Lily Mooney is a playwright and performer originally from Boston. Her work, which includes theatre, comedy and site-specific performance, has been developed and produced in Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and New York, on a variety of stages and sidewalks. Most recently, she created a self-guided audio tour performance for the 2011 DUMBO Arts Festival in Brooklyn, and was a selected participant in the 2011 Dramatists Guild Writers' Intensive in Chicago last fall. She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from Northwestern University, and will begin writing and performing as an ensemble member with Chicago's Neo-Futurists next year.
Lily on...
The Process
I have learned, through unplanned trial and error that mostly felt like error the whole time, that my writing process has very distinct phases. I don't constantly write, but I do constantly think about my pieces and projects. When I'm looking for a new idea, I can get inspired in all kinds of weird ways by all kinds of weird things. From big social or philosophical questions to the garbage in my alley, and what I try to do in the beginning is just let myself think a lot and be thoroughly inspired by something without judging it too early. Once I've thought about something enough I get very itchy to get it on paper, and if it's a play or an essay or something that requires structure I will usually spend a period of time taking copious handwritten notes on the structure or framework of the thing, as well as any bits of language or dialog that occur to me along the way. My two goals in this phase are one, not to lose the paper on which I have written all that crap and two, not to talk to myself too loud in public while I am thinking about dialog. I know that what I have described does not sound like writing, but it is essential to my writing process.
After those phases things become more methodical. I set aside time to write and then I get it all down, trying to keep up that attitude of not judging myself or the thing until a significant portion of the idea has been realized as a first draft. This attitude is really important for me because earlier in my writing life I was an extremely harsh critic of my own work, and that made it difficult to finish anything. A good critical eye for your own stuff is actually a great tool, but I have had to learn how and when to turn it on or off. After the first draft is done I show it to someone or a few people, get it read out loud, get feedback, and rewrite.
SatisfactionSharing [my writing] with people and having it elicit a genuine emotional or physical response. Knowing that in a piece I managed to tell the truth in a unique and effective way. Sometimes it's also just great to see something you envision made real. It's empowering. And also humbling, as the image you have in your brain is brought into contact with reality, or the laws of time/space/physics/economics, or the imaginations of other artists. As a playwright, I like being the architect of a performance event that is unique every time it happens. I like the act of creating a blueprint, and like seeing what other people do with it.
Knowing
I'm not sure when I realized. People always say this, but I never really wanted to do anything else as much as this. Even with that feeling, though, for me it has never been about making money off it. I just have the impulse to make things, and it has never totally gone away, and I want to do it as much as possible for as long as possible. So as a result I have to figure out how to afford groceries and heat in the winter. If the art makes me some money, I'm killing two birds with one stone and that is very helpful. However, I am completely uninterested in making a piece of art or entertainment only or primarily to make money from it. I have been kind of scared to admit that until recently, but that's how I feel. So maybe it's not a viable career, but I'm doing it anyway.
The First Time
When I was in eighth grade, I think, I wrote a sketch for my English class about two kids doing a project in a library while an overbearing librarian tried to get them to be quiet. I performed it for my class in my high school's cavernous auditorium with my two best friends, and we were nervous but we totally thought it was the funniest thing ever, and it bombed. Rightfully. I'm sure it was terrible. But after it bombed I remember not feeling awful about it, and wanting to do more with it and try to make it better. I got some feedback from my teacher, avoided looking my classmates in the eye for about a day afterwards, and then I moved on and kept writing things. And I guess I still do this, and the awkward part afterwards is a lot easier to bear now that I take myself and my work seriously.
In general when my work is performed or when I perform my own work, I experience a blend of hope, fear and nausea. And then it happens and I just try not to worry about how I personally feel afterwards, because sometimes if you do something that makes you really vulnerable you can feel bad even if the work is totally awesome. Or at least I can. I try to pay attention to how it is received, and I try to make my closer friends be as honest as possible with me about it, and then I try to maintain my resolve, stick with whatever I have created and work on it more and make it as good as I can. I feel like there is always more to do. I don't mean that you can't stop working on something and call it finished, because it's important to be able to do that. But I can't think of anything I've written or made where at any point I felt like I was done exploring.
Advice
I am still at the start of my career, I think, and have been lucky enough to get or find a lot of good advice. But I do kind of wish that some adult person would have taken me by the shoulders when I was like thirteen and held me close to their face and yelled, "HEY! TAKE AS LONG AS YOU NEED! IT'LL BE JUST FINE!"
SMALL GAME written by Lily Mooney
Directed by Katie Jones
Produced by Peter Papachronopoulos
For tickets to Small Game check here.