Rachael Carnes (RC) Hi Donna! Thanks so much for connecting. How the heck are you? We’re both writers and we’re also juggling the needs of kids or grown-up kids at home. How’s that all going? If I write half a page, I feel like a rockstar these days! How has Covid created obstacles for you? Any surprising new developments in your creative practice?
Donna Hoke (DH) Ahhhh… yes. I went from getting ready to put the house on the market and be a full-time-ish writer with a half-empty nest to having all four kids at home and being convinced to get a kitten for everybody’s mental health. So to say there is very little me time is an understatement. In fact, I think I’m the only one in the house who doesn’t have a way to find productive escape. That said, we are doing just fine. We have food and means and health insurance and each other and we are mindful of and grateful for that.
And THAT said, I’m still a writer and want to write! For the first month or so, I was in a fog, but I committed to writing a play on my blog and sharing the process. That forced me to write about three pages a week because I knew people were expecting the next post (there are about 500 people following quietly as I know from Google Analytics lol) and lo! I finished a play. I’d chosen this one because of all my works in progress–which literally included a play about a family trapped inside during a virus–it was a comedy and I felt like maybe that’s something people would want to read. And I also felt comfortable sharing the process because it was a lark of a play.
Once the fog kind of lifted, I dusted off a one-person show and that’s the next thing I want to finish. And I have two little commissions for Buffalo companies I’m working on. My days are kind of back to routine, but I’m still interrupted constantly and I write best in an empty house so it’s an ongoing challenge. And maybe the biggest challenge is that I can’t seem to convince myself that there’s no rush, because there really isn’t. But I’m a workaholic so I don’t believe myself when I say it.
RC: I feel the need for an empty house to get writing done. That’s been my routine for a while, to write in the early mornings, when everyone’s asleep. But since Covid, wow, we all seem to be just around all the time! I leaned into the Baby Animal panacea, too, procuring a baby kitten and a new puppy. Maybe that’s why my mornings aren’t quiet anymore? Ha. At least I wake now to cute puppy energy and playful kitten goofiness instead of the dread I’d been experiencing.
I echo your gratitude: A comfortable home, a big backyard, food on the table, simply having company, all these things are simple gifts that I appreciate every day. But there’s still this moment each day, where the totality of our collective losses, the insanity of our political moments and this conjoined pandemic sink in, and it’s hard to shake it. The puppy helps.
With theatres shuttered, the art form can feel a little like it’s in suspended animation, yet development continues. I feel really busy with collaborations and projects. Are you writing for now – Zoom theatre stuff – Or for when we can get back on stages, or both? How do you feel about Zoom Life, as a new medium? I’m embracing it, but gosh, I miss being in theatres!
DH: Yes, we probably talk about COVID every night at dinner in some capacity–but this is probably the longest string of family dinners we’ve had since the kids were much younger. I also haven’t traveled in four months after having been gone once or twice a month for the past several years. And everybody seems to go through their down phases at different times. I think we’re all looking forward to the kitten, but need to get the other cat on a stricter food schedule first–step one of the Jackson Galaxy introduce-a-new-cat plan!
But yes, I am really busy! The magazine I work for has resumed printing so I have that work again. My crosswords for Soap Opera Digest never stopped. I’ve had private crossword clients, as well as people wanting script feedback, even now. Then my own work. But it feels like ten times more than usual because I never have steady-state time to work. I also share an office with my one daughter, so there’s no real alone time. If I could get up early, that would be great, but we are all night people and with everyone here, we naturally gravitate toward a later schedule. Getting to bed at midnight is early and, of course, because there’s no real reason to get up. I’ve been getting a full eight hours every night. Oddly, that has affected my ability to fall asleep, which is frustrating because I’ve never had that problem.
I have not written a single Zoom-specific thing and that hasn’t seemed to affect my busy-ness. I’m not a super fast adapter prolific writer and I do feel like Zoom plays are temporary. I think Zoom will remain for developing work, and maybe streaming for those who can’t get to theater, but I just can’t believe it’s ever going to be the preferred art form. I’ve had quite a few Zoom readings since this all started, and attended quite a few as well, and they are of varying quality. The “production” I had recently was a nice use of the platform but, again, that play wasn’t written specifically for Zoom.
The two commissions I have are both alternate ideas–one a five-minute monologue that will be filmed and released in a unit with fourteen others. The other is an audio play and I really got into that. Audio is such a different medium, more related to screenwriting actually, so there’s a lot of freedom and you have to move more quickly; my ten-minute play has seven scenes which I feel is necessary to keep listener attention but also works because there’s no down time for scene transitions. I’ve listened to a lot of them and so many are just ten minutes of dialogue and they’re not as dynamic; it feels like a wasted opportunity. I have a meeting Monday about a larger, ongoing audio project and I hope it happens because I’m really excited about it. I’m much more excited about audio as the medium of this era than Zoom–and it also seems longer lasting, because podcasts are still on the rise. Have you tried it at all?
