NWC #5 Deaf Characters.
DUE Nov 6th at 8am CST
RIGHT
So Red Theater focuses on
the Differently Abled, Disabled, and other marginalized voices- allowing them
to become "dangerous" to the status quo.
CHALLENGE- Write a play with a Deaf character.
Yes, you can have everyone
in the play understand them- if that's the best way for you to deal with this
issue.
No, you don't have to make
it ABOUT their being Deaf- but why not take advantage of the situation at
least* and not write EVERYONE like they are a sexless middle class white
midwestern housewise, mkay?*
;)
"But I don't know
anything about Deaf Culture!" - I
know! Good! So look some things up and interact with it- or mock yourself for
it- or address your fears. Write from your perspective as you!
Are they deaf or Deaf?
https://www.verywell.com/deaf-culture-big-d-small-d-1046233
How did they become Deaf?
How do they interact with
Hearing who have no ASL? (paper, phones,
charades)
Put yourself in someone
else's shoes. Talk it out. Don't be afraid to write a page of shit before the
good questions start to come out. In fact, assume that. Assume you will write a
page of crap that will be deleted and just start typing. It won't hurt. It'll
feel good... probably.
******
(I love this challenge but
not today. I've been noodling a fix to a
question I got at a reading a couple of weeks ago for my play TV Boyfriend
(which actually sprang out of the challenge here last year). I had a thought about it the other day and I
figured I better force myself to get a draft down on paper before it just
disappeared from my head. The two main
characters are Ken, a playwright, and Jake, an Olympic medalist in freestyle
skiing on the X-Games circuit, who embark on an unlikely relationship even
though Jake is in the closet and half Ken's age. They meet when Jake comes to see one of Ken's
plays. The script lays out pretty
clearly how Jake came to be there. But
someone pointed out to me that the script doesn't really touch on why Ken is so
familiar with Jake's career and follows it so closely. What drew him to the guy before he ever met
him in person? Fair question. The perfect tee-up to the question is already
there in the diner scene the night they meet [which was another thingrough-drafted in last year's challenge].
So I figured I could maybe rough it out after some overdue vocabulary research.)
Lead-in lines:
KEN
You’re not gonna goad me into making a fool of
myself, *more* of a fool of myself.
JAKE
How would I make you do
that?
KEN
Nice try.
JAKE
OK, I’ll ask one.
KEN
Here we go.
JAKE
How did you know who I was back at the theater?
KEN
I told you.
The Olympics.
JAKE
C'mon. Most
people couldn't pick an Olympic athlete *by name* out of a line-up in their
everyday life. Plus I'm Winter Olympics
- we're always bundled up in five layers of clothing, plus the helmet and
goggles and gloves.
KEN
I told you I watched your interviews.
JAKE
Why?
KEN
Aside from the fact that you're handsome?
JAKE
Passing interest while channel-flipping I get. But free skiing's still pretty new to the
Olympics. We don't have the reputation
or the history or the coverage of ice skating or hockey -
KEN
Or the bobsled or the luge, or heck, even curling -
JAKE
The fact that you even know what curling is.
I know why I love free skiing. What hooked you?
KEN
The things you do seem impossible to me.
JAKE
Sometimes they feel pretty out of reach to me,
too. Years of practice and falling down,
occasionally breaking things.
KEN
Yeah, but I have a hard time walking across the room
some days without bumping into or tripping over something. And I'm scared of heights. And you, you leave the ground, you hang in
the air, you spin, you cross your skiis, and you always -
JAKE
Not always -
KEN
Whenever I'm watching you always land,
perfectly. You take off and you return
to earth and you do the most amazing things.
And you make it look so simple and elegant.
JAKE
Elegant?
KEN
The grace and the strength and the coordination
involved are mind-boggling to me. You
don't seem human. But I see that you
are, not just now, which is still kind of screwing with my head, you, sitting
across the table from me. But just
watching you on TV. I know you're
human. I know we're built out of the
same parts. So there's a part of my
brain that's obsessed with breaking everything you do down into its component
parts and understanding how you do it.
Does that make sense?
JAKE
Yeah. Keep
going.
KEN
I think it was the first time I saw you grab your
ski while you were in mid-air.
JAKE
That's it?
Just a grab.
KEN
See, you act like that's nothing, but it's hard
enough for me to contemplate leaving the ground and then returning immediately
without something I do throwing it off so I lose my balance and tip over. You have to be in complete control to be able
to do something like that correctly.
JAKE
Yeah. OK.
KEN
My brain gets scrambled by how the most basic moves
in your sport even happen.
JAKE
What kind of grab was it? Tip, tail, mute, indy, toxic, safety, japan,
stalefish - ?
KEN
See, that's another thing, you have your own
separate language.
JAKE
laughs.
KEN
(cont'd)
No, you do. I
listen to the announcers talk about what guys like you and Jasper do, and I
know they're speaking in English, but it's an uninterrupted stream of
jargon. You use the same words I wrestle
with in a completely different way that I have yet to decode. Just like your stunts -
JAKE
Tricks.
KEN
Sorry.
JAKE
No, stunts is OK.
Runs. Tricks. Whatever.
KEN
Butter. Nose
butter. It sounds kinda dirty.
JAKE
How about tail butter?
KEN
Dirtier.
JAKE
It's not, though.
I mean, the tip of the ski is the nose and the back of the ski -
KEN
Is the tail, no, I get it.
JAKE
I can see what you mean, though.
KEN
I'm still sorting through corks, and blunts, and
flips. The most basic stuff, it's
silly. None of it sticks. I must sound like a complete moron.
JAKE
No, I love this.
Talking like this. Translating.
KEN
Yeah?
JAKE
Absolutely.
It's like you understand me, or you're trying to. I don't get a lot of that outside of the
other guys on the snow. I could talk to
you like this all night.
KEN
There's a thought.
Pause.
They just look at each
other a moment.
Smiling. Unguardedly.
JAKE
So do you mostly date guys your own age?
KEN
I try, but I’m not very good at it.
(and we're back to the rest of the scene)
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