you. I love that. I want to thank you, Ghandi, for this exercise. It was great. I especially like the way you said that creating the scene, how important it is to create the scene. Because, you know, so often you hear about dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, but you know, it is important to create the scene. And just by switching it up a little bit and creating the scene, it enabled me to you know, quickly write the dialogue. It just made it that much simple and the plot just seemed to I don't know if anyone else felt that way, but that's how I felt. Thank you again, Ghandi. How was it for you, Steven? I mean, it was definitely amazing. I actually recently wrote just the other day, like a little 10-minute scene for like a movie. And it all started on me personally, my experience of writing a bus. And the characters that I would observe while I was riding the bus, all my childhood through high school, riding the bus all the freaking time. And just all these characters that would pop up into my life. And then I grabbed this one homeless person in particular, this gentleman who always talked about how he was ruined by the government. And he had a box of papers that he would pull out and really pull out real articles and say, see, this is the day that they did this and this to me. So I kind of took that character and I wrote this awesome scene about it. But it's, I like how you mentioned how the setting will always kind of drive a story. Like, who are the people in this space? And where do they come from? And why, what brought them to this particular space at that particular moment? And that creates the storytelling for me. So thank you. Great. Alisa, you have? Yeah, I think for me, what was really impactful was the beginning exercise that was in four sentences that you had to give a little snapshot of the characters and then also the concept and also the setting. It was a really great brain teaser because I was originally writing and then I was going past the four sentences. And so then I was having to take what would have been sentence seven or eight and then combined it with two and three. And, you know, what would have been a one liner then turned into a little bit more of a, like a two to three, four sentence dialogue from one person. So instead of making it so like snappy and syncopated, I was actually having to extend some dialogue of each individual character to set up that conflict. So I really appreciated that exercise. Yeah. I love what you all came up with. Like, I really, there's snapchats of stories that I'm invested in. That's just the relationship or, you know, the husband and the little kids here or even those two strangers. I figured, you know, place about strangers are always fun because they go anywhere. So we probably could all write something, the ending to that story about how the strangers end up together because there's no history, except for the present conflict and the history is about to be born from that. So I think that's a, it's always fascinating to me how quickly people can come up with stories and how, you know, how I always get my students and, you know, I teach kids who don't have, haven't written any of a word in two years in school that they know how to tell a story. And I said, well, what do you hate about a story? What bores you of a story? What excites you about a story? I said, see, you know, you already know how to tell a story. Yeah, what excites you. And once I get the students to believe that they could tell a story, then the stories are going to be fascinating. You know, the longer the story, the more technical games you have to play and learn. But it helps to start from a place of knowledge, rather than I'm going to give you this knowledge and you have to apply it and you say, well, where does this go? You know, does the year go there? I don't know where the year goes, you know, so you already know where that year goes. And you might say, my ear is on my knee. You know, that's your creation. Um, Candy though, I know we're a little bit over time, but I know Hector has a question that he wants to ask. Hector, we can make it quick. Just share your question, and then we will have to close up for the evening. Yes. Hi, Candio and Daphne and the other friends. Thank you for this. I was not able to be part of the exercise. Like I told Daphne, I just spent seven hours on Zoom and my brain is not working anymore. So I did have a question, a two-part question, Candio, or anyone. So, Candio, besides yourself and Carmen, what would you say are good playwrights to read for conflict and setting? Oh, you know, I go with, for me, Arthur Miller, you know, he's direct, the conflicts I direct, um, his settings are interesting. Um, I'm, I would stay away from magical realism writers because they don't really deal with conflict, direct conflict. You know, they deal with images and it's a different genre. The conflicts, if you want direct, I think Arthur Miller, for me, is one of the ones that I really like for that. I love what you just said too, Candido, so many Latine writers, especially Latin American writers, will focus on magical realism. So how interesting to think about, like, how magical realism, you know, like, how that, how that works and stuff. We have to part because of time, but if you want, if you want to send me Hector a question, I will forward it over to Candido, and we will make sure that, you know, you get a second question answered. There was a second question, but thank you so much, everyone. Thank you so much for being in the space. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for this great exercise. I absolutely loved it. I hope everyone has a beautiful day. We have two more sessions coming up next week and the following week, so I hope that y'all can join us and enter the space and be with us in the space again. So thank you, everyone. Have a beautiful day. Have a beautiful Thursday. Gracias, Candido. Thank you so much, y'all, for this. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you.