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[0:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Writing is by its very nature a solitary practice. Whether with pen and paper or in front of a computer screen, it is generally time spent alone, creating a world of characters and stories. Acting, on the other hand, is generally a collaborative and shared effort in bringing those characters and stories to life. Psychologist Marty Olsen Laney says that writing and speaking use different pathways in our brains. Extroverts tend to speak more easily in front of others, while the writing pathways simply seem to flow more fluently and easily for introverts. So it is always a unique combination when a playwright becomes an actor or an actor starts writing plays.

[0:44] Jack Canfora: Hi, my name is Jack Canfora. I'm from New York, New York, and I live in New York still. I'm the artistic director of the online theater company New Normal Rep, and I am also a playwright. Jack began his theater career as an actor, but now primarily writes plays like Jericho and Poetic License, both critically praised works for their dialogue. In our conversation, we talk about these two plays as well as some of the hard lessons he's learned in producing plays in general. We also discuss the parallels between acting and writing and how each one has helped improve the other. But like any creative endeavor, it's a back-and-forth process of elimination, and that includes being able to take feedback and comments.

So with this episode, I'm going to start sharing comments I get from listeners like you. You'll hear that at the end of the episode. Because whether it's podcasting or playwriting, it's important to highlight and expand upon what works and either improve or outright eliminate what doesn't.

[1:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: By the time I present it as a draft for people to read, I've done all the editing I can do. And when then once I hear it, sometimes it'll be embarrassingly obvious what I need to cut. It's usually in the form of cuts. I'm a terrible overrider. Welcome and thank you for joining me for another episode here on Why I'll Never Make It, an award-winning theater podcast hosted by yours truly, Patrick Oliver Jones, an actor and singer for more than 30 years. Every other week I talk with fellow creatives who bring us stories from their own life of personal struggles and professional hardships with lessons we can all learn from. The website is why I'll never make it.com, where you can subscribe, donate, and find past episodes. Again, that's why I'll never make it.com.

[2:57] Patrick Oliver Jones: Welcome, Jack. It is so nice to meet you. I'm so glad we're connecting here on the podcast today.

[3:02] Jack Canfora: Me too. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[3:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, when you graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, a very prestigious place, you actually began your acting career in regional productions of Shakespeare plays. And how do you think that facility with language helped your own writing as you crafted these more contemporary plays?

[3:26] Jack Canfora: Right. Well, um, that's a very good question. I it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I think part of why I was drawn to Shakespeare is that I've always had sort of a lifelong love of language and really just enjoy a well-turned phrase, you know, almost more than anything. Um, and so it certainly drew me to Shakespeare, and um one of the nice things I think about knowing Shakespeare reasonably well is that as a writer, it frees you because you know, well, I'm not never gonna be that good. So I can just try my best.

[3:59] Jack Canfora: Takes the pressure off, right?

[4:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, all the pressure is off, right? And then you throw in the fact that apparently Tolstoy hated Shakespeare, it's a big relief because you realize, well, no one's ever gonna not everyone's ever gonna like me, because not everyone likes Shakespeare. So if Shakespeare can't win over the entire population, then I stand no chance, and so I shouldn't even bother trying.

[4:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: It's interesting whether you're a writer or an actor, there's so many ways that we can feel pressure. We can feel like I need to step up, I need to do that. But if we can reduce those pressures, I think that allows our creativity to flow much freer.

[4:34] Jack Canfora: Absolutely, absolutely. It's just you have to have I mean, and I'm talking a good game here. Obviously, I don't live up with these ideals anything like all the time, but I think if you can just take care of what you know you do and what you bring to the table, and you know, let the chips fall where they may, so to speak. I think that a lot of times you may not get a role, and it has nothing to do with you, and it's not at all a commentary on your acting. I mean, one thing I wish I'd known as an actor when I was acting more regularly, and I don't do it that much now, but that I learned as a playwright is because I sat in the audition room, obviously, for all the auditions, and 90% of the time, roughly, the people who aren't selected, it has nothing to do with whether or not they're good actors.

