Inevitably, when you’re rewriting a script, some losses cut deeper than others. Some stuff is easy to cut out. Some stuff you just hate to let go of.
In one of my misbegotten earlier drafts of this Medea project, where I was still trying to wedge a modern day plotline and characters in alongside those of the Ancient Greeks, there was a happy accident that sticks with me. Rewriting that sequence of overlap the other day, I finally had to strike it out and move on.
Jason and Medea are meeting for the first time.
Meanwhile, on stage at the same time, a modern day character is working a shift on an AIDS Hotline.
Medea is helping Jason outwit her own father so that Jason can claim the Golden Fleece. One of the strategies is to use an ointment which will make him invincible for a day. The ointment is extracted from a plant which sprung up in the ground where the blood of Prometheus fell. Prometheus, who brought the secret of fire to humankind, was punished by the gods for it by being chained to a rock. There, a hungry eagle pecked away at his innards. His innards continually regenerated, making it an unending sequence of torture. You’ve got to hand it to the gods, they don’t think small.
But just as no good deed goes unpunished, out of the bad must come some good. Where Prometheus’ blood fell to the ground, a plant is born. The plant provides temporary invincibility for humans to achieve supernatural tasks. While it won’t do Prometheus much good, it came in mighty handy for Jason, thanks to Medea.
Of course the audience knows, at least a little, what’s coming down the pike. Jason and Medea meeting and pledging their love to one another isn’t going to come to a pretty end. There will be betrayal, there will be death. There’s a lot of blood on the ground by the time they’re finished with each other.
Meanwhile, our AIDS Hotline friend is resting between calls, pondering methods of transmissibility. He says aloud, to no one but himself,
“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”
Even if disease weren’t a factor, no sex is safe.
Fun, sure. Intense, if you’re lucky. Safe, not a chance.
Divorcing sex from emotion was never something I was particularly good at doing. If there’s no emotion involved, it’s just exercise.
Don’t get me wrong. I like exercise.
But that’s what I got a gym membership for.
There’s a Warren Zevon song that I keep thinking about in relation to these two mythological lovers. Of course, it’s a big old anachronism in many ways, but Warren always had a way of cutting through to the heart of the matter. Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s not...
“You can screw everybody I’ve ever known
But I still won’t talk to you on the phone
It’s a hopeless cause
There’s no use crying
And I can die
You can die
We can die trying
Thanks anyway
There’s no use hanging around
While you try to put the finishing touches on me”
Juxtaposition. Point of view. Foreshadowing.
Two people meet. Their lives are never the same.
“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”
Monday, January 12, 2009
Incubator - Medea - Blood and Semen, Semen and Blood
Inevitably, when you’re rewriting a script, some losses cut deeper than others. Some stuff is easy to cut out. Some stuff you just hate to let go of.
In one of my misbegotten earlier drafts of this Medea project, where I was still trying to wedge a modern day plotline and characters in alongside those of the Ancient Greeks, there was a happy accident that sticks with me. Rewriting that sequence of overlap the other day, I finally had to strike it out and move on.
Jason and Medea are meeting for the first time.
Meanwhile, on stage at the same time, a modern day character is working a shift on an AIDS Hotline.
Medea is helping Jason outwit her own father so that Jason can claim the Golden Fleece. One of the strategies is to use an ointment which will make him invincible for a day. The ointment is extracted from a plant which sprung up in the ground where the blood of Prometheus fell. Prometheus, who brought the secret of fire to humankind, was punished by the gods for it by being chained to a rock. There, a hungry eagle pecked away at his innards. His innards continually regenerated, making it an unending sequence of torture. You’ve got to hand it to the gods, they don’t think small.
But just as no good deed goes unpunished, out of the bad must come some good. Where Prometheus’ blood fell to the ground, a plant is born. The plant provides temporary invincibility for humans to achieve supernatural tasks. While it won’t do Prometheus much good, it came in mighty handy for Jason, thanks to Medea.
Of course the audience knows, at least a little, what’s coming down the pike. Jason and Medea meeting and pledging their love to one another isn’t going to come to a pretty end. There will be betrayal, there will be death. There’s a lot of blood on the ground by the time they’re finished with each other.
Meanwhile, our AIDS Hotline friend is resting between calls, pondering methods of transmissibility. He says aloud, to no one but himself,
“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”
Even if disease weren’t a factor, no sex is safe.
Fun, sure. Intense, if you’re lucky. Safe, not a chance.
Divorcing sex from emotion was never something I was particularly good at doing. If there’s no emotion involved, it’s just exercise.
Don’t get me wrong. I like exercise.
But that’s what I got a gym membership for.
There’s a Warren Zevon song that I keep thinking about in relation to these two mythological lovers. Of course, it’s a big old anachronism in many ways, but Warren always had a way of cutting through to the heart of the matter. Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s not...
“You can screw everybody I’ve ever known
But I still won’t talk to you on the phone
It’s a hopeless cause
There’s no use crying
And I can die
You can die
We can die trying
Thanks anyway
There’s no use hanging around
While you try to put the finishing touches on me”
Juxtaposition. Point of view. Foreshadowing.
Two people meet. Their lives are never the same.
“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”
In one of my misbegotten earlier drafts of this Medea project, where I was still trying to wedge a modern day plotline and characters in alongside those of the Ancient Greeks, there was a happy accident that sticks with me. Rewriting that sequence of overlap the other day, I finally had to strike it out and move on.
Jason and Medea are meeting for the first time.
Meanwhile, on stage at the same time, a modern day character is working a shift on an AIDS Hotline.
Medea is helping Jason outwit her own father so that Jason can claim the Golden Fleece. One of the strategies is to use an ointment which will make him invincible for a day. The ointment is extracted from a plant which sprung up in the ground where the blood of Prometheus fell. Prometheus, who brought the secret of fire to humankind, was punished by the gods for it by being chained to a rock. There, a hungry eagle pecked away at his innards. His innards continually regenerated, making it an unending sequence of torture. You’ve got to hand it to the gods, they don’t think small.
But just as no good deed goes unpunished, out of the bad must come some good. Where Prometheus’ blood fell to the ground, a plant is born. The plant provides temporary invincibility for humans to achieve supernatural tasks. While it won’t do Prometheus much good, it came in mighty handy for Jason, thanks to Medea.
Of course the audience knows, at least a little, what’s coming down the pike. Jason and Medea meeting and pledging their love to one another isn’t going to come to a pretty end. There will be betrayal, there will be death. There’s a lot of blood on the ground by the time they’re finished with each other.
Meanwhile, our AIDS Hotline friend is resting between calls, pondering methods of transmissibility. He says aloud, to no one but himself,
“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”
Even if disease weren’t a factor, no sex is safe.
Fun, sure. Intense, if you’re lucky. Safe, not a chance.
Divorcing sex from emotion was never something I was particularly good at doing. If there’s no emotion involved, it’s just exercise.
Don’t get me wrong. I like exercise.
But that’s what I got a gym membership for.
There’s a Warren Zevon song that I keep thinking about in relation to these two mythological lovers. Of course, it’s a big old anachronism in many ways, but Warren always had a way of cutting through to the heart of the matter. Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s not...
“You can screw everybody I’ve ever known
But I still won’t talk to you on the phone
It’s a hopeless cause
There’s no use crying
And I can die
You can die
We can die trying
Thanks anyway
There’s no use hanging around
While you try to put the finishing touches on me”
Juxtaposition. Point of view. Foreshadowing.
Two people meet. Their lives are never the same.
“Blood and semen. Semen and blood.”
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Review - Henry V - The Acting Company - 5 Stars
Puissant.
A word tossed around so regularly in the first half of The Acting Company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” that I was shamed into looking it up immediately upon arriving home.
Powerful. Mighty. Potent.
That about sums it up.
I’d been looking forward to seeing this already, since I’d never seen a live production of “Henry V” before - just one of the movie versions.
Then I learned Matthew Amendt was Henry, and I was looking forward to it even more. Ever since first seeing him in action as one of the regular rotating ensemble of Thirst Theater, I’ve been impressed with his acting chops. Seeing him in roles at the Guthrie both large (Nick, the narrator of “The Great Gatsby”) and not so large (as one of the cast of the great, and criminally underseen, “The Home Place”) in the time between only reinforced my admiration. I thought, “Let him get his hooks into King Harry. Wow. Stand back, everybody.”
That about sums it up.
But not quite. Director Davis McCallum has assembled an amazing ensemble, all of them playing multiple roles without skipping a beat or confusing the audience. They had us laughing one minute, crying the next, then throwing in some goosebumps just to top things off. They are - alphabetically, because I’m blown away by them all in equal measure - Freddy Arsenault, Georgia Cohen, Kelley Curran, Rick Ford, Andy Groteluschen, Carrie Kawa, Robert Michael McClure, William Sturdivant, Samuel Taylor, Chris Thorn, and Sonny Valicenti. They all took a complicated tale with an epic cast of characters and made this story of a young king of England leading an outnumbered army into battle with France not just easy to follow but remarkably compelling.
They were, of course, mightily aided by the design team. A stirring sound design by Scott W. Edwards, with music composition and direction from Victor Zupanc. Deceptively simple costumes by Anita Yavich with a dash of color over gray base with a lot of quite versatile zippers. The lighting design by Michael Chybowski often felt like the beating heart of the piece. And if the lights were the heart, then the guts were most definitely the set - a semicircle of wood designed by Neil Patel with doors opening and closing and sliding around on two levels, giving the story a lot of places from which to keep popping out and surprising the audience from all directions. Add to that some rather sturdy rolling tables and steps of metal and wood and the thing just kept barreling along like a mighty river. The power of the battles also owes a great deal to John Spies’ fight direction.
It never ceases to amaze me that in the right hands - like those of The Acting Company - Elizabethan English becomes not just easily understood, but a vibrant living thing. It’s a pleasure to listen to something operating just a little above the level of the English with which I tend to muddle through my days.
If there’s a more intimidating thing for a playwright struggling with a new script to sit in a theater and watch than a production of “Henry V” like this, I can’t think of it.
Thankfully, there’s also nothing more inspiring.
O for a muse of fire, indeed.
For someone suffering from a little theater fatigue right now, a production like this is just the kind of jolt I needed to remind me why I love it so.
Which is why I joined my fellow audience members in applauding long after the lights came up until the actors all came out, sheepishly, to take another bow, so we could stand and thank them properly.
(Guys, add a light cue. You had over two and a half hours. You don’t just get to walk off after Shakespeare’s finished. We intend to applaud you for at least a couple of minutes. You earned it, and we’d like to give it to you.)
When you can overcome my general queasiness these days with the concept of people invoking God on their side in a war, and just sweep me up in the genuine earnestness of it all, well, then I guess you've got something...
Powerful. Mighty. Potent.
Puissant.
That about sums it up.
The Acting Company (kicking off their tour here, visiting from New York) - Henry V - The Dowling Studio at the Guthrie Theater - now through February 1, 2009
A word tossed around so regularly in the first half of The Acting Company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” that I was shamed into looking it up immediately upon arriving home.
Powerful. Mighty. Potent.
That about sums it up.
I’d been looking forward to seeing this already, since I’d never seen a live production of “Henry V” before - just one of the movie versions.
Then I learned Matthew Amendt was Henry, and I was looking forward to it even more. Ever since first seeing him in action as one of the regular rotating ensemble of Thirst Theater, I’ve been impressed with his acting chops. Seeing him in roles at the Guthrie both large (Nick, the narrator of “The Great Gatsby”) and not so large (as one of the cast of the great, and criminally underseen, “The Home Place”) in the time between only reinforced my admiration. I thought, “Let him get his hooks into King Harry. Wow. Stand back, everybody.”
That about sums it up.
But not quite. Director Davis McCallum has assembled an amazing ensemble, all of them playing multiple roles without skipping a beat or confusing the audience. They had us laughing one minute, crying the next, then throwing in some goosebumps just to top things off. They are - alphabetically, because I’m blown away by them all in equal measure - Freddy Arsenault, Georgia Cohen, Kelley Curran, Rick Ford, Andy Groteluschen, Carrie Kawa, Robert Michael McClure, William Sturdivant, Samuel Taylor, Chris Thorn, and Sonny Valicenti. They all took a complicated tale with an epic cast of characters and made this story of a young king of England leading an outnumbered army into battle with France not just easy to follow but remarkably compelling.
They were, of course, mightily aided by the design team. A stirring sound design by Scott W. Edwards, with music composition and direction from Victor Zupanc. Deceptively simple costumes by Anita Yavich with a dash of color over gray base with a lot of quite versatile zippers. The lighting design by Michael Chybowski often felt like the beating heart of the piece. And if the lights were the heart, then the guts were most definitely the set - a semicircle of wood designed by Neil Patel with doors opening and closing and sliding around on two levels, giving the story a lot of places from which to keep popping out and surprising the audience from all directions. Add to that some rather sturdy rolling tables and steps of metal and wood and the thing just kept barreling along like a mighty river. The power of the battles also owes a great deal to John Spies’ fight direction.
It never ceases to amaze me that in the right hands - like those of The Acting Company - Elizabethan English becomes not just easily understood, but a vibrant living thing. It’s a pleasure to listen to something operating just a little above the level of the English with which I tend to muddle through my days.
If there’s a more intimidating thing for a playwright struggling with a new script to sit in a theater and watch than a production of “Henry V” like this, I can’t think of it.
Thankfully, there’s also nothing more inspiring.
O for a muse of fire, indeed.
For someone suffering from a little theater fatigue right now, a production like this is just the kind of jolt I needed to remind me why I love it so.
Which is why I joined my fellow audience members in applauding long after the lights came up until the actors all came out, sheepishly, to take another bow, so we could stand and thank them properly.
(Guys, add a light cue. You had over two and a half hours. You don’t just get to walk off after Shakespeare’s finished. We intend to applaud you for at least a couple of minutes. You earned it, and we’d like to give it to you.)
When you can overcome my general queasiness these days with the concept of people invoking God on their side in a war, and just sweep me up in the genuine earnestness of it all, well, then I guess you've got something...
Powerful. Mighty. Potent.
Puissant.
That about sums it up.
The Acting Company (kicking off their tour here, visiting from New York) - Henry V - The Dowling Studio at the Guthrie Theater - now through February 1, 2009
Friday, January 09, 2009
Incubator - Medea, part 4 - Spreading the Wealth
Normally, I’m trying to figure out how to present a story with as few characters as possible. Or rather, as few actors as possible. There’s a reason one and two-person shows are so popular with producing theaters around the country - they’re cheaper to do. Because you have less people to pay. I also imagine it’s less of a headache. Fewer people means fewer schedules to coordinate to try and pull together rehearsals. If I want a play produced, getting the number of people down is a way to make it easier for theaters to do so.
But necessity really is, in this case, the mother of invention. Having to constantly keep the number of actors foremost in mind has made me a better writer. I don’t add random characters at will, just to say a couple of lines here or there. Giving each character a lot of thought before bringing them into being hopefully insures that they have a singular purpose as part of the story. With luck, it means the actor will have a role worthy of their time and talent to invest in the piece. The last thing I ever want to do is cause an actor to feel like I’m wasting their time. They should always have something important and/or fun to do.
With this Medea project, however, I was faced with the opposite problem. I kept asking how many actors do I have, thinking the number would be low. Instead, they kept bumping it up. Most of the other college productions I’d worked on in the past, a half dozen actors at most would be available. With a sprawling legend like this one, it was clear, no matter how many bodies were on hand, they’d all be playing multiple roles. Honestly, you get the right actor and you can do pretty much any story with one. Get the right pair of actors and two is no problem either. Challenging, but still doable. I kept getting the response, “As many as you need” which is sort of like telling someone they have to write a paper for English class and they can write about anything they want. With all the subjects in the world laid out before you, the mind goes blank and you can’t think of a thing to write about. There’s such a thing as too much freedom of choice.
So you turn the question around and ask the college, “How many do *you* want to use?” Something clicked over in my head - remembering that sometimes, with a shorter season with fewer productions, sometimes the object is to get as many people on stage as humanly possible. And when you’re doing the Greeks, just like doing Shakespeare or Chekhov or Shaw, there’s normally a large ensemble required. After all, in college, everyone’s doing it for the experience, and you don’t have to pay them. This time, maybe I’m thinking too small. So, how many actors? What’s the magic number?
“I’d prefer nine. I really don’t want to go higher than 12.”
Wow. I *was* thinking small.
“Let’s say I write it for nine, and if you feel compelled at auditions to expand the ensemble to 12, we can adjust.”
