Onsite Theatre Commission: Day 6 (+Alice +Playground +Safe House)

I thought about Onsite not at all today, but I did finish a draft of Alice. We’ll rehearse tomorrow and see if any of the new stuff works. I’m anxious to see the new Alice in Wonderland movie, though (I am not proud to admit) am silently rejoicing a little that it is not getting good reviews. I had this fear it would be amazing and dwarf what we are creating. Petty. And also silly: two very different approaches . . . I assume. My other fear is that Tim Burton is doing all the stuff we’re doing and people would think we copied his ideas. Actually, I created our Mad Hatter in direct opposition to what I have seen of Johnny Depp in the previews: our Mad Hatter is a quiet gentleman who is hyperbolically rational: he is made mad by the act of following rational thought out to the extremities of logic, because if we think about anything too hard everything will become absurd. Or we will find god. Our Mad Hatter has not found god.

I just got back from SF Playhouse’s production of Geetha Reddy’s Safe House, a production of a local playwright’s local play. Safe House was the first gig I got in San Francisco: I was the production assistant for the Playwrights Foundation’s script-in-hand production during their Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Being a production assistant is a really hard job for a dramaturg: you have to keep quiet. Being quiet is a skill that every dramaturg has to master. It is not their room; it is the director’s room. Comments should be reserved for appropriate moments. The problem with being a production assistant—when there is another dramaturg assigned to the project—is that there is no appropriate moment (unless the playwright comes up to you and says, “What do you think?”). I believe not only in the authority of the director, but also that too many cooks in the kitchen means no one is going to eat a decent meal. So there was a lot of keeping my thoughts to myself during that process. And it turned out really well. Seeing it tonight though made me realize how much more growing it had to do, because it has blossomed into something really lovely.

This production is notable for members of the Playground writing pool, and a few emails have been sent around . . . and apparently we have a google group?

What should really be of interest to the PlayGround pool, however, is the development process that culminates (so far) in this premiere production. Safe House began life as a 10-minute play in PlayGround’s Monday Night series in October 2003. Geetha’s play was Honey I’m Home, and it was one of the entries in the 2004 Best of Festival—and it was just as hilarious and moving in its concentrated 10-minute way as the full-length production that’s at SF Playhouse now. PlayGround saw the potential and when an opportunity came for an alumni commission from Geetha, Honey was the starting off point, and Safe House began to take shape. The resulting full-length was presented in conjunction with another Best of PlayGround Festival.

The play then received further development when selected for the SF playwrights Foundation Festival in summer of 2008, where it was performed to great acclaim. And now, PlayGround has seized the initiative again and given it a world-premiere production in the collaborative Sandbox project with SF Playhouse. This is a quintessential development process for those of us in the PlayGround Writers Pool. I urge you to go see the production and get a taste of where all the sweat and toil that goes into a Monday night 10-minute piece can eventually lead. This is OUR path to a potential production — yours and mine. It’s an amazing and major evolution of PlayGround’s mission to step up and bring our writing to a fully-realized full-length world premiere production. With a stellar cast — it must be noted. If nothing else, it should inspire us all to write the best damn plays we can for Monday nights. The potential rewards are great!

There were some members of the writing pool there tonight. I confessed that I was still planning to skip this month despite having started a couple superhero-related plays in the past. They told me to revisit one of those older plays. It’s an interesting idea. Geetha started with a 10-minute play and expanded into a full-length; I could start with an idea for a full-length and see how I can concentrate it into a 10-minute play . . . perhaps.

Onsite Theatre Commission: Day 3 (+ ALICE + CHALK CIRCLE)

Regarding the Hostel Play, I’ve been thinking about two things: 1) sound and 2) expectation. I was casually carpooling yesterday, and the driver had on classical music (usually it’s NPR, so this is notable). Also, on my wedding to-do list is: Secure a string trio for the service. So classical music is in the back of my mind. What if we think of the two acts happening simultaneously as different segments of an orchestra? I have not yet studied the blueprint my director gave me so I don’t know how much sound will bleed between the rooms, but some would be nice. Maybe a lot. Maybe a lot out of one room, but not much out of the other. Rhythm and timing is going to be essential. I was starting to wonder just how my director is going to rehearse since he can’t be in two different rooms at the same time. Not my problem! Sorry JR. But how I can help is on the page. I am starting to think I will write this play like I wrote Vow (Vows? I can never remember what I titled that damn play!), which is basically two monologue plays woven together and stitched with three (three?) sections of dialogue. The text for each character (the bride and the groom . . . no I did not write it to deal with my anxiety about July. I wrote it two years ago, so shut it. I have no anxiety.) appears on the same page, side by side, in columns. That might work well for this play, at least as I am writing it.

