Advocacy

Manila Pages - Part 5

KIRSTEN GREENIDGE

Boston, MA

Once I started writing plays, I fell in love.  And I can honestly say I that I rarely think of writing for other genres.  I think in the future I may try a novel, but other than that, very few other types of writing present the kind of mystery that I want to explore in the same way that I do when I write for the stage.  There is something transformative in hearing your words performed that does not happen in poetry or prose.  The fact that human beings are speaking in front of you, breathing the same air as you is something movies can't offer, either.  Also, so much can go wrong when reading or performing a play.  When a reading or production goes well, when all the different elements of theatre work in concert, there is such a feeling of accomplishment, and what's beautiful about that is that it is shared with other people: there's nothing that satisfies and completes in quite the same way.

That said, it can be challenging to be a playwright in a culture like that of the United States, where a career in the arts is not as valued as a career in finance or technology.  Because theatre can be such an expensive endeavor here, theatre companies are under enormous financial pressure, and economic survival can often take precedence over presenting new and relevant work.  Since I am both a woman playwright and a black playwright, I feel as though I am sensitive about the demographics of who and what gets produced in this country.  The last statistic I heard was that seventy-three percent of the plays produced in America are produced by men, and that of that seventy-three percent, relatively few are new plays and still fewer are by new writers.

With those statistics, the likelihood that I will become some sort of overnight phenomenon, produced all across America is slim.  So I find I face the challenge of rejection often, but not nearly enough or with enough ferocity to make me consider taking up another profession.   It's dismaying to be rejected.  Especially when it comes to something as subjective as art.  And something that I love so much.  It's challenging to keep writing when it can feel as if it wouldn't matter if I never wrote another word again.  In the United States we have a variety of development programs for new work.  Although development programs can be an entry-way for new work by new writers, they can be challenging because you talk to so many people with so many different opinions about your work, with so many different biases, that it can be awfully confusing to remember to listen to your own voice first, while considering the voices of others second.  It's a close second, though, because I have also learned that there are many, many highly intelligent and extremely generous theatre artists out there who are dedicated to encouraging new work by emerging writers.  

Another challenge is to avoid being labeled or pigeon-holed as being a "black" writer, or a "woman" writer.  Whenever I am asked to participate in a development program or reading series, I always wonder "Did they choose me simply to fill a slot? Or because they like my work?"  I don't think I should ignore those questions or their answers (we haven't come that far yet) but I can't let those questions adversely affect my work.

Also, I would have to say the development environment itself can get frustrating.  You spend a week with collaborators you may or may not know very well, and at the end, you've created this entity that isn't quite a play yet, because it hasn't had the chance.  The worst can be taking a play from theatre to theatre and never see it fully performed.

Finally, because I don't have a steady office job as my means of support, it can be difficult planning the mundane events of life, like acquiring health insurance or starting a family or buying a house, because there is a lot of uncertainty involved.

For the most part, however, I feel more than fortunate to live in a place where my voice, once heard, is valued, where I had the opportunity to choose to write, to choose to develop and study my craft.   Without something as fundamental as that, I am not sure where I would be able to let my voice be heard.  

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RHIANA YAZZIE

Los Angeles, CA

A Message to Playwrights Around the World from Rhiana Yazzie, Navajo playwright.

Recently I was involved in a staged reading in a renowned new works play reading festival.  My role was a literary assistant.  It was barely a functional position, it was more like a glorified fly on the wall.  I appreciate and relish the opportunity to watch the process of an emerging playwright and veteran director trying to create something new, something innovated, because I want to be that playwright too, one day.  But it wasn't too far into the two-day rehearsal process that I began to feel antsy and began to feel that my time was being wasted.

Maybe because the playwright, like myself, was a minority that I felt like his play should have said something more.  The play was a convoluted homage to violence and did not offer anything more than albeit, entertaining fiction.  I heard myself saying over and over in my head, "I don't have time for this kind of fiction, I don't have time for this kind of fiction!"  I know that there is so much in my heart that I want to say, that I need to say, which is why I am a writer, and I was frustrated with the way his story missed an amazing opportunity to say something meaningful and to give a voice to something that has never had the chance to speak in a world, in a country that swallows lives whole.

I don't like to hear stories without purpose and without the ability to move.  Use the opportunity to tell the audience about the hidden places and lives that never see day light.  Use your story to give validation to muffled voices, to let an audience know that my people are alive and tell them this is how we get through our lives living in the cracks.  I crave a story that has a purpose, that says something important.  I need to be moved and I want to see how people solve the problems of their hearts in conflict.

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MARTHA RICHARDS

Northampton, MA

In 1994 I created The Fund for Women Artists, a non-profit organization dedicated to challenging gender and other stereotypes and to increasing the employment of women in the arts, especially women in theatre, film, and video.  In our first nine years we have provided direct fundraising services to hundreds of women artists, and we have raised over $2.2 million including an endowment of $425,000.  

I love to talk about how I started this wonderful and growing organization in my kitchen with only my trusty laptop computer, because I think it is important for women to realize that we have the power to build our own organizations.  In fact, I don't think we will ever get cultural institutions that truly suit our needs unless we build them ourselves, and more people should consider this option.

But you can't really understand The Fund for Women Artists unless I start the story a little earlier.  My usual version ignores a key question, namely, "What the heck was I doing at home in my kitchen at age 44 instead of working a full-time job as I had all the rest of my life?"  The truth is that I was recovering from a broken heart.

