 I don't care. Are they there? They're there. Everything's good? Right. I've brought my ticket today. Okay, we'll just start. I just need to be walking on the building by 6 o'clock today. I know that's what happens when people have events and gallows coming up. It's not working. It's not working? It existed earlier. It's not working. It kind of doesn't do it. No. Thank you. Who is the other guy? Hello, hello. Yeah, no, it's not working. What happened when we did the test? It works. I wonder if they let me pull this down though. I'll put the mic too. We'll just start. We're just going to start because I've got to be out of here. We're going to start because I've got to go to a thingy at a thingy thingy thingy. I have to run out of here. But good to see you guys. Good to see you guys. We're watching work. Here we are. Which is one of the things we have to start making. If you haven't already, you start to make a list of the work that you have to do. If we didn't learn the lesson the easier way. We're going to learn it the harder way, baby. You're going to learn it the harder way. So you make a list of things that you have to do. And one of them is show up. You have to show up. So I have a friend. I don't get on Facebook, but I had a friend who's on Facebook. People were saying who they voted for. And one of his friends had let the unfriending begin. So if you didn't vote too bad for your person. And if you voted for anyone who's unqualified, too bad. But the point is that from here out you got to, you know. Someone was asking me, well what do we do? Do we, let's do theater in all these towns. And you know they'd see my play uptown. They said let's do theater. Let's take this show and run it up. You know, what we can do though is know that you can take your play. Every year you go. The play of you. You know what I mean? You know what I mean for Star Wars? The play of you, right? The play of like the world is wonderful and inclusive. That play. You know, it doesn't have to be elaborate. It just has to be something. So you can take that play. And it's inexpensive and it's easy to put it on. You put it on all the time. Like right now. And this is why this is a play and not like just a writing class. It's a show. We are showing up and we are showing you how to read. One way to read. Okay. Paris. I'm memorizing. I'm on a quest to memorize the name too. So awesome. So our mic, our mic doesn't work. Whatever. Okay, whatever. But we're going to keep going. We're going to get started. So anybody not know how Watch Me Work works? Okay. You don't know how to do it? Okay. So Watch Me Work is a play. It's also a free writing class. Okay. So it's free. So if anybody asks you for money. They're not affiliated with us. Okay. So this is what we do. I set the timer for 20 minutes. We work together for 20 minutes. That's the action part of the play. All right. And that we create the action of the play together. And then after 20 minutes, the timer will go off. The dialogue together. And the dialogue of the play will be us in conversation, like dialogue. In dialogue about your work and your creative process. So, and everybody knows who's already been here. If you ask me about my work, I'll make you mine. Okay. So, and that's basically it. So if you have questions about your work and your creative process. That's what we're here to talk about. Yeah. So we're going to just start. We'll do that. Hopefully the mic will be working. Okay. Ready. Do it after we're done. Okay. Melissa, yes, you quickly tell us. So thank you for joining us at HowlRound. If you want to tweet us at any point to ask SLP any questions that you have. Tweet us at watch me work SLP and then make sure to hashtag HowlRound. So that's H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. All right. Cool. Okay. So anybody have any questions about their work, their creative process? You guys are here. These are people from my past. And it's fitting that they're like behind me. They're never far away. They're never far away. And I'm always talking to you guys. They're like a gang. They're like leather jackets and antlers. And switch blades. That would be me. So what do you do with the switch blade? Yeah. Anybody have any answer? It's been such a rough kind of week with the election and stuff. But it's so amazing to me how it can go from disappointment and anger and all those things. To healing and creativity. Right. I've met so many people this week who said I've written a poem. I've written a song. I've written a list. It's like we need to express our feelings and our creativity. It's the way to do it. Right. It's one of the ways to do it. It's so interesting how we can go from disappointment to healing and creativity is often the way to do that. And you're right. I mean there were also some folks, I guess it was Wednesday, in Washington Square Park doing a love rally. It was just pretty cool. You know, that was cool. And I think people are protesting all over the world. It's funny, you know, when your relatives from Germany call you, you can always come over here. They say, whoa. You know, when Germany's