How does a playwright go from idea to completed project? This is a keyhole into how I do it.
Below are the notes I made before I started writing "The Canard of Vaucanson" which received its world premiere at The Overtime Theater in San Antonio, Texas, May 2 - May 31 2014.
Fig Leaf or The Canard of Vaucanson or Viaduct
Vaucanson’s Duck - le canard de Vaucanson, "vendre un canard á moitié."
A young woman in a skimpy outfit (think magician’s assistant) herds a live duck (or a duck decoy strapped on a Roomba or any other mechanical duck that can be imagined and made) on stage. Chicken wire covering the front of the stage to keep the duck from going into the audience. A small sign in the bottom right of the chicken wire.
Debbie is trying to provoke an admission of guilt from Cain.
Adam and Eve are dressed in fur suits.
Recovery of innocence.
Adam
Eve
Snake - appears mechanical, talks with an enhanced mechanical voice
Cain - red hair
Debbie - artist, dyed hair, piercings, tattoos, dressed in black, smoking, gay
Amber - dressed in magician’s assistant skimpy outfit, and Debbie’s current girlfriend
Debbie has recreated the Garden of Eden or rather the “essence of the Garden.” One crumby tree with only a few leaves and a couple pieces of fruit and no other vegetation. She wants to get the opinion of the people she cares about, her grandparents and her father before she opens it up to the public and starts charging admission. Cain is being supportive. Grandma thinks it’s an abomination, a sin against God, Grandpa thinks it’s says something important, although what he thinks it says and what Debbie thinks it says is very different.
This is the first time that Adam and Eve have seen Cain since the fateful day, many, many years ago. Debbie used to visit them often when she was younger, however, since she’s grown, she has only seen them a couple of times.
This story is the story of everyone redeeming/reclaiming there relationship with God.
Issues:
Raising children
Lesbians
Body modification
Feminism
Fun
Inspiration
The origin of the devil
The lost years
God provides for Adam and Eve, but not for Cain (Actually, Cain has been providing for Adam and Eve, they just don’t know it.)
Innocence and guilt and sin
The perspective of history
Seymour - the first critic
Who’s to blame
Cain and Abel
Rape
Original sin
The origin of Adam and Eve - Adam was a mistake that Eve was the correction for.
Cain real father
Debbie needs a real job
Leisure time
Art
Representation of Adam and Eve as young and beautiful
Notes:
Samael - (Jewish Angel/Angel of Death) Esau’s Guardian Angel
Cain was not Adam’s son (?) The Serpent or Samael
Book of Jubilee
Book of Enoch
Book of Daniel
Nephilim - giants, fallen angels who mate with human women
NAMES - Seymour, Moshe (Moses - son or deliver), Jethro (Abundance), Absolom (my father is peace), Esau (hairy), Saul (prayed for), Shet (Seth - placed or appointed), Shlomo (Solomon - peace), Ham (hot, warm), Hiram (exalted brother), Herschel (diminutive of deer), Hyman (man), Tzvi (deer), Bartholomew (son of Talmai - furrowed), Mordecai (Servant of the chief Persian god, Marduk), Nimrod (Rebel)
Adam and Eve are separated. Have been for a long time and are hiding it from the kids.
Monty Python:
A: Most of ‘em are related to me.
E: No they’re not
A: They’re all related to me.
E: No they’re not.
A: They have to be related to me
E: Well they’re not
A: Then who are they related to? There was no one else but me.
E: There was this fella...
A: Fella!? What fella?!
E: He said he was an angel.
A: An Angel?!
E: A fallen Angel. He said his name was Bob.
A: Bob? The fallen angels name was Bob?
E: That was the first ones name. There was a bunch of them really.
A: A bunch of fallen angel? What did they call themselves.
E. Not all at once. It was more like a train really. You know, one right after another... Choo-choo. And I was always the caboose.
Eve: I gave him the best 300 years of my life.
Tower of Babel
Canaan - Ham’s fourth son
Genesis 10:6 - Ham’s descendents
Adam - 800 years old, proud patriarch of all humanity. Dressed in a long, somewhat ornate cotton caftan. Greying. He is late middle age. He rarely smiles or shows any kind of emotion.
