Ten Questions

Episode 6: Ten Questions

This week Lindsay answers ten questions about her process as a writer. She didn’t write down any of the answers beforehand. Ten questions. No net.

Show Notes:

• Sample pages from our plays.
• Theatrefolk on Facebook.
• Theatrefolk on Twitter.
• The Theatrefolk Podcast on iTunes.
• Dramatists Guild of America.
• Alexander Graham Bell, I Want To Have Your Love Child.
• Among Friends and Clutter.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP, the Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you’re well. Thanks for listening.

Today it’s me off the grid, off the crutch, off the notes, answering some questions. But first let’s do THEATREFOLK NEWS. And yes, we will eventually have like actual news, new news, like what conferences you can find us at upcoming plays, but it’s August still and since we basically run on the school year, things are just now gearing up; although it’s really freaky to me that there are some places that start school in August and not the first Tuesday after Labor Day. What is that? School in August seems very, very wrong. Where’s the tradition in an August start? Where’s the feeling of sinking dread on that Labor Day, holiday, Monday or you know was that just me? It took about 10 years for it to fully sink in for me that I don’t have to go to school anymore in September. And I still have nightmares about exams. Ugh. But I digress. Okay, so let’s talk about sample pages today. You can find sample pages for every one of our plays over on our website www.theatrefolk.com. Why are sample pages important? Well, we don’t want you to buy a play that you can’t use and sometimes descriptions, they’re not enough. They’re not enough to know if the place is going to be suitable for you. They’re not enough to know if the set is going to work in your school. They’re not enough to know about what happens on page 22. You know we have a lot of folks who like our stuff and will grab new material or they’ll be grabbed by the title or maybe they like the red cover and that’s the reason they pick a play. But directors and especially high school directors often have built in factors than need to be met in order to choose a play. And if we could do something to make that decision process easier, we’re going to do it. Like that you read a chunk of the play before you buy. You test drive a car, test drive a play.

And lastly, please always remember and don’t ever forget the places in which you can find this podcast. We are of course at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter and you can subscribe to this podcast. You can just subscribe to TFP on iTunes. Search for us through Theatrefolk.

Episode Six: Ten Questions.

So I do want to push myself in this format, this speaking. Hello? Talking to you, how you doing? Good? I want to push myself to talk without having notes or having everything written down, the actual act of speaking off the top of my head. And I came across a Ten Questions article in the most recent edition of The Dramatist, the magazine put out by the Dramatists Guild of America. You know the deal. They do them in every type of magazine for every type of topic. Ten questions for actors, ten questions for a chef, they probably even do ten questions for a scientist in a science journal. They are questions that in a capitalized form are supposed to help you, the reader, learn something interesting about the person answering the questions. So I thought, why don’t I do the ten questions from The Dramatist, but not think about or prepare beforehand. I have… I wrote down these questions about a month ago and haven’t looked at them since. Ha, ha! One point I thought about changing in couple of the questions or cutting them because I thought they’re dumb at that time and I thought no, no, no. I should just do them as is, off the top of my head. But I mean, deep down inside haven’t you always wanted to do one of these? I’ve always kind of really wanted to, I have to admit. Haven’t you ever written out your Oscar’s speech, your Tony speech? Can’t you see yourself being interviewed somewhere maybe at the Cannes film festival or you know having your play on Broadway and you’re saying all these wonderful pithy things. Maybe it’s just me? And maybe it really is just me.

Here we go. Question Number One:

