 We have David Barkhaps. Raise your hand, David. We have Leslie Evasian. I became our winner for our contest and has a production about Mothra, which you will see tonight, in Summer Shorts. So he has a Summer Shorts Festival playwright. Is Leslie Evasian this year? A Summer Shorts Festival playwright finalist. Here we have Sherry Wilner, who was a finalist last year and has a production this year. So we're developing work as we go along here. A festival playwright this year and Lauren Gunderson, who has the family musical this year, which she has also been working on since we are the first production, since that play was commissioned at the Kennedy Center. And then we just have our great, wonderful goddess, Miss Howe, who will be leading us a little bit later. And so to turn, I guess, to start things, I would like to go to Tina and ask about your experiences. I had put down the Lark Theater, for example, as a place. I know you do things all over the place. But if you would like to talk about that or anywhere else, carry on. She's also at Hunter. She is the head of the MFA program at Hunter for playwriting. Greetings. First of all, in case any of you wondered, last night I was so excited to see a friend who was a friend of a dear friend of mine that I embraced her so vigorously that she spilled her entire glass of red wine all over my trousers. And I had one blazingly red trousers around. It was a snow-white one, and the question was what to do. So being a thrifty new tender, I went home to my room and got out a little bar of soap and washed them in the sink. And all of the red wine came out of the trousers and out of the spark. We're sure of it out of everything. So I just want you to know that if you ever steal wine, you don't have to go to the dry cleaner. Then it costs, you know, $800 a month to get it out of the soap and water. And to me, there was a, I don't know, there was a message in that. There was a metaphor for coming down here to Florida, being all pristine and then getting dappled or, you know, getting painted and deciding that the paint was beautiful, that maybe the paint should be somewhere else. And I think to answer Suzy's question, to me so much of being a playwright really involves community. I never went to graduate school and I never was part of a writing group. I did it all by myself. And I, when I talk with my friends who run the game and talk about their wonderful mentors, you know, these aged men with, you know, one leg and one ear, one out of their ears to pet them on their head and saying, oh, you're such a wonderful writer, which gave them courage. And I never sort of had that and not having that, I'm very aware of how important it is to have some sort of a community that you can rely on and that will exalt you and that will inspire you. And so at Hunter, when I'm teaching, I make a point of trying to get the students to bow on. Because in the long run, I think that their affection and being at stake with each other is much more important than what they get from us aged professors. And it's when the, you know, when the dark hours of the night come and when they're not sure what they're writing and if they're writing is any good, they call each other and they go off on retreats to each other. So it's like this very confidence here that we are all around together. Because in the end, it is a lonely endeavor writing plays. Because in the end, I think the best plays come from us going deeply into our, into the mysteries and the terror of our lives. And people so often say, why about what you know? Why don't you basically the best plays and why don't you don't know what eludes you or what sort of scares you? And so I know that there are people here that are going to talk about writer's group. And my feeling is that if you're not at a university, it's really important to have a writer's group or else a wonderful husband who loves your work and can tell you hourly how great it is or a wife or a partner or whatever. But I think the hardest thing for us as playwrights is to know how to forgive ourselves. And that's why I think you need a community. The situation at the mark are there Colbert whose extraordinary charge of the playwrights workshop where every year for eight months, every twice, every two months, they assemble five extraordinary playwrights and bring in work to have it read in front of each other and actors and in front of the co-hosts who's either me or David Henry Wang or David Arge or somebody. And what I've noticed over the years is that the playwrights in the playwrighting workshop are getting more and more story. They tend to come from straight out of Juilliard in Yale and one time with John Iser and I was saying, you know, I think you should lie to the net. For instance, you've never had anybody talk about the one person show, maybe get Lisa Crone, somebody like Lisa Crone, a young Lisa Crone in the playwrights workshop. Somebody got Lisa Crone herself to come to the workshop. So it's very exciting because the level of the work is very high, but I've noticed through the years as the mark is making more and more of a name for itself the writers are getting, they have more experience, they've been around the block more, their voices are more assured. But for them, when I said, you know, John, this isn't fair to the others, Lisa, to give Lisa this and he said, oh, but she's loving it, it's so important for her. She needs a place to, you know, to hone her work as well. So, you know, that's all I have to say about the mark is that it is, you know, if you reach a certain level, you can get