Adam is a simple man. He is not a deep philosopher. He has guilt about his relationship with God. He feels guilty about the Garden and about having born a son that was the first murderer. He has learned in this last part of his life to enjoy the mundane and boring... mostly.
Adam is very reserved. His emotions are on the inside and he doesn’t share them easily. He is the patriarch. He must be strong. He was made in God’s image and this weighs on him heavily.
Life has been long and mostly boring. He is tired, world weary, but doing his best to stay respectable despite the fact that his marriage has been difficult for 500 years. He knows that it is his fault that his marriage has had problems for a long time. He took God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and hit on any number of his daughters, granddaughters, great granddaughters, etc.
Eve had gotten bitchy before his philandering started. At first he blamed her for his wandering eye, but eventually, he knew that the responsibility was his.
Eve tolerated the philandering for many years, but eventually, she got mad and left him. As Adam has gotten older, he stopped cheating on her, but she has never forgiven him. They have a strained and distant relationship that he would like to be more. There relationship has been cold and distant. He misses her.
Life was miserable when Eve was gone. He was unhappy, dirty, poorly fed. He got bored with the strange women who were all too young and had no frame of reference for his experiences, but he knew he’d messed up and was too proud to ask her to come back.
Adam is a successful farmer. He grows a wide variety of vegetables and fruits. He eats meat now and then and has tried hunting, but he isn’t very good and he doesn’t really enjoy it. He likes meat, but doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble.
He loves being a farmer. He has an affinity with the earth and with his plants. He has learned to make cloth and makes all his own clothes from the hemp her grows. He makes the dyes from plants to give the cloth color. He had to learn after Eve left and his clothes started to deteriorate and then disintegrate. He learned he like it and that it was fun to make his own cloths.
He learned to cook as well and he is quite a good cook now. He grows lots of herbs and spices to make the simple vegetables he cooks tasty.
When Eve lived with him earlier in life, he learned to hunt because she liked meat, but after she left him, he mostly quit, and now he’s gotten to old to hunt much. Farming takes most of his energy.
He fears and has a grudging admiration for his son Cain. He fears him because he is a killer and he admires him for his bravery and willingness to take direct action. He hates for what he did to his brother, but he also loves Cain as his first born.
His other children he loves and remembers well, but he struggles to have deep and meaningful relationships with them. They came fast and furious after Cain killed Abel and was banished. He wants to be loving, but holds back and he’s not sure why. It’s not that his children don’t know that he loves them, they do, they just don’t know who he is as a person because he has never shown that side of himself to them.
He has mixed feelings about his time in the Garden. Life was easy, and beautiful, and simple, but there were no challenges. Plant a seed, it grew. Farming is much more interesting now that there is death, plague and pestilence, not to mention bugs.
Adam has a mixed relationship with God. He prays and every now and then, he hears the still small voice that used to be so clear in the Garden. He is ashamed of what he did and he wants to be forgiven, and he has asked God to forgive him, but he doesn’t forgive himself. He forgives Eve. He wanted to sample the fruit, but was too scared. He admires Eve for her courage, a courage he does not have. A courage he sees in his son, even if it is a little twisted.
Eve - 800 years old, late middle aged, but still a beauty, trim, tall, vigorous, fun, truly young at heart.
Eve was not always as she is now. After three hundred years of marriage, she had grown bored and sick of the same thing, dishes, laundry, cleaning, day in and day out with no end in sight. She became hostile toward Adam because he seemed satisfied to just go on forever with no change, no excitement. She became nagging and bitchy and annoying. She feels like she drove him to other women. At first, she blamed him, but after her initial anger, she was relieved. It meant she could go and do what she wanted without having to worry about Adam. She began sneaking around on him. He never knew. Finally, she just had to leave. She couldn’t stand the lies and the boredom. She needed freedom. She left Adam. She was wild and crazy for quite a few years, but finally realized that she loved and missed Adam. That all the excitement was not really interesting and in fact just generally a sign of unpleasant problems and drama.
Eve never really liked being a housewife, but there is and was little else for her to do. She eventually grew to hate it. She spends her days visiting her children and grandchildren, hanging out with them, taking long walks. She has learned to do hair and is much in demand as a hair stylist.
