Stories are our best revenge

silence absence

2012-01-13T00:59:00.002-05:00

repeat 100 {silence brought absence; absence brings silence.}
the noise of other people
slips to nothing.

and now it's finally quiet.

When she wrote that first, it worried her friends. They wrote her letters. No smartphones involved. In longhand. Mailed and taken to the Post Office and moved through a huge system to end up right in her mailbox, nearly lost amongst ads and bills, Shackleton hellbent for the Beaufort Sea.

They all wondered also about the braces, but then a few weeks later she informed everyone she'd got a job writing encryption algorithms for some midsize quick and dirty code factory. Nothing creative really, just cribs of Triple DES and Kerberos. So they got the joke but they didn't laugh, in that way people can not laugh.

She wrote a book of poetry with a publication run of 250 that James Franco happened to pick up and read. Within a month he had tweeted it. Right after, he Googled for her email addy, and told her in a 310 word email the book knocked him over. James fracking Franco asked if he could use it for something. She expected nothing, what's he going to do? But with typical James Franco class, he read it aloud on his vlog, saying it was the first poetry that really moved him.

Orders started pouring in. She got a call from Viking Penguin who was looking for an online poet. She made them wait, while she walked to the loft of the friend with the handpress who done the first edition of 250, and ordered 1,000 books (how many orders she had gotten from NYC and Long Island bookstores). The friend turned her down. In the meantime Viking/Penguin called her back, and they did a run of 150,000 copies and they sold out in three weeks. The second run of 150,000 sold out in two weeks.

Armed with that money she started buying things. They seemed like normal things a person would buy. Flatscreen TVs, gaming systems, tiny black set top boxes. Computers. Many of them, on every floor of her condo. A hot tub, a massage table.

To power her world she purchased a photovoltaic array for her roof, several gasoline generators for her ground floor, and a power windmill, more for its intimidatingly rotating white blades than for its ability to supplement her household's need for electric power.

She began to lay in a collection of identical sturdy charcoal grey steel anodized metal shelves, which she assembled assiduously with a rubber mallet, and lined along her walls. Into these shelves she inserted rubberized polymer trays, ostensibly to prevent messes. Alongside these dark metal shelves she installed, several freezers of the highest stainless steel quality, all made by the same European appliance company.

She then purchased many forms of foods, always with an eye toward those that could be held from consumption for long periods of time. Some by being filled with ingredients that promised to preserve the food and her, other by their merely being boxed and canned and dried and bagged.

She outfitted a room in her condo just for Yoga. At strange hours of the night one could hear chanting. But mostly these things were kept away from prying eyes.

With that entire list of planned purchases and changes accomplished, she was ready to implement her grand strategy.

She didn't stop seeing the people all all at once. No, she leveled down to it from almost an imperceptible gap. She'd fail to return one phone call, but then call back or answer the phone the very next time they called. Then it was every third and then fourth call. Then it was not send back response holiday cards. And so on.

After nearly a year of turning the knob down, she finally got to total. That's total, complete, utter. You could hear an angel trying to dance on the head of a pin but accidentally kicking it over, that tiny ringing sound. You could hear a moose fart in Canada. You could hear faraway species dying, and I'm talking at the bottom of the ocean where even marine biologists shrug about going there. I guess it's a really boring part of the bottom of the ocean, with no vastly differently-evolved species of life that can survive by engufling cigarette filters as they drift down from the pacific trash vortex.

Over that year, her consumption of all those preserved foods made the lawn over her septic leaching field as lush and verdant and filled with a sense of near eternal awe-filled natural goodness as her life lacked human contact. The lawn looked like a little New Zealand, but without all the sheep.

to be continued...

Story part: Assembler

2010-09-06T15:56:00.000-04:00

Opening

She codes. She looks only at the screen. And codes.

The code is measured in lines, each beginning with white space, each ending in a semi-colon. Her friend Felix would look at them and say, you could have saved four bytes there. Her boss would see the quote from a line of his own code, and smile. His boss would watch the check-ins and grunt with satisfaction at the LOC count and lines to defect ratio.

The screen she looks at is blue shaded in the background, and white on the page she is looking at; even though there is no real page because this code is designed to be compiled, not published. The typeface is Courier New, long popular with coders (or more likely, just a given circumstance of her editor).

later

When she backed away far enough, you could see it was a perfect clod of dirt – studded with a million contexts (a bug’s hideout here, a recess where a stand of Clostridium tetani lie in wait to be injected into some mammal there).

Story

She’s focused on coding, its art and its results; her bank account and investments; her house at the beach and her apartment in the City where she works. She’s no good at being with people; she does reading detective novels, her music (light rock of the 80s and 90s – amusement there) and quiet moments of sunset. She’s not here to get involved with anyone, or to have adventures.

But adventure comes seeking her the moment she becomes remotely interested in someone romantically. This has never happened to her before, but as they say, there’s a first time even for the most unlikely of us.

And with that romance, and the compromises it engenders, she is dragged against her will into her first real adventure since she was a kid.

She remembers when she was a kid, making up stories, taping them, until she discovered machines and their intelligence; she loves them, their orderliness, their challenges, the fun and bravado of doing it well, better than the boys.

No pertekshin

2010-08-13T20:07:00.005-04:00

'what the F. may be my name, my skill, my breath, my size, what diff is it, for some reason i'm the flavor, so why not give a taste?' he thought.

others would have gone the stretch to pick a pseudo. but frankly he hated writing so much at this point, he decided to let those others select the byline. they promised payment, or micro-payment, or haptocredits, or whatever posed as folding money those days.

took a month probably spent distilling everything, all of it, big bang to five billion whimpers per second per second, into a thousand words. black letters on white paperlike, papersameas screen. dark squiggles being the point of it, how some ever it got got.

there was a faceless editor, no meetings, this being lowbudget. then the words appeared there in the almost non pageness.

took a month, and then between the spills and double dips and racing up and crashing down, between hoping and a thousand microcuts, or pantogashes, or whatever passed for pain those days, before any reader, passing through via scrollbar, carousel, dropdown, happened upon it in that brief flassssh of attention that is all there is any more.

on this one, these particular dark squiggles they maybe stopped a moment and then did that unthinking parsing, followed by a squint, then rapt scrolling.

the name was the last thing they noticed or cared about, when they clicked the icon to pass it on. read this was what they posted on their pages, these faces composited of their own banalities (mostly, face it), plus their passing on, sometimes, the choices of others.

so the dark squiggles began to reproduce in the same pattern, from one bit structure to the next, milkiness squirted forth from their noses as they spasmed surprised. me:me, syllabically monocompressed.

and the name was the last thing any of them cared about.

until

(end of part 1)

Page on Facebook

2010-07-19T15:44:00.001-04:00

If you like the blog, and belong to Facebook, then please navigate to this new page and click "Like" there:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bob-Jude-Ferrante/107996602554296?ref=mf

It's good to be liked. Most of the time.

What would be, say, Six Tenets of theatre Perfection

2010-07-10T17:23:00.005-04:00

If one were actually going to start a theatre company that would actually handle not just the production but also the aesthetic and total artwork of theatre. What properties would such a company need? It seems to boil down to six (hence the post title) but perhaps there are more.

What do you think? Please comment, tear this up or agree or whatever you want to do. You might have already started a company with such or similar goals in mind. Or you might be afraid to do one. Or you might be mad enough to plan it and do it.

One last thing. The question mark is intentionally missing from the title. This poses as the first draft of a question. But not quite a question yet.

Ultimate Experience – A life-altering experience for the audience and the performers must be offered, every time. It’s a big thing to promise and you can never achieve it fully. An ideal is intended to be beyond reach. This is the most important tenet.

Revolutionary Design – The visual and aural aspect of every performance must push the boundaries of the known state of the art. Perfect and life-altering look and sound. These designers want to change the world through light, color, depth, tone, melody, emotion.

Physical perfection – to keep the instrument of every performer in perfectly tuned shape, permitting no limits to what can be accomplished. The maximum possible human physical state, to ground what must come from the performer and company.

Cultural breadth – Sufficient knowledge of all major branches of human knowledge that the performer can call up an immense library of knowledge in performance. Every performance calls up Joyce, Popper, quantum theory or finite automata, and intelligently, in the service of story as well as culture.

Situational Dexterity – Having studied every form of improvisation known, the performer can call any one up at will. This includes Commedia, Spolin, Bebop Poet, Jazz, Rap / Hiphop, Slam, & whatnot.

Genre Flexibility – Discovering, understanding, codifying scene, act and work structure of every known storytelling genre ever used. Then, more importantly, the ability to instantly adopt that genre for use, both overall and within a scene.

Easter greetings from Transylvania

2010-04-04T17:30:00.003-04:00

A bunny comes back to life; in the background a zombie chick pecks holes from within a moldy egg. Even the bonnet reverts to undead cotton plants.

Luckily we got out of there before it was too late.

The first government was formed this way

2010-04-04T16:57:00.005-04:00

Many times ago, a citizen dug her own grave. (Not metaphorically.) She dug a hole in the ground, in a place where people were already being buried, for people to come visit her after she died.

First digging your own grave was considered a virtue. Then custom; then unwritten law; then maktoub as Law.

It was a sign of honor and great virtue to dig your own grave. The Great dug their own graves, and all the citizenry aspired to be Great.

And each citizen was good about it. Generally. He’d set some time aside, before he died, to dig the grave. It would get dug.

Usually. Sometimes he didn't do the duty. Perhaps it became something he tended to put off until late in life (after all, if he dug his grave too soon, he’d have to go keep going back to make sure the grave stayed dug, as another person, or nature, might tamper with it).

Sometimes he managed to die before it got dug. In that case, some family friend or descendant would sneak in and dig the wayward grave before anyone found out (as digging your grave was a sign of honor/virtue, not doing so would be a source of familial embarrassment).

In general the Great were good at it too, perhaps actually better, it being a sign of Virtue and all. But sometimes the Great said, “I’m too busy. If I forget to do some Thing, you understand,” etc. So it got be done anyway, as it was Law. Maybe bought, but done, and since the Great gave life to the People, the People got it done. Reliably.

De facto there was now a government, there to get things done reliably. And perhaps economics. As if a well-dug grave inspiring government wasn’t bad enough, maybe it should also start money.

Remember, stories are our best revenge.

the critics... new philosophy... hope...

2009-04-07T09:23:00.005-04:00

We got widely varied critical response to A NEW THEORY OF VISION; the first critic gave us an unabashed rave and said, there's all this philosophical background in the play, perhaps a bit too much, but since it does reflect on the action, you have to sort of let it wash over you and then it all makes sense, even if you're not a philogeek. Another, our only pan, said, there's all this character and plot stuff but not enough of the actual philosophy these guys are talking about. Finally, there was a balanced review that complained s/he wanted to hear the philosophy too. So that's two critics who complained they wanted to have the philosophical content of Lee's books spelt out.

Well, I'm not adding these explicitly to the play. It feels talky enough in the parts where it talks about the de minima aspects of Berkeley's philosophy that directly impact the play (a total of 2 minutes of stage time, max, and even though these support the action moment to moment, some might feel even these to be part of an extra credit assignment).

So perhaps we need to prepare a companion to the play that explicates the exact philosophies about which Lee wrote in his two books? Now, it must be said the philosophy is actually at the heart of the play's action. Thus if you observe the play's action, you can deduce all the philosophy you need, right there in front of you. This is perhaps an arrogant statement. Because if the smart people who write our theatre criticism can't pick this stuff up from the action of the play, how can we simpler minded people?

