Tag: play

• October 27, 2016

  A Writer and a Fraud

  

  This month, I put myself on the line. I dusted off the play that I wrote two years ago and started sending it to theatres and new play festivals around the country. Some of these programs are known for discovering brilliant playwrights that go on to fame, fortune, and accolades. And each time I hit send on a submission, I felt a little pang. Way back in the dark recesses of my soul, a little voice said, “They’re going to know you’re a fraud, you know.”

  I’m told that this is a common fear. It even has a fancy name coined by a pair of psychologists in the late-70s: Imposter Syndrome. It is especially common among high achievers — celebrities, athletes, CEOs, and writers at the top of their games. Even the great poet Maya Angelou once admitted, “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

  Still, knowing that I’m in good company doesn’t make the feeling go away. In my cover letters that accompany my play, I explain my background and achievements as a short story writer and playwright, but what if my publications are just dumb luck?

  I grew up in the generation drowning in praise. A played several years of soccer as a kid and came home at the end of each season with progressively larger trophies. For years, those trophies played into a mistaken belief that I was actually good at soccer. It didn’t dawn on me until high school that they were participation trophies. So, you can’t blame me for being skeptical of my prowess as a writer. If I was a charlatan, would I realize it?

  And yet, that isn’t what worries me the most. If I can attribute my successes on the Imposter Syndrome, what’s stopping me from blaming it for my failures? What if someday I get a rejection and chalk it up to not being a real writer instead of learning from it and going back to rewrites?

  So, I’m training myself to believe that I am the real deal in victory and defeat. If a story gets published, it’s because I worked hard and made it the best I could. If I get rejected, it isn’t for lack of talent. And when I send a play out into the big, cold world of modern American drama, I’m still working on having the confidence to claim that I am the genuine article.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle lives and writes in the City of Destiny. You can find him on Twitter or join the mailing list.
• March 20, 2014

  If the WGAW Says You’re Legit…

  

  Earlier this week, I arrived home to find a large white envelope exploding out of my mailbox. In this email age, I always get a little excited when something other than a book of coupons arrives in the mail. According to the return address, it was from the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW). I didn’t even wait until I was inside to tear it open.

  Inside, I found a certificate, saying that I had registered my play, Worm Food, with the WGAW. The guild offers this service to non-members for a small fee. All you have to do is upload a manuscript and they’ll store it for five years. The idea is that it can serve as evidence that you wrote it, should someone try to plagiarize your work. For many writers, it’s the last step of the process before you unveil it to the wider world.

  I don’t think anyone is going to steal my play, but I still feel good about having it registered. The certificate with my name on it (my full legal name, which probably cost them a small fortune’s worth of ink to print) is like a stamp of legitimacy. I have a work registered with the guild. That means I started it, finished it, edited and did all the work necessary to prepare it for the marketplace. I feel like I’ve got my stripes as a playwright — now I have to prove that I’ve earned it.

  A play in the WGAW registry is not the dream. The end goal is to get it produced by a theatre company. A play without actors and an audience is just a bunch of words on a page. The WGAW says I’m a playwright, but that’s just the first step. Don’t worry, I’ll get there.

  

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a writer and aspiring playwright in Tacoma, WA. His full-length comedy, Worm Food, is a satirical look at friends, family and death. He also writes short stories, screenplays, novellas and most importantly of all, tweets. Seriously, you don’t want to miss his Twitter stream. Thanks for reading!
• March 3, 2014

  The Play’s The Thing

  

  Shakespeare knew best that a stage play can provoke powerful emotions. A great performance can make you laugh, make you cry, make you question (and in Hamlet’s case, expose a guilty conscience). With that in mind, I started writing a play shortly before the end of the year. Now, nine weeks later, I’m finished.

  Worm Food is a dark comedy about a group of family and friends who gather at a funeral and are forced to come to terms with their insecurities, jealousies and unsettled scores. At 96 pages, it is one of the longest things I’ve ever written and my very first full-length stage play.

  Last week, I rounded up some friends for an unconventional table reading. Using a Google Hangout video chat, nine actors from all over the country — Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts (and one person in Guatemala who lost her Internet connection) — read the script out loud. I nearly didn’t make it, having accidentally double-booked my afternoon, hitting traffic and failing to get the script to print. Together we laughed, stumbled over typos and generally had a great time. I am deeply grateful to each of them for staying up late to bring the characters alive. And they even seemed to like it.

  Now, that it’s finished and safely registered with the Writer’s Guild of American West, the show must go on. It isn’t enough to have a completed script. It needs a stage on which to be unleashed. That’s my next challenge. Over the next few months, I’ll be shopping the play around, starting with my hometown community theatre and hopefully, my story will stride out under the bright lights to make audiences laugh, cry and question death, family and friendship.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is an aspiring playwright, novelist and short story writer living in Tacoma, WA, where he does most of his writing in coffee shops, trains and Twitter. Thanks for reading!
• January 21, 2014

  Words Upon the Stage

  

  I have always been drawn to the theatre. From my earliest performance as Robert E. Lee in a kindergarten production of “What’s More American Than Cornflakes?” to playing the protagonist in George Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” to my college years performing with Theatrikos Theatre Company (often in silent roles), I have loved being on stage. Frequent readers of this blog will know that I also love to write. So, it will come as no surprise that I’ve always flirted with the idea of being a playwright.

  I’ve dabbled in playwriting before. I wrote my first play in high school. It was a heavily allegorical one-act script in the vein of Samuel Beckett and Sophocles. In college, I co-wrote three scripts that were produced by the campus ministry center as a small, traveling musical. But I’ve never written anything for a mainstream theatre-going audience. Until now.