She also has learned how to do make-up and teaches all her girls how to fix themselves up to be more attractive to men.
She is also a woman’s advocate. She hates the way so many men treat women as children. She thinks women are strong and can take care of themselves. She advocates for an end to violence against women and has taught herself and now teaches other women how to physically defend themselves. She was taught in secret by Cain. She was raped once during the time that she was not with Adam. In fact, protection is one of the reason she wanted to get back with him.
Her relationship with Cain is complicated. She loves him a great deal as her first born, but he killed his brother and she is still angry about that, but she wants everyone to forgive and forget, which of course they can’t. She defends her son. She dislikes his violent nature, but when she needed to know how to protect herself, she was glad that her son had become an expert.
She is beginning to have some physical and mental problems. Nothing serious, she has just been slowed down and she is beginning to forget things.
Her relationship with God has been silent for a long time. She prays once in a while, but she doesn’t hear anything back. She wants it to be like it was in the Garden, but she knows it will never be like that again. And she is scared of God. She knows that her actions were the precipitator to them being thrown out. She believes that God hates her. She wants a relationship with God, but she is too fearful to reach out.
Eve works hard to maintain her appearance, but it is too clear that she is rapidly losing the battle. She is sad about this.
She wants Adam back, but fears that he won’t want an old woman. She misses him.
Cain - 730 years old, just starting to grey at the temples, ruggedly handsome. World wise and world weary.
Cain is a recovering alcoholic. It took him a long time to get sober, but he has now been sober for a long time. He was drinking when he killed Cain, but his drinking was starting to get bad while he was married to Debbie’s mom, but really took off after Debbie’s mother died. He blamed Debbie for her death. He has moved past this, but it is one of his last resentments. He knows that it’s not true that Debbie is responsible, but Debbie’s Mom was that soulmate that everyone looks for and he just can’t quite let go of his anger. He has come to this to because he knows he has to let go of his resentment and this is an effort to do that.
He has repaired his relationship with God, but he still has a lot of repairing to do with his family.
He was married many times while a drunk and has many, many children from these marriages. Since he sobered up, he has not been married. He doesn’t trust himself enough to give himself to someone else, but he is lonesome.
He is a professional hunter. He hunts wild beasts that are damaging or killing people and he leads the rich on hunting expeditions for exotic trophy animals. He doesn’t really like this kind of hunting, but it pays for his life style. In fact, it’s made him rich. He also teaches hunting to the children of the rich, and donates his time teaching poor kids how to hunt for food.
He spends most of his money taking care of the many kids he fathered as a drunk. He’s tried to give Debbie money in the past, but she won’t except it. He respects this, but is also hurt by it.
He lives a simple life. He doesn’t really have a home. He travels a lot for his work.
Cain has a simple, but solid relationship with God. He knows that God has forgiven him for his past and he works hard to do God’s work. His faith is not complicated. He believes that God’s will for him is usually pretty obvious. He has never had a burning bush experience, which is not to say that he doesn’t feel God’s presence in his life.
He has tried in the past to heal his relationship with his parents and he has to some extent. He has a sort of secret relationship with each of them separately. He knows that, because of his past, each of them wants to keep it secret from the other that they have a relationship with him. He actually finds it kind of amusing.
Debbie - 224, hair has a shocking pink highlights on black, many piercings (nose, lips, ears, eyebrow, other less visible), several prominent tattoos, dressed in black mini dress with tears and Doc Martins with heels. She smokes and she is a lesbian.
Debbie’ mother died giving birth to her. Her mother was Cain’s third wife, much younger than him, and the daughter of one of Cain’s much younger sister’s. Debbie blames herself for her mother’s death because her father has always blamed her for her death. He was angry after her mother died and took it out on Debbie. He felt that if she hadn’t been born that this marriage would have been a long one. He really loved Debbie’s mother. When she was four, Cain left her in the care of Sheila.
