New Play Rumblings

Having finished rewrites of "Holy Schmidt!" for the new play festival reading, I have started to push myself to the need to work on my new plays. Three of them. "Hades & Persephone," "Solamente Una Vez," and "Spiral from Normalcy." I have found myself slowly picking away at these plays like a four year old pokes at a plate of peas. So, it's slow goings on figuring out where these plays are going. However, I have come to the realization that "Schmidt" is the answer. The tools and narrative freedom of "Schmidt" should open up these other plays wide open. Especially, "Solamente." "Solamente" is a straight drama, (a genre that seems somewhat foreign to me), yet I can see the ways that it can benefit from "Schmidt" tools such as monologue and audience adress. For a while I've been tending to get away from monologues since you're supposed to "show, not tell" in a play, right? That's the way it goes... But you can't "show" everything and the easiest way to get information out to an audience is to do it directly. Now, I'm not advocating the demise of subtelty or subtext, but great things can be done by simply being direct about it. For example, by opening up the possibility for monologue in "Solamente," the main character, David Ruido, has a whole new way of communicating that he can use to get his feelings across. In the first scene (as the play exists now), David is awakened by yelling from the apartment above. He is intent on calling the police to report them since this is not the first time it has happened. The scene follows David and his new wife, Becky, as she tries to get him to get back to bed and go back to sleep. Very simple scene. Not a lot of dialogue. The characters in "Solamente" have started speaking in short, clipped sentences such as:

"Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"Eat something."
"No."

It's getting slightly monotonous and boring. It doesn't sound like me. I usually put in way too many words and characters (and actors) fumble around trying to find the point. So, if, and here's getting back on track, if David can speak to the audience and break that damn fourth wall (which isn't there, so why should we pretend it is?), if he can speak to the audienec, what could he say, for instance, in that first scene? He can set us up, build our expectations, draw conclusions, and we can follow along and understand more about who he is. Rather than leaving the scene at:

"I should call the police."

I can open him up.

"I should call the police. (To audience) It's the same thing every night. Go to sleep exhausted. Wake up to the sound of Spanish being screamed above me. What the hell do they have to yell about every fucking night? I've started making up little stories, little narratives, you know, I can't make out the words, not that I could understand them, I don't speak Spanish, but I've been making up stories about them. Up there. As far as I can make out, there's this blustering, big guy. Fat guy up there. You can tell by the stomps. Heavy and damn loud. Some neanderthal. And there's a woman, probably his wife who enjoys wailing a bit too much. And there's a second woman. A different kind of woman. She likes to yell... And I think she fucks a lot. From what I hear. She's not quiet about it. So, I figure this neanderthal has two wives that he's very happy to live with, but I don't think he fucks both of them. Only the wailing one. Someone else fucks the yelling one. Sounds like another neanderthal, but he doesn't live there. I don't think. It's hard to keep them straight actually. The women blend, the men blend. And, God, it's two fucking thirty in the morning. Ah, now, two thirty one."

Opens the world up and all that's onstage at this moment is a bed and David and Becky. That's it. Yet a whole world is starting to brew. Monologue. Audience address. My two new best friends. Thank you, "Holy Schmidt!" for reminding me of my voice. It's easy to get bogged down and misdirected when you're confronted with so many voices at a program. Each voice is trying to prove itself and prove that it is the "one way" to write a play. Even though that idea is completely false. There is no one way to write a play. There might be one way to write a "Chris Leyva play," but even that is false. I just have to find my center once again. This is a year of rediscovering what was always there, but got buried by the ideas and influence of others.