The Words

Maybe it is because of my new job that I found myself in the script aisle at Borders. I did not go there to buy scripts; with the potential impending move -- still not completely finalized because of a scholarship complicating matters that my homework-crazed ladyfriend is too busy to wade through -- buying scripts that will just add to the weight of boxes that not nine months ago made the walk from the moving truck to our apartment door unbearable...it seems counterintuitive. I went to buy Juno and the new Ludo CD. Which I bought. Along with August: Osage County (which I have since read; a wonderful amalgamation of Buried Child, King Lear, and some other flavor that I just can't define...a sprinkle of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf maybe?...or maybe it's just Letts himself...maybe great playwrights are like prime numbers) and Three Days of Rain (which I mayhaps will read after I cook some dinner).

But my new job is...well...a departure from what I know about theatre. In fact, in my first 4 days on the job, it has had very little to do with theatre other than it is on the fourth floor of a building that houses two theatres in a cubicle surrounded by people who are in someway responsible for the general functioning of those theatres. That is not to say it's a bad job: as Interim Education Coordinator -- filling a position on short notice and no training when it was left vacant by its former occupant -- I will be dealing with students and teachers (which I have done before and miss) and seeing to the theatre's interns (which also reminds me of my teaching days when fresh-eyed freshman would ask my advice on what to do with their lives as if I had lived any myself at the ripe old age of 25). But it is not what I signed up for; not in the long run.

But, I signed up for it for the next few weeks. Which is why I wake up in the middle of the night fretting over transforming revised Word documents into PDFs and sifting through the applications for the next Education Intern -- "I trust you" says the boss -- when I have only been in the Education department for 4 days and have little idea what makes for an exceptional Education Intern and am wondering if I, in good conscience, can sign someone up for multiple months of free labor in an environment that does not value their interns as students to the extent to which they like to pride themselves or to the extent, I think, they probably should considering the free labor aspect of the deal...

August: Osage County works because it is big, but not out of control. It has thirteen characters and requires a whole house of a set, but by dividing the set into a dollhouse of segmented rooms and by allowing storylines to fade out of focus for periods of time, Letts is able to build a larger story out of smaller components. It's like the backside of Big Ben -- which is actually the bell not the clock but oh well: the world sees a big time piece clicking through the days effortlessly; but inside the Clock Tower hide lesser cogs and gears working in perfect collaboration. I am not saying the play appears effortless, nor would I argue that it is perfect. But it is certainly worth celebrating...

I would rather be talking scripts that study guides.

But it has been only four days. By the end of next week I will know how to comfortably convert files into other files. I will learn how to use TypePad. I will know how to work Tessitura. I will have met the teachers. I will have interviewed applicants. I will have asked my boss for a $30 expense fee per intern to give them an opportunity to take someone in the business out for lunch so that they can understand a little better how the theatre world of Chicago works. This time next week I will understand my new job, and I will be comfortable with it.

And I will be back on the couch, reading another play, wishing I was dealing again with the words.

A reading of this play I didn't write?

I inadvertently had my first Chicago reading today. On January 22, I was offered one of the oddest jobs: ghost-rewriting another playwright's play. In this play, three goddesses come down to save the planet from, firstly, environmental destruction, and then, secondly, a nuclear holocaust. They intend to do this by inspiring three activists to do...well to do what they are already doing...only better. They want to convince them to embrace their inner "god" or "poet", as the original playwright put it. Only these gods accidentally allow human emotion to consume them and they fall in love with the humans they are attempting to assist. Whoops.

Not my thing really. Although, I realized half way through the ghost-written rewrite -- for which I would receive no credit or royalties but had attached to it a commissioning fee that would pay my rent for the three months to follow -- that I started my own playwriting experiments with gods, goddesses, and spirituality. My first full-length play was about a son and a father in the afterlife who could travel to visit the living on a horse; one of my first completed one-acts was about the three Fates and what happens if they just quit; an early ten-minute play for a 24 hour play festival examined a couple in the Elysian fields. So I can deal with that crap. Mythology's just my cup of tea.

Activism though? Really? Me? I'm fairly moderate. More over, I'm a libra. The idea of getting passionate enough to do, well, just about anything seems foreign to me, as did writing a play about characters who are passionate enough to fight. But I did it and it's done and I've been paid and after Monday's meeting with the original playwright and his staff (his alter ego is the President of the Center for Cultural Interchange), I don't have to have anything to do with it...

Except I probably will. There was a reading today. I hadn't been invited: this was either a) an oversight, b) a decision based on the assumption that I would not want to come because I wouldn't be paid for my time and because it says quite clearly in my contract that I will have no association with the play after Monday's meeting, or c) a decision based on the idea that it would be easier to criticize the play if I was not present. But Chicago's off-loop theatre scene, though vast, talks. And word got 'round.

I talked to Lois Smith about what to do. She is the lead in the Goodman's Trip to Bountiful and one of the lovely actors I am driving around as part of my current day-job as the Company Manager's assistant. I asked Lois if I should warn them that I was coming or just show up. Just show up, she said. I forget her reasoning. It was something simple and true and I wish I could remember it. So this morning at 11am I just showed up.

I was surprised to learn my name is attached to the script. I thought that part of our contract was that it wouldn't be. I don't know if I feel strongly either way...or maybe I feel strongly both ways. Of course I would like to get some recognition for the changes I made, and believe me I changed quite a bit. All of the character development, the majority of the dialogue, and a few key plot points. The intentions of the script and the basic structure of the original plot are all that really survived. And I am pleased with it. I am pleased with what I did to it within the parameters that surrounded me.

But at the same time it is not a play I would have written, and I am not sure how I feel about people thinking that it is a play that I would have written. It is didactic, but also campy. It requires 10 actors. These rules made for a fun exercise, but they are frankly not my style.

