One of the things I tell students, and which I heard myself saying again the past two days in my workshops here at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, is that you shouldn’t try to edit while you write. It’s better to write, then edit. Otherwise, definitionally, you’re editing yourself — and writing should be a freeing process, not a judging process. It’s best to write, then edit.

My friend and colleague Shelly Lowenkopf is a writer and an editor, someone with major credits in both regards. If you’re interested in writing, I direct you to this posting on his blog, where he discusses the purpose of editing. Like most things I hear Shelly say, it’s filled with useful wisdom.

Back in Burbank, CA, my son Lex is rehearsing “The Laramie Project.” (And, being a strapping young white guy, he’s playing the unrepentant town asshole — which he isn’t.) Here in Omaha, I was just now reading the LA Times online to find out what’s going on back home, or, at least, the Times’ version of what’s going on, when I came across this news profile, which covers the production my son is in.

A little back story: Originally, the Gay Straight Alliance at John Burroughs High School (where my elder son is a junior) proposed doing “The Laramie Project.” When the principal learned of this, he banned the production — so those enterprising kids got some money elsewhere and are doing it on their own. Now, in his own words, the principal is “eating crow” and has allowed them to rehearse on campus.

I know most of the players involved — the high-school principal who initially banned the production, the drama teacher he doesn’t get along with, one or two of the kids in the picture, Greg from Actors’ Gang, Trent Steelman and the Colony Theatre (where I saw that remarkable production of “The Laramie Project”), and so forth. Burbank is a town where most people somehow or other know most other people, and theatre is the same sort of town, stretched around the world. Don’t believe me? I saw a play last night here in Omaha, and was startled to see that one of the leads was played by a terrific actress I had directed in the world premiere of “Remember I’ll Always Be True,” by Kevin Barry, in, I think, 1997. (Or whenever OJ was acquitted, which made for one very memorable rehearsal night.) My friend Catherine Porter in New York posted a comment to this blog suggesting that I say hi to a guy named Deke if I see him here — yes, I see him here; we’re sharing a house.

The Burroughs kids’ youthful activism cheers me. It also takes me back to my own fights with the high-school establishment involving, oh, the dress code, the content and length of my first play, various things I said or wrote, just where exactly I was at some times when I was supposed to be in other places and, finally, whether or not I was going to graduate. Now I see these kids doing this play and I’m glad for them — and at the same time, having sat in assemblies where I learned the worldview of some scattered segments of the parent population, I’m well aware of this principal’s no-win situation. Actually, his being “forced” to at least allow them to rehearse on campus may be the best thing that could have happened for all involved. Had he merely allowed the production to go forth, I have no doubt he would have gotten angry phone calls and emails, as well as letters published in the Burbank Leader (the Times’ “community newspaper,” which I guess means that the overall LA Times is not a community newspaper — a position I’ve begun to share), all from an outraged sliver of parents. It’s not noted in this news article — and how could it be? — that my son’s best friend is not in the play because he was afraid of his parents’ reaction. They are very religious, and very strict, and the principal is in the position of having to take that into consideration. As one high-school teacher recently told me, when certain reading material is assigned, the teacher can always count on upset parents calling.

That leads to an insidious self-censorship. “I’m not going to try out for this play because it’ll get me in trouble with my parents.” “I’m not going to assign this text, because I don’t want to do battle with parents right now.” “I can’t let them rehearse on campus, because I’m going to get angry parents showing up with pitchforks and torches.”

Every writer I know faces this sort of challenge as well. “I can’t write this — what will they think?” “I can’t put Bill’s story in there — what if Bill sees this?” Or, in my case, “Will my kids ever confuse these characters with me?” I like to think not — and plow on. Robert and Aline Kominsky-Crumb have explored their sexuality and their open marriage in their comic strips, at the same time with a running narrative wondering what their child would think of this when she got old enough to read it.

It’s easy — and right — to condemn the principal. Nobody likes small-mindedness or censorship.  And I’m glad the way this worked out:  The show goes on, and the high school is permitted, in a small way, to support it. But each of us every day makes choices, conscious or unconscious, about our public face versus our private face, and sometimes principles are tested by the exigencies of living with other people.

The first issue of Southern California Review is out.

Contents of this new journal include my play “The Fifth Administration,” as well as… literary contributions by other people. I haven’t had a chance to read all of it yet, but Kristina Sisco’s play “Gone…” is a terrific little gem that deserves many more productions, and the Ann Stafford prizewinning poem by Elisabeth Murawski is emotionally devastating. The journal is well worth your time and support. Click here to order.