Debbie was raised by Sheila, one of Cain’s other sisters. Cain visited and tried to take care of the girl, but he was always drifting around and it wasn’t until she was nineteen that he married again and settled down. Sheila treated her well enough, but Sheila made it clear that Debbie was not her child and her children, all fourteen of them, got priority. Debbie was the maid and nanny to Sheila’s children. She eat whatever was left over which often wasn’t much. Sheila’s husband, Bruce, molested her when she was 14. She never told anyone, but left the home immediately and wandered the streets of Enoch begging. She finally meets Amber when she is sixteen and the two move in together. Amber is a good provider.
Debbie is often angry and rages, but she is beautiful and smart. She is the first artist. And there is an inner strength that only appears now and then... when she is angry, or when that perfect moment of clarity about what she believes is threatened. Only recently has she begun to assert herself.
This is Debbie’s first public exhibition of any of her work. Friends have seen some of her drawings and sculptures, but they have only been seen in her home. She is both terrified and excited. She wanted the first people to see it to be her grandparents since they inspired it.
She has some resentment toward her grandparents. She thinks that they should have taken care of her after she ran away from their daughter Sheila’s home after being molested and raped, however, they didn’t really know what was going on. No one did. She has only told Amber about it. Even if her grandparents had offered to take in her in, she probably wouldn’t have gone, but she is hurt that they didn’t ask.
Debbie is still very confused. Her art is her way of dealing with her confusion. This piece is her defiant stand. She doesn’t want to believe in God. This is an in-your-face effort to make God prove that he exists.
Her art makes her feel powerful. She is the Creator. She is God.
Debbie used to pray when she was a girl, but nothing seemed to happen and she gave up. She’s not sure she believes in God anymore. She does and she doesn’t want there to be a God, but, if there is a God, she’s not sure how much God actually participates in the live of God’s creations. She’s not sure she wants God to participate in the lives of his/her creations.
She has trouble believing the whole Garden of Eden story, but she loves her grandparents. She thinks maybe it’s just a story to explain how they had sex before marriage without looking like they were just curious teens.
She created this particular piece of art because she was struggling with why, if there is a God, God allows evil. Did God create the devil? Is there really a devil? What are human beings responsibilities for evil? What is God’s responsibility for evil? What is evil?
Debbie has sort of idealized her father, but she doesn’t really know him. This is an attempt to get to know him. She is scared of him. She knows that he blames her for her mother’s death. She blames herself.
Debbie is bi-sexual. She slightly prefers girls. She is not currently involved with anyone. Her last love didn’t end well and she is taking some time off.
Shlomo - 670, a man who looks older than his age. He carries an unlit cigar. He recently quit smoking, but can’t stop carrying and chewing on a cigar and spitting.
He is well dressed although he is a little hunched and walks a bit slow.
Shlomo was the first merchant. He opened a little store and sold fruits and vegetables. Adam supplied and still supplies him with product for one of his stores, but Shlomo has branched out. Shlomo now owns a large number of stores all across the middle East, northern Africa and eastern Europe. He is one of the richest men in the world who is not royalty.
Shlomo is a salesman at heart. He loves bargaining and making deals.
Shlomo is Seth’s boy. He was raised in Enoch and opened his first store there. His father wanted him to be a farmer, but Shlomo hated farming and quit as soon as he left his father’s home and got married. He fumbled around a few years, but finally saw an opportunity and using his wagon to supply vegetables and fruit to various neighbors in exchange for goods and services. It was sometimes hard to collect using the barter system, but one of his brother’s came up with the first money, that’s when Shlomo got the idea that he didn’t have to transport the food to others, which caused damage to the goods, but could open a store and have them come to him.
The store took off. He quickly opened a second and a third. Then he began supplying cooking pots and knives and utensils and things just took off after that. Now he has a bunch of small stores that supply essentials and a few mega-stores that supply a wide variety of goods, furniture, clothes, etc.
He travels a lot and doesn’t really like that part of the work, but he loves meeting new people and so travels as much as he has to. He loves talking and always visits family wherever he goes. He is close to Adam and Eve and regrets that they split, but he has a live and let live attitude. He doesn’t know Cain well and has always sort of looked down on him because of his past. He loves Debbie. He has been her “favorite uncle” for a long time. He took pity on her when she was little. He always stayed in touch with her and did what he could to help her. She would never accept much help. He offered her a job and she worked in one of his stores for a while, but it wasn’t what she wanted. They have drifted apart in the past hundred years, but he still loves her.
