Stuff Now. – Page 8 – Sheila Callaghan.

January 2, 2019January 2, 2019

Battery acid.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This year is gonna be GREAT!

The tides are gonna TURN!

We’re gonna SMOKE THESE JOKERS OUT AND SHIP ‘EM TO THE AMAZON AND MAKE ‘EM SLURP BATTERY ACID FROM THE BELLY BUTTONS OF UNBATHED TREE SLOTHS.

(what)

I’m feeling festive! I’m in a giving mood! But only to some of you! So if you feel Very Good about your flow, then top o’the mornin’ and tally ho, see you in half a fortnight.

But those of you who feel like you didn’t write enough in 2018 and could use a little *squeeze* for the new year… well I dunno if this will help but it can’t hurt. It’s just me talking about my “process” and giving “tips” and discussing “writer’s block” and all that stuff. For this gal:

I’m still a new/emerging playwright! I’m gonna go apply for some grants… Jk jk. She asked some Q’s. I gave her some A’s.

I never had a mentor (mentress?). I had writers to whom I felt psychically connected, who I read obsessively and whose work parented my own in an anonymous yet intimate way, but I never had anyone I looked up to who could specifically ask for help.

So. Like I said. She asked some Q’s. My A’s are below.

– What is your writing process like and how do you get your ideas?

Honestly, it depends on the project. If it’s TV stuff I’ll pitch moments from my own personal history that are adaptable to the characters in the show. I’m more able to write from a place of truth when I do that successfully.

If it’s a play, usually I’ll start by paying attention to what I’m paying attention to, then I’ll identify the moments I’m most excited to write, and then try to earn them by building believable characters whose desires and needs are discernible and serve the story/idea/theme/moment. Sometimes I’ll check my browser history to see where my eyeballs have been spending the most time.

If it’s an essay or a note on my website, I picture who is reading and imagine I’m speaking directly to them. I try to engage people with stories they might find funny or moving or helpful.

– What advice would you give to a future writer?

First of all, don’t think of yourself as a future writer. You’re a writer. Even if you don’t get paid to do it yet. It’s not like other professions where you need to wait to be employed. You can write and be a writer.

Being a committed writer, however, means you to write and write and write until you understand your own singular voice. But even if you can’t hear that quite yet, it doesn’t mean you’re not a writer. You are.

As far as starting a career as a writer, which is probably what you meant, here are my boilerplate tips:

1) Get a community of friends (actors, writers, directors, etc) and feed them and read each other’s work. Stay connected to them. Support them. You will need them.

2) Stay in love with the form by watching and reading all the stuff you love all the time. Not just theatre and TV. Everything. Music, novels, poetry, art, documentaries, etc.

3) Find something else that makes you happy and do it joyfully three times a week; something that has nothing to do with your career (drawing, jogging, dancing, gardening, cooking, whatever). You’ll need nourishment when the work falters. It will and it’s totally ok. Just be prepared.

4) Don’t network at people, don’t ask to pick anyone’s brain, don’t send emails to people you don’t know asking for jobs, and don’t act like you deserve anything; just make good truthful work and share it with your treasured collaborators before anyone else. The work will get you noticed, not your insistence.

5) If you need to ask help from people you don’t know well, offer something in return. Whatever. Bottle of wine, gift certificate to the Olive Garden, a handmade thank you card even. Gratitude goes along way. (Ok maybe not the Olive Garden but you know what I mean.)

6) Write the things you thought you’d never write because they are too scary/weird/unconventional. The terrifying stuff is often the most affecting.

However, it’s also the most painful to explore. So make sure you’re taking care of yourself before, during, and after you go there. Therapy, foot massages, extra sleep… you’re doing something brave, and bravery needs kindness.

– What is your favorite play, as well as your favorite play you’ve written?

I don’t have favorites but the play that was most influential to me at an early age was The Zoo Story by Edward Albee, which I saw performed when I was 16 and it changed my life.

(I just realized I didn’t answer the second part of this question! Though I don’t have a favorite play of my own. That would be like asking someone to name their favorite finger.)

– What do you do when you come to a writers block?

I’m not totally sure I’ve ever had writer’s block in the sense that I’ve never sat down and stared at a page and wondered what to write. Sometimes I have ideas that don’t go anywhere. But I generally feel passionate/angry/confused/heartbroken enough that something finds a way out.

For me, it’s more a matter of timing. If it’s not the right time for me to tell a particular story, like if I don’t have enough perspective on it or if I don’t have the heart to really dig, I’ll stall out a little.

Sometimes if I’m “stuck,” I do research. I’ll unpack the thing I’m having trouble with by populating the room it’s in, or the wardrobe of the character, or the city where it takes place. I flesh out the picture so I can see it better.