RC: I have attempted audio plays; I have one that’s a longer one-act, and a few shorter pieces. One was a stage play that I adapted for radio. My writing is often very physical, like, weird crazy action built into the dialogue; I think it comes from my years as a dancer/choreographer. I’m expressive/bossy about designing the physicalized play, so audio is an interesting format. My short play “In Training” is written for a dark theatre –like, pitch black– and it’s going to be shared via audio podcast soon. I love listening to audio plays, but it’s not a space I’ve written for much.
I hear you on the Zoom play phenomenon. I’m grateful for real-time collaboration, and I do enjoy how distances and time zones are melting. I’ve written some short plays and monologues for the Zoom platform, and I’ve been having fun redeveloping a couple of plays for the stage, for Zoom/webisodes. I took a course through the Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop recently, in screenwriting and dramatic writing, and it piqued my interest to learn more about teleplays, another genre I know nothing about! Like everything in this art form, I get curious, and then try to learn more.
Your busy home sounds a lot like ours. I’m never alone! I miss having new experiences and meeting new people… I traveled almost six weeks for playwriting last year: NYC twice, Cleveland, Kansas City, Los Angeles, twice, Nashville (Sewanee), Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New Haven, even Cambridge U.K. – When both our plays were given a reading, and I decided to make it a holiday! Gosh, I miss travel. Now I feel excited when I go to the grocery store.
The commissions you’re working on sound cool! What are the projects, and what’s it like making theatre in Buffalo?
DH: I’m grateful for the ability to collaborate nationally as well. My recent virtual HEARTS OF STONE had people from Oregon, Michigan, Kentucky, New York State, North Carolina–that was really cool. For a reading of BRILLIANT WORKS OF ART, I was able to put together actors who had previously done it even though they were in different locations. I’m glad people still want my name in the mix, and I love the democracy of theaters using NPX to enable direct negotiation with playwrights. But I don’t want to do it forever.
I miss traveling, too, because I felt more like a working playwright. I think I made 18 trips in 2019 and ten of them were to New York. It’s an easy flight from here; I’ve actually gone back and forth in one day before. When COVID hit, I was two days from leaving for France for a ten-day writers’ retreat with other playwrights, which would have been big for me as I haven’t been out of the country except Canada (which is in my backyard) since I worked for a travel magazine in my twenties. I decided two days before not to go and about half still went and were there when things got crazy. I also had a month-long residency in Hamilton, NY that got canceled and a Screenwriting for Playwrights residency that hopefully is just postponed. Attending conferences isn’t the same online. But… I’m taking the pause. The travel part of traveling is a drag and some things have been just as effective online.
DH (con’t) On the flip side, the availability of stuff that wasn’t in a pre-COVID world is cool. I drop in on DG events all over. I’m taking a class with Primary Stages. I want to take advantage of that stuff while it lasts, though I suspect online DG events may be the wave of the future because attendance is so much better!
So the commissions are from two theaters in Buffalo who are trying to put together alternate-to-live programming for the upcoming season. Alleyway commissioned fifteen playwrights to write five-minute monologues based at locations in Buffalo and they are working with a film studio to film them all; they’ll be put together under the title CURRENTS: 716 and streamed 11 times over a normal run course, and people can choose a time to watch and there’s a sliding ticket price. The other (and this isn’t public until September 1 so I don’t know when this will be on your website so I won’t name the theater) theater commissioned six playwrights to write ten-minute audio plays under a specific theme that aligns with something they did live before. Those will be released to their podcast in November. (If you want to hear my table read, we’re doing it Wednesday at 7:00 EST, and I can give you a Zoom link; it shouldn’t take too long.)
Buffalo is a tough place to be a playwright. We have no regional theater, no MFA program in anything let alone playwriting (The first acting MFA will begin in fall 2021) despite having a zillion colleges, no nationally recognized development program, no theater-led workshops, very little commissioning of full-length work. All of that means we don’t really get new blood or new work, so while the theater community is active, it’s not vibrant, not dynamic. A lot of familiar things based on what people want to act in or direct. “New” most often means most recently from New York rather than developed and created in Buffalo.