[5:20] Jack Canfora: There are so many X factors involved. Uh, you know, one of the roles is already cast, and that person doesn't look physically right or the other person in some way, or things that seem arbitrary to me, certainly. Um, but inevitably the director and the casting director will say, Well, I don't know that their energy meshes with this other person. And it's not a question of being better or worse. Uh, those are incredibly subjective anyway. It's just a question of, do you fit exactly what they're looking for? And since you can't really know, because I think half the time they don't really know, even though they say they're looking for a certain type, I think a lot of the time they're really just as clueless as everyone else.

[5:57] Jack Canfora: To me, as an actor that would have taken a lot of pressure off me. I'd have been like, I'm just gonna go in and do my best, and if they like me, they like me. If they don't, it'll be another day. It won't be an indictment of my acting ability or lack thereof.

[6:08] Patrick Oliver Jones: Exactly, exactly. And even though you're predominantly a writer now, you did get your start in acting. Was writing always the eventual goal, or did it just kind of happen?

[6:17] Jack Canfora: It well, uh I don't when I was younger, I wanted to be a writer, and then when I got to be my late teens, I wanted to be um I was I was a musician and I really wanted to be a songwriter. And I, you know, and I did a little bit, but then I really got the acting bug, as they say, and so that really was my focus. And then I tried once or twice in my early twenties to give writing a go, and you know, it was a disaster. I mean, I could barely get past the first page and I would, you know, it would just be all drek. So I actually got a relatively late start in writing. I didn't really start writing in earnest anyway until my mid to late twenties, which is a little late in the game.

[6:51] Jack Canfora: And I started writing sketch comedy because I was in an improv slash sketch group, and I found that I could do that. And um after a certain time, uh the sketch group disbanded, and I was gonna have a child, and so you know, as I like to say, I knew he was gonna want to eat every day, and so I had to get a day job. And so I thought, well, how can I stay connected to the arts in some way? Because I can't go on auditions if I'm working a full-time job, because I can't then say to you know, I was a teacher for a while. I can't then say I'm gonna be on the road for the next two months, but I'll come back, you know, in February. It didn't work that way. But writing was something I could do, and the more I did it, the more I realized that I think I was probably better at it than acting, and it fit my personality better, um, because it's equal parts hermit-like and also social.

[7:41] Jack Canfora: When you're writing, it's obviously you're alone, and but then when you're rehearsing and doing readings, it's very social, and so and I'm sort of bisected that way myself.

[7:51] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, let's get into your first story. And you wanted to start off by talking about your second play, which was Poetic License. And you say that the rehearsals were disastrous mostly because the lead simply couldn't learn his lines, and then four days before opening, he was replaced. Now you were kind of cutting it down to the wire. What was that final straw that led you to fire this actor?

[8:14] Jack Canfora: Well, um, yeah, it was sort of like I don't know if anyone's seen Spinal Tap, but uh it was like if they that was they were doing a version of uh play rehearsals, and I have to say, um, there were other people who were uh for practical and I and I think uh basic kind out of basic kindness, they were a lot more reluctant to let him go than I was because we had like a three-week rehearsal, and by the end of the middle of the second week, he hadn't really made any progress in his lines, and um he'd been talked to about that, and he just clearly wasn't gonna get there in my mind anyway.

[8:48] Jack Canfora: And so I'd frankly been saying we need to really cut our losses here quickly, and then like literally like three days or four days before our first preview, and he was still walking around and just in a fog, and he was a very nice man and not and and a good actor, but he just could not learn the lines. And uh eventually everyone said, Okay, we have to let this guy go, but he had to have another actor lined up. Uh, and of course, we it then decided that you know, through the opening weekend, he was just gonna be on book, uh, which already is less than ideal. Because in a perfect world, the actors knew their lines.

[9:25] Jack Canfora: And so it was at that point when we could stop worrying about that that we started to really listen to the play in earnest. And the last 15 minutes of the play we soon realized was an absolute train wreck, and that maybe it was better in some ways if people didn't know their lines. Because the lines were not it just wasn't working at all. And you know, and I tried rewriting and rewriting, and but it just wasn't it just wasn't getting any appreciably better. And it got to the point where I was very downhearted about the entire play. In fact, I told friends and people who wanted to come, so you know what, give this one a miss. This is not gonna be a pretty sight.

[10:03] Jack Canfora: Um in the first act we were very happy with, and that's really mostly what we kept running, was trying to get him to have him get the lines down. It's like, well, the first act's in good shape, and then the second act was a horror show. But then I got a um a review, I forget who wrote it, but it was it was uh regional theater, but it was a New York Times review, and it was very honest about the play.

