Twenty years ago I am playing in my best friend's basement. Probably my first best friend. I can almost make out what we're playing - like a word on the tip of my tongue I can almost verbalize - but I know if I attempt to look straight at it, the memory will dodge and weave. Evade.
So I can't make it out before the phone rings.
Mom wants me home for supper in ten minutes.
I tell Jeff, "My mom wants me home for supper in ten minutes." And I start to leave. I live down the block. About a minute away if I walk at a moderate pace on my six-year-old legs. When I was six I ran a mile in 6 minutes and 52 seconds during the memorial day fun run. I can't run a mile at all right now. I could jog it. Slowly.
You said ten minutes.
I know but I'm going to go.
Ten minutes is a long time.
I go up the steps and out the front door before Jeff can stop me and run down the block. I sprint like I am running away from something. Running away from Jeff like he is chasing me with something. Twenty seconds later I am home.
For one of the shows I am working on, the sound designer (a company member) wants me to conduct a series of interviews with actors, designers, the director, etc. The play is about a girl reliving the final days of her childhood before her mother abandons her. During these interviews I could ask: "What do you think about this play?" "How do you relate to your character?" Blah blah blah. But what would that accomplish? So what I am going to ask them is this: "When do you think your childhood started to end?"
I am 3 years, 11 months, and 23.5 days old and I am on the playground of my preschool and a teacher (babysitter?) is telling me I have a phone call and then my dad is telling me I have a sister. I am in kindergarten and I propose to Alexis right before naptime; Sam A. teaches me how to draw a horse (he would die of some pre-existing condition when we are all in seventh grade during a sleepover; I would learn about this from Lauren - a blonde i had a crush on in second grade - at lunch while Liz is sucking on a bouillon cube and I'll shrug it off and say I didn't really know the guy so why would I go to his funeral; when I am taking classes at the art school during undergrad I will run into Sam's mom on a regular basis. Her smile's still sad.). It's first grade and I pee on John for making fun of me in the bathroom; I don't understand why I have to sit out in the hall, why I always have to sit out in the hall. Second grade: have a crush on a blonde who doesn't choose me as a square dance partner; she chooses a guy with the last name Valentine (who would later apparently do some weird f-ed up shit); I have to play Little Bear in a fucked up rendition of Goldilocks and I swear I will have nothing to do with the theatre ever again...in seventh grade I am Will Parker in Oklahoma! and Liz is coaching me on how to sing in front of people: "If you can't sing in front of me," she tells me in my living room, "how are you going to sing in front of a whole audience."
The memories unfold like a personalized yearbook. Does our childhood end with every memory we carry into our adulthood? Does it end as we accumulate the ghosts that will haunt us for the rest of our life? Ghosts that always seem to resurface at the end of the year when we are taking stock. Looking back.
New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday because of its inevitability. Nothing drives it but time itself. A year ends. And you wake up the next morning and all your calendars are invalid (burn them!). And whatever you were is now optional. A suggestion. I am going to quit smoking. I am going to stop eating poorly. I am going to make more of an effort at maintaining my relationships with people other than Rachel (yeah that was mine for 2007)...I am going to stop masturbating in the middle of Walgreens...you saw the news right?...oh you didn't...oh well then this is kind of awkward...
The resolutions aren't inevitable and are, in fact, completely arbitrary. You could decide to change your ways any day of the year just like you don't have to wait until Lent to give up chocolate. But the holiday is inevitable. The temporal renewal is inevitable. And maybe that's what encourages us.
It's January again. Mod 12. Right math guys? 313 mod 12 is 1 right? And we all want to go back to 1 again. Pass go again. Collect $200 again.
Jeff moved away about a year and ten minutes after we were playing in his basement, and I never saw/spoke to him again. I often wonder...no that's a lie...on New Year's Eve I wonder what we could have done in those ten minutes. I wonder if our friendship would have solidified enough that when he moved we would have stayed in touch...okay, I don't wonder that...retroactive nostalgic editing.
But I am wondering it now...
Resolution 2008: Don't sprint home.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
From "The Year of Magical Thinking" which I am reading tonight in lieu of "getting anything done" (a big step for me)
"I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right."
If I ever teach an introductory writing course again, this quote will be the centerpiece of the first day.
--Joan Didion
If I ever teach an introductory writing course again, this quote will be the centerpiece of the first day.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
razorbutterflyapple
Here is that wild play -- wild in the sense of whattheFwerewethinking rather than in the sense of actual wild things happening in the script -- I was telling you about a while back that is a collaboration between me and EJC Calvert (whom I miss terribly: move to Chicago you NYC jerkface!) and Kristin Idaszak (who should add another i to her last name so it is more like Naomi Iizuka). Liz wrote razor, Kristin wrote butterfly, and I tackled apple. Other than the initial rules, we did not discuss what we were writing until we had each finished the first drafts. Then we kind of rotated the play around and revised to make it somewhat cohesive. But it is still fairly wacky. And by fairly I mean TOTALLY wacky.
razorbutterflyapple
act i: razor
TREE
razorbutterflyapple: Act I: razor.
It begins, as it always begins, in a field.
(CAROL enters, MAE dragging behind. She sets up at the base of the tree.)
TREE
Everything doesn’t always begin in a field. But all the stories that happen to me do. I don’t… move. Generally.
(CAROL begins shaving her face.)
TREE
Usually, I’m so sad, I’m the saddest tree in the world. A sad, sad, sad, sad, lonely tree.
MAE
Carol… Carol… come on… Carol… the bus…
CAROL
We got time and you know it.
TREE
Though, to be perfectly frank, these beginnings always make me nervous. The beginning began, it has already begun, and now all we can do is dread the end, when the story will be over and I will be lonely again.
MAE
If we miss the bus again—
CAROL
Shut up, Mae. I can’t talk and shave at the same time.
TREE
Usually, my only visitors are birds. Always flapping, flapping, pecking, flapping. Today I have children! O, joy!
MAE
You won’t grow hairs that way. You’re being stupid.
CAROL
I’ll grow hairs if a goddamn well want to!
MAE
You can’t! You’re a girl, and you can’t grow hairs on your face!
CAROL
Try having faith, Mae. “If you shave there, hairs will grow…”
TREE
I want hairs! I want hairs, too! Shave me! Shave me! Shave all over my bark, and we’ll be haired together!
MAE
Your mom only told you that because she didn’t want you shaving your legs and turning into a whore.
CAROL
You shave. Don’t you?
MAE
None of your business! Come on. Let’s go. Seriously. Come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on
TREE (simultaneous with MAE’s “come on”s)
No! Take your time. Stay forever. Lounge, read, climb if you want, I don’t mind! Just stay!
CAROL
You can go on by yourself! Why don’t you just go on and pretend like you don’t even know me, if you think I’m such a freak and an idiot, why don’t you do that.
MAE
If you didn’t think this was wrong you wouldn’t do it hiding.
TREE
She’s not hiding, she’s with me!
CAROL
Mae, there is only one thing I want in the whole entire world. I don’t give a shit about trust funds or celebrity or my virginity, all I want is a thick, full beard.
TREE
All I want is YOU! I want US!
CAROL
Please, Mae.
MAE
Just hurry.
CAROL
Thank you.
TREE
If you slip with that razor and die, promise you’ll be buried among my roots?
act ii: butterfly
MAE
Act ii: butterfly.
TREE
Thank god we’re onto the second act. I mean, beginnings and endings are all the same. Middles, though. Middles are fun.
CAROL
What?
MAE
Mae and Carol die.
CAROL
That’s fucked up, Mae.
MAE
I don’t say it.
CAROL
I just heard you. Listen, I know you’re mad about the beard thing, but—
MAE
I know it came out of my mouth, but I wasn’t doing the saying. It just came out.
CAROL
That’s fucked up.
MAE
Mae and Carol die, Mae and Carol die, Mae and Carol die.
CAROL
Stop it. You’re freaking me out.
MAE
That’s how the story ends.
CAROL
What story? No it doesn’t. Mae, I’ll kill you.
TREE
Telling the middle of a story’s like detonating a bomb. You’ve already done all the hard science-fiction lab construction bullshit, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up the bodies. You just press the little red button and watch the fireworks.
CAROL
So what do we do?
MAE
I don’t know. Something middling. Say something about a butterfly?
CAROL
My pussy looks like a butterfly.
MAE
That’s it?
CAROL
Uh-uh. Passive aggressive. Like you.
MAE
I’m not—
CAROL
Sit there in a shadow box looking beautiful and dead.
TREE
Stop!
Carol and Mae acknowledge the tree for the first time.
CAROL
What?
TREE
Know what’s hard about being a tree?
CAROL
You can’t have sex?
MAE
You’re such a nympho.
TREE
There’s no pathos or bitter longing or sweet affection in this play. There’s no sense of scale, no grandeur.
MAE
Trees have grandeur. Or at least scale. Right?
TREE
You’re missing the point. There’s no high tragedy. The stakes aren’t life-and-death.
CAROL
Life’s not life-or-death.
TREE
Fuck it. Let’s just move on to apple.
act iii: apple
TREE
apple has nothing to do with the fruit. There are no apples in this scene. I'm not an apple tree. No apples are going to be eaten, and no apples were harmed in the writing of what you are about to see.
Apple attempts to extrapolate from one's understanding of an apple and create an end to this strange tale. The friendship you've seen begins with a conflict between Mae's need for punctuality and Carol's need for a beard and progresses into a conversation about coming of age with the brief acknowledgment that a pussy resembles a butterfly.
Many years have passed since the razor and the butterfly, and we are looking for an end like an apple: clean, crisp, hard, sweet, juicy. Refreshing. Simple. Many years have passed because sometimes time passes. We trees know this.
MAE
Can I say I'm sorry.
CAROL
You can say whatever you want.
MAE
I'm/
CAROL
Shut up.
MAE
Okay.
CAROL
Just shut up. Just shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.
MAE begins to cry softly. CAROL goes over and hits her and continues to hit her until MAE is curled up in a ball and then CAROL kicks MAE and CAROL is crying and they are both sobbing and then CAROL collapses on top of MAE and they hold each other and rock back and forth.
MAE
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I am so so sorry.
CAROL
Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhh. Oh god. Shhh shhh shhh.
MAE
I didn't know. I honestly had no idea. I didn't I wouldn't have, there's no way.
CAROL
Shhhhhhh. I know. I know. Shhhhhhhhhh.
More crying and hugging that eventually turns into laughing.
MAE
You hit me really hard.
CAROL
I'm sorry. You can hit me back if you want.
MAE
I'm not going to hit you.
CAROL
You can if you want.
MAE
I miss you.
CAROL
I miss you too.
Hug into blackout.
TREE
This is the moment I dreaded. Everything doesn't always end in a field, but all the stories that happen to me do. Mae and Carol die. Yes, it is my line. Mae and Carol die. Not now, but eventually. And they won't be buried amongst my roots.
There is no one here to hear me as I fall apart. Not even you. I'm alone waiting for visitors. The saddest tree in the world because I'm the most awake.
END OF PLAY
razorbutterflyapple
act i: razorTREE
razorbutterflyapple: Act I: razor.
It begins, as it always begins, in a field.
(CAROL enters, MAE dragging behind. She sets up at the base of the tree.)
TREE
Everything doesn’t always begin in a field. But all the stories that happen to me do. I don’t… move. Generally.
(CAROL begins shaving her face.)
TREE
Usually, I’m so sad, I’m the saddest tree in the world. A sad, sad, sad, sad, lonely tree.
MAE
Carol… Carol… come on… Carol… the bus…
CAROL
We got time and you know it.
TREE
Though, to be perfectly frank, these beginnings always make me nervous. The beginning began, it has already begun, and now all we can do is dread the end, when the story will be over and I will be lonely again.
MAE
If we miss the bus again—
CAROL
Shut up, Mae. I can’t talk and shave at the same time.
TREE
Usually, my only visitors are birds. Always flapping, flapping, pecking, flapping. Today I have children! O, joy!
MAE
You won’t grow hairs that way. You’re being stupid.
CAROL
I’ll grow hairs if a goddamn well want to!
MAE
You can’t! You’re a girl, and you can’t grow hairs on your face!
CAROL
Try having faith, Mae. “If you shave there, hairs will grow…”
TREE
I want hairs! I want hairs, too! Shave me! Shave me! Shave all over my bark, and we’ll be haired together!
MAE
Your mom only told you that because she didn’t want you shaving your legs and turning into a whore.
CAROL
You shave. Don’t you?
MAE
None of your business! Come on. Let’s go. Seriously. Come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on
TREE (simultaneous with MAE’s “come on”s)
No! Take your time. Stay forever. Lounge, read, climb if you want, I don’t mind! Just stay!
CAROL
You can go on by yourself! Why don’t you just go on and pretend like you don’t even know me, if you think I’m such a freak and an idiot, why don’t you do that.
MAE
If you didn’t think this was wrong you wouldn’t do it hiding.
TREE
She’s not hiding, she’s with me!
CAROL
Mae, there is only one thing I want in the whole entire world. I don’t give a shit about trust funds or celebrity or my virginity, all I want is a thick, full beard.
TREE
All I want is YOU! I want US!
CAROL
Please, Mae.
MAE
Just hurry.
CAROL
Thank you.
TREE
If you slip with that razor and die, promise you’ll be buried among my roots?
act ii: butterfly
MAE
Act ii: butterfly.
