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...
Monday, June 07, 2004
Saturday, May 29, 2004
Ugh, i have not nailed it
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.
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.
Friday, May 21, 2004
Workshopped now - tired and happy
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.
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.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Rehearsals well under way
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
And the beat goes on...
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....
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....
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
First draft *IN*
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.
See some of you tomorrow night... hope all this malarkey was worth it. All for love, all for love.
Friday, April 09, 2004
character reflection
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
tiny scraps when whole cloth not available
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.
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.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
the atrocity of this future world
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.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Stages, not acts
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.
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.
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