I’m wondering once again why I do things like what I’m about to confess in just a moment. But some backstory first.

I’m in Omaha, Nebraska for the Great Plains Theatre Conference. This is the third year that I’ve been booked in for this conference, where I lead a couple of workshops, and serve as a panelist giving feedback on new plays throughout the week. It’s a great gig, run by kind, talented, generous people, on an absolutely beautiful campus, where I spend lots of time smoking cigars and writing and drinking and where I get treated in a fashion I could easily grow accustomed to. Last year I left here with two plays. This year I would be happy to make major headway on my new full-length play.

So tomorrow is the first of the workshops I’m leading. It’s called “Starting at the Start” (or, as it’s listed in the program, “Starting with the Start,” which to me is a somewhat different thing. But anyway.). Usually I go over all my material in advance. Days, if not weeks, in advance. There are books I read from, and chapbooks, and writing exercises I like to employ, and visual aids — the whole works, in a very low-tech format. In the past two weeks I don’t think I had a minute anywhere to review any of that. Just before leaving town, I did lay hands on the pendaflex folder holding all the assorted precious paperwork from last year’s conference; a quick review satisfied me that some (if not most, or all) of the stuff I’d need was in there. So I put it into my suitcase.

I was supposed to arrive last night around 11 p.m. Instead, for no fair reason ever given, United canceled my connecting flight and I and many many other people were stranded in Denver half the night. I finally got here and into my room at 3 a.m. Then I stayed up ’til dawn playing Civilization 4 Warlords on my laptop because believe me, I was in the mood to plunder and sack someone else’s city. All day, since then, I’ve fretted about this workshop tomorrow. I’ve thought about it constantly, and meant to sit down and get ready for it, and tried to crack open the pendaflex folder and see what’s in there and get started… and I just haven’t. Instead, I read every single wall post ever made by anyone I know on Facebook. I walked to Popeye’s and bought myself a spicy wing sampler and biscuit. I went next door for a beer. I borrowed a car from the college to drive over to Target to buy myself new luggage. I came back and went back next door for another beer and had a great time swapping bad-production stories with Constance Congdon. Then I came back over here and read what had newly been posted on Facebook. Then I fired up Civilization 4 Warlords again and attacked the Mali empire, taking two cities away before they begged for peace. Then I went back on Facebook. Then, finally, with the clock past 10 p.m. and the constant awareness that this workshop is in the morning now thrumming and slamming in my head the way the deafening clanging machinery did in the engine room of my father’s automatic carwash, I cracked open the pendaflex file.

Whereupon I found, right on top, all my notes from precisely the same workshop last year.

Relieved, I grabbed a cigar and decided to head next door for a beer. But first, I thought I’d post this. Because I’m left to wonder just why I couldn’t bring myself to look in there at any time over the past 24 hours — or even sooner. I guess it was just the fear that it wasn’t in there. But even then, I figured I’d just wing it. I’ve been teaching playwriting in one form or another for 20 years; I like to think that in that time I’ve developed some ideas of how to make use of 90 minutes with a roomful of playwrights. Maybe my reptile brain figured that looking in the pendaflex folder equated somehow with “work” and I just wanted a day of no work. Who knows?

I just know it would’ve been a lot simpler to have looked in there earlier.

As I said the other day, they just come to me.

But if you’re really really really stuck for a script idea, this little tool will take care of it for you for free. Here’s what it suggested that I write next:

• A bug-eyed monster and a couple of child-like steelworkers find themselves trapped in a shopping mall.

Except I think I’ve already seen that one. Instead I guess I’ll be writing this one:

• Six bounty hunters form a rock band in a corn field.

But wasn’t that a John Cougar Mellencamp video?

The other night I told a playwright friend over dinner that I felt “pregnant with play.” It’s a repulsive metaphor, but better than the alternatives that seem somehow equally right:  that a play is going to burst out of me like an alien through my chest; that a play is going to pop like a pus-filled blister; and so forth. Whatever the appropriateness of the image, she knew what I meant:  Sometimes you feel like you have a play coming on, and this was one of those times. I had thought I was going to puzzle out the missing section of act two of the play I’ve been writing, and which I told my wife I wanted to drive to Omaha and back (rather than fly) in order to be able to write.

