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Well, it’s been a long road for me and this play. It started as an exercise in Mike Geither’s English 612 class sometime in February or March of 2007. The exercise, toward the bottom of this entry: http://weebelly.com/04/working-theatrically/, led to Timothy and Spooky running around a campfire.

As nearly as I can remember the play started off like a normal one for me. Two characters in a rather bland exchange:

Timothy: Hey, Spooky, whachya up to?

Spooky: I don’t like being called ‘Spooky,’ thank you so goddam very much, I thank you.

Timothy: Okay, then Spooky, what is your name?

Spooky: I won’t tell you my name. A name’s power, there’s power in names; power in names over the named thing there is power. That I won’t give you.

Timothy: Spooky, how can I talk to you if I don’t know what to call you by?

Spooky: (Standing quickly and moving toward Timothy. Speaks in a loud voice and stands menacingly close) Ahhh, why doan you fuck off!

It had two male characters interacting and one was violent and domineering and the other somewhat passive and timid. At this point, the play could have gone the same route as an earlier play I wrote, Only Sing for Me. In fact, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on this comparison and the two are eerily similar, one is simply less imaginative and has less of my “true” voice in it. Although it nearly went the same route as the earlier piece, one exchange popped out that changed things:

Timothy: (Shrinking visibly and stuttering) I…I…m sorry Spp… I’m sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to…

Spooky: (Just stands and breathes heavily into Timothy’s face.)

Timothy: (Raises his right hand and taps it on his chest) My, but you have got my heart racing. Simply racing. (He backs up a step and then turns, slowly, and begins circling Spooky) Simply a’goin’ pitter patter, my heart. (In the mock voice of Scarlet O’Hara or Blanche DuBois) Why, whatever is a girl to do with such a… brute as you?

That strategic choice by Timothy to switch to an openly effeminate persona, coupled with the sly strategy of a comedic mockery that challenges the openly violent hostility of the other fundamentally changed how the two would interact. This exchange was followed rapidly by the next exchange:

Spooky: (Sits on the ground again and crosses his legs; he draws idly with his index finger.)

Timothy: (In his normal voice) You know, I don’t often come to the woods anymore. Not like I used to. Not like I used to with Uncle Philly and Brother Gene and Sister Mary May and John the Butcher and Kim the Karate man from down the block. Not like that anymore. I used to come. With them. Used to come out here all the time and lay on my back in the clearing over there and gaze up at the night sky. Orion and Cassiopeia and the Pleiades and Sirius and Ursa Major and Ursa Minor and the Milky Way which was always my favorite way and the vast distance of the immensity that was the greatness that pressed down on my tiny chest and encompassed me fuller than any womb I was ever completely in but not completed in. I used to gaze at that.

This effusion by Timothy is remarkable, for me, in that the character of Timothy now has openly been freed up to allow his innermost thoughts to pour out, uninhibited. It is quite really that by allowing my character (myself) to put on an effeminate voice I freed myself (Timothy) to let an imaginative world pour forth. This is quite naturally followed later by this, not too much later:

Spooky: (Turning) Are you gonna get smart? (Stands) Are ya? (Walks menacingly toward Timothy) Are you gonna get smart. Are ya? Are you gonna get smart, now? (Smacking Timothy on the head) Where’s your dress? Where’s your dress, Timothy? Where is it? (Smacks Timothy on the head) Put it on. Put the dress on. (He turns and stomps back to the backpack and starts rummaging.)

And then…

… Timothy steps out of the tent in a pink dress and a blonde wig with braids. He has red lipstick all over his mouth.

So, the course of the play had been set in motion.

Originally, the Ranger was in on it. Later he became a foil against which the other two acted. This is very in keeping with Only Sing for Me, but I do have to speculate what the play would have been like had I kept the Ranger as a part of the other two’s activities.

