 She has been the president of the literary men's research institution in the U.S. And as an agent at the agency in North New York, she's a great friend of mine going back many, many years. She served on collection committees for multiple programs here and has visited the best reviews here. And we're so grateful and glad to be here tonight. It was a super quick introduction to me. It was a remarkable journey to be such a great text writer, which although written over the course of many years in some cases, has an immediate reach to the world around us that is simultaneously heart-wrenching and heartening, especially if you believe, as I do, that it's nothing so much as an audience member, to either feel, or challenge, or turn in. I want to feel, from Alcambra, the Bolivian essay about Sarah C. 2015, called The Illumination of Dreams. She explained that it is the underlying need for connection, a complex relationship with guilt, and the reaming question of the business. They're about to say, in some cases, there is fear, desire, meaning, and life. It is chance, and in other, dreams, is being able to earn an offer. And so, it's instructions by way. And then, as well, also, you have some insight and questions to others who are alive in the room, or to hashtag these writers. So, we're going to start with Sarah Celdwitz. They don't know what we're going to do. Sarah, can you tell us a little bit about this play, Europa? Um, yes. Now, Europa, sorry, has two women who live in the same neighborhood as your mother met, you know, in Texas. So, their kids are playing on the playground. One, by the family of two female owners, they really put it off. Then they discover, previous knowledge of those two kids. This is a kiddie program. And so, it becomes, is this new friendship going to survive? The second act, like 14 years later, the kids who have been on the playground are now teenagers, and they have returned to sort of hash out how they would be friends or not friends. And particularly, how this has been a different path. Great. And you're clearly trying to avoid doing plot reveals. So, I'm going to now try to avoid doing plot reveals. But you have one of maybe my favorite stage directions of all of the plays that I read, which is at the end of Act 1, there's a stage direction that says, Alma breathes deeply. She is so many people right now. And then at the end of the play, her now college age daughter says in a speech, I'm going to swing on swing until I feel like just one person. So, I'm really intrigued by this idea of fractured identity in the play, how it can gap you through hard times in life. Happily, you're nodding, so I'm guessing this is something you're exploring. And I'm wondering, do you feel like this is true to the world in general, to women, or to simply these characters? I think it's very true to the world in general. I think one of the scariest things about this play is it's just, it's two people being alone together. And it's the kind of conversation no one was expecting to have, that you just sort of find yourself in. And it becomes a conversation that's going to change your life, and change things you believed in. And my hope with the play is both of these moments of connection and challenge are cracking these people open, and that they are made different. And I think this fracturedness is there, it would be nice to escape into this sort of like politeness. Or to say like, oh, so good to meet you. I'll see you around, which Alma tries to do many times. She's like, I have to go right now. But that there's something that's pulling them back. So, there's these questions too of fault and blame and moments where it's like, oh, now these two people hate each other. And that could be the end. But what if it's not? What if there's another push? And we hold that moment a little bit more, and they keep working on each other. And my hope is that it feels scary to sort of have another person get into those personal parts of yourself, or maybe you're not the proudest of some of your ideas or some of the connections, or you have to give up something that you've been holding on to. Yeah, beautiful. Will you share a little bit of the play with us? I will. So this is from the first act. Leslie, who is new in town, is telling Alma about her last Halloween costume. The first act takes place just after Halloween. Bruce is Leslie's son. It is also the name of her husband. Leslie. Me and Bruce like to read the story of Ferdinand. I like to read him stories about peaceful animals, and Ferdinand is such a sweetheart. I'd like Bruce to grow up to be something like that, like a dancer or something. Plus, I like cows. I wanted to be a cow for Halloween, a nice family-appropriate cow, but Bruce vetoed it. He said I was too old, and he hates cows. Alma, what a jerk. Leslie, well, I don't know. He might be right. Last year was a disaster. I had a whole vision, but Alma, what were you, Leslie? A zombie pirate queen? Not family-appropriate. I invested in my arms back then. Lives were pretty good, too. We had a babysitter and a party. A dream come true. I was just going to be a pirate queen, but then the whole party was zombie themed, so I had to adapt. The themes are important, especially with movie people. But apparently, I was over-enthusiastic and inappropriate. Alma, what did you do? Leslie, what do you think of when you think pirate? Alma, an eye patch? Leslie, what animal? Alma, a parrot on your shoulder. Leslie, exactly. Bruce said the parrot pushed it over the edge from fun to fucked up. Do you want to see a picture? Alma, okay. Leslie gets her phone. Leslie, you aren't going to be offended or think less of me. I mean, in some ways, in many ways, it's the best costume. Leslie hands Alma her phone. Alma looks. It's pretty crazy. Alma, is that bird? Leslie, from natural causes. Alma, where did you even find a dead parrot? Leslie, the internet? Alma, that is commitment. Leslie, right? The people said it was offensive. I didn't know the owners had birds. Who has birds? Swipe, there's more. Alma Swipes looks at more pictures. Bruce didn't even dress up, loser. Alma, is that him? Leslie, no, that's his friend, Jim. He was a lawyer for the undead, specializing in living wills. Oh, here's Bruce, big Bruce, in his regular, boring clothes, not even an eye patch. Alma looks. Her temperature drops. Hard. Leslie looks at her. You okay? Alma, yeah. Alma hands Leslie the phone back. That was a crazy costume. Leslie, next year I'm gonna make something fantastic and family friendly. You'll see. Alma, right, next year. You think he'll stay? Leslie, Bruce wants to be here. Alma, right, tax incentives. Leslie, yeah, Bruce has this idea. It's a good place for families. The quality of life was really good. And it was safe. So here we are. We'll settle in soon. It's kind of bad here. It's really nice. Do you like it? You must. Alma. I do. You know, I actually, we have to go. We've been talking about Claire's plot for the last couple hours. So this is Claire Feichel. She's gonna tell us a little bit about Pocros. Oh my God, you're making me sound so self-centered. No, it's because it's so fun. Pilgrims takes place on a spaceship and it's about a soldier. They're going to this other planet that the soldier has already been to. There's already been a war over there. And the soldier and this young adolescent girl are stuck together in this cabin on the spaceship or quarantined together with only themselves for company. They both sort of have experienced trauma and processed trauma in different ways. And so it becomes sort of a play about how do two people who are essentially strangers connect on a spaceship. And then there's a robot too, for fun. Yeah, and... That's great. Good. So I was reading your Playwrights Corner interview, which you can read their interviews on the LARC website. And you talk about people performing roles the program to play or the roles they aspire to play or the roles they get stuck in and the role that society has in all of that. And I found it particularly interesting because I was listening to the NPR Politics podcast this morning which was talking about the roles that we are tend to be in in terms of our political opinions and that we get so trapped in them that we otherize the other side and cease to sort of see them as human or cease to feel any empathy for them or to understand why they deserve empathy. So I'm wondering is there a role you see for your play, for art in general, that helps people understand the nature of those roles the personal agency can take to break out of them and to understand the people that we do tend to otherize? Yeah, I mean I think that's a great question. I mean I think empathy is the role of art. I see myself like as an artist, one thing that I can do is sort of illuminate other people's inner worlds. And sometimes when we are, we have stereotypes and cliches and archetypes that are all available to us at all times and that sometimes we meet someone or we see a story and