 Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I want to show this mic. OK. Like Peter Paul and Mary. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Good morning. And those of us, we are live streaming this. So anyone joining us from afar, it's early for us. And we've been partying all weekend. So if we're groggy, excuse us. This is the 18th Pacific Playwrights Festival. I'm Julie Marie Maillet. I'm the Mellon Playwright in Residence here at Southwest Rep, and I'm happy to be moderating this panel. And the topic today is, who do you write for? So we'll see how we get to that. But first I'd love for you guys to introduce yourselves and to say the play that we saw here in the festival. Hi, I'm Richard Alger, and I'm the writer of Big Shot, which is our vaudevillian collage inspired by the Godfather film and novels. Hi, I'm Aditi, Brennan Kapil, and I wrote Orange, An Illustrated Play, which was a Crossroads Commission. I'm Edomar Moses, and I wrote The Whistleblower. I'm Becca Brunstetter, and I wrote Going to a Place Where You Already Are. And there were three playwrights who couldn't join us, Melissa Ross, whose play of Good Stock was in this weekend, and she couldn't join us today. Kui is in rehearsal for his play, Viet Gan, which will be next after the panel. And Rajiv Joseph couldn't join us this week in Morocco, working somewhere. Yeah, in Morocco. He's here in spirit with his set. We're on his set, Mr. Wolfe. Before we get to how, I'd like to start with asking, or before we get to who I want to start with, how and what. What was the seed of these plays? Why did you write them? What was it an image, a feeling, a question, a crisis, an interest? And anyone can start to say, what was the, why did you write these plays? Besides, why not? I work very closely with our director, choreographer Tina Cronus, in creating these works that our company does, Theater Movement Bazaar. And we deconstruct classics. And typically it's been texts, maybe a play, a short story or a novel, sometimes a myth, and kind of do what we want to with them and what the work inspires. And we're always influenced by cinema in the how that we do things. Maybe it's how we do a scene or something and how it gets constructed. But this time we wanted to start, particularly with a motion picture as our inspiration, as our source material. And we're kind of fanatics of the Godfather. We seem to watch it like every year, Thanksgiving or something weird like that. So it has a strange influence on us. But yeah, great to get together and have a good time, great grid. But so that's, we also just knew it to be an iconic film of the American culture and worldwide it has influence. And so that's what kind of brought us into that. And that's just how the plays start is like we have some kind of inspiration and then it can go anywhere from there. But we just knew that that was so rich with kind of material to explore. Mine was because I was part of the Crossroads commissioning program. Mine started with a four day residency in Orange County where I went around with Kimberly and Kelly Miller. And we met community groups, we explored. I saw Pageant of the Masters, you know, saw Flaming Lips concert of the O.C. County fair is awesome, you know, like just kind of explored a wide swath of Orange County. And I think the thing that is oddest to me about the process of having written this play is because I came in searching for a play as opposed to having an idea of what it is that I was. I mean, I literally I was wide open. I had no preconception whatsoever. What happened is a result is that a play snuck up on me instead of me having decided already and working at it, which is the central character in my play is something that I had not ever intended to write. And as I'm writing something I think is amusing about Orange County, she just snuck up there and started talking. So that I think I think for me, unlike anything else I've ever written, which usually I'm very purposeful, she snuck up on me and it became a play about this young girl on a coming of age type journey for Orange County. Yeah, I guess the whistleblower started with the first scene sort of came to me in one of those moments where you just where you feel like you intuitively sort of sense that's the beginning of something without quite knowing where it where it leads or how like and they don't always come with the first scene. Sometimes it's like an image or like something late in the play. But this one felt like oh, that's a launch. And it was just this idea of a guy and it may be because I was spending some time in LA trying to figure out how to pitch TV shows and rather than I never and like where I actually was emotionally with that stuff was like I was I how I really was feeling was like a thin surface of superiority about it concealing like an ocean of fear about about not about not being good at it. But out of so so that I was struggling with that. And then and then this idea came to me of of someone pitching a show and then just in the middle of it being like actually, you know, it never mind and leaving. And and it was but I also knew that I didn't want to write a play about about it wasn't really a play about Hollywood, that it was a that once he got out of that room, it was about and then what if someone sort of did that to every relationship in his life and so it was just that that that opening scene in the sense that it would give me a character who was like like somebody like someone fired out of a cannon at the beginning and then just watching as like the drag, the wind resisted slow, gradually brings the cannonball to Earth. So it was just that and then just following that feeling. In case any of y'all didn't see my play, it's about a woman who has a near death experience and goes to heaven and comes back to life and her husband doesn't believe her. So I guess it came from a place of just me still trying to figure out what I believe about God and where we go when we die and just always having that question since I was a little kid, so it's just another another way to try and answer that for myself. And my mom is very spiritual and every time somebody writes a book on heaven, she sends me a copy of the book. So I have like 37 of them and I have some