Purpose in the process
Daniel Glenn performs in his play “How To Not Get Turned Into a Tree” in March 2014. Glenn has served as an English and drama teacher in Fulton County in addition to his other professions. “When you teach theater or something that really is your passion, like creative writing, as opposed to, you know, college essay writing. It's great when you find students who are interested or don't even know that they were interested but enjoy it,” Glenn said. “But at the same time, in a high school setting, you're also teaching students who don't, and it's fine, but they don't really care about the subject matter, you know, and then they're never going to be interested in it.” Photo courtesy of Daniel Glenn
iliad Co-Editor-in-Chief Luna Reichert spoke to playwright and graduate student Daniel Glenn about his background and personal experience in creative writing.
iliad Co-Editor-in-Chief Luna Reichert: Can you just tell me a little bit about your background specifically relating to drama writing, but also just in general?
Georgia State University graduate student and playwright Daniel Glenn: I went to high school in Alpharetta, Georgia, did some theater there, (then I) went to NYU for undergrad. My degree was in dramatic literature, which is sort of like an English degree, but maybe a little even less useful. I did some playwriting there, both on my own and through student theatre companies. I also got involved with a professor lead project that I ended up writing for. Then I taught high school for a few years, English and Drama, in Fulton County. And then I went back to school for theater at Sarah Lawrence College. I got my MFA. I did playwriting there, but they don't really -- they're unique in MFA programs, and that they don't require you to have a specific concentration. Most MFA programs, and a lot of BFA programs I guess, are going to make you choose “I'm an actor, I'm a director, I'm a writer.” Sarah Lawrence is a little more loose than that, for (the) better and for (the) worse. (I) did some playwriting there and lived in New York for a couple years, and then moved back to Georgia to teach. I’ve been playwriting since, sort of on the side. Also doing some solo performance where I write stuff, but I'm the only one performing.
LR: What drew you to playwriting?
DG: I was always writing stories, short stories, and things. Sometimes I (would) spread mysteries involving thinly veiled versions of my family members and they found them amusing. (I) wrote a terrible draft of a kind of novel when I was in high school, as a lot of people sort of do. Then I actually got started in theater because, I was thinking about this last night, I wanted more friends. Just to be kind of blunt about that, I was kind of a loner and I wanted to meet people. It did help me in that way. I think because the acting part wasn't always the focus for me, like, I'm not driven to perform in a way that a lot of people are for. Thankfully, they are. I think that's why I sort of, in a way, came back to the writing aspect.
LR: And you touched a little bit on this throughout, but what are some of your favorite parts of drama writing, and then some of the hardest parts overall?
DG: A lot of writers will say, and a book about writing that I that most people love and I finally read and agree with because writers can resist, I think, like being told what to do or read. But there's a book called Bird by Bird, written by Anne Lamott that I really do think is wonderful. She is of the school that I think a lot of people are that like, though writing itself is going to be perhaps the most enjoyable part of the process. I think when you're a novel or book writer like she is, nonfiction, as well as fiction, I think that's more true. The joy of being a dramatic writer is that then once you've written something, you get to get all these other really smart, talented, creative people to give their input on it. They're inevitably going to make it better than it is without them. So you get to hear it, and you get to see people laughing, and you get to do all that.
But it also brings with it what I think is the most challenging aspect of Dramatic Writing, which is in that case, you do have to make yourself clear to everyone else in the room. When you're a novel writer, and you send it off to the editor, if you get published,you don't really have to explain yourself. If you're working on a play, and the actor suddenly says, “I don't understand this.” You may be looking at some writing that sort of came out of you creatively, and maybe you don't know exactly how to articulate what it means. But now suddenly, somebody wants that of you. Not that all writers will explain themselves fully in a rehearsal room, but that is the part that I have found the most difficult is that, “What do you mean by this?” Because an actor, then will say, "Well, this part in this scene doesn't make sense when I think about this part in this scene" because they're just looking at it through their character, and they're seeing things that maybe you hadn't considered, like inconsistencies. That can be really humbling and challenging to then try and resolve.
LR: How do you feel like having this outlet for creativity has impacted you?
DG: I do think that writing serves as a kind of catharsis that way. For me, more journal writing. Then when I'm trying to do something fiction-wise, I do believe that there's an emotional aspect to generating creative writing. I also think that we can get tripped up as writers by confusing our individual emotional experience with trying to create something for an audience, whether that's a leader or (an) actual audience at a show. They're the ones ultimately who are supposed to be having the experience. Sometimes we confuse like, well, a friend of mine once said about a piece of writing, “Spilling your guts is exactly as charming as it sounds,” is what she said. And I think what she was getting at is like, and she's a writer too, is that sometimes you need to process your raw material a little more when you're doing creative writing, than when you're just sort of writing to get something out.
In terms of the social aspect, it's been great. Obviously, not obviously I mean, it's led to the great friendships and relationships of my life. I think the downside of theatrical social life is that it constantly starts and stops. So that you develop these really fast, quickly, intimate -- I just mean, like, personally intimate relationships with people -- because you're in these intense experiences putting theater together, and then they stop. They go away. If you don't have a means by which to keep working with the same people, and you're going to get close to people and then not see them again, maybe ever. For some time for some people, I think that would be great. For other people, I think it would be very draining. I think maybe it's a little bit of both for most people.