(There's an implicit criticism of criticism building here, I can feel it... but I won't spoil the ending of this essay by stating it there, so let's briefly state it here. Critics often take upon themselves the "duty" to "represent" the audience, but they often use a simplified model of who the audience is, and judge a work by how "clear" it is to that simple-minded artificial audience model. But it's self-deception. Audiences are far smarter than critics think they are, and sometimes, far smarter than the critics themselves.)

So. A warning. If you proceed there will be spoilers. And thanks for sticking with this, thus far.

Lee's first book, A New Theory of Vision was essentially a simplification and popularization of the works of Berkeley and the idealists, updated for a more telepresent world such as existed in the late 1980s, when his book would have come out. The parts of the materialist/idealist philosophy that would have made the most stir in the popular mind - the book was, after all, a massive best-seller - would have been those that talked about the increasing virtualization of who we were. Extended we were, as McLuhan would have said, by our creations - the telephone, television, and the PC network - we learned to project and virtualize our identities to match their representations over the various wire protocols of these extensions.

So we would have first developed a "voice or sound-heavy" set of identity contexts to serve as representations of ourselves over the telephone (which is a two-way medium - one-to-one) and for radio (which is a broadcast medium - one to many); a visual-and-sound set of identity contexts to represent us over the airwaves. These would eventually evolve to no longer being literal attempts to represent us. They would begin that way. But identity as communicated and compressed over these media would become first shadow representations of our selves, then gradually the representations would diverge as we accommodated ourselves to the medium, until eventually we had created at least one, perhaps many separate representations of ourselves to adapt to each medium.

Shadow identities, each containing part of our own experience and the contexts made real and appropriate for each medium and tuned to the audience each medium brought. So to each person with whom you conversed on the telephone, you created a different identity. It began as a set of sounds that resembled your voice, but gradually it evolved to become a new voice. Likewise, on TV or the radio, you created new visual and audio aspects of yourself.

Note in the play how the characters identities are somewhat malleable. Not in a MAN = MAN way (cf. Brecht) but rather in a postmodern way - their decisions and actions and the "selves" we see of them are adapted to the medium in which they present these selves. These represent the world as Lee saw it in his best-selling book.

Lee's new book, also probably destined to be a best-seller, The Book of Reality, takes this much further, in fact all the way into the world Erich inhabits. On the path to writing the book based on Erich's online world, Lee is in fact creating signifiers that led him inexorably to the realizations he has at the end of the original act-break, where his mind begins to loop in on itself - when both he and we - SEE and HEAR his self-perceived crime, that he didn't prevent a suicidal person, whom he loved very much, from committing suicide. The realization he makes - and which is wrong - is that the self is actually an illusion. That there is no contiguous set of ideas upon which any person is based. That we are chaotic stews of ideas constantly attempting to summarize and interpret and re-spew endless chaotic casseroles of matter and energy that surround us, and of which we are also constructed.

This can lead to a depairing, nihilist worldview which in fact represents exactly Jane's. We would then all want to kill ourselves, since what's the point of existence if you're a temporary process that observes temporary processes, and even your observations themselves are captured in a boiling cauldron of sense information which in itself is destined to change and be corrupted by chaos?

But the other assertion The Book of Reality makes is there are constancies. That the only constants are the links between us. Two hands clasping each other. Words of comfort, and care. We are the forces, amidst the stew and spew, that wrenches the world back from chaos. We create the illusion of order, and it is in fact the illusion of order that is the fact of order. In a world where all is illusion, illusion is therefore fact. That it all is some sort of miracle worth experiencing is the main of it.

Wazzup, Baby... Playing God

2008-08-23T11:49:00.003-04:00

Got a job as God recently...

Actually, a friend was having a reading of Bruce Jay Friedman's Steambath, funny and dated play from the 70s.

Tried out for a part in it as a hoot - since I saw the play on PBS in the early 70s, always had a fantasy to play the part of God, a Puerto Rican steambath attendant. Don't audition much and don't think I looked that impressive. Weeks went by during which I didn't think much about the audition - at that point was sure I wasn't cast.

Then the director (Eric) contacted me to tell me I didn't get my coveted part, but I had a part - Bieberman, the least attractive guy in the cast. Was game to do it anyway.

Just before the first rehearsal, got an email that God had quit (and why wouldn't he) as He was moving to Burlington VT (and why wouldn't He), offering me the part. So now am playing God, unmetaphorically speaking.

Rehearsals went well... we had a surprising number for a script-in-hand reading. End result I felt like I was the biggest liability in the cast. Sure that a playwright shouldn't mix in and try to perform (example, wasn't very impressed with my work on the show we did in the Spring either).

However, when the audience was there, they laughed with us a lot and all had a splantasmic time. It all stunned me, suddenly I was playing a lead role in something that people liked. Gotta tell you, now I understand why actors stick with this business... if you can finally get a chance to reach any kind of audience, it's an amazing experience. Nothing like it.

So if you're in the Brattleboro VT/Chesterfield NH area tonight (Aug 23 2008) come see the show. Sure, it's quite sexist in its portrayal of its only female character, but it does have a raft of big laughs - with me as God.

New Works of Merit / Sade

2008-06-09T08:58:00.003-04:00

So I get, again, after asking to be removed from their email list 3 years running, yet another email about the "New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest." This is a particularly egregious example of a writer rip-off, for reasons far too numerous to list in full, but let's begin with their "$25 entrance fee." Yea, the O'Neill has been charging an entrance fee for uninvited writers (a group to which I still belong), but at least they bothered to develop a reputation before skimming lunch money off said writers.

This contest is run by 13th Street Rep, a company that certainly have "established" a "reputation" for themselves (their last produced original work of merit being the play "Line" by Israel Horovitz back in the 70s - or was it the 60s?). Which I believe is still running there??

I checked on the Web to see how many others have been warning against entering this contest... OK, perhaps they actually do offer the winner of this contest a reading at their theatre. They probably even fund that $300 check the winner receives... note that I didn't bother to fact check this by contacting those winners, but let's give them the benefit of doubt.

Then I noticed this additional note on their entry page:

TO RECEIVE EVALUATIONS OF YOUR SCRIPT: One Evaluation .... $25 + $25 submission fee Two Evaluations ... $50 + $25 submission fee

$75 for "evaluation" services. These must be highly qualifed dramaturgs, folks. And what a refreshingly original way to offer this dramaturgy service.

The best moment reading their website was the statement that the moderator, who is also the "executive producer" at 13th St. Rep, is a member of the DG.

Note she's still a member - they don't return her check. Perhaps it is funded at least in part by this contest?

After reading this blog post, playwrights, if you still feel the need to send out a check for $75 because you wrote a play, what the hell, send it to me. I'll write you a better critique, I bet, and would use the money toward a real play production, not to fund my rent, liquor bill, or membership in the DG.

Videos of Sweet Cantatas now up on YouTube

2008-05-27T14:05:00.002-04:00

These are from the Sunday 2PM matinee on the last day of performance. The performances are mostly solid (though there's some "rule-breaking" on the Mot Juste piece - an actress making extra sounds). The usual caveats about video'd live performance - though I boosted the sound, it's slightly blurry at points. And the video can get blocky or fuzzy.

But it's cool nonetheless. Have a look!

http://www.youtube.com/user/bobjudeferrante

Great night

2008-05-04T17:03:00.000-04:00

Saturday May 3 was a fantastic performance of the show (called Sweet Cantatas). We had a big turnout for Brat (almost 100 people, I know, nothing for NYC but a lot for up there). And they were enthusiastic, laughing, clapping. Great support, great turnout, great night.

Rehearsals

2008-04-20T13:58:00.000-04:00

What have I gotten into? Originally I booked the NEYT theatre space with the intention of presenting an evening of my own work. Sort of an intro to the work to my hometown. Seemed like a nice thing to do.

Between the date the show was booked and the date it was to go up, I began a project with NEYT called the Performance Writers Lab. It's similar to the labwork I've already talked about here, done in Brattleboro not NYC, that's really the only difference. Otherwise the usual drill - a chance to foment new projects, hear new work, give writers a chance to bring in fresh pages and hear them for their music; chance for performers to practice their cold reading chops and maybe, just maybe get a line on a new part in a new project. And of course, all done at no charge to anyone, and with respect for the playwright and performer always paramount.

Then figured, well, jeez, since I have this project date all set up, why not make it about the lab work, rather than just an evening of my work. So it went from doing a full-length of mine to doing shorts (again, with the shorts) of my own and the work of other writers.

Then I had trouble getting a director who'd do the project so decided to direct the pieces.

So here I am now, in typical all-hectic mode, scheduling, directing, and even performing in several short pieces. All going up May 1-4 here in Brattleboro.

Hooboy.

There are at Least 1001 Reasons to See Jason Grote's 1001

2007-11-01T00:43:00.001-04:00

Jason Grote's 1001 is flat-out the best thing I've seen so far in 2007. And I've seen a lot. You must put down that graphic novel immediately and rush out to see it.

Why am I gushing like this? For starters it's huge. The character list includes a one-eyed Arab, a Jewish/Palestinian couple, Scheherezade, Dunsiad, Shariyah and the king's Vizier, Gustave Flaubert and Jorge Luis Borges (now how many times can you say you saw a play that featured a blind Argentinian writer?). Due to the amazing Krazy Glue of Jason's eclecticism, and the whole-cloth, filled with Unity direction of Ethan McSweeny, the entire thing not only holds together but seemingly expands, giving you plenty of space in which to contemplate the generous helping of ideas, symbols, comedy and pathos. Though the play runs only 110 minutes it feels as if an entire world is contained within.

Despite a cast of only 6, its character list positively sprawls; but due to McSweeny's deft direction and the cast's terrific chops (and faster than light costume changes), it doesn't feel at all tight. The logistics of the production alone are worth watching, because the cast and technical crew pull off all the pyrotechnics - from places to moves to props - without a hitch.

One aspect of the show that's not going to get a lot of attention but in this case definitely deserves it is the music. True to Jason's 21st-century tastes, I can honestly say this is one play with a killer soundtrack. From dance-electronica to various forms of Arabic rhythms from the parodic to the sublime, suffused with subtle rock, this is an iPod of a show.

Rachel Hauck's production design is top-notch and thoughtful. A series of colored lines on the floor guide you to your section, and once you spy the mise - a bombed and blasted NYC streetscape in Arena, with two-deep audience seating, you know you're in good hands. Tyler Micoleau's lighting is comprehensive to say the least. The backstage geek in me stopped counting at a 120 cues.

Page 73 Productions has stood behind this play all through its creation, from Jason's initial drafts to the masterful concoction that's now playing in Gramercy. They are to be commended for their support and patience, as works this ambitious can take years - in this case nearly 3 - to come to fruition.

So how to sum up? The nice couple from Jersey sitting next to me asked me, "what's the play about?" I'd seen previous readings and hesitated, then blurted out - "it's about how our lives are wrapped in stories, and how our lives wrap themselves around stories. It's about the oldest story, the largest, about the tellers of stories, about their stories."

1001 closes in only two short weeks (Nov 17) though the director said they might get a 1-week extension. The house is small. So you better get off your bum, get out there and catch it. It's at the Baruch Performing Arts Center/Nagelberg Theater on E25 between Lex and Third.

