And we're off!
My attempt at 24-hour theatre begins...now. Write the play by dawn. Print it out for the actors. Sleep. Wake up. Check in with director and actors. Make myself available during rehearsal. Procure and manufacture props. Tech rehearsal. Performance. Applause. Sleep.
Key:
This step is completed.
You are here.
Still to come.I finished writing the play at 2:30 a.m. It's not a magnum opus, by any means, but for something produced in about six hours I guess it's not so bad. If I had a few days to ruminate on it, it would probably be a very different thing at the end of the rumination, but that's not the game we're playing. Houston has written some music for it, so I'm hoping we can make it work out. Some is a capella, but there is one sound cue for the poor techie, who apparently is running lights and sound.
Update 10:30 a.m.: I've been listening to the director discussing the play with the actors. It was profoundly moving, in a way I did not expect, to hear them talking about the characters, why they do what they do, how they see them, what they think the characters' lives might have been like before the start of the action. My play is rich enough that they can do this. My play is interesting enough that they want to. My play is currently being blocked out in the back yard — it's bloody chilly this morning, but they're still out there, shivering and working. I feel very greatly honored.
Update 3:20 p.m.: I'm thrilled at how well it's going. But I'm really nervous that I've simply put too many words in for them to learn by tonight. Tim, the director, is doing a fantastic job: capable, imaginative, and very, very nice about not messing up what's on the page just to gratify some longing for control. The actors are working like dogs. I don't know whether it helps or hurts that one of them is my husband and another is my child. The third actor is a friend from Script Frenzy (and, in fact, four more Script Frenzy friends are planning to come to the performance tonight — but no pressure).
Update 10:20 p.m.: I can't linger, for we have friends in the living room with whom I want to hang out. But the show went FABULOUSLY. Margaret was FABULOUS. Houston was FABULOUS. Cass and Tim were both FABULOUS. My friends were FABULOUS for coming down from Sydney. I'll write more tomorrow.
Update 12:50 a.m.: Going to sleep now.
posted by Laura E. Goodin @ 8:45 PM (permalink)
5 comment(s)
5 Comments:
I can help with one of these!
Have a blast!
Break a leg!
Thanks so much for the opportunity to act in your play, Mom. I'm happy to work in the freezing cold for you any day!
M
Congrats again on the amazing piece of work that "Real Shakespeare" was, is and - I hope - will be. What with your love of the Bard the theme for this year must have been right up your alley. Heck, you could even have used the play to product place and hype your blog and still have been on-topic!
And what a rush to go from page to stage in 24 hours (less even, with those "wasted" hours of sleep and restlessness between 2.30 and 9)! Yours is a truly talented family - a case of strands of DNA and threads of fates combining to produce wonderful people and wonderful works.
While there were bits I liked about each of the four pieces, one fell flat (the "Lear"), one was okay but didn't quite come together (the "Richard III"), and two did work (the "Much Ado..." one and yours). Which is a pretty good strike rate for a programme put together in a day.
"Much Ado" was inventive and theatrical: creating something out of thin air or a piece of lint and making a big deal about it is what theatre is all about after all. It had the added bonus of a professional-quality performance, but by the end of the 10-15 minutes the premised felt more or less played out. That's not a criticism, because as a short piece it felt pretty much complete, which is a good thing.
In contrast, yours felt just as polished (which is to say, with few and only slightly awkward bits) but also IMO had the most promise of all the plays. There was SO much going on between the lines: back stories, plot developments and character relationships glimpsed in the wings, waiting for cues that never arrived. Arguably this is a tribute as much to the direction and performances as it is to the writing, but you can't really make a silk purse out of a crappy script (unless maybe you're Hal Prince *cough*Phantom*cough*).
I thought, while "Real Shakespeare" did work in its present form, that it could easily be turned into a full-length piece, and that that piece could be a drama, a comedy, a play that introduced young people to Shakespeare, a fully-fledged musical ... any, some, all or more of these. Hopefully you will expand it, and I can start putting Real Shakespeare in italics rather than referring to "Real Shakespeare" in quotes.
(Yeah, it's a nerdy, nerdy blog readership you got when they start making lame citation jokes...)
Thanks, mate -- VERY glad (and relieved) you enjoyed the show! I agree that there's a lot between the lines in "Real Shakespeare" (and I, for one, appreciate that there are still people out there who understand the difference between referring to a longer work versus a shorter — to my intense disgust, house style at the Washington Post is now quotes/inverted commas for the titles of full-length books! Yes!). I would like to expand the piece someday, perhaps; when the right opportunity comes along, I'm pretty sure I'll recognize it and get the "Real Shakespeare" script out for a reworking!
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