Advocacy

Manila Pages Part 6

LYNN NOTTAGE

Brooklyn, NY

I've been very interested in the isolationist nature of American theatre, particularly the way in which it excludes the voices of women from the Southern Hemisphere.  We simply do not have access to plays written by women of color living outside of America. I acutely feel this absence, and mourn the fact that no real artistic dialogue is able to occur between women of color writing for the theatre here and abroad.  Is it that theatres don't know these writers?  Is it that these women don't know how to penetrate the American market?

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DIANE PAULUS

New York, NY

THOUGHTS FROM DIANE PAULUS - NOVEMBER 11, 2003

What interests me most about the theater is the audience.  I believe that the impulse to make theater is a gift giving impulse, and whenever we make a gift, we always think about the recipient.  The intention of the gift can be multifold - to delight, to shock, to provoke debate, to laugh, to recall memory.  Whatever the particular nature of the intention, it is always somehow to touch the recipient, in our case, the audience.  Nothing is worse than the polite response of a "thank you," when deep in your heart you know that gift will go untouched, or in the case of a Christmas fruitcake, perhaps uneaten. Probably the worst feeling is to give someone something they already have, as it indicates that we don't know our friend well enough to even know that we are duplicating what they already have.

As usual, the best gifts are labors of love with an investment of time and thought behind them, endowed with a personal touch and a great attention to detail.  There is always an element of the unknown with a gift, of suspense, in how we present these gifts - how they are wrapped, choosing the best moment of presentation. All these choices are made in an effort to craft the perfect exchange.

I think that as theatre artists, we need to always question the entire event of this gift-giving, never taking for granted any procedures - the shape or size of a gift, accepted colors of wrapping paper, or the very fact that it has to be wrapped.  Instead of merely thinking about the gift itself, we must always think about the ritual surrounding the moment of exchange.  Where do we want to place the recipient for this moment - at the top of a hill at the exact moment of sunset, in a crowded bar after several drinks have been imbibed, blindfolded and led down a back alley.

In the United States, it is staggering how limited our vision of this moment is.  For the vast majority of theater making, we numbly follow the catalog version of sitting our audience in chairs bolted to the ground, all facing one direction towards a proscenium stage, with a code of behavior for our audience that dictates the range of proper reaction (talking back to the actors is completely forbidden and would probably have you escorted off the premise.)

To the women playwrights of the world, I say, break our expectations.  Engage our minds, hearts, and bodies with new forms that will mandate the reinvigoration of theatrical ritual.  Wake up our audience, trick them, catch them off guard.  Invite them with care and love to a place they have never been.  Craft a moment they will never forget.  Create a gift that will finally necessitate an honest reaction from the audience - or perhaps provoke a response from an audience that we never thought was possible in the theater.  That would be a gift.

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JUDYIE AL-BALALI

New York, NY

NOTES FROM CAPE TOWN

Alice and I shared many wonderful moments teaching together this summer.  I'm honored she's asked me to participate in this esteemed gathering of potent creative female energy.  At this juncture, nexus, leap in human history we absolutely deserve to do what we love in an atmosphere of support and mutual benefit.  Congratulations on being where you are.

Let me add that I'm writing this in Cape Town, South Africa looking out at the ocean and mountains and thoroughly enjoying one of the most spectacular views on Earth.  I'm thrilled to be immersed in an incredibly exciting society at a profound state of transition.  So, I gladly state my gratitude for my vibrant artistic life right here at the top.  Congratulations on being where I am.  In response to Alice's inquiry I'd like to briefly offer three points that are particularly inspiring for me right now.

Theatre as a Place to Vision;  Establishing Interactive Creative Spaces

Time to broaden our definition of theatre to include our audiences in the creative process.  Most contemporary societies, certainly those that are mechanized and bureaucratic need places where people can feel, express, connect, touch and interact with safety and vulnerability.  The ritual space of theatre, specifically the studio rehearsal room has this potential.  Audiences now need more than to sit passively at the final product.  It's time for the studio to be come part of the theatre experience, not in any way as a replacement for performance, more like inviting the public into our private way of life.  Games, improvisation, writing exercises, movement plus all your favorite techniques are valuable tools allowing the body and breath to be engaged.

