Over the past several years that I have been writing plays, even when I do a pretty extensive outline, I often find myself stuck like many other writers.  It's the usual:  either I'm not sure what the play is really about or if I'm not sure I understand the main character or I'm not sure how to bring something from the past into the present. Many other things of course but those issues often plague me.  Sometimes this happens at the very beginning when I am considering which idea I want to develop. I find these situational exercises really help me get out of the playwriting doldrums.  They do the trick for me to get me off my ass and writing again!  They are by no means original. I have stolen them from actors, other writers and oberved the structures in plays I've seen. I have found them helpful and fun, and most of all, they yield results.  I thought I would share these three exercises, like favorite recipes.  So, here they are:

The interrupted ritual.  Create a ritual between two or more characters and then find something that disturbs or interrupts or destroys the ritual.  Rituals can be as simple as two people meeting for lunch every Wednesday to a highly stylized religious ceremony - like a wedding or funeral. This could become a play but could also just give you the framework for an important scene in a new play.

A character tells you the story.  If you have a play idea already, but aren't sure what the play is about yet,  take one of the characters you think you know the least about and have them (perhaps in monologue form or journal entry form) tell you the story of the play you are writing from their perspective.  Try and make it opinionated, they can even comment on the action, maybe predict what could have been different, or reveal their blindspots, etc.  This also works with a main character you are struggling to understand.  This might not be a play but it can tell you a lot about the characters when you are done - you also might get a terrific monologue out of it.

The 10 year cycle.  I have a couple versions of this exercise.  It can really make for an interesting way to look at characters. Create a character (or pull one from a play idea) and then write four to six (1-4 page) scenes from their life.  But between every scene needs to be at least 10 years of their life. For example:  Marcus when he is 10 playing with his best friend. The next scene is Marcus when he is 20 arguing with his girlfriend who is leaving him to go to college.  Next we see Marcus when he is 30 interviewing for a job.  Then Marcus when he is 40 at his mother's funeral.  Finally we see  Marcus when he is 50 meeting his estranged daughter for the first time. You set up the situation of each scene - just spread them 10 years apart. The other way to go with this exercise is to choose TWO characters and we see how they remain connected throughout their lives in 4-6 scenes together.  This could just be an exercise to get to know a character as background information, it could be a scene for the play, or it could become the play.

There you go.  If you find yourself slammed against the wall of writer's block, or just not knowing where to go with a play,  or which idea you should put the effort into - I would put your characters and plays through this exercise program!  It may be your next play.  What are your favorite exercises? I would love to publish them here.

*The image of Marcus is a computer generated image which is from a website that creates headshots of people that don't exist.  

​--Morgan Ludlow

Dear Martian Colony Committee--

Why do we want to go to Mars? I’ll tell you why we want to go to Mars. We've done all there is to do on this planet, and we’re tired of Boca Raton. Retirement in Florida isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And I’ll tell you, our neighbor, Edna, she won't ever leave us alone. She's always asking us for advice, and sugar. She doesn't need to eat sugar. Have you seen her? If you have, you’d know. And I'm tired of hearing her brag about that damn Caribbean cruise her son sent her on. I’ll get the one up on that woman if it's the last thing I do. And you know what? I think she's got her eye on my Murray. He always thinks someone’s got her eye on him. And it’s true, because there’s a lot of him to see. He’s one big hunk of manhood. I know that better than anyone. That’s where the low gravity would come in handy. It would be nice not to get crushed by him. Oh, and another thing - Mars is far away, so there’s no traffic.

Next is the humor. I have such a good sense of humor. And we have to keep the crew laughing, don’t we? It's a long trip to Mars. It's what – eight, nine months? It’ll be even longer if nobody's laughing. But don’t get Murray started on the impersonations. He thinks he’s so good with the impersonations. My God, if I have to spend the rest of my life on Mars with his damn Sean Connery impersonations – he sounds nothing like Sean Connery. He sounds like he has a cold. I just want to give him a Sudafed when he goes on with the Sean Connery. You leave the laughter to me. I'll bring the Mad Libs. It always does the trick. It worked on the kids. Who gets tired of Mad Libs? Nobody, that’s who!

