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Wrapped up the Writing from Character workshop this evening at CPT and it was a blast.

The evening started out much as the evening started Monday with a lot of intense movement work. This time we were in Parish Hall, so we had quite a bit more space and a nice wood floor to move around on. We started in a circle and did a quick refresher on names and then moved on to Sun Salutations. Again, I was happy that my P90X work came in handy–as I felt like I was working straight out of CardioX. We started with some pretty intense yoga salutations that increased in speed. There was a little bit of plyo in the jumping–you know, we mixed it up; because variety is the spice of life. Sorry, channeling Tony Horton. Next we imagined that the large expanse of floor was gridded up at 90 degree angles. We all moved along in lines, redirecting when we encountered others. We played with tempo (speeding up our movement and slowing down); we played with spatial arrangements; we kept each other in our soft vision areas–periphery–and mimicked each other; we changed our core body positions in height: slinking down, rising up, crawling, tumbling, jumping. The sweat was pouring off all of us when we were finished, and I know that my legs will be sore tomorrow.

We took a break and then came back in costume: dressed as our personas from Monday. We walked about as before, getting a sense of ourselves in our characters. Then Jeffrey divided us into groups. We were charged with creating a 5 minute ensemble piece in :50 minutes which we then performed for the other groups. For those of you who’ve seen Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant, you have a sense already of what the pieces were like, as they revolved around the creation of one course of a meal. For those of you who haven’t seen Conni’s, your time is running out. Very like Conni’s, the segments that we created had to have several components: 1) we were working with food, so we had to create a dish (the food was very basic: carrots, boiled eggs, apples, lemons, nuts, etc.); 2) the dish that we created had to fulfill a need of one of at least one of the characters in our group; 3) there had to be a song; 4) audience participation was greatly encouraged; 5) something in the piece needed to reveal more about each of our characters (deepen them); 6) there should be movement involved (i.e. no static tableaux); 7) we had to work together to create the piece, accepting as much as possible all ideas, suggestions. It was a challenge.

Fortunately, I worked with a great team. A great team! I was in a group with Lynna Metrisin, who was fantastic in my thesis play Patterns and who directed Cat Kenney’s play that ran on the same bill as mine in Springboard; Katie Nabors, who recently starred in The Underpants at the Beck Center; and the always fabulous Lauren B. Smith of concon fame. Our short piece centered on getting love for Lucy (Smith). This was accomplished by the other characters: Luna (Katie) my “hay rollin” cousin from the farm days; Bernie (Metrisin) who played a dispirited Browns fan turned coach for our team; and myself, Schnitzel Fritz: ponderer extraordinaire, who happens to be skilled at animal husbandry. Our piece started with a quick dance routine that was energetically and spontaneously created by Luna. The dance involved using paper plate bowls in either hand, choreographed movements, clapping of plates, and a quick spin around our protagonist, Lucy, as she sang about her need for love. Bernie, Luna, and I then gave Lucy a quick going over as we circled around and concluded that she needed a “stud,” whom we obtained from the audience (Randy Muchowski–who is an Actor Teacher at Great Lakes Theater Festival and who is also fantastic). Luna blew up a latex glove and Fritz gave Randy a quick instructional session on handling large breasts and how to clench a nipple firmly while pulling: Luna was quite inspired. We then guided Randy to a nearby dinner table where Lucy awaited his company. Luna dolled out some dishes to the audience while the two love birds at their appetizer course. Luna and Fritz then served up the “Intercourse” segment of the meal, but not before presenting it to the audience for inspection. Luna carried a thick, long carrot with two appropriately placed hardboiled eggs at the base; while Fritz carried a plate with the nippily ends of two lemons upward and a succulently halved and spread red pepper resembling another portion of the human anatomy. The meal was the generative portion of the supper which, after being presented to the dining pair was eaten with great enthusiasm, culminating in the orgasmically spontaneous noshing of an apple by Lucy. Then she was sleepy and laid down upon Randy. Later Lucy was heard to say that while it was not love, it was satisfying.

Such was our stint into the dynamic world of character creation and character in action, a la Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant!