Embrace Technology

We can't do what electronics can do and they can't do what we do. Together we are something New.  Not too long ago I was a purist, regarding live performance as a sacred antidote to media gadget glut.  I've come to appreciate the evolving unity of technology and organic life.  I know there are more precise terms for this process and I'm hungry for the appropriate language.  One of my most exciting recent discoveries as a director emerged through a discussion about the computer industry.  We combined a discourse on physics with a hip hop dancer and created a very exciting performance.  Art and science are no longer dualistic.  We are harmonizing and enhancing our respective worlds.

Ability to Respond

Even with all the outstanding poetry and layers of irony I'm tired of focusing on oppression.  I want to choose topics that uplift and inspire. 'Uh-Oh' I hear you say 'Easy, sappy, unrealistic theatre.'  Say whatever.  I have two children who are young adults and a whole generation of students that want to live in a New World.  They are truly able to envision, implement and celebrate living on a New Earth.  Media directs our attention 98% of the time to problems. I want to see theatre become a great laboratory for solutions.  Let's be scientists and encourage our scientists to be artists.  Life is Grand.

Judyie Al-Bilali

11 November 2003

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JULIE JENSEN

Salt Lake City, Utah

ONE PAGE OF CONCERNS

.Women playwrights are still not represented in anywhere near equal numbers to men.  In spite of the fact that way more than half of theatre audiences are composed of women, those women get to see very few plays by women.

.The theatre in this country is controlled by men, money, and movies.

.The really important social issues for women are seldom treated in plays: domestic violence, pornography, reproductive freedom.

.The notion of class consciousness is seldom treated in the theatre; consequently the upper- and upper-middle class ideas and issues predominate.

.Many young female playwrights do not want to identify themselves as feminists.  They are eager to be included in the larger category of playwrights.  That means that they likewise shy away from women's issues, sometimes even refusing to write women characters.

.The political picture in this country is both confusing and ominous. Female playwrights are as confused as everyone else.  Conservatism (indeed, sometimes to be equated with Fascism) is unwelcoming. Criticism of political choices goes unheeded, sometimes even punished.  Theatres are in economic trouble and cannot figure out how to save themselves.  Women's issues, per se, seem less important in that mix.

.More and more theatres are looking at niche marketing, appealing to a specific demographic: blacks, Asians, gays, young, etc.  Yet the number of women's theatres has not increased, and plays by women are somehow not considered when seeking to balance seasonal offerings at mainstream theatres.

.Writing about people other than your own group is discouraged. Hence, many issues are not treated because no one from that group is telling those stories: stories of Native Americans is an example, stories of working class people.

.These times require bravery, and we are not brave enough.  They require relentless dedication, and we are not dedicated enough.

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DESI MORENO-PENSON

Bronx, NY

It is an exciting time to be a woman in the theatre.

Playwriting is at the center of the theatre.  Theatre is at the heart of a playwright's fervor.  It is the hub of both uncertainty and enthusiasm.  Vague indecision and keen gusto.  It is the core from which we emerge as artists-shaping the world, nudging and stimulating our senses, bracing us with thoughts, compelling anecdotes, and passionate ideals.

To be a playwright is to be fully engaged in the ongoing and enduring narrative of the world as we see it.  With both acute observation and the beheld scrutiny of our very human place within it.  And for both men and women, it is an awesome responsibility.  And like men, women playwrights are continuing to shape and create within the 'final frontier' of the American stage; works that are experimenting with form and structure in ways never imagined before.  

It is an exciting time to be a woman in the theatre.

Women playwrights are tackling subject matter that in some cases could only be undertaken by women. For itself, audiences are seeing plays from distinctly new angles.  Innovative ideas and ardent thoughts that are driven, diverse and emboldened with a fresh and novel energy.  The tricky relations between aesthetics and politics, success and marginalization, and all the delicate subtleties that surround those patently risky categories like race, ethnicity, cultural and sexual identity and gender.

Women playwrights have and continue to have, and will always continue to have so much to say .   

