Whether you’ve been writing forever, or are new to it, whether you’re published or hope to be, join us at the Writer’s Cafe at the Westport Arts center. Sympathy, support, new ideas and time to connect with other writers. We’ll bring the coffee, you bring your sandwich. For more details, please visit www.westportartscenter.org and www.mousemuse.com.
Whether you’ve been writing forever, or are new to it, whether you’re published or hope to be, join us at the Writer’s Cafe at the Westport Arts center. Sympathy, support, new ideas and time to connect with other writers. We’ll bring the coffee, you bring your sandwich. For more details, please visit www.westportartscenter.org and www.mousemuse.com.
Audiences loved last season in Fairfield.
Finally, Westport!
Have you ever wondered who is that person everyone is crowded around at a party? That’s the best storyteller, or the richest man in the room who is looking for a wife, or, Lady Gaga dressed for the best of show. But you don’t have to have diamonds and coinage in your pocket, or be wearing 10 inch steel heels to connect.
It isn’t hard to stay socially involved with other people. It really isn’t. Despite how wonderful digital connections are because they expand our world of like minded people all across the globe, it is psychologically and physically rewarding to be face-to-face with those in your actual geographical circle. Hearing people laugh together at something funny you’ve told them, or watching their faces as they relate to something that happened to you is one of the biggest endorphin (those good good hormones!) boosters that nature gave us in life.
Also, being part of an audience with friends and neighbors is humanizing. Well, that beats chit chatting in the checkout line. The launch of Westport Arts Center’s first ever storytelling program is coming in January. Get in touch with me: ina@mousemuse.com, or gabi@mousemuse.com, and ask about the program. Tickets go up for sale through WAC, but storytellers are welcome to stay in touch anytime. Multiple themes will be posted this week for the whole season.
On Wednesday, November 17 at the Writer’s Cafe, I gave my favorite exercise to the women and men in the group, “Nine Things I Don’t Remember” and “Nine Things I Do.” This extraordinary writing prompt was given to me by Abigail Thomas, whose memoir writing and instruction can be easily found on http://www.abigailthomas.net/.
I promised to post what I had written last February in a group class that Abby conducted at the Woodstock Writer’s Festival. Alas, I can’t find the notebook with that entry. So I suppose that should be one of the “NIne Things I Don’t Remember” this time around. But by way of proving to the doubters that this exercise is illuminating, I thought I’d give myself the same challenge, again. Old work is good to revisit when it needs to be revised. New work is a diversion and serious avoidance if you haven’t completed what you’ve started.
An aha moment for me! I’m on a deadline with the third piece in my series about my father for the www.goodmenproject.com, and this “remembering” exercise can get the juices flowing for that piece—which is slow in coming. It is tentatively called ” Scheherazade of the Stove.” In the opening of the memoir that I’m writing for publication on or about November 25, my parents are having a violent argument in the dining room in our lake house in the Berkshires. Here are “Nine Things I Don’t Remember” about that argument.
1. I don’t remember why my mother was in her dressing robe in the middle of the afternoon?
2. I don’t remember how my mother kept that dressing robe, mended and tidy.
3. I don’t remember who followed who into the dining room where the argument escalated
4. I don’t remember if the sun was shining through the picture window that looked right out onto the tranquil lake
5. I don’t remember if they knew I was there?
6. I don’t remember what I said to god when I prayed they would get divorced?
7. I don’t remember when I switched to praying they would stay together?
8. I don’t remember when I started thinking my father would kill her.
9. I don’t remember which one of us carried my mother to her four poster bed.
Tomorrow I will write the “Nine Things I Do Remember.” Obviously, I will by then have approached my looming deadline with more knowledge than I had at the start of this post. “Nine Things You Don’t Remember” are a good way to come into your “memory room.” Sneak in. See what makes you tremble when you deny memory.
If you attended the Westport Arts Center’s November 11, 2010 performance and readings of memoir contest works about war, I could tell you that all of these works in the original written form didn’t have the dramatic core well integrated into the medium—which is often just a difference in writing a 1500 essay for print only, and writing for listeners. The authors all had stories to tell, and luckily they were open to having some of their work revised—the way editors revise. But this is performance work, and playwrights rarely give the director/producer carte blanche for narrative progression.
