Experiences in the Training Workshops

All last week I had gone to the training for Playwrite. There was more information on neuroplasticity which I find to be amazing and inspiring.

I had this weird experience in the playwrite training with one of the standing meditations that we did. We stood with our arms like a bowl or like that of a dancer, with our knees bent, and our eyes closed than we did deep breathing. As we stood there, I had thought about how I felt oddly comfortable. At one point the woman who was leading a portion of the workshop adjusted my body, and I felt this surge of anxiety move up my sternum as if it had been sucked through a straw. I wondered what it was that had set off the sudden anxious feeling when I heard the man next to me beginning to breath quick and panicked. He sounded as if he would start screaming any moment and I had this thought, “I hope I didn’t give that to him. I hope my anxiety didn’t just jump into his body.” Another thing that had happened as I was doing a writing exercise, was that I had a memory recall. This was something simple, but significant to me. I was writing about a memory of an emotional event that took place when I was 13 or 14. It is a story I have written and told many times, but this time I wanted to focus on the fine details. I have memory blocks. In fact there are large portions of my life missing. Thinking about the details tend to exhaust me, which gives me a very good idea of how the kids must feel when doing this stuff. I was going through the memory event, and at a part when I pick up a phone, I asked my self what the phone looked like, and it was at that moment that I remembered I had a Garfield phone. It seems minor but the memory recalls are exactly what much of the writing is about – the other details of our lives the few things that we found important to us individually, a smell, a taste a touch some detail all your own.

I have been pretty bad about writing in general, but today I did manage to get a new poem out and after posting this short post I am crawling back into the pages of my short story which i need to have ready for submission by the end of this month.

In a few days I leave for California to visit my mom.

Yeah up and running!

The computer gods smiled at me and brought my computer back to life. After taking it apart and drying it out than putting it back together again it turned on as if it had just taken a week-long bath. Sweet thing. So I’m back- ha ha!

I didn’t do any writing last week, as I was too busy moping, which is ridiculous since I can use a pen and paper, but feeling sorry for yourself you know… it’s so productive. Anyway, I do need to get my ass back into the writing gear as two important things are coming up. One is the Glimmertrain new fiction writer’s contest and the second is the much coveted A Room of Her Own, contest/grant. Glimmertrain means I need to make sure I feel that my short story is as polished and perfect as I can see and AROHO means pulling out the neglected novel and getting back to work.

In Playwrite news, last week the kids watched their plays performed by actors at the Theatre! Theater!. The room was packed with highschool kids, a smattering of adults and a friend of mine from work. What I didn’t know was that I was also signed up to act. So when I got there I was informed that I would be playing the part of a Hot pink and black high top converse. Can it ever be better than that? In all of my internal conflict with the program I also really enjoy working with the kids, so I have no idea where I am going to go with this but I will be heading into more training this evening.

In more theatre news: Inviting Desire will be doing another very short run later this month to introduce a new theatre aphrodisiactic writing and theatre workshop to create a new group of monologues for Eleanor O’Brien’s project. I will be returning to my roles again. Which should be fun.

Lastly, I got two checks in the mail, one for the tour I did in Canada and the other for working Playwrite. It is amazing but this month art is paying my rent. I made money acting, teaching and writing. In fact the past three months much of my income has come from art. I can not express how gratifying it is to say that I am finally supplementing a portion of my living income with art. I want more and more of this in my future. It is a positive reinforcement that I am moving in the right direction and that my work is valuable enough to be rewarded with a living income, even though it is hard and I have NO IDea how I am going to deal with my taxes this year. God.

