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I have decided to get serious about this blog. Uh oh… I don’t know exactly what led me to this conclusion. I was sitting around Saturday night and found myself suddenly in blogger land. I was reading articles about how to configure my WordPress blog so that the category showed up and not the obscure ?=58 number thing; and how to modify the metatags in the page; how to use Feedburner to boost your hits and track who’s looking at your site; and then “top ten” or “top twenty” things to do to make your blog work–one of them being: stay focused on what your interest is, don’t be all over the place. Well, my interest in playwriting and playwrights. So, by God, that’s what I’m really going to start focusing this thing on. Not that I’ve strayed, but I have been emphasizing reviews and that sort of thing more lately than just thoughts on playwriting itself.

There are two things that have brought me “back” to my point of origin…well, maybe three. 1) Jonah Knight’s ridiculously cool offer to allow other playwrights to take up the mic and do a show on his podcast Theatrically Speaking; 2) hitting Technorati after my marathon blogger night and finding some cool playwright sites that I now feel compelled to read and connect with; and 3) again, my desire to actually create a successful blog that deals with something I feel very passionate about.

I scoped out a few playwright blogs and was pretty interested in the whole “Authority” ranking that Technorati uses; but I found out pretty quickly that the “authority” is not related in any way to the content. It clearly is more of a time and endurance rating and friend rating, as the “authority” one seems to have is directly related to when the blog was started. One that had a high authority for a ‘playwright’ and ‘poet’ wrote two paragraph long entries about tv shows, ddt, juvenile gossip bordering on slander, and long articles about his own plays (in third person). Another seemed more interested in his kids than anything else. All of which is fine, but it demonstrates the point that blogs whose subject matter becomes watered-down and slides off the point will quickly lose their power–but not authority, clearly.

One blog that I did find through Technorati that I have found very enjoyable so far is Intermission. The first entry I read was entitled Pocket Notes, and had some good moments, including the one where the in-laws stare at you as if your an idiot while you try to recover from the invitation to morning Mass and also try to hold a play idea in your head all at the same time. Who hasn’t been there? (Jews, Protestants, and Atheists pipe down.) But the point is the same and depressingly comic. I found the evaluation of the various notepads enlightening and am now deeply covetous of the Miguelrius, which I shall have to purchase. When I was carrying notepads I stuck with the cheapo .25c Memo pads with the plastic spirals at the top. They fit nicely my back pocket and were insanely cheap. Of course, they fell apart after a beer or two was spilled on them.

Then there was the opera clip from Britain Has Talent, or whatever that show is. My wife showed me this clip and I was as thunderstruck as I think anyone in that audience was. Truly amazing. So, now I’m beginning to bond (mentally) with this person. Then the links come, which include Theatrically Speaking, so we’re on the same page now. And then this whole playwriting process thing opens up:

“And so, I am writing the new play, amazed by its ferocity in spewing forth onto the page. There are elements which my Editor’s Mind balks at, trying to dictate other ideas or directions. I know my muse well enough by now, to go with where the story and the characters take me. They are usually right. My Editor’s Mind is usually wrong, wanting to go someplace familiar and safe…I always do that when I’m writing. Shove the Editor’s Mind aside, and choose the path that’s scary. You know scary, don’t you? It’s the thing in your stomach that churns when you are not in control.” ¹

And all I can help think is how beautifully put that is. There are several things that strike me about this. First, I’m dumbfounded as I just finished doing a podcast for Theatricallly Speaking and I talk about the necessity of uninhibited writing, of letting the words flow onto the page and the mad rush of it; I also speak of what is referred to above as the “Editor’s Mind” that is, the internal critic or the “internal censor,” but the description above is a bit more precise and I know exactly what is being referred to. This is the problem of my most recent play, loosely titled A Howl in the Woods–the one that’s getting the reading at CPT in Little Box. Two times after extensive re-writing I have hung an ending on the play. The first time I knew it and asked aloud, when do you stop writing and start directing something toward a goal? And when are you pushing something too much and need to stop? I had no real answer, and this time the director called me on it. He was like, “I really like the play, there was so much that was unexpected and there were new ideas coming out at every turn, and the transformations of the characters (they go through many) were great, etc., and then there’s the ending…” I said “Sorry to disappoint you.” And he shrugged and then admitted, “you did, a little bit.” And why did that happen? Because I stopped listening to my unconscious mind and caved to my conscious mind, my “Editor’s Mind” the one that said to my inner voice “I know where this is going better than you do, so step aside.” Well, it doesn’t know better. And I need to learn the valuable lesson described in the Intermission blog entry: to listen to my muse; to go where I don’t feel safe and smug; to “choose the path that’s scary.”

Thanks for the good advice.

Designated Mourner @ CPT

[amazon_link id=”1608460967″ target=”_blank” ]Wallace Shawn[/amazon_link] may be more familiar to you as an actor than as a playwright. His appearance in films such as [amazon_link id=”0792846109″ target=”_blank” ]Manhattan[/amazon_link][amazon_link id=”B001WLMOLE” target=”_blank” ]My Dinner with Andre[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B000TJBNHG” target=”_blank” ]The Princess Bride[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B0001V6ZJI” target=”_blank” ]Prick Up Your Ears[/amazon_link], and [amazon_link id=”B0054QTWJK” target=”_blank” ]Vanya On 42^nd Street[/amazon_link], as well as more popular television forms such as [amazon_link id=”B0006N2EZA” target=”_blank” ]Murphy Brown[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”B000TGURZ8″ target=”_blank” ]Ally McBeal[/amazon_link] make him an almost ubiquitous character actor on the screen.