However, I can easily demonstrate how if you’re a writer, listening to your own work matters. I will be uploading the audio for both the October 17, 2010 readings and the Veterans Day readings next week, and you’ll easily be able to feel how if you “read” your work aloud, you’ll get the maximum bang for you ink-buck.
When I was an editor in a large noisy newsroom, I use to make my reporters read their stories aloud before they filed them for editing. At 5 pm for a morning newspaper, there was always a low hum in the clicking clacking computer terminal humming newsroom—ten or twelve people yakking away to themselves —as if they were talking on a cell phone on a Manhattan street corner. But here’s the thing they all learned: You can be the best writer in the world, but you may have less than perfect pitch in your ear. No problem. If you read your work aloud, you will hear where you need to change up sentences, move descriptors, and “ings” and “howevers,” and all sorts of tricks to make the music of what you write sing louder. It can’t hurt. Try it.
Finally!
The Tuesday evening series that launches on January 25th at the Westport Arts is in the casting phases.If you have a a good story on the following theme, email: ina@mousemuse.com or call 203 247 3346. If you’re selected, we will work with you to get that story into a dazzler, under 10 minutes no matter what, and you’ll see, you’ll be hooked. You’ll want to be a storyteller again and again.
The End of Innocence—We want to hear your stories of End of Innocence.
We often think that young kids are the only innocents in the world, and indeed we try to protect them from as much reality as we can. But we are all kids in certain ways, and the end of innocence keeps popping up throughout our lives. Maybe you were six years old when you noticed that the Tooth Fairy slipping out the door looked just like your mother? Or perhaps you were just at retirement when your genius stockbroker turned out to be Bernie Madoff?
Disillusion is a kicker no matter when it happens. Maybe the boneheaded guy who cheated on his exam in high school ended up getting into Harvard? Maybe you suddenly realized that the guy who finally asked you on a date really was only after one thing? How long did it take for these eye opening realities to sink in? And how did they change your life? Did you go for vengeance or acceptance? If we’re lucky, and if we are to grow, each end of innocence brings some retrospective humor, wisdom, and knowledge.
Think about it. You’ve got a story. We want to hear it. So does everyone else.
Staged Readings a Tremendous Success for Writers
The winning entries are appearing on WAC website now.
First Place
We Saw the Sea, by Katharine Weber
Second Place
Learning to Lie, by Margaret Rumford
Third-Place-Tie
Loving Lydia, by Marcelle M. Soviero
Crosswords, by Leslie Chess Feller
Honored Writers (alphabetical)
Connecticut Sopranos, by Liz Beeby
The Prom Dress and the Kugel, by Carol Boas
Tending Beauty, by Linda Clearwater
Pimp My Kitchen, by Ivy Eisenberg
On the Road Again, by Gayle Gleckler
Christmas 1944, by Sumner Glimcher
The Princess, by Susie Bedsow Horgan
Affirmative Action, by Elise Meyer
Kerplunkle: A Musical Memoir of My Greatest Worst Achievement, by Chad Rabinovitz
The Lobsters, by Christine Shaffer
The American Cocktail, by Ruth Sutcliffe-Heagney
The American Son, by Alan Swerdlowe
Learner’s Permit, by Linda Urbach Howard
Vocational Training, by Cathy Von Berkem
Holmes Street, Priscilla Whitley-Mathews
Away, by Teresa Yokoi
Writers of Promise Award
True Struggle, by Kayce Gillespie
Exile, by Zahary Wheat
Okay, so last night at the Garden Cinema where I dragged myself after an exhausting day, and later from a rather large martini at Meigas restaurant on Wall Street in Norwalk (always great food!), I had an artist’s epiphany. The art of short film-making is highly specific, and I am not a fan of that genre.
Meanwhile, I am happy to say “take heart” at how others were completely involved in each of what I thought were agenda-driven films. The short film series is presented by the dazzlingly successful lunchtime producers of “Play with Your Food.” The gold dust twins, Nancy Diamond and Carole Schweid, who run the series in several venues and are sold out, must be onto something with their migration to night time shows and into another medium. While not my cup of tea, these shorts are definitely thought provoking, entertaining momentarily, and valuable for others.