in and you can really fly and it's really wonderful, but it's this, being in the room like this together. This is everything. Was it? Who would like to take on from here? I'll time up about community because I think there's kind of the official readings as Tina was saying, places like the Lark with the O'Neill or all sorts of places that have either those kind of, what I think is a bit of the dreaded four-hour rehearsal than a public reading kind of model, which is a lot of pressure. Because for me, I think the readings are always work. Even if you have that four hours, it feels very passive to be like, well, I'll have my play read to me and others. But really, you're working the entire time because, you know, the plays want to be produced. They want to be up and alive and in color with all the other brilliant minds of theater designers. But in that early phase, that's something you can do in your living room and I often do. I mean, that's my community in San Francisco. I, you know, after a couple of years of being there. But in New York and in every community, you know actors. You are friends with Elma Chor and directors and designers, people you admire. And you can just feed people free chili and good wine and they will come to your house and you can do readings and get the first couple of drafts and be hearing it out loud. And you learn so much even if there's no none of those talk back kind of things and clever questions and all this business. It's just about hearing it in that first way. So I think a lot of this kind of developing you can just do by yourself and of course the other elements will come out to that and it will be more likely that you'll say get into the O'Neill or Pacific Playwrights or Humana or any of those various levels of production if you play who's already had some great, great, great, great production. David? I'm sort of based at, in terms of the community and I think like everything that Martina said I think it's exactly true of the Labyrinth Theatre Company in New York which is kind of a collective of writers and directors and actors. It's predominantly an acting company where a lot of actors were then encouraged to write and some of the writers that have come out of there Steven Gurgis and John Patrick Schannell who didn't come out of there but he just kind of developed a lot of stuff there. A lot of the dynamic there that has worked for me in the sense of the community is when you have a group of actors that you write for that you have different, I've had different ideas for plays that I had written at various times and also I'd be sitting in a room or I'd know we do this thing called the summer intensive where we go away for a couple weeks upstate then everyone just gets around and starts working on new material, do readings and a lot of times I'll sit there and I'll be like I'll know that these four actors that I really love are going to be up there and I'm like oh that's one idea that I've had maybe these four actors this is like the right time to write a play given people that I knew that were going to be up there and then the dynamic, the creative dynamic there is everyone's kind of, it's sort of a family and everyone knows each other very well so it's a very aggressive kind of environment where people are not afraid to say this sucks and why are you doing this here or why don't you do it this way and it's a very, a lot of arguing and fighting and support and love. I think in those kind of communities where you have a certain intimacy and it's helpful to have people that are very tough on you because it's always that I'm sure everyone that's already knows that blind you to welcome having the confidence to do it and not sort of collapse in on yourself you'd still be able to be self critical and be able to take criticism so it's generally not, I mean when I give people plays and feedback I don't, it's as much as nice that people say oh this was great, that was great I really want to hear about what didn't work what they think like sucks and what the problems are and I feel like in the honest community where people really have real I think that's the best way to create work and so at Labyrinth that's kind of something that happens where by the way most people would say at Labyrinth they don't know how loving and supportive it all is and that was kind of the thing and I think recently somebody was actor Phil Hoffman who ran the company for a while everyone was talking about how loving and supportive it was and he said if I were a writer I would never show any of you my work because it's like actually you all are like vicious, viciousity and so I find that environment actually a great one to work in of knowing that you're going to get people that you trust but they're going to be aggressive with you I think that's really, I find that very helpful Sherry? Yeah I think, I mean I'm in two writer's groups and I'm sort of trying to start a third and I think for me it's I mean we could talk about all the different plays about in particular the O'Neill and Sundance and The Lark and The Lab and I mean you guys can Google all those I mean what I started getting frustrated with is that you apply for those programs and then you wait nine months to a year to find out if you get in and so you're back in the same position as your work you've had the finished play and you're waiting for someone to accept you and take you and then when you're there the stakes can be so high in those places that there's just sort of a I think a stage fright and a terror that kind of sets in because you don't want it to be that