He was married once , but his traveling and excessive focus on his business ended that. He had one kid from the marriage. He’s had girlfriends and relationships, but he’s just never found the right woman. He travels to much and no woman would ever tolerate that. He’s not a good looking man, and he knows it. He’s kinda fat, short and ugly. Women have been attracted to his money, but he reads women to well and never found one that just loved him. And a big part is his fault and he knows it. His business has consumed most of his life.
He’s getting old now. Suddenly, he finds that he has slowed down. He has no one to turn the business over to. He tried to groom his son, but he didn’t want to be a salesman and hated the business. He wants family, but has none. About the only person he has been close to is Debbie.
He contacted her recently and she invited him out to this opening. He has no idea what is going on, but he wants to renew his relationship with Debbie and so he is going.
Rudy - aka The Snake. 124, an older teen. The only part of Rudy we ever see is his hand and arm.
Rudy is the voice of The Snake. Rudy is really excited by this, but he also wants to get paid. He sees this as a real opportunity to show his stuff. There is no theater yet and no acting. Rudy is the first and he is the perfect choice. He has the ego needed to be an actor and the drive to succeed, despite what Debbie may want.
He is Debbie’s younger first cousin. He is a little naive, but he is eager and is sick of being a ‘kid.’ He wants to be a full adult, but he feels like his parents and everyone else is holding him back. He is very grateful to Debbie. She is the first one to ever give him any responsibility and trust, but he is also feeling constrained by what Debbie has told him he can do, and he is determined that he is not going to be leashed like that.
He loves the idea of embodying evil, and he loves the microphone that gives his voice such power. He’s not really evil. In fact, Rudy is gentle and loving, but when he gets into a role, he tries hard to stay in character.
Rudy has been close to Debbie for a long time. He loves her very much. He doesn’t know much about his family, they were killed in a plague and he was raised by Debbie’s mother’s sister. Debbie is close to her aunt who lives on a small subsistence farm not far from where this art installation is. That’s how Rudy got involved. He helped haul materials for Debbie and Debbie loves Rudy and wants him to get involved in life and asked him as a kindness to help her out. She is paying him a small amount which he desperately needed to do this job. She knows that he wants to leave the farm and do more with his life, but she also knows that he is kinda odd and naive and worries that he will get in trouble, but... Birds gotta fly.
Rudy has a crush on Debbie, but he is too shy to say it. In fact, he thinks he loves her. Debbie suspects, but doesn’t realize how much Rudy loves her. Rudy thinks that Debbie is a lesbian.
Rudy has invited Shlomo to the opening without consulting Debbie. He doesn’t think she will mind, and besides, he is part of this too. He thinks that this can be important and he wants to impress Debbie by promoting her art.
Rudy as The Snake acts as chorus.
Outline:
Debbie wants to show the most important people in her life something new she has created - the first work of art. She has an ulterior motive, she wants to try and repair the relationship between her Grandparents, Adam and Eve. She is also trying to get to know her estranged father, Cain, and she also hopes to rehabilitate the relationship between Cain and his parents. She hasn’t seen any of these people in a long time.
Her art project is intended to explore the nature of evil in the world and what God’s role in evil and the world is.
Rudy, the operator of the manikin and Debbie’s assistant, invites his grandfather, Shlomo. He invited Shlomo because he wants to get paid for all the work he has done. Debbie has paid Rudy a little money, but Rudy thinks this can be a real commercial operation and Shlomo is the salesman in the family.
In the end, Adam and Eve get back together. Cain is reunited with his parents and Shlomo buys the art project, but Debbie feels as though she has sold her soul to the devil.
Act I:
1. Debbie sits near tree. The Snake whacks Debbie in the back with it’s tail. Debbie EXITS to talk to Rudy. (”Damn it, Rudy!)
2. Eve ENTERS slightly bewildered. Adam ENTERS shortly after and sees Eve. He hesitates, then see her befuddlement and goes to her.
