Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: _The Book of Mothers_ by Eleanor

Hello Eleanor!

You have a wonderful beginning for an interesting, feminist play. I wish you the stamina to carry the whole thing through.

Here are my comments:

--Scene One, Line 7: Unless your male character is offbeat, I find it inappropriate that he volunteers to tell someone about his wife's pregnancy. It is usually the woman who hogs that privilege. As a general rule men do not announce their wife's pregnancy to anyone because, psychologically: 1) he has a subliminal sense of guilt about the pregnancy; 2) he will initially be in denial because of the concomitant responsibilities implied by the pregnancy;  3) he will subconsciously ask himself whether he will make a good father; and 4) it is another goodbye to a comfortable, predictable life, the first goodbye being to bachelorhood and the second goodbye to being only a husband and not yet a father.
--When you write a play, you tend to think in terms of scenes you like; this will result in a disjointed play. Write the first scene as thoroughly as you can with your premise constantly in mind--afterward, allow the play to write itself from there without having to conform to the zinger lines and scenes that play themselves in your mind.
--This is the kind of play that hinges on the right balance and orchestration of characters. Otherwise it is better written as a complex monologue that employs supporting roles that revolve like satellites round a single protagonist.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: Untitled by Eve

Hello Eve!

The draft you submitted promises to be an intense, emotional drama.

Here are my comments:

--It is interesting that in all the four scenes that you wrote so far, there is a box-like item that represents death and life: a coffin, a box on a trolley, a cardboard box of discarded treasures, and a TV set.
--Avoid cinematic treatment. Did you make a makeshift model of your stage? That is meant precisely to prevent cinematic treatment, by forcing you to visualize the action on your makeshift model.
--Avoid very short scenes. Why are short scenes unfair to the performer? Because he cannot step onstage and adequately develop emotional truth in a trice. By the time he achieves truth you are already calling a blackout and a scene change.

I look forward to the completion of this work.

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: "Duet" by Wisely

Hello Wisely!

Your manuscript is a complete vignette in itself.

Here are my comments:

--The play came out as a vignette rather than as a one-act play because the subject matter, although charming and successfully engaging, can go no further once the act of consummation is over.
--You have an excellent ear for dialogue. Develop it.
--Avoid cinematic treatment. Remember that you are writing for the stage.
--Do not write for a school audience.
--Discipline yourself to write longer pieces with more depth. Go for the one-act play, for starters. Vignettes are mere curtain-raisers or entre'-act fare. Write not only for yourself and people your age but for a wider audience range as well. You can do this and rivet your audience even if your characters are young--as young as the playwright or even younger--as was done by Rumer Godden in Battle of the Villa Fiorita. Ask yourself, what makes a play about young characters come across to the world as mature work?

Dramaturgy for TheatreWorks Singapore: Untitled by Wisely

Hello Wisely!

You submitted an interesting beginning for a play.

Here are my comments based on what I read:

--As I advised everyone during the workshop, try to avoid writing dialogue in terms of questions and answers. A character speaks because he NEEDS to, not because he wants information or wants to give it.
--The entrance of a new character should never be employed simply to provide exposition either for the audience or for the characters who are already onstage.
--Your pair begins with two pairs of characters with apparently two different sets of problems. It is not yet clear to me whether the two pairs of characters and their problems will illustrate one premise or two premises.
--I will not discourage you from pursuing the theme of sexual experience or exploration. A writer really learns from trial and error. Let me just mention here that seasoned playwrigtss like Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill have tackled the subject matter in the light of the psychology of Sigmund Freud, but some of their works come across as intellectually immature.

Keep on writing. I will be there and guide you through it all.

We marvel at writers' recorded experiences and insights, but every writer has secrets he will never put into words and that he will take with him to the grave.

Mens Sana In Corpore Sano

Do not avoid activities associated with mesomorphs. Take up a sport, exercise daily, or go regularly to gym. A healthy body promotes a healthy mind--one that you need to continue producing creative works.

Never dash off a poem or a painting and attribute them to flashes of inspiration. Every work you create, no matter how long or how short, must be well thought out and laid down as perfectly as possible. In a manner of speaking, every work should not only contain the esthetic foundation and philosophical spine of your oeuvre, it should also contain the entire essence of your life from your birth to the present time.