This was clear in today's reading. Oh yes, there are problems with the script still. Thankfully we had one of the most helpful talk back sessions I have ever experienced. Critical but constructive. Honest but polite. And articulate. Incredibly articulate. Many talkbacks consist of people wanting to blather about themselves. "Well I liked that a monkey popped out of the microwave because that reminded me of this time my husband..." "I hated when she kissed that boy because I would have never kissed that boy because his eyes aren't pretty." But the few audience members who accepted the invitation that I never received were brilliant: this isn't working and here is why. That can't happen because then it betrays that. I liked the old beginning from the last draft because this, this, and this...

So now I have these ideas on how to fix it. But it's not my play anymore. And not how a director's production is not his production anymore once the show opens and it becomes the actors' play. I mean legally it's not my play anymore. If it ever was...

So odd. So so odd.

(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.

wine glasses on an empty table: a quizzical examination

Do critics go straight home?
Do they stop at a bar first? Lube the synapses?
Do they go out with people and talk about the play to confirm their own suspicions, or do they shelter their precious opinions away from the ruckus, the hubbub of chittering little theatre birds who like too much and too often?

How quickly do they process? Do they know the moment the applause stops whether they are moved, whether they will be moved tomorrow afternoon on their drive home from their editor's office? Or do they let it all sink in; marinate?

Seven wine glasses with some cheap cheap red sit on the unused tablecloth covering a thoroughly used table. The stage empties, and the actors are gone. The lights quickly dim, and the glasses are gone too. This moment has been a long time coming; it has been earned, as they say in the biz. But it is over too quickly. The actors speed off. And the wine in the glass has barely settled before the room's gone dark. We want it back.

"This is not a play about dishes, or food, or costume changes, but rather a play about people in a dining room" -- A. R. Gurney, Jr. Preface

Jess in her genius -- or the genius of her artistic team, she will tell you -- simply get rid herself of the dishes and the food. No newspapers. No tea-cups or birthday cakes. But through the soundscape, there they were. Perfectly timed movements to perfectly simple sounds: the snap and shuffle of the morning news, the clinking of china. The groundlings would say, on their commute through the plague-ridden streets, "we are going to hear a play."

Nothing throughout the show, save a table and chairs. No props to lean on or hid behind.

And then these glorious glasses with shining wine. In the final scene, the materialization of a dream: the simplest dream of reality. But so quickly gone. I want them back. Wait. Please. Just a little longer. Hold that cue...

But maybe that is the point: the vignettes of The Dining Room are -- if not straight memory scenes -- always nostalgic. Always about longing. Always about the past. A past we can never get more of. The sands in an hourglass slipping through. The last glance at a wine glass before the rose fades to gray fades to darkness.

I wonder if critics feel regret? Do they think of their reviews like referees think of calls? Snap judgments under pressure; under a deadline? Do they ever go back and look at the feed and say, wow, I really fucked that up. I should have stopped at a bar on my way home.

I hug Jess on the way out of the theatre. I think about mentioning the wine glasses. I wanted more of them, Jess. Just three more seconds alone with that image. Please? But I didn't say that. I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I let it marinate.

Well, Jess. I wish you happy reviews, well-deserved. I smiled at a stranger walking her dog on the walk home from the bus, and for some reason I know it's your fault.

On punching the guy next to you, and why it is okay.

I feel my elbow bend and the muscles tense like my cat when she is about to pounce her brother. And then it springs: one swift punch to his temple. I feel his consciousness crack. He's out. I catch his head and quickly balance his chin on his chest. His date doesn't even notice. Thinks he has simply fallen asleep. The play isn't that entertaining, so it is plausible.

It is this plausibility that may be the culprit: the play isn't that entertaining, and the gentleman beside me (seat F2) is letting the surrounding patrons know this with his exaggerated sighs. Exhaling: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. He has a little bit of mucus in his throat. A little cold maybe. So every third or fourth hhhhhhhhhhh ends in a chunky cough.

Counting the three New Stages staged-readings, this production of Sondheim's Passion -- hhhhhhhhhhhh -- is the sixth show I am seeing in five days. This number is also counting Pat McCurdy's genius set at the Beat Kitchen which he performs almost every Monday night, which might be a little unfair. Pat is on a level all his own. And one can drink beer in the dark back room of a bar while singing along to hilarious songs. But of the five playz: one was great (definition: well-crafted, well-executed, intelligent, pleasing), one was fun (definition: silly, entertaining, maybe would have paid for it if I had to and if tickets were cheap), one was pleasant (definition: glad I saw it; gladder it was free), and two were chores (definition: chores).

Some plays are chores. And you go. And you feel older when you leave. You want those hours of your life back so you can do something more worthwhile such as pretty much anything else you can think of. But, like your mama taught you, your chores need to get done. And your chores are someone else's pleasant experience. Your pleasant experience may be some one else's great. And I found Passion pleasant.

And so I feel my elbow coil and the tension build. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I try to remember that place on the neck that you can karate chop someone so that it knocks their adam's apple just so. hhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I begin to wish I had watched Star Trek so that I would know how to execute the Vulcan pinch. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

But of course I do nothing.

I think maybe people become playwrights because they are too cowardly to enact some of their more socially-unacceptable, morally-ambiguous, physically-improbable fantasies, like walking over to that asshole over there who decided not to turn his cell phone off -- even though he is in a theatre and even though he was reminded by the usher and by the house manager -- and taking said cell phone from his hand and, raising it high like the Spartans lifted their unwanted babies skyward before hurling them off Mount Taygeto, snapping it in half for all to see.

But then maybe that is why people go to the theatre as well.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. POW! BAM!