Andy Accioli

Just saw a reading of Dustin Lance Black’s play “8″ online. It’s a courtroom drama dealing with marriage equality.  Wow. You have to experience this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlUG8F9uVgM

There has never been a time in my life when I was not in love with theater.  While attending East Hartford High School in East Hartford, Connecticut (now it’s a middle school), Mrs. Wilson who headed our drama department asked if I wanted to usher at the Hartford Stage Company, a regional theater located in Hartford, Connecticut.  Wow.  I jumped at the chance.

Besides our annual (Latin club, yes I did take 4 years of Latin, you never know) train trip to New York to see a Broadway show, I was now going to be an “integral” part of the Hartford Stage Company as an unpaid but enthusiastic usher.  I loved the theater before Hartford Stage…but while there I saw more professional plays than ever before in my life.

Besides seeing shows like The Three Sisters and The Fantastiks, they performed controversial (for the time) works such as MacBird.  One scene in their presentation of MacBird had an actor riding on to the stage on a tricycle.  I thought whoever staged this must be a genius.

One performer from my Hartford Stage ushering days that impressed me was Rue McClanahan.  Little did I know she would later play a vital part in our TV culture by first appearing with Bea Arthur as Vivian in Maude.  Then most notably as Blanche Devereaux in the Golden Girls.

Over the years, I have been to a number of regional theaters…and probably have seen quite a few actors who have moved on with their careers after getting their teeth cut at a regional theater.

What would happen to all this talent…actors, playwrights, artistic staffs…were it not for regional theaters?  If we only had live theater in the major cities and you were the artistic or managing director, you would be forced to pander to what brings in the bucks.  Every one of us should wholeheartedly support our regional and community theaters.  This includes you, my New York City friends.  When was the last time you ventured out of New York City on the Long Island railroad to Centerpoint (Long Island) to see regional theater productions performed by the Arena Players Repertory?  Or schlepped it down to Long Branch  to visit the New Jersey Repertory?

At some stage in our education, who does not recall reading Herman Melville’s 1851 whale tale, Moby Dick?

It was a book packed full of metaphors, packed full of symbolism, packed full of long soliloquies. And packed full of potential to be a Broadway smash.  Not.

I’m not referring to the Cameron MackIntosh  (Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Cats…)  1992 Moby Dick: A Whale of a Tale version.  No, I’m going back decades ago to a musical Moby Dick version that should never had made it to a high school theater stage much less Broadway.

It wasn’t the worse play I had ever seen.  No, wait, yes it was.

New York Broadway productions were going through a transformative period.  They were no longer touring shows to try them out, no more Boston, New Haven or Philly.  Now they found it more feasible financially to preview them in New York.  (A pity in the instance of this version of Moby Dick as undoubtedly had it opened in Boston, I’m pretty sure it would have dove into Boston Harbor and swam out to sea. Never to be heard from again.  Argh.  Argh.)

My reason for being at a preview performance was due to free tickets being passed out to college students.  (Red flag: why would they have to flood the market with free, “student rush” seats?)

Once the overture started the reason for the free tickets became apparent.  It was as though the conductor had one score and the each individual orchestra member had their own different one.

Usually when the overture ends something should happen.  Perhaps a good idea would be for the curtain to rise.  What seemed like an eternity, actually only a minute or two, the audience was in darkness and nothing was happening.  Finally the curtain rose and sailors attempted to hornpipe dance on to the stage.  Perhaps a more accurate description would be that the sailors danced into each other.  (A prior rehearsal probably would have been nice.)

At this point the billowing sheer curtain in back of them which was to give the impression of a massive sail suddenly decided to tear and fall onto the dancing sailors.  Not a pretty picture.

Main curtain falls while they picked up the fallen sail…as well as the fallen dancers…so that the show could go on.

Finally after our second eternity wait, the curtain rose while stagehands were trying to free up Ahab’s cabin which was recessed below the stage floor.  (Guess the set was afraid of showing itself and decided to remain below, unseen.)  Next thing, other stagehands scurried onto the stage carrying a desk and chair – from Ahab’s cabin I would assume.  Behind the stagehands, Ahab hurriedly followed to start his scene.)

