A HEAPING STACK OF SLOWLEARNER

Here's what I've been doing.

Fleet Week - This is a musical I've been cowriting with Jordana and Sean, my Gideon coproducers. In its basic iconography, Fleet Week is an homage to On The Town and other musicals of that style. The basic idea is the same: a bunch of sailors (in white sailor suits, of course), freshly on leave, run across the gangplank from their ship to New York City in search of love and excitement. The ways in which they find both will hopefully be a bit of a surprise.

Partly also, Fleet Week is an attempt to develop the template we set with Lucretia Jones, to tell a story in a retro style we enjoy while sneaking in some of our real-life concerns under the counter. I couldn't have started Lucretia Jones without the desire to write an old-school detective story and experiment with rapid-fire screwball dialogue, but I couldn't have finished it without the desire to write a play about a workaholic trying to hold onto a moral self in an overcrowded life and a violent world. The pretentious bit is the engine; the trappings are the fun. Hopefully, it's the same with Fleet Week.

We recently had a drive to finish and sing through the first act, so there've been several days of meetings and late nights of writing of late. In a way I feel like an apprentice on this piece; Sean and Jordy have all the musical theater literacy and the sense of how to hammer the thing together. Sean's written all the music, and he's obviously one of those people in whom musical sense is innate. He talks about how notes on a staff are as easy for him to read as words. But Jordy and I come up with song ideas - lyrics and basic tunes - and bring them to him to massage. The difference is, Jordy's ideas are clear, simple, and structurally playful, with all these fun little tempo changes, while mine feel to me more rigid and overcomplicated, stuffed with more ideas than a listener can digest. (Not to mention that they're more or less bald ripoffs of famous songs that Sean has to rejigger for hours until they're no longer legally actionable.)

That seems like a standard arc for a lot of artists - the movement from ambitious complexity to simplicity and clarity. I'm valuing the latter qualities more and more in my solo playwriting, but with lyrics, it's like I'm starting from the beginning again.

Nonetheless, Act One went well, and the revisions we're considering are, at the moment, feeling more exciting than daunting. (Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.)

Sarah's Yesterday (see here for a synopsis) - Jordy read my second draft last week and gave me the four or five basic criticisms that I've been afraid people would have. My response was, "Not only do I think you're right, but I think you're so right that I think the play's unproduceable." Luckily for me she disagreed, and suggested some ideas to clean it up, and now I'm hopeful about it again. The problem is, the play turns two seriously hard-sells:

1) the gradual realization of a conspiracy, which means both the conspiracy itself and the ability of the conspirators to pull it off has to be believable, and

2) the central character's (Sarah) recovering from her trauma quickly enough to carry out a brave series of actions to deliver herself.

The first is the technical challenge. How to establish the credibility of the conspiracy without tipping the audience off to its exact nature? The second goes to the thematic heart of the play. I want Sarah's Yesterday to be a story of unlikely courage. The problem with unlikely courage, of course, is that it's... unlikely.

The Untitled Devil Play - This began as a bit of bravado. I saw some crappy play recently involving the Devil, and I was ranting to some people about how almost every time the Devil gets used in a play or a movie, the play or movie sucks. Ian says never use God in a play (a rule I've already broken) but the Devil can also be used as a crutch or a short-cut for a hack writer, a quick signifier of evil or weakness that spares one the legork of considering what evil and weakness actually are. I declared (I may have been drinking) that I was gonna write a play about the Devil that wouldn't suck.

So I started it as a fun lark, but as it turns out, it's coming pretty quick and may be turning out to be a good play. More as this develops.

Woyzeck - I've taken a couple small parts in manhattantheatresource director Andrew Frank's production of Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, running for three weeks in January. I've only had a few rehearsals, but it's lots of fun. I really love acting, and this has been my first opportunity in a year to be involved in a production as nothing but an actor. I seem to be falling into a pattern of acting about twice a year, and I'm glad of that. For a while I thought I would have to give it up. Andrew's bringing his patented syle of extremely laid-back ambition to the project: there's a full set, light, and costume design, two elaborate animal puppets (designed by Gretchen Van Lente), and plans afoot to drench the stage in water and blood, and yet Andrew never looks remotely stressed. I'll keep you posted.

Here's what I'm not doing:

The People's Monster - This is the North Korea golf-hair play. I'm totally Luke fretting over when to go back and face Vader on this one. During my first period of intense work on this script, I made an enormous structural mistake. It's too hard to explain specifically, but it would result in the second act being much larger than the first, which audiences relish much as they would sandpaper on their innner thighs. I know what I need to do to fix this, and I know it means junking a lot of pre-existing work. I just haven't summoned the courage yet, so I'm keeping myself in shape with other stuff in the meantime.