So those were my marching orders. Still plenty of story, still plenty of characters, still a lot of ground to cover. But, nine people, that’s a luxury. It also means keeping about twice as many people in mind as I normally do, when thinking about making sure that everyone gets a balanced menu of things to do.
Greek chorus style, all nine actors enter at the start, all from different places, and converge together. There’s probably some kind of ritual, live music created by the actors - vocals, percussion, low tech but something to let the audience know what kind of world they’re entering. One male actor and one female actor stand apart. We may not know it yet, but they’ll be tackling Jason and Medea.
The male actor asks, “So, did she kill her kids or didn’t she?”
The female actor responds, “See, that’s not the point. It’s basically a love story.”
“Gimme a break.”
“No, really. You think anyone starts out like that?”
A third actor (who I realize later will become an Oracle), takes the lead on the first of the stories...
“It starts with the Golden Fleece.”
A fourth actor (who I realize later will become, appropriately enough, Cupid) chimes in...
“Because without the Golden Fleece, they never would have met.”
Actor 5 introduces, “Jason.”
Actor 6 clarifies, “Of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ fame.”
Actor 7, “And Medea.”
Actor 8, “Of ‘mother killing her own children’ fame.”
“Hey!” says the actor who will later be Medea.
Actor 8 - “That’s the first thing people think of when they hear her name, that’s all I’m saying.”
Actor 9, getting everybody back on task, “It starts with The Golden Fleece.”
and we’re off.
A page and a half, everybody has spoken aloud, everybody has taken the reins of the story. Some are starting to inform their lines with the personalities they’ll be creating later.
But there is no one narrator. There is no ponderous speaking in unison. The thing is going to live and breathe and fight and change hands over the course of the evening. There will be differences of opinion, there will be different points of view, there will be different versions of the same key moments. A story passed down through so many people over so many centuries is bound to have some rough edges and loose ends.
So far, about 14 pages into the thing where I sit, the role of lead narrator (the task of driving a particular chunk of the story forward) has changed hands three times. Particular actors have assumed the roles of Jason’s primary royal nemeses, King Pelias, and King Aeetes (Medea’s father). An Oracle, and Cupid have also made appearances in other hands. And a couple of actors will get to play Hera, queen of the gods, and Aprhodite, goddess of love and beauty (and mother to Cupid), one of Zeus’ many bastard children by women other than his wife, Hera. And that’s keeping it simple.
There’s a page with a list, Actors 1 through 9, and as I go through the script on one side of my computer screen, I add to the different actors’ tallies of characters as the script moves forward. Keeping it balanced, so no one feels left out, and no one feels exhausted, and the story keeps barreling forward, ever forward. I get the feeling no matter how this shakes out, everyone is going to end up getting a workout by the time the final curtain falls.
But necessity really is, in this case, the mother of invention. Having to constantly keep the number of actors foremost in mind has made me a better writer. I don’t add random characters at will, just to say a couple of lines here or there. Giving each character a lot of thought before bringing them into being hopefully insures that they have a singular purpose as part of the story. With luck, it means the actor will have a role worthy of their time and talent to invest in the piece. The last thing I ever want to do is cause an actor to feel like I’m wasting their time. They should always have something important and/or fun to do.
With this Medea project, however, I was faced with the opposite problem. I kept asking how many actors do I have, thinking the number would be low. Instead, they kept bumping it up. Most of the other college productions I’d worked on in the past, a half dozen actors at most would be available. With a sprawling legend like this one, it was clear, no matter how many bodies were on hand, they’d all be playing multiple roles. Honestly, you get the right actor and you can do pretty much any story with one. Get the right pair of actors and two is no problem either. Challenging, but still doable. I kept getting the response, “As many as you need” which is sort of like telling someone they have to write a paper for English class and they can write about anything they want. With all the subjects in the world laid out before you, the mind goes blank and you can’t think of a thing to write about. There’s such a thing as too much freedom of choice.
So you turn the question around and ask the college, “How many do *you* want to use?” Something clicked over in my head - remembering that sometimes, with a shorter season with fewer productions, sometimes the object is to get as many people on stage as humanly possible. And when you’re doing the Greeks, just like doing Shakespeare or Chekhov or Shaw, there’s normally a large ensemble required. After all, in college, everyone’s doing it for the experience, and you don’t have to pay them. This time, maybe I’m thinking too small. So, how many actors? What’s the magic number?
“I’d prefer nine. I really don’t want to go higher than 12.”
Wow. I *was* thinking small.
“Let’s say I write it for nine, and if you feel compelled at auditions to expand the ensemble to 12, we can adjust.”
So those were my marching orders. Still plenty of story, still plenty of characters, still a lot of ground to cover. But, nine people, that’s a luxury. It also means keeping about twice as many people in mind as I normally do, when thinking about making sure that everyone gets a balanced menu of things to do.
Greek chorus style, all nine actors enter at the start, all from different places, and converge together. There’s probably some kind of ritual, live music created by the actors - vocals, percussion, low tech but something to let the audience know what kind of world they’re entering. One male actor and one female actor stand apart. We may not know it yet, but they’ll be tackling Jason and Medea.
The male actor asks, “So, did she kill her kids or didn’t she?”
The female actor responds, “See, that’s not the point. It’s basically a love story.”
“Gimme a break.”
“No, really. You think anyone starts out like that?”
A third actor (who I realize later will become an Oracle), takes the lead on the first of the stories...
“It starts with the Golden Fleece.”
A fourth actor (who I realize later will become, appropriately enough, Cupid) chimes in...
“Because without the Golden Fleece, they never would have met.”
Actor 5 introduces, “Jason.”
Actor 6 clarifies, “Of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ fame.”
Actor 7, “And Medea.”
Actor 8, “Of ‘mother killing her own children’ fame.”
“Hey!” says the actor who will later be Medea.
Actor 8 - “That’s the first thing people think of when they hear her name, that’s all I’m saying.”
Actor 9, getting everybody back on task, “It starts with The Golden Fleece.”
and we’re off.
A page and a half, everybody has spoken aloud, everybody has taken the reins of the story. Some are starting to inform their lines with the personalities they’ll be creating later.
But there is no one narrator. There is no ponderous speaking in unison. The thing is going to live and breathe and fight and change hands over the course of the evening. There will be differences of opinion, there will be different points of view, there will be different versions of the same key moments. A story passed down through so many people over so many centuries is bound to have some rough edges and loose ends.
So far, about 14 pages into the thing where I sit, the role of lead narrator (the task of driving a particular chunk of the story forward) has changed hands three times. Particular actors have assumed the roles of Jason’s primary royal nemeses, King Pelias, and King Aeetes (Medea’s father). An Oracle, and Cupid have also made appearances in other hands. And a couple of actors will get to play Hera, queen of the gods, and Aprhodite, goddess of love and beauty (and mother to Cupid), one of Zeus’ many bastard children by women other than his wife, Hera. And that’s keeping it simple.
There’s a page with a list, Actors 1 through 9, and as I go through the script on one side of my computer screen, I add to the different actors’ tallies of characters as the script moves forward. Keeping it balanced, so no one feels left out, and no one feels exhausted, and the story keeps barreling forward, ever forward. I get the feeling no matter how this shakes out, everyone is going to end up getting a workout by the time the final curtain falls.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
For a limited time - Contribute your thoughts on the best of 2008 theater
OK, everybody. Forget Graydon, Rohan, Dominic, Quinton and John - time for *you* to sound off. I write some for MNArtists.org, and my editor Susannah is pulling together a "2008 Year In The Arts" series. She got so many responses from areas other than theater that it quickly convinced her it was not one, but several articles. One drawback, no theater feedback. That's right, nothin'. I feared I had missed her deadline by being out of town, but now it's been extended to next Monday or Tuesday. (And even that, as you'll see below, is flexible.) I asked if she'd mind my posting the call for theater here, as I know you're not shy about sharing your opinions, and she said, "sure, it's an open invitation." So read on, wrack your brain for a handful of your favorite anythings in theater (events offstage or on, design as well as performance, etc.), and send it her way. The more the merrier. No one can see everything, but between all of us, we've probably seen a heck of a lot. Let her, and the wider net, know about it. Bear witness, my theater folk!
Susannah's second call for theater feedback specifically...
Susannah M. Schouweiler I Editor, mnartists.org
and access+ENGAGE
Phone: 651.793.7580 I Email: editor@mnartists.org
The mission of mnartists.org is to improve the lives of Minnesota artists and to provide access to and engagement with Minnesota's arts culture.
Hi folks,
I'm writing, just one more time, to see if I can twist your arm into putting a few sentences down (specifically in the category of notable developments / performers & playwrights / productions / companies for any kind of theater) for a year-end wrap feature I'm putting together. The good news is I got quite a lot of response; so much, in fact, that I've decided this merits a two- or three-part series, with responses divvied up by discipline.
Thus far, other disciplines are pretty well-represented, but at this point I've gotten no reflections from anyone working in theater! I very much want to include local theater in this feature, but I'll need your participation to pull that off. (I'm pasting the note I sent out last week for your reference below.) If there's anyone you think would like to give their two cents as well, feel free to pass this around-the more the merrier. I just want to be sure the richness of the MN theater community is well represented here, too.
If you can get your thoughts to me by next Monday or Tuesday, that would be lovely. If that timeline is too tight, but you'd still like to send something, go ahead-I'll just add it in when I hear from you. (I love online publishing for that fluidity.) This absolutely doesn't need to be a lot of writing or terribly involved -- just pick your favorite local writer of the year, call out a great fellow performer or playwright, lament/celebrate a new trend or hail a company's success. It can be just a couple of sentences. My aim is merely to do my best to include your voices and insights, as a diverse body of working artists, into the mix.
One small additional request:
please look to your sentence or two of bio for any self-promotion you find yourself wanting to do. (It's a totally understandable temptation to use this as a platform to promote your own stuff, but I'd very much appreciate it if you'd offer your take on something from outside that sphere in addition to that, too.)
Thanks everyone!
S
Susannah's original call for material in general on the arts in 2008...
Hi everyone,
2008 has been a tumultuous year for the local arts scene, and it sure looks like there are lots more changes afoot as we head into 2009. Here at mnartists.org we're aiming to take stock of the highpoints (and low, perhaps) of last year in our state's arts scene; and also to look forward, to where we may be headed as we embark on the new year. I'm writing to reach out to you-a generous handful of curators, contributors, and friends of mnartists.org-to help us out in this endeavor.
My question for you is a simple one (and your answer can certainly be as well):
As you look back at all the regional arts happenings and reflect on all the arts-related news you've read in the recent months, good and bad, what sticks with you? Among all the events, news, trends, shows, artistic creations-what, to your mind, is going to continue to leave the greatest, most enduring impact on the scene in 2009? Or, more personally, what have you seen/witnessed/heard in the last year that you just loved, and that you
want more people to know about?
Your main take-away from the last year could be a show that blew you away, a piece of news that you find to be emblematic of a trend going forward; maybe you read a book by a local author and it continues to linger in your mind, or perhaps you listened to a local musician's album and it left you reeling. Maybe you're worried about the arts economy, or, on the other hand, perhaps you're feeling more optimistic about the future health of the state's arts and artists, thanks to the newly-passed Clean Water, Land, and Legacy
Amendment.
So, hit me. To give you an idea of what I'm looking for, I'm pasting some introductory notables for our year-in-review from Scott Stulen, project director of mnartists.org.
Look for the results, where I'll collate the responses I receive from all of you, to be published as part of next week's issue of access+ENGAGE. I know these year-end lists can never really capture the whole picture, and they're terrible at getting at nuance; but they're sure fun to read and, with thoughtful insights from wide variety of folks (like you-all), such things can be a good place from which to start a larger conversation.
If you'd like to have your thoughts included in our year-end wrap-up feature, please get the following to me by Monday, January 5:
1. Your name and ONE or TWO notable local arts pick(s) from 2008 (whatever / whoever it may be) - can be an exhibition, a trend-in-the-making, a happening or news item, book, film, album, live show, an emerging artist... whatever you like
2. A sentence or two articulating why you think your selection is the stand-out trend/release/show/news/artist/etc from the past year
3. A few words of bio for yourself (e.g. sculptor, curator for gallery x, musician in Band ABC, etc) and a link to your website (if applicable), plus town where you live
That's it. If you have time to weigh in, I'd very much appreciate having your insights in the mix, and I know our 8400 readers would too. The year has just been too big, the happenings too complex and too numerous, for this assessment to come from just a couple of us.
Susannah M. Schouweiler I Editor, mnartists.org
and access+ENGAGE
Phone: 651.793.7580 I Email: editor@mnartists.org
On to the example: Here's what Scott Stulen had to say when I put the question to him.
***
Year in Review, MN Arts in 2008: Scott Stulen, Project Director mnartists.org
1. The passage of the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment
The overwhelming support and successful passage of this landmark amendment is a tribute to years of research, a savvy marketing campaign, pooling of collective resources and the long-range vision of voters. The New Year will provide many challenges for arts organizations; the passage of this amendment is a strong statement as to the priority we place on the culture and environment within the state of Minnesota. The next challenge will be figuring out how the money will be spent when it becomes available in 2011. Here is my follow-up question for 2009: "What is the corresponding responsibility of publicly funded artists and organizations to the greater community"?
2. Arts Organizations in trouble
2008 was a year filled with challenges and financial difficulty for many arts organizations. Sadly we lost several key organizations, notably the Minnesota Center for Photography and Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Other organizations have been forced to cut staff and programming to survive project budget shortfalls (Intermedia Arts). Everyone is facing a new landscape of funding and programming, however this could be a wonderful opportunity for local artists to come together and create a more vibrant and supportive arts community.
3. Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
"Change" was the (most obnoxiously overused) word of 2008, both in the election cycle and also amongst the local art scene. There were several new additions throughout the local arts institutions, including key positions at the Walker and MIA. Stewart Turnquist resigned after three decades as head of the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program at the MIA raising concerns in the local art community as to the future of the program. Jeff Bartlett, longstanding Artistic Director at the Southern Theater also made his exit, which prompted a similar outcry from many in the performance community.
4. Bon Iver
Eau Claire, Wisconsin's Justin Vernon retreated to a Northern Wisconsin cabin and emerged with one of the most fragile, beautiful and intimate albums in years. Technically this was widely circulated last year through music blogs other sources, but 2008 saw the official release of the album and Vernon's rapid rise to the top of hipster neo-folk movement. Bon Iver's second album titled Blood Bank will be released January 20th.
5. D.I.Y. and Contemporary Craft Movement
Craftiness is hot. From the Local Crafters 612 and No Coast Craft-O-Rama, to Craft and Make magazine everything is covered in felt, letterpressed or hacked from some battery-powered toy. As we get increasingly dependent on our cool digital technology it seems a desire for precious, unique hand-made objects is on the rise. I'm not immune: I've been keeping my iphone in a recycled necktie pouch.
6. My Personal Favorites from 2008
Aviette's The Way We Met, Haley Bonar's Big Star, Roman Signer and Chris Larson at the Rochester Art Center, Bruce Tapola at Occasional Art, miniStories Readings at the Ritz, Chuck Olsen and the Uptakes's election coverage, my growing addiction to Facebook, MinnesotaPlaylist.com, Robot Love and being back in Minneapolis
***
Thanks so much, and happy New Year to you all. Have at it! I'm eager to hear
your picks.
Susannah
Susannah M. Schouweiler I Editor, mnartists.org
and access+ENGAGE
Phone: 651.793.7580 I Email: editor@mnartists.org
***********
Okay, everybody. Start typing.
Susannah's second call for theater feedback specifically...
Susannah M. Schouweiler I Editor, mnartists.org
and access+ENGAGE
Phone: 651.793.7580 I Email: editor@mnartists.org
The mission of mnartists.org is to improve the lives of Minnesota artists and to provide access to and engagement with Minnesota's arts culture.
Hi folks,
I'm writing, just one more time, to see if I can twist your arm into putting a few sentences down (specifically in the category of notable developments / performers & playwrights / productions / companies for any kind of theater) for a year-end wrap feature I'm putting together. The good news is I got quite a lot of response; so much, in fact, that I've decided this merits a two- or three-part series, with responses divvied up by discipline.
Thus far, other disciplines are pretty well-represented, but at this point I've gotten no reflections from anyone working in theater! I very much want to include local theater in this feature, but I'll need your participation to pull that off. (I'm pasting the note I sent out last week for your reference below.) If there's anyone you think would like to give their two cents as well, feel free to pass this around-the more the merrier. I just want to be sure the richness of the MN theater community is well represented here, too.
