I’m very excited about how well this play has come together thanks to some very important break throughs and character revelations recently. It’s a wonderful surprise when a project you’re working on takes you in direction you didn’t expect. It’s what makes writing worth it for me. I outline and plan out how a work will progress before I sit down at the keyboard to write a single line. It’s so refreshing to have unique moments come out unexpectedly.

I’m also working on a revision to “An Army of One” that is bringing the story up to date. All told there has been a lot of work happening at my desk after I wrap up my daily work obligations. I’ve had so many good ideas lately that I’ve been doubling up on projects.

This is all good news for me but bad news for the blog. I intend to keep updating the site so please continue to check in, it just may be a bit slow here until I finish these two big projects.

I’m more than fifty pages into a new full length play that’s really coming together, and is practically writing itself.  I finished a new ten minute play that I’ve had stewing in the back of my mind for quite a while, and finally put words on paper last week.  I’m in the process of finishing a major overhaul on “An Army of One” that I feel really brings that play together, and will mark the last major revision I do to that play for a long time.  And I’m working on something that could potentially be a screenplay, comic book, or dynamic digital web show using flash and animation… I don’t know.  The past three weeks I’ve had so many good ideas rolling around in my head I’ve had a hard to finding ways to focus on any one project. 

I figure that this is a good problem to have, and it’s not hurting any of the things I’m working on, so I can’t really complain.  The only thing it has really hit hard is my ability to sit down and write up my response to Beckett. Frankly I don’t want to derail the good thing I have going in my own writing, so I’m going to post-pone a write up until this current writing streak cools down a bit, and I need something to stimulate myself.

The irony here, is that maintaining this website, and posting reviews of works I’m currently reading is meant to be the fuel that burns my creative fire, and I guess the good news is that it’s working.  The bad news is that I’m not keeping up on new posts.

I have a fairly small readership on this site, and of those readers, 98% of them never respond to what I write, so I don’t really feel like I’m letting anyone down but myself.

In the meantime I’d like to share a few tidbits about Endgame that you might enjoy, and I’ll do a proper write up when I come down off my play writing high.

Youtube videos of scenes from Beckett’s “Endgame”

If you’re in Minneapolis, you should absolutely check out this production of “Endgame” by the Ten Thousand Things Theater Company.

When I have the chance to do a proper write I’m going to discuss the above theater’s decision to do runs of this show for free in housing projects, homeless shelters, and prisons.  These people are doing some amazing things with classic theater works to communicate with people in difficult situations.  Hopelessness, the cyclical nature of life and living, and fining meaning in routines is so difficult when you’re broke, or living off the state, or at the state’s mercy.  This play really speaks to that type of living, and with the proper talk back session can make an impact in those peoples lives.

Take a look at the press kit that the folks from Ten Thousand Things put together for the show (links to webpage):  Press Kit Website

Also, I’m going to host a copy of their PDF here on my site so that you can review the details of this production once they’ve updated their site and moved on to other works.  This is really great stuff that these people are doing.  (Link goes to PDF file.)  Press Kit PDF

Lastly, I’ve always thought it’s good to start any discussion of a work by looking at what someone else thinks, (even if they’re wrong), here’s a link to the spark notes analysis of this play:  It’s only marginally useful

Realistically speaking, I would suggest that the Ten Thousand Things production is as close as I’ve even seen anyone come to my interpretation of this work.  How do we find meaning in life when we have no control, when the world seems to have conspired to determine all our actions for us and we’ve lost our ability to choose.  Free will is a luxury that many of us take for granted simply because we have the means to choose.  The characters in this play are acting out their parts in a script certainly, but their paths were chosen for them by a hand less sympathetic than Beckett’s.

The idea that the world these characters live in is inescapable, and that they are doomed to repeat the cycle only serves to make this show something of a fable.  Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our fathers?  Can Clov turn his back on the boy outside, or is he doomed to Hamm’s fate?  In a world of gray bleakness and repetition is the only real escape in death?  Can you really die in the world Beckett created?  Or are you condemned?

I hope you enjoy the bits I’ve shared with you thus far, and I hope to return in earnest to talk about this work in greater detail when I can spend more time and think about what I want to say.  So far the above is all that I have. Enjoy!