The Straw that Broke…

I wont be updating these post for quite sometime. I had been working on a writing project last night, and as I reached for a paper I knocked a full glass of water over my only possession my computer. To some this may be an expensive annoyance but for me its devastating. Aside from loosing a loved one to death this is in the top five of the worst things to happen for me. This year about four of my top five have happened. I know it’s just a computer, but as a writer it is my main tool, my main resource. Yes,  I have lost almost all of my work. I have a hard copy of the short story I have worked on for about two months, and some of my novel saved on an external drive, but I have nothing to work on. I live very much hand to mouth. The computer I was able to buy when I was a student so in truth it isn’t even paid for since I still owe for student loans. I don’t think I can begin to express what a blow to me this is with out just sounding like I’m whining. The amount I make at the store and the fact that I can not do writing gigs makes getting a new computer nearly impossible. I’m broken completely broken and I haven’t even begun to focus on what I’ve lost. My life has just gotten to be about 50% harder and I’m just not thrilled for the next portion of my life, you know, it’s been too hard for too long.

I’m sorry it does sound like I am whining. It just it was all my work you know, my future all gone and it is very hard to be seen in the electronic world with out the main tool. I still sound like I’m whining.

So, anyway, I have the last day of the workshop tomorrow. I’m sure it will be wonderful. Alright, till I can write again.

The Richness of Human Capacity

The playwrite workshop has ended, but that is not what this post is about except to say that I think my writer came up with a great play and I am excited and proud to watch it performed on Tuesday. Plus, she was so thrilled to have done the work and she worked really hard and it was nice to see someone feel pride in something they created. I really enjoyed meeting her and working with her and I hope her the best in her life and future.

Compared to most of my long-winded posts, this one will be short. I have posted this lecture by Ken Robinson on Why schools kill creativity. This is a subject dear to my heart and I think it is delivered well and in an entertaining manner. I am an avid fan of TED and I watch a new lecture every night. I would probably post them all, but right now since I work somewhat in education and because I think knowledge is the true power, and that creativity is a major part of knowledge, plus it is close to my heart as I am a creative and I found “traditional education” difficult and demeaning (at times), I decided to post this one. It is 19:21 so find yourself 20 mins and enjoy.

Workshop: 2nd week, 2nd day- Emotional

The second day of the one-on-one workshop was tough. Tough for both myself and for my writer. It again leaves me wondering if I should or want to be doing this, again I think, I am not a therapist and I don’t want to be a therapist. Not that there was therapeutic digging but after a series of questions we hit a trigger and my writer began to cry. My impulse was to change the subject or be comforting but it was awkward because we don’t know each other, plus this is the “good” stuff so to speak the stuff that goes on the page. There is something a little insensitive and sadistic about it. I know what this is all about and I know my writer does too, but it still feels uncomfortable. I think back to my own writing and how many times I have sobbed over a paper or broke into tears after reading a particularly powerful paragraph, that may or may not be recounting actual events, but I know the truth of where the emotion comes from. It comes from my life. Same with my writer, her character’s emotions will be coming from a place that is real. From the truth of her life.

But, sometimes I wonder… do we really have to do this? Is it really good art to have to connect to it? Can the audience tell if a piece is disconnected or connected? I bet there are some pretty successful  writers out there who are not connected to their characters, and some actors that just act and don’t pull from life experience.

I know I am having a difficult time with this because I feel a disconnect within my own life, and I don’t want to talk about feelings, or emotions. I’m beginning to feel that being disconnected is not such a bad thing, and getting in touch with your hurt is a load of crap. The idea of being numb and distant seems attractive to me. This desire to be seen to be known, what’s the point? But I can’t guide my writer through her piece and successfully get those emotions that were flying wild into writable actions if I am not right there with her and connected and paying attention to the feelings in my own life.

I really like my writer, I think she is awesome, and will be an awesome adult (which she basically is since I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t seem to emotionally develop beyond 20) but I don’t think this is the right place for me. I wonder if this will be one of those situations where I see the production and every moment of discomfort and tears will be worth it. Like some after school movie or something? Is this what life is all about? I will admit, I am envious too. I feel like I’ve had very little help in my creative life, and I wish I had someone to guide me through my work and keep pushing me to finish a project. I know you have to take control of yourself, but like my novel that I’ve ditched, no one cares that it gets done, no one is on my ass about it so if I feel like it isn’t worth working on I can easily throw it away. Sure maybe ten, twenty years from now I’ll regret never finishing it, but who cares? I mean what does it matter? These kids may feel the same way, but we are there pushing them saying – you matter- your work matters- you finish because I wont let you regret this ever. I can do this for myself, but it is tiring and after a while it really doesn’t seem to matter.