[10:23] Jack Canfora: The review that Jack refers to here is from 2008 and is by Stephen Wells, who wrote, When the first act of a new play holds the audience captive, as it does in Poetic License, a drama by Jack Canfora at New Jersey Repertory Company and Long Branch. One cannot help becoming excited by the possibility that a major hit could be unfolding. Unfortunately, as often happens, Mr. Canfora seems to have had little idea how to finish what he started so promisingly. And the second act is not only disappointing on its own merits, but also oddly invalidates much of what happened in the first. The reviewer goes on to say, if there's good news for Mr. Canfora, it's that his second act is so short that he won't be jettisoning much if he decides to develop the piece further. But as it stands now, he has written only half a play that works. It's a glorious tease.

[11:46] Jack Canfora: Yeah, yeah, sometimes they like to use their language and really cut things down.

[11:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[11:51] Jack Canfora: I mean, and I can't blame them. We all enjoy some Schadenfreude, and uh we all enjoy, you know, you can you can you know show how smart you are now and it's a lot more fun to be mean, you know, which is one of the central dilemmas of humanity, I guess. Is you know, you have to I mean as an actor, I like the villain more than the exactly, exactly right. It's all far far more fun to play.

[12:10] Jack Canfora: Um, but this was a critic who was clearly saying this is this could be a very good play. It's not, and it's really not a very good play. But so I took that uh advice to heart, and uh it actually ended up being off Broadway. And the funny thing there is that even then, uh, when I thought I had fixed it, it really wasn't fixed, and like we finally got to the end, finally figured it out as we were loading in the play uh to be off Broadway. We finally landed on the endings.

[12:38] Jack Canfora: That I mean, I without exaggeration, it probably took me 50 drafts to get there.

[12:44] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, now I'm curious. As you were going through, you know, as you say, the first act was in pretty good shape, but that second act wasn't. Could it have been the fact that the play wasn't written as well, that this actor was having so many trouble with the lines?

[12:58] Jack Canfora: I mean, it very well could be, although, like I said, he was having a horrible time with the lines in the first act, and and the consensus was that no, the first act works. So, I mean, I would be the first to blame it on the lines. In fact, I I try. Uh, I think it's very useful for me as a writer if I'm in rehearsal and the scene isn't working. I think as a player, I have to assume that it's the writing. And sometimes it isn't, but my it's just a best practice to assume that it's the writing and and to go from there.

[13:28] Jack Canfora: And um I'm pretty good at hearing when something is clunky or just isn't land. Um, you know, I guess practice makes perfect, but I think, you know, um, uh, you know, I so I try to be very uh critical of my writing as as um listening to it. So I know I think his problem was just some sort of I mean, he was a slightly older gentleman, and I and I apparently, you know, he was a working actor, but he apparently hadn't had like a central lead in a while. And he has and he had a lot of lines, and I think that that was a little overwhelming, and then I think he got in his head after a while.

[13:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely hard because it kind of be a spiral that you have a little trip up, and then that trip up becomes a speed bump, and then it becomes a snowball and just yeah, it just found Kilimanjaro, yeah, absolutely.

[14:08] Jack Canfora: Yeah, exactly. As far as the opening when it finally did open with this new actor, were you happy that you went with this new actor? Did that seem to be the right choice? Yeah, well, he's a very good actor, and you know, and he ended up doing, I think, a very commendable job with it, even bravely and heroically got through the end of it with dignity, which you know it was hard to do with the writing. But uh, and in fact, uh, this just came back to me now. Um we did it off Broadway. We had an actor named uh Garrett Wynne Davies, who's a very well-known Canadian actor, and you know, he's part of the uh the Stratford Festival, and um he was unable to make the last week of the show, and so we but we really wanted him, and so we actually got the actor was very kind enough to agree to come in and do the last week of it off Broadway for us.

So he got to revisit the role and totally off book. So right, right. Yeah, so now he was wonderful. Now, when it comes to this critic that you said that actually seemed to take care of wanting this production, wanting this play to be something more, what made you actually want to take that critic's advice rather than see the trouble, see the vast rewrites it was going to take and just kind of take it out behind the barn, so to speak?