PS: Variety's Mark Blankenship's given Jason's play a rave as well; have a look:
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935269.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

Being out of it

2007-03-27T23:54:00.000-04:00

Some artists never go through the periods known as "out of it." Those with the courage or the ability to go it alone can usually do it. Some are born with a silver spoon and that's how they manage. Others meet someone who's amazingly supportive. If you have none of those things, whether by choice, marrying for love or whatnot, you invariably end up spending large amounts of your time doing work that runs... let's say... counter to your bliss.
So in case you're wondering why I haven't blogged since last July, and why all that seems to come from me right now is static, that's why. There is some writing going on, but not the kind that cranks out large works quickly. No, it's been short plays when and if. That and course outlines for a school at which I've done work, etc.
Somehow it all feels like stalling. You say to yourself, it's just a matter of time before the waves of chaos recede and you can go back to it.

Houses, Openings and Closings

2006-07-20T01:16:00.000-04:00

Vocabularian Car Crash...

My house in Brooklyn has been sold and the sale is closing this coming Monday. At the same time I'm obsessed with houses and openings with Sanctuary. And of course two shows are closing in the coming weeks. It's all just conflated.

Talked to old friend - not that either of us is old mind you - Jane Scarpantoni, rock and roll and newjazz cellist. We talked about the tension between the public parts of our careers, in both cases we enable others but less so ourselves - she doing string arrangements for other musicians' albums, in mine productions of other playwrights' plays - and our inner desires to see our own work done and promulgated.

One wishes all could happen for all... but at some point one must push all others away and begin to realize the work that breathes within our own souls.

On the train I wrote, finally, a page of pretty good dialogue and realized... I can still do this.

This year I'm going to get an entry out to New Dramatists. And to see some more of my work produced both by me and by others. That's got to remain a promise and be realized as one kept. Otherwise I'm just cheating.

There's a safety in enabling others to get their work up... then I don't have to deal with the possibility of failure in my own work... of mistakes made, or proving I'm a fool making bad choices. I can work with Sanctuary and pick great plays and make them happen in front of audiences, and the Times can come out and love them, as they did with Adam's play. But if I'm not taking the chances with my own work, investing the time to write them, and the heartbreak that inevitably falls from actual productions of the work, then what sort of playwright can I call myself? Love others, yes, but love onesself too. And self-love means seeing work completed, and produced.

So what's there to complete? Well, since The New Life, and the short Flick See Gears in the Sparklight, I've laid back in the safe zone of creating snippets of work, a character drawing there, a page of dialogue here, and not completed anything of substance. This cheat must stop. I must dedicate real time in each day to completing writing and real additional time in communicating that writing to real theaters who might produce it, and to garnering support and resources around myself as a playwright. To do these things will give me the ability to once again call myself a playwright.

More good stuff

2006-07-16T00:27:00.000-04:00

NYTheatre.com gave Food for Fish a great review too...

We're very lucky here... to have this piece by wonderful Adam Szymkowicz, and the work of Alexis Poledouris and the cast, at this moment.

And crowds of folks - folks we mostly don't even know - are coming out to see it and laughing and saying great things about it and telling their friends. And putting up with the lousy AC in the theater and still keeping up good spirits and still laughing and clapping at the end.

On a personal note... the house closing is now on schedule and the buyer is a nice lady who told my son (very sad about the sale of his childhood home) that he could come visit anytime. Gabe has sworn that he will grow up and become rich and buy the house back. Heh.

There's a lot of stuff here all about love - defined as the moments between people where they wish each other well and strive to do the right thing by each other - and of course, all this amazing, beautiful luck.

Sure, working your ass off for 20 years and saving and paying bills and helping other artists and hoping it all works out in the end, all the promises you make being kept, etc... that's probably part of the basis. Having a dream of making something that helps a lot of people, and that brings some more great beauty into the world, a world crying out for some beauty, is part of it. And focusing strong and relentless energy and concentrating all your positive thoughts on the outcome and being organized and cooperative and friendly is part of it.

There are probably 3 or 4 plays in all this complexity. Funny plays and sad plays. When all this slows down, and there's time to reflect, some wisdom will trickle out of all these experiences... many painful, many almost unbearably achy, and some humiliating and embarrassing. And these will be the basis of, one hopes, some kind of art. That speaks some truth to people. That communicates the value of hard, positive, focused work and good intentions and good plans.

The time to reflect on all this is coming. That reflection will bring about those many plays. And now we have a machine that can bring those plays to people. Now we need to gather about us all the support we need to make this happen. It must happen.

The NY Times

2006-07-11T23:17:00.000-04:00

Bless you Anita Gates for your review of Food for Fish... it feels great... though... wellll... really all this stuff is really ephemeral, I mean what is the point of anything... "press..." whatever. Still a moment, to breathe and feel maybe something was accomplished... ahhh....

Still we need to sell a bunch of tickets to this thing to keep us out of the poorhouse. Oy. I can complain multi-culturally.

Though it never made the NY Times, in the Daily News the Caption read: "Save the life of my child."

Dunno whar that crap comes from... the sump of the unconscious prob.

My dad, ever the guy from the previous generation, but kind, says blow up the NY Times article and laminate it and post it in the lobby. As if there were room in the Kraine lobby for it. I think we should, make us feel like NY Theatre Workshop or whatever.

Too much-a

2006-06-15T00:04:00.000-04:00

It's-a whadda you say, you know?

A combination of multiple stimuli (stimuluses) has lately been conspiring (if stimuli can conspire) to reduce me to a bundle of over-stressed threads. Self almost completely obfuscated behind said bundle. What threads? Thread: Apartment hunting. Yech. After all the house is closing (hope) in a matter of 2 weeks. Must be done, however who EVER wants to move to a new home? Even a snakepit is better than moving. Moving out of this gorgeous Victorian, though, now that's hard. Thread: Starting the BratFlix festival. That seems to be getting off the ground well. Thread: Managing the Hooker-Dunham and keeping the bills paid. Thread: Writing the prospectus for Susan/Taj's opera. That's yet more stuff to do. Thread: Doing the dayjob dance. That's... well... it just is. Thread: Producing Adam's play (to open July 6 at the Kraine). That's going well. Think. Thread: Getting Larry's piece up to the H-D. Thread: getting workshop pieces up there for retreat work (have heard from many playwrights and each needs care and feeding to get their projects up there).

Yet all is not lost. Morgan Faust, a filmmaker from Brattleboro, has proven amazingly organized and resourceful in helping get the BratFlix festival off the group. The Wonderful Alexis Poledouris the director (bless her soul) and B. Carter Edwards (stage manager) have found us a likely assistant - after my own efforts to find one (on top of all else I hadda do) proved useless.

Yet, dealing with that, I have this messed up kneejerk reaction. It's like 25 years ago when I was doing the EST thing, and had to "sell" workshops, and did OK but was still 1 short for a goal, and a friend brought me a sale. I didn't know how to deal with that. How do you respond when someone is just being really nice to you and doing you a huge thing like that? God. What kinda person are you? Do you feel OK when someone gives you something you need... or do you have that flash like me, where you think, "why am I such a leech?" When you're not really... you're just a nice person and people want to help you.

Where does that crap come from? Having trouble accepting help from others? Inherited from weird parents, or what? Point is, it IS there. Guess the main challenge then with that is to learn to accept the favor anyway.

...Tra : Art...

2006-05-30T23:27:00.000-04:00

Gallery opening tonight for friend Susan Yankowitz's husband's poetry magazine Parnassus at Heidi Cho Gallery. Saw two photos there, wished to buy but didn't buy. Yoy... no money.

Adam Szymkowicz's play coming along the home stretch to production in surges, froths... lots of energy there. New draft came out. Still things to do... however it's coming along fantastically.

You'll be there, won't you? July 6 we open at the Kraine, 85 E 4th, we run 4 weeks mostly Th/Fr/Sat. Cheeeeap tickets... $15. This play is the fuckin funniest thing I've seen in a loooong while, friends, and I read a lot of scripts. End of self-plug.

Have a play opening in Romania about now, however communications are fuzzy. They were supposed to send a check, haven't seen the check... time to fly to Bucharest and COLLECT, man. I got a flurry of emails from them, then promises of payment. No, they didn't ask for my bank account information. Well, they did actually. But I didn't give it to them. Maybe they were really from Nigeria? Heh. My luck, prob-a-ly.

These are the times I wish I still took drugs.

It's not too late.

Actually there's info about it here and I'm listed right next to a production of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. Auspicious company.

Now where are those drugs?

Keeping it above water

2006-05-14T10:36:00.000-04:00

First in a series titled: The Trials and Lessons of a playwright recently become Theater Manager

Had some funny feedback today about the Vermont project. Every month all the galleries in Brattleboro get together and organize this thing called Gallery Walk... everyone comes out for it and all the galleries open up to the public. It makes for a nice evening.

The feedback was, the quality of the free food we serve at Gallery Walk is starting to disappoint folks.

In past years, many of the galleries timed their openings for new shows to this event, and many in the traditional "show opening" spirit served food, some times healthful and solid, others lavish.

But over the past year and a half, many galleries in Brattleboro, squeezed by the arid funding climate and reduced art buying by the strapped middle class, have either cut down or eliminated the free eats. In that period, the Hooker-Dunham became known as "the last remaining place" to get a good, classy, free bite. And that supposedly kept it on the itinerary of many residents, despite its lack of a good art show. So it came to pass that folks who were hungry but not particularly interested in seeing a lackluster art show showed up, ate the good eats, and left with their families, leaving only a trail of breadcrumbs in their wake.

Then the Hooker-Dunham fell. And , well, the spirit of Hansel and Gretel aside, we decided when we took over the gallery and theater that our primary responsibility when we came in there was to keep it going. And to eliminate the practices that caused it to previously go through hard times and close. We noticed that we weren't selling a lot of art, that the art shows at the gallery were not well-regarded, and that on gallery walk night most people who did show up, simply grabbed a bite and left.

So we made a judgement call. We cut down our emphasis on a good feed that night, and focused our resources on a better show in the space for Gallery Walk and the month following. We asked a curator whose work looked particularly special to give us a try. She brought much better shows in. We also went from a solid $175 a month in gallery rent to a free arrangement, with the hope that if we could build this right, and attract the right artists, we'd get more art purchases and that would offset the loss of the rent.

Well the gamble is still being tested. Little art has yet been sold, though we definitely have good art in the space and most folks love the shows.

So some residents resent we have de-emphasized the great feed we used to have. They used to show up for the food and they want to know why we're not offering it with the same aplomb.

Well, hm... I guess they're right. For now at least, we think it's more important to have a great art show for people who want to come in and see an art show. We're a gallery, not a restaurant.

And we spent some time looking at the folks that seemed to most relish the food we put out... they typically left immediately after securing victuals. Not a glance at the art. They were just hungry. If you asked them on the way out the door what the name of the space was, or whose art was being shown, or even when the next performing arts show at the theater was going to take place, they'd typically give a blank resentful stare. As if it was an imposition for them to expect anything other than, we're here for the food, lay off.

To my amazement, I was told, that's why we should have first class food, to serve the community's need for good food on gallery walk night. This when all the other galleries in town have either gone to a pay for eat model (like the Museum) or stopped it altogether.

Are we wrong? We seem to be getting good traffic for the gallery. We still do have free food, it's just more frivolous stuff, bruschetta and chips and crudite and cheeese and finger-size hot pizza bites. We're still one of the few serving anything. We would just rather be known for being a great gallery where important artists are being shown. We aren't making anything on the gallery yet, we don't yet have a sponsor to cover this, and in fact we're laying out $80 a month for what we've got, and frankly can't afford that $400 spread any more.

That's the complaint for today... next time I'll talk about the accessibility harpies.

