when.we.were.24

Creative?

2006-03-07T18:07:00.000-06:00

I spend so much of my time thinking scientifically. My brain is filled with statistics and research ideas and methodology...which is great. It is what my brain needs to be filled with in order to succeed in graduate school and my eventual career. I need to think like a psychologist and a scientist, even if I want to someday be a consultant.

Furthermore, I LIKE thinking that way. It feels so productive and right. I am a problem solver, I like to figure things out. I love psychology. This is the right path for me.

But lately, I know something is missing. I know I need to be more creative in my everyday life, whether that means managing my time better to include sewing, knitting, writing, playwriting...I don't know. It seems to me like the creative process takes such a long time, and like I need to gear up for it.

What I really need to do is jump in. This summer will be amazing, I know it. I want us to write down everything we think might be good, without discussing the hell out of it first. I want to dive in and be unafraid of the product being bad. I want to get the creative juices flowing and feel whole again.

It's only a couple of months off. I feel it.

Also?

2006-02-23T15:22:00.000-06:00

We're 25 now. Just for the record.

So it ain't boring

2006-02-23T15:16:00.000-06:00

I saw A Child's History of Bombing last weekend, and it was a really cool two-person show. But lemme tell you. I realized how tedious it can be to have the same two people onstage the whole time (even wonderful people like Greg and Donovan), especially when they are telling stories and not acting/improvising huge scenes. So their production was definitely spiced up by the addition of video, SLIDES and burning some selected things in glass bowls. I vote that we steal these ideas mercilessly. It also worked because they switched "modes" a lot, between storytelling, speeches & facts from others, being really emotional, really excited, really serious, really funny. So. Just some thoughts. It's important, with our concept, to keep it interesting, I think. Also, we clearly have short attention spans, so we should cater to our own easily distracted selves and keep it movin'.

New Plan

2006-02-07T22:16:00.000-06:00

Holy moly. It has been over NINE MONTHS since we wrote anything here!

But Lindsay has been writing actual things for the play, and I...well, I haven't. But I should! I am thinking that maybe Linz and I can have coffee once a week down at school and maybe use that time strictly for play stuff. Or for catching up, because it feels like we hardly see each other anymore. Such is the craziness of life.

And there is a new plan: I will take one last summer away from an office job, and will instead wait tables, so I can focus on being creative. Focus on creating something. Linz will also work only minimally, so we will spend a lot of time together (easy, because all our other friends have jobs!) and write write write. I am sure that there will be days where we do more hanging out than writing, and days when we will barf at the sight of each other, but I hope that we can also write things down. Write EVERYTHING down. And in that giant summer-long freewriting will be the truth of our play. Of our lives.

Then we can move on. Editing, rewriting, finding a director, casting, finding a venue, putting it up. But for now, because all of those things cause me to hyperventilate a little, we'll just write. It is the first step, and the most important, and will be fun. I will MAKE it be fun, dammit!

I can't wait for summer.

Game On.

2005-04-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

Yo, peeps. The play project is back on. We're working again, in the beginning stages at least, and feeling more optimistic. Woo!

Wish us luck.

About last night

2005-03-01T11:32:00.000-06:00

Class last night was really helpful; a few key things clicked into place. Teacher Jeff asked: "What are you trying to say, with this play?" We replied, that "it's hard but it's worth it..." One classmate commented, "What's the other side of the coin? Suicide?" And I was really confused for a second, but it did snap things into place. Now is the time when we're making so many choices, choices choices. Why did we choose this road instead of an easier one?

Also, Jeff told us to just start writing. That's probably the best advice we've gotten. Just get stuff out, and we can edit and make stuff pretty and rearrange and (like Deanna said) find meaning later. It'll come out organically, I have faith. We just gotta go.