If you can get your thoughts to me by next Monday or Tuesday, that would be lovely. If that timeline is too tight, but you'd still like to send something, go ahead-I'll just add it in when I hear from you. (I love online publishing for that fluidity.) This absolutely doesn't need to be a lot of writing or terribly involved -- just pick your favorite local writer of the year, call out a great fellow performer or playwright, lament/celebrate a new trend or hail a company's success. It can be just a couple of sentences. My aim is merely to do my best to include your voices and insights, as a diverse body of working artists, into the mix.
One small additional request:
please look to your sentence or two of bio for any self-promotion you find yourself wanting to do. (It's a totally understandable temptation to use this as a platform to promote your own stuff, but I'd very much appreciate it if you'd offer your take on something from outside that sphere in addition to that, too.)
Thanks everyone!
S
Susannah's original call for material in general on the arts in 2008...
Hi everyone,
2008 has been a tumultuous year for the local arts scene, and it sure looks like there are lots more changes afoot as we head into 2009. Here at mnartists.org we're aiming to take stock of the highpoints (and low, perhaps) of last year in our state's arts scene; and also to look forward, to where we may be headed as we embark on the new year. I'm writing to reach out to you-a generous handful of curators, contributors, and friends of mnartists.org-to help us out in this endeavor.
My question for you is a simple one (and your answer can certainly be as well):
As you look back at all the regional arts happenings and reflect on all the arts-related news you've read in the recent months, good and bad, what sticks with you? Among all the events, news, trends, shows, artistic creations-what, to your mind, is going to continue to leave the greatest, most enduring impact on the scene in 2009? Or, more personally, what have you seen/witnessed/heard in the last year that you just loved, and that you
want more people to know about?
Your main take-away from the last year could be a show that blew you away, a piece of news that you find to be emblematic of a trend going forward; maybe you read a book by a local author and it continues to linger in your mind, or perhaps you listened to a local musician's album and it left you reeling. Maybe you're worried about the arts economy, or, on the other hand, perhaps you're feeling more optimistic about the future health of the state's arts and artists, thanks to the newly-passed Clean Water, Land, and Legacy
Amendment.
So, hit me. To give you an idea of what I'm looking for, I'm pasting some introductory notables for our year-in-review from Scott Stulen, project director of mnartists.org.
Look for the results, where I'll collate the responses I receive from all of you, to be published as part of next week's issue of access+ENGAGE. I know these year-end lists can never really capture the whole picture, and they're terrible at getting at nuance; but they're sure fun to read and, with thoughtful insights from wide variety of folks (like you-all), such things can be a good place from which to start a larger conversation.
If you'd like to have your thoughts included in our year-end wrap-up feature, please get the following to me by Monday, January 5:
1. Your name and ONE or TWO notable local arts pick(s) from 2008 (whatever / whoever it may be) - can be an exhibition, a trend-in-the-making, a happening or news item, book, film, album, live show, an emerging artist... whatever you like
2. A sentence or two articulating why you think your selection is the stand-out trend/release/show/news/artist/etc from the past year
3. A few words of bio for yourself (e.g. sculptor, curator for gallery x, musician in Band ABC, etc) and a link to your website (if applicable), plus town where you live
That's it. If you have time to weigh in, I'd very much appreciate having your insights in the mix, and I know our 8400 readers would too. The year has just been too big, the happenings too complex and too numerous, for this assessment to come from just a couple of us.
Susannah M. Schouweiler I Editor, mnartists.org
and access+ENGAGE
Phone: 651.793.7580 I Email: editor@mnartists.org
On to the example: Here's what Scott Stulen had to say when I put the question to him.
***
Year in Review, MN Arts in 2008: Scott Stulen, Project Director mnartists.org
1. The passage of the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment
The overwhelming support and successful passage of this landmark amendment is a tribute to years of research, a savvy marketing campaign, pooling of collective resources and the long-range vision of voters. The New Year will provide many challenges for arts organizations; the passage of this amendment is a strong statement as to the priority we place on the culture and environment within the state of Minnesota. The next challenge will be figuring out how the money will be spent when it becomes available in 2011. Here is my follow-up question for 2009: "What is the corresponding responsibility of publicly funded artists and organizations to the greater community"?
2. Arts Organizations in trouble
2008 was a year filled with challenges and financial difficulty for many arts organizations. Sadly we lost several key organizations, notably the Minnesota Center for Photography and Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Other organizations have been forced to cut staff and programming to survive project budget shortfalls (Intermedia Arts). Everyone is facing a new landscape of funding and programming, however this could be a wonderful opportunity for local artists to come together and create a more vibrant and supportive arts community.
3. Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
"Change" was the (most obnoxiously overused) word of 2008, both in the election cycle and also amongst the local art scene. There were several new additions throughout the local arts institutions, including key positions at the Walker and MIA. Stewart Turnquist resigned after three decades as head of the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program at the MIA raising concerns in the local art community as to the future of the program. Jeff Bartlett, longstanding Artistic Director at the Southern Theater also made his exit, which prompted a similar outcry from many in the performance community.
4. Bon Iver
Eau Claire, Wisconsin's Justin Vernon retreated to a Northern Wisconsin cabin and emerged with one of the most fragile, beautiful and intimate albums in years. Technically this was widely circulated last year through music blogs other sources, but 2008 saw the official release of the album and Vernon's rapid rise to the top of hipster neo-folk movement. Bon Iver's second album titled Blood Bank will be released January 20th.
5. D.I.Y. and Contemporary Craft Movement
Craftiness is hot. From the Local Crafters 612 and No Coast Craft-O-Rama, to Craft and Make magazine everything is covered in felt, letterpressed or hacked from some battery-powered toy. As we get increasingly dependent on our cool digital technology it seems a desire for precious, unique hand-made objects is on the rise. I'm not immune: I've been keeping my iphone in a recycled necktie pouch.
6. My Personal Favorites from 2008
Aviette's The Way We Met, Haley Bonar's Big Star, Roman Signer and Chris Larson at the Rochester Art Center, Bruce Tapola at Occasional Art, miniStories Readings at the Ritz, Chuck Olsen and the Uptakes's election coverage, my growing addiction to Facebook, MinnesotaPlaylist.com, Robot Love and being back in Minneapolis
***
Thanks so much, and happy New Year to you all. Have at it! I'm eager to hear
your picks.
Susannah
Susannah M. Schouweiler I Editor, mnartists.org
and access+ENGAGE
Phone: 651.793.7580 I Email: editor@mnartists.org
***********
Okay, everybody. Start typing.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Incubator - Medea, part 3 - Crossbreeding Scripts
So the process I’m in the middle of right now, is putting my two previous versions of the Medea play together, and trimming the fat out of it, to get the purest form of the story I can manage.
Still a work in progress at the moment.
At first as I was working on it, I was thinking of creating it all again from scratch, and just referencing the two existing scripts as I worked my way through it. Then I realized that the essential structure of the thing - the beginning, middle and end of it, the characters - was sound. I should probably build on what was there. Altering it, of course, making it better. But not re-inventing the wheel.
So I created a file that had the two scripts - the older and the newer version - lined up back to back in the same document. And I’d start writing the latest version up in front of them both, at the beginning of the document - cutting and pasting as needed. Slowly, the document would shrink down in size to just the brand new script that emerged from fusing the two older plays together.
But as I started putting the brand new script together, I realized I was wasting a lot of time picking a scene out of the oldest script, then scrolling all the way down in the document and finding the analogous scene in the newer script, and pulling that out. Moving it all up front a chunk at a time, then rewriting and polishing.
I was essentially doing a lot of hopping around when all I was looking to do was line up the two versions, one scene at a time, side by side, or at least in the same general vicinity in the document, for easier juggling.
So why not just chop both versions apart and slam the corresponding scenes together right next to each other. That way I’m not going through the whole story start to finish three times, but only once.
That cutting and pasting project is now behind me. And now I’m working on crafting each scene out of the two versions of it which came before. Old scene one, newer scene one - meld them into a single unit and fix them up. Next, old scene two, newer scene two - meld and fix. And on through the story to the bitter, or not so bitter, end.
The main advantage I have this time around is - no modern day characters. I don’t have to find some reason to justify the fact that these people are telling this story. It doesn’t have to reflect, literally or thematically, off something that is happening in their lives. I don’t need a Greek mythology geek that rambles on about a bunch ancient fictional characters, while everyone else puts up with him and his mythological hard-on because he’s their friend, their family, they want to sleep with him, etc. (Thus avoiding bizarre plot structure misfires like the one draft where the modern day plot line was moving backward, but the mythological story was moving forward. If you took the script apart and put it together in chronological order from a modern day standpoint, those characters were actually telling the Medea story backward. Why anyone would tell, or want to listen to, a story in reverse like that - inside or outside the confines of the play, well, I have no excuse. I never recovered from reading Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” during my formative years, apparently. I am constantly messing with time in my plays. It’s just something I do. It would drive Aristotle crazy. But just because I *can* do something with a play’s structure, doesn’t mean I should. There needs to be more of a reason than, “because I thought it might be neat.” I do still get teased about that misbegotten draft by the way. Mercilessly. You know who you are. But let’s be honest, I deserve it.)
I need to release myself from the burning desire to make some direct one-to-one correlation with 21st century life in the hope of convincing everyone how “relevant” the story is. One could argue that yes, there are mothers killing their children all the time, literally and figuratively. And there are those that would affirm that we’re still surrounded by supernatural beings - angels, ghosts, horoscopes, what have you - which are influencing or even controlling our destinies.
But there really isn’t a modern correlative to Ancient Greek mythology. The world isn’t just one country or culture anymore (as if it ever was). There are no universally agreed upon gods and demons. There is no single set of stories that we all tell and share with each other, which we all have in common, even just within the United States of America (which is the audience I need to worry about first, specifically Iowa).
Trying to get modern day characters and their life experiences to have the same breadth and scope of mythology is a bit more of a stretch than I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around. Compared to the epic scale of Medea and Jason, our passions and adventures seem kind of tiny. They’re not, of course. Particularly not to the people living those lives from day to day. But it’s apples and oranges. Best not to muddy things up by comparing them.
Here, in this version, we have an ensemble, a Greek chorus if you will (if you must). Their sole purpose - to tell this story. They exist to be storytellers. They are the story. They become the characters. They want to present the tale to the people who gather to hear them speak.
Good old fashioned catharsis.
At least, that’s the hope.
The trick, of course, is to give everyone in the ensemble enough to do, so they all feel well-utilized, and challenged, by the production. So they bring their A-game.
First, I need to bring mine.
Still a work in progress at the moment.
At first as I was working on it, I was thinking of creating it all again from scratch, and just referencing the two existing scripts as I worked my way through it. Then I realized that the essential structure of the thing - the beginning, middle and end of it, the characters - was sound. I should probably build on what was there. Altering it, of course, making it better. But not re-inventing the wheel.
So I created a file that had the two scripts - the older and the newer version - lined up back to back in the same document. And I’d start writing the latest version up in front of them both, at the beginning of the document - cutting and pasting as needed. Slowly, the document would shrink down in size to just the brand new script that emerged from fusing the two older plays together.
But as I started putting the brand new script together, I realized I was wasting a lot of time picking a scene out of the oldest script, then scrolling all the way down in the document and finding the analogous scene in the newer script, and pulling that out. Moving it all up front a chunk at a time, then rewriting and polishing.
I was essentially doing a lot of hopping around when all I was looking to do was line up the two versions, one scene at a time, side by side, or at least in the same general vicinity in the document, for easier juggling.
So why not just chop both versions apart and slam the corresponding scenes together right next to each other. That way I’m not going through the whole story start to finish three times, but only once.
That cutting and pasting project is now behind me. And now I’m working on crafting each scene out of the two versions of it which came before. Old scene one, newer scene one - meld them into a single unit and fix them up. Next, old scene two, newer scene two - meld and fix. And on through the story to the bitter, or not so bitter, end.
The main advantage I have this time around is - no modern day characters. I don’t have to find some reason to justify the fact that these people are telling this story. It doesn’t have to reflect, literally or thematically, off something that is happening in their lives. I don’t need a Greek mythology geek that rambles on about a bunch ancient fictional characters, while everyone else puts up with him and his mythological hard-on because he’s their friend, their family, they want to sleep with him, etc. (Thus avoiding bizarre plot structure misfires like the one draft where the modern day plot line was moving backward, but the mythological story was moving forward. If you took the script apart and put it together in chronological order from a modern day standpoint, those characters were actually telling the Medea story backward. Why anyone would tell, or want to listen to, a story in reverse like that - inside or outside the confines of the play, well, I have no excuse. I never recovered from reading Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” during my formative years, apparently. I am constantly messing with time in my plays. It’s just something I do. It would drive Aristotle crazy. But just because I *can* do something with a play’s structure, doesn’t mean I should. There needs to be more of a reason than, “because I thought it might be neat.” I do still get teased about that misbegotten draft by the way. Mercilessly. You know who you are. But let’s be honest, I deserve it.)
I need to release myself from the burning desire to make some direct one-to-one correlation with 21st century life in the hope of convincing everyone how “relevant” the story is. One could argue that yes, there are mothers killing their children all the time, literally and figuratively. And there are those that would affirm that we’re still surrounded by supernatural beings - angels, ghosts, horoscopes, what have you - which are influencing or even controlling our destinies.
But there really isn’t a modern correlative to Ancient Greek mythology. The world isn’t just one country or culture anymore (as if it ever was). There are no universally agreed upon gods and demons. There is no single set of stories that we all tell and share with each other, which we all have in common, even just within the United States of America (which is the audience I need to worry about first, specifically Iowa).
Trying to get modern day characters and their life experiences to have the same breadth and scope of mythology is a bit more of a stretch than I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around. Compared to the epic scale of Medea and Jason, our passions and adventures seem kind of tiny. They’re not, of course. Particularly not to the people living those lives from day to day. But it’s apples and oranges. Best not to muddy things up by comparing them.
Here, in this version, we have an ensemble, a Greek chorus if you will (if you must). Their sole purpose - to tell this story. They exist to be storytellers. They are the story. They become the characters. They want to present the tale to the people who gather to hear them speak.
Good old fashioned catharsis.
At least, that’s the hope.
The trick, of course, is to give everyone in the ensemble enough to do, so they all feel well-utilized, and challenged, by the production. So they bring their A-game.
First, I need to bring mine.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Incubator - Medea, part 2 - Homework
The blessing and curse of Greek mythology is that there’s always another layer.
It’s what piqued my interest in the Medea legend in the first place.
When I realized that Medea’s faithless husband Jason was the same Jason of Jason and the Argonauts fame, and the quest for the Golden Fleece, I was hooked.
But then you start pulling the whole thing apart and realize that there aren’t even six degrees of separation between any of these legends. There’s just one or two, tops.
So Medea and Jason touch on everything from Oedipus to Orpheus to Hercules to Phaedra to the Minotaur to Prometheus to the Amazons to Helen of Troy to the homicidal house of Atreus, and so on and so on and so on, spiraling out to infinity. And that’s just the humans and demigods. Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Cupid and Company up on Mount Olympus are in there mixing it up as well.
In the original stab I took at this whole thing some twenty years ago now, I laid it all out. The thing was so top-heavy with backstory and tangents that it’s a wonder the plot moved at all. In order to make the story just as captivating for an audience as it is to the writer, ya gotta start streamlining the thing so the main storyline pops out a bit more.
What to leave out, what to keep in?
The last time I took a stab at this, over twelve years ago, I took a great deal of the details for granted and just drew the adventure in really broad strokes. There were hints at the untold stories behind it all, but I essentially left all that for the actors and director and dramaturg to hash out for themselves when they started doing their own prep work.
Both of these versions were so old I had to dig out a hard copy and retype them, or at least, for now, all the pages having to do with Jason and Medea’s story. I’d set the idea aside so long ago (several computers back in the mists of time) that there weren’t up to date translatable electronic copies to be had.
Entering the words onto the screen again made it clear that the balance lay somewhere in between the two versions. Part of the fun is the weird interconnectedness of it all. But I just need to resist getting carried away. Or being too withholding of information.
The other thing it made clear is that I needed to tell this story, and only this story. All the times before, I’d tried to string a modern day plotline and characters through the thing, and it never worked. For one, Jason and Medea is one of the most heterosexual storylines you’re gonna find out there. And my young writer’s obsessions kept trying to find some homosexual angle to it all. Sure there were characters on the periphery, there always are. But trying to allow the gay sensibility of the modern day story to bleed into the mythological tale just never worked. Worse, I started doing ridiculous cross-gender stuff with no real rhyme or reason to it. Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. But I think scanning the old material from the modern day stories drove a stake through the heart of it all, finally.