TREE
Thank god we’re onto the second act. I mean, beginnings and endings are all the same. Middles, though. Middles are fun.
CAROL
What?
MAE
Mae and Carol die.
CAROL
That’s fucked up, Mae.
MAE
I don’t say it.
CAROL
I just heard you. Listen, I know you’re mad about the beard thing, but—
MAE
I know it came out of my mouth, but I wasn’t doing the saying. It just came out.
CAROL
That’s fucked up.
MAE
Mae and Carol die, Mae and Carol die, Mae and Carol die.
CAROL
Stop it. You’re freaking me out.
MAE
That’s how the story ends.
CAROL
What story? No it doesn’t. Mae, I’ll kill you.
TREE
Telling the middle of a story’s like detonating a bomb. You’ve already done all the hard science-fiction lab construction bullshit, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up the bodies. You just press the little red button and watch the fireworks.
CAROL
So what do we do?
MAE
I don’t know. Something middling. Say something about a butterfly?
CAROL
My pussy looks like a butterfly.
MAE
That’s it?
CAROL
Uh-uh. Passive aggressive. Like you.
MAE
I’m not—
CAROL
Sit there in a shadow box looking beautiful and dead.
TREE
Stop!
Carol and Mae acknowledge the tree for the first time.
CAROL
What?
TREE
Know what’s hard about being a tree?
CAROL
You can’t have sex?
MAE
You’re such a nympho.
TREE
There’s no pathos or bitter longing or sweet affection in this play. There’s no sense of scale, no grandeur.
MAE
Trees have grandeur. Or at least scale. Right?
TREE
You’re missing the point. There’s no high tragedy. The stakes aren’t life-and-death.
CAROL
Life’s not life-or-death.
TREE
Fuck it. Let’s just move on to apple.
act iii: apple
TREE
apple has nothing to do with the fruit. There are no apples in this scene. I'm not an apple tree. No apples are going to be eaten, and no apples were harmed in the writing of what you are about to see.
Apple attempts to extrapolate from one's understanding of an apple and create an end to this strange tale. The friendship you've seen begins with a conflict between Mae's need for punctuality and Carol's need for a beard and progresses into a conversation about coming of age with the brief acknowledgment that a pussy resembles a butterfly.
Many years have passed since the razor and the butterfly, and we are looking for an end like an apple: clean, crisp, hard, sweet, juicy. Refreshing. Simple. Many years have passed because sometimes time passes. We trees know this.
MAE
Can I say I'm sorry.
CAROL
You can say whatever you want.
MAE
I'm/
CAROL
Shut up.
MAE
Okay.
CAROL
Just shut up. Just shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.
MAE begins to cry softly. CAROL goes over and hits her and continues to hit her until MAE is curled up in a ball and then CAROL kicks MAE and CAROL is crying and they are both sobbing and then CAROL collapses on top of MAE and they hold each other and rock back and forth.
MAE
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I am so so sorry.
CAROL
Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhh. Oh god. Shhh shhh shhh.
MAE
I didn't know. I honestly had no idea. I didn't I wouldn't have, there's no way.
CAROL
Shhhhhhh. I know. I know. Shhhhhhhhhh.
More crying and hugging that eventually turns into laughing.
MAE
You hit me really hard.
CAROL
I'm sorry. You can hit me back if you want.
MAE
I'm not going to hit you.
CAROL
You can if you want.
MAE
I miss you.
CAROL
I miss you too.
Hug into blackout.
TREE
This is the moment I dreaded. Everything doesn't always end in a field, but all the stories that happen to me do. Mae and Carol die. Yes, it is my line. Mae and Carol die. Not now, but eventually. And they won't be buried amongst my roots.
There is no one here to hear me as I fall apart. Not even you. I'm alone waiting for visitors. The saddest tree in the world because I'm the most awake.
END OF PLAY
Friday, December 14, 2007
clownaround
i think this is how Iago felt
justified
tossing things
from
a
ten-story window
hoping to hit
and hurt
i think of the blonde alto
and how
one smothers
but
smothered pride
reminiscing wasted time
concocts plots
then
sits
in a corner
wearing the dunce cap
(brewing)
moral: never trust men in corners
you don't know where they've been
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
TOWERS (TOWER version the second)
TOWERS is the first revision of TOWER in an attempt to make it less of a complete downer and to incorporate the two other rules set down for the project: 1) use of a mandolin and 2) "future building as a theme." Rule 3 was to use a character who was silent but present, but I nailed that the first time. I love rules!
TOWERS
Scene 1
Lights up. SAMMY, alone on the stage, is looking straight up. He is carrying a sack lunch. There is a distant yelling that gets closer and closer as the lights fade. And then, in darkness, the sound a body makes when it hits the pavement after falling a few miles.
Scene 2
Lights up. Mandolin music starts quietly. There is a broken body face up almost exactly where SAMMY had been standing. The body reaches his hand up to SAMMY. SAMMY is looking down at the body. The mandolin music gets louder and louder. SAMMY bends down to the man and tries to hear what the man is saying but the mandolin music is too loud. Lights fade but music does not.
Scene 3
Lights up. SAMMY is facing the audience as far away from the body as the stage will allow. The mandolin music quiets slowly until it is a soft hum.
MAN 1 enters with a briefcase that he
immediately drops and goes to the body.
MAN 1
Oh my god Oh my god. Hey man. Hey are you alright. Oh god you're not alright. You're not alright. Alright what do I do? Ummmm...hey you you there hey! Call 911. Hey you! Oh shit oh shit.
MAN 1 approaches SAMMY. Mandolin music gets louder.
MAN 1
Hey. Hey! Somebody call someone! Where's that music coming from!
The body reaches his hand up to MAN 1. And MAN 1 leans down to listen to the body.
MAN 1
What? I can barely, what? No I can't...what? Turn that damn music off!
SAMMY closes his eyes and concentrates really hard. The music dims.
SAMMY
In the middle of the street there is a man.
MAN 1
Shhhhhh. He's saying something! Somebody help!
SAMMY
And that man's my father. Who I haven't spoken a word to in thirty-three years.
MAN 1
He's trying to say something. You're his son? Get over here!
SAMMY
And he wants to tell me all that he didn't tell me when he was alive.
MAN 1
He's not dead yet!
SAMMY
But he can't.
MAN 1
Help!
WOMAN 1 enters with a purse from which she has pulled a cellphone.
WOMAN 1
Omigod what happened?
MAN 1
He just fell. He fell from the sky.
WOMAN 1
What?
MAN 1
Just call someone.
WOMAN 1
I'm calling, I'm calling. Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.
SAMMY
He didn't fall from the sky. He fell from his tower.
MAN 1
What? What? I can barely hear you. Sammy. Are you Sammy? Sammy's here. Sammy's here. What? I know. He won't come. Should I make him come?
SAMMY
He fell from his tower.
MAN 1 goes to SAMMY
MAN 1
Hey man, you gotta get over there your dad he's/
MAN 1 grabs SAMMY and the mandolin music bursts so that MAN 1 is blown over. SAMMY tries to help catch him.
SAMMY (shouting over the music)
I'm sorry. When I was seven I swallowed a mandolin. My dad's mandolin.
WOMAN 1
Hello? 911? Yes there is man in the middle of the road.
Mandolin music begins to quiet.
SAMMY
I swallowed it because I thought he loved it more than he loved me.
WOMAN 2 enters with a grocery bag leading CHILD by the hand.
CHILD
Mommy look.
WOMAN 2
Don't look sweety.
CHILD
He's all flat. Did he fall.
WOMAN 2
Sweety I said don't look.
SAMMY
He asked, Sammy where's my mandolin and I lied and said that it had run off with mom. But then mom came home and then the mandolin started to play in my stomach. So he knew I was lying.
WOMAN 1
Yes. In the middle of the road. Where? Where? I don't know where? Where are we?
MAN 1
Corner of 5th and 2nd.
WOMAN 1
At the corner 5th and 2nd. No I'm not hurt. No, nobody is hurt except the guy lying in the middle of the road. No he's not drunk he's dying!
SAMMY
But he wasn't mad. He smiled. But it was a sad smile and that's when I realized that I had eaten my dad's best friend because my dad talked very little because he hated talking. Or he was bad at talking my mom said. He got uncomfortable talking because he was a brick-layer and that was solitary work.
WOMAN 2
He's asking for a Sammy.
MAN 1
That's that guy over there.
WOMAN 2
We should go get him.
MAN 1
No. No.
SAMMY
And after I ate his mandolin, he didn't have anything to do so he started building his tower. He would leave at sunrise and come back late into the night. Mom blamed me. She hated me for a long time. But dad was happy.
WOMAN 1
The ambulance we be here in 3 minutes.
MAN 1
I don't know that he has 3 minutes.
WOMAN 2
He's asking for him.
MAN 1
That Sammy guy won't come over.
WOMAN 2
Well, how do you know if you don't ask him.
MAN 1
I asked him.
WOMAN 2
Well, I'm going to ask him.
SAMMY
He'd say hi to me and pat me on the head on his way up to the bedroom. He would walk straight into the shower leaving a trail of his dirty work clothes. I'd watch him sometimes and sneak out when he was toweling off.
WOMAN 2
Hey your dad's over there and/
SAMMY is taken by surprise and the mandolin music bursts from him. The groceries spill every where. He rushes to help her pick them up apologetically.
SAMMY
I'm sorry. I can't control it. Whenever I'm startled or nervous or sad or...well anything.
CHILD
Mommy? Mommy? Hey mommy.
MAN 1
Hey man cut that out!
WOMAN 1
Hello? Hello are you still there? Yes can you send the police too? Oh they're already coming great. Great. There's a man here...yelling music at people. I don't know...yelling music. I don't know if he is drunk or not? He might be.
SAMMY
And every day I would come here and bring him lunch. My mom would make it and I would carry it down and he would come down and pat my head and grab this sack and go back up again. I would get so nervous I couldn't say anything to him. Just, music.
CHILD
I think he's dying.
WOMAN 2
Get away from him.
WOMAN 1
He is dying.
CHILD
Do something.
WOMAN 2
We have to wait for the ambulance.
CHILD
Why?
MAN 1
Because we don't know the right thing to do.
CHILD
We could ask him.
WOMAN 2
Sweety leave him alone.
SAMMY
Every day for 30 years.
CHILD
Hey mister. What can I do? Huh? Sammy? Oh is that your son? He's real mean. He's yelling at everyone.
SAMMY
I’d meet him at this spot.
CHILD
What? You have to tell him something. Well can you tell me? I don't think he's coming over. I don't know, were you mean to him?
SAMMY
It’s about 3 miles high by this point. He’s a local hero.
CHILD
I’ll write it down if you want.
CHILD writes.
SAMMY
My dad.
CHILD goes to SAMMY and hands him paper. SAMMY reads. He looks down at CHILD and then he concentrates as hard as he has ever concentrated in his life. If the actor can make his nose bleed, that seems to be the current visual cue to indicate concentration. The mandolin music becomes more manageable and then it is just a hum and SAMMY goes to his father and leans down.
END OF PLAY
TOWERS
Scene 1
Lights up. SAMMY, alone on the stage, is looking straight up. He is carrying a sack lunch. There is a distant yelling that gets closer and closer as the lights fade. And then, in darkness, the sound a body makes when it hits the pavement after falling a few miles.
Scene 2
Lights up. Mandolin music starts quietly. There is a broken body face up almost exactly where SAMMY had been standing. The body reaches his hand up to SAMMY. SAMMY is looking down at the body. The mandolin music gets louder and louder. SAMMY bends down to the man and tries to hear what the man is saying but the mandolin music is too loud. Lights fade but music does not.
Scene 3
Lights up. SAMMY is facing the audience as far away from the body as the stage will allow. The mandolin music quiets slowly until it is a soft hum.
MAN 1 enters with a briefcase that he
immediately drops and goes to the body.
MAN 1
Oh my god Oh my god. Hey man. Hey are you alright. Oh god you're not alright. You're not alright. Alright what do I do? Ummmm...hey you you there hey! Call 911. Hey you! Oh shit oh shit.
MAN 1 approaches SAMMY. Mandolin music gets louder.
MAN 1
Hey. Hey! Somebody call someone! Where's that music coming from!
The body reaches his hand up to MAN 1. And MAN 1 leans down to listen to the body.
MAN 1
What? I can barely, what? No I can't...what? Turn that damn music off!
SAMMY closes his eyes and concentrates really hard. The music dims.
SAMMY
In the middle of the street there is a man.
MAN 1
Shhhhhh. He's saying something! Somebody help!
SAMMY
And that man's my father. Who I haven't spoken a word to in thirty-three years.
MAN 1
He's trying to say something. You're his son? Get over here!
SAMMY
And he wants to tell me all that he didn't tell me when he was alive.
MAN 1
He's not dead yet!
SAMMY
But he can't.
MAN 1
Help!
WOMAN 1 enters with a purse from which she has pulled a cellphone.
WOMAN 1
Omigod what happened?
MAN 1
He just fell. He fell from the sky.
WOMAN 1
What?
MAN 1
Just call someone.
WOMAN 1
I'm calling, I'm calling. Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.
SAMMY
He didn't fall from the sky. He fell from his tower.
MAN 1
What? What? I can barely hear you. Sammy. Are you Sammy? Sammy's here. Sammy's here. What? I know. He won't come. Should I make him come?