Suddenly the Fringe (part 2)

2005-08-18T21:01:00.000-04:00

So there I was; had read the script before. It wasn't perfect, but it took a Robert Frost poem dead serious and was, well, odd. And odd was good. Most definitely.

Re-read the script and did a whole bunch of charts. I knew blocking a show, with little other directorial input, and without those critical one or two weeks taking the script apart together, would be a challenge. But it was going to get done.

Showed up the first night and spent, as I figured, a good 45 minutes on scene 1. A pretty short scene. Adam got nervous about time, but I reassured him if the first scene in this situation took less than two hours, we were in good shape. He was concerned we'd not get through half the script - in his mind beginning of act II - by end of the four-hour BlockFest I. I said, don't look at it that way, there are 75 pages in the script, 75 minutes onstage. Halfway was really page 35. And that was still in act I. He was reassured.

I had lots of nutty ideas to open the script up. We used commedia characters, we used weird positions onstage, we talked about burying treasure and finding it - to me the heart of comedy. We got to page 35.

It was a getting a play on its feet by the seat of its pants. But it was up, halfway, and it was working.

Suddenly the Fringe (part 1)

2005-08-15T19:17:00.000-04:00

Well, the Fringe is pretty unfair to writers. It's unfair to everyone. Yet it's there, it's big, it's loud. And when anyone anywhere is making a big fuss over theatre, how can one not?

I'd co-produced a reading of Adam Klasfeld's Good Fences Make Good Neighbors at a Chashama space a few months ago - and to say that, really, I just helped that poor hard-working guy get space and took care of a few other assorted things. The kind of stuff I'd rather not do if *I* had a reading going up. At the time I'd offered to help him with directing but he didn't need it. He had a director already.

Adam decided to put his show into the Fringe... his director was on board. Gave my standard pre-Fringe warning. Same thing always happens, once they've decided to do it, it's going to get done.

Three weeks before show open - around the beginning of August - he called. His director was gone to England - paying work. For some crazy reason, I volunteered to block his show and get it on its feet. We had two days.

New Fall Project for Sanc...

2005-07-25T17:38:00.000-04:00

Working with Phil on the new commissioning project, which will commission 6 writers to work with an artist in another discipline - think "visual arts" or "music" - to create original works that describe the process of creation. A bit of synaesthesia perhaps... or insights into the mind of these insane people we call artists. Hopefully.

sanctuary ready to go...

2005-07-25T17:34:00.000-04:00

After all the waiting, finally last week we got the Dept of Edu approval to proceed with our incorporation... and today I finalized the signatures. That pile of checks from all those wonderful donors who have wanted to support sanctuary... will shortly be depositable.

Exciting... well, I think so anyway. Possibly elicits yawns from other artist friends for whom hacking the real world holds less appeal.

love directing...

2005-07-21T17:45:00.000-04:00

a friend - adam klasfeld - who's also a terrif publicist - wrote a play i admire titled Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, about to go up at the Fringe. His director moved suddenly to England - no fault of Adam's of course. He was in that weird position, not enough time to find another, unable to really have time to do it himself but feeling obligated. I'm stepping in to help as a "consulting director" - to do blocking, coaching, traffic cop stuff. Tho it doesn't pay and won't garner me more than a "co-" credit, no matter... I really love doing this.

I'm delving into the script... it's a fun piece but also very meaningful. Starting out with a basic visual concept, I think the piece is about "seeing: not seeing" and am basing the visual and movement vocabulary on this.

Of course I have to run it by Adam first... he's my "boss" on this project...

:-)

Fourth ND no go

2005-05-20T17:42:00.000-04:00

well, fourth time I've applied to New Dramatists and not gotten that happy letter. I really like those guys, and wish I could count myself among them, but not this time, alas. This just after, the day before, I got a rejection from ATL for a 10 min piece. I thought they liked my work, I even got a Heideman nod last year, but apparently they've changed the literary staff over and I have to start again. That's how it is every year with ND; you never get the same group deciding who gets in year to year.

Can't say I'm that familiar with most of those who *did* get in either... but I'm sure they're wonderful.

Next year this time, if all goes well - and there's no way to tell if it will, but - I'll have more time to work on marketing.

When the future looks bleak...

2005-02-20T11:16:00.000-05:00

People turn to the past. Perhaps that's the driving force behind the aural memory project, something I've been doing since 2000... hm... interesting... since Bush was elected. Well, our sitting president - tempted to add an H to that at risk of being childish - represents a lookback philosophically, but aside from that it's just advancing age or whatever.

Nut of it is to recapture the soundscapes of various periods of my past... pop and non-pop music, soundtracks, theme songs, sometimes even ad jingles... to reproduce mental states long trod over by newer engrams. Theory is that within each of us is every alien person through which we phased as we grew, and using secondary sensory tools (since vision is "primary") we can sneak up on our minds and recapture our previous alien mental states. Useful for writing.

The actual performance would be to assemble the old songs and sounds package them together to typify a particular moment in personal time. Then play them and regenerate the old mental state, or at least a simulacrum of it, and using that old me for a writing purpose.

KESTIN - IM Conversation Play. Have fun with it.

2005-01-20T01:09:00.000-05:00

by Bob Jude Ferrante

Note. This is material is copyright 2005 Bob Jude Ferrante. For performance licensing information please contact jude@pipeline.com.

KESTIN (23:43)
There are three examples of this. The first is when they are right next to you, and you can smell their breath. The second is when you're in the salon and the Asian girl is really tearing up your cuticles. The third... well, there isn't a third.
KESTIN (23:51)
Hello?
KESTIN (23:53)
Got a call. Back in probably 10 mins.
KESTIN (23:56)
That went well. You there?
KESTIN (23:56)
Just checking. I guess, well, your away message isn't on, so just thought...
KESTIN (23:57)
You're probably getting a snack.
KESTIN (23:58)
Maybe I'll just go get a snack. If you see all this, I'll be right back.
KESTIN (01:04)
Went to the kitchen. Looked at the food. A lot of food. Five different kinds of cheese. None of them the same color. In a couple it’s the wax but there is one that's dark green somehow on its own. Then I thought, I'm too fat. When I was young I was buff. Wasn't everyone buff? Bet you were buff.
KESTIN (01:05)
Going to bed. Beat anyway.
KESTIN (01:26)
Can't sleep. The cat controls the bed. The parakeet was recently elected president of the spare room. They ll soon sign a non-aggression pact and kick me out of the apartment. Wsh you were here to read me.
KESTIN (01:27)
I'll go rotate, throw phases. A moon in the place of too many suns.

ten minute play ideas for ATL

2004-10-21T23:52:00.000-04:00

A woman slowly turns back into a man again – with dread, with fascination, with horror, with a growing sense of pride, with a growing sense of resentment, calling into image Tiresias, Busch, Fierstein, Ludlam, Quentin Crisp; gay lib and women’s lib at the same time.

It takes ten minutes to do something completely rapid and mundane that would normally take 10 seconds. Example: During a 10 second orgasm at the end of a brief affair between a lonely man and a lonely woman; one minute per second, we see the waves of realization and horror come over them, we see things happen in realtime in the body (the physical and neural events surrounding orgasm) and in dreamtime in the mind (the details of their meeting, their shame at this affair, their joy at this affair (sliding into or around a stranger reminding them of freer sexual times, of being bad, of bring a good lover mechanically, of the marriages and friendships betrayed by this affair). These were two good friends that have now messed up their friendship perhaps. A million details that interweave and contradict. Ten seconds can be a lifetime.

six nights over

2004-10-21T22:39:00.000-04:00

six nights and starting sanctuary: has had big impact on writing. ideas coming fast and furious but no time to get them beyond sketch stage. working also on producing another premiere; can't really talk about it yet, but it's a fantastic play with space to make new.

so pray with me - if you pray to the gods of whatever art where you worship - that the time to write again comes soon, i'm gonna bust.

x b

More Ideas

2004-07-22T14:24:00.000-04:00

New ideas coming in...

1. The immortality product (LifeX) needs frequent upgrades which extend life in "paks." The current pak lets people live to be 125 years old, prevents mental or physical aging. After that, an upgrade would be require to extend life to 135, then 150, etc. They are advancing the science the same way that chip scientists are advancing the evolution of microprocessors... they are not infinitely fast or efficient, but each new generation is faster and more efficient. Same with LifeX; and the benefits of this dynamic are similar to those experienced by chipmakers; customers have to pony up to get the latest upgrade or they lose out on the improvements to the technology.

2. We find out a covered up fact: Kate was a scientist involved in the initial stages of development of LifeX. She left when it was clear it would not be publicly available and free technology, but would rather be an expensive product only available to the richest people on the planet. The argument that LifeX used is that the funds permit continuous improvement. But Kate's argument was: you seem to be condemning the large parts of Earth's population to death. Having this background as a scientists and researcher bolsters the believability of her skills with genetic manipulation, and simultaneously gives her a stronger, more personal motivation for wanting to take down LifeX.

More ideas coming soon...

2004-07-09T18:51:00.000-04:00

We’re not selling shares and any “profit” the company realizes will be ploughed back into more programs – more productions, more presentations, more commissions. We also have not asked the playwrights for future rights to these commissions. We’re trying to give them a playground where they can fly, and hoping that brings out their true – and enormous creativity. We’re into paying artists. That’s our mission. That being said, eventually it will pay us salaries and this project has already had a measurable impact on my own visibility, it’s the goodwill part of my portfolio. I’ll be rapacious as an artist and leave the nobility to my producer side. That oughta be amusing.

Simultaneity

2004-06-07T17:13:00.000-04:00

OK... this is a capture of what in some ways are notes for the next stage in the evolution of this project.

It's clear that I'm strongly in favor of keeping the two worlds both present in the script. I got a LOT of notes saying that I needed to root the play in one world, and eliminate the other - the one most wanted eliminated was the fantastic world. The main note was that the future world is lost completely when the fantastic one intrudes, and the play becomes a plot machine and loses its ability to access subtlety. All true!

But there's a strong energy in the fantasy world, which actually represents a post-singularity world and is so strong I can't deny its actuality.

One cast member though had a key for me... Shakespeare's DREAM play introduces both worlds in scenes that alternate and eventually collide. That's the key to the success of this work.

1. Vera is having visions that have served her up until the story begins... giving her almost supernatual insights into her world and making her a terrific journalist, in fact, one of the greatest.

2. The visions begin to take on a more fantastic aspect... they in fact become what she knows of the Bush.

3. As the story progresses, her dilemma is made clear through increasingly surreal and strong visions. And she discovers the origin of these visions, and it's not what she expected it to be.

I know this is still vague, but I don't want to sperl it...

Ugh, i have not nailed it

2004-05-29T00:20:00.000-04:00

The comments are coming in and it appears that many colleagues are not picking up on what I was trying to do. Is this what I meant? Probably not.

Think I am definitely onto something and feel pretty damn obsessed about it, it's just going to require some more work.

There need to be two worlds. The worlds need to intermix better and earlier, so we don't have to meet the second world at the very beginning of act ii - I think it does slow down the play - instead we need the second world to be waiting on the first world to make the first move, back in Act I... and for the characters in the new world to ready/steady themselves for what is to occur back then.

Around the end of June it'll be picked up again and worked on.

Be good.

Workshopped now - tired and happy

2004-05-21T17:55:00.000-04:00

Ahhh... the six workshop productions - which took the form of staged readings - are now done.

The actors and director worked incredibly hard to do a low-tech realization of the draft. The energy they brought to the piece was palpable, and their talent and
Audience response was educational and sometimes heartening.