A life examined

2005-02-24T16:32:00.000-06:00

"Personal narratives are only interesting and useful when there is some more universal meaning attached. Which means you have to examine your life, your prejudices, your actions first. If you still can’t make sense of something in your experience, why share it with a crowd? This isn’t therapy, this is art and performance, and improvised or not, you must think, or have thought, first about what you have to say. That sort of performance is better suited for that other confessional medium- the talk show. The audience comes for inspiration, enlightenment, not to analyze the performer. If the unexamined life is not worth living, it is certainly not worth staging. Unless there are flying chairs involved." -- Shannon Manning

Crisis Averted

2005-02-20T23:57:00.000-06:00

Linz and I talked out the issues at hand, and appear to have come to a resolution. That's right people, we're back on track!

Once again, we've modified the class homework to fit our own needs, and this week that means writing monologues. We had originally decided to work on the "running scenes" for class because they more closely match the screenplay/dialogue structure of most of our classmates. However, getting any decisions made or any work done was like pulling teeth.

So I suggested that, in order to get SOMETHING moving, we might should start with monologues. So that's what we're doing. Writing 5 monologues each for tomorrow night.

Hey, Linz, I just had an idea about the monologues. I'm thinking as I write, so it's really just the first inkling of a brainstorm. So we're currently looking at 2-minute monologues, right? Well, I'm working on one about "faking it," and I'm not sure there are 2 minutes worth of things to say about it. What if we considered doing shorter monologues, but maybe doing more of them in order to keep the length of the show?

I'm overtired and talking out of my ass. Does this make sense? Anyone? Bueller?

What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Stronger

2005-02-17T10:29:00.000-06:00

Or so we hope. Linz and I are having some troubled times, people. I think all the frustration with the process is finally coming to a head, and it sucks. I'm frustrated with myself, and frustrated with the process, and I'm taking it out on her. Totally shitty, I know.

Linz, if you want me to delete this post, I will.

I just wanted to say. . .I'm sorry. You apologized for being "nonhelpful and sort of mean," but I didn't apologize yet. I realized that last night. But I am. Sorry, that is. For being obstinate and bratty and also sort of mean. I'm a jerkface sometimes, as it turns out.

Love you, girlie. We may have further to melt down before we rebuild, but we will. Promise.

--Becca

We are writing

2005-02-14T14:53:00.000-06:00

We are writing! We are. We are. We are. We are putting actual dialogue onto actual paper. It is semi-miraculous and very hard but very fun.

Another semi-autobiographical play by a 24 year-old

2005-02-14T13:14:00.000-06:00

This one has a more serious subject. But it does have monologues, bits and video.

One review.

A write-up in the Vancouver Courier:
---------
Being Inside is based on Joseph Baker’s experience of having a father suffering from dementia and how it has affected his family.
Son’s labour of love comes to life
By Fiona Hughes

An average teen living in his own world, Joseph Baker didn’t take much notice when his dad started showing early signs of dementia. The 15-year-old Surrey resident had other things on his mind—school, friends and surviving the teen years.

"At the time, I didn’t give a damn," says Baker, now 24, whose written a play based on his family’s experience with the disease that runs at the Roundhouse Community Centre from Jan. 5 to 21.

"I wasn’t paying attention because it was just little things—like forgetting how to spell his name. Then it gradually progressed to getting up in the middle of the night and going over to the neighbours and asking them if they were going to take him to work. It wasn’t until I was 19 or 20, when the disease was far along, that I wanted to sit down and talk to him about things."

In 1995 after many years of tests, Baker’s father was finally diagnosed with Diffuse Lewey Body, a dementia with symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Thomas Baker, now 74 and a former priest and counsellor with two master’s degrees, has steadily declined in the last five years and has been unable to care for himself.

"I first wrote a poem about him. I grew up pretty fast because we spent a lot of time dealing with him and not dealing with me," he says. "But as painful as it is for me to watch my father dying of this disease, I don’t know how much pain he’s in."

Joseph says that as he faced the loss of his father, he was forced to come to terms with his own adolescent struggles and deal honestly with his emotions.