we think of those archetypes instead of thinking about maybe the specific nature of that person. And it's like sort of an extraordinary thing just to realize that everyone is just as complex as you are like your complexities and your inner life. I mean I know that sounds silly, but that your inner life and the things that you are fucked up about or the things that you hide are probably similar to other people's inner lives. In terms of like the political nature, definitely I mean I think I've been thinking a lot about the people who support Donald Trump and the sort of lack of empathy that sometimes the media portrays when there's been a lot of amazing segments of like why these people have clung on to the idea of Donald Trump and it's you know like there was an amazing figure where it was, but it was about the co-workers who are basically like, Donald Trump gives us hope and they have their living in these cultures and situations that have no hope and maybe it's easy for certainly me sometimes to dismiss their inner worlds I think if I think of them in terms of like large voting bases instead of made up of individuals. For this play I think, yeah I was thinking a lot about the soldier the role of veteran in our society and how often what we ask of veterans and we often, when you talk to veterans we say thank you for your service and there's a sense of like we don't actually want to know what they've experienced we don't actually want to know the way of saying thank you for your service is actually also a way of silencing them and there's not really the we don't have the space in our culture to sometimes talk about what actual experiences these soldiers have gone through which is I think why there's such large percentage of suicide and PTSD also is just because we don't actually know how to talk about that kind of trauma in the same way that I think the role, I was thinking a lot about the how the role of a girl like a woman and what it is to like that kind of role and what we ascribe to saying like you're a 14 year old girl you're a 16 year old girl I'm ascribing these kind of things that you should be thinking about and I'm gonna like assume that you think of without necessarily knowing or wanting to know more Great, good I'm not gonna do any better than that so let's do something Okay, this is a little section so the girl, the adolescent girl has sort of finally got the soldier to do what she wants and so one of the things that she has made a deal with him that he's gonna put on his uniform that he's kept and this is the first time he's he has his uniform in the closet but he hasn't worn it until this moment so he's in the bathroom getting changed Come on, I'm waiting Hurry up Hang on Oh my God, you were such a girl How is it taking so long coming the soldier exits the bathroom He's dressed in his uniform and he looks 100 times more comfortable than before A whole new person Well, wow Don't make fun of me No, you look good Real good Like movie star good Shut up No, I'm serious This is totally who I pictured Like exactly like this Before I came on this ship I pictured you It's not quite ironed No, I mean really It fits you really well Thanks Does it feel different having it on like that? No Looks different Yeah, I mean it's a little It feels comfortable, you know Like the old days Yeah, cool, really cool I'm glad you like it Yeah I wish I had something to put on like that Like armor? It's not armor Yeah, but it's like Somehow you look safer I feel safe looking at you Good Okay, whiskey first or game first? Whiskey He pours them both a shot, they drink Okay Now we are ready for the big shebang Shebang Don't make fun of me Are you ready? I don't know what it is we're doing We're playing a game It's not hard This is my specialty Are you ready? Yeah Okay Cowboy or Indian? I don't get it You just choose one Don't think cowboy or Indian Indian Interesting Indian or soap opera star Indian, Indian or astronaut Astronaut or spy Spy? Can I change? Wait No, spy or husband Spy Spy or president Spy, really? Spy or Jesus Come on You come on Spy, spy Spy or detective Detective Detective or soldier Detective Okay Okay, that's the whole game No, that's how we decide what we want to play That's the first stage You're a detective You're like that old fashioned kind You know from the old movies Like Humphrey Bogar Or be like him Are you a detective too? Obviously not That'd be no fun I'll be the bombshell The pretty one You can't help liking She's swell But you can't tell If she may also be the culprit Are you the culprit? That's the wrong question Also you're not doing it right The question is What is the crime? What is the... No, no, do it in the voice Come on Lady I heard there was a crime Around these cars And I'm aiming to get my hands on the criminals No, not that But wait, I need a... I'm going to head... Are you talking to me? Early am I'm going up so bad No, no, it's good Keep going Why don't you tell me what you witnessed Last night Why don't you tell me how this... Oh, of course Ended up on this hear floor Of course Well, I don't know Detective You see, I was asleep last night Fast asleep and I Never woke up Once I closed my eyes I'm one of those Hellish dreamers Oh, there You're a smart-looking dame Don't try that again You mean your gunshot last night Not right outside your door In your own living room? I live in a dangerous neighborhood Detective I'm afraid I've fallen on hard times I hear gunshots all the time And say, you see I've tuned my ear not to hear them Why once there was a shootout Not two doors down And you know, I didn't know Something was amiss until the morning I had to step over three bodies To get to my car Amit Eh? Yes, I've never been married I know the man who could Handle me Because most men aren't like you, I'm afraid I've been looking for a man like yourself A war veteran Someone who has seen hand-to-hand combat Someone who knows how to practice Mouse to mouse Huh? That's a good question I wish we could build you a quarry Can you tell us a little bit about What is against the first time? That's right, against the first time Kind of about what does this kind of work Or is he the first guy to be pleasing And then, ultimately, he can have Honor to the people There are so many connections And most all of these lives Are used to come here All of them, right? And really get it to yourself But you'll play All of them play physical You talk about living How do you feel Consciousness in a way That our lives And their experiences Affect your life And your lives with other people Just really get in the future And maybe you can stay To play in the subway Because I don't really know What I want a person to be I think if I was going to say Something It would just be to think about All of those people Back to people I think if we see the music It's really easy to feel a difference Like it's extremely easy Because there's thought in a certain way And there's sometimes dramatic music playing But I think at the end of the day What I'm trying to do with this play Is show that we're actually all the same In really fundamental ways And so something I try to do is The first two scenes of the play Both start with a seduction And it's to show that Whether it's in Pakistan Or in Las Vegas The same things are happening We have the same patterns We're the same And I think that's something that I feel like theater is the perfect instrument To deliver Is it like you're seeing people in front of you And you're like, oh, they're just like me And that's a big thing that I'm trying to do with this play Great And yet simultaneously I would say These characters are leading Very different lives Just in terms of the simple risk That they face And getting through the day And one group of characters Kind of knows they're going to get At home at the end of the day And be fine But another set of characters really doesn't So at the end of the day Is it a fine line between saying We're all the same And then quite effective people Are having very different journeys of life No, I think that's great I think that that's ultimately Kind of where the guilt comes in, right It's like on one hand you want to equate You want to say, look Both sides of this conflict are equally affected But is that really true? It definitely skews in one direction Like I would say the biggest impact Is obviously on the people whose lives Are at risk But sometimes we forget And I think especially in New York We kind of have this attitude Like, oh, the military You know, we kind of like throw it away Like, oh, the military Like there are all this group of people That's all the same, right And I think that something I wanted to do In this play is really like Look at who are these people And what do they believe in And why are they going to work every day Because I think we oversimplify it all the time And just understanding the quiet suffering That can be happening behind the facade And one that's all business So I think, yeah It's not necessarily