SAMMY
He fell from his tower.
MAN 1 goes to SAMMY
MAN 1
Hey man, you gotta get over there your dad he's/
MAN 1 grabs SAMMY and the mandolin music bursts so that MAN 1 is blown over. SAMMY tries to help catch him.
SAMMY (shouting over the music)
I'm sorry. When I was seven I swallowed a mandolin. My dad's mandolin.
WOMAN 1
Hello? 911? Yes there is man in the middle of the road.
Mandolin music begins to quiet.
SAMMY
I swallowed it because I thought he loved it more than he loved me.
WOMAN 2 enters with a grocery bag leading CHILD by the hand.
CHILD
Mommy look.
WOMAN 2
Don't look sweety.
CHILD
He's all flat. Did he fall.
WOMAN 2
Sweety I said don't look.
SAMMY
He asked, Sammy where's my mandolin and I lied and said that it had run off with mom. But then mom came home and then the mandolin started to play in my stomach. So he knew I was lying.
WOMAN 1
Yes. In the middle of the road. Where? Where? I don't know where? Where are we?
MAN 1
Corner of 5th and 2nd.
WOMAN 1
At the corner 5th and 2nd. No I'm not hurt. No, nobody is hurt except the guy lying in the middle of the road. No he's not drunk he's dying!
SAMMY
But he wasn't mad. He smiled. But it was a sad smile and that's when I realized that I had eaten my dad's best friend because my dad talked very little because he hated talking. Or he was bad at talking my mom said. He got uncomfortable talking because he was a brick-layer and that was solitary work.
WOMAN 2
He's asking for a Sammy.
MAN 1
That's that guy over there.
WOMAN 2
We should go get him.
MAN 1
No. No.
SAMMY
And after I ate his mandolin, he didn't have anything to do so he started building his tower. He would leave at sunrise and come back late into the night. Mom blamed me. She hated me for a long time. But dad was happy.
WOMAN 1
The ambulance we be here in 3 minutes.
MAN 1
I don't know that he has 3 minutes.
WOMAN 2
He's asking for him.
MAN 1
That Sammy guy won't come over.
WOMAN 2
Well, how do you know if you don't ask him.
MAN 1
I asked him.
WOMAN 2
Well, I'm going to ask him.
SAMMY
He'd say hi to me and pat me on the head on his way up to the bedroom. He would walk straight into the shower leaving a trail of his dirty work clothes. I'd watch him sometimes and sneak out when he was toweling off.
WOMAN 2
Hey your dad's over there and/
SAMMY is taken by surprise and the mandolin music bursts from him. The groceries spill every where. He rushes to help her pick them up apologetically.
SAMMY
I'm sorry. I can't control it. Whenever I'm startled or nervous or sad or...well anything.
CHILD
Mommy? Mommy? Hey mommy.
MAN 1
Hey man cut that out!
WOMAN 1
Hello? Hello are you still there? Yes can you send the police too? Oh they're already coming great. Great. There's a man here...yelling music at people. I don't know...yelling music. I don't know if he is drunk or not? He might be.
SAMMY
And every day I would come here and bring him lunch. My mom would make it and I would carry it down and he would come down and pat my head and grab this sack and go back up again. I would get so nervous I couldn't say anything to him. Just, music.
CHILD
I think he's dying.
WOMAN 2
Get away from him.
WOMAN 1
He is dying.
CHILD
Do something.
WOMAN 2
We have to wait for the ambulance.
CHILD
Why?
MAN 1
Because we don't know the right thing to do.
CHILD
We could ask him.
WOMAN 2
Sweety leave him alone.
SAMMY
Every day for 30 years.
CHILD
Hey mister. What can I do? Huh? Sammy? Oh is that your son? He's real mean. He's yelling at everyone.
SAMMY
I’d meet him at this spot.
CHILD
What? You have to tell him something. Well can you tell me? I don't think he's coming over. I don't know, were you mean to him?
SAMMY
It’s about 3 miles high by this point. He’s a local hero.
CHILD
I’ll write it down if you want.
CHILD writes.
SAMMY
My dad.
CHILD goes to SAMMY and hands him paper. SAMMY reads. He looks down at CHILD and then he concentrates as hard as he has ever concentrated in his life. If the actor can make his nose bleed, that seems to be the current visual cue to indicate concentration. The mandolin music becomes more manageable and then it is just a hum and SAMMY goes to his father and leans down.
END OF PLAY
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Birth of a New Blog!
Blogger, you have been so good to me. You helped me see that I could secure my own little corner of the Internet. But sometimes, Blogger, a man has to branch out:
http://darkknightdramaturgy.wordpress.com/
http://darkknightdramaturgy.wordpress.com/
Friday, December 7, 2007
Coffee Detox Day 2
For the last week or so I have become hyperaware of my heartbeat. It felt like it was beating harder than it should be. Even when I was sitting still and had been sitting still for a good long while at my desk researching Wharton, TX -- hometown to Horton Foote, 91-year old playwright extraordinaire (who liked me according to his agent according Tanya, he having made this assessment during our half-hour interview in which I said about two sentences and was otherwise dumbly starstruck [which has never happened before: not with Sarah Ruhl. Not with Naomi Iizuka. I wonder if it is because I never had a grandfather figure in my life...]) -- it would punch my ribs. Not quickly. My pulse was normal. Just with gusto. It is probably nothing, unless you consider early onset hypochondria to not be nothing, but it has made me reevaluate my little addiction to coffee.
I have, like many of you, been battling this addiction for years. I attempted to give it up last semester. My students playfully mocked me. And with Meshuggah right down the street from my apartment and working at a restaurant with its own special blend -- Khaldi's Blueberry Hill Blend -- which I could drink for free, giving up the sauce was inevitably doomed. For those of you who do not know about Meshuggah's coffee: they brew each cup individually with their espresso machine. It is dark, and rich, and is like liquid electricity speeding through your veins. You can get a free refill, but I don't recommend it unless you want to be wired for four hours and then crash. I, of course, usually opted for the refill, except on days when I felt like my heart couldn't take the pressure...
I had the refill when I was home for Thanksgiving. I had to: you know. I think it is what set off the chest pains. And the longing. The other problem with Meshuggah coffee is that you will NEVER find a cup of coffee as delicious and fulfilling. I tried. I usually get an Americano -- just espresso and water -- at my usual haunts, but you get exactly what you should get: watered down espresso. Which Meshuggah coffee is not. It is not watered down at all. It is the opposite of watered down...
I like coffee. I like it for more than just "what it does" for me. Yesternight, after detox day 1, I was reminded of the physiological dependency as I went to bed at 9:15 with an all-consuming headache that had not gone away when my cats decided to play tag on my face at midnight. I will not exaggerate and say I had the shakes and the sweats all day, but you can certainly tell -- in your soul -- when you go without. But I went into work yesterday with a mission of not drinking coffee: I knew what to expect from the previous semester -- oh, I lasted about a week before I caved and found myself in Meshuggah's upper loft area celebrating my week-long sabbatical with a breaking of the fast -- and I welcomed it. No pain no gain. The throbbing in my head was me beating the crap out of my addicted cells, telling them to fall in line and shape up. My weariness (it should be said that I had woken up early to get Rachel to her crit on time) was the exhaustion of my victorious soul who had fought valiantly on the Trojan fields two-to-two with Mighty Ajax and his Shield all the long day.
But I like coffee because I like coffee shops. They are good places to work. They provide a mock-society that makes one feel like they are not completely closing themselves off from the outside world when they work, even if one does feel little tremors of rage whenever a couple starts talking too loud (or at all). One has to remind oneself that it is not a library and if one had wanted silence one should not have left one's damn apartment...In addition to the frustration of the distraction, this couple reminds the coffeehouse scholar that he in fact isn't participating in the world at all: rather he has brought a 3x4x10 foot cube of solitude with him into the public sphere and he sits sipping Americanos within its woefully un-soundproofed walls.
I don't know what I will order now. I cannot in good conscience buy tea. That's like paying for water. Maybe I will order coffee and not drink it. I'll just look at it. To test my soul.
I think my cat has the hiccups. Either that or he is about to barf all over my keyboard.
I have, like many of you, been battling this addiction for years. I attempted to give it up last semester. My students playfully mocked me. And with Meshuggah right down the street from my apartment and working at a restaurant with its own special blend -- Khaldi's Blueberry Hill Blend -- which I could drink for free, giving up the sauce was inevitably doomed. For those of you who do not know about Meshuggah's coffee: they brew each cup individually with their espresso machine. It is dark, and rich, and is like liquid electricity speeding through your veins. You can get a free refill, but I don't recommend it unless you want to be wired for four hours and then crash. I, of course, usually opted for the refill, except on days when I felt like my heart couldn't take the pressure...
I had the refill when I was home for Thanksgiving. I had to: you know. I think it is what set off the chest pains. And the longing. The other problem with Meshuggah coffee is that you will NEVER find a cup of coffee as delicious and fulfilling. I tried. I usually get an Americano -- just espresso and water -- at my usual haunts, but you get exactly what you should get: watered down espresso. Which Meshuggah coffee is not. It is not watered down at all. It is the opposite of watered down...I like coffee. I like it for more than just "what it does" for me. Yesternight, after detox day 1, I was reminded of the physiological dependency as I went to bed at 9:15 with an all-consuming headache that had not gone away when my cats decided to play tag on my face at midnight. I will not exaggerate and say I had the shakes and the sweats all day, but you can certainly tell -- in your soul -- when you go without. But I went into work yesterday with a mission of not drinking coffee: I knew what to expect from the previous semester -- oh, I lasted about a week before I caved and found myself in Meshuggah's upper loft area celebrating my week-long sabbatical with a breaking of the fast -- and I welcomed it. No pain no gain. The throbbing in my head was me beating the crap out of my addicted cells, telling them to fall in line and shape up. My weariness (it should be said that I had woken up early to get Rachel to her crit on time) was the exhaustion of my victorious soul who had fought valiantly on the Trojan fields two-to-two with Mighty Ajax and his Shield all the long day.
But I like coffee because I like coffee shops. They are good places to work. They provide a mock-society that makes one feel like they are not completely closing themselves off from the outside world when they work, even if one does feel little tremors of rage whenever a couple starts talking too loud (or at all). One has to remind oneself that it is not a library and if one had wanted silence one should not have left one's damn apartment...In addition to the frustration of the distraction, this couple reminds the coffeehouse scholar that he in fact isn't participating in the world at all: rather he has brought a 3x4x10 foot cube of solitude with him into the public sphere and he sits sipping Americanos within its woefully un-soundproofed walls.
I don't know what I will order now. I cannot in good conscience buy tea. That's like paying for water. Maybe I will order coffee and not drink it. I'll just look at it. To test my soul.
I think my cat has the hiccups. Either that or he is about to barf all over my keyboard.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Writing
I owe Jess a play. TOWER was way too dark, and it did not follow the parameters we set for it. That's fine. I'm happy with it, as uncomfortable as it makes me. And I am just as happy to try again.
But I critiqued a friend's paper tonight. A paper she is applying to grad school with.
I like critiquing papers. I do. I like seeing how a paper is trying to work and figuring out how it can work better. Academic writing is intriguing because it is a balancing act: how to juggle in-depth pertinent information without being stale and boring but also without being inappropriate and colloquial. How do you engage with secondary sources without sacrificing your own authority and voice? How can you be creative with it? Wonderful challenges. Fun challenges.
But it takes so fucking long to do a thorough critique of a paper. Not merely commenting on aesthetics, but getting dirty with it. I'm not sure I can write a play tonight because I just spent 2+ hours in a coffee shop reliving the glory days of teaching.
I don't know if she wanted as in-depth a critique as I am giving her. I'm not really sure what she expected when she dropped the papers on my desk. I warned her I wasn't nice and that I don't pussyfoot around. Many of my teachers pussyfooted around, and I never got any better. Not until my friend Nancy tore it all to shreds.
I solicited Nancy to be my adviser on a fellowship project exploring Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. She was one of two people on campus qualified to deal with Middle English poetry. "What do you want from me?" she asked when we first met. I wanted to say "I can sleepwalk my way into an A- just by turning a clever phrase, but I don't know how to write" but I didn't know her as well as I do now.
So I edited: "I have been getting A minuses for three years of college with no explanation of why it wasn't a B and why it wasn't an A. I want someone to be straight with me and tell me when I'm not writing well instead of pushing me through with a grade I won't complain about." Her eyes smiled. She was not teaching at this point because she had turned to the dark side of academia: administration (which she reluctantly started to enjoy). And Nancy loved the harsh and honest critique of papers as much as I do now. Because that's how you get better.
"No pain no gain," the beautiful deaf soccer player in high school would yell as he whizzed by us during one of our morning Brazilians.
I just wish I was faster at it. I barely wrote when I taught because I was always grading papers, and when I wasn't the last thing I wanted to do was think about words. Is that a balance I can teach myself, or is it physiologically impossible to push the brain that hard without illegal and dangerous stimulants that burn bright and quick?
Maybe I should be asking myself whether I should edit the end-comments for the paper I just critiqued. Like I said, I'm not nice. And, like I said, I don't know what she expected or how long she has to revise before applications are due or if she was even intending to revise or if she just wanted me to circle sentence fragments and the spaces where missing words should live. I hope I don't lose a friend over this. That would suck.
