Creative stuff. To enjoy.
I’ve now formalized the growing deck of idea cards with an easy to follow set of guidelines:
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.