Okay, so we've had three guests visit the program recently, all three testing our limits of our imagination in terms of how to create and view our work. One guest, Norma Bowles, was very physical and made us focus on improvisation to create a collaborative piece to present to the community. The next, John Walch, was concerned with structure and spoke to us about "Feng Shui" revision, which actually helped me focus the revisions of "Holy Schmidt!" I was having trouble letting go of certain things because I had grown to love them, but knew they weren't working for the script. But after the guest, I was able to refocus my energy without the fear of letting go.
Our most recent guest, Ruth Margraff, who is still here, had us look at the five shaolin fighting styles: Dragon, Crane, Tiger, Snake, Leopard. She had us consider three plot points from a current play of ours, three actions. We were each assigned an animal, I was a Crane. The Crane is patient, yet full of libido. The Crane lives a long time. The Crane tries to control opponents with the minimum amount of energy. Somewhat passive aggressive. Great for my characters. So we had to partner up and present our actions in martial arts movements... Didn't go over completely well with everyone, but most of us were good sports about it. It was an interesting concept to physicalize and then internalize that into writing a scene. It gave me a large sense of purpose on a particular scene that I couldn't wrap my head around for my new play "Solamente Una Vez." How do you ask a friend that you're in love with to have sex with you? That was the bulk of the scene. How do you communicate lust in an effectual way? The Crane point of view focused the writing of the scene. I didn't even take a break when it was available. I continued writing and writing, the words were coming. This is a play that seems to be coming from a different place in me. Usually plays come from theme songs or images or jokes. This play is coming from somewhere else entirely. The writing of it reminds me of writing my first draft of my play "Father Bob." It started out as a ten minute play, which was different from anything I had written. The characters were very dark and gritty. They wanted something taboo and were going after it. That was the fun of the scene I wrote yesterday for "Solamente Una Vez." I was completely inside the character's struggle to get something they couldn't come right out and say. I think it's one of my strongest scenes. And, as a play, I think it's going to be stronger and more visceral than things I've written so far. It's starting to inform my other plays as well, which is a good thing. The plays from different genres are now starting to bleed into each other, making them more complex and rich. I'm excited about my writing again. It's always to hard to find that spark to carry you through writing an entirely new play, but I've found it, and for the first time, it's internal rather than external.
3/23/2005
Found Excerpt
I found this little ditty from a writing assignment with a guest we had, professing my goals with my plays. It's always nice to focus in again on what your intentions are. I've been telling people that I want to write plays, but why, what kind of plays? Here's the answer:
"I love a dark humor of the world, where lines are crossed, and characters still have a lot of youth in them. I love characters that aren’t afraid to say what they enjoy, but are afraid to really say what’s important to them. I love and hate at the same time, how uncomfortable it is to watch my plays because of how much I’m in them. I want to be inside of my plays, the discomfort with religion and seeking of God, the discomfort with American politics, the fears I have and the frustrations I have. I want people to laugh [at the dark side of things] and then realize, "Shit, this is awful." Laugh because what else can we do? I want humor that’s not just funny and enjoyable, but that eats at you. All the things that you "know for certain," I want to take that and question it. Do I know that I really think I know? I don’t think I do. The world is a terrible and wonderful place. I want to investigate people, what’s inside of them, what their buttons are, what they’re hiding from. People need to be exposed to the little ugly parts. I’ve said that I want to roll in mud and blood and shit and semen and then use them to paint a face in clown make-up. Elegance in the grotesque. Comedy in what’s on the other side of the line drawn by society. Honesty in the face of fear."
"I love a dark humor of the world, where lines are crossed, and characters still have a lot of youth in them. I love characters that aren’t afraid to say what they enjoy, but are afraid to really say what’s important to them. I love and hate at the same time, how uncomfortable it is to watch my plays because of how much I’m in them. I want to be inside of my plays, the discomfort with religion and seeking of God, the discomfort with American politics, the fears I have and the frustrations I have. I want people to laugh [at the dark side of things] and then realize, "Shit, this is awful." Laugh because what else can we do? I want humor that’s not just funny and enjoyable, but that eats at you. All the things that you "know for certain," I want to take that and question it. Do I know that I really think I know? I don’t think I do. The world is a terrible and wonderful place. I want to investigate people, what’s inside of them, what their buttons are, what they’re hiding from. People need to be exposed to the little ugly parts. I’ve said that I want to roll in mud and blood and shit and semen and then use them to paint a face in clown make-up. Elegance in the grotesque. Comedy in what’s on the other side of the line drawn by society. Honesty in the face of fear."
3/06/2005
More Rewrites...
