Find a Mentor

Find a Mentor

by | Mar 20, 2024 | Inspiration, NPD, Theater

THE WORKING PLAYWRIGHT: a monthly blog column by Melissa Bell 

Find a Mentor

Sometime after I wrote my first musical, I attended an alumni event. While waiting for the elevator, a well-groomed woman and I picked up a conversation. When I asked her what she did, she said “I’m a Broadway producer.” Although at that point I had never heard the expression, the proverbial moment was about to come true – you meet a producer in an elevator, what do you say? I smiled and said that I had just written a musical that had been optioned by a film company, then added “so we can talk,” meaning I wasn’t going to try to sell her my show. She responded with a smile, “I would love to hear about your show.”

Thus began a 14-year mentorship – and friendship – with legendary Tony-winning producer Stevie Phillips, who singlehandedly produced THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS from its Off-Broadway beginnings to Broadway, film and beyond. I recommend reading her amazing auto-biography Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me for the details of her career as high-powered agent, manager, and producer.

So how did this amazing producer become my mentor? Over time.

 

Cultivate the Relationship

After our initial meeting, Stevie attended another alumni event I hosted called the “Writers Forum.” We were reading scripts and screenplays, and she showed up. Giving only her first name as an introduction, she joined the group, read parts, offered feedback, and listened to 5 sets of 10 pages of new work. Near the end of the meeting, one participant innocently asked, “so how do we get our scripts out there?” I looked at Stevie to answer that question, whereupon she introduced herself to my stunned participants. Her answer was simple: “You do it just like this. You go to readings, submit your work, if you don’t know where, get your friends together, do a reading, and invite people. When I was at Universal, I read the first 10 pages of everything that made it to my desk. That’s how you do it.” She added it was hard work, but everything worthwhile is hard. I took that advice to heart and still follow it with my own work.

A few days later, Stevie reached out to me and asked me to read something of hers. I read it and sent her my notes. She replied with thanks and asked, “now what can I do for you?” I invited her to a reading of my play a few weeks later. She came and sent me her notes (which was like getting a masterclass in playwriting). Back and forth we went. When she told me she was planning to produce a new show with Tommy Tune, I begged to be part of it. “I’ll take, notes, run errands, anything.” Noting that I had high-level PowerPoint skills, she said, “I’d love to have a presentation I could run on my iPad.” I met with her and Tommy, came up with an idea and created a pitch deck that she used to pitch Universal Studios and others. Sadly, the show didn’t work out, but we had become a team.

When I got the opportunity to present a one-night-only benefit reading of “Lost in Love,” a musical based on the hits of Air Supply for which I wrote the libretto, I called Stevie immediately for advice. She looked at my press release and asked me “What are you selling?” I was unsure of what she meant. She noted that I had not just one star but two in the cast, but that the press release listed all the actors in alphabetical order.

“Listen to me,” she said, “your first press release should say: Tony-nominated actor Constantine Maroulis cast in Lost in Love at the Triad along with his photo. One week later, your second press release should say: Tony-winner Andrea McArdle joins cast of Lost in Love. And the third week you announce the rest of the cast.”

Lesson: when you have a star, use them. It was golden advice, and a strategy I have followed to this day.

 

Be There

Stevie has been an amazing mentor to me ever since. I call her when I’m facing a tough decision, when a production goes off the rails, or when I don’t get the “yes” I was hoping for. Stevie calls me when she needs help with her various projects, knowing I will show up, ready to support, and will always share my honest impressions and listen to hers. And sometimes she just needs me to send a large file by setting up Dropbox for her. I will drop everything to help her, and I highly value our relationship.

Finding a mentor is a two-way street. It begins slowly and builds over time. The best way to gain a mentor is to either ask for advice with a specific problem or to offer a service only you can deliver, and then overdeliver. Go beyond the call of duty.

If you are a member of ETC, I know you’ve found a mentor as I have in Cate Cammarata as well as in the fellow members. I share my real-world experiences in the hopes that my experiences can mentor you as well. Being a theatre-maker is hard work, but so is anything worthwhile.

Find a mentor to make the journey a bit easier.

 

Melissa Bell’s work has been featured in the New York Times and nominated for Best Adaptation & Modernization by New York Shakespeare and awarded Finalist for Henley Rose Playwright Competition for LADY CAPULET and awarded Honored Finalist for the Collaboration Award by the Women in Arts & Media Coalition for COURAGE.

 

Find a Mentor

The Working Playwright

by | Feb 26, 2024 | NPD, Theater, Writing Tips

(This is a new monthly column on CreateTheater.com – thank you, Melissa!)

