An Invitation to the RRBC Writers’ Conference & Book Expo

 

After a bit of a hiatus on my blog due to writing projects — and to life itself — I’m happy to report that this week I’ll be a participant in the inaugural RRBC Writer’s Conference and Book Expo — a virtual book fair Dec. 1-3, sponsored by the ever-innovative Rave Reviews Book Club (for more info on RRBC click here).

The live link will not be unveiled until late on Nov. 30, but come back to this post then to access the various “Author Booths” of fiction and nonfiction writers from around the world. Right before the holidays – a perfect time to find new “reads”! The conference will also feature “Vendor Booths” for those seeking professional services. There will be so many resources for writers, readers and more, all on virtual display from Dec. 1-3.

My Author Booth will feature more on my novel, Bravura, part one of The Music We Made novel series about three generations of the Driscoll family of musicians. My Vendor Booth will highlight my professional writing and editing services that are the culmiation of 25 years of high-end experience.

Hope to see you there soon. Onward!

 

 

 

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Walking “On Air” – Journey of a Play

Sometimes our life and work synergize in ways that we don’t expect.

In writing my new play, On Air, that certainly happened, with the added synergy of such dedicated theater artists who brought it to life at San Diego’s Scripps Ranch Theatre (SRT) and its new play festival, “Out on a Limb,” which concluded yesterday.

In On Air, a young, principled professor at a San Diego community college navigates his family obligations and professional ambitions against the backdrop of a campus in crisis from the Vietnam War.

The one-act version of On Air premiered in the inaugural year of SRT’s Out on a Limb New Play Festival in 2012, with the outstanding cast (shown clockwise, below) of lead actor Jeffrey Jones, Vimel Sephus, Charles Peters, Joshua Jones, Steven Smith, and Tyler Jones, directed by Antonio TJ Johnson.

(All Photos by Darren Scott)

That original one-act version focused only on the professor, Gary Gordian, and four students who come to him in various stages of crisis — amid being drafted to Vietnam, family dysfunction, relationships. Gary’s dedication to his ideals, amid campus politics and pressures, results in his job and future being at risk.

When the play drew such a strong response from audiences, SRT Artistic Director and festival producer Robert May asked me to expand the play to fill out the picture of Gary, to include his personal life and challenges.

Four years and much soul-searching later, the full length version of On Air premiered this past week, with the spectacular cast of Fran Gercke, Mariel Shaw, Charles Peters, Carlos Angel Barajas, Michelle Marie Trester, Robert Bradvica, Chris Torborg, Michael Crosby, and directed by Liz Shipman.

My heart and mind are still spinning. Why?

Because On Air and Gary’s story are loosely based on the life of my own father, a retired and courageous literature professor, who endured much of what is chronicled in the play.

Fran Gercke as Gary

And in the full length, I introduced the character of Gary’s wife, Siran, loosely based on my mother.

Mariel Shaw as Siran

Their life together, amid Vietnam, family challenges, and the early days of the tumultuous San Diego Armenian community, are my main expansions to the play.

Writing about family, about personal events, is never easy. I don’t do it often. Of course I poured over old letters, photos, articles, recordings. But how can one do the subject matter justice, truly? How can a writer be objective in these situations? Or maintain a workable balance between fact and fictionalizing? These challenges, among others, are why it took me so long to complete.

And of course I eventually had to show my family the script. I was braced for the worst, because I could only imagine what my parents, nearly 50 years later, would feel as they revisit one of the hardest times in their young lives. But they couldn’t have been more supportive. A few requests for changes, sure, but just when I was expecting a full-throated veto or a boot out the door, I instead got a thank you. “Thank you for acknowledging that it was such a difficult time in our lives,” my father said. It was a time in their lives that pre-dated me and yet which they always mentioned as I grew up, hence my desire to explore it in writing. I wanted to show them coming through, victoriously.

With the remarkable dedication of Robert May, SRT and actors who sat to table read the working versions of the script so many times over the past four years (Thank you!), as well as the heartfelt new cast of the full-length version, I saw the story come to life in ways I did not expect.

