Poetry & Blindfolds

Last night, I tore through two pivotal scenes for my as-yet-unfinished play, “The Observatory,” adding on thirteen pages in the process.  The first of these two scenes had been gnawing at me for a few days – I knew what I wanted to happen, but I couldn’t figure out how to say it.  Well, that’s not quite true.  I knew how to say it – in fact, I came up with numerous ways to say it – but none of the ways I thought up were particularly new.

It is difficult for me now, being fully ensconced in adulthood, to see things are NEW, anyway.  Rather, I tend to see things as NOT OLD YET.  Buildings, fashion, politics, attitudes… I can look at just about anything now and, instead of being impressed by its innovation, I like speculate when whatever-it-is will become unfashionable.

Back to the play: in the scene, there is a particularly dramatic change in the fortunes of a character I’ll call Bess (for the record, I’d never call any character Bess, but since I haven’t finalized this character’s name anyway, Bess will do for now).  This dramatic change links the first half of the play with some of the tragic elements I’m developing for the final scenes, so how I tell it is as least as important as the how the character experiences it.  It’s a balancing act.

It is my wont to write out scenes in longhand and then lose those pages somewhere when it comes time to type it up on the computer.  That way, I only remember the skeleton and the particularly good bits within a scene.  So I sat, armed with pad and paper, and started to write various scenes for our dear Bess.  In one attempt, Bess got a phone call and she said something like, “hi, honey, no, I can’t see you tonight, because I’ve got to go somewhere else”, thus setting her on the (literal) road to her future.  Yuck!  Amateurish tripe.  I might as well have Bess hold up a sign that says “I’m doomed” on it and send her on her way. 

In my second attempt, I put Bess’ boyfriend on the scene and they discuss an important meeting she has been called to (during which, her fate/future twists like a lemon).  Yuck.  I had two problems with this scene: (1) Couples don’t speak like normal people; there is a pre-verbal grunty-groany communication that doesn’t translate into any known language.  Thus, to make a couple communicate like a couple and still get important information out, the scene bloated itself up to seven pages.  (2) I felt guilty for introducing a new character (Bess’ boyfriend) into the play, as this scene comes about two-thirds the way through, and there’s no place for said boyfriend in subsequent scenes.  In my play, “The Tearful Assassin”, I had three male characters who were in one scene each, and two of the actors  I had problems with, as they milled around backstage and appeared very grumpy that others had more lines.  So I wanted to avoid that.

Eventually, I ditched the boyfriend – love interests are, ultimately, pretty boring when in supportive roles – and replaced him with a lesbian bartender whom Bess had not met until that scene.  A little bit of harmless flirting from the bartender and a bit of history added to Bess (suddenly, she’s a journalist!) to inflate her own curiosity and – boom! – a very funny, touching and nice scene that reflects the comic relief of the gravedigger scene from “Hamlet” while providing just enough foreshadowing of what is to come.

An astute reader might say, ‘hey, if you ditched the boyfriend character because he’d only be in one scene, does this mean the lesbian bartender will be in more than one scene?’  No, absolutely not.  I just made the character a female because a woman with a “small” role wouldn’t throw the kind of tantrums I dealt with during “The Tearful Assassin.”

It’s interesting how events, both important and trivial, blend like ingredients for a soufflé to produce new but completely logical results. House ownership, Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”, “Fahrenheit 451”, Duncan Jones’ “Moon”, “The Mighty Boosh”, “Gless” and the surprising ebb and flow of certain relationships have fused together to push me along in the creation of a very old idea of mine entitled “The Observatory.” The story basically follows a fellow – just an ordinary guy, not a superspy – who is hired to watch someone else and the profound effects it has on his life. It’s got some great bits in it, all about sexuality and voyeurism and protectiveness and duty and money and claustrophobia. The Big Statement of the piece (WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?) hasn’t revealed itself to me, but that’s fine.

I’ve had considerable trouble getting back into the playwrighting thing, not because the ideas were eluding me, but because the format was. True story! My first real play, “Ensemble”, about a dismal improv troupe, was constructed around a series of very silly improvisational conceits (i.e., one scene had a dialogue in which each line began with a subsequent letter of the alphabet; another scene was all questions, etc.). The next, “Remote”, was a three-parter, with each part being about 22-24 minutes, intentionally sitcom length. The third, “The Tearful Assassin”, was a bit more manic, with thirteen or fourteen scenes scattered among various locations. I’ve written a pornography parody called “Chinese Alegbra”, but the scenes flowed like “The Tearful Assassin” and some of the sex jokes reminded me a bit too much of my work in Suspicious Clowns. There was a revenge/tragedy called “Undisclosed Damages”, which felt, structurally, a little too close to “Remote.” For some reason, I detest repeating myself, even structure-wise.