Instead, it turns out it’s a new play. One that just came to me earlier today while driving with my college-student son back to Los Angeles from San Francisco. We were listening to an album by a band he likes. He said, “Do you like this?” “No,” I said. When it came to the end, though, I told him to leave it on so we could listen to it again. Because by then I was writing a play in my head, and this was the soundtrack. Eventually I pulled onto an embankment off the interstate, dug out my journal, and wrote down everything I knew about this play while my son looked around in the passenger’s seat, unsure what to do with himself. Later I had him fish me out a napkin from the glove box so I could scribble down two new notes:  the name of a made-up song in the play, and the last line of the play. This sort of thing kept happening. There was the realization that “Oh my God, I know the last line of this play….” And actually I could envision the last scene, completely staged. Then I could see the transitions between time periods — and this is not the sort of thing that I’m very good at. I quickly scrapped the first scene, set at the protagonist’s home, because I never wanted the action to go there, because I didn’t know how to go back there once the play moved on. Then I realized that I could have one actor play two roles in two time periods. Then I had the back story — of how the protagonist and the third main character came to meet again in the present.

This went on in my head for hours.

So now I have to write it, and I think that starts tonight. This is a good time to start it — a few days before I go off to a theatre conference, and then off to visit my mother on the East coast. In the next three weeks I’ll have more available time than I usually have, and as I told my friend the other night, “I’m a clumper.” I write plays in clumps.

After I put the pen back in the unashed ashtray of my car, I heard myself say this to my son:  “I don’t particularly want to be a playwright. I just am one.” Because plays have just come to me this way.

I just came across this news feature on my friend Trey’s Facebook page. It seems that as a third-grade teacher in 1961, his mother gave some memorable encouragement to a student writer. That writer has now written more than 100 children’s books and, now, a book of poems. Here’s the story.

Last night was the latest night of readings from my playwriting workshop. One of the three playwrights has become an accomplished award-winning, produced, published playwright. (I think she and I will always remember the moment we jointly realized in my class that yes, she was a playwright. I could suddenly see it, and so could she.) One of the other playwrights last night has been in my workshop for a while. She joined the workshop to start writing plays — to learn how to write plays — and now here she was, the first act of her first play finally completed, playing out for a full house at the Inside the Ford space at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. She had one of those rare debut achievements:  the audience laughed in all the right places, and at least two of them cried in the right places. The joy written on this new playwright’s face afterward will stay with me for a long time.

I salute my friend’s mother. And I salute all the people who continue on with whatever sort of endeavor despite all the setbacks and discouragements  the world can sling at them.

What’s the one jury you definitely don’t want to serve on?

It’s not a homicide prosecution, or a lengthy federal trial.

No, it’s the drama jury for the Pulitzer Prize. At least as a member of the jury on a homicide or any other trial, you’d get listened to in the end. As a member of the drama jury for the Pulitzer, you’re likely to do your service and then get utterly ignored. That’s the ignominious pattern of the drama jury. Here’s Charles McNulty on how that feels.

Now that I’ve ended my day of internet silence — and thank you again to everyone here who joined me in helping to make the internet more available to everyone, especially those struggling with slow connections — I thought I’d share this great news. The previously lost Beckett play, “Attack the Day Gently,” has been found! Here are the details.

Thanks to Mark Chaet for alerting me to this!

My friend Terence Anthony’s terrific environmental piece “Blood and Thunder,” about two lowlife criminals caught in rising waters during Hurricane Katrina, closes this weekend after a smash six-month run. If you’re in LA and you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend you do. Here’s where to get tickets.

In the meantime, here’s a nice interview with the cast, courtesy of my friend and fellow playwright Ross Tedford Kendall.

My friend Terence Anthony just got interviewed about his terrific play “Blood & Thunder.” Here’s what he has to say.

The play has been running at Moving Arts for six months, but it must must must (must!) close last weekend of this month. It is definitely a don’t-miss, so if you’re in LA, well, don’t. Here’s where to get more info — and tickets.