For the most part the play developed in a natural course flowing out of me quite easily. Toward the end, though, the magic fizzled and my conscious mind started getting in the way. I’ve written about this on several occasions, but my entry on Wallace Shawn certainly foregrounds the problem: http://weebelly.com/02/on-writingand-on-writing-about-sex/

The unconscious mind is the realm of dreams. It is mythological and powerful, spontaneous and frightening. The conscious mind is dull and predictable. Beware you let your conscious mind write (or edit your unconscious material). Of course, you have to do this (allow it) so, as Shawn points out, this is where a talented writer shows up (the ability to edit). I have yet to fully acquire this talent. I read Christine Howey’s review of my play and admired her eye, as she directly caught the problem of my play of which I was acutely aware.

In revising the play, which I had named A Howl in the Woods, I comment elsewhere about the change in name http://weebelly.com/25/play-to-be-produced/ which I admit is much more interesting than my original. The original name, however, reflects the direction I went with the play: there is something in the unconscious tangle that transforms the main character—empowers him to slough off his mutable identity and become the self-defined person he was meant to be.

There was a fundamental failure on my part to instantiate this vision for this play and that left it open to many interpretations. And truth be told, the direction that it went was too much a conscious decision and left it open to the failures I mention above. I think very much that Clyde revived the comedic heart of the play as it was originated—the playful spontaneity that made it special—and helped it to come to something worthwhile. I know that I am fortunate to have him as the director.

Ultimately, there were mistakes made in the writing of this play and I have learned valuable lessons from them—so, I will go on to new mistakes. Hopefully my plays will get better as I move forward, too—the mistakes less obvious and bumbling. In reflection, I had opportunities; including the aftermath of the staged reading at CPT.

Lord of the Burgeoning Lumber is going well and has been very well received (see Tony Brown’s review). I admit that I’m somewhat surprised, but I guess that is because I know its warts and focus on what could have been rather than what is, making it difficult to see that there is good in it yet. Certainly, I have no regrets about placing the play in the hands of convergence-continuum. I cannot say enough about all who have given so much of their time to it: Clyde Simon, Lucy Bredeson-Smith (tireless and omnipotent wielder of the immortal stage manager lash), Geoffrey Hoffman (whose talent as an actor and director shows in his acute perception of and critical inquiry about the flaws in this play), Tom Kondilas, Tyson Rand, Mark K (who should have two more arms to manage the musical gymnastics he accomplishes for this performance), Megan DePetro as the Butterfly Queen, and Sarah Kunchik as Helga. Then there is Terrii Zernechel who put in long evenings working on lights and lighting effects, Tom Kondilas (again) who stop-motioned the video and brought the shadows to life, and Sade Wolfkitten who is always present to make the sound go off without a hitch.

I am grateful to convergence for making this play a success; to Mike Geither for his guidance, and for the input of the 612 class who helped shape it. The play has yet to reach its final resting place, perhaps, as it has been entered in the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival (ACTF) and will be reviewed by a judge from Wooster very soon. Some recommendation will be made at that point.

Freakshow (Carson Kreitzer) and directed by Geoffrey Hoffman is another delivery straight from clubbed thumb on the menu at convergence-continuum. Very like its counterpart from the 1930’s (Freaks) the play takes a hard look at what it is to be a freak and who may fall within the boundaries of this definition. Usually, of course, those who society would characterize as being “normal” are the ones that truly deserve the “brand” of freak: for behavior that is egregious on the soft side and utterly repugnant on the hard.

Mister Flip (Clyde Simon) is such a character. For most of the play Mr. Flip didn’t particularly strike me as being terribly offensive or vile. He ran his freakshow as the business it was; the one striking feature being that he kept a boy, re-labeled the “Pinhead” (Kellie McIvor) in a cage—which isn’t particularly humane, but neither was the roughly two – three hundred years of mental health management practices of Western civilization which did essentially the same thing with ‘unmanageable’ persons. It isn’t until 4/5ths of the way through Freakshow, when the Dog-faced Judith (Lucy Bredeson-Smith) delivers the story of how she became the Dog-faced Girl and of her time “as the star” of Mr. Flip’s traveling freakshow: prior to the arrival of Amalia, the living torso (Laurel Brooke-Johnson). It is Judith’s story of how she became the central attraction that reveals the true capacity for depravity that Mr. Flip commands—or perhaps he is simply brutal enough to do what needs to be done? Other occasions where Mr. Flip shows his capacity for brutality are mainly those that involve tough business practices, which can be understood given the context in which he operates; but none-the-less, all reveal that Mr. Flip, at least, has a soul that is to the “freaks” what their bodies are to his.