looking good, right? We know how far we've come. I love Germany, but you know, it's ironic that they're offering, you know, they're saying, hey, you can always come look over here at Germany. They offer asylum. They are. They're offering asylum. So, you know, Angela Merkel is, you know, kind of righteous. So anyway, you know, then we find things to laugh at. And we recall that, you know, days have often been difficult. And I think, you know, those of you, is anyone here concerned about a millennial or millennial? I mean, it's funny, right? Because people are always like, oh, the millennials are like, like six months with the millennials. They're not doing anything. They're lazy. They're table-gazing. Now you all got a job. You might not pay anything. But you definitely got a job. So, you know, you got a job to do. There you go. So, yeah. So, you guys got, you guys got, you know, if you didn't feel like you had any purpose, and you're just waiting to get your own reality TV show or whatever the fuck you're hoping for, you know, there's a real calling now. You know, I mean, come on. You can always look back into your own past. No, maybe not your own particular past, but the past of your foremothers and forefathers and know that, you know, yeah, welcome to the club called your human experience. Sometimes things get shitty. Here we are. It would be the same. And it won't. And it won't. It would be different. But it won't. Things will never be the same. And it heals. And a blessed, perfect day. This isn't, like, the best place to sit. People come by and shake hands. Anyway, so anybody have a question about their work, their creative process? Anybody work on anything? Stacey? Yeah. I don't know about out of a busy period of not creating, but kind of just working. I'm finding it hard to mentally settle that pain to write. And I'm trying to steal that time. Like, I'm trying to take that little bit of time of gay. And sometimes I don't get to get that little bit of time. Right. When I get it, like, I had a homemaker ran around like, okay, when I finally get it at home and I'm going to write and all I can do is just a basic plan. So it's just like, I, but I want to, like, I need to create. But I just don't, my head is up here. Well, yeah, so, everybody here, so Stacey said, so after coming out of a very, very, very busy time, we weren't creating, you said? Yeah. And she wasn't getting work done. Now she really thinks, wow, wow, wow. Now I really need to get some work done now. And it's really hard because every time I sit down, I have a little bit of time. I don't get the work that I'm having trouble getting the focus back, you know. Or just maybe just exhausted and need a little bit of work. Yeah. I mean, you might just need a little bit of work. Yeah, so take the time. And again, do it in small increments. So sometimes we think, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. I've been doing this really intense job. And now I have a week or a whole day. I'm going to spend the whole day writing. You know, we know what that's like. Oh, yeah, people like that. They're like, oh, yeah, I've been there. You know, it's great, I'm going to spend a whole day and then do anything you need for my shit. Instead, why don't you spend, you say, I'm going to spend five minutes of my day writing. You can do five minutes, all right? You can do five minutes. Right. And so we set ourselves a task that's manageable instead of, you know, set yourself a little task. Yeah. And say, great, so for the next seven, what? A week. Why don't you just do five minutes a day? You know? Yeah, I'm trying to repeat. Yeah, yeah. Right. So aim for five. And five doesn't work when we said it. We go to the bar. That's how we get all our work done. We go to the bar. We go to the bar. Oh, this one. Oh, look how low it is. And so it's 45 of the work, right? We do 20. If 20 is too much, we do 10, or five, or three, or one minute. You know, guys, no. So you don't have to take my line, right? So part of this lesson is to stand still. He's five. So we stand still while we play Twinkle, Twinkle, Star. And he stands there. And I play Twinkle, Twinkle, Star. And he stands still for like two minutes. But that's his violin practice for the day. Two minutes. That's all we do. Good job. All right. Next thing we want to do, you know? So give yourself two minutes. And think of Durham. I'll bring in a video taken from Stanley. Well, I play Twinkle, Twinkle, Star. Really aggressively on the violin. And he's like, okay. So lower the bar. Lower, lower, lower. If you find that you're unable to do something, lower it to a place that is manageable. Anybody else? I used the word focus before. Would you talk about this? Like what is it? Focus. Focus. I know I say that a lot. Durham says that. What do you mean focus? What do I mean? What do I mean when I say focus? Yes. And how to get to that, you know? Focus? Yeah. Focus. Yeah. Let's see. Maybe, okay. So when I say focus, does that make any sense to anybody? Focus, you know? So, okay. So for example, there are a couple of things we can do. If you're having difficulty