Also, all that male-female switcheroo stuff, as effective and useful as it might be elsewhere, just muddies the waters here. Medea did what she did because she was backed into a corner. She had no options. Jason, and the other male figures in the story, held all the cards. This is a story about a culture where women and foreigners and people who are different (in this case, with magical powers and supernatural relatives), are treated as second-class citizens. They are praised when they are useful to the needs of the established order, but barely tolerated otherwise. Medea gave up her power and standing in her home country to aid Jason in his quest and follow him to a new land. He repaid her by betraying her on a number of levels. From a certain angle, the guy had it coming. I didn’t want to accidentally set up a situation where a director might think, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s have Medea played by a guy!”
No.
It is, on one level, about the victimization of women by men. Turning it around and making the man the victim and the woman the oppressor won’t fly. Plus, Medea is one of the few meaty, strong roles for women in the classical canon. I would rightly be strung up by my thumbs by any number of actresses I know if I took yet another role away from them and handed it off to a guy. Men have plenty to choose from - from Oedipus to Hamlet and beyond. Leave Medea alone.
Me, I keep trying to leave Medea alone. But she keeps coming back.
It’s what piqued my interest in the Medea legend in the first place.
When I realized that Medea’s faithless husband Jason was the same Jason of Jason and the Argonauts fame, and the quest for the Golden Fleece, I was hooked.
But then you start pulling the whole thing apart and realize that there aren’t even six degrees of separation between any of these legends. There’s just one or two, tops.
So Medea and Jason touch on everything from Oedipus to Orpheus to Hercules to Phaedra to the Minotaur to Prometheus to the Amazons to Helen of Troy to the homicidal house of Atreus, and so on and so on and so on, spiraling out to infinity. And that’s just the humans and demigods. Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Cupid and Company up on Mount Olympus are in there mixing it up as well.
In the original stab I took at this whole thing some twenty years ago now, I laid it all out. The thing was so top-heavy with backstory and tangents that it’s a wonder the plot moved at all. In order to make the story just as captivating for an audience as it is to the writer, ya gotta start streamlining the thing so the main storyline pops out a bit more.
What to leave out, what to keep in?
The last time I took a stab at this, over twelve years ago, I took a great deal of the details for granted and just drew the adventure in really broad strokes. There were hints at the untold stories behind it all, but I essentially left all that for the actors and director and dramaturg to hash out for themselves when they started doing their own prep work.
Both of these versions were so old I had to dig out a hard copy and retype them, or at least, for now, all the pages having to do with Jason and Medea’s story. I’d set the idea aside so long ago (several computers back in the mists of time) that there weren’t up to date translatable electronic copies to be had.
Entering the words onto the screen again made it clear that the balance lay somewhere in between the two versions. Part of the fun is the weird interconnectedness of it all. But I just need to resist getting carried away. Or being too withholding of information.
The other thing it made clear is that I needed to tell this story, and only this story. All the times before, I’d tried to string a modern day plotline and characters through the thing, and it never worked. For one, Jason and Medea is one of the most heterosexual storylines you’re gonna find out there. And my young writer’s obsessions kept trying to find some homosexual angle to it all. Sure there were characters on the periphery, there always are. But trying to allow the gay sensibility of the modern day story to bleed into the mythological tale just never worked. Worse, I started doing ridiculous cross-gender stuff with no real rhyme or reason to it. Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. But I think scanning the old material from the modern day stories drove a stake through the heart of it all, finally.
Also, all that male-female switcheroo stuff, as effective and useful as it might be elsewhere, just muddies the waters here. Medea did what she did because she was backed into a corner. She had no options. Jason, and the other male figures in the story, held all the cards. This is a story about a culture where women and foreigners and people who are different (in this case, with magical powers and supernatural relatives), are treated as second-class citizens. They are praised when they are useful to the needs of the established order, but barely tolerated otherwise. Medea gave up her power and standing in her home country to aid Jason in his quest and follow him to a new land. He repaid her by betraying her on a number of levels. From a certain angle, the guy had it coming. I didn’t want to accidentally set up a situation where a director might think, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s have Medea played by a guy!”
No.
It is, on one level, about the victimization of women by men. Turning it around and making the man the victim and the woman the oppressor won’t fly. Plus, Medea is one of the few meaty, strong roles for women in the classical canon. I would rightly be strung up by my thumbs by any number of actresses I know if I took yet another role away from them and handed it off to a guy. Men have plenty to choose from - from Oedipus to Hamlet and beyond. Leave Medea alone.
Me, I keep trying to leave Medea alone. But she keeps coming back.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Vote now for the secret ingredients in the 24 Hour Play Project
Did you ever want to see a play with a giant talking statue in it?
Ever want to ask a playwright to include "Exit, pursued by a bear" as either a stage direction, or even dialogue in their script?
Do you bemoan the lack of plays featuring a kazoo playing?
Can't get enough of characters struggling with nostalgic lust?
Have I got an online ballot for you, my internet friends...
Theatre Unbound is gathering the elements for its annual gala/benefit, with the latest 24 Hour Play Project as its centerpiece.
Six teams of two writers each on the night of Friday, February 6th at 9pm will be given four items they must include in their script - an object, an emotion, a quote or line of dialogue, and something else random.
Apart from including those items, the shape of the play is up to them.
Before 5am on Saturday morning, they must compose and turn in a 10 minute play.
That evening of Saturday, February 7th, after a day of directors and actors working their magic in limited rehearsals, the plays will be performed at the gala.
Snacks and caffeine will be on hand to aid the writers' creativity throughout the night.
But right now, you can tell them what you want in those plays.
For what exactly the object, emotion, line of dialogue, and random thing will be is up to you, the voting public.
Each of the four categories has 12 items in it. 48 potential winners. Only 4 will emerge victorious.
It's your call.
Click on the link here - http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2fk5eqjfphe515g/start - to cast your vote for the four ingredients to be included in all of this year's 24 Hour Plays.
You only get one chance to vote, so choose wisely.
(But, feel free to encourage your family, friends and co-workers to get in on the fun and sway the voting your way, of course. That's democracy in action.)
Voting is open for three weeks - now through Monday, January 26, 2009
Enjoy!
And if you want to book your tickets to the event now, to see how it all turns out, visit Theatre Unbound's website at www.theatreunbound.com
Ever want to ask a playwright to include "Exit, pursued by a bear" as either a stage direction, or even dialogue in their script?
Do you bemoan the lack of plays featuring a kazoo playing?
Can't get enough of characters struggling with nostalgic lust?
Have I got an online ballot for you, my internet friends...
Theatre Unbound is gathering the elements for its annual gala/benefit, with the latest 24 Hour Play Project as its centerpiece.
Six teams of two writers each on the night of Friday, February 6th at 9pm will be given four items they must include in their script - an object, an emotion, a quote or line of dialogue, and something else random.
Apart from including those items, the shape of the play is up to them.
Before 5am on Saturday morning, they must compose and turn in a 10 minute play.
That evening of Saturday, February 7th, after a day of directors and actors working their magic in limited rehearsals, the plays will be performed at the gala.
Snacks and caffeine will be on hand to aid the writers' creativity throughout the night.
But right now, you can tell them what you want in those plays.
For what exactly the object, emotion, line of dialogue, and random thing will be is up to you, the voting public.
Each of the four categories has 12 items in it. 48 potential winners. Only 4 will emerge victorious.
It's your call.
Click on the link here - http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2fk5eqjfphe515g/start - to cast your vote for the four ingredients to be included in all of this year's 24 Hour Plays.
You only get one chance to vote, so choose wisely.
(But, feel free to encourage your family, friends and co-workers to get in on the fun and sway the voting your way, of course. That's democracy in action.)
Voting is open for three weeks - now through Monday, January 26, 2009
Enjoy!
And if you want to book your tickets to the event now, to see how it all turns out, visit Theatre Unbound's website at www.theatreunbound.com
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Incubator - Two Left Feet
I didn’t even know there was a Museum of Bad Art until Chris Kidder of Commedia Beauregard told me about it - www.museumofbadart.org
They’ve published a book - Masterworks...
"Located in the basement of a theater, the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a unique institution dedicated to the celebration of artistic effort, however misguided. The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks presents a pulsating collection of more than seventy never-before-published pieces of artwork from MOBA’s permanent collection. Comprised largely of canvases found discarded on curbside trash piles or obtained for a pittance at thrift stores, this innovative compilation occupies a niche previously ignored in the international community of art collection, preservation, and interpretation. If the subjectivity of art appreciation were ever in doubt, this astonishing assortment of artistic commentaries will fan the flames of controversy. It is clear that many of these artists suffered for their art; now it’s your turn."
From this book, six pictures were chosen.
From the Twin Cities, six playwrights were chosen. Among them, me.
Each was assigned a picture.
Each was told to write a short play (10 to 15 minutes) based on that picture.
The results of those efforts are currently being rehearsed.
The finished product will be onstage at the Bryant Lake Bowl as “Masterworks - The MOBA Plays” the last two Sundays in January, and the first two Sundays in February - January 18, 25; February 1, 8. All shows at 7pm. Doors at 6pm. Tickets $15, $12 in advance or with Fringe button. You can call 612-825-8949 for reservations or make them online at brownpapertickets.com
The other playwrights involved - Greg Bonine-Giles, Bill Corbett, Lisa Day, Dan O'Neil, & Nick Ryan
The directors involved - Directed by Leah Adcock-Starr, Robin Johnson, Natalie Novacek, Scott Pakudaitus, Katie Willer, and Laura Leffler-McCabe (who’s doing my script).
My picture was a sadly rendered drawing of two feet - one of them inexplicably blue. (It's posted currently on the ludicrously long front page of my website, part way down)
It was entitled, more sadly, “My Left Foot.”
I was not going to title my play, “My Left Foot” or “No, Not That Left Foot”
I settled on “Two Left Feet” - a short play about loss.
Three actors - characters non-gender specific.
Jamie - the bereaved
Taylor - the foot
Third - all the others
Could be three women, three men, or a combination of the two. The casting note says, “ Love is love. Grief is grief. War kills everybody.”
The epigraph is four lines from a Mountain Goats song that was in heavy rotation while I was writing my last play “Leave”
“And I am coming home to you
With my own blood in my mouth.
And I am coming home to you,
If it’s the last thing that I do.”
It was one of those ideas that came to me so quickly and so completely, and was so odd, that it scared the crap out of me. It’s either going to be really funny and equally sad, or I’ve completely cocked it up.
Here’s the way it begins...
“A figure, TAYLOR, clad from head to foot in black - hands, head, perhaps even face.
The one exception, the left foot is covered in a long blue sock.
That foot stands in a tiny coffin (it could be as simple as a shoebox), draped with or decorated like a small flag of the United States of America.
Standing by TAYLOR are JAMIE and THIRD (currently in the guise of a military officer)
THIRD (military) - This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States military as a token of appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.
Oh.
And here’s the foot.”
More on all that, shortly...
They’ve published a book - Masterworks...
"Located in the basement of a theater, the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a unique institution dedicated to the celebration of artistic effort, however misguided. The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks presents a pulsating collection of more than seventy never-before-published pieces of artwork from MOBA’s permanent collection. Comprised largely of canvases found discarded on curbside trash piles or obtained for a pittance at thrift stores, this innovative compilation occupies a niche previously ignored in the international community of art collection, preservation, and interpretation. If the subjectivity of art appreciation were ever in doubt, this astonishing assortment of artistic commentaries will fan the flames of controversy. It is clear that many of these artists suffered for their art; now it’s your turn."
From this book, six pictures were chosen.
From the Twin Cities, six playwrights were chosen. Among them, me.
Each was assigned a picture.
Each was told to write a short play (10 to 15 minutes) based on that picture.
The results of those efforts are currently being rehearsed.
The finished product will be onstage at the Bryant Lake Bowl as “Masterworks - The MOBA Plays” the last two Sundays in January, and the first two Sundays in February - January 18, 25; February 1, 8. All shows at 7pm. Doors at 6pm. Tickets $15, $12 in advance or with Fringe button. You can call 612-825-8949 for reservations or make them online at brownpapertickets.com
The other playwrights involved - Greg Bonine-Giles, Bill Corbett, Lisa Day, Dan O'Neil, & Nick Ryan
The directors involved - Directed by Leah Adcock-Starr, Robin Johnson, Natalie Novacek, Scott Pakudaitus, Katie Willer, and Laura Leffler-McCabe (who’s doing my script).
My picture was a sadly rendered drawing of two feet - one of them inexplicably blue. (It's posted currently on the ludicrously long front page of my website, part way down)
It was entitled, more sadly, “My Left Foot.”
I was not going to title my play, “My Left Foot” or “No, Not That Left Foot”
I settled on “Two Left Feet” - a short play about loss.
Three actors - characters non-gender specific.
Jamie - the bereaved
Taylor - the foot
Third - all the others
Could be three women, three men, or a combination of the two. The casting note says, “ Love is love. Grief is grief. War kills everybody.”
The epigraph is four lines from a Mountain Goats song that was in heavy rotation while I was writing my last play “Leave”
“And I am coming home to you
With my own blood in my mouth.
And I am coming home to you,
If it’s the last thing that I do.”
It was one of those ideas that came to me so quickly and so completely, and was so odd, that it scared the crap out of me. It’s either going to be really funny and equally sad, or I’ve completely cocked it up.
Here’s the way it begins...
“A figure, TAYLOR, clad from head to foot in black - hands, head, perhaps even face.
The one exception, the left foot is covered in a long blue sock.
That foot stands in a tiny coffin (it could be as simple as a shoebox), draped with or decorated like a small flag of the United States of America.
Standing by TAYLOR are JAMIE and THIRD (currently in the guise of a military officer)
THIRD (military) - This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States military as a token of appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.
Oh.
And here’s the foot.”
More on all that, shortly...
Friday, January 02, 2009
Incubator - Medea
“How quickly could you write a fun, up to date version of MEDEA? 1-1/2 hour tops?”
“A fun up to date version of MEDEA? Does she still kill her kids?”
“well, yes she kills her children. I would like some type of chorus, it can be ritualistic, yet attractive to a college audience - does that make sense?”
And thus began my latest project.
My friend Marty recently landed a faculty job in the theater department at Iowa Western Community College. He’d already directed something for them, but this next production would be the first thing he’s directed for them since coming on staff. Medea was already chosen to be part of their season, but he wanted to put his own spin on it. So he sends me an email.
Slowly it came back to us both that the reason the whole thing seemed familiar was that I’d been struggling with the Medea legend - the whole Medea legend, Jason and the Argonauts and the quest for the Golden Fleece, and everything that happened after the child killings - for a number of years. 2009 will make it year twenty. Which means I’d been kicking the thing around since, we were both in grad school together.
The first full draft I could find was dated August of 1989. The last serious stab I took at the thing was June of 1996, not long after my first production in Minneapolis, “Heaven and Home.”
Note to self at the time, Medea is not the best thing to be working on while dating. Learned that one the hard way.
And yet, now, during the latest Medea resurrection, is the time I chose to sign up with one of those online screening services. This should be interesting.
“What do you do?”
“I write plays.”
“Really? Wow. What are you working on right now?”
“Medea”
“Gee, look at the time...”
“A fun up to date version of MEDEA? Does she still kill her kids?”
“well, yes she kills her children. I would like some type of chorus, it can be ritualistic, yet attractive to a college audience - does that make sense?”
And thus began my latest project.
My friend Marty recently landed a faculty job in the theater department at Iowa Western Community College. He’d already directed something for them, but this next production would be the first thing he’s directed for them since coming on staff. Medea was already chosen to be part of their season, but he wanted to put his own spin on it. So he sends me an email.
Slowly it came back to us both that the reason the whole thing seemed familiar was that I’d been struggling with the Medea legend - the whole Medea legend, Jason and the Argonauts and the quest for the Golden Fleece, and everything that happened after the child killings - for a number of years. 2009 will make it year twenty. Which means I’d been kicking the thing around since, we were both in grad school together.
The first full draft I could find was dated August of 1989. The last serious stab I took at the thing was June of 1996, not long after my first production in Minneapolis, “Heaven and Home.”
Note to self at the time, Medea is not the best thing to be working on while dating. Learned that one the hard way.
And yet, now, during the latest Medea resurrection, is the time I chose to sign up with one of those online screening services. This should be interesting.
“What do you do?”
“I write plays.”
“Really? Wow. What are you working on right now?”
“Medea”
“Gee, look at the time...”
