Thoughts on the Fourth of July

It is difficult to get started, but nothing happens without that first step. Of course, constant revision is necessary, too. That's true in writing; true in governance.

Today we celebrate the start with an eye ever-present on improving future drafts and an appreciation for the freedom to make those revisions.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

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Ups, Downs, Pivots, and Awards

We had quite a time in the classroom this past week. 1/3 of the musical cast is now in quarantine due to positive Covid contact. They won't return until two days before our first dress rehearsal. We will now shift our plans to a fully filmed performance, which may actually take some pressure off of the cast.

In brighter news, two students in the Playwriting class received Honorable Mentions for their original, one-act plays. It is awesome recognition of their creativity and the hard work they put in to the piece. The students all loved the class so much; it was great to get their feedback about it at the end of the class. This is some fun icing on that cake!

Back to it all tomorrow!

The Young Playwrights Guide

The past three months have been a whirlwind! I think we all feel that way to some degree. Now that school has closed for summer, I am feeling the slower pace of the mornings, and finding ways to approach many of the projects that had been waiting in the wings.

http://youngplaywrghtsguide.blogspot.com
@TheYPGuide

One of these projects is the newly branded Young Playwrights Guide, a retooled version of the Young Playwrights Map that I developed during my doctoral study. The map was a great tool for documenting the existence and spread of opportunities for youth writers around the world, but I found children and their parents were looking for advice, instruction, and guidance through various videos and conversations that arose at the beginnings of Covid-19 quarantine. I spent some time reflecting on those inquiries as well as my own desire to (re)connect with artists whom I haven't been able to work with, or even see, over the last year or so.

The Conversations Series was born on YouTube at the beginning of May and is now in its 8th iteration. You can check out those videos here. I have two more conversations in the works and am looking to build another program through the Guide by the end of summer.

Additionally, I am spreading out my prep work for the beginning of the 2020-21 school year. We anticipate hearing more in the next few weeks about potential returns to school in the fall. In the meantime, I will continue to take it slow and look to ramp things up again as July rolls around.

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Holding out for a hero!

This summer has been a complicated one (with stories for future posts), but one positive side is it has given me time to work on a number of projects I've had in mind for some time. Can't share details yet, but stay tuned...

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Writing Challenge

The best way to write is to write. In fact, the best way to do anything is to do it. Seems the shoe company slogan ingrained in us late Gen-Xers was on to something.

After completing the dissertation in late December, I took a significant break from writing to allow myself time to decompress and let the reality of what I'd done (and what's to come) a little time to settle in. The honeymoon is over now and it is time to reestablish a writing routine to put the degree to use.

As always, and with anything, the greatest obstacle is time. And the way to "find" time is to make room for it. So as a way to get back into the swing of things without taking on more than my commitments allow, I am giving myself a 10 day writing challenge that begins today with this post. My goal is to take at least 10 minutes each day to share an idea on this blog no matter how small, or large, it may be. I know that having a loose outline is helpful for me to get things moving, so I have come up with a list of potential topics in case I don't find that occasionally elusive "inspiration" to write. While I would like the blog to focus primarily on my work in the theatre classroom, research, etc., but for now anything goes until I find my new groove.

So, mark off Day 1! I will see you back here tomorrow.

Young, Emerging, Submurging

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How do we define a particular group of playwrights? Are they "emerging" or "young" writers? Or perhaps they are something different altogether. This is one of the question I have considered throughout the dissertation research. Generally, I have found that the preference for one term over another, as well as the definition of each, depends in large part upon geographic region and the age of the playwright. However, even those aren't definitive rationale for using one term over another.

And then there are the occasions where a term is used, but the context leaves little clue as to what exactly it means. (I'm looking at you, Audible. The $5 million in commissions is great, but who do you mean when you say "emerging playwrights"?)

In the end, I think that each term refers to a group of writers who are "new" to the work both as writers who have never crafted a script before and those who are just becoming known to the larger audience. Here is an interesting blog post from the Emerging Writers Festival in Victoria, Australia that offers a new suggestion, the "submerged playwright":

http://www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au/rmit-gazette-emerging-established-submerged/

Publishing articles about young playwrights programs

This past month I had published two articles about the growth of young playwrights programs in the United States:

The first is an encyclopedia-style entry about the burgeoning regional programs in the late 1980s, which is published as part of a crowd-sourced timeline celebrating the 30th anniversary of Youth Theatre Journal. You can link to the article here.