And lastly, why should we go to Mars? Out of the six people, we're the two that really need to go. We're the life of every party, and nobody can beat my matzo ball soup. And of course, there was the year I made all the kids' costumes. I'm a great seamstress. We'll have one hell of a Halloween! We'll all dress like earthlings, like that Sandra Bullock lady in that movie. She's a cutie that Sandra Bullock. It was Gravity! Why did they call it Gravity? There was no gravity there. They should have called it Floating.

So please, send us to Mars! Because what else are you going to do with us?

Sincerely,

Gladys Schackerdue

By Karl Schackne

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Lakeview, OR – a little town in the middle of nowhere in Southeast Oregon. It's a very rural area in the high desert. Lakeview is a town that had one traffic light, and it only flashed yellow – they took it out, though, because it confused people. In particular, I lived on a cattle ranch outside of town, where, when not crawling around old barns with rusty nails and loose floorboards or playing on 2300 acres, I was chopping thistles by hand and removing rocks from corrals.  At times I felt isolated from a lot of my interests. There was no theater, my family drove me hours away to participate in summer workshops, or see play. I learned that was a good way to avoid building fence.

What excites you about theatre right now?

Badass female roles. Badass female playwrights. Badass female directors. 

How did you know acting was your strong suit? Did you ever do anything else?

It's difficult for me to really pin down a specific moment that I "knew" acting was my strong suit. I've always been the performer in my family and it's always been something I enjoyed. Maybe the moment I first felt confident in my ability to inhabit a character and empowered to pursue acting unapologetically was in an acting class during my semester abroad at the Moscow Art Theatre. The curriculum was based around acting etudes, one in particular we were instructed to choose a character from a play from our reading list and present a "missing scene" with that character. I chose Nina from "The Seagull" and created a scene that might have occurred after she was abandoned by Trigorin and still trying to make it as an actress, before she comes back for the last scene. It's incredible when everything clicks into place. That was the first time that happened for me.

I've done a lot--both in and out of theatre. I have experience directing, playwriting, and in costume design and construction. In school, I spent my summers leading trail rides and packing mules in Kings Canyon National Park. I've done the food and customer service thing. I have a lot of other interests, but what made me realize how important acting is to me was the year I went without it. I never want to do that again.

How do you handle backstage drama?

I avoid it. At all costs. I'm a classic middle child in that regard. I focus on doing my job: solving problems not making them.

What's the most fun or most challenging acting role you've had to date? Why?

My perspective on past roles often changes. But, thinking about it right now...it would be a character from a short play called Tucked in Tight. I played a woman who has to face her physically abusive ex-husband, who was loving to their two young daughters. They don't know about the abuse, but recent actions force the woman to ban him from seeing them. It was such a complex scenario and required a lot of layering. Add a very short and intense rehearsal time and I found myself pretty spent. I am usually able to shake off challenging characters when I'm not in the rehearsal room, but I found this one lingering. I still trust my resilience, but I now understand the importance of taking care of myself with roles that can be emotionally and/or mentally taxing.

What do you do to take extra care of yourself through rehearsals and into performances? 

I make sure I get plenty of sleep and drink a lot of water. I remind myself to go for walks and runs and do laundry. A lot of reminders! As much as I can I stay organized – keeping up with my calendar and keeping clutter under control. That being said, I try to cut myself some slack when things get chaotic. I'm not going to say I haven't stumbled home late from rehearsal, collapsed in my bed with a pile of clean-ish laundry, and--in response to my growling stomach and my roommate's request to finally do my dishes say, sotto voce, "I'll deal with it after closing."

What is your favorite part about the work?