focusing, you have a lot of chatter in your mind. This is great to work here. There's usually always noise down here. And I always have two minds. One mind says, I'm going to get up and I'm going to leave my head open. Fuck off. And then the other part of my mind goes, hi, what a learning opportunity. I can practice being attentive to my work while there are distractions and while there are other people in the world. Hello. Right? Okay? So this is what we do. But there's certain things that we can do. One, again, the timer is a really good focusing tool. This is why we use it. It's not just to mark off the time because looking at a clock on the wall could do that for you. This is a focusing tool. Actually, and I like these because it's digital, it's visible, and it's only a timer. This does not check me in with what's going on on Slate. You know what I'm saying? I can't read up on who you're doing, you know what? It's not going to give you the answers to those questions. It's only going to tell me how many minutes and seconds I have to go in my writing process, which is great. So this thing is focused. It's only doing one thing. That's it. Yay. So you surround yourself with a few focused things, right? You maybe sit in front of your computer. You might turn off the thing that gets you to the news feed or whatever. Right? So you're focusing. So you're shutting down some of the distractions. You might wear, I have these I didn't put them on today, earplugs. The blue ones are the heavy-duty ones. So I have two kinds of them. So you do things that are going to help you. And then you just say, I'm going to write for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 5 minutes. That's basically it's used as a verb. It's a thing you do. You know, write for 20 or 30 minutes, but then focusing on what you want to write. I mean the babble. You can write babble for 25, 30 minutes. You can write the what? Babble. The babble? The babble. The babble. Yes. But to focus on the task of him, the play that you're writing, the story you want to tell. Yeah. I think what you do is you sit down and it's like this. You're going to write your job, talk to Carol. See, focused on me, right? Go talk to Carol again. Lynn! Lynn! Look at me. That's amazing. I can amplify whatever you say. You see what I mean? You're staying focused. That's what it is. You have the sting over here. Trying to get your attention. You're not paying your much mind. You can hear that voice, right? You're not like, focus on the conversation that you wanted to have. Listen to the conversation that you didn't want to have. So you're making choices, right? And that's a strength. That's a muscle that you're working on. Right? I'm looking at you, right? I am looking at you. Because I know you. You seem more ground up. Are you wearing heavier shoes? Yes. You're wearing heavier shoes than the longer hair. I think it's kind of like... Right? It's good. Stay down here with us. It's fun. Does that make sense? Yes. See, that's basically what it is. You have voices in your head that are trying to distract you constantly. Right? And sometimes they're important voices. Like your kid might be calling you. Mommy, mommy, mommy, my kid doesn't. Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy! And I say to Mommy, he's writing. And he knows what that means. You know? He knows, okay, cool. I'm putting my leg up. So that's because we have a long room apartment. When I write at home, my son is running around in circles in the living room. So I have to sort of help him to help me focus by asking him to help me with my space. Right? And it's okay if you veer off the path a little bit. If you turn to that voice and listen. Okay, it's okay. It's alright. Be gentle with yourself. Come back to the task of him. Talk loud, sister. Loud! I was like, a writer, I feel like everything you do ends up being a metaphor. A black woman, my whole life is being a metaphor. And then as an artist, I feel like my job is to be both timely and timeless. But considering right now, I feel like even though the work I'm working on feels like timeless in itself, it doesn't feel very timely considering. And then something I was writing to just get my juices flowing right now, it was like, oh, this feels timely and timeless, but it's not what I want to do right now. So what do you think my responsibility is to now as an artist? What do I think your responsibility is now to... What do you think your responsibility is now? What do I think your responsibility is now? I already feel inspired to do that. So do I have a responsibility, like what we were just talking about with millennials, as much as in my actions and my art to do that, even if that's not the project? I think now more than ever we have a responsibility to be true to ourselves. This is in my experience, this is how it works. This is just me talking. In my experience, when I am very true to myself and tell the story, write the play of the novel, the movie, whatever, that I want to write that I think is important, then for some weird kind of crazy reason, it ends up being important to a lot