I have several things I'd like to say about some conversations going on in the art blogosphere, so hopefully I'll get to them a bit later in the week.

--SlowLearner

Comments

[jack]

Jesus Christ.

Have you slept at all recently.

That seems like a fantastic amount of work to be accomplishing in such a short time.

Take a coffe break before you collapse...or better yet, a nap.

jack

[Mike Mariano]

As an author of a devil play that may or may not suck, I will advise you, Mac, not to dodge Old Scratch. I sent Satan to the psychiatrist without any interest in the results--my devil loved our pain only because she wanted to FEEL our pain. Yet the reader feedback I have received indicates that there's more desired from my Princess of Darkness. I avoided the usual traps only by avoiding the Devil, and that doesn't take you very far. I hope you have better luck.

I am particularly interested in Fleet Week. How "big" will it be? Will it be a three-person show like Lucretia or a chandelier-smashing mega-musical?

Please also omit any "Seamen" jokes. Even the Village People avoided that.

[Sean]

Wait, we can't make any "seaman" jokes? I mean...

Wow, we're fucked.

[Mac]

Hi everybody!

Jack, my secret is, I'm currently unemployed and at the moment am okay for money, so I can stay up a bit later at night and, the following morning, pour my first cup of coffee into writing rather than into a job.

Mike, I just realized I've never read "I AmThe Devil." I've worked my way through a bit of your right-hand column, but not that one. I downloaded it just now. My plan is to read it this weekend and then on Monday present it to my friends as my own.

Yeah, "Fleet Week" is pretty much wall-to-wall seaman jokes. There was an early decision, heartily supported by me, to make this show utterly infantile. (Actually, there's a payoff to all the "seaman" jokes that Jordy came up with that makes me cough up a rib every time I think about it. We'll discover if audiences agree some time in mid-2009.)

As to how big it will be: it'll be a full-cast show with - well, not all the trimmings but most of the trimmings. Hopefully.

[Christopher]

Mac, a drive by on my birthday, and a familiar face at the show. Thank you so much for checking out our li'l holiday romp.
You are indeed having a fecund period, all seamen jokes aside. I hope I can eventually audition for "Fleet Week" back in the cervix I was seaman first class.
Oof... I'm sorry...
But seriously, keep me posted.

[Mike Mariano]

Thanks Mac; hope you and the friends you hoodwink enjoy I Am The Devil.

And don't worry about double entendres about our sailors. Keep 'em coming. So to speak.

[Tim Hulsey]

How about an "On the Town" musical for the ongoing Iraq war? It could be a cross between "One Red Flower" and "Waiting for Godot." I'll even give you a title for the rousing opening number: "When're We Gonna Get Back Home?"

The problem with writing a play with the Devil as a main character is that he really can't grow, develop or change -- he's always just plain evil. However, "A Play About the Devil That Doesn't Suck" would be a pretty good title -- esp. if the play isn't actually about the devil. (As in, "You can't write" etc.)

[Isaac Butler]

I don't really know if the Devil is just plain evil, necessarily. As a mythic figure he's incredibly complex since he's a combination of so many different icons and ideas.

Perhaps this will help, Mac (although perhaps you know this already):
The name "Satan" (loosely pronounced sah-TAHN or say-TAHN or something like that) as a Jewish character has pretty much nothing to do with evil, or rising against God and being thrown out of heaven or anything like that. Satan is an angel, and all angels have specific restrictions in Jewish myth on what they can and cannot do (These restrictions escape me for some reason right now) but anyway, they all have specific jobs to do for God, and Satan's is to tempt people.

He's not considered evil at all, he just has a job to do and that job is to test people for God. They have a collusive relationship. A good example of this is in the book of Job where God and Satan make a wager (will Job denounce God/lose his faith?) and then God sets the parameters (you can do anything but hurt Job and then that changes to you can make Job sick but you cannot kill him). Satan never disobeys God in the book of Job because, as I said earlier, he's not really evil. Just a tempter.

This also explains the three temptations of Christ in the New Testament. Since it was written from descendents of the same Jewish tradition as the O.T. (although now calling themselves "Christians") again we have Satan not waring against Jesus, not trying to kill Jesus explicitly anyway, not trying to hurt him, simply he tests Jesus-- offering him all the power in the world etc. What this brings up is... why does God want to test Jesus? If we're talking about the same iconography (Satan the tempter angel)... why is God asking him to go after Jesus like this?

anyway... some food for thought...

[Tim Hulsey]

Well, we're not talking about the same iconography. The Satan in the Christian Gospels isn't the same as the Satan of Job. No longer God's vice cop, by now he's emerged as anti-God. (You can thank Zoroastrianism for this development.) Of course, Satan's new persona creates a major cosmological conundrum: If God is all-powerful and good, why does He allow this anti-God to run amuck?