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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.

Really enjoyed Indelible.  I don’t want to sound dismissive when I compare, but I found it a very real, earthy play, in the vein of [amazon_link id=”1559363037″ target=”_blank” ]August Wilson[/amazon_link] or [amazon_link id=”0823413004″ target=”_blank” ]Lorraine Hansberry[/amazon_link].  It is very odd for me, because for all the workshopping and scriptwrighting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a production of one of Oatman’s works.  I don’t know what I expected, but with his ongoing obsession with Negro professors I was expecting something high-fallutin’ and “talky.”

I’ve found recently that when I see a play I’m focusing much more than I ever have on technical and structural aspects of the piece.  So, the first thing I noticed was the frame: the opening and closing are in the present framing, as it were, the play itself, the main events of which are in the past.  I think this worked very well for Mike.  At first I wasn’t sure, being overly conscious of it.  But one effect that it has is to put a certain matter-of-fact expectation on the events.  That is, it removes “suspense” (to some degree) from the piece and allows you to focus on other aspects of it.  More frankly, it was apparent early that the main character, Walter Davidson, would be dead by the end: because it was a dramatic piece, a white man was confessing, and this is America, where bad things always happen to good people.  The framing device also is a convenient way to bring the piece to a conclusion that not only works, but is highly satisfactory to the audience: giving them a sense of where they started, what they went through, and where they have arrived.  I found the framing device worked well, as well, in the way Smith chose to stage it: planting two voices in the back corners of the audience to counter the voice below on stage.  The only thing that I found disappointing, in a way, was the silence at the end.  That is, the outraged black voices of the arrested marchers (what’s a white man doing here?) were replaced by the ignorant white voice of a cop (so, you’re the crazy white man).  I can see this as effective, to a degree, in shining a light on the similarity between the “present” day ignorance of both races when it comes to their still judging others based on appearances and shallow criteria; but I would have liked to have heard from those black voices again.  I don’t know what I would have wanted them to say, though.

The play moves very quickly into the frame and we learn all about Walter Davidson and Doleda and Festus Watkins.  I found the character development and interactions highly believable and very adeptly handled.  I think Oatman did a terrific job with them all around.  These were living people, and you could smell their sweat and feel their heart beats, taste what they ate for dinner, and know what the slept, tossed-and-turned about, and what they dreamt at night.  I think great credit is owed Mike on that alone, for it is very difficult to create characters who so really breathe and live.  I think, I believe, that Mike has probably carved one of his finest characters in Doleda Watkins.  I feel foolish saying this, having no real familiarity with his other works; but she was very delicately drawn, passionately presented, and was the heart-wrenching linchpin of the piece.  Mike also clearly hit the target audience with her, as the women in the audience went fairly nuts about several of her lines (the big one being, and I don’t have it exactly, when you say “woman” it should come off like “pearls from your tongue”).  I think Mike knew his mother would be watching this one and gave her credit through this character.  I had some minor issues with the character of Festus.  There were a few places where he seemed to me to be talking over his head.  My daughter is only 21 months, so I can’t claim to have deep and meaningful conversations with her yet; that is to say, I don’t know what she will be like at 7 or 9 or 11 and what she will be capable of thinking.  Perhaps she will be capable of the philosophical ruminations that Festus was delivering, but it struck me enough to mentally note it, and move me out of the play’s experience.  I think more so in the very first scene between Festus and Walter; than the later scene between Festus and Amassa Delano—but even there Festus brightly jumps to conclusion that Amassa is going to hurt Walter and in the end (almost romantically or poetically) says nothing about it.  It may be that Festus is supposed to represent a generation that was silent in some way about what it saw? (As opposed to the generation after, which would have marched, fought, and became the Civil Rights movement—but, I may be reading too much into this.) I found the exposition regarding how the paper system worked between Walter and ‘Bama a bit much.  It was also difficult to hear on some occasions, (which added to the frustration of involved discussions such as this) and I’m not sure what was the source of this: whether the words didn’t role-off mellifluously enough, whether there were issues with the space echoing, or whether it was an issue of pacing—i.e. trying say too much too fast. Finally, I found the relationship between William Rochester III and Doleda to be too much to believe.  I can see why it is there.  I can see clearly how it works in the structure for Mike.  I don’t know if there is a way to soften it, or otherwise dilute this.  The only thing that I can think would be to remove the open suggestion of intimacy between them and make it more intellectual or impersonal.  But that removes the emotion and it also lessons the comparison between Rochester and Davidson in terms of manhood and responsibility, which I think is one of the central points that Mike is making.  It is a very sticky issue.  I see clearly why Mike has done it, and I think it is effective—especially, again, for someone who isn’t looking at the play for elements like this, but is just enjoying the work for what is says and how it says it.  But to me, it did stand out and momentarily threw me out of the experience of the play.

There were also some moments of language that perhaps need examining.  At one point a character says “whoop his ass” or something.  It is the discussion of Jack Johnson. I marked the phrase and didn’t know if it was something someone would say in 1930. And another was “a pretty short drive” or something. But, these things could have been said, and I may be mistaken.  It is tough to pay attention to all of these details as I discovered in my play The Empiric: trying to figure out or imagine how people talked in a time that is well-removed from your own is challenging—especially the idioms.

I don’t want to come off as too critical or smack of a sort of nitpickiness.  I think Indelible is a tremendous work: great characters, strong emotion, well-researched, and a real earthiness and power that I would kill to feel coming out of some of my plays.  I think Mike has done a wonderful job with this piece and I look forward to seeing more of his work.  I also wonder if there has been any consideration of expanding this piece just a bit and making it a “full evening of theatre.”  It is a long enough one act that the move is not that much, I think. That is, adding an intermission and a two act structure.  I think it could be done; and it would make the play more marketable.  A move like this would challenge the “frame” structure, I think.  But it could be offset in a powerful way by adding a scene in the middle to heighten the success or achievement (paper) or tension or love (Doleda)—in fact, much of it is already there to be pulled out; and then bring it all to a devastating conclusion—sort of the Greek thing with the Hamartia or tragic-flaw in the character—Davidson’s hubris or prideful sense of injustice and the Peripeteia (reversal)—where everything suddenly goes to hell, like right now.  The achievement is undermined by the boldness of the action in a corrupt society.  Of course, Mike may have captured exactly what he wants from the piece and it is just the way it will be; and that’s fine too.