3. Debbie ENTERS and goes to the two before they can really talk. They are actually relieved. They ask why they are here and Debbie talks about this new thing she is doing. Art. They are curious, but before the discusssion gets too far, Rudy hollers again and Debbie has to go help him.
4. Uncomfortable discusssion between Adam and Eve. (Should we start here and let the audience think this is the real Garden? No, they are old.) Adam EXITS to find a burning bush to extinguish.
5. Cain ENTERS. He is uncomfortable with his mother. Eve acts kindly. Small physical reconciliation and a hint that they have been in contact for some time, but as Adam returns, Eve wants Cain to keep it secret from Adam that they have been in contact.
6. Eve EXITS to go talk to Rudy. Adam asks if Cain told his mother about the relationship that Adam and Cain have maintained. Cain reassures Adam that Eve knows nothing. They discuss Eve’s failing “health”, meaning her mind.
7. Eve and Debbie ENTER. Debbie is happy because everyone is finally here. She is proud and scared. Debbie starts to explain her concept when loud Uncle Shlomo ENTERS, shakes hands, slaps back. (Shlomo: You should of told me. I coulda had it cartered.)
8. Debbie is excited and confused by Shlomo’s arrival. Shlomo explains. Debbie and Shlomo EXIT to talk to Rudy.
9. Cain tries to make pleasant conversation, but the old grudge rears it’s ugly head. Cain killing Abel. Who his father is?
10. Debbie ENTERS. She is still frustrated by Rudy’s invitation to Shlomo. Why is he even here? Why is Shlomo anywhere? Money. What money is there here? This is art? Debbie finally relates to Cain, Eve, and Adam what art is. They are a little confused. Show us.
11. Debbie tells Rudy that it’s time to start. The Snake raises it’s head. Cain defends. Debbie intervenes.
Act II:
1. Everyone except Shlomo is angry and hostile. They dither. They are confused. Rudy is roaring and ranting.
2. Cain is angry because he believes that Debbie is being insensitive to the pain of Adam and Eve.
3. Cain is angry because he has always felt that it was his fault.
4. Eve is hurt because she believes it is her fault.
5. Debbie believes that God, if there is a God...
6. Everyone reacts.
a. Adam is confident and shocked that Debbie could even doubt.
b. Eve wishes that there was no God, but she knows there is.
c. Cain wondered a long time himself, but he has started a new relationship with God.
d. Everyone is surprised by this and talks about their own poor relationship with God.
7. Debbie continues that God brought sin into the world, not humans. God created the devil. Adam explains the law of unintended consequences. Shlomo believes that God created and walked away and that the Devil is our own creation. Like this art.
8.
Issues:
Raising children
Lesbians
Body modification
Feminism
Fun
Inspiration
The origin of the devil
The lost years
God provides for Adam and Eve, but not for Cain (Actually, Cain has been providing for Adam and Eve, they just don’t know it.)
Innocence and guilt and sin
The perspective of history
Seymour - the first critic
Who’s to blame
Cain and Abel
Rape
Original sin
The origin of Adam and Eve - Adam was a mistake that Eve was the correction for.
Cain real father
Debbie needs a real job
Leisure time
Art
Representation of Adam and Eve as young and beautiful
Tower of Babel
Debbie - “You would know, grandmother. Pandora and her box.”
“Always something else to do.”
Monty Python:
A: Most of ‘em are related to me.
E: No they’re not
A: They’re all related to me.
E: No they’re not.
A: They have to be related to me
E: Well they’re not
A: Then who are they related to? There was no one else but me.
E: There was this fella...
A: Fella!? What fella?!
E: He said he was an angel.
A: An Angel?!
E: A fallen Angel. He said his name was Bob.
A: Bob? The fallen angels name was Bob?
E: That was the first ones name. There was a bunch of them really.
A: A bunch of fallen angel? What did they call themselves.
E. Not all at once. It was more like a train really. You know, one right after another... Choo-choo. And I was always the caboose.
Eve: I gave him the best 300 years of my life.
Amber:
Duck Call
Sign Board
Shadow
Reactions
Gun
SA Production notes:
Signs: Sheep dog
Act 1: Wabbit Season
DaVinci’s man
David with a fig leaf.
Colorado Tourism
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