 All right, shall we begin? It's one after five. Great, okay. This is Watch Me Work. I'm Susan Larga Parks and I'm gonna do a little blurb explaining what Watch Me Work is before. Has everybody been to Watch Me Work already or are there some people who don't know what it is that we're about to do? Hey, Mo. Is everybody? I'll just do it really fast because there's a few people who are like, huh, what is this? We're gonna have to watch Susan Larga Parks work for an hour, how boring. No, so Watch Me Work is a show. We've been doing it for over 11 years. Usually I do it in the lobby, live in the lobby of the public theater for 11 years. And Howl Round, the public theater has been helping it happen. Howl Round came on several years ago to help us livestream the event. And since this Corona lockdown thing, I figured, hey, what could be more fun than doing Watch Me Work from my home five days a week? So here we are in our second week of that. I'm a writer. I write lots of different kinds of things. And big thanks to the public theater and Howl Round for helping this happen. Here's how Watch Me Work works. It's a show. It's a play. We're gonna make it together like all the worlds of stage. And here's what we're gonna do. It's gonna have the first part of the play is gonna be the action of the play and we're gonna create the action together. And then the second part of the play we're gonna create the dialogue, meaning you talk to me, asking me questions about your creative process. Okay, so this is an opportunity for us to work together for 20 minutes. I'll have a timer. I'll set it. And then it's an opportunity for you to ask me questions about your creative process. I said that twice. I'll say it again about your creative process, okay? We won't have the bandwidth in this forum to offer you to read something you've written and to have me critique it. It's not about that. This is about process where we just talk about how you're working, how your work is going, any difficulties you might have, some difficulties that you might recently have overcome concerning your work. And it can be any kind of work, really. Big ups to the people in the medical profession and all the EMS people who are working very hard on all of our behalf. If any of them are out there, thanks for everything you're doing. And everyone, really, who's contributing in some positive way during this very difficult time. So what else? Audrey, is there something else that we should mention right now? Totally, I'll let you know how you can ask some questions. So if you're in the Zoom class itself, you can ask a question by clicking on the raise your hand button. It should be in a participant tab on your screen. If you click on that, a pop-up should come up and you should be able to click raise your hand. And I will see. And I will click and unmute you when it's time to speak. If you are watching the stream on HowlRound.tv, you can ask questions via the public theater Twitter or Facebook. And you can also tweet at watch me work SLP hashtag HowlRound H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. And that's it. I'm gonna be setting this timer for 20 minutes. If anybody wants to know why I use kitchen timers, we can talk about that in the question part of the show. But I'm gonna set it for 20 minutes and we're gonna work together. Okay, here we go. One, two, and whoops. Great, all right. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Audrey, I just, it's funny, I was so focused on you guys that I set my timer and then I didn't turn it on. So during that, if any of you saw me texting, I was texting Audrey, what time is it? Anyway, it happens. So, yeah. You're ready? I am ready, I'm ready. I just had to get my, you know. All right, up first we have Monique. Hey, Monique. Are you understanding? Hey, Monique. Hi. Hi there. Thank you so much for doing this. This has been amazing. Thank you. So I'm an actor primarily. I just started writing this year. Oh, yay. And yeah, so far I've written two short plays and I did a part of an online devised play a few weeks ago once quarantine started. My question is I have some other ideas for a full length play and I'm just having trouble sort of expanding my work if that makes sense. Like the other plays I did, they were by design short. They were for submissions for upcoming festivals and things like that. So I kind of just had an idea and knew I had to keep it really compact. But now I'm sort of wondering how do I take my next idea and, you know, do 60 pages instead of 10. Right, right. That's a great question. So how did you, you know, you said you've written these short plays. How did you decide that they were going to stay, you know? Short. Yeah. As I said, I wrote them for specific reasons. It was more that I saw submission opportunity and thought, oh, since I want to start writing doing a short play seems like a good place to start. Right. So then I kind of got an idea, expanded on it and I guess since I knew ahead of time that it had to be short, I didn't let it run