Even with the fictionalizing I felt necessary in various portions of the play, the fact was that I saw the spirit of my parents, and I saw the spirits of all the students my father used to talk about, even years after their interactions…

I saw the dilemmas relived of a young married couple facing difficult family choices and pressures, community politics and dynamics.

Carlos Angel Barajas as Van

L-R Michael Crosby, Carlos Angel Barajas, Robert Bradvica, Michelle Marie Trester, Chris Torborg, Sarah David, Morgan Kirby

I saw how seminal events and interactions in our lives can stay with us for decades, for a lifetime, and remain as vivid as the day we first experienced them.

L-R: Robert Bradvica, Chris Torborg, Charles Peters, Michelle Marie Trester

The production had its challenges — a key last minute cast change due to illness, and even an accidental campus lockdown where students spotted rehearsal of a tense scene involving a (fake) gun and called the police, fearing the worst, only to be told it was a play. In the very same scene, on opening night of the earlier one-act version, the power went out in the theater, and audience members thought the darkness was part of the scene as stage managers quickly shined flashlights on the actors. The unexpected should always be expected in theater…

But I’m grateful for all of it — and for the conversations the play is generating among audiences, artists, family members, everyone. My father, after watching a period of his life pass before him onstage, thanked me for the play and the “love letter” that it is. Not sure if he even knew that those are the words I always govern my writing by, to make my words a love letter to the story and characters I create. So I was beyond grateful, and at peace, after that.

It seems that the play will have a life beyond this lovely first production, which is encouraging. Because once again as a writer I’ve experienced first-hand that facing our biggest fears and challenges in our life and work yields the deepest meaning in both, a combination of inspiration and release that our souls never get enough of.

As I always say, yet with more conviction every time:

Onward.

 

Heart Full of Fire

My heart is full today.

Coming off of my daughters’ completion of a brave and whirlwind school year — followed by a beautiful trip east celebrating my nephew’s graduation.

And back home soon after, enjoying the first moments of summer with pajamas, basketball and videos.

Then seeing the horror today in Orlando. The vicious killing. The families forever torn apart.  Somehow hearing the screams of my martyred Armenian ancestors all over again, like I’ve been hearing them lately from Syria and around the world. And knowing in my bones that no matter what is said by this faction or that, God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).

But then on the night following this tragic morning, seeing the Tony Awards, and being reminded of the transforming power of storytelling — of theater, like nothing else — to return our minds and hearts to hope, to truth, to love.

And all this … on the eve of a playwriting deadline I must complete. One of the most important ones I’ll ever have. How do I complete the story now, as I had planned before? With all of this new tumult, both good and horrible? Even with the story remaining intact, what changes now in my approach or mindset?

Tonight I realized: it’s exactly the right time to finish this play. Because my heart is more full of fire now than I can remember, and this play is about a character who stands up for what matters most to him, no matter what the consequence. (More on that in a future post). Countless inspirers surround me, here and in the heavens, so I am more humbled, and more grateful now, for the opportunity to tell this story that means the world to me. I’m more convicted than ever that it needs to be told. And that all our stories of courage, faith and persistence must be told, no matter who tells us otherwise. I can only hope I do this particular one justice.

Onward.

 

 

 

The Best Birthday Gift

When I celebrated my birthday earlier this week, I looked forward to (and enjoyed!) the special times I had with my husband, family and friends. I loved using my birthday freebies at some of my favorite places. I had a massage and manicure. Ahhh…some of the relaxing I’ve rarely had a chance to do all year.

I also looked forward to whatever verse/quote of the day I’d get that day on my email, since I subscribe. Thinking the e-subscription would perfectly select a Rah, Rah, Rah, You Can Do Anything statement for that day, I instead got this:

My Guest Piece in “The Dramatist”

Writers often get the question, “So what are you working on?” and most of us enjoy answering with our latest project.

But what’s even more interesting is not when people ask “What,” but when people ask “Why.” “Why are you working on that particular project? Why do you like to write about XYZ?”

I recently had the opportunity to contribute a piece to the May/June 2016 issue of The Dramatist magazine, a magazine for members of The Dramatists Guild, which supports professional playwrights and other theater artists.