Shameless Plug of the Day - Urban Samurai - Halfway Home
Seen all the holiday shows already? All set to start seeing a new year of theater? Urban Samurai has you covered.
A shout-out to Urban Samurai Productions and their latest offering, the dysfunctional family comedy "Halfway Home" - which opens this weekend.
(My first fleeting thought, "Really? They made a play out of an obscure novel by Paul Monette?" But I only imagined an adaptation until I read the play description and realized it was indeed a completely different beast)
What it's actually about... "A tour guide can't take it any more and has a breakdown while her bus is caught in New York City traffic with a load of non English speaking tourists from South Yemen. Susan runs from the bus, gun in hand, and hails a cab. Her family, who hasn't heard from her in ten years, receives a cryptic telegram: "Dire straights. Must lie low. Driving in on Saturday." Susan arrives with the cheerfully loony cab driver for a reunion with her mother, sisters, neighbors and childhood chums. Before long, she realizes that life in the city was sane compared to being among these characters."
Last April, I got the chance to see "American Apathy" - a scathing but very funny look at... well, come to think of it, the consumer society and economy that's currently coming unglued all around us. Urban Samurai was ahead of the curve on that one (Review here) - and it was just tapped as one of City Pages' Top 10 Theater productions for 2008. (And now the Samurai are looking to be the first out of the gate for the 2009 lists, so why not tag along?)
Performances start tonight, January 2nd and run through January 18, 2009. Thursdays thru Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2pm at the Sabes Jewish Community Center - 4330 Cedar Lake Road South in St. Louis Park, MN.
Urban Samurai is one of many scrappy smaller theater companies in town that tackle new plays, and unusual subject matter, sometimes both at once (and as a working playwright, I like to encourage that whenever I can). Sometimes they also let their hair down - as evidenced by their wildly popular Fringe Festival offering in 2008 "Musical - The Musical." So if you saw that, and want to see what else they do, this is a comedy without the music this time.
Tickets available online, and they're cheaper if you go that rate - visit www.urbansamuraipro.com. Tickets are $14 online, or $16 at the door. Student and Senior discount is $10 online, $12 at the door.
More information on the production, including directions and the like, at www.urbansamuraipro.com
A shout-out to Urban Samurai Productions and their latest offering, the dysfunctional family comedy "Halfway Home" - which opens this weekend.
(My first fleeting thought, "Really? They made a play out of an obscure novel by Paul Monette?" But I only imagined an adaptation until I read the play description and realized it was indeed a completely different beast)
What it's actually about... "A tour guide can't take it any more and has a breakdown while her bus is caught in New York City traffic with a load of non English speaking tourists from South Yemen. Susan runs from the bus, gun in hand, and hails a cab. Her family, who hasn't heard from her in ten years, receives a cryptic telegram: "Dire straights. Must lie low. Driving in on Saturday." Susan arrives with the cheerfully loony cab driver for a reunion with her mother, sisters, neighbors and childhood chums. Before long, she realizes that life in the city was sane compared to being among these characters."
Last April, I got the chance to see "American Apathy" - a scathing but very funny look at... well, come to think of it, the consumer society and economy that's currently coming unglued all around us. Urban Samurai was ahead of the curve on that one (Review here) - and it was just tapped as one of City Pages' Top 10 Theater productions for 2008. (And now the Samurai are looking to be the first out of the gate for the 2009 lists, so why not tag along?)
Performances start tonight, January 2nd and run through January 18, 2009. Thursdays thru Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2pm at the Sabes Jewish Community Center - 4330 Cedar Lake Road South in St. Louis Park, MN.
Urban Samurai is one of many scrappy smaller theater companies in town that tackle new plays, and unusual subject matter, sometimes both at once (and as a working playwright, I like to encourage that whenever I can). Sometimes they also let their hair down - as evidenced by their wildly popular Fringe Festival offering in 2008 "Musical - The Musical." So if you saw that, and want to see what else they do, this is a comedy without the music this time.
Tickets available online, and they're cheaper if you go that rate - visit www.urbansamuraipro.com. Tickets are $14 online, or $16 at the door. Student and Senior discount is $10 online, $12 at the door.
More information on the production, including directions and the like, at www.urbansamuraipro.com
Thursday, January 01, 2009
It seems like happiness is just a thing called...
Joe.
I’ve been avoiding writing this.
For over three months.
Just like I avoided writing the final monologue in my play “Leave” even though I knew for a couple of days exactly what it was going to be. That time I was unconsciously trying to avoid the death of a fictional character. This time it’s real.
It’s not new. I got word that my friend Joe had died exactly two weeks after the last performance of “Leave” at the Bryant Lake Bowl packed up and the cast and crew drove back to Morris. In fact, they'd laid him to rest the day after closing night.
A co-worker on my day job ran across a notice of his death in a professional e-newsletter. No real details. He was gone. People missed him. A long list of the good things he’d done with his life. He was two years younger than me.
It took me another month to find some words to scribble on a piece of paper and put in the mail to his partner. It still ended up sounding like every other condolence card or letter a person gets - I’m so sorry, he was great, I know you must be hurting, hopefully your loved ones and your memories of him are giving you some comfort, call if there’s anything at all I can do to help. Words never seem so limp as when they’re supposed to be important and helpful.
Joe and I had been moving in different circles for a number of years. He had gotten out of the business of theater and into the more practical side of the non-profit world, working at fundraising to make things better for living creatures of both the human and animal variety. And of course he was very good at what he did, and did it with his signature sense of humor. Me, I stayed in theater.
But Joe was a big part of my life when I first moved to Minneapolis after grad school.
He was a big part of the reason I even moved to Minneapolis after grad school.
He was the first genuinely friendly face I ran into on my spring break scouting trip my last year of school. I was trying to figure out if Minneapolis was the kind of theater town I wanted to set down roots in for a while. I visited a bunch of different theater companies large and small, trying to get the lay of the land. I walked into this one theater office, and there Joe was. We hit it off immediately. Not only was he full of useful information, he was a real boost for my flagging energy and determination, wandering around a strange city by myself. I kept on looking. We met for dinner. One thing led to another, and the movie screen fades to black at this moment...
Phone calls were exchanged, pieces of mail went back and forth (these were the days before everyone had email, or internet access, or theaters had websites).
Joe helped me find the apartment which I still live in.
Joe helped me (and my Mom) move me into the place.
When my new theater job had me stuck in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and I missed the holiday with the family for the first (and thus far only) time in my life, Joe engineered an orphan’s Thanksgiving of various friends where we all got together, ate, and watched the Turkey Day marathon of cheesy movies courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
One small way I repaid him for all this was when an actor friend had connections to the Mystery Science Theater crowd and was able to get a private tour of the Best Brains studio where they filmed the show. Of course, the first and only person I thought of to tag along was Joe. We were kids again, wide-eyed, loving wandering every inch of that industrial park studio space. There’s even a photo somewhere (in a pile that needs digging through, formed in the days before a laptop held electronic backups of all my pictures) of Joe and me in the prop shop, holding up the puppets Tom Servo and Crow, enormous grins on our faces.
Looking back, a chunk of the very first play I had produced in Minneapolis, “Heaven and Home,” has Joe’s stamp all over it, though he never saw it, or to my knowledge never read it. One of the first monologues I had published in an anthology is from that play, and though it was written for a straight female character talking about the relationship she has with her straight male long-term boyfriend, it’s essentially about Joe. Someone asks if the guy has ever said, “I love you...”
“It's just -- words. Three words. They don't mean anything anymore. No one believes them anymore. I'm not even sure I'd believe them if he said them. I probably wouldn't.
It's funny, but it's easier to believe God loves me. Because I can't see Him. He's not standing right in front of me. He's not sitting across the kitchen table waiting for His newspaper, wondering why I'm out of milk, waiting for me to leave for church so He can play basketball and not feel guilty. It's easy to believe God loves me. He doesn't have to say it. Someone else tells me and I take it on faith. I read it. I don't have to face Him. Look in His eyes and wonder.
Vince -- it's things he does, things I do. He's an easy movie rental. He'll stay up all night just talking, holding me in bed. I can't remember the last person I felt comfortable enough to talk with in bed. Laugh with in bed.
He shows me. I believe he loves me. Even though we both scrupulously avoid saying it.
Is it enough for me?
(pause)
It's more than I've had in a very long time.
And no. It's not enough.”
Shortly after I moved to Minneapolis, Joe met the guy would would become his partner in life for the next seventeen years and settled down. They only moved a handful of blocks away from me. But we rarely saw each other. I recall being invited to a holiday party once. There were a few Christmas cards. We unexpectedly ran into one another once at a local neighborhood coffee shop that was off the beaten path for both of us. Not surprisingly, we both liked the atmosphere of the place and so it kept us driving the extra few blocks to return, though coffee shops are hardly in short supply, and closer, elsewhere. He even applied for a position at one of my day jobs a few years back. Because of our history, I absented my self from the interviewing process. He ended up taking a job elsewhere. We never saw each other. Of course now I’m wishing we had, even briefly.
His old apartment, on the corner of the first floor of a squat yellow brick building, is still there, just four blocks away from mine. I can’t help but drive or walk past it constantly in my travels. He hasn’t lived in it, and I haven’t set foot in it, in almost twenty years now, but I know the layout of that apartment like the back of my hand. Every room has a vivid memory.
Those were memories that we only shared with one another. And now he’s gone. So they’re mine to carry.
Without the other person around, memories start to feel more and more like stories I’m telling. Like maybe they didn’t really happen. But they’re a big part of who I am. So I’ll do my best to keep them sharp.
Joe was good people. He had that uncanny ability not just to make you laugh, but to make you feel better about whatever ridiculous situation in which you found yourself. Things were often serious, but not to be taken too seriously. It was laughter as encouragement, as a recharge for the personal batteries. That’s a gift. I’m glad he shared it with me. I’ll try to share it in my own way with others as best I can.
I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of months, “Man, it’s such a shame Joe’s gone. He would have really loved this.” Voting for Obama, seeing Obama elected, watching Obama build a new government, the movie “Milk” (Joe introduced me to the Uptown Theater), the latest DVD collection issued by the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 for their 20th anniversary. Those things in particular, but hell, let’s face it, everything. Joe loved life, and laughing, and justice.
Every Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD has been pulled off my shelf and I’ve been watching them, one right after the other, the last several weeks. Laughing. Thinking of Joe.
There are many variations on this saying that keeps rolling into my head, the most basic being, “Every day is a good day.” (Meaning, every day you open your eyes and you have another rotation of the earth to enjoy, that’s a damn good start. And more than many people get.)
So take 2009 by the horns, everybody, and make the most of it.
And as they frequently said in that quirky, bewildering old John Irving novel “The Hotel New Hampshire” -
Keep passing the open windows.
I’ve been avoiding writing this.
For over three months.
Just like I avoided writing the final monologue in my play “Leave” even though I knew for a couple of days exactly what it was going to be. That time I was unconsciously trying to avoid the death of a fictional character. This time it’s real.
It’s not new. I got word that my friend Joe had died exactly two weeks after the last performance of “Leave” at the Bryant Lake Bowl packed up and the cast and crew drove back to Morris. In fact, they'd laid him to rest the day after closing night.
A co-worker on my day job ran across a notice of his death in a professional e-newsletter. No real details. He was gone. People missed him. A long list of the good things he’d done with his life. He was two years younger than me.
It took me another month to find some words to scribble on a piece of paper and put in the mail to his partner. It still ended up sounding like every other condolence card or letter a person gets - I’m so sorry, he was great, I know you must be hurting, hopefully your loved ones and your memories of him are giving you some comfort, call if there’s anything at all I can do to help. Words never seem so limp as when they’re supposed to be important and helpful.
Joe and I had been moving in different circles for a number of years. He had gotten out of the business of theater and into the more practical side of the non-profit world, working at fundraising to make things better for living creatures of both the human and animal variety. And of course he was very good at what he did, and did it with his signature sense of humor. Me, I stayed in theater.
But Joe was a big part of my life when I first moved to Minneapolis after grad school.
He was a big part of the reason I even moved to Minneapolis after grad school.
He was the first genuinely friendly face I ran into on my spring break scouting trip my last year of school. I was trying to figure out if Minneapolis was the kind of theater town I wanted to set down roots in for a while. I visited a bunch of different theater companies large and small, trying to get the lay of the land. I walked into this one theater office, and there Joe was. We hit it off immediately. Not only was he full of useful information, he was a real boost for my flagging energy and determination, wandering around a strange city by myself. I kept on looking. We met for dinner. One thing led to another, and the movie screen fades to black at this moment...
Phone calls were exchanged, pieces of mail went back and forth (these were the days before everyone had email, or internet access, or theaters had websites).
Joe helped me find the apartment which I still live in.
Joe helped me (and my Mom) move me into the place.
When my new theater job had me stuck in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and I missed the holiday with the family for the first (and thus far only) time in my life, Joe engineered an orphan’s Thanksgiving of various friends where we all got together, ate, and watched the Turkey Day marathon of cheesy movies courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
One small way I repaid him for all this was when an actor friend had connections to the Mystery Science Theater crowd and was able to get a private tour of the Best Brains studio where they filmed the show. Of course, the first and only person I thought of to tag along was Joe. We were kids again, wide-eyed, loving wandering every inch of that industrial park studio space. There’s even a photo somewhere (in a pile that needs digging through, formed in the days before a laptop held electronic backups of all my pictures) of Joe and me in the prop shop, holding up the puppets Tom Servo and Crow, enormous grins on our faces.
Looking back, a chunk of the very first play I had produced in Minneapolis, “Heaven and Home,” has Joe’s stamp all over it, though he never saw it, or to my knowledge never read it. One of the first monologues I had published in an anthology is from that play, and though it was written for a straight female character talking about the relationship she has with her straight male long-term boyfriend, it’s essentially about Joe. Someone asks if the guy has ever said, “I love you...”
“It's just -- words. Three words. They don't mean anything anymore. No one believes them anymore. I'm not even sure I'd believe them if he said them. I probably wouldn't.
It's funny, but it's easier to believe God loves me. Because I can't see Him. He's not standing right in front of me. He's not sitting across the kitchen table waiting for His newspaper, wondering why I'm out of milk, waiting for me to leave for church so He can play basketball and not feel guilty. It's easy to believe God loves me. He doesn't have to say it. Someone else tells me and I take it on faith. I read it. I don't have to face Him. Look in His eyes and wonder.
Vince -- it's things he does, things I do. He's an easy movie rental. He'll stay up all night just talking, holding me in bed. I can't remember the last person I felt comfortable enough to talk with in bed. Laugh with in bed.
He shows me. I believe he loves me. Even though we both scrupulously avoid saying it.
Is it enough for me?
(pause)
It's more than I've had in a very long time.
And no. It's not enough.”
Shortly after I moved to Minneapolis, Joe met the guy would would become his partner in life for the next seventeen years and settled down. They only moved a handful of blocks away from me. But we rarely saw each other. I recall being invited to a holiday party once. There were a few Christmas cards. We unexpectedly ran into one another once at a local neighborhood coffee shop that was off the beaten path for both of us. Not surprisingly, we both liked the atmosphere of the place and so it kept us driving the extra few blocks to return, though coffee shops are hardly in short supply, and closer, elsewhere. He even applied for a position at one of my day jobs a few years back. Because of our history, I absented my self from the interviewing process. He ended up taking a job elsewhere. We never saw each other. Of course now I’m wishing we had, even briefly.
His old apartment, on the corner of the first floor of a squat yellow brick building, is still there, just four blocks away from mine. I can’t help but drive or walk past it constantly in my travels. He hasn’t lived in it, and I haven’t set foot in it, in almost twenty years now, but I know the layout of that apartment like the back of my hand. Every room has a vivid memory.
Those were memories that we only shared with one another. And now he’s gone. So they’re mine to carry.
Without the other person around, memories start to feel more and more like stories I’m telling. Like maybe they didn’t really happen. But they’re a big part of who I am. So I’ll do my best to keep them sharp.
Joe was good people. He had that uncanny ability not just to make you laugh, but to make you feel better about whatever ridiculous situation in which you found yourself. Things were often serious, but not to be taken too seriously. It was laughter as encouragement, as a recharge for the personal batteries. That’s a gift. I’m glad he shared it with me. I’ll try to share it in my own way with others as best I can.
I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of months, “Man, it’s such a shame Joe’s gone. He would have really loved this.” Voting for Obama, seeing Obama elected, watching Obama build a new government, the movie “Milk” (Joe introduced me to the Uptown Theater), the latest DVD collection issued by the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 for their 20th anniversary. Those things in particular, but hell, let’s face it, everything. Joe loved life, and laughing, and justice.