doubles too. She like keeps sending me the same ones. And one time she sent me a little note with a book that said, you should write a play about this. This is like three years ago. Put it on my fridge and I'm a very obedient daughter. So and I also was sick of thinking about my own age. I wanted to connect to my grandparents. I wanted a chance to talk to them while they were while they're still around. So I started interviewing them for the play. And yeah, so it was just my own questions and wanting to connect with them and make my mom happy. So you're saying that you write for your mother. I write for my mother only sometimes. What at what point do you all think about the audience and your process? Becca was smart and did a sum up of her play. So I'm going to do that real quick. I described my play just in case you didn't see it as being a coming of age story told from the perspective of a young woman on the autism spectrum. That is how I describe my play. And I heard you, actually. So that's why I was like, I should say it. I this is so cool because Edomar just sort of expressed a thing that I always feel, but I can't quite express, but now from now on, I will. The idea that we feel our play like, say a cannonball, do you know what I mean? It has a feeling, it has a way of feeling. And I think as soon as I feel what I want a play experience to be, I'm deciding that that's the experience I want the audience to have. And then the question becomes, how do I craft that intersection between the imaginary someday, hopefully audience and the thing that is basically just words on a page, I mean, that hopefully will inspire stuff to happen, right? But I think like if I have a feeling that my play is going to be like a cannonball, then that's the goal and that has everything I think to do with the audience and to do with how it's going to interface with them and how it's going to connect with them ultimately. So that's probably the first moment I think of them. That's right. That feeling is related. That feeling is an instinct that that that I think it's important to cultivate as opposed to how a play will look or sound, all of which is important. But it's a feeling about the sort of the like the way in which it will pull the audience forward. And as you start to do this, as you you start to you can start to feel it as you're working on something. This will like it's like a physical shape or like a, yeah, like some sort of parabola inside of you. So the my answer would be yes and no. Like I you can't think of the audience in terms of particular kinds of people or a group of people or I think that's I think that's sort of deadly because then you're going to be writing from the outside in. What will people think of this? Will this offend people? Will this confuse people? But then there's this deeper level where that instinct is in a way the most important thing to listen to. And this I feel more and more strongly about this. The longer I do this that like what you start to learn when you write plays or parts of your plays that just don't work or that lose the audience. It doesn't matter how attached you were to that speech or that incredibly important line. If you don't have that if that forward momentum thing that we're struggling to articulate isn't happening, they can't they literally can't hear the speech that you love. It just doesn't go in because it's not animated by this other underlying thing. And so it's like, but I love that painting, but the lights are off in the room. Well, no one can see the painting because the lights are off. And if you turn, you know, but the painting is destroyed by direct light. You're like, well, then cut the painting. It's like that. Anyone else want to respond to that? I mean, when does the audience come in for you guys? Well, I guess it's it's a little it's usually when I start working on the editing with the director, Tina, that's when we because because we come up with ideas and concepts and both go into our own camp and I work on texts and I write texts and the things I write have no stage directions. It's kind of unique in that form where I'm not kind of controlling everything that's supposed to happen on stage. And I write texts and I write dialogues and scenes and we start creating something. And then she's usually being the first voice of the audience for me saying, you know, way too much talking here. And, you know, let's cut this cut that or, you know, this is this could be funny or something and sort of finding and that's and but the but the piece doesn't get kind of discovered until well into rehearsal process. You know, this this play emerges through her work with the actors. And that's when I start to see things. And that's when we start to get in a dialogue about, you know, is our structure correct with this project? We were fortunate enough to do a work in progress of it a year ago. And then Mark Masterson asked us to come down here and do the premiere of it. And, you know, so that it's been a year, but it took the full production to be done, sorry, the work in progress to be done for us to go. OK, here's what's really happening and to get the audience kind of feedback a little bit on on what's what's emerging there. So it it has sort of a string. I can't preconceive other than, you know, I want to entertain or do something that's funny and I hope that the audience thinks it is too. Becca, what about you? When does the audience enter the year? Maybe this sounds horrible. I don't really think I think about you guys until you're in the room. It's hard, you know, it's hard. It's so in theory until it's actually happening. But when it is when it is actually happening, it's happening. It's so it's so incredibly helpful. And it's just hard to guess until they're there. But I was thinking about how I was just thinking about how once an audience is there, an audience needs to be told how to perceive the play within the first five to ten minutes of the play or they get really confused. So I'm always like, that's the first thing I always end up learning is how does the how can I help the audience understand what it is that they're watching early on so that everybody can kind of go on a journey together because you can feel and when you're watching a play when