The other big current rushing through the play, like blood through an engorging… well, I won’t go there…is that of sexuality. Obviously, it goes hand-in-hand that the main attraction of seeing freaks is their physical deformity and the fear and self-consciousness that it drives onto the viewer; which is then logically followed by arousal (at one end) and simple speculative considerations regarding sexual practices…or other practices (at the other end). Kreitzer rightly recognizes this paradox and puts it squarely at the center of the play, in fact, opening the play with Amalia’s confrontational statement, “You are wondering if I have ever had sexual intercourse.” Judith, the Dog-faced girl, is also appropriates an overwhelming sense of sexual power, highlighted graphically in her story of the “old days” when she was the “star” of the show and lorded it over the men of the various towns the freakshow passed through. Sexuality drives many of the relationships between the characters, too. Matthew (Stuart Hoffman) is the “caretaker” of the traveling freakshow—“shoveling out the elephant shit”—but also ‘services’ Amalia in the evenings. And Aquaboy, the Human Salamander, (Shawn Galligan), has a tryst with The Girl, a runaway farm teen, (Sarah Kunchick). If one looks that the sexual or love trysts throughout, the only one that seems ‘normal’ is that of Matthew’s love of Amalia or possibly Amalia’s love of the Pinhead. All other relationships seem to be distorted in some way—Amalia’s relationship to Matthew is skewed by utility (she sees it serving a purely sexual function and eventually ‘fires’ him); The Girl’s love interest in Aquaboy seems to lose it’s luster when Aquaboy discusses running away and working in a factory for a living.

For the most part, in Freakshow, we see the stories of several characters presented in an episodic manner—that is, there is no real plot orientation driving the story any particular direction. The freakshow seems to die out of natural causes—lack of attendance due to numerous external factors. So our eye is placed squarely on the human interactions and their implications for who we are as people, as a society, culture, etc. Many times throughout Mr. Flip makes reference to P.T. Barnum, contextualizing the activities we’re seeing in both time and as a pattern of societal behavior and expectation in entertainment. Most other elements fall along predictable lines: the townies that want the show closed, at least on Sundays; running away from something to join the freakshow; the ‘selling’ of freak babies to the show because the parents don’t know what to do—or worse, want to make a fast buck; a bit of light romance; jealousy, envy, fear: all that is human.

Sade Wolfkitten, who usually relegates her talents to the lighting or sound control, steps out big for this production—and I means STEPS out—as in, on glass. Brining a bit of the carnival to Freakshow, Sade gives the audience what they want in a mesmerizing glass-walking feat followed finally by a jump from a stool—barefoot, of course!

The production is strong and Geoffrey Hoffman does an excellent job pacing the performance of a script which has the capacity to slow down and get choppy at times. His choice of lighting and tech effects is good too and directs the eye of the audience with subtlety. The use of Mark “K” Korneitchouk on the guitar fills in some of the “traveling” time effectively. Visually, the play was well done, too, from costuming to the set build to the flapping banners on the wall advertising the “products” of the traveling freakshow. The two big shout-outs go to Laurel Johnson for the at once torturous binding she endures as the torso Amalia, and, at second, for her ability to completely command the audience while having no arms or legs to use for gesture or motion—only her face and the bob of her head and neck for emphasis–and, of course, her powerful command of language. Lucy Bredeson-Smith also delivers hard in Judith’s story, which is profoundly engaging and held the audience wrapt as she subtly wove a tapestry between love and family to sexuality and desire through to brutality and rage. Lucy is showing a true command of her art and its ability to hold an audience fixed. I also enjoyed Stuart Hoffman, who lent a sense of dignity and strength to the character of Matthew which I felt was compelling.

Next up for con-con: Buried Child. Ah… Sam Shepard…