When I was a kid, comic book editors were thoughtful enough to include the mailing addresses of fans who wrote in. There’s a whole generation of us who made a lot of good friends that way.

Now we have the internet.

Which is how I received this communication today:

Hi, my name is Isabel R–. I am 13 years old, I live in Mexico City and I now study in the American School Foundation. Right now in my civics class we are making a project about our future. I currently love theater, and it’s my lifetime dream to be a part of it and spend my whole life on it. I want to study acting, but I seriously don’t think I could be that good, so instead I would just love to direct, be in charge of everyone and be responsible [for] the whole play. This is why I was wondering if you could answer me an interview about your studies. I seriously respect you because you are a director, and in my opinion it takes a lot to be one.
I hope you will answer,
Isabel R–
P.S if you don’t have the time to answer or email me back, don’t worry I know you must be full of work 😉

Here’s my reply:

————

Isabel, I am indeed full of work. (And full of a lot else, too.) But I’m happy to answer you. The theatre is a wonderful thing to devote your life to. If you want to, you should do it.

Before we get to the questionnaire you attached, I’d like to say this:  You should study acting. Why? Three reasons:

1.    Because you want to. Thirteen is far too young to decide that you can’t be good at something. Know what the right age is? Never. Last month I heard a radio interview with an 82-year-old woman who had just piloted a plane for the first time. At age 80, she decided that she wanted to learn to fly, and now, two years later, she was flying solo. It’s not a good idea to limit yourself at any age. (It’s also good to have grandchildren to take away the keys, if necessary.)
2.    You should act because you want to, and you should act because it will help you as a director. Directors work with actors. That means you need to understand acting and actors. No, I was never an actor. But I did some acting in both high school and college (poorly, I might add), and since then I’ve done staged readings that I’ve been drafted into. And every Saturday I get to read at least one part in my workshop. Do some acting. It’s fun. And even if you’re bad, nobody dies as a result.
3.    It’s good to fail. Failure teaches you things. It’s also good to succeed. What isn’t good is to not try. Don’t avoid failure, or you won’t try enough new things.

Okay, let’s tackle that questionnaire.

1.    What did you study?

I have no formal theatre training. None. I have degrees in Communications (Associate of Arts), Literature and Language (Bachelor of Arts), and Professional Writing (a Masters degree). This qualifies me to answer your questionnaire, and to answer things for people even when I don’t know what I’m talking about. You learn that how you say things can lend a certainty to your tone that convinces others; that’s useful. It’s amazing what you can get away with when you sound confident. I also took a lot of science in college, and I’m glad I did. Other than the writing classes, the classes that stuck with me the most were probably Logic and Philosophy which, compiled with the others, form the backbone of criticism. Oh, I did study playwriting in graduate school, but it didn’t teach me how to write plays – I was already getting produced, after all. But it helped build my circle of contacts.

2. Where did you study?

I think you’re asking me theatre-related questions. What I would say is this:  To learn the theatre, you get involved with theatre. You attend plays, you volunteer, who do photocopying and script reading and chewing-gum-scraping and whatever else they need. And then, one day, an actor doesn’t show up and you read that part to help out. Or, in my case, the cool kids are putting on a high school play and even though you’re invited to participate, they don’t invite your other friends (the non-cool kids), and you don’t feel good about that, so you wind up writing your own play expressly for those uncool kids.  And then when you hear people in the audience laugh at your funny lines, you are hooked forever.

The simple lesson:  In most things in life, you learn by doing. So go get involved with directors and actors and playwrights and costume designers and stage managers and lighting designers and all the other theatre people and you’ll learn everything. Because theatre people – honestly – can do everything. They have to.

3. How long?

To this day. On Saturdays I convene a playwriting workshop (for almost 20 years now), and I’m always glad to learn new things from the smart talented people who come. And at least a couple of times a month, I go see plays. Even bad ones are useful (although annoying). You can learn good things from bad plays.