not everybody understands what kind of play that they're watching and it's kind of confusing and I tend to write in dramedy a lot. So it's figuring out a way to tell an audience that it's OK to laugh and it's OK to feel and that it's OK to do those two things at one time, even. Yeah. You said something about you think it's dangerous for the playwright to have a specific idea in mind of who's in the audience. And I wonder if you all feel that way or if there are plays that. That's different for or that you might say, OK, this play, I really would like. This for this demographic to experience this play or this I want this conversation with the audience, do you guys are there? I have a perfect mix often for a play of what what you know how audiences have their own character once they're all assembled and they have a personality. Right. And I know that there are plays I've written where if the audience has a certain mix of people who will get all the facets, they teach each other how to enjoy everything and how to under like if something would have been elusive to you, but you've got a bunch of South Asians over there laughing so hard, they're falling, you know what I mean? Like, you're like, this is funny. I get that it's funny, you know, and you kind of teach each other things. Like, I think people from Orange County taught us a lot at my reading. Frankly, everyone was like, what was that joke? I didn't get that. Blimp hangers. What is a blimp hanger? But so I frequently have like a dream. Confluence that. And very kind marketing departments will sometimes ask me and I'll go, I have the perfect mix for you. What you need is you need a quarter of this, a quarter of that, a quarter of people in this area and then you put it all together and they're all going to get it because they'll kind of all teach each other how to experience it. The other end of the spectrum, speaking as someone who as a person of color often is asked if I want to communicate directly with specific communities. I always do. I always want as diverse of an audience as possible because I write I write plays where it helps to have a really, really diverse audience so that everyone enjoys it and gets it. I find it very dangerous to claim to be the voice of any community. And I feel like that's a little bit what ends up happening. If you're like, I am writing this for my Indian people. I'm Indian, Bulgarian and of Swedish nationality. I don't think the Indian people want me to be their universal voice, you know? I've been there twice, you know? That doesn't mean that I don't tangle with a lot of Indian. The third time I'm going to claim that position in American theater and I'm going to be the voice of it now. I mean, I just don't think that that's I think we gather to commune and tell stories and the more of us the better and I do feel a responsibility to diversify the stories that are in our theater so we can all be part of that more diverse discourse. But I don't want to and I want I do. I want my Indian people in the audience, I for sure do. But that said, I want everyone. I want everyone in the audience because I want all of us to be in that conversation because otherwise there's something very weird about that, you know? So that's my. You want to add to that or comment on that? Thank you. This is when we start a fight. Well, just to clarify what I said, like, I think that is a special case if you're writing if it's like, OK, this is because I do think that's an important. Certainly the theater has a has a various problems bringing in more audiences. It would be wonderful to bring in. And so there is I think there's room for that for being like, OK, this is. But what I mean, I actually meant something else, which is that even then, even if I'm, you know, I'm going to write a play for like the Israeli immigrant community in the Bay Area, you know, which is which is where I grew up, that then when I'm writing that play, I can't be worried about. Like projecting yourself outside of the play and imagining specific kinds of people hating it or being bored or whatever. It's anything, especially in the early going, when you're first generating it, anything that that shame, like any imaginary voices in your head that shame you out of impulses, risky impulses is dangerous. That is great. It's sort of like when you're in a conversation and you're worrying about whether the other person will like what you say next, you're going to be a really boring conversationalist, you know, you need to just say and be and put your voice in and then, you know, it'll continue without you. You're not the only play in the world. So. Yeah. Every day I say, Aditi, you're not the only play in the world. You go ahead and do you. Yeah, I agree with everything Edomar just said, that it's so important when you're writing your first draft to protect yourself and, yeah, to trick yourself into thinking you're the only playwright in the world. Like you kind of have to get that protective of your own ego while you're writing or you'll just or you'll never write a word. You have to you have to be that way. And then later on, can you and once once you bring in actors and once you bring in an audience, can you start to get a sense of, you know, what is what is working and what is not working? But I was just thinking that I do I do sometimes think in terms of an audience, what what question am I asking that goes against what most people like what question can I ask that that can be against sort of the status quo in terms of what the in terms of gosh, what am I saying, coffee, just just the idea that a lot, a lot of people. OK, in terms of heaven, most of the people, most of the people that I in my world that I interact with, you know, since since I lived in New York and did theater and since I've been living in LA, most people do not believe in God. Most people do not believe in heaven. Of course, there are people here and there who do. You have to be kind of secretive about it. You're like a secret Christian. It's kind of crazy. But I thought, you know, what can I can I challenge the idea that that heaven is insane and that there is no God? How can I challenge? How can I ask a question that's hard? So I like I like to think of it that way. How to ask a hard question without being alienating. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, for for me, you know, what I'm interested in is is like the the form of theater and and kind of working on the form and asking the audience to if they're curious about what can we change with the form? So you're not maybe going in and seeing something that is is expected in that way. And you know, can you are you open to being surprised and to be caught off guard and taken along a path that you that is unexpected? And and so I think that's always in my mind, my relationship with the audience that way. And it's it's almost, you know, like you hear about how Vaudevillian's write jokes, you know, it's like it's like finding these sort of, you know, bang, here we go and then we go over here, we move this way and move that way and and but but trying to compose a play that way. That's that's sort of the intention. But I hope that that the audience is kind of, I think, curious is the big thing for me that they're like, OK, yeah, what's, you know, what's going to happen? I don't really know how this is going, but I go along on this ride. And so it's really the form that gets it instead of some kind of preconceived notion of a theme that I really want to relay. Form, yeah. So I'm still asking this question, who do you write for? Aside from writing for everyone on the planet, they should all come. Sometimes I'm writing for. The part of me that was like a teenage girl, he used to hide out in a convenience store, reading comic books, you know, sometimes for any parent that worries how their kid will survive. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think there's probably a very specific answer. With every play. That is kind of in that universal realm, though, you know. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that that if if there's a general principle behind that specific answer to each play, it's I don't know that I can even say it's writing for someone or a group of people so much as it's writing under the suspicion that if I express something that feels really personal and idiosyncratic, that then I will be end up having written for people that surprise me. Like that my experience has been that the most it's often the stuff from like, well, I can't put this in because it's too embarrassing or or like no one this is so specific to me that those are the things that people come up to you afterwards and say, how did you know? Stop stop reading my diary. And most of the time I haven't even read their diary for that one time. I've been like twice, yeah, but so so, yeah, for for like for the opportunity to to like, yeah, I don't know. It's so hard to not feel less alone right to get the opportunity to communicate with like to connect and communicate with other humans. And that can and that can it can surprise you who that turns out to be like the last play that I had here. What was that called? Completeness, which was in this space that the I expected people around my age to who had like similar dating experiences to be like, oh, yeah, totally. But but it surprised me like how many people of each of any generation were like, yes, it was exactly like that or you helped me understand what my kids are going through or so it's it's that it's like the for the surprise for the for the surprise of who you end up connecting to. Yeah, I really agree with what Aditi said. And you, Martio, have both of you. But you agree with me more. Yeah, but not me. You didn't agree with me. You haven't said anything yet. I would agree with it already. This is really intense. I really think that I was thinking about because I did think about the question this morning, I'm very proud of myself. I think that, like, ultimately it's it's for myself. I can't help but get around that obvious answer. But to try and get more specific, I was thinking about like, sometimes it's for my past self and sometimes it's for my future self, like, because it's always giving voice to something that I wasn't able to actually say in my actual life, be it, you know, in like when I'm, you know, when you're a teenager who can express herself and you're filled with all these feelings and you don't know how to articulate them. So sometimes it's for the past self, but with this play, I think I'm kind of writing for my future self in hopes of answering questions that will help me be a better human being as I proceed in my life. And then I wanted to share this awesome little story, which is that Rebecca Lynn Mozo, who played the granddaughter in my play, we did a reading of it in December and at that point she was a smoker. And I didn't know that at all when we cast her. But the day of the reading, she showed up and she said, I haven't smoked and I don't want to smoke. I don't know what's going on. And she hasn't had a cigarette since. So I kind of feel like I wrote the play for her in a way. If I, if I, if I saved her life, if I saved anyone's life because making somebody put down a cigarette, then that's fucking awesome. Because, I mean, what plays can can do things like that in these little ways. So I'm, you know, maybe it was for that purpose in this case. Forget the patch. Yeah. You just need a bit of pity. You want everyone can play that role. Exactly. Well, I think for the kind of work that I'm doing, it's, for instance, in this show that's based on the Godfather. I mean, it's written because I'm one of those people who loves this movie. And as I mentioned, all of our work are starting with some kind of known source material. And so there's kind of two levels we end up kind of creating these shows on. And one is for these people who know and love the movie and get all of these references that are in there and kind of pop up. And then the other people that we're trying to address. And we found out that there are many people under the age of, you know, 30 who have never seen the Godfather, which kind of blew my mind. But it's true, you know, it's like they're like, I don't know. But we have to we have to offer something to them, too. You know, that that inspires them to maybe look at the original source material, read the book, read the play, go see it. We've done it with check off plays and, you know, many people like I want to, you know, I want to go back