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What have I been doing? (besides sleeping, it seems)
I haven’t posted in a few days and it may be a few more before I start talking about anything meaningful.

I’m in that happy down state after a play has been pushed from conception/inception to, well, in this case, about as far as it will go for now without a full run. I’ve got some real ‘pull-up-your-sleeves’ rewriting to do, but I’m going to let it sit for a while. I did tape the reading, so I can watch it at a later date and see all the painful points again.

For my NEOMFA class I have to write a paper on my “art” and why it’s important or what is relevant about it. That is something I haven’t really thought about, so I find the question quite intriguing and if there’s anyone else out there reading this blog and who is a playwright I would put the question to you as well. Why is the theatre important? What does it do for people? What does it do for you?

Shadows of the Gods

Now, I’m re-reading an article by Arthur Miller entitled The Shadows of the Gods: A Critical View of the American Theater; Harper’s Magazine, 1958 Aug; 217: 35-43. It is a speech he delivered, to whom I don’t know, but has some very interesting points in it.

I’m not going to address the question now, as I’m writing a paper that will. When I’m done, I’ll choke up the blogosphere with the results. In the mean time, I’ll mention a few points that Miller discusses that I find interesting, and then link to a blog entry by someone who has a completely different take on Miller. But, as I’m using this article in my paper and I’m only half way through a serious re-read, I’ll not be considering it too much either.

1. Miller mentions, in passing, that ‘professionalism develops only as a result of having repeated the same theme in different plays’; p35
2. He was ‘shaped’ as a person by the Great Depression and says that the time period gave him “a sense of an invisible world” and that “The hidden laws of fate lurked not only in the characters of people, but equally if not more imperiously in the world beyond the family parlor…” and this led him to a profound interest in process–“How things connected” p36
3. For him playwriting and art became a way of addressing or answering “the practical problem of what to believe in order to proceed with life.” p36
4. “‘The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.’ The hidden will be unveiled; the inner laws of reality will announce themselves.” p37
5. “There is a hidden order in the world. There is only one reason to live. It is to discover its nature. The good are those who do this. The evil say that there is nothing beyond the face of the world, the surface reality. Man will only find peace when he learns to live humanly in conformity to those laws which decree his human nature.” (This is what Miller says that Dostoevski’s The Brother’s Karamazov said to him). p37
6. “I connected with Ibsen…because he was illuminating process. Nothing in his plays exists for itself, not a smart line, not a gesture that can be isolated.” p37
7. Finally, one that answers the question I asked above, to some degree: “One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives. With the greatest of presumption I conceived that the great writer was the destroyer of chaos, a man privy to the councils of the hidden gods…”

But this is enough for now. The article goes on another six pages and for those interested I highly recommend getting it. If you can’t find it, email me and I’ll run it through the handy-dandy Side Kick scanner I have access to and shoot you a copy of it–marked up as it is. If you’re really nice to me, I’ll make you a fresh copy.

Screenplay time…

I’ve also started reading STORY (imperious) by Robert McKee again. I am going to (finally) go head on at a screen play idea that I have. I’ll talk about it later as I get beyond the “step outline” process I’m doing now. For a screenplay I find that I’m totally throwing aside the process that I advocated for playwriting earlier. For some reason I think that, for my first screenplay at least, structure and control are important. I’ve already got 22 index cards with an ordered listing of scenes. I just need to flesh it out and add more scenes and really get the whole step outline finished an in place. In the mean time, the messy side of me is generating piles of content about the characters, the world (it is futuristic a la Ray Kurzweil), and the events that control their destinies.

I’m having fun with this and so look forward to the process. I know soon enough, like a play I’m writing, this thing will take over my waking mind completely and the fun will morph into a mania that will only expire when I’ve done with the thing–seen it through to its completion and several re-writes and, hopefully, the silver screen.

Blind Man’s Bluff

Written by Steven Korbar and directed by Mindy Childress Herman

I was a bit disappointed by this one. The acting was solid as was the directing. But the script itself, for me, didn’t live up to its potential–that is, I thought it could have done a lot more than it did. Wayne Zahn (Derek Koger) is a blind man who likes to set up–what else?–blind dates with women over the Internet, and–of course–sends out pictures of male models that he passes off as photographs of himself–apparently thinking that because he’s blind no one else will be able to see the difference either. He meets up with sexy Felicia Rufus (Sarah Kunchik) who isn’t amused by the switcheroo that dear old Wayne has pulled on her. This is essentially the set up and the premise of the whole short piece. The two argue, present justifications, debate, etc. And toward the end actually have a meaningful heart-to-heart moment about his/her own weakness, ideal, disappointment, and defense mechanisms. But all the same, Felicia is still not happy and walks out, leaving Wayne to phone the next number on his list who also liked his online avatar. This play has some genuinely funny moments (Felicia, for instance, chides herself that she should have known Wayne was blind because his hotmail address is ‘eternaldarkness@’) and the thing with the guide dog is modestly cute (Wayne talks to the dog who is outside the restaurant and the dog barks appropriately); but there is much that is irritating as well–for instance, Wayne looks around all the time asking Felicia where she’s at (when she moves, of course) when I know damn well that any blind person with heightened senses would be able to tell where the person was; and, in general, the notion that a blind person cannot get a companion, has to pay prostitutes, and generate false personas cannot be in any way taken seriously; finally, there were too many easy jokes and too many cliches to really get behind this and feel it in any meaningful way. I think Korbar needs to take a look at this and cut out all the crap and figure out how these two people can connect–even if for a short drink–because even the connection they make isn’t enough.