But I critiqued a friend's paper tonight. A paper she is applying to grad school with.
I like critiquing papers. I do. I like seeing how a paper is trying to work and figuring out how it can work better. Academic writing is intriguing because it is a balancing act: how to juggle in-depth pertinent information without being stale and boring but also without being inappropriate and colloquial. How do you engage with secondary sources without sacrificing your own authority and voice? How can you be creative with it? Wonderful challenges. Fun challenges.
But it takes so fucking long to do a thorough critique of a paper. Not merely commenting on aesthetics, but getting dirty with it. I'm not sure I can write a play tonight because I just spent 2+ hours in a coffee shop reliving the glory days of teaching.
I don't know if she wanted as in-depth a critique as I am giving her. I'm not really sure what she expected when she dropped the papers on my desk. I warned her I wasn't nice and that I don't pussyfoot around. Many of my teachers pussyfooted around, and I never got any better. Not until my friend Nancy tore it all to shreds.
I solicited Nancy to be my adviser on a fellowship project exploring Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. She was one of two people on campus qualified to deal with Middle English poetry. "What do you want from me?" she asked when we first met. I wanted to say "I can sleepwalk my way into an A- just by turning a clever phrase, but I don't know how to write" but I didn't know her as well as I do now.
So I edited: "I have been getting A minuses for three years of college with no explanation of why it wasn't a B and why it wasn't an A. I want someone to be straight with me and tell me when I'm not writing well instead of pushing me through with a grade I won't complain about." Her eyes smiled. She was not teaching at this point because she had turned to the dark side of academia: administration (which she reluctantly started to enjoy). And Nancy loved the harsh and honest critique of papers as much as I do now. Because that's how you get better.
"No pain no gain," the beautiful deaf soccer player in high school would yell as he whizzed by us during one of our morning Brazilians.
I just wish I was faster at it. I barely wrote when I taught because I was always grading papers, and when I wasn't the last thing I wanted to do was think about words. Is that a balance I can teach myself, or is it physiologically impossible to push the brain that hard without illegal and dangerous stimulants that burn bright and quick?
Maybe I should be asking myself whether I should edit the end-comments for the paper I just critiqued. Like I said, I'm not nice. And, like I said, I don't know what she expected or how long she has to revise before applications are due or if she was even intending to revise or if she just wanted me to circle sentence fragments and the spaces where missing words should live. I hope I don't lose a friend over this. That would suck.
Maybe the most unrelenting play yet! Yipes!
After HotCity did Demons, my friend Nancy mused that I must be incredibly put together to be able to write about such screwed up people without being consumed by them. I like to think that she's right. I think she's right. Right?
Disclaimer for the posted play: My dad and I get along REALLY REALLY REALLY well. Except when he bugs me about health insurance. Although I now have health insurance thanks to him bugging me. So, I guess, he wins.
Scene 1
Lights up. SAMMY, alone on the stage, is looking straight up. He is carrying a sack lunch. There is a distant yelling that gets closer and closer as the lights fade. And then, in darkness, the sound a body makes when it hits the pavement after falling a few miles.
Scene 2
Lights up. There is a broken body face up almost exactly where SAMMY had been standing. The body reaches his hand up to SAMMY. SAMMY is looking down at the body. The lights fade.
Scene 3
Lights up. SAMMY is facing the audience as far away from the body as the stage will allow.
Ummmm...hey you you there hey! Call 911. Hey you! Oh shit oh shit.
Disclaimer for the posted play: My dad and I get along REALLY REALLY REALLY well. Except when he bugs me about health insurance. Although I now have health insurance thanks to him bugging me. So, I guess, he wins.
TOWER
Scene 1
Lights up. SAMMY, alone on the stage, is looking straight up. He is carrying a sack lunch. There is a distant yelling that gets closer and closer as the lights fade. And then, in darkness, the sound a body makes when it hits the pavement after falling a few miles.
Scene 2
Lights up. There is a broken body face up almost exactly where SAMMY had been standing. The body reaches his hand up to SAMMY. SAMMY is looking down at the body. The lights fade.
Scene 3
Lights up. SAMMY is facing the audience as far away from the body as the stage will allow.
MAN 1 enters with a briefcase that he immediately drops and goes to the body.
MAN 1
Oh my god Oh my god. Hey man. Hey are you alright. Oh god you're not alright. You're not alright. Alright what do I do?MAN 1 realizes he is going the throw up and runs offstage and throws up offstage and runs back to the body.
Ummmm...hey you you there hey! Call 911. Hey you! Oh shit oh shit.
SAMMY
I'm sorry.MAN 1
What? Hey. Hey! Somebody call someone!SAMMY
I can't.The body reaches his hand up to MAN 1. And MAN 1 leans down to listen to the body.
MAN 1
What? I can barely, what? No I can't...what?SAMMY
In the middle of the street there is a dead man.MAN 1
Shhhhhh. He's saying something! He's not dead yet. Somebody help!SAMMY
And that man was my father.MAN 1
He's trying to say something. You're his son? Get over here!SAMMY
And he wants to tell me all that he didn't tell me when he was alive.MAN 1
He's not dead!.SAMMY
But my father once told me never listen to ghosts because they are lying sonsofbitches so I am talking to you instead.MAN 1
Help!WOMAN 1 enters with a purse from which she has pulled a cellphone.
WOMAN 1
Omigod what happened?MAN 1
He just fell. He fell from the sky.WOMAN 1
What?MAN 1
Just call someone.WOMAN 1
I'm calling, I'm calling. Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.SAMMY
He didn't fall from the sky.MAN 1
What? What? I can barely hear you. Sammy. Are you Sammy? Sammy's here. Sammy's here. What? I know. He won't come. Should I make him come?SAMMY
The sky wouldn't have let him fall. The sky loved him. It cradled him his whole life.MAN 1 goes to SAMMY
MAN 1
Hey man, you gotta get over there your dad he's/ SAMMY punches MAN 1so that he falls, unconscious.
SAMMY
My dad once told me a story about his childhood.WOMAN 1
Hello? 911? Yes there is man in the middle of the road.SAMMY
He and his friends built a kite our of sheets and broom handles and wire.WOMAN 2 enters with a grocery bag leading CHILD by the hand.
CHILD
Mommy look.WOMAN 2
Don't look sweety.CHILD
He's all flat. Did he fall.WOMAN 2
Sweety I said don't look.SAMMY
And everybody laughed at them and said it couldn't fly and his parents just shook their heads and went back to playing gin because it was Sunday afternoon.WOMAN 1
Yes. In the middle of the road. Where? Where? I don't know where? Where are we?WOMAN 2
Corner of 5th and 2nd.CHILD
What happened to that man over there?WOMAN 1
At the corner 5th and 2nd. No I'm not hurt. No, nobody is hurt except the guy lying in the middle of the road. No he's not drunk he's dying!SAMMY
But the design was flawless and they took it to the field and my father wouldn't let anyone fly it but him and the sky laughed at him because it saw its own stubborness in this boy and it pulled the kite harder and harder until the kite lifted my father into the air.WOMAN 2 has gone over to MAN 1
WOMAN 2
Hey are you okay? Hey you. Honey, stay back.SAMMY
They found him an hour later three miles away. Smiling as he picked the bugs out his teeth and the feathers and leaves out of his hair. "Like goddamn Peter Pan."CHILD
Did he fall too?WOMAN 2
Hey are you alright.MAN 1
I'm fine.MAN 1 gets up and returns to the body.
WOMAN 2
What happened?MAN 1
He fell out of the sky.SAMMY
From that moment on, he was in the sky whenever possible.MAN 1 (about the body)
What is he saying?WOMAN 1
I'm on the phone with 911. I don't know.SAMMY
He climbed every tree to its highest branch and never fell. He visited his grandmother whenever he could because she lived in Oregon and he had to fly there. When he was 16 he dropped out of school to join the air force. Never shot down. Never shot down once. He retired to fly stunt planes and then he found skydiving and realized that he didn't even need a plane anymore. He could fly without wings. The sky let him.WOMAN 2
He's asking for a Sammy.MAN 1
That's that guy over there.WOMAN 2
We should go get him.MAN 1
No. No.SAMMY
But it was all too temporary for him. He always had to come back to earth. To eat. To sleep. To marry. To make me.WOMAN 1
The ambulance we be here in 3 minutes.MAN 1
I don't know that he has 3 minutes.WOMAN 2
He's asking for him.MAN 1
That Sammy guy won't come over.WOMAN 2
Well, how do you know if you don't ask him.MAN 1
I asked him.WOMAN 2
Well, I'm going to ask him.SAMMY
That was the only story he ever told me. WOMAN 2
Hey your dad's over there and/SAMMY punches WOMAN 2 so that she falls, unconscious. The groceries spill every where.
SAMMY
That and the advice about not trusting ghosts.MAN 1
Hey man I know you're upset but/SAMMY punches MAN 1so that he falls, unconscious.
CHILD
Mommy? Mommy? Hey mommy.SAMMY
Because when I was seven he started building a tower. A tower that he could live in that would be tall enough so that he could always be in the sky.CHILD runs to WOMAN 1
CHILD
I think my mommy's hurt.WOMAN 2
Why don't you wait over here. The ambulance is on the way. Hello? Hello are you still there? Yes can you send the police too? Oh they're already coming great. Great. There's a man here punching people. I don't know if he is drunk or not? He might be.SAMMY
And every day I would come here and bring him lunch. My mom would make it and I would carry it down and he would come down and pat my head and grab this sack and go back up again without so much as a "hey son".CHILD
I think he's dying.WOMAN 1
He is dying.CHILD
Do something.WOMAN
We have to wait for the ambulance.CHILD
Why?WOMAN
Because we don't know the right thing to do sweetheart.CHILD
We could ask him. WOMAN 1
I don't think he'd know either.SAMMY
Every day for 40 years.CHILD
Hey mister. What can I do? Huh? Sammy? Oh is that your son? He's real mean. He punched my mom. What? You have to tell him something. Well can you tell me? I don't think he's coming over. I don't know, were you mean to him?SAMMY
It’s about 3 miles high by this point. He’s a local hero.CHILD
I’ll write it down if you want.SAMMY
What a shit.CHILD
I think he’s dead.WOMAN 1
Are they close? How close? No I think we’re losing him. I don’t know if there’s a pulse hold on. Nope no pulse. Okay. Okay hurry.SAMMY goes to the body and stares at him like he did in Scene 2. CHILD goes to WOMAN 2.
END OF PLAY
Monday, December 3, 2007
A play I'm fix'n to submit.
Two friends and I are joint writing a seven page three-act play called Razor Butterfly Apple. Why, you might ask? Well, Kristen and I were at Red Moon's Hunchback (stellar!) and we were waiting for the show to begin and she said "razor butterfly apple," not randomly but the back-story to how we reached this point in the conversation is long and incomprehensible, so suffice it to say we arrived at "razor butterfly apple."
And I said, "What a great title for a play."
And in the deep background of both of our brains, a gunshot rang and we were off: Structure: 3 acts. Length: 6-7 pages. Characters: two girls and a potentially talking willow tree. I claimed apple. Kristen took butterfly because razor was too obvious. This took about 2 minutes. An email to Liz later secured our third. And our guerrilla playwriting project had begun.
This was all last night. The first draft is already done. I have found my people.
I will post the completed terrifying mess when we have "finished" it.
The length of 6-7 pages was actually determined by a festival that a local company holds every year called Sketchbook, and it is our intention to submit it after we dramaturg the shit out of it. And once I start writing, all I kind of want to do is write, so I wrote another piece to submit (we can enter three each because they are short).
I am posting this play with the following disclaimer:
This is NOT autobiographical.
The character in this monologue play is NOT me, though we share some thoughts.
And most importantly: mom, I do NOT think you look old at all.
Because in the back of the room behind the seats resting comfortably by the door ready to slide behind us as we exit is a truth that we don't want to think about. And if I'm not doing my job or if I'm doing a shitty job, he'll sneak into the seat next to you and prop his elbow on the arm of your chair and start breathing silently into your ear and you don't even realize it but all of a sudden you thinking about how old your mom looked when you went home for her 60th birthday. You're thinking about how you can't remember high school anymore and how when you look back at your childhood you are seeing yourself in the third person. Thoughts usually reserved for the eerie quiet of 3AM when you haven't been able to fall asleep because you can't quite reach that annoying little itch somewhere between your skull and your chest and suddenly the flood gates crack and you're drowning.
You roll over and cling to the person next you. You try to think about anything else. What you have to get done at work tomorrow: oh I have a lot to get done I have to xerox that report for administration and coordinate that meeting with management and utilities and if I can sneak it in my nephew's birthday is in two months and I wonder if that toy store has an internet site, or if Amazon.com has it, or if Ebay has it.
You think about what you are going to eat for breakfast oh bacon sounds good bacon sounds great maybe I should make some bacon right now oh but I am so tired I can't move there's no way I can move I’m just going to fall asleep.
Hey baby hey sweety: sex come on come on kiss kiss kiss wake up sweety I am going to rock your world baby if you would only wake up baby oh hi did I wake you well now that you're awake...