and read that again, you know, or see it. You know, it's and that's kind of so those two kind of audience groups are always there and and there's some kind of level that we have to reach both of them and that's kind of and so each project has that's how we answer how I'm answering the question of what's my relationship with the audience. It's like, well, these guys will get this and the other guys will get, you know, some kind of silly joke and that'll be great. You know, we're even going that way, you know. Well, this is a burning question for me, but I don't know if it is for other people has just the economy affect the way or who you write for? The economy affect how you guys write or who you write for like the state of the world? I mean, yeah, it's a broad question, but I'm just not sure what I mean. It means it depends what you mean. Beyond your own personal economy, I was like, yes, it means I really need money. That is a huge effect on who I used to write for, such as a television studio. It affects cast size. Absolutely. Like if you're going to have a character has to be absolutely, absolutely necessary. And I think that I used to write plays that had seven to nine characters, and now I write plays that have three to five characters and because I and I think that you think about economy in terms of the set, even like wanting something to kind of have a unity so that a little theater can kind of pop it into a space. I do find myself thinking that way. I possibly go in the opposite direction. And I don't know if that's because I'm just contrary. Yeah. No, but that's smart because in like a few years when you're done with the big cast play, you start in the economy is bad. That's when everybody's going to be going, where are the big cast play? Well, I have 12. Yeah. But is that what you meant? Did you mean like the economy is a global theme? Or did you mean the economy is in like theatrical production type stuff? Both. Because it also has an effect probably in terms of like the mood of the culture. Yeah. You know, when when the culture is very comfortable versus when there's like a like an atmosphere of desperation. It's hard to pinpoint how, but it like sort of seeps. It's like in the air and on the news and the stories that feel important or maybe have maybe shifted a little bit in terms of the discourse, in terms of the things that I don't, similarly to how I wouldn't want to second guess how an audience will perceive a line that I'm writing. I don't actually second guess whether a play will get produced. I feel like they're hard enough already and it's like the odds are against it anyway. So, so yeah, I don't I don't think about economy when I write. That said, I think I do think about what stories are necessary right now. And I mean, the thing is that I think I was always writing. I mean, I've always written about like outsiders, immigrants, like things, people who are on the fringes of our mainstream narrative, because a huge thing for me is I want to tell universal stories. But what I would love to do is see people who are normally at the edge of the stage, center stage in the middle of their great adventure, in the middle of the great love story, in the middle of whatever it is. So because I've always sort of tried to look at what needs to be center staged, I think that as society shifts, it maybe shifts what I think I need to what I start pushing at. Like, I think I've recently gotten more. This is probably not related to the economy, but I've recently gotten more obsessed with the stories we tell about women and how we expect women to behave in our mainstream narratives and wanting to mess with that in the same way that when I write about characters who are from another country, I want to mess with how that is traditionally perceived, you know? So similarly, I would say, as things get more. I mean, there's like when when when when things are great, they coast. When things are rough is when the world gets more polarized and, you know, I think different conversations end up wanting to be foregrounded at that point. And so I think it does, but I can't pinpoint exactly how I think. But I think this is a shift of some kind, depending on what's going on in the world around you. I close the conversation down nicely. Well, at that, well, that you didn't close it. I want to open up to the audience because I think you guys, some of you have questions who have seen these plays and might want to ask these of these wonderful playwrights who are here to talk to you. So, yeah. I think that's an audience that those of us that are giving money for these plays don't often think about because teenagers and the 20-year-olds aren't buying a lot of theater tickets. But you really stick to them. Thank you. They're part of my perfect mix. I always feel like if there's just a little group down there of kids who are just, you know, getting it on a different level, everyone has more fun, you know? Yeah. Thank you. This is for everyone. What's your writing practice? I'm not interested in the two of you are writing. You too. I'm interested in your writing practice. Becca. She seems like the most disciplined, so we're going to let her answer it. Five a.m. to seven a.m. now. I write whenever I have time to. I have a I write for a TV show now as well. So it's a matter of finding time to squeeze in around that. But ever since I think ever since ever since grad school, I just became tried to be as rigorous as possible about making deadlines for myself. Even if they're completely arbitrary, I just say this play needs to be done by this state. And then I just do my best to work towards that date. And I like to write at night. I do not like to write in the morning. Maybe usefully, I'm sort of the opposite of Becca. Well, first of all, yes, it's different if I have a day job, like if I'm working for a TV show or something, then you sort of kid yourself and you're like, I'll get up extra early and right before I go in or right before I come home from eight hours in a writer's room. And that's just not realistic. But barring that I do. And I used to be I could only write late at night. But I think that was just fear of it was just fear of missing. Like something exciting was happening elsewhere. Yeah, that's what that's