RACHEL RUBIN LADUTKE,  Playwright
New play in process.

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9/5/00   Well, I had a lovely long weekend, and got lots of things accomplished.  Unfortunately, I'm still sick (or sick  again - I'm not really sure which.)  But on Friday I worked on revising CLARY'S, particularly the last fifteen  pages of Act One. I shifted some things around so that now Ruby Mae returns at the end of Scene Two instead of Scene  Three. And now, after Clary and Phoebe go out to dinner,  Ruby Mae sits down, puts her feet up and starts singing along to a blues song on the radio!  It's really cool! It was one of those times when it was all her idea. Then at  the end of the act, it's just Phoebe and Clary.  Clary is  engrossed in the book Esther leaves behind, and so Phoebe has to run out and answer the phone when Claude calls. I  think it works better.  I was also trying hard to simplify Esther's language; sometimes she sounds like she's reading from a book!  I e-mailed Arlene the changes on Friday night and then we talked through them Sunday.  It's coming nicely. Back to rehearsing for DANCING tonight so I probably won't be able to touch the play again till at least Friday evening.

9/13/00   It's been a hectic week, rehearsing DANCING every night and trying to schedule everything.  Since I learned GRACE NOTES is going to be produced here in NYC, I've been trying to figure out how to balance it with the reading of CLARY'S EXODUS at NJ Rep, which was scheduled tentatively for December 4. Now it looks like the reading is set for December 11 instead, which would mean I don't have to miss any rehearsals in order to see GRACE at the Looking Glass.  However, that's dependent on them approving the script. Today I'm sending NJ Rep the revised version. I hope they like it; I want them to respect my work. The staged reading of BELLES there was done independently and I would prefer CLARY'S to be sponsored by them, rather than us bringing it in "on spec" as it were. We'll see.  I also gave the CLARY'S script to a producer who may be interested in co-applying for the NFJC grant with me, and he should be reading it very soon.  Whew. Marketing is a full-time job in itself.

9/24/00   Well, I had something of a milestone yesterday in the mail:   my first rejection for CLARY'S EXODUS!  We're pretty well  set for the December 11 staged reading at New Jersey Rep,  but I've already sent a few scripts out. One of these was   to a local staged reading series which will be in Manhattan   in late October/early November.  I knew it was getting to  be a long time since I had the results, and I think CLARY'S  might have made a few cuts, since I didn't get the rejection till yesterday.  Still, they had some nice comments hand-  written at the bottom of the letter.  I had an amusing  thought about posting a webpage with a list of all the   places who have rejected my work, organized by play. I  thought this might be both encouraging to other playwrights  and a source of mirth to me when I'm feeling low: "Hey, look at all the wonderful theatres who've turned me down!" Gallows humour?  Perhaps.  But there may be some merit in  it yet.  Someone on one of my chat lists reminded me that rejection letter means it's one step closer to production.     

I've been feeling stymied lately; still fighting this damn cold or whatever-it-is, and caught up in my directing project, I haven't been able to get going on a new writing project.  I have yet to learn in my bones (as I know in my mind) that these seemingly fallow times are just as valuable as the more tangibly productive ones. More, perhaps. I'm storing things up, mulling them over, in ways I can't even know till I start writing something new, and maybe not even then. I wish we didn't have so long to wait till the staged  reading.  It's not like I don't have other things going on, but I'm so eager  to hear the new stuff!  Sigh. I must learn how to wait creatively. Or rather, to trust myself that I am waiting creatively.  I know there's things going on up there; I just can't get them yet.     

Posted over my desk at my day job, I have the quote:   "Nobody asked you to become a playwright."  Every time I get frustrated or low  or crazy, I think of that and smile.

10/4/00   The playwrights' lab I just joined will be reading CLARY'S  through next Wednesday. So I'll get to hear the changes. I already know some things I want to work on: I need to make it clearer that Clary's a spendthrift, which is part of the reason the family has money problems - she makes  good money but spends it easily.  And I need to widen the  gap in understanding between Clary and Esther at first so their coming together has more impact. That will of course add to the conflict as well. My mom read the play and she didn't like it as much as I expected she would. Oh, well,  I guess we never stop taking that into consideration. I would have liked to make these changes between now and  the time it's going to be read, but I won't have the time to do it completely, and I don't like bringing in half- baked drafts.  If I were going to make them I'd want them  to be completely finished before I brought it in, and between Yom Kippur and the meeting for my December production, that won't happen. So I'm bringing in the version I have now, which is at least cleaner than the one from the first read-through.  I'm looking forward to hearing how those changes work, anyway.  My mom also thinks Phoebe is TOO mature for an 11 year old. I say, when a child has an irresponsible parent, they often tend to grow up faster. So that doesn't bother me.  