Henry and Louise and Henri

Written by Kathleen Cahill and directed by Greg Vovos

Hands down the funniest of them all. Henry (Dennis Sullivan) and Louise (Lynna Metrisin) are American tourists sitting in an outdoor cafe in Paris. Henry is irritated because he’s hungry and all he’s been given is bread: no wine, no meat, no nothing. And the waiter (Ryan Smith) who keeps showing up doesn’t speak a lick of English–or if he does he isn’t letting on–and isn’t interested in taking the order of the two tourists. Irritated and tired (because they walked all day) Henry just wants to eat something and complain about how France isn’t like America. In America he’d have his food. In America he’d have the service that he wants. Louise isn’t listening. In a zone of her own since the outset, she stares off–visibly distant from her husband. When she does finally speak, at Henry’s insistence, she wants to talk about the little museum they went to earlier and how physically moved she was by the beauty she there beheld–Metrisin’s acting is intentionally Pollyanna and over-the-top in its gooey ‘wasn’t it just so beautiful’ sort of way. When he hears all this, Henry is sorry that he got Louise talking in the first place; and, true to his American nature, can only talk about how small the museum was and how he had to duck and how small the paintings there were, and if Henri Matisse weren’t a midget. Louise isn’t amused. She describes how much it means to her and how she had an orgasm while experiencing the beauty that took over her body. She is transformed. She can never go back to a life the way it was. Henry is happy for her, but he goes back to the small museum: for instance, the paintings were just unorganized and on the floor and scattered all around: anyone could just come in and take one and no one would even know–the sheer irresponsibility of it was astounding to him. This, of course, is when Louise takes a small painting from the waistband of her pants, revealing that she and her husband were thinking alike. Henry is overwhelmed by this. He can’t conceive her act. It’s not like not paying the toll on the Mass pike. It’s not like she can just roll through customs with it. What was she thinking. Louise, however, states that she is satisfied with her decision. In the heat of this discussion, the waiter appears and tries to take the bread. This sends Henry into an aggressive tizzy and he fights with the waiter, finally slapping him across the face. The waiter hails a cop (Tom Kondilas) who chases Henry away as Louise safely tucks the stolen painting back into her pants. She orders vin rouge and, drinking it with a naive pollyanna happiness, tells the world how much she loves France. This play is one of the best in the festival for its delicacy of character emotion and quick ability to flesh out deeply meaningful characters and connect with the audience. Additionally, it is well acted and well directed and genuinely enjoyable to watch. It was tender, it was heartfelt, it was funny.

Find Mucking

Written by Jayme McGhan and directed by Greg Vovos

At open, Kathleen (Margi Herwald) is masturbating on a desk–or is on the brink of orgasm anyway–while reading a car manual. We, the audience, of course, don’t know it’s a car manual at the outset, but the fact that it is, and we learn this later, demonstrates the way this play rolls. While Kathleen is thus involved, Maureen (Sarah Kunchik) enters through an upstage window startling the room to life. I am unsure of the relationship between the two, formally, but they are lovers. It is possibly a professor student situation. Regardless, the two women are lovers, but in the most unlikely of ways. Kathleen loves to have German philosophy and linguistics and forms of dry composition read to her–such as congressional hearings–as a means of ‘warming up.’ Maureen, on the other hand, loves the ‘hard’ sciences: chemistry and biology, talk of oceans and saltwater. As soon as they are into it, Kathleen stops: complaining that she can smell the reek of ‘doc martins and individual thought’ all over Maureen–is she cheating? There are the denials and arguments and in the end we find out that Maureen in fact is cheating: a young art/lit student named Desmond. He seduced her with Dali and Joyce; and eventually Maureen seduces Kathleen by the same methods–this ‘new’ method–art, emotion, love. This piece was definitely funny in a smart and creative way; and quotes like “you know you’re my one true brain,” and “spank my Nietzsche” are a true part of that.

Scream

Written and directed by Greg Vovos

So, what could be better than an end of the world cocktail party? How about one at which all the guests–one after the other– make his/her exit from the soiree over the side of the building they’re partying on? And what could be better than that? A media rep is on hand to film it all. It’s hard to tell if this is just a fun piece or if it is making a serious statement about the media in our society–as the final moment is that of the lone survivor from the party–the camera man–moving down to the side of the building: he looks over the edge, pretends to jump, laughingly changes his mind, and walks out the upstage door. The remaining image for us being the man’s black jacket back emblazoned with the word MEDIA. This short piece is a good time. It begins innocently enough with a man answering the door and a woman coming in with a bottle. Soon, a dozen people have come through the door and are swirling around atop the Gordon Square theatre’s balcony–which has now become the stage. Then, out of no where, one of the party goers voices his heard more loudly than all the rest: she is protesting something and says something to the effect, “Can you believe that they would do that to me?” After her statement silences the whole crowd of party-goers, she walks to the front of the stage/balcony and jumps. It is, of course, obvious that the actor is only falling three or four feet, but she drops and disappears and screams, decrescendoing her scream over time–attenuating it, as it were–until she slaps the floor–the thud being of course… So then, over the next dozen actors or so, the same scenario plays out. It is brilliant in its simplicity and in its hook: the party rages, a party-goer talks loudly about some insult–boom, over the edge he or she goes. It reminded me of 4 Murders by Brett Neveu where, of course, four murders occur–but it’s how they occur–and how the audience comes to expect them like clock-work–that makes the play interesting.

Scream was a great finale to what I would assert was a fun and successful 10-minute play festival, as 1) it involved all the actors from all the plays, 2) at the end they all pop-up from the balcony and take their bows. But more, the manner in which the audience had to travel around with chairs involved the audience; the short pieces were fun and active–for the most part–and engaged the audience and, like Raymond Bobgan, CPT’s Executive Artistic Director says,

“It’s a bit like a wine tasting. It’s about enjoying all the flavors, savoring the exploration, and defining your own tastes. Not every wine will appeal to everyone, but the next is just around the corner.”

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