The second is an article about the current field of young playwrights program that draws from data I have gathered in creating and updating The Young Playwrights Map. This is published in the NYU Program in Educational Theatre online journal, ArtsPraxis, and can be found here.

I am excited to share this work and to document the tremendous field of playwriting programs for youth that are present in this country. Looking forward to wrapping up my dissertation exploring the impact of these programs and to continue to advocate for the unique opportunities and experiences provided within this field.

Who's teaching Whom?

Revisiting Gerald Chapman's excellent book, Teaching Young Playwrights (1991), to gather some inspiration as the summer playwrights complete their first drafts. In addition to finding some great revision exercises, I am also revisiting some of Chapman's salient stories about the power of writing for young people.

One such anecdote is excerpted from the book Writing: Teachers and Children at Work (1983) by Donald Graves in which Leon Tolstoy was asked by some children to write a story for them:

"He began composing while his students gathered around his desk. But instead of being awed by this great writer, the children quickly pointed out a mistake in Tolstoy's portrayal of the young thief. In his journal, Tolstoy later wrote that they were right to correct him, and he crystallized his views about this in an essay entitled 'Are We To Teach the Peasant Children to Write, or Are They To Teach Us?'" (quoted in Chapman, p. 101).

Summer Camp Playwriting - Day 3

(also published on the Writers Theatre of NJ blog)

Picking up where we left off in Tuesday's class, I shared with the students the advice from Twitter about crafting scenes. In addition to what was mentioned in yesterday’s post, I also included these ideas from Ramon Esquivel (@Bub1974)

• Good Q. 1st draft, I write scene until it naturally ends/shifts. Later, I CUT to shape story tone + pacing.
• 1st drafts are about finding character for me. I let 1d scenes run/meander as long as needed. Find voices!

The suggestions received on Twitter immediately sparked ideas within the class and they quickly made some edits to the scenes already written. I coupled this with a quick discussion of The Hero’s Journey framework to show how smaller scenes, and their individual tasks/conflicts, can fit into the larger arc of the play. This really sparked the playwrights’ imaginations, particularly when seeing the journey as a 3D spiral rather than the 2D drawing I had done on the board. We had already discussed how the Emergency can launch a character into the world of the play whether or not she wants to go. Thinking of this as the point when the character’s world changes was especially useful; understanding that the typical “conclusion” was actually the start of the hero’s return home after completing, and being changed by, the journey set them off scribbling and typing new ideas.

Our version of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey

The class also liked the idea of introducing additional characters into the play as “mentors and demons,” who either help or hurt the heroine in her journey. One student suggested the term “demon” be changed to “dementor,” which I thought was a great idea. (You’ll see that term on the chart above.) I also added the phrase “line of change” to emphasize the points at which the main character experiences change in the journey paradigm.

We explored conflict through a letter writing exercise in which the main character writes to a potential mentor for help on the journey. That letter was shared with another playwright who wrote a response letter as if they were the person to whom the page was addressed. The respondent did not know anything about the character other than that person’s name; they also had to refuse to help. The first playwright wrote another letter in response and this time the respondent could either agree or again refuse. This activity takes a lot of time, but can be helpful not only in demonstrating conflict, but for beginning to develop the additional character(s) who may be found along the hero’s journey.

The students made great strides in their writing today, but still need some more time to write tomorrow. A couple have suggested that they may be done, but I anticipate that there will be more of the story to tell. I’m considering bringing in a few of our summer interns to read the plays so the playwrights get a chance to hear the words outside of their own heads. This is much earlier than I would typically do something like this, but I think they are ready. Can’t wait!

Summer Camp Playwriting - Day 2

(simultaneously published on the Writers Theatre of NJ blog)

Picking up where we left off yesterday in the Playwriting Workshop, the students revisited the formatting for a script through a pairs writing exercise. Partners took turns setting up their script by alternating the writing of information on a title page. This included items like character descriptions, setting, and an “at rise” to describe what the audience sees as the play begins. Once this was set, the writers took turns crafting a line of dialogue and then passed the notebook to their partner. They wrote like this for ten minutes and then we shared the drafts. I like to use this activity early in the process to reinforce the way the script is structured - which is often foreign to young playwrights - but also because it helps students practice writing dialogue as a reaction to what another character has previously said or done. I find this prevents them from overthinking how the play is structured and is a good stand-in for an acting exercise (which I find is something my student writers tend to not want to do).

