The Drive to Make it in Show Business

Welcome to the House of Keniston, Where Theater is a Sport

Greetings, and welcome to theater is a sport, my blog where I talk about what's on my mind regarding theater.  It's a good time (I think).  Enjoy your stay.

I've been thinking about "drive" a great deal lately, mainly because I've been talking to some people about what it takes to try to make a living as an actor.  "Drive" is the answer I keep coming up with.

It's interesting:  for those of us who studied acting in college, we learned so much great stuff about craft, technique, keeping our bodies as well-tuned instruments to serve our art.  The business doesn't necessarily care about these things.  It's sad, but acting is a job where, even if you're really, really good at it, there's no guarantee that you'll ever get work.  And if you do, it won't be like your acting class.

And so you need drive.

So what is drive?  I like to think of it as encompassing the following parts:

LOVE,
PASSION,
NEED,
PERSISTENCE,
COURAGE,
RESILIENCE,
FLEXIBILITY,
SELF-ESTEEM,
IMMOVABLE FAITH
ACCEPTANCE

Allow me to explain.

LOVE, is fairly simple. You need to love to act.  If you don't love to act, sing, or dance, or what-have-you, why would you do it?  Countless better ways to earn your daily bread, believe me.

PASSION, which is different from love, is also essential.  Passion is the fire in your belly, the thing that turns you on, gives you the greatest bliss.  And not just for the performance, but for the process. Passion is thing inside of you that shuns the ordinary and desires the little something extra.  Let's be honest--- if you can make a living from acting, that's pretty extraordinary, isn't it?

NEED, I know may sound bad, but I don't mean it that way.  I simply mean that you must feel that reaching your dreams is a need, like food or water.  Often, people who have "made it" will say that they did so because they aren't suitable for any other kind of life.  I believe them.  If you don't absolutely need to be an actor, then please find something else that makes you happy and do that.  It's not "settling" if it makes you happy and you don't feel pangs of regret.

PERSISTENCE, of course, is key.  You have to constantly be doing things outside of your art for your art, and all for rejection.  And you have to keep doing it over and over and over and over again.

COURAGE, to accept your need, your love and your passion in the face of constant rejection. Courage to live without the hope of financial stability.  Courage to shun social norms and societal expectations.  Courage to constantly risk absurdity.  Courage to fail, and, even harder sometimes, courage to succeed.  Courage to look at yourself in the mirror to keep growing and getting better. Courage to listen to commentary about how you're wasting your time, you're never going to "make it", to hear questions like "when are you going to grow up and get a real job?"  In fact, you need courage to believe you are a grown up, when most of the world will tell you you're not.

RESILIENCE, or, thick skin.  Did I mention you're going to get rejected a whole lot?  It's true.  And when you're being rejected as an actor, it feels like they are rejecting YOU, because your body is your instrument.  And yes, I believe it's even worse for women.  I can't imagine being at a chorus girl "cattle call" audition, and literally having them point out "You, you, you, step forward.  The rest of you, thank you for your time", without really even seeing what you can do.  It is inherently a cruel process, and you have to be able to bounce back from it and do it all again.

FLEXIBILITY, at least until you're "in demand" or have "clout".  You might have to take jobs you're not passionate about, just to get on stage (don't compromise your deep-rooted morals, however). You have to compromise, eat dirt now and again.  They don't always teach you that in acting class.

SELF-ESTEEM, which ties in a bit with resilience, but is something a little different.  You have to believe you're good.  Not to the point where you're a total diva (again, unless you've achieved clout), but yes, there is a little ego involved, and maybe even some good-natured arrogance.  Don't feel bad about this.  You need it.  Facing all this rejection, you have to be able to psyche yourself up and feel good about yourself.  You have to believe.  Which leads me to...

IMMOVABLE FAITH.  You have to have the faith of a zealot. Faith, or course, is having believing in something, even without hard proof.  And actors need to have this kind of faith and belief--- a faith in themselves, of course, and faith in the fact that they WILL reach their goals.  That it is MEANT TO BE.  This faith is what can give you courage and resilience.