Little did I know that those were the positive aspects of the show.  It careened downhill faster than any Olympic bobsled after that.

When intermission arrived – I kind of sensed it was intermission as the theater lights came up in spite of the actors still finishing their last scene, I looked around and was amazed to find that half the audience had stuck it out for the entire act.  However, I can’t say how many returned after intermission because by that time I was on a subway heading as far away from that theatrical tsunami as possible.  Little did I know that visions of a sail falling over dancers who could be described as choreographed spastic at best would leave me scarred for life.

I actually felt bad for the actors.  Not bad enough to endure Act 2 though.

If anyone remembers this musical, again NOT the 1992 Cameron Mackintosh version, but the one from the 70’s, email me with your near and dear “Moby Dick, The Musical” experience: andy@andyaccioli.com

I find research to be both essential and boring.  (Never having been a fan of minutia you can understand why I say it’s boring for me.)

Research is helpful in two ways.  First, I research elements of my plot to be sure it is plausible.  Second, I research the characters I am about to write about (this is my guide for how they feel emotionally, what they would say and how they would say it).

Currently I am in the research phase of a new play.  And, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m in way over my head on this one.  I have sifted through EVERY document known to man on the subject over the internet (and there have been hundreds of them).  Plus I have read 3 books on the topic which has led me to just order 4 more.  Corruption, conspiracy theories, murders and a touch of sex are running rampant.  There are 6 main conspiracy theories that are “plausible” from which I have the arduous task of picking one or formulating my own.

Trust me, it would have been much easier to create my own theory but I fall far short of some of the conspiracies I’ve been reading about.  Here, reality trumps fiction.

At this point, I feel like I’m writing a Seinfeld episode.  You know how there would be 2 or 3 story lines running through a single episode and somehow they would all be tied together in the end?  Well, that is exactly what I am facing.

As you know from a previous post, I write my last scene(s) first and then use this as my target for the rest of the play.   This works if you have completed all of your research as the end is a natural, “plausible”  conclusion of that research.

However, given the twists and turns I am encountering in real life, I’m practically thinking of a new ending each day.  Actually that might not be such a bad idea: a different ending each time the pay is performed.

Let me unequivocally say, I do not want to be a director.  I never wanted to be a director.  And, I will never be a director.

There are some playwrights that I feel are frustrated director-wannabees.  They give the most minute stage direction:

SAM sweats. Then reaches into his back right pocket

and removes handkerchief and wipes the sweat off

his forehead.  Carefully folds handkerchief and places it

back into his back right pocket.

If I were writing it – and felt as though something had to be said about the emotion SAM must be experiencing – I would simply say:

SAM sweats.

More likely than not, I would expect that a director would be better capable of visualizing SAM’s dilemma and instruct him accordingly.

I recently noticed a posting on Facebook by a playwright relative to a director crossing out all the playwright’s staging suggestions.  Why?  Just because he wanted to.

This is wrong.  There are times when a writer must add stage direction.  For example, in researching one of my plays I stumbled upon a comment made to me by a person I was interviewing relative to anonymously written letters.  I used this concept at the end of the play but had to lay the groundwork at the beginning of the play.  So I  included a line of direction: “EMMA hands TRICIA a bright colored envelope.”  At the end of the play, “PEG opens the last envelope…EMMA’s bright colored envelope.”

It is absolutely essential that this direction be included and not left to chance that a director will know this through his/he own research.  A director who chooses to ignore (cross out) this direction will cause the audience to misunderstand the ending.

I have to admit, I did have a little fun with the Facebook posting about the director who crossed every stage direction in the script.  My suggestion was for the playwright to write a couple of lines about the central theme and then hand the director a manuscript consisting of those two lines and a hundred other blank pages.  Hey, I said, I just wanted to have a little fun not winning the  Pulitzer Prize.

Last summer I spoke to a literary manager at a repertory theater company.  He had read two of my plays and determined that although he liked them, they were too edgy for his audience.  He added that they ended with more questions than they answered.

Your point?

If a theater-goer emerges from a performance and now is challenged intellectually, is that wrong?  Is that not the object of writing?  Present a main idea and then cause the audience member to think of it for the ride home…or for the rest of their life.

