I'm packin' plastic*

Just one word.

In my perfect play, there would be no original dialogue.  Every line would be "borrowed" from somewhere else.

I don't want to create a private language like Joyce.  I want to create a public language; stripping language old and new from the classics, advertising, television, movies, music, anywhere, ever where, wherever.

Every line would be an echo.

When I research, I take copious notes.  For  the 25 minute play, I wrote last month, I had ten pages of notes.  Not all that material got used, but much of it did.

The notes included: lists of potential topics, notes about an obscure art movement, Greek and Roman mythology, a joke by Sartre, ideas from Cocteau, graffiti from the May 1968 French "Rebellion," a long list of potential titles (Go home, Mister Chaplin; Under the paving stones; Piggies; Holy Innocents; Herod’s Pig; Childermas; Feast of the Holy Innocents; Unto Dust ; Rachel’s Children; Danse Macabre; All Fall Down; The Rosie; Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust;  We all Fall Down; Ring Around the Rosie:  Pocket full of Posies; Rape of Persephone; The Madness of Orestes; Iphigenia crosses the Delaware; Occupy Hell (Hades?); The Kids in Art School; The Joy of Mechanical Force; No More Flat Feet; Lipstick Traces (on a cigarette).) and more.  (The next to last one in the list is the one I finally settled on, although it may change.  I'm leaning toward The Joy of Mechanical Force this morning.)

And why do I do this and why do I dream of a play with no original lines?

Stay tuned...


*  The Fear, Lily Allen