My latest book analysis is late, but I assure you that this post required the proper amount of time to figure out what I am now capable of sharing with you.  I mentioned in my initial post discussing mnemonic that I had never done collaborative theater, and that I was intrigue by the possibility and promise this work represented as a learning experience for me.  What I discovered in the past two weeks extends far beyond the pages of this interesting and multi-faceted work.  This past week I had the great pleasure to participate in a workshop at the American College Theater Festival titled simple: Alternative Forms.

The concept of this workshop was to pair playwrights with actors with the intent of staging a show in four days, then simply wait and see what happens.  Unlike with the 24 hour playwriting model, where there is an very tight time frame that requires the generation of SOMETHING in less than 8 hours, this workshop encouraged writers and actors alike to experiment with different styles of theater, and to collaborate on the final product that ended up on the stage.

One of my fellow playwrights participating in this workshop wrote a Lincoln Douglas style debate on the inherent qualities of pie. (The dessert, not the mathematical sign.)  Another gentleman wrote a poem on how choices effect the path our lives take, and had a single actress act out the imagery as she recited the piece.  I ended up taking a page out the Complicite handbook from my recent reading of mnemonic, and approached the workshop as a collaborative writing opportunity to better understand just how this process can possibly work and whether or not I would appreciate the quality of the product without having the ability to completely control what ends up on the stage from start to finish.  The answer to these questions , and more, follows…

The Review…

In my initial post introducing this work I posited the idea that a collaborative work, by its very nature, may lack the focus and consistency that comes from a single writer expressing his ideas on the page.  In fact, collaborative theater represents the creative conception of many different individual’s personal experiences culminating into something that is greater than the sum of its parts.  Having never done this type of theater in the past I was very put off by the text.  My initial reading left me feeling dissatisfied and some what confused by the message that was left after the curtain fell.

Here are some of the things that I took away from the initial reading:  the play discusses the nature of life, and the interconnectedness that we as a species share amongst one another.  Through the use of symbolic theatrical devices the Complicite company evokes a sense of history and solidarity in our collective pasts.  This is accomplished by discussing the nature of memory, and how the human brain goes about creating and retaining memories.  The text of the play describes the process of the human brain triggering synapses and building bridges between different pieces of tissue and cells in order to develop a structure of synaptic pathways that connect our consciousness to our memories.

The play presents memory as a thing that continually grows over time through a series of branch points that results in an ever expanding series of connections that resemble the veins in a maple leaf.  (This description was very theatrical and struck me as an interesting explanation.  As a result of reading this play I am inspired to discuss this topic in greater deal with my good friend Dr. Craig Bennett who is a cognitive neuro-scientist doing his post doctoral work on this topic at the University of California in Santa Barbara.)

Following on this theme of interconnectedness, the play goes on to suggest that there is a connection between each and every person living and dead on the earth.  This metaphorical connection laid the ground-work for a relationship between humankind today and a 5,000 year old corpse of an Ice Man discovered in the Alps near Bolzano Italy in 1991 by a group of hikers.

Using the Ice Man’s experiences as a model for human behavior, the company takes the reader on a journey of discovery that connects each of us to the struggle for survival that is depicted through the analysis of the Ice Man’s collected remains.  Complicite employs the scientific and news media discourse on the Ice Man discovery through out this work to connect each of the disparate characters to one another by suggesting that if we can understand the Ice Man, we are able to learn more about humanity and the way we live.  This is the through-line that holds the show together.

The major themes covered in this play include the importance of understanding humanity’s place in the world, and recognizing how we’re all connected: past, present, and future.  The play spends a great deal of time analyzing the importance of ancestry and knowing where we come from.  In the course of expounding on the relationship between the two major characters in this piece, Virgil and Alice, we come to understand that despite the difference in time, place and experiences of Alice, her father, and the Ice Man… we see that the journey’s taken in life by these three individuals are in many ways connected, and represent all of us.

Many of the important themes included in this play are universal by nature.  The broad sweeping concepts that are discussed in the text result in the play feeling like it lacked a sense of purpose.  During my initial reading of the script I was turned off by the lack of a cohesive message.  As a collaborative work you can see the devices used to hold together the many pieces that act as the heart of this play.  The question one must ask, as you read, is whether or not it holds up.  Has the company has found a way to strike a balance between the theme of human interconnectedness and the many unique stories that are told in the course of the text?  It is my contention that this is a very theatrical work, that on stage would showcase a very interesting set of ideas and make for an interesting evening of theater, but on the page it feels like it’s missing something.