[15:18] Jack Canfora: Yeah, well, that's always my instinct, is just a sort of certainly at that point it had been such an unpleasant experience all around that my um my instinct was just to move on. But my funnily enough, my director had been saying sort of the same thing to me along the way. Uh, but when I read this, I thought maybe there's something to it. And he was, I thought, very perceptive in his analysis uh of what worked and also what didn't work. He's very perceptive about that. So I thought, well, maybe uh maybe I should give it another crack because I I know I have a first act, and to me, ideas don't grow on trees. And so um I thought, you know, theoretically, I'm I'm halfway done with the play already.

So if I look at it from that perspective maybe that's better and I did put it away I don't know how long I put it away for but probably close to a year uh because I was there's no way I could do it right away. Um I just sort of wash the taste out of my mouth so to speak and then look at it come to it relatively fresh. And so after about a year I I started reworking on it and and then I agreed that there were there was a play in there worth fixing. Overall what is your general consensus when it comes to reading reviews and critics and that kind of thing?

[16:29] Jack Canfora: Well I believe adamantly you should never read reviews which is weird because I do read all the reviews and I've been generally very very lucky with with with reviews. Um in the ones that that haven't been as kind I try my best to uh objectively think do they have a point? And and oftentimes I think oh that's a fair point and occasionally I don't think they do in that I feel a lot of critics will tend to talk about the play that they would have liked to have seen you know they they would have liked to have written and while that sounds like a wonderful play it's not the play I wrote you know and it wasn't the play I was interested in writing. So those sort of criticisms to me roll right off my back.

But any criticism that I think has some you know real validity in terms of uh in other words I was trying to do this the writer's trying to do this but he didn't quite get there maybe because of this I'll listen to those criticisms uh because I think you can learn a lot. But it's also a case of considering the source, right? I mean, a lot of critics do like to just, you know, make their pronouncements. Uh, and but there are some critics like that uh writer and uh he was just interested in really trying to do his job as a critic and so I I think critics do have a valid role to play, but uh it doesn't keep me from complaining about them when they're not nice, but yeah, I I do. No, that may be an unpopular opinion, but I think that criticism is important.

[18:03] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, getting to your second story, this one involves another play of yours that has been optioned by the Schubert organization, which is America's oldest professional theater company and one of the largest theater owners on Broadway. Now you had this great director who put together an investor's reading, several prominent actors, but then the uh the director had so much faith in the script and the actors, he saw no need for a rehearsal.

[18:30] Jack Canfora: No, I I can only imagine how that went. What what happened? Well, what well basically as as you said, uh had such faith is like we're just gonna and so we had like a rehearsal like the morning of and the and then that was really like they don't have any questions, you know, and at that point, and you know, and this is my fault uh almost just just as much, but it was my first experience dealing with sort of theoretically, you know, like the you know, the major leagues, whatever that is, you know, and so I mean there are people in their room with you know a lot of Tony Awards in that room. And so I thought, well, if I think something is egregiously wrong, I'm gonna say something, but obviously, you know, this person knows what they're doing, and these actors know what they're doing, so I'm not going to come across as this neurotic uh playwright, and I'm just gonna trust the process, which is almost never a good idea.

[19:23] Jack Canfora: And as it happened, the reading started and it was fine, but the one of the actress playing the central one of the central roles clearly was not familiar with the script and was not good at cold reading, but and would frequently stumble over words and uh mispronounce words. But the thing is, the actor, rather than saying the word, you know, or stumbling on it, and then was moving on, the actor was determined to get the word right. So they would go back and they would say it again, and they would, and that didn't work, they'd say it again, and you know, and it was uh yeah, and it was it was a play that should have run with intermission about about two hours, and uh I think it ran close to three.

Just because of the various mistakes or yeah, and also by the way, the pace was was uh glacial, and uh you know, I I you know I don't know what could have fixed that, maybe a rehearsal, I don't know. But um it was just familiarity, yeah. Just having you know, you know, halfway through who's who's my character again? No, but um, yeah, so it was really like the world's worst reading. And that was like in 2011, it was like in 2013 or 2012, and um it it gone from a surefire, like we're booking the theater kind of thing, to it just disappeared, like people put their checkbooks away because they couldn't get a sense of it.