So, you are familiar with the saying “better late than never”? Well, here’s hoping that this is true. Over a year ago my wife and I took a trip south to Columbus to see a play by my friend and fellow playwright Michael Parsons. The play is 29 Bells, about which I wrote a blog entry when I had the opportunity to go and see a staged reading of the piece. The short point is that it is a marvelous play and it is one of those plays that has the sneaky habit of creeping back into your conscious mind periodically for what appears to be inexplicable reasons.

The reason that a play can take hold of you and constantly return your mind to it are impossible to tease out and identify; especially given that the reason will be different for each person who experiences it. For me, I think the reason the play holds my imagination and mind is that its center is on a family and the life of this family in the past. There is a profound sense of loss in this play and the true and hopeful glimmer for a recovery of some of what has passed–that is, a restoration. Parsons achieves both of these effects which have tremendous dramatic payoff for the audience member. The dark spiraling descent, cast against the all time perfect metaphor (a sinking ship), is, as one would expect: tense; but the relief that comes through hopeful emotional moments and through Parson’s natural humor, bring the audience out of the darkness at the end, yet keep the balance of emotions of the piece in place. For myself, I think of my family and Christmases past and households that were filled with people and light and humor and food and drinking and celebration. During my college years my dad’s mother passed and the center of one family blinked out. The center did not hold and the families dispersed. The light went out, and one side of the family descended into a darkness from which it has never recovered. More recently my other grandparents have passed and the same has happened. Relatives are older, families of their own, people are in different places, etc. That said, of course, now I have a family of my own and we have begun creating our own traditions and the holidays are filling again, and have been for several years, with light, and people, and humor and food and drinking and celebration. Aristotle new well that drama, like life itself, moves in rhythms and that these rhythms are meaningful: they lead us through the various emotional and intellectual events of our life. Parsons captures these very well in what is a sprawling story held tightly together.

I mention Aristotle because it is important in another way. Parsons is a more traditional playwright. That is to say, he writes plays with Aristotelian structures. Plays that are mostly naturalistic. He tends to have strong views on the subject and has admitted the challenges of not writing in this way. His concerns as expressed and his admitted challenges are somewhat surprising given that 29 Bells has some absolutely fantastic moments that show a sense of exploration beyond traditional structures. For instance, throughout the play are a variety of generic structures present: from the rapid fire dialog of the LA power lunch, to the ghost boy (Ricky Isbell) sitting at the ham radio, to the presence of a variety of media sources (radio, television, etc) in the highly dramatic ending to the first act, surreal moments–such as the names of the deceased tattooed on the back of the girlfriend (Natalie Jensen); there is love story, ghost story, family story, hollywood story, etc; and much of the work plays with time and challenges linearity. The list goes on. Parsons has very adeptly woven together a quilt of a variety of pieces of fabric that act as both independent pieces and both shine and reflect on each other–illuminating and deepening character and meaning.

The plot of 29 Bells is fairly straightforward, though thankfully the telling is not. Ian Carlyle (Jeremy Ryan Brown) is sent back to his hometown to write a screenplay about the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in Lake Superior in 1975. It is the same lake on which Ian’s father Hal (Jeff Potts) disappeared (guilt over his not being on the Edmund Fitzgerald–as he should have been–taking its toll). Once in his hometown Ian’s past begins to surround him like the cold lake waters and soon Ian is treading memories and beating back emotions that he did not count on. His mother (Amy Anderson) and former/new girlfriend provide much of the prodding necessary to get Ian to throw off his LA facade and become the true person he should be–one who can accept the totality of who he is, including the events of his past. That is, to become a centered person.

29 Bells could still use a bit of thinning out, a fact of which I am certain that Parson’s is aware, as there are a lot of story lines competing for audience attention: a challenge that I myself face with my most recent play Patterns. Nevertheless, 29 Bells takes several stories which combined have almost epic sweep and manages the impressive feat of joining them together while director LB Rabby keeps the pace up and constantly driving forward. Especially nice is the full cast re-telling of the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down that dramatically and energetically closes out the first act.