of people. Like Last Black Man. And I never tell people to go see my show. We opened up the last part of the whole time. Well, I gave the people who were dead last night up at Signature. People came out of the theater overjoyed, not because it's a happy play, but because they felt, wow, okay, I wrote the play 26 years ago. I wrote it because it was important to me. And 26 years later, it's important to a lot of people who weren't even born when I wrote the play. So I say, now more than ever, you need to take care of yourself. Now more than ever. And if you take care of yourself thoroughly, and if you know inside that yourself is just another way of saying everybody, right? Yourself, you are the gateway to everybody. You experience the world through yourself, right? So if you take care of Alexis and you finish one of those projects, and you just told me, oh, I'm writing something, and then I joke about something else, that's your in-law's sister, you write something, get it done, take care of yourself, make it as good as you possibly can, and in that way, you will best serve the world. In my experience, that's how it works, right? Okay? So do your thing. Emerson said, do your thing so that I may know you. Do your thing, everybody. Do your thing. Now more than ever. Don't be trying to do somebody else's thing. Okay? Don't be doing your mom's thing, or your dad's thing, your auntie's thing, or something else. Do your thing. It's important that you do your thing, right? And somehow, the way that works is you will then be serving humanity in a huge way, in a way that you cannot imagine. In my experience, that's how it works. So, okay? Good question. Yes, who's Brett? Yes. This is my mission. I have a modest mission, so just memorize everybody's mission. I set a low bar. Well, who's Brett? I mean, no, that's very hard. No, but I mean, like, I'm honest with you. Never mind. Anyway, based on, obviously, in light of recent events, do you have recommendations on how, whether it's things that you do in your daily practice, or how to maintain the feelings that things like that give these... Like, what's give? Your work, or the politics of the game? The politics of the game, or whatever might be sort of an inspiring or galvanizing thing, in terms of maintaining, because it feels like too often, there are a million sort of big things that happen, and everybody in their sort of grounds, well, of art or creativity, or sort of a lack of inhibition, and then, inevitably, that goes away, and then we're right back where we started from, and then things repeat themselves. So, if there are any sort of words you can offer, or things that you do in your daily practice... I had to keep it going, yeah. I had to keep the feeling of, like, well, how would you talk about the feeling that you're feeling? I think it's something that I personally struggle with, that everyone would know about anybody else, but I censor myself a lot. I have to censor myself a lot when I make things. Brett says, I censor myself a lot when I make things. And recently, I've been feeling a lot more freedom and a lot less necessity in censoring things. And I feel like part of it is because I'm like, well, you know what's going to happen. There's only a certain amount of time left. So, in that sense, it's all gone. So the election, it was good for you, man. I guess. Isn't that interesting? No, but you really, yeah, this is what you have to do. You have to say, okay, you can either, you know, say only horrible things about it, or you can say, what am I grateful for? I'm grateful for the feeling of maybe I won't censor myself so much because, you know, it's like, the time is now. So that's good. So you have to remind yourself of what you're grateful for. I think that's a good thing to do. I think you have to allow yourself some slippage. You know, you might have a whole day to write and you might not. It's okay. I think we should endeavor to be kind and considerate to every single person we meet. I keep saying this over and over every week. Every single person, not just your writing teacher, not just your bank clerk, you know, who's in charge of your money or whatever. Every single person can do it. I don't know. Every single, like, you know, the clerk in the grocery store, the every single person you meet. Do it. I know. Interesting. Those kinds of things. Set yourself some challenges like that. Eat better. I know how you eat, but you know what I'm saying? Eat better. You know what I mean? If you go home and you have, like, 10 beers, maybe you only have five, you know what I'm saying? I mean, cut back a little bit and do some self nurturing. I'm starting to take care of yourself. You know? So you'll be of better service to the world. Volunteer for something. Do something for freedom, for somebody. The angles of your head is constant. Anybody else? Yeah, man. What's your name? Jared. Jared? Hey, Jared. You actually use a typewriter in your process? Or is that a prop? Yeah, this is my process, and this is a typewriter. You know that it's a, it's a, hey, good question. It's a prop, but also it's the real