The five movies, each produced by a different country, were all nominated for Academy Awards and that kind of banner advertising regarding quality is enough to interest movie-goers. After-all, with YouTube, any one of us can make a movie, (Oh, no!) and with film programs installed in every worthwhile school, and not for profit arts orgs., there is an abundance of choices to put up on the silver screen. These were the creme de la creme.
After the third short film (We are talking 6 minutes, 18 minutes etc. ), I ducked out to the ladies room, running into neighbors who were leaving because they had already seen this series at the Avon theater. It was raining hard, so they wanted to get home. They were totally rhapsodic about the presentation, and especially about the film that to me seemed as if it were two hours long, but two-hours tiring. There, in front of the Ladies Room on Isaac Street in Norwalk, I got it! I understood what they were saying and how they felt about the entry from India, 18 minutes of “Kavi.”
This was the ideal audience for the series. Most of the them grew up in another era, and not in the continuous news bombardment generation from the internet era, and they react deeply—from afar—to human rights violations. They were the original activists. They mourn any political ennui surrounding us. “Kavi” deals with slavery from a child’s point of view, which is not so tortuous in Kavi’s bright, hopeful desire to please his masters. Small consolation for what we know will be a terrible life in the class system, there. The film is affecting as the camera follows the naive and joyous little kid living in squalor. It’s vaguely akin to the kids’ lives in Slumdog Millionaire.
I wanted more. I wanted an arc where I can get into the drama first—be thrust into a situation, and then watch the character (s) struggle against their fates and environments. Will they win, will they lose? For me that takes time to develop, and perfect timing. Short films don’t allow me to travel that arc. I think I’m slow.
However, if you are moved by sensitive cinematic work, original metaphor, zippy and winkingly-smart irony, a hint of muckraking for certain kinds of political statements, but indeed enough animation with good humor, and art too, then take a short break from a long day next month. November 11, 2010. Check out Play with Your Food‘s website for the next showings.
Writers Artists Collaborative
Wednesdays from 12:30-1:30pm
Wednesday, April 15
Free & Open to the Public
RSVP here
Hemingway and Fitzgerald and all of the expat writers living in Paris had one unifying force besides liquor and deadlines, they met regularly at cafes and just talked, either about themselves, or the process of writing, or the terrors of not writing, and maybe they talked about the art all around them in those halcyon years. Come join other writers together for a cup of espresso, some tidbits, (but no absinthe, for sure) one Wednesday a month in the WAC gallery lounge.
Bring your successes, favorite rejection note, memory of your first byline, or maybe a line from a book that set your creative juices flowing. Show up.
Whether you’ve been writing forever, or are new to it, whether you’re published or hope to be, join us at the Writer’s Cafe at the Westport Arts center. Sympathy, support, new ideas and time to connect with other writers. We’ll bring the coffee, you bring your sandwich. For more details, please visit www.westportartscenter.org and www.mousemuse.com.
The mouse goes out and nibbles around in the theater. Latest post to westportnow.com.
If you are headed to the Westport Country Playhouse at any time in the near future, not just for the stellar new production of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” but for any production, I advise you to sit far away from me, if you know me by sight.
Why? I am an eavesdropper, especially in our town’s homey, pretty fabulous looking theater. I am always a writer and reporter, trying to listen in on “everyman’s” thoughts to take the pulse of the Zeitgeist, you might say.
I like to write down people’s comments, just like that! Just as I heard them. Don’t worry, you may be shamed but you won’t be named.
I am not in the theater to critique the show, but rather to incorporate relevant social opinion as it pertains to the arts in this era—a snapshot of how as a town we relate to art, to culture, to each other. Your dialogues make me think. Make me react.
I have overheard praise of canned, lighthearted revivals done by deft directors with innovative sets, and with highly professional actors. I have heard the comments on great scoring and triumphant performances for musicals, and, whether I like the play in its totality, I could agree.
I, however, am a big fan of hard-hitting plays that make me think or make me cry. I like to ponder. I like to see the good in everything. Even a bad play has a reason for being and I try to figure out what went right or wrong, but more than anything I try to see why it got into the Playhouse mix.