Every Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD has been pulled off my shelf and I’ve been watching them, one right after the other, the last several weeks. Laughing. Thinking of Joe.
There are many variations on this saying that keeps rolling into my head, the most basic being, “Every day is a good day.” (Meaning, every day you open your eyes and you have another rotation of the earth to enjoy, that’s a damn good start. And more than many people get.)
So take 2009 by the horns, everybody, and make the most of it.
And as they frequently said in that quirky, bewildering old John Irving novel “The Hotel New Hampshire” -
Keep passing the open windows.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Vote, but Let's Be Careful Out There
I've got to hand it to the internet. It makes finding information on the candidates pretty handy sometimes.
I don't know about you but when I see a list of unfamiliar names for things like judge and school board and even soil and water supervisor, I start to get a little nervous.
So the day before, though I always mean to do it earlier, I start poking around the League of Women Voters website, and the ones for the local papers, to see what info they've gathered on the people running for office. The big offices are kind of inescapable on the news and in the ads. And some of the smaller races sometimes also have print ads in magazines or papers I frequently pick up, and those are useful. Sometimes ads from an organization I trust or support give a rundown of who they recommend, and that's a place to start.
But to be sure I'm not putting a creationist or a gay basher in charge of children or defendants in a court, I tend to do a little more digging.
As a son of two ordained ministers, I feel bad that religion has become such a convenient whipping boy in the political process, and essentially ends up being shorthand for "crazy" for some people. Still, when a candidate for judge says things like a judge should "fear God and serve the people," I start to wonder myself. On the surface, it seems like a perfectly legitimate statement. Shouldn't make me nervous. But since a lot of people lately tend to use God as a bludgeon to separate people into groups of "like me" or "not like me," "good" or "bad," I think I'd prefer my judge to stick to the laws on the books - are they just or unjust, fair or unfair, being applied consistently, or not. Obviously one's beliefs influence those kind of calls. And they still make people put their hand on a Bible and swear an oath before they give testimony. I get that. I take my religious beliefs into the voting booth with me. Can't help it. Part of who I am. But if I'm honest, I'm more comfortable if a judge keeps God out of it. That goes for any candidate. I'm looking to see if I think they can do the job. Do they have the background, education, experience? Do they seem like a good, fair-minded person, whether they believe the things I do or not? Do I feel like power is well-invested in this person's hands?
I'd nearly finished my "homework assignment" to myself when I ran across a contested race in Soil and Water Supervisors. One of the candidate profiles in particular caught my attention. The profiles on this one site have a section where they can make a statement under the heading "Most Important Issue." So, for Soil and Water Supervisor, this candidate decided to lead off with the following (his spelling and punctuation, by the way, not my doing. Earlier, he misspelled college as collage, first red flag, though an honest mistake). So. Soil and Water. Most Important Issue...
"I strongly agree that a marriage should be only between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of same sex marriages."
(Um, OK. What the heck does that have to do with soil and water?)
"I strongly agree that all MN residence should have affordable health insurance. even if it means new or added cost to businesses."
(Same note)
"I strongly agree that we dont need anymore increase in taxes, we are all ready being taxed to death."
(Same note, though I suppose some of those taxes will go to soil and water)
"I strongly agree that an increase of funding should be put towards educating our children in grade k - 12."
(Same note)
"I strongly agree funding should be allocated toward natural resources conservation."
(Ah, soil and water. There you are!)
Now, this guy had run unsuccessfully in the past for state senator and for mayor (twice), so maybe he was just getting it out of his system, but seriously...?
Gay marriage? Really?
I mean, thank you. You made it ridiculously easy to decide, "OK, anybody but this guy." But wow.
So, vote.
Everybody.
By all means vote.
You can find your polling place at any number of websites like here and here, and many candidate and political party websites, as well as newspaper websites, have handy "find your polling place" functions - just give them a zip code and street number and off you go.
We have same day registration if need be, just read up on what you'll need to bring with you (aside from a book to read or movie to watch or music to listen to on your headphones - the lines will be long, folks, but worth the wait).
Just make sure you know what you're getting into.
And again I say, please Vote.
We only get one shot every four years to choose the next leader of the free world. Don't waste it. People bled and died so we wouldn't have to. The transfer of power in this country is staggeringly smooth compared to dozens of other places all over the planet. Seems obscene not to do all you can.
Vote.
I don't know about you but when I see a list of unfamiliar names for things like judge and school board and even soil and water supervisor, I start to get a little nervous.
So the day before, though I always mean to do it earlier, I start poking around the League of Women Voters website, and the ones for the local papers, to see what info they've gathered on the people running for office. The big offices are kind of inescapable on the news and in the ads. And some of the smaller races sometimes also have print ads in magazines or papers I frequently pick up, and those are useful. Sometimes ads from an organization I trust or support give a rundown of who they recommend, and that's a place to start.
But to be sure I'm not putting a creationist or a gay basher in charge of children or defendants in a court, I tend to do a little more digging.
As a son of two ordained ministers, I feel bad that religion has become such a convenient whipping boy in the political process, and essentially ends up being shorthand for "crazy" for some people. Still, when a candidate for judge says things like a judge should "fear God and serve the people," I start to wonder myself. On the surface, it seems like a perfectly legitimate statement. Shouldn't make me nervous. But since a lot of people lately tend to use God as a bludgeon to separate people into groups of "like me" or "not like me," "good" or "bad," I think I'd prefer my judge to stick to the laws on the books - are they just or unjust, fair or unfair, being applied consistently, or not. Obviously one's beliefs influence those kind of calls. And they still make people put their hand on a Bible and swear an oath before they give testimony. I get that. I take my religious beliefs into the voting booth with me. Can't help it. Part of who I am. But if I'm honest, I'm more comfortable if a judge keeps God out of it. That goes for any candidate. I'm looking to see if I think they can do the job. Do they have the background, education, experience? Do they seem like a good, fair-minded person, whether they believe the things I do or not? Do I feel like power is well-invested in this person's hands?
I'd nearly finished my "homework assignment" to myself when I ran across a contested race in Soil and Water Supervisors. One of the candidate profiles in particular caught my attention. The profiles on this one site have a section where they can make a statement under the heading "Most Important Issue." So, for Soil and Water Supervisor, this candidate decided to lead off with the following (his spelling and punctuation, by the way, not my doing. Earlier, he misspelled college as collage, first red flag, though an honest mistake). So. Soil and Water. Most Important Issue...
"I strongly agree that a marriage should be only between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of same sex marriages."
(Um, OK. What the heck does that have to do with soil and water?)
"I strongly agree that all MN residence should have affordable health insurance. even if it means new or added cost to businesses."
(Same note)
"I strongly agree that we dont need anymore increase in taxes, we are all ready being taxed to death."
(Same note, though I suppose some of those taxes will go to soil and water)
"I strongly agree that an increase of funding should be put towards educating our children in grade k - 12."
(Same note)
"I strongly agree funding should be allocated toward natural resources conservation."
(Ah, soil and water. There you are!)
Now, this guy had run unsuccessfully in the past for state senator and for mayor (twice), so maybe he was just getting it out of his system, but seriously...?
Gay marriage? Really?
I mean, thank you. You made it ridiculously easy to decide, "OK, anybody but this guy." But wow.
So, vote.
Everybody.
By all means vote.
You can find your polling place at any number of websites like here and here, and many candidate and political party websites, as well as newspaper websites, have handy "find your polling place" functions - just give them a zip code and street number and off you go.
We have same day registration if need be, just read up on what you'll need to bring with you (aside from a book to read or movie to watch or music to listen to on your headphones - the lines will be long, folks, but worth the wait).
Just make sure you know what you're getting into.
And again I say, please Vote.
We only get one shot every four years to choose the next leader of the free world. Don't waste it. People bled and died so we wouldn't have to. The transfer of power in this country is staggeringly smooth compared to dozens of other places all over the planet. Seems obscene not to do all you can.
Vote.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Shameless Plug of the Day - My play Dog Tag opens in Chicago
Just in case you have friends in the Chicago area, I thought I'd let everyone know that the year of the dog for my friend and co-writer Anne Bertram and I continues.
"Dog Tag," our short piece that started January in Baton Rouge, and then spent August here in Minneapolis as part of the Fringe Festival has been picked up by Appetite Theatre in Chicago as part of their short play showcase Bruschetta, running Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm from October 17 to November 1, 2008.
The plays are being performed at Act One Studios, 640 North LaSalle, Suite 535
$15 suggested donation, cash or check
Reservations 312.787.9384
Details can be found at www.appetitetheatre.com
More on "Dog Tag" (including a little video clip) can be found here and here
Spread the word if you know anyone down there who might be interested.
Thanks.
"Dog Tag," our short piece that started January in Baton Rouge, and then spent August here in Minneapolis as part of the Fringe Festival has been picked up by Appetite Theatre in Chicago as part of their short play showcase Bruschetta, running Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm from October 17 to November 1, 2008.
The plays are being performed at Act One Studios, 640 North LaSalle, Suite 535
$15 suggested donation, cash or check
Reservations 312.787.9384
Details can be found at www.appetitetheatre.com
More on "Dog Tag" (including a little video clip) can be found here and here
Spread the word if you know anyone down there who might be interested.
Thanks.
Call for Suggestions for 24 Hour Play Ballot
Put on your thinking caps and send me your suggestions.
Theatre Unbound’s 24 Hour Play Project is February 7, 2009
But before the plays can be written, rehearsed and performed all within 24 Hours, we need to know what the plays will be about.
So we solicit theater folk for ideas for the “ingredients” for the six ten minute plays which will result.
The categories are, as always…
- an object
- an emotion
- a quote or line of dialogue
- another random element – such as a stage direction, a color, an animal, a particular word, a song, etc.
Suggest something for any or all categories, and just post a reply here on Callboard.
I’ll collect the results and pass them on to the powers that be at Unbound. Last year, we ended up with so many suggestions, they had to whittle them down quite a bit just to make the online ballot manageable.
Ah, the online ballot. Once the suggestions are compiled, the final ballot of choices will be posted online so that the general public, all of us included of course, can vote for their favorites.
The winning ingredients will be revealed to the writers on the night of the writing, February 6, 2009. And off they go…
Obviously, the sooner you get your suggestions in, the better. I still have to discover the cutoff date for this part of the process from the Unbounders. But I figured I’d get the ball rolling, since it’s election time. That’s our trigger to get started every year.
Oh, and don’t forget the vote, people. Not for this, although, yes, vote for this, too. But polls don’t vote, people do. We can only hope to get the result we want if we all actually get our butts to the polls. So vote November 4th, then say a prayer, cross your fingers, light a candle, whatever things you do after actually voting to try and sway the national will your way.
End of PSA.
Type up those ingredients and email them my way.
My primary email is mail AT matthewaeverett DOT com
Since my spam filter is selectively mischievous, it’s also a good idea just to copy the message to browder268 AT yahoo DOT com as well, just to be on the safe side.
Thanks.
Theatre Unbound’s 24 Hour Play Project is February 7, 2009
But before the plays can be written, rehearsed and performed all within 24 Hours, we need to know what the plays will be about.
So we solicit theater folk for ideas for the “ingredients” for the six ten minute plays which will result.
The categories are, as always…
- an object
- an emotion
- a quote or line of dialogue
- another random element – such as a stage direction, a color, an animal, a particular word, a song, etc.
Suggest something for any or all categories, and just post a reply here on Callboard.
I’ll collect the results and pass them on to the powers that be at Unbound. Last year, we ended up with so many suggestions, they had to whittle them down quite a bit just to make the online ballot manageable.
Ah, the online ballot. Once the suggestions are compiled, the final ballot of choices will be posted online so that the general public, all of us included of course, can vote for their favorites.
The winning ingredients will be revealed to the writers on the night of the writing, February 6, 2009. And off they go…
Obviously, the sooner you get your suggestions in, the better. I still have to discover the cutoff date for this part of the process from the Unbounders. But I figured I’d get the ball rolling, since it’s election time. That’s our trigger to get started every year.
Oh, and don’t forget the vote, people. Not for this, although, yes, vote for this, too. But polls don’t vote, people do. We can only hope to get the result we want if we all actually get our butts to the polls. So vote November 4th, then say a prayer, cross your fingers, light a candle, whatever things you do after actually voting to try and sway the national will your way.
End of PSA.
Type up those ingredients and email them my way.
My primary email is mail AT matthewaeverett DOT com
Since my spam filter is selectively mischievous, it’s also a good idea just to copy the message to browder268 AT yahoo DOT com as well, just to be on the safe side.
Thanks.
Call for Writers for upcoming 24 Hour Play Project on February 6 & 7, 2009
I’m helping Theatre Unbound out again as volunteer playwright wrangler for their 24 Hour Play Project. So I thought I'd put out a general call to see if there were interested writers among the readership...
Theatre Unbound will be presenting another 24 Hour Play Project on February 7, 2009.
This is one of the main fundraising events for the company for the year and it's always a lot of fun.
We need playwrights with availability from 9pm Friday, February 6th until 6am Saturday, February 7th.
For those who are new:
The 24 Hour Play Project is exhilarating! (and perhaps exhausting, and other ex words I will leave to your imagination)
Friday night twelve playwrights are locked into a space, paired up and given "ingredients" to write a 10 minute play.
These "ingredients" usually consist of an object, an emotion, a quote or line of dialogue, and something else random.
These four things will be common to all the plays, but what the writers choose to do with them from there is up to them.
(Oh and snacks. Let us not forget the snacks - and coffee, and other caffeinated beverages :)
Cast size and composition - number and gender of actors - will also be assigned before the writing starts.
The next morning, six directors come in to read and analyze scripts.
The scripts are cast and rehearsed that morning and afternoon and finally presented that evening.
Phew!!
The 24 Hour Play Project will be presented in conjunction with the Theatre Unbound annual Benefit and Silent Auction at Theatre Unbound’s new home in The Neighborhood House of the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center, 179 Robie Street East, St. Paul, MN 55107.
Playwrights will receive free admittance to the event, plus a discount pass to give to a guest.
This is obviously a charity event, so everyone will be working out of the goodness of their hearts - but there will be complimentary food and libation at the event for your enjoyment.
More details for the potential writers about the process itself...
To those of you who’ve done this before, much will be familiar.
But we’re also continuing to experiment with the formula a bit.
We’ll be pairing the teams again ahead of time like we have the past two years, as it seemed very helpful.
As in the past, it’s six teams of two writers each. Once we get initial responses from those who are interested in participating as playwrights, we’ll let people choose their partners up front, rather than leave it to the laws of chance on the night of the writing session.
I’ll send out a list of the participating writers to each of the interested writers individually, and then you can respond to me with your top three preferences for partners (or if you just want to leave it up to us to pair you, that’s fine, too).
All teams will still include at least one female writer (in some cases both, since the majority of the writers we try to recruit will be women in the first place - this is Theatre Unbound, after all :) But all writers - male, female and... however you care to define yourself, are welcome.
We’re also soliciting ideas again this year (like the past two years) for the ingredients to be included in the plays from a cross section of theater folk (in fact, I'll be blogging about that, too, in just another minute). We got so many suggestions last year that after I passed them on to the powers that be at Unbound, they had to whittle the choices down a bit to make the ballot manageable.
The ballot will then be posted online through which the general public, us included, can vote for their favorites. I'll post more details on the voting window, when and for how long it goes live online, etc., once they get that hammered out.
The winning ingredients will be revealed to the writers on the night they are to write the plays.
(Though if you're a writer, you can certainly view the ballot and do whatever homework you like in advance, if you wish)
Feel like joining the experiment...?
Email me if you're interested and available to participate as a writer on those dates.
My primary email is mail AT matthewaeverett DOT com
Since my spam filter is selectively mischievous, it's also a good idea just to copy the message to browder268 AT yahoo DOT com as well, just to be on the safe side.
Thanks.
I've done a few of these 24 Hour Play Projects in the past myself. Examples of ideas that I've come up with in the middle of the night with fellow writers Anne Bertram, Carol Critchley, Holly Davis, and Chris Kidder can be seen here, here, here, here, here, and here
Also, we've started publishing collections of the final scripts as an additional fundraiser for Theatre Unbound, for those writers who want to pitch their scripts in for the cause beyond the 24 Hour weekend. You can check out Volume 1 here.
Theatre Unbound will be presenting another 24 Hour Play Project on February 7, 2009.
This is one of the main fundraising events for the company for the year and it's always a lot of fun.