equal suffering But it's definitely both sides Are valid to be looking at, I think Yeah And that watching somebody just kind of Go through the daily steps of life Yeah It's hard not to then see them as human Right, exactly, anyone That can be true of anyone And this play happens to be People 2,000 miles away Yeah So is that the change Maybe walking down the street And seeing the person with the cardboard Signed begging All of a sudden you're thinking about What their daily life might be Sure As opposed to just seeing the image Right in front of you Yeah, I just think that consciousness Has the power to change things Versus us just being in our bubbles And going, oh, it's my own quiet life I have to do X, Y, and D today And that's it, and then I can go to bed No, like every action Like buying a coffee at Starbucks Has a ripple effect And it's exhausting to think like that Constantly But I think in the context of theater Especially like we have some luxury To take some time to think about things Great Will you share something with us? Sure So I'm going to share the very beginning Of the play So it's south Wazirstan And Pakistan, it's evening Reem and Syed's home Reem enters quietly nodding With a finger to her lips Syed pulls his wife over Kisses her humbly Puts his hands all over her Whispers in her ear We can't make any noise Syed, do you think you'll manage? Listen, you're not very good At keeping quiet She pulls away She asked me to kill the mosquitoes What? Well, Hida She asked me to kill the mosquitoes Said she didn't like the buzzing And what did you say? I said the mosquitoes were too high up For me to kill A beautiful answer from a beautiful head He makes another attempt Reem pulls away again She's never mentioned it before It's good that she did No, otherwise we'd have to check her ears What are we supposed to tell her? That the mosquitoes are singing her a lullaby I don't know I don't want to lie to her She's a child We lie to children No She's going to be fine She's strong like her father And very good looking He makes a third attempt She pulls away One day she's going to find out For God's sake Reem How many times can we have the same conversation? This isn't the same conversation She's never mentioned it before We need to discuss it Fine, yes Let's discuss it That's exactly what I wanted to do tonight Now I've made my peace with it Syed I really have But no child should have to grow up like this What? In a loving family With all the attention in the world The beautiful mother who tells her stories Always watching her steps Hesitating while putting one foot before another She doesn't She will She will learn to Just as I have Making sure not to wander anywhere The Americans might find suspicious Always washing clothes in the same place Taking walks the same way Keeping the same hours Just like you have I haven't You have I have seen you, my brave husband Listening to the sky Before stepping out to your uncle's house Listening to make sure your steps won't be misconstrued I do no such thing I don't want her living like this Abusing in the sky Always waiting for some kind of death You're being dramatic And you're being cavalier Maybe because we haven't done anything wrong We don't let foreigners stay We're careful who we talk to There's no reason to kill us I heard from Aisha That in her village The entire baker's family Was slaughtered at a wedding Dozens of innocent people Just like that We don't know if they were innocent What? The five-year-old shot down In her mother's arms Was guilty But their neighbors They may have been They may have been hiding Taliban And our neighbors Did you say you'd make your peace with it? She always knows When something is wrong Said Who? Waheeda Remember when my mother got sick She started crying in her arms So she didn't like your mother Not everyone liked your mother She knows something is wrong Maybe she sees us Always watching our step Listen to me Some children grow up With Taliban everywhere No singing No dancing No running free In the hills Don't lecture me But the Taliban are gone, Reem And growing up with a quiet buzzing A quiet buzzing that melts into the sounds Of cars and bells Of children running muddy in the yard It's not the worst thing in the world What if she can't get used to it? She will Now can we go to bed? Please? No What can I say so you'll rest? That we'll leave That we'll take Waheeda and our things And go to a city I can't go through this again We have to What if the buzzing What if it makes her crazy? Reem, our lives are here We could be next That's it This is a conversation Fine, I'm going to go sleep with Waheeda This way I won't have trouble keeping quiet Reem, what? I thought this wasn't a conversation The problem is you're not trying Oh, come on You haven't tried to ignore it Please, I'm tired Take your idiocy elsewhere Take a new wife Just let it blend into the world Let it be another layer Part of the day Part of the night Say it, I'm getting tired You haven't tried You don't want to try I don't want to try No, you don't You prefer to suffer Who prefers to suffer? You Your life is more interesting If someone was watching us Across the ocean If someone is just waiting To pull the trigger To blow us to bits More interesting Perhaps regretting that you The beauty of Peshawar Don't call me the beauty of Peshawar Settle down with a shopkeep Instead of a businessman The businessman she could have had You hear the noise And you label it fear But it's really unhappiness I knew you could be mean-sighted But I didn't think you could be so stupid Thank you The lecture here in the United States Of sort of knowing that we're going to get Through the door at the end of the day safely And then I realized Nick Gambiello's going next So Nick, go ahead Tell us about the blameless So the blameless is a play about The family of a victim of mass shooting Welcoming the father of the shooter Into their home to great breadth But it's funny It's inspired by It's inspired by a real event in which The father of the victim Met the father of the shooter And I saw a photo of these two men Hugging each other And I just thought to myself How did I get that moment on stage? And that's where the play came from I consider myself somewhat an expert In plays about grief They're weirdly Kind of one of my favorite topics To explore is grieving And so I feel fairly secure in saying I think this is a play That uniquely turns on its head Everything that we expect a play About grieving to be At the end of the day You actually say in talking about the play That it has more light and more hope Than your other work You say that you don't think the Garcia's Love for each other can erase their pain But the love may become stronger for it And I would maintain that it's a Complete subversion of the topic Not to be writing about the healing from trauma Which tends to be the impulse And something personally I'm not even sure I believe exists But about hanging on to what you have In the face of that loss To get through it So I'm wondering do you as person Do you as playwright Do you agree with that Or do you think it's the saying Those time heals all wounds Time certainly doesn't heal all wounds I mean you can't Like I don't believe that But you learn to live with the wounds But if the wound is on your life You learn how to walk with the wound I feel like we were actually Just talking about this In the room of the other writers One of our instructors in grad school Laura told us not to write The play where love saves the day At the end until you believe That love can save the day And I just feel that I've recently in my life Witnessed love being The way that you get through the day For each other So love can't Love can't make grief go away Love can't make the darkness That comes with that kind of trauma go away But it reminds you that there's something Here to keep pushing through for And in my personal experience Grief has It used to feel when I was younger It used to feel like a stalker Behind me It used to feel like this medicine presence And now grief feels like this old friend That I see every now and then In this long history together And I don't think the Garcia's Are the characters in the play I don't think that they're at the point Where the grief is an old friend But hopefully they're the family That will get each other there Yeah, great And do you feel like That love crosses To the father of the shooter And the family Or do you feel like everybody has to Have protection of the love In their own sphere? Is it possible for it to cross Through that membrane? We were talking about that a lot In rehearsal today and who gets to be a victim And who gets to own that story In this context Love is a really strong word To cross that membrane I do think that recognizing Recognizing another's pain When you had been trying not to Is something that's possible And I think Opening up to listen to someone That you had been blocking For valid reasons But I think what's possible