A quick side note: A big thank-you again to Kimberly Glann for directing the premiere of “The Fifth Administration” in fall of 2004. Rereading the drafts that SCR’s scrupulous editor Annlee Ellingson sent me reinforced how much I learned about that play and its characters in working on the production with Kim. Case in point: After the Rumsfeld substitute breaks his aide’s leg in three places, the aide is dragged out screaming by that very leg. I’m not sure whose idea that was — perhaps Kim’s — but I’m sure glad it’s in there.

Remember this post? Mike Daisey responded to it here. If you’re of a mind to, go read that, then come back here.

Mr. Daisey accuses me of making a straw man argument, either by putting words in his mouth, or by drawing hyperbolic comparisons. (Hopefully, not as outrageous as this one.) Straw man arguments, though, set up false targets (hence, the straw man); the charge doesn’t stick when you’re hitting something relevant that is actually there. I’ll get to that part. But first, one of his responses I flat-out don’t get. He says:

“Actually, theater has been in retraction about 100 years in Western culture….”

I’m not sure what to make of this. One hundred years ago, here’s what was playing in New York theatres: a lot of revues and musicals (hm, not much has changed), as well as Molnar’s “The Devil.” Elsewhere in the land, it was either minstrel shows, carnival sideshows, or nothing. I would be astonished to think that Mike Daisey thinks this was the epitome of our theatre history, and can only conclude that he misspoke.
In response to my scoffing at his suggestion that the theatre would die, he writes:

“I reiterate, I’ve never expected, predicted or commented on the idea that theater will ‘die’. This is a straw man argument.”

It is technically true that he never said the theatre would die. However, the way he talks about it is in a way we would associate with being on life support — which often continues after brain death. So perhaps it depends upon one’s view of “death.” Because I’d rather be unplugged if I were in such a situation, to me flatline life support equals death. Supposing that Mr. Daisey feels otherwise and is entitled to his own opinion, I’ll cede the point. Where we do disagree is that he seems to feel that theatre is dying — not “going to die,” but dying, or ailing mightily — while I think that larger institutions are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the future of theatre, a future which lies with smaller theatres and troupes immune to the economic realities he bemoans.

One last point I’m going to take the time to redress (and excuse me for quoting at length; the bold, from his own blog, is my own words thrown back at me; the itals are his response):

“Eleven years ago at the RAT (Regional Alternative Theatre) Conference in New York City a bunch of attendees were offering dystopian views similar to Mr. Daisey’s of what was going to happen to theatre in America and what to do about it. Many of the prescriptions, like those of Mr. Daisey, were interesting and fun to talk about and utterly impracticable. Erik Ehn suggested trading bread for admission. Here’s what I know about bread: Most of it goes stale before anyone eats it. The birds in my back yard are well-fed indeed. Meanwhile, many of us who buy tickets find it more convenient to pay with a credit card than to carry around fresh home-baked bread. You see where I’m going with this.”

Look, if you honestly equate my plans for repositioning non-profit theater development efforts to use their resources to adopt wholesale the proven university model of creating lockbox endowments for “chair” positions in order to create ensemble positions for artists with a plan to pay for theater with bread……I’m speechless.

“If the main thrust of Mike Daisey’s ideas is related to audience development, then I’m with him. If it’s about finding ways to keep local artists tied to theatres, then I’m with him again — except, all over the land, they are already (just not in larger theatres).”

Well, I don’t know if I want the artists “tied” to the theaters, so much as the theaters should provide homes and workspaces for ensembles to inhabit, and frankly I don’t talk in any form about “audience development”, though I’d argue that done correctly needs to grow out of the continuity and community of letting artists back into those buildings, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.

The model Mike Daisey is espousing is precisely one that will “tie” theatre artists to theatres at which they will reside. I’m not sure how it couldn’t be so: When you pay someone a salary, you expect them to show up for work. Even Esa-Pekka Salonen, with his starting salary of $1.09 million in 1992 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was expected to show up and, you know, conduct. The model Mr. Daisey envisions might work well in, say, Arkansas (and this is no dig at Arkansas, a state I have a fondness for, and one that offered me my choice of theatres in Little Rock if only I’d go down to City Hall and pick one out), but it is precisely in those smaller communities that the salaried resident artist will be expected to be performing. That responsibility will, in effect, tie the artist to the theatre. Which I think is an interesting model, and one I might try one day in retirement, in a small-town community.