1. What was your most memorable theatrical experience as a child?

I have a… I’m going to say that I have two. The first one is very quick, it is… And I can’t remember if, I think it was the Nutcracker. I have a very vivid memory of going to see the Nutcracker but then also going to see any when I was at the O’Keefe Center in Toronto which is no longer called the O’Keefe Center, it’s called something else. And I think it actually has a 3rd name. But my memory is being in the car after the show and driving around the O’Keefe Center and down pass the stage door. And seeing, it has to be the Nutcracker because I can remember the girl. I can see girls all with their hair in tight, tight bonds. And they’re all standing at the stage door and it was like “Oh, oh if that’s where actor, you know that’s where the actors came out.” Oh, oh, that’s very interesting to me and I think I was about 6 or 7. So just having that real knowledge of the back stage life and it’s something that I’ve always loved. I’ve always, always loved behind the scenes of things and just the whole backstage thing. And second memorable theatrical experience is when I was 8 and I was in grade 3. And I was in a very small school and our whole entire school went and saw a Christmas pantomime. I think I’m going to say was it Christmas time. The secretary of the school just happened to be in the show and for some unknown reason; I got to go back by myself. My parents weren’t with me; I’m sure they’d pick me up and dropped me off. But I got to go and see the show again but I was by myself, I wasn’t with my school. I remember sitting in the front row and I remember that at, in her mission an usher came up to me and must have said are you so and so and I must have said yes and they said come with me. I’m going to take you backstage, so they took me back stage with my first look of the green room and somebody shot me on a cube in the wings and I’ve got to watch the second act of this pantomime, the show like a Christmas whole fun show, I think it was a Christmas. And I’ve got to watch the whole second act backstage in the wings and I’ve got to see the way the actors were before went onstage and how they joked with each other and what they were like onstage and there was this whole big thing where one of the characters had to sing to his girlfriend, who wasn’t a very nice character. And he sang Ain’t She Sweet to her and it was decided all the actors backstage. I think it must have been one of the last shows or something. And they all got together and they decided that while he’s singing Ain’t She Sweet, every time that he did that, everyone backstage was going to answer “No” and I got to do that and I got to like join in and I have very clear memory of the actor onstage obviously not knowing that this was happening because he turned and looked upstage as if to say what are you doing? And of course, now I know, as an adult this was a very horrible, horrible thing to do to the people who are acting on stage. But as an 8 year old, was that not the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me and probably informed my love of theater? Right then in the air that the whole notion of being in the wings and seen the difference between what goes on onstage and what goes on off, just fantastic. I still, I have the worst memory in the world; Craig is telling me all the time. You know I told you this, don’t you remember this? I told you how to do this and I don’t remember anything. And yet I can still see myself sitting on that cube, seeing the face of the guy when he looks backstage with his very puzzled look because all the people and me included are shouting “No” every time he says Ain’t She Sweet.

2. Is there a production you wish you could have seen?

Craig and I are really lucky in that we have been able to travel to New York 3 or 4 times, now, in the past. The first time we went was in 2004. I’m going to say, I think it was 2004. And we’ve just been really, really lucky in the past. Holy crawly that means it’s been 8 years that we’ve gone maybe 4 or 5 times. And there is always a show that we wish we had seen; that we could’ve seen and we didn’t. We could have seen Avenue Q; I wish we had seen that. We could have seen Alan Cummings was in a version of The Threepenny Opera that we could’ve seen and we didn’t. And see now, this is where the questions like this are always throw me because later, I will think of at least 3 other plays that I wish I had seen and didn’t. I’ll tell you one I saw that I wished I’d never seen. I did not like Spring Awakening. As a playwright, I know it was a hit thing. I know it was all cool and everything. Sorry to me. As a playwright, I just could not stand the construction of the story. I just thought it was ridiculous and didn’t need to see, watch her head top less twice. Saw at once, didn’t need to see it twice. I cannot think, I cannot think, I cannot think of another show. I think the Alan Cumming one is the one that we talk about all the time that we wish we had seen that and never did. Okay.

3. Who was the person who made the biggest impact on your career?

Oh my goodness. You mean, aside from myself? Myself just writing and getting things done. Who has impact on my career? I’ve done a lot of it on my own because nobody really had any faith in my writing abilities. Yeah, I think it was more… Really it was more of the number of people who had no interest in my writing. I supposed I had a teacher in university who I wrote a scene for class. That was done in a class project and based on that scene, she invited me to write the, every year for the freshmen there was a sexual awareness play; every university has one. And because I did that, I felt confident and motivated to then write another play which was my first play, which was among friends and clutters. So I guess I have to say that if that chain of events hadn’t happen, I don’t know how things would have gone. You know what? I’ll tell you who had the most impact on my career. There’s a guy named David Cheoros who works in out west. And he hired me to act in a French festival tour. We toured Canada and we did a little bit, teeny tiny bit in the states as well. If I hadn’t learned all the ins and outs and tricks of touring a play on the French, seeing that I could do it myself, seeing that I could write or play, put it up, produce it and tour the country with very limited resources, with very simple tactics. If hadn’t seen that and learn that from myself, I never would’ve gone on to tour the French myself for 6 years. And then, the touring of the French and running those plays is really what the basis of theater folk is. So there we go, that is the person who has made the biggest impact on my career and ending it up where it is today. David Cheoros cast me in a play called Alexander Graham Bell, I Want To Have Your Love Child. And that was that.

