Some of the most thoughtful discussion of art I have ever read was in Calvin and Hobbes.
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WORD OF THE DAY
Izzat
Part of speech: noun
Origin: Arabic, unknown date
1 - Honor, reputation, or prestige.
Examples of Izzat in a sentence
"The new president’s experience increased the izzat of the nonprofit organization."
"The diplomatic relationship has a great deal of izzat on both sides."
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I have frequently heard “Izzat” used differently.
Example of Izzat in a sentence
“Izzat George over there by the coffee shop?
Spending the week being “Nanny” for two of my granddaughters, while my daughter works. Not sure whether to give them tranquilizers or give myself a five hour energy. Or both.
I used to run a playwrights' workshop. The pandemic has ended that, at least for the time being. I have, as a result, developed a reputation of being a very good early reader of work in progress scripts. I have a short bullet point list of advice for new playwrights.
1) Write that first autobiographical script to get it out of your system then put it in a drawer. It's boring, nobody wants to read it, and really, truly, please believe this part, nobody will ever, ever, ever produce it.
2) If you still believe that your life would make a great play, do not make yourself the protagonist of your autobiographical story, tell it from someone else's point of view. The trap most people fall into is making themselves too good to be true.
3) Never, ever, ever, ever, ever start an onstage conversation with the words "Remember when". NO!!!!
4) This bit is not original with me, but don't start your play at the beginning, start in the middle. If it helps you to get started writing, go ahead and write the beginning, then cut it.
5) Sometimes you write a great line that ends up not working in this play. If you have to edit it out, save it for another play.
6) The difference between playwrights that are ever going to be good and those that will flounder, unproduced, in writing workshops forever is being able to recognize the crap, especially when it's yours. If you can't edit, you'll never be any good. You have got to cut out the crap.
7) Every play could use an edit. Every single one. No play is perfect. (My brother once asked, "Aren't you finished with that play yet?" I responded with, "Finished? No, I'll never be finished. But I will reach a point where I stop working on it.")
And the last bit of advice isn't so much about the writing process but the producing process. By all means go ahead and write the epic that requires 30 actors and multiple scene changes, but don't expect it to be produced. If you want to be produced, spend a little time thinking about (the non-existent) theater budgets.
...not to be confused with Watto.
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The discussion of art made me think about that list. Number 6 in particular - the difference between good and mediocre playwrights. I could always tell the very first time a playwright brought in a revision if they had what it took to write a play that might someday be produced.
It’s harder to fool people with bad writing. Art critics, experts and collectors have been had plenty by fakes and forgeries and fads. That being said, plenty of writing critics have not recognized genius when it was there job to do just that - and there are lots of sparse or grammar agnostic writing styles that I don’t enjoy. Cormac McCarthy comes to mind.
One of my “aha” moments for how I think about and appreciate art was seeing an early works of Picasso exhibition in Barcelona. He’d been taught in the classical and naturalism tradition and by the time he was in his teens was producing amazing works in those styles. He could do anything he wanted on canvas but chose the radical exploration that he’s most known for - really boundary pushing stuff for the time. It’s not for me but it really brought home his genius for me for the first time in a real way.
It’s fun to discuss but I’m weary of critical expertise accompanied with pretension.
This post and BostonDevils post are exceptional. This is why I come back here every day. The truly transcendent talents are so incandescent that people frequently can't appreciate them in real time. Because it upsets orthodoxy it has a tendency to be perceived as lesser than the more traditional works of the day, when in reality it is a paradigm shift that isn't recognized until later when the ability to understand the genius catches up to the artists abilities.