That's why we fuck so much, and when we're not fucking we're masturbating and if not that then we are thinking about fucking or masturbating. Or we are watching a tv show in which people either presently fucking or in the process of securing a person with whom they can fuck. Because sex is not just a recreational past-time: it is a defense mechanism. Because the evolution that is corsing through us is telling us that we need to procreate and so when we are having sex we have tricked our brain into thinking that we are actually achieving something.
And despite all that practice, we all think we're dissatisfied with our sex-lives; but we're really just dissatisfied with life. The whole mechanism. We say that we're unhappy with our sex life because we can fix that. We can buy another toy, call up another friend, try doing it on the roof in the rain...
Catharsis is a term that is thrown about a lot in the theatre. As a good thing. As a thing that cleanses us. A thing that makes us feel like we have achieved something just by watching a play. Like we have achieved what the actor has achieved even though we're just sitting there. Like when an asshole character gets his comeupins, we feel like we gave it to them. We feel like justice has been served and that we somehow served it. Or some character in need got helped, and we feel like we helped them.
But then we don't give any money to the homeless guy outside trying to sell you a Streetwise. Catharsis is the queengoddess of all distraction because you feel like you’re the opposite of distracted: you feel like right now at this very moment you are hyperaware of all of the realities of truth and beauty because it has just been presented to you in an easy-to-digest coated blue pill on a silver-spoonful of sugar. Like we were in a cave and we had been looking at shadows, but we can now turn around and look at the candle. And we are so happy, so fucking gleeful, that we don't even think to look past the candle outside the cave.
Or maybe we do look past it, but it's too fucking dark out there to see anything.
It’s not just cathartic for you all either. When I experience something up here, I almost really experience it. It’s like life without the risk of death. I can't die when I'm up here. (DEATH comes up behind him/her) My character can die. (S/he dies) In any number of ways (S/he dies again). But I will always (S/he dies again) come back (dies again). It's like a shield. Or like a bodyguard. And as long as I have my guard up, I'm safe. And this stage is safe because we made it
The irony of it all is/
And I said, "What a great title for a play."
And in the deep background of both of our brains, a gunshot rang and we were off: Structure: 3 acts. Length: 6-7 pages. Characters: two girls and a potentially talking willow tree. I claimed apple. Kristen took butterfly because razor was too obvious. This took about 2 minutes. An email to Liz later secured our third. And our guerrilla playwriting project had begun.
This was all last night. The first draft is already done. I have found my people.
I will post the completed terrifying mess when we have "finished" it.
The length of 6-7 pages was actually determined by a festival that a local company holds every year called Sketchbook, and it is our intention to submit it after we dramaturg the shit out of it. And once I start writing, all I kind of want to do is write, so I wrote another piece to submit (we can enter three each because they are short).I am posting this play with the following disclaimer:
This is NOT autobiographical.
The character in this monologue play is NOT me, though we share some thoughts.
And most importantly: mom, I do NOT think you look old at all.
WHEN IT’S ALWAYS 3
ACTOR
I am ignoring the large dark elephant in the room. So are you. I'm distracting myself by talking to you, and you're distracting yourself by watching me, listening to me, wondering if I am going to go up on my lines, wondering if I am going to crack under the pressure. But the truth is when I'm up here is the one time that I feel no pressure because I have ceased to be me. I have taken on my merry little role, my character, which in this play is a reluctant nihilist, just as you have taken on your polite little role as audience. We don't do this because we have to, we do this because we need to. To distract ourselves.Because in the back of the room behind the seats resting comfortably by the door ready to slide behind us as we exit is a truth that we don't want to think about. And if I'm not doing my job or if I'm doing a shitty job, he'll sneak into the seat next to you and prop his elbow on the arm of your chair and start breathing silently into your ear and you don't even realize it but all of a sudden you thinking about how old your mom looked when you went home for her 60th birthday. You're thinking about how you can't remember high school anymore and how when you look back at your childhood you are seeing yourself in the third person. Thoughts usually reserved for the eerie quiet of 3AM when you haven't been able to fall asleep because you can't quite reach that annoying little itch somewhere between your skull and your chest and suddenly the flood gates crack and you're drowning.
You roll over and cling to the person next you. You try to think about anything else. What you have to get done at work tomorrow: oh I have a lot to get done I have to xerox that report for administration and coordinate that meeting with management and utilities and if I can sneak it in my nephew's birthday is in two months and I wonder if that toy store has an internet site, or if Amazon.com has it, or if Ebay has it.
ACTOR looks around content and then it fades and s/he is freaking out again.
You think about what you are going to eat for breakfast oh bacon sounds good bacon sounds great maybe I should make some bacon right now oh but I am so tired I can't move there's no way I can move I’m just going to fall asleep.
ACTOR looks like s/he is asleep but then is freaking out again.
Hey baby hey sweety: sex come on come on kiss kiss kiss wake up sweety I am going to rock your world baby if you would only wake up baby oh hi did I wake you well now that you're awake...
That's why we fuck so much, and when we're not fucking we're masturbating and if not that then we are thinking about fucking or masturbating. Or we are watching a tv show in which people either presently fucking or in the process of securing a person with whom they can fuck. Because sex is not just a recreational past-time: it is a defense mechanism. Because the evolution that is corsing through us is telling us that we need to procreate and so when we are having sex we have tricked our brain into thinking that we are actually achieving something.
And despite all that practice, we all think we're dissatisfied with our sex-lives; but we're really just dissatisfied with life. The whole mechanism. We say that we're unhappy with our sex life because we can fix that. We can buy another toy, call up another friend, try doing it on the roof in the rain...
Catharsis is a term that is thrown about a lot in the theatre. As a good thing. As a thing that cleanses us. A thing that makes us feel like we have achieved something just by watching a play. Like we have achieved what the actor has achieved even though we're just sitting there. Like when an asshole character gets his comeupins, we feel like we gave it to them. We feel like justice has been served and that we somehow served it. Or some character in need got helped, and we feel like we helped them.
But then we don't give any money to the homeless guy outside trying to sell you a Streetwise. Catharsis is the queengoddess of all distraction because you feel like you’re the opposite of distracted: you feel like right now at this very moment you are hyperaware of all of the realities of truth and beauty because it has just been presented to you in an easy-to-digest coated blue pill on a silver-spoonful of sugar. Like we were in a cave and we had been looking at shadows, but we can now turn around and look at the candle. And we are so happy, so fucking gleeful, that we don't even think to look past the candle outside the cave.
Or maybe we do look past it, but it's too fucking dark out there to see anything.
It’s not just cathartic for you all either. When I experience something up here, I almost really experience it. It’s like life without the risk of death. I can't die when I'm up here. (DEATH comes up behind him/her) My character can die. (S/he dies) In any number of ways (S/he dies again). But I will always (S/he dies again) come back (dies again). It's like a shield. Or like a bodyguard. And as long as I have my guard up, I'm safe. And this stage is safe because we made it
The lights hiss and pop and go dark as if a fuse just melted. In the dark, ACTOR remains basically still. Then ACTOR improvises. S/hee can wait a while if s/he wants. But then s/he tries to strike up a conversation. Maybe about her/himself. Maybe about the festival. Maybe about some local bit of news that everyone knows about. S/he is making small talk because if s/he doesn't then s/he will start freaking out...the improv should end with the following line:
The irony of it all is/
All the lights burst on and during the darkness as many DEATHs as you can costume have slipped into the audience, in the aisles, in empty chairs, standing directly in front of people. Hopefully there will be screaming. And no catharsis.
End of Play
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Torn 2008
Just when I thought I was positive I was going to vote for Obama:
It was anybody's guess what Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were talking about when they met for a breakfast date in Manhattan Friday morning — but Obama picked up the tab. Judith Perez, a waitress at the New York Luncheonette on East 50th Street, said Obama picked up the $17.34 check and left a $10 tip for the early riser nosh of coffee and eggs.
Hilary goes and does something that makes me think that she wouldn't be that bad:
During the standoff, Eisenberg had three conversations with CNN staffers in Washington and Atlanta, Georgia, during which he said he had mental health problems and could not get the help he needed. CNN and police refused his requests to speak with Clinton. "As a tactical standpoint, that would not have been wise for us to do that" because it would have reduced negotiators' bargaining leverage, Rochester Police Chief David Dubois said. Clinton said she made it clear to authorities that she would "take their direction" in deciding what to do.
Can you imagine GW in this sort of situation? Would he even show up? Or would he phone in a "we don't negotiate with terrorists" from his ranch? If he did show up, or if anyone from his administration showed up, do you think they would take direction from the Rochester Police? Or would four cars full of NSA experts flank him and take over?
Maybe this isn't fair: he's the President and the stakes are different. I should have worded everything in the past tense: When GW was running way back in '99 when the world didn't hate us and our military wasn't spread out like that last little bit of peanut butter on a piece of honey wheat and we were not buried beneath $9,142,461,538,254.04 of debt and so on and so forth, do you think he would have shown up?
It was anybody's guess what Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were talking about when they met for a breakfast date in Manhattan Friday morning — but Obama picked up the tab. Judith Perez, a waitress at the New York Luncheonette on East 50th Street, said Obama picked up the $17.34 check and left a $10 tip for the early riser nosh of coffee and eggs.
Hilary goes and does something that makes me think that she wouldn't be that bad:
During the standoff, Eisenberg had three conversations with CNN staffers in Washington and Atlanta, Georgia, during which he said he had mental health problems and could not get the help he needed. CNN and police refused his requests to speak with Clinton. "As a tactical standpoint, that would not have been wise for us to do that" because it would have reduced negotiators' bargaining leverage, Rochester Police Chief David Dubois said. Clinton said she made it clear to authorities that she would "take their direction" in deciding what to do.
Can you imagine GW in this sort of situation? Would he even show up? Or would he phone in a "we don't negotiate with terrorists" from his ranch? If he did show up, or if anyone from his administration showed up, do you think they would take direction from the Rochester Police? Or would four cars full of NSA experts flank him and take over?
Maybe this isn't fair: he's the President and the stakes are different. I should have worded everything in the past tense: When GW was running way back in '99 when the world didn't hate us and our military wasn't spread out like that last little bit of peanut butter on a piece of honey wheat and we were not buried beneath $9,142,461,538,254.04 of debt and so on and so forth, do you think he would have shown up?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The secret of the non-existent secret lives of dorks who want secret lives.
I have been having this urge to dork-out and write a fan letter to the writing teams of Pushing Daisies and Chuck because, well, they make me smile on a regular basis and not a lot of things make me smile on a regular basis. This is not to say that I am not a happy guy, but I am certainly not a happy-go-lucky guy and hopefully the distinction is clear because I have no idea how I would explain the difference in less than 3000 words and 20 hours of research in the Newberry's collections on philosophy and etymology.
Pushing Daisies is easily the "better" of the two shows: beautiful, fun, witty...great. It has been flawless except one moment in the second or third episode that only someone who wore an eye-patch for a year and a half of his life would notice...I had a lazy eye...the school nurse caught it...I'm not blind in my left eye because of her...they called me pirate boy...
I cannot conceive how anyone could not be addicted to Pushing Daisies and so I don't really see a need to defend it. Check it out. It is its own defense. Because it is brilliant. It is brilliant. It makes me want to write for television.
If you are reading this writing team of Pushing Daisies, I want in...Please...please.
Chuck, on the other hand, probably could use some friends. The basic story of Chuck is ridiculous: a very-smart-but-basically-regular-Joe gets a whole system of government secrets downloaded into his brain through some shaky hypnosis thingy that is sent to him through his email by his ex-best-friend-turned-CIA agent. So he is now a walking computer that the NSA and CIA have to protect and use on missions, which are all conveniently local. Sounds pretty stupid right? But the characters are, again, brilliant and whoever cast the show should probably be given a medal. F-ing hilarious with just enough action to make it somewhat thrilling. And all the actors are really pretty. I mean REALLY pretty.
But more than the eye-candy and unapologetic-no holds barred-we-are-going-to-entertain-the- shit-out-of-you-attitude, Chuck is tapping into the secret dream of every single dork, pseudo-dork, and semi-dork: to have a secret power, or a secret life, or a secret. Do we all want to be spies? No. Because dork fantasies maintain a certain degree of logic and being a spy would be pretty lame. Chuck knows this. He's not thrilled about having a super-computer inside his head. Who would? I already get migraines.
But we do all want to be heroes. Superheroes wouldn't be bad either. Depending on the power of course: there is a lot of literature out there right now about how being a superhero would probably suck too. And, likewise, Chuck is tapping into an interesting angle of the escapism of the hero-fantasy: we can all become heroes overnight if we just receive the right email or we just get bitten by the radioactive spider or get doused in the right combination of crime-lab chemicals during an electrical storm.
But when that happens, we are not going to stop being dorks. We are just going to be dorks with super-powers.
I am searching for a day job, and finding a day job is kind of like searching for the right secret identity: you probably won't love it, but you should at least try to find one that doesn't make you miserable. And if you are really lucky, your day job will be helpful to your secret life. The Flash: Barry Allen, police detective; probably hated the paperwork, but he was always in the know. Spiderman, Superman: work for news organizations. Do they like taking photos and writing articles, maybe. But it's probably not as interesting as soaring through the air.
Batman runs with the social elite. Do you think the brooding obsessive Batman, enjoys brushing elbows with those boring suits? Of course not. He would rather be down in his cave eating the souls of all the weirdos running around Gotham as he feverishly pushes his super-computer to figure out who the hell killed his parents and psychologically scarred him for life, but instead he has to sip champaign and hear about how Eleanor's poodles just won nationals and about Simpson's dissatisfaction with his new caddy. No wonder he is so irritable.