It took me two weeks to come to this conclusion.  My initial reaction was that this play had no soul, rambled, and ultimately left me feeling unfulfilled after the introduction of so many powerful ideas.  I’m sharing this with you so that you can appreciate how much a writer can be changed by participating in a collaborative writing process, and staging the product of such an event.

ACTF and Collaborative Writing…

At the American College Theater Festival for region five, held this year at the University of Kansas, I participated in the “Alternative Forms” workshop.  In the course of this experience I was giving the opportunity to work with a group of actors in order to create something non-traditional to be put on stage for our showcase night on Thursday, 1/22/09.  It was a three day event that really changed my perspective on this play, and on the process of collaborative development.  I had two important realizations: 1) You can’t fully control the product of what ends up on stage if there isn’t one person completely in control of the script, and I really don’t like being able to completely control what goes into something that has my name on it. 2) It was a lot of fun to feel out of control for a little while.  (This is particularly difficult for someone who is just a little bit O.C. to admit and mean it.)

I may end up choosing to do something like this again because it was such a unique experience, but I did feel out of my element, and had to adjust my approach to the writing process around what others had given me.  In our groups collaboration I tried to steer us away from a 24 hour play fest style script writing and actor staging situation.  I took input from the group, had them write stories from their lives, and we discussed the concept that was to act as the central theme of our piece.  I took copious notes during out development meeting, collected the actors written stories, then went off to create a composition that included all of these components into something worthwhile.  It was really challenging, and the initial reading of that work was stale, stilted, and really didn’t work.  I took notes during the reading, had a follow-up meeting with the cast, and we made some hasty decisions on line delivery and organization of the dialogue.  I then went away again with news notes, ripped apart my original draft and turned it into something that flowed better and felt like a unified experience that had the potential to connect with our audience more effectively.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the final product… but what writer is ever completely satisfied?  Once our piece had it’s moment under the lights on stage I felt like we had done very well under the circumstances.  My actors were very talented, and did a great job of contributing to the development process, and gave impressive performances after little to no rehearsal time.

Participating in this workshop certainly opened my eyes to the challenges of collaborative theater, but it also help me see how these shows challenge audiences, and offer a truly theatrical experience that is designed for the stage, and not for the page.  As a playwright it’s good to be reminded every once and while that theater is collaborative even if the writing process usually is not.  This was a wonderful experience and despite my misgivings I would recommend it to anyone who brands themselves a playwright.

I owe a great deal to Paul Lim.  Recently he was cleaning out his office at KU, and had a few boxes of plays and manuscripts he no longer felt he needed to hold onto and asked if I would be interested in them.  As you can probably imagine I did my best not to jump up and down, and dance around the room as I said very politely, “Why yes, thank you Paul.” 

One of the most important aspects of being an effective writer is reading.  My brain works in a very peculiar way, but I’ve found that it also is quite predictable.  I function better as a writer while I’m reading works by other playwrights.  I spend a great deal of time reading and re-reading a work in order to familiarize myself with a given authors approach, format, structure, and general style.  I have a tendency to take notes when I’m reading.  Over time these notes have become the rubric by which I go about conducting myself in my writing endeavors. 

Recently, in a conversation I had with Paul, he suggested I go back and read the Pulitzer prize winning plays from the last fifty years and attempt to discern some sort of pattern that might lend itself to further my writing.  So I recently sat down to read, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and found myself caught up in Tennessee Williams forward detailing his approach to play writing and the writer’s responsibilities to his audience. 

In my undergraduate play writing classes we were not given a guide with which to write our scripts.  Many programs offer their students a process, or process document to how plays should be structured in order to have viability in the commercial theater market-place.  (E.G.: This must happen in scene one, this must happen before the end of act one, act two should start with this type of action, etc.)  I did not attend one of these programs.  Paul Lim’s approach to play writing starts with plays.  We read everything from Paula Vogel to student plays from previous semesters.  We did readings of a variety of scripts in many different styles and formats in order to get exposure to how different authors approach the process of play writing.  It was a very natural and organic learning style that slowly turned into the actual composition of plays.

