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One prominent notion in Patterns is the character’s act of writing a play as she is acting the play. It is quite self-reflexive and for a large part dominated the content of the play. As the drafts have progressed, this element has been cut way back as it became somewhat apparent that the self-reflexiveness often as not came off as self-indulgent. There was an additional problem of the self-reflexivity being greatly redundant and, being interpreted by some, as insulting to the audience (even though that was not the intention).

Another component of this was to make the play more aware of itself. That is, the convention in plays predominantly is the audience’s agreement to pretend that the “characters” in the play are unaware of the audience and off in their little world. As I have quoted elsewhere, Eugene Ionesco:

Why could I not accept theatrical reality? Why did its truth appear false to me? And why did the false seem to want to parade as true, substitute for truth?… [The actor’s] material presence destroyed the fiction. It was as though there were present two levels of reality, the concrete reality, impoverished, empty, limited, of these banal living men, moving and speaking upon the stage, and the reality of the imagination. And these two realities faced each other, unmasked, irreconcilable: two antagonistic universes which could not succeed in unifying and blending.

So, many aspects of Patterns are directed at the act of play creation itself; to reflect on this as it is happening. One method of super-charging that reality is using the actual names of the actors in the presentation of the play. This is something that the Wooster Group does often. So, below, you’ll see mention of the cutting of this element in the script, as it didn’t seem to be working right in the actual process of staging the play.

Rehearsal Report
Date: 2/9/2011 Start Time: 6:30pm Break: 8:20-8:30 End: 10:10pm

Summary:
– Reviewed blocking pages 1-11
– Blocked pages 11-20
– Ali did measurements

Director/Playwright:
– Line change on page 2 spoken by King. Middle of his first paragraph of dialogue he used to say: “daughter: fill my cup and let not but that my cup continually runneth…” And now reads: “daughter: fill my cup and let my cup continually runneth…”

– Line change on page 11 spoken by Aisa. The actors’ real names are again eliminated near the middle of the page. Aisa now says: “Let’s look at the fairy tale again. I will play the role of the princess.”

Props:
– No new props for today’s rehearsal.

Costume:
– Added a few items to the prop list for the Doc’s costume.

Set/Sound/Lights:
– On page 19-20, it was decided to lose the “playback” on the videotape during the scene with the Doc. The doc will now “review” the raw tape from an actual video cassette tape. The Doc will tear at the tape, look at it, and discard the cassette. The dialogue will have NO changes.

Misc:
– Regarding the plywood for the Queen’s death scene, it only needs to be large enough for her to lie comfortably. Laura is 5’4” so perhaps a 5’8” board in length and 3” wide would work?

Next Day Schedule:
Thursday, Feb 10th 6:30pm
Company review pages 1-20, block pages 20-28.

Went to see this at convergence. It was a good time.  Funny play, hits the notes that a funny play should hit.  Not much in the depth department.  Quick story line: guy meets guy in a laundry mat; guy and guy become sexually involved; guy finds out that other guy is Satan (Jack–Lukas Roberts); Satan wants to steal other guy’s body (and ‘hit the gym’) but can only do so by getting the body from a willing partner and by killing an infant (‘they’re like olive oil in Italian cooking: you use them in everything’).

The play has a very droll sense of humor and some very funny lines (per the above). It shoves two stories together to allow for contrasting visions of meaning: the story as described above and the story line in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.  I’m a great fan of Crime and Punishment as well as Notes from Underground; but have never read Karamazov, so I don’t know how well the contrast of content works.  I can say from a viewer’s perspective, it does not work as effectively as it probably should, as I was unable to clearly see the parallels.

According to Wikipedia (the source for everything, right?), Karamazov is a “spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason” and I can certainly see elements of that in Satan.  Obviously, if you’re not a believer in anything and find that you suddenly are dating the chief antagonist in one of the oldest stories in Christendom, then you need to re-think some things.  Themes are balanced as well by difficulties that the main character, Andrew (well-played by Scott Gorbach) has in dealing with his own insecurities and relationships with others (including a fantastically aggressive Bernadette–Laren B. Smith and a saintly Jerrod–Stuart Hoffman).  I also have to give a shout out to my Ranger, Tyson Rand, who kicked ass and stole scenes as the burly bouncer and answering machine (with a phenomenal ponytail).

On the whole the play is fairly flimsy and the seams are visible, especially the moment where the play shifts gears and pushes toward a conclusion.  This is a common problem though with comedies, as one of my friends likes to point out, as there really is no cause for an ending at all but there must, by convention, be one.  Thus, as my friend points out, the true success of Monty Python in avoiding any contrived ending in its work and just ratcheting up the absurdity.  With theater, it seems, the path to contrivance is inevitable, and was the case in my own play when it was staged in 2008.  (After all, the play has to end somewhere, right?)  Satan is a play that makes one laugh as it slings mild criticism at certain aspects of how we relate to each other in our society as well as the things we place value on, but it doesn’t go beyond that–nor do I think it was meant to.

As usual, Clyde and convergence re-imagined the space of The Liminis in a wonderful way, transforming the space into a gay dance club.  Added to this is the comic story recounted by Clyde about the opening of The Liminis (nearly 10 years ago).  The space had been a bar named Club Juana Diaz, and when it re-opened as a theater a Tremont resident, who noted the “change in clientele walking toward the newly-opened Liminis, asked one of the passersby, ‘So, is the place now a gay bar or what?’”  The space had a functioning bar for the performance, a cage area for intimate dancing, a dance floor, and, of course, the light design (Cory Molner) accounted for that most excellent of dance club features.

There are some strategies that I noticed with interest including the constant narrative voice over used by Andrew’s character. So, as he is in action he narrates his inner thought processes to the audience. I don’t know if that technique has any resonance in Karamazov, but would assume it does.  I think the notion of narrative/monolog while the character is in motion doing something else is an interesting strategy to keep the forward movement of action in what would normally be a static section (given more traditional approaches to monologic moments). Narrative is one area in which I am particularly interested right now as my thesis play will use characters who often engage in direct address (I like the notion of polyvocality as a method of decentralizing “authority” in the text of the play as much as possible). So, aspects of how to handle narrative sections are of interest to me. In most cases I like the fact that direct address breaks the wall and calls attention to itself a la Brecht, and Jenkins, and Overmyer, etc., and the interactional effect that this has on the relationship with the audience.

Another strategy I’ll comment on is that Aguirre-Sacasa’s script must leave blank space to allow for the staging company to “insert here” whatever local setting is desired.  Over lunch at the Dramatists Guild daylong event several of the playwrights were discussing this strategy for “localizing” a script and whether it had the intended effect.  For instance, there is a moment when Andrew flees Jack and ends up walking home through a bad neighborhood wearing only a towel.  In this instance, the proper name “Kinsman” was inserted to provide that local flavor–essentially pointing to a “bad” area in Cleveland.  There were other instances of this as well.  Is this an effective strategy?  Some playwrights found it to be contrived, obvious, and pandering.  One playwright felt that it threw him out of the play, drawing an awareness to external reality of the viewing location.  I’m sure there were audience members who felt that it was “neat” and had a comic effect.  One playwright was reminded of the openings of stand-up routines or rock concerts where the refrain is: “Hello, Cleveland” or whatever city.  I personally feel that if you can make it as generic as possible and yet retain the essence of the thing, that is a better way to go, rather than localizing it in such a way.  In life there are enough archetypal elements that they can be applied regardless of the locale: all cities have “bad” areas, hospitals, laundromats, etc.  Making them overtly local is just being cute.