4. Who are your heroes? Writing or otherwise.

I don’t like the word hero because it is used so often in people who are really not heroes, like people who don’t risk their life or risk anything or a sacrifice for themselves. Because I think that’s what I think a hero is. I think a hero is someone who puts others ahead of themselves, who sacrifices. So in that regard, I would say that Craig has an aunt who is a nun and who has spent many, many years putting other people ahead of herself, who spent 10 years, I apologized if that was. She just retired and I apologize if I can’t remember how long it reached. It is that she went to, she was in Ottawa and started from scratch a place called Carty House which is where sort of a refuge for refugees for those many of the women who are staying there, came there from war-torn countries trying to find a way. Some of them, having to leave family behind not knowing what happened and she built this place from scratch. She also was in between place in Toronto and she was a place people who are coming out of, I know it’s not 999 Queen West anymore but out of the mental institution, a place for them to go before they got out on their own. And I just always see her as being somebody who put other people before herself. Do I have any writing heroes? Do I have any writing heroes? I wouldn’t call them heroes. No, I have no writing heroes.

5. If you could be anyone (past, present, or fictional) who would you choose to be and why?

I have already had a headache by the way this is your question five. I have a headache for answering these questions. Okay. If I could be anyone past, present or fictional, say I get put on the spot and then it takes a while for my brain to circle around, if I could be anyone, who would I want to be? Well I’m always going to choose somebody fictional. Oh, I have horrible one. I have a very horrible one. There is a series of books that I read before I go bed at night because they are mostly mindless and very formulaic but there’s like a slew of them. It’s J.D. Robb and she’s written about 40, I’m sure of this particular and she’s running a gazillion other books. It’s Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb. She writes this series of futuristic New York based on a, surrounding a cop. And Eve Dallas and they’re so, oh they’re so formulaic. But the world that has been created in these books, it’s fascinating to me like the characters and the future that she sort of put together and I just find it very, very cool. So that would be a cool place to live. I read so much and I cannot think of another person that I would like to be. Is there anybody in the past? I don’t think there’s anybody in the past. It’s always going to be more fun to think of fictional people.

6. If you could have a love affair with anyone (past, present, or fictional) who would you choose?

And of course I would choose Darcy from Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. And only because I find the mini-series with comfort and none anything else, I don’t like him in anything else I’ve ever seen. But I love that miniseries quite a bit. What I like to be, you know what? It makes no sense because as a girl, I never would have been allowed and would’ve been horrible. I imagine living in England in Shakespeare’s time was a nightmare. But if you didn’t know any different, you would know any different but it wouldn’t be so intriguing to have been an actor in Shakespeare’s company and in the large chamberlain’s men. Never could happen, well then I would have to be a guy. So there you go, I’m being fictional, that’s what… You know, that would be, I just found that we just did a newsletter on Elizabeth in England and she’s found that whole time, so fascinating. It probably really would not fun in anyway shape or form but to have… there’s the whole transition of theater from the beginning of the era to the end of the era. I think that being in Shakespeare’s plays, the first productions of them. I think that would have been wicked. So that’s what I would want to be. Okay? Love affair I don’t even know his first name, Mr. Darcy. Anyone else who I would like to have a love affair with? I don’t actually ever think about that in those terms. I’m pretty happy so I don’t really need to have fictional love affairs.

7. When you sit down to write, what must you have with you in the room?

Kleenex. There’s not a lot; something to drink which is usually in the winter time, a pot of tea. I’m so tired of summer. I would like summer to be over so that it can be tea season again. I think that we mostly keep our house cold so that Craig can drink coffee and I can drink tea, or water or diet coke. So I have something to drink, I have my laptop on my lap and then I also have a notebook and a gazillion pens nearby cause sometimes if I’m working on something, if I need to deconstruct it, it’s always better for me to do it with pen and paper.