When a writer does not articulate his thoughts in written words, his mind explodes.

Every epic novel begins with a single sentence, and that is what you should dare to write.

When not writing, read.

Never go with cardboard or plastic folders for your personal use. Your creative writing is not for an office or school, and you deserve better than those.

Know this, that a writer's voice is always heard, even if the whole world shuns him.

Old athletes can be replaced by young athletes, but old artists cannot be replaced by young artists.

Be able to distinguish between a theater piece and a play.

The former is visual art, the latter literature.

Stainless steel pen nibs are wonderful. They outlive their users and last for generations.

Writing and painting are seasonal activities for many, so do not get distraught during the times that you are unable to do either or both.

A fountain pen is a magic wand and can be used as such, other than for writing.

Be thankful to be a playwright. You will tend to outlive directors and performers due to the comparatively minimal physical stress your work demands.

It is more productive to write and to paint than to sulk and to play solitaire.

Every writer obsessed with psychology discovers words within words.

Always master yourself, your subject matter, your medium, and your audience--in that particular order.

To improve your penmanship, think word by word as you write rather than of an entire sentence or paragraph.

Before writing, consider the entire sentence or paragraph, then descend from the macroscopic to the microscopic level.

Since a playwright is a thinker of society, he/she must always be inclusive and never exclusive.

If your readers cannot comprehend your first few sentences, they will read no further and abandon you.

We write and we paint to partially describe, with each work, the dream life that we have, hoping to complete its description with our oeuvre before we die, and hoping that it will be a good legacy to leave to those who can step back and comprehend all of it in its entirety.

When writing a play, don't just write. Visualize.

A vision is nothing if it is not put into words or pictures.

Writing from The Heart Workshop For TheatreWorks Singapore (May 29 - June 4, 2017)

https://www.facebook.com/pg/tHEATREwORKS.Sg/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1943590879221429

Never write, rewrite, or revise a play before bedtime. It will give you insomnia

It is always difficult to rewrite and revise a play because, in doing so, you go through all of the emotions in the play all over again.

A playwright must always write from a state of emotion, because emotion is the foundation of dramatic dialogue.

That is why in a workshop, after an emotional truth exercise, I immediately lead the participants into a writing session.

Everyone who is prone to road rage should try it. It is an effective way of taking emotion to a higher level by means of the defense mechanism sublimation.

The writing on the wall can always be revised.

When inflamed with anger and you want to calm down, write with a blue pen.

The literal has no meaning until you look beyond it.

A writer without passion is a beautiful kite without wind.

There is nothing like black ink, especially very black ink, though you should keep other colors in reserve for stimulus and for variety.

Always have a notebook on hand to write your random thoughts and ideas in, rather than hope they come back when you need them. They never will come back. They are all brought about by historicity, the time, the place you are in, and what you are feeling at the moment. Like water passing under a bridge, those thoughts and ideas will never be the same even if they occur to you again.

Like the only way to enjoy painting, the only way to enjoy writing is to not do one project after another.

It is also the only way to enjoy good chocolate.

There is no such thing as forgetting a dream. When you wake up and cannot recall the narrative and the imagery, first inspect how you are FEELING, for that is always the key to every dream. It is the first message that your psyche sends you in the dream state--and sometimes it is the only message.

Go with the feeling. Write a poem or three-paragraph story WITHOUT CONSCIOUSLY AUTHORING ANYTHING SENSIBLE AND JUST LETTING THE WORDS FLOW. What you have written is a variation of your dream, and can be interpreted as such.

And this is, as a mater of fact, how many great works begin.

Again, a reminder to use mahjong tiles or building blocks to create a model of your stage space as you are writing your play. Keep the structure on your writing desk until you finish writing your play. You may of course make changes and adjustments to your stage as you continue writing.

The model stage prevents you from thinking in terms of cut-to-cuts and close-ups, and compels you to think instead of entrances and exits, upstage, center stage, downstage, stage left, stage right, diagonals, cycloramas (if you want one), and what is hidden backstage and in the wings.

