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So much for silly giddiness.

At the 3 hour mark of the final rehearsal last night we came to a long speech. Very long. Brutally long. It is the moment of possession for my main character: possession of a great spiritual energy bursting from the woods; and a moment in which the main character finally possesses himself for the first time: instead of being punched around like a beach ball. Did I mention that the speech in this moment is long? And after three painful hours of watching even mild speeches get a blistering cold reading that consisted of shredded and swallowed and then choked out lines–well, I nearly fainted in the face of my own long tirade.

Aside: Let me just take a moment to say that the director, Clyde Simon, and all of the actors: Geoffrey and Stuart Hoffman and Tom and Evan Kondilas are doing absolutely fabulously and I would not in any way disparage them.

Panic

There were two distinct moments when I wanted to cut lines. No, not just cut them; I wanted to just rip them out and throw them on the floor and then stomp on them. I didn’t want anyone to hear them: least of all me. There was a genuine moment of terror in which I contemplated calling the whole thing off; and then there was a briefly-swift moment where I wanted to vomit. Other than this, the rehearsal went quite well.

It was grueling. During the first rehearsal, which lasted four hours and covered a dry reading and the blocking of the first part of the play, I laughed. It was very pleasant; alright, hilarious at points. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Last night, however, it was the last part of the play and it took 4.5 hours to get through it. I felt like we all were trudging. It was vapid, tedious, and terrible. God, I only hope it was the time of day; or the weather; something…anything…other than what I fear it was most of all.

The Dreams of the Nighttime will have Vanished by Dawn

Today, I’m a little bit more introspective and upbeat. I feel that it will most certainly move fast. I remind myself that the length of time on both occasions was the blocking, the enactment, the re-enactment, the reading and re-reading and so on. The go and stop and the ‘do-it-again.’ This, of course, won’t happen during the reading. And then I recalled, ‘hey, this is the point of a reading.’ I gave pause. I took a beat. This isn’t a production. This isn’t even the final version of the play. It is rough. It is supposed to be rough. Lighten up, tight ass. Slowly, now. Slowly. Unclench them. Ease up.

I was preparing for the night of, today. I had to send a bio to the marketing person. I had to pick out a “moderator” who would lead the post show talk: a no-brainer for me–Mike Geither. I thought about where I could pick up a Viking helmet with the fake braids under it and maybe even a breast plate with two big breasts–and how all those Slim Jims would go over. (You think I’m kidding, don’t you?) Then I shopped around the web looking to swipe post-staged-reading questions from others who have gone through this. I found a couple solid sites that talked about it. But the best, perhaps, was DAM*Writer, who on January 15th of this year wrote:

As anyone who’s even glanced at this blog now and again knows, I have a real love/hate relationship with staged readings. The rehearsal process and the readings themselves can reveal all sorts of wonderful/horrible things that don’t always make themselves known in the space between my ears when I’m sitting alone in my office, tapping away or even reading out loud. Since plays are meant to be experienced by audiences, it can be very helpful to get a sneak peek at the effects of one’s work on people experiencing it for the first time.

On the other hand, a staged reading is a misleading, watered-down presentation of any but the most traditional of dialogue-heavy, standard-narrative, linear-storyline plays. The further you go out on the experimental branch, the less likely it becomes that a staged reading is going to support the work, its intentions, its style and the author’s voice.

Hear, hear… and my play is out a bit on the experimental branch. It’s not full out whacked, or extreme expressionism, but it sure has elements that are like that and is heavy on the visual elements of theatre–not good for a reading. Clyde though is taking a damn fine crack at it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he’s done not only a fine job, but I’ve worried that the person reading the stage directions (Stuart Hoffman) will be mistaken for a character.

