5/29/00 Started drafting a scenario for Clarice's Exodus.  Still don't like the title but it's the best I've got for now.  It is her journey, but it's also a beginning, so I like Clarice's Genesis but then that sounds weird. I don't know.  Also got two pages of dialogue written. I started at the beginning; I may not write in sequence all the time, but it's working so far.  One surprise: instead of the Rabbi, his wife came in the door.  That was her idea, not mine!  It’s a good start.  But I already find myself worrying about how to make it funny.  I know, I can't TRY to write funny, and I can't let it hang me up. My sense of humour is offbeat and a bit skewed.  And after all people got the dense jokes in Grace Notes more than I expected. Hafta just let them talk.  As long as they will talk.

6/2/00 Didn't really feel like writing tonight after graduation yesterday and working all week, but I forced myself to sit at the computer. I read a quote today on a writing web site, something like, "I don't only write when I feel like it. Because I don't usually feel l like it." So after dinner I went to the laptop and put in a new CD of 1920's women's blues singers Larry just got me, lit my candles, burned my incense, and started typing.  Less than an hour later I had 2 1/2 new pages of dialogue. Some of it turned out to be a different scene, so I moved it, because these two people (Phoebe and Esther) just started talking to each other. Good.  Let 'em talk. Don't know how much of this stuff I'll use, but the characters are relating to each other and it does seem to be heading somewhere.  Anyway, they're learning about each other. And at the rate I'm going, I WILL be able to have a draft by the end of June.  After I get actors to read it for me, that's when the real work begins.  I also had a talk with Arlene today in which I said that I didn't think it was going to be a flat-out comedy after all, and we both feel our favorite type of play is a comedy with depth, or a serious play with humour. Grace and Belles I would describe as serious plays with humour.  Maybe this will be a comedy with depth, maybe not. But it will be what twill be.  Anyway, 12 pages into a first draft is a bit early to pigeonhole it.  Remember, just let it take on its own life, or what's it all for? "We find magic everywhere" - Dar Williams.

6/5/00   I gave myself last night off to watch the Tonys.  Earlier in the day I went to a service at a Baptist church in Flushing, Queens.  (Character research.) I was the only white person in the room. It was really beautiful. A couple of times during the service everyone went aroundand hugged everyone, shook their hands, said "God bless you," that sort of thing.  The service went on for three hours though! I wasn't expecting that.  There was a lot to absorb. Before dinner I surfed a little and found a great web site with hundreds of hymns, including lyrics, sound files, dates of writing (I'm looking for stuff in the public domain for my play) and also information about the composers. I think this site is going to be a big help. And I got a couple more pages done tonight; I think it's up to about 20 so far, which means atthis pace I should have a first act within a couple of weeks.  I find myself worrying about whether it's going anywhere yet, or is it just people talking?  Am I imposing things on them, or is it a natural progression? Of course I won't know this till I hear actors read it,and maybe not even then, and I don't want to hear it till I've finished a full draft.  I need to do some more thinking about the characters, so they become more layered and their motivations and thoughts are clearer.  That's always one of the toughest parts of writing: creating whole, textured PEOPLE.  But what fun when they become fleshed out!

6/23/00   Last night was my first productive evening in over a week.A few nights ago, I reworked the synopsis a bit but I was still feeling stuck and really tired when I started to work last night.  Nevertheless, I stayed at the keyboard and bounced a few ideas off Larry, then I was on track.I have about half of Act One and a few bits of Act Two, but more importantly, I am finally getting a sense of the direction in which this once-amorphous beast is heading. It's also been distracting fostering Katie the kitten (now called Svetlana) this week.  She keeps throwing around the litter.  The place is a mess but tomorrow she'll be settled in a good new home, thank heaven.  Today I spoke with Arlene and we set a date to have a table reading in mid-August.  Now I have more tangible goals to work with, which feels great (and forces me to push on.)  I've finally gotten into reading the book WHEN HARLEM WAS IN VOGUE which is very interesting.

6/26/00   I had a REALLY productive writing session last night! I'm still excited about it. I moved some things around and then had to rework others to have it make sense.  I think it works much better since I shifted the order of entrances. I've got about 2/3 of a first act now.I have a good idea about how to start the second act as well.  It's a bit of a teaser, and it'll be great if it works. Clary really started talking tonight, and I was surprised to find she's going to have a monologue before her song. I'm still searching for a good song. I may have some pieces which are in public domain.  At least on the CD there are no copyrights listed.  I'm feeling great about the piece right now.  I printed it out today but don't want to read through it yet.  Was thinking about asking Larry and Arlene to read it again, but I'll wait till I finish a draft of the full first act.  With any luck, that'll be done by the weekend.

