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Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

cdeemer@yahoo.com.

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

Practical Screenwriting

Love At Ground Zero

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FAUST MOVES INTO THE THEATER

In 'production' language, last night was" Faust's" 'run-through'. It's a
pivotal event in a production's journey from concept to stage. The
moment, after weeks and weeks of rehearsals, rehearsals in the morning,
rehearsals in the afternoon, and rehearsals in the evening, after all
those weeks, the moment to run it completely through without a stop. It's
the first real look at what we've got. And, if last night's run-through
was any indication, we've got something very special for you with this
"Faust".

There's a powerful raw quality about a run-through. A rehearsal hall is
not a particularly spectacular place, at least compared to an actual
performance. There's no special lighting. No full costumes. No
orchestra. No sets. Instead, a mighty pianist, a few props, set pieces
that fit in the room, a shawl to hint at the costumes. The director and
production team sit at a table, taking notes. People cluster around the
door. A few others are seated in the corner. The General Director has
squeezed in behind the production table. Perched high above it all, the
conductor.

And the cast.

When Maureen O'Flynn mounted the platform in the final scene-as Marguerite
she's bereft, broken, and about to be hung-and joined Bulent Bezduz
(Faust) and Mark Doss (Mephistopheles) in one of the most powerful trios
in all of opera, the rehearsal world stopped. Pens at the production
table froze. No one moved. People outside in the hall gathered at the
door to listen. And when the 50-strong chorus builds, their voices
gathering steadily into the most majestic of all choruses, Marguerite (and
each of every one of us) was transported instantly to heaven.

When the invisible curtain dropped, in that moment in which you'd expect
an explosion of applause, there was instead awestruck silence. And, if
you looked closely around the room, a tear or two as well. And only then,
seemingly minutes later, riotous applause for the cast and chorus from a
very special audience-their colleagues.

Slowly, the "real" world returned. Notebooks, laptops, coffee cups all
gathered up and people dispersed into the night.

We move now into the Keller Auditorium, where we'll put the remaining
pieces together, the final polish. The sets, costumes, props. Tech the
lighting. And have everything ready for you when we open the season on
November 4. But you'll have to bring the hankies.

• Whiskey Bar
  
• Der Bilbao Song
  

Key "firsts" (by age) in writing career:

• 19, first publication, Mathematics Magazine (a number theory problem)
  
• 28, first writing award, Haycox Short Story Prize
  
• 29, first story published, "The Scrapbook" in Northwest Review
  
• 30, first play produced, "Above the Fire," award-winner, University of Missouri
  
• 31, MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon, Shubert Playwriting Fellow
  
• 38, first performance of "Ramblin': the songs and stories of Woody Guthrie"
  
• 44, first theatre residency, Playwright-in-residence, New Rose Theatre
  
• 45, first book published, Christmas at the Juniper Tavern
  
• 45, first TV production, Christmas at the Juniper Tavern, ACE award
  
• 46, first screenplay optioned, "Ruby's Tune" (based on my play "Waitresses")
  
• 48, first school residency, Distinguished-Writer-in-Residence, The Catlin Gabel School
  
• 58, begin teaching screenwriting at Portland State University
  
• 63, first opera libretto, "Dark Mission" (for John Nugent)
  
• 65, begin Oregon Literary Review
  

Oregon woman given DUI while picking up friend arrested for same

The Associated Press

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. - When Amy Parks was arrested for drunken driving on Friday night, she called a friend to come pick her up at the Lincoln City Police Department.

But the friend, Louanna Foster, didn't make it there as planned.

Instead of showing up in her Ford Taurus, Foster, 43, arrived in police custody after being arrested for drunken driving about two miles from the location where Parks, 48, was arrested.

After both Lincoln City women submitted breath tests, they were released to a sober driver, police said.

Strokes
We all need strokes and probably most of us don't get as many as we need. There are two kinds of strokes: the expected and the surprise. When we do a good job and know it, we expect a certain amount of positive commentary. Sometimes, of course, we get the opposite, as in a bad theater review. We expect strokes from friends and family who support us.

But the best strokes, I think, come unexpectedly. I don't get fan mail often but when I do, I love it. Somebody reads something that really moves him and lets me know.