This issue was entitled, “The Ethics of Ethnic,” exploring a variety of issues for writers writing about ethnicity.

Although the magazine is for members only, they allowed me to reprint it here, in the text below or the PDF link here: My Piece in The Dramatist

Let me know your thoughts!

“In your opinion, what are the obligations of a dramatist writing outside her/his own ethnicity?”

When I once told a fellow playwright, far more famous than I, how I rarely write about my own ethnicity, she looked at me incredulously and said, “I can’t imagine not writing about it!”

But isn’t that what our playwriting, and our life in the arts, should be about? Doing the very thing we cannot imagine? Getting out of our comfort zone, losing ourselves in the wonderful and scary ‘otherness’ of life, of our world, of our friends – and enemies?

One of the best compliments I ever received as a playwright was when I wrote a play about an African American poet/civil rights activist. At the first staged reading at the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles, one of the elder actors (African American) looked at me shocked when I was introduced as the playwright. He told me later: “I thought the person who wrote this was black. There are things in here I thought only a black person would know and understand. I was a boy sitting in the pew at my Baptist church in Chicago when Dr. King came and spoke – no one talks about that speech. But you did.”

I relish the opportunity to research about ethnicities and histories other than my own – just as I am always beyond thrilled and honored when non-Armenian playwrights choose to explore “my” Armenian history. I serve on the board of the Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance, which helps get the Armenian story, and other human rights stories, told onstage (www.armeniandrama.org). And when the work of non-Armenian playwrights writing about Armenian topics gives me insight into my own ethnic identity – strengths and weaknesses alike – it inspires and reminds me that the interdependence of art and artists across boundaries makes us all better, wiser and stronger.

Several years ago I wrote a play about multi-faith immigrants across ethnicities living in San Diego, commissioned by the Playwrights Project, which builds literacy, creativity, and communication by empowering individuals to voice their stories through playwriting (www.playwrightsproject.org). In researching the writing of other playwrights – and in speaking with everyone from a surviving Lost Boy of Sudan, to a Vietnamese refugee, to recently emigrated Muslims trying to navigate their post 9/11 community – I found such resonance with my own Armenian history, and that of so many other people groups: the pulls of passion and pride, misplaced trust leading to tragedy, glimmers of grace and help amid war horrors, clinging to hope over bitterness, perseverance over surrender. Audience members of all backgrounds came up to me after the performances, thanking me for ‘understanding’ and sharing their story.

Our story.

Shared suffering, shared survival, shared triumph. Oh, how we are not alone!

The responsibility I hold in writing about other ethnicities works hand in hand with the responsibility I believe we all have as artists — to understand and encourage our audiences and each other. Writing outside of our ethnicity, embracing and sharing its new insights, helps us recognize that our ‘otherness’ is, perhaps, not so ‘other’ after all.

 

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LISA KIRAZIAN’s plays include On Air, The Blackstone Sessions, Switch, The Visitor, Six Views, and numerous one-acts. Productions & Readings: Fountain Theatre, Long Beach Playhouse, Scripps Ranch Theatre, DG Friday Night Footlights, Playwrights Project, Barrow Group, and several festivals. Publications: Los Angeles Times, Performing Arts Magazine, San Diego Union Tribune, Audition Monologues for Young Women #2 (Ratliff), various literary journals. Boards: Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance (ADAA), Playwrights Project (Past President). Lisa is a Stanford graduate. www.lisakirazian.com.

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Onward!

 

 

Is It Still Mother’s Day?

Ah, it’s a week after Mother’s Day.

Still celebrating her? Still bringing Mom flowers or breakfast in bed? Still doing the dishes for her? Still listening to what she has to say? Still telling her you love her?

Or is it back to normal?

Just like my Mom has always told me, I told my girls: if you listen to me, respect me, help me out with the little things each day — then every day can be Mother’s Day. Those would be the best gifts of all!

