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?

Cornelia Parker's 2003 The Distance (a kiss with string attached) at the Tate Modern

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.

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.

(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.

His name was (is) Oliver! (See last post)

This image is blurry. There isn't much I can do about it. So oh well. It's kind of like a chuck close painting. Or one of those pictures that you stare at and then you see something else (like a sailboat!) but only if you let your mind go or let your eyes relax or something having to do with relaxation or release.

On Tuesday I found a 30 day pass on the bus much like the one you see above. Only much crisper. It had been started and it is only good until the Halloween, but it is pretty f-ing sweet all the same. It's basically like finding 20 dollars. Or like finding a 20 dollar gift certificate to a store that you like to frequent multiple times a day but only spend 2 dollars at a time. I felt guilty for finding it at first: there are some schools of thought that when you get three wishes, your wishes are granted but at the expense of others and they never turn out quite like you expect them to. The rules of wishes are a bit shaky. But I didn't wish to find someone's lost CTA pass, and what am I going to do? Post a Craigslist ad?

That's just dumb.

It couldn't have come at a better time. It has been a busy week with two callbacks for the two shows I am turging. I continue to define what a dramaturg's* role actually should be and to whom a dramaturg's allegiance should be: the director or the playwright. His allegiance should ultimately be to the play but what the hell does that mean? Whose play is it? I had a...debate about it tonight with a dear playwright friend...she says our friendship will continue, but we will have to wait and see.

*Dramaturg in the context of this entry is shorthand for research dramaturg and not new play dramaturg; new play dramaturg's are clearly present for the sole support of the PW. **

**I realize that most of you*** really don't care.

***Screw you.

Dramaturgs help playwrights kill babies. -Old Aztec Saying

glimpsed memories

I started work on two shows today with two different companies that open the same week in March.

A long time in high school -- which it is safe to say was a long time ago because a) I just turned 26 (jesus) and b) I have very few actual memories of high school; I do have echoes of memories that have been distorted and colored from bouncing off the walls of my brain for the better part of a decade (jesus), but all specificity of those years has been bumped by more recent memories and more recent relationships; I once had a girlfriend who told me that people fill momentary moments in other people's lives, and once they are gone let them go. I guess I remember that. -- I used to do too many things.

I don't remember why.

I played drums in a garage band with my closest friends, but I never practiced -- to their chagrin -- because I was busied by Spring Musical rehearsals when I wasn't at practice for soccer (first waterpolo: those pictures have thankfully been burned), or tennis. I think at various times I was associated with various other associations: the art club (I think I was VP? Maybe? I don't think we did anything.), the environmental club (I think I joined for the babes? I don't think we did anything), that one club that met in the morning before school (I have no idea what that was or what we did), NHS (we didn't do anything), and yearbook (which wasn't a club, but a class, but we still had to do stuff after school...didn't we...).

They were social gatherings that had names that reflected well on college applications. If you are going to hang out with your friends anyway, call it a club (was I in chess club too? did we have a chess club? maybe it was math league...but only for that one competition because they needed a substitute...) I think I genuinely enjoyed most of them...some of them.

In college I slowed down. Didn't I? Wow: it's already getting blurry. Scents and senses. Shapes and feelings. I can hear Andy's voice but not what he's saying. I can tell you the configuration of my Freshman dorm room but not what Freshman year was like. Good, right? Art classes. Shopping carts. Andy. Mike. Kim. My first martini. Acting I. The Spring Musical. Jami Ake's Shakespeare class. Sophomore year: Andy. McNiell driving to crack church in his gas guzzler. 9/11. Stacking our furniture to have stadium seating in our common room. Dauten. Jacob. All Student Theatre. Medal of Honor. Blueberry Hill. Junior Year. Andy. McNiell painting his room in our apartment blood red. Jon the Mormon. My closet sunroom of a room. School work. Never having time for Andy. No cell phone: talked to Rachel long distance from land lines and free phones at school. Woodcarving. England. Amy. England. Five weeks around Italy and France and Spain. Alone and lonely. The 40 year old Californian lesbian from Ireland who told me I had an old soul in Barcelona (what is the Spanish word for old soul?) Angel. Ginny. Chaucer. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Sussex library. That one friend I made...what was his name...from Emory...what was his name...Amsterdam. Senior year. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Carter. Playwriting. Jon. Ginny. Andy. Julia. Stephanie until Travis came back (bastard). Cruddy cheap off-campus housing. Playwriting. Blueberry Hill. Andy knocking on my window to get me to hang out, me ignoring him because I had work to do. A thesis to finish.