Is to look across the table And see someone who needs to communicate something And to just listen for a moment Instead of putting forth Everything you need to say Great, will you share some pages with us? Sure, yeah So This is Teresa, who's a daughter In the family And she's 16 And right at the start of the play She has been Found out doing some Naughty business That gets her in trouble And this is on the day That they're to meet the father Of The shooter that took one of their loved ones And it's odd I picked a section where there's a lot of dialogue And I'm just going to read Teresa's section Of the dialogue, so we'll see how it goes So this is after There's been a big, big fight And they're kind of in the calm After that fight And this is how it goes Mom, I'm sorry I'm really sorry I said that before I get so exhausted Trying to figure out if What I'm feeling Is because I'm grieving Or if it's something I would have felt Anyway, if it's something I would have felt If Jesse hadn't died Like sometimes I get so angry at you I get so angry at you I felt that if Jesse was still here Like what I love Howard so much What I love him so much if Jesse had never died So sometimes when you impose on me When you impose on me that I have to be grieving That what I'm doing must be because I'm grieving It makes me feel Resultant I don't want my life to be a result Whenever I meet someone forever Or do something forever to be the girl whose brother died In a school shooting I did some stupid fucking shit today I did some stupid fucking shit today It wasn't like my smartest move And you know what Maybe I did pick this day Like subconsciously Like to sabotage myself and get in trouble So I don't have to be here while this guy is here Because honestly, what is this This guy is gonna Sit here and You know what, it wasn't subconscious I didn't have rehearsal today And Howard didn't have jazz band And sometimes I want to give my boyfriend a blow job And it's not because I'm a victim It's because I enjoy doing it I enjoy it It isn't because I feel neglected No one ever neglects me Everyone is staring at me waiting for me to have a breakdown Or say something meaningful I wish someone would neglect me For five minutes But I don't know Maybe I did Maybe I did because honestly Mom, no one asked me If I was cool with Jacob Davis' father Being in our house No one asked me if I was cool with that It was just all of a sudden happening And I don't think I am cool with it I think it's really important to you and dad To meet him And forgive him Or forgive his son through him I guess And I know it's important to you that I'm part of it And I want you and dad to have what you want Because with everything you've been through With everything you've been through You should get what you want sometimes But not gonna lie I'm gonna be pretty angry at this dinner Because I don't forgive him Or his son I don't forgive his son, I don't know how to do that So not gonna lie, yo This dinner is gonna be tense You know, he's not misleading you The play is also very funny So we're gonna stay on the topic Of grieving And reaching through the membrane Towards somebody And we're gonna turn to Benjamin Benet Who's gonna talk about it The very bottom of a body of water Yeah So this play was actually part of the trilogy And He's been replaced by a man named Taiishi Who she finds out is his son And she learns that Yoshi Has passed away And so what happens is that She invites Taiishi over To have some catfish soup As to offer her condolences And that triggers a whole spiral of events That causes her ritual to unravel And forces her to confront A ghost that is quite literally haunting her Great So I was particularly intrigued By something you said in your playwright's Corner interview Because we're obviously about to embark On a leak that is very text centric But you talk about yourself as a writer Interested in theatre's uniqueness As a space that puts, you say Living, breathing bodies in space Before an audience And that you like to think about how to push The limits of the human experience On physical and emotional levels And I can attest that the play Absolutely supports that mission The heart of these characters live on So many levels beyond just what they say So I'm curious Like when somebody's a songwriter And asks them like, which comes first? The music or the lyrics? And I'm wondering for you, is there a norm To whether you're a writer Who sometimes starts with an image? Does it start from text? Like what's that creation process for you? Yeah, it's absolutely an image for me Usually there's one Really prominent image That begins the play for me So for this particular one it was When I was growing up There was a fish store That I've written into the play And there were these massive tanks Of fish that were alive And it was catfish mouths You would just see them through the glass Just sort of like one on top of the other Just stacks and stacks of these fish in this tank So that was the first image That actually came when I was writing the piece And for me the process of writing a play Is usually a collection of images That I feel are somehow related But I'm not quite sure what the associations are And then words start to come Words start to associate with those images And then it becomes a whole collage And then the process becomes What's the pattern here? How do I turn these images And these words into something that Supports a central idea And do you physicalize those images? Like do you make big collages on your wall? Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah It's an ongoing process for me I collect all kinds of pictures That I literally will put on a board for me And then words will come I put the boards up there Lines will come and for example The title of the play suddenly one day I just went at the very bottom of the body of water Oh, let's put that at the top of the board That sounds like it's summing everything up So yeah, it's definitely a literal process Of putting the images in front of me Great, and to the degree That you're comfortable because I didn't know What the genesis of the play is So share whatever you feel okay sharing Was there a question you were looking to answer For yourself In the losing of your dad Or just a question around loss in general That you were looking to answer on the play? Well that's interesting For me each piece tackled The idea of mortality And relationship to ghost Slightly differently In this one it was The grieving of the child That really spoke loudly And It was Okay I am going to share something really personal Actually that I didn't realize until very recently So it was working on a very conscious level But in this play Marina has five children There are four older boys And then a younger daughter named Rosa Luz And I realized that I had inverted My mother's experience Where she was One of four younger daughters And an older son who had passed away And I totally didn't realize That I had done that until Very recently and then I was like Oh my god it's very personal I just found a different way To spin it so that I could Tell the story in a way that Felt approachable Absolutely and I think we'll be Resonant for a lot of people I have a mom who lost a sibling that she never knew Because she wasn't born yet So I think there's going to be a lot of people Who are going to show up and find their pathway Into this play in all kinds of ways Do you read us some? Oh yeah I love to So the scene that I'm going to read Is towards the beginning of the play This is when Marina has invited Taishi over for Kappa Super And it's right towards the end of that interaction Taishi and Marina dance As Marina dances she closes Her eyes and begins to depart from the room She is somewhere deep and dark Like the bottom of the ocean She moves progressively more And more violently to the music She washes her hair, her head, her curves Taishi stops and watches her rat He becomes aroused He sits to hide his boner Marina continues to dance alone savagely Panting, she hasn't danced like this in a while It's like an exorcism She opens her eyes Marina, why aren't you dancing? Come on, Taishi, no thank you Marina, please I'm always alone Don't make me dance alone, come here Taishi, no Marina, demanding get over here now She shakes his head Marina suddenly shuts off the music Rips the cover off the crucifix That is on the wall Why? Why my girl, my pink, my light Of all my girls Why don't you answer me? Why? She howls, she composes She pours a shot She offers one to Taishi He accepts, they take a shot in silence Marina, you know What would you wish for? Marina, I wish to swim I wish I could have swimmed Taishi, oh Taishi, I'm sorry Marina, no, it's okay Taishi, I'm sorry, it's time for me to go Marina, no, no Stay just a little bit longer, please For one more dance, a slow one Taishi, okay Music? Marina, we don't need it now They slow dance the Perpetual drone at the city Marina presses her body into Taishi's Taishi