A while back I was at a gathering at Mt. Hood Community College and ran into one of the members of General Strike, a folk group that does union songs. I'd engaged them to perform with me a Labor Day tribute to the Wobblies at the Unitarian Church a few years back. During our conversation, I mentioned how much I liked working with them on that gig -- and she surprised me by saying that the highlight of the performance for her was my rendition of The Miner's Lifeguard. What a nice unexpected stroke!

This happens to be my favorite union song, which I learned on the classic album of union songs by The Almanac Singers. I suppose I'll remember the lyrics till the day I die. Five years ago, in LA for a friend's 70th birthday party, we picked up guitars at night and played together as we used to in the 60s. One of his showcase songs was the hymn from which the tune to the union song was taken, so after he did his lyrics, I began the union lyrics. It was a great moment, all of us singing together like in the old days. Through the 60s we got together most weekends for singing potlucks and partying.

Another stroke moment I'll never forget happened at blackout of my early play Country Northwestern. "This play has balls!" somebody spontaneously shouted. How can you not love a compliment like that?

I get fewer strokes than I used to but I don't think I need them as much. Not that they aren't nice when I get them. But my writing is really in the margins compared to where it used to be. I appreciate any kind word that drifts my way.

I also like to return the favor. I'm big on letting young talented writers know how talented they are: Julie Mae Madsen and Dan Trujillo most recently. Writers need to know folks care about what they are doing. This is what is wrong with "development" in Hollywood and in theater now: the vision of the artist plays second fiddle to other demands. I was so damn fortunate in the 1980s to be playwright-in-residence at two different companies that let me do whatever the hell I wanted to do -- and then produced it. That's what it should be about. You don't see that open-ended support of artists as much as you used to. Part of the emergence of Homo Consumerus dancing to the Corporate Music. I'm glad I'm an old fart and not a young artist starting out. I used to think the Internet would level the playing field but I see the corporations are taking it over. Homo Consumerus marches on.

Give an artist a stroke today. S/he will appreciate it.

"One more thing, and I'll shut up. Sure, we want answers. But what's to be done out there? Kierkegaard said that there are two ways: to suffer; or to be a professor of the fact that someone else suffers. In my humble opinion, we've got too many fucking professors. Sorry for the f-word, lady." (from The Half-Life Conspiracy)

"You get to be my age, you look back for what went wrong. What happened to the traditional American values? You used to go out and work hard for what you wanted. You used to get married for life.

"Well, I fault ourselves. I fault the kind of parents we became. We tried to save our kids from going through all the hardships we went through, and that was a mistake. We had the experience of standing in soup lines during the Great Depression, of being bombed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor — you don't forget experiences like that. They become rooted in the fabric of your being. Because those experiences are clear, they are without ambiguity.

"When a foreign country makes a surprise attack and sinks your navy, you don't get lost in rhetoric about whether war is right or wrong — you roll up your sleeves and get to work. You do what has to be done to defend your country. Everybody pitches in and works together as one big American family.

"Maybe you have to suffer to learn these things, and when parents of my generation started protecting their children from going through the hard times that we went through, we ended up doing them a disservice. We spoiled them, is what it amounts to. We gave them the idea you could get what you wanted without working for it, that the world was some kind of play thing for their personal and selfish amusement. Our children never learned how to pitch in and work together, all they looked out for is number one.

"When's the last time you heard of a marriage staying together for the sake of the children? Something like that is unthinkable today. Community and family values have gone down the drain." (from Famililly)

We only went
Where greed will go
We only sought
What greed will seek
Since greed is good
We’ve done no wrong

We are the dead
Who did no wrong
We are the dead
Who did no wrong.

In terms of developmental processes the theatre has changed drastically in a deleterious sense. A former student of mine, for example, emailed me to announce that she was at last getting a play produced after countless readings, rewritings, developmental workshops, etc. The problem is that everyone wants to help you write the play through a coercive process: "If we like how the play is progressing in accordance with our enforced dramaturgical concerns, we might consider producing it." Their concerns often have nothing to do with the writer's vision, but rather are more concerned with the perceived needs or prejudices of the patrons of that particular theatre or of their literary staff.

