Back at the MoJoe Lounge

I'm here at the MoJoe Lounge, just below me is the box office to the 30 screen AMC theatre here at the Easton Town Center. The large open lobby to my left that I'm lording above is somewhat distracting. There are a lot of people here for a Friday morning. Guess people are starting spring break a little early or something. I don't know. It's about 11:30am and I still have about an hour and a half before heading over to work.

Open in another window is the file of "The Brothers Caramillo," complete with some changes from today. I'm battling with a case of writer's block that is different from the kind I usually experience. This time, I actually WANT to write, I desire getting into the world of the play, but I'm having trouble getting a handle on the story at the moment. I feel like I'm confusing characters and moments and the timeline of the action. I know at this point, I should just be writing and then "fix" any continuity errors when I start revising and really putting scenes in their correct order.

My mind has been trying to fix scenes, to give each character his or her due and purpose. This play has... Let me think... Alex, Dimas, Elian, Theo, Simon, Faith, Lise, Kate... 8 characters. Not too bad. But I need to make sure that each character allows an actor a good opportunity. Lise is a problem character right now... She's Alex's "girlfriend" and isn't serving much more of a purpose than putting Alex in a particular path. I'm considering cutting her, but she does add a nice layer to Alex's character. So far she's only in a single scene, so I'm trying to find a place for her in the second act, someplace...

Theo is also a problem character. He's in the first scene of the play (or what is the first scene of the play right now) and it's a really fun scene for an actor. He's also in another scene in act 1, at the very end of act 1. But I wonder if I need him in the second act... Somewhere... There's a bit of a problem with having him in the second act, which I don't really want to divulge right now since it's the hinge that the play operates on...

And I know, I KNOW, I shouldn't be worrying about any of this right now and should just be writing scenes, building on them and letting the energy of the scenes and the discovery of new character quirks be revealed (because every new scene presents something surprising about the characters). The characters will start rebelling against the pegs I've put them into and will start tweaking themselves into different shapes. I should just let them do the work for me, you know? I feel like part of being a playwright is becoming a stenographer for imaginary people. So, I guess I should just let them talk. Shut the computer and open the Moleskine and get gritty. Let's see what happens.

The Point

I'm at the point in my writing "The Brothers Caramillo" that I love to be at. I have about pages written and am moving towards the end. I have a "first act" that tops out at 52 pages and a "second act" that is filled up by scene titles that are acting as placeholders. These scene titles are mostly names of characters that will be in the scenes: "Elian and Alex," "Dimas and Kate." Some are more descriptive of action: "Dimas Breaks into Faith's Apartment." I always put scene titles as placeholders at this point in my writing, when I know what I'm driving towards and know, somewhat, what dramatic holes need to be filled with a scene. How many of the scenes will survive? How many more scenes will I need to write? I don't know. And I won't know until more and more of the scenes are written, and I can see how the play "plays." But I'm moving with great energy and anticipation and NEED. Since I started my new job at a bank call center in the afternoons/evenings, I've taken to hitting this coffeeshop (The Cup o Joe MoJoe Lounge) in the morning (around 10 or 11). I write for two hours or so and get my body moving. The coffee and the friction of typing on the keyboard of my laptop gives me the energy to get through 8 hours of training in the afternoon. I'm finally getting my life back into a semblance of order.

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...

Addicted to Stories

I haven't written on this blog for a good couple months. There are many reasons, but one is the fact that I've been addicted to stories. I've been devouring books and movies and tv shows like never before. I'm not going to list everything I've seen, but here's some of what I've experienced:

"The Brothers Karamazov"
"The World According to Garp" (film and novel)
"1984" (novel and film)
"Capote"
"Casino Royale" (film (in the middle of the novel))
"The Prestige" (film and novel)
"Y: The Last Man" the graphic novels (I'm chomping my way through them)
"Ex Machina" the graphic novel
"Equus" (film)
"The Sound and the Fury"
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

It's been literally years since I've read anything for the sake of pure enjoyment. And now, I find myself hungry for books, hungry for stories. And it kind of makes me wonder if filling myself with so many stories will have an adverse effect on my ability to pour out my own stories, or whether I'm merely adding water to the well. I'm not too worried by this new, healthy obsession. If I'm going to be addicted to something it may as well be something worthwhile, right?

Changing Titles, Changing Plays

It's rarely the case that I change the title of a play... Why? I don't know. I guess the play titles usually fit. Either that, or I'm so insanely stubborn to consider the fact that a play's title might be wrong. The second one is most likely closer to the truth.

I've renamed The Drowning Dance, and it's very difficult to call it by its new name, despite the fact that I've already renamed the file, the folders it rests in, and the pages on my dormant website. The new name? Bloodletting. In looking closely at Drowning Dance during my rewrites, I noticed that I was trying to paste in as many water images as possible in order to make the play work. But the play was telling me it was about something else. Everywhere, all throughout, there were references to blood and flesh. I thought about calling it "Flesh and Blood," but that was dumb. More than dumb, it was fucking stupid. So, I looked up the words "flesh" and "blood" in the good ol' thesaurus. "Flesh:" Meat. Food. (Boring.) "Blood:" plasma, vital fluid, gore. "Vital Fluids?" That's a terrible name for a play! "Vitality?" Nah.

But "Bloodletting." 1. The surgical removal of some of a patient's blood for therapeutic purposes. (YES!)
2. The violent killing and wounding of people during a war or conflict. (Yes, to a smaller extent)
3. Bitter division and quarreling within an organization. (Yes, again!)

So, the new play is born. Even though it's mostly the same play, there's a different feeling now that it has a new name. Why? Because it makes you search for meaning differently. Instead of searching for "Drowning," you're tapping into "blood" and "therapy" or conflict. It's a major change in the audience's focus.