The collaboration. Everyone has individual duties and roles, but when everyone is sharing their hard work with the team, that's when the magic happens. Also, I get to play make-believe everyday--what's not to love about that?!

https://www.facebook.com/SamanthaJGranberg?fref=ts

play·wright
ˈplāˌrīt/noun: a person who writes plays.

Meet Jennifer Roberts, Head Writer for the Wily West, charged with the task of corralling the work of #8Writers and putting it all together into cohesive pieces for our #SummerShows #ZeroHour #ISawIt

Get Early Bird Tickets now!

Where are you from? 

Transfer. It's a small village in rural Pennsylvania. It was named after the transfer stations on the rail lines that linked two track systems of different gauges. Early on, before the transcontinental, railroads were built by multiple companies and unregulated, so eventually there were over 20 different track gauges across the east and midwest. Therefore, when a train came in on one line and met up in a town with a different line, the cargo and passengers needed to be transferred to a different train in order to continue its journey. I've always found this an appropriate personal metaphor.


What excites you about theatre right now?

I'm loving the new groundswell of playwright collectives popping up and the Do-It-Yourself mentality when it comes to self-producing. It's gotten a bad rap in the past, but I think it's vital for playwrights to take some control in getting their plays seen.  Let's face it. Competition for a production is rough. Hundreds of playwrights are vying for the few slots available in a theater's season, so what are we to do? Sit and wait? I don't think so. Plays are meant to be seen. Get them seen!


How did you know writing was your strong suit? Did you ever do anything else?

Oh, I've done a lot of other things. My first job was a radio announcer when I was sixteen. Through the years I worked multiple jobs, all service industry and often at the same time when my husband was going to school. Later I settled into reception work at an animal hospital, working my way up to management. I stayed in that position for over ten years. I wasn't happy. I asked myself what it was I wanted out of life. I had always wanted to be a writer. So I decided to pursue it. By then my daughter was in high school and the opportunity to go to college presented itself, and I took it. I got started late. It used to bother me. But now I keep telling myself that I'm on my path. Don't look back!  


What's the most fun or most challenging writing experience you've had to date?

Hands down, the most challenging experience was sitting silently through a festival reading of my play with this gentleman who was full of mansplaining and dismissiveness. My research was solid and it was a subject I studied. He didn't know this, so he was peacocking a bit. He was irritated at the subject matter; he wanted to put me in my place. I regret not grabbing a microphone and giving a rebuttal. It wasn't how the event was set up, but I still should've done it. 


What is your favorite part about the work?

I think it's finishing each task, each stage. The research. The first draft. Meeting the deadline for the next one. Every time I can hit "send," and feel like it's an end to a phase of the play development, I get a thrill. I can relax for a bit until the next deadline. I also love when I'm writing well. I can feel it. There's a flow and an energy that's quite a high. So I guess my favorite part is beginnings and endings. The middle is the job. We may like our jobs, but they can be tedious and frustrating and sometimes we are looking at the classifieds. 

Even business colleagues don’t
really know what I do, but my
family and non-work friends are
really baffled by it. I spend a
large part of my day talking to
people about what they do and
then turning that into flow diagrams, then analyzing those flows to help find areas where things aren’t making sense. 

If I’m doing my job right, I can get people past the “my head hurts” phase of looking at this stuff, and start to see the validation that this thing they are doing that feels like it isn’t working really is complex and convoluted. 

12:00 AM

Finally it was time for bed and a little

light reading (Dracula) and some music (Art Tatum) to ease me out of the day and be ready for the next one. 

Is there a writer or other artist that most influenced you as an artist?

Embarrassment at admitting this aside, I might say Andrew Lloyd Weber. He was my first introduction to theatre and was embedded at a time when I was outwardly obsessive and extremely impressionable. I probably listened to my tape cassette recording of Jesus Christ Superstar 3000 times. I rarely ever removed the sweatshirt. On more than one occasion, the Knight household had to stop what they were doing to find one of those two items. 