See this! See this internal struggle? Coaching and encouraging someone to strive to be the best they can and to write and to believe in themselves while at the same time not having any faith in my own ability as a writer. Shakespeare was right wasn’t he, about the world a stage and us merely players? Merely.

A mighty exhausting Workshop

Today’s workshop went really well, but I am so tired. I have a great student/writer (I’ll be calling her writer from now on since that is what we call them in the workshop). About 2 1/2 hours into the writing process I was exhausted and my writer was exhausted but we pushed through the final half hour and got some great work done.

I should elaborate on the workshop more. I know I have spent more time writing about how I feel, which is part of the purpose of the blog, but I also feel I need to do the workshop justice by describing it in action so that you can get more out of the posts. Plus, it’s an interesting process.

It’s two weeks long, as I might have mentioned before, and the first week is four days then the second week is five days, then the following week we have a performance day. The goal is that each student write and then direct a play.

The first week is about setting boundaries, guidelines and understanding of how the process is going to work, along with getting time to build trust and for each coach to work with each student, so both student and coach can see how they work together. There is generally equal number of coaches to writers although we often have an extra coach to work as what is called a floater- someone to help out if a coach or writer finds themselves stuck.

The first day we stand in a circle: coach/writer/coach/writer and we learn a game called popcorn. In this game you get eye contact then you simultaneously clap hands and send the clap around the circle. It is about connecting and getting eye contact of course but as we all get better and faster through out the weeks we add more tricks like double claps or two claps going at the same time. We talk about respect and what it is and how we respect each other in the workshop. Then we talk about performance. Two of the coaches come up to act a short two line play called five bucks- which is really boring and the kids talk about what is needed to make the scene more interesting. Then there is the first break where a writer and coach work together doing the “car” which I had mentioned in the earlier post. We add more games, like a name gesture game and the zip game. Then two new coaches come up to perform a scene from Death of a Salesman and afterwards they dissect it, to find the conflicts, internal and external, the histories, the stakes etc. A final actor comes up to perform Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be,” and we dig deeper into internal conflict and complex character development. Lastly, we break up into new pairs and write a quick play between two inanimate objects. As a group we read their histories and wants, fears, secrets and conflicts and all the writers were provided with the same first two lines, then with their coaches they write the rest of the dialogue and then we all sit in the circle and we, the coaches read the plays. That is just day one.

Day two is a lot of the same games but we also do a game where we all walk around the room as an animal. Later with a new pairing of coaches the writers dictate to the coach in first person about their animal. As coaches it is our job to pull out more detail, more emotional drive, hidden, motivation and personal connection to the character. It is a game of 100 questions, we all get tired and it is just for 30 mins. Day three is more of the same games, than another walking game where we play that we are an object in nature and then off with a new coach to repeat the same question answer and design game with the object in nature. Day four is more of the same but now we are an object that we may use in daily life and again the writer goes off with a new coach and we do 100 mill questions. In between, we all have private writes and we also play a machine game where we all work as a machine till it breaks down. Once that game is over and discussed the writer dictates to the coach (coach writes everything) about a real time in their life when things were going well but suddenly everything seemed to break down and then change. Then we all take a break because all this thinking and delving and writing and connecting is exhausting.

Week two- A coach is paired with one writer and that coach and writer will work one on one together for the entire week. This leads me to today.