Or has the American theater turned into one of: heavyset princess meets troll..brings troll home to meet the king and queen parents…they marry, move to trolly-wood where they happily reside for the rest of their lives…the end?

I am currently in the research phase of a play that I am writing which blends a number of conspiracy theories into one plot.  Talk about leaving the audience with more questions than it answers.  If there are 300 audience members, I would be willing to guarantee that 250 will walk out with varying opinions. They certainly will have different thoughts than what they had prior to seeing the play.  (The other 50 will probably mutter “Huh?” as they try to figure out where they should grab a late night snack.)

I have always maintained that the audience brings to that theatrical performance all of their life experiences.  Let’s face it, some people have had more drama in their lives than what unfolds on the stage in front of them.  (And I’m not just talking about the drama queens we all know.)  To these folks, what some might consider too edgy is not edgy enough.

Sometimes you can drive yourself nuts trying to come up with a solution to a nagging problem.  It churns over and churns over in your head to the point where you realize that you are never going to come up with an answer.  At least not while you’re dwelling on it.

I had a problem like that (writer’s block?)  yesterday.

So what do I do to get unblocked?  Of course, I – along with 11 others – went to play high stakes bingo at Foxwoods Casino last night.  For the record, I am not 80 years old but given our age blended with the 3,000+ blue hairs (those between 80 and 100), we definitely lowered the mediam age of the room considerably.

Some of us opted for video bingo machines as some of us might be lacking in the motor skills department.  I stink at doing repetitive anything including finding a Bingo number called on 9 bingo games at the same time.  It wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose, if the bingo caller would speak with a tad less speed than an automatic machine: “B-7, O-73,  G-57…”.  With a video machine all you have to remember to do is tap on the small ball with the called number on it and the machine will automatically cover the number for you.  That is if you are blessed by the bingo gods by having that particular number  on all 18 cards that are magically crammed into your machine.  (I already told you how I am repetitively task deficient…there were times I’d forget to tap the ball with the number on it.)

It was at one point – while in bingo-la-la land – that the solution to my writing dilemma popped into my head.  Ideas were once again flowing as I excused myself, turned my machine over to my wife to let her fingers do the tapping while I went outside the huge bingo hall so I could jot down some key points of my breakthrough.

That done.  I returned to the blue hair hall, er, I mean the bingo hall.

The night was uneventful until Angela, a long time friend, was unexpectedly delayed from returning to her seat after a brief intermission.  Seems she was being held-up by a one-armed bandit. (Those of you below 30, a one-armed bandit is a slot machine.)  Not seeing her return, I quickly grabbed her paper sheet of bingo cards and her number marker.  Now, the guy who barely could keep up with his video machine was going to do the impossible and simultaneously also find the called numbers on her 9 bingo cards.  Let’s put it to you this way, by the time I finished finding the first number called, there were probably 4 or 5 other numbers called that I didn’t have a clue what they were.  At that point, Jim started:  “I went to the Andy Accioli School of Bingo Instruction which guarantees you will lose at least 99% of all bingo games you play.”  He and I both lost it at that point.  I didn’t even bother to try to find any other numbers on Angela’s 9 bingo cards.  I did tear off the sheet and quickly threw it away before she returned.  (By the way when she managed to extract herself from the clutches of her slot machine, she asked how she did, I told her as sincerely as I could, “Sorry.  You lost.”)

I have an acting friend in New York who did some off-Broadway work.  She would tell me about not leaving her apartment in case THE CALL would come in.  (Cell phone, anyone?  Or when you get THE CALL does it work better on a land line?)  She finally got relief from her apartment-i-tis by seeing a shrink.  I got my relief from my writer-i-tis for 15 bucks at Foxwoods Bingo Hall.  Maybe you can too.

Every morning my wife and I hit the local Planet Fitness gym (Warwick, RI) at 6AM.  And, every morning we see this friendly PF staffer (friendly, at 6AM?…yup), Jona Cedeno.

About a month ago, he looked completely exhausted.  Ordinarily I’d give a quick “How ya doing?” and drag my sorry butt onto a treadmill.  But this morning, he looked exceptionally tired so I asked him if he had a big night.  He responded that he spent the night rehearsing a play he was in.  Ding. Ding. Ding.  Now you’re talking my language.