4. Did you study an MBA?

That’s a business degree. (Now I own a business (not my first) and am once again completely self-taught. Libraries and book stores and the internet are wonderful things.) I believe you mean an MFA. I have an MFA-equivalent degree. It is a terminal degree, but I am living with it.

5. If yes, where did you study it? How long?

The University of Southern California. In general, a graduate degree requires two years. What you learn may not be as important as who you meet. Building a network of contacts is important.

6. After studying, in what have you worked?

I have written radio commercials, billboards, plays, advertising copy, fundraising letters, essays, poems, cartoon strips, short stories, websites, interviews, speeches, public service announcements, headlines, newspaper stories, technical specs, instructions, magazine articles, and just about everything else you can imagine. At some time or other I’ve been paid in almost every conceivable field of writing. (Yes, I even got paid for poems once.) I own a creative marketing agency (with another theatre person!) named Counterintuity. That allows me to offer creativity all over the place. Leonardo da Vinci was an artist and a scientist; Benjamin Franklin was a writer and statesman and scientist and inventor; Will Eisner was one of the founders of comic books and graphic novels, and also a businessman. I am inspired by their greatness.

7. What have you been doing lately?

See above. Plus, I travel frequently. And I read a lot. And I like to take long walks with friends and my dog and smoke cigars. (The dog doesn’t smoke.) And I like to play games with my family and by myself (“Risk” on my iPhone, “Civilization” on my laptop, and “Oblivion” on the xBox.) I also go to the theatre, of course. Last night three friends and I went to see a play that we didn’t like at all, but we had great fun afterward, and that made it worth it.
8. As you have worked in plays, what have been your favorite or most famous?

Almost all the plays I have directed are new plays. The theatre I founded in 1992 does only new plays. I’ve directed world premieres by Trey Nichols, Werner Trieschmann, Sheila Callaghan, EM Lewis, and many others. I don’t direct as often any more because I don’t have time, but I make an effort to do it at least once a year. Last year, I directed four times and am still unclear how that was possible. Famous playwrights whose work I like include Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Mamet, Labute, Albee, Kushner, and August Wilson. I think that Shakespeare guy is pretty good too. I am a big fan of Buster Keaton, so any well-done commedia del arte excites me; a couple of years ago I flew across country just to see Bill Irwin’s new show. It was well worth it.

9. In the play, what is your job?

To make an impact other than boredom on the audience.
10. What [do] you get out of this career?

Brief bursts of intense satisfaction. Followed by an addictive need for more.

11. Do you live well with your job?

I’m not sure what you mean, but I’m going to try to answer what I think you mean. I make my living being a creative storyteller, sometimes for business clients, sometimes for audiences or students. Stories are at the core of who we are. The human brain has grown and expanded because we developed language, and we developed language because we needed to share stories – about the hunt, about our struggles, about who we are and want we want. Without stories, we would all still be in the trees. It’s enormously gratifying to move an audience with a story you’re telling – whether it’s a ticket-buying audience watching one of my plays, or an audience of two in a business setting. It’s also enormously gratifying to get pulled into the stories of others whose voice you respond to. I’m lucky enough to have very smart, very funny friends who keep me surprised and entertained.


12. Has this career choice made you happy?

I don’t believe in happiness. Pursuing it is fine, but I don’t know anyone who has gotten it, and if anyone were to get it, I don’t know what he or she would do next. I do believe in work, good work, and in remembering that on any given day, most people in the world are worse off than I am. Bear that in mind and it’s easier to focus on your work.

Thank you for emailing me. Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll always be someplace interesting. I apologize if my reply isn’t as good as Rilke’s, but no one’s is.

The simplification movement has given us advice like this:

The Problem

E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.

The Solution

Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

two.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be two sentences or less. It’s that simple.

That’s potentially great. It’s also potentially disastrous. English, like most languages, requires nuance. If your email message is regarding something more elaborate than, say, “Good. See you there,” it’s not  done well in two sentences. Moreover, writing well while writing short is difficult — in many cases, it would take you more time to answer shorter.

I also can’t help pointing out that this bit of communications advice commits an error:  They mean to say “two sentences or fewer,” not “less.” If you’re going to be brief, at least be right.