FIND THEE A WRITER’S GROUP

When I speak with aspiring playwrights or writers of any genre, the first piece of advice I give is “join a writer’s group.” If you can’t find one, create one. A writing group has been essential to my growth as a playwright, and it will be for yours as well.

Why? Writing groups offer both a dedicated time to write and a dedicated time to present and receive feedback to your project.

The consistency of selecting and presenting a 10-12 minute section or scene of your play helps you focus on your play one scene at a time, deeply and succinctly. You see the way the scene operates in and of itself and the way it functions within the play wholistically. If you present 10-12 pages per week, within 10-12 weeks you will have detailed notes and comments that will help you edit the play, focusing on what is working and eliminating what is not working.

I have been a member of a writing group that meets once per week, for three hours, 10 months per year since 2015. That’s nine years! I’ve developed each of my plays using these methods and all of them have been presented as staged readings or productions once completed. It’s a method with proven results.

HOW: To function well, a writing group needs commitment, consistency, and structure.

Rule One:

  • Set and maintain a schedule and hold each other accountable for attendance whether once per week, once every two weeks or once per month. The group can’t function if no one shows up. Each member should have a project they seek to create or revise using the momentum a working group provides.
  • Set the length of the meeting to allow for a 10-minute check-in, followed by 20 minutes from each writer. So if your group has 4 writers, your meeting should be 1 ½ hours. If you have 8 writers, your meeting should be 3 hours.

Rule Two: Presentation and Feedback.

  • Set rules. Each writer can present up to ten minutes of new or revised work. The writer “casts” the players from the members or bring in actor friends. The group might invite a few actors to participate regularly—it helps them too!
  • After the reading of the selection, the floor is open for comments. This is not the time to rewrite the play, offer “advice” about what you would do, or talk about your own work. This is the time to tell the author what you heard and what you know from the scene. List the events and how you experienced it. What did you like. What didn’t you understand. What confused you. Don’t offer prescriptive advice.
  • Writers: LISTEN. Reserve the right to remain silent. This is your chance to learn about your play! This is not your time to explain the plot or answer comments.
  • Don’t reveal your intention. Take notes. Write down everything that is said. If one member is confused, let other members answer their questions.
  • At the end of the discussion, if you have one or two questions, ask them, but again, don’t explain. If you don’t get the responses you want, it’s time to rewrite and re-present until the scene works.
  • When people ask me a question my favorite answer is “what do you think?” They often have a response, and surprisingly, it often is the response I was hoping for.

In addition to listening to your own work and hearing responses to it, you will grow by listening to other’s work and responding to it as well. It’s all about learning and listening.

A few more things:

Don’t cancel meetings unless ALL the writers are in rehearsals or productions, which is your goal. If no one has work to present, meet ANYWAY! And use the time to write together, starting with a prompt (you can find these on the internet) and write silently for 40 minutes. You do not have to read what you wrote. Just use the time to focus on writing without interruption. Discuss the prompt, how if affected your writing, then move on.

Discuss plays that you’ve seen, plays you admire. Discuss craft. Use the time to talk about theatre. How often do you get time to do that in your life? Value it. Protect it. Use it.

Use your writing group to prepare your script BEFORE you submit or schedule a staged reading. Those steps should follow AFTER presenting and rewriting your draft within the group.

Submissions and Staged Readings will be topics for other columns, so stay tuned!

For now, keep writing!

Melissa Bell’s work has been featured in the New York Times and nominated for Best Adaptation & Modernization by New York Shakespeare, and as a Finalist for the Henley Rose Playwright Competition for LADY CAPULET. She was also awarded Honored Finalist for the Collaboration Award by the Women in Arts & Media Coalition for COURAGE. TheMelissaBell.com

Where Are We Going?

Where Are We Going?

by | Feb 12, 2024 | Inspiration, NPD, Theater

How Are We Doing?

 

I can’t believe we’re already approaching 2025, our quarter-century mark. That’s a significant milestone in history, with enough time under our belt now to collectively look at “how we’re doing” and where we’re going.

The first 25 years of the twenty-first century were a difficult time to live through. Although Y2K never happened, it was a precursor of the “fake news” that would build enough momentum to destroy our trust in the media, government, medical/pharmaceutical industries, and in general all of the large institutions built in the twentieth century that told us what to believe and what to do. Unprotected, we chose instead to silo ourselves into smaller insular tribes with whom we decided to “know, like and trust” (a concept fittingly forged by various marketing strategies). Technology intensified and exponentially expanded each individual voice through social media and the internet.

The next thing to hit us (literally) was 9/11. Whatever vestige of safety and security we had in whatever institutions that were “supposed to keep us safe” were destroyed and replaced by excessive fear against the “other.” The “other” continued to be defined to be whomever didn’t look like us and believe what we believe.

