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As I mentioned in my recent posts, I was given a gracious opportunity by Jonah Knight to speak on his program Theatrically Speaking–for which I am grateful. The topic I discussed was playwriting process and I looked over the breadth of my experience, which has moved from a formal pursuit of the “well-made” play; into the fearful vagaries of just letting images and ideas swell up from the unconscious and surround a set of characters or actions or spaces. In doing the podcast I found that I was hedging against a diatribe and I still feel somewhat that I should avoid doing so outright. However, the more I think about the subject of playwriting process and the more I look at what others say about it, the more I’m convinced that I have moved onto a solid path: one that will guide my future steps. I have just picked up the book [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Playwriting in Process: Thinking and Working Theatrically[/amazon_link], and I have a feeling that I will very much enjoy it. The author, [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Michael Wright[/amazon_link] promises a litany of exercises to explore the various aspects of playwriting, and, as I’m always anxious to explore, I will take them up and later comment on them: including which I have found effective, not so much, and, of course, what they did for my awareness and experience of process. Wright’s introduction is very encouraging to my mind. He begins by stating that,

“…this book does not follow any kind of formulaic approach to the making of a play. It’s my belief that formulas impose an inhibitive sense of style and limited theatrical thinking on a writer.”

This is far better articulated than what I managed in my podcast, where I resorted to strange metaphors and comments to the effect that making plays is not like making cakes: that is, there’s no recipe that you can follow: a dash of tension here, and teaspoon of spectacle there: here 3 cups of exposition. Now, I don’t want to imply that just anyone can make a cake either…there is art to most everything that is done conscientiously, tirelessly over time, and well. In my podcast I say that this approach to writing,

“tended to produce plays or create plays that often seemed to be very similar to one another, not necessarily in their content, but in the way that they moved and in their rhythm and in the way that they felt…”

And I think Wright’s diagnosis of the problem is accurate: namely, that there is “an inhibitive sense of style and limited theatrical thinking…” and, perhaps, I was inhibited and limited in the same way all the time, so that my plays were constricted and lacking always in the same way…thus giving them the same feeling or quality that I describe above.

Wright later states that, “Playwriting is an art even though we refer to it as a craft; the latter implies that playwrights simply become apprenticed and five years later have achieved playwright status.” Despite the truth of his comment, I have to state that I would love to be apprenticed to a master playwright and spend five years in such a manner as, say, a printmaker would have in 1778, or a shipwright or whatever. I think there is great value in such an arrangement and I wholly believe that the knowledge of the tools and the forms and constructions, etc., would be invaluable. This is not to say, as Wright justly points out, that having done this one would achieve ‘playwright status.’ But, one would go a long way toward it. I believe, still, with growing certainty, that dropping inhibitions and exploring the different components in a free form of writing would be necessary to making that jump to the status of a successful playwright–and I don’t mean commercially, but personally and artistically: that is, satisfying yourself, exploring yourself, and at the same time creating meanings that truly connect with others and add value to their understanding of both themselves and the world we all live in–limited as my Western perspective on that would be.

Wright writes (I have to say that again and again) that,

“Watching master playwrights struggle with their latest plays would be a great training ground. We could learn by watching how they make decisions about plot, which structure to place the plot in, how late to get into the action of the play, and how much needs to be known about their characters.”

Interestingly enough, I have a book entitled “From Ibsen’s Workshop” which takes the approach of gathering up all known copies of his notes and drafts and then assimilating them and then comparing them with the final versions of the play–so that you can see, for instance, how Nora changes in earlier versions to the final version of [amazon_link id=”0486270629″ target=”_blank” ]A Doll’s House[/amazon_link]. (It also provides the interesting note that in Germany whoever staged the play forced Ibsen to change the ending so that Nora didn’t leave, saying, instead, something to the effect, “Oh, I could never leave my children.” and then collapsing at the door to their room. I think whatever that line is would make a great title for a play for any of adamant feminist writers out there who want to poke fun at this pathetic alteration of Ibsen’s play in Germany.) But, I digress.

I think one of Wright’s excellent insights is when he comments that,

“Human nature is to copy what we don’t know how to do, and so a student ends up putting together a Xerox of what the sample looks like. But were does the student go from there?”

[amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ] Wright[/amazon_link] says this in the context of introducing his exercises and how he uses them. However, for those playwrights out there who have self-taught themselves from books (as I started) and found themselves mimicking the structures and designs of other playwrights, I think there will be general agreement that this leads directly to a very difficult period of adjustment when one must learn to think for oneself–as one eventually must if one is to truly be an artist. That is, there is a sense of dependency that is fostered and one must refer to other plays as guides or reference books–like learning php or css. “How did he do that again? Hmmm. Let me look.” Instead of just taking the proverbial bull by the horns and saying “damn it all, I’ll figure it out myself.” That step took me a while and I think that relying on a manner of creating plays that focuses on structure and building and proper arrangement of pieces for an effect leads to a manner of play creation that fosters this approach to writing. [amazon_link id=”1585103403″ target=”_blank” ]Wright[/amazon_link] goes on to say that “there is no longer any meaningful single definition of play that applies across the spectrum of what’s being created around the world, beyond saying that a play is a (largely) live event that takes place in a space that all involved have agreed is a “stage.” And that further,

“there is little reason to believe that theatre will retreat to the well-made play or to some rigid Aristotelian framework. Theatre is far more likely to continue its expansive form, subject matter, language, use of space, and so on. In fact, it will continue to embrace its eclectic heritage from the experiments of the twentieth century.”

By both accident and guidance from my professor/mentor Mike Geither I have found my way to this path, this “eclectic heritage.” And for that I am glad and hopeful for the more deeply meaningful and personal playwriting that it has engendered in me.

[amazon_link id=”B000QXDHTM” target=”_blank” ]Take Me Out[/amazon_link] is a play by Richard Greenberg and is the story of the baseball team the New York Empires, but specifically about the coming out of star player Darren Lemming.

At Dobama, Lemming was very ably played by local actor Michael May. May is a fairly big–read strong–African-American man and my mind was invariably drawn to Barry Bonds as a model for the star-power incumbent in the character of Lemming (do lemmings really commit suicide?). Lemming is encouraged to come out by his close friend from the rival baseball team the Satellites, Davey Battle (played by Jimmie Woody), even though Davey doesn’t know at the time that’s what he’s encouraging Lemming to do. Davey is a Christian, God-fearing man who has a wife and three kids.

Lemming’s coming out is poison to the Empire clubhouse a fact that is discussed immediately in the play by Lemming and Narrator slash Shortstop Kippy Sunderstrom (played strongly by Phil Carroll) Just how much the clubhouse is poisoned is made very clear right off the bat (no put intended) by a series of short encounters with the Empire roster: when Lemming encounters Martinez (played by Javar Parker) and Rodriguez (played by Vincent Martinez) neither one will talk or even acknowledge him; Jason (played by Shaphan David Seiders) the awe-struck catcher who is confused about Lemming’s sexuality; and then there’s Toddy (played by Joe Gennaro) who comes right out and calls a spade a spade–saying that he knows Lemming is looking at his ass when he showers. The trouble in the clubhouse infects the team’s play and their many-game lead in the division goes on a downward slide to a half-game–taking the morale of the team right along with it. The coming out has personal implications for Lemming as well, as his accountant drops him and so do many of the sponsors for his endorsement packages. This results in Lemming getting a new financial manager, Mason Marzac (played extremely well by Caleb J. Sekeres), who is not only awe struck by the famous baseball star, but quickly learns the game and develops an inspired passion for it. With the morale plummeting, the only thing that stops the Empire’s slide is the hardly believable addition of a closing pitcher from class AA. This pitcher, Shane Mungitt (played with remarkable character by Baldwin-Wallace theatre major Fred Mauer) not only stops the slide, but if you believe the playwright provides the team with wins as well. The only drawback? Well, Shane is a thinly-veiled version of the Rocket, John Rocker, whose famous tirade about riding the 7-train in New York ran thus: its like ‘you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.’ Only the character of Shane ends by saying, ‘taking a shower with a faggot.’ This new level of tension takes care of what was missed by Lemming’s coming out–that is, it alienates everyone in the clubhouse. Shane is suspended, but how long can you suspend a winning closer? Not long apparently, and after a few games suspension and a stuttering, heartfelt, soft-in-the-head apology (written, as we find out later, by Kippy), Shane is right back where he was: closing games. The quick re-instatement doesn’t sit well with Lemming who feels that he was the biggest target of Shane’s racially and homophobically fueled tirade, and leads to a scene between Lemming and the manager, Skippy, (played by Gregory K. White) that I felt was forced, ironic, and insincere–namely, Lemming charging that Shane is a disruption to the clubhouse. The tension rises to climax when Davey comes into the clubhouse before a game and has it out with Lemming about his being ‘perverted,’ to which Lemming responds, ˜drop dead.’ A fateful comment. The anger over the falling out with his so-called best friend leads Lemming to force himself onto Shane in a menacing shower scene–an action by Lemming whose sole intent is to revolt and scare Shane. The unpredictable event that transpires from this is that Shane, in a fit of homophobic rage, when he finally gets in to do some relief work, throws his first pitch right at Davey’s head and kills him–recalling the fate of [amazon_link id=”1566635519″ target=”_blank” ]Ray ‘Chappy’ Chapman[/amazon_link] the Cleveland Indian shortstop who is the only baseball player ever killed during a game–and that by a New York Yankee’s pitcher (Carl Mays). Chapman is buried in [amazon_link id=”0738532304″ target=”_blank” ]Lake View Cemetery[/amazon_link]. Enough on the history lesson though, as the fateful death of Davey is believed to have been the murderous intentional act by Shane; and believed by Lemming to be the result of his own action of grabbing Shane in the shower. The death, of course, falls hard on Lemming, who hours before the event told Davey to ˜drop dead.’ And Lemming turns to phone conversations with Mason for consolation and support; in contrast to Kippy, whom Lemming has moved away from (if he was ever close to him to begin with). After the smoke clears, Kippy and Lemming go and talk to Shane, presumably at a police station where he is being questioned about the intent behind his pitch. Much is revealed: the actions by Lemming in the shower; Kippy’s role in ˜coaching’ Shane’s letter; and that Shane is in-fact, a homophobic racist through and through. The revelation of Kippy’s role in Shane’s apology drives a wedge between Kippy and Lemming that appears to be a trenchant break. The Empires go on to win the World Series, driven presumably by their hatred of each other and fueled by an obsession to forget the season’s mess. And in the final scene, Lemming invites Mason, the financial manager with whom he has been talking long into the night, to go to the World Series party with him¦and they kiss. Presumably all has gone to hell, but Lemming has finally found something that he can stand behind and someone to love.

