Ah! The surprise of it all!

I love it when your characters do the talking for you and teach you things you didn't know about them! I sat down to write this morning with an idea of what I wanted the scene to be and I just sat down and one person said something and the other responded and we were off to the races! And I didn't know where these two characters had met! Or that it was at the bar an earlier scene takes place in!

Lovely when that happens . . . just sit back and let it come to you.

They aren't all that easy, but this one is falling right into place.

There was a character that I wasn't sure what to do with . . . how to introduce him or how to present him . . . and it would be more of a transitional thing anyway . . . and then today it just hit me that HE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE IN THE PLAY AT ALL!

We learn that he is important to Martha, and the fact that we don't get to see him and put a literal face to the name just lets the audience do the heavy lifting with imagining who this guy is! Sweet!

More later of course!

More on the Craftsman

Continuing the exploration. I'm finding a lot of fun stuff and having a blast doing it. Some major revelations: most significantly I asked Wallace to play Martha in the scenes we read on Tuesday. That came to be as Bette and I were talking to him and I don't remember exactly who it first came to but once it was mentioned it made perfect sense: Wallace should play it!

That puts a bit of distance and a touch of satire that might soften the play some and make it more accessible. Yes it could be a horror story . . . of it could be a horror story with a twist.

At any rate the reading went wonderfully . . . everyone was laughing and thought it was fun . . . Mindy said: 'As much fun as it was, there was an undercurrent of violence' . . . which is pretty much just what we want . . . and that should build and build and build . . .

I'm having fun with figuring out the hallucinations as well . . . I've now written two scenes through the lens of maybe they're real and maybe not . . . and to whom . . . I am beginning to get the sense that this might be a very special play . . . sometimes writing is harder work . . . grinding it out to try to get to the end . . . sometimes it just flows . . .

A fun ride.

Craftsman update

The work continues! I've been taking baby steps a little at a time and coming up with ways to make The Craftsman work as a play. I have decided that one way to deal with the hallucinations is perhaps to give the audience code that they are coming . . . so when our hero gets hit on the head with the length of pipe there will be a bright flash of white light . . . then each time there is some hallucination the bright light will come and, for example, Uncle Walter will step into the scene . . . it's not written in stone just yet but it is a possibility.

It's interesting to take something from so long ago and revisit it. Especially since it's the first play I've worked on in a long time where I know the ending going in so I have some sense of where it will build to . . . that is assuming the ending doesn't change. Much has. I am basically taking the structure and attacking the scenes as if for the first time. I'm about forty pages in now, not that it matters, it's probably about half way . . .

More on the hallucinations: it's also fun to write with an expectation of stage craft . . . giving them problems I'm not sure how to solve and seeing if I can solve them.

The magic of theater! I'm sure Tony Kushner wasn't quite sure how an angel crashing through the ceiling would work, but work it did!

Progress!

I've gotten some good work done on the Craftsman this weekend. So now I'm up to two scenes for our leads (which I've done yesterday and today) and the one scene with another essential character, which I did earlier in the week.

And best of all! I'm enjoying it! It's nice to be working on it again and some of the more fantastical elements will be a hoot . . . if they can be pulled off on stage!

On Friday night went to a Deb Vines' house and read one of her plays. Wallace came down for it, but Bette was not feeling well and didn't go. It's always nice to hang with Wallace and other folks were there as well . . . a nice evening. I asked Wallace about my concerns with Old Hickory in this time of heightened awareness of abuse . . . and his response was short and sweet and struck right to the point: 'Are we never to do Richard the third again?'

Cool. That helps. I still think a gentle adjustment would not be unwarranted given the opportunity . . . but it's not as if I'm planning on dusting it off again any time soon. It's just been on my mind. And because it's been on my mind the idea of The Craftsman leapt into my head!

It all works one way or another.

I got confirmation from Jerry Davis at Burning Coal that he had received my email of The Brother of the End of the World. Now I'm going to leave it with him and not bug him for a while. I hope he likes it. It would be nice to get at least a reading out of it. We'll see.

This week I got a rejection email from my friends at the Premier Theater festival competition. I hadn't really planned to enter it this year as the play I completed most recently was Self-Inflicted Wounds . . . which I'm not all that high on. I wrote it and worked hard on it, but I'm not sure if it holds up or not.

Next year I'll have The Craftsman for them!

Onward!

Work on the Craftsman

I started work on the adaptation of The Craftsman to a play. I began with the scene between our hero, Jimmy and the framer, Ralph, who Jimmy meets in a bar. It is the defining moment of the piece really in that, while it seems to be another thing pointing Jimmy in the direction of murder, it actually lights a fire in him to take himself more seriously.

The scene is expanded a great deal and might have to be trimmed some ultimately, but I like the characters and am enjoying working on them.

We'll see what happens with it.

It would help if the writing could be more consistent but time is of the essence so I basically work mostly on weekends . . . more later (after this weekend's writing 'binge' perhaps!)

I do have to mention the play Indecent. We missed it onstage in NY because it was playing in the midst of the Happy Days mania, but PBS has it available so we watched it. What a play! The ensemble was exquisite and the direction spot on.

Good work all 'round!