[20:46] Jack Canfora: And what I was surprised by was how many people uh you know, the investors could only understand the play through a a reading of it. Like they couldn't see past the fact, well, this is really a not a very good reading, let me read the script. They just purely judged it on that. So they walked away, and then the play really gathered dust until um like 2017, and uh another very good director, a friend of mine named Michael Wilson, uh, was talking to someone at uh the Bay Street Theater out in the and in and Zach Harbor and that play had been given to that theater several years ago and he had said oh did you ever read that play and uh the artistic director uh said oh you know what I'm embarrassed to say I haven't and uh he said no read the play I think it's good and then he read it and liked it and then we finally produced it in 2018 but it was five years and it and if um you know Michael Wilson at that cocktail party hadn't as a piece you know as a conversational gambit raised that issue it would still never have been produced.

[21:41] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now in those five years had you been working had you even been thinking about it?

[21:45] Jack Canfora: Well I've been thinking about it a lot but I hadn't worked on it because I and this was not to say I thought it was perfect because I know I knew it wasn't but um I really had no gauge of what to fix. You know for me I need to hear it a lot of the time. By the time I present it as a draft for people to read I've done all the editing I can do uh until I hear it. Uh and one then once I hear it sometimes it'll be embarrassingly obvious what I need to cut. It's usually in the form of cuts for me. I'm a terrible overwriter. And you'd think that you'd be able to piece together reading it all you've mentioned this four times but I don't I tend not to notice it until I hear it. So I just really wasn't much I could do and then I eventually I would say probably by 2016 2017 I think by then as a nation we'd all lost lost hope in in general uh and so by that point I'd sort of like forgotten about it and then and then finally it it it it came back.

[22:46] Jack Canfora: But yeah, I mean that was a blow. And that was that was a definite blow. But again, that going back to the earlier point about when you audition sometimes it doesn't it's not got nothing to do with you. That had nothing to do with me or the quality of the play, be it bad or good. It was it was just the reading that day.

[23:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well I also think this highlights the you know and the previous story highlights the collaborative art that goes into writing. I mean yes you're a writer you've created the words but once you have actors who are actually portraying it that are actually working through the material that's when you can hear where it's good, where it's not, what needs fixing and and when actors like the first story or in this one where they're mangling this then that becomes the focus rather than the actual material.

[23:31] Jack Canfora: Absolutely and and that's and I and it sounds like this is a podcast about me complaining about actors and it and actually I've been extraordinarily lucky for the most part and I what I love about playwriting is is also is the collaborative aspect of it. You know and you know the text of the play is not the play. You know uh the text is the script. The script isn't a play. You know if you need a lot of other people to make it a really a play. And uh so I rely a lot on um director and also you know uh smart cast members. I mean I've been very lucky and with this theater company I've gotten to work with some extraordinarily good actors and no matter um if you've got a smart actor and a talented actor in the room they're going to make your play better.

It doesn't matter how good you are they're going to elevate your work. They're gonna make you seem smarter than you really are uh which I'm all in favor of it you know I realize it's not like it may have been um well I am complaining about those two actors in general I've yeah I've been exceptionally lucky and um one of the uh few smart things I've done in my life is that when I find collaborators whom I admire and also like being in a room with, which is also really important, I try and as much as possible to keep them in my creative life because finding um a collaborative family is uh is so hard and it's such a lonely business on top of everything else.

[24:54] Jack Canfora: But to find people whom you trust implicitly as people and as artists, I mean, uh you got you you know, if I find them, I I I want to hang on to them.

[25:02] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I think that's something that certainly myself as an actor, but I think any actor we like to have that director, that playwright, that producer, someone on the other side of the table that likes us, keeps bringing us back. There is a sense of familiarity, but then there's also a sense of, oh, I've kind of found a home. I found a place where where I fit in. Do you tend to seek out or have gravitated toward actors that are on your same page, fit your groove, or those that may kind of be adjacent and give you different ways to look at it?

[25:32] Jack Canfora: Uh I think a bit of both. I think I, you know, perhaps to a fault, I um I definitely trend to hang on to actors who who oh I know make my plays look better. There are some excellent actors who just don't respond to my to my plays, and it doesn't seem a natural fit for them. And that again isn't a knock on their abilities, it's just not always a good fit. But I I have several actors, I've been very lucky uh to have actors who, by the way, could would be excellent in anything, but uh agreed basically to stay in my orbit creatively. And not only does that on a pragmatic level make everything better, it's an incredible boost of confidence that these are people whom you would go, you know, proverbially, you know, to to read the phone book, and um yet they want to still keep working with you.