rough play that you're developing you want it to be a finished product that impresses all those other story playwrights that you're with and whatever but it's mostly like the waiting that I got tired of and the waiting to be accepted and rejected in order to write my play so I'm in a one writers group that started about 10-15 years ago a bunch of people that graduated from the same playwriting program started it and every couple of years if people move away they bring new people in so I was lucky to be brought into that and meet twice a month and share work with each other there's no organization that supports us it's just a group of people and then I'm in another group that started with again, some more things just a bunch of friends all sharing work together and little by little people's schedules change and it got so hard to schedule like no one had the same free time or if we did no one had a playwriting so one of the people in the group who's one of my best friends he's a Miami-born Brett Kenichinko who a lot of people here work with he has perhaps been the playwright's development program so anyone Miami needs to know about this I'm going to talk about that but anyway lunch or short he and I not just meet alone we started meeting once a week sometimes we meet but the thing is he's my best best friend in the world and there's nothing that I would share with him so you want those people that are going to be ruthlessly honest with you and he is but in a way that your best friend can be ruthlessly honest with you and so there's sort of no nothing that's sort of too rough that there's no polishing it's just what do you think that's to say that don't wait to be accepted into a group just start your own group and then it doesn't matter the size of it just you and your close friend and I think the other thing I would add is that it doesn't have to be playwrights if your friends are a director or designer or actors it doesn't have to be just a group of writers because I know we're privileged and that we live in New York and every waiter and hairdresser is a playwright too so you can gather from eight people to replay it's like that but if you're in a community where it's not lousy with playwrights then bring in novelists or anyone a painter everyone is going to have some perspective and some insight into the work so don't wait, don't send your script in eight months just to be part of a group less I think I'm still trying to figure it out I think that I'm a teacher I teach playwriting at Columbia and one of the things that I feel in the classroom is how to talk to each other so that playwrights still stay open because I've been in the position of losing my play I've been in the position of getting too much feedback or getting feedback I couldn't choose from or getting feedback I couldn't defend myself against and ultimately losing that ethereal thing that informs you while you're writing it's sort of that peripheral intelligence that you have that is sort of over here and not necessarily there and so I've felt a little careful and a little protective of my students and one of the things that we do is we learn how to give feedback or we try to learn how it's a week to week thing and I find a lot of times what's most helpful is to put feedback in terms of questions so that when I ask for feedback or when I'm in a group with other writers, whoever they are that's an approach I don't like it when people make suggestions about my play I don't want to be told how it ends I like to know what you think the story is I'm not missed don't tell me, don't give me adjectives about my characters because I really can fall off that sensitive place of what it takes to write something so I've had the experience and I had a play of my take-in to be done at ACT in San Francisco my second play and I didn't start writing until I was 45 so when I moved into it I moved into it because I just wanted to be with my kids so I moved away from acting and I moved into writing because I thought that would allow us to hang out together and I did so that was a good choice so my second play when it started out at this big theater and I didn't quite have the ending in place and suddenly I was there with a very verbal director and a very verbal main person and I could not end that play I could not find the end of it and it was my second one my first one created some noise everyone was looking for my second one and it failed so the sensitivity of what it is to hold on to something while it's still in that vibrating form is something that you learn and I thought maybe I would just share with you what's happening for me right now which is that I feel like I started a play I didn't expect to write it just came to me in one of my writing groups which I do I do women's writing groups every Wednesday and this play just showed up for me and it ended up being in a psych ward and it really is about insanity and it was making me feel insane and I thought that was a good thing but it scared me and I didn't know if it was my right guide I didn't know if I would lose this play so I went to somebody I respect a woman who works as a dramaturg she worked as the lit manager at the Manhattan Theater Club for nine years she was there when I was there and I asked her if she would flank me while I wrote this play I just took her to lunch and I said I don't know what's going to be in this for you I'm not going to pay you I'll take you to lunch I'm going to be needy I'm going to call you when you don't want me to I can't imagine what's in it for you but the play is making me vibrate so