slowly allows himself to melt And fill the peaks and valleys of Marina's body They dance for a while, they lock eyes Marina caresses Taishi's face Marina, your face is smooth and round Like a melon Taishi breaks away He goes to the sink, turns on the faucet And splashes water on his face He scoops handfuls of water And drinks them insatiably Marina composes, she puts up her hair Taishi, I have to go Please, stay Taishi, good night Marina, I'll walk with you Taishi, I'll see myself out Thank you for the soup He bows slightly and exits in a flurry Marina aims her fury at the pot of soup She hurls the lid off the pot And grabs onto the handles preparing to throw it The catfish head emerges from the pot It squirts soup broth into Marina's face Rosalus appears laughing hysterically Marina wipes her face with her arm and a roar Blackout Marina's home, tell us about the Found Dog Ribbon Dance Well, the Found Dog Ribbon Dance I kind of consider a love letter to the Pacific Northwest and it's a story about a professional cuddler named Norma who finds a lost dog in the park and takes it home with her and then begins searching for its rightful owner and along the way kind of comes across a number of strange characters and also kind of finds Mitsu, a person that kind of opens her eyes and her world a certain way and so it's about this journey with this dog I wanted to kind of save you for last because I suspect even without knowing the place in their entirety this will start to come clear to you This play essentially embodies everything that we have just talked about I mean it's kind of astonishing, it is about connection it's about grieving it's about self definitions, it's about the roles we play, it's about the impact of how those roles have on others So we were talking about kind of microcosms and macrocosms so I'm going to start with a microcosm at the moment. I'm curious about the impulse behind the play about a protagonist who's kind of trapped within herself who is a professional cuddler she like curls up non-sexual with people in bed and holds them who is inviting strangers into her home to try to identify the owner of this dog as opposed to like meeting them at the dog park and I think the push pull of all of those human impulses is so incredibly human so I'm just curious like what was the genesis of the play what was the birds image or moment or question for you I mean I think in all of my work I'm really fascinated by the kind of anatomy of loneliness and kind of the different ways in which people are kind of all uniquely alone and kind of the ways in which we demand and strive for connection and kind of succeed and fail and kind of how we manifest this striving and so I think to me when I found out about professional cuddling as a practice it spoke to me so immediately first because it was a profession that really began in Portland where I went to school and where I have a lot of family and so it felt very personal to me because of that but also it just felt like such a kind of personification in a certain way of what fascinates me in art which is this need that we all have that we all activate so much to connect with another human being to touch literally or metaphorically another person to see another person and kind of the ways in which that can be stony or that can be successful and so I really wanted to examine someone that chose that as their life and I also think I was very interested in to me often I think people in my personal experience people who have chosen kind of caregiver type jobs whether it's therapists or even yoga teacher or anyone kind of the impulse to choose a profession that is so much about giving others kind of sucker or soothing and what actually the wounds that can itself be kind of hiding or keeping at bay so that was kind of a lot of the things I was kind of dancing around and it's interesting to me like the idea of writing about loneliness or characters who are grieving or all the things we've talked about tonight is there an inherent challenge in theatricalizing something that can feel so interior I mean I think that's there definitely are challenges of course but I think for me it's always been something that I've been really fascinated with and a type of character that I'm really drawn to I kind of came up with this term I'm really interested in writing I call them Rigby's I think of like that Elmer Rigby I think of like I'm very interested in characters that in one way or another have a space between themselves and the world in a certain way or prove themselves to other people and so I think yes that is on some level hard to dramatize but I also think what you're dramatizing is not that space what you're dramatizing is the attempt of that space either by them or by people on the other side and I think that is if done right is highly theatrical and that's exciting to me can we give away that there's a character in the play who's a dog is that okay? is that a conscious choice for you as a writer to kind of give her that being with whom she can interact with in her kind of loneliest space? for me the dog besides being a deep dog lover that part of the story actually came from originally came from an anecdote of a presser of mine at Columbia who had found a cat and was kind of talking about this strange relationship of people attempting to retrieve this tad in the disappointment of of these people and kind of looking for this thing they've lost and being unable to find it and so that was kind of where that the official plot came from and then of course I changed it to a dog just because I'm more of a dog person but I think for me what I liked about playing with a dog and also making the dog character a human actor rather than an actual dog or just like an empty space that is theatricalized is for me I was interested in the idea of so much of the play for me is about people attempting to communicate and connect with other people and being unable to receive what they're looking for and I was really interested in the idea of a character on stage speaking to a dog that we see as a human being and what that feels like of this to see a character speak to and ask things of this person and so wanting and demanding a response and being unable to kind of receive that and what that feels like to watch and I think humanizing the dog in that way to me is interesting in that I think it problematizes and kind of clarifies that the need the inability to kind of on some level satisfy that need I want people to hear from the play so will you read something? Sure thing the character is named Norm and I think the rest you will kind of get as I go go out with me I know you probably think I'm a loser probably think I'm a loser to be working at a coffee shop at my age working at a coffee shop at 41, 42 you probably think I spend all my time on the couch being lazy, being a loser doing what a loser does and then I come here and make coffee and I hate myself and I hate my life but I don't hate my life I love my life I love making coffee and I love doing other things too I dance I'm a dancer not like a professional but I dance for myself with ribbons and a Mexican lucham mask the music of Whitney Houston I love Whitney Houston I believe in the power of the music of Whitney Houston I dance for myself with ribbons and a mask to the music of Whitney Houston and I make videos of my dancing and I put the videos online and I have fans I thousands hundreds and I love it, I love dancing and I love other things too I love making homemade bread I love the smell of homemade sourdough bread in my oven what else? Bar trivia I love bar trivia I am good at bar trivia but not in a weird too good way I am just good enough at bar trivia I have interests I have hobbies get to know me they're all with me great so if you're watching on Alram tweet us at hashtag we're going to take liberty of being MC to ask the first question because when I asked about dramatizing loneliness or depression I watched a ripple go down the line of body so I'm curious if anybody wants to talk about what does it take to dramatize something that is frequently interior Sylvia you have a character who's coming home and not telling his wife what he's feeling not telling his boss what he's feeling refusing to go to a string it's been hard that's a challenge it's hard because you run the risk of just having a really close off character that we can't relate to and I think a lot of the work I've been doing recently on the play is finding ways to actually use the formality of certain situations to get to deeper conversations but it is it's a challenge but it's kind of fun but it's like a weird challenge because you're like I want this character to be internal but I also want you to care about him there's something here and I can't put a dog in my place it might be a slightly odd merger Claire you were talking about subtext to dinner does that resonate with you in all those questions subtext yeah I think for me I think that you can do that