We need playwrights with availability from 9pm Friday, February 6th until 6am Saturday, February 7th.
For those who are new:
The 24 Hour Play Project is exhilarating! (and perhaps exhausting, and other ex words I will leave to your imagination)
Friday night twelve playwrights are locked into a space, paired up and given "ingredients" to write a 10 minute play.
These "ingredients" usually consist of an object, an emotion, a quote or line of dialogue, and something else random.
These four things will be common to all the plays, but what the writers choose to do with them from there is up to them.
(Oh and snacks. Let us not forget the snacks - and coffee, and other caffeinated beverages :)
Cast size and composition - number and gender of actors - will also be assigned before the writing starts.
The next morning, six directors come in to read and analyze scripts.
The scripts are cast and rehearsed that morning and afternoon and finally presented that evening.
Phew!!
The 24 Hour Play Project will be presented in conjunction with the Theatre Unbound annual Benefit and Silent Auction at Theatre Unbound’s new home in The Neighborhood House of the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center, 179 Robie Street East, St. Paul, MN 55107.
Playwrights will receive free admittance to the event, plus a discount pass to give to a guest.
This is obviously a charity event, so everyone will be working out of the goodness of their hearts - but there will be complimentary food and libation at the event for your enjoyment.
More details for the potential writers about the process itself...
To those of you who’ve done this before, much will be familiar.
But we’re also continuing to experiment with the formula a bit.
We’ll be pairing the teams again ahead of time like we have the past two years, as it seemed very helpful.
As in the past, it’s six teams of two writers each. Once we get initial responses from those who are interested in participating as playwrights, we’ll let people choose their partners up front, rather than leave it to the laws of chance on the night of the writing session.
I’ll send out a list of the participating writers to each of the interested writers individually, and then you can respond to me with your top three preferences for partners (or if you just want to leave it up to us to pair you, that’s fine, too).
All teams will still include at least one female writer (in some cases both, since the majority of the writers we try to recruit will be women in the first place - this is Theatre Unbound, after all :) But all writers - male, female and... however you care to define yourself, are welcome.
We’re also soliciting ideas again this year (like the past two years) for the ingredients to be included in the plays from a cross section of theater folk (in fact, I'll be blogging about that, too, in just another minute). We got so many suggestions last year that after I passed them on to the powers that be at Unbound, they had to whittle the choices down a bit to make the ballot manageable.
The ballot will then be posted online through which the general public, us included, can vote for their favorites. I'll post more details on the voting window, when and for how long it goes live online, etc., once they get that hammered out.
The winning ingredients will be revealed to the writers on the night they are to write the plays.
(Though if you're a writer, you can certainly view the ballot and do whatever homework you like in advance, if you wish)
Feel like joining the experiment...?
Email me if you're interested and available to participate as a writer on those dates.
My primary email is mail AT matthewaeverett DOT com
Since my spam filter is selectively mischievous, it's also a good idea just to copy the message to browder268 AT yahoo DOT com as well, just to be on the safe side.
Thanks.
I've done a few of these 24 Hour Play Projects in the past myself. Examples of ideas that I've come up with in the middle of the night with fellow writers Anne Bertram, Carol Critchley, Holly Davis, and Chris Kidder can be seen here, here, here, here, here, and here
Also, we've started publishing collections of the final scripts as an additional fundraiser for Theatre Unbound, for those writers who want to pitch their scripts in for the cause beyond the 24 Hour weekend. You can check out Volume 1 here.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Shameless Plug of the Day - The Chairs - Pangea World Theater
Another plea from another of the many great smaller theater companies around town, another production among the many that is heading into its final weekend of performances starting tonight that I thought deserved a special nod, given the caliber of the people involved. A very easy one to recommend. In my email box was the following...
"The Chairs" is a wonderful Pangea production! Richard and Claudia are extraordinary. It's a great treat to watch them at work in the intimacy of the Pangea studio. Please forward this information about "The Chairs" far and wide...
(But you don't have to just take their word - or mine - for it. There's a couple of reviews posted online that have already weighed in - here and here, if you need more input for your decision. Meanwhile, here are the basics...)
Pangea World Theater presents
"The Chairs" by Eugene Ionesco
In a lighthouse on the edge of civilization an old man and an old woman are waiting.
The old man is waiting to deliver a message to his audience.
The old man is ready to reveal all. Who he really is . . .what life really means . .
.what he should really have become.
What will his message be?
In this great absurdist masterpiece by Eugene Ionesco, "The Chairs" features Twin Cities favorites, Richard Ooms and Claudia Wilkens. It is a must see show for anyone who enjoys high quality theater with an absurd comic flavor.
Directed by Dipankar Mukherjee
Featuring Richard Ooms, Claudia Wilkens and Alberto Panelli
Dates: October 2 - 19, Thursdays through Sundays
Time: 7: 30 p.m.
Venue: Pangea World Theater Studio
711 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, 55408
Tickets: $15, $10 students/seniors
Box Office Number: 612-203-1088
www.pangeaworldtheater.org
**************************************************************
Pangea's been a little hard for me to pin down recently - at least online (I always seemed to run across information on a show too late to catch it) - but it looks like they've rebooted their website - www.pangeaworldtheater.org - with a new, cleaner look, and a good store of information on upcoming productions from now through February, including a couple of visiting productions and a revisiting of a classic of their own...
I-Land - taking place over at Intermedia Arts, November 20-22, 2008
Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - February 26 - 28, 2009
Conference of the Birds - March 12 - April 5, 2009
So if you can't catch them this time around, there are several other chances coming up as well. Look them over, find one you like, and mark your calendar.
"The Chairs" is a wonderful Pangea production! Richard and Claudia are extraordinary. It's a great treat to watch them at work in the intimacy of the Pangea studio. Please forward this information about "The Chairs" far and wide...
(But you don't have to just take their word - or mine - for it. There's a couple of reviews posted online that have already weighed in - here and here, if you need more input for your decision. Meanwhile, here are the basics...)
Pangea World Theater presents
"The Chairs" by Eugene Ionesco
In a lighthouse on the edge of civilization an old man and an old woman are waiting.
The old man is waiting to deliver a message to his audience.
The old man is ready to reveal all. Who he really is . . .what life really means . .
.what he should really have become.
What will his message be?
In this great absurdist masterpiece by Eugene Ionesco, "The Chairs" features Twin Cities favorites, Richard Ooms and Claudia Wilkens. It is a must see show for anyone who enjoys high quality theater with an absurd comic flavor.
Directed by Dipankar Mukherjee
Featuring Richard Ooms, Claudia Wilkens and Alberto Panelli
Dates: October 2 - 19, Thursdays through Sundays
Time: 7: 30 p.m.
Venue: Pangea World Theater Studio
711 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, 55408
Tickets: $15, $10 students/seniors
Box Office Number: 612-203-1088
www.pangeaworldtheater.org
**************************************************************
Pangea's been a little hard for me to pin down recently - at least online (I always seemed to run across information on a show too late to catch it) - but it looks like they've rebooted their website - www.pangeaworldtheater.org - with a new, cleaner look, and a good store of information on upcoming productions from now through February, including a couple of visiting productions and a revisiting of a classic of their own...
I-Land - taking place over at Intermedia Arts, November 20-22, 2008
Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - February 26 - 28, 2009
Conference of the Birds - March 12 - April 5, 2009
So if you can't catch them this time around, there are several other chances coming up as well. Look them over, find one you like, and mark your calendar.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Shameless Plug of the Day - 10/14 - Lamb Lays With Lion
You now have plans for Tuesday night.
10/14
the night, the play
It. Is. Unbelievable.
This is the latest play from Dan O'Neil, whose Players of Notorious Temerity produced two of my very favorite Fringe Festival shows of recent years - Desolation In America, and Baggage. Both of them were so good I did something I rarely do with theater, went back to see them each twice. "Desolation In America" landed in my pre-Fringe Top 10 that year and I didn't regret it.
Anybody who reads this blog knows I have very little patience for theater about theater, or writing about writers. Political theater can also be pretty dicey in my opinion. All three things are easy to do badly, or worse, self-indulgently on the part of the artist. On the rare occasions such things are done well, they're amazing.
Dan O'Neil's writing in "10/14", on all three counts, is amazing.
I remember hearing an early draft of this script read around a friend's kitchen table a year or so back. It was a cold reading, we were all seeing the pages for the first time. Most of us at that table weren't actors but fellow writers. Even with all that, the reading of the play that night still blew me away.
And he's been working on it since then. I can only imagine how good "10/14" is now.
Tuesday night, 10/14, the play "10/14," 8pm, Cedar Riverside People's Center (425 20th Avenue South in Minneapolis), suggested donation of $5 to $20 (and worth every penny you want to give them, trust me.)
Dan's so talented, and makes it look so effortless, I should hate the guy. But his writing's so great, I just want more. It's smart, it's funny, it's got a really big aching heart. It's beautiful stuff.
With luck, this is only the beginning for this play. But don't wait. Get in on the ground floor. This is the kind of thing you want to be able to say you knew about before everybody else caught on.
This thing is not to be missed. But enough from me. Here's their press release...
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
“10/14”
A World Overturned, A Play Re-Written
Lamb Lays with Lion Theater Company is proud to present a one-night-only staged reading of "10/14," written by Dan O’Neil and directed by Cameron Brainard, on October 14th, 2008 at 8pm at the People’s Center Theater (425 20th Avenue South in Minneapolis, $5 - $20 suggested donation).
A post-show discussion will be held following the reading for those who wish to participate.
A group of actors in a remote warehouse rehearse & prepare their "groundbreaking" new work, Cap'n Faust, in preparation for their opening night the following evening. Overnight, the world changes. In the midst of a developing nuclear fall-out, the theater opens its doors to receive their audience but instead find refugees from the disaster outside. Having spent many hours preparing a production that one hopes will "change the world," how is a theater artist to react when the world changes first?
10/14 - It's safer in the theater.
Featuring members of the Lamb Lays with Lion Company, this staged reading marks the launch of a new-play development initiative for LLwL. These intensive staged readings will provide a template of physical staging and directorial engagement to future playwrights and their works-in-progress as a means to transform the process; from cerebral exercise to the visceral experience of bodies in space. We invite the audience in as a collaborator and a witness to the birth of new plays, raw words, and (until now) unspoken questions.
Lamb Lays with Lion is an Original and Experimental company dedicated to the exploration of unique and radical new forms, virtual and spectral expressions, and the thrust into a new age of art; one in which expectations are checked at the door, to be replaced by ear plugs and open minds.
Quick Reference
Production
10/14
Producer and Director
Cameron Brainard and the LLwL Company
Ensemble
Jeremey Catterton (Alfred)
Jacob Mullis (Sam)
Melissa Friedmann (Maggie)
Carl Atiya Swanson (Duncan)
Jake Lindgren (Connors)
Jayne Deis (Old Woman)
Ashley Smith (Amy)
Katie Rose McLaughlin (Eve)
Design Team
Dan O’Neil, playwright
Dates
One Night Only
Tuesday, October 14th, 8 pm
Tickets
$5-20 suggested donation at door
Synopsis
In the midst of a developing nuclear fall-out, the theater opens its doors to receive their audience but instead find refugees from the disaster outside. Having spent many hours preparing a production that one hopes will "change the world," how is a theater artist to react when the world changes first?
Theatre Location
People’s Center Theater
425 20th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55454
See. This. Play.
You can find information on the play and Lamb Lays With Lion at www.myspace.com/lamblayswithlion
10/14
the night, the play
It. Is. Unbelievable.
This is the latest play from Dan O'Neil, whose Players of Notorious Temerity produced two of my very favorite Fringe Festival shows of recent years - Desolation In America, and Baggage. Both of them were so good I did something I rarely do with theater, went back to see them each twice. "Desolation In America" landed in my pre-Fringe Top 10 that year and I didn't regret it.
Anybody who reads this blog knows I have very little patience for theater about theater, or writing about writers. Political theater can also be pretty dicey in my opinion. All three things are easy to do badly, or worse, self-indulgently on the part of the artist. On the rare occasions such things are done well, they're amazing.
Dan O'Neil's writing in "10/14", on all three counts, is amazing.
I remember hearing an early draft of this script read around a friend's kitchen table a year or so back. It was a cold reading, we were all seeing the pages for the first time. Most of us at that table weren't actors but fellow writers. Even with all that, the reading of the play that night still blew me away.
And he's been working on it since then. I can only imagine how good "10/14" is now.
Tuesday night, 10/14, the play "10/14," 8pm, Cedar Riverside People's Center (425 20th Avenue South in Minneapolis), suggested donation of $5 to $20 (and worth every penny you want to give them, trust me.)
Dan's so talented, and makes it look so effortless, I should hate the guy. But his writing's so great, I just want more. It's smart, it's funny, it's got a really big aching heart. It's beautiful stuff.
With luck, this is only the beginning for this play. But don't wait. Get in on the ground floor. This is the kind of thing you want to be able to say you knew about before everybody else caught on.
This thing is not to be missed. But enough from me. Here's their press release...
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
“10/14”
A World Overturned, A Play Re-Written
Lamb Lays with Lion Theater Company is proud to present a one-night-only staged reading of "10/14," written by Dan O’Neil and directed by Cameron Brainard, on October 14th, 2008 at 8pm at the People’s Center Theater (425 20th Avenue South in Minneapolis, $5 - $20 suggested donation).
A post-show discussion will be held following the reading for those who wish to participate.
A group of actors in a remote warehouse rehearse & prepare their "groundbreaking" new work, Cap'n Faust, in preparation for their opening night the following evening. Overnight, the world changes. In the midst of a developing nuclear fall-out, the theater opens its doors to receive their audience but instead find refugees from the disaster outside. Having spent many hours preparing a production that one hopes will "change the world," how is a theater artist to react when the world changes first?
10/14 - It's safer in the theater.
Featuring members of the Lamb Lays with Lion Company, this staged reading marks the launch of a new-play development initiative for LLwL. These intensive staged readings will provide a template of physical staging and directorial engagement to future playwrights and their works-in-progress as a means to transform the process; from cerebral exercise to the visceral experience of bodies in space. We invite the audience in as a collaborator and a witness to the birth of new plays, raw words, and (until now) unspoken questions.
Lamb Lays with Lion is an Original and Experimental company dedicated to the exploration of unique and radical new forms, virtual and spectral expressions, and the thrust into a new age of art; one in which expectations are checked at the door, to be replaced by ear plugs and open minds.
Quick Reference
Production
10/14
Producer and Director
Cameron Brainard and the LLwL Company
Ensemble
Jeremey Catterton (Alfred)
Jacob Mullis (Sam)
Melissa Friedmann (Maggie)
Carl Atiya Swanson (Duncan)
Jake Lindgren (Connors)
Jayne Deis (Old Woman)
Ashley Smith (Amy)
Katie Rose McLaughlin (Eve)
Design Team
Dan O’Neil, playwright
Dates
One Night Only
Tuesday, October 14th, 8 pm
Tickets
$5-20 suggested donation at door
Synopsis
In the midst of a developing nuclear fall-out, the theater opens its doors to receive their audience but instead find refugees from the disaster outside. Having spent many hours preparing a production that one hopes will "change the world," how is a theater artist to react when the world changes first?
Theatre Location
People’s Center Theater
425 20th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55454
See. This. Play.
You can find information on the play and Lamb Lays With Lion at www.myspace.com/lamblayswithlion
Friday, October 10, 2008
Shameless Plug of the Day - Touch - Urban Samurai Productions
A shout-out to Urban Samurai Productions and their latest offering, the Twin Cities premiere of "Touch" - which closes this weekend.
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2pm (that's tonight, tomorrow or Sunday afternoon) at The Cedar Riverside Peoples Center Theater (425 20th Avenue South in Minneapolis - 3rd floor, entrance on the 20th Avenue side of the building).
Why this show? Well, for one, they asked me in a recent email...
"Touch is going very well performance wise, it's a really great show. Unfortunately attendance has been exceedingly meager. If you could spread the word in some shape or form to get more butts in the seats I would be most appreciative."
But beyond that, I just like Urban Samurai in general. They're one of many scrappy smaller theater companies in town that tackle new plays, and unusual subject matter, sometimes both at once. Sometimes they also let their hair down - as evidenced by their wildly popular Fringe Festival offering this year "Musical - The Musical." So if you saw that, and want to see what else they do, this is a great example of something on the opposite end of the scale from bouncy and frothy.