8. When you’re in despair with a piece of work, how do you maneuver out of that?

When you are in the despair with a piece of work how do you maneuver out of it? I change locations. I almost always associate despair in… It’s really never despair; it’s writing. I don’t have anything to be despairing over. If I’m writing and it’s not working, I will change location. Sometimes I will go and I will sit on the bed. Sometimes I will go, we have a room upstairs and I will sit on the floor. Sometimes I will go to a coffee shop. I change location and I also change mediums. If it’s computer that I’m working on and it’s not going well, I’ll go to pen and paper or vise versa. Go often for a walk, also there’s so many times that if I have a problem with the play, if I just go for a walk and I just sort of let things run around on my head and just let it circle and circle and circle, I will go “Hey I figured that out”.

9. If you hadn’t become a dramatist what profession would you have chosen?

Not so much anymore, there was a time period probably a year ago, where the original CSI was on every day. I had a certain period of time where I could watch it. I wonder if Craig was doing a show. No, he wasn’t doing a show last year. Whatever it was, it must have been during the day but I used to watch CSI Vegas, the Vegas one, just religiously until and I’ll tell when I stop watching. I stop watching when see, it’s been a long time so I don’t even remember their names. One of the characters got into trouble in real life and got kicked off the show and then he got killed off on the show. And that was sort of it to me. I didn’t watch any of the episodes after that but like the first 5, 6 years? I have seen all those number of times. And if I wasn’t a dramatist and I didn’t have the kind of imagination that would keep me up at night, I think being a forensic scientist and if I had any attitude for science at all and if I didn’t, you know took.,, If I actually took science in school, all the factors that does this job completely impossible. But I think it’s fascinating to look at a crime scene and go okay the blood splatter goes this way. So that means, when someone so said that they fell, that couldn’t have happened or to look at fibers or to look at the jigsaw; it’s the jigsaw puzzle pieces that all fit together to tell a story and I just find it fascinating and yes I know that CSI is not real but so what?

10. Which of your works is your favorite and why?

I’m so excited this is it. I can’t believe how tiring this is. Which of your works is your favorite and why? They are all my children, they’re all my favorites. People ask me this question all the time and it’s hard to say. First of all you have to… When somebody asks you this question, you have must an answer. It is not fair to not have an answer. Sometimes they’re asking because they’re bored. But sometimes they’re asking because they want to read something that’s meaningful to you? To me? Sometimes they ask because they can’t make a decision and it’s really unfair to say to them, “Oh I don’t have a favorite” because everybody has a favorite, right? Even though when they say they don’t have things that are their favorites, everybody has something that means something to them and that’s really what it’s all about. So you know, sometimes it depends on the day. Mostly my favorite play is the play that’s in my head and that I’m working on because I’m living with it all the time. I just finished a draft on my typewriter play and it’s just like, it’s kind of like rocket ships and fireworks going off in my head as I’m thinking and thinking and it’s very exciting, so it’s very meaningful to me right now. Sometimes there’s a play that’s if they’re standing at the table and we have a lot of a certain play, I’m like “Alright! That’s my favorite play” and I can always come up with a reason because it’s so sad to say but really it’s true that they don’t get published unless I feel something than less than meaningful to me. I don’t publish my stuff that I only sort of semi-care about and there’s a lot of different reasons why I care about something. I care about plays that were very challenging to write or where I put out a thesis and explored it and was successful. There’s no feeling like doing something challenging and that you find that it’s successful and sometimes, on a certain day that is what is meaningful to me. I suppose in the end, what I often say is that the most challenging play, if I tried to do something and it worked, that’s always going to be meaningful to me and of course my first play. My friends and clutter is always going to have just the most special place in my heart because I still can’t believe that play was done in 1991 and to this day. There are productions going on and that to me means that the play resonates and that is what we’re all striving for as writers, to have our work resonate and to have our work resonate long after its first production. Okay that was 10 questions. I hope that was interesting. I feel that, I wish I had been able to sit down and think about some of these answers because I might have given something that was more meaningful as opposed to just trying to think off the top of my head. However, I think that, that means that the answers maybe are more instinctual. Is that s good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. I thought I really wanted to cut the love affairs question because it’s like, I don’t know, I don’t… I like when I read, I love worlds like I love books and that create worlds and I love sort of jumping into those worlds. I don’t necessarily want to have myself in those worlds. I wonder if it’s because I create, I spend a lot my time creating worlds myself that I don’t have that side to me where I want to go live in a book, I don’t know.

And that’s where we’re going to end. That’s it that’s all, take care my friends, take care.

Music credit: “Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.