ACCEPTANCE.... I know some of you are probably thinking that this "acceptance" I'm talking about, is the acceptance to realize when it's time perhaps to pursue other things.  Nope.  This is a post about drive after all.  There's nothing else to pursue in this post.  The kind of acceptance I'm talking about is the acceptance that, in order to make it in the business, you have to remember it is a business. The art and the craft, which is what is responsible for your love and your passion, is not enough.  You could be the best actor of your generation, and never find work.  You also have to accept that, like I mentioned earlier, the stuff you learn in your acting classes in school, while serving your personal work, are not going to ensure your employment with a director who's process is completely different (remember flexibility?)  Acceptance of the fact that, while your heart wants to play Hamlet, you need to WANT to book that national laxative commercial just as much, and put just as much work into it as you would the world's most famous soliloquy.  You have to accept that sometimes, you may feel a little phony with people because you need them as a connection.  You have to accept that you are a PRODUCT and part of your job is to make yourself a BRAND.  A brand that people want to buy.  A brand that you're constantly tweeting about, and sharing on other social media.  Accept that this brand might lead to type casting, but, at least you're working, and one day you'll step out of your wheelhouse and show what you can really do. You have to accept that your love and passion comes with a lot of hurdles, and you're not always going to feel satisfied at the end of the day.  But you happily accept climbing more of that mountain day after day.

That's what drive is, ladies in gentlemen, in my humble opinion.  And, while I possess some of these fine qualities, I am lacking in others, which is why I never really pursued the big stages (more on that in another post).  And, no, I didn't intend for this to be a depressing post.  Just something to demonstrate a bit of a universal truth people don't always talk about--- to make it in show business, it's not enough to love the show.  You've gotta do the business.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences on this subject in the comment section below. I'd love to hear what others think.

Thanks for reading Theater is a Sport.  Come back soon.

WRITING INSPIRATION: How and Why I Wrote My Play "Citizen's Arrest"

A Production of My Play "Citizen's Arrest" as performed by Hettinger High School

Welcome to Theater is a Sport.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and today, I'm going to talk a bit about how and why I wrote my play "Citizen's Arrest".  I don't know if you're like me, but, if you are, you are interested in why and how writers write their work, and, even if you haven't read my stuff, I'm hoping that you find my experiences at least someone educational or slightly interesting.  If not, I'll aplogize in advance.  I'm a bit of an apologist.  (And and R.E.M. fan)

Anyway...

Inspiration is a crazy thing.  When you are a writer, you never really know when it is going to strike, so it is best to be aware of everything around you.  There's fodder for plays, stories, articles, and so much more in the simplest of events, occurences, happenings.... hey, even in just a consistent family joke.  So writers, store everything away... you never know when it will come in handy. 

So, let's see... in my life, I had published "Rumplestilskin the R-Dawg, Hip-Hop Minstrel", "Confession: Kafka in High School", "Death and Pez", and "Sky Baby and the Bedtime Story".  I was feeling pretty good about my growing list of publications.  At about this time, I started reaching out to other playwrights that I had found on Facebook, dropping them messages saying hi, asking for advice, etc.  It turns out, I've met a lot of nice people because of this, a large group of people who write in my market and who I consider wonderful colleagues and pals now.  It's nice to have a group of people to talk shop with, to share success and failure stories with, complain about the market with... and, what's great, is that we have all been there and had the same problems.  It's a nice group of people.

I digress.

In any case, I had reached out to a wonderful playwright in my market named Jerry Rabushka, who was one of the first to really reach back out and offer me encouragement and advice (Jerry has a TON of plays published with Brooklyn Publishers, and is a very talented and nice guy).  He mentioned to me that Brooklyn was always looking for one-act plays with a large cast, even casts of 20 or more. 

A one-act play with 20 characters?!  I didn't really think I could do something like that, unless maybe I made a Shakespeare adaptation.... I mean, how do you fit 20 characters into a play that's only 30 minutes long without making a number of them just walk-ons? 

Nonetheless, I stored this information away in my mind, just in case I ever came across and idea that could accomodate 20 people in a one-act play. 

One day, I was riding in a car with my parents.  I was reminded of road trips with the family when I was a kid, my two older sisters and I crammed in the back seat, my dad driving.  Throughout my life, there have been times when my dad is driving that he'll witness someone making a slight infraction, say, walking just outside of a crosswalk.  When this happens, my dad will say, in a silly voice, "Citizen's Arrest!"  It used to make my sisters and I laugh. 