From here we visited the character descriptions the students created yesterday and talked about what event or opportunity sent the character on her journey. This led to the brainstorming of a list of actions someone might take to get what they want. Ideas ranged from asking to murder! I encouraged the playwrights to decide one action where the character would begin and another that signified how far the character was willing to go to succeed. Having a line to cross is a great way for a character (and a playwright) to heighten the tension and, in my opinion, make the story more interesting and real to an audience.

Speaking of audience, I was happy to revisit the idea of writing for two audiences (spectators and performers), which we discussed on the first day. This seemed to inspire them to make detailed choices about how to present information within the dialogue for the audience and within the stage directions for the production staff. After some time writing, other questions arose about when to change scenes. My response is always along the lines of: you start a new scene whenever time or place changes. This works for most young playwrights’ stories, but this particular playwright had location shifts that were more subtle and this answer didn’t quite suffice. So, I took to Twitter and polled a few playwrights. I’m thankful to Pia Wilson, Dania Ramos, and Lauren Gunderson who provided some suggestions in response.

Pia Wilson (@pwilson720) began with the following suggestions:

• Depends on the story. U have 2 think abt the objective of the scene & what the chars need to accomplish.
• Sometimes a scene isn’t finished when you think it is. U can only know that in the context of the play.

Lauren Gunderson (@LalaTellsAStory) supported these ideas with the following:

• Each scene is a small play, with a goal achieved, something discovered or status changed. Then a new scene.
• A scene should propel the characters into the next scene. The audience should be hungry for more story
• Plot = Change. What changes for the characters in the scene. If nothing? Then you’re writing the wrong stuff

Dania Ramos (@DaniaDania) echoed my suggestion about time and place.

I look forward to sharing these ideas with the students in the morning and to the impact they are likely to have on the process.

When I teach a summer playwriting class, I don’t prescribe a strict writing process for the students. Instead I make a few suggestions, support them with exercises, and largely leave things open for the writers to proceed as they wish. For some that involves mapping out the steps a character takes along the journey (which typically translates into scenes); others need to know who the play is about, what s/he is going to do, and where it is taking place and then they write and figure it out while writing. I like to leave it open to take away the pressure of having to write something excellent and instead place the emphasis on just writing. But the playwright suggestions above may alter our course toward a more formal outline. I think there are some students who will benefit greatly from that idea and I’m curious to see how it works out.

Summer Camp Playwrights - Day 1

(simultaneously published on the Writers Theatre of NJ blog)

Today begins another summer of theatre camp classes at Writers Theatre of New Jersey. For the second year in a row, we start off with a class of young writers in the Playwriting Workshop. These students will enter sixth through ninth grade in the fall and most have an interest in creative writing, if not playwriting specifically. In fact, this may be the first time I’ve had a summer playwriting class where all of the students have written a dramatic script before. Regardless of students’ background, the first day always poses the challenge to figure out how comfortable everyone is sharing their work as well as how willing they are to spend the time writing.

Over the years I’ve come to structure the first class as an overview of the entire process: we brainstorm, develop characters, instigate conflict, and explore how things like setting, time, and even physicality (what if what you just wrote was spoken by an object in the room?) can impact those elements. I ask a lot of questions - a LOT of them - and make sure to emphasize that as a playwright there are two audiences: the people who gather to hear the story, but also the creative artists who will embody the story and bring it to life. This is a lot to digest, but I find it is often a new realization for the writers that helps craft more theatrical stories.

Creating characters

This first day is also a chance for me to try out some new activities and approaches, or to alter how I introduce them within the two week course. Last year, my groups had a great time working with a Norman Rockwell April Fool’s Day painting from 1947 and an exercise in which they rewrote a scene using a location from outside the building. The latter experience of setting made quite an impact on the students last year that I anticipate using it earlier in the process, but still not until they’ve begun to establish the parameters of the play they will develop for a public sharing on the final day.

For today, I tried an adaptation of something I’ve done for a while. I asked the students to make a list of five things they knew to be true. These could be known facts, personal experiences, or even ideas that they could support like factual evidence. They then wrote about this truth in their own voice. To keep this from feeling like a persuasive essay, I asked that they think of it like telling the story, or sharing the information with someone else. Once this was done, I asked them to reread - and likely rewrite - what the had just done from the perspective of an object in the room. Once that was done, they had to imagine the truth from an opposite perspective. Who might believe the opposite was true? Why? What led them to have that belief or understanding? They then read the two opposing speeches and we talked about how having multiple perspectives made the “good guy” and “bad guy” more realistic and believable to an audience. I will look to keep this theme going throughout the session.