The most talked about feature of this play is undoubtedly the spectacle of flopping penises. After all, a majority of the play’s action takes place inside a locker room: and what to athletes do in there? I have heard and read much debate regarding the point of the showers and the shower scenes: i.e. is a working shower just spectacle? Is it too much realism? Does the shower distract from the play, that is, do audience-goers say ‘oh, wow, wonder how they got that set up?’ and stop concentrating on the action of the play? Are those naked men really necessary? Personally, I’m going to have to come down on the side of ˜yes,’ it is necessary. And here’s why: first, during a highly charged exchange that starts between Kippy and Toddy (in the shower, of course) Kippy remarks that in the shower they are now all overly conscious of their nakedness, they have conversations during which they make very sure that they make eyecontact and when they aren’t talking, no one even looks at another person. They are so afraid of being labeled gay that they are ashamed, self-conscious, and modest. It think this comment by Kippy taps the audience feeling as well, and reflects, indeed, makes the connection between the effect on the locker room that Lemming’s coming out had and the audience’s own queasiness with seeing all the naked men. The showers are necessary because, frankly, seeing naked men mime a shower would be very odd. Regardless, the decision was a good one.

Speaking of which, time for kudos. [amazon_link id=”B000QXDHTM” target=”_blank” ]Take Me Out[/amazon_link] was directed by Scott Plate, who many of you may have seen in Dobama’s production of Thom Pain: based on nothing. It would be hard to argue that Plate didn’t to a fantastic job in that role and fundamentally changed the perception of [amazon_link id=”155936291X” target=”_blank” ]Eno’s [/amazon_link]character. Here, Plate does a solid job of directing. The set design, which presumably he had some say in, was very well done; the choreography of all the field events; of course, the shower scenes; and the management of the actors in a large space that clearly required more strength of voice and stage presence than a smaller venue would have required. The tension builds where it should and is released were it should. The pace of the play is good and well-managed, as there are some perilous points where the play could have dragged to a halt if not managed correctly. The stage itself, designed by Jeff Herrmann, was a marvel. Yes, it was a baseball diamond made from white tape; but there is something viscerally satisfying about a baseball diamond, as Mason remarks at a passionate point in the play. What is perhaps amazing on both Plate and Herrmann’s part is the ease with which the stage design they used allows for movement between a space conceived as a locker room and space conceived as a baseball diamond for play. It reminds me of the almost ethereal set in Death of a Salesman, the manner in which reality and fantasy blend together. And indeed, the movement through time, memory, past and present are enhanced by this set and this approach to the play. The lighting was handled by Jeff Lockshine and worked very well to set the moods of vibrancy, when required, or the solemn blue of sorrowful remembrance. The baseball outfits were handled ably by Aimee Kluiber and the sounds of balls hitting bats, phone calls, and other elements by Richard Ingraham.