There are times when I regret not having more structure. I guess this regret stems from the fact that at times I don’t know where the words are taking me, and I wish I had some guide on the wall that told me exactly how the general story-line should proceed so that I can stay on course.  I compose outlines for my longer works, but that’s not the kind of direction I desire.  The problem with a structured approach to writing is that it also has the potential to stymie creativity and limit the possibility of breaking from convention, not following the accepted norms, and generating something special.  Every writer has the potential to express themselves in a way that is unique to them.  Tennessee Williams said it best, “My world is different from yours, as different as every man’s world is from the world of others…”

He goes on to discuss the idea that this unique world view is foisted upon us by the nature of our existence.  “Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.”  This statement is in reference to a line from his play, Orpheus Descending, which reads, “We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!”

There is so much to learn from Williams’ vision of play writing.  He put a great deal of stock into the idea that we all live inside ourselves, and our perception of the world is colored by the combined weight of all of our experiences.  He argued that it is the playwright’s job to find a way to bridge the gap between himself and his audience, or as Tennessee Williams puts it, “I thought of myself as having a highly personal, even intimate relationship with people who go to see plays.” 

Williams goes on to suggest that this relationship is the foundation to successful play writing.  One has to see the world not only as it is, (or as you believe it to be), but in a more universal way.  This allows your audience to connect with your work and your characters in a personal way.  Ultimately it is your job as the writer to build a relationship with the audience for the duration of a show.  One can only hope that this bond follows the audience out onto the sidewalk when the show has concluded.  It sounds like a lot of hard work, and it is… but I’ve seen a play succeed in this way, and it is magical when it happens.

Tennessee Williams also suggested that, “I want to go on talking to you as freely and intimately about what we live and die for as if I knew you better than anyone else whom you know.”  There is something powerful and direct in this statement that should provide any playwright with a path through the woods when you come to a point of uncertainty.  When in doubt, remember the importance of being honest and direct, write for your audience, and work hard to connect with them in a personal and intimate way. Perhaps I was not gifted with a writing rubric when I left KU, but I did learn this lesson well.

I’m a nerd. I know, I know… You already knew that. There are a lot things in this world that I think substantiate this fact, but none more so than what I’ve recently done in order to stream line my writing process.

Good news? I’m using my powers of nerd for the good of my writing. Bad news? I’m wasting time geeking out instead of writing. Check out what I’ve done.

I took the time to figure out how the normal.dot basic template file in Microsoft Word works well enough to create custom formatting style sheets in order to essentially apply CSS to my play writing projects. You may be asking yourself, “Zac, you’re a dork, why is this cool?”

It’s a lot more interesting than you might think. This allows me to use style sheets to employ predefined formatting at any given location within a document simply by clicking a button.

Play writing uses a very specific style sheet. That style sheet is provided to all playwrights by the Dramatists Guild. You aren’t required to follow it, but following this style sheet makes it easier for people to read your script, and lends itself to a professional look and feel. Using the Guild’s style sheet also allows you to communicate to a reader that you take your work seriously. Presentation and formatting can go a long way towards selection… Of course, you still have to generate good ideas, and be able to write…

Therefore, I have created two sets of style sheets I can use for my work. The “Classic” style sheet uses the old “Courier New” font and layout schemes for: Character Names, Dialogue, Stage Directions, Character Directions, and various other formatting used in this writing style. The second, “Contemporary” style sheet is the revised version of the Classic format that uses Times New Roman, and conforms to the new formatting guide lines provided by the guild.

I click a button and everything changes: 3″ margin, all caps, ready to type a character name.

Pretty cool stuff.

Even cooler? Yeah, you know I took it to the next level. I wrote a macro script with a VB front-end that lets me choose the styles from a panel that’s always available. It also allows me to create a “Cast-list” from which I can simply click on a Character name, and it automatically inserts a line-break, inserts the character name in the proper formatting then inserts another line-break, and resets the style to “Dialogue” so that I can immediately keep typing the next lines of my play.

I’ve wasted a lot of time putting this together, but I must admit that using this new system makes writing in this format 100 times easier. No more worrying about formatting or style guides as I’m typing my script. I just have to write.

Some people may not appreciate this, but for me it’s a life saver. I tend to get distracted and off center if I have to invest time thinking outside of my character’s mind. Worrying about structure and format takes me out of the process, it’s cumbersome. This new system enables me to stay in the moment and focus on my work.

I know this makes me a nerd. But it’s satisfying to know that my geek factor is having a positive impact on my creative life.

It’s times like these when I am reminded that I should be grateful that I inherited my father’s hardcore nerd skills. He gave me the ability to do this sort of stuff for myself. Thanks, Dad… you old dork!