The Epoch of Last Week

As Anne of Green Gables would say, “This has been an epoch in my life.”

As hard as it is (or, at least it’s hard for me sometimes), it is important to recognize “epochs” AS they are happening. Because they are few and far between, and easily forgotten when times get rough. I have been working on my script for two years. We had a reading of two of the scenes in New York in 2009 with my brilliant actor friends David and Jen. That reading gave me a lot of information about what didn’t/did work, so I kept writing from that essential information, filling in the blanks, and finishing the play. All of that has been done in isolation, with random bursts of connectivity when I would show a new draft to Mike, or David, or Jen. I considered it done in around February of this year. This is when the schedule started heating up, and we started putting together the workshop. Missy Yager came on board as director. She and Mike reached out to actors, and two – Peter Giles and Rebecca Creskoff – said Yes to working on the project. I didn’t know them before this. Missy has a good feeling for the script and what it needs (she did the original reading back in Los Angeles in 2009). Then started another round of major rewrites – again, me by myself, doing my best to cut cut cut. In general, shorter is always better. Much of this stuff can only really be done after you’ve heard two actors read it, but I did my best on my own.

Getting a date nailed down was nervewracking. I am freelancing right now, so my time is available, but getting everyone in the same room at the same time took finessing, everyone is so busy. Finally, it was all set, and I booked my flight to come out for a week of rehearsals and a small invite-only reading of my play.

I’ve been involved in readings like this from the actor side, but being, you know, in charge of the material is a new thing for me and brought a host of new anxieties to the table. What if it doesn’t play? What if it has no life? What if we discover it’s not ready yet to fly on its own? What if problems come up during rehearsals (and I knew they would) and I CAN’T fix them? And, most importantly, what if the jokes fall flat?? I had to keep saying to myself that Mike and Missy have confidence in the material. That’s why they organized the workshop. Duh. But still, the brain is a funny thing. I guess I like to make up things to be nervous about.

I arrived in Los Angeles. Sunday night was the first read-thru at Mike’s house. Missy and I talked for a bit about what was coming for the week, and how she wanted to work. Missy is about to give birth to twins so the fact that she gave up her time was overwhelming and awesome. She’s so FUN to work with. And since we didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse, she was requiring that people go deep FAST. And that’s the beauty of working with good actors who have been doing it forever. They know how to do that. They do it automatically. They are facile (in a good way), flexible and emotionally available to the personal implications. Because without weeks to delve into character analysis and motivation, you had better know how to make personal connections (“This reminds me of this” “I know this, I have experienced this” “This relationship makes me think of so-and-so”) and be able to utilize those connections. Missy gave me a couple of suggestions that first night: that during the first read-through, I not take notes. Just sit back and listen. It was a terrific suggestion (of course I had been ready to do the exact opposite). This would really be my only opportunity before the public reading to hear the whole thing in its entirety, to hear these two actors do it, and to let it wash over me.

So that’s what I did. Peter and Rebecca sat opposite one another, and read my script. I listened. I do remember I had moments where I thought, alternately: “Wow, did I write this? This is really funny/moving …” and also: “Oops. This is a dead section. I can feel the dead-ness of it.” That’s another gift about working with good actors. They are so good at justifying stuff (that’s an acting term: meaning: making sense of ANYTHING that is before them and making it sound good or realistic – a bad script can be saved by talented actors) that when something suddenly halts, or loses air or life … you can be pretty sure that it’s the writing. It’s a huge gift. There was one line that has been in it from the beginning. A line I loved. But every single actor who has had to say it has stumbled over it. When I read it outloud to myself, I stumbled over it. So Sheila, take the damn hint and either cut it or make it more say-able. I cut it.

After they read through the whole thing, the three of them sat and talked about it for a while, and I stayed out of it, just listening. Major head-trip hearing people talk about my script as though it is REAL (I know, I know it’s real … but when you’ve been living with something primarily in your head for a year or so, it’s hard to actually remember that). “Here’s what I think is going on …” “What interests me about this is …” “This makes me think of this …” They talked about the scenes that felt either stilted, or unclear. Missy asked me to look at a couple of the scenes, pare away that which I might not need. Both Peter and Rebecca are working actors, with busy careers. Their time is valuable and I felt so happy, grateful, excited that THEY would be playing my dear crazy little characters. I felt safe with them, and I felt safe with Missy. I careened home to Santa Monica down Wilshire at 10:30, 11 p.m., my brain buzzing with adrenaline, excitement, nerves. I was convinced I wouldn’t sleep a wink but after thrashing about for 42 seconds, I passed out.

Monday was a busy day of holing myself up with the script and working on it. I actually like the editing process, because by that point you actually HAVE something on the page to work with. It’s the creating from nothing thing that can propel you into the void of despair! But to take a cold look at what is already there, and making assessments of what can go, what I can lose, what needs to be re-worked … It’s hard to get started sometimes, but once I get going I gain momentum and also brutality. You need to be brutal when you’re editing. The condensed process worked in my favor. I didn’t have time to agonize over choices.

