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What can I say about re-writes? Hmmm. Self-defeating, triumphant, withering, the source of endless self-questioning, confusing, revisionist approach to history, etc.

There is much to be said for Shepard’s belief that the first shot is the one. Period.

I wrote a while back about Wallace Shawn’s piece in American Theatre where he discusses editing. Well, Sex and Editing. In that blog entry I wrote that:

The small kudos paid to the logical dweller in the great cavern who’s only pedantic offering is to sort things out. And I don’t underestimate this by any stretch of the imagination. Shawn is quite right to point to the “skill” required, for it is that. It is one that I am still honing. I can catch the torrent and ensure that it pours out onto a page. It is that skill at going back and doing the “modest organizing” and the “finding” that is most important. To pare down the utterance. To select. And yet NOT TO HARM or DISTORT the voice.

And, of course, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I found myself right back in this same place. I guess I’m finding that the true challenge in writing is how to become a good editor–and pedantic organizer.

I’ve just gone through one round of meetings and revisions only to have a reading where the whole structure of my piece has been called into question; and hence, made me call it into question (right at the point where I should be affirming, not doubting–rehearsals begin in a week).

The main comment that has set me off is that “pattern is no replacement for narrative”.

That was the comment. The whole premise of my play is precisely that. It is precisely that pattern is a replacement for narrative. The human mind actively seeks pattern. The human mind finds pattern and then makes meaning out of the repetition. This is absolutely true. It has been proven time and again by cognitive scientists and psychologists and computer scientists, and even though I know that is a “weasel” statement, because I have no intention of finding citations at this time to back that sentence up. But I’m not even concerned about the assertion right now so much as I’m concerned about the fact that my specific set of patterns aren’t working.

Then again, maybe they are. I don’t know how many people who heard the reading felt that “pattern is no replacement for narrative” and how many felt the opposite. You see, the trouble here is that narrative has functioned in 1) (subversively) the structure of how plays are written; and 2) (overtly) using a narrator or strong exposition; for so long that people come to expect that sort of guidance. Hence, when you don’t provide it (intentionally) they might just not be used to it. It’s not that they don’t get it, but that they don’t like it.

The contradiction between the two paragraphs above is not me being fickle, but rather it highlights, I think, the inherent problem of re-writing and revision: you may have done it right the first time but given the opportunity to re-examine what you’ve done, you start to tinker where you should have left well-enough alone. This is especially the case where there are readings, and more readings, and more readings, and you gather input from more and more people. Perhaps the best example of this is contained in these two quotes:

Patterns not necessarily a substitute for narrative

Really felt the oppression of repetition…the oppression is in the repetition itself.

That is, if my interpretation is correct, there are some who felt that there was something missing from the play without the standard through-line of narrative; and others who felt as if the patterns used were oppressive–hence, overly strong. How do you deal with that? Two people expressing completely opposing views of what is wrong with the play?

The obvious answer is to ignore both and just assume that you’re right on the mark, which is what I’ll have to do.

The good thing about readings is that you can tell where things are just too damn long. There are places in the play where it just drags a bit. These are places to cut and re-draft. This is easy. It’s in the structure or “theoretical” parts of how you’ve built the play that the damage can be done if you’ve mis-stepped. For instance, right now the play is cast, so there is very little I can do in editing it–that is, I can’t really cut characters or re-think them. I have to work within the framework that exists now.

Let’s hope that’s a good thing.

Mayannah, Rosemary, and Ani prepare to dine.

Went and saw Brainpeople at convergence last Thursday night.  I must admit that I don’t know how to feel about it.  I take that back, I do know how I feel about it; I just…as I so often do…question whether my impression is correct.  I suppose it’s silly, really.  After all, one’s impression is one’s own and needn’t seek any external validation; however, one can be off-base in the variables one puts in one’s calculations, and that is what I fear.  Regardless, this is just an avoidably long way around saying that I thought it was a not very good play. In fact, a bad play.

While no expert, I am familiar with Jose Rivera: References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, Marisol, and I listened and laughed as he described the insults and stupidities endured as a Hollywood screenwriter in Tales from the Script. So I am still a bit shocked.