I remember participating in a reading in Madison, Wisconsin, in which Gretchen Cryer also participated. Gretchen is a talented, proven theatre creator, highly respected. She and I exchanged a few thoughts about the interminable development process to which theatres subject us. She complained about the never ending rewrites that are done to satisfy one theatre after another who each want to replace your vision with their concerns. They always have "problems" with what you've labored over. They "don't buy" some technique or character motivation or dramatic action, etc.
...
Playwrights need to rebel, create their own spaces and challenge the American theatre. At one time the Off-Broadway and regional movements represented rebellion and then eventually they conformed to traditional mainstream expectations to assure their financial survival. Off-Off-Broadway is promising enough for now and NYC's downtown theatre movement offers some fearless fare, but the overwhelming feelings among the creative artists of the theatre are frustration, disgust, rage, despair and perplexity. The theatre is now a corporate entity that produces and promotes palatable consumer products of a 1984ish nature, stuff that "big brother" will approve of or, at least, not feel threatened by.

Playwrights need to develop ways to circumvent the restrictions of the culture police.

• You have been approve f or the star prize of US $787:000:00
  
• ONLINE WEB LOTTERY WINNINGS OF $880,000.00
  
• You have therefore
  been approved to legally claim a total sum of $6,000,000 (Six Million United
  States Dollars)

• the basketball court where the NCAA "March Madness" often took place (this was easy since the theater was in the same huge complex)
• the memorial to O. Henry
• the memorial where the first sit-in took place

By Gene Johnson

The Associated Press

SEATTLE — When Washington state announced its new tourism slogan — "SayWA" — last spring, Pike Place Market vendor Kenny Telesco was willing to give it a chance.

He practiced saying it with "jazz hands" and asked tourists to "SayWA" as they posed for photos. But he's not sure he can stomach Seattle's new tourism slogan, unveiled today in 18-foot-tall letters atop the Space Needle: "metronatural."

"How do you use that in a sentence?" Telesco asked. "'Welcome to Metronatural.' ... It's an airport where you can buy organic bananas."

Others suggested "metronatural" evoked an urban nudist camp, and started speculating about whether it would last longer than the widely panned "SayWA," which the state dropped recently because it failed to catch on.

"Bessie Smith in Stereo" said jazz critic Leonard Feather in Playboy when Barbara Dane burst onto the scene in the late '50s. Time said of her: "The voice is pure, rich...rare as a 20 karat diamond." To Ebony, she seemed "startlingly blonde, especially when that powerful dusky alto voice begins to moan of trouble, two-timing men and freedom...with stubborn determination, enthusiasm and a basic love for the underdog (she is) making a name for herself...aided and abetted by some of the oldest names in jazz who helped give birth to the blues..." The seven-page Ebony article--their first feature story about a white woman (Nov., l959)-- was filled with photos of Dane working with Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Clara Ward, Mama Yancey, Little Brother Montgomery and others. (Continue bio)

• The Basileus Quartet, 1984. This Italian movie is hard to get but worth the effort. Great premise. A string quartet of old men is on their retirement tour when one of them dies of a heart attack. Instead of canceling, they audition for a replacement for the first violin -- and take on a young stud of a player, whose off-stage activity changes all their lives. Delightful movie!
  
  
• Running On Empty, 1988. Also a great premise: a radical couple from the 60s has been on the run, raising two sons while living underground. Now one is a teenager and a piano prodigy, having learned from his mother, who gave up a scholarship to Juilliard for her political activity. A powerful story about how love sometimes means letting go.
  

• The End of Faith
  
  • "a brave, pugilistic attempt to demolish the walls that currently insulate religious people from criticism" -- The Independent (UK)
    
  
  
• Letter to a Christian Nation
  
  • "fearlessly describes a moral and intellectual emergency precipitated by religious fantasies." -- Janna Levin, professor of astronomy and physics at Columbia University
    
  
  

MOLIERE: Shed no tears! You rot in one grave as another;
If you don't believe that, don't ever have a mother.
The luck that gets us all got me—
Though I'm better off than most, you must agree.
Consider this: though I am dust, you're glad to pay
Right through the nose to see my plays!
Without me, Montfleury's just a name;
Because of me, he has a kind of fame.
The Archbishop of Paris is no concern of yours
Except for me — I give him the notoriety he deserves.
In other words, why shed a tear for me?
My plays live on until eternity!
Oh, I know — in your age the time is getting short,
Everywhere there's war, famine, a great environmental wart.
Yet you insist your own age is unique:
"Never has civilization reached such a peak!"
But I question this wisdom found on TV and in "Forbes,"
Though maybe that's presumptuous, coming from a corpse.
Still, I don't see our times as different, I confess,
Since in your age, as in mine, it's all a mess.
Though you've reached the moon, discovered strange galactic gasses,
Three hundred years later, the world's still full of asses!