what the kids are calling it. But like, you know, so I couldn't write unless I thought everything everyone was asleep everywhere. But but but after but after grad school, I yeah, I sort of cultivated this approach of like, I'm going to make this my day job. So generally what I do is I'll try to make it the first thing I do. This is disgusting. But I don't even like before I shower or like I just like pick up my clothes from the previous day that are on my floor or night. Nicely, it's being nicely my mom could be watching this on live stream if she yeah. But and like throw them on and then and then before it's almost like so I'm as close as possible to like sleep, basically, literally. So that's supposed to be really good. Yeah, like more like there's fewer things of intervene between me and my unconscious or whatever. And so and I'll try to get two or three hours in like from if I'm being really good, I'm like there at eight thirty, but sometimes it's nine or nine thirty and like until noon or one. So and then I'll be like, OK, what am I doing today so that the question isn't will I write today, but like will I get back to writing today? But but even then so then you sort of turn that into a habit and and it's really hard. It's easy when it's going well and you're excited to get up and work on that thing. The hardest is when you're like, I don't know what I'm going to do to just sort of show up for it. And then then I'm like, so from nine a.m. to noon, I surf the Internet because I can't. So but you try to. So the first thing is to like create that habit. And the second thing is like more and more micro moments within that time of like, how do I stay focused? How to what are my tricks for when I feel stuck or when I don't know what to do for being for being productive? There's an amazing TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. And some of you have probably seen. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love and she she talks about shifting how in the renaissance, the idea of the artist and like sort of humans as the center sort of came about and has been in her opinion, killing artists. Because before that, you never said that a person was a genius. That they had a genius. Genius was just another term for muse. And it was literally a creature that lived in your wall and would come out and like rub its juice on your piece of art. I think I'm quoting her TED talk. But and that and that so that your job was just to show up every day and try to be in communion with that thing. And so if it went badly, it wasn't totally your fault. And if it went well, you couldn't take the credit. You're just your genius was really on that day. And so it's sort of about that, like showing up and being open and then trying to do it as, you know, for me, on like a regular schedule. I have three kids. So that intervenes. And a cat. She bug you. So so, yeah, so they're very exciting as of this year, all in school during the days. I went when I had kids, I got really, really efficient about dropping into the zone and writing whenever I needed to be in the zone and write. It used to be that I would need two hours lead in before I was open, like exactly what you're talking about before I was open to the muse. Now I'm like, I got time. I'm open, you know, which is I actually wonder how it's affected my work, because I feel like I took that like luxury of time out of it somewhat. I still indulge in the luxury of time. Sometimes like when I'm when I'm elsewhere, I turn into this weird person who writes whenever, even if it's in the middle of the night and my sleep habits and my eating habits all get very wonky. And then I go back and I become structured because they're up at 6.30 AM and I go to sleep at 10 or I won't be up with them. So that's a lot. And then the other thing I do that I think is probably a little odd is and I think it has to do with the fact that I grew up in a city and quiet. I don't quiet is disturbing to me. So so I listen to really, really loud music on my headphones because I'm not rude. But it's really like my my dramaturg. You're there. My dramaturg lives. I pulled out my headphone to ask her something and she was like, hell, are you listening to and it's like punk rock or something. Just because I need something that I don't know. I need something to push against. I need something. I don't know what it is. But that's my other weird thing that I do. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have any kind of routine other than the the project at hand and I'm sort of in that I'm in a fortunate, I guess, position of when we've decided on making the show where it's working towards some deadline of it opening and we are creating this piece. So then I have to just get in there and write as whenever and however I can to get the get this thing going. So it has this propulsion out of, you know, oh, my gosh, here it comes kind of thing all the time. That's all and I'm terrible at taking my free time and kind of exploring things. I'm always coming up with excuses. But but but that's sort of I think part of the process, though. It's like, you know, something is coming and all this everything you read or watch on TV or conversation then starts to feed into it. And so I guess I'll consider that part of my writing, you know, it's just doing those kinds of things. Any more questions? Sorry. Good question. This was the first reading that my play had five actors instead of three. So that was huge to find out what that did. And to I think I'm married to it now. I liked it, but so that was a really big one for me was I did this thing where I did the thing that was a very neat little skeptical and it got bigger. And then I just needed to see what it did in the world when interfacing with an audience. That was one for me. Yeah, the big thing for me. This was I've done readings and workshops of this before, but other than an audience of like we the last workshop didn't really have an audience. It was a pretty closed reading. And the one before that was in Colorado at this at Perry Mansfield, which is this theater camp. They do these weeks week of workshops before the campers show up and then they show up the weekend of the readings. So the first reading of this play was for like a