With regard to bread and bird feed and their connection to Mr. Daisey’s prescriptions, we are talking about economic models. I’m sorry that he didn’t appreciate the comparison, but here it is again: Erik Ehn’s idea about baking bread and exchanging that for theatre performance was impracticable. So, for the most part, are Mr. Daisey’s ideas. His sole example is of he and his wife supporting themselves these past eight years as a mini theatre company (a feat for which I congratulate them, truly). I’m not sure that this is akin to the model he extols — if anything, it is more entrepreneurial, and speaks to his and his wife’s savvy as business-artists. In the main, I’m unsure that the existing large-scale regional non-profit theatre model has a future (just as I’m decreasingly confident that most non-profit models have a future). Commercial theatre is doing just fine, on Broadway, on the West End, and in major cities around the globe. Small theatres are immune to the proclivities of the marketplace. It is the mid-sized that is endangered, just as most middle players in most economies of all sorts are endangered.

I wish that I could see Mike Daisey’s show next month when I’m in New York, but it will have closed. I share his passion for the theatre and his hopes for its future, and I’m interested in learning more about why he thinks what he thinks (as I understand it so far). And I agree with him that management models need to change: If you remove the word “theatre” from the discussion, the root causes apply to every cultural form undergoing radical change, from music to movies to publishing and beyond. The most foolish mistake would be to try to hold onto a past that’s already gone.

My friend, the playwright Mike Folie, emailed me this interview with monologist Mike Daisey, who offers ideas on reinvigorating the dying American theatre.

A couple of quick reactions:

1. Last I checked, the theatre had been dying for 2,000 years. For God’s sake, WHEN WILL IT JUST DIE????
2. Whenever that finally happens, somebody will just start a new one.
3. Eleven years ago at the RAT (Regional Alternative Theatre) Conference in New York City a bunch of attendees were offering dystopian views similar to Mr. Daisey’s of what was going to happen to theatre in America and what to do about it. Many of the prescriptions, like those of Mr. Daisey, were interesting and fun to talk about and utterly impracticable. Erik Ehn suggested trading bread for admission. Here’s what I know about bread: Most of it goes stale before anyone eats it. The birds in my back yard are well-fed indeed. Meanwhile, many of us who buy tickets find it more convenient to pay with a credit card than to carry around fresh home-baked bread. You see where I’m going with this.
4. If anything, in those 11 years I’ve seen more alternative theatres pop up all over the country. They are the future. They do what they want, when they want, even in the face of great indifference or unforeseen spectacular success, and there’s no stopping them. Are the artists making a lot of money in them? No — but the actors on-stage at the Public and the Mark Taper Forum aren’t making a lot of money there, either; they tend to be movie actors on the way up or on the way down. These alternative theatres, meanwhile, have a DIY ethic that will seem familiar to anyone who produces a print-on-demand book or podcast or blog — they put product out inexpensively and often and attract niche audiences. And this is fine — because more and more, everything is a niche.

If the main thrust of Mike Daisey’s ideas is related to audience development, then I’m with him. If it’s about finding ways to keep local artists tied to theatres, then I’m with him again — except, all over the land, they are already (just not in larger theatres).

Let’s make an agreement to check back in on the state of the American theatre in another 11 years — 2019 — and see how we’re doing. I say this, by the way, on the afternoon of Moving Arts’ 15th anniversary celebration. Almost every single week of those 15 (and a half) years, we’ve been going out of business. Some day, it’s going to happen for real.

April 24: (Yes, that’s tonight.) I’ll be giving what promises to be an action-packed and fun-filled talk about last month’s state Democratic Convention (and I’m only promising the “action-packed” and “fun-filled” part if I can finish loading photos and images in time to build my presentation). I’m speaking to the Burbank Democratic Club, it starts at 7 p.m., and you’re invited to join us. Here’s the address: McCambridge Park, Room 2, 1515 N Glenoaks Blvd, Burbank, CA 91504.