away with me too much. Right, so now you want it to run away with you. Now you're going to write. Okay, so let's think of like, do you know the play Hamlet? Have you ever, you know? Oh yeah. Okay, you're, okay. I'm just, you know, you people, you know. Well, not high school. It was standard. Yeah, you go, Hamlet, okay. So right, so Hamlet, right. And most of us know Hamlet. Shakespeare's Hamlet, okay. So Hamlet, it could be like Hamlet comes home, Horatia goes, yo, we saw your father's ghost. Hamlet could go, that motherfucker, my uncle killed him. Almost stabbed his ass, boom, had the end. Right, it could be that, right? Yeah. Okay. So instead of that, it could be that. And that could be very interesting. That could be your short play, right? And then instead of that, the writer Shakespeare, he goes, well, what if Hamlet wasn't sure? Oh, that's interesting. You see what I mean? So he starts to ask, I mean, I don't know, you know, what he did to write that play, but we can pretend to know. But I see where you're going. Yeah. So what if one of your characters wasn't sure? You know, what if, what if, what if, okay, they want to go to, they want to go to Coney Island, right? But they don't have any money to get there. So you start asking, what if, right? You start introducing complexity, roadblocks, if you will, things that your character has to deal with. So we could say that geometry says this, the quickest, the shortest length between two points is a straight line, right? That would be a short play, right? There's less complexity. But when you have a circuitous route where your characters are going, well, what if I go in that door over there? What if I have to make money to get to where I'm going? I have to get a job. What if I don't have a job? Then I have to, you see what I mean? Just starting introducing complexity and see if that expands it. And again, you want it to feel, you don't want to just fill up pages for the sake of filling up pages, right? So you want it, Sam Shepard had this great essay years ago, the playwright Sam Shepard, he wrote an essay called, I think it was called Time, when he talked about, to paraphrase horribly, a play should be just as long as it needs to be and no longer. You know what I mean? So you don't want to stuff your play with unnecessary twists and turns just to make it longer. You want the changes, if you will, like musical changes to organically come out of the situation, right? Like say Jane wants to marry, you know, Isabelle, right? Great, they're both single, they're both available, boom, it happens great. But what if Isabelle is going out with, you know, Frank or something, then it gets a little more complicated. Okay? Yeah, no, that's- It might be a fun exercise to take some of your favorite plays and just go, this is a full-length play, simplify it down and then see the complexities that the writer observed along her path as she wrote the play, you know? That's a really good idea. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks, great question, Monique. Thank you, Monique. All right, up next we have, oh, so sorry, I scrolled to the wrong part. Devon, hold on one second. Are you unmuted, Devon? I am, yeah, thank you. Awesome. Hello, hi everybody, hope everybody's doing well today. So I am a college student, actually, and I was wondering if you had any insight or like want to talk about your writing experiences throughout college and how the, or like the earliest like formative part of your writing days and like how those might have informed like where you are now, like how do you see that lineage from where you started to where you are now. Right, so here's where we do some gymnastics. Ready, Devon? So because this is about you, we're gonna make it about you. Okay. What I'm gonna do is ask you how are your writing classes going so far and how do you see a connection between the writing classes that you've taken and the writer that you are now? Yeah, I do. So I've taken a couple of playwriting classes and extracurricularly, like I do poetry workshops and like different varieties of things. And I do think that they like have informed my like writing practice, so to speak now, even though like it fills up the prerentive to say that like I'm a playwright or like I have an artistic practice because I don't even know if I do yet. But yeah, I do think that like my writing courses have been helpful, but I also think that now that I'm starting to like write more outside of those classes, I'm figuring out a way of like how do I use those materials that came from that class and the things that I wanna be writing like for years to come. Like do those things just get put on the back burner? Are those the things that you start working from? You mean the pieces that you've started in those classes? Yeah, like for example, like one class you're supposed to write like a one act play and like that was interesting but that work doesn't necessarily look like what I wanna keep doing. So like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, so