Ideally we could all be like Mr. Fantastic or Aquaman: merge our two lives into one. Not have a need for a secret identity. But I don't think that is going to happen for me anytime soon. So I need to find a kick ass cover. Because I don't want to be irritable. And I get irritable...
Writing for Pushing Daisies would be nice. Please...please.
Pushing Daisies is easily the "better" of the two shows: beautiful, fun, witty...great. It has been flawless except one moment in the second or third episode that only someone who wore an eye-patch for a year and a half of his life would notice...I had a lazy eye...the school nurse caught it...I'm not blind in my left eye because of her...they called me pirate boy...
I cannot conceive how anyone could not be addicted to Pushing Daisies and so I don't really see a need to defend it. Check it out. It is its own defense. Because it is brilliant. It is brilliant. It makes me want to write for television.
If you are reading this writing team of Pushing Daisies, I want in...Please...please.
Chuck, on the other hand, probably could use some friends. The basic story of Chuck is ridiculous: a very-smart-but-basically-regular-Joe gets a whole system of government secrets downloaded into his brain through some shaky hypnosis thingy that is sent to him through his email by his ex-best-friend-turned-CIA agent. So he is now a walking computer that the NSA and CIA have to protect and use on missions, which are all conveniently local. Sounds pretty stupid right? But the characters are, again, brilliant and whoever cast the show should probably be given a medal. F-ing hilarious with just enough action to make it somewhat thrilling. And all the actors are really pretty. I mean REALLY pretty.But more than the eye-candy and unapologetic-no holds barred-we-are-going-to-entertain-the- shit-out-of-you-attitude, Chuck is tapping into the secret dream of every single dork, pseudo-dork, and semi-dork: to have a secret power, or a secret life, or a secret. Do we all want to be spies? No. Because dork fantasies maintain a certain degree of logic and being a spy would be pretty lame. Chuck knows this. He's not thrilled about having a super-computer inside his head. Who would? I already get migraines.
But we do all want to be heroes. Superheroes wouldn't be bad either. Depending on the power of course: there is a lot of literature out there right now about how being a superhero would probably suck too. And, likewise, Chuck is tapping into an interesting angle of the escapism of the hero-fantasy: we can all become heroes overnight if we just receive the right email or we just get bitten by the radioactive spider or get doused in the right combination of crime-lab chemicals during an electrical storm.
But when that happens, we are not going to stop being dorks. We are just going to be dorks with super-powers.
I am searching for a day job, and finding a day job is kind of like searching for the right secret identity: you probably won't love it, but you should at least try to find one that doesn't make you miserable. And if you are really lucky, your day job will be helpful to your secret life. The Flash: Barry Allen, police detective; probably hated the paperwork, but he was always in the know. Spiderman, Superman: work for news organizations. Do they like taking photos and writing articles, maybe. But it's probably not as interesting as soaring through the air.
Batman runs with the social elite. Do you think the brooding obsessive Batman, enjoys brushing elbows with those boring suits? Of course not. He would rather be down in his cave eating the souls of all the weirdos running around Gotham as he feverishly pushes his super-computer to figure out who the hell killed his parents and psychologically scarred him for life, but instead he has to sip champaign and hear about how Eleanor's poodles just won nationals and about Simpson's dissatisfaction with his new caddy. No wonder he is so irritable.
Ideally we could all be like Mr. Fantastic or Aquaman: merge our two lives into one. Not have a need for a secret identity. But I don't think that is going to happen for me anytime soon. So I need to find a kick ass cover. Because I don't want to be irritable. And I get irritable...
Writing for Pushing Daisies would be nice. Please...please.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Regarding a fictional conversation with Will Shakespeare:
Sometimes dramaturgs need to save playwrights from pirates.
Hermit
There is a man
On the coast of Antarctica
At Dumont d'Urville
Living in constant fear
That the French will show
And ask for a passport
he does not have.
On the coast of Antarctica
At Dumont d'Urville
Living in constant fear
That the French will show
And ask for a passport
he does not have.
Dramaturgy in motion
I am at a table with very smart people. Smart in that way that I have never been smart -- heads full of random facts and semi-important names; remembering everything they ever heard, saw, read -- but also smart in that other way. The director has found the only extant biography of the Canadian playwright that American production teams can get their greedy hands on without ordering from Amazon.com, and has copies of T.S. Eliot poems that he believes are subtly alluded to in the script. Gold. The sound designer suggests the nostalgic music of Beirut -- "Think Amelie" he helpfully offers to those of us who look lost (but only half of us are, because these people are smart in that way I have never been smart) -- would help us as we are finding an appropriate soundscape. Gold. The Artistic Director explains how the play fits into the larger goals of the company and why it specifically was picked for this season: Gold. I have to be reminded that I have two photographs -- results of a Google search of the word verdigris -- that might provide some insight. I sheepishly share.
I ask questions. I play devil's advocate. I remind people of what they said the other day. I try to keep up. We are in the back of a restaurant in a section that is outside when weather permits and under a tent when it doesn't. There is a space heater frying my ass. Literally. Jess moves my coat because she thinks it might be burning. I am hot, but I am having fun. I love conversations like this. It is Autumn 2003 and I'm in the back of someone's car driving back to Advanced Playwriting from a preview of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia. And we are talking about it, and I am deciding I cannot stop talking about it and all I want to do is talk about it.
Autumn 2007 is quickly feeling like winter in the back of this tented pub with good cheap dark beers, and questions of "do these smart people need me" quickly evolve into "how do I step up my game so that these smart people need me." Maybe this is dramaturgy: smart people helping smart people be smart...
Monday, November 19, 2007
It took me four years to learn how to ride a bike and that was only after I rode smack into a huge blue wall in the middle of a completely empty space
Late Night Break Up
I love you.
No you don't.
How do you know?
Because I don't love you.
Oh.
I'm not sorry either.
Oh.
I love your father.
What?
You're dad.
He's, like, 70.
He's a real man.
He's 70.
Don't tell him.
Why would I tell him.
Why wouldn't you.
He's married. To my mom. For like 50 years.
She's old though.
So is he.
And men cheat.
I think you should leave.
Loads of men want to cheat with me. I've had offers. I, like, remind them of something.
I need for you to leave now.
Is your dad home?
Where's your coat?
He's probably asleep. Is he a light sleeper? Lighter than your mom?
Here.
I wonder if I just lightly knocked on the door...
I want you to leave right now.
Or if I just slipped in next to him...
I'll call the cops.
She laughs.
Oh come on.
I will.
I'm not serious. (Beat) You think I want to do your dad. You're mom's like the sweetest person on the planet.
Ok.
I mean, your dad's fine and all.
Yeah.
But he's, like, 70.
He is.
Probably couldn't even perform if I did jump him.
73 actually.
I mean, it would be a thrill for him no doubt.
Sure. Sure.
I mean when you're 70.
73.
I bet you'll want your son's friend...
Girlfriend.
to make a pass at you.
I don't think so.
Oh come on you'll take your jimmys were you can get them.
I don't think so. And it's jollys I think.
I'd probably give him his first hard-on in years. Maybe decades.
I think I still want for you to go.
It was only a gag.
No. It's fine. But I think I still...
I mean except for the part about old men wanting me. That's true. I don't know why. Maybe they want all the girls. Oh god here I was thinking I was special but what if they make passes at everything walks by them. Jesus that's embarrassing.
It's getting late and I have to get up in the morning.
Would you want me if you were 70?
Not if I was married.
No, no but say you weren't married would you want me?
When you're 70?
No like I am now.
But I'm 70?
Right.
Probably.
Really?
I mean, I want you now; I don't think taste in women changes. But maybe it does. I guess it does. It must, right? Or else old people would be chasing around young people all day. So I don't know. Maybe I'd want you.
Maybe.
Or maybe I'd want you only I'd want you-at-70.
You want me to be 70.
Well not now, no, I...
There's a word for that. For the opposite of pedophile. But I don't know it because nobody talks about it because it disgusts people. Not that it disgusts me. But I'm a girl. And girls find older men, maturity, sexy. But it disgusts men because Mrs. Robinson and Maud aren't real. Men want firmness more than they want maturity. And I'm firm.
Yes.
And you like that I'm firm.
...yes...
But I won't always be firm.
...no?
I think we should break-up.
Okay.
Because I don't love you and you love me and I think that's going to make things awkward because there is all this expectation, all this pressure for me to fall in love with you now and I don't think I will because I really don't do well under pressure. I resist it. I run away from it. Kind of like I think I am going to run-away right now. Maybe that is why I find older men attractive. They're going to die soon. I tell you I love you and, wham bam!, we're married and then we're 70 and we have spent 40+ years together wanting to screw other people but remaining faithful out of politeness even though we want to be chasing around all the firm 20somethings; but if you're 70 then the pressure is off because even if we do end up married, it won't be for the rest of my life. The rest of your life, sure, but I will have a life after marriage. A safety net.
I think we should break-up.
Oh. You're sweet.
Okay.
You don't have to.
I know. But I think I do. Think that.
Oh.
You're freaking me out.
And so you're breaking up with me.
I'm agreeing with you.
That we should break up.
Right.
Because I'm freaking you out.
Yes. No...Yes.
You're so immature.
She opens door.
And you wonder why I'm sleeping with your dad.
She leaves.
I love you.
No you don't.
How do you know?
Because I don't love you.
Oh.
I'm not sorry either.
Oh.
I love your father.
What?
You're dad.
He's, like, 70.
He's a real man.
He's 70.
Don't tell him.
Why would I tell him.
Why wouldn't you.
He's married. To my mom. For like 50 years.
She's old though.
So is he.
And men cheat.
I think you should leave.
Loads of men want to cheat with me. I've had offers. I, like, remind them of something.
I need for you to leave now.
Is your dad home?
Where's your coat?
He's probably asleep. Is he a light sleeper? Lighter than your mom?
Here.
I wonder if I just lightly knocked on the door...
I want you to leave right now.
Or if I just slipped in next to him...
I'll call the cops.
She laughs.
Oh come on.
I will.
I'm not serious. (Beat) You think I want to do your dad. You're mom's like the sweetest person on the planet.
Ok.
I mean, your dad's fine and all.
Yeah.
But he's, like, 70.
He is.
Probably couldn't even perform if I did jump him.
73 actually.
I mean, it would be a thrill for him no doubt.
Sure. Sure.
I mean when you're 70.
73.
I bet you'll want your son's friend...
Girlfriend.
to make a pass at you.
I don't think so.
Oh come on you'll take your jimmys were you can get them.
I don't think so. And it's jollys I think.
I'd probably give him his first hard-on in years. Maybe decades.
I think I still want for you to go.
It was only a gag.
No. It's fine. But I think I still...
I mean except for the part about old men wanting me. That's true. I don't know why. Maybe they want all the girls. Oh god here I was thinking I was special but what if they make passes at everything walks by them. Jesus that's embarrassing.
It's getting late and I have to get up in the morning.
Would you want me if you were 70?
Not if I was married.
No, no but say you weren't married would you want me?
When you're 70?
No like I am now.
But I'm 70?
Right.
Probably.
Really?
I mean, I want you now; I don't think taste in women changes. But maybe it does. I guess it does. It must, right? Or else old people would be chasing around young people all day. So I don't know. Maybe I'd want you.
Maybe.
Or maybe I'd want you only I'd want you-at-70.
You want me to be 70.
Well not now, no, I...
There's a word for that. For the opposite of pedophile. But I don't know it because nobody talks about it because it disgusts people. Not that it disgusts me. But I'm a girl. And girls find older men, maturity, sexy. But it disgusts men because Mrs. Robinson and Maud aren't real. Men want firmness more than they want maturity. And I'm firm.
Yes.
And you like that I'm firm.
...yes...
But I won't always be firm.
...no?
I think we should break-up.
Okay.
Because I don't love you and you love me and I think that's going to make things awkward because there is all this expectation, all this pressure for me to fall in love with you now and I don't think I will because I really don't do well under pressure. I resist it. I run away from it. Kind of like I think I am going to run-away right now. Maybe that is why I find older men attractive. They're going to die soon. I tell you I love you and, wham bam!, we're married and then we're 70 and we have spent 40+ years together wanting to screw other people but remaining faithful out of politeness even though we want to be chasing around all the firm 20somethings; but if you're 70 then the pressure is off because even if we do end up married, it won't be for the rest of my life. The rest of your life, sure, but I will have a life after marriage. A safety net.
I think we should break-up.
Oh. You're sweet.
Okay.
You don't have to.
I know. But I think I do. Think that.
Oh.
You're freaking me out.
And so you're breaking up with me.
I'm agreeing with you.
That we should break up.
Right.
Because I'm freaking you out.
Yes. No...Yes.
You're so immature.
She opens door.
And you wonder why I'm sleeping with your dad.
She leaves.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
no fate but what we make
I clean my desk and I clean the dishes in the sink because I think it is a way to clear my mind of the clutter that prevents it from writing. But I prevent myself from writing even when the silverware shines and the paperwork is neatly filed away. It is easier to sit on the couch and watch Terminator 3 (a damn fine movie no doubt) and ponder what it says about me as a person that the commercial advertising the success of a penis-enlargement pill (though they never use the word penis: that would be too vulgar) comes on every other break. It is Saturday night. And I am home alone with two cats watching Arnold before he became governor. What demographic am I filling? What statistic? There is a cast party up on the Brown Line; I think I'd have fun but it is just a little too far and just a little too cold. But it hasn't started yet, so I tell myself there is still hope.
