Bringing Movement into Playwriting

Me, trying to be "movement-y" with Michael Mohammed.

Recently, I've been considering how I can access more of my right brain while writing. This might sound redundant to some, since writing can be a creative act, and thus would tap into right-brain energy. However, I often feel that writing can become a very left-brain act for me, as I focus a lot on linearity, logic, and building a concrete structure. These aren't things to avoid, necessarily, but I do feel they can sometimes limit where I take my thoughts creatively. As I begin writing the script for Calafia, which occurs in a realm of fantasy, I want to allow my right brain to do some more conjuring without letting my left brain get in the way.

One way I thought of doing this was through movement. So, this week, I met with director/choreographer/teacher Michael Mohammed (director of the recent Town Hall Theatre production of The Song of the Nightingale), who gave me some ideas about how to connect movement of my body to the work I have to do as a playwright. Michael guided me through a handful of movement and gesture exercises. One of the most insightful was imagining the space I was in as a gravity room, where center stage has normal earth gravity, stage right has 200% gravity, and stage left has 0%. Walking back and forth, I was invited to explore the heaviness or lightness of my body. Then we layered on another gradient: emotion. What if stage right was anger at 200% gravity and stage left was joy at 0%? And what if you swapped the emotions? What if we tried fear or sadness?

For me, this opened up a new way of fleshing out my characters. I have already taken the exercise home and worked on it with some of the roles in Calafia. I'm discovering through posture and gesture what priorities or desires might exist for my characters. For the titular role of Calafia, for example, I learned that she would much prefer to stand in the middle with chest and head held high. And if circumstances cause her to head toward either the 200% or the 0% directions with her body, she begins to feel out of place or exposed. Her priority is to retain the status quo, but it might also be a cover-up for deeper emotions that she does not wish to express for fear that it will make her look weak or out of control. I don't think I would have learned this about her this quickly in another way, and this leaves me feeling very excited to continue bringing movement into my playwriting process.

Creativity Quotation #22

"A perfect theatrical song is not the same as a perfect pop song, nor is it the same as a perfect operatic aria. The kind of storytelling that happens in a musical is specific to the form, where the journeys of the characters on stage determine the pace and tone of the storytelling. The composer of a musical, therefore, has to constantly negotiate between the sheer musical pleasures that the audience (and the composer!) desires and the basic storytelling that the audience is following." - Jason Robert Brown, Composer & Lyricist

The Nightingale Returns

This past weekend, The Song of the Nightingale opened once more in the Bay Area, this time at Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette. This is the first time I've had a second local production of a show, and a newly revised one at that. I approached this production as an experiment: if The Song of the Nightingale had a new theatre company producing it with a new creative team and a (mostly) new cast, what would I discover about the show? I'm excited to say that I learned that the story of the show still shines through. The design elements, direction, and actor choices may be new, but the characters remain trackable, even more so with the new revisions.

I also learned that this show is a very meaningful experience for the cast members. There are very few musicals that feature Asian-American actors, and those that do are problematic for a variety of reasons. I received feedback from actors in Nightingale that they were very proud to be a part of this show. Several of them felt that for the first time, they could be themselves onstage and backstage. That they weren't putting on a white character or a white perspective of what it means to be Asian. It has been a goal of mine to create more roles for Asian-Americans in musical theatre, and I'm so honored to hear the effect it's having on my friends and colleagues.

Finally, I discovered that I love this show. It holds a very special place in my heart as my very first passion project for musical theatre. The script and score are certainly written by a younger me, and it was an interesting challenging revising the material in a way that stayed true to that younger style of writing. At times, I did wonder if those watching it would sense this "younger me" and consider it an amateur attempt at writing. But while watching it on opening night, I felt confident that I love the show for what it is. The Song of the Nightingale will always be the project that started it all.

Folks from both the Altarena and the Town Hall Theatre productions of The Song of the Nightingale pose together on opening night!

Re-Thinking My Work Day

This year, I made the decision to devote myself to playwriting (and composing) full-time. Unbeknownst to me at the time, what accompanied this decision was pressure. I told myself that if I'm going to work full-time, then I need to spend 8 hours a day working on my projects. I thought: "Everyone else is slaving away at least that amount of time working at their jobs, so I must do the same."

But the fact was, I never ended up writing or composing or researching 8 hours a day. Most of the time, my brain would reach creative capacity for the day at around 4 hours of work total. I started to feel guilty, thinking that I was lazy, and turning my vocation into an excuse to goof off. So I pushed harder, and the pressure and guilt only increased to the point where I wasn't sleeping well due to anxiety and stress. Something had to change.

I decided to experiment. I would give myself permission to have 4-hour work days. I blocked out two 2-hour chunks of time (before and after lunch) that would be dedicated to my writing projects. If I felt like working longer, I could. But if I fulfilled the 4 hours, then I would allow myself to be done with work that day.

I started this experiment two weeks ago, and the stress and guilt have gone down considerably. I find that the work I accomplish in those 4 hours is quite productive. And usually, I end up working longer, often working up to 6 hours total. Today, I found this article titled "Why you should work 4 hours a day, according to science" which gives a quick profile on renowned scientists who accomplished much in their field, and yet only worked 4 hours a day. It's a nice confirmation that I may be on the right track here. I'm in the company of people like Charles Darwin! OK, maybe not that exactly, but I'm hopeful that this new 4-hour workday can yield great creative results for me. Let's see how it goes!

UPDATE: A couple days later, I found this article titled "Use the Two-Hour Rule to Make Progress on Your Creative Projects" confirming my plan of splitting my work into two-hour chunks!

Revising the Nightingale: An Ode to Long and Feng

The biggest script change from the previous version of The Song of the Nightingale and the upcoming Town Hall Theatre production is the removal of two clown-like twins named Long and Feng. This duo served as the Emperor's main attendants and provided a lot of the comic relief in the show. They did cartwheels, offered sarcastic commentary, and oh -- the puns! When it came time to revise the show, however, I knew that I needed to cut down the duration considerably. Long and Feng rarely did anything to push the plot forward, and anything that did feel substantial to the story could easily be handed to another character. I decided to try this new version without them. By doing so, I also discovered that removing the characters of Long and Feng allowed the humor and presence of the other characters to shine through more clearly, without any vaudevillian interruptions. What's remarkable is that the idea of cutting the twins from the show would never have dawned on me sans the prospect of a second production on the horizon. As I said in a previous post, I don't know that a show is ever "done," but I'm so grateful to Town Hall Theatre for this chance to explore and experiment with a more streamlined Nightingale.

And thank you, Long and Feng, for your time and service to the show.

Feng (Isabel To) and Long (Christopher Juan) - you will be missed. But don't worry! Isabel and Chris are now playing other roles in the new production!