I'm sort of fascinated by the idea of a "citizen's arrest".  I have never actually performed one, and probably never will, but I find it interesting the idea of an average citizen taking the opportunity to fight crime, brandishing themselves a temporary deputy to enforce the law. 

On this day in the car, I thought of my dad and his "Citizen's Arrest!" joke.  He has since told me he picked this up from an old TV show, either The Andy Griffith Show or Gomer Pyle, I can't remember which.  I was thinking of how silly it was, and I thought to myself, "how could I push something like this to this most ridiculous extreme?" 

That was the seed of the play, Citizen's Arrest.   How to make something ridiculous even more ridiculous.  I pictured someone placing anoher person under a "citizen's arrest", but not stopping there.  I imagined this person stopping passer-bys to form their own "citizen's trial", complete with citizen prosecutors, citizen defense attorney, citizen judge, citizen bailiff... the whole works.  Then, of course, they would need a juy of citizens to make a verdict, wouldn't they?

As soon as I thought of needing the twelve jury members, I knew I had a one-act play that could be 20 characters.  And, indeed, Citizen's Arrest has exactly twenty characters.

COMMUNITY/SCHOOL THEATER PLAYWRITING TIP:  Always try to write more female characters than male characters, as, statistically, more females audition for community and school theater than males. 

I had a great deal of fun writing the play, which, if I'm not mistaken, took about a week for the first draft.  Once the basic idea was in place, it kind of just flowed out of me.  Here's the basic story:  a guy named Dennis, walking through an idealized beautiful park, drops a candy bar wrapper on the ground without thinking about it.  Dana, a concerned citizen, places him under citizen's arrest.  Dennis tries to be a good sport about things, but Dana decides to stage a citizen's trial right then and there.  An out-of-work actress becomes the prosecuting attorney, a coffee shop employee becomes the defense attorney, a moody woman on her way to a quilting circle becomes the "sassy judge, like the ones on TV", a construction worker hunk becomes the bailiff, a very slow typist with a laptop becomes the stenographer, and a tour guide and her tour group become the jury.  It's a great deal of fun.

RANDOM FUN FACT:  At the time I wrote Citizen's Arrest, I had recently been in a musical revue of Johnny Cash music called Ring Of Fire.  Four talented ladies named Tracy, Nancy, Mary Kate, and Lisa were all in the musical revue with me, so, in Citizen's Arrest, four of the tour guide jurors are Tracy, Nancy Mary Kate and Lisa, an all-girl Johnny Cash cover band.  They keep coming up with silly song titles throughout the proceedings and wonder out loud "What Would Johnny Cash Do?"

If I had to pick a favorite character, it would be Miguel, the coffee shop guy who plays the defense attorney.  He wants very badly to do a good job.  He claims his hero is Atticus Finch, and he always wanted to spak out for justice just like Atticus.  Unfortunately for Miguel, when the time comes to make his big impassioned speeches, he's got nothing, except for a few metaphors about how justice is like a cup of coffee.  It even goes well with cheese danish.

So, I sent the play off to my editor at Brooklyn Publishers, a cool guy named David Burton.

He accepted the play less than a week later.  At the time, that was my fastest acceptance, and, actually is still the second-fastest acceptance I've had.  It makes me happy to report that David really loves this play of mine.  He talked at the time about how it made him laugh out loud, and I think it is still one of his favorites of mine.  I know he has recommended it to many places looking for a large cast one-act.  It always makes a writer feel good to know that their editor is really pleased with the work they are putting out.  To be honest, I think David's reaction to Citizen's Arrest really was the beginning of him thinking of me as a playwright who was going to go the distance, and opened him up to talk to me about different projects to pursue and things like that. 

Citize's Arrest has done pretty well for me since it has been published--- it averages about four productions a year, though David insists it deserves more.   It also seems to have had a good balance of school and community theater, which is nice.

I'm proud of it.  It made my friends laugh, made my ideal reader laugh, and that's what matters most to me. 

I hope you have found this little story interesting and helpful.  If you're looking for a large cast one-act, or would just like to read a sample of Citizen's Arrest, please follow this link:  http://www.brookpub.com/default.aspx?pg=sd&st=CITIZEN'S+ARREST  Just click on script preview to... you guessed it!... read a preview of the script!