About 30% saw it and had a response similar to drinking a triple espresso... they responded with energy, excitement, enthusiasm, even. The draft as it stands today - "scene complete" but nowhere near finished or polished, inspired a lot of comments on its ideas and constant drive forward through its complex worlds. Those responses were heartening. I can expect that even if I get really wild, this 30% can stay with it.

As for the 70%... there were comments like "a play is *that*... a play is not *this*" - meaning a play is not what they saw. Most commonly this came over in a somewhat distressed tone. The draft is sprawling with characters, scenes, modes, ideas, words, images. It is not in its current form easy to follow. In a sense it has too much in it. But there was confusion between faulting it for its ambitions and faulting it for its complexity. It is too complex, it does need to be lined up and neatened. It does tend to burst out of the space and that's not always a good thing. In that sense, they're right... but they didn't need to be so distressed about it. The draft was a scratchpad for the play in a sense... a testing of various ideas and modalities for telling this particular story; exploration of possible character arcs and character forms from the ironic to mythic to the realistic.

What they saw was a series of experiments, testing the limits of what the play - when it's finished and actually becomes a play - can get away with. A few people somewhat condescendingly trying to define what a play was... nice of them... the definitions tended to fit into TV and well-made forma. One place, a few people talking, conflicts on a personal level. Someone actually said, a novel is about a conflict inside someone, a play is about a conflict between people, and a film is about a conflict of a person against the world. They are missing the point, but that's OK. Another person faulted the science aspects of the play, saying it's known the scenaria are implausible. Well, it's a work of fiction. But even so, scientifically it all really could happen.

A subset of those who responded enthusiastically were non-American folks. I think for them the expectations that any work for the stage would have a necessarily linear plot with clear precedent at every point for the main characters, that focus would necessarily be primarily on the protagonst, are different. Whereas Americans are more used to TV entertainment that reaches all the way into their living rooms to get them; they have fingers that twitch at an imaginary remote control whenever they see something that doesn't draw them in instantly or that floats above their line of sight.

Now I'll be taking a break from The New Life for about a month - a necessary cooling off period before I go out to absorb everything I learned, re-read the draft as if someone else wrote it, and apply a gimlet eye. Always need to do that... otherwise I'll start the rewrite with a strong sense of ownership and the changes and cuts will be too hard to do. You can't have that sense and still make the brutal cuts and rewrites that will be needed to turn this mass of twitching machinery into a real play.

Rehearsals well under way

2004-05-06T08:48:00.000-04:00

Rehearsals are going well... a little creatively chaotic (after all we have a fairly difficult 2-hour play with original songs to rehearse in five sessions - you have to admire these guys for their enthusiasm, talent and efficiency!).

It seems that the ideas and tableaux in the play seem largely to be borne up in rehearsal, and as always there are hundreds of deeper things there in the script that make it funner and funner to work with as you rehearse - some of these are intentional and some, at least overtly, not.

But it's apparent there's a static block of a scene sitting in the middle of Act II... so I've now cut another character (Donna Morgan) and am back to my writing room to completely rewrite that entire section. The best part of it is that watching the rehearsals has given me a set of clear ideas on exactly what to do. Now it's just a question of making it, and making it fun.

And the beat goes on...

2004-04-28T23:14:00.000-04:00

Have received lots of notes from several colleagues as well, plus there are my own observations and the notes from the reading itself. Quite a lot to digest, and have to confess it's been a good break from working on it, as the necessary distancing between the script and my sense of ownership occurs. At this phase, to rewrite, I must elicit a certain brutality -(Faulkner's darlings-must-be-killed; that means watch out for ETIOM - Effects That Impress Only Me...).

Tuesday, met with Peter Papazoglou, director for the next phase - workshopping the play before an audience over the next couple weeks.

Over coffee (at Starbucks) Peter had very incisive comments re structure and lots of logic questions.

You know, I spend entirely too much time talking about my approach. But what might be interesting: the approach has been somewhat story-mystical, if that makes any sense. It’s largely been world-building and character voice. The thinking was, we needed a really present world to 'set' the story (gemologically) best. Logic can suffer with that approach. Once you know the sense of the world, and the way the characters talk and feel about each other.

Been a quiet phase, but things are about to get hot again... cranking a new draft to the cast by mid-weekend. Been experimenting with a new character, one of the genetic scientists who built the Bush. Strong chance, he could be scaffolding soon. There are so many dimensions to this world that I must leave out of the play. There is enough to this fictional world to make a whole series. Hmmm....

First draft IN

2004-04-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

Dancing the night away... finally got through a complete draft. There's holes, sure, but we're ready for the reading TOMORROW NIGHT. Sent a copy to the cast and then spent the entire day today working on the draft, polishing and rewriting several scenes in Act I, especially scene 1 - which lost 10 pages today, glad to say - removing notes and other scaffolding, and then got back to work smoothing Act III scene 3, the climactic battle scene. Sounds funny to think there'd be a climactic battle scene in a stage play, but there ya go, doing all kinds of crazy time here. In about a half hour, will send the reading draft out to everyone, and call it a night. Do something brainless - or possibly brainful, like watching Robert Altman's Nashville - what a flick!

See some of you tomorrow night... hope all this malarkey was worth it. All for love, all for love.

character reflection

2004-04-09T08:50:00.000-04:00

The New Life has a menagerie of characters... one of the things decided when i realized we'd have 9 actors involved at the idea stage was not to restrict the number of characters we could have arbitrarily. (as it would happen, the number 9 has special significance for dante in the poem behind the title, so there's a near scary confluence there.)

So in the middle phase, there were suddenly over 20 principal characters in the play. Madness! The audience would need a scorecard, tons of doubling means lots of context shifts for the actors, making the play harder to realize. not that hard is always bad. but in this case, the play is ambitious in so many ways, and with the sometimes timid response difficult scripts get from some theatres, one must do everything possible to give a play a chance to see the stage again. What to do to solve this, reduce the number of characters?

Went through the script over the past month, telescoping characters and was able to reduce the number to 18 this way. Looked for another way to make a change to clarify and simplify. And it hit me. Matt had given a note during the open rehearsal - that there was a tiny influence of the Wizard of Oz in the play. As you'll recall, in the "set up the world" long first act before the inciting incident, the people Dorothy meets (Mrs. Gulch, Dr. MarVell, Hunk, etc.) are played by the same actors who later become the Wicked Witch of the West, the Wizard, and the Cowardly Lion. And there are links between the Kansas characters in terms of how they're played. That was it. Though I'd have the same actor playing multiple roles, I'd link the characters they played, so that the core characterization and verbs could be highly similar. Bingo.

tiny scraps when whole cloth not available

2004-04-07T01:18:00.000-04:00

Just an observation whilst writing; when sometimes I can't write a whole scene through, instead I make little scene bricks. Sometimes they're specific to a situation, which means they can only be used in one place; other times they're specific to (usually two) characters talking to each other, which means they can be assembled into many places in the play; sometimes this requires adjustment to make the arc clear for that moment.

lots of interesting stress starting of course... the project is due for a reading April 15. see you there, I hope, same place as the open rehearsal, Champion Studios, 257 West 39th St., NYC, and same time - 7:30 PM. RSVP to me at jude@pipeline.com. Love to see you there; if you can put up with this blog, which is dry, think of how much more fun you'll have at the real thing, the play that's developing underneath the blog.

the atrocity of this future world

2004-04-01T02:04:00.000-05:00

A fellow playwright whose advice is impeccable helped nail one aspect i'd been trying to bring out... how to rationalize Vera running instead of staying put and trusting the system. There's something fishy about it, they way they won't admit how much damage the rebellion is really doing, won't even allow the rebellion ten minutes onscreen. Her mention of the Rebellion is censored. The society they live in, despite its benefits and amazing possibilities, is also built on lies and death. There are a couple of possible atrocities they could commit. Sacrificing Mortals to add to their extant virus information - so they can track viruses across the Cities... that's one possibility. Or perhaps there's a worse, 22nd century form of genocide. Well that's a happy thought. How cheery this play is. It's just non-stop wads of cheer.

Stages, not acts

2004-03-20T00:30:00.000-05:00

Been writing little notes to self at the top of each scene. In bold. Pep talks about each scene. Seems to work... the technique sort of lets you put up temporary scaffolding and sandblast the idea until all the crap's off it.

If you get a chance, check out The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast. This is the investigative reporter that Michael Moore and the like get some ideas from. It's important to have balance in your diet.

The meaning? Of the heading up there? Ah. The phases of the new life are stages, so the acts take on those stages. that's what that means.

Open Rehearsal

2004-03-13T01:59:00.000-05:00

The focus was to honor all of the actors with a script worthy of this group, you made it look great and sound great and you should hear that as soon as possible.

Always thank the one with the thankless task first. So thank you to the hard-working and *fluent* Karin, doing the thankless task of reading stage directions. Larry gracefully switching between BEARER 1 and DAMIAN. Colleen, the Russian embassy needs a translator. Joe, you put Chiron in a Leisure suit and gazillionaired like a gazillionaire… imagine if it were “three-sexillionaire” (3 with 18 zeroes). Kimberly you made everyone want to take Japanese drugs (big surprise). Kirsten you found the cuore (heart) of Vera. Chris you picked the damn script up cold tonight and brought us the character of Net. Matt, you got us in there. Courtney made sure people found the place. Thank you all.

The play is by no means finished, but what we heard tonight was material that will for the most part survive, possibly cut down (cutting is a favored way to improve a script).

The actors took the material and were able to fly with it. That means the indirection is there, the voltage is in the wire and actors can take the material and make it their own.

The hard work is starting to pay off. But coffee break's over, time to get back on my head.

An early draft is out there

2004-03-10T23:54:00.000-05:00

Sent the early draft - pre first draft - to the cast for the open rehearsal. It's 9 scenes, from the fugue at the beginning through 8 more movements. At this point, if I hear it works and it's off the beaten path, that's what I need to hear. If it doesn't work, I'll fix it. It's a complex piece and it's lucky there are so many seasoned players in the group; what they got tonight is a workout... but it's going to be fine.

Questions I plan to ask Friday -

1. Are we starting to get the stuff across?
2. Some characters are boldly drawn and others are a little blurrier, depending on how close they are to the focus. Who are these people?
3. The story moves against a world hanging in the background. Mortal Coil is a whole world, but if you live in a world you don’t go round talking about it, you’d just live there. Are the rules of the world clear?

... and surely more questions will come.

Open rehearsal Friday March 12, 7:30 PM

2004-03-08T08:04:00.000-05:00

Mortal Coil will have its first public presentation by Praxis Theatre Project NYC at an open rehearsal Friday, March 12 at Champion Studios, 257 West 39th St., NYC, 7:30 PM. If you have been reading this blog and now plan to attend, please shoot me an email at jude@pipeline.com, as seating is VERY LIMITED.. Plus, if you email, I'll get you on the mailing list so you can keep abreast of things - there is an open reading and workshop run of the play coming up!

Back to pages!

La Vita Nuova

2004-03-07T19:41:00.000-05:00

Small details can be important. Example, Vera receives messages that appear in her mouth; someone or something has rewritten her genes and activation sequences. Among the genetic changes, her body is manufacturing messages on rolled up paper, which are brief snatches in Italian from Dante's La Vita Nuova. Net is there to translate these for her (until he's not).

These messages foreshadow the stages in her character's evolution as she changes from human into whatever the changes made to her genes designs. La Vita Nuova.

Now it's about pages...