In the early stages of the disease, he was cared for at home by his wife Janice with help from a home-care worker. Eventually, after a year on a waiting list, he required 24-hour care and was placed in Delta View Hospital, where he still resides.

Watching his father decline physically and mentally has had a profound effect on Joseph, who wrote Being Inside while at Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash. where he graduated from last year.

"It explores what it means to be caught inside a personal tragedy where the cause and cure are unknown and the sentence is unrelentingly progressive and indeterminate," Joseph explains.

He and his brothers—22-year-old Jeremiah and 17-year-old Nathaneal—are much younger than most kids whose parents are living with dementia. Compounding his sadness is guilt. Joseph, raised a Catholic with a strong sense of family, left B.C. to study at Evergreen College while his family remained behind to care for his father. (With dual citizenship, Joseph had always dreamed of attending university in the U.S.)

"I felt bad about being so far away. My brother Jeremiah visits my dad every other day and has been supporting the family since he finished high school," he says. "The guilt is something I’m still dealing with."

As his senior thesis project at Evergreen, a unique, interdisciplinary college one hour south of Seattle, Joseph created Being Inside, which he describes as a "multi-media environmental theatre piece that maps the suffering that can sear and transform lives." Evergreen and its teaching philosophy played a key role in how the play developed. Begun as a poem, Being Inside eventually included video projections, music, dance, interviews and monologues.

"Evergreen is like a Montessori university—those are my words, not the college’s," he says laughing. "Going there changed my life. Their approach is very non-traditional, but it’s not weird hippy crap that no one can understand. I learned that theatre is a way to increase your vocabulary with your body."

Being Inside is based on his own experiences, but includes stories of other victims of dementia and their families, some of whom live at Delta View Hospital. Joseph insists the play has broad appeal and is not just for those who have a family member with dementia. He says the show is for adolescents dealing with the loss of a father or mother, for caregivers coping with heavy burdens and suffering, and for artists to experience an emerging and organic form of theatre.

"Ionly hope that people go home with questions and walk out with a better understanding of what it’s like for people going through the disease," he says. "But I want people to have their own experiences. I don’t want them to have my experience or my family’s experience."

The one person it’s really for, though, is his dad, which is why Being Inside is premiering in Vancouver after a trial run at Evergreen a few months ago.

"He’ll be at the opening, if his health permits it. How much of the show he’ll understand I don’t know but that’s why we’re opening here. I want him to be there."

One of our own

2005-02-11T09:43:00.000-06:00

Playwright Arthur Miller died today, and -- I am not even kidding -- I felt a kinship. Because we're writing a play. I have maybe read one Arthur Miller play, ever. And truth be told, I didn't even know he was still alive in the first place.

Voila! Separation.

2005-02-11T09:11:00.000-06:00

Lindsay and I have had some concern over the fact that our play is based on...ourselves. This means that when we put it up, everyone will know all our secrets! ACK! We're dooooooomed.

But then I was talking to a coworker yesterday about this very thing, and about how we aren't sure how to separate ourselves from our characters (Is just naming them something different ok? Would that even fool people? What other names work with "Desperado," anyway?), and she pointed out that at some point, it will happen naturally. She, being older and wiser, is probably right.

Someday (maybe soon) we will have something actually written down. The character development, for purposes of the play, will be complete and written down and mostly final. But Lindsay and I? Will keep on living our lives. We'll keep growing and learning and gaining perspective on our pasts. We will keep changing, but we'll leave the characters right where they are.

Voila! Separation. (We hope.)

On fire escapes

2005-02-10T13:35:00.000-06:00

Becca and I are featuring a fire escape in our newly revised play. Basically, the premise is that we're sitting out on a fire escape while a party's going on, venting about one of Becca's enemies being at the party.

This happens all the time. The "sitting outside on fire escapes" thing.