As such, in spite of living in times of both political and economic upheaval, I believe that the 21st century future can be observed with an air of hopeful expediency, if not outright optimism.  As women playwrights continue to ask provocative questions in their work, they maintain firm stands in their embrace of potentiality.  The psychic tolls of cultural and colonial Diasporas, sexism, racism and gender warfare will not lessen the urgency, ambition and humility seen all too clearly in the work of women playwrights working in the theatre today.

It is an exciting time to be a woman in the theatre.

At the risk of ending this on such a cliché tone, there continues to be a great deal left to do.  No matter what, women playwrights must continue to write, to create, and to dream within the sometimes wary, conservative and anxious world of the American Theatre.  So, where do we go from here?  I have absolutely no idea.  But I am excited at the prospect of finding out.  We should all be excited at such a grand and illuminating prospect.

Desi Moreno-Penson

Playwright/Dramaturge

November 11, 2003

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CHING VALDES

New York, NY

The playwright and the actor are co-dependents! One cannot exist without the other! In 1979 at La MaMa E.T.C.in JeanClaude Van Italie's "Tibetan Book of the Dead" where I started my career in the theatre.  There were only a handful of Filipino actors in New York City and even fewer playwrights (if any, aspiring perhaps, but none to be contended with).  There were David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Kotonda who were just starting out but no Asian-American female playwrights.

We have come a long way but not far enough!!!!  There are more
Asian-American playwrights and actors at the present time but not enough productions are being done that gives employment to all.  We have three major Asian-American Theatre Companies here in NYC (namely, Ma-Yi, the National Asian-American Theatre Co., and the Pan Asian Rep) who are mainly producing Asian-American writers...thank God for them...but these are not in the main stream venue.
 
I SALUTE THE PLAYWRIGHTS WHO WILL NOT BE DEFEATED DURING THESE DESPERATE TIMES.  In fact, what better time to keep the flame going and keep our voices ROARING.

THIS IS WHAT THE THEATER MEANS TO ME: TO EXCHANGE IDEAS, TO PROVOKE, TO CHANGE AND/OR SIMPLY TO AFFECT THE HUMAN SOUL, TO FEEL, CONNECT AND THINK AND TO HOPEFULLY MAKE THIS A BETTER WORLD TO LIVE IN.

CHING VALDES-ARAN
ACTOR/DIRECTOR/(and aspiring playwright)

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SUZANNE BENNETT

New York, NY

Yesterday the heat backstage stopped working, the board reneged on a promise to host an opening night party, the playwright just added extra scenes to a play we're in rehearsal on, making an already long play longer, and a staff member's husband is going to Bogotá and her worry is making all of us hyperconscious of the increase in the world's dangers and our helplessness.  But last night I went to a reading of a musical that came about from our first ever Collaboration Initiative between the Playwrights Lab and the Directors Forum at the Women's Project.  One playwright, Dana Goldstein, and one director, Elysa Marden, were given $500 and access to rehearsal space and over the period of a year they worked with a few actors and composer and created Cyclone and the Pig-Faced Lady. 

The play starts in Romania in the early 1900's and follows a gypsy mother and her two children who flee persecution and come to the U.S. where they end up working at the then glamorous Coney Island. Act One ends with the burning of the Luna Park entertainment tower and Act Two opens in this century as the writer who created these gypsy characters listens to a message on her machine from a lover on Sept. 11 from the World Trade Center.   It's one of those truly inventive dramatic surprises that catch you off guard at the same time that you appreciate the way history echoes and the way loss and survival is a story we will live over and over.

After a really lousy day, I went home feeling lighter, my optimism restored about the theatre, our playwrights and directors and even, despite the deceitful Bush and his arrogant administration, our world. When such creativity can spring from such modest circumstances as $500 and a rehearsal space, we can only be proud of our profession and the way we spend our time.

Having worked with the Women's Project and Productions, the largest theatre dedicated to producing work by women in the U. S., off and on for over 15 years, I often get discouraged that women playwrights and directors only make up a quarter of the main seasons of our theatres (excluding Broadway where we clock in at about 10%).  But this season, as I look around at some of the most influential New York theatres I see announced plays by Lisa Loomer, Paula Vogel, Cherylene Lee, Naomi Wallace, Alice Tuan, Lynn Nottage, Milcha Sanchez-Scott, four plays by newcomer Julie Jordan and just yesterday, the announcement that Sarah Ruhl, won the prestigious Whiting Award.