In terms of the play itself, [amazon_link id=”B000QXDHTM” target=”_blank” ]Take Me Out[/amazon_link] is an issue play. Mostly, of course, an issues play about gays in sports and sports as a microcosm of America. There are more issues than this, of course: personal isolation, God and religion, our responsibility to the most vulnerable among us, etc. And in this regard it works in a pretty standard pattern of pairings: this character’s for this, this character’s against it, the characters have it out; tensions build over time and eventually abate or resolve, etc. Structurally, the play is a three act play with each act ending on a high note, or with a ˜hook.’ This may or may not serve the purpose of bringing people back from smoking outside. Although, I think the play was good and of sufficient strength that people should have come back. The main formal functional device for the play is Kippy as narrator (and Phil Carroll’s handling of it reminded me terribly of Matthew Broderick); and I’m not sure how I feel about the narrator as a device. I actually have two concerns with it: first, I don’t trust Kippy as a character, which makes me distrust him as a narrator; second, I don’t know if I like the narrator in a play period. The narrator sets a very odd tone in the dynamic with the audience–is the narrator a person with his own set of ideas, is it the author talking to me, what’s the real angle here?

The shining moments, are those when Mason is on stage, and I began to think that the character Mason was transparently channeling Greenberg, who is gushing about baseball. Mason gushes about the true democracy of the game (the leveling of everyman and yet everyman gets his shot, his moment at the plate, as well as the strict enforcement of the rules for everyone); the symmetry and numerology in the game (the perfect diamond, the pattern of 3 and its square and cube). These moments are truly beautiful, in my opinion and are shining testaments to baseball. There are truly inspired words here about baseball invoking for me a love of the game and the deep place it holds in our country’s life and history. The not so shining moments are the crude portrayals of some players, especially those who seem uncomfortable personally or morally with homosexuality. These people are portrayed as willfully loud bible thumpers or morons or outright racist homophobes. At its worst I would suspect the playwright of unabashedly associating all that is good with those who are gay or support gay people and all that is bad or stupid with those who are heterosexual. If one wished, one could examine the characterization of each player in Greenberg’s line-up to see how this all falls in line. Of course, the play is more complex than this, and the many other characters show the diversity of not only modern baseball, but, by implication, the complexity of veiwpoints in America today.

I could expand the tarp I’ve just thrown a bit and suggest that Greenberg goes hard on most all sports players (or, at least, baseball players). Now I’m quite certain that sports have their unique allotment of morons, but the portrayal here was often ridiculous. I found it equally interesting that the player chosen to be most representative of this brand of idiocy was the catcher portrayed as Jeff Spicoli-esque (for you young folks–or old–that’s a reference to [amazon_link id=”B003PUQ5CO” target=”_blank” ]Fast Times at Ridgemont High[/amazon_link], bud!). The catcher position being quite possibly the most intellectual of all positions on the field: after all, the catcher must be intimately familiar with each batter and know pitch counts, direct the pitch choices, know weaknesses, pitch patterns, dissemble for the umpire, call signals for defensive alignments, and act as a [amazon_link id=”B0010YSD8Q” target=”_blank” ]psychologist[/amazon_link] to wound-up pitchers (pun intentional). Instead, Greenberg’s catcher is a moron and the shortstop (Kippy) is the genius. Except, Kippy’s presumptive arrogance is his undoing: he takes it upon himself to ‘interview’ Shane, the upstart AA pitcher (who pulls a closer from double-A anyway?); to presume to know his heart and provide him with the apology he doesn’t believe; to assume that he can plumb the depths of Lemming, much like [amazon_link id=”0802132758″ target=”_blank” ]Rosencrantz and Guildenstern[/amazon_link] attempt to play on Hamlet as a pipe.

Ultimately, I think I’m going through a phase and find that I’m looking for experiences in both my own writing and in that of others–or in performances as the case may be–that are less obvious in their meaning. That is not meant to be a put down or to say that plays that are driven and intentionally meaningful are bad or to be frowned upon, but most of my own first plays were heavily guided by this principle and were plot driven, intensely polarized in that characters squared-off and met on an ideological battlefield and truth was arrived at somewhere in between the two sides. Issue plays. Tension here, a little laughter here to lighten it up, something profound here–almost like making a soup: a dash of pepper, a bit of salt, some meat. But I’m trying to step away from recipes and move, perhaps, straining the metaphor, moving into grazing–or would it be a buffet?–you know, just try this over here, and then move along over to here and see what comes up, see what it all tastes like, hopefully it doesn’t poison me or make me too sick. I directly blame Mike Geither for this, blame being a lighthearted term in this case, as the encouragement to seek deeper waters and to really let things flow (from my unconscious and from my pen–fingertips–keyboard) came from him. Too many of my plays were driven to an end; this is not to say that there was no room for exploring the worlds that were created, but the end result is still pretty common and recognizable, as is the feel of the piece itself. It *feels* theatrical, put on, poised and purposeful; not spontaneous or energized: vital.

In the end, I think [amazon_link id=”B000QXDHTM” target=”_blank” ]Take Me Out[/amazon_link] is a good play and I would recommend it. I don’t feel that it is a must see play–one that demands your viewing it; but it is a solid play with some very fine moments.