First, let me disclaim a few things.  The convergence production was very good:  I’m assuming (having not seen it anywhere else).  That is, the set was sumptuous.  The atmosphere was wonderful (lighting, sound).  It was storming when I went to see it and you could hear the rain pounding on the roof which added to the eerie effect of the thing; and the effect of the dystopian environment and fear of a police state was effective.  I thought the acting was terrific, especially that of Kristi Little, which frankly blew me away and was worth the whole trip.  Her portrayal of Rosemary, and her deft powerful shifts through multiple personalities was both terrifying and exhilarating.

The problem I have is with the play itself.  And it could be that I’m in this phase where I’m obsessing with Eric Overmyer and Len Jenkin and the Wooster Group and Megan Terry and reading Brecht and Artaud and Ionesco, in short, dealing with playwrights who are challenging form and structure and authorial position.  But, I was just shocked that here is a very, very good playwright who has three women on the stage and the majority of the play is monologs.  That was just flabbergasting.  And one significant piece of the play has a major character (Rosemary) catatonic on a chair periodically chirping pieces of a rather predictable sentence.  I just could not believe that I was watching a Jose Rivera play (whose past character lists include a coyote , a cat, madmen, guardian angels).  I couldn’t believe that Rivera would handle three characters like playwriting students in a 101 class.  And to make the characters more effective within this stultifying mold, he just gave them quirks which seemed more contrived to me than anything fundamentally real at their core.  I felt, more than once, that the choices Rivera made were intentional and contrived (not developing naturally out of the writing) and pushed in place to serve the plot’s outcome, not, again, any sort of organic meaning from the writing or meaning that rises up out of the unconscious.

The plot is that one woman (Mayannah, played by Laurel Johnson) lures two other women (Rosemary and Ani, played by Laura Starnik) to her house with the offer of $20,000 if they can make it through dinner.  This is one of the plots.  The other plot uses the literal presumption that you are what you eat to suggest that you literally can experience the memories, feelings, etc., of whatever creature it is that you have consumed; this theory is key to Mayannah whose parents were eaten by a Tiger when she was 8 years old.  By eating Tiger every year at this strange dinner, Mayannah hopes to be able to find her parents via one of her guests.  In this case, Rosemary, whose multiple personalities make her susceptible, apparently, to channeling Mayannah’s consumed parents.  Interesting as all this is, I could only see a re-hashing of Hollywood plots.  Since every pitch for a screenplay is supposed to be a combination of two movies in some way, Brainpeople is House on Haunted Hill meets Altered States.

One of my professors, David Todd, has mentioned in passing, and I’m paraphrasing, that once you become a playwright and sit through enough plays there comes a point when you can pretty much see how a play is going to play out right off the bat.  And there are two outcomes for this: one is that you become very cynical about what you’re seeing and the second is that you begin to develop a taste for stuff that really challenges you in new ways–or stuff that is surprising or occasionally you get surprised by more traditional fare that is really, really good.  Unfortunately, with this play, I found myself in the cynical position.  It was very hard for me to be there after a certain point.  Once I realized how this play was working I was just dispirited. Dispirited, I think, by the fact that meaning was going to be handed to me in this utterly conventional way.  There was a clock on a table on the set facing the audience and I found myself staring at the hands while time passed in five minute increments.  The only place that really blew me away was when Rosemary told her story and there I was overcome by Little’s acting which was just flat out great.  I’m certain, too, that some credit is due Clyde Simon’s direction in keeping Little’s transformations on edge like that.  Starnik had her moments as well, describing her love affair with Mayannah’s father through the television, which demonstrated glimpses of Rivera’s sense of humor and the bizarre, which were unfortunately missing from most of the play. Johnson got a moment, too, describing her first communion gone awry.  Regardless, other than those few points, the seams and mechanics of Brainpeople, the formal strategies and plot points, were just way too visible and the rotation of monologs among the women, some of which nearly turned the characters into cartoons, were just disappointing.