I think I’ve made the best of it, though, and also been lucky, probably luckier than most. I love my theater community. I have so many artists who are willing to help me develop things, even if they don’t get produced here. I’m on the Artie committee. I’m the theater writer for Buffalo Spree. I became involved with the Guild by repping this region. And, because there was a time when Road Less Traveled Productions did have a workshop, that’s how I got my start when they gave me first-ever production in 2010. Since then, RLTP has produced two more of my plays and a fourth is postponed to November 2021. I had ten-minutes in festivals at Subversive, seven times at Alleyway, and four times at Buffalo United Artists, where I founded BUA Takes Ten: GLBT Short Stories. The AD at BUA asked if I could expand one of those tens to a full-length and he produced my first full-length in Buffalo outside of RLTP. I had a commission from an ex-pat in San Jose to write ONCE IN MY LIFETIME: A Buffalo Football Fantasy, which he produced here. And I had a commission to write PAST MIDNIGHT: A Visit With Larry and Viv, which is supposed to be produced September 2021.
But it also took a long time for things like that to start happening. Networking, visibility, community building, service, and probably the fact that I didn’t wait for Buffalo to produce me, which is what I try to tell all the playwrights here: there’s a whole world out there. Even if you do get produced in Buffalo, you could wait a long time before the next opportunity comes along. Don’t wait for it. I know you know what I mean because you get produced everywhere. On the other hand, you also get a lot of action in Oregon, but you have a much more dynamic and arts-centered theater environment there it seems.
Even if I could move, at this point, I doubt I would. I’ve talked to a lot of people in New York and they agree that at this stage of my career, it probably wouldn’t help me much to be there. The move toward curated rental and self-production is probably not one in which I’d rise up. There is also a part of me that feels like I started this so late and I’m so grateful for any successes I’ve had because, as I said, even with any potential gender, age, or geographical limitations, I’ve gotten to do a LOT, certainly more than some people without any of those and I’m so grateful for it. If anything, I wish I’d started in the days of snail mail submissions, when you actually could get discovered sending something over the transom. I totally have the stamina for all those post-office visits! But all I really want now is to be able to write more-or-less full-time but that’s on hold until post-COVID.
What about you? What are the goals you have?
RC: As I was reading your response, I was nodding my head ‘yes’ to so much of it. We’re on a similar path, though I just started the journey a few years later than you. Late in life, though (46?) to embark on a new art form. I can’t complain. It’s been fun to land where I do, whether a festival or conference or production wherever. I just try to enjoy it all. When I get weird, when I feel pressure to do this, that or the other, it stops being fun. I try to stay in a mindset that allows for opportunity and shakes it off when they don’t come. (Because, even though I’ve had my share of ‘hits’ – of course that comes with many times more rejections. That’s just the deal!)
My goals during Covid? I dunno. Get through the day? The week? The month. Supporting the family is a challenge. I feel like we’ve gone back in time. I find myself cooking, cleaning up, taking care of custodial and community duties, way more, like when my kids were small. My husband is great, does a lot, it’s just – with all of us home 24/7 – the kitchen, the bathrooms, the spaces are always in a state of entropy. It’s kinda getting to me, does it show? Haha (Welp.)
Artistically, I am grateful for development opportunities that can still continue now, over Zoom. My play WINDBERRY CREEK – you read the first draft last fall – continues to grow and be nurtured by one different theatres. That’s been so helpful, because for that one or two-week time, my mind can focus in on a deeper, wider process. Covid is tricky. Living with constant health and safety issues, the economic pressures that the disease creates (I just got laid off), plus this dysfunction, high-stakes political gambit, are pulling focus away from my work. I still write everyday, but I don’t find I can drop right into the frequency that writes these big, weird, dense, full-length plays. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe in my exhaustion and anxiety, I’ll finally write something more produceable!
Big Picture, like you, I want to write. I want to be paid to write, or to be in a creative team of writers, developing a show or a film. Earlier in Covid, I started writing a novel, but it’s terrible. I was boring myself. I do better with dialogue than purply prose.
RE the post office, same. I miss the fellas who work at my shipping store. We had big philosophical chats. I hope they’re okay.
When you look back on this year, say, five years from now, how do you think Covid and quarantine will have influenced your creative practice?
DH: I didn’t necessarily mean COVID goals, but writing goals. What you want to do or try or aim for. I’d been working toward the writer-life goal for a while but that’s on hold. I always have such a list of projects I want to work on.
My husband has been doing a lot because he’s actually not working (he’s a Philharmonic musician so he’s literally doing nothing, and, as I said before, I’m a workaholic so he’s been doing a lot of cooking etc.) But I have never been someone who writes every day because I’m always being pulled away and because I write best in an empty house. You are so insanely prolific that I just marvel; in the short time you’ve been writing plays, your body of work is insane and you’ve had so many successes, which is just amazing and I feel like they just keep coming. Plus you do such amazing service as well; I don’t know how you do it all!