in two different ways for me like other people probably have other ways but you could either use some sort of like metaphor so I think if the world itself can somehow reflect or like activate that passive character that sometimes is useful I had a play that was about a woman who was like incredibly depressed but she like thought she was obsessed with this whale in the Hudson River so like that became the locus of like all of her sort of like passive depression and then I think the other way I do it is that if you have other characters that are trying to break into them so in pilgrims I would say like it's definitely like you have an active character the girl is sort of like this one who wants to keep breaking into the soldier who is more passive or more like hold his trauma in his body so part of it is how you can crack that but subtext in terms of that is just hard because I think a lot of it is performance like I think you just have to also we're not writing literature I don't think I write literature I write blueprints for performance I think that there's something that you have to continue to to say like this is something that is not in the text and sometimes it's about like how do you make your reader understand what's actually going on that something very, very in performance there's actually no problem like we actually like to see people who are in like experiencing stuff on stage and I think that we often feel even interested in sort of people that are like totally expressive and can be very like a magnet on stage so I think it's also just a question of like how do you make that character read well on the page absolutely anybody else want to jump in on that one or that's okay we can come back to it let it go questions from the audience or responses or interesting things you drew lines of connection to or things you're going to walk away thinking about tomorrow morning when you walk down the street and you feel you are a changed person yes hi guys I'm Stephon I just want to say I loved each and every one of you guys and you guys all had something so profound with your pieces and that's giving someone else a voice whether that be culture whether that be you know an animal of some sort it's giving to me as a voice I was more curious you know just you touched on it where did everybody start in the process because I've always been told that the writer's process could be a grueling one but where did you guys all start do you start with a picture do you start with a word do you start with a conversation and how does it just go from there I'm going to quickly restate the question for the microphone for the camera because we don't have mics so there was compliments offered and then a question of what is that first impulse that lights the pilot light that starts a flight thank you Stephon who wants to jump in I can you know it's often not a spark for me it's often having swim around in something that really bothers me for a long time there's something going on in the world or going out on myself usually both that disturbs me or unsettles me and I'm just like stewing it for a long time and I usually wait for a story to present itself that addresses that that feeling and then from there it's really picking the situation that best best like reveals that experience so it's like it's swimming around in a thought and feeling for a long time and then finding the right situation and then expose that feeling so it's a lot of thinking then a shorter amount of time of writing for me for me I think it's really exciting because I think every play every playwright is different and every play that a playwright writes is so different that I think for me the process can be radically different each play, like I've had plays where I literally just hear a back and forth of dialogue and I don't have characters, I don't have a setting I just have to hear these kind of voices and create the scene and then from that scene creates a play and then other players definitely have a scenario or a newspaper article I've read or something very specific and I'm like oh I want to write a play about this and then I craft it so it really feels like every piece kind of germinates from a different part of the body or a different part of the mind in a fun way Sarah, your play feels so specific I have to believe there was something somewhere, was it fully out of your brain? It was one of the strangest plays to write I was reading the Empathy Exams the wonderful book by Leslie Jamison and it's a collection of essays that are all about empathy and really where it gets tough particularly she has one essay where she describes being hit in Nicaragua and having her person or camera stolen and sort of the different repercussions of that and her nose was broken and she came back and got a nose job to fix her nose but like so no one could tell but she still knew and she spent some time wondering about who this person was who attacked her but also how much worse it could have been very easily so that I was reading that and then I just sort of sat down and my my boyfriend was out of town so I had like all this time to myself in our house and I just sort of started writing these women talking and I didn't know what was going to happen and it was just this process of really like listening like with little very good ears and just watching them have this conversation and it was really surprising and then it's been a process of like refining, refining, refining and then when I look at the play and I'm like oh my god this is also one of my closest friends was totally this character this character is very similar to make it great but it didn't feel like that it felt like sort of eavesdropping and walking very quietly and just paying attention and it's been a process of hearing those voices but it was very I was like play, thank you for coming to my house at this time when I had like four days off I think I was like around like a Thanksgiving this is great, this is just cute writing I love those late reveals in Benjamin talked about kind of belatedly going like oh it's my mom's role in her family but in verse, are there moments sometimes late in the writing of a play where you go oh shoot I get now where this came from yeah for example they're willing to share they won't get you in trouble the next Thanksgiving there's a camera on us nobody's watching it's fine no I mean I think there's I mean coming to also mixing those questions a little bit but like sometimes it happens like that and it just feels like amazing and like outside of yourself and then sometimes you like have to write the wrong play to write the right play so like and I think and sometimes I think in terms of like pilgrims I wrote I tried to write a play about a cruise ship that was like a about like a girl detective that was a farce you know what I mean like that was the first play and the cruise ship had its own monologues and it's completely different than this play and yet I still now that I see pilgrims I'm like oh that's where that comes or like that I had to do the bad version of that to get that and I'm also just like sometimes I you know you hear something you're like oh that's me like I wish I it's very vulnerable I think sometimes when you're like oh I do that thing and I didn't realize while I was writing yeah do you ever have to become a different writer or a better writer or a better skilled writer to write the thing that you maybe wanted to write years earlier oh yeah and you always have to become a better writer but I mean with this play in particular I do this question resonates with me because I've been trying to write a version of this play for years and they were all really bad plays you know it was trying to confront the subject of violence and I feel like I still hadn't worked out my feelings on it I was still trying to convince myself it was something that I really didn't believe in these other drafts of this play they were all too dark they were all too modeling we couldn't watch it or they made violence seem sexy and cool which is a way of like resisting the pain of it and there's something about this play when it came I like was ready to deal with the vulnerability of it I was ready to deal with I was ready to put love back into it in a way that I hadn't been before so yeah I mean it's yeah your personal growth sort of has to meet your technical growth I think we have a question yeah yeah this is really not specific to anything that's about this particular play festival but you said something that stayed with me and became this question I'm basically a performer I react I interpret it involves music it involves all kinds of things but for a large part of my career it's one of the reasons I'm here is I put together film projects so I worked a lot with writers and for me when I write it's really painful so my question is because what you said was really interesting you said I don't write literature I write plays so having gone through the process in film company