It comes in a rush, and I see so many holes that were filled with school work rather than friends. Studying rather than conversations. At the graduation party, Andy's folks came up to me and said I was a good influence on their son, getting him to focus more on his school work.

My papers were good, and I remember none of them. All my time in the library blends together into one peaceful memory. But that night when we taped Mike to a chair and pushed him to Schnucks in a shopping cart where we were stopped by a rent-a-cop ("not a cop; hate cops")...the night in Steph and Julia's apartment watching 24 (one of the decent seasons) when I told Pedro his girlfriend was incredibly attractive moments before she walked in the door behind him...walking through the gated neighborhood with Andy and getting told we were not allowed to be walking through the gated neighborhood...

You call old friends to catch up, but it's never like it was and every conversation reminds you of that. Every conversation is an exercise in interactive nostalgia. Once they are gone let them go.

This was an entry about beginnings and it turned into an entry about loss. My apologies. I started work on two shows today with two different companies that open the same week in March. New projects. New associates. New friends.

But I miss you guys. For the first time, I wish I wasn't allergic to cameras.

I want to say his name was Doug. The guy from Emory. He wanted to be a writer.

Quick Sand Glass Houses

There is dust in my pocket watch. Maybe it is sand: sand from glass rubbing up against the metal frame...oh wait. Sand doesn't come from glass.

I am sitting at auditions for The Boys are Coming Home. More accurately: I am sitting outside the hallway outside the auditions for The Boys are Coming Home checking in eager actors awaiting an open call. It is a lot like hosting back at Blueberry Hill except the patrons are nicer. They have to be nicer. They don't know if I am taking notes. I am of course, not that anyone can read them:


An actress asks me about the call-back procedure. Another asks me which accompanist is in which audition room. Another asks me, "what are they looking for." Eventually I explain, I'm the literary intern. I spend most of my days reading scripts. I have no idea. I'm here because they needed bodies. I do not detail how I will spend the remainder of my day completely reorganizing the Goodman's library. Logging in a series of plays from the '50s, none of which I have heard of (save Auntie Mame). Questioning the need for our Encyclopedia set in light of that merry little innovation, the Internet. Lamenting the boxes full of random photos from random productions and wondering what the hell to do with them.

I went biking in the rain yesterday. Not wise considering I was fighting off some bug; I am fighting off that bug a little harder today. Low-grade fever. Head full of fuzz. No fun. I hate being sick. Usually I can wrap my mind around it; come to terms with it on an intellectual level; level with it; see it eye to enzyme. But for some reason this one is blocking me. It won't let me in, and so it persists.

There is thunder outside? Fireworks? Sounds kind of like a soft bombing of a not-so-far-away city, but that is probably because I can barely hear it over the Journey that is coming from Rachel's computer. I wonder if that kind of war will ever come here. Liz brought her Venezuelan friend to our taco & tequila party Friday night. Conversations turned politely political. She explained how Venezuelans take an interest in their neighbors -- ten points if you can name one of them -- and their leaders. "Do you know who the Prime Minister of Canada is?" she asks. "Mexico's President?"

I know it was Fox...

All this information at our fingertips...the problem with being always connected, what do you connect to?...I bookmark Canada's globeandmail online newspaper and Mexico Daily...

Do you think the Internet will ever get full? Or will we simply get sick of information piling on top of information piling on top of information...