Yes, I’m producing two readings, two nights in a row. (And I hope you can join me)

Despite her successful career, Katie is a bit lost. Half Caucasian and half Japanese, and cut off from both parents at an early age, she isn’t sure who she is. But a forced reconciliation with her crazy mother — and then a roadtrip to visit Grandmother — bring her face-to-face with the women she was eager to leave behind.

“Lies My Mother Told Me,” a dark comedy by Connie Yoshimura, receives a staged reading this Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Studio/Stage in Hollywood.

Please join me for this free event, with catered reception afterward. I’m the dramaturge on this project and am eager to hear your input.

“Lies My Mother Told Me” by Connie Yoshimura

directed by Joe Ochman

with

Alice Ensor, Helen Slayton-Hughes, and Linde Gibb

Studio/Stage is located at:
520 North Western Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90004

Click here for directions.

What: rehearsed reading of “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Connie Yoshimura, with reception

When: Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Studio/Stage, 520 North Western Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90004

Please join us.

This weekend I’m producing readings of two new plays by Connie Yoshimura, a playwright I work with as dramaturge.

Please come join us.

Here’s Sunday night’s offering: “Open House.” (Monday night’s reading is “Lies My Mother Told Me”; more about that shortly. And yes, for my purposes, “Monday” is part of the weekend. Hmph.)

What happens when everyone in the neighborhood suspects the worst about you?

That’s one of the questions explored in “Open House,” a new play by Connie Yoshimura receiving a staged reading this Sunday, March 9 at 7 p.m. at the Hollywood Court Theatre.

Please join me for this free event, with catered reception afterward. I’m the dramaturge on this project and am eager to hear your input.

“Open House” by Connie Yoshimura

directed by Mark Kinsey Stephenson

with

Carolyn Hennesy, Ronnie Steadman, Maria Lay, Kip Adams, Liza de Weerd, Laura Buckles, Richard Ruyle, Angie Hauk, Toby Meuli, and Rick Sparks

Hollywood Court Theatre at Hollywood United Methodist Church

(the church with the large AIDS ribbon on the tower)

6817 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood CA 90028

Click here for directions.

There is a large free parking lot. Park in the lot, then enter through the gates in front into the courtyard. Walk up the ramp to your left. Go to your right along the breezeway and you’ll see a set of doors to your left. Go up the stairs to the second floor, turn right, and you’ll be at the theatre. We will post signs directing you.

What: rehearsed reading of “Open House” by Connie Yoshimura, with reception

When: Sunday, March 9 at 7 p.m.

Where: Hollywood Court Theatre, 6817 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood

Please join me.

Tonight my son Lex and I went to screening and talkback on campus at USC. The guest was David Simon, executive producer and creator of “The Wire,” which we are sad is ending its five-season run next Sunday.

As LA Times television critic Howard Rosenberg noted in his introduction, “The Wire” is far too complicated to synopsize easily, but if you haven’t watched the show, let’s just say it’s about the long-ranging and wide-reaching implications of the war on drugs and all the institutions it touches. It is not a show that an optimist could embrace.

Admidst talk of the show’s themes, Simon recounted the latest statistics on our country’s prison industrial complex: 1 in 100 people in this country are in prison, 1 in 9 black men in this country are in prison, 1 in 4 black men are in some way under the aegis of the enforcement or corrections. We are the most imprisoned people in history.

It’s the war on drugs that has gotten us here.

“No politician in our lifetime will touch this,” he said, “Not Obama, not Clinton, not McCain. The only thing that will end it is massive civil disobedience.”

His plan is this: That if he ever winds up on a jury in a drug case where no one was harmed, he plans to vote not guilty. If asked, he’ll admit during voir dire that victimless drug crims shouldn’t be prosecuted. If everyone did this, he said, and the system couldn’t empanel a jury for possession cases, then the system would have to adapt.

That’s his proposal to end the war on drugs: not to play the game.

He says his fellow writer-producers on “The Wire” have already signed on, and tonight he was spreading the word to the 300 or so of us.

Now I’ve posted it here.

Thoughts?