will you help me if you like me and she said I'll read the play and I said how long is it going to take for you I had to show her right away who I was and I'm going to be needy she said a week so I'm just sitting there a week later on that day and she asked me one question which I now don't even remember what it was but it was a good question and you want her even more so I said to her are you going to do this before I answer this question are you going to do it she said I am and I said why and she said because your play gives me goosebumps that was the whole reason and she has been by my side for the last six months she has arranged readings for me at the Lark she has arranged readings for me to just be in rooms with nobody else and the experience in this play is entirely different than any other one I've done because it scares me and I am so glad I finally have a play it scares me so that's it oh I also want to say Tina I'm so impressed that you even wear white because those of us who wear black don't notice when people spill they either wear black or white oh do you well white is just another version of black oh wonderful spill out poetry I want to ask what frightened you what scared you it's too close to something insane in me it's too close to me insanity in my family it's just it's it's lifted it's not a photograph of life but it does make me shake it makes me shake to even talk about it because it's um it's vicious I've never written anything vicious oh now that you have is it out it's in my purse it's right here I don't leave it alone my ankles what do you think that was I think what's great what you're talking about is it it's a development so it's your development and it can be any way that you want it and I think it took me a while as a young writer to realize that everyone else's process didn't have to be mine so there's a I remember one reading at Marin Theater it was a wonderful theater they had this whole new process we were there for two weeks but you could arrange it as you wanted we can do two in the middle and you don't have to read it and keep working for the rest of the week at the end you can do one at the very beginning like you walk in there's people you hear it and then you work for two weeks and have one you can rearrange it and the idea of it being that flexible and at the end as well there's like what kind of designer do you want to work with or do you want anyone at all do you want this just a staged reading do you want it in kind of up and alive and with sound with the playwright it can help you arrange your thoughts about your own play so it still helps you write and know your work to go is this a play where I want a designer in the room why because there's something in the play that needs design that needs that language well what does that tell me about what this play is so and timing wise are you a person that is not going to be served by a short rehearsal and then 50 strangers listening to your play or is that going to freak you out to the point you're like I can't fix everything I want to fix I'm not myself or is this like a week thing or how do you want to do with it who you work with as you say you're a best friend he's the one that I trust with everything and so that relationship is so valuable because I don't have to be perfect and he knows the things that I always do and he's like you're doing that thing with your female characters you know that but I think taking charge of it also releases that somewhat unhelpful gratitude that posture of like whenever you're ready I'm here with my awesome play please accept me and more like I'm ready to work on this this is my story and you can lean forward and if you read children's book lean into your play or do career um and to be your like diagnostician is that how you say that word you know and like so she figured out exactly what she needed and so I think you know maybe any designer in the room maybe you know I've written plays where characters are almost silent and you have a reading and everyone's like well you know what's that guy doing but on stage you would really see what that guy's doing so you know to sort of look really shrewdly and closely at your own play and even with my friend you know sometimes we're like you know we just we just need like two months to kind of generate more material before we need to and I think a lot of it just comes with practice of sort of doing things that don't help you to realize what does help you so it's sort of you know trying to figure that out for yourself and then like asking for it I think even when you are involved in a play development program I mean they genuinely do want to help you so if you say you know the way this is scheduled actually isn't helping me right now and to be able to articulate you know what you think a significant change would be David I want to ask you at Labyrinth is there a time when everybody basically agrees the play is done there's a time where about 10% agree it's done and 90% think it sucks it's usually hard you know it works in any large collective I mean it's like a large group of people and it's a I compare the company with guys like democracy in India or something you know Labyrinth started out as a Latino theater company essentially for I think when Mike Nichols did definitely made it then he said he notoriously said he cast a bunch of white celebrities as Latinos and he notoriously said something like I couldn't find anyone to cast and there was like all the actors were like really came out of here we are these black actors and so since then it's gathered more