But it may come three, two, one, two*

It's been several months since I updated this blog.  My last blog entry was written after the attacks in Paris.  I hit publish, but didn't post on social media that I had written anything.  I wasn't sure then and I'm not sure now that what I wrote didn't trivialize something of tremendous pain to so many.

My life and my writing has been in transition for the last year.

Last summer I wrote 90 short plays in 90 days.

Before this I had been working on a play about my experiences as a foster parent.  The play seemed artificial and forced.  I wrote thirty pages that I didn't like.

During the 90 in 90, I found myself writing a large number of short plays about my experiences as a foster parent.  When I returned to the play I was working on earlier, I realized that I had already written a play about fostering.  I gathered the best of the 90 in 90 and compiled them along with a one-act I'd written two years ago for FronteraFest into the play I had dreamed of writing about foster parenting.

I was struggling.  Trying, again, to force the words out.  To make it be a play with "internal logic."  A classical, traditional play with a beginning, a middle, and an end, in that order.  A "well-made" play.  A play with a coherent plot and character development presented in a normal chronological order.

Maybe that's just not me.

What I have is once again... not surreal.  It's not a dream.  Most of what is on the page is autobiographical... very autobiographical.  But as you can imagine for a play made of 30 or 40 smaller pieces scrambled together... it's surreal... with touches of Brecht... just for fun.

I also wrote a high school play.

And then the desert.  I have written nothing for four months.  Some of it was life (household repairs, health, etc.) getting in the way.  Some is just lack of... motivation... or rather focusing on a different area of my life.  Focusing on the practical, the everyday.  Things I often neglect.

I have dreamed of projects.  I've made notes.  I've done research...
...but I have not written more than a few words.

Nothing has inspired... yet.

But I can hear the Siren's call.


*The Monkees - "Ditty Diego - War Chant"

What is my theory that it is*

I was wrong.

I dream of being a surrealist.

I was bemoaning in my last blog post, and to my mentor, that so much of the modern theatre (this is the spelling I am sticking with) is concerned with the "internal logic" of the play.  Nothing wrong with this, but it is very limiting.  And I speculated that Alfred Jarry or August Strindberg never worried about "internal logic."

I don't want to worry about internal logic.

I was doing the dishes and listening to the radio as I do every morning.  On NPR (where so many of the great ideas I have come from), a mention was made of a book called Aluminum Dreams - The Making of Light Modernity.  What a wonderful title, I thought.  The modern world helped along by a manufacturing process.  I wrote a poem years ago called Plutonium Dreams.  I remember the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick, the book the movie Blade Runner is based on.  Anais Nin wrote The Novel of the Future, a wonderful book I read in high school about surrealism in art, with the refrain "proceed from the dream outward," which I have used as a touchstone in my own work and, which I have just learned, is a Carl Jung quote.

Dreams are important to me.  And, no, I am not one of those people who writes down every dream and I spend very little time analyzing my dreams.  I don't think most, or practically any, of my dreams are important.  Most dreams are a response to the previous day and are basically a process of sorting out what the day before held.

But as an excessively rational person, and an artist, I work hard to tap into my irrational mind.  It is a critical element in my creative process.  (Remember what this blog is about... my creative process.)  Dreams, the waking kind, the fantasies that spring into my thoughts unbidden are regularly keys to my art.

And suddenly I understood why surrealism has such a hard time in the modern theatre.

Real life is surreal.  Modern living is surreal.

I can go to a building in my town.  Enter a tiny room crowded with people.  Sleep through the night, and wake up with the Eiffel Tower at my feet.

I've done that.  We call that building an airport and that tiny, overcrowded room an airplane.

This very morning, I was doing the dishes, listening to voice coming out of the ether, telling me about the making of modernity.  Moses would have thought it was the Word of God.

And then there's politics, or international relations, or mega-corporations, or global warming or... on and on.  None of it is rational, logical.  It's surreal.  The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade makes more sense.

No wonder "internal logic" has become so important!  Real life has no internal logic.  Perhaps modern drama must.


*John Cleese & Monty Python, "Ann Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses"

A Group of Angelic Troublemakers*

This is what I try to be.  This is what I hope the actors, directors, and the other artists and crew are, who perform my plays.

My scripts are my dreams.

I am not and do not wish to be an actor.  I am not and do not wish to be a director.  I am not and do not wish to be a producer.  If necessary, to see my work on stage, I will do any of these, but first I will do my best to find someone who is competent at these gifts.

I have found someone who is taking the first steps to being a great director.  I know this, because every time I run into her she is learning everything she can about the theatre.  (by the way, how the hell do you spell theater.)

She is directing my short play, "Go Home, Mister Chaplin," next week.

I am going to my first rehearsal today.

I deliberately stay away after the read through with the cast.

At the read through, I answer whatever questions the actors and director have... if I can.

I've mentioned before, in earlier posts, that, when writing, I tend to take in large volumes of information on all kinds of topics, some directly related to what I'm writing about, some background, some random.  Then I write.  Notes, outlines, character sketches.  Then I write.  Even for a short piece, this is generally how I work.

So far, the read through's, have been months after I wrote the piece.  I've moved on.  I review my notes before a read through to try and spark my memory, but a lot of what ends up on the page is... intuited during the writing process.  By the time of the read through, what ever I was thinking is no longer in my memory.  I also allow my intuition to make decisions about my plot, despite the fact that I have an outline.  Sometimes those decisions are not part of a conscious decision making process.

What I'm trying to say is that when the director or the cast ask questions, I sometimes don't have a coherent answer... And I'm okay with that.

The read through for "Go Home, Mister Chaplin" was at a staged reading.  Not only did the director and cast have questions, the audience had questions.  And as usual, I didn't always have answers.  Some of the questions made me very happy because they indicated that I had achieved my goal.  Some of the questions indicated that the audience didn't like those goals.  Some of the questions showed me where I had created confusion that I didn't want to create.

Rewrite.  Minor.

And then men, women, and children were killed in Paris.

Rewrite.  Minor.

I stay away from rehearsals because I want the other artists to deal with the confusion I have created in whatever creative manner they can.

My scripts are my dreams.  I hope they inspire others to dream.


* Bayard Rustin