If you would like to become a fan of Theater is a Sport on Facebook, please follow this link:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/TheaterIsASport

Thanks for reading.  I hope you are all well and happy and full of goo theater feelings.  Until next time, please remember that theater is not only a craft and an artform, but also a sport!

How to Write a Play or How to Enjoy Repeatedly Banging Your Head Against a Wall, Lesson 4: Exposition (Blame it on the Maid)

Hello everyone and welcome to Theater is a Sport.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and today is Tuesday, March 5, in the Year of Our Lord 2013.  Since the Mayan calendar proved false, today, like every Tuesday, is playwriting tutorial day! 

I am going to assume that you have all read lessons 1-3, read some plays, thought about the structure of your favorite TV shows and movies, written a monologue, pondered the importance of conflict, and written a two-person scene demonstrating your knowledge of the aforementioned conflict, and are now ready to start looking at some of the big nuts and bolts of the craft of being a playwright.

(Note:  For those of you curious, a person who writes plays is called a playwright, not because people misspelled the word "write", but because a "wright" of any kind was a craftsperson back in the old days.  "Playwright" is literally someone who crafts plays.  Neat, huh?)

One very important nut (or if you prefer, bolt) is exposition.  Every playwright struggles with how exposition is handled, so, be prepared:  this is where the banging your head against the wall might start looking like more than mere hyperbole on my part. 

Exposition is backstory.  It is all the stuff that has happened before the play starts, but that is important to the play.  For instance, in Hamlet, we know the fact that Hamlet's father died and his uncle married his mother is all exposition, information outside the present action of the play, but, clearly very vital information for the play to work. 

If you have ever read a review of a play or a movie, you might have heard a critic refer to a certain piece as having "clunky exposition".   For some reason, "clunky" is the negative adjective I see paired with exposition the most often.  I suppose it makes sense:  exposition can be very clunky.  I have written clunky exposition (particularly in first drafts), and if you decide to write a play, so will you.  It gets easier with time.  It takes practice.

Once upon a time, murder mysteries used to be written using a certain tool to get most of the exposition out of the way in one big swoop--- the maid.  Yes, there are several old murder mysteries that seem to begin with a maid answering the phone and saying way more than what seems necessary in what the audience hears as one side of a conversation.  Tom Stoppard parodies this technique to great effect in The Real Inspector Hound.  Just for fun, I will create an example for you here and now.  Please feel free to bask in this clunkerific passage:

ACT I
SCENE 1

SETTING:  The parlor of well-to-do PROFFESOR WAINSCOTT.  The furniture is plush and expensive, with gorgeous carpeting and exquisite art adorning the wall.  There is a makeshift bar stage right.  Stage left is an ornate stand sporting a telephone. 

AT RISE:  MISS SPANKME, a young maid, is dusting the parlor when the phone rings.  She answers the phone.

MISS SPANKME:  Good evening, Professor Wainscott's residence.  No, I'm afraid Professor Wainscott cannot come to the phone right now.  He is finishing up his notes on the psychology of escaped convicts murdering everyone in their path.  And what a time to be writing such a piece, with a real-life escaped convict on the loose today!  Everyone knows he has it in for the good Professor, who put him behind bars 3 years ago!  This brute swore at the time he would have his revenge on the Professor, no matter how long it took!  (slight pause)  Oh, no, the Professor is not one to live in fear!  A brave man he is, far braver than a young lass like me could ever hope to be, me not having any real education to speak of.  The Professor still plans to hold his dinner party tonight, which will be attended by the famous Doctor, Peter Plankow and his new wife, who everyone says is too young for him, Mayor Breckenwith, who's trying to gain support for his re-election campaign, and, just for fun, Madam Batty, who claims to be a psychic.  I sure hope the bridge holds out in this hurricane weather.  I wouldn't want anyone to be trapped here until morning with a crazy escaped convict on the loose, and I pray we won't lose power.  (Pause.  BUTLER enters and listens in)  Oh, no, I'm sure we'll all be right as rain.  The only door in the house that remains unlocked is the back door way 'round.  So sweet.... the good Professor keeps that door unlocked so that his estranged wife, who disappeared without a word five years ago this very night, may always have a way to come back into the house and into his arms.  (pause)    Yes, I'll tell the good Professor you called.  (she hangs up)

BUTLER:  Miss Spankme!  Just who were you talking to?

