playwriting – carla ching

Middles

December 8, 2009 carlaching2 Comments

The middle is always the most difficult thing to characterize.

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.

The Writing Process

October 14, 2009 carlachingLeave a comment

Some people get sheepish talking about their writing process. Particularly if you find yourself working at the last minute. Or right up to deadline. Do you make apologies? Do you just forgo the sleep? Do you foist it on some kind soul to read it at the 11th hour and make sure you’re not totally crazy and there is a discernible story there?

I am working up until the 11th hour to get this piece done for the reading. It is massively nervewracking to put it before an audience, but perhaps that’s the only way to know if it works. If it feels alright in the mouths of these wonderful actors. If there is that feeling in the air during the reading. You know the one. When we’re all present and inside the story and breathing hard because of what just happened/is threatening to happen/can’t happen.

If you can get a moment or two of those, maybe you’ve got something going on.

So, that is what we’re trying for. If this play would just cooperate. I keep trying to whip it into shape and it keeps bleeding around the edges. C’mon, play. Stop being so messy and chaotic. Or be more messy and chaotic.

A Room of One’s Own

September 15, 2009September 17, 2009 carlachingLeave a comment

Good thing I have good walking shoes. And an Unlimited metro card. Run around time has begun.

Started the new Pace class yesterday. They are an awesome group. I introduced Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (thanks to Unlocking the Classroom for putting my eyes on it) as I’ve been not 100% pleased with how feedback sessions go in creative situations. I wanted to practice on work that wasn’t theirs. I asked them to choose a play we were all familiar with. Perhaps it’s a sad state of theater that we couldn’t find a common play. I went to film. Someone suggested Star Wars, but not everyone had seen that either. Somehow we ended up with a certain film about a man who overcomes his disabilities, class and a single-parent up-bringing to become an influential–albeit, haphazardly so–figure in history. Yes. That movie. But that’s not important. What’s important is that we practiced the process, with them taking turns as the writer and responder while I facilitated and they got quite good with it in a short period of time–giving and receiving feedback in a meaningful way. And it really made a difference that the artist drives the conversation with their own questions about their work. We will see how the semester goes, but I am quite hopeful and so glad to have found this new way of workshopping plays right off the press.

Started at Teachers and Writers yesterday. I am meant to assist with their programs this year and to work on my own writing. I am so excited. When I was taken to my new office, I almost started to cry. A lovely little room, filled with light. A red wall, two other walls of glass and the third wall with a window, from which you can see the Hudson. A little red hand-painted public school chair that was apparently found on the street. I have never had a room of my own in which to write. It does make all the difference.

I am familiarizing myself with their programs and am astounded at how far reaching they are and what a lovely history they have, being founded by many, but Herbert Kohl and Muriel Rukheyser, who are two personal heroes. Much to do. Much to learn. Much to look forward to.