Sigh

Oh well. I console myself by knowing that it will all be said and done by Wednesday at 10:00pm. I will have my answers, though not for the sake of a live audience. As David mentions on his site, it is unlikely that you can rely on what the audience has to say…although, they might point out one thing or other that surprises you. But, as Mike Geither said to me earlier on the phone:

You’re the one closest to the work and you know it best. You can’t rely on the audience to tell you what to do. The feedback isn’t even for you, really, it’s to let the audience think that they have some input in the process; but mostly, it’s for the theatre…

Presumably to demonstrate that they’re the kind of theatre that does these sorts of things. Okay. Right on. It is nonetheless helpful to hear the thing read aloud. To see it staged, however modestly. To get a sense of its rhythm (or lack there of). To know what works and what doesn’t. To hear the audience laugh, or moan, or yawn, or swear, or ask, aloud, WTF is this and who gave me this ticket anyhow?

We’ll see. I have a tendency to overreact and jump to conclusions, overly harsh conclusions. If you would, cross your fingers with me, then say the following: “middle biddle fumble and ding” three times really fast.

Or not.

Theatre Games

Michael Wright in his book [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Playwriting in Process: Thinking and Working Theatrically[/amazon_link] begins chapter two by outlining the concept of theatre games for playwrights.

Wright outlines the approach to playwriting that he rejects:

Doctrinaire statements include saying, the conflict must begin by page 5, or that exposition has to be done in such and such a way. Nontheatrical statements are suggesting that you develop plots from outlines or work up characters from lists of traits such as hair color, politics, and choice of bath soap.

Instead, [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ] Wright[/amazon_link] advocates, per the first sentence, the use of “theatre games; activities that encourage creative and dynamic thinking, playful writing, and immersive engagement in the process of creating scenes, characters, text, dialogue, and, of course, subtext.

Wright mentions a couple of sources for the games that he advocates. The first is Viola Spolin‘s theatre games and improvisations. Wright comments that her theatre games showed him “how to work from a ‘doing approach’ finding a given scene through active discovery”rather than a detached mental process.’ The second source for [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] came from his work with Harold Clurman in the Director’s Unit, which was a subdivision of Israel Horovitz‘s Playwright’s Unit at the Actors Studio. [amazon_link id=”1557831327″ target=”_blank” ]Clurman[/amazon_link] apparently used a process whereby a group of playwrights began creating new plays all at the same time with a set number of pages to create per week and then these plays were workshopped, i.e. shared, read, critiqued, discussed, etc. This is very like the process I’ve gone through in several of my playwriting classes at CSU/NEOMFA. For several reasons, [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] and another playwright, [amazon_link id=”0435086294″ target=”_blank” ]Jeffrey Sweet[/amazon_link], left this group and created their own named the New York Writer’s Bloc. Out of this came an exercise described by Wright as the “Six Line”.

The six-line as a writing exercise is a short scene literally comprised of six lines between two characters with each character having three lines. A line can be one word or five pages and is the sum of one character’s thoughts as spoken in that one response Each week’s six-lines were based on a given topic, which was also known as ‘negotiation.’ A negotiation was defined as the matter, issue, or problem between two people who each wanted a different result and automatically led to conflict The use of an assigned negotiation helped us all because we didn’t have to think of a topic on our own

Wright asserts that writing negotiations is the “center of all theatrical writing” because it encompasses the “show don’t’ tell” writing principle (mentioned in my earlier posts) and creates characters who define meaning by both what they say and what they do that is, not only the action, but how that action is carried out. More importantly, by creating meaning in this way, the audience is forced to pay attention to all aspects of a theatrical production, not just the words that characters speakbecause the words a character speaks can be in sharp contracts with the actions that character performs: the sum of these elements adding up to a complexity and depth of meaning that is much greater than their component pieces alone.