My mom also did an interesting thing. Growing up in Silicon Valley, trips to the theatre most often came in the form of the touring shows in a series at the Golden Gate called Best of Broadway. A few weeks before seeing the show, my mom would get the soundtrack and we’d listen over and over. I didn’t read many, if any, plays at a kid, but I became very familiar with the process of listening to music and lyrics and trying to imagine what I was seeing on stage, and the story that came between. 

What are your two favorite characters in all theatre and why?

Benno Blimpie and Dr. Frank N. Furter

What would you say you got the most from your graduate school experience in playwriting?

The fear and joy of feeling like UH OH writing a play means we’re going to CREATE something and who the hell knows what it’s going to look like and if it’s going to escape and raze townships or bring people to a greater understanding of humanity. 

Also the German nanobiologist Nicole Steinmetz, who is now a collaborator on the The Nanoman (www.thenanoman.org), taught me how to surf. 

Any personal aspects of this play that you are willing to share?  

My mom is incredibly charming, and a good, open listener, which means she is the recipient of some very disturbing anecdotes. 

I notice you write a lot about stream of consciousness and dreams.  What about the topic of the subconscious or dreams seems to draw you in as a writer?   

I love that theatre can manifest the imagined, and, depending on the rules of the play, force the characters to grapple with it. I like that theatre can make metaphor manifest. I like that theatre gives us two sides of a triangle and asks us to draw the third in order to see the shape. 

When you finish a play do you feel it is complete?

Mostly in the sense that I’ve gone as far as I can, and the lingering puzzles of this play will be jumping off points of the next project. 

What most excites you about seeing this play on stage?  

The final moments. The last page of the script is the repetition of a phrase. 

You now teach the art of playwriting - what is it you try to leave with your students?

I want my playwriting students to learn how to create live experiences across platforms—virtual and real—so that they can create scripts for the stage, digital web experiences, and high tech amusement park rides. 

We need to be bold in our definitions of what constitutes a "platform" or a "stage" from which we can edify and entertain an audience. 

Artistic Director Morgan Ludlow talks about the producer behind the scenes for Wily West... 

Quinn ever present in the tech booth.   On top of being producer, set designer, props mistress, literary manager, etc.   Quinn is also our resident lighting designer.   During tech week you will find Quinn on stage, back stage with her checklist and observing the madness she needs to sort out from the booth!

Quinn's office - is often the porch off her backyard where she works with Wesley to build sets and props.  Here she is about to add another base coat to the set for our fall shows.  She is getting the overalls (which will be worn by actor Rick Homan) to look worn-in while she also paints the set.

Here is the Wily West workshop in action - Quinn and Wesley's backyard.   Most of our sets and props are built here before they are sent to the theatre.  Here we see Genevieve helping Quinn apply another base coat for the set of DROWNING KATE.

Studio 633: Quinn's command center.  We are in rehearsals for our current production of DROWNING KATE (also UN-HINGED).   First testing of ghoulish make-up for actor Colleen Egan by Genevieve Perdue our make-up artist.   Quinn observes the progress...

Throwback:  Here is a photo of Quinn from a production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC (she is playing Maria) at Oakland School of the Arts.  Then Quinn Whitaker began studying theatre design and production at Oakland School of the Arts with a concentration in Lighting Design and Stage Management.  

Quinn went to Barnard College in New York City where she served as the Lighting Designer and Stage Manager for Columbia University Event Management and the Columbia Musical Theatre Society.  While living in New York Quinn worked many shows as a technician, including the International Architectural Lighting Lighting Design Awards and the Ellie Charles Awards.

So a little love story:  Quinn and Wes have been together for several years but they just got married last year: July 5, 2013!   Wesley has been our technical director since 2011 and he has originated several roles for the company.   Last year he started directing for us by bringing the premiere of LAWFULLY WEDDED to SF and this year he directed plays for SHEHEREZADE 14 and he is directing both fall shows UN-HINGED and DROWNING KATE.