you just keep going. I mean, the thing is that good writing classes, good classes, good interactions are gonna give you tools, right? Tools, I've been my says tools not rules. So they're gonna give you tools. So you're gonna have at the end of each class or each interaction a series of tools for your tool belt that you can use to, I mean, if I gave you a hammer and a saw and a bucket of nails, right? You wouldn't say like, and you have to build a diving board every time you go to work, right? No, you're like, yeah, I don't wanna build a diving board every time I wanna go diving board today. I wanna build a seesaw tomorrow. I wanna build a park bench the next day, right? I mean, whatever, right? So the tools we give you are going to help you do what you wanna do. You can take a short work and expand upon it. I mean, that's what Monique earlier is gonna take a short work or you can say wow, I really kind of, I like, this is kind of the work I like to do. Maybe I'll just pick a whole new topic and apply that skill set that I learned, those tools to a new piece, okay? And we all know those of us who did any kind of formative education that you're getting a great education right now in college and in a lot of people's experience once you graduate is when the learning really starts. So it's like a whole new level of working because you're out in the world and working. So the idea is to, and you said, you don't know what kind of writer you are yet or if you are one because you don't have a practice, showing up every day is a practice. So try to do that as much as you can, you know? Not to chastise yourself if you don't show up every day but try to show up every day, okay? Yeah, awesome, thank you so much. Thank you, thanks for tuning in. Thanks to everyone. All right, next up we have Vincent. Vincent, are you unmuted? I am, can you guys hear me? Yes, yeah. Oh, great. Thank you for taking the time for my question. I'll try to simplify it so I don't give you all the baggage background but basically I've been working out of play for the last couple of years that just recently through Mutual Friends and a theater company that they have, we've started to do readings of it. So I've gotten to hear it a couple of times and we just did a, there was a reading in February that we had our first invited audience for. And I sat down with one of my old writing teachers who got to go and got some notes from her and I've talked to the director and I have a lot of good information. I feel like I'm excited about the rewriting process. This is like whatever draft this is at this point but there's part of me that also is struggling with if I've lost like the initial impulse of what, like the reason why I started writing this to begin with and trying to be okay with like, okay, the journey. Obviously, you know, it's gonna take you somewhere. It's not always gonna be the place you started from but I think in all the notes that I've gotten, I'm like, that's cool. Yeah, that works. That sounds really nice. But then there's always that like part of my brain that's like, but was that the initial, was that the thing that really was exciting for me about it? And just curious how you address if when you're working on plays or when you're working on revising, if you ever feel like you've lost that excitement about what the initial idea was and how you find your way back to like, oh, that was the nugget that I was starting from. And now here's my way back into it as I allow it to morph and change. That's a great question, Vincent. And I think a lot of us have that sort of experience. In my experience, I get more excited about the thing I have than the thing I thought I was gonna have when I started writing however many years ago, back there, right? You know what I mean? So in my experience, I'm like, wow, look, I have something and it's growing, yay. And that sort of obscures what I thought I was gonna be doing when I started. But it sounds like you might have a sort of feelings of maybe not regret, but concern. I mean, it sounds like you're getting great notes, but you might have a little concern, like this isn't what I wanted to write. Is it, am I hearing it correctly or? I think that might be it. And I think the other part of it for me too is that it's, I was doing a lot more like experimental writing for lack of a better word, non-traditional kind of theater playwriting. And this play came out in a little bit more of a traditional way. And I had a draft where I was like, I'm gonna blow this up and do the experimental version. And then I showed it to the director and he's like, yeah, I don't think we need all that. That's maybe like for this reading, we don't need that stuff in there. And I said, all right, I know it, let me try it and stick with what he's saying and keep digging into it. So I think maybe there's that part of it for me too. I'm like, oh my God, it's too, this is sort of, I'm not challenging myself or it's too dull, I guess, is my fear. I don't know. So I think there's that part of it too. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And sometimes it's confusing when we, we grow and change as artists, you know? Yeah, right. Our work when we're, you know, 15 doesn't resemble our work when we're 20 or 30 or 50 or 80 or whatever, you know? I mean, there are artists who are the same all the way through. I worked with one of them years ago in the middle of rehearsal, I said, well, why are we doing that that way? He was a director, he's a director. And he shouted, I've been doing it this way for 30 years. And I was like, wow. I mean, that's his style, right? Those of us who do it the same way for our whole career, you know, and there are those of us who are not like that. So we grow and change and we have growing pains and we say, is this really me? Or was that really me? Who am I? You know what I mean? Right. So it sounds like there's something of that in what you're experiencing right now. Is there a deadline or a finish line are these collaborators, wonderful collaborators of yours? Are they saying I need a new draft by such and such? Right now it's been sort of loose where I left it was, okay, with the notes I have, I'm gonna sort of beat out the moments, talk about the new scenes and then address it and then sort of write out the next draft. And they wanna, I think they're aiming to produce it. Hopefully, you know, who knows what's gonna happen but in the fall. So that's sort of the loose deadline. Right. It's tricky. I mean, I would sit and like have a conversation with the play, you know what I mean? Like what is it that you really wanted to do? But it might be one of those, it might be you changing into a different kind of writer. You know, I mean, the tricky thing is, is that right now if they're planning to produce it in the fall, you're kind of in a relationship with these wonderful people. You know, they sort of signed on to what you're writing. So if you decide now to go and do something else, you sort of aren't really working in the spirit of the collaboration that you have agreed to thus far. Right. And so while you might, you can certainly write two kinds of the play, write the far out there play and the less far out there play. You could, you know? Or you could just say, I'm gonna write this like this. Right. I'm gonna write it like, I'm gonna talk to the play and make sure it's okay with the play that we're going in this direction. And we're gonna write it in the direction that we've agreed to, you know? Right. You know what I mean? Maybe it's like dating. You go, I'm not single anymore. Oh no, who am I? You know what I mean? We're all on parent. I'm a mom, I'm a, yeah, you know what I mean? And then there might be a lot of that. I don't know, but I do know that you have made it an agreement with some people who I, sounds like you like. I do, yeah. I think they've been very, I mean, they've been very generous to me with their time and continuing to hold these readings and then the invited read. You know, I think it's a really, their whole company is about creating new works. It's been very supportive. I think my fear is like, oh, I'm gonna disappoint them because the sort of initial part for me was maybe something else and, but I'm conforming to their idea to please them. That's maybe that's misrepresenting it because it's not totally like I'm only just doing their notes. I think it has been a good dialogue, but yeah, feeling just a little bit like in that weird blasé place about it, like how do you move through it? And maybe it's just you do it and move through it. I think, yeah, I think you, because you appreciate the collaboration, if it didn't feel good, right? If it didn't feel good, then I'd say get out. Yeah. Like that. It feels, it feels pretty good. So you go with it and maybe along the way you, maybe your next play is just very different. Sure. You know what I mean? And either back to the style that you used to have or a combination of the two, you know? I mean, my style has changed up a lot. I don't really sweat it too much. Sure. I'm just like, oh, here I am today, right like that. People have accused me of doing all sorts of evil, selling out, pandering to the man. I'm like, fuck, I'm just writing, you know? Right? I mean, I grow and change. I don't, I'm not one of those people who is deliberately staying the same throughout her career. Everything I write is different. Cool. And that's just me. But, you know, it also feels right as I'm writing it. I don't feel like I'm being pressured to write a certain thing, even in work for hire. I don't feel, I mean, I feel slightly constricted because of the medium and the form and all the money that's involved. But it still feels like something I want to do. Right. Maybe because I pour everything I got into it. I think that could be perhaps part of it, is withholding something. Like let me just get over the fear of like it's too, it's too anything and stop putting two on it and just say, it is what it is. What's the... Yeah, it's yours. Right. It's yours. And maybe this one is different than your other ones. Sure. It's okay. And if anybody calls you, you know, oh, you sold out. Say, fuck you, motherfucker. I wrote this fucking thing. It came out of me and I'm doing the best I can under the circumstances, you know. You know, a lot of people like, well, want to lay that on you. We knew you win. You were, you know, poor and, you know, ripped stockings, living downtown with no food. You know, I mean... I appreciate that. Okay. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much. And we're your squad. We support you in all your changes, you know what I'm saying? Thank you. And all your changes. I mean, I gotta say this, this is my soapbox thing and this is not Vincent, what you're talking about. But if in this culture we can, we lambast and we get on artists for selling out, for being different and different artists than they were last year, but we're welcoming to people who might want to change gender. Right? We have to be open and welcome to ourselves. We have to allow some of that generosity for ourselves. Right? This is who I am. This feels honest to me right now. You know? Okay. That's my soapbox. Thank you so much. I'm gonna get off my soapbox though. Thank you so much. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thanks Vincent. Thanks Vincent. All right. Next we have Emmanuel. Emmanuel, are you unmuted? Thank you so much. I can't hear you so good. Oh, you can't hear me? Oh, better, better, better, better, better, better. Okay, I'll just speak really close. So thank you very much for doing this. It's been amazing. So I am writing a musical and I've had a first reading and the main, so I love all the characters. But the main character, so the feedback is that we don't like her and then I realized I don't like her. The story, like it feels quite organic. It felt like that's just the story and that's just the way it is. And I was just wondering my question was how do you make a character more likeable? Is it, I mean, yes. I like all the other characters with all their faults and quirks and everything like that. I like them and I think that means that they come across as likeable. I mean, I'm just, I'm speculating, I don't know. And her, the main character, like everything happens to her, I guess. And so we don't necessarily, yeah, I don't like her very much. I like her but I don't like her. I mean, she is what she is but I don't know how to make her likeable. That's a hard note to get. Your character is unlikeable. Yeah, I know. That's a really, that's a, I find it a tricky note and a note that can make it difficult to know what to do. You know what I mean? Because we don't wanna turn all her frowns, all her frowns upside down. You know what I mean? Yeah, she's smiling all the time. Now she's happy and she gives cookies to people and so she's likeable. I mean, that's horrible. But maybe what the note might mean is that we under, maybe your readers are not fully understanding why she does what she does. Yeah, I think that's... Okay, so yeah, so for example, another Shakespeare like Richard III, you know, he goes and kills a lot of people and people go, okay, he's not likable, right? But we have a sense that we feel him. He feels disenfranchised or out of the loop or made fun of. So he has these feelings and this anger, maybe. I'm not a Shakespeare scholar, but you know what I mean? So maybe you need to ground her actions. You also said a lot of things happen to her, which is tricky. So you need to activate her, have her do things to get what she wants, right? And to ground everything she does in something that is, well, that is grounded. You have to really tie everything she does to a real need that she has. Does that make sense? I don't know if that would make her more likable, but it certainly will help the audience or your readers wrap their heads around why she is doing the things that she is doing. Maybe the tricky thing is because the idea is that it's the outside pressures that are making her do what she's doing. Okay. That she's pressured into this way of being and that she thinks it's her idea, but it's not her idea. It's what society's told us, what her parents have told her. It's what everyone, and so she's acting, thinking that it's what she wants, but it's absolutely not what she wants. Right. So activate her, make it a real choice. Give her some real choices to do real things to get what she really wants. See? I mean, people will follow anybody, look at who's the president. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you know, give her some real, no, I mean, that's off the topic, but give her some, she wants X. She really wants that. She's gonna go for it like nothing else, you know? Do you understand? If you've made her passive, it's maybe she just doesn't have enough energy behind her. Okay, see if that works. Do it a scene at a time also, you know? Or you can have cards and kind of work with index cards and do some basic outlining and sort of starting to feel her. You need to really focus on, you probably focused on all the other characters, which we often do, and then we focus on the main character sometimes last. Yeah. Okay, now it's time to really focus on her and her journey. We can't hear you anymore. Are you saying anything? Oh, I said, thank you so much. Oh. Thank you for saying that. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. No worries. All right, next we have Anna. Anna, are you unmuted? Yes. We hear you. Hi. Hi. Thank you so much for this. I had a question. Can you hear the rhythm? I do dance theater. So the text is happening in between movements. All right, am I back? I'm in Mississippi. We have bad connection. So I'm wondering about how you build momentum with your text. So with your characters and how you use tempo inside of dialogue. Anna, it's tricky for me to hear you. I said, I think you said you do dance theater pieces with choreography. Is that correct? I can hardly hear you. Oh, she's repeating. I think I get it. You do theater pieces with dance in them. Is that correct? Maybe did anybody else hear her? And how do we, how do we work on putting dialogue within the movement? But I'm not sure if that is your question. So I'd hate to answer a question if it's not yours. Yes. Yes. I'm looking for your. Hey, Anna, maybe you can log out and log back in and we can, we can try this again. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. We've got about seven minutes left. We want to do one more and then hop back to Anna. Yeah. All right. Next is Saida. Are you unmuted? Of your character. Hello. Hi, can you hear us now? I think we were getting a delay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hi. Great. Okay. Go ahead. I know I won't. Okay. Saida, you're on mute. Okay. How about now? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. How are you? I had a specific question. I'm a, I'm a 27 year plus English and drama teacher on the high school level. I'm trying to leave some of the English alone and move more into some of the English. I'm a young woman. I'm a young woman, I'm a young woman. I'm a young woman show. And I'm just really interested in. Any specific instructions like Allah, Sarah Jones or Anna DeVere Smith, just writing for yourself. The, the creation of characters that you then feel you can play. If there's any specific. about 12 different stories of women of color throughout the diaspora and it's just I don't want it to all seem so vignetti and just people telling their story over and over again but really to give some life and breath to the characters and maybe show how women of color connect throughout the diaspora. Right so you have your your subjects right you have your subjects and I mean you you've mentioned Anna Deere Smith great you know to to look toward her of course you know Intazaki Shange for colored girls and you know that kind of beautiful work that has different stories from different women or different people you know it's okay if it starts to be vignetti I mean the thing that the thing that the thing that links the stories together is that they're all searching for something if you will or with Anna's pieces you know she's working through something or she chooses a particular community or a particular subject you know so I think I think you just write them like think of your your subjects you know this person that person the other person I mean they're are they fictionalized or are they real um they're all fictionalized and they're all talking about insidious racism and how we all function with white supremacy great great so I mean where do you know um are they all in the same place no they are actually I'm I'm here in the Caribbean and some of them are African Americans some of them are Caribbean and some of them are from the continent right okay so I'm learning accents and doing that in terms of my my my acting but in terms of my writing I didn't want you know people I didn't want to feel very preachy and overwhelming I still wanted to see beauty even though I'm taking on the animal that is racism right so yeah so I think I mean I think you're really there you do you have a writing schedule um well now thanks to you there you go I mean I I mean now that I'm just teaching remotely as well it just gives me more time with my own children and with my own writing so good I mean I've taken this COVID as a gift you know right well good good so you have a writing schedule right um so you do a little bit on an every day yes you I would suggest doing one character at a time so maybe you have a list of all the characters you'd like to eventually get to but you choose one uh woman at a time right and even if you write her one of her monologues if you will um just imagine what it is at first draft and then go to the next one so get a first draft of everybody's monologue mm-hmm and it might be obvious but to to get away from that preachy thing even though you're tackling big subjects you remember that first and foremost these people are people mm-hmm so we're I'm going to be more interested in the details and specifics of