Our next rehearsal was Tuesday night at Mike’s house. Mike and Lisa and the kids had been on vacation and they had returned so I got to see Lisa briefly, and the little ones. Or, not so little anymore! We holed ourselves up in the guest house, and this time Mike sat in. He’d pass me surreptitious notes with “CUT THAT LINE” scrawled on it. hahahaha. I do whatever he says. This time we stopped and started. Each little scene in the first section was done, and then the actors talked about it. Anything feel off, any questions for me, anything that doesn’t seem right? It’s a weird feeling to be asked about my script. “When you wrote this, did you mean it in such and such a way?” Good lord, I actually haven’t thought about it. But of course you can’t say that. Actors are awesome. They are the most curious, inquisitive, open people on the planet. And smart, too. You put something on the page, it had BETTER mean something, because they will pick up on it. A script is a roadmap. A path. Nothing is meaningless. It helps to be in the presence of ruthless (in a good way) actors who know how to read a script, who know the questions to ask. It helps me be a better writer, and to actually try to understand what it is I have written. It’s surprisingly difficult, at times. This is just another part of the process of getting it out of my own head, and letting it stand/live on its own.

I had a LOT of work to do the next day. Two scenes needed a major re-working. MAJOR. I ended up cutting an entire scene. As I did it, I thought to myself, “Well, you’ve certainly got some balls, O’Malley.” It was hard. I had actually believed in what I had written originally (of course: that’s why I wrote it), but it didn’t work. Missy said to me at the rehearsal the night before, “There’s something about this scene that makes me feel like we’re moving backwards.” I could feel it, too. I thought I could fix it, and I tried, but finally just cut the whole damn thing, moving a couple of paragraphs into the scene that came before it, and it read so much better. It became clear. “Here is the scene that is about THIS.” Missy had talked a lot about “temperature change” and how every scene, no matter how small, had to have some kind of “temperature change”. And you can’t have any times where the characters are just coasting. What I had cut was backstory stuff which we ended up not needing: it was coasting. It became crystal clear, through the brilliance and openness of Peter and Rebecca, what I needed and what I didn’t. You don’t need to say EVERYTHING. If you have good actors, then you already know it, you see it in who they are.

There was also a big problem with the “bar scene”, which was painful for me to admit. It was the first scene I wrote. It was the scene that made me want to write the rest of the play, to find out what had actually happened between these two people. That scene had killed when Missy and Mike read it at the first reading, back in 2009. But something had happened in the interim. I ruined it, basically. Once I filled in the rest of the play, the context, I went back and rewrote that scene – since the characters were more fleshed out in the rest of it. But what ended up happening was I rewrote it/fixed it into oblivion. The event was no longer clear. The way it read was a bunch of small talk interrupted by her painful outburst at the end. And that’s not the event I meant at ALL to write. Nothing worse than rewriting something and making it WORSE. It SUCKS.

Missy said to me, “Do you still have your first draft? The one that Mike and I read? Because I remember it as being pure.” I felt a bolt of panic that I wouldn’t have it anymore. She said, “Go back and look at what you wrote – sometimes the first impulses of a writer are the right ones.”

It was a great suggestion. I don’t think I would have thought of it myself. I was stuck in what I had written, let’s just say that. Even though, as the writer, I am in charge, like God, it still becomes this morphing experience where what I have written feels like IT IS THE WAY IT IS. That was the fun (and craziness) of this past week. Of letting go what I thought I had written, and going with what was best for the unfolding event of the play. We don’t need this joke, it dissipates what’s happening … I think at this point you can afford to just barrel through to the end, with no distractions. I went home and looked through my files on my laptop and lo and behold, found that original scene. The characters didn’t even have names at that point, they were just SHE and HE. I read it, and it felt like a different scene. I had lost all of the tension in my various rewrites. So, with a couple tweaks here and there, I took that original scene, and cut and paste it back into my script, whole, erasing the rewrite in its entirety. I was terrified as I did it. I also thought, “God, I hope this works.”

That night we rehearsed at a little theatre. Peter and Rebecca sat up on the stage, and Missy, Mike and I sat out in the seats. Missy, pregnant, sat in one row, her legs flopped over the row in front of her. She’s so adorable, so smart. I held my breath as they read the new bar scene. It felt better. It felt much better. When they finished, Missy glanced back at me and nodded. Relief was mine. It was so much fun for me to listen to Rebecca and Peter talk about this or that scene, making connections, sharing little stories from their own lives – “This reminds me of …”

The next night was the reading. Mike was hosting it at his beautiful home. I had invited friends. Mike had invited people, Missy, Peter and Rebecca did too. Larry and Fielding were coming. My brother and Melody would be there. Maria was coming. Alex was coming. I invited four Facebook friends, people I had never met before, but I feel like I know. Kent Adamson, Don Mancini, Dennis Cozzalio and Maria McKee. I know them as their Facebook and blog personae: first and last names always. Oh yes, Kent Adamson, Don Mancini, Dennis Cozzalio and Maria McKee are coming tonight! A couple of them know each other in real life, and we’re all friends on Facebook. But it was nervewracking: to invite these people to come meet me at this particular event? Nice to know you’re not playing it safe, O’Malley. Way to overload your already shot circuits. But I was excited, too. I already feel like these people are friends. The internet is amazing, in case you haven’t noticed. Missy, Rebecca, Peter and I basically hid out in the guest house. The time was drawing near. Mike came out at one point and said, “A bunch of people just arrived for you, Sheila. They say they know you from the Internet.” Hysterical. So I went into the main house and saw my brother, Melody, Maria, and my new friends, all in the dining room with one another. Alex arrived, in a whirl of perfume, drama, and cigarette smoke. I got to meet Kent, Don, Dennis, Maria and Maria’s husband. I felt overwhelmed. Kent gave me an amazing gift: these old-school drawings he had in his collection – one of Eleonora Duse and one of Sarah Bernhardt. I was so touched. I feel so so lucky!