April 28: It’s the 15th Anniversary of the theatre I co-founded — and you’re invited! Moving Arts’ 15th anniversary celebration includes a celebrity reading of the show that launched the theatre, “Now This… Then What?” written by — you saw it coming — me, and directed by one of the best directors in town, Daniel Henning of the Blank Theatre. Here’s the info:

“NOW THIS… THEN WHAT?”

written by Lee Wochner

directed by Daniel Henning (The Blank Theatre Company)

WITH GUEST STARS

MARCIA WALLACE
(The Bob Newhart Show, The Simpsons)

REBECCA FIELD
(October Road, Trapped in the Closet)

KURT CACERES
(Prison Break, American Family)

Legendary Star of Westerns and Horror Films,
CLU GULAGER

(The Killers, The Virginians)
at
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N. Fairfax Ave,
Los Angeles, CA 90036

7pm — Reception with Silent Auction
Open Bar and Hors D’Oeuvres
8pm — Performance
followed by Coffee and Dessert

Live music provided by
piano player Brian Kinler

Admission is $50
Tickets available online at movingarts.org and by
phone at 323-666-3259.

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW.

Can’t make it? PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION AND SUPPORT
MOVING ARTS.

May 23 – June 1: I will be teaching at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. (As well as visiting the local pool halls and cigar bars and raising whatever ruckus is to be raised in Omaha, Nebraska.) Here’s the workshop schedule — and you’ll see that my first session is “2B,” but my final session isn’t “or not 2B” — and here’s the home page for registration and info. If you are one of the playwriting folk and coming to this conference, drop me an email.

June 1 – June 5: I’ll be in Philadelphia to see Bill Irwin’s new show, and dropping in on NYC to visit theatre friends and southern New Jersey to sponge off my mother’s cooking and to visit two important landmarks: The Black Cat Inn and Smith’s Clam Bar.

June 6th – July something: My play “About the Deep Woods Killer” opens at Studio/Stage in Los Angeles as part of Moving Arts’ umpteenth one-act festival. More about that later.

More dates and places as the summer unfolds.

Tonight in a discussion moderated by a funny and fannish Matt Groening at the Writer’s Guild, “Sopranos” creator David Chase was hit with two recurring and predictable questions: Whatever happened to the Russian who escapes into my old stomping grounds in the “Pine Barrens” episode, and, in the words of a misshapen middle-aged woman who seems to have sniffed too much bleach, “That ending — what’s the deal with that?” (I told my friend Terence that when his play “Tangled” opens in June, we’re going to make and pass out t-shirts that say “‘Tangled’ — What’s the deal with that?”)

Chase took the bait on one of these questions, and passed on the other. I think there’s a lesson here for any writer who’s ever in a discussion with his audience.

Here is what dramatists should not do in audience talkback situations:

• In a developmental reading, do not entertain ideas from the audience about how to “fix” or “improve” your play. Let your common sense prevail: If the person offering advice could have written the play better, he already would be doing so rather than offering to do yours for free and for no credit.
• Do not explain your play. Either they didn’t get it because someone didn’t do their job — either you, or the actors, or the director — or because even though everyone did their job, they still just didn’t get it. Explaining it merely assert that it needs to be explained. It doesn’t. It needs to be performed, and that should be the limit explanation.
• Similarly, don’t fill in back story or what would have happened next. It’s in the play, or it isn’t. If it belongs in the play, then put it in. If you don’t, there’s a good reason to leave it out. Filling people in with coulda-wouldas risks making these missing elements seem like shouldas.

That’s pretty much the advice I give to students facing an audience Q&A for the first time. What should a playwright do? Make the theatre or university or foundation or whatever brought you out happy that they did so. That means being charming and funny. Maybe they’ll even have you back.

While David Chase wisely passed on explaining the ending of “The Sopranos,” I’m sad to say that he told us exactly what happened to the Russian, none of which was ever scripted or shot. Boy Scouts find him in the woods, get him back to a hospital, his mob boss gets him back to his native Russia, and there he remains, brain-damaged. I don’t know if Chase was putting us on or not, but this inelegant connect-the-dots outcome, completely lacking in subtlety and wit, will no doubt never leave my mind — and has now forever ruined my favorite episode. I share it with you as a cautionary tale. Some things are better left as they are.

1. In Sunday’s Times, Scott Timberg offers this piece about three youngish men with the audacity to launch print journals. Timberg is a good writer and someone with an eye for important details. Which to me confirms that it was a copy editor who captioned a photo of Keith Gessen on the jump page as “Keith Gesson.” The first rule of journalism: Get people’s names right.
2. Evidently, at least part of the LA Times website is on Eastern time. I say that because every night sometime after 9 PM I’m able to play the next day’s crossword puzzle. If your own website operates in a different time zone, I don’t think you’re building a strong case that your paper is that important. Sorry.