Some advertising clerk decided that the 7 to 9:30 Saturday night slot on AMC attracts an audience of men who needed some enhancement...what if they are right?
Spent the afternoon in the Newberry Library: a public library that manages to feel like an exclusive country club...but for dorks. There are lockers on the main floor in which you have to stow your bag and coat before you can enter, which you can then only do when you explain what specifically you have come to the Newberry to find and then you sign in and then they give you some paperwork to fill out once you have reached the 3rd floor before you go down to the 2nd floor where you hand the clerks the information for the three (3) books you would like them to fetch for you; no civilian is allowed in the stacks. They give you a desk number and point you towards your chair and a few minutes later the clerk has come with the books...Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction by Larry F. Norman (1999)...Moliere: His Life and Works by John Palmer (1930)...Moliere, a playwright and his audience by W. D. Howarth (1982)...and before he arrives you run quickly to the john and check to make sure your pen is functional because once he arrives you need to read, your hand feverishly keeping up, because you cannot check books out of the Newberry and photocopies are $.40 a page at the Newberry and the Newberry closes at 5pm on Saturday and aren't open at all on Sunday...
A dramaturg's utopic dream.
And it is quiet like no library is quiet because the rigmarole to get in is so thorough that once you are in you are there to work. You are there to get done what you needed to get done. You have a mission and you have gone through marine boot camp and survived the hazing and by-golly you are going infiltrate the Communist Military Base and deactivate the launch sequence because that is what you were trained to do...only the Military Base looks a lot like Paris in 1622 and deactivating the launch sequence involves discovering that Jean Poquelin IV is a lot like Horton Foote in that they were both actors well before they were writers...but Horton Foote is still alive. And Moliere's, well, not.
I wonder how many other people left the Newberry at 5 -- having satisfied their need for research; we are all researching the exact same question, we're just going about it differently -- only to find themselves on their futon with a cat 3 hours later watching commercials on male-enhancement...
If I stare at the television hard enough maybe I will see them staring back at me.
Some advertising clerk decided that the 7 to 9:30 Saturday night slot on AMC attracts an audience of men who needed some enhancement...what if they are right?
Spent the afternoon in the Newberry Library: a public library that manages to feel like an exclusive country club...but for dorks. There are lockers on the main floor in which you have to stow your bag and coat before you can enter, which you can then only do when you explain what specifically you have come to the Newberry to find and then you sign in and then they give you some paperwork to fill out once you have reached the 3rd floor before you go down to the 2nd floor where you hand the clerks the information for the three (3) books you would like them to fetch for you; no civilian is allowed in the stacks. They give you a desk number and point you towards your chair and a few minutes later the clerk has come with the books...Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction by Larry F. Norman (1999)...Moliere: His Life and Works by John Palmer (1930)...Moliere, a playwright and his audience by W. D. Howarth (1982)...and before he arrives you run quickly to the john and check to make sure your pen is functional because once he arrives you need to read, your hand feverishly keeping up, because you cannot check books out of the Newberry and photocopies are $.40 a page at the Newberry and the Newberry closes at 5pm on Saturday and aren't open at all on Sunday...
A dramaturg's utopic dream.
And it is quiet like no library is quiet because the rigmarole to get in is so thorough that once you are in you are there to work. You are there to get done what you needed to get done. You have a mission and you have gone through marine boot camp and survived the hazing and by-golly you are going infiltrate the Communist Military Base and deactivate the launch sequence because that is what you were trained to do...only the Military Base looks a lot like Paris in 1622 and deactivating the launch sequence involves discovering that Jean Poquelin IV is a lot like Horton Foote in that they were both actors well before they were writers...but Horton Foote is still alive. And Moliere's, well, not.
I wonder how many other people left the Newberry at 5 -- having satisfied their need for research; we are all researching the exact same question, we're just going about it differently -- only to find themselves on their futon with a cat 3 hours later watching commercials on male-enhancement...
If I stare at the television hard enough maybe I will see them staring back at me.
Friday, November 16, 2007
exploding lightbulbs
Eventually you probably get over the hump and stop writing about thinking and stop writing about writing and just write. I'm troubled that the most appropriate lines that come to mind are from The Matrix when Morpheus instructs Neo how to fight -- Stop trying to hit me and hit me -- and Star Wars when Yoda instructs Luke -- Do or do not. There is no try -- but I guess movie references are the allusions of our generation and there is no need for embarrassment.
I had ideas today. I have been having ideas all week. Ideas are problematic. At least mine are because my ideas always seem fun and lovely and economically impractical. Not impractical. They don't cost much; they just don't make anything. I'm not bad with money; I'm just not good at making it.
Like on the bus downtown two days ago (was it?). I'm on the 134, that lovely (word of the hour) little express that skips over half the commute and transits along the lake. The lake is beautiful and I am looking right at it but I'm not: it's earlyish and my mind hasn't yet popped into second gear. I don't know what I am thinking about, but not about the lake. And I think about not thinking about the lake and think about how anybody looking at me would say I am looking at and thinking about the lake (these are how the conversations in my head usually unfold) and to these theoretical voyeurs I would cleverly reply: what you look at doesn't matter; but how you look at it...
or something like that. It felt like a deep philosophical thought at the time. I was proud of it. It gave me hope. But I didn't write it down, and minutes later when my mind had moved through about seventeen different topics I was saddened to learn I had forgotten that thought that had filled me with a certain amount of creative glee. The 134 was turning off of Lakeshore and onto Wacker and I tried to convince myself that it was enough that I had thought the thought at all: that simply thinking it was evidence that my mind still had "it" and that "it" would come again when I needed "it" to.
I don't remember when I remembered (if hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, what is the memory of remembering called?). It might have been the same day that I decided I wanted to open my own literary agency for midwestern playwrights (and dramaturgs; and directors). Another idea! That would have put it at about a week after the dramaturgy blog. Another idea! Oh, and I have plans for a new works program for New Leaf if I am asked to move into the position of literary manager...
The job hunt goes poorly because I am stubborn and full of ideas and the Medici are all dead and even when they weren't they lived in Italy...
I just laid on the couch for the last hour listening to This American Life. The one radio show that I don't mind when it plays a repeat. What a great idea...
I had ideas today. I have been having ideas all week. Ideas are problematic. At least mine are because my ideas always seem fun and lovely and economically impractical. Not impractical. They don't cost much; they just don't make anything. I'm not bad with money; I'm just not good at making it.
Like on the bus downtown two days ago (was it?). I'm on the 134, that lovely (word of the hour) little express that skips over half the commute and transits along the lake. The lake is beautiful and I am looking right at it but I'm not: it's earlyish and my mind hasn't yet popped into second gear. I don't know what I am thinking about, but not about the lake. And I think about not thinking about the lake and think about how anybody looking at me would say I am looking at and thinking about the lake (these are how the conversations in my head usually unfold) and to these theoretical voyeurs I would cleverly reply: what you look at doesn't matter; but how you look at it...
or something like that. It felt like a deep philosophical thought at the time. I was proud of it. It gave me hope. But I didn't write it down, and minutes later when my mind had moved through about seventeen different topics I was saddened to learn I had forgotten that thought that had filled me with a certain amount of creative glee. The 134 was turning off of Lakeshore and onto Wacker and I tried to convince myself that it was enough that I had thought the thought at all: that simply thinking it was evidence that my mind still had "it" and that "it" would come again when I needed "it" to.
I don't remember when I remembered (if hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, what is the memory of remembering called?). It might have been the same day that I decided I wanted to open my own literary agency for midwestern playwrights (and dramaturgs; and directors). Another idea! That would have put it at about a week after the dramaturgy blog. Another idea! Oh, and I have plans for a new works program for New Leaf if I am asked to move into the position of literary manager...
The job hunt goes poorly because I am stubborn and full of ideas and the Medici are all dead and even when they weren't they lived in Italy...
I just laid on the couch for the last hour listening to This American Life. The one radio show that I don't mind when it plays a repeat. What a great idea...
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Postulations about dramaturgy examined through metaphor.
Most people...well at least some people...well...at the very least I hope you have heard of the Sistine Chapel debate: to clean or not to clean...To clean and restore the work to its original splendor or to allow the soot and the dirt and the mold of time that has accumulated to remain, well, accumulated. Most would probably agree that it would be nice to actually be able to see God and Adam touching pointing at each other with recognition
ADAM: Hey, hey. I know you.
GOD: Yeah. Yeah. Weren't you that...guy...
ADAM: Hey, yeah. Didn't we meet like at
GOD: I think it was...
ADAM: Hey. Yeah! That's right. That's where it was! Yeah. Hey, man, you look great.
so few would argue that light maintenance is inappropriate. But once it is visible, what about reviving the colors? Revisiting the details. Do we deny history her due? Or do we deny the audience of today what the audience of yesteryear enjoyed? How does one maintain this allusive thing called authenticity when time does not give a shit.
My friend put to me an interesting question that is similar. Kind of. Well, it's an art question. Sort of: it was actually an art metaphor to talk about theatre. I am defining what I think the role of the dramaturg is, and I am lucky to have found a friend who disagrees with me at the very core. Disagrees with me in a way that fills the air between us with a violent electrical current.
The question: Would you allow a curator of a museum to hang Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night upside down?
I started to think how cool it would be to have an exhibition in which numerous masterpieces were flipped upsides. How we would see the pieces in a new way. We would see elements of the paintings we never saw before. This was not my friend's intention. I started to think of the marketing side of it too: purists would be enraged by the prospect of disrespecting the art while a small faction of revolutionary post-modernists would gleefully praise the reinterpretation. Fireworks! Arguments! Heated arguments that can only happen between people who believe they have found the meaning of life. One side has found meaning in an authentic beauty that reaches deep down into them and phenomenologically moves them; the other side has found meaning in the endless potential of interpretation and in the evolution of meaning itself.
The ticket sales would boom!
And people would go see the art again. And one intention we can safely assume about every artist -- possibly the only intention we can safely assume -- is that they wanted the work seen.
But would this audience see the art the way that the artist had intended? This was my friend's point. Are they seeing the art or are they seeing the interpretation of the art? I think this was her point. When we view The Starry Night upside down, are we seeing Van Gogh's painting or the curator's project?
I would go see it, and I think a lot of people would. And I would enjoy it (and I think a lot of people would). I also think that a lot of people would also view the painting how it was originally angled: I would wager that many patrons of the exhibit would crook their necks uncomfortably downways; I would hypothesize that many of them would peruse the merchandise in the giftshop on the way out to remind themselves (but do you think they hung the posters upsidedown when they got home?); and with whole museums our our fingertips, I would guess that many a Google search of The Starry Night would occur before, after, and during (iphones, you scare me).
But what if this was it? What if this was the moment that you would see The Starry Night for the first and last time? What if no one was around to tell you that it was upside down? That it "wasn't supposed to be viewed this way." What if there was no context?
These final extrapolations from the original question are what irk me the most. I don't know. A temporary exhibit viewed in the context of a world of easily accessible information is easily excused. A permanent entry in the museum of the mind is less so.
Maybe this is the compromise: there are works of art -- as there are works of theatre -- that have reached a level of contextualization. And this context protects the piece from any one exhibition -- or production -- defining it. I would argue that The Starry Night is protected. I would argue that Death of a Salesman is protected. And since they are protected, why not screw with a little bit...so as not to get bored with them?
ADAM: Hey, hey. I know you.
GOD: Yeah. Yeah. Weren't you that...guy...
ADAM: Hey, yeah. Didn't we meet like at
GOD: I think it was...
ADAM: Hey. Yeah! That's right. That's where it was! Yeah. Hey, man, you look great.
so few would argue that light maintenance is inappropriate. But once it is visible, what about reviving the colors? Revisiting the details. Do we deny history her due? Or do we deny the audience of today what the audience of yesteryear enjoyed? How does one maintain this allusive thing called authenticity when time does not give a shit.
My friend put to me an interesting question that is similar. Kind of. Well, it's an art question. Sort of: it was actually an art metaphor to talk about theatre. I am defining what I think the role of the dramaturg is, and I am lucky to have found a friend who disagrees with me at the very core. Disagrees with me in a way that fills the air between us with a violent electrical current.
The question: Would you allow a curator of a museum to hang Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night upside down?
I started to think how cool it would be to have an exhibition in which numerous masterpieces were flipped upsides. How we would see the pieces in a new way. We would see elements of the paintings we never saw before. This was not my friend's intention. I started to think of the marketing side of it too: purists would be enraged by the prospect of disrespecting the art while a small faction of revolutionary post-modernists would gleefully praise the reinterpretation. Fireworks! Arguments! Heated arguments that can only happen between people who believe they have found the meaning of life. One side has found meaning in an authentic beauty that reaches deep down into them and phenomenologically moves them; the other side has found meaning in the endless potential of interpretation and in the evolution of meaning itself.
The ticket sales would boom!
And people would go see the art again. And one intention we can safely assume about every artist -- possibly the only intention we can safely assume -- is that they wanted the work seen.