[26:21] Jack Canfora: And that is an immense boost of confidence. And and frankly, in the world of theater, sometimes it's the only payment you're gonna get. So you need to sort of cherish it. Uh and so I do. Um having said that, I also trust these people to say, hey, I know someone who'd be really good for this role. And so it's always fun to sort of bring in new people as well because you don't want it to be static. But yeah, I tend to be very clingy in terms of uh no I like this actor and I and I've actually gone so far as writing parts for certain actors specifically because they'd be good in it but also you know in a naked attempt to make them like me.

[27:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well in a similar way as much as I enjoy producing this podcast I also do it hoping that you'll like me and these episodes and the guests that I bring on and that it will entice you to help support this podcast financially to not only continue producing episodes like this but also improve enhance and expand this podcast as well. You can go to why I'll never make it dot com and click subscribe to support either monthly or yearly and get access to bonus episodes that aren't interrupted by these promotions.

[27:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: Or you can choose to make a one time donation to why I'll never make it either way your contributions are not only needed but much appreciated well this actually gets us into the third story which is that you have not only written plays but you've acted in them as well so you've written parts for yourself. And one time you were in the dressing room during a performance of uh one of your plays called Play Sitting, and there was one particular night where you were just chatting away with other actors.

[28:15] Jack Canfora: What happened? Like an idiot. Yeah. And uh, you know, because I figured what an idiot. Because I figured, well, I know the play, I know how long I've got left. And I guess I was so taken with my own, you know, uh, oratory skills. Uh, and you know, I was I I missed my cue. And here's the thing too. The stage is at it was at New Jersey rep, and the stage is uh you to get to the wings in the dressing room, you have to go off stage and then climb up a flight of stairs at the landing and then go to the other side of the building. So it's a good two-minute, well, minute and a half walk. Um, and so the stage, so first of all, there had to be enough time elapsed for the stage manager to realize, oh my god, he's missed his cue.

And then to uh tell the assistant stage manager, go get him. She had to run up in a panic, get my attention because I'm bla blathering like an idiot. Tell me that you missed your cue, and then I sort of black out, you know, and it's all in slow motion. So I have to run down and come downstairs. And uh when I came on stage, the looks of the other actors uh staring at me uh were so mortified and hateful in a very crowded field that may be my most embarrassing moment uh of my life. It was horrifying, you know, horrifying for anyone, horrifying all the more because it's my play, it's your own work, right? What an idiot. And uh fortunately, they uh the cast was a very nice group of people. Um, and uh one of the actors, actresses in fact, who was on the stage is someone I still work with a lot named Carol Todd, who's actually very brilliant, and and we're very close, but she loves that story.

She she never tires of telling that story. So just you know any any moment I think, oh, I've done this well and pretty good, and she'll say, Well, Jack, remember the time Well, I would say that any actor, we have those two nightmares. The one is that not knowing your lines and you don't know where you are on stage, and you you know, right? But then the other is that you've missed your cue, and it is a football field away, and the more you run, the farther it goes away. I mean, the I've had these nightmares myself, but I've also lived it, you know, even myself this past year. I was in a scene with Kate Baldwin. Wonderful. Love her. But I had missed my cue. Fortunately, it was a it was a very small, like one line that I had missed.

And so then I just came into the scene later and we were able to move on, and she was very gracious, but I just felt like I was the worst person. It is it's you know, I mean, you really do question your basic humanity in a moment like that, right? What sort of monster am I? Uh and in fact, I'm just you know, I was just an idiot that day, you know. Um and so uh yeah, no, it's still like even just retelling the story. I'm laughing just to cover up the the adrenaline rush. Like I am chill to the bone, even just talking about it. Yeah, like yeah, I still feel it too. So I get it. It's terrible, it's terrible. And even as I'm retelling, I'm like, what's what sort of person would do that? So yeah, that's uh all true though, unfortunately.

[31:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, I'm curious though, you know, given beyond that, to the sense of being in your own plays, then do you find working on them, rewriting them, do you find that easier? Because you're actually saying the lines with other actors?

