I think I am getting upwards of 100 emails a day.  I wish that I were joking.  My gmail is bursting with emails, and that’s after I unsubscribed to a bunch of junkmail.  So, this is really all work-related and personal correspondence.

Who has a good system of filing and responding to all this stuff?  I’m drowning.  As a freelance worker and a writer, those emails are always flowing in faster than I can deal with ‘em.  And they’re coming like a river of hot volcano and they’re threatening to burn my house down.

Anybody?

In theatermaking and in teaching, we often call this “process.”

I spend a lot of time planning in both things.  When writing a play, I’ll often spend weeks or months reading, researching, thinking.  Thinking while I’m in the shower, eating a cupcake, falling asleep on the subway, in the middle of a conversation with someone, while watching a play.  The play is omnipresent.

Teaching is very similar.  I build a map, think about where I want to end up with them at the end of 45 minutes, at the end of a 2, 4 or 10 week residency.  And I build backwards.  What game, activity, set of questions, turn and talk will get us there?

I find a lot of solace in that initial mapping.  There is something tangible and concrete I can hold onto and look at.  There is a terrain I mean to cover.  I just need to wear the right shoes and get enough rest and I should be able to make the journey.

But, on the journey, a torrential downpour will come out of nowhere.  The upper of my shoe will separate from the sole.  I’ll drop my water bottle in a stream and it’ll float away.  I’ll get 15 or so mosquito bites.  This is what happens in the middle of a residency when you add the students and daily school drama, absences, classroom teacher burnout.  This is what happens on a second and third draft of the play when all the feedback you’ve gotten starts running through your head and you get seduced by strands that take you off entirely in the wrong direction.  Then, your characters get angry and start to run amok.

I am in the middle of a lot of things right now.  In the middle of a big residency devising a piece of theater with young people.  In the middle of a residency around Fela! In the middle of a draft of The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness.  In the middle of building the Spring reading series called 2020 Visions at Teachers & Writers.  In the middle of writing an article on Philadelphia Young Playwrights for the Spring issue of T&W Magazine.

It makes me feel very messy.
But I am “in process.”

I’ll finish something soon.

I’ll cross a bridge.

In this particular case, I was moved to see teachers put in the position of their students, writing personal pieces though it’s scary and hard.  For, we can often be our best selves as teachers when we truly understand the difficulty in what we’re asking our students to do and have had to fight through fears to be brave and master the skills or create something specific and true.

***

In the airy, book-lined Center for Imaginative Writing at Teachers & Writers Collaborative, a group of teachers from Aviation High School are buried in their notebooks, scribbling out their responses to a prompt by Karen Ulrich, a T&W writer and author of How to Write Your Life Story.  “Today, our goal is to write a scene from your memoir.”  This felt big to me, a big goal.  But I took a deep breath and put myself in Karen’s capable hands.

Karen gave us an excerpt of her book which contained a list of prompts on “memory triggers.”  Turning points-decisions that changed your life. Regrets.  Secrets you have kept.  World events that have had a powerful effect on your life.  “Choose one that you are especially interested in writing about and make a list of moments in your life that apply to that category,” she encouraged.  She then asked us to select the one that we were most curious about. This would be the kernel of the memoir piece.

As the workshop went on Karen showed us how a unit on memoir can be employed to teach good writing technique for both fiction and nonfiction.  She started with character.  Karen said, “List traits of you at the moment in time you’ve chosen.”  I had used the world events prompt and from my list, I’d chosen the Blackout of 2003.  What was I like then?  “Bob haircut.”  “Tall shoes.”  “Always bustling.”  “A bit meek with authority.” Listing in this way helped me to examine myself from the outside and without prejudice.  More importantly, it helped me to find the voice for this protagonist-me in 2003.

We then moved on through setting, plot, sensory detail, and dialogue.  As each aspect was introduced, we did a bit of writing with that technique or device in mind.  At the end, Karen asked us to take the very best bits out of what we’d written and to cobble it together into a whole.  This seemed much less scary than being told to build a memoir piece from scratch.  Instead we had small bits which we could collage together into a cohesive piece.  In this way, Karen modeled beautifully how a teacher could take this work into the classroom and create a well-scaffolded unit for his or her students.