Expectation: How can I create dual mysteries that can only be solved by the other? Solving a mystery with a mystery. How do I reveal information in one play that is relevant to that play (enough so that it is not out of place) but is even more essential to the play the audience will not yet seen? How can a forward also work in retrospect? I feel a little like I am writing a chicken-and-the-egg play that doesn’t make any attempt to deal with which came first. Whichever you saw first, came first . . . wait, is THAT the answer!

“What do you mean ‘writing,’ DR? You haven’t written a word!”

Well, the cast is not yet finalized, and having been asked my opinion on the final actor I realize that I am completely dependent on them to choose and dependent on who they choose. Any of the actors they told me about will work for the role I am going to write because I am going to write it for whomever they choose! (Chicken. Egg. Ahh!) So all I can do right now is muse. Well that’s not true. I should be researching hostels, and the St. Louis hostel specifically. But I haven’t because I have a few loose ends to tie up.

Namely Alice. Alice goes well. We have figured out a lot since last I wrote about it, and it is our hope to have a complete working draft of the script for Part I in place by Sunday’s rehearsal. Two more scenes to write: Alice drowning(?) in her Pool of Tears after the Garden of Talking Flowers attacks her, followed by The Caterpillar scene, in which Alice finds a friend, begins to find her own voice, and is once again faced with a choice. Having this in place by Sunday will give everyone 4 weeks with the words before their showing on April 4. So much about this project has been fun and satisfying that I will be sorry to put it on hold. It has been a joy to get to know a handful of our students better. It has been great working hand-in-hand with another creator, putting words to her story and physical/musical vision. And it has been a wonderful challenge to balance Lewis Carroll’s originals with our interpretation. But I think a break will be good. Well, a break will be necessary while I write the Hostel Play, but even after that I think I won’t return to it until May or June. Or maybe July. I do have a wedding to organize.

In other news: John Doyle’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle opened at A.C.T. last Wednesday. I love it. I have never felt prouder of our company and I’m so impressed with the three MFA students who are in it. I think Doyle’s sparse storytelling and gritty vision is captivating, and I appreciate that he has no interest in pandering to the lazy audience member. Unapologetic: a word I keep coming back to when people ask me what I look for in people. It is a production you have to say yes to; once you do, it is a gift. I waited to see it with Rachel and her aunt and uncle, and they all said yes to it and loved it as well. I agree with Charles McNulty’s glowing review in the LA Times. That said, I do not disagree with Isherwood’s intelligently balanced review in the NY Times: “impressive if problematic.” The question Doyle poses is, Whose problem is it to solve?

I saw a matinée of Chalk Circle on Sunday. Last night we were offered free tickets to Wicked. I haven’t seen it since I lived in St. Louis. It has changed NOT at ALL. Which is both a comfort and a terror: totally enjoyable, but, man, I can’t imagine doing the exact same show for years. It’s gotta be hard, especially with those demanding songs. Ken MacDonald, Morris Panych’s husband and Canadian designer extraordinaire, was in town to work on some set stuff for Vigil, and we happened to be sitting next to one another, so that was a fun reunion from our 2-hour interview over drinks last fall. I was glad he enjoyed it. I have to admit, I was worried he would be like, “This is American theater?” The Words on Plays for Vigil is so close to being done! I have to write my conclusion to the Brief History of Canadian Theater (!) and we’ll be all set. It’s a good one.

And tonight I went to the Berkeley Rep opening of Naomi Iizuka’s new play, Concerning Strange Devices form the Distant West. I am way to tired to process what I thought about it, so don’t ask me tonight.

So that’s why I haven’t written a word.

Alice’s Theme Song.

Three weeks ago, I hated this song. But some songs are the play you are writing and all you can do is listen to it on repeat, digest its crazy energy until it makes you go insane, and spit it back out in a new form. This might not make sense to you, but Alice knows exactly what I am talking about. Which is why I am hanging out with Alice tonight and not you.

On a more literary note, I love the rhythm of the lyrics:

She has a little creepy cat
And a little creepy bat
A little rocking chair
And an old blue hat.

where the weight of the elongated “blue” is created in juxtaposition to “creepy” and “rocking”.
The power of the monosyllabic line.