LR: Is there any work or writers that have specifically inspired you throughout your career?
DG:Eugène Ionesco is an absurdist playwright that really sort of blew things open for me. When I was in high school and in college, I think at first I was really serious and thought that the only way to make good writing was to make really serious and depressing writing. Ionesco takes a lot of those same serious themes but is very funny in the way that he treats them. I think I noticed a significant uptick in people enjoying my stuff once I was exposed to that. But the second way of looking at it, I want to talk about quickly, is I think you can find authors that inspire you to do better than them. You read something, or you watch something, and you're like, "Wow, that's really frustrating to me because I don't think the writing is good enough for the subject matter, or whatever." A professor once called those your hotspurs, after this character in a Shakespeare play, who is a rival to the hero. Who is pricking you on with the Spurs by trying to get you to sort of say, "I can do that better than you?" I think both of those are necessary to drive creative ambition.
Actors from Daniel Glenn’s 2019 play “King Phillip's Head is Still on That Pike Just Down The Road” perform during June 2019. Glenn has found inspiration for his writing through reading other creative works. “I think it's a natural, necessary step to--if you read something that you really love at least if you're at all like me--the next thing that you write might end up being sort of become like, there's an aura that's sort of been transmitted to you. That's going to be a little bit stylistic, like what you just read and I think that's fine. I think then if you do that enough times as a young person, and expose yourself to enough different things, then you eventually start to find your own after you've been influenced by all these.” Photo by Elke Young
LR: Are there any goals you hope to achieve through your writing?
DG: I think it's tricky. Anytime I write, unless I'm really just writing a journal thing to just sort of get my memories down on paper so that when I'm old and adult, I can read it. If I'm not doing that, the goal is always to write something that's good. You always want to write something that is good no matter what it is. Once you determine what good is for yourself, once you're able as a younger person or a person starting out, to sort of separate out what I think I've been told is good or like these are the voices in writing I use for school, and this is the whatever.
Once you sort of know what you think is good, you always want to try and create something that lives up to that. In terms of the reason, I think that it's tricky to think about what do you want to do as a writer. I think having more tangible, like, I'd love to have a musical produced, right, like, I'd love to -- Those goals, I think, are very helpful in perhaps promoting your activity. Where I think that I ran into trouble earlier, and it's not like I'm free of it now, is if I had it in my mind that I was going to write something that taught people about blank, right. I think that for me, with my own perspective, and background as this right, I think that was a more --- I think I ran into bad writing more quickly when I had that kind of goal in my mind.
LR: Do you have any plans for the future, when you’re done with school?
DG: I'm in grad school, this time as an eternal sort of student. Because as I told you about the teaching thing, right now, I'm studying education policy. My hope is to still use my background in education, but in a different form advocating for teachers and students. In terms of creatively, I actually do still, I mentioned the idea of a goal of having a musical produced, right. In theater writing, there's something called being in development. Your script is in development. What that means is over the course of a lot of years, sometimes people will read the work, maybe read it aloud, maybe even read it aloud in front of people, but it doesn't get fully produced. This musical has been in development for a number of years and I do have a goal of eventually, someday I'd love to see--I'm writing it with someone. I'm not a musician myself.--I'd love to see that produced.
Otherwise, I don't really have many goals right now because I think that Dramatic Writing is at an interesting moment where we are taking stock as a society and culture of who's telling what stories right and who gets to tell what stories. I think theatre writing especially because it takes so much money to put on a play and, and to go to school for. It has really been a resort of the privileged, like a bastion of privilege. This is not the first time but it's definitely a very important time to be having conversations about that. I don't feel a pressing need right now to get anything out there because I think it's a great time for sort of assessing what's out there and trying to find ways for new things to emerge.
LR: Do you have any advice that you would give young people who wanted to go into dramatic writing specifically?
DG: I think advice is hard because I really do believe that everybody's creative practice is different. And the way that you're going to find success for yourself will be unique to you. I was talking to the AP class about there are sort of two schools of thought about writing, there's more, but if you boil it down to like. Some people believe you really need to develop a practice of writing every day. There are rules that they think you should follow, and that's to sort of build up your writing muscles and be able to. When inspiration strikes you, then you're able to sort of process it easier because you've been practicing. Whereas other people, say like you either you're not able to do that you don't have the resources to do that, or you just, that's not how you want to be creative.
I think there's other ways of living, like only writing when you're inspired or whatever. If I can give any advice, I think I really think that trying to read and see as much literature, dramatic or otherwise, as you can is really helpful. I mean, yeah, there are people who sort of are idiosyncratic and don't really engage with popular culture or whatever. And they become interesting artists. But more often, for most of us who aren't just like natural geniuses, we learn by seeing what we like, and what moves us. Once we see that, and once we really appreciate everybody says this movie is good, but I don't like it. I really like this one, right? What does that say about me and my style? Once you start to develop that I think you'll be on the fast track that most of us follow.
