Bang! Pajama Party Story Slam!

by Tony Bartolone

Staff Writer

The genius of Lizzie Czerner’s Bang Theatre is the ability to take everything great about hanging out with friends – the warmth, the fun, the excitement, the familial love – to take all that stuff and translate into live entertainment. Shows at Bang never feel like “shows.” Instead, their programming feels like a kickback or a party or a friendly get-together. It is punk rock theatre. They are not concerned with “production value” as much as the raw energy and primal response from a crowd.

So it was rather fitting that their most recent story slam was performed under the guise of a pajama party. Brought to life by Don’t Tell My Mother creators, Nikki Levy and Lizzie Czerner, it was remarkable how informal the whole thing was (that’s a good thing, by the way). The problem with theatre is the reverence with which it is treated. Is not a man singing on the side of the street just as much theatre as a bloated, big budget production of Chicago?  The only way theatre can exist as art is if it is available to all stages of society. Bang’s loose, anti-theatre is exactly what keeps art alive in the times of economic peril.

Creators Nikki Levy & Lizzie Czerner posing in PJs.
Copyright Bang Comedy Theater 2012

With subject matter ranging from growing up to ghosts to a hot, young guy at Trader Joe’s, the Pajama Party Story Slam truly achieved the feeling of an adolescent sleepover (And there were cookies!). The party started with creators, Lizzie and Levy reminiscing, and smoothly transitioned into a more traditional story-telling format, never losing the casual attitude that sets Bang apart from other theaters.

Barbara Cole shared her mid-life temptations of which anybody who has ever had a long-term relationship could connect with. As Vanessa Marshall immersed the audience in an England haunted house, the lights begun to flicker suggesting we were not alone. And the effusive Scout Durwood closed out the night with her summer stories of growing up and growing apart from friends. Although Scout’s story was intrinsically feminine in subject matter, I found myself deeply identifying with the overall emotion and themes woven in her well-told, personal account. It begs the question: Is loss of innocence something that happens suddenly, forcibly? Or is there some sort of gradual, natural progression to becoming an adult? All we really have to draw from is our own story and the stories shared by friends.

Ultimately, the PJ Story Slam succeeded in casually concealing the “work” (which is a mark of strong comedy) to give us an unpretentious evening of interest and fun. There is not a single thing more an audience can ask for.

The Alliance of LA Playwrights hosts Drama Lama Ding Dong

The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights is an excellent resource for playwrights in Los Angeles. Don’t believe me? Read for yourself in this interview with the organizations co-chairs, Jonathan Dorf and Dan Berkowitz.

What is the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights? It is the service and support organization for playwrights in the greater Los Angeles area.  We are not a producing organization, but rather an advocacy organization that provides playwrights with a variety of resources to advance their craft and careers.  It’s not a requirement that playwrights live in the Los Angeles area, and, in fact, our more than 250 members live in nearly a dozen states and even Canada.  Our many online services make ALAP membership valuable, even if you don’t live close enough to attend our physical events.

Your organization was incorporated in 1992. How have the needs of playwrights changed since then? Back in 1992, playwrights wrote plays, agents represented them, and theatres and producers produced them; with rare exceptions, if a playwright produced his or her own work, it was looked down upon as “vanity production.” Since then, however, the economics of the theatre have changed drastically, and playwrights need to be much more responsible for not only the “art” but the “commerce” of playwriting as well. Targeted marketing and promotion, and self-production are more and more recognized as critical ways of getting your work before the public, but these require an entirely different set of skills.

What are some of the services that you provide and how can they be accessed? ALAP holds a variety of events throughout the year.  These have included panels and workshops on the business and craft of playwriting, Director-Dramatist Exchanges, and monologue and scene slams.  Regular annual events include In Our Own Voices, in which playwrights take part in readings of their own work, and the Annual Playreading Festival, featuring 10-minute play readings of member work.  The New Works Lab allows for table readings of member work in conjunction with Los Angeles area theatre companies.  We also hold a number of social events, ranging from our monthly Salo(o)n to cocktail parties to a summer picnic. Our social events are open to the public, as are most of our panels; some participatory programs, such as In Our Own Voices, are open to members only. But many of our members join because of our online services.  Members get access to our actor and director databases and the Resource Guide to LA Theatres, and they can promote their plays and careers through the Script Catalogue, Meet Our Members and our email list.  The members-only email list that provides submission opportunities and discounted tickets.