THE MANY SETS OF QUINN & WES! 

This slide show is just a portion of the many sets Quinn & Wes have designed and built for Wily West from 2009-2014.

Quinn is busiest at the theatre days before we open.   

Quinn working with director Chelsey Little for our SUPERHEROES production at the Exit Theatre in SF.  The production has received a TBA Award nomination for Best Anthology!

Buying and trying on some costumes with Genevieve.  We ain't named Wily West for nothing!

In her spare time Quinn shops for props, sees as many other shows in the SF Area as she can - as a TBA Awards Adjudicator, volunteers for the SF FRINGE FESTIVAL and spends quality time with her pets - here she is with Maisy probably on her way to buy more props...

Don't miss Quinn's latest work as a Producer - lighting designer, props mistress, scenic painter, etc.  DROWNING KATE and UN-HINGED both world premieres run October 3-25 at the Exit Theatre!

"My turn to put in a few words about Wily West's upcoming fall productions - Un-Hinged and Drowning Kate. I have lived and breathed these shows for the last month and I can honestly say I've never felt more pride in my work/ achievements. In large part this is due to the partnership and support from a group of amazing Theatre Artists. This company has got it right folks. Wily West fosters new artists in a challenging, supportive, creative environment and consistently pumps new life and heart into an industry that has been reportedly "dying" for the last century. Through their loving care I can feel myself grow and improve as an actress, as a collaborator, and as a lover of theatre and it's inspiration - Life and humanity.

These two shows are going to reflect all of this! They represent a cast and crew's dedication and love for each other and our community - from the brilliantly creative minds of the playwrights, Morgan Ludlow and Krista Knight into the caring and passionate hands of our director, Wesley Cayabyab, and our production team, Quinn Cayabyab, Laylah Muran de Assereto, Jason Jeremy, and Phil Goleman, and finally delivered in the performances of an awesomely talented Cast, Scott Cox, Colleen Egan, Cameron Galloway, and Rick Homan (and myself ~.^). They are haunting shows, heart breaking shows, twisted shows, hilarious shows - and all who come to see this first hand will walk away with something worthwhile, some small tiny change that made their lives better."

What have been some of your favorite previous productions?

I played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. I’m thirty now and it makes me a little sad to know that I’m probably too old to play that role again.

ALL PHOTOS BY JIM NORRENA

That is what one Goldstar Member had to say about the cast of our hit summer show EVERYBODY HERE SAYS HELLO!  And we are inclined to agree...but look at what else has been said of the show...

"In a story that at first seems to have a gay relationship at its core before sending out tendrils into complex webs of sexual permutations. Happy and sad are always in close proximity, but Bousel finds ways to evoke laughs that always seem appropriate for the situations. Even the most quippish wisecracks ring true for the characters, who feel like fresh creations but are somehow still familiar."
--Richard Dodds
Bay Area Reporter 

"This is a marvelous script packed with witty, character revealing dialogue!  Wily West Productions can be extremely proud to have brought this world premiere to a Bay Area stage."
--Charles Kruger
TheatreStorm

"Stuart Bousel has written a very clever entertainment and this production has a young energetic cast performing the roles."
--Richard Connema
Talkin'Broadway

"Delightful. The cast is uniformly excellent...the direction is sharp and smooth, and the script is hilarious (and incisive). A comedy with a great deal of heart, this one is for anyone who has ever dated. I'm not kidding. The questions we all have while in the dating pool are deliciously exposed and up-ended in this tale of a love triangle that becomes a rectangle and then a hexagon... I'm going to go back and see it again."
--Goldstar Review

"Everybody Here Says Hello! is a delightful contemporary comedy... It contains some of Bousel's smartest writing and is performed by a talented, finely-tuned ensemble. If you've ever wanted to see a furiously fast-paced, fierce Feydeau farce without any slamming doors, Bousel's play definitely hits the spot!"
--George Heymont
My Cultural Lanscape