Don't just develop one talent--develop two or more. You will find that they feed each other.

Draw a person as best you can. Note that your skill in anatomy as an artist is always the equivalent of your perception of character when you write about a person.

If your literary depiction of a person is shallow or sketchy, try developing your drawing skills in anatomy. Begin with the skeletal system, and, when you have mastered that, progress to the muscular system. Be mindful of light, shadow, and three-dimensional rendition (a.k.a. "roundness").

Afterward, write about a person and note the improvement in your psychological understanding of that person.

It's all about powers of observation. And if you tell me that you are not interested in drawing human beings, why should I believe you when you say that you are interested in writing about them?

Write to change a reader's life, not a reader's mind, and know the difference between the two.

After writing and polishing your work, never ask yourself how it would come out had you done it another way. Your what-if work will not only lack spontaneity, it will also come out as over-written.

The FIRST version that emerges from your psyche will always be the most truthful one.

Any attempts to redo it will be your subconscious, defense mechanisms' efforts to disguise truth.

Tony Perez's Art of War: Like an arrow in a quiver, keep silent until you need to be used.

A hundred years from now, who will care what your particular preferences were?

Fear is always a herald of the new.

A constant lack of clarity in your works is always an indication that you fear not having enough depth, and that you would rather that your works be misunderstood than be judged as being trite.

Shake off that fear. Everything you say is important because no other writer will ever say it the way you can and the way you do.

An artist finds solitude even in companionship.

Obsessive-compulsive writers believe they are not worthy of writing in beautiful and expensive notebooks.

Know that it is not the perfection of your penmanship that counts but the quality of your thoughts.

When uncertain as to what you should paint, place your canvas upright at the base of a tree. The shadows of branches and leaves will fall on the canvas and suggest visual images.

When uncertain as to what you should write, sit in front of a tree, look up at its branches and leaves, and contemplate their patterns. Look down at your notebook and go with the first association that comes to your mind.

An Exercise In Developing Dialogue

Record a normal conversation. Transcribe it on paper if necessary.

1) What is the objective of each person in the conversation?

2) Mark the twists and changes that each person in the conversation takes.

Now REWRITE the conversation as dialogue in a play, keeping in mind that the dialogue in every scene in a play must push the premise forward.

3) After deciding what the premise of each person in the conversation is, DELETE all irrelevant passages from the conversation.

4) Rewrite the conversation so that each line pushes its speaker's premise. Be aware of dramatic economy and cross out everything superfluous, i.e., any idea that has already been articulated.

5) Now read through the rewritten conversation. Do emotions play a role in the conversation? If they do, EXAGGERATE each emotion--merely as an exercise--in the conversation.

Reread your work. You have just written a passage of dialogue.

Write and paint as though there's no tomorrow.

Good literature is a magnifying lens of reality.

To every creative and observant person, each day brings at least three pleasant surprises--and most especially to every artist, for an artist is not an artist if nothing surprises him any longer.

At the end of each day, recall and reflect on your three pleasant surprises.

Write and paint not to sell but to change the lives of others.

When you write and when you paint, ask yourself if your work has value not only to yourself and to your country but also to the rest of the world.

Know that "self-expression" is a grade-school and high-school rationale that artistic maturity and evolution always leave that behind.

Whenever you write something, you leave a piece of yourself on what you wrote on.

Thank God that you are infinite, and, because you are infinite, you are inexhaustible.

Write a portrait, draw a face description.

A writer never rises in the morning and wonders what the day will bring him.

To the extent that it is possible, a writer authors his day.

And he succeeds in doing so especially if he has mastered lucid dreaming.

Even pornography must have a thought-out and effective narrative.

There is no real difference between composition in painting and composition in creative writing, that its why it is beneficial to you to practice both.

To infuse your work with dramatic urgency, write your story not from the beginning but from the middle, then develop and push it forward WITHOUT resorting to flashbacks.

Always write for readers who are 30 years old and above. Your work then becomes truly timeless.

The artist who becomes truly immortal will always be the artist who takes pride in aging.

Write from your heart, never from your producer's or your publisher's cash register.