Last June we published the 8th anthology of plays from the Women's Project so women's work in the theatre continues, undaunted by statistics, to proliferate and provide great satisfaction and encouragement on our sunny and on our dark days.

Suzanne Bennett

November, 2003

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DORIS BAIZLEY

Venice, CA

LITTLE WOMEN, BIG SUBJECTS: The letter I never sent to a woman theater critic.

Dear Ms. (Critic),

Ok, you think my play (about the Vietnam war from a woman's point of view) is self-conscious and melodramatic.  It's awful to see that in print, but I understand that one woman's drama can be another woman's melodrama, and on the subject of Vietnam I'd rather sin on the side of going too far toward melodrama than holding back with cool irony.

But here's what really bothers me.  It's the "Self" words: Self-important, Self-involved, Self-conscious, Self-pitying.  How many times have women (not just writers) heard those words used to describe and belittle our ideas and emotions?  As a woman writer there's nothing I would rather do than turn that around and say: Yes, my "self" is important, is involved, is conscious, and capable of pity and terror and all the other big feelings that make drama.

After recovering from your attack I realized it was just the goad I needed not to give up on my play; not to sit back and say forget it, lay off the big stuff, lower your voice, and stick to closely observed domestic realism.   The subject is big.  I want to write it big.  And I will continue to write it big.  You may still call it self-conscious and melodramatic, but as long as actors and audiences don't, I'll keep at it.

This isn't just my problem, so let's make it public.  Let's have a panel and ask some male playwrights about drama vs. melodrama, self-conscious vs. invisible writing.  I'll be there - but I can't guarantee that my voice will be modulated to a soft, gentle, ladylike pitch.

Sincerely, Doris Baizley, playwright.

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NANCY KEYSTONE

Los Angeles, CA

NANCY KEYSTONE--ARTIST STATEMENT

When, in third grade, we were assigned to make a report on one planet in our solar system, I chose to do my report on the entire solar system.   This early ambitious desire to generate work (including the last-minute-late-night-mother-to-the-rescue scenario) has remained a rather consistent model for me.  I consider myself a multi-disciplinary artist: in the theatre my work encompasses that of director, playwright, choreographer and designer; I am also a visual artist, filmmaker and educator.  From the earliest days, my life has been suffused with the arts to the point where art-making as a core expression of being is as necessary as breathing.  As my expanding understanding of the universe is informed by my various expanding identities--artist, woman, citizen, wife, Jew, mother, teacher--that understanding manifests itself through many disciplines and forms, as I search to express meaning in the most visceral, poetic, resonant way.

Working in the theatre is a form of devotion; it is a way of life which engages the intellect, emotions, body and spirit.  What I love about theatre is what is difficult: it is a labor intensive, collaborative, low-tech art form, which requires a group of people to inhabit a common space and experience an event together, in the present moment, with concentrated attention.  These days, in the U. S., at least, this seems like an almost insane proposition.  However, the more difficult this becomes in our virtualized, fragmented society, the more I am compelled to embrace it.  The material that interests me is usually expansive in nature: epic structures, muscular language, highly charged emotional matter, extremes of human behavior and situations, work that asks the big questions about our existence.  I believe in rigor of thought, structure, and technique, combined with intuition, spontaneity, a deep, wide imagination, hard work, and an occasional miracle.

I am the founder and artistic director of Critical Mass Performance Group, a collaborative ensemble dedicated to the creation of new works and reinterpretations of classic plays, aiming to push the boundaries of narrative form and performance.  The process of making each piece is long-term, progressing over more than a year, allowing for deep exploration and the discovery of an ideal performance vocabulary.  An interest in the poetics of space has led me to create productions in non-traditional environments--houses, a jazz bar, parks, building exteriors, industrial spaces-as each site contains a unique energy and meaning which is integral to the event. I consider myself extremely fortunate that, in addition to activities with Critical Mass, I am also able to work regularly as a freelance director, designer and writer at other theatres throughout the country.