The teachers shared some of their final pieces and they were textured, with strong charismatic characters and richly drawn settings.  You could see that they were surprised by each other’s work and how personal and authentic it was.  For those who read aloud, there was a palpable sense of the pride in building and sharing this piece of memoir.

So, while they walked out armed with Personal Fiction Writing by Meredith Sue Willis (T&W, 2000), handouts from Karen’s own book, and samples of memoir writing, more importantly, they walked away with their own memoir pieces and the memory of having participated in this process so that when they ask their students to be brave and to write about something true, they will be able to say, “Yes, I’ve done that that too.  And it’s hard.  But it’s worth it, I promise you.”

I am reminded of what a hero the classroom teacher is, how they truly set the tone for great learning, safety, humor and creative exploration.

This is also a crazytown theater time.  I just had the good fortune of catching the closings of my friends’ plays–Ooh-rah! by Bekah Brunstetter and Thunder Above, Deeps Below (yes, again) by A. Rey Pamatmat.  It was a good reminder of what I reach for in writing–truthful moments, compelling and charismatic characters, and something about the blow at any moment.  Both, so lovely.

And now, here comes Ma-Yi Theater Company’s Labfest.   As you see, I’m closing this sucker.  So I have a little time to finish this here little play that is, eh, not quite done yet.

Labfest III
First-look readings of brand new full-length plays from
the next generation of Asian American playwrights!

The Ma-Yi Writers Lab is the largest resident company of Asian American playwrights ever assembled.

This, its third LABFEST, will be the largest collection of brand new full-length plays by Asian American writers ever presented in one stand, anywhere in the universe throughout the history of recorded time.

Labbers have been known to write about things like space aliens, moustaches, salmon canneries, Darfur, calculus, cheesecake, and Scooter Libby – we make no promises about the content of this year’s crop, but we can promise that they will be brand new, first-look readings from the next generation of Asian American playwrights.

The person who attends the most readings wins a cash prize of one hundred million dollars.*

All readings are $5, available at the door.  To make reservations, email Mariah MacCarthy at mariah.maccarthy@ma-yitheatre.org, or call 212-971-4862.  All readings will be at Theater for the New City, at 155 1st Avenue (btwn 9th/10th St).

Monday, October 5 at 7pm
Heartbreak/India
by Kyoung H. Park

Tuesday, October 6 at 8pm
Garba Griha: Womb-House
by Michi Barall

Thursday, October 8 at 7pm
Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them
by A. Rey Pamatmat

Friday, October 9 at 7pm
Infinitude
by Sung Rno

Saturday, October 10 at 3pm  
The White Knight
by Mrinalini Kamath

Saturday, October 10 at 7pm  
Growing Up For Dummies
by Nora Chau

Sunday, October 11 at 3pm  
How to Get Rid of the Wife: A Political Romance
by Nandita Shenoy

Sunday, October 11 at 7pm  
Jesus In India
by Lloyd Suh

Monday, October 12 at 7pm  
We in Silence Hear a Whisper
by Jon Kern

Wednesday, October 14 at 6pm  
The Kimono Project
by Patricia Jang

Thursday, October 15 at 6pm  
A Voice in the Wilderness
by Eugene Oh

Thursday, October 15 at 8pm  
Particles of Pakistan
by Rehana Mirza

Saturday, October 17 at 12noon  
Microcrisis
by Michael Lew

Saturday, October 17 at 2:30pm  
Sharksucker
by Dustin Chinn

Sunday, October 18 at 2pm
The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness
by Carla Ching

*payable in installments of $1 every 10,000 years

The curators find a bunch of objects (for under $2) at garage sales, thrift stores, on the street, etc., then commission a writer to invent a story about the object–giving it a history, a life, a past, a “significance.”

Then, the objects are sold on e-bay. 

I like it.  I’ve sort of always loved found things.  Re-appropriated, re-made, re-contextualized.

In other news, Harold and Kumar are both respectively, well, in the news. 

John Cho is featured in Asian Pacific Arts and talks about how he used to be an English teacher during the day and act in plays at East West Players at night.  Kal Penn quit his sweet gig on House to work as Associate Director in the Office of Public Liason for Obama’s administration.

It seems to be our imperitive as Asian Americans to be overachievers.
Or to die trying.

Me, I’m more of an underdog than an overachiever.  But my nose, oh yeah, it’s to the grindstone.