The man who sat behind me on preview opening night for “The Diary of Anne Frank” was a most non-felicitous fellow who certainly deserves to have his opinion heard. I was appalled at his pre-curtain judgment that the Playhouse was making a mistake to “to dwell on these subjects from so long ago—to include such a downer in the season.”
Wow. That was a shallow arrow in my heart, and from someone who had probably just had a lovely dinner in Fairfield County and who wanted to continue the evening in complete harmony with his own sense of himself.
He was unaware, and skeptical, when I informed him that the Westport Arts Center and the Westport Country Playhouse were conjoined in a thematic exploration of “Memory.”
I didn’t get a chance to tell him that a Holocaust survivor’s daughter, the visionary artistic curator at WAC who put together a remarkable exhibition with a good deal of Holocaust art, Helen Klisser During, is one of the most upbeat people that I know and her demeanor belies the gravity of her ancestor’s lives. “Not dwell on these subjects?”
I informed him, whether he wanted to hear it or not, that I was very lucky because, as far as I know, I had no relatives exterminated in Germany, or trapped in Holland before being sent to the camps. My relatives came here around 1898, all of them.
But my luck doesn’t prevent me from reflecting on horrifying events. Doesn’t introspection guard us from vanity? From arrogance? Didn’t denial or the lack of desire to know about these things create the worst sort of horror for the Jews in those countries that were not so lucky as we were?
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is indeed a play that leaves you with a somber thought. But it is a play about the amazing ways humanity “hopes” despite human unimaginable suffering. It is about everything we need to dwell on forever.
Anne Frank was on a real life journey into womanhood while in hiding from the Nazis. She told herself the truth with humor and pathos. She was one of the rare beings who survive to inspire others despite her physical death during the liberation of the camps. “Not dwell on these subjects?”
At the end of the first act, during the black out, there was an overwhelming, reverent silence. “Deathly still” would be an accurate term. No one was running to the bathroom as they did in “Happy Days.” No one was gleefully checking out the orchestra pit as they did for “I Do I Do!”
The woman sitting in front of me sighed when the lights came up, “I couldn’t applaud,” she said. “I didn’t want to interrupt what was happening almost in real life and in my heart.” Anne Frank lives today because we should dwell on atrocities. They happen over and over, and it’s artists who are left to tell the tale.
We must dwell on things that make that man sad, or make him uncomfortable, or better yet, remove him from his privileged reality. We shall applaud the existence of hope instead of avoiding what makes us despair. We shall certainly applaud the selection of this play, because it’s life affirming.
If we don’t pay attention to Anne Frank’s memoir, or to “Memory” as it has been captured visually in the exhibit at WAC, if we are only willing to watch rousing musicals or hear Noel Coward’s flippant scripts, we will be consigned to our own narcissism.
That’s a place where all art will be the same. Where art will no longer have a purpose. A smiley face will do just fine above the mantle, and the dialogue we hear everyday will only be, “Have a nice day!”
Awake After Dark (but home early enough in the suburbs).
(Read “recent posts” for more info)
Doors open at 7:00.
Bar and Small Plates
Show starts at 7:30.
Run time 80 minutes with intermission.
Turn off the six-o-clock news! Treat yourself to a weeknight evening that doesn’t end by falling asleep before 9 p.m. There is life here in the suburbs after dark! Hear it! Be part of it! Experience it!
Be in the audience or be at the microphone. Or be both!
Tuesdays: January 25, February 15, March 22, April 26, 2011.
How to become a storyteller? Try not to write out your story. If you have already written it, then fold it up and put it in your back pocket. You wrote it. You know it. You can tell it by heart. If you watch a politician reading a speech, you can feel it. Same with an actor who has memorized lines but not gotten “in” to the heart of the character. You are the character! It’s your story.
Doors open at 7 PM. Show starts 7:30 PROMPT.
If you’re a member of the Westport Arts Center, $15 gets you a ticket. If you’re not, $20 buys you the same. Some of the storytellers from last season’s pilot at FTC.
Themes announced in advance:
Check back at MouseMuse.com, our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter.
Contact ina@mousemuse.com if you have a story to share. Contact Westport Arts Center for tickets.