But would this audience see the art the way that the artist had intended? This was my friend's point. Are they seeing the art or are they seeing the interpretation of the art? I think this was her point. When we view The Starry Night upside down, are we seeing Van Gogh's painting or the curator's project?
I would go see it, and I think a lot of people would. And I would enjoy it (and I think a lot of people would). I also think that a lot of people would also view the painting how it was originally angled: I would wager that many patrons of the exhibit would crook their necks uncomfortably downways; I would hypothesize that many of them would peruse the merchandise in the giftshop on the way out to remind themselves (but do you think they hung the posters upsidedown when they got home?); and with whole museums our our fingertips, I would guess that many a Google search of The Starry Night would occur before, after, and during (iphones, you scare me).
But what if this was it? What if this was the moment that you would see The Starry Night for the first and last time? What if no one was around to tell you that it was upside down? That it "wasn't supposed to be viewed this way." What if there was no context?
These final extrapolations from the original question are what irk me the most. I don't know. A temporary exhibit viewed in the context of a world of easily accessible information is easily excused. A permanent entry in the museum of the mind is less so.
Maybe this is the compromise: there are works of art -- as there are works of theatre -- that have reached a level of contextualization. And this context protects the piece from any one exhibition -- or production -- defining it. I would argue that The Starry Night is protected. I would argue that Death of a Salesman is protected. And since they are protected, why not screw with a little bit...so as not to get bored with them?
Clearing the Throat
A really bad movie makes you realize how easy it is to allow your life to amount to absolutely nothing. I am talking a movie that has absolutely no redeeming value other than to distract you from your ordinary day. To distract you from the fact that your ordinary day is ordinary because in the time that you could take to make your life extraordinary, you happen to be watching this movie. This movie that is mind-numbing. This movie that is a sedative. This movie that is Lara Craft Tombraider Search for the the Somethingorotherwhogivesafuck.
And yet I cannot turn it off. It is on as I write this. Angelina Jolie just jumped off of somewhere and shot someone in the head without looking because she is just that good at shooting people in the head. And there's that guy who is in 300 but he is like 30 pounds smaller and 30 times less badass -- Spartans! Tonight you dine in Hell!. It is on because it is not only a distraction, it is also an ambassador. Not Lara Croft per se (although with Miss Angelina "UN" Jolie...), but the television. Alone in my apartment with two loving but sleeping cats, I can reach my hand through the television and hold yours, the other poor sap who has been sucked in to watching the Tomb Raider jump through break away glass as thousands of bullets whiz by her pretty head. Our silent lazy go-between. I am communicating with the other people watching AMC at 8:40 on a Friday night. I am saying the same thing they are saying: I had a busy week. I want to unwind with something mindless.
But I don't.
Time to turn the TV off...or at least pause it. Thank you TIVO.
And yet I cannot turn it off. It is on as I write this. Angelina Jolie just jumped off of somewhere and shot someone in the head without looking because she is just that good at shooting people in the head. And there's that guy who is in 300 but he is like 30 pounds smaller and 30 times less badass -- Spartans! Tonight you dine in Hell!. It is on because it is not only a distraction, it is also an ambassador. Not Lara Croft per se (although with Miss Angelina "UN" Jolie...), but the television. Alone in my apartment with two loving but sleeping cats, I can reach my hand through the television and hold yours, the other poor sap who has been sucked in to watching the Tomb Raider jump through break away glass as thousands of bullets whiz by her pretty head. Our silent lazy go-between. I am communicating with the other people watching AMC at 8:40 on a Friday night. I am saying the same thing they are saying: I had a busy week. I want to unwind with something mindless.
But I don't.
Time to turn the TV off...or at least pause it. Thank you TIVO.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Intolerant
I knew I couldn't digest avocados. Turns out, can't digest nutella either. So: find out the common ingredient in both of those most-disparate-foods-ever and I am that-intolerant.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
(Production) Dramaturgy defined: attempt 1
I am waiting1 for a call2 from Libby, the Greasy Joan director of The Misanthrope, to discuss who she thinks the characters in the play are and how they fit into the world that Moliere (see also Jean Baptiste Poquelin) and, more importantly (objection: argumentative!), she is wanting to create. She is wanting to create a futuristic dystopia (google search: futuristic dystopia movies) akin to that found in the film Brazil. I had never seen Brazil. I have now seen Brazil. Some major translation is going to be necessary, and I am not talking the kind that can be resolved with the help of a French-to-English dictionary (n. dictionnaire m.).
1. Consider sharing that lovely bit from the Noah Haidle play in which the old Colonel refers to his book on how to do most everything in order to reteach himself how to wait.
2. "Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you." (Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, 1876)
So it seems that now is as good a time as any to try to define what dramaturgy is. For myself as much as anyone. Because I consider myself a dramaturg. I also consider myself a playwright. Soon I might consider myself a literary manager, and eventually I hope to consider myself a scholar and call myself a professor, but not yet. Right now I am a dramaturg and a playwright and as such I hope I can speak to both with the same freedom and frankness that Dave Chappelle uses when he makes black jokes and Jerry Seinfeld makes Jewish jokes and Howard Stern makes asshole jokes.
The old takes-one-to-lampoon-one theory.
Because ultimately the only people who are going to be happy with my theories on Dramaturgy are directors.
Dramaturgy is tricky because dramaturgs are -- while helpful -- ultimately unnecessary. In order to produce a play, one needs a script and actors. (For performance art, even the script is an unnecessary luxury.) In order to have a good production of a play, one needs a director: the voiced manifestation of a consistent understanding and vision as seen from the perspective of the audience. In order to have a smooth production of a play, one needs a stage manager. In order to have a production that is both visually and aurally pleasing, one needs designers and the crew to implement their designs.
And a good smooth visually and aurally pleasing show has often been enough.
The least necessary voice in the room is the playwright. After the first production of the show, after the playwright has lain (laid? I was a writing instructor?) the script to rest, after she has made her vision as clear as she can with the words of her play, after she has kissed it on the forehead and sent it off into the world -- "don't forget to write sweetheart. let me know what you're up to" -- the playwright is no longer in charge. She was before this moment. Of course she was. It was her play. New Play Dramaturgy will be the subject of a later post.
But now it is the director's play: the playwright is dead. And here is why: the play was written with a set of intentions to communicate to an audience in a specific context. And that specific context has dissolved into the recesses of time. It is a new time with an audience with new needs. Theatre is lovely because it is organic and it is organic because it is a collaboration between the past (as it has been captured in the text) and the present (as it is understood by the director). If the playwright dominates the direction of a production, it's growth and applicability is stunted. Literature consists of time capsules, while the theatre is constantly renewing itself.
This is not meant to sound pretentious: I like time capsules. I just don't think theatre should be one (historical fictions and, maybe, documentary dramas excluded).
And none of this is to say that the playwright should not be involved: but her voice shouldn't have any more authority than anyone else in the room, and certainly not more than the director.
The dramaturg is the second most unnecessary voice in the room, which is why many productions do without. There was a directing professor back at school who "didn't believe in dramaturgs" because they simply do the work a good director should be doing for himself.
Well yes and no: it is true that if a dramaturg does the basic research surrounding a play -- production history, contextualization, looking up what a ookpik is -- this frees the director up to concentrate on what is seen and heard on stage. And in a pinch, one cannot argue this is a bad deal.
But to say that a dramaturg is useless is to say that the field of consulting is useless. I used to resist defining dramaturgy as a form of consulting because I did not like the implications associated with comparing art to business. But it is basically comparing research to research. A consultant is one who is hired from outside a company to look inside a company(and at the environment surrounding that company) to tell that company how to improve, usually with the goal of making money. Likewise a dramaturg is brought in (though not hired in my experience as of yet; how to make money as a dramaturg is something I have yet to figure out) to help the director realize his goal: producing the best production of a play as possible under the circumstances given.
This unsatisfying definition is vague, but is has to be; the requirements of every show are going to be different. But I think I can simplify it -- unfortunately without adding much to the explanation -- by saying that a production dramaturg keeps the director honest to his vision. And he can do this in a number of ways: understanding the play, understanding the original context, understanding the playwright, understanding the present social climate, understanding the social climate the director wants to create in the play, understanding the director's vision and helping the director communicate his vision to the actors and designers with your cumulative understanding.
Theatre does not need dramaturgs. There have been brilliant productions without them. But I am guessing that many shows have also been saved by an astute dramaturg. And dramaturgs can add a level of consistency and complexity to a production that would otherwise be absent.
Okay. My head hurts. It feels full and empty simultaneously. I think this is right. It is right for now. Deirdre being a genius once dramaturged a day in her own life (which is a different kind of dramaturg all together: lets call that Creative dramaturgy with a capital C because she is creating a new work through dramaturgy; that said, it probably already has a name; I will have to look that up). I will probably dramaturg this entry later to make sure it is consistent.
Until then: fellow dramaturgs and playwrights, if we spirits have offended...it was not my intent.
1. Consider sharing that lovely bit from the Noah Haidle play in which the old Colonel refers to his book on how to do most everything in order to reteach himself how to wait.
2. "Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you." (Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, 1876)
So it seems that now is as good a time as any to try to define what dramaturgy is. For myself as much as anyone. Because I consider myself a dramaturg. I also consider myself a playwright. Soon I might consider myself a literary manager, and eventually I hope to consider myself a scholar and call myself a professor, but not yet. Right now I am a dramaturg and a playwright and as such I hope I can speak to both with the same freedom and frankness that Dave Chappelle uses when he makes black jokes and Jerry Seinfeld makes Jewish jokes and Howard Stern makes asshole jokes.
The old takes-one-to-lampoon-one theory.
Because ultimately the only people who are going to be happy with my theories on Dramaturgy are directors.
Dramaturgy is tricky because dramaturgs are -- while helpful -- ultimately unnecessary. In order to produce a play, one needs a script and actors. (For performance art, even the script is an unnecessary luxury.) In order to have a good production of a play, one needs a director: the voiced manifestation of a consistent understanding and vision as seen from the perspective of the audience. In order to have a smooth production of a play, one needs a stage manager. In order to have a production that is both visually and aurally pleasing, one needs designers and the crew to implement their designs.
And a good smooth visually and aurally pleasing show has often been enough.
The least necessary voice in the room is the playwright. After the first production of the show, after the playwright has lain (laid? I was a writing instructor?) the script to rest, after she has made her vision as clear as she can with the words of her play, after she has kissed it on the forehead and sent it off into the world -- "don't forget to write sweetheart. let me know what you're up to" -- the playwright is no longer in charge. She was before this moment. Of course she was. It was her play. New Play Dramaturgy will be the subject of a later post.
But now it is the director's play: the playwright is dead. And here is why: the play was written with a set of intentions to communicate to an audience in a specific context. And that specific context has dissolved into the recesses of time. It is a new time with an audience with new needs. Theatre is lovely because it is organic and it is organic because it is a collaboration between the past (as it has been captured in the text) and the present (as it is understood by the director). If the playwright dominates the direction of a production, it's growth and applicability is stunted. Literature consists of time capsules, while the theatre is constantly renewing itself.
This is not meant to sound pretentious: I like time capsules. I just don't think theatre should be one (historical fictions and, maybe, documentary dramas excluded).
And none of this is to say that the playwright should not be involved: but her voice shouldn't have any more authority than anyone else in the room, and certainly not more than the director.
The dramaturg is the second most unnecessary voice in the room, which is why many productions do without. There was a directing professor back at school who "didn't believe in dramaturgs" because they simply do the work a good director should be doing for himself.
Well yes and no: it is true that if a dramaturg does the basic research surrounding a play -- production history, contextualization, looking up what a ookpik is -- this frees the director up to concentrate on what is seen and heard on stage. And in a pinch, one cannot argue this is a bad deal.
But to say that a dramaturg is useless is to say that the field of consulting is useless. I used to resist defining dramaturgy as a form of consulting because I did not like the implications associated with comparing art to business. But it is basically comparing research to research. A consultant is one who is hired from outside a company to look inside a company(and at the environment surrounding that company) to tell that company how to improve, usually with the goal of making money. Likewise a dramaturg is brought in (though not hired in my experience as of yet; how to make money as a dramaturg is something I have yet to figure out) to help the director realize his goal: producing the best production of a play as possible under the circumstances given.
This unsatisfying definition is vague, but is has to be; the requirements of every show are going to be different. But I think I can simplify it -- unfortunately without adding much to the explanation -- by saying that a production dramaturg keeps the director honest to his vision. And he can do this in a number of ways: understanding the play, understanding the original context, understanding the playwright, understanding the present social climate, understanding the social climate the director wants to create in the play, understanding the director's vision and helping the director communicate his vision to the actors and designers with your cumulative understanding.
Theatre does not need dramaturgs. There have been brilliant productions without them. But I am guessing that many shows have also been saved by an astute dramaturg. And dramaturgs can add a level of consistency and complexity to a production that would otherwise be absent.
Okay. My head hurts. It feels full and empty simultaneously. I think this is right. It is right for now. Deirdre being a genius once dramaturged a day in her own life (which is a different kind of dramaturg all together: lets call that Creative dramaturgy with a capital C because she is creating a new work through dramaturgy; that said, it probably already has a name; I will have to look that up). I will probably dramaturg this entry later to make sure it is consistent.
Until then: fellow dramaturgs and playwrights, if we spirits have offended...it was not my intent.
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