One of the cool things about your website is the script catalogue that you just mentioned. How does it work? We agree.  The script catalogue is indeed cool.  In fact, it’s super cool.  If you’re a member, you can list as many plays as you’d like, and include information on cast size (including gender breakdown), genre and running time, as well as a synopsis, script excerpt and even a production photo.  A prospective producer can search the script catalogue in a variety of ways, and our authors have had inquiries from all over the world.

What is Drama Lama Ding Dong? We’ve been doing a daylong Big Fall Event for quite a while, and Drama Lama Ding Dong is this year’s version. The event always includes a number of programs, such as panel discussions and workshops, sometimes a Scene Slam or Monologue Slam, often an exchange such as this year’s with playwrights, producers, and directors; we end the day with the Annual Play Reading Festival, in which short plays chosen by a panel of judges receive rehearsed readings before an audience.

As for the name… several years ago, one of our Vice Chairs suggested we give that year’s event a fun name, so we called it Dramapalooza! Since then, we’ve tried to come up with a funny name each year. So far we’ve done Dramageddon, Dramapocalypto, Drama-Kaze, Drama Mia (Here We Go Again My My How Can You Resist It?), and now – ta da! – Drama Lama Ding Dong! What next?!?

During the event you will have a couple of panels with various artists. One of them is called “Bridging The Generation Gap” where you will have young and seasoned playwrights discuss where playwriting has been and what its future looks like. What do you hope to get out of this discussion? One of the great things about panel discussions is that they often take interesting, unexpected turns.  We’ve got a diverse mixture of up and comers and veterans, which should add up to an entertaining conversation, but also an enlightening one.  If you’re a young playwright—and I think this is a “don’t miss” event for playwrights in undergraduate and graduate programs, or just starting out—it’s an opportunity to hear some “been there, done that” stories that may save you aggravation or give you new avenues to explore in your writing.  But at the same time, our young playwrights will bring new insights and paradigms for our veterans to consider.  Being a playwright is a combination of craft and business, and our hope is that we can blend the best insights of both generations as we continue to move forward into the future of our profession.

How can playwrights and theatre artists get involved in your organization? The quick answer is send us a check! The longer answer is bring a check to one of our events and check us out in person. We’re a volunteer organization, so we’re always looking for people who want to pitch in, and pitching in is the best way to get to know people in a group – and that’s the real key. For while we think our programs are terrific and educational and entertaining… and while our website is one of the most incredible resources for a playwright who wants to promote his or her work to a global audience… the best part of being a member of ALAP is that membership makes one part of the playwriting community in Southern California, which not only gives you the opportunity to meet and network with people who do what you do, but also gives ALL of us playwrights a greater voice in assuring that our rights are preserved and kept strong and inviolable.

Drama Lama Ding Dong is on Saturday, October 15, 2011 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm at Plummer Park Community Center 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood. Parking Lots off Santa Monica (3-hr limit) and Fountain, or street parking. The event is FREE and open to the public.

For more information about the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights please visit their website: http://laplaywrights.org/currentnewsflash.html

A Playwright’s Currency

By Fanny Garcia

I’ve been kind of MIA from the blogging thing since the beginning of June. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I think I was overwhelmed with everything that happened in the first weeks of the month. I am slowly but surely getting back into my writing schedule. So here is my first blog after a much needed break.

June started at hyper speed. I was at the TCG National Conference all day for a week, and Radar L.A. was happening at the same time as well. So I went from exhilarating theatre workshops during the day to jaw dropping performances by local, national and international theatre companies at night. I was exhausted by the time it all ended.

The day after this “theatrepalooza” in Los Angeles, I went back to my play reading group. We were scheduled to read “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” by Rajiv Joseph but ended up having a pow wow of sorts. I shared my experiences at the conference and Alejandra Cisneros shared her experiences at the Director’s Lab West which had occurred at the same time. (Alejandra wrote a fantastic piece for pLAywriting in the city called “On Being A Stage Manager.”  You can find it here: http://playwritingworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/on-being-a-stage-manager/)

Both of us wanted so much to share what we had seen and heard. We wanted those that had not had the opportunity to attend the conference or the performances or the lab to get some sense of what we had gone through. It was a fascinating thing to share. One that I think rekindled our passion and commitment to our craft. Not just for me and Alejandra but also for the members of the play reading group.

We are all at different levels of our artistic careers. My career is definitely in its infancy. I still walk cautiously under ever-present self-doubt, fear, and the seemingly elusive acceptance as an artist, into a theater community, or by an audience not yet defined. Sometimes it can be paralyzing and it is here where the danger lies. I’m constantly fighting the paralysis.