Write write write

This morning, Facebook reminded me that it was two years ago today that Lin-Manuel Miranda replied to my question on Twitter about his advice to young playwrights:

"Write write write. What I'd give for your energy. WRITE!"

Some of the best advice there could be for young writers... or writers of any age. (What I'd give for Miranda's energy!)

Here's the Pitch

Playwrights pitching their ideas (PTNJ Summer)

This post was originally published on the NJ Young Playwrights blog on Nov 9, 2015.

When writers have an idea, or a completed script, and are looking for financial support, they sometimes need to give a presentation of that play to a producer (think Shark Tank for writers). Similarly, other writers (usually in television) meet together frequently to share plot ideas with one another. Talking about a story idea in this situation is called giving a "pitch". A pitch is a summary of the story that is usually pretty short and defined by a certain amount of time, amount of words, etc. This is typically something done when you start writing, but I've found it to be helpful to young playwrights at any time throughout the process.

If at any point in the process you find that you are stuck, or have writer's block, give this pitch exercise a try. First, summarize the general information about the play by beginning with the phrase: "This is a story about ________ " and then continue by giving some information about the character. This can simply be a noun like "girl" or "boy" or "wallaby", or you can give the name. Next, tell a little something about that person's everyday life, what they want/need to do in the play, and why the want/need to do it." For example, if we were to give a pitch about The Wizard of Oz, it might look something like this:

This is the story of a girl from Kansas who gets trapped in her house during a tornado. The tornado picks up the house and lands in the middle of a magical world called Oz. The girl wants to get back home, but is in danger because when her house fell, it fell on the Wicked Witch of the East and killed her. Now, the witch's sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, wants revenge on Dorothy for what she's done. With the help of a good witch named Glinda, Dorothy begins her journey to the Emerald City to see the Wizard who she is told will be able to send her home. Along the way, she meets three other inhabitants of Oz who also need the Wizard's help.

In that one paragraph, we get a pretty good sense of who the story is about, what she needs to do, who some of the other characters are, and what difficulties they all might face. This isn't a complete story, but it might just give you enough of an idea of what you are writing about to help you move through any writer's block, or moments where you are unsure about what you are writing. You can also use this exercise to brainstorm before writing your play, or as a check-in to see how well your story is progressing at any time during the writing process.

Happy writing!

Penumbras by Braden Bell - A Blog Tour Review

One thing that I look forward to doing with this blog is reviewing books and plays for young people. There hasn’t been as much time as I would like to spend reading this year, but I did have the pleasure of reading The Kindling and Penumbras, the first two books in the Middle School Magic series by my friend, Braden Bell. Penumbras was released in July and I am happy to join the final leg of the Penumbras book tour with my first book review.

The Middle School Magic series focuses on Connor, Lexi, and Melanie, average middle school students who are quickly thrust into the epic struggle between the forces of Light and Dark when it is discovered that they are Magi-in-training in service to the Light. All of this while they struggle to find a balance in their rapidly-changing, pre-teenage lives. The Kindling introduces readers to the characters and the world of the Magi. Penumbras picks up where the first book left off and defines those factions in more detail and explores the grey areas where Light and Dark can intersect: often within the human soul. Much of the book tells of Connor, Lexi, and Melanie’s training under the guidance of Dr. Timberi, a master Magi who also happens to be the music and drama teacher at their school.  Penumbras has plenty of action and intrigue to keep an audience (young and adult) engaged throughout. Bell has a knack for infusing even the most intense action scenes with a great deal of humor. I particularly enjoyed the battle in a department store at the mall. Also, there are some interesting and controversial character developments (link here) and a surprise ending that will leave you wanting to get your hands on the next book as soon as it is published. But what particularly excites me about Penumbras is how the story is as much about the emotional development of its young characters as it is about the epic struggle between Light vs. Dark.

