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Rehearsal Report 2

February 10th, 2011 No comments

One prominent notion in Patterns is the character’s act of writing a play as she is acting the play. It is quite self-reflexive and for a large part dominated the content of the play. As the drafts have progressed, this element has been cut way back as it became somewhat apparent that the self-reflexiveness often as not came off as self-indulgent. There was an additional problem of the self-reflexivity being greatly redundant and, being interpreted by some, as insulting to the audience (even though that was not the intention).

Another component of this was to make the play more aware of itself. That is, the convention in plays predominantly is the audience’s agreement to pretend that the “characters” in the play are unaware of the audience and off in their little world. As I have quoted elsewhere, Eugene Ionesco:

Why could I not accept theatrical reality? Why did its truth appear false to me? And why did the false seem to want to parade as true, substitute for truth?… [The actor’s] material presence destroyed the fiction. It was as though there were present two levels of reality, the concrete reality, impoverished, empty, limited, of these banal living men, moving and speaking upon the stage, and the reality of the imagination. And these two realities faced each other, unmasked, irreconcilable: two antagonistic universes which could not succeed in unifying and blending.

So, many aspects of Patterns are directed at the act of play creation itself; to reflect on this as it is happening. One method of super-charging that reality is using the actual names of the actors in the presentation of the play. This is something that the Wooster Group does often. So, below, you’ll see mention of the cutting of this element in the script, as it didn’t seem to be working right in the actual process of staging the play.

Rehearsal Report
Date: 2/9/2011 Start Time: 6:30pm Break: 8:20-8:30 End: 10:10pm

Summary:
– Reviewed blocking pages 1-11
– Blocked pages 11-20
– Ali did measurements

Director/Playwright:
– Line change on page 2 spoken by King. Middle of his first paragraph of dialogue he used to say: “daughter: fill my cup and let not but that my cup continually runneth…” And now reads: “daughter: fill my cup and let my cup continually runneth…”

– Line change on page 11 spoken by Aisa. The actors’ real names are again eliminated near the middle of the page. Aisa now says: “Let’s look at the fairy tale again. I will play the role of the princess.”

Props:
– No new props for today’s rehearsal.

Costume:
– Added a few items to the prop list for the Doc’s costume.

Set/Sound/Lights:
– On page 19-20, it was decided to lose the “playback” on the videotape during the scene with the Doc. The doc will now “review” the raw tape from an actual video cassette tape. The Doc will tear at the tape, look at it, and discard the cassette. The dialogue will have NO changes.

Misc:
– Regarding the plywood for the Queen’s death scene, it only needs to be large enough for her to lie comfortably. Laura is 5’4” so perhaps a 5’8” board in length and 3” wide would work?

Next Day Schedule:
Thursday, Feb 10th 6:30pm
Company review pages 1-20, block pages 20-28.

Poor Little Lulu

March 21st, 2012 No comments

Poor Little Lulu

Went and saw Poor Little Lulu at CPT on Monday, and for the most part I enjoyed the play conceived and directed by Matthew Earnest, an adaptation of two Frank Wedekind plays as noted in the program, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box.

I say “for the most part” because, as with many conceived pieces, the story really falls apart at the end. However, with that said, apparently both of the plays written by Wedekind are, generally, run together in one performance. The “running together” of the plays at CPT is no different: though, I wish in many ways it was. Simply, either the plays should not be run together in one evening, or sufficient time should be provided for them to properly develop and resolve themselves. As with other jointly conceived pieces I’ve seen it’s as if the steam (enthusiasm) just runs out—-or the time to prepare it does–and there is a push to just end the piece in whichever way is most expedient—-or no one working on the piece has the faintest idea how to end it, and so it lieu of letting it just sort of peter out some contrived ending is ratcheted on. This, however, was an adaptation, so there was not this particular problem, there was another, which I get to later.