During the conference Todd London, Artistic Director at New Dramatists, Inc. delivered the plenary session speech. He said, “We all begin as amateurs. The word amateur from the French word love. The love of what we do.” This hit me like a tone of bricks. I am an amateur. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Why do I do what I do? Because I love it. It is my currency, one that I hold on to tightly because I live in a society that does not value art. And if it does, it is always asked in the context of what school the artist attended, who they studied under and how many times they’ve been produced, instead of asking much more important questions.  What is your story? How do you tell it? Why do you want to tell it? How can we stage it?

It may seem idealistic to think of love for theatre and writing as currency but at the moment it is all I have. My value as an artist is what I produce when I sit down in front of my MacBook Pro in my hot apartment and begin to type out a story.  Each time I do that, I am getting better at what I love.

What do I love about it? I love the tingly feeling I get when an idea starts to percolate. I love the frustration that visits me when my brain does not function properly and deciphering the idea does not come as quickly as I wish. I love the rewrites because it brings me closer to the finish product, even though I complain about them all the time.

I’ve often fought my identity as a playwright. Erroneously, my reasons have been based on how others define my value. I haven’t attended a fancy school. My playwriting education comes from a few workshops, reading American Theatre Magazine, “The Art & Craft of Playwriting”, “The Dramatist’s Toolkit: The Craft of the Working Playwright”, and a workshop production of a play that took me five years to write. I list the books because they were a great help to me and I highly recommend you pick them up at your local bookstore if you’re planning to write a play.

I haven’t owned my playwriting skills fully. I’ve let comments from people get to me. The most memorable is: “You’ve only written three plays, does that make you a playwright?” I should have replied with a resounding, “Yes, yes it does.” But instead I cowered and decided not to mention that I’d put my blood, sweat and tears into three plays. Literally. Okay, maybe not the blood but you know what I mean.

Not any more.

My name is Fanny Garcia and I am a playwright.

I may be at the beginning stages of my career. But with each new play I write, with each semester I finish at school, with each writing job I take on, and each rewrite I do… I am perfecting my craft.

The Theatre Communication Group National Conference comes to L.A!

By Fanny Garcia

For years, I’ve heard great things about this conference from colleagues and fellow artists. They rave about the workshops and the speakers and the people they meet and the amounts of wine they drink over thought provoking conversations about art and playwriting and creating and producing and I have listened each and every time with a jealous grin on my face.

But this year, it’s a whole different story.  I will not have a jealous grin on my face as I listen to the stories the attendees tell because I will be present for every bit of it. And I won’t just be any normal attendee, I’m one of the recipients of the Young Leaders of Color Scholarship! I was nominated by the multi-talented Diane Rodriguez who is currently Associate Producer and Director of New Play Production at Center Theatre Group.

The scholarship allows the recipients to attend the conference for free and partners each with a mentor. It also provides separate events geared only towards Young Leaders of Color. I’ll be attending a lunch where I’ll meet alums of the program and a mixer at Yxta Cocina Mexicana (I’ve been to this place and it’s awesome) where we can network.

The conference will take place June 16 through June 18th with workshops at the Millenium Biltmore Hotel, Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, and Central Los Angeles High School #9 School of Visual and Performing Arts.

Speakers include Susan V. Booth, Roger Copeland, Gordon Davidson (Founding Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles), Mona Eltahawy (award-winning columnist and international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues), Marcus Gardley (poet and playwright), Janie Geiser, David Houle, Nancy Keystone (Artistic Director of Critical Mass Performance Group. Fantastic!), Sage Lewis (composer), Mimi Lien (set designer), Todd London, Cricket Myers, Marsha Norman, Sonja Parks, Tanya Selvaratnam, Mark Shugoll, Julie Taymor (Yes, THE Julie Taymor), and Angel Ysaguire (director of global community investing at The Boeing Compay).

The theme of this year’s conference?

What if we imagined the theatre field of the next 50 years, and began making visible progress today?

• What if theatre weren’t seen as a luxury but as central to the fabric of our country?
• What if artists and other theatre leaders talked regularly and openly about art and aesthetics?
• What if theatre institutions and their boards committed to hiring more people of color in leadership positions?
• What if a group of billionaires created a “Giving Pledge” initiative for theatre?
• What if the US became more embedded in wars around the globe – what would become the role of theatre and artists?
• What if there were a new audience engagement model as powerful as the subscription model?
• What if theatres and artists could commit to each other for multiple years?
• What if we could solidify new business models that would truly lead to the sustainability of our theatres?

