Writing Across Genres

Episode 148:  Writing Across Genres Today we talk to Treanor Baring who has written poetry, plays, novels, and scripts for television. What’s her favourite form of writing? What are the important elements when writing for television? How do you write effective poetry? What’s the difference between the first draft and the second draft of a piece? Show Notes * Almost History: the whole space time continuum thing Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This is Episode 148. You can find any links to this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode148. Okay. So, today, I am talking to Treanor Baring. Treanor started out her career working in educational television for PBS and has hit a number of different writing forms along the way. I like this conversation and this is a great conversation about what makes different genres unique and what makes writing as good as it can be. You know, it’s a really awesome thing to have a playwright in our catalogue who also has dipped their toe into a bunch of different formats. I think that it’s an amazing thing to be multifaceted as a writer and that’s why this conversation, I think we should get right into it, right? Let’s get into it. Let’s go. LINDSAY: Today, I get the pleasure of talking to Treanor Wooten Baring. Hello, Treanor! TREANOR: Hi! LINDSAY: Treanor is a new to Theatrefolk playwright this year. She wrote a play called Almost History: that whole space time continuum thing and it’s an awesome title because it tells you so much, right? It tells you that we know something – we know something about history is happening but we also know that it is a little perhaps left of centre, a little wonky – but we’re going to get into that. First, hello! How are you? TREANOR: I’m good! Hello to everybody! LINDSAY: Awesome! That’s great! So, Treanor, the first thing that I want to talk to you about is that you have a fabulous sort of multi-career background and a whole bunch of different parts of the arts and none of it is steeped in theatre. I’m fascinated. It’s so fascinating when we get these plays because we don’t know who the playwrights are and we’re only going on “will this play work for our audiences?” So, when I went back and looked at your bio again, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be fun stuff!” So, that’s my first question to you. TREANOR: Okay LINDSAY: Where is your background in theatre? Is there something in the distant past that sort of started you on that path? TREANOR: Yes. Actually, in high school – well, a little bit before that – I think it was when I was about ten or eleven. I joined a local theatre company just as an actor and to get training in that in our area. I grew up in South Florida and we had great community theatres and they had classes for young people and they had plays that they put on that you could try out for and so I did that from about the age of ten on. That’s where I really found my love for plays and theatre and acting. I was in Summer Stock in Florida. I was actually the maid in Private Lives when I was fifteen – you know, tiny little part, but I got to work with professional actors and work around theatre. That was my youth background. Then, I knew that I wanted to get into writing and directing somehow and I also am just a very v...