thing. Because, you know, as a man I said, all the world is the same, you know? I think you shouldn't really know after that. All the world is the same, you know? I don't think that's a good thing. Thank you. And that's what I'm talking about? No. I'm actually writing on that. All right, so I have a two part question. Yes. All right. First, have you ever written anything that has scared the life out of you to write? Yeah. Yeah? No. Have I ever written anything that scares the life out of you? I'm in the process of writing something right now that's really, really scary. It's a one man show, and it's taking me, it's taking me a very long time to write because I'm usually, I can usually write pretty quickly. Right. But this one has been for like six or seven years. It's about my life growing up with my mother who abused me. Oh. And it's like, it's extremely scary to write. But I know like right now I have to, I have to do it. Right. So I was going to ask if you have ever written anything and how long did it take you? It was like really, really, because it's, I'm so scared but I know I have to do it. Right. I have to get this out of me. Right. And that's, I mean, yeah. Some things are quick to write. They come quickly and some things come more slowly. For me it's just because I just think like, well, it's like not there yet, really. And I think the spirit is gentle. You're showing up every day. You're writing every day. And the spirit is giving you just enough, you know, you can, oh, Paris can bear this a little bit today. So we'll just do that. You know what I mean? Because it's sort of a gentle, gentle, plodding forward kind of thing. And you know you have to keep going. So it's not a question of whether you're going to turn back or not. It's just a question of like what? Like when am I going to be done? Writing this? Well, yeah, sort of. I mean, it's taken me so long. And it's, when I first started, it scared me so much. I was like, oh, I can't, I can't do this right now. Right, right, right. This was years ago. But now I'm at a place where I'm like, okay, I have to get this out. Right. Because if I don't do it now, I wouldn't ever do it. Right. So do you have any other projects that you're working on simultaneously? I am, I am, yes. Okay, so that's sometimes helpful. But one project is like really, really hard, you know, for whatever reasons. It's a personal story that's hard. It's technically or whatever. You have to do a lot of research to figure it out. Sometimes it's good to have a different project. Maybe even in other media. Maybe if you play music, you can write some song, or do something that's just way different. And do that and sort of take joy. So it's like, you can have a little holiday time. Okay. You know, and then you go into the deep, you know, and then have a little something, and then back and forth as you move forward. It might make it just a little easier, you know. But congratulations for being so great. Yeah, I know, right? I don't know. Everybody else? Yes. I'm Christine. Christine. Hey, Christine. You mentioned research. I'm wondering how research fits into your writing process, whether it's anything to any research, so then you do the research. Right. Christine's asking about research and how we should do research. It's about you. So how does research work for you? Do you have a project that you're working on and you wonder, should I do all the research up front? Should I do a piecemeal? I work in documentaries, so my experience is doing a lot of research up front. Right. But I'm wondering if that's the right approach to take for writing, because I'm finding myself just doing endless research. Right. So if you find yourself doing endless research and you're asking this question and you probably have a feeling like you'd rather be writing, I know everybody's laughing. Ah! Better write. You can always double back and do a little research. You can always put a post in your play or your novel or whatever you're writing to go look up the so-and-so with this and that later. You know what I mean? You can always go back and rewrite and organize it. So if you're feeling like you ought to be writing now, go ahead and start. You know, go ahead and start and see how you feel. Yes, you're right. We're rewriting music index cards. Right. And but you forgot what I said. I wish not. No, no, no. Okay. So does anybody, did any of you remember? Yes. Stay still. Reminders, could you remind her? Because I'm in court. But what it is is that you tell the story on an index card. Tell the story on index cards. Each beat of the story is its own individual index card. Each beat of the story is its own individual index card. And so... Yeah. So this is now a remember. So Siobhan, if you have a whole draft of your play and you're looking to do a rewrite, okay? Instead of combing through word by word of your script, for example, which are a screenplay or whatever, right? You can just do little snapshots of the scenes on index cards and get a snapshot of your screenplay, for example, that way. Okay? And then you can sort of say, okay, scene one, this happens. Scene