Soundtracks for Plays & Moments of Shifting

This morning on the drive to school (not my school, the wife's school... I've taken to going with her since my new job doesn't start until next week in an attempt to get work done away from the TV), anyway, my wife, Rachael, was driving and from the CD player, the Joseph Arthur song, "Let's Embrace" comes on. And everytime I hear this song, my play "Father Bob" bursts forth from the ether of the back of my mind and begins playing in sound and movement, dancing freely on the lit stage right behind my eyes. It's astounding to me that this song, which became the "Father Bob" "theme," could carry an entire play within it like a capsule, a pill, and once it gets into my system, it releases every bit throughout my body. I long to find songs that are capsules for all my plays. That way, I can just listen to the song and be immersed instantaneously in the world of that play...

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Yesterday, while lamenting the fact that my reporter Moleskine notebook was left in the trunk of the car my wife had taken to school, I decided that it was an appropriate time to start planning the timeline of my play "The Brother Caramillo" (formerly "Goody Goody"). I thought about the course of events, made a list of scenes that were missing, and sketched out blue notes on my dry erase board in the corner of my office. And in these moments of staring at the jumbled blue, erasable scrawl and the "notecard" setting of the script, my mind started placing scenes in order, one after the other, and I started to see transitions. Transitions are always difficult for me as each scene I write usually has a very distinct END OF SCENE feeling to it, very precise, exact. I don't usually write with scenes bleeding and shifting in and out to each other like mingling mists. My brain doesn't think that way... (That's perhaps why I had so much trouble with writing "All Grace")

But, here's the thing, as I was "writing" (not typing or documenting, but "writing" in my head, hence the quotation marks) a new scene, something odd happened. In the corner of the stage right behind my eyes, the scene that was to follow this new scene slowly emerged from the darkness and remained in shadow. So, two scenes were happening at once, only one of them wasn't completely lit. And the thing is, the shadowed scene was commenting on and cementing a concept in the scene playing to the audience. Then, the dominant scene crashed out and the shadowy, secondary scene burst forth--BAM. It was revelatory and beautiful. The stagecraft in my mind helped bring out underlying themes in the play AND served as a theatrical and beautiful transition. I was, and remain, surprised and giddy about this new moment. Yes, giddy...