7/3/00   I'm feeling like a million bucks because I finished a draft of Act One! And I don't think it totally sucks.Which from me this early, is a ringing endorsement.  I think the hardest thing for me to get used to when writing a play is that the first few drafts will be nothing like what I want to say, no matter how much preparation I do.  After dinner I watched a winderful “Inside The Actors Studio” with Kevin Spacey.  It was truly inspirational. I said to my husband that the best actors illuminate the human condition. I wonder what the best playwrights do? I suppose the same thing. Whatever it is, I want to do it. Onward to Act Two...I've got about six pages so far.

7/11/00   Well, onward. I was wrestling with Act II last night and this morning, I think I got an inkling of WHY Clary really wants to convert. Judaism makes her feel pure and clean like nothing in her religion of birth ever has.  Ruby Mae keeps telling her she's a sinner and she's going to hell. Judaism is redemptive to Clary.  Clary's saying this helps her and Esther connect because Esther then talks about her feelings of loving God, really understanding and loving Him, for the first time, while witnessing her older brother's Bar Mitzvah.  Problem is, I feel what I'm trying to say better than I can say it.  But the characters don't have that problem, they're very articulate, thank goddess! Larry read the first act yesterday and said it moves well, which is a relief.  Because I was worried it was all talk, talk, talk. But then, I always worry about that. I plotted out Act II (very roughly) in my journal this morning.  As of now, Claude DOES NOT comeback in Act II. But we'll see. He may change his mind on me.  They do that.

7/13/00   After a good long talk with Arlene yesterday, I had a whole new structure mapped out. I worked on shifting around chunks of dialogue for two hours last night and it's going to take me awhile longer.  But I'm pretty jazzed about it.  I can't wait to write, which is a great feeling!  We discovered that Esther is not Orthodox but rather Conservative.  At that time they would certainly have been the more inclusive sect.  The emotional truth of the piece is beginning to become much clearer to me now. I feel emotional truth and psychological sense are crucial to my work.  I've also put a little more thought into future goals.  Thanks to Larry, I also got hold of the Yeats play I've been wanting to read in preparation for my collaboration with Betsy. I've decided to put off  WHEELIES till after the summer.  After the draft of CLARY'S is completed, I'm going to focus on the screenplay adaptation of BELLES for awhile.  Whew! And to think I once believed I'd run out of ideas...

7/18/00   Well, I'm finally able to use the laptop again after two  nights of problems. Of course, I also procrastinated with watching movies, but tomorrow I'll get in a good night's  work before going to Falcon Ridge this weekend. I've been feeling pretty tired lately; I think frustration makes you exhausted! Anyway, this past weekend I did rework the  first act and fixed about half of the third (final) act.  It does seem that it'll work better.  Plugging through the  first draft is sometimes the hardest part of playwriting.  Then again, table readings can also be agony. I remember sitting through the first read-through of BELLES and just  wincing...This weekend will really help me recharge. I  plan to bang my bodhran, sing along loudly at song circles,  and dance with abandon! The weekend hippie in me is having one of her annual resurrections...and then there's the freezing swimming hole at the waterfall to look forward  to...I'm feeling more in sync just thinking about it!

7/27/00   I had a wonderful time last weekend, but it took a couple of nights to recover sleep-wise. I was nodding off at the keyboard, which is VERY frustrating! But I can't let  myself forget it was all worth it.  Since I was struggling  with the second act, even though I think I have a pretty clear idea of what's going on, I turned my attention to  the second half of Act Three last night. And it worked. I sat down at 8:00 and by 11:00 I had a last scene!  Of  course, I woke up this morning with half a dozen changes I need to make...But I won't lose them, they're all in my journal. Also, finishing this scene has informed my previous writing, so I'm now hearing a more conflict-driven ending for the first act. There's a good energy going now, a momentum. Hopefully I can carry it through the weekend and finish the first draft - the hardest part.  I already have some thoughts on where to go with the rewrites - for one thing, Clary's got to be a lot earthier - but I mustn't get ahead of myself.  I have a hole in the middle.  Oh, well, Shaw wrote his plays backwards, and he did pretty well. I'm sure I'll be able to color in the center of the paper, like the little girl in Quintero's book.  Come to think of it, I'm surprised I've written in sequence for this long!  Oh, and tonight I get to hear Dar's new album on the radio for the first time...yahoo! 