I’ve written plenty of plays, but at least so far I’ve never written a novel. Tonight may have helped me understand why. Novelists work in solitude. Playwrights work with actors and directors. To me, that feels better.

I know a number of novelists, and I have enormous respect for what they do. But it doesn’t relate all that closely to what I do.

What I do is write a play, or agree to direct a play, and then get together with some actors, and proceed from there.

That process is collaborative. Obviously. It’s also generative. Other people bring other things — like ideas, and excitement. And, sometimes, bad ideas, and baggage. But when you’ve got a group of people you trust, talented people you have developed a relationship with and who have developed relationships with each other, that provides a foundation. Novelists tell me they start all over again every time. Theatre people start with the foundation of other people.

So tonight we had readings of two plays in progress from my private workshop. The plays, by Ross Tedford Kendall and Stephanie Walker, were strong and funny and felt lived (as opposed to written). Admittedly I may be biased, but I think these plays should be produced. Ross has put his play through several complete redrafts — and I commended him for both his patience and his tenacity — and has now arrived at what I’ll call a point of departure. It should depart from the development process and into the production process. Stephanie’s play features beautiful writing and subtle character work. Both readings benefited from the interplay you find in a place where people with similar ethics are committed to achieving the same goal. Not all of these actors may have worked together before, but there were so many interwoven relationships in this theatre tonight that it really felt like a family celebration.

All of us grew up with a family, whether that family was large, or just one person. I’m not so naive as to think that family is always a good thing; there are bad families. But when we think of what we want from a family, I certainly felt that tonight at the theatre I work in and from the people I work with, and that is something I doubt a novelist ever gets.

Stephen Dunn, my undergrad writing teacher, told me, “Suspense is cheap.” I knew what he meant — that providing insight into human lives and poking at the fabric of existence is a higher literary calling, and is what separates Tolstoy from Louis L’Amour. But I also thought it was an easy thing for a poet to say. Suspense isn’t a weapon that is kept in the poetical armory.

Dramatists have a greater eye for suspense — and for where storylines are going. For most of my life, I’ve known where most stories are going, so for me suspense has been cheap and insight more highly valued. I had little doubt where “Anna Karenina” was headed, the novel or the eponymous heroine, especially because I’d heard in advance about the final meeting with a train. That never mattered because every page signaled the miracle of creation. I was enrapt by Levin’s struggle to understand himself and his place on his land and in the cosmos, and sick over Anna’s dreadful mistake in following her heart and losing everything else. The suspense, such as it was, didn’t matter.

Last year after he gave a talk, Brad Meltzer handed out copies of some of his books, provided gratis by his publisher in what I thought was a nice gesture. I decided to read “The Millionaires.” Was it entertaining? Plenty; it was the reading equivalent of a cocaine rush. Was it suspenseful? To a degree — although again, I could see where all of it was going (and that, in true Agatha Christie fashion, the secret villain was someone who had already falsified his own death). Has it left any footprints on my thinking? Let’s just say that although I gobbled down all 547 pages of the book, a week later I couldn’t remember one iota of it. Whereas I still can’t drum out of my head Chaucer’s cook with the ulcerating knee who happens to stir up a wonderful blancmange, and I read that once 25 years ago.

Last week when we were watching “The Wire,” I said to my son, “Omar isn’t going to make it out of this season.” Omar is the character we like the best, and I could see his demise coming. On tonight’s episode, Omar was hobbling around the streets of inner-city Baltimore taking out Marlo’s muscle. Once I noticed that there were two such scenes, I knew tonight was Omar’s night. (Because the third such scene would complete the movement.) “Tonight’s when he gets it,” I said. Lex said, “NO!” Then Omar stepped into a liquor store to buy a pack of smokes and I said, “This is the scene,” and then he got it in the head from behind. Another smoking-related death.

“WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS RIGHT?!?!?!!?” Lex screamed.

Because suspense is cheap: It’s easily unpacked and solved. Forecasting Omar’s death didn’t ruin the drama because the best drama isn’t about suspense. Suspense is just the vehicle.