It wasn't a person who had broken my heart, but a job.  From the beginning of my arts career, I had dreamed about being the head of a theatre in a medium sized city where I could settle in, find colleagues, and build an audience for the kind of bold, provocative theatre that I love so much.  With great effort, I had finally gotten a job as the Managing Director of a regional theatre, and then just five years later I quit and found myself sitting in my kitchen crying.

What happened?  Glass ceiling?  Sticky floor?  It was a complicated situation.  There were relentless financial pressures and the usual constellation of theatrical personalities, but what finally did me in was a gnawing sense of alienation from the work.  As a manager, my role was to support the artists by supervising the fundraising, marketing and accounting functions, but the artists in charge were all men.  In the five years I was there, we only did one play by a woman playwright (and a dead woman at that), and we had no women directors.  I kept having uncomfortable moments where I could see that many of the characters on our stages were   stereotypes, but as a manager and not an artist, I didn't see a way of changing them.  Also, I was painfully aware of the salary differences between our male and female personnel.

I can remember a turning point in my final year.  We did a period piece for the holidays about a Southern family getting ready for Christmas dinner.  Most of our audience members were white and they seemed to be enjoying the show, but one night there was an African American family sitting right in the front row with a very excited little girl who was about ten.  As part of the "Southern" dialogue in the show, there was a point where one of the white actors casually used the term "nigger."  I found myself looking at that family.  It was supposed to be a festive holiday show.  Even though it was dark, I could see that little girl wince and turn to her father in shock and disbelief.

I was never quite the same after that, because I identified so deeply with that little girl and that wince.  I had been that wide-eyed girl in love with the stage when I was ten, and seeing her reminded me of all the painful vulnerability I had felt and still feel as I experience limiting stereotypes - about gender, about race, about sexual preference, about size, or other issues.  I was back in touch with a whole range of feelings, and I could not hide by keeping busy or pretending nothing had happened.  I felt compelled to do something, but I wasn't sure what it was.

This brings us back to 1994 when I was sitting in my kitchen.  I needed a way to experiment, and I started The Fund for Women Artists not with any answers, but with a question: "How can we create an organization that will support artists who want to challenge gender and other stereotypes and make sure that they are fairly paid?"

It turns out this is a wonderful question, a question that I can work on happily for a very long time.  It's also a very sociable question, because it is far too complex for just one person.  We have to form teams to create viable solutions.

I want to leave you with two thoughts.  First, I want to say that my broken heart turned out to be a good thing even though it hurt a lot, because it forced me to stop for a while and think about what I wanted to do with my life.  The Fund for Women Artists has accomplished great things in its first nine years, and I am confident that we are moving in a good direction.  If any of you are suffering from broken hearts or quiet despair, I hope my story will encourage you to work through your grief and search for the values that mean the most to you.  As my mother always taught me, "It's not how many times you fall down, it's how many times you get up that counts."

Second, as we start our second decade at The Fund for Women Artists, we are moving in bold new directions.  We are determined to build an organization that will have a lasting impact on the role of women artists in our society, and we are looking for collaborators.

Since we receive a steady stream of calls and emails, we know that there are amazing women artists all over the world who are struggling to create works reflecting a more just society.  We are awed and inspired by these women, and we dream about what will happen when they have the resources to express their creativity fully.  We are convinced that they can change the world, and we want to help.  Please join us if you can.

For more information, please contact us at info@womenarts.org or visit our website at www.WomenArts.org .

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MALLORY CATLETT

New York, NY

This summer I was at a dramaturgy conference that was focusing on diversity.   Due to my recent work on the THE FIRST 100 YEARS       I realized that we were talking about this issue almost exclusivley from the perspective of new play development.  No one was talking about diversifying the cannon, for example.  I was thinking historically, and it occurred to me that history hasn't favored diversity; and that we often think about the problem from the front end.  It would be wise to think about the issue from the back end in an effort to more fully support the work of playwrights today.

In terms of the cannon, from what I can tell, the reason it is a rich source for us even today is the way in which playwrights have recycled and reconsidered the stories of the past.  Any one play may
have many plays and production histories in its wake.  Somewhere behind WHO'S AFRAIND OF VIRGINIA WOOLF is DANCE OF DEATH.  It is this referencing of writers in the past and the constant reintegration of that material into the present via the voice and vision of playwrights that leaves the rich trail for directors, actors and audiences to walk.

In 1695-96 London produced a season of plays that had one of the highest percentages of female playwrights in Anglo-American history. By that time woman had been writing for the professional stage for only 25 years.  What is wonderful about that season was there
were several plays that were adaptations or critiques of other plays previously written by women.  So there was this instinct early on for women to refer back to and rethink and recycle the work of their
predecessors.  They didn't have a long history but they knew it, and they dealt with it in their work.

I think we underestimate the power of knowing our history and letting it have some influence on our work.  Theater history tells us that a play gains currency and richness exponentially when it grapples in some way with the past.  Women have been writing
plays and using the theater to tell compelling relevant stories for hundreds of years.  That work and those stories need to be recycled and reconsidered by playwrights today.  So I guess I'm thinking about knowing one's history and making work that reflects that knowledge.  It is an obvious point and probably not particularly interesting, but our history allows us to stand on rich ground when we work.  We don't have to constantly reinvent the wheel.  I don't think this preoccupation serves us well or makes for interesting theater.

Have a good trip,
Mallory

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