you know diversity but so there's no so many different people so many different tastes there's very few people that ever think something's done but I don't even know how many writers ever it's that quote that I've heard attributed to a million people like Novel saying you know you just whatever you're never done you walk away you know whatever that is so I don't know I rarely feel like something's done also kind of what Leslie was saying a little bit is that there's always going to be someone you can think something's done and there's always going to be someone who's like you know that ending everyone wants to do to your play what they would do if they were correct and so it'd be like that I really like your ending but what if this or that character I wanted to see this so you're always never going to get a real sense I think so that's I don't think that's an aspect of playwriting is feeling like you know that you just sort of chiseled something and it's complete and now but I do want to talk to what Leslie was saying about you know I thought was great about when you find something that you're writing that is goosebumps or fear because to me that's the most that is sort of the heart of playwriting and because I had zero interest in plays that I see where I feel like this writer was never afraid of anything this writer's never put themselves out of the mind and recently I saw some relatively successful play in New York and a friend of mine commented on it and it was a good solid while we're playing and the friend that I saw would say it was like television for smart people I know the plot there's a lot of them like people that that wasn't the one but yes I think that's that's a sad state I think of a lot of commercial theater right now where there's no danger and so for me for writers finding their voice for the stuff that I find interesting in theater is when you're writing something you think this is the thing that I'm going to be really humiliated about when I have to hear actors read it aloud that you're just afraid of to me that's where you need to go and the time that you feel that the goosebumps the fear being revealed that to me is the heart of it as opposed to that it's not an intellectual pursuit it's not like writing an essay figuring something out logically going oh now I know the third act because this is and that makes sense that it has nothing to do with that what you were talking about was I can't remember the term you used but I heard to me the unconscious this incidental thing allowing the unconscious the things that aren't the kind of things that you plan when you sit down and you talk about what your characters are and you think about what your climax is at the end of this moment or whatever the rational I think a lot of times can be your enemy in playwriting and so finding a way to free the unconscious and the dangerous elements of what you're capable of to me is really the most important thing to figure out as a writer and I think part of that is when you're having that experience of actually embracing what it is that's brightening to you I think that the part of the reason I felt that I wanted to do this with a friend was the ability to tolerate that not only tolerate it to yourself but tolerate what people will tell you about it because people like to be technical about plays if you do this here you have to tie it up three quarters of the way through the play and if you don't do and so my fear was that I've done that with my plays the play that was out in the ACT I made too neat it started out as a kind of complicated messy play and that's where it's life was and when I made it make sense it just died it's like the souffle that just died so when you know that you can do that when you know when you have the experience of knowing that you didn't make the right choices with your own play you just have to continue to learn about what is right for you how you value something just let me say in terms of ending things one of the things that I find important and helpful in my life is looking at how artists painters work not just how playwrights work but how painters work because the process of creating something visual is amazingly helpful in terms of what is process in general and so I've taken a number of classes at the new school on painters and one of the things that I like in terms of what you said about nothing being finished is Degas one of the wild things about Degas he was cuckoo but what he really did was what would sell his paintings to his patrons and then he would go to his house to their house for dinner he brought his paints and he would get up from the dinner table and keep working on what was on the wall that impulse of when something is finished is something I think you always struggle with how is it when are you content with it do you want to go back to it those kinds of questions are a great thing to just keep asking yourself at some point you do have to decide this is done now but that interesting keep working is something to be aware of I'd like to open it up because I have a feeling that people have conversations that they want to have am I right about that yes, okay, yes Dylan this sort of ties into your mind and speak up so everybody back there can hear you when you are doing a reading of any of your plays with other actors not for an audience but in a writers group or something like that do you find yourself giving notes to the actors during the reading or do you step back and sort of just let them do their thing what's your process of tolerance with that because you were talking about