Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
This mopey winter poem, complete with collywobbles, was one of my favorites as a kid. This is just a portion of the perfect poem in which to wallow when depressed. You can read the full poem here (scroll down). Aroint thee, sweetness and light! I want to be dark and sour! Away with the bird that twitters! All that glitters …
Noted Pulitzer and Tony Award winning playwright Edward Albee knew well the issue of having aspirations loftier than one’s talent. He said, “Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn’t so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you’ll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.”― Edward Albee
The “Writing Down The Bones” author Natalie Goldberg likes to keep things simple. She writes: “A writing practice is simply picking up a pen — a fast-writing pen, preferably, since the mind is faster than the hand — and doing timed writing exercises. The idea is to keep your hand moving for, say, ten minutes, and don’t cross anything out, …
I’m writing a play that deals with the themes of mercy and forgiveness. I’ve been researching ideas and quotations about forgiveness, and this one from Rita Mae Brown is particularly pertinent. “One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.”― Rita Mae Brown
How many times have you watched a show and felt sad when the villain wasn’t onstage? That’s because a good villain is not only watchable, they’re somewhat relatable. Think Aaron Burr. Stanley Kowalski. Goneril and Regan. When writing a villain, make them the hero of their own story and they’ll shine. More than anything, audiences want characters (virtuous and not) …
I’ve been meaning to blog. I have had every good intention to blog. And yet. I have said before that too many things have happened this year that are unprecedented; that I have not experienced before. The pandemic, obviously. The California fires that hid the sun for a day. A person losing the presidential election insisting he has won it, …
I am constantly reminded that endings are hard. Just the other day, as I was walking, I thought of the ending of a play I’ve been kicking around in my head for a few years (yes, years). This makes me very happy. I feel like I can actually start writing the play now. Endings are hard because they must be …
“When you’re asking what is the role of a poet in a society, in a culture, in a country, in a community, it is to respond in a way that only poetry can.” ~ Jane Hirshfield Which brings me to one of my favorite poets, June Jordan. Her poems have inspired me to write plays, to be active in politics. …
Every morning, I walk in my neighborhood for about four or five miles. This month I’m greeted by skeletons rising up out of front lawns, bony dogs and owls on neighbors’ stoops, headstones dotting suburban yards. It’s never been my favorite holiday. Enjoy All Hallows’ Eve, a poem by Dorothea Tanning. Be perfect, make it otherwise.Yesterday is torn in shreds.Lightning’s …
Coincidences in plays can be problematic. Audiences will only tolerate so much. Once when discussing coincidences in “Oedipus Rex,” an instructor said what I think is a nifty, concise rule: “There should be only one coincidence per play, and it should happen offstage, and in the past.” Scott Myers makes the distinction between Fate coincidences and Writer coincidences. (Fate coincidences …