(LA GRANGE enters.)

LA GRANGE: So we hope we've moved you and given you a little fun; In truth,—
MOLIERE & LA GRANGE: — there's not a damn thing new beneath the sun.

(MUSIC FANFARE AND CURTAIN CALL: THE PLAY IS OVER.)

I often play the cuckold on stage, don't I? So maybe I'm just practicing. That's what we live for, isn't it? Perfecting our parts? Fine-tuning our roles? I know I haven't given you much attention lately. I mean, you're right, our life is a rehearsal. My life is a dress rehearsal for a play. Even now, as I hear myself talking, I wonder where I'll be putting this, in what future scene in what future play I'll be standing before someone like you, perhaps before you yourself, the actress, and I'll be the actor, and we'll be talking — in some play, some day — much as we are talking here now. Because that's what my life seems to be, a dress rehearsal for a play. Which, strictly speaking, doesn't really make my life much of a life at all, does it?

...
In retrospect, it feels like I hallucinated much of my life. I hallucinated the enduring love of my years with Sally. I hallucinated the expected heights of my literary career. I hallucinated future possibilities, however vague, with Mary. But I never hallucinated my friendship with Hooker. He was my buddy, and the gods can’t take him away from me.

Lately I spend my days reading and walking with Idaho [a dog]. I watch a lot of movies, some of which I worked on. I write occasional letters to former colleagues and students. Mostly we keep to ourselves, Idaho and I. I have no energy to make new friends at my age. Hooker is a hard act to follow.

In memory I walk along the scroll of my life the way a native returns after many years to visit his homeland. I remember this! I remember that! I wander the hills and valleys of my past and marvel at the scenery. So many memories!

Then Idaho leaps up on my leg to demand attention, I find a ball or, if we are outside, a nearby stick to toss, and we spend time focused only on the immediacy of our game, and the past falls silent. And this is my life, an old man playing with his dog, as the present pulls against the past and becomes the tether for the future.

• The Quiet American
• Mrs. Bridge
• The Physicists
• Marat/Sade
• The Skin Of Our Teeth
• Revolutionary Road
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The French Lieutenant's Woman (both novel and screenplay)
• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
• The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (might as well include my favorite libretto)
• something by Baldwin
• something by Albee
• Love's Body
• Damage
• The Last Good Time
• Fat City

Easy Scrapple
Recipe #55516

This is a recipe I learned from my Dad whose family was from Conshocken, PA.
by Kit Redmond

12 servings

time to make 25 min 5 min prep

1 lb sausage
2 cups water
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon rubbed sage
1 cup cornmeal

1. pour 2 cups of water in a sauce pan and bring to a boil.
2. cut sausage into pieces and add to boiling water mixing thoroughly (a potato masher works well) Once sausage is done take pan off heat and add red pepper flakes and sage.
3. Add Cornmeal and mix thoroughly and pour into loaf pan.
4. Refrigerate until completely cooled.
5. slice and fry in frying pan with cooking spray.

SEOUL, South Korea -
North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

"The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to the our military and people," KCNA said.

Collaborations with Brecht
A commission from the Baden-Baden Music Festival in 1927 led to the creation of Mahagonny (Ein Songspiel), Weill's first collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, whose Mann ist Mann and whose poetry collection, Die Hauspostille, had captured Weill's imagination and suggested a compatible literary and dramatic sensibility. The succès de scandale of Mahagonny encouraged Weill and Brecht to continue work on the full-length opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (premiered at Leipzig in March 1930). Exploiting their aggressive popular song-style, Weill and Brecht also wrote several works for singing actors in the commercial theater, including Die Dreigroschenoper and Happy End. They explored other alternatives to the opera establishment in the school-opera Der Jasager and the radio cantatas Das Berliner Requiem and Der Lindberghflug. Increasingly uncomfortable with Brecht's restriction of the role of music in his political theater, Weill then turned to another collaborator, the famous stage designer Caspar Neher, for the libretto of his three-act epic opera, Die Bürgschaft (1931), and again to Georg Kaiser for the daring play-with-music Der Silbersee (1932). In both he refined his musical language into what he called "a thoroughly responsible style," appropriate for the serious and timely topics he addressed.