MISS SPANKME:  (wheels around, surprised)  My Lord!  You gave me quite a fright, Mr. Pruneface!

BUTLER:  (not playing around)  Who were you talking to?

MISS SPANKME:  Just the New York Times, sir.  They wanted to see if Professor Wainscott wanted to renew his subscription.

END SCENE

Pretty ridiculous, right?  But that's not the only way exposition can be clunky.  Here's another example I'll make up for you:

JENNIFER:  Hello, dead beet ex-husband.  What are doing here?

PHIL:  You know why I'm here, ex-wife, who I divorced a year ago because we couldn't make things work.  If it wasn't for our two children, Mark, age 8 and Kara, age 6, I would have nothing to do with you!

JENNIFER:  You're just mad because the judge awarded me the house, car, and seventy percent of all our possessions.  You should be grateful  you still have your job on the police force, where you've been working for 10 years, and that you haven't seemed to inherit your father's heart disease, which he died from at the young age of 38.  Hey... you're turning 38 this weekend, aren't you?

END SCENE

The trick with exposition is to add it slowly and subtlety into conversation, and do your best to make it feel like a part of real conversation, and not an excuse to give the audience information.  It is also a good idea to place your exposition throughout new information if at all possible, but that's not always necessary.  Again, this takes practice.  An audience needs exposition to know what's going on, but if you hammer them with too much exposition at a time, it not only feels phony, but it can take an audience out of the present circumstances if it goes unchecked.  And you don't want to take the audience out of the present too much--- in fact, the goal is to want the audience to be eagerly wanting to know what happens next, not what happened three years ago or ten years ago, except as to how those things might effect the here and now.

Here's a little exchange from my play The Girl I'm Gonna Marry, available from Heuer Publishing.  In this scene, MIRANDA has been stood up at her wedding, and is talking to her best friend SIMON.  Unbeknownst to Miranda, Simon has always been in love with Miranda.  Oh, yeah--- and Miranda's a little drunk.

MIRANDA:  You're the only man that I trust.  And I love you, and always have.  We should get married.  How 'bout it?  It would be fun.

SIMON:  Well, we were engaged once.  Do you remember?

MIRANDA:  Whaaa?  (Pause- realizing)  Oh my God!  That's right.

SIMON:  When we were in college.  Philip and I were roommates....

MIRANDA:  You poor boy.

SIMON: Admit it:  he's grown on you.

MIRANDA:  Like a fungus you get used to, but go on.

SIMON:  Thank you.  It was that night we went grocery shopping because we were sick of dining hall food, and so we were at the grocery store and it had one of those little quarter vending machines...

MIRANDA:  With the plastic rings!  You know, they're like fifty cents now.

SIMON:  Yup.  And there in the store...

MIRANDA:  In the dairy aisle.  I remember, 'cause it was cold and smelled like yogurt...

SIMON:  I got down on one knee, and I proposed to you.  I asked you to spend the rest of your life with me.

MIRANDA:  And I said yes!

SIMON:  That's right.  But we never set a date.  (beat)  We should have set a date the second you said yes.

MIRANDA:  I always thought you seemed a little too serious that night.

END SCENE

Now, I'm not going to argue this is a perfect scene, but within in it, we have Simon and Miranda remembering a key event in their lives and telling the story together.  Meanwhile, we see that they are beginning to look at each other in a different way, while also learning about how they interact with one another--- comfortable, familiar, homey.  Again, it may not be perfect, but it's not as clunkeriffic as Maid Exposition, that much I'm certain of. 

So, try things out.  Keep your exposition in small doses, letting the info out when needs to be out, and try to avoid putting it into the mouths of people (like a maid or butler) who are only there for the sole purpose of being Mr. or Miss Exposition.  Characters should have more of a purpose for existing than to catch the audience up on what has happened in the the last five years leading up to the event of the play. 

I hope you have found this lesson on exposition enjoyable.  Once again, I'm Bobby Keniston.  If you want to know more about me or Theater is a Sport, feel free to check out the following links: 
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To go directly to PLAYWRITING LESSON NUMBER 5, simply click HERE

I'll see you tomorrow for some more theater talk.  Until then, please remember:  theater is a sport, and don't blame your exposition on the maid.