how the play that you're writing now is really personal so if you have a hard time not saying like oh no that character is more along the lines of this than the way you're doing it right now or do you let the play be interpreted you mean for a reading for readings, yeah you know what it's sort of it's so hard for me to make like a general response everything is different according to where you are in the process who the reading is for you know we've done a lot of readings just around the table and I'm asking the actors to come in cold and just come up their instincts I just want to know what is your instinct with this character and I pay attention to when they seem to fall off it you also go to the actors that you think are going to inhabit this kind of easily you know even if it's wrong in places you can still hear it somewhat so I think there's value to cold readings I've experienced and both as an actor as a writer I think over rehearsed readings you can lose it I think you can read it through and then you read it through again and they've lost what they had to begin with I think there's something fresh to allowing actors to just be Olympic about it ski the slope throw it at them and let them ski the slope and if it's wrong and it will be sometimes I had a reading in Manhattan beer club last year that was so terrible it was so terrible that it was I just and when we walked out the artistic director said to me so what did you learn from that and I said I learned I cannot vomit in the middle of things and that was not a small thing to learn if it's not a public reading if it's just you and I would say I would ask one of my writers groups I remember character had a guy who was a farmer and for some reason one of the writers was reading it was like very very thick like southern accent and she was just like whoa whoa whoa he's from Berkeley California like he's not southern as simple as that you know if you feel like you're actually not hearing your play it's not helping you it's not the actor I find if they've they've started an interpretation that's wrong they're going to like fall off the play the play won't be able to support that interpretation and they're going to get stressed and subconscious and upset so I think it's fine to make a small adjustment and say you know he's not really angry right now you can say it very very sort of moderately mildly and just throw a little you know but it does help you realize what's not on the page is there a stage direction is there a note at the beginning to go I mean my work I have to specify commas mean this a pause mean this versus a beat my work like go fast until the pause and it doesn't mean go fast through the line but just pick up your cues or else it's not going to be funny or it's not going to be this or it's not going to be clear that stuff I think actors will find helpful because it's technical but be better yeah yeah you look I don't know why you proceed I mean acting is hard to be nice back there can I just stand up so I can see you can you speak to finding like the right group because I know I've been in some of the wrong groups a couple times like when I first moved down here lovely people I still talk with them they're great people but they weren't the right people for me to jab match with we were writing to believe different styles and how do you say no I guess or how do you find the right group and if you found the wrong group how do you say politely in the group records I think if you find life short it's not thanks it's pretty easy to be like just not do it again find the people that inspire you push you and if it's not just thanks but no thanks there was like maybe one person in that group that you did like have coffee without putting it down but I think you have to find them and bring them together yourself there's nothing wrong with being protective of your work and when you're protective of something you can be your stronger self you can be your blunter self and that will serve you you don't have to one of the hardest lessons that I find is that one of the is learning how to get what you need and not worry about being nice yes Leslie this is kind of back to you because you mentioned when you had to play at ACT they confined you and they made you fall in all these places it was better as a sloppy mess and I think in my writer's group I'm kind of the rogue to play you right they have all these 15 rules the antagonist has to be introduced by this page and the arc has to be here leave, leave that group okay I agree oh my gosh and they say that's why you're not published that's why you're not getting this one I just feel like I'm losing myself and my vision and my voice when I fall into a little save the cat book that you guys go by I just feel like I'm breaking all the rules and then I think well maybe I'm sabotaging my potential career but I'm just so funny and my pages are so much funnier when I just kind of let it go pouring out of me and I just kind of fine tune it and I don't follow any rules so you agree that a sloppy mess well you know I'm like I'm too sudden and I'm extreme and I'm probably not the person to answer this question I think I'm most like you I think you are you know I think that basically you just said what you needed to say it doesn't matter what I say it doesn't matter what I ever say I think that you just said what you needed to say if something in you and I think this is true too that you know when you're feeling hemmed in and when you're feeling hemmed in you can't access the best part of you so then it seems like you just answered the