These later works outraged the Nazis. Riots broke out at several performances and carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns discouraged productions of his works. In March 1933, Weill fled Germany; he and Lotte Lenya divorced soon thereafter.

You can talk about the glory of his heyday
You can also forget his old days completely
Can't do anything to help a dead man
Can't help him or you or me or no one.

When I learned this, I almost had a heart attack...!
...on the spot! My very favorite work of art, the Weill/Brecht opera RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY, which I have never seen but which I would travel anywhere in the U.S. to see, is being done at LA Opera in Feb and March 2007. I can't believe this! Fantastic! I have to get tickets immediately. Need H to get home so I can see her schedule. I am stunned and excited!

About the opera.

Dear Prof. Deemer

I greatly appreciate the effort you have to putting your cyber film school
material on the internet.

I am just starting out in creative writing and am a student in creative writing
at the University of Canberra in Australia. Your material complements what I have studied at the
university.

Thank you for your efforts.

Creative writing program at UW to get $15 million grant
Largest ever for College of Arts and Sciences

By JOHN MARSHALL
P-I BOOK CRITIC

Seattle's reputation as one of the country's leading literary centers has gotten another boost with announcement of a planned $15 million grant to the University of Washington's Creative Writing Program.

The gift from the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Foundation will be the largest ever received by the UW's College of Arts and Sciences. UW President Mark Emmert said Monday that the grant will help further cement the city and the UW's literary prominence.

"This gift from Grace Pollock ... will help assure that this storied program, one of the strongest in the country ... remains at the forefront of educating and developing the next generation of talented writers and poets," Emmert stressed. "In a community that values the written word as much as Seattle, it is fitting that the university's program should be this good. Thanks to this gift, we have the resources in the future to keep it strong and vibrant."

The $15 million bequest is part of the will of 87-year-old Grace M. Pollock, the widow of S. Wilson Pollock.

Her father, Loren Milliman, taught mathematics and creative writing at the UW. She and her four brothers attended the UW.

The planned gift is the fourth in a series of Pollock gifts to the UW that began 24 years ago. They include the Milliman Scholarship for Creative Writing, whose past recipients include David Guterson, the Bainbridge Island author of "Snow Falling on Cedars.

Plans are just being made for use of the $15 million bequest, but it is expected that the money will hire additional faculty members and provide financial assistance to students enrolled in the graduate-level program.

The program currently enrolls 30 students and has a faculty that includes three winners of MacArthur Foundation "genius grants" -- Linda Bierds, Charles Johnson and Richard Kenney.

The creative writing program will be renamed for Grace Milliman Pollock after receipt of her bequest.

• location (ocean, desert, forest, mountain tops all close)
• public transportation
• memories of having lived here in the Golden Age (1980s)
• Portland State University and my dream of a job
• the early Trail Blazers (Walton)
• all the parks
• many cool neighborhoods
  

• theater ghosts
• weather
• civic boosterism
• weather
• growth
• weather
• Civic Stadium
• Jail Blazers
• weather
  

• it occurred to me this is the home for "the short novel," a form I love, which is so hard to market in the "adult market"
• I discovered in the online library catalogue that these books are pitched much like screenplays with short synopses, almost a logline
• I'd read some good comments about the genre from writers I respect.

Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down by Merle Haggard was the first song I ever heard the late John Basham play. This would have been in an Oregon campground in the late 60s or so. The song became the one I requested from him most often. I've lost track of his widow Peggy since he passed away. Phone and email no longer function. She may have moved from Port Townsend to Seattle, where she worked, or she may have returned to Michigan, where her family is.

Turtle Blues by Janis Joplin. My favorite Joplin song, though I actually haven't heard it for years.

Monday Monday by The Mommas and the Poppas. I associate this song with the jukebox at the bar in a Chinese restaurant in Eugene where many grad students went after Maxie's closed at 1 a.m. It seemed to be playing forever there.