Written by Anita Larsen
I do not concentrate on either stage or screen plays. In fact, I try not to concentrate on anything at all. This could be a problem, but I don’t see it as such, viewing realtors and carpets as bigger issues than preferred medium. When I want to sound off about dirt sellers and/or dirt traps, I think in terms of stage. People are allowed to use actual words onstage, a stage production is more a playwright’s event than a film is a screenwriter’s event (unless they also produce, direct, and maybe act), and because I just plain like the theater atmosphere better than I like the smell of the trans-fat popcorn of the Cineplex, for all that the latter is a such a sweet siren smell. When I want to punch something out, I think in terms of screen plays. That said, working on screenplays is newer for me than is working on stage plays, so screenplays are more fun. Somebody once told me that learning is comprised of excitement, followed by boredom, followed by competence. I am currently getting bored with screenplays. This may or may not bode well.
I have been sort of successful in getting my work to production. A full-length adult script, “Felix Culpa,” was produced at the American Shakespeare Theatre in their new playwrights series one long-ago summer. But Broadway didn’t call, and a review by a Yale Guy started with “Damn!” and went downhill from there. A later reader at the Guthrie said of this script that it must include every single idea I’d ever had, which was not entirely true. There wasn’t a realtor or a carpet in the whole thing. Another time, a bill of one-acts—one of them was “Fish of April” and even I have forgotten the other(s?)—won a regional contest. The board of that theater later closed down their contest. They may even have closed down their entire operation. I’m not sure.
I have a whole long dreary list like this, but hesitate to inflict it on you, Gentle General Reader. If you have up-front production money, however, I’m happy to provide a complete resume on request. This unfortunately comes with cost analyses, profit projections, a proposed distribution plan, and perhaps even photos. These would be photos of me as Thea or Masha or Bananas, etc., and while they are off the point entirely, they do bulk up a business proposal package nicely.
ISA was sufficiently kind as to read a children’s script, and then it got published, so there’s a whole long dreary list of productions from that and similar situations. There should be another script published some time this year or next, which will be, I am told, a musical. Composer’s CDs sound good to me, so maybe it will be fine. Then again, maybe not.
Imminent starvation and mortgage requirements are great spurs to getting work completed. This works better for me in print. There are a little more than 20 books with one or another of my bylines floating around somewhere. Some of these are now mercifully out of print. Sadly, that also means they no longer earn anything, except for people clearing their bookshelves and selling copies on Amazon. I don’t make a dime on these Amazon copies but am occasionally trapped into autographing one or two. So there will just have to be more books, and more print projects and corporate media projects, etc. This is too bad for the lives of trees and the sensibilities of the wider conscious world, and I apologize for that, but that is just too bad.
Neither enforced fasting or keeping a roof over my head is especially effective in getting work produced on stage or screen, however. Production seems to depend on a modicum of quality, massive doses of marketability, tremendous networking/schmooze skills and Being There. What I foist off on an unsuspecting possible-production public appears to have a modicum of quality, not much marketability (actually recently took an online course on high concept, thinking it would be a good idea to know what that is), a lack of networking/schmooze skills so vast as to be stunning—I mean, there should be an award!—and, of course, I Am Not There.
I write daily. But I think this isn’t as important as sitting around and thinking. Whatever the medium, if you can’t say your idea it in a single sentence, forget it. Conversely, ideas are a dime a dozen. That’s what you polish and hone and get all worked up about when you’re sitting around thinking.
A final note: If you’re really serious about writing, you need to have a dog. Cats simply don’t care, and families and friends are iffy. A serious writer needs a dog. Petting a dog gives you something positive to do while you’re sitting around thinking. And God bless!