2004-03-01T12:05:00.000-05:00

There is an open rehearsal scheduled for March 12. I'd like the cast to have at least two days with the script beforehand. Admittedly some things are still going to be rough, but many things will also be exactly the way they'll be in the finished script.

For about two weeks now, I've been focused on only one thing: Turning pages out. This has been a full-time, 3-day a week job (I also work a full-time job in the computer industry, so it's been a balancing act).

There are already 55 pages done, all keyframe scenes are in except the climax. Following please find my writing schedule for the next two weeks. Scene shapes are also done for the scenes that stitch the keyframe scenes together, so now we just have to write those. Page counts are very approximate.

(Hopelessly quotidian! But writing is more than just thinking stuff up. It's bone-crunching work.)

Monday 3/1 - The party - (6 pages) Desperation 1 (4 pages) and Desperation 2 (6 pages) -
Tuesday 3/2 - The Road 1 (5 pages) - Weird creatures
Wednesday 3/3 - The Road 2 (5 pages) - Lotus Eaters
Thursday 3/4 - The Road 2 (5 pages) - Lotus Eaters
Saturday 3/6 - The Road 3 transition (3 pages) and Donna Morgan death scene (9 pages)
Sunday 3/7 - Entering the Safe House (5 pages) meeting Kate (5 pages)
Monday 3/8 - Rewrite climactic scene (8 pages) and complete Scene 1 (4 more pages)
Tuesday 3/9 - Review and tweak Opening and climactic points (2 more pages)
Wednesday 3/10 - Research and weave in poetry quotes, fill in jokes, gaps and expletives, Proofread
and TURN IN DRAFT to CAST and MATT

When I deliver on this schedule we'll have double the number of pages almost - 111 pages - but still be well under the two-hour limit. If I fall slightly short of that, I'm not going to kick myself. Nor will anyone else.

I know, if I'm going to be *this* entertaining, you might as well tune in to "American Idol." Or better yet, go out and see a bunch of other great new plays - too bad Melissa James Gibson's Suitcase just closed, that was a good one.

taking shape

2004-02-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

Shape is one of the most important things in a play, at least for me. Let's define shape as the overall pattern of motion for the plot and character arcs. There needs to be a unity of shape for a play to contain beauty. By unity of shape, I mean the principal character's arc must be the force that molds the play's shape and the shapes of individual character arcs must reflect the overall shape of the driving plot in the play. And the shape must move in a harmonious fashion. Even ugly beauty involves some form of harmony; even dissonance requires discipline or it's just noise.

Shape in a play is not static, it must move. It is a four-dimensional shape, taking definite boundaries and filling its countours with detail, but also moving in time to gradually transform from one static shape to another.

Successful directors work this way as well; several directing textbooks talk about "picturization" which is seeing a play as a gradual progress through possibly tens or even hundreds of static pictures. These pictures add up to a time-based experience of shapes in motion. When most successful these shapes are evocative and not literal. Most of the time when an actor complains about a scene being too on the nose, they are referring to this dynamic. By the way, audiences rarely say a scene's too on the nose, especially at readings. It's always an actor, director, another playwright, or stage manager, even a designer who will point these things out to us. Or we just notice it ourselves. But audiences always say in talk backs they want everything to be crystal clear. Really they don't want that, they're just telling us they have a hard time reading the music off the page, and that's completely understandable - they haven't made a life of interpreting plays.

Each individual picture should evoke a particular sense of dynamism (potential movement) as well as status (level and forward/backward position control status - downstage and higher up take higher status than upstage and lower down.) This is a gross oversimplification for the purpose of making a point, and I don't mean by this definition to denigrate the importance of voice. But the visual sense dominates our way of perceiving change, and change is what theatre is about, and that's got to count for something.

When determing the shapes of characters in the play, it's important that the shapes of secondary and incenting characters should *not* be identical to that of the play overall. Instead the shapes should either support or contrast to the central shape. Oversimplified, if the principal character is moving in a downward direction in terms of their status, other characters should experience upward motion. For example, as Vera's fate apparently moves downward, that of her husband, who's exploiting her downfall for his own ends, moves upward in inverse proportion. Now, the husband is not a principal character in the play, at least not in terms of overall pages where he appears, however he's important to show the progress of destiny in the play.

Size of notes vs. size of scenes

2004-01-27T00:47:00.000-05:00

Of the near 50 pages written so far, there are 15 pages of scene drafts and 35 pages of notes. The scenes are more like experiments in actualizing the world of the notes. What are the notes? An amalgam of character analysis, plot points, metaphors, setting ideas, modes of conveyance, hot objects...

The opening sequence is critical, reduced again to outline (dialogue is relentlessly cannibalized) it reflects the structure of the whole play - there are three full-cast scenes planned and this is one of them. There are these 9 terrific actors, and they should all be onstage as much as the story will carry that.

The basic movement of the opening scene is: She's editing a documentary, with the aid of software agents, for presentation to the network for whom the program was commissioned. During the course of the editing, parts of scenes are repeated and augmented; there are no rules of objectivity in 2129 journalism... in fact, a show is a success when its opinions most closely match the prevailing course of opinion - that's 'objective fact' for the time (unlike today's journalism - so dispassionately objective ;-)) Simultaneously she's presenting the final edit to her mentor, who notes what's missing - the very thing that will make the show a coup, an interview with Kate Anthony, head of the RU. A building explodes nearby. A body's carried in...

Sure it sounds like a plot machine... the towering freaking inferno... but just wait...

to be continued...

Conventions - arriving at them and using them

2004-01-20T16:41:00.000-05:00

Can't think of theatre as a limited form. It's got the same possibilities and presence of limitation as any other medium. Comparing theatre to film has resulted in some makers of theatre thinking that theatre can't achieve what film can - can't match its scope, can't be as visual, can't depict the fantastic as well.

The problem to solve is how to create a depiction of the ideas for the future, real in a way, without any of the CGI/SE palette that film has... and without having to EXPLAIN them... those are the limitations, and so within those strictures, i've come up with a whole bunch of strategies, some borrowed from avant/garde, some invented.

In truth, it's film that's limited. The great CGI effect that looks so cool today will be passe in 5 years. Whereas the theatre's use of special effects, lo-tech and relying on the human imagination... why, those will remain cool, possibly forever.

So achieving, for example, a play with scientfic imagery that takes on an almost mystical set of properties can actually be done better in the theatre - where the special effects that lie in the mind can never go out of date.

So for example, rolled up pieces of paper appear in her mouth with messages to her written on them - her genes were reprogrammed to create the paper, ink and actually write the messages (deposit the ink in a predetermined pattern on the paper). Objects and tools are imbued with intelligence, have ideas, opinons and strong feelings about how well we use them.

The story trinity

2004-01-09T00:47:00.000-05:00

There are three stories woven into this play.

The story of the documentary she is making - the answers to the core questions she's been asking all her life - or perhaps sometimes better questions. Though it's created in multiple installments, it's the core of her being that's explored and revealed; the play's world reflects these values. Specifically the questions are about the nature of the world they occupy, and how they've deluded themselves; she's the artist, a needed tonic for her day. She's not always right - in fact, she's mostly wrong and the truth has to give her a good nip before she can see it. The beliefs she holds at the opening are surely the result of having given up on achieving any of her lifelong goals. But this makes her feel alive; alive for the first time in ages, because she's going to die. Each actor in the company has to have a part in the documentary at the opening; a 5 or 6-stage journey.

The poisoning plot, which is the cover story for her journey through seven checkpoints - there are seven characters besides Vera and Internet (he's with her almost in every scene until he can't be there any longer).

What's really going on; what grab for power is this and what she's going to do to bring them to justice and not let them win out.

1. structure 2. write

2004-01-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Near as soon as the first scenes start coming out, the structure starts to change; this is pretty typical of how it goes for me. Got a skeleton of ~ 24 basic scene actions (each scene actions usually translates to a single scene. The exception would be in a multi-threaded or "epic" story, where a scene will always have more than one scene action - typically a threaded character gets an objective on their journey as well as the protagonist). By the way, this is shaping up to be an Epic style play. For a good definition of what's meant by Epic, see The Power of the Playwright's Vision by Gordon Farrell

Now, as secondary characters become more complete, they start arguing with me that they want to do more, and that means changes to the structure to respond to their lobbying.

NAMES are really important to characters for me... i tend toward a modernized Restoration Comedy naming convention, where a character's name correlates closely to their character. So the lead character's working name for now is Vera, with all those connotations (it will probably change, it's a bit heavy-handed, that the seeker after truth would be named Vera). But there are all these rich tangents; Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn? The secondary characters tend to have less well-defined names at this point; i'm naming them obvious things like caliban, dulcinea and pericles, names too absurd to coexist in a script with a concrete structure. Using ridiculous but evocative names keeps alive both (1) the basic spine of the character (2) the fact that it HAS to be changed before the draft goes to anyone; again, typical of how I work.

DETAILS On a related note, I tend to not work out the detailed things whilst writing initial drafts... I leave spaces in the script-in-progress that says things like, "insert haiku about laundry here" because my head doesn't interrupt well; if it's on a streak of writing plot points it's not going to be too good at writing lyrics or crafting an acerbic comeback. This is a painful thing, I have this creative ADD thing going on, so if I get distracted, I've lost the context - all the little intricate threads I thought I was weaving into permanence become fumetti (little puffs of smoke). Are you like that... is it hard to re-focus on the context once the stack gets popped, (software term) after an interruption?

Scene 1 drafted, Scene 2 underway

2003-12-30T02:09:00.000-05:00

1. Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. -- Arthur C. Clarke
2. Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T.S. Eliot

Scene 1 drafted, Scene 2 underway: Am doing at least 2 versions of every scene, playing with various stakes. In one version, her chances at getting the license for a child are good and she approaches the counselor with some contempt; in another her chances are at risk and she's more oily. We aren't going to like her right off, important for education plot.
The outline is a stern taskmaster. A lot more scenes to write. But it's better to have an idea of what they'll be than staring at the blank mind of nothing.

Warren Zevon's cover of Knocking on Heaven's Door a real source of inspiration, if not just a dark, sad, brittle flash of brilliance.

Creating a language for these people; it's modern English (not Nadsat or anything) but there should be a slight linguistic drift. Think of the difference between the way we spoke in 1875 and now, to get an idea the degree of drift.

Immortality at issue

2003-11-20T00:25:00.000-05:00

What if the thing at issue, at least in the background of the thriller, were immortality? (Kirstin’s world idea follows along similar lines too… but there are also elements of Gary’s and others’ ideas in the mix here with mine as well).

Imagine the ruling culture has mastered life and death; the human lifespan has been increased to where you can nearly be immortal. Did some reading up. A few weeks back researchers from UCSF published a paper that says disabling the capability of worms to reproduce was the key to increasing their lifespan in the lab. Hmmm…

World - general. So people can live practically forever, just not if they keep their sex drives... if they have sex or keep their sex drive they have a limited lifespan. In our fictional future history, we live forever. Of course we can be killed by accident or malice, but if they get to us in time, EMTs (e.g., paramedics not aliens) can put our minds in black boxes and take us to a corporate hospital where we're grown a new clone of ourselves to hold it. But sexual activity is forbidden... in fact illegal because to have sex is to eventually bring about your death; attemped suicide. People are not sterilized, every morning everyone takes a pill that safely neutralizes their sex hormones and renders them infertile. It can wear off if the drug is not taken every day.