I asked him which play.  “Take Me Out”, he responded.  Ah, Richard Greenberg’s 2003 Tony Award winner. I said that we would go and see him in “Take Me Out”.  He cautioned me that there was male nudity in it as it took place in a men’s baseball team’s locker room.  I told him that I knew the play…and I knew what to expect.  (Hell, have you seen the male locker room @ PF…I’ll leave that post for another day.) Then I went on to tell Jona that I write plays.  One of them was Candy Apples involving a very proper woman getting drunk, removing her top and prancing around in her bra.   I added that I was more embarrassed than she or the audience when I saw it performed.

That morning while on the treadmill I thought: male nudity in Rhode Island.  I don’t think so.  They’ll probably get down to their underwear…and the shower scenes would be performed with a panel blocking  full frontal views.

Wrong.

Last night we schlepped to the 2^nd Story Theatre in Warren, Rhode Island.  Quite frankly I didn’t know what to expect as I had never been there before.  Okay, if Jona and the cast can bare all, I’ll bare all.  I had never been to 2^nd Story as I prejudged it as being part of the good, the bad and the ugly local theater scene.  Obviously Trinity Rep held the good category, which only left two options for 2^nd Story in my prejudicial, uninformed view: the bad or the ugly.

Once again, I got smacked by a two by four last night knocking some sense in me.  2^nd Story was neither bad nor ugly.

We arrived and I was extremely nervous about their ticket procedure (or lack thereof).  You see, when you make reservations, you pay with a credit card and they record your name.   As soon as you enter the theater, you give your name to a receiving person who checks you off the list and you proceed to be seated in any available (non-reserved) seating which is handled by an extremely competent ushering staff.  There is a head-honcho there, Jonathan, quickly working to seat all 150 members of the audience.

In looking at the bare stage I envisioned platforms being rolled in.  Little did I know what magic Ed Shea, the director (and Artistic Director of 2^nd Story) was going to perform with a bare stage  and a scrim backdrop behind which a number of scenes took place.

Okay, bare stge.  Since I loved Richard Greenberg’s writing, my next thought was how a bunch of local actors – sorry, Jona and cast – could ever present such an emotional, powerful play.

Lights dimmed, Kippy took the stage and the rest is history.  You know how in Jerry Maguire when Jerry returns from a business trip and starts to babble on to Dorothy (in front of a roomful of ladies) and she simply responds “You had me at hello”.  Well, Kippy, Take Me Out, The Cast, Ed Shea and the 2^nd Story Theatre had me from Kippy’s opening lines.

This experience – excuse the metaphor – was “out of the park” for me.

Unfortunately I cannot categorize 2^nd Story as fitting into the good, the bad or the ugly of our local theater scene.  It can only be categorized as the exceptional.

Can’t wait to see 2^nd Story’s next production: Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County”.  (Call for tickets: 401/247-4200…don’t worry, don’t worry your name will be on their list).

P.S. A playwright is a horrendous audience member.  Why?  As the play begins, you start to think of the actors you are seeing in terms of which character they would be in the plays you have written: Kevin Broccoli would be Freddie in my At Heaven’s Door; Ara Boghigian would be Jim Cummings and Eric Behr would be Frank Gallo in my White-Collar Crime; Jona Cedeno would be John Davis, Jeff Church would be Craig Carlson and Tim White would be Jim Hanover in my newly completed Life Don’t Give You No Do Overs…sorry other cast members for not mentally plugging you into my other plays but I’ve got to focus on “Take Me Out”.

If you cannot handle rejection, writing is the wrong business to be in.

Most decisions over our future are being made by people and are therefore highly subjective.  The value of our project, for example in writing a play, is decided by a theater’s literary manager or a literary assistant.

Does a rejection in any way diminish the fact that you have created a worthwhile project?  Absolutely not.

The fact is that the person making a decision is reviewing your project as it would relate to their market.  Again, in the case of playwrighting, a theater may have a problem with profanity in a play as the primary market for their theater may not want to hear cussing.  Obviously my plays Candy Apples or Life Don’t Give You No Do Overs would not be suitable to their audience and therefore these plays would be rejected within the first few pages.

