Am I the only playwright who asks himself over and over again, "Who am I?" and ever time comes up with a different answer?
I love Ibsen and Shaw and Wilde. " I should write 'well-made' plays."
I love Aristophanes and The Marx Brothers and Neil Simon. "I should write comedies."
I love Dada and Surrealism and Theatre of Cruelty. " I should write experimental theater."
...and then there's this voice...it's not like those others, the one's above. I value those voices. I listen to those voices. I have learned a great deal from those voices.
But this other voice... this emerging voice... I hesitate to say this... my voice is... Groucho, and Tristan, and Jack Tanner...
And Kathleen Hanna...
And Kimberly, and Maria, and Ashley...
And Spaulding.
And Lily Allen.
And Regina Spektor...
and...
Back to the play I started in the spring. Well, not the play... the main character. The setting was all wrong. I wrote pages of notes, and even, ten pages of dialogue, but I didn't like it. But I kept going back to it. Finally, I asked myself what it was I did like about the play... the main character.
I thought the setting was contrived... not that I'm against contrived settings. I mean, I have play set in a remake of the Garden of Eden. I have a play set in the underworld. But both of those rose "organically" from the characters. The main character for this play was just plunked down on a set where many, many other different characters would have fit just as well, if not better.
Setting is very important to me. I've learned that recently.
And it came to me. The set that this character needed. I said "came to me." I sweated over it for days. And by "sweated," I mean my mind wandered aimlessly.
But with a level of anxiety. And frustration... but mostly anxiety.
And then I knew!
How?
<shrug><head shake>
*Daniel Gregory Browne, Ann Marcus, Jerry Adelman - Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
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