The Singer/Songwriter

Another free-write. I like to go back and find these things in old notebooks. I was actually listening to someone sing a tribute song like this - but this is not their story (or my opinion of them...).

She sang a song for him, piano and voice, to remember him. He had always hated her songs, her voice. He didn't have the courage to tell her - he didn't trust that she liked him enough to survive telling the truth. But now she sings what she calls 'his song,' thinking it is a tribute to him, to their relationship. But really it is a tribute to her own perception of their relationship, which has little to nothing to do with him, or reality. If it had been up to him, the best tribute might have been moments of silence, pure silence, expectant silence which is more full than empty absence of sound. That is how he would have remembered them, who they were together.

But she. She remembers them by covering over that silence with her words, her voice, her playing the piano, her thoughts, her attempts at poetry. And she remembers him with her own creativity, which has little to nothing to do with him, with reality. It is only her, covering over their perfect silence with herself, afraid that in the silence he will disappear. And that she will as well.

She sounds the siren...

This is a short free-write I did a few months back in my notebook, writing to the song "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" by U2. Not sure what it is, really, except that I've come back to it time and time again as I flip through the notebook. Something about the character, I like. If you want, listen to the song while you read...

She sounds the siren. The cry for help. Supersonic, and only the dogs come running. She's been beaten before and expects each embrace to end that way. It's all temporary, she's learned, but it doesn't mean she lives that way. Each meeting is a desperate goodbye, each loss the dawn of a new morning. When he passed, she half expected him to walk in the door the next morning. She opens the door every day expecting the same.

She's a walking invitation to a party in an empty room. Her hair flows down in front of her shoulders. She's long since given up pretending to be attractive, which has only made her more alluring. Do the men that approach her want to be her savior or her damnation? She gives none of them the power to be her either. What can make a girl lose this much of her soul? Where has she given it away - where is it hidden now?

She's the girl who when she wants something, puts her hand in her pocket and, no matter what when or how much, the money is there - in crumpled bills and change - and she's learned to keep her wants to that scale. To want more is only disappointment. To want more is a luxury she can't afford. It costs more than her pocket can provide.

A little bit more...

So I got another 17 pages done, which is the bulk of one of my primary climax-type scenes, a very complicated sequence which has proven to be a real challenge today. The scene isn't done, but i did map out how the rest of the scene will work. Up to 86 now.

I'm finding it quite difficult to write scenes with this many people in them. I realized a couple of days ago that I haven't actually written a play with more than 4 characters total, much less a scene where 8 people are all trying to talk. Almost as confusing as the fact that almost every single person in this play is pretending to be at least one other person, if not more.

I will also say that, as someone who almost always writes to music, I'm having a great time listening to all the Tango music that I've chosen to inspire the writing - a LOT of Astor Piazzolla. It's a fun kind of energy that is beautiful, takes itself quite seriously, and is bouncy and fun at the same time.

As the New Year is approaching, I am also realizing that if I finish this first draft - no matter how badly it is written - I will have kept my New Year Resolution for 2010, to write at least the first drafts of two new full length plays. I might just be able to sneak it in under the wire...

A beginning!

It has begun. I have started to write script pages for The Mayfair Affair.

On December 21, I pounded out the first 20 pages of script, another 24 pages on the 28th, and today, I have about 25 (That's a total of about 69 for the math-deprived). This is all some really terrible first draft writing, but I continue to make discoveries, as my pre-conceived ideas seem to take a back seat to whatever the characters start to say while I type - though I am hitting all of the major plot points (a necessity in a farce comedy - which needs to have a highly structured plot). I have reached some moments which should hit right around the end of Part One (pre-intermission), and a big scene that I think should go in part two. Though I do think there might be more setup necessary before I could call part one 'done' even for a first draft.

I'm actually just glad that all of the characters finally have names now - which really helps when trying to flesh them out as full characters and not just 'the maid' or 'the male thief'. Obviously, there will be a lot of cleaning up to do - including re-establishing some of those initial ideas, but a start is a start.

The goal is to have a full first draft (which I'm guesstimating will have about 100 pages, maybe a little more) sometime over the weekend. That's long for a play, but inevitably there will be some trimming. With a pending trip next week, I'd like to have at least this first pass done before I leave. Perhaps putting it in the drawer for a week while I'm gone will let it settle before charging ahead with another draft.

Kind of funny, the idea first came to me in early January, while making the long drive back from visiting family - roughly the same trip I'll be taking next week...

So much to do - but glad to finally be at a beginning - a whole year later!

My Daughter, the Playwright!

So, my ten year old daughter 'surprised' us on Christmas Day by presenting her brother, her mother and I each with a 10 page part of a play she's been writing. (I say 'surprised' because we all knew she had been hiding away to write something as a present, but we didn't know exactly what.)

Part One: The School Problem, she gave to her brother.

Part Two: The Report was for me.

Part Three: Moving Day she gave to her mom.

The play is about the adventures of a girl named Jane and her little brother J.J. as they navigate a school bully, J.J.'s major oral report on an animal, and her neighbor friend's impending move to San Diego. All three parts seem to involve the family's watching one of the Star Wars movies every Friday night (which we had been doing when she was writing - she instinctively knew to 'write what you know'!).

I took her hand written pages and typed them into Final Draft today, and used the Voice feature so it would read it out loud to her (as robotic as the people sounded). She got a big kick out of that, and we did a tiny bit of rewriting to fix some of the misspellings and typos.

At the end of part three, the story is far from over, so I'm really hoping she keeps writing. I'm very proud of what she's been able to do so far.

So, many months later...

I'm just about ready to get back on track with the farce that I'm working on, The Mayfair Affair. While I haven't gotten any script pages done per se, I've been turning the ideas over in my head over the past few weeks, and it's been heating up over the past few days - the fingers are itching to write. Directing has been where the energy has gone, but every time I don't really have the energy to work on writing - that's when the ideas start to roll.

I'm very lucky to be in the position I'm in, where this project already has some deadlines built in: I'm scheduled for a staged reading in the late spring, with an eye toward an actual production during the 11-12 season - plus a director attached who I'm very happy to have working on the play. Of course, the panic of not actually having pages in hand could potentially be crippling as the reading approaches, but knowing me, having that deadline that I can't push back just because I feel like it should be a strong motivating factor.

I'll always remember the story that my playwriting teacher would tell us about the English playwright whose agent came up with a title, booked a theatre for the opening, and hired a graphic designer to make a poster with the title and show dates - then sent it to the playwright, who then wrote the play! I don't think I'll go that far...

I've been published!

OK, so I presented three short theatre pieces at the Matter '09 conference last September - one of which, The Urns, has been published in the conference anthology; which also has a photo of me in that piece and one other, The Silent.

I was very glad to be invited to such a wonderful conference - and now I've been doubly blessed.

Thanks to Shechem Ministries for hosting the conference and publishing the book!