Although 9/11 was an American tragedy, the reverberations were felt globally. With the increasing alacrity to hold “the other” at bay, nations globally reflected the search and destroy philosophy video game theory promoted and kept people hypnotized and in fear worldwide.

And … here we are.

Wars. Hatred. Potentially permanent climate change. Dire economic realities. Unthinkable just twenty-five years ago, democracies everywhere are being threatened with their very existence, to be replaced with autocracy and/or radical change.

Where’s the promise of freedom, prosperity and growth? Will we ever know, like and trust our neighbor again?

Fear expands exponentially, whether promoted for personal or national aims.

 

The Golden Age of Greece

 

The fifth century B.C. is known as the “Golden Age” of Greece. That classical era that established the concept of democracy in the first place also saw the birth of the drama itself as the primary offering to the god Dionysus. The Dionysian Festival is a huge part of the celebration of freedom which Athenians saw as an important feature of their democracy – the freedom to discuss new ideas and to reconceptualize established myths and stories to reflect a new “way of seeing” to the citizens gathered in the theatron (which literally means “placee for seeing”). The fledgling democracy of Athens supported this festival and the literary forms that flourished in this setting. Tragedy, in particular, was useful to the state and funded by the monied choregos, or producers, who also usually served in government or the military. As the “noble offering to the gods,” tragedy, unlike comedy, was always a primary platform to communicate the values of the polis. At least it was until the end of the fifth century, when political ineptitude, fear and corruption made the drama “dangerous” (as Plato said famously later, in the fourth century).

Dangerous? We can all agree that new ideas can be dangerous. But dangerous to whom?

Dangerous to the entrenched leaders, of course, who were the funders of the drama anyway and who subsequentially shut down the platform. When the drama returned roughly 100 years later audiences were entertained with broad, physical comedy rather than a theatre of new ideas. Audiences were entertained and distracted by the comedy, instead of being challenged with plays of new ideas. New ideas were thought to be politically dangerous to the established state and the dear leaders’ political strategies.

I think that we, now, like the Ancient Greeks, are in the transition stage from what was into what will be. We are definitely being entertained and distracted by the many “powers that be” that fund our multitude of various distractions.

All this to say that we should wake up and smell the expresso.

 

Where are we going?

 

I’m not Nosferatu. I’m a theatre maker. We reflect our times and put it onstage. But like the ancient choregos, I’m interested in putting the poetry of the present on stage to help represent and preserve the ideas of the moment in a new way.

In other words, I’m interested in helping writers craft their contemporary stories on stage to deliver a message meant for a wider platform of people to receive, understand, and to interpret in their own way. Creative expression received is dependent upon the story the receiver attributes to it; the creator has no control over the individual’s interpretation. Such is the nature of art.

And such is the usefulness and function of art in our society. Then and now. To receive new ideas in new ways, and to be open to new modes of thought and understanding.

To understand the “other’ and their world as perceived vicariously in the audience through the dramatic journey is what we do. To honestly experience theater is to experience another’s way of life, way of thinking, and another’s human journey without judgement, in reception of the ideas as they are presented. To present theater today is to challenge the audience to be open to other ways of living, thinking and being human.

Wherever this century takes us, we’re not going very far without knowing, liking and trusting the other and their human experience. Theatre arts help society develop empathy, which apparently we’re dreadfully lacking. 

 

Theatre Makes Us More Fully Human

 

To enjoy theatre is to understand the functions of the artist in society. To support theatre is to support those artists who sensitively create art onstage in order to reflect ourselves back to us. 

Keep making theatre like the world depended on it  – because it sort of does.

 __________________

Up next tomorrow: Theatre kids rule the world (according to the NY Times).

 

 

Using Technology for Theater?

Using Technology for Theater?

by | Jan 10, 2024 | Theater, Virtual Promotion

Every year I try to update my vision of how to create more theater, and what that theater should look like.

What exactly is my role this year as a theatre-maker in the 21st century? What can I personally do to develop, produce and promote more theater?

Is theater dying? Or is the way we make theater today dying?

The old Danny Newman subscription model doesn’t work anymore. Regional theaters and downsizing, or closing their doors. All of this has of course been accelerated by nearly two years of shutdown in theater.

Theater isn’t dying – it will always be around – but we need to examine how to build new audiences, to speak to those audiences and to market them off the sofas and into theaters.

Can we use technology to help us create more theater?