I love fire escapes, most truly. Having a fire escape in New York made up for the fact that we had not a stick of furniture. Crawling out the window, sitting outside on a warm night, listening to the traffic and people.

And I also love that the phrase itself, "fire escape" harbors no illusions. It's sort of a panicky way to look at it -- I guess like a fallout shelter, or a tornado cellar, it just reminds you unapologetically about potential disaster. It's not a deck, a porch, a patio, a veranda... no, it's there for escaping from a fire. Period. Of course, in reality it's so much more... (plot device for our play, an escape from annoying parties, a deck, a patio, a veranda...)

We're OK. We're Really, Really Ok.

2005-02-08T09:18:00.000-06:00

Becca and I worked hard yesterday to revise our outline, then met with our teacher before class to talk it over. He said it was fine. How great is that? I seriously thought he was going to be like, "I'm sorry. You need to start again." At which point I would have started to cry.

Also, Becca and I had some good talks about our co-writing process. In some ways it's harder to work with someone else. Decision-making is such a process sometimes. But one thing that's better: We really are two defined characters colliding in a confined space. When we were mapping out/revising the plot, Becca was able to say, "But my character wouldn't do that." And we came up with something more interesting than we'd had before.

I really, truly believe that this collaboration will yield something better than either of us writing alone.

Hunh. I wonder.

2005-02-07T15:21:00.000-06:00

I wonder when Becca and I are going to have a big fight. That sounds so foreboding. We might not have a fight. But. We've mused about this.

The thing I like is that one of us senses a fight coming on and then skillfully deflects it... when I say "one of us," I'm actually referring to Becca. I might not know a fight were approaching if it were wearing a neon orange cap and some boxing gloves. It's true.

Know What Else Is Hard?

2005-02-07T10:48:00.000-06:00

The fact that we keep changing our minds. Granted, we're changing our minds back to our original ideas, but still.

We had a hard, but productive meeting on Saturday (see two entries ago, re: brainstorming), in which we made a lot of decisions and a lot of progress on our outline, etc. But! We were talking again last night, and it turns out we both HATE what we have so far.

Our original idea was to have a show that involved sketches, some monologues, and a small story that runs through the whole show. But through the magic of our writing class, we were steered in the direction of writing a more traditional three-act narrative. So we developed and developed....

And we just don't care about it. We thought we did, but now agree that our story feels contrived. And if we don't care, how can we expect our audience to give a crap? We can't.

So. Back to the drawing board. Not quite to square one, but close to it. Maybe square 3.5.

Curses.

Reference

2005-02-06T18:59:00.000-06:00

A play called Girl. Monologues!!!

Brainstorming? Sometimes? Is hard.

2005-02-05T18:24:00.000-06:00

Lindsay: This is why people perform plays that are already f-ing written.
Becca: Or adapt books.

Beccarado

2005-02-04T11:59:00.000-06:00

So my friend Amber and I were driving one day last summer, talking about boys, when the song "Desperado," by the Eagles, came on. She renamed the song "Beccarado," because it exemplified my dating life at the time. At any rate, I hereby decree that "Desperado" must be in the show, possibly accompanied by a drunken singalong in which I sing "Beccarado...." It will be fantastic.

I do realize, however, that this throws a wrench into Lindsay's whole "these characters aren't us!" plan. Perhaps the character's name will also be Becca. Which solves my whole other problem of what to name her.

Set design

2005-02-04T11:31:00.000-06:00

Becca and I were thinking about incorporating slides projected onto a backdrop into our simplesimple set.