To make more people, which doesn't have to happen anywhere near as much because the world will fill up quickly after forty years of people not dying. But in case more people are needed, companies that handle mixing the genetic material to create new human cocktails. Children when created this way are practically flawless. To make sure nobody breaks the law, everyone has to be tested regularly for sex hormones. If they any are detected, they are arrested and tried - for attempted suicide. There are a few convictions a year. As a replacement for sex, couples take new, physically harmless drugs and sit together. Gradually over the centuries you start to dry out a bit... your mind flattens out, you lose your ability to feel things. Now, there's a growing underground of people that have found a way to keep their sexuality and who have also learned how to get around the test… perhaps through some sort of payoff scheme, or they can fake it.

This has a potentially interesting world for a play. Talking black boxes. A character can die and then walk in again a scene or two later. A sex scene that gives a possible If people couldn’t have children, perhaps - possibly - they wouldn't worry about gender as much - wouldn't the stigma against homosexuality be irrelevant? Would there still be marriage - between homosexual or hetero-sexual couples indiscriminately (you just find the mind you love, and don't worry about their sex)? Would people still have affairs? Would having affairs be an institution (think the French). What about prostitutes? (No, I am *not* obsessed, but I had a few years driving them, never wrote about them yet, and I recall a really interesting assortment of characters!).

World - personal. OK, so what if the heroine were a famous news/human interest reporter, very successful (or a similar career that communicates a certain bland vacuity, while simultaneously placing her at the center of the popular culture). Now, in the past, she wasn’t so superficial… she was a great investigative reporter in her youth… but that was 70-80 years ago. She long ago realized that if she is ever going to get anywhere, she must ruffle fewer feathers, and so now HI is her specialty. At this point, her career has grown to the point where she is about to make the big deal that will make her a household name and wealthy beyond dreams of avarice. The deal involves some kind of sellout.

She's married to another successful man, (maybe a politician - she makes the money). And there’s something interesting and twisty about her – maybe she’s having an affair with a woman (the husband knows and puts up with it as long as the relationship between he and she is still good). To really add extra twists to the story, at two chokepoints both the husband and the lower must become suspects and/or victims later.

Four years ago, she and her husband had a factory-made daughter who was killed by someone in the reproductive underground, and neither she nor her husband could get to her in time to save her mind for reproduction. Or perhaps even more pointedly, she herself made a serious error and caused the daughter's genetic material to be lost, so it was her fault? The couple has, after four years of paperwork, applied for and gotten permits to have a child made to replace their child. But this would require them to go back and do the whole painful process again; since losing her last daughter, she’s been torn and distracted from doing it. The service calls her regularly and nags her to come in and pick out her new child’s characteristics.

Change of fortune. She attends a convention where the political power brokers of the press regularly attend; something of a big bash. It’s here she’s planning to cut the final deals that will make her career dreams finally come to full fruition. She’s sworn to herself that after this she will slow down and order that kid and spend more time with her designated family.

During this party, she is slipped a mickey - a hormonal cocktail designed to reinitiate her reproductive system. She never sees who does it to her. Meanwhile, the deal goes down. She is going to get it all… her dreams are going to come true. She goes to bed and wakes up feeling a bit weird. She ascribes the feeling to the heavy partying the night before, and gets ready for work. We see inklings – subtle ones – of what’s happened to her, but she doesn’t suspect a thing.

Crisis. When she goes into work, her newly activated reproductive system sets off the alarms. She’s sent home and told to go to the doctor. They run tests. She gets the bad news… she’s been found to be a reproductive criminal. What’s more, the way her system was reactivated requires her to find the exact set of hormonal compounds that were used… the compounds have passed out of her body now, and can’t be detected. Whoever did this had access to the best biochemists money could buy. She calls in some favors to powerful and influential people keep the news out of the press. But they can’t do it forever. Within forty-eight hours, the story will break and her career will be over. What’s more, at that point her condition will be irreversible. She’s got no choice. She must find whomever did this to her, and fast.

I am still working on a lot of the details of the interim journey, and perhaps you are also getting ideas on the steps she can take to uncover each of the clues. Suffice it to say that her old talents as an investigative reporter are being revived even as the effects of the dosage she swallowed starts to compromise her. Yes, this is an aspect from a previous idea… that whatever has happened to her is starting to erode her effectiveness at the very sleuthing that made her such a great reporter all those years ago. She’s losing it even as she needs it.

Her journey needs to take her to lots of weird and cool places, these are places in our future, some of which we can only dream today. She needs to meet a really bizarre group of characters… these are people of our future world, with disturbing and/or fascinating similarities to people in today’s world. At some point, she will discover who it is that’s done this to her… members of the reproductive underground. And after spending time with them, she starts to be swayed to join them… and to rebel against the comfortable life she’s built all these years. She changes sides. And then things start to get really interesting…

To be continued…

Just for Fun

2003-11-15T02:27:00.000-05:00

Female Driven Thriller - Meeting notes 11/13
written up by Bob Jude Ferrante (playwright on this thing)

We met to really just be together; it's apparent we've made a huge amount of progress in the past few weeks, despite the brief moments of contention... which are probably a normal part of any process where you throw 10 strangers in a room together and tell them to make something happen together.

Larry Rothman, enormously talented actor, improv teacher for the Times Square Group, and all-around great guy, did a 2-hour improv class. We thought (crazy us) that we could get them on their feet, thinking on their feet, and thence make their creative juices flow.

It's my belief - and I can be disabused of that belief given enough sufficiently cruel real-life experience, mind you - that trying to create a peak experience for people can sometimes actually result in people having a peak experience.

Many years back I volunteered as a facilitator for a group called Actualizations in San Francisco. They seemed to have a corner on peak experiences... it seemed that everyone who I saw do their workshop had a peak experience. With very few exceptions. Everyone had to pay full price anyway, whether they wanted to have a peak experience or not. I guess that's critical... given that situation, I'd bet most people would just say, screw it, might as well have the peak experience.

It's my hope that the two hours of playing we did at Kirsten Mitchell's apartment resulted in some fun. It's amazing how much work you are doing while you are having fun.

2003-10-30T23:23:00.000-05:00

Minutes for Female Driven Thriller - 10/30 meeting
written by Kirsten Mitchell, actor (and producer at Praxis)

Today, Journey, the world moves or a person moves.
Are Heists thrillers? Some of the group said yes, some no.
Can thrillers be comedic? ex. Scream, Conspiracy Theory (references to Catcher in the Rye clue us into the type of conspiracy).

What if someone is a freako? What if the leader of a government is crazy or something isn't what it seems, the world is innocent untill... Discovery is made.

Movie 2001, computer Hal isn't what he seems, becomes a thriller half way through.
Movie The Exorcist, little girl is innocent, possessed by devil.

What should Female Driven Thriller be?
Role reversal, women in power over men. The idea of Nuturing in a sinister way. Movie Alien, woman is thrust into the main role without pointing to the fact that she is a woman, at first you thnik its going to be Tom Skerrit, it becomes a female driven thriller because of circumstance, alien kills Tom first.
Character Driven: relationships are more important; woman to woman relationship. Wacky idea: she is hunting down some sort of conspiracy, everyone she goes to is a part of it, she ends up being central to the conpiracy's inception. The characters are part of a call girl ring. Because call girls are outsiders, skilled in manipulation.

Outside group of women in society: Nannies; they could manipulate through nuturing. Perhaps the nannies are raising children to be brainwashed into doing something for them someday. Maybe they are baby switching. Nannies form secret ring in order to manipulate the wealthy.

Nannies example of subculture, denegrated, an underclass that is both inside and outside, as outsiders they are given alot of trust.

A perfect society, innocent. What if its not a black and white story but gray everyone is culpable.

Being put into the outside w/out trying, shunned, but then shunning doesn't work.

For next time, look over all the homework handouts, what people submitted. Group decided they were ready to go from the page to the stage, so to speak. Read and reflect on what you liked that people brought to the homeworks. Come to the next meeting prepared to discuss what you think is good that we have come up with so far, opptional bring in an article that you feel expresses what we've been talking about.

2003-10-26T23:21:00.000-05:00

Minutes for Female Driven Thriller - 10/23 meeting
written by Kirsten Mitchell, actor (and producer at Praxis)

Hey all,

Here are the meeting notes from last week:

Characters homework was a way for Bob to learn more about us and for us to stay connected to the project outside of meetings.

Today: Start imposing challenges; questions still unanswered: What is the world of the play? What is the crime?

Types of thrillers: Personal crime(classic), and Political crime(social/topical)
Example of a personal crime thriller, DOA, characters have base motives, the victim solves his own murder and finds out the reason for his death is trivial. Example of a political thriller: The Manchurian Candidate.

Bob's aims: Selfish, to bring the group to the play. Selfless, find out what's going on in people's minds today.

Focus on the future, predict from a pattern. What will life be like 40 years from now? What about the difficulty of being identified, what tactics will be used to be recognized?

Perhaps there will be some sort of international id. Karin brought up her difficulty to open a bank account as a foreigner. Today's ids are becoming inadequate. People are becoming the victims of fraud. What about drug testing and credit checks, results could be manipulated. We're being watched, analyzed and filed. What if a homeless person is actually the victim of descending status brought about by someone else.

What if the solving of the mystery had a time limit like 90min.

World cards:
1) Recreational drugs of the future shut off some of your senses
2) Reflection: a brain mapping lie detector
3) Wrapping: gives you skills instantaneously, mental plastic surgery
4) Closing your halo, hiding your thoughts
5) Halo: software containing everyone's personal info data
6) Bitmass: radio frequency transmitters, sensors
7) The leith pill: used to forget bad memories
8) Virus inhibits one's ability to use systems
9) Information replaces currency
10) Everything must be bought
11) Dating: quick background sessions

Homework: In roughly 200 hundred words construct a world in the future, make it multidimensional, 3-4 dimensions or aspects.

2003-10-19T23:13:00.000-04:00

Minutes for Female Driven Thriller 10/16 meeting
written by Chris LoDuca, actor (writer as well)

OK, here are the minutes to last weeks meeting, Thursday, October 16,
2003

THRILLER: Threat to losing something of value.
-Mystery
-Ticking clock threat
-Stakes

BOB's THOUGHT:
In life we participate in a various number of games.
Theatre is one of those games. Could we use games for development?
Card games could inspire a moment when we find ourselves stuck.

Example of a card game:
Find a place where a the presence of a video camera could present a
problem.
-We decided that a bathroom would be a place and we played out a
little improv to prove that point.

SURVEILLANCE VIDEOS:
-Don't tell the whole story
-Editing can Juxtapose a reality
-Truth and Lies are blurred
-Everything seems to be covered by Video
-Skews memory of events

STALKERS:
-Would be interesting if there were a stalking character that always
appeared on someone's surveillance tapes or pictures.
Who would be the villain? It could be the person owning the camera
equipment.

SOCIAL RULES:
Makes us feel uncomfortable if we don't participate
-ie: Standing for the National Anthem – it makes a person feel
uncomfortable if they don't do it. The collective conscience expects
you to stand.

Someone mentioned the movie 'Wave' made during Hitler's reign. I think
it was Bob.

EDWARD R MURROW:
-Used video to undo a person (Senator Joe McCarthy) by allowing his
true self to emerge on camera. (I kept calling him Eugene McCarthy,
but I meant Joe McCarthy - sorry).

We all agree that Negating in an improve is BAD.

STAKES:
Bob: Researches and uses random facts to write a play. Thus the
homework.
He feels that doing homework makes the process seem like "ours"

HOMEWORK:
Craft more than 1 character (2 minimum)
Show 4 facts about that person
Show pivotal moment in time that formed that Characters beliefs,
personality tics, etc.