[31:36] Jack Canfora: No, it's much easier to work on other people's plays, I've found, and it's something that I'm not especially good at, I've found, for a couple of reasons. And the main one being that I'm the most basic thing any actor owes to another actor is to listen to them and to pay attention. And I inevitably will have moments where I'm listening to them like I'm not sure about that line. That line really doesn't land. And so, first of all, for myself, I'm obviously not going to be doing a great job acting, because I'm not in the moment at all. Um, and it's really unfair to the other actors. And I've also talked about this is maybe my second most embarrassing thing, because it's happened more than once, where I have had actors afterwards say to me, you know, you are very quietly mouthing my lines.

Right, because you know them all, right? Yeah, and they're just yeah, well, I mean, just and how awful is that for the other actor? I mean, they're they have to emote and say these lines. I'm like, you're you're saying the lines with me. Very, very terrible. I um the the you know, this this podcast play that we have out now, I'm actually in it, but it was recorded, and um, and we all had scripts in front of us, so I didn't have to worry about that. Uh, because I could just look at my script and then look at the actor. So I sort of uh was able to avoid that trap. But yeah, it's very hard for me. It's very hard because I can't I can't not hear it as lines that I've written, and therefore I need to make sure that they're working. So it's I'd I'd much rather do uh a play of someone else's. But writing the play, as you say, you you obviously know the lines, so obviously learning the script is much of a fault.

[33:23] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah. How does that work being an actor, the writer, and then working with a director who's trying to maybe change some things or alter how does that relationship work?

[33:33] Jack Canfora: Uh well, uh you know, for me, for example, I would never have any interest in directing one of my own plays. Um, because I always like other eyes on it and other ears listening to it. Um so I and I also believe, and again, it to be honest, it depends on the actor, but um I think that there are times in which an actor may not know the play better than you. I mean, hopefully that if they do, that's that's problematic for you. But they may they may very well know their character and understand their character in a level you don't. And it may not be better or or more correct, although sometimes it is. It's just they're coming at it from a certain angle and it forces you to reassess what you've done.

And I think that there's a lot of things that I've done or written that might be open to another interpretation or that I may not have consciously put in there, but when someone whom I respect points this out, I think, oh yeah, that might be true. So I always try to be as open as I can to the idea that um just because I wrote the play doesn't necessarily mean I'm always right about every choice. I think I'll you also have to respect the actor's sense of what is playable and what is um consistent psychologically and uh performatively for them. Because although I started as an actor, so I think that gives me a sense of that, it's hardly unerring. You know, in the moment and the dynamics of the different actors and personalities, it it may not be the right angle to take.

And I've definitely had actors say to me, I think the character really is doing this more because of that. And sometimes I will disagree, but other times I'll think, you know, I think they're right. And I think there's some level in which I either lucked out, which which is very possible, but I I do think that I tend to write intuitively. I write, I tend to write very intuitively and I try to edit more intellectually. But I definitely think there are things I've written that just feel right to me to write, and I couldn't intellectualize it for you. And then the actor will sometimes intellectualize it for me, and I'll realize, oh yes, that that is it.

[35:39] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I mean, it really is this collaborative effort as it as we've been talking about. And so in the writing of your plays, have there been those that have been, you know, as we say, you know, your little baby that you want to take care of that you were very precious with, and anyone criticizing or what he's like, no, you can't change. Have you ever felt that?

[35:55] Jack Canfora: I mean, I think everyone feels it, but I try I try very hard never to give in to that because what I always bear try to bear in mind is that everyone has the same goal. And then in the room, uh, the best idea wins. You know, it should be a pure meritocracy. And uh again, I've been very lucky in a lot of the plays that I've worked on have been with people whom I entrust implicitly and are very smart. And for example, if someone says to me, I think X is wrong, I will listen to it. But if I don't think X is wrong, I'll say, Oh, well, I you know, I've listened to it, but I disagree. But if like four people are saying to me, X is wrong, then I'd have to be an incredible kind of narcissist to think, no, everyone is wrong, and only I have the purity of vision to guide this through.