Paula Vogel's "How I Learned to Drive" used this:

http://www.willamette.edu/~charris/howilearned.htm

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~jmgriggs/portfoliopages/drive.html

Waiting for the Bus

2005-02-03T23:33:00.000-06:00

So I got this thought lodged in my head, this mental image of a photo of me when I was little. I can just totally visualize this photo, which I think I have saved somewhere. In it, I am like 6, I think, and I'm standing at the end of my driveway wearing a pink dress and swinging my lunchbox, looking daydreamy and purposeful all at the same time. I have been trying to understand why this photo is lodged in my head right now. And I think I just figured it out. That was a first-day-of-school photo, and the expression I have just sort of sums up my character in this play. Waiting for the bus, part hopeful, but too nervous to be totally hopeful, part ambitious, but too daydreamy to be totally ambitious. Swinging my pink lunchbox and looking down the road.

Exactly.

2005-02-03T22:37:00.000-06:00

This post made me think of our show.

Hell, everything makes me think of our show lately.

Quote

2005-02-03T15:32:00.000-06:00

"People like us, people who did reasonably well in
high school and college and haven't hit any major roadblocks and have been working toward what are, ostensibly, our goals ... it's not that we keep expecting to get what we want. I don't believe that. It's that we just expected we'd KNOW what we want." -- my friend Kimra

This is the thing.

2005-02-03T15:23:00.000-06:00

"Do we have nothing better to think about than ourselves and the fact that we are like overgrown teenagers? Everyone's doing it I guess." -- Eliina

Eliina's sentiment (which I think was a reaction to the Time article) is what gives me an annoyed/worried feeling in my stomach when I think about this play project, about describing it to people, even about discussing it in class. There seems to be something just soooo self-indulgent about it. But really, our idea was just that we would write what our characters were experiencing, from the heart, in a complex, interesting, amusing way. I'm just hoping we can pull it off.

Becca had similar concerns about being original, being schlocky, when we first started this project. I sort of brushed them off and told her that we just had to trust ourselves, not get lazy, try to make something we liked, and be true to ourselves. Ok, I maybe just invented that motivational statement. But I would like to believe it.

All of Us on Our Rafts

2005-02-03T12:23:00.000-06:00

Saw this post today at a random blog, and it sort of reminded me of what this project is about, and why I moved to Chicago in the first place, really.... to have other people to float about with on this lil trip.

Time: On Our Side (Ha!)

2005-02-03T12:03:00.000-06:00

Time magazine recently published a report on "Twixters," twenty-somethings who aren't quite grown up in the mortgage-and-children sense. Now, the strange thing was that this is treated, in the magazine, as a phenomenon. I never really thought about that before, but I suppose it's true, that thirty years ago there weren't any folks doing the Twixter thing. They were actually grown up. Now we get to fake it for a while, which is a damn luxury, if you think about it. My gut instinct is to immediately toss out anything as mainstream as a phrase coined by Time magazine -- but; I'm a snot like that and should evaluate more carefully.

Thanks to my friend Mark for the reference.

Well, crap.

2005-02-01T21:09:00.000-06:00

I just had this lovely post about how Lindsay called me up and MADE me talk, and it was all written and lovely, and then? IT WAS EATEN! By the Internet gods!

Gah. Will repost later. Stupid internet.

But I Liked the Feely Vibe!

2005-02-01T15:31:00.000-06:00

OK, yes. Jeff is teaching us awesome, concrete Things To Know In Order To Finish Our Shit. Which is great, but a total change from the vibe Lindsay and I had going before we started this class. We were all, "we're going to write a play!! It's going to be AWESOME!!!" And we have all these ideas and it was a very flowy, cool place to be.

But. Now we have someone holding us accountable, pushing us...it just came to me. We have someone who is not us looking at our work and critiquing it. Telling us that our ideas, while interesting, are maybe not as AWESOME!!! as we thought, not just yet.

And hearing that criticism is hard. Even when you're working with the best partner in the world, telling each other that it's ok, we'll make it through.

Hi, my name is Becca, and I don't deal well with change or criticism.

Hiiiiii, Beccccaaaaaa.

Food for thought

2005-02-01T15:15:00.000-06:00

When Good Monologue Plays Go Bad.