So yesterday, one of my daughters cleaned her room. The other one collected and took out the trash. Both of them set the table for family dinner. They didn’t do it without being asked — I still had to ask them. But today they listened; they did what I asked. Right away. And it was as great a gift as the beautiful picture frames they made and gave me last weekend…

So at our Family Movie night last night where Mommy, Daddy and the girls watched The Peanuts Movie (great movie, by the way), I finally noticed a bit of Meghan Trainor’s lyrics to her song that plays during the final credits, “Good to be Alive” (great song, by the way):

Gonna wake up every day like it’s Christmas
Gonna celebrate this life I’m given
From now on (from now on)
Gonna tell my mother every day I love her
And tell her “thanks for being such a good mother”
From now on

Oh, it feels so good to be alive
Oh, it feels so good to be alive

It does feel good. And what gifts we have each day — in each other. Let’s celebrate while we can.

I love you, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

And thanks, girls, for the continued ‘gifts’!

Onward!

 

 

An Interview with RRBC’s “Rave Waves Buy the Book”

Yesterday I was honored to be interviewed by author Beem Weeks for one of the weekly online radio shows of the Rave Reviews Book Club (RRBC). Entitled “Rave Waves Buy The Book,” the show features a different author for a half-hour each week, highlighting their latest work and taking questions from Twitter.

It’s one of the many resources for authors that comes as part of membership in the Rave Reviews Book Club. For more information on how to join RRBC, click here.

The “Raves Waves Buy the Book” show yesterday centered on my novel, “Bravura,” which I’ve shared about on this blog previously. The book follows a group of young classical musicians in 1960’s London and beyond.

But the show gives some insights into the book and my writing process which I hadn’t shared on the blog before. So I thought it would be great to have the interview speak for itself as my post this week.

Enjoy! And onward.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ravereviewsbookclub/2016/04/16/rrbc-rave-waves-blogtalkradio-buy-the-book-with-lisa-kirazian

 

 

 

Easter Reflections

 
On this Easter Sunday, I’m struck by the preciousness of life despite its complexity, the worth of a soul despite some contentious people in my path these days, and the overwhelming power of God’s love and truth.

As CS Lewis said in his famous trilemma, ‘Liar, Lunatic or Lord’ — you can’t just call Jesus a good moral teacher. His claims were too great, too outrageous and supernatural. Either he was lying, was crazy — or he was right. And a day like today is as good a day as any to visit — or to revisit — his life and words, and decide for ourselves what we think. Personally, when I do so I am transformed — and relieved — by the purposeful love, sacrifice and forgiveness behind everything he did and said, and how applicable his wisdom is to me each day.

Right now around me, I see such joy — a friend marrying her long last love; my long-awaited baby goddaughter/niece’s first Easter; the blessings of my own kids, amid dealing with difficult classmates at school; and my noble husband, always seeking the right despite his many work stresses and unethical competitors…

And also I see such heart-rending challenge — a favorite young teacher with late-stage cancer; a friend with an ill child; another in a marriage troubled with addiction; health challenges all around; my local church divided by intense factions; conflicts within volunteer organizations; compatriots suffering around the world for their faith or ethnicity.

And yet there is Hope.

This day reminds me of my own people’s sacrifice – The Armenian Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915, commemorated on April 24 each year and having its 100th anniversary this year. Despite Turkey’s denial, more countries and institutions are acknowledging the truth of history than ever before and honoring the legacy of our ancestors, who died instead of giving up their faith, or their hope that their people would survive. And we did.

So much to be mindful of today — yet I’m resting in the fact that there is true Victory, because of Today.

As a character of mine says (a line I feel I cannot take credit for because of the inspiration out of nowhere that blew it onto a page one day): “Love who you can, while you can.”

And allow the Greatest of Loves to ease your heart today.

“He is not here; He is risen, just as he said!” — Matthew 28:6

Happy Easter.

Onward.
This post originally appeared on Easter 2015.

When Inspiration Has Bad Timing

 

When inspiration comes at the wrong time…drop whatever you’re doing, right? Not always so easy.