Here are some of mine:

• What if artists weren’t always struggling to make ends meet?
• What if there more theatre companies that focused on development of new work by artists of color?
• What if audiences in low-income communities didn’t see theatre as something the “elites” do?
• What if plays were promoted as an important part of theatre?

Although my primary interest is in playwriting and meeting other playwrights, the real opportunity the conference provides is creating a space where artists from all over the country can discuss the future of theatre in the United States and begin to create a blueprint for it. The conference will engage us in discussions that will force participants to think outside the artistic realms of theatre and spend time on the business innovations that will ensure its sustainability for years to come.

I am honored to have been chosen as a Young Leader of Color and will make good use of the information I collect at the conference. I’ll be keeping the readers of pLAywriting in the city informed by posting an update at the end of each day.

If you are not able to attend the TCG National Conference next week you can still make your voice heard by doing one or two or all of the following:

1.)   Check out the Theatre Communications Group Facebook page, click “Like” and post your very own “What if…?” statement. http://www.facebook.com/tcg.org

2.)   Attend one of the shows in the Radar L.A. Festival. It’s an international theatre festival coming to Los Angeles for the first time. Artists from Japan, Mexico, Australia, Ireland and Los Angeles will be performing at REDCAT. http://www.redcat.org/event/radar-la-festival.

3.)   Get yourself a prescription to American Theatre Magazine and start educating yourself about theatre across the country and the world!

4.)   Make sure theater stays alive by supporting local theater performances!

The Playwright As Teacher

By Jose Casas

I have been teaching on and off college campuses ever since completing graduate school back in 2003 and one of the things I have noticed is that the life of an artist (in my case, the life of a playwright) eerily mirrors the life of an adjunct professor looking for tenure. I have taught a number of different courses in departments such as Theatre Arts, English and Chicano Studies.

I respect the teaching profession and attempt to teach each class as well as I can because I hold a responsibility to the students I instruct. However, that does not mean there are classes I prefer to teach over others. I am only human. Please do not ever put me in front of another INTRO TO THEATRE course for non-majors [wink wink]. That is all I ask. But seriously, the class I prefer to teach more than any other, by leaps and bounds, is: PLAYWRITING.

I cannot speak for all playwrights, but I have a very strong suspicion that most playwrights would love to pay the bills only by writing. I know I would, but that is not the reality. That being said, once in a while we got lucky and get the opportunity to teach our craft.

The question being posed to me is: am I disillusioned or inspired?

I am disillusioned in the sense that many students I have come across seem to choose to enroll in a playwriting course, but they come in with a screenwriter mentality; their visions spilling out in 3-D and surround sound. That is not to say anything negative about screenwriting; not at all. It simply means that some students seem bored by writing plays and the skill that goes along with it. They picture a movie in their heads instead of the energy of actors on a stage. They think with an MTV type of reality where short and quick looks at the world make it difficult for them to concentrate on a layered and meaningful piece of drama. They want instant gratification because the mere thought of WRITING  and REWRITING and REWRITING is unacceptable; the process getting lost in the shuffle.

Now that I have stepped off of my soap box I can honestly say that the majority of my time with emerging playwrights is truly inspiring and hopeful because not only do I create theatre, I actually watch it too. If I can play a part in trying to help our theatre collective evolve and survive then even better. I am inspired by the stories students create; giving me hope that people still have something to say. I am energized by seeing a writer develop. I am not making that student a writer; merely leading them, ideally, in the right direction so that they, one day, truly discover  and understand that their voices make a difference.

And the best thing about teaching playwriting? The best thing is that my students, undoubtedly, inspire me to become a better writer. They offer up new perspectives and ideas that I never would have or could have envisioned if I had not made a connection with them. There is nothing better than reading a student’s play and declaring [to myself], “damn, I wish I could write like that.”

It brings me back to the days where my teachers challenged me to think of new stories and not accept the status quo.  It brings me back to the days when I felt that if I could not say what I wanted to say I would explode. It brings me back to the days I first realized I was not seeing “my” stories being told.

In the end, teaching playwriting reminds me of the reason I put a pen to the paper in the first place.

