Mary Joe Deschanel
Dthnvnc, a one woman show that I have been writing for
many many years came into real world existance when
Laura Day who I had just met did a ritual in her hotel
room in West Holllywood on my birthday November 25th
2009. My daughter had met Laura the week before in
New York and when Laura said she was coming to Los
Angeles for a couple of days and that maybe they could
meet and my daughter said ‘oh I can’t on Wednesday,
it’s my Mom’s birthday and Laura said, “oh let’s do a
ritual for her and my daughter said, ok. They went and
bought some things for it.
I was surprised and excited by the invitation, but I
didn’t know what to expect.
Laura and my daughter and I created a small circle that
contained my desire and wish to make a show of my
monologues. I didn’t know what would come of it, but I
liked Laura and her son so very much right away that I
was just glad to spend time with them.
Before that I had tried many things but they did not go
anywhere. That is not to say I did not learn from all the
classes I took and people that I asked to help me before
the work in november of 2009. But stil I had trouble
telling people about it. I felt blocked and crippled. I felt
a kind of shame that I couldn’t figure out how to get this
work out into the world.
CIRCLE
When I was a child one of my favorite poems was the
one,
“He drew a circle that shut me out, heretic rebel, a thing
to flout, but love and I had the wit to win, we drew a
cirlce that took him in.”
There was a prior experience of the circle that started
things rolling before meeting Laura. And that was the
circle that we do in my acting class on Monday nights at
Warner Loughlin Studio. We do a guided meditation in a
circle and then visualize what we want and also help
person next to us by visualizing for them. I feel this
circle is a part of the circle that Laura did with me.
After the ritual Laura told me to write a business plan
and I did and I sent it to her. And I started to be able to
put my show in a context, I put in a place the canals of
Venice California and a time, early 1970’s.—and I
started to be able to connect the characters together. It
was exciting. I felt that I had broken through a wall that
had existed a long time.
I would get up every morning and sit in my meditation
before my yoga and put myself in the circle again with
laura and my show.
I thought of it everyday and it started to have a feeling
of fluidity. One night I was out to dinner with friends
and someone asked me what I was doing and I suddenly
said, “oh I am doing a show with these monologues that I
have written”. The couple, Tom and Celeste were
enthusiastic and I told them about it and as I did,I felt
this wonderful strength. On the way home I was so
elated to have shared with other people what I was
doing and to have them respond in such a positive way.
When Laura did the ritual with me, she said I think you
should do it in an art gallery –it should be connected
with the arts. And then she also said that I needed to
work on the business aspect, the organizational aspect
that the creative work would be ‘fine’.
That changed my thinking and it gave me a lot of
confidence. It was as if I had the confidence buried
within me about my creative work, but I needed
someone to say that to me, so the confidence could
emerge and be useful.
Sometime at the end of February I was frustrated. I
have several close friends and they are all very
successful in their work. I didn’t understand why none
of them asked me about my monolgues or show even
though I had told them about it and said I wanted to
share more information about it with with them.
One Friday one of these women friends called up and I
told her I was a little angry that she never asked about
my work when I always asked about her work. She was
apologetic and that encouraged me to talk to another
friend; this was my friend Astrid, a wonderful painter,
and when I told her I needed her to ask me about my
show and writing, she said, “oh of course, what do you
need?”
And I said, “I need a place to do it; I need a director, a
producer”.
We talked a few more minutes and hung up.
Two hours later she called, “I have a place for you. I just
had lunch with a friend, Anne T. who is head of women
in the arts at the Santa Monica Bay Women’s Club. And
she said you can do your show there and be their ‘artist’
in residence.
I was stunned. It was to do with the arts, it was a place
to do my work, it was real help. I was being taken very
seriously.
The following Monday I went to the beautiful building in
Santa Monica and met Anne who was lovely. She
showed Astrid and me around. There were two spaces,
one an auditorium which felt too big and formal and
then another beautiful space where they have dance
classes and art shows and intimate performance.s
I loved it and once again it so resonated with me, there
were art shows there and the two women – Astrid and
Anne are visual artists.
All a part of Laura’s intuitions.
Then it all fell into place, I met with the committee of
the club and got a small committee made up of a solo
performer and teacher and an artist/art historian and
Anne T. to help me structure and organize the show.
All along the way my husband had encouraged me, but
with this new energy and real world connection he
became even more involved and helpful.
Warner Loughlin, my friend and acting coach has been a
part of my process all along and continued to be a
supportive integral part of the creative process of
developing the characters and connections between
them.
Chris Anthony, another friend and a brilliant
photographer went with me to the canals and took great
evocative photographs. My manager, Sarah Jackson
had always been an enthusiatic listener about my
project agreed to produce the show.
Out of the blue an old friend and amazing director,
Davida Wills-Hurwin called me and we had coffee and
she spontaneously asked me to write something with
her and I agreed and we started having a great time
writing a story together.
Then my daughter who was the third person in the
cirlce with Laura, said “Davida would be a great director
for you” which echoed what I had been thinking.
I asked her and she said yes.
The other part of working with women in the arts and
the santa monica bay womens club was doing something
to connect to other charitable groups in the
community. Davida, my director teaches at Crossroads
School where my children went to school and we were
able to come up with a program to take a few high
schoold students to train as volunteers to work at 826,
a program that helps kids after school do their
homework and write. I would then train them in
teaching creative dramatics and we would do a few
workshops at 826 with the students from crossroads
working with kids at 826 as a pilot program.