When I went to Armenia one glorious summer, fully expecting to delve into new writings about family history, ethnic identity, the genocide, you name it, what came to mind instead? An idea I had started several years before that I hadn’t finished. Avoidance of the personal? Procrastination? Maybe. But it just didn’t stop coming, and I had to get it down, even if it meant missing out on that one outing or tour. (The inspiration from that trip would come through in writing a few years later, actually).

At other times, in the throes of a PTA meeting, school event or church meeting, the juices flow and I want to run out and take copious notes, but instead I try to slyly put them on my IPhone notepad as if I’m taking notes of the event/meeting itself, nodding along with the speaker but all the while getting my freewrite done.

  

Or I’m on a writing deadline or in a tough spot with one script, and all of a sudden the inspiration comes with another idea (some would definitely call this procrastination if we don’t want to deal with a tough project). Should we at least jot it down?

Or, upon that exhausted first moment we plummet into bed and have some peace and quiet and literally don’t want to move — not even to the nightstand to get the journal and pen (because you DO have them there, don’t you?) — and you’re in the most comfortable position you’ve found in weeks…and then the most exquisite line pops into your head and takes your weak breath away. But you just don’t want to move, and your eyes are heavy, and you tell yourself: I’ll remember it in the morning.

But you don’t. It’s gone. And you kick yourself.

  

Or that flash of an idea first thing in the morning – but if you don’t get dressed now you’ll be late for work or late to take the kids to school. You’ve already pressed snooze; there’s no more buffer time. But you finally came up with the solution to that scene that just wasn’t clicking – til now. And if you don’t get it down now, the day will race by and you never will.

Be late for once. Get it down. You won’t be able to recapture it the same way later.

Here are some suggestions to deal with inspiration at the wrong time:

Have notepads and pens everywhere – bed, car, purse/attaché, kitchen, bathroom, office, living room. Whatever type you like – Mead paper & Bic, Moleskine and Pilot Precise, journal & Ticonderoga #2 pencil, IPhone/laptop, napkins & Crayolas, anything. Just have them everywhere. So that no time needs to be spent looking for something to write with – the tiny spare bits of time can be dedicated to getting the idea written down and done. Then you can continue as you were.

Learn to love – or at least tolerate — your recorded voice. Sometimes it’s easier in the car or in another setting to use the recording function on our cellphone (most of them have it now, like VoiceMemo for IPhone). Sometimes it’s easier to just say what you’re thinking, just like sometimes it’s easier to call someone rather than craft them a detailed email. And if you don’t have the voice recording function on your cellphone? Just call yourself and leave yourself a voicemail with your creative idea. Just don’t erase the message until you have it written down.

Sleep truly does make a difference. I rarely come up with strong creative ideas when I’m exhausted or cranky or preoccupied. And I find that the moments right before and right after sleep, are potent times for visionary, free thinking. But if we never sleep, we wouldn’t have those moments.

Repeat it to yourself, over and over. If you get a great idea and are in a setting – giving a speech, taking a test, changing a diaper, going into the doctor or x-ray — where you’re about to do something that you absolutely cannot get out of — repeat the idea to yourself at least three times, so that it’s engrained in your mind and you can remember it after your obligation is done. If necessary and possible, repeat it to yourself throughout the occupied time until you are free, then run to your car where you have kept your trusty notebook and pen and get it down.

Ask for help. Lean to a friend and say, “Remind me to tell you about my XYZ idea after we finish this meeting.” And if you forget, perhaps they won’t, and their follow up may jog your memory. Or when you get home at night, share your idea with your family. A week later when you’re frazzled with something else, the idea long forgotten, they might mention it and you’ll be grateful you shared it.

And if you do end up not being able to get the idea down, don’t worry. There IS more where that came from. Just give it space to wiggle out. By all means, never stifle your creativity or say “not now” or “that’s crazy” or “it’s no good.” Get in the habit of responding positively to it so that new ideas will be inclined to visit more often. Everything else can (hopefully) wait.

Onward!

An earlier version of this post appeared in 2015.

The Beauty of Book Clubs

 

I’ve enjoyed three book club experiences in the past several months where my book “Bravura” was featured and read by a group of women (and men!) Each of them was markedly different and yet I learned amazing things from all of them.