10/17/00 Well, as usual, ups and downs...the bad news first.  The staged reading scheduled for December 11 has to be  postponed.  Not sure till when - argh!  On the up side, (yes, even this has an up side), I can relax and enjoy the run of Grace Notes that weekend. But I so much want and need to see this thing on its feet soon! There are  some other options which we're exploring: possibly Looking Glass might even let us do a staged reading there. And now, the good news: I did manage to get the National Foundation for Jewish Culture New Play Commission grant  application in, and I think we have a good shot at it.  Last Wednesday, the same day I messengered over the  application, I got to hear the whole play read through again by my Playwrights' Lab.  The changes sound good.   Overall it's in much better shape than the second draft of my last play!  I got some really great feedback, I heard a couple of awkward spots which I (mostly) know how to fix,  and after talking over the feedback with Arlene yesterday, I have a clear idea of what needs to be strengthened and/or  deepened. So, onward... 

11/6/00   I've been pulled away from the revisions I want to do because of various other projects.  I really do need to get back to work on them.  Hopefully I'll be able to do so later this week.  I know the ending monologue needs cutting and there are a few things I want to sharpen up. I have some good possibilities of places to submit it, so I ought to just dive back in.  Sometimes it's hard to get motivated when there's not a specific goal in sight. The postponement of the staged reading was really a bummer.  There's a possibility we may be able to put one together in, say, January, in NYC.  I'll follow up on that today. When my Playwrights' Lab fellows read through it about a month ago, I got some very helpful comments but for the most part, they loved it.  It's encouraging anyway that it took me about twelve drafts to really get BELLES right and this one is only in its third draft and already reads quite well.  I'm not sure if that means I'm becoming a better playwright or whether this one just happened to come more easily.  Moss Hart in his memoir ACT ONE, which is a great book about playwriting and about life, talked about how even seasoned pros are starting from scratch with each new play. The first time he collaborated with George Kaufman, they had a near-smash but the third act still didn't work.  It was less than a week before the Broadway opening before they figured out how to fix it, and that was a purely accidental inspiration Hart got when he was corralled by one of the (very drunk) producers!  So I guess you just never can tell. (Hey, isn't that a Kaufman-Hart play?)

11/24/00   Struggling to get anything done this week as family responsibilities come at  me left and right.  I did manage to get a bunch of scripts sent out over the past week or so at work. I've started to submit CLARY'S more heavily, albeit  to carefully chosen venues, as I feel it really, really, really needs a staged  reading before I can take it any further. I don't think it needs a lot of  changing but I can't tell if it will work at all in front of an audience. So I'm in a holding pattern.      A minor-turned-major annoyance is running out of the report covers I use to submit scripts, only to find Staples no longer carries them and neither, apparently, does anyone else in the Northern hemisphere! (OK, slight  exaggeration, but...) I got an alternative idea and had to call all over creation looking for THAT item, but finally I found it at a supplier in  Missouri(!) where it cost about 1/3 of what Staples wanted to special-order it.  Argh! Thank goddess for the internet.  I ordered enough to last me a year or more.  I don't want to have to worry about these stupid little  details.  I've also begun to reorganize my system of tracking submissions,  which I desperately need to do.  Once this weekend's over I'll be tied up with my GRACE NOTES production for the next two weeks (hopefully blissfully).

8/18/01  Last Sunday & Monday (the 12th & 13th) we had the premiere staged readings of CLARY'S EXODUS.  This came about because I was renting a theatre anyway to produce my directing project since we hadn't made it into the NY Fringe Festival (probably because it's a full-length play).  Anyway, Arlene and I decided to put up a reading of CLARY on the dark nights. We posted online casting notices in June and started getting lots of headshots. Naturally, the role of Esther (20s, white female) got the most submissions. Still it was nothing more than we could handle.

We were planning auditions by appointment for mid-July, so at the end of June we got together in NYC to look over the headshots. But here's where it got interesting...after we finished going through them, we discussed the fact that Esther still didn't seem to have an emotional investment in the events of the play. And it's a crucial thing for each character to have an emotional investment.  After we kicked around ideas for an hour, Arlene had helped pave the way for a fabulous and completely organic, believable plot twist which would give Esther that emotional connection.  I was very excited to finish this rewrite, but life got in the way as usual. 

We worked with the existing script for audition sides.  Over the course of two evenings, we saw about thirty actors for the five roles.  I had been concerned about potential actresses for Phoebe, Clary's 11 year old daughter, but even for that role we read five girls (between the ages of 10 and 13).  At the end of the auditions, we had pretty clear ideas about who we wanted.  Arlene and I are very different as directors, but we see eye-to-eye nearly all the time about casting and about dialogue. This makes us a good match for collaboration. For one role, we had to take a performer who had initially been my second choice, but that person surprised me during rehearsals and now I can't imagine having gone any other way.

Well, that's the nuts and bolts.  In my next installment I'll discuss the actual rewriting process (trying to do it without giving away the plot twist) and the craziness of getting the reading up on its feet while sharing a theatre, and only having three rehearsals.  Wow!

 © 2001 Rachel Rubin Ladutke

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Winter 2001