room full of like theater loving 17 year olds who are super excited that like New York actors were in front of them and people were swearing in the play. So it was like unfair. I was like, I didn't get I didn't get a fair like it was too good a hearing. So this was the first, you know, sort of real audience that the show has had. So I always find it super useful to just feel the the the waxing and waning level of engagement or understanding or electricity in the room and try to interpret what that that means. So I just got a lot of information about like, OK, the they tried to go with that part, but I think it lost them. And I felt confused. So just sort of downloading that information and then trying to figure out what that means in terms of cutting or clarifying or, you know. So I got a lot of I got a lot of info yesterday. I guess with my reading, I kind of heard the same argument over and over that you've got a couple trying to decide whether or not heaven exists. And I ended up hearing that for too long. So I think what I'm going to do in the next draft is just try and make the argument more organic and come out of the relationship, because I think it's a little too currently like that I've just scripted an argument. So I'm going to try and just weave it into what the characters are going through. That was a great question. It was a question behind behind you, right? I mean, in my case, you saw him. Like I've worked with Michael Esper before he did my play the four of us in New York and it was one of the more and I don't know that I wrote this. I'm not sure how to what degree I wrote this part with him in mind, partly because he's always working because he's so good. So I could it would be like I never want to anticipate that I can necessarily get him, but but he that's on the example of someone who I think of as whatever his skills are, seem to match up exactly with how I write text and and how to to yeah, I don't know. He just has I just think he's extraordinary. And and so that so that that would be this was a happy confluence where he you got to see him do it. And but it's yeah, I'm on the shot up now. Well, you yours is ensemble phase. Yeah, so yeah, for for me, we work with the same actors often and so that that definitely helps the sort of knowing this is this guy I know or this girl and it's like we can, you know, I can hear the voice as it's being written. Sometimes sometimes that's that's dangerous, though, you know, and I just I try not to do that too, because it's like let let let something else discover without some preconceived notion about how this is supposed to sound. Just work on rhythm and and and and let let that emerge. So sometimes it's actors that we've worked with other times. It's just let it let it calm as it's coming. How many plays at once do you work on? I like three. That's my magic number. No, seriously, I actually like it. I like to be able to switch. Like when one thing is frustrating me to, you know, go. OK, fine. And, you know, go to the next one. And it's like it's like a pallet cleanser, but it's not like I stopped working. You know what I mean? Whereas I could, I guess, go take a roller coaster ride and that'll close my pallet too. But then I'm leaving my work day, you know. But if I'm going to have a work day and I do, I try to have like a nine to five ish kind of work day if and also sometimes I have thoughts that just don't belong in this play, but they're a perfectly fine thought. So, you know, maybe it belongs in one of the other things. Yeah, three is fun for me. Yeah, I sort of think of it as like a front burner, back burner type of situation where it's hard to get really deep, meaningful work for me done in more than one thing. I know it's something, you know, the important stuff is happening when I'm focused obsessively on one thing for weeks on end, but you do hit walls. And it's it's yeah, if it's never the case that I'm like, this is the next thing. And then I write it from beginning to end and then I don't and it's done. And then I move on to the next thing. It always is a certain point you just have to rotate. And the and the wall you'd hit two months ago on something else. You're so relieved to see this thing again. It's like different from the thing you've been staring at for the two months since that you're like, why did you have suddenly the solution is there? And I think that's real. I think I think, you know, whatever the cliché that is probably not scientifically true of like, oh, we only use 10 percent of our brains or whatever the numbers floating around, but there's some there's some percentage is true. And there is a huge part of your mind that's just working on other things. And then we'll cough up a solution into your conscious mind, you know, when you're often only when you turn your attention to something else. I like that cough up a solution. Yeah. I think I thought of it when I thought this I thought this idea once once I felt like I was singing in rounds with myself, if that makes any sense. Like I was I started I started working on one play kind of kept moving forward on it. And then I would start working on another play and kind of move forward. And it was kind of all happening simultaneously. But I think that it's easy for me. It's easiest to only be working on one new thing at a time. And then I'm going back and rewriting other things. But I can only be writing one new thing at a time. Yeah. Yeah, I am in the same way that it's one one project at a time. Because a lot of the things get worked on even once it's up in full production. We're just constantly trying to adjust and tweak and find things. So my attention seems to kind of always be on that project that we're working on and then move on to the next thing. OK, Pierre Carmel. I'm curious because I'm sure you're going to say that they're not conditions and say that the conditions are a difference in rainfall versus in health. What is how does it change things when you're writing on a condition? Yeah, for me, honestly, it doesn't change it at all. Unless the commission came about because I discussed a specific idea with that theater, then it's like I am writing. I know I'm writing this play for that theater. But even then, I sort of try to put that out of my