watching the blue pages and the pink pages and all the changes we actually has cream play by the end except for the title had nothing to do with what the poor writer sold us why did each one of you choose as writers or as people whatever you want to address to become playwrights knowing that it's a collaborative art ok so just very quickly the question is why write plays I might have spent on that my writing I mean for me I that's what you said about why write well choose to write it in such a collaborative medium that's the exact reason I mean as a teenager I only wrote prose and I thought I wanted to be a novelist or a story writer and I think I did theater I loved theater but I didn't write it and I think the transition for me was I liked the not the challenge but the personal challenge of of that kind of collaboration I think the way that theater forces you as an audience member and as a creator of it it forces you to be with other people in a really visceral way again if you're writing a play you can't just kind of write it and then hope that it gets published or something happens to you like you have to really get in the mud with people and that's not always a lot of fun but that's kind of that's how I feel like you be in the world and like grow and be kind of a more human being but yeah so I think that challenge is really exciting and the fact that it isn't it's an exercise in giving over a lot of control and kind of having to have a lot of trust and faith in other people I think it's because we're masochists I think like ultimately theater is the most difficult art form like I think there are lots of other art forms that I find I mean I was originally a fiction writer I think you're only looking for one audience member that you just have to connect to one person if they don't like it they can switch the play page or not by the book but playwriting it has to do so many things at the same time and there's such a greater chance of failure and such a greater reward to success I think in theater because it is so collaborative and dependent on other people and also the audience I think it's really it's a populist art form still at the bottom of it in which you have to respect like the audience doesn't like this part so in previews you will change it you know and that's the only thing that you do that with yeah I think that for me it's like I make this analogy a lot I don't know how true it is but like for me it's like kind of like a religion in the way that like we enact this thing in front of a group of people and then we all use that as a way to reflect on our lives as a society and I think the fact that we experience this art form with other people and we can understand their reactions and see how the group is responding is something that's really unique and powerful and I think it's kind of it's a place where society can go to examine itself in a way that you can't when you pick up a book because we're all experiencing it together so that's my that's why theater for me I think it's also a good way to make friends I just go about a lot a lot longer with the theater Joan you have a question what is the context in which your plays have been developed to date and what are you looking forward to in your relationship to the art okay so the question is what is the context in which their plays have been developed to date and what are they looking for in this next week here at the Lark so I I first developed this play at Ohai Playwrights Conference in California and I had written like 30 pages of it and I sent it to them thinking they're not really thinking they would invite me and they're like yeah sure come and I in this fever pitch I owe a lot to that team of actors and I was working with Hal Brooks as a director over there I owe a lot to him too and all the staff there they really pushed me to write the rest of the first draft so I showed up like 30 pages and left two weeks later with about 90 pages and I've workshopped it several times since then done like one day readings of it where you meet the cast and four hours later you present a reading and then I've done a couple like full week workshops of it and this week I we were talking before this week I'm looking to see how far I can push the difficult dangerous moments of the play how far can they go until we can't come back from them what's next for the play now oh hello Dominic it's going to be produced at the old globe San Diego Benjamin you want to talk about that what if any developments it's had and then what you want to use these 10 hours for when I write the first draft it tends to be sprawling I tend to have too many ideas so for me going back and visiting it in workshops which I did multiple times in Seattle with a couple different companies one is called Parley which is Playwrights Collective and the other one is Umbrella Project which is a new play advocacy group in Seattle which is where I did a lot of my writing and it just becomes kind of determining what is essential and what is the heart of the story and what is supporting that central image to go back to like how I build my play and then just weeding out whatever feels like a detour from that because I tend to overwrite just because the world becomes so vivid for me that I want to write every little detail but of course that's the novel right that's a different medium if I'm writing everything so for a play it has to be much more streamlined so it becomes a process of kind of winnowing down into something more focused so that's where I'm continuing that process here at the Lark yeah there was a question down here in the front yes excellent so continuing the discussion that we were starting about like the permanence and impermanence of this Wheeler art form and Claire you talked about the difference between the experience of reading a play on the page and seeing a play in three dimensions and a play kind of being like the blueprint of getting this thought in your head into the head of somebody else I'd be curious to hear from some of the writers what's your relationship with stage directions knowing that that's like 50% of the play that you're writing that we're going to downgrade fully realized are you generous with them are you sparing with them do you write in your voice do you write in the voice of the world how do you negotiate that I hate stage directions if I could get rid of stage directions I would but I ultimately tried to do the most important ones but I don't so I think part of what I'm doing on this week is also to figure out what needs to be said in stage directions so that the audience can have that in their head Dominic you're really explicit about how you want the dog done on stage which is very not doggy right? I think Claire hits the nail on the head I hate stage directions as well and if I could have a play with no stage directions I would in the process I kind of identify what are the things that okay this is something that I have to clarify this is one of the important what are the kind of the battles to be fought and what are the things where actually you're just kind of micromanaging and so I feel like for me in my case the dog is something where if you have a character that's a dog that's opening up Pandora's box so maybe you want to clarify that or give some direction but generally if I'm doing a scene it's just two people talking I would rather just have the language and nothing else so it's like navigating what's enough and then hopefully not giving much more than that One of my other favorite stage directions of these six plays is that Dominic says the dog barks off stage where he says the actor does not say woof he says bark again like please do not be overly doggy yes so this is again based off of blueprint comments for the actor I love hearing about how the actors work in a playwright's head when you're writing dialogue do you find yourself sort of playing out out loud the conversations acting it out basically and to see how the cadence flows and if so do you find yourself fighting the impulse to want to direct within the writing the way that you're doing it to make sure that the actor doesn't just like that yes so the question is do you ever act out your dialogue as you're writing the play and if so does that like create the impulse to kind of give actor guidance within the script I definitely move my mouth a lot when I write particularly when I'm rewriting and I was like I'm just gonna do what I do and hopefully I don't know everyone but for me it's just about like staying in the world and making sure the language has the sort of velocity that I need it to and I'll notice sometimes I'm like oh I'm changing punctuation a lot here but for me it's more like keeping the play alive for me I have no desire to act in my plays really direct them I'm like oh take your other life I think I love stage directions I think I differ in that but again it's sort of I love them selfishly because they allow me to see instead of just here because I think if I