By inviting them, and by inviting a lot of people, I was inviting abundance into my life. I’ve written before about deprivation and scarcity, which have been my default modes for the last couple of years. I’ve been aware of it and working on it ever since that awe-inspiring crack-up I had in 2009. Fake it til you make it, basically. To PRETEND I operate from abundance. And crazy things have happened because of that. The last two years have been so damn productive. It’s insane for me to think of scribbling out that first draft of the bar scene one lonely night in March of 2009 and now, 2 years later … a crowd was gathering at cousin Mike’s house to view the finished product. It was hard for me to actually be present in that room. I kept flying up into the stratosphere.

The reading started at around 8:30. I perched in the back, quietly having a nervous breakdown. Missy made a speech. Mike made a speech. Melody was reading stage directions (thank you, Melody!!) Peter and Rebecca sat in chairs at the front of the room. And then we were off. As they started reading, Mike reached out to me and held my hand for a while. He knows. He knows what it’s like. We had talked beforehand and he said, “You won’t relax until you get the first laugh.” Thankfully, the first laugh came pretty early. Thank you, Jesus. I can’t really speak of my experience of that reading – my consciousness was this weird three-dimensional awareness: pin-light focus on Peter and Rebecca up there – and also aware of people’s body language around me, the laughs, the nods, when people leaned forward, all that stuff. I was swirling outside of my body, but at the same time I was totally riveted by what the hell was going on between Peter and Rebecca. They were off the charts. Jesus Mary and Joseph!! The play is about an hour and a half long. It’s strange to have an out-of-body experience that lasts that long.

I still haven’t come down.

People clapped and clapped and clapped when it was over, and Mike said to me, as it was going on – “Do you hear that? Make sure you hear that.”

Always making sure I’m IN it.

Peter and Rebecca were just miracles up there. They let the play LIVE. With their generosity, smarts, imagination, and ability to connect … they let my play stand up on its own legs. It was incredible. I am so grateful for how MUCH they gave. It’s easy to do readings when you read well. Actors do readings all the time. It’s part of the life. Giving a good strong cold reading is a skill. And this could have been that kind of reading, no problem. But it wasn’t. It was an experience: and THEY allowed that to happen. By their willingness to go as deep as they did. I’m blown away. Still.

Then there was a feedback conversation with me, Peter and Rebecca sitting up front, and Mike sort of moderating the comments. It was so cool to hear what people got. At one point, people were actually arguing about the last scene – not in an angry way – but people got different things from it, and had all of their reasons why … Larry said to someone, “I disagree with you, I think that last scene is really freaky. I mean, there she is, she’s wearing, what, a velvet hat? That’s freaky.” (Still laughing about that. He had listened to the stage directions and they terrified him. Haha). It was another weird experience to listen to people argue about what I had written. “Here’s what I saw.” “Well, here’s what I saw.” I sat there like, “I don’t even know my own name anymore, but please, continue. Argue amongst yourselves.”

The feedback session broke up and people milled about. I heard people arguing about the play in small groups. HEAD TRIP. Had a couple of really great conversations – with people I knew, people I didn’t know, and also my “new friends from the Internet”. I was so glad I had invited them. It was a risk, it paid off. Now I can’t wait to see all of them in a more normal context when I’m not so nervous and distracted. Alex basically refused to talk to me at all until we got home to her house later that night. “You’re not going to talk to me at all???” I said. “I don’t want to hog you. I have too much to say.” she declared loudly. She and I did have a long great conversation with Mike’s friend Mike, who played Sully in Mike’s play Searching for Certainty. I was still working on the play in my mind, so I wished I had a tape recorder to tape their conversation. It was helpful, invigorating: intelligent criticism and response.

What can I say. I was HIGH from the whole experience.

Alex and I then drove, in separate cars, out to her and Chrisanne’s place and we stayed up until 3:30 in the morning talking about the whole night.

Like I said.

The whole thing was an epoch. I will never forget it.

But it’s not the end. Already, I’m thinking: WHAT NEXT???

Peter, Rebecca: I treasure both of you, what you brought to it, your openness and intelligence – and then: your performances themselves. I had no idea I wrote THAT. I’m serious. You both blow me away.

Missy: I won’t soon forget your thoughts on “temperature change”. Essential. Helpful. Your devotion helped me make my script better, clearer.

Mike: There really are no words. I look at this picture and realize that nothing has really changed since then.

And I feel lucky.