mind. But in this case and in most cases, there isn't a specific I at least in my experience for a specific idea or topic or whatever. And so in that case, I often don't know. I'll have it. Let's say I have two or three vaguely overdue commissions. I like vaguely I don't I don't even necessarily know. Like when I was working on the whistleblower, I knew that South Coast rep was my most overdue commission, but I didn't know whether I didn't know whether they were the angriest at me. And so and so I didn't. Well, I was working on it. I knew I was like, OK, this will, you know, this will be great. I'll finish this and it will fulfill one of my outstanding commissions. But I didn't think necessarily about which theater I was definitely going to. So and I and partly that's the same protective psychology we were talking about at the beginning that it's like. And I remember when one of my early commissions, the artistic director of the theater, said, I just want you to write whatever the next play you were going to write anyway is, which I think is a great way to give a playwright a sense of freedom and ownership. When I was down here for PPF last year, just as a, you know, hanging out and watching plays and stuff. And at that point, I was trying to decide between kind of had a vague idea about the heaven play or I was going to write a play about Paula Dean. I was going to go one way or the other. And I saw Samuel Hunter's play Rest and I just thought it was so beautiful to see those older characters on stage. So I just it felt like the right thing to do for this theater. Because I think when we you do want to write the next play, you're going to write anyways, because otherwise you'll write a bad play if you're overthinking it. But I do think we all want to write a play. If we're going to be hired to write a play by theater, we want to give them something that they are going to want to produce because it's like, you know, it's so hard to get a production. You might as well take advantage of the fact that the theater commissioned it. So hopefully they will do it. So I think you think about it a little bit, but you can't think about it too much or you'll just. Yeah. Once I was done, I was like, oh, here's what I have. This seems, oh, this seems appropriate to. Yeah. Yeah. I think I I've never had. Might be lying, but no, I don't think I am. I've never had a commission that was prescriptive. So which is great. And I think I'd be uncomfortable with that because then what if that's not a good play? Do you know what I mean? How how upset will we all be? You don't really want my mediocre work. You know, you probably want my better work. But this one was right because it had. Actually, no, Mark, I don't have Marks in the room. Mark was really specific about the fact that we want you to come out here. We want you to experience Orange County, but then go home and write whatever is next for you, whatever you're feeling. So it's actually really weird that my play is called Orange. I'm vaguely embarrassed by it. You know, I was like, God, is there any other title this play can have? But so it's like I had no imagination whatsoever. Write a play about Orange County. I'll call it Orange. It's horrifying, you know, but the fact is somehow they snuck up on me. I honestly like had a nice long conversation. I was like, oh, this doesn't, and then they were like, you can write anything you want. I was like, oh, that I can do. I can write anything I want. And I did not think that a play would get inserted in me by Orange County. Like, what are the chances of that happening, you know? So it's a little odd. It seems like I was doing an assignment, but I really wasn't at all. It just kind of happened that way because I don't know, I was researching stuff and I discovered the black box was orange and all of a sudden it had to be orange. You know what I mean? That was my favorite part, by the way. Thank you. So yeah, no, I've never had a commission that tells me what to do, and I think actually that's on principle. I think that's important because I think you want your artists to be the thinkers in a society and not just the implementers of art. That said, I think clearly I'm very influenceable. And I think I'm also very inspired by the theatrical spaces that a theater that is commissioning me has. I was here last year for PPF also, and I think what I loved was experiencing all the different theaters in this building. And I think a little bit that was in me a little bit is, ooh, the potential of this space. Like what you can do with this space? I remember sitting in another theater that had commissioned me and they had this thing happen we're during intermission of a really lovely show that I was watching. I didn't really know what I was gonna write for them yet. They opened the side doors and the wind blew through the entire audience. And I was like, this space, this space. This is an amazing space. I wanna write for this space. And then now they're stuck with this epically proportioned play. And I'm like, honestly, it's your fault. You opened the doors, the wind blew through. It was a thing. I had a moment. Yes, there's nine actors in it. I'm sorry. Yeah, so. Again, my situation is maybe a little unique in that any commission that comes is about, or ends up being about a production because it's really about the style or method of theater that we're creating. And we did one up at the Getty Villa. And this was when they started out with this playwright kind of festival that they had. And so we did this piece based on Orpheus and Eurydice. And created it, and we went all the way and added video and set and everything. It was supposed to be a play reading. And we're like, what do we do with three performances? And it just became huge, but that sort of says how it proceeds. It just kind of keeps getting its own propulsion. And it isn't just about this play that I'm writing down. That seems to be how the commissions happen. So it's a strange circumstance. On that note, we will conclude. Thank you so much. You guys are an amazing panel. Thank you for your opportunity to join us. Thank you so much. Really, really do thank you. I kind of wanted to turn the tables on you and ask you a question, so it was good for you not answering stuff.