Positivity

2005-02-01T12:55:00.000-06:00

I will say that as tough as it is to get this project underway, I'm learning a lot. Jeff is teaching a system that I've never used before, and I can feel my brain trying to stretch around it. I grew up with a very touch-feely philosophy taught to me about creative writing -- Go with your heart! Start writing and let it develop! Actually, it was a very noncritical philosophy in general. If you were writing something at all, then good for you, Peaches. Which was nice for the self-esteem, maybe, but less-than-helpful regarding the finished, consumer-ready product. So this is different, which is cool. We're planning. We're setting goals. We will keep crunching on through.

Oh, Lindsay

2005-02-01T11:43:00.000-06:00

See? Now I feel badly for staying home and watching Everwood (and 7th Heaven, though I would always feel bad about that one), and leaving my other half to work on and field questions about our play all by her lonesome!

I am very much in "hide head in sand" mode, here, which is totally unhelpful. I'm not really sure how to get out of it, except to just start writing SOMETHING. But when I think about writing, I get so overwhelmed that it just seems easier to stop. So I do.

But that's letting down my "partner in crime," isn't it? I need to be there for her, whether I'm physically there or not. If I were sitting over here with strong ideas and characters and outlines of my own, would Lindsay have felt ok enough to say "yeah, ok, this character is based on me?" I think yes, because I would have been right there with her, saying that my character is based on me, too.

We write what we know, people.

Sometimes? Learning is hard.

2005-02-01T09:12:00.000-06:00

At class last night, we all had to come up with outlines for the first act of our pieces. Ok, as though that weren't bad enough, we had to come up with outlines for each SCENE of the first act. We did this exercise at a breakneck pace, and I was definitely a little freaked out. And so I deemed it necessary to tell the whole class this, when Jeff asked for thoughts. Also, Jeff asked if my character was aimless and I said yes, but really I meant no, she's not aimless, she has about a million aims and just can't pick one.

Also: Becca was sick. Everyone kept asking me where my "partner in crime" was. Writing a play is not a crime, folks!

Here I Am!

2005-01-31T17:23:00.000-06:00

In the interest of this being an actual collaboration, I have dragged my sad self out of my sickbed to make a post.

So. I'm glad Lindsay is feeling enthusiastic and motivated about this, because I am...not. I keep getting all intimidated by all the good-sense stuff Jeff throws at us, and when I get intimidated I like to run away and not think about things. Ack.

Avoidance. Smart tactic? Probably not. That's the awesome thing about Lindsay and me, though -- we have been shown to balance each other nicely. It's good stuff.

fyi: a play & 2 silent films

2005-01-31T12:49:00.000-06:00

I was at the Northwestern University library this weekend and came across a book of actors and actresses from the early 20th century. One listed his acting credits as a play called "When We Were 21." So that's where I got the web address of this blog from. It's comforting to know that writing about the early 20s is a time-honored tradition. The link contains a write-up about the silent film, a remake of the first film called "The Truth about Youth" and the original play. I wonder if it's dumb. I wonder if we could find a copy.

Info on the movies and play: www.davidmanners.com/truthaboutyouth.html

Info on the play:
http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?id=5306

Info on the original movie: http://poll.imdb.com/title/tt0012835/

as becca would say: backstory

2005-01-30T15:31:00.000-06:00

Becca and I are writing a play. We originally wanted it to be short bits, fragmented, shards of a play. The thing is, our teacher wants a flow-y, overarching narrative. But we experience our lives as fragments right now, we don't yet HAVE the narrative. We don't know what's important and what's not, we have no idea what's around the next twist, we don't know what to hold sacred and what to toss aside. Our play, as originally conceived, mirrors that feeling. Maybe we can sort of keep that same idea but yet make it also a compelling narrative.

We met people on Thursday who also wrote a two-woman show. People are so durn helpful. And so supportive. What the heck.

testing, 1,2,3

2005-01-30T15:27:00.000-06:00

This is a test -- Does our diary of a play work?