Given that during this time, I can’t be too picky, I hope that I can learn to write with more distraction. Be more disciplined about getting things done on a timeline. I had someone off NPX ask me if I had any screenplays and writing one has been on my to-do list forever so I’d love to do that; I think I have a play idea that might make a better screenplay… So many ideas, so little time…
A lot of my plays stem from presenting those kinds of challenges to myself. I wanted to write a two-hander and that was FLOWERS IN THE DESERT. I wanted to write a play in real time and that was THE WAY IT IS. I wanted to have a Christmas play and try to write a comedy so I wrote CHRISTMAS 2.0. I wanted to write an all-female cast play and that was FOUR DOORS DOWN. I wanted to write a TYA play so I adapted MEET ME AT THE GATES, MARCUS JAMES. Then I wanted to write a classic adaptation so I wrote LITTLE WOMEN… NOW. I want to write a screenplay so… I feel like giving myself those challenges forces me to write in a different way and learn something new but I also feel like they give me a fresh approach.
Which ideas do you tend to grab?
RC: I love how you’re leaning into trying these different projects! I’ve been curious about teleplays and screenplays, too. Right now, I think the most satisfying thing, the thing that makes me forget I’m in a Zoom meeting, is collaborating with creative teams on full-length stuff. I’ve cranked out a lot of plays, and generally prefer to crack into a fresh project, but Covid is shaving down my time and energy. So, Covid and creative goals are kinda combined right now, or at least related, because I feel like I have to help my family be more or less okay, and then I can write. And there are some days, when getting to “okay” is just a longer distance.
When we get to the other side of this pandemic, what will you want to retain, in your artistic practice? And what would you like to forget?
DH: If I ever attain it, I’d like to retain an ability to work in any environment. But today, I was trying to do revisions on a play and I kept getting interrupted and I was so frustrated and ready to cry. Like I just wanted to check into a hotel room and catch up. So I haven’t even yet reached the thing I want to attain lol.
I hope that a project I’m starting soon will continue. I hope that learning new skills for audio and screen plays remain useful. I hope I retain the relationships I’ve made with new theaters. And I hope I retain the memory that things don’t have to be urgent. The things I want to forget are all things beyond any artistic practice–the anxiety and stress and sadness mostly. I did read that people who live through collective trauma like this rarely retain the symptoms of it, so that’s hopeful. Unfortunately, that still makes us among the fortunate ones.
RC: Yeah, the adaptability to environmental shifts is so resonant with me. Revisions require a lot of focus, to hold all those threads and complete edits in that creative cognitive space. Interruptions kill that flow and are exhausting. That’s why I’m shying away from bigger projects right now – With everyone home all the time, I can develop existing work with teams, but I don’t have the attention to think Big which is what I need to write a first draft of a new longer work. I don’t know when the house will ever be quiet again! 2022? 2023? Waaaaaa
Like you, I’m focusing on gratitude: My home is a sanctuary right now. (A noisy sanctuary, full of kids and pets!) But I’ve never appreciated our space, and our backyard, more than I do now. I’m grateful for food on the table, for my family’s health. Stress and sadness is real, and I’ve hit deep pockets of both. The puppy’s MVP in my life, he knows his little job is to keep me smiling.
Maybe last question?
What’s giving you hope, inspiration and energy right now?
DH: Hope… that our numbers here are still pretty low, so I feel like people are trying? And also that even Fauci says a vaccine is sooner than we might have thought. I don’t dare hope for the election results I want. I’m inspired by the new projects I have going, even the little ones. The actor I wanted for my monologue project just accepted so that’s just a little bump; I can’t wait to see what he does with it. And energy? Honestly, probably just the fact that once my sleep settled down, I’ve been able to get eight hours of sleep a night. That’s probably giving me more energy than I know because I can’t remember the last time I had that kind of consistency. You?
RC: Happy for your monologue project! Yeah, those little moments feel uplifting. A short play reading, a new connection. I think I’m going to focus on Zoom plays with commercial appeal, for kids. So many kids at home – But they still need theatre.
My biggest inspiration is my kids. They’re losing more than me. Not starting High School? Not going away to college? Can’t see friends? This pandemic is hardest on younger people, and yet my kids have continued to inspire me with their resilience. And when anyone’s having a hard day, there’s always the puppy or the kitten or the puppy AND the kitten.
The baby animals are really pulling their weight. They’re getting us through.