Every writer has a phenomenological frame of reference, but he/she must consider his audience's general frames of reference at all times. Otherwise he/she will be terribly misunderstood, and, when this occurs, it is always the writer's fault because he/she communicated first.

The artist who exercises true powers of observation is seldom engrossed with his gadgets, for he is constantly attuned to the world without and to the world within.

It's Love

Go through an entire day with the mindset that you love everything--everyone you see, everything you do, everyone you meet.

At the end of the day, write your insights in your notebook.

What's In A Name?

Choose a name you've seldom encountered, preferably one you cannot associate with a real person. For example, "Corinne" or "Maksim", whatever your gender.

On a day and a night that you are mostly alone, use that name for yourself, going about your day and your night as though that were indeed your name.

You will find, among other things, that:

--You will have a different color sense.
--You will develop different preferences for food.
--Your penmanship will change.
--Your behavior will also change.

This is, actually, the process of "possession". And what is a writer, after all, but a person being possessed by the current character he or she is writing about?

Note: Heighten your powers of observation during this exercise, and always in the service of creative writing, rather than merely going through the experience just for fun.

Purple is a complex color because it is a tertiary comprised of a myriad of mixes, not just blue and red. That is why, very often, no two pieces of purple clothing, bought separately, match. There will almost always be a clash of tints, hues, and shades.

See how the color purple applies to your sentences in a paragraph.

Be and become an artist, and that is good enough for the present and for posterity. You don't even have to be popular or highly acclaimed.

Being and becoming. Know those words and their meanings well.

It is poetry that sets us high above everything else, yet I wonder whether other creatures have poetic thoughts but not the language to express them to us.

An artist should be sensitive in that he should use all of his powers of observation in exploring Nature, society, and himself.

Yet, he should not be sensitive in the sense that he is easily offended by others and closed to all kinds of criticism.

A Writer's Quirk

I am certain that only I experience this, that, when my keyboard is on my lap rather than on the keyboard stand, I feel more connected to my writing. The physicality of bearing the weight of the keyboard on my thighs and the rhythmic strokes that I feel as I tap on the keys, makes me merge, somehow, with what I am writing.

Make your painting feed your writing. Then make your writing feed your painting.

Finishing my novel and posting it in cyberspace must be somewhat like bringing to term and giving birth to a baby. There is a sudden feeling of fulfillment and of pride, quickly followed by a feeling of emptiness that verges on depression for the psychologically weak. During this dark time of stillness there is a compulsion to write again--in the same manner that a painter refuses to set down his brush lest his loss of momentum be perceived as a form of failure or of death. It is a fear of being infertile or sterile.

As for myself, it is always a time to rest and have fun. I spend that time hanging out with my children and grandchildren, or going shopping, or enjoying my house, or being around my antiques, or looking through my jewelry and my treasured collections and my favorite books and my DVDs.

After giving birth to a baby, after all, one doesn't rush to make another baby.

This is why I live. Not for the moments of writing and painting, but for the moments of resting and having fun.

Yet, almost no one seems to understand that.

I wrote the last line of my novel, and my mind took me back to the time I wrote the first, tentative line. And rewrote it. And rewrote it some more, until it sounded right to me. The first line is Alpha, the last, Omega. In between, an entire world of births and deaths and comedies and tragedies.

Perhaps that is how every person's life is. We are fortunate that the Creator has the supreme intelligence to rewrite every line along the way, as necessary and as is best for each and every one of us.

Take care not to write constantly, as you must take care not to paint constantly.

Stop. Rest. Recharge. Have fun in life, because, as you will learn soon enough, that is the point--not writing or painting.

Note that those who write and paint constantly simply keep repeating themselves and, the more they do, the more their works get devalued.

Fill cyberspace with your very mind and your very heart, for it is the writer in cyberspace, not the writer in print, who will be truly immortal.

In mid-year this year Y. sent me a pan review of his new play and electronically cried on my shoulder. I replied, "My dear Y., when someone criticizes your play, the sweetest form of revenge is to write three more."

That is what I do with every novel, play, essay, poem, or Google+ and facebook posting that I write. When people say that they don't like it, I deliberately write three more.