What Earnest does with the play from a directorial and visual dimension is fantastic. The choices of costuming (nudity, cross-dressing, costume design), scene transition, the contrast of white and black and shadow play (noir) is stunning, etc. The performances from the cast are equally exceptional. The play, for the most part, is worth seeing for the visual effects, direction, sound design (James Kosmatka), video design (Earnest & Will Bezek), and staging alone. There is a constancy of energy and forward motion driving the piece, which helps when the story flags in Act 2. There are only a few instances in which the other flaw of devised pieces exhibits itself, which I’ll refer to as the onanistic tendency to indulge in superfluous goings on: characters (actors) sing for no reason (just because they can, I suppose) and for the same reason they engage in choreographed dancing. Don’t get me wrong, Lulu is supposed to be a dancer—so why not let her dance, right? Of course, she is supposed to be a prostitute, so why not let her…? The point is that seeing the dancing or fucking or whatever is not immediately relevant to the story. If it doesn’t materially function as an element of the story then cut it. If it has no story contribution (forward progression) then cut it. Katie Nabors (Lulu) is a dancer by the way and is clearly very talented and it was a joy to watch, even though it had no real purpose, or perhaps phrased differently, why was there no dancing and singing in Act 2? If you’re going to go whole hog, go whole hog.

Having worked on adaptations myself, and having read many books that touch on the subject, one of the rules that is always put forward is that the playwright, sorry, conceiver, should be faithful to the script (devised piece) he/she is writing/ conceiving, not to the original material—-even in cases when the original creator is still alive and you are beholden to that original work you should fight as much as possible for your own vision. That is, you should be as faithful as possible to your adaptation—-your interpretation of the story. So, for Earnest the question is, what was the story? His story? Because, I think, too faithful an adherence to Wedekind’s ponderous arc drove this piece to a forced progression of plot pegs. I can see and understand the imperative to present the “whole” story—-the complete character arc for Lulu: her rise and terrible fall—-but that is a different play from the emotional entanglements of Lulu and Schon (Mark Farr) which dominate the first act. Equally, I understand CPT’s mission and goal of presenting stories that cast light on social injustice and issues that still are prevalent in today’s society: including the slavery of women. These two plays by Wedekind certainly do this. But as presented in this adaptation the story fails in the second act completely—-the plot points are there and clearly apparent, but dramatic and emotional interest just vanishes. Having never read the original plays I am unsure how long a full production of both would be—-compared to this one at CPT. But, in the interest of finishing this adaptation much of Act 2 is clipped of meaningful dramatic content and all is presented as rough plot points and characters speaking their situations (telling): “Oh, I have no money,” etc. It is in this regard that I would rather have had only one play presented, or perhaps both at different times.

The story in the first act is quite compelling and engaging (i.e. the first play) and it is quickly and emotionally enthralling with regard to the relationship between Lulu and Dr. Ludwig Schon. Earnest, with the first play (act) creates a captivating story, in which the tension between Lulu and Schon is built and very productively dominant—-a tension that could have been sustained over the whole piece. Unfortunately, by being wholly true to the Wedekind original, this tension and emotionally dramatic force is cut short far too quickly with the marriage of Lulu and Schon and the subsequent murder of Schon by Lulu. This arc is fine for one play (Earth Spirit) but not fine for the two plays combined. The problem for the Earnest adaptation (wholly) is that the emotional attachment for the audience falls predominantly on these two characters (Lulu and Schon) and in the second act the audience is left with without them (hence no attachment–and virtually no interest in what transpires.) In fact, Lulu is in prison and absent from the first several minutes of the second act, so there are no characters that serve as an attachment at all—-and the characters that remain are debauched (as expected given the time period and location) but also two-dimensional, and thus cannot be emotionally engaging. Again, I don’t know if this is a problem for just this piece, or if it is common to the other adaptations of the “Lulu plays.” It is regrettable, because the first part of the piece is very alluring, but the second is just a series of rote events that wrap up the character arcs in a mechanical sort of way.

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