Poetry & Blindfolds

After a few weeks of plotting and planning, the Great Workshop of my new play, “The Tearful Assassin,” was scheduled for Friday, March 14.  However, the roster gradually and systematically whittled down due to conflicts and lack of confirmations: two traits you can always count on actors for.

I thought it was karma for my attendance at a similar workshop five weeks earlier, in which I took the author of a new work to task for numerous dramatic protocols and arcs that, in my view, never materialized.  Out of the array of people there, I was the only one to say, ’nothing happens,’ an opinon that none of the other twentysomethings in attendance – especially the author and his partner – seemed to agree with.   I wrote to the author a couple of days later, in response to his mass email thanking everyone for coming, but the only reply I received was a mass email some time later, inviting me to pay money to see him in a different show.  I even sent out an invitation for my workshop to a couple of actors who were in attendance at the author’s workshop.  Nothing back.  So – ouch.

But that’s one of my handy flaws: I blame myself if my opinion results in people not talking to me.  The fact is, I was just honest and did the best job I could critiquing a work.  I can’t own the reaction.

So, instead of a workshop, my cohort in Suspicious Clowns, Robert, and an ex-Clown and writer/director Kyle (and his girlfriend), came over and we drank and talked.  Eventually, the topic got around to my play.  “I’ve got plenty I found wrong with the piece,” began Robert.

And so started a good hour-long discussion about “The Tearful Assassin”: character motivations, staging, lighting, what characters appeared necessary and which appeared less so, exposition, subtlety and many other topics.  Robert took me to task for quite a few of these, and I took it all in, ego be damned.

Over the weekend, I went over the script page by page and began tweaking.  For me, tweaking is a process that involves anything but writing a play: I clean, make coffee, make food for The Girlfriend, make Bloody Marys, put things in the dishwasher, do laundry, nap, walk, etc.  Then I return to the keyboard, blast through it all for ten minutes, and then find other things to do until I think long enough to attack it again.  The Girlfriend is never so fed as when I am writing a play.

One of Robert’s criticisms involved the police characters, of which, Robert said, we see too much of.  Why are they there so much?  I rattled that question around in my head for a while, until finally I went to the keyboard and, as a line delivered by one police officer to another, I asked, “Why are we here so much?”  The other responded, “Because Angela (a girl who is kidnapped at the top of the play) needs someone not to forget about her.”  I liked that, so it’s in.

In addition to that bit, I added shading to all of the major characters which showed traits instead of told you about them – another Robert criticism – and came up with a new, slimmer working version of the script.

As much as I dread bad reviews after a show is out (hidden behind the usual bluff of “it doesn’t matter”), I dread good ones during a workshop.  I prefer a good challenge, or in this case loads of challenges, through which I can change how I say something (not what I’m saying) so it is the most clear and concise as it could be.

And if I get to go to another workshop held by another author, I’ll probably just say, “oh it’s fine.”

OK, I’ll only say that if I believe it.

 

 

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