Emmy-nominated writer Kim Rosenstock (Dying for Sex) posed a provocative question to a eclectic group of playwrights-turned-TV writers who joined her at the latest edition of Proper Presents: Deadline Dinners: Have you ever been asked to explain your show’s tone?
To kick off the night that’s designed to foster candid, intimate conversations among storytellers, Rosenstock admitted she was once asked the tone question by a reporter and was a little stumped by what to say. As a former playwright (she penned the 2013 play Tigers Be Still) who holds an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama, tone is rarely addressed in the theater, where the discussion is typically centered on a playwright’s voice.
“I don’t know what that means,” said Rosenstock about the tone inquiry.
That spawned a lively discussion among Rosenstock’s many guests at the Deadline event that took place at the Santa Monica Proper hotel under its cultural platform “Proper Presents.” The guest list — which Rosenstock assembled because of their roots in the theater — included Kat Wood (The Fantastic Four: First Steps), Carly Mensch (Glow), Alena Smith (Dickinson), Rachel Shukert (Nine Perfect Strangers), Melanie Marnich (Apples Never Fall), Susan Su He Stanton (Succession), Anthony King (The Afterparty), Halley Feiffer (American Horror Story), Anna Moench (Severance), Jeff Augustin (The Morning Show), Selina Filinger (The Morning Show), Carla Ching (Mr. & Mrs. Smith), Anna Halberg (Tarot), Sarah Treem (The Affair), Julia Brownell (This is Us), Ken Lin, Blair Milam, Daniel Billington and Josh Allen.
One writer talked about having just received the tone question this week when she turned in a script. “I think in theater we talk about voice a lot, which is related to you and what you have to share,” she admitted. “In TV the show gets to have a voice I guess, which is tone. It’s annoying how many times tone gets brought up.”
Another recalled having to lead a tone meeting while running her first show and was taken aback by having to explain what’s on the page, which any “smart person would infer.”
“I was like, why do I have to spell this out?” the writer recalled. “That was very naive and also quite arrogant, obviously, because I was actually experiencing how decisions get made and how many people can’t be at that meeting. We have to actually specify the intention behind everything.”
(L-R) Deadline president Ellie Duque and Kim Rosenstock
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(L-R) Anthony King, Selina Filinger and Blair Milam
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(L-R) Kim Rosenstock and Deadline’s Ellie Duque
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The conversation at the table
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Halley Feiffer leading the conversation
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Milam, who works at the documentary film company Freethink Media, injected an aha moment into the discussion by explaining tone from her perspective as a yoga teacher.
“People want an expectation of what they’re walking into and they’re looking for you to create a container that they can have a safe experience,” she said during the dinner featuring seasonal eats and craft cocktails. “Tone is coming from fear of the unknown and fear of experience in the moment. I say that because people tell me that my yoga classes are extremely f*cking hard and that I’m kicking their ass. And my response to that always is I’m doing nothing except offering words. And then you are fulfilling whatever those words mean to you. So the tone of my class is hard and fiery, but as a person and as a container, it’s safe and free.”
Smith then dropped a quote from an Israeli psychoanalyst that brought down the house. “Tone is the emotional organization of experience,” Smith said. “I think that is fascinating because with tone you are telling people how you feel and you’re telling people how to receive the information that you’re giving them. It’s facts with a meaning. Right? And tone conveys that.”
Rosenstock just earned her first Emmy nomination for co-writing the Dying for Sex episode “Good Value Diet Soda” with Elizabeth Meriwether. While assembling the guest list for the dinner, she joked about Googling “playwrights who work in TV” and was surprised to find that she wasn’t on the list.