 

Strengths of 21st Century Theater

 

Let’s review at the beginning of the year what we’re doing right:

  1. We were a diverse society from the beginning. Thus, we are and must continue to be a diverse and inclusive theater if we are to develop new audiences.
  2. Theater takes the invisible idea, the invisible thought, and makes it visible. Today theater is doing it more creatively than ever, utilizing technology, “game theory,” and innovative performance techniques (immersive, site-specific, experimental structures, etc.)
  3. We all acknowledge that staging performing arts performances in a community accelerates the economic growth of that area and leads to a revitalized community. The arts are good for local businesses.
  4. The arts have a positive impact on academic achievement and personal growth of young people, as well as other marginalized groups and the elderly. The arts are good for society in general.
  5. The “live” component of theatrical performance create social engagements that build social empathy and understanding that can help heal fractures that are increasingly dividing us everywhere.

All of the above are true, but apparently we’ve done a terrible job communicating these strengths to the public. How can we entice new audiences in when ticket prices are stratospheric, yet thanks to technology, movies and videos are everywhere?

Surely we can use this same technology to promote theater.

 

Technology Makes Entertainment More Accessible

 

We are now surrounded with more entertainment options than any other time in human history – accessible any time on the little device we all carry in our pockets. YouTube is free, and paying for entertainment is over (except for live concert and sporting events) for many people.

Why not use technology to build an appetite for live theater?

Streaming theater is a viable option, if for no other reason than to serve our audiences. Allowing my college students to view bootleg videos of past musicals on Broadway or great plays at the National Theatre creates more of a desire to see theatre, not less. I love watching students discover HEDDA GABLER or SPRING AWAKENING for the first time, and getting excited about the work and the ideas.

Also, audiences are reluctant to buy expensive tickets for shows they don’t know. Familiarity with Harry Potter drives a desire to buy a ticket to that show, or a ticket to the parody musicals  of “The Office” or “Friends.”

How can audiences become familiar with your show? Where and what can you post online to drive a desire to see your show?

Here are some ideas that I see working:

  • Record bits of your play or musical being rehearsed (even if there’s no planned production yet) to post on social media
  • Create a promo clips or sizzle reel and post on social media and on your website (a necessity now).
  • Grab your friends and shoot a video of your show scene by scene. Edit and post on YouTube (this works especially well if you’re a millennial or Gen Z creator)
  • Go live and play your musical one song at a time, with an introduction. Post on YouTube to create a playlist, and on your website
  • Writing a play? Record a monologue or an especially dramatic moment, and post online
  • Have a local staged reading? Hire a videographer to record it. Don’t forget to capture the audience’s reactions at the end. Post it on YouTube for a short time (if allowed).

Social Media is the new word of mouth. I’m not a “digital native,” but hey, I can learn. So can you.

 

Always Promote Yourself

 

The end goal of all this promotion is, of course, to get your show onstage. You’ll still have to do the traditional activities to make people aware of you and your work:

  • Continually submitting to every play submissions contest you can find
  • Networking with Artistic Directors, producers and literary managers, in person and online
  • Volunteering at your local theater, or attending their galas – and donating
  • Be active on the New Play Exchange and participate in the community
  • Designing a modern website and keeping it updated
  • Maintaining an email list of friends, family and followers
  • Participating in online communities like CreateTheater, The Playwrights Center, the Dramatist’s Guild, and the BMI Musical Theater Workshop (to name a few) where you can network with other industry professionals.

Yes, it is exhausting to build an audience for your work, and to invest time in your social networks. It takes time, consistent effort, and passion. It. Is. Exhausting. I get it.

I am exhausted, too. But I’m always learning new ways to promote good work and stage good work. I will continually adapt our storytelling onstage to allow new audiences to experience theatre in new ways (look for an immersive show coming soon to a Brooklyn restaurant, and the resurrection of our 2020 Monday Night Reading Series online).

Because we’re theater people, and this is what we do. We adapt, and go where the audiences are. We don’t stand there and shout at them to come to us. That’s so “twentieth century.” We go to them.

Write good stuff and send it to me. I’m looking to develop new musicals and plays in the 2024 CreateTheater New Works Festival in NYC, and beyond.

How Masta Ace Transformed from MC to Playwright with ‘The Falling Season’

How Masta Ace Transformed from MC to Playwright with ‘The Falling Season’

by | Sep 26, 2023 | Press, Theater

Since before the turn of the century, Brooklyn-bred rapper Masta Ace has put out numerous studio albums, most of which see him employ an incredibly detail-oriented, storytelling-based approach. But now, with an upcoming play titled The Falling Season, roughly influenced by his beloved LPs like Disposable Arts (2001), A Long Hot Summer (2004), and The Falling Season (2016), Ace is preparing to take his raps to the theatre.

Read article online here…