If that doesn’t work, I snack or take a walk or shower or exercise to refresh my mind. Sometimes the solution will reveal itself when I’m not looking so hard for it.

If that doesn’t work, I try to return to the initial impulse I had to see if the problem lies in an unhelpful detour I may have taken. That happens quite often.

If nothing works, I’ll abandon the scene or script or whatever it is and chase the smoke from another fire for a little bit.

December 19, 2018October 15, 2018

Dead man’s soup.

This was our old apartment in Brooklyn, courtesy of Googlemaps. We lived there for two years in the mid-aughts. We shared the two-story upper level with a roommate, a friend of a friend from college.

It was the most beautiful apartment I’d ever lived in. Long elegant windows, wide marble fireplaces, original pier mirrors and crown moldings from the turn of the century… we’d have friends over and they’d walk in and gaze up at the twelve-foot ceilings like “What the FUCK???”

Not our apartment, but similar. (I don’t know these people.)

We’d gotten lucky. We paid very little rent because the owner lived beneath us and was picky about his tenants. Most of the owners in the ‘hood had lived there over thirty years. They were hanging on to their buildings with white knuckles through the neighborhood’s rapid gentrification.

Our landlord also owned the adjacent brownstone, which was as lovingly kept and stunning as ours. A man named Willie occupied the lower two levels with his dog. He was around seventy years old, and was a fixture in the neighborhood.

I wrote a story about Willie and published it on my old website on August 4, 2005. I had initially intended to write about my abysmal habit of being late to everything and Willie’s role in that. But then, the story changed itself.

I know it’s a little awkward to have this as my last note before the holidays. It’s not exactly merry. But I dunno. I get melancholy around this time of year. And I think about Willie a lot.

So.

Merry Christmas. See you in 2019.

DEAD MAN’S SOUP.

A while ago I asked you to remind me to tell you about my neighbor Willie. He sat on his front stoop every day with his dog and chatted with people as they walked by. Neighbors mostly, but he was friendly to everyone. So was his dog.

And somehow, everyone except me knew what he was saying.

Two years ago, Willie survived a bout of cancer of the esophagus that had taken a portion of his tongue. He ate through a feeding tube in his tummy. Most of his words came out sounding like scoops of mashed potatoes; all mush, not a lot of shape. He spoke through his nose mostly, and he required a bit of pantomime to get his points across.

Talking with him put me freakishly on edge. I’m chronically late for everything, and Willie was always on his stoop, and I couldn’t just blow by and act like he wasn’t there… and so most times I would stand there with my face all corrugated in frustration, straining to translate his nasal expulsions while my nerves pulled tighter and tighter…

Jump forward to yesterday. I was ravenous and I knew we had nothing in the house to eat, but I didn’t have the cash to blow on some bullshitty crap from any of the overpriced bodegas in staggering distance (not another lunch of cheddar Soy Crisps, please)… so I scoured the fridge and the freezer with the “I’ll eat anything, even the frozen fucking peas” kind of fever… and I found two tupperware containers filled with chunky, brownish, ominous-looking material.

Each had a strip of masking tape on the top with scrawled writing. One read “Turkey Neckbone Soup”, and the other “W. Bro. Pigfeet Soup.”

Neckbone? PIGFEET?

Our roommate was a vegetarian. None of us cooked ancillary animal parts. And whose handwriting was that?

Then I remembered.

About four months ago, Willie’s apartment had caught on fire.

He’d been microwaving some meatloaf and he heard a bang. He grabbed his dog and got the hell out of there. By the time the firetrucks arrived, his entire first floor was in flames.

The neighbors above him were not home, and their apartment was not damaged. But Willie lost everything. His extensive stack of blues records was one huge melted pile of black. All his furniture was eaten through with black. His lamps, his telephone, his TV, everything had melted from the heat. Every bit of glass in the room had turned to liquid. What took seventy years to accumulate was annihilated in less than twenty minutes.

And anything that might have been salvaged was damaged either from the hydrant water or from the firemen smashing through (they had to gouge open up all the walls afterwards to make sure nothing was still burning inside).

Afterwards, we took photos for the insurance people while Willie climbed around his wreckage, pulling charred objects aside to reveal more charred objects. He tried to open his freezer but it was fused shut. We had to pry it open with the help of another neighbor.

Inside, all of his food was completely intact. The ice had protected even the plastic of the tupperware.

Willie asked us to hang onto everything for him until he could come back for it. We said okay and stashed the food in our freezer. That night Willie slept on a cot in his basement, water dripping all around him. We saw him through his window on our way home from dinner. He had a small battery-powered light next to him.

The landlord suggested Willie find somewhere else to stay, but Willie refused. He slept on the cot at night, and during the day he sat on his stoop with his dog. One morning I was rushing off to work and I passed him, saying, “I’m so sorry about your apartment, Willie… when do they think you can move back in?”