If a theater appeals to a gay audience, At Heaven’s Door, would be appealing given the “Freddie” character.  A traditional theater would tend to not accept this type of play as their audience would probably find “Freddie” an uncomfortable character.  Therefore I would expect a rejection from this type of theater.

There are times when rejections flow simply due to the tremendous volume of plays submitted for their review.  They do not have the time or staff to completely consider each submission.  (One theater’s literary associate rejected my Candy Apples play because it did not answer a particular issue.  Had she read the play to its end, she would have seen that it did in fact resolve that issue.)

If you have ever been involved with network marketing, you are taught one thing early on: some will, some won’t, so what.  In other words, some will join your business, some won’t join your business, so what if they don’t join your business.  In the case of a play submission: some will like it, some won’t like it, so what if they don’t like it.

I discussed this issue of rejection with a friend of mine.  We came up with the idea of including a (tongue in cheek) preprinted postcard with each submission for ease of response:

Oh, well, have to go . Have a ton of submission material to send out for my latest play “Rejection”.  (Only kidding, that’s not its name.  Or is it?)

You want to write.  Don’t have kids (and don’t get married).   Especially now with cell phones, texting, emailing…trust me, they’ll find you.

Let me give you an example from my not to0 recent past (yesterday).

I sat down at my computer determined to start a new play that has been churning within me for about a year now.  Yesterday was the day…I would write nonstop without any interruption until the final curtain.

“Act 1. Scene 1.”

Phone rings.  No, I had not written that in the script but my phone actually did ring.  It was from my #1 son informing me that yesterday his school department issued layoff notices and after working within the system for seven years, he received one.  I spent some time assuring him that he would be called back and this was only a procedural thing mentioning the fact that his mom, my wife, had received a layoff each year of her first ten years of teaching.

Okay, back to writing.

“Act 1. Scene 1.”

#3 son comes into my (home) office and tells me about #1 son who had just sent him a text.  I said that I already knew.  He happened to be home because he is a part-time teacher in the same school system and would substitute teach on the days he was not a part-time teacher.  As it happened he was not called in to sub yesterday so it provided him with plenty of time to talk…TO ME…about how bleak the prospects look for his own teaching career since he was even lower on the teacher seniority totem pole of #1 son.

We discussed the reasons for so many teacher layoffs and declining enrollments: in our cul de sac of ten houses each with four bedrooms only one still had school age kids.  every other house – including our own – had children outside of the K – 12 school system.  Being the ever thoughtful son, he said that we should move into a condo so that a family with young children could occupy our home (along with the others without school age kids).  I told him I couldn’t agree with him more: go talk to your mother.

Now where was I?  I remember…

“Act 1. Scene 1.”

Phone rings.  Nope.  Still not in the script.  Our daughter calls.  Have we heard about #1 son?  I assured her I had.  She wondered what could be done about it.  Not wasting an opportunity to remind her that our friends were grandparents and we were not, I responded that there wasn’t much we could do about it but “you can do plenty.   Get married, have kids and re-populate the school system so your brothers would have jobs.”  Hello?  Hello?  Did you hang up???

“Act 1. Scene 1.”

Text from my wife: #1 son get laid off.  For the love of God.  I know.  I know.  Call from my wife: “After school, I have to bring my car to be serviced and I don’t want to go alone.  Can you come with me?”  Sure, no problem.

“Act 1. Scene 1.”

#2 son calls from Orlando.  Since he is a mechanical engineer with a firm that does quite a bit of school construction, he felt as though the school populations down there were expanding rapidly and they would need a gaggle of new teachers.   He wanted me to tell his brother – #3 son – to relocate with him to Florida and get a teaching job down here.  Okay, I assured him I would mention it.

Since I was at my computer, let me check out the various Orlando area school districts to see what the teacher employment prospects were.  After just over an hour I realized that it was not all that promising.

Oh, my goodness, It is nearly three in the afternoon and  I have nothing to show for my planned all day writing session.

“Act 1. Scene 1.”

3:05.  No that was not the time in the script.  That’s when my wife called to tell me to be ready as she was swinging by to pick me up at 3:10.  I said, okay but I just have to finish the new play I started this morning.

 “Act 1.  Scene 1. To be continued…”