Jose Casas is a playwright living in Moreno Valley, California. His plays have been produced across the country. Works written include MindProbe/Freddie’s Dead, The vine, La Rosa Still Grows Beyond the Wall, 14, Somebody’s Children and La Ofrenda. His play, MindProbe/Freddie’s Dead, won the Sherrill C. Corwin/Metropolitan Theatre award for Best One-Act plays. His play, La Ofrenda, has won the 2005 Bonderman National Playwriting for Youth Award and the 2007 American Alliance Theatre and Education’s Distinguished Play Award. His play, Somebody’s Children was the winner of the 2009 Bonderman National Playwriting Award and the 2010 American Alliance of Theatre and Education’s Distinguished Play Award. His plays, 14  (2003) and  La Rosa Never Grows Beyond the Wall (2005) have both been awarded the ARIZoni Theatre Award for Excellence for Best Production of An Original Play. He has three published plays: La Ofrenda (Dramatic Publishing), 14 (AltaMira Press & Paseos Nuevos) and Somebody’s Children (Dramatic Publishing). He recently completed a commission for Dramatic Publishing which will be included in the anthology, The Bully Plays, which will be published this summer. He currently is an adjunct faculty at California State University, Los Angeles in the Chicano Studies Department.

From Poet to Playwright

by Marisela Treviño Orta

I’m an accidental playwright.

I moved to San Francisco from Texas to get my MFA in Writing, to take a few years to focus on my craft as a poet. I’m an Imagist. That is, very image driven. And it was images that first attracted me to theatre—the line of limbs stretching and moving, the pantomime of bodies.

I was watching El Teatro Jornalero! rehearse. They were doing a series of movement exercises, silent yet so expressive. Watching them I had the urge to write, to sit down and watch and write.

And that’s what I did. I joined ETJ! as their Resident Poet and began attending their rehearsals so I could write poetry while they did exercises and worked in collaboration to develop a new play.

ETJ! was a social justice theatre company made up of Latino immigrants led by USF theatre professor Roberto Varea. It was fascinating to watch them work and the subjects they explored were very close to me. Politics was an area I avoided in my poetry. I was always weary that I would fall into heavy-handed rhetoric, that I would be hitting people over the head with my opinions, when what I really wanted was for my readers to feel, to re-experience my own emotional state.

Working with ETJ! I learned that social justice theatre can do just that, create empathy by making the political personal.

Every Friday I’d hop on the 33 bus and traverse the city to the Women’s Building in San Francisco’s Mission District. They’d rehearse and I’d write, take pictures and maybe help run lines. Then we’d all sit down for dinner. We were a little family.

I kinda became the theatre’s Girl Friday. I made programs for their performances using my poetry and photos, created slides for their English supertitles, recorded performances and even once helped translate one of their plays into English.

After a year I began to get curious about playwriting. ETJ! developed their scripts collaboratively, but I wanted to know how to write a play by myself. Luck would have it that playwright Christine Evans came to USF to collaborate with ETJ! and teach an introduction to playwriting course. That last semester of my MFA I took her class with the goal of writing a full length social justice play.

At the end of the semester I showed the scenes I had written to Christine. I explained that I hadn’t written the play linearly, that some of the scenes were from the middle of the narrative, others from the beginning or end. Even today I seem to resist writing from A to Z. I jump all over the narrative, writing whatever my muse seems most excited about.

It was Christine who suggested I keep the play non-linear. She also suggested I submit my play, Braided Sorrow, to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

Getting into the festival was a bit of a shock. That was in 2005 and it was after the Bay Area Playwrights Festival that I began to seriously consider continuing to write plays.

My transition between genres was really cemented by the encouragement of others—Christine Evans and the Playwrights Foundation—coupled with the fact that my first play kept opening doors for me.

But there was something else, something about playwriting itself. As a child I used to write short stories, even worked on a novel. And my poetry always had a very strong narrative bent. Playwriting it turns out is perfect for my writing sensibilities.

Federico Garcia Lorca once said, “A play is a poem standing up.” I love that line. Love that I first new Lorca as a poet and it wasn’t until I came to playwriting that I discovered his plays.

I see the potential for poetry in plays. I don’t mean this literally, even though I do occasionally include poems in my plays. What I mean is that my poetics greatly inform my playwriting. Imagery. Lyricism. Repetition. Metaphor. All prosodic elements, can be applied to playwriting. And in doing so a play becomes a poem, stands before us, looks right into our very souls and takes hold.

 Marisela Treviño Orta is a San Franciscan poet and playwright. Her first play, Braided Sorrow, won the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama and the 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama. Her poetry has appeared in BorderSenses, Double Room, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Traverse.