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.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a fabulous play for many different reasons: amazing monologues, intense subject matter, dynamic characters, and a very controlled environment that does not change as the play moves forward in time.  In classic Williams style, Cat has no real scene breaks.  All the action in this show takes place across three acts but there are not gaps in time, nor is there any change in location in order to tell the story.  This play is a lesson in controlled story telling.  There is only one set, time moves forward in a linear fashion, and the characters struggle to work out the question posited by Margaret in the first ten minutes of the play: Was there more to Brick’s relationship with Skipper than mere friendship?

I have always admired the craftsmanship exhibited in this play, but I love it all the more now as I read this newly discovered version of the work that includes a forward and an afterward by Williams.  In these two author’s notes, Williams discusses the nature of a playwright’s struggle as he works to move a play from page to stage.  I find it particularly enlightening that his experience is very similar to the struggle that many of us go through with directors as we work to stage a show.  Williams was fortunate enough to be working with Elia Kazan, and the show was being produced on Broadway… but the playwrights experience is a universal one due to where our work starts and stops.  Williams had a great respect for Kazan’s work, and as with any director Kazan offered notes on the original version of the script.  His suggestions included notes on character arch, plot devices, how the play should end, and where the characters should be when the curtain falls.

It is so overwhelming to know that someone like Tennessee Williams, a man who is renowned for his writing ability and style, should be questioned by a director… ANY director.  But that having been said, Williams does something that we all should learn: he listened, considered, and ultimately ended up revising the play per the notes given to him by Kazan.  The wonderful thing about this version of the play is that it includes both the original ending, and the revised one.

Reading the two versions of act three you can see a dramatic difference in where the characters end up, and how the tone of the play changes because of the revision.  Is it changed for the better?  I would argue that the answer is probably yes, but I contend the the original version gave us a greater understanding of the man that Brick has become in his "disgust".  In the original ending Brick remains the static drunk and his prospects continue to look bleak and unchanged all the way to the curtain.  In the revised version we see a more dynamic Margaret, and a Brick who seems to be coming out of his shell a bit, opening up, talking… changing before our eyes.

What I dislike about the revised version, (the version that was eventually staged,) is the transformation that occurs in Brick.  Despite all the things that happen in the course of this play, I conclude that there is no real motivation for Brick to "surface" from his alcoholic haze.  He continues to drink, he continues to push towards the "click" in his head, and realistically speaking even a functional drunk doesn’t have the mental faculties to demonstrate the type of change we see in Act III from Brick.  To my thinking, no amount of poking or prodding from Big Daddy would result in any real revelations from this character.  He was forced to face his demons with his father, but he did so with a glass full of whiskey in his hand that he repeatedly filled, drank, and refilled ad nauseum.  Brick’s transformation in the revised version of act three struck me as difficult to believe.

That having been said, I think that it is a better play because of other changes.  It’s a better play because we understand the possibility that tomorrow now holds for Margaret and Brick.  On the whole it was a good revision, but I also would argue that we all strive so much to have our characters follow a development arch that is logical and meaningful to audiences.  This makes sense because it allows people to connect with our characters, (which is a good thing if you want to sell tickets.)  But I also think that there are times when certain characters should be allowed to remain static and unchanged despite the events that are unfolding about them.  This allows us to understand a greater sense of sadness for where this character has ended up, and who they’ve become due to their life experiences.

Brick is definitely one of those characters for me… the original version of Act III made me ache for Brick.  In many ways I felt like he was lost, and the lack of any real communication or humanity from him in the final scene of the play made me feel the depth of his grief, and helped me appreciate that he was truly and deeply broken over the loss of his friend.

On the whole I would argue that this is a great play to use as a teaching tool for people interested in understanding the process of making a show more approachable for an audience.  The original version of Act III doesn’t let the audience into the lives of the characters nearly as much as the revised version.  In that way the show works "better" thanks to the revision.  The lesson taken from this reading should be that even great playwrights some times need the help of a talented director to help see their show with new eyes.

In my own experience, during the production of  "An Army of One" I had many times where the director, Paul Hough, came back to me and suggested a revision, or restructuring of a specific scene in order to make the play work better on stage.  You have to be open to these suggestion as a playwright because there are many times when the words simply don’t translate effectively to the stage.  I am very grateful that in my first production experience I had the opportunity to work with such a talented and patient director, who was interested in working with me.  We all should be so lucky as to work with someone like Paul Hough.

It is a fine line to walk when you’re considering revising your work based on notes from a director.  You can’t allow the work to run away from you, and give the director carte blanche to do with the script what he will.  But I think the lesson I learned in my production experience, and from the pages of this wonderful play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, is that no one is infallible—not even Tennessee Williams.

Check out this edition of the play to see both versions of the third act:
ISBN: 0-451-17112-8 
Amazon: Buy It