New Draft of "All Grace"

I began All Grace in May 2005 as part of a summer independent study. Over that summer I came away with a disjointed 60 pages that had enough emotion and dream-like flights of fancy to almost make up for what it lacked in plot, structure, or character development. It was at that time that I was using the structure of the Catholic mass to structure the play, which was an interesting idea and helped me come up with several of the most interesting moments in the play, but, in the end, rang extremely false. Here's what I said in my thesis about this time:

"I felt more at ease as I felt sure I had found a structure for the play. I was also confident that I knew what play I was writing: A play about seminal, spiritual moments that happen in ordinary, modern life.

* * *

The initial writing of the play was exhausting. I continually felt overwhelmed and somewhat disappointed by the scenes’ disparity between what I wanted to write and the scenes that were actually taking shape on the page. While I felt confident with my structure, I felt that I was essentially creating a theatrical “collage” that felt inactive and
lacked dramatic action."

After almost a year of working on the play, I came to a production at the Iowa New Play Festival. After going through workshops in a class by Robert Blacker, conversations with Sherry Kramer, Morgan Jenness, and Art Borreca, a rehearsal process with actors, I had come away with a script that was now 116 pages.

From my thesis again:

"This process, from the beginning, has been one of flexibility and asking serious questions about the play. The actors’ questions during the rehearsals, the observations of Willie Barbour and Jessica Dart, the theorizing of Art Borreca have all moved the play forward. As I look back over all my notes from the multiple meetings I’ve had over the past eleven months, it’s daunting how many times a new point of view has shifted the course of the play. I’ve spent the better part of a year exploring this play and having new, grand epiphanies that have served to deepen and expand the play to levels, which I never
imagined my plays could exist. I’m excited and nervous, intimidated and confident. All Grace is, without a doubt, the best play I’ve written (so far), and it is due, in no small part, to the community of people and ideas that cocooned around me and planted questions and inspiration in my imagination."

After that production in May 2006, I knew that the play wasn't finished. The emotion wasn't honest enough, the play wasn't entirely visceral and, it's the wrong word but I'll use it, "magical" enough. It lacked the feeling of two worlds, the sacred and profane, really co-mingling. In a sense, the profane had won out as I told Jacques Lipchitz' story from beginning (as an 18 year old moving to Paris) to the "present" (1940's). I'd gotten stuck in the real world.

Now, I'm coming fresh off of a new exploration that started in October of 2006, 5 months after the Festival production. Bits and pieces of the play were coming to my mind as the years went on. I made notes on programs while I sat in the audience of plays, made sketches on pads of paper at work, but every time I sat down to "write" the play, I couldn't find a way back into it. What changed? What helped me get through the play? Two things.

Last month, my church, Broad Street United Methodist Church, began planning events for the Columbus Arts Festival. Since I run our drama program, they asked me if there was a play we could produce. I originally pitched the idea of doing Caryl Churchill's Far Away, but the planning committee seemed less than thrilled by the idea when I described the play to them. Then, I thought, well, what better play for a church to produce during an Arts Festival than a play about art in a church... And as easy as that, I found myself promising a production of All Grace in early June. Having that deadline forced me into high gear, forced me into finding any little moment to steal a glance at the script and scribble a note, a new line, a new thought.

But there was something else, something more personal that I think was keeping me from writing the play again. In a sense, I had lost that deep connection to the spirit. There isn't a better word for it than "Spirit." It's the word Matisse and Lipchitz used to describe the connection to something deep within their work. My spirit was atrophied. Sure, I had touched it again with my "Brothers Karamazov" adaptation, but was now feeling a major disconnect. I found it again through Lent. And through one of my original and deep-rooted inspirations: Jesus Christ Superstar. Yes, I know, as ridiculous as it sounds, that rock opera thunders in me and awakens something. Those peals of the electric guitar call to something primal and pure in me. So much so that on Saturday, the day before Easter, I found myself looking at my new draft of All Grace. I removed 40 pages of excess fat and found an economy to the emotionality and the connections to the past. The play sits now at a scant 75 pages. It's a "three act" play now, which brought the structure of the play into immediate focus for me. And remembering Far Away, made me feel at ease with having a 20-page "act." The play is more honest than the longer, bulkier version, and speaks more to the spirit that Lipchitz himself was trying to touch upon. I feel ready to get the play out there, ready to have it seen...

But first, I need to find 8 actors...

Teaching

In a fit of odd desperation at work, I went to a "huddle room" (rooms with little tables and chairs and dry erase boards for small meetings) and I started to teach a class on playwriting. To no one. Like a young girl has a tea party with stuffed animals, or how I used to play "Mass" when I was a kid, dressing up in one of my father's T-shirts and using grape juice and Lays Potato Chips as communion. Of course, since my congregation consisted of myself, I ate a lot of chips as a kid. I still feel a twinge of sacredness when I have a bag of Lays...

Anyway, so I was teaching this class, starting with Aristotelian principles and Freytag's Triangle. I broke this down further into a basic three-act structure, using terminology gained from Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige: The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.


I then moved into a discussion of how this structure works in Caryl Churchill's Far Away, moving from something ordinary to something exceedingly outrageous and unexpected.

I told my imaginary students that another name for "The Prestige" was "Perception Shift," which was taught to me by Sherry Kramer. (We would be investigating this throughout the semester.)

They could also look forward to our session on adaptations, (my forte, my calling as Sherry Kramer decreed one night, "I know what you should do with your life! Adaptation!") and we would be going over such plays as Tallgrass Gothic by Melanie Marnich (one of those other playwrights who have pushed me into a better understanding of myself as a playwright).

My class was cut short by the end of my break, and, sadly, I have left my imaginary students out in the cold. I haven't had a chance to start our workshops, see what they're writing. I'm way behind on my syllabus... Hell, I haven't even created my syllabus!

I'm a poor excuse for an imaginary playwriting professor.