question yeah but it's like Amy from San French going to see it and say oh she's not hitting this or it's not that where do you kind of say okay I submit I agree I need to do it your way to get it published or when do you say nope this is the way I want it this is the way it's going to end I respect what you're saying but I just I wonder if there you could read plays and playwrights that are published that are wild and crazy because there are a lot and just see what they look like on the page okay because yeah oh yeah and there's no magic just because you do that doesn't mean that you go right and you know Broadway can I tell you about one of our first MFA's at F-100 College John Adams who wrote a whole trilogy about a group of people in Texas who raised round snakes she was very strange haunted very disturbing plays and she and the other three MFA's in the first semester over Martin Luther King weekend to inspire each other and challenge each other and then sit in the circle and then go okay ten minutes you have to come back to the circle with ten ideas for any play and then go around in the circle and during this time John came up with a group of ideas and one of them was I'd like to write a play about a parent of a five-year-old of a fifth grader having a conference with a teacher and then terrible happens and in the course of the play the child commits suicide and the teacher the parent goes to confront the teacher to see what did the teacher do why did the teacher suspend the child that ended up in the child committing suicide and she wrote this very very dark two-hander in class very dark and I'm a mommy and I and it was red and everyone was sort of goosebumps I mean this was bleeding but by the time it was over and when everybody left I just said listen John I'm a mother and I don't know just this thing that happens I just have to tell you I find that really hard to take and I think the audience is going to find it hard to take John, God bless her well Tina that's very interesting but I'm going to be seeing my writer's group on Sunday they'll tell me what they have to think about it so I appreciate your comments okay wrong story short this December American theater magazine published her play in American theater a complete unknown who wrote this very strange haunted play picked it out of all of the slots ignored all of the comers and all of the people who were having wonderful successes all over the place for John with her sick brain that now is having 12 productions across the country wow one more final thing is that when I begin my playwriting class with my new students the first thing I have to read is a huge chapter from Jung's autobiography dreams, memories, reflections in which he talks as a young boy of 10 feeling very ill at ease with the world and not really belonging to the world and when he sits on a stone in the garden is he sitting on the stone or is the stone being sat upon wondering about what is it like to be sat upon Jung's father was a minister and things were very austere at the house and the mother was always sick and Jung as a little boy felt that he was both a young man and an old man and he really didn't have anyone to talk to and so to console himself he bought a little pencil box with a ruler inside and he took the ruler and he carved out of the ruler a little man, a little homunculus a little figure and he carved this little figure out and he dressed him a little black frog a little coat and he would write little messages for him and he'd make a little library for him and he'd put him in the pencil box and he'd go up to the attic and he'd hide the little homunculus in the pencil box, in the attic and whenever he was in despair he would tiptoe up to the attic and he would open the pencil box and he would look at the little man and write more little lectures and more little poems no idea what any of it meant and it turned out years and years and years later that there is a template for this in African societies of people worshiping tiny little lads and endowing them with all sorts of powers and so forth and so on but the point of the story is that Jung felt anxiety and mystery and confusion and the goosebumps that you were talking about and he wasn't a playwright, he wasn't a writer but he acted on that and his creative act was creating this little tiny figure to me that is the same thing as us you know, stewing about a play that we have or ideas that we have and so we write our little play and it's our secret and we put it in the pencil box and we go up and we commune with it and what I say to the students all the time is that look, you have something inside of you that nobody else has and the whole point of being a playwright is to share that and to share it with other people that you put on the stage what you've never seen before and which only you understand and it can be weird and it can be funny and it can be outrageous but it's got to start with that impulse of trying to understand and trying to entertain and trying to console so that you go back to that little man in the pencil box imagine being ten years old and creating a little older ego of a play so as much as we need writers groups and or MFA programs and or people standing around us applauding I think it's basically about going back to answer your question going back into your own strange, exalted, mysterious dappled world and pulling out what you have inside of you that is yours and that is special and like Johnna look at this girl, unknown she's missing twelve productions alright, with that in mind, I think we adjourn for lunch