Choose from the following:
Hero
Villain
Victim
Suspect

Give Bob feedback about how you think the meetings are going.

October 16 2003: Pictures don’t lie

2003-10-17T22:58:00.000-04:00

Session notes - Female Driven Thriller - Thursday, Oct 16 2003
Kirsten and Larry joined Joe, Karin, Gary, Colleen, Kimberly, Chris, Gabriella & Bob. Now the entire group is together. We redid intros to greet the new people; this took up some time from the session, but was needed to get the new people and the group from last time on the same footing.

Bob summarized the introductory meeting. Besides getting to know each other, the group had defined what a thriller is for their purposes: A mystery where someone or something utterly dear to the crime-solving hero is put under direct threat; to solving the and the hero must solve the crime to save that thing they hold most precious or lose it forever. Thrillers nearly always have deadlines (ticking clocks) at their heart. A mystery is a story where one or more false stories cover a true story, which must be discovered as part of the narrative.
He also explained that he thought we could use games to develop the show, but not to get too disturbed about the word “games;” games are the basis of all human existence, games are based on our ability to represent one thing by another and to create . He then introduced Card Game as first game we have available to us;

We did first Card Game and Larry drew card #10, video cameras watching us. Larry also read the card to the group.

Video cameras watch you shop, drive, enter or leave an office building, train or bus station, or airport. Describe one location where a camera can be present, then enact a problem caused by it.

Following game rules as stated on the card, we suggested possible situations; came up with cameras in corporate offices and then more specifically in toilets in corporate offices.
Bob suggested an improv on the bathroom idea. Gary volunteered, began the improv, pretended that his chair was a ‘toilet’ and, parked there, read a magazine. Gabriella joined the improv and became a voice on a speaker in the bathroom, telling Gary it was forbidden to read a magazine on company time. Gary then started playing with his game watch; Gabriella told Gary that, too was illegal. Gary then covered his face. Gabriella stated that, too, was verboten; and that the company had now detected he was angry and required counseling. Chris joined and became a security guard who banged on the bathroom door, barged in, and told Gary he to clean out his desk, he was fired.

We launched into a lengthy conversation about the improv. Bob mentioned that the cameras were not only being used by corporations; for example, a traffic program on cable TV typically showed video from a menu of literally a hundred traffic sites around New York City; these cameras were on 24/7.

Chris told a true story of a drug dealer who approached him in Kinko’s; he was offered marijuana, asked to see it, smelled it, it was oregano, told the dealer, dealer denied, then admitted, Chris commented that if a corporate camera a Kinko’s had seen him, that a video of him smelling the contents of the bag of suspected contraband shown in a court of law would have had him convicted and imprisoned for buying drugs with no basis in truth.

A lively conversation ensued, where we concluded:

People implicitly trust pictures (seeing is believing) and routinely use them as proof of something.

Kirsten described a recent fight she’s seen at the playoffs on TV, and how the motions of one player during the fight were actually to pacify an angry player, but which taken out of context (the player apparently pushed the other player’s head toward the ground) appear to be cruel and violent. Colleen dissented; she was at the game and in person it really did look as if it was in fact a violent act.

It was commented that a picture shows only part of what is true and often shows something with no context.

The news and entertainment have merged. Bob suggested that Hearst had started that process; but it was pointed out that it’s dated back to at least the 19th Century; papers in the 1860s sensationalized news. Chris suggested that Edward R. Murrow and other Great Generation reporters had reformed the news beginning in the 40’s, but that it was starting to revert back to its big bad days.

Karin mentioned photos of her that people had seen and mistakenly turned into racy little stories; taken out of context some of the pictures appeared to be sexually suggestive or violent but those interpretations were always the result of misinterpretation (because Karin was there and knew the context was different than the more dramatic one people assumed).

Cameras really are everywhere. Bob said the cameras are cheap and are made in such quantity and it is human nature to use them once they are available, they are too useful not to be. As a result, the world is now one step closer to Orwell’s vision in 1984.
Joe left; Gary moved into Joe’s seat, someone commented that Gary could finally get off the ‘toilet.’

Game 1: The Card Game

2003-09-17T22:25:00.000-04:00

I've now formalized the growing deck of idea cards with an easy to follow set of guidelines:

At a lull, select a card.
Group reads card aloud and has one minute to decide if we can work with it.
If not, card goes back to the deck & we select another card.
Group spend ten minutes working with the card.
We decide if it should go back into the deck.
Topics are not to be suggested at meetings but anyone from the group can email Bob with card topics

Milestone 1

2003-09-10T21:39:00.000-04:00

Just got back from a vacation on Virginia Beach; a fertile but non-productive period, where I did a lot of planning for the impending start of the Genesis process. Have now arrived at a process point where I think I can actually be of use to the actors as we work.

The major effort I am making is to be a source of support, process and information but not an arbiter or judge of the material. As in a perfect brainstorming or improvisational process, I'm seeking a meritocracy of ideas. So my own ideas must take a backseat to those the group as whole can generate. And that's going to be one of the first things I shall announce once Matt turns the group over to me for the startup phase of our work together.

On the other hand, I have done a large amount of research for this play, and want that research to be of benefit to the play development process. The cards mentioned in the previous entry are a part of this. A guided improv process will be a second tool for generating scenes. A physically oriented brainstorming process will support the generation of themes. All in all, I'm really looking forward to this!

2003-09-01T02:00:00.000-04:00

Talked to Matt Bray, AD of Praxis... he's amped about this blog; so it's all set... I'll report on the output of the process, sometimes in a rather raw state, other times more associatively.

I plan to bring in a set of big index cards to all the meetings, possibly starting with the first if the time is right; each card has no more than 25 or so words about the ideas that have come out of the research. A picture already on the background of each card represents Shared Idea. If things ever get static and need livening up, I'll pull out a card at random and if I've done a decent job on the first set, it should do some good. If there's a flop, we have to agree to put it BACK into the pile to be drawn later. So we only dispose of an idea card once we are done.

I plan to open the process of generating these cards to the whole group as soon as possible. People can email me ideas and I will put them on cards, the same as the first ones I generated, and we will draw them at random when we need.

Maybe also take a quick vote (we have to get good at quick votes) to determine when a card should be considered completed. But I think perhaps these cards will never be completed; if we get a card again, it's time to see what that card has to say to us again. If that idea doesn't pan out, we'll abandon it.

The cards:

• If someone were to say “MacBeth,” what would be kept from that, and what taken out?
• Do Banquo & Lady MacBeth represent the two sides of evil’s intimacy?
• True or False: A story published Sept 8, 2001 (NY Times website) with a CIA warning to overseas US interests did not mention the domestic US. The story is removed from the Times website on 9/12.
• True or false: The famous flag raising on Iwo Jima photo was staged.
• True or False: Video cameras watch you shop, drive, enter or leave an office building, train or bus station, or airport.
• Every word you say over any electronically transmissible medium is recorded & analyzed for key words like: terrorist. bomb. shoot. protest. congress. president.
• What if SS/Stasi/KGB/MI6/OSS/CIA operatives were really the Oracle of Delphi?
• A CIA operative’s life is 99% banal routine
• The Elizabethan worldview… through new eyes, but still influenced by the Middle Ages' spiritual aspiration and physical corruption.
• The Body Politick – the human body as the state and vice versa
• Ann Coulter/Camille Paglia; the sexually and politically active woman, liberal or - even more interesting - conservative.
• Eventually there will be an incident that will compel us to vote the Constitution out.
• The gradual erosion of meaning destroys our ability to care, and thus to oppose.
• Elements of what Greil Marcus calls “The Old, Weird America”
• Aerial slides of military sites, taken from satellite photos.
• The Quality in Education Act disembowels public school budgets. The Clean Air Act allows increased air pollution. The Patriot Act removes our freedom. Name two other possible Acts.

2003-08-06T22:37:00.000-04:00

This process will involve more than an orientation to use non-logic and dreams in the construction of plays; there is also the deliberate use of coincidence outside the actual structure of a play, in fact in the making of a play. Case in point...

I'd done about 8 pages of notes for the Praxis play so far... all exploratory (no dialogue yet because the characters are still taking shape and are not ready to speak). I'll be transcribing some of the notes shortly. I have made a tentative decision that it's possible the model of the play is based on Shakespeare's MacBeth, and besides re-reading MacBeth the 12th time, I decided to look at some older criticism on the play.

That same day, I took my son to the park. Someone was just closing up a yard sale in front of their house on Prospect Park West, and put a box of books out for free (guess nobody was buying books that day). Amongst the books was a copy of Jan Kott's Shakespeare Our Contemporary.

It's an older book, but reading the section on MacBeth and on Hamlet in that book is starting to give some ideas on how to apply the storylines to a political context... and this is definitely a political play... and now my notes:

1. One character - Ann Coulter/Camille Paglia; the sexually and politically active woman, whether liberal or - even more interesting - conservative.

2. There should be elements of what Greil Marcus calls "The Old, Weird America"

3. Play pre-show: Aerial slides of military sites, taken from satellite photos.

4. Banquo & Lady MacBeth should be merged in this play... they represent the two sides of intimacy...

5. The witch: an old OSS/CIA operative who's trying to get in touch with her.

6. Everywhere the sense that everyone is being watched, recorded, monitored, measured, judged. Their acts transcribed directly into the Book of Justice, or St. Peter's Book of Virtue and Sin.

7. The Elizabethan worldview should have some influence on this play... they viewed the world through new eyes, but eyes still under the influence of the Middle Ages' cruel spirituality.

2003-07-29T22:30:00.000-04:00

Reading Playwriting Master Class by Michael Wright... interesting to study the processes of other playwrights... although at the same time, valueless. Every writer has their own unique process... though Wright's premise of dividing writers up into three categories of process (dreams... journeys... cut from whole cloth) does bear some scrutiny if for no other reason than a chance for each writer to query the specifics of their own process. Possibly there is a fourth, perhaps even a fifth and sixth.

Research proceeding apace on Bridge/Berkeley's monologue... found a huge trove of research on Berkeley's life, including some accidental parallels between certain relationships with women in his life and relationships of my protagonist and women in his life. I couldn't have known this beforehand, yet somehow it seems to gel so perfectly.

And of course the job is knocking me flat so I'm grateful to even write this blog, nevermind a script. The day I leave the job, aye, indeed thah will be a blessed one.

2003-07-28T22:49:00.000-04:00

Wow... four months since my last post... guess i suck at this blog thing. sorry everyone...

good news is that Praxis Theatre Project - a terrific NYC company that had a hit this Spring with How His Bride Came to Abraham - has designated me their Genesis playwright in residence for 2003-2004... they've got a real cool process for developing plays that's sort of up the alley of any active hands-on type of playwright.

Their process in a nutshell... their Artistic Director, Matt Bray, meets with the playwright over the course of the summer to coalesce some thematic material. it's a suggestion-built-on-suggestion process that's very interactive and leaves a lot of the gathering to the playwright... and Matt's a fascinating and charismatic personality and a great talker on his own.

You enter the Fall development period with a two things decided (1) the skeletal themes of the play to be (2) a basic rundown of the actors who will participate.

That's it. The rest is up to the process.

Actors meet weekly with the playwright as moderator to read script in the works, discuss themes and ideas, argue, whatever works. The playwright is unleashed with the actors, without a further need for artistic moderation on the part of the company... the degree of trust implied by the process is very impressive.

And since I have this blog thing... perhaps I will record a portion of the experience and insights that come with the process here for all of you... perhaps it will even capture some of it for you.