Accidental Revisions

I told myself that I wasn't going to revise "All Grace" until I knew who was directing the upcoming production in May. Yesterday, that plan kind of broke... In church, my mind drifted to my conversation with Jacques Lipchitz' daughter, Lolya, and I revisited a scene from "All Grace" in my mind. Ms. Lipchitz told me that her father felt that he had the ability to tell if a work of art was authentic or a "fake." He could sense the artist's emotions and joy of creation from within a work. When I heard this story, I was amazed and knew it was important, but didn't know where it fit in the script. Then, in church, my mind flashed to a scene in which Lipchitz is speaking to his wife, Yulla, about his inability to create the statue of the Virgin Mary. Originally, Lipchitz argued that he didn't feel "connected" to the work because he was a Jew. While this was interesting and true on some level, it wasn't "personal." Yet, if Lipchitz knew that he wasn't creating something "authentic" and didn't want people to pray and be baptized before a "fake" work of art, then that creates a larger need for Lipchitz. I also softened the scene, so that it wasn't a "heated" argument between Yulla and Lipchitz-- it was one of concern.

As I typed through that scene yesterday, I began to read through scenes and taking little cuts here and there, altering scenes... Then, I stopped myself. I made a list of scenes that needed to be "fixed." Seven scenes.

This morning, I awoke with the need to make a single change in the script. I merely wanted to change the placement of one of the scenes. There is a scene in which the Virgin Mary gives birth and a separate scene in which she speaks to her child. I wanted to combine those two scenes. They needed to be shifted and parts needed to be reworded, so I made the small incisions and cuts and added to the script. Then, I read more of the script and before I knew it, I had moved two other scenes, added a monologue for a character, changed the structure of the second act altogether, and revised the end. All this revision, and all I really wanted to do was move a single scene! Now, I have only five scenes to adjust! (3 in act 1, 2 in act 2)

What I noticed as I was going through the script, was that the problems I was having with certain moments weren't the giant problems I perceived them to be. They were all issues of "action" and "motivation." By changing the character's motivation, the scene gave way to a new understanding. For example, I changed several scenes between Father Couturier, the priest responsible for getting almost ten Modern Artists together to decorate the church (Notre Dame de Toute Grace) and Father Devemy, the priest who started it all. In my version of the story, Couturier saw NDdTG as his chance to flout the glories of Modern Art, but in the end was upset by the mediocrity of NDdTG. What caused this change? In moving a scene to a later moment, we can see that his change of mind was one of desperation, based in his frustration that he hasn't changed the minds of the Church leaders, which is part of what he set out to do, rather than an attack on the church itself.

Most of the other changes are very small along these same lines: changing the motivation of a character, with careful attention to "why" a character is speaking certain lines. For example, I've never been satisfied with a scene in which a young Lipchitz finds a beggar woman, Yenta, praying at a Catholic Church. I wanted this scene to also explain why Lipchitz left Russia for Paris to become an artist, but the conversation was never easily breached. It was always awkwardly phrased and felt forced. Now, I have a way to make the conversation flow. Before, the conversation started with Lipchitz touching Yenta's face and Yenta seeing that Lipchitz' hands were dirty with clay:

YENTA: Your hands. How did your hands get so dirty? Why would a rich boy be crawling in the mud?
LIPCHITZ: It's not mud, it's clay. I've been making sculptures.
YENTA: Sculptures?
LIPCHITZ: I'm an artist.
YENTA: An artist? If you’re an artist, why aren’t you in Paris starving with all the other artists?
LIPCHITZ: My mother won’t let me go.

Crap. I know. It's crap. Later in the conversation, (or earlier depending on the draft), Yenta speaks of her room in the Lipchitz family hotel and begs Lipchitz to speak to his father so she could have a room again. The change I want to make in this scene is that when Yenta asks for a room, Lipchitz offers her his room: "I'm not going to need it anymore." Then, Yenta can ask, "Where are you going?" "Paris." Bam boom, a couple more cuts and revisions and the scene is fixed.