A horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.*

So where do my ideas come from?  The ozone? God? Research? A warped childhood?  All good answers, but in this case... the newest case, it started with a news report on NPR.  I've actually had quite a number of ideas that started from listening to NPR.  Usually while I'm doing the dishes.  My mind is dual focused on not breaking things and listening to the radio.  Cross-pollination?  <shrug>

This idea came in the form of a setting - a basement with two filling cabinets.  That's it.  Perfect for the stage.  Empty stage except for two beat up filling cabinets.  And what is in the filling cabinets?  See the play and find out.

Title?  "No More Flat Feet"

But ideas are not hard to come by for me.  I have lots of ideas.  I keep lists of ideas.  And titles.

I struggle with action.  Characters have to want something bad enough to do something very drastic to get it.

Fortunately, what's in the filing cabinets gave a simple solution to this problem.  Ta-Da!  We have a play!

Except, of course, I have to do some research first.  I start making notes: the death culture, the Orestes' myth, Pussy Riot, the Situationists, the Lettrists, the May 1968 French Revolution, Les Enfants Terribles, Iphigenia, Sturm und Drang...

Sturm und Drang!  A literary movement in Germany in the 1760's and 70's.  An anti-Enlightenment movement.  Goethe!  Violent, emotional, irrational.  I have been an anti-Rationalist for a long time, long before I heard of Sturm und Drang.

I started listening to Riot Grrrl punk bands.

And I was excited by what the director and actors had created from my play.  I wanted more of that.  The movement, the chaos.  Sturm und Drang!


*Aristophanes - The Knights