Just because I didn’t blog yesterday or today doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about what to blog about. So here are the things I thought about blogging about that I didn’t blog about:

1. That it now occurs to me that counting students, thesis students, workshop members, private dramaturgy clients, and me, I’m knee-deep in 19 different new plays — and exactly one of them is by me.
2. That I’m reading three books — and not at the moment writing either of the two I’m working on.
3. That “John Adams” on HBO leaves untouched the great question: How someone like Paul Giamatti gets someone like Laura Linney. And then leaves her behind for years at a time.
4. That yes, I can do a baked dijon flounder at home and have it come out well — but it will never be the baked dijon flounder at Smith’s Clam Bar in Somers Point, New Jersey.
5. That while Eliot Spitzer is a hypocrite who needed to go, I have to wonder again how many violent crimes could be prevented and how many roads and bridges and schools rebuilt and able-bodied productive non-violent people released from prison to help feed the economy if we legalized prostitution and decriminalized marijuana and taxed them both.
6. That Wizard World was in Los Angeles this weekend and I didn’t go because Comic-Con comes but once a year and Wizard World ain’t it.
7. That the Fed bailed out Bear Stearns, and it was those “free marketers” who cheered. In a free market, failing businesses fail. We had NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard); now we have NIMBA (Not In My Bank Account). By the way, the Fed funds that backed up Bear Stearns came from the Treasury — which means they were tax money. Which means you and I bailed out Bear Stearns. And yet we never got any of those windfall profits. This seems like something potentially more worthy of a federal investigation than call-girl rings.

I’m sure more will follow as I think about it.

Just today I was complaining again about the one unfortunate constant in David Mamet’s otherwise often quite marvelous dramas: the secretly scheming woman. We see it in “Speed the Plow,” we see it in “Heist,” we see it in “Oleanna,” we see it in “The Verdict,” we see it in “The Edge,” we see it again and again; when it’s unclear who the villain is, look to the woman in the cast. Those men may be crooks, but somehow they have better morals than those women whose intention is to emasculate them.

Then this afternoon I came across this piece in the Village Voice, in which Mr. Mamet’s other, less-visible, fault reappears: that of setting up false targets so he can easily knock them down. In this case, he equates liberalism with being brain-dead and attacks liberals for arguments I don’t hear them making.

(And you will note that I use “them” as the pronoun for liberals, rather than “us.” Please don’t think I dislike Mamet’s thin argument because my own group is being attacked. It isn’t. But I do wonder at how negative the connotations of “liberal” have become, when once there was a fine tradition of liberal humanism that cut across the political spectrum on these shores. Where once liberals were strong and proud standard-bearers of the improvability of the human condition, now they are cast as appeasers to tyrants and abettors of the disenchanted and ungrateful. In other words, they seem weak — which may be why the famously macho Mamet has jumped ship.)

Mostly when I listen to liberals I don’t hear a nostalgia for Che Guevara. What I hear is concern over a loss of civil liberties (an issue I would think both conservative and liberal and an issue, therefore, unreservedly patriotic and “American”), a bemoaning of the misconduct and malpractice of government (Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), and a great economic unease as enormous stockpiles of wealth are slushed over to an often incompetent few presiding over the ruin of major corporations while hundreds of thousands suffer from their daily mismanagement. If those complaints are liberal, then statistically we are all liberal. To me, a believer in free markets and friendly relations, someone who chokes up over the founding notions behind this nation and wishes we would get back to them, these complaints are commonsensical.

When liberals attack Rush Limbaugh, whom Mamet almost seems to embrace in this strange essay, surely they recognize Limbaugh as the opportunistic showman he is. (Let us always remember that the cowardly Limbaugh is hiding behind that microphone in his broadcast booth every day; if you were one of the few who saw his short-lived television show and his actual confrontations with a live audience, you will never forget the terror in his eyes and the timidity in his voice.) No, what irks leftists and, well, me about Limbaugh is rather what he represents: the dumbing-down of the dialogue and the debasement of the platform. As incredible as this may seem, many people actually listen to Rush Limbaugh and think he makes sense. Worse, the tenor of how he says what he says feeds an indignation that is misdirected against the sufferers rather than the perpetrators. And that, too, is what Mamet’s essay at times seems to do.

If David Mamet found himself caught up in groupthink and extricated himself, I’m delighted. We should celebrate that; it seems like one of our founding principles. But if he has left behind one groupthink to surrender to another, he hasn’t gone anywhere new.