It is the prolific writer who is always the victor. A hundred years from now, everyone will remember you, not your critics.

If you are a writer, write three more. And more. And more. If you are selling a product, sell three thousand more. And more. And more.

Drama is not about ideologies, political issues, and grandiose, spectacular affairs. It is about the simplest relationships between human beings.

A true, creative writer never runs out of ideas because knows how to attune his personal mind to the cosmic mind.

When a reader comes upon a piece of writing he is enamored with, he wishes to see the author's photo.

Yet, when you see a photo of a person you are enamored with, you do not wish to see his writing.

We fall in love with faces and with bodies more than we fall in love with minds.

Always have a second penmanship--one that only you can easily decipher and that cannot be comprehended by "sightdroppers"--people looking over your shoulder.

The worst readers of all are those who tell writers what to write and how to write it.

To improve your handwriting, practice writing big if your penmanship is small and practice writing small if your penmanship is big.

Do not abhor being haunted by unpleasant memories. Instead, learn how to burn them as creative fuel to propel your art.

The Truth Is Not Out There.

It Is Within You.

"The werewolf bit you, and you are mine forever."
--Tony Perez

Congratulations to Pamela Tham (_Waiting for Marimekko_), who won First Prize under the Open Category in the recent 24-Hour Playwriting Competition sponsored by TheatreWorks Singapore! Congratulations also to Clara Chow (_Birth Days_) and Jason Montes (_Gigantocmachy_), who won Merit awards under the same category! 

Pamela, Clara, and Jason were my students in the _Writing from The Heart_ workshops I conducted in Singapore.

Practice writing in a place that provides many distractions. First merge with your surroundings, and then write. The more you do this, the more you will be able to write without having to isolate yourself. You will also eventually discover that your writing takes on additional dimensions, because your mind connects not only with your personal unconscious but with the Collective Unconscious.

Never conduct the same workshop twice. Otherwise you will eventually get bored with your own exercises.

My writing habits are quite eccentric. I begin passages on Word and keep rewriting them until I have the right point of attack. Then I switch to writing with my dragon pen in a dedicated notebook. I encode that and continue writing on Word again. I switch regularly between computer-encoding and writing in cursive. It gives me the best of both writing sensations.

It is like living my current lifetime and simultaneously reliving a past lifetime.

When starting out a novel, write your first two pages, set them aside, and come back to them a day later to see if your lines sound right. If they don't--if they are stilted and the lines don't flow--it is because you are writing it in the wrong language. Switch to another language, such as Chinese, Bahasa, Hindi, or Tagalog.

If you INSIST on writing your novel in a preferred language, talk to yourself in a running monologue in that language while you are alone in your room. When you think your thoughts, think in that language. Only then should you resume writing your novel.

If you are a serious writer, and if you are truly nationalistic, it is your duty to ensure that your readership extends beyond the border of your own country.

When the heart looks back, it sees its love projected to all four corners of the earth, and unto the sky.

The heart seeks shelter when it rains.

When writing, have in your presence as many colors as possible. They serve as a visual palette. Some items that work are a jar of multicolored candy, a vase filled with crayons, or a bowl of glass pebbles.

What You Cannot See, You Can Feel

I've been knitting for more than 30 years now. While working on projects I noted that the yarn I used had a unique texture depending on what color it was. Pink yarn, for example, feels sticky to me, while red yarn feels rough and sandy. I asked my mother and my sisters if they noticed the same thing, but they said that they did not, or that they did not bother to, and so I kept quiet about it for some time.

In 2013, while I was teaching creative writing in my "Writing from The Heart" workshop at the Philippine National School for the Blind, I remembered my knitting and introduced a new exercise. I asked the participants to peel the paper covers off every crayon in their boxed sets. I then placed one crayon of the same color in their hands, a color at a time, and asked them to feel it while thinking of specific associations. I even allowed them to smell and lick each crayon.

At the end of the exercise I asked the class to raise the crayons that corresponded to my words--Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and so on. NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the participants successfully completed the exercise. The teacher-monitor who was observing the workshop was shocked speechless.

Try this exercise with crayons and with yarn. It heightens your powers of observation.

The heart will thirst for the water of love and the wine of romance.