“Never,” he said.

That I understood perfectly.

About two weeks later, contractors were hired to re-assemble the interiors of the old brownstone. Willie moved to a nearby hotel with some clothes donated by the neighbors.

Last month I came home to find the landlord outside our apartment, crying. Willie had gone to the hospital the day before, and had died that morning. Complications with his feeding tube. The hole in his tummy had partially healed.

He had starved to death.

So.

Turkey neckbone soup.

I defrosted it in the microwave.

The first bite almost made me gag. More the thought of it than anything… the word “neckbone” caught in a loop in my head.

The second bite was easier.

The third was spicy and rich, almost cajun.

I ate the whole thing.

December 12, 2018September 5, 2019

One person.

If you get my notes via email, you may have received a draft of this one in September. I was trying to schedule posts in advance for the weeks I knew I wasn’t available, but I accidentally sent it early. Ooops.

I pre-scheduled this because right now I am locked in a rehearsal room in downtown LA working on this play. I did a small reading of it in NYC in October, which was like placing a pillow under its head and asking if it wants some warm milk. Right now, however, I’m gouging it with a hunting knife and ordering it not to bleed on my nice white carpet.

Why?

Because it’s a one-person play.

I don’t like one-person plays.

For one, they invoke in me a sort-of empathetic claustrophobia for the performer. “That poor gal is stuck on that stage for a whole hour with no air! Get her out of there!”

But my bigger issue, I think, involves my struggle as an audience member to understand my role in the narrative.

Like, if the character is talking to a literal theatre audience, as with my friend Heidi’s play, I get it. I bought a ticket and sat down and now a performer named Heidi is talking to me about stuff she cares about. My job is to pay attention to her.

I can do that. Heidi’s amazing. The show is great. Easy peasy.

And in McNally’s Master Class, which I saw at the Taper in LA a bazillion years ago, we are cast as Maria Callas’s students. My “purpose” in that audience is to stay silent and worship her so she can react.

I’ve been a devoted disciple. I know how to worship a legend. Done and done.

Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger, Soho Playhouse, NYC 2001. A librarian gives a lecture about a book that was returned 113 years late. My role is pretty clear. I’m a person who showed up to a lecture about a book. My character likes books. Perhaps I have lots of free time. I’m… enterprising? Educated?

Check.

The Object Lesson at the Kirk Douglas in Culver City two years ago. We’re literally moving boxes and sharing food and dancing with Geoff Sobelle’s character. We have jobs! We help him build the event of the show. He can’t make his play without us. He’d have no one to dance with.

I’ve only ever read 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane ’cause when it was at St. Anne’s in Brooklyn four years ago I was feeling maybe not totally emotionally prepared for it, but in it you witness a young woman’s mental collapse on stage. Your role is almost opposite to The Object Lesson; she would fall apart even if you weren’t watching. You’re basically there to hold the stories of the woman who can’t. You’re the survivor.

I’ve been a survivor. I know how to do that.

However.

When I can’t tell who I am as an audience, I get a little um nervous.

Like when the character on stage is a just a person telling horrific or humorous or meaningful stories. I’m like, did I just casually wander into a trauma circle? Why is only one of us talking?

(Is that crazy?)

I loved Will Eno’s Thom Pain at the DR2 in 2005 (didn’t see the recent revival at the Signature, sadly). I looked it up for the character breakdown:

In this show I play an anonymous passive observer cloaked in a temporary theatrical convention. Ok… but why does Thom need me there? What am I doing?

Same with Buyer and Cellar by Jonathan Tolin, which I saw at the Taper. An out-of-work actor named Alex talks about the time he got hired to work in a basement mall at Barbra Streisand’s house. He’s telling me about it because… I have no idea. Am I his friend? Are we having coffee? Why isn’t he asking me about the bleeding gash above my left eyebrow?

I don’t have a gash. But if I did, he wouldn’t ask about it.

(Am I the only person who’s been hurled into an existential void over this??)

For some reason I don’t have this problem when the performer portrays multiple characters connected by a central theme. Like with Danny Hoch’s show about gentrification called Taking Over, or Heather Raffo’s Nine parts of Desire dealing with the plight of Iraqi women.

I saw neither of these. I looked them up.

‘Cause I’m writing a one-person show, man.

By choice.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

The structure of my play hangs on an actual yoga class. Before the show begins, play-goers are invited to participate on-stage where they remain until the performance ends. They are “yoga students.”

But my character only addresses those people. She doesn’t address “the audience” at large, who is crouched behind the ol’ fourth wall.

Who the hell are they?

Am I writing a hybrid between a traditional play and an object lesson?

Do I need to account for the relationship between on-stage audience and in-house audience?

Am I doing it wrong?