  Fresh off of writing a novella, I’ve spent the last several weeks laboring on a play that I hope will someday be performed. That’s the real beauty of the theatre. A play literally leaps off the page and briefly inhabits the real world. More than any other form of literature, it is a living story; the themes of which lay hidden in the subtext of each character’s dialogue. A great play can be performed a hundred different ways.

  

  While writing, I’ve also been reading Barefoot in the Park, a masterpiece of comedy by a giant of American drama, Neil Simon. Reading his words has inspired me and seeing how he has unraveled the elements of his plot in the claustrophobic setting of a New York apartment — not unlike my play’s setting — has given me fresh ideas about how to tell my own story of life and death, guilt and revenge, expectation and reality.

  In a lot of ways, it’s exciting to write a play. There is something thrilling about seeing the reactions of your audience; something a novelist can never experience. But there is also something terrifying about it. I’m asking a theater company to stake their time and talents upon my words. What if it’s not good enough? What if the reviews are bad and the audience throws rotten tomatoes?

  I’m no Shakespeare. I’m not even going to aim that high. But when I’m finished, when it’s gone through a few table readings and polishings, I hope my characters get to stand in the spotlight. I hope people see their own foibles and laugh at my distorted reflection of modern life. Even if it doesn’t rise to the heights of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, I think I’ll be content to stand in the wings and listen to the applause.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a budding playwright and an actor specializing in playing mute apple thieves. All the world’s a stage, the saying goes, and that includes the world of Twitter, where you can follow Jonny at @jonnyeberle. Curtain.
• April 21, 2013

  Let Your Characters Speak for Themselves

  

  Some writers are afraid of dialogue. I used to be one of them. I would write page after page of brilliant narrative — crisp details and settings so real you could smell the ponderosa pine sap on the thin mountain air — without a single line of dialogue.

  I was terrified to let my characters speak. Because I knew the spoken word was a whole different beast to tame. It didn’t play by the same rules as straight narrative and it was hard to get a feel for it from the authors I was reading. Dialogue was the weakest part of my game, so I tried to minimize its role in my prose.

  I think a lot of writers fall into this same trap. Dialogue is scary. It feels clunky and fake when it’s written out; it’s difficult to figure out what’s missing. What is the spark that makes it real?

  It takes time to train your ear to hear speech correctly. A lot of it comes from talking to and listening to people. People from all over the world. Notice where they place emphasis; which words they use over and over; the cadence of their sentences.

  Quickly, you’ll notice that people do not speak properly. Life isn’t an English essay. People don’t use complete sentences. They sprinkle their conversations with jargon, quotes, references, inside jokes. They conjugate verbs incorrectly and end sentences with prepositions.

  The second thing you should do is immerse yourself in theatre. Watch some plays. Then read some plays. Then write some plays. Plays are almost entirely dialogue. There is some stage direction, but the spoken parts carry the plot, develop the characters and engage the audience. If you want to see how language can make a piece of writing sparkle, study the plays of Neil Simon, Harvey Fierstein, Lisa Loomer, Arthur Miller and George Bernard Shaw. Notice how the characters play off each other; notice how hidden agendas and secret desires are manifested in the dialogue.

  With a careful ear and a lot of practice, the dialogue in your stories can go from the dullest facet of your piece to the most polished.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a writer, photographer and occoccasional playwright living in Flagstaff, AZ. You can find more of his signature wit, wisdom and words, words, words on Twitter: @jonnyeberle.

  Related Posts:
  From the Page to the Stage: A Playwright’s Journey
  Forget What You Know — Write What You Feel
  Ripped from the Headlines
• February 26, 2012

  From the Page to the Stage: A Playwright’s Journey

  

  I have this theory that all writers are egomaniacs. Bear with me a minute while I explain. We write for an audience, in the hopes of impressing something of ourselves onto our readers in exchange for a few words of praise. We can’t help being self-centered in our work — we write alone with only our own experience to guide our pens. The result is always a self-portrait.

  This past Friday, a play I helped to write opened in Tempe. It was exciting and worrying and terrifying and thrilling all rolled into one frenetic emotion. Every time the show starts, I feel a little sick. Those characters and situations are a part of me, after all. With that exposure comes a certain level of vulnerability. Because the work is so personal, I can’t help but be a little afraid when the curtain goes up. There’s a piece of myself under the spotlight. It’s open to public scrutiny and criticism, but when the cast takes their bows and the audience cheers, I feel validated.

  Perhaps one of the most egotistical (and therefore most rewarding) written forms is the play. A play is the only medium that allows the writer to directly observe their audience’s emotional reaction. More so than the novelist or the poet, the playwright knows immediately if the audience is engaged; if the material works or if it falls flat. When it bombs, you know what to fix; when it sings, there’s no better feeling.

  Now, I’m no Shakespeare — there wouldn’t be a show without the contributions of my talented co-writers, who were willing to commit to the madness of a 4-week writing frenzy — but this project has certainly sharpened my dramatic skills. If you’ve never written a stage play, go do it. Not only do you get to quench your inner thirst for applause and recognition, but you also learn some valuable lessons that carry over into other media. Nothing can teach you how to write dialogue, develop character relationships, structure a three-act plot or understand pacing quite like a play. Even if it only runs 10 pages, even if it is never performed and it languishes for all time in a dusty desk drawer, writing a play will make you a better writer.

  Play writing is as much an exercise in storytelling as it is an awesome boost for the old self-esteem. The stage is a blank page just waiting…

  — 30 —

  Thanks for reading! If you want to read more, check out my Twitter feed: @jonnyeberle. I promise all the attention won’t go to my head.