Day one with my writer, and we sat down for three hours, with just one 10 min break. We went through everything in her notebook bit by bit, pulling out what was strong, what was active, what was interesting, what had connection. There was a lot of writing to go through and we covered it with a fine tooth comb. Our goal was to pick two of the three characters from the previous weeks sketchs that we were going to choose for her play. We didn’t get to this. Which was fine because we got into serious detail and questions about the other two characters and by the time we got to the third I was loosing steam and energy. My writer was great because I was beginning to forget how to spell or write and she said, “You’re doing great.” We decided that it would be better for her to think over night on her characters and then we are going to tackle the third character tomorrow and then choose.

It is a really taxing process. In order to have truly interesting believable characters the writer has to drill down to the core of the character, make it real. And, the best way to do that is to connect it to real events in your life- you don’t need to record the events but you want to honestly capture the emotions and have your characters act in a true action in order to engage an audience. Most writers and performers know this, but when it comes down to the heart of the work many of us don’t want to go there. I find this to be true for myself from time to time, I mean its taken me months to write my novel and two months to get to the heart and truth of a 13 page short story, and I hardly drill myself for a solid three hours. Here I am sitting with my young writer and I am on her, pushing her to go deeper to think specific and to touch into her personal, fears, wants and secrets. It’s pretty hardcore.

It is hard for me to contain my excitement about seeing what she and all the other writers create because you don’t get this far without pulling out some great work.

Week two of Workshop and things unrealted

Today starts the beginning of the second week of playwrite.

Last night I was sent the name of my writer/student. All the kids are awesome so I had no concern about who I work with one on one. The other coaches talk about this week being the tough week. It’s funny all the talk about tough. I will admit I have some strange aversion to certain things, and I’m not sure why, but I do know it is my problem. After each workshop all the coaches stand around and give a little feedback about how it went, and how they felt, and everyone is just so stoic and serious, and speaking with soft voices, and for some reason I get irritated and think what the hell am I? Am I coach or a shrink? Then I feel like slapping everyone. Not the students the coaches. I’m not sure what my problems is, but, I recognize that this is my problem; odd buttons are getting pushed and I’m not sure why. All that said I do, recognize that there is difficulty in this workshop. Not the students themselves as this group is open and excited to be a part of playwrite making the process easy, but the biggest challenge is that many of the students already have a story in mind and a preconceived ending making it difficult to get to the heart or the meat of the truth of a story. This is difficult at any age.

Some of my favorite moments from last week’s workshop: We did this trust exercise called driving the car. I was paired with a student and he put his hands on my shoulder and then I was to close my eyes as that student guided me blinded around the room. I had complete trust in this kid and it was the craziest sensation. I don’t know if I ever have allowed myself to just melt into someone’s hands and let them guide me. It was complete relaxation and floating. It was also amusing as I could hear the boy  who was guiding me giggling and then whispering, “phew, that was a hard one,” as he guided me through a particularly tight spot. I also liked working with another student on an exercise called the map. The student draws a map of their earliest home and it is their time to just talk away and you merely guide them by asking a few questions. My student was a bright young woman who was detail oriented and very animated.

Playwrite also works with youth who are troubled and I can get an understanding why some of the more troubled youth may have a hard time with certain aspects of this workshop, (the intimacy, the attention to detail, the emotional connections or reconnection) but this group is so ready to write and to get down to the heart of work that it has been truly enjoyable. But, I’m lying if I don’t say it is exhausting. If I am not all there (which I wasn’t Thursday- because I’m human and I come with all my issues too) it can be harder for me, because I have to be constantly focused and listening and surprisingly that can be challenging.

Unrelated:

I saw Where the Wild Things Are and I was surprised at how intense it was. I would not bring my kids to that movie. There is very little dialogue, just like in the book. The way the movie is shot I was immediately struck with an overwhelming sense of loneliness and stress. I really liked the movie and I would watch it several times because there was a lot in there but for kids, under twelve I wouldn’t bring them. Mainly I think it could bore them. I don’t have kids so what opinion do I have on what children should see? Well none, but I saw several people with kids leave and I had heard other parents say they would not take their kids to see it. I have some instinctive kid receptors. Besides if I’m a 36 year old adult uncomfortable and feeling lonely and sad by watching the movie, I’m pretty sure the uber receptive kids will get the same impression.