Nice piece on Slate.com on the late, great comic-book writer Steve Gerber. But writer Grady Hendrix gets one thing wrong when writing, “[Gerber] delighted in sneaky juvenile wordplay—for part of his run on Man-Thing the book was called Giant Size Man-Thing.”

Yes, great line, and no, Hendrix is not the first to point this out. But Marvel had an entire line of “Giant-Size” something-or-others, including Giant-Size Avengers and Giant-Size Defenders — indeed, there were no fewer than 29 in all (each, you’ll note, with a hyphen between “Giant” and “Size,” which pleases me greatly). So this wasn’t any wordplay on Gerber’s part; this was the result of the regular title selling well enough to merit a quarterly edition as well. But I doubt that would explain the existence of “Giant-Size Kid Colt,” and my algebra skills aren’t up to the task of solving “Giant-Size Marvel Triple Action.”

By the way, the issue above was the one most prized in my collection. I have a letter published inside. I was 14. Ironically I now relate to it even more, but in a completely different way — most nights, I am The Winky Man, wandering around my bedroom creating chaos in my sleep.

I just got in from the memorial service for my writing teacher, Bill Idelson, whom I talked about here. The service was held at the Writer’s Guild Theatre, and let me say that even in death Bill continues to be a great teacher. Here’s advice we all should heed in thinking about the service we would want:

1. Get Carl Reiner to emcee. (You may recall that Bill wrote for “The Dick van Dyke Show” and played a recurring role. Hence the connection to Carl Reiner.) Mr. Reiner is warm, humane, slyly funny and wonderfully off-the-cuff. He didn’t miss one opportunity. Perhaps my favorite bit was the suggestion of specific edits after viewing the tribute film.
2. In every photo of you, make it look like you were having the time of your life. Apparently, every day was the time of Bill’s life.
3. Pose an attractive spouse with you in those photos, and enjoy her company in every shot.
4. Surround yourself with interesting and amusing people like Norman Corwin and Ray Bradbury and various successful former students and performers like Ann Guilbert who will show up and tell funny stories about you.
5. Turn out to have been a World War II flying ace, someone determined to fight even though the Navy has given you a p.r. job so you can keep working as an actor. Pay for private flying lessons yourself so they can’t deny you. Then fly night fighter missions over Japan and get awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals. Then don’t tell people, so that even longtime friends learn this only from reading your obit.
6. If you’re going to have children, do a good job with them so that they say things like “I won the Dad lottery,” a claim that will be supported by all the photos and the video.

In summation: great service, impressive life.

It was a pleasure watching clips from “The Andy Griffith Show,” which Bill also wrote for, with a large audience. It’s easy to forget just how wonderful Don Knotts was — as well as the material he had to work with. Much was made of Bill’s writing advice to students over the years. Last night in class I was talking about “verisimilitude” — a word that puzzled my students and that Bill would have winced at — but really I was echoing Bill said: “Keep it real.” (Or, more literally, “make a simulation of the truth.”) One of his other bits of advice repeated tonight was this: Never mortgage your story for a joke. The story is more important, and the joke won’t be that funny. That’s exactly right. If you want more of this, you might click here and order Bill’s book — the core of his workshop, captured on paper.

There’s great wisdom in this piece by Marsha Norman (writer of “‘night, Mother,” which, coincidentally, I’m teaching from tonight). I especially like Ms. Norman’s insight that smart playwrights are smarter than critics about where fault lies. I still read the critics — sometimes — but no, I don’t heed them, not really. Playwrights can often hear the play that poor direction has muffled, but critics, who often have limited working knowledge of the theatre, can’t knowledgeably separate these creative roles.

Thanks to EM Lewis for bringing this piece to my attention.

My friends Doug and Stephanie Hackney are on a permanent tour of the world. Lucky for them and us, the world is a large place. That way they get to upload awe-inspiring photos like these. Click here to see their photos from the furthest tip of the world and to read Doug’s simple, striking, declarative narrative. Favorite line: “But as the mountains shook off their cloak of nighttime clouds, the day looked more promising.” That approaches Hemingway.

A professor of rhetoric digs at the meaning beneath Obamalingua.