The coincidental convergence in the past couple years, of having a child, and living in what seems to be an acutely unstable and frightening moment in history, has made me even more conscious of the work I'm doing and how I do it, leading me to seriously question the necessity and meaningfulness of the theatre.  I'm, sadly, past the moment in my life as an artist when I believed that doing a play could stop a war.  And it is regularly argued that art is functionally impotent, it has no concrete, quantifiable purpose.  Despite this, I still believe that the effort of making and sharing work is valuable on a larger, more subtle and mysterious level, that art is, in fact, vital to the inner life of the human being.  At this critical juncture in history, when my government is doing things, in my name, which I deeply oppose, it is incumbent upon me to have faith, and to direct my artistic voice toward these issues from my tiny corner of the world; I aim to create transformative events, to jolt us--artists and audience alike--out of our habitual perceptions and assumptions, to re-engage with our oft-numbed sense of astonishment, to touch the nerves, spirit and intellect through the burning of the human mark in time and space.

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JUDY SOOHOO

Los Angeles, CA

Say the unsayable.

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LISA LOOMER

Los Angeles, CA

Since you are speaking mainly to women...tell them this.

At first, when people identified me as a "feminist" writer, or a writer who addressed "women's issues" I balked.  I did not want to be labelled.  Or limited.  I still don't.  But...my last three plays have been about...well...women's issues.  Not that these issues haven't affected the men in my character's lives.   Not that these women characters have not been affected by men... But I have written about breast cancer, high tech baby making and adoption, and childcare.  What I realize, though, is that through these stories, I have been able to look at race, class, power and citizenship.  I have been able to look at science. I have been able to time travel.   In other words, "women's stories" encompass...everything.

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MIGDALIA CRUZ

Cape Cod, MA

Dearest Colleagues:

On November 10th, I was on a theater panel at INTAR Theater with seventeen Latino theater artists.  In this rare and extraordinary company, I was asked what was my dream for the theater.

I could not think of one.

If I had only one dream or wish, I wouldn't waste it on theater.  The world is in too much turmoil.

I long for my daughter to one day know a world at peace.  That's my dream.

Theater is not something I dream about.  It is something I do. Like a carpenter-I build houses to fill with voices.  And I would like to see each person whom society has tried to make disappear, find the strength to build their own houses, filled with their own stories, giving them the truth and beauty they deserve.  Each person of color, each poor person, each person who been disenfranchised by society-I would pray that each one of us would finally feel entitled to our own poetry.  Let us fill many sturdy houses with our voices. Let our voices be our path to truth.

Maybe that is the way to peace.

-Migdalia Cruz, Nuyorican playwright and mother-

p.s. I did NOT vote for George Bush.

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RACHEL HAUCK

Los Angeles, CA

Dear Al and All,

Here are a few thoughts:

I think of Emily Mann's letter to this conference (which Alice just read to me over her kitchen table/desk) and think what a different and indebted generation I am from.
I am shocked to hear those numbers.
I never think about those numbers.
But come to think of it, I am sure that less than 16% of the country's designers are women.
I don't wish myself to be defined as a "female designer".
It is somehow a qualification
As in "pretty good for a female designer"
Yet I am shocked to hear those numbers, and I think how can that be?

I watch the government slash arts funding everywhere and I think
Hmmm.  What does it mean that the arts in America are not valued?
That can't be a good sign.

And then I think of that school in Georgia that eliminated recess because it was a waste of perfectly good class time, and that school system in Kansas that starting teaching Creation and went to court to prohibit the teaching of the Theory of Evolution.  Recently.
In the new millenium they did this.
And I think uh oh. This really can't be good.
And I worry.

These days I think often of a project that I worked on recently which presented the simultaneous and interwoven writings of Euripides, Shakespeare and Rogers & Hammerstein, and pointed undeniably to the timelessness of human nature.  I wonder where in the cycles of Medea, of Macbeth, and of Cinderella we find ourselves now?

And when it gets quiet, I think of my Swiss friend who listened to my political rant on a train one late night and who responded "do you have any idea how American the fact of your response is?"  That has given me great pause.

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