Also unrelated, I stayed up watching TED videos. Every once in a while I geek out on these talks. I watched Dave Eggers, mainly because I just found out that he wrote the screenplay with Spike Jonze for Where the Wild Things Are and I remembered he had a talk on TED that I had wanted to check out. I also watched these talks: Philip Zimbardo, Steven Pinker and Robert Wright (who I have decided that I love). All the talks were great- TED is an amazing resource of ideas and thinkers, but Philip Zimbardo’s talk on what makes an ordinary person turn “evil” was fascinating. There are some rough photo’s since he talks about Abu Ghraib. Each speech is under 24 minutes and every talk I have watched from technology to art to philosophy has been engaging and enlightening.

All right, that’s all I have to say today.

A little Soapbox

Yesterday’s workshop was nothing but fun. The kids are awesome, and really engaged. At the end of the workshop when all of the coaches got together to go around and say how they felt, I said I had a lot of fun. They all pretty much scoffed at me, and said your having fun now, but wait till later, you wont be having fun.

Can I just say I hate it when people do that. Yes, I know it will be hard but why ruin the joy I felt today just because tomorrow it may be challenging? I don’t get people. I don’t think they really think before they speak. Its like this underlying hope that I will have a bad experience so that I will know how hard this is. I hope I never have a bad experience. I hope I face all the challenges that may present themselves with an open mind and a creative sense of joy. I hope the kid likes the tough parts. If I hate this if I think it’s too hard then I wont do it anymore. I mean I have my own shitty life why do I have to drudge through another’s when we can actually be enjoying ourselves for two hours. Honestly, I think people mean well, but I don’t think they understand that they are undercutting you and implying (oh you’re just green you’ll know soon enough). It’s like when I first started a workshop with another organization with girls in a half-way house. We were talking about writing, and the director said, “tell me, what are you going to do when one of them punches you in the face?” I said, “why would they punch me in the face? We’re just writing.” Okay it wasn’t that bad but it reminded me of that.

I’m over it, just a small gripe, besides I’m certain that today’s workshop will be horrible!

On to other things to preach about:

I should post this on my poetry blog (I haven’t posted anything there in awhile) but I’m posting it here. This is a great poem. It isn’t just the poem itself but the tension in his voice and the rise of the energy. It’s a poem it’s a performance. Each time I hear it, it brings a fierce burn of tears to my eyes and I can feel the pain and the fight in my chest. Although I don’t relate verbatim to the words since I have a different experience of youth, different color of skin, and had a different absence of parents, I can still relate to the message and the fight and the power. We are not our parents’ choices- we are not even history’s choices- its important and necessary to be reminded that we are unique individuals with our own choices, no matter our ages.

One life to the next

My GOD my room is freezing! I just have to mention that because I am in my room typing with gloves and a huge blanket around my shoulder. Anyway…

Playwrite starts today. I have no idea what to expect. I’ll report as I go along.

The Write Around is finished. I had a lot of fun, unfortunately on the last day I only had two youths the rest were staff (5 total). It is just how it goes with that demographic. Regardless the two were very engaged and it was a lot of fun working with them. We created historical fiction along with writing a slice of our own personal history.

The experience had an almost surreal feel for me because the workshops were right across the street from my old job, the one I left a year ago. I would sit outside a tiny coffee shop waiting to go over to the New Avenues and I could see people I used to work with coming to or from lunch. People I had known but didn’t know at all. The class room had these huge windows that looked right toward my old office. That life is so removed from the life I am living (this week). I’d sit with my back to the window forgetting that I had once had any part of the building across the street. Symbolically my old work building loomed four stories over New Avenues’ one story building filled with Street kids hoping to transition and all the people working to try and help them.