their lives than them telling me although this is not what you're saying but them telling me racism is some bullshit yeah because we could do that in like you know five words right right right so I want to you know think of for color girls I mean it was it told us a lot of things but yeah there are in so many different ways and you want to just keep coming uh and maybe someone one of them two of them 12 of them are not talking about racism right maybe they're just talking about yes they're they're not specifically saying like this is what racism is this how it affects me but I want the thread with all of them you know the way in which you know it's a strange bedfellow and how it impacts all of their lives mm-hmm great great just remember their people and get into them as people okay and what they're doing what their day-to-day is like okay right and what stories they have to tell you right right and and and and then sort of see if you can see common threads common themes emerging as you go along and you'll think of how to but get a first draft of each one of these characters yeah that's what I'm I'm almost there with that so I love that great great great great thank you I think it sounds like it's gonna be beautiful well you know you can only try it's true it's true thank you is Anna back I've got Anna she typed out her question to me out loud um she said she's looking for guidance on building momentum in dialogue how do you deal with tempo and speed of dialogue between characters and action right oh gee that's a hard question that's a hard question Anna no but a really good question um but is it did she say something about how she has dance in her pieces or was that just a she's nodding yes yeah okay okay so how do we deal with tempo and say it again Audrey please she said uh building momentum in dialogue and how do you deal with tempo and speed of dialogue between characters and action right right um so desire Anna and stakes are really really helpful okay so if I want like I want a pie for dinner really badly I might be moved to run out to the store and get it right I mean but but I might not be moved to run out to the store and get it because Cuomo I'm in New York City you know they said don't go outside today right so it's gonna what I'm saying is that how much your character wants something and how many obstacles they have between them and the thing they want that's one way um speed is also accomplished in dialogue speed is also accomplished after we've written a first draft or a second draft or whatever in trimming away the stuff that's unnecessary but that's later that's the second or third draft right so we don't want to really worry about getting the tempo just right in a first or second draft we want to allow ourselves to have a little fluff to have a little fat to not know all the answers right away okay and as much as you can um you're you're you're a choreographer also is that what you said no am I just making that up no you're a dancer you do me no I'm just making all this up yes is that a thumbs up that's you said yes okay um great I got it so you're a choreographer you move okay so as much as you can when you write something Anna a page or two of dialogue or whatever stand up and even by yourself say you got no fringe and you're self isolating or whatever you can take your your script your thing and read it out loud and when you start reading your work out loud you're gonna feel what doesn't need to be there right and what might you might need to add so it's just you so again it's about the urgency being really clear on what the stakes are and what the scene is about you know that scene with again Hamlet and Hamlet's ghost you know dang man we saw the ghost of your father oh shit what are you gonna do I don't know right I mean just be really clear on what the scene is about okay that'll help you trim away the excess that'll help you with speed all right and read it aloud for yourself it doesn't have to be a play for you to read it aloud it can be a screenplay a teleplay us a novel whatever you can read it aloud to feel the language language is a physical act it should run through your body it's not just something that happens between the top of your head and your shoulders right it's not a neck up kind of thing it's a physical thing and you should be able to move your language should move you I mean I keep I mentioned Shakespeare like 10 times today but that's one of those things that's really great about his work that it moves you to do things you know you can feel the movement in the lines which is very exciting okay so get in your body or get you stay in your body because you're in your body already you're a dancer well it is 604 604 okay should we come back tomorrow we'll come back tomorrow let's come back tomorrow amazing as a reminder if you want to sign up for class it's at publicleader.org by 3 p.m each day and you'll get a link for the zoom and we'll release next week's link on friday at three thank you guys have a great day keep washing your hands