Somerville poet appearing in film on WGBH website

Medford resident Chelsea Spear - who has screened films at festivals thorughout the US and abroad - thought a journal-writing documentary would fit perfectly with the current Open Call theme, Life Stories.

Playwright Kelly Dumar and book editor Sarah Westbrook Binns responded to Spear's online ad seeking interview subjects.

Spear said in a statement that she wanted Lazar for the piece after seeing her perform with the band Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys. Lazar performs poetry and spoken word during their sets, in costume.

"I love her visual panache, and I thought she'd bring some great, offbeat
insights to my film,” Spear said.

In the film, the three women tell Spear why they keep journals, and Lazar offers some pithy thoughts.

"I guess it's my oldest bad habit," Lazar says in the film.

And the writing comes at a torrid pace, she said.

"As a performance artist constantly pulling scraps of sonnets out of my underoos, and scribbling $1 poems [in 100 seconds] I release out into the universe to never see again, it's important to me to share how the [heck] I got here, that is to say, where these insta-writing chops came from,” Lazar said in a statement.