The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill Vol. 1: First Plays/Lost Plays

Leave it to the New York Neo-Futurists to be clever