Back in April, I got the chance to see "American Apathy" - a scathing but very funny look at... well, come to think of it, the consumer society and economy that's currently coming unglued all around us. Urban Samurai was ahead of the curve on that one. (Review here)
Now they're tackling the poetic and emotionally charged work of Toni Press-Coffman. "Touch" deals with those that live on after a loved one has been taken from them by an unspeakable crime. I know, not light and airy fare, but then again, neither is "Macbeth" or "The Laramie Project" and they're popping up around town, too. This production got a great review in the Star Tribune. My work schedule hasn't allowed me to get out to see it yet, but knowing the Samurai, and the script and playwright's reputations, I thought it was a pretty safe bet to recommend, even before the reviews started coming in.
So, if you're looking for something to focus on in a weekend full of options, I'm submitting this one for your consideration. After all, a lot of the other things on the docket are continuing on into the coming weeks. If you want to catch "Touch" by Urban Samurai, there's only this weekend left, and then it's gone. Catch it while you can.
Tickets available online, and they're cheaper if you go that rate - visit www.urbansamuraipro.com. Tickets are $14 online, or $16 at the door. Student and Senior discount is $10 online, $12 at the door. You can also get a the student/senior discount by showing your Fringe button at the door. Good deal.
More information on the production, including a video trailer, at www.urbansamuraipro.com
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2pm (that's tonight, tomorrow or Sunday afternoon) at The Cedar Riverside Peoples Center Theater (425 20th Avenue South in Minneapolis - 3rd floor, entrance on the 20th Avenue side of the building).
Why this show? Well, for one, they asked me in a recent email...
"Touch is going very well performance wise, it's a really great show. Unfortunately attendance has been exceedingly meager. If you could spread the word in some shape or form to get more butts in the seats I would be most appreciative."
But beyond that, I just like Urban Samurai in general. They're one of many scrappy smaller theater companies in town that tackle new plays, and unusual subject matter, sometimes both at once. Sometimes they also let their hair down - as evidenced by their wildly popular Fringe Festival offering this year "Musical - The Musical." So if you saw that, and want to see what else they do, this is a great example of something on the opposite end of the scale from bouncy and frothy.
Back in April, I got the chance to see "American Apathy" - a scathing but very funny look at... well, come to think of it, the consumer society and economy that's currently coming unglued all around us. Urban Samurai was ahead of the curve on that one. (Review here)
Now they're tackling the poetic and emotionally charged work of Toni Press-Coffman. "Touch" deals with those that live on after a loved one has been taken from them by an unspeakable crime. I know, not light and airy fare, but then again, neither is "Macbeth" or "The Laramie Project" and they're popping up around town, too. This production got a great review in the Star Tribune. My work schedule hasn't allowed me to get out to see it yet, but knowing the Samurai, and the script and playwright's reputations, I thought it was a pretty safe bet to recommend, even before the reviews started coming in.
So, if you're looking for something to focus on in a weekend full of options, I'm submitting this one for your consideration. After all, a lot of the other things on the docket are continuing on into the coming weeks. If you want to catch "Touch" by Urban Samurai, there's only this weekend left, and then it's gone. Catch it while you can.
Tickets available online, and they're cheaper if you go that rate - visit www.urbansamuraipro.com. Tickets are $14 online, or $16 at the door. Student and Senior discount is $10 online, $12 at the door. You can also get a the student/senior discount by showing your Fringe button at the door. Good deal.
More information on the production, including a video trailer, at www.urbansamuraipro.com
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Review - 100 - Workhouse Theatre Co. - 4 stars
“Be thankful you have even that.”
This is a tricky one. The last time I saw a production at Workhouse Theatre Co., it was their brilliant production of Marsha Norman’s “’Night, Mother.” It was a great example of a perfect group of collaborators set loose on a riveting script. Both sides of the equation made the other better, and they ended up with a well-deserved Ivey Award for their efforts. Workhouse’s current production, the area premiere of “100” written by Christopher Hemann, Diene Petterle, and Neil Monaghan, is a little more imbalanced. It’s not the fault of the production. Diane Mountford’s direction is spot-on. The ensemble of actors work really well with each other, and individually, and the script calls upon them to do a lot of both. The design team does their usual great job. The set design by Sarah J. Leigh in particular is wonderful - opening up the performance space at the Warren in ways I haven’t seen Workhouse use it before, and director and cast take full advantage of having the whole theater space in which to roam. It’s a very engaging production of a pretty smart script. I just wish the story and characters went further.
“100” starts with an intriguing premise. Four characters are dead and about to be, for want of a better word, processed back through the assembly line of souls and returned to the living world. They can only take one memory of their past life just ended with them. All other memories will be erased. They have a limited time in which to choose this memory. If they fail to do so, they lose everything and start their next phase of existence as a blank slate. The warning is that such an existence is less than ideal.
The problem with this premise, fascinating though it is, is that it immediately boxes in the characters, the story - and the audience. And the longer it goes on, the more limited the options become. Not that the show itself is long - it clocks in at only a little over an hour, leaving plenty of time to sit down for a drink or a meal and chew over the play (and with a subject like this, there’s a lot of food for thought). The danger with a story structured like this is that the audience can get way too far out ahead of it. (For instance, most audience members can probably see the last line coming from about a mile away.)
Another example - something as simple as a character who starts counting, which other characters pick up, clues us in right away that once the count reaches 100, the show is over. The trouble with this is that there’s no rhyme or reason to the number chanting in the script. It doesn’t recur with any recognizable pace, cadence or frequency. It is merely a convenience for the authors. Its significance is never explained. It could just as easily be some other standard of measure - increments of 12 or 60 hold as much significance as 10 or 50 in some cultures.
There are four characters onstage going through the processing ritual. As each one completes it, they disappear and do not return. So we know as we watch that the play isn’t over until everyone has had their epiphany, and as the story continues, there are fewer and fewer players to help in the telling. There is an additional character of a Guide (Robert Larsen) who seems to understand what’s going on, and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere (though in a telling reversal of everything else in the script, neither of those assumptions turn out to be right - and that is one of the story’s most satisfying payoffs). The character of the Guide, and Larsen’s performance, are intriguing enough to keep one guessing, and when the revelation finally comes, you don’t feel tricked, which is a nice bit of work by authors and actor alike.
Maybe I don’t handle random well. That could be it. The inscrutable nature of the memory device is clearly a stand-in for either a judgmental or indifferent controller of the universe in matters of life and death. The memories which these people seem to think are the most important for them, aren’t. Or at least, they aren’t in the judgment of whoever or whatever is pulling the strings. The first time each one of the characters choose, they choose wrong. They and the audience know this because there is no flash of light that preserves that memory and erases all others. The characters are still there, memories intact. Which begs the question, if you aren’t really allowed to choose the right memory but someone has already chosen it for you and you’re merely playing a cruel guessing game, what’s the point? The writers are playing god, with the characters and the audience, and they’re not playing fair. The rules we’re given aren’t really the full set of rules, and the characters and the audience are going to keep getting jerked around until the writers are done with them. That’s not a fun place to be sitting, on or off stage. Perhaps it’s the writers’ intention to provoke. The point of the provocation remains largely unknown.
The problem with a script that’s constructed like a puzzle box is that the structure and the puzzle become the point. The characters are merely pieces being moved around a game board by the authors. Rather than story and character being advanced by the characters interacting with and influencing one another, the changes in character are solitary. The whole thing has a distancing effect. It’s hard to be unsettled when you’re only being engaged on an intellectual level and not an emotional one. You are always aware that you’re watching a play from the outside, rather than being allowed to immerse yourself in the story.
The inscrutability does have some payoffs. When we think we’re being handed easily digestible platitudes, we find we’re ultimately not spoon-fed anything. Sure, the character of Sophie (Sigrid Sutter), who realizes she’s not beautiful and then throws herself into her work, isn’t going to be allowed to take the moment of the pinnacle of her career with her as her most treasured memory. But the play doesn’t pretend that there is no satisfaction in life lived for work alone, or that all Sophie really needed was love. The play doesn’t imply that she wasted her life. And the peculiar memory she does end up taking with her may actually stand her in good stead to get more of what she wants the next time around. Alex (Joel Raney) and Nia (Jen Rand), scruffy young lovers who died together and want to find some way to stay together in that one key memory, find they each have very different, if equally pleasant, ideas about the memory of the day they first met. It is the inability of one of them to choose, or share, that key memory that threatens to tear them apart for eternity. Ketu (Khary Jackson) learns that it is not his great discovery and quest to spread knowledge among his tribe that is his primary memory, but perhaps simply learning to live and make peace with the ingrained ignorance of society for the sake of his family.
Side note - I have to admit that my knee-jerk liberal reaction to the only actor of color in the cast being put in the role of the savage who learns the world isn’t flat after all had me resisting parts of that last storyline. But it also got me thinking about all kinds of other creative casting which might have taken place. When one character is recounting their memories, all the other members of the ensemble step into supporting roles in each other’s personal dramas. It’s a seamless piece of work, with each tiny role fleshed out with the same care and attention to detail as if the roles were much larger and more significant. In lesser hands, these seeming throwaway mini-roles might have been less rich. In Workhouse’s production, several miniature worlds are created in service of the larger story. If the actors and director can do that (and they do, oh they do - it’s one of the chief pleasures of watching this production), imagine what other things they might have done by turning this script inside out and playing fast and loose with gender and race roles as well. The more predictable elements of the script might have garnered a little unexpected freshness in the process.
Despite my issues with the script, the actors do great work, the direction keeps things moving along and visually interesting, and the design creates an engaging netherworld that surrounds the audience in the dark. If you haven’t seen a Workhouse production yet, this is a fine example of the kind of work they do best. They keep raising the bar for themselves with every production, and “100” is another step up the ladder. All scripts, great or flawed, would be lucky to get this sort of treatment.
Highly recommended.
The area premiere of “100” runs through Saturday, October 18, 2008 at Workhouse Theatre Co.’s performance home at The Warren, 4000 Vincent Avenue North in Minneapolis. For information and reservations, visit www.workhousetheatre.org or call 612-386-5763. On the website, there's also a little video preview.
This is a tricky one. The last time I saw a production at Workhouse Theatre Co., it was their brilliant production of Marsha Norman’s “’Night, Mother.” It was a great example of a perfect group of collaborators set loose on a riveting script. Both sides of the equation made the other better, and they ended up with a well-deserved Ivey Award for their efforts. Workhouse’s current production, the area premiere of “100” written by Christopher Hemann, Diene Petterle, and Neil Monaghan, is a little more imbalanced. It’s not the fault of the production. Diane Mountford’s direction is spot-on. The ensemble of actors work really well with each other, and individually, and the script calls upon them to do a lot of both. The design team does their usual great job. The set design by Sarah J. Leigh in particular is wonderful - opening up the performance space at the Warren in ways I haven’t seen Workhouse use it before, and director and cast take full advantage of having the whole theater space in which to roam. It’s a very engaging production of a pretty smart script. I just wish the story and characters went further.
“100” starts with an intriguing premise. Four characters are dead and about to be, for want of a better word, processed back through the assembly line of souls and returned to the living world. They can only take one memory of their past life just ended with them. All other memories will be erased. They have a limited time in which to choose this memory. If they fail to do so, they lose everything and start their next phase of existence as a blank slate. The warning is that such an existence is less than ideal.
The problem with this premise, fascinating though it is, is that it immediately boxes in the characters, the story - and the audience. And the longer it goes on, the more limited the options become. Not that the show itself is long - it clocks in at only a little over an hour, leaving plenty of time to sit down for a drink or a meal and chew over the play (and with a subject like this, there’s a lot of food for thought). The danger with a story structured like this is that the audience can get way too far out ahead of it. (For instance, most audience members can probably see the last line coming from about a mile away.)
Another example - something as simple as a character who starts counting, which other characters pick up, clues us in right away that once the count reaches 100, the show is over. The trouble with this is that there’s no rhyme or reason to the number chanting in the script. It doesn’t recur with any recognizable pace, cadence or frequency. It is merely a convenience for the authors. Its significance is never explained. It could just as easily be some other standard of measure - increments of 12 or 60 hold as much significance as 10 or 50 in some cultures.
There are four characters onstage going through the processing ritual. As each one completes it, they disappear and do not return. So we know as we watch that the play isn’t over until everyone has had their epiphany, and as the story continues, there are fewer and fewer players to help in the telling. There is an additional character of a Guide (Robert Larsen) who seems to understand what’s going on, and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere (though in a telling reversal of everything else in the script, neither of those assumptions turn out to be right - and that is one of the story’s most satisfying payoffs). The character of the Guide, and Larsen’s performance, are intriguing enough to keep one guessing, and when the revelation finally comes, you don’t feel tricked, which is a nice bit of work by authors and actor alike.
Maybe I don’t handle random well. That could be it. The inscrutable nature of the memory device is clearly a stand-in for either a judgmental or indifferent controller of the universe in matters of life and death. The memories which these people seem to think are the most important for them, aren’t. Or at least, they aren’t in the judgment of whoever or whatever is pulling the strings. The first time each one of the characters choose, they choose wrong. They and the audience know this because there is no flash of light that preserves that memory and erases all others. The characters are still there, memories intact. Which begs the question, if you aren’t really allowed to choose the right memory but someone has already chosen it for you and you’re merely playing a cruel guessing game, what’s the point? The writers are playing god, with the characters and the audience, and they’re not playing fair. The rules we’re given aren’t really the full set of rules, and the characters and the audience are going to keep getting jerked around until the writers are done with them. That’s not a fun place to be sitting, on or off stage. Perhaps it’s the writers’ intention to provoke. The point of the provocation remains largely unknown.
The problem with a script that’s constructed like a puzzle box is that the structure and the puzzle become the point. The characters are merely pieces being moved around a game board by the authors. Rather than story and character being advanced by the characters interacting with and influencing one another, the changes in character are solitary. The whole thing has a distancing effect. It’s hard to be unsettled when you’re only being engaged on an intellectual level and not an emotional one. You are always aware that you’re watching a play from the outside, rather than being allowed to immerse yourself in the story.
The inscrutability does have some payoffs. When we think we’re being handed easily digestible platitudes, we find we’re ultimately not spoon-fed anything. Sure, the character of Sophie (Sigrid Sutter), who realizes she’s not beautiful and then throws herself into her work, isn’t going to be allowed to take the moment of the pinnacle of her career with her as her most treasured memory. But the play doesn’t pretend that there is no satisfaction in life lived for work alone, or that all Sophie really needed was love. The play doesn’t imply that she wasted her life. And the peculiar memory she does end up taking with her may actually stand her in good stead to get more of what she wants the next time around. Alex (Joel Raney) and Nia (Jen Rand), scruffy young lovers who died together and want to find some way to stay together in that one key memory, find they each have very different, if equally pleasant, ideas about the memory of the day they first met. It is the inability of one of them to choose, or share, that key memory that threatens to tear them apart for eternity. Ketu (Khary Jackson) learns that it is not his great discovery and quest to spread knowledge among his tribe that is his primary memory, but perhaps simply learning to live and make peace with the ingrained ignorance of society for the sake of his family.
Side note - I have to admit that my knee-jerk liberal reaction to the only actor of color in the cast being put in the role of the savage who learns the world isn’t flat after all had me resisting parts of that last storyline. But it also got me thinking about all kinds of other creative casting which might have taken place. When one character is recounting their memories, all the other members of the ensemble step into supporting roles in each other’s personal dramas. It’s a seamless piece of work, with each tiny role fleshed out with the same care and attention to detail as if the roles were much larger and more significant. In lesser hands, these seeming throwaway mini-roles might have been less rich. In Workhouse’s production, several miniature worlds are created in service of the larger story. If the actors and director can do that (and they do, oh they do - it’s one of the chief pleasures of watching this production), imagine what other things they might have done by turning this script inside out and playing fast and loose with gender and race roles as well. The more predictable elements of the script might have garnered a little unexpected freshness in the process.
Despite my issues with the script, the actors do great work, the direction keeps things moving along and visually interesting, and the design creates an engaging netherworld that surrounds the audience in the dark. If you haven’t seen a Workhouse production yet, this is a fine example of the kind of work they do best. They keep raising the bar for themselves with every production, and “100” is another step up the ladder. All scripts, great or flawed, would be lucky to get this sort of treatment.
Highly recommended.
The area premiere of “100” runs through Saturday, October 18, 2008 at Workhouse Theatre Co.’s performance home at The Warren, 4000 Vincent Avenue North in Minneapolis. For information and reservations, visit www.workhousetheatre.org or call 612-386-5763. On the website, there's also a little video preview.
Labels:
4 Stars - Excellent,
Theater reviews
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