Here is an example from Wright’s book:

#1 A Couple playing Scrabble

KAREN: There. L-O-V-E. That’s, mm, double letter. Fifteen.
HARRY: OK, and I’ll just borrow that L, and add my U, S, T. That’s triple word, forty-five!
KAREN: Fine! I’ll add my F, U, and L up here. That’s now Faithful, and that scores me thirty-six, so I’m still up by fifty.
HARRY: Yeah? Well, here’s one for you in front of your ART, I drop a P, then finish with a Y. Double-word, triple on the Y, and we’re talking seventy-eight points. Now who’s “up”?
KAREN: Yeah, we’ll see. Here, try this: in front of your ANT I’m going to add P, R, E, G, N. [A beat; she gives him a very long look.] Your move. [Beat.] Well?
HARRY: I’m thinking! [Beat.] I’m thinking.

First, going back to the quote I added to one of my earlier posts from Bob McKee’s book, Story: namely, that if the characters in your scene are talking about what they’re talking about: you’re fucked. The point being, in this case, that Karen and Harry aren’t talking about scrabble. They aren’t directly talking about what they’re talking about. It is carried behind the text, or under the text, or is to the text as the spirit is to the body: out there floating, ethereal.

Second, part of the theatricality of this scene lies a) in the fact that they are doing something physical: in time, space, etc; and b) the thing that they are doing they are doing aloud and, while they are literally spelling everything out for the audience, the audience still has to add everything up to get the meaning and what is implied by the activities of the two.

Third, the scene builds tension. The first exchange sets the pattern and the relationship; the second ups the stakes in way Karen and Harry relate within their society; the final exchange raises the ‘game’ to a whole new levelone that ‘check mates’ the other and removes the relationship from the world of college parties to the world of child-rearing, parenting, and adulthood.

Fourth, the words each speaks, the location of the exclamation points (their enthusiasm), their sense of humor, sense of irony, snideness, revelation of interests and what is important to themall of this ‘dialogue’ and ‘behavior’ reveals characterbut it is revealed only in discerning it actively, not by having it told explicitly.

Regardless, this, as [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] admits, is only an exercise, but this could easily be a way of developing a dramatic moment in a play that you are already writingthis play is about Karen and Harry and you need a way of showing the dramatic revelation of her pregnancythis certainly would be a more engaging way of doing it than find some argument or reason to logically wind them up and have Karen blurt it out to silence all things that could be said after it, etc.

In the podcast I did for Jonah’s Theatrically Speaking show I mentioned the exercise that Mike Geither distributed which led to the play that will have a reading next week at Cleveland Public Theatre. That exercise runs as follows:

Five to fifteen pages.
The speaker from the monologue you created tonight is involved in a two character scene. All of the following must occur:

One character has a secret.
A musical instrument is heard or played.
One character has a nickname.
There is a kiss.
One person sings.
For at least ten lines, they must communicate with single, one-syllable words.
A secret is revealed.
One character makes a paper airplane.
Something spills.
Something must be sold.
A history is recounted.
Someone prays.
Someone rubs his/her/its hands together.
One character touches the other’s face.
At the very end of the scene, a third character enters.

Very like poetry in meter or within a rhymed system, the act of constraining your writing and forcing yourself, technically, to do certain things sparks creativityit demands inventive solutions to rules that, in this case, you must abide or meet. But more, this approach to writing forces you to think about possibilities you never would normally consider. I, for instance, never would have a character pray. It is not because I am opposed to prayer. It is because, while I prayed throughout my childhood like a good little boy, I rarely do now. So in this regard, how does having a character pray connect me with the character? What dormant emotions, images, longings, and connections from my childhood are stirred uplike sediment on a river bottom? What does this bring to my writing? What does that bring to my characters? How does this deepen them, strengthen themand what does it do for my writing as a whole?

As [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ] Wright[/amazon_link] remarks:

“This active process allows the writer to explore the play, the characters, events prior to or following the play, and so onall in a very theatrical way because the exploration itself is through playwriting.

Follow-up

I just was reading Intermission’s site again and she has done something cool, she uses a box that “displays qualities about the character or meaningful aspects of the play,” but this time she’s used a mask. That is supercool. But beyond this, she notes that she uses a collage to think about her characters and the play and that kind of approach has to create some really original insights and develop powerful connections between characters, events, attributes, etc.