two, this happens. Scene three, what's the main event? I don't know, but they're talking a lot. Scene four, this and this happen. Oh, but that's a lot. Scene five, okay? And then you sort of can organize them and do a rewrite that way and then go back and do a rewrite with the actual dialogue and all the specifics and trimmings and all that. Does that make sense? Welcome back into the game. That was a great question. Anybody else? We have five. We have five. Yes, yeah, man. What's your name? Marcus. Marcus. Hey, Marcus. Hey. Okay, so my question is what is a tip or two about creating a synopsis for the work? So you have a work that you're interested in and you want to and now you need to create a synopsis. Yes. Okay, well, so imagine, I mean, this is the stuff you've heard this one before, right? So imagine that you were in an elevator. You know, you've heard the elevator pitch, right? Imagine that you were in an elevator with someone and you really wanted to tell us like who's your, are you a director, a writer? A writer. Okay, so who would be your ideal director? My ideal director? Quentin Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino, fantastic. So you're just, you just happen to be minding all business, you know, right? You've got an elevator being like a freedom tower. And so most of the elevators, right? And for some reason, for some kids that pushed all the buttons, there's no one in the elevator you would quit anymore. And you're like, wow, this is my moment. I have like a minute to tell Quentin Tarantino about my fabulous project. Imagine what it would be like in what you would say. You see what I'm saying? You don't tell us now, but as you imagine it, and write that down. This is the story that you want. Man, I got this script. You'd be a great director for it. Oh, what's the story? Boom. One minute. Well, it's about this, huh, and more than anything, they're going to try and be doing, huh, except that, huh, huh. And then, you know, then that happens. And then, what? It's amazing. Like that. And you just fill in the blanks like that. But just imagine you're in the presence of someone you deeply admire that you really want to work with. Mostly. Okay. So it's like, I don't want to tell why I'm writing the poem. I don't want to talk about it. I want you to get there. Right. But I just want to pack it. Right, right, right. You don't have to go into the Y. Okay. You don't have to go into the Y. Quentin, man. I mean, can I call you Quentin? Yeah, cool. Well, you know, I started writing this story because, you know, I grew up on a farm in Virginia, and there were a lot of sheep, you know. I mean, right, and then you're already, it's over. He doesn't care why you started writing it. Save that for your interview on entertainment tonight or whatever. You know, talk about pitch the story. You know what I mean? You wanted him to tell him the story. Or imagine you have like a five-year-old. Do you have a five-year-old? Okay, well, so you know. So once upon a time, right? And then, and you have to be excited. And yeah, no, full body listening. Are you with me? Are you with me? Yeah, and then, like that. And then they're like, yeah, they're like, yeah, okay, okay, okay, like that. You've taught five-year-olds so you know how to pitch to a Hollywood director. Anybody else? How you doing, C.A.? Yeah. How you doing? I was just, all right. It's good to see you. How are you? Fine. You good? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're together. We're making up. We're laughing. We're still smiling. Right? Because you're our people who we do. We do her. You know, we keep on keeping on. That's, you know, you hear these, you see these back in my movies about like the civil rights movement and shit. Yeah, look at them. Oh, shit. What were they talking about? Ain't nobody going to turn this around. What were they talking about? Yeah, they were talking about stuff like this. You know, and you think, no, we're not alone. If it was like, if Hillary wanted to popular vote, no one would. Okay. And number two, if you were the only one who voted for her, right, then it would kind of be a bummer. But if you voted for her, you weren't the only one. And that's all, you know. There you go. I haven't been in the majority of the world. So I haven't been in the majority. You know what I mean? You know, but, you know, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of work to be done. We find this wealth. You know, so take care of yourself. Eat your vitamins. You know. Dear, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you guys are pointing, you're pointing something. It's six o'clock. It's six o'clock, and I have to go to school. Yes. So, we love you. We'll see you next week when we be back. Thanks, please. Bye. Please. So don't care. That's not supposed to work. That's how we needed it. That's the only thing. At the top of the show, it's not working. You know. But I have to do all that talking? Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. You guys are great. Come on. You guys are great. This is like great. Can we really do it next?