Unless you’re a hardcore theatre buff, his work as a playwright is likely less known to you. Plays by Shawn include The Hospital Play, [amazon_link id=”0802151035″ target=”_blank” ]Aunt Dan and Lemon[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”080214070X” target=”_blank” ]The Fever[/amazon_link], and of course [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link].

In his book [amazon_link id=”1566395178″ target=”_blank” ]Writing Wrongs[/amazon_link], W. D. King describes Shawn in terms of an A and B personality. The primary personality, the A personality, is the intellectual, the playwright, the self-described liberal prince (son of [amazon_link id=”B001O2SCKI” target=”_blank” ]The New Yorker[/amazon_link] editor [amazon_link id=”1582431108″ target=”_blank” ]William Shawn[/amazon_link]): striving to be an artist and striving to right society’s wrongs. The secondary personality, the B personality, is the actor, the persona that most of society recognizes: the angry little balding man with the funny face and high-pitched voice. But don’t confuse the two: in his plays the little balding man with the funny face is gone, replaced by a complex voice that is not afraid to fix the view of an audience on things which are most uncomfortable to look at.

In his play [amazon_link id=”0802151035″ target=”_blank” ]Aunt Dan and Lemon[/amazon_link], Shawn’s main character, Lenora (Lemon), opens the play by praising Nazis and proceeds to reflect on her life and upbringing, closing the play by again praising Nazi efficiency and asking the audience to thank the killers. Shawn writes:

“A perfectly decent person can turn into a monster perfectly easily–the difference between a perfectly decent person and a monster is just a few thoughts. The perfectly decent person who follows a certain chain of reasoning, ever so slightly and subtly incorrect, becomes a perfect monster at the end of the chain.”

The irony for the audience is that at the end of the play one is supposed to give applause. But how do you applaud Nazi efficiency and a request to thank the killers? Shawn loves to fix an audience on the end of a pin, and this is only one example.

Perhaps a more notable example is [amazon_link id=”080214070X” target=”_blank” ]The Fever[/amazon_link], a play told by an unknown narrator who is sick in a foreign country. The play is a brutal self-flagellation that some suggest is a case of liberal guilt, but is nonetheless a ruthless indictment of our inability or lack of desire to help the impoverished and miserable of the world. Shawn intended the play to be “performed in homes and apartments, for groups of ten or twelve,” and has admitted his interest in seeing the audience react as much as anything. This last piece of information is significant, as it demonstrates Shawn’s desire to change the theater fundamentally. In the case described, the audience has become the “thing” to watch, not the reverse.

In fact, the most notable aspect of Shawn’s work is the seeming lack of structure or, at least, lack of well-drawn plot. Shawn himself has said, “It’s laughable, in a way, that someone who has no sense of character or plot would become a playwright.” His plays are, in a way, excavations of character, psychology, and motivation: why does person X become person X? Or, to use the words of Howard in [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link], “Wouldn’t it be more valuable to try to understand various things?”for example, to understand what circumstances in the world or in a person’s life might lead them to behave the way Martin behaved?”

In [amazon_link id=”1559363223″ target=”_blank” ]Our Late Night[/amazon_link], a couple’s relationship is excavated and analyzed as the two lie in bed on the edge of wakefulness and sleep. In [amazon_link id=”B001WLMOLE” target=”_blank” ]My Dinner with Andre[/amazon_link], both characters analyze their motivations for seeking, or not seeking, spiritual and creative awakening”the character Andre examining in excruciating detail his life experience. In Aunt Dan and Lemon, the character Lemon opens the play saying that she admires Nazis for their “refreshing” lack of hypocrisy”and Shawn wants to show you how she’s come to that admiration. In The Fever, the narrator torments himself seeking the solution to how he should act in the world and why he doesn’t. In [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] the character Jack disassociates himself with his wife and father-in-law, managing to avoid a political execution, and we witness his transformation and disassociation in excruciating detail.

Shawn’s plays often border on the edge of the abstract, that is, they nearly become expressionist pieces that can focus solely on the image of something or of creating the image of something to impress upon your mind a certain sensation. [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] is no exception. Don’t be fooled early on by the conversational tone of the piece, the virtual nonchalance of the way characters address you. Shawn’s plays are largely conversational, involving lengthy monologues delivered by characters to you as audience: you as hearer becoming, in effect, a confidant for the character. Shawn places you in the position of sifting through the actions, motivations, and statements of a character to discover the moral righteousness or unrighteousness of the action, motivation, or statement: that is, Shawn places you in a position of judgment.

As Shawn himself notes, “Most of the people who go to the theatre are simply looking for a certain kind of soothing experience that will take their mind off their troubles. So if that’s why a person has come to the theatre, I feel like an idiot grabbing him by the throat and trying to get him to worry about the things that are bothering me. My style as a human being is to indulge people who need to escape. Yet I insist on confronting them as a playwright. It’s quite embarrassing, it’s quite unpleasant, it’s quite awkward.”

In [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] Shawn posits a future that may be, a future where the intellectual, the philosopher, the person concerned with more profoundly human things is driven out of existence: a future, perhaps, of purely animal joys and experiences. Shawn takes aim at a society strangely familiar, one in which high standards have disappeared, morality is vanishing, ethics and good taste are buried. As if this weren’t enough, you get to watch the main character, Jack, dismantle himself, change himself, to be less like the hunted, and more like the mob. As the character Judy remarks, “Human motivation is not complex, or it’s complex only in the same sense that the motivation of a fly is complex. In other words, if you try to swat a fly, it moves out of the way. And humans are the same. They step aside when they sense something coming, about to hit them in the face.”

In [amazon_link id=”1559363622″ target=”_blank” ]The Designated Mourner[/amazon_link] Shawn opens up a frightening landscape so that you may peer into it as though it were a crystal ball. I hope you’re ready for him to grab your throat.