You’d think by now with how much things change in my life that I would get used to the idea that nothing stays. Still, it was strange in a way looking at a building that I once walked in and watching people pass in the distance, people who I once talked too but yet it is as if I was never there. I try not to let it bother me; the obtuse reminders that nothing ever stays the same, it is a constant theme. Truly no one’s life remains the same but I feel like many people have that illusion and I envy them that.

I had told my friend, it’s strange because I never know what my life is going to be like from one week to the next and I certainly can’t tell you what I will be doing next month. She had asked me if that was exciting or unsettling. I said a little of both. Then she said that’s how it was for you as a kid too right? I said yes. Than she said, it must be like you are always on edge. I said a little bit.

Looking at the building that held a moment of my past, a recent past that feels like hundreds of years ago, I felt a pang of not belonging. But, once in the classroom with my back to the windows, and my back to the building, I forgot I had ever been there, and in a way I never had. I was exactly where I was at that moment, and there is and was nothing I can do about that. And, where I was at that moment was nice, even if I knew it, like everything else, was going to end. And, like the people I had once worked with in the tall office building, I would never see these kids again, because that is the way it works in this life.

The Second day of Writing/theatre workshop

Yesterday’s workshop went so WELL! I think my largest fear is that the kids are going to think the prompts are boring, and wont want to write, but they were all very engaged. I had about seven youth. I’m not sure their ages, it can be really difficult to gage the ages of youth sometimes. These kids all felt like they were older than teenagers but I’m certain, just based on the program, that the oldest would be around 18 or 19, still in many ways they had the energy of thirty year olds.

The writing was creative, and well crafted. They seemed to really get into the exercise of “my life as a performance”. This one guy didn’t read but he did explain that he felt his life was like Romeo and Juliet because he loved his girl and everyone was trying to keep them apart. His girl would sit silently next to him in the workshop. She never shared but she wrote every time. Later he told me that he writes poetry, all love poems, about his girl. Another guy came in late sat down for the perspective writing, wrote a slam poem based on a photograph and then left. It was great. A young woman who joined for the last writing exercise on writing conflict, came in and wrote a touching story about a young white woman in love with a black man during the turn of the century. It was written in a 15 min timed writing exercise but it is definitly the type of story that would make me want to read more.

Tim DuRoche from Portland Center stage gave us some photo’s from turn of the century Portland. Damn, I guess we just had a turn of the century, so I should say turn of the 20th century. We used those photo’s for our writing exercises. Today we went to see the musical Ragtime and we were able to see the characters we wrote about hanging up in the lobby of the theatre. The show had a large cast all with stunning voices. The play interwove the lives of middle class white Americans, black Americans and new immigrants as they all crowded into New York looking for the American dream of the time. There were also famous figures portrayed like Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, JP Morgan and Henry Ford and Evelyn Nesbit. I will not lie, I shed a couple of tears. The kids all seemed to really enjoy it. I sat between two kids, who also happened to be in the workshop yesterday, and they would laugh or react to the play. At the end one girl stood up whooping and hollering like she was at a rock concert. That was awesome, I must say, I think more theatre should be whooped and hollered at.

We have one more workshop tomorrow and then I move onto working with Playwrite.

In personal news my mother is cancer free, which is a relief. They had found cancer but were able to remove it so I can continue to put off moving back to California. As for now I will just make a trip out there in the second week of November. It has been a really long time since I have seen my mother so it will be nice to visit.

It was a beautiful fall day in Portland and I took they day off from the gift store. Generally after a workshop I head back to work. The bike ride sucks because it is all up hill riding from downtown into SE. Today it was nice to avoid the monster hill, I’ll hit that sucka tomara’. It was a good day to pick to have off since the weather is gorgeous. Fall is by far my favorite season and these warm clear days with the changing leaves can not be more beautiful, all I need now is the smell of wood and candy. Mmmmm…fall.