Tuesday, March 29, 2016

DiCaprio: It all starts with the script

For all of you writers who are working your way through an initial draft, keep in mind that any successful project always starts with the script.  And taking the time and effort to make that play or screenplay or teleplay totally lift off the page is well worth the struggle before releasing it to the world.

Here's what Leonardo DiCaprio had to say on the subject in an interview with Charlie Rose a couple of years ago:

"Everything at the end of the day when you're making a movie starts with the material and how well written the script is...  I've never seen a silk purse made from a sow's ear...  I've never seen it happen wherein a 'crap' script with 'crap' characters, a director somehow found a way to make a masterpiece out of it."


He goes on:  

"And that's the constant struggle we all sort of have as actors...it's finding those gems and that's why people grab onto them like vultures... When you find a great piece of material or a great script it's like (he motions with his hands in a vulture grip)...You should see what happens...it's like a piranha feeding fest!"

So take your time with that draft and your subsequent drafts.  Fight the urge to release that script before it's as good as it can possible be.  Set your sights high.  And never compromise or settle for second best.  Work at it until you know it's right and is, indeed, one of those gems that can trigger its own feeding fest.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.




Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Networking in our MFA Writing for Stage and Screen program, Part 2

Continuing with what we started last week, I'm happy to announce another important project that's been generated out of our MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen program.  This time it's a New York City venture that involves several faculty and actors who are part of our MFA family.

Next Monday, March 28th there will be a concert reading of playwright (and faculty member) Karen Sunde's intriguing play To Moscow at the Players Club in New York City.  It's being produced by our recent MFA graduate Steve Ashworth (from Edmonton, Canada) and stars, among others, our program's Casting Director and faculty member/actor Lisa Bostnar as well as Emmy-award winning actor Gordon Clapp, who works closely with us in readings of student scripts on a regular basis.  The play is being directed by Robert Lawson, who also is on our faculty.


You can check out all aspects of the project and how it's breaking new ground at tomoscowtheplay.com.

For me, however, what makes this project unique (and others like it) is that it's a direct result of our MFA program and the creative energy emanating from it.  Our faculty, alums, and current students are bursting with creativity and are talented working professionals (emerging and established) who are building an expansive network from coast to coast and beyond.

I feel privileged to be the Director of this program that we launched three years ago.   And I'm increasingly excited and proud of our "family" and the good work that's radiating from it.

If you're in NYC next Monday, March 28th, I urge you to join us.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Networking in our MFA Writing for Stage and Screen program, Part 1...

I'm thrilled to announce the national premiere of a new play written by one of our recent MFA graduates and produced by a soon-to-be graduate of the program.  The play is called Cleave, the work of  Los Angeles writer Vicki Peterson who graduated with her MFA degree last June.  Owen Robertson, who will be graduating from our program this coming July, is producing the play in Tampa, Florida in a co-production of Lab Theater Project and Stageworks Theatre Company.  The production will run from this Thursday, March 17 through Sunday, April 3rd.


Cleave tells the moving tale of a self-proclaimed prophet's wife, who gives birth to her child on the very day her husband has prophesied the world will end.  As they prepare for the end, a teenager stumbles upon their homestead, bringing with her conflict, doubt and perhaps hope.  The play explores the nature of spiritual abuse and the moral and spiritual cost of making idols out of men.

Playwright Vicki Peterson wrote the play along with several other scripts while in our MFA program. Her work has received considerable recognition, including her screenplay Zoe and the Zebra, which won Best Screenplay at the Irvine International Film Festival and the California Independent Film Festival.  She is also co-author of Notes to Screenwriters, a recently published book on screenwriting, and for many years has been partner in the script consulting firm Catharsis, based in Hollywood.

Owen Robertson is an established professional in the Tampa-based theatre scene and founder of the Lab Theater Project.  A well known local actor, Owen is also a teacher and emerging playwright himself.  Owen has flown Vicki to Tampa for the final week of rehearsals and says "Vicki is helping and watching the show grow--my dream of a safe place for playwrights to see their shows come to life and to feel they have a voice in that process."

Needless to say, I'm proud of these two members of our MFA "family."  It bodes well for our program's future as more and more projects we've had a hand in generating are being given professional recognition and life throughout the country.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.  

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Writing in your sleep..or the muse within us

The other day an MFA student of mine got in touch and said that her husband just got a new job hundreds of miles from where they were living, that the job started in a couple of weeks, and that she'd have to suddenly focus on the move and have to take a hiatus from her work on her major script project for the semester.  She was worried that she'd get behind schedule and her project would get derailed.

I told her not to worry.

And I said this with some confidence because this student had been stirring the pot of her story for over a month and a half already, doing extensive research, completing multiple character exploration exercises and making a number of preliminary jottings regarding aspects of her plot.

But what was really going on unaware was that she was pouring ideas and story questions into her subconscious, the dwelling place of the writer's muse.  "Feeding" her subconscious with rich material and energizing her inner mind to sort out the issues involved and when ready to send solutions and the keys to locked doors back up into the conscious mind.  I told her to trust that was happening, that work was continuing on her project even though she was packing boxes, making to-do lists, saying goodbye to friends, closing down her apartment and on and on for the next three weeks.



Ray Bradbury, in his excellent and classic collection of essays on creativity called Zen in the Art of Writing has a wonderful piece on this called "How to Keep and Feed a Muse."  He, too, thinks that your subconscious is your muse and that you have to play this game with yourself.  He writes:  "What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse.  They are two names for one thing."  And, "...I wanted to show what we all have in us, that it has always been there, and so few of us bother to notice.  When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh.  How strange--we're so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in." He goes on to suggest the "diet" we need to feed this inner muse.

Of course, this only works if you indeed do feed your muse, have patience, and trust that she'll come through when you need her.  So I told my student to enjoy her move, celebrate the new job and the setting up of their new life, and visualize that muse working away and ready to deliver the goods upon a return to the writing desk.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Musings on story structure...

The other week I was talking with a writer friend about why solid story structure is always present if a script is going to work.

In trying to explain why this is so I said to imagine a hundred people standing in front of you in a long row.  And you're directed to walk by them slowly, engage in a short conversation with each person, and observe how strikingly unique every individual is in terms of physical appearance, personality, and general "presence."  Without question, you'd conclude when you finished the assignment that no two people were the same and that you'd just experienced one hundred different versions of what it means to be a unique one-of-a-kind human being.

Now imagine that all clothing, flesh, and life suddenly was removed from those hundred people and all you were left with was a long row of parched white skeletons lying on the ground in front of you.


Would you be able to see any difference between them?  Oh, variations in height, perhaps, and general size.  But what about personality, sex, unique physical features?  None--at least to the untrained eye.  The bone structure would look basically identical for all one hundred.

My writer friend laughed and understood.

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I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  Our last residency ran January 3-11, 2016 and we are now considering applications for starting the program with our July 2016 residency that runs July 21-31.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), a professional script consultant, and the author of The Playwrights Process.