That would be idiotic. And and in fact, in this new radio play, there was one scene, and this has never happened to me before, where I wrote a scene and I and I really liked the scene. And everyone who read the play said, Boy, I really like this play. This one scene doesn't work, though. And I and I'd have these individual conversations with people saying, Well, I don't see that, I do think it kind of works. And then I realized one day I had had that conversation with literally everyone in the play about that same scene. And so I said, You know, clearly I'm wrong. Just because I wrote it doesn't mean it's right. It's just like you'd use your your baby analogy. Um, you know, I I love my children to death, and sometimes I think, well, maybe I'm not viewing them objectively.

You know, maybe maybe they are wrong about this. Maybe they do need to be uh have a little correction here. And so I went back and I happily rewrote the scene in a way that people I think ended up being satisfied with. But it hadn't I not listened to them, I think it would have really hurt the play. Because I would have thought, well, this scene works, and anyone will listen to it and say, Oh, I like the play, but you lost me in that scene. On the other end of the of this scenario is that uh during uh that play that I talked about, Fellow Travelers, which was out at San Carver, there was one line, and it was a not an important line at all. It was it was a joke, it was a little throwaway joke.

And uh and the actors and the director were saying to me, Jack, no one's gonna get this reference. It was it was a uh Leni Riefenstahl reference. I don't get it. It was exactly because you're a well-balanced person, living a full life. She was a uh she was a famous German director in the 30s and very talented director, but she's most famous for having directed a film propaganda for the Nazis called Triumph of the Will. Uh and it's considered like a masterpiece and documentary, but it's also horrible, yeah. So it's a double-edged sword. And so um, and so there's one line in which the character makes a reference to Leni Riefenstahl. He's like, and they said, No one's going to get it. And I said, No, most people won't get it.

But enough will, and um, sure enough, it I was, you know, one of the few times of my life I've been proven right because the first preview came and the joke, uh, and then Leni Riefenstahl came out, and um, you know, like 10% of the audience laughed, which is actually a pretty good percentage. You know, I didn't bring the house down, and I didn't expect it to. Um, but I was, you know. You can bet that I looked at my director incredibly smugly. And and the actor, by the way, is an excellent actor. You could like the audience would never have been able to tell. But I looked at the actor say the line and when I got to laugh, I could tell that he was like, What? Like almost disappointed that I got to laugh.

Because he was so desperate not to say it. So there are times I will sort of stick to my guns, but I try never to be precious. And it's always about serving, you know, the good of the play. And it's like that William Faulkner line, you have to, you know, kill all your darlings. And a bad sign for me, and I think for a lot of writers, is if I've written something and I think to myself, what? That's perfect. It's almost inevitably a sign that man, that's that's a terrible piece of writing because it's very it's self-indulgent. And I can relate to when I was an actor, and there were a few times when I was an actor where I just felt unconscious, just on fire. And I'd walk off stage and think, Man, I nailed that.

And people inevitably would come up to me and say, Jack, are you feeling okay? What happened out there? Yeah. So um, you know, when you fall in love a little bit too much with your stuff, you realize that it's it's not necessarily about quality, it's about self-indulgence. And so he's trying to be very on guard about that.

[40:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, thank you so much for joining Jack and me today. And remember, you can get early access to full episodes by going to why I'll never make it.com and click subscribe, or just look for the link in the show notes. But I never want finances to keep anyone from bonus content. So if a monthly or yearly subscription isn't possible for you, then please contact me at why I'll never make it at gmail.com, and I'd be happy to offer you a reduced price or even free subscription.

[40:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: All right, well, as I promised, now let's get to this week's review. And this one comes from Carolina Girl0508 via Apple Podcasts, where she left a five-star review. And she said, I love this podcast. Patrick is a top-notch interviewer who never gets in the way of his guests. Rather, he lets them talk. Further, he does his research and the podcast production quality is second to none. Highly recommend this podcast. Patrick is the best of the best. I have to laugh, even as I read that, it's a little funny talking about myself. But yes, thank you so much, Carolina Girl. I greatly appreciate that. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jack as well. I certainly didn't get in his way as he talked about playwriting.

Mostly because I've never written any play at all in my entire life. So he's certainly the expert there, not me. But one thing I do know something about is podcasting. And as host of why I'll never make it, I'm in charge of writing, editing, and publishing this podcast, which is a production of WINMI Media, with Maria Clara Ribero joining on as co-producer. Background music used in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and John Bartman, and please be sure to join me in two weeks as we talk more about why I'll Never Make It.