was just here I think I would people would say too much and I would be like no there's another thing that happens that's basically dialogue but it's movement or it's a very specific emotion but I I think you have to as a playwright be open to being surprised by your collaborators particularly your actors and if you go in with a very set idea of how it should be I think you're really doing yourself in the play of the service of being surprised and seeing what could happen because what I get is just the best version of the idea I had and what am I doing the thing I had no idea was going to be so I'm curious if you'll answer this because you have characters with very distinct gender differences in terms of women being mothers or about to be mothers you have characters with wildly different age spans and you have characters in different countries you want everybody to sound like their own unique self I assume are you acting it out in the living room? No I'm not I was trying to think of a good answer to this I'm definitely not acting it out I think it's more like and I think something that a lot of us do with line breaks where it's like we're trying to indicate something about the rhythm the way that it goes and in that way trying to preserve the sounds in our heads because I think it is important like I have a young kid in my play and he speaks in very short sentences and like very simple questions I have a woman that's trying to work out something deep and she's like working through tangles and thoughts and I don't know it's interesting I think that this line break thing is something I don't necessarily see in plays that are a little bit older but I think a lot of us are doing it and it's like to indicate this rhythm thing that we can also add to help guide that well I mean I think language is music and so I think and especially I think for contemporary writers I think the rhythms and the flow of how things are said often mean just as much as what has been said or revealed as much so I think while also giving the freedom of the space for actors and for collaborators I think there's also a way you can create a certain kind of instruction manual through line breaks or whatever that can teach it's like a score it's a musical score right I mean you're still if you give a violinist a musical score they're still going to bring their genius virtuosic you know but you're saying these are the notes you're playing with and now do what you want with them but pianissimo can mean a different thing but I mean if you have that score to begin with I think you can get more lost and so I think that's for me what I'm interested in is giving actors a lot of freedom but freedom inside the structure great okay yes button there and then there yes yeah a lot of you guys talked about empathy within your place and also the role of empathy within theater as an artistic genre I guess I was wondering and you also talked about these worlds you created where very different people somehow find the space to connect I was wondering if you guys could talk about the process and responsibilities of being a writer creating characters very much outside of your own world and experience yeah so what is the role and responsibility when you're creating a character who is not exactly 100% exactly like you which I assume is every character in the play I really like this question because I think we have this thing sometimes in theater where it's like who has the right to tell what story and it drives me up a wall because it's like we only have so many people who have the privilege of becoming playwrights and like there's so many other stories to tell and people who exist in this world if those of us that have this position don't start turning to those stories we're really screwed on some level and I think that you can do your due diligence and you can be responsible and you can find ways to empathize with people who are very different from you but I think it's something where it's become this weird taboo that I think is really doing a disservice to everyone so that's my I think I think the responsibility is less an artistic one than a human one I think it's like if you respect others and are like decent and like approach things from with an open heart and with willingness to learn and kind of I think the problem in these situations and I think that with the response often is the backlash is when it is assumed or felt that it is approach without that level of you know so I think it's like it's the same way you have to kind of treat other people in your daily life it's the same way you have to treat people in your plays and so if you approach the world with empathy you will approach the characters with empathy you will invite that in the artistic team they will invite that in the audience and maybe the world gets a little better should I save that for the answer yeah so you guys talked a lot about the image the catalyzing image that you have to bring yourself into the world of play and then there was talk about language and rhythm and character as well but all of your plays have really popular structure to them and I wanted to know how conscious are you in the process of the structure whether that's ritual or a formal situation or what have you come so consciousness of structure and the process of play writing does that start at the beginning does that wind its way in oh for this particular play for me I had no idea where I was going I started with an image and a feeling because I think when I'm responding to images and words that are kind of determined for myself are going to be part of this world it's more it's something I can't even quite articulate fully it's more just a feeling and so as long as I'm moving on to something that I'm like this feels right it's very intuitive I couldn't tell you what the structure of the play would have been before I started writing it I had to just follow and see where the story took me does anybody outline from the very beginning start with a rigid structure from the get go now outline as much as a as a sense of direction Michael Weller was one of our researchers from grad school would say that after us before you before you start building the ship you need to know what kind of journey it's going to go on and that has stuck with me that I knew for this play there's something intuitively right about it taking place in real time in one location the pressure cooker that was right for this situation and then there's others run like it needs to be an act break because we got to come back after the act break and things have to change so this is the general what's the general sense of direction that supports the emotional trajectory for me I got to know that before I get in Maestro Blyne Coming back to this issue about empathy usually about this time between 6.30 and 7.30 8 o'clock it's this time of the day that I'm such a news nerd I might have watched Leicester Holt that I switched to EDC that I was constantly watching and then I go online and start watching things and my heart starts pumping pumping and I start seeing the poles and everything now and it's been so cheering sitting here for the last hour it's been wonderful I mean it's just been this great bubble I've been listening to people talk about their impulses that are so nuanced they're starting impulses for their plays that have been about empathy I've been hearing oh my god about making grief a friend I mean it's just so many other nuanced impulses and instead of listening to an hour and a half understanding human behavior in this polarized way of either converting organics and the notion of playwriting that gesture is not about only those two poles it's just so I mean it's oxygen is all I can say yeah great Alex anything pressing from the world of the internet? no we've had some read tweets that have been quoted then I'm going to use that brilliant moment to say I too have been living in that world of going home and instantly turning on MSNBC and finding this a really hard war to live in and finding myself wondering what happens on November 9th when we wake up and we have to live together not as the blue states and the red states but as the United States of America and I think if playwrights are abode maybe they are a phenomenally necessary tugboat who are pulling and nudging and guiding vessels that can feel very slow to turn that can maybe feel like they are bearing down on us in a way that feels unstoppable but I would like to believe that writers matter that art matters smoking empathy in them as people and extending that through to the audience matters and that maybe we will have a very real role to play after November 9th in saying to the world we invite you to that act of empathy we invite you to humanize the other we invite you to be your best selves and let's start by doing it in a theater so thank you all for being here thank you for coming through the process to Lloyd's to Andrea Heidler to John Eisner to Beth White to me about Beth White