7/31/00   I FINISHED A FIRST DRAFT LAST NIGHT!  The second act isn't long enough yet, and Ruby Mae doesn't have a chance to speak her piece yet, but I still feel great!  And I think I'm starting to get a handle on the central question of the play, thanks in part to talking to Mariann about Sam, and to free-associating in my journal this morning. (Gotta love those Artists Way exercises!)  Which brought me to ponder the question: how does one walk the fine line between accepting one's fate (NOT pre-destiny, I don't believe that) and fighting against what seems like fate in order to get what you should?  What does Clary feel about this?  What about Phoebe?  Ruby Mae? Esther?  Claude? How does each of their approaches to this question manifest itself in their actions? Food for thought, I hope... And I have a table reading in two weeks!

8/8/00   Tonight I finally lined up an actress to read Ruby Mae. Now the cast is complete for next week's table reading. I did a little bit of work on Act I,Scene 1 tonight but now I think I'll let it be till next week. I really need to hear the script before I make any more major changes.  Or even minor ones. Happily, I've been able to line up a staged reading for mid-November and will probably be able to have a second one (in New Jersey) in early December.  The work I do the rest of the week will probably be on the BELLES screenplay and preparing to direct DANCING WITH THE BAD MAN.  Those will be welcome diversions! Larry and I have also been working on setting up my new website. It's almost ready to be launched, and it'll have a much more comprehensible address.

8/16/00  Whew.  Got through the first reading.  It went much more smoothly than I expected.  A lot of the things I hoped  would work, seem to work. Some better than I could have  dared hope. The first scene with Phoebe and Esther is  absolutely HILARIOUS! We were all in stitches, even the  teenager reading Phoebe.  I couldn't believe it.  And the  second scene with Clary and Claude is so poignant, it's almost TOO heavy.  But then it did take on its own life,  and that's what we hope for, isn't it?  The actors who  were kind enough to donate their time to read for me were all first-rate.  We got a bit of a late start. I did hear a few places where I'd moved lines from one spot to another  and neglected to delete them from the original place, so  there were maybe two or three instances of a character  saying almost exactly the same thing in the same way.   I changed the structure to a two-act play: the first act  is set in September and the second in December, so the  passage of time works quite well too. The actors said they  felt the characters were all very clear and differentiated  and real, and that the stakes were high for all of them. I woke up in the middle of the night when I heard a huge thunderclap, and then thunderclaps started going off inside my brain.  I got all kinds of editing ideas and I could  hardly get back to sleep for the thoughts.  Since I've already got some requests for the script, I want to have a cleaned-up version to mail out tomorrow. Which should be doable, as I plan to make the cosmetic changes tonight and then clarify what needs clarifying in a couple of days.  This coming weekend I'm going up to the original Woodstock  festival site to reconnect again. Meanwhile, I can't  wait to get home from work and hit the laptop!   

As I was talking with Arlene after the reading, I commented that it  seemed to me that this play would be more of a hard sell than I'd anticipated. I think reading it, the religious commentary and lessons seem to come across more forcefully than they do in the context of the whole piece.  So even though I made an effort to write  a more "practical" play, it still has some strikes against it.  So  be it.  It's the play I had to write. If I am not for myself, who  will be for me?  And I realized that Clary's exodus has as much to do  with her self-realization, her growing up, if you will, as it does with her spiritual journey.  Esther brings both Clary and Phoebe a new sense of their own potential.  She gives them each hope and a feeling of power.  She shows them that they have options.  Because she's content with herself.  So although she's the most traditional  character in the play, she's also the most grounded.  I wonder what  that means?

8/28/00   Well, I've taken a break to get my directing project on the road.  After this week's rehearsals I plan to take a long, hard look at the remaining fixes I need to make.   I made a bunch of small-to-medium ones the first couple of nights after the table reading. I feel comfortable enough to send out the script if it's requested, but I want to get it in stronger shape still.  We're scheduling  a staged reading at New Jersey Repertory in mid-November  and I really want to knock their socks off. I'm also trying to find a partner theatre to apply for a grant with me, to develop the piece. It's right up the alley of the grantor, National Foundation for Jewish Culture, but you have to apply as a team.  And I don't have much time to find a theatre, as the application is due October 11.  I guess the best thing to do is get all my paperwork ready,  which is the majority of the application, and keep on sending out inquiries. It has to be somewhere in the tri-state/New England/DC area, because I want to have  a hand in it and would hope that Arlene could as well. I've begun by contacting theatres who express particular  focus on work relating to women, Jewish, or African  American themes.  I've never done anything quite like this  before (grant-hunting, that is) so it'll be a good-for-me experience even if nothing pans out.  

© 2001 Rachel Rubin Ladutke

RACHEL RUBIN LADUTKE,  Playwright
New play in process.

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Winter 2001