High wire writing

Today I am participating in another one-day play exercise at the Ruskin Theatre in Santa Monica. Five playwrights meet at the theatre at 9:00 am. We are all given the same topic and each handed headshots of the two actors who have been assigned to us. Based on that we each go off to our little corners and write a ten-minute play in three hours.

And there are certain restrictions. They all must take place in a café. (The program is called THE CAFÉ PLAYS.) On the stage is a small table, two chairs and a counter. No internal light cues, no tricky sound requirements. And for the sake of the poor actors who have to learn and perform these plays in only a few hours, no long monologues. Two or three sentences at the most per line.

At 12:30 the actors and directors arrive, receive their scripts and fan out into separate rehearsal spaces. I hear a table reading of my script, offer any insight into how I see it, and then I go home and nap for four hours. The directors stage and rehearse the plays, the actors memorize them, and at 7:30 and 9:00 they’re performed for generally sold-out audiences (the theatre seats 65).

It’s great fun and a real adrenaline rush. But it’s also nerve-wracking as hell. I’m always amazed at the results. Most of these plays are terrific, and the actors learn enough of their lines to pretty convincingly pull it off. It’s also so interesting to see how the same topic leads to five wildly different plays, both in terms of style and subject matter.  Imagination is a wonderful thing.

And at the end, for me as a playwright, I now have another ten-minute play. And I can always polish it at my leisure. A couple of the Café Plays I’ve written have gotten into other festivals. And the Ruskin provides bagels! Another advantage is being introduced to a bunch of really talented actors. It’s a win/win.

Writers always complain of not knowing what to write. They can’t think of a good idea. For some that’s an excuse but for many it’s a legitimate thing -- a form of writer’s block. But this exercise shows there are ways to break through that. Assign yourself a task. Imagine you will have two actors. They can be any age, gender, nationality. Pick a setting. A café, park bench, a street corner. And then pick a topic. It could be an expression, something you saw in the paper, an old cliché. The three I’ve had since participating were “The end of summer,” “The graveyard shift,” and “No good deed goes unpunished.” Pick one of those if you’d like.  You can even impose a time restriction if you like.  Sometimes not having all the time in the world to think about something is a good thing. 

The point is I’ve written plays on topics I never would have thought of had it not been for the exercise. You don’t need the world’s greatest, most unique, dazzling idea. You just need a topic and a relationship between two people. And bagels.

If you’re in LA, come see our Café Plays. They’re tonight and every third Sunday of the month.

from By Ken Levine