I have a major love/hate relationship with rewriting. I love getting feedback, but sometimes I get bogged down by the changes I want to make to “fix” all the problems people had with the play. The fear that I have is that I’m a bit overzealous when it comes to rewriting. I think to fix one thing, I have to change several other things, and before I know it, the entire play is switched around and I’ve cut out a ton of things that I loved from the play, including, in some cases, the one scene that made me want to write the play in the first place.
So, it’s a skill to figure out what’s important and what’s getting in the way of the audience understanding what I’m trying to say. I don’t feel like I should validate everything for an audience, but I don’t want them asking stupid questions. Maybe part of the problem are the people that are giving me feedback. There’s a sense of competition to find something wrong in the writing and to pick and pick at every unanswered question.
With this play, Holy Schmidt!, I’m trying out a style that I love, but haven’t written in before. Well, all my plays have this sense of animated comedy to them, the humor is somewhat random and based in association, but Holy Schmidt! blows the concept out of the water. I tried not to hold myself back from making the strange jokes and the funny situations and playing around with theatre itself. My first draft felt good, but somewhat empty. I remember a lot of people asking what the point of the play was, what characters’ motivations were, and I remember one person in particular telling me that my play’s not funny and I shouldn’t try to “rewrite the rules of comedy.” I was never trying to rewrite the rules of comedy, I was going by very solid rules in the comedy of the animated comedies that I grew up and still watch. But I do think there was a lack of clarity in the characters and what they were really doing in the script. The main character of Alyssa is one character that was just around as a deivce, someone that the plot revolved around, but didn’t have any power in it. In my further drafts, I need to get her to be more active and more in control of herself and her surroundings. While I do want her swept up in the events of the play, she does have to make and stick to some strong decisions.
Right now, I have just finished with a major overhaul of the structure of the play, moving scenes and deleting other scenes. It feels stronger in the way that the story unfolds, but there is still a major problem with the characters not really having big enough wants. The stakes aren’t high enough to validate the entire scope of the play. I’m still trying to work out for myself what these characters really want, but here’s the thing: every time I try and answer one question, another one pops up. There are no easy ways of fixing these characters and their wants. I have a specific structure, I know where things start and where things end up, but getting the characters from the beginning to the end is something that’s holding me back. Someone once told me that my plays were “too easy” and “too nice.” This translates into my characters giving in much too easily and coming to agreements. But they have to come to agreements in order for the play to move forward. They have to make some kind of concessions to another character in order to get things rolling, but how does that become feasible and realistic (in the world of the play)? And that’s where the problem rests. I know what I want to happen, I have lots of images for scenes, I know what I want to get out of the play, but how do I shove characters into their “roles” while still keeping them real?
So, it’s a skill to figure out what’s important and what’s getting in the way of the audience understanding what I’m trying to say. I don’t feel like I should validate everything for an audience, but I don’t want them asking stupid questions. Maybe part of the problem are the people that are giving me feedback. There’s a sense of competition to find something wrong in the writing and to pick and pick at every unanswered question.
With this play, Holy Schmidt!, I’m trying out a style that I love, but haven’t written in before. Well, all my plays have this sense of animated comedy to them, the humor is somewhat random and based in association, but Holy Schmidt! blows the concept out of the water. I tried not to hold myself back from making the strange jokes and the funny situations and playing around with theatre itself. My first draft felt good, but somewhat empty. I remember a lot of people asking what the point of the play was, what characters’ motivations were, and I remember one person in particular telling me that my play’s not funny and I shouldn’t try to “rewrite the rules of comedy.” I was never trying to rewrite the rules of comedy, I was going by very solid rules in the comedy of the animated comedies that I grew up and still watch. But I do think there was a lack of clarity in the characters and what they were really doing in the script. The main character of Alyssa is one character that was just around as a deivce, someone that the plot revolved around, but didn’t have any power in it. In my further drafts, I need to get her to be more active and more in control of herself and her surroundings. While I do want her swept up in the events of the play, she does have to make and stick to some strong decisions.
Right now, I have just finished with a major overhaul of the structure of the play, moving scenes and deleting other scenes. It feels stronger in the way that the story unfolds, but there is still a major problem with the characters not really having big enough wants. The stakes aren’t high enough to validate the entire scope of the play. I’m still trying to work out for myself what these characters really want, but here’s the thing: every time I try and answer one question, another one pops up. There are no easy ways of fixing these characters and their wants. I have a specific structure, I know where things start and where things end up, but getting the characters from the beginning to the end is something that’s holding me back. Someone once told me that my plays were “too easy” and “too nice.” This translates into my characters giving in much too easily and coming to agreements. But they have to come to agreements in order for the play to move forward. They have to make some kind of concessions to another character in order to get things rolling, but how does that become feasible and realistic (in the world of the play)? And that’s where the problem rests. I know what I want to happen, I have lots of images for scenes, I know what I want to get out of the play, but how do I shove characters into their “roles” while still keeping them real?
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