While Lexi, Connor, and Melanie work to understand their abilities and responsibilities as Magi, they must also navigate the treacherous emotional landscape of early adolescence. Bell shows the experiences of being a young person in the language of a young person with great skill and honesty, undoubtedly a result of his years as a middle school teacher. Within the narrative, the Light and the Dark become parallels for the “good” and “bad” that may exist within the human soul and continually impact the characters’ thoughts and actions. The narrative as a whole demonstrates the much larger implications that personal decisions and actions can have and, perhaps more importantly, shows that it is possible for a person to be more than just “good” or “bad” and that redemption and forgiveness are always possible. I can imagine such a message resonating with young readers as they struggle, often silently, to understand the numerous new and often accentuated thoughts and emotions that accompany the journey through puberty and into adulthood. Bell seems to say to our children, and to us, that sometimes you need to go through the Darkness to get to the Light. And that in the end, there is still the possibility that everything will be ok. That is a strong and encouraging message that all of us, young and old, need to hear.

I strongly recommend Penumbras (and The Kindling) to you and to the young people in your lives just as I have recommended the books to my students and my family. I hope that you find Penumbras and the rest of the Middle School Magic series as enjoyable as I have. And please let the author know how much you enjoyed it. As he says on his website, he loves interacting with his readers!

Please see the links below for further information about this series and its author, Braden Bell. There is a discounted rate on the book when you order through the author’s website.

Happy reading!

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Where to purchase Penumbras:

You can buy both Penumbras and The Kindling through the author's website at a discounted price - $9.99 (plus s/h).

The author also encourages readers to support independent bookstores and to order online through Parnassus, an independent bookstore in Nashville.

You can also find Braden's books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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Beginning a Life with Alopecia

On the morning of April 18, 1987, I came from a birthday party sleepover at a friend’s house and sat on the living room floor to watch TV. My mother was sitting on the couch behind me and noticed a small bald patch on the back of my head about the size of a quarter. Every morning for the next few days, I woke up to a pillow so thick with hair that I had to use a lint roller to remove it. Two weeks later, I had gone from having a full head of hair to a few weak patches near the top of my head.

This is me about a year before losing my hair.

Fourth grade can be tough enough for a child given all of the changes that begin to take place around that time. My fourth grade year was certainly an awkward one: I had new braces and glasses and adolescence with all of its glories lurking just around the corner. Just about everyone goes through those changes sooner than later, but what made it different for me was how quickly I morphed physically in front of everyone’s eyes. There were plenty of questions to be had. Some of my friends and classmates were genuinely curious and concerned about what had happened. Questions from certain others had a bit something less friendly about them. To make things worse, when I was eventually diagnosed with alopecia universalis (an autoimmune disorder resulting in the complete loss of body hair), the dermatologist prescribed a giant pill that was impossible to swallow and a cream for my scalp that stained my face several shades darker than my hands and arms. It is not necessary for me to go through the variety of ignorant and hurtful things that were said and done to me in the years that followed. It was not fun, to say the absolute least. Luckily, it was around this time that I was introduced to theatre and began to develop a love of stories both on the stage and on the page.

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I began to read a lot; saw many movies, plays, and musicals. I enacted the stories in front of a mirror in the shelter of my bedroom and wrote scripts for my friends and I to enact and occasionally film. To my knowledge, nothing but one of these scripts ever got produced: we filmed a movie with a friend’s VHS video camera, but that was more of a collaborative effort than an independent script. Nevertheless, writing and stories became a way for me to cope. I kept a collection of journals from fifth grade through high school, which I kept until recently. Some of the writing was about life with alopecia, but much of it was the accounts of the day, or ideas for a new story. No matter the subject, the tone of my writing in the journals was unfettered and real. Writing in those pages helped me to reflect on and express emotions about everything that I was experiencing and, as the stage would later provide, provided a comfortable place to be myself and share my voice.

Now, through my professional life in theatre and in academia, I understand how important this involvement in story was to the development of my maturity and personality. I enjoy seeing that same development in the young playwrights that I mentor and/or whose work I produce; in the energy and confidence with which college students assert their artistry independently for the first time. There is something very powerful in a young person sharing their voice and there is little that can benefit the young writer / young artist more than having their work read and discussed. It is my hope that with the establishment of the Alopecia Writers Club other children with alopecia can find joy and encouragement similar to that which I experienced when I was in their shoes.

The Alopecia Writers Club is currently accepting new members and I hope to have writing prompts and tips going for Club members by the time Alopecia Awareness Month starts up in September. If you know of a child with alopecia, or a sibling of a child with alopecia, who would be interested in developing and sharing their creative writing, please see the Club section of my website for more information, or contact me at jim@jimdevivo.com. (April 2016: Please note that the Alopecia Writers Club is currently on hiatus.)