Excerpt from Letters To A Young Playwright, Practical and Impractical Advice on the Art of Playwriting, by Adam Szymkowicz, Rowman and Littlefield, Applause. Comes out Sept 2024.
We make art because art feeds us. I think most people think the point of art is to share something with the world, to make people laugh or cry or think. To rewire someone’s brain. That’s valid. But I think that’s actually the secondary effect of art. The main thing art does is for the artist—to make their life better. Everyone is different, but for me, my mental health is better on a day when I’ve written something. It helps my mood somehow, the act of expressing myself. And if I can get into a flow state where I’m writing but I’m no longer aware of time, that always centers and grounds me. What I’m trying to say is that art-making, like exercise or yoga or getting a massage, is a form of self-care. If we have souls, making art nourishes our souls. And it’s not really anything exclusive or magical. Anyone can benefit from making art, and you don’t have to be any good at it in order for it to make your life better. Sometimes it’s as simple as doodling on a page or writing an idea down in a notebook or whatever your version of this is: Strumming a guitar. Arranging rocks on a beach. Because also art is lots of different things.
Sometimes enriching your soul by making art is a slog. Sitting down to write is not always fun, but the more you do it, the easier it will become to slip into the flow state.
This is how I wrote about art-making in my play A Thing of Beauty:
AMY
We don’t make art. Art makes itself through us. But we have to be open to let the muse in. I mean the state of being where it’s not just us doing it. Time passes and you don’t notice. It’s like you’re in a trance. You come out and you feel like you were led on by forces beyond you and just touched God. It doesn’t happen every time. For some people almost never. But it’s the reason to make something. It’s the dirty secret of why people are really artists. It’s the chance you get to commune. That high you get from creation when you’re with the muse… Or with God or whatever you want to call it. And you come out of it and you’re like how did I do that? It couldn’t have been me. It must have been someone else.
I think athletes know about it too. Scientists. Mathematicians. They all know what it is to get in the zone. It’s just that for me, the way to that thing is through painting. . . Or sculpting. But the muse won’t come if you’re thinking about your critics. It’s why Fred doesn’t read reviews.
It’s why artists drink. That shuts up the critical voices for a little while, at first, but it destroys you other ways I guess.
I don’t know. I’m not an alcoholic. But I am addicted to making art with my muse. If you could only access that all the time—but you can’t. Or at least I can’t. But that’s the flaw of criticism.
You think the artist is creating something for you. But she’s not. She’s feeding her addiction. The art is just the byproduct of the process. The art is for the artist, not for the people.
Some writers write to exorcise a demon inside themselves. There is something dark and ugly and scary and by putting it on a page they get it out of themselves, maybe get a little relief. While I write about things that scare me or make me angry, ridding myself of this internal darkness isn’t the thing art usually does for me. But it might do that for you.
Excerpt from Letters To A Young Playwright, Practical and Impractical Advice on the Art of Playwriting, by Adam Szymkowicz, Rowman and Littlefield, Applause. Comes out sept 2024.
There will be a book release at Drama Book Shop October 1. Jacqueline Goldfinger will also share her book Playwriting With Purpose and we’ll have a Question and Answer. EVENT INFO: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/playwritingmaking-art-and-making-a-living-tickets-907170540507
ADAM SZYMKOWICZ’s plays have been produced throughout the U.S., and in Canada, England, Wales, The Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Turkey, Switzerland, South Korea, Thailand, Sweden, Austria, Slovenia, Malaysia and Lithuania. His work has been presented or developed at such places as Portland Center Stage, MCC Theater, Ars Nova, South Coast Rep, Playwrights Horizons, LCT3, LAByrinth Theater Company, The Lark, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Primary Stages and The New Group, among others.
Published plays include Deflowering Waldo, Pretty Theft, Food For Fish, Hearts Like Fists, Hearts Like Planets, Incendiary, The Why Overhead, Adventures of Super Margaret, 7 Ways To Say I Love You, Rare Birds, Marian Or The True Tale of Robin Hood, Kodachrome, Clown Bar, Clown Bar 2, Clown Bar Christmas, Mercy, The Bookstore, Old Fashioned Cold Fusion, The Parking Lot, The Night Children, The Wooden Heart, Stockholm Syndrome, When Jack Met Jill, Heart of Snow, Christmas Tree Farm, 100 Things I Never Said To You, 100 Love Letters I Never Sent and Nerve. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service, Concord/Samuel French, Playscripts, Broadway Play Publishing, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, Stage Partners and Original Works Publishing, and are featured in numerous Smith and Kraus and Applause books. His monologue book, Small Explosions came out from Applause in early 2023. His book on playwriting, Letters to a Young Playwright comes out from Applause in fall of 2024.
He was the premiere Resident Playwright at The Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA and the first playwright to participate in Bloomington Playwrights Projects’ Square One Series. He has been to The Orchard Project, Green Gulch, Theatre4ThePeople’s the Barn and to JAW at Portland Center Stage, served twice as Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Center, and twice as a Dramatists Guild Fund’s Traveling Masters. Szymkowicz received two grants from the CT Commission on Culture & Tourism, and has been commissioned by South Coast Rep, Rising Phoenix Rep, Texas State University, The NOLA Project, Single Carrot Theater, Majestic Rep, The Chance Theater, Concord Theatricals/The Educational Theatre Association and Flux Theater Ensemble.
Adam received a Playwright’s Diploma from The Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and an MFA from Columbia University where he was the Dean’s Fellow. Szymkowicz is a two-time Lecomte du Nouy Prize winner, a member of the Dramatists Guild, Writer’s Guild of America, and was a member of Primary Stages’ Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer’s Group, the MCC Playwright’s Coalition and of the very first Ars Nova Play Group.
He has interviewed over 1100 playwrights on his blog.
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Audrey Cefaly's plays (Alabaster, Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, The Last Wide Open, Trouble) have garnered the Lammy Award, the Calicchio Prize, the NNPN Goldman Prize, the Edgerton, and a Pulitzer nomination. Her works have been produced at Signature Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Barter Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Florida Studio, Florida Rep, Gulfshore Playhouse, and countless others. Cefaly is a Dramatist Guild Foundation "Traveling Master," an Arena Stage playwright cohort, and a recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. She is published by Concord Theatricals, Applause Books, Smith & Kraus and TRW
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