“The Observatory” seems to be creating its own structure, its own space, as I write it. The first scene is fairly epic (in size, that is – I wouldn’t be so obtuse as to claim the work itself to be “epic”), like an overture of a tragic musical. And that is followed by a series of “blackouts” driven by silence, something I love but haven’t dabbled with much. Two scenes later, a new play seemingly begins within the construct of the play already going. These little turns and twists intrigue me, and before sitting down, I ponder various questions, some character-related, some philosophical, and jot down the answers (if not the solutions) on the various notepads that accompany my desk at work and desk at home.

In finding the different way to tell this story, and to answer the questions I put to myself, I find I often rumble through the last ten years of writing and recall the writing (and editing) to be by far my favorite part. There is more of a thrill of mounting a production and listening to the voices and the faces of the audience as they see it for the first time, but there is more of a solid, good, learning feeling – like an architect – in writing something to begin with. When the show is up and being performed, it is well and truly out of my hands by then. But for now, I enjoy strolling passed old ideas, plays, sketches and performances, stacked up in the warehouse of memory, made dusty and dull through time and perspective. And I check them all off my list of “have done”s and I return to “The Observatory” with an inventory of things, places, twists, lights, people and names not to use!

Tonight’s question in my head is, how can I destroy a character who is good and vindicate a character who is just as good? Off to the inventory…

It’s been nearly three weeks since we bought and moved into our house and I find my feelings continue to vacillate between being awed and not being awed.  On one hand, it’s remarkable to be able to walk through the backyard at night (though the “yard” part of “backyard” is extremely wanting at this stage), yet it is another feeling altogether to look up at this vast building, standing in the middle of other vast buildings lined up like cruise ships that never leave port, and wonder what I’m doing with such a thing.

Conversations at work have changed just as violently as my living arrangements.  Gone are the days of casual conversation about weekends and whether the day in which we chat was worth thanking God for; instead, I am inundated with good-natured yet baffling advice about what to do now that I’ve joined the ranks of being a homeowner.  It is like going to a foreign country and being advised to make sure I go to this restaurant in that town and ask for the chef special; by the time the conversation is over, I have forgotten everything except for the “you will want to make you that you…” part.

I keep on trying to lure people over to see the damn thing to gage how far I have to go in improving it.  This weekend, I had my ex-brother-in-law-to-be Keith Lamb over (I was engaged to his sister long ago, but he and I – and she and I – have remained friends) and gave him a tour.  He nodded a couple of times and said, “cool”.  This says to me that there’s a great deal more work to be done.  I want a “wow” or “awesome” or even an enthusiastic “neat.”

My office is wide and spacious and is plonked down in the basement, although it is not dingy or dank.  The carpet is relatively fresh and there is a 3 foot by 6 foot window beyond my computer where I can gaze out onto a limited yet happy slice of sky.  If I am to write a Great American Novel, I can think of no more suitable place than one that is permanently subterranean. 

Thinking of writing has, after a long respite, finally worked its way back into my mind.  Should I direct another sketch show?  Perhaps some improv?   Perhaps a drama or tragedy?   Perhaps I should see about licensing Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” or  Aykbourn’s “The Norman Conquests”?  Should I just direct?  Should I just produce and let others direct?  I confess, as I inch a bit older, the idea of producing and letting others get on with the directing and acting is increasingly attractive.  As I have said often, I adore live theater, if it weren’t for those fucking actors.

I can’t really blame actors for being the emotionally needy, painfully damaged egomaniacs that they are.  After all, in the legal profession, law is the common language.  In design, complex mathematical theory is the common language.  In theater, emotion is the common language.  So it’s no wonder there’s so many actors who proclaim their friends are the best friends ever, their significant other is the best significant other ever and their shows are the best shows ever.  They are constantly auditioning.  They are only dangerous when they get the role.  There hasn’t been a show I’ve produced in 17 odd years that hasn’t been infected by a Problem Child, who either feels compelled to fuck around on the set or, worse, fuck someone else in the cast.  Dealing with that once more – and usually getting some blowback from said Problem Child when I try and say, “maybe this isn’t the way you ought to be doing things” – is one of the core reasons I have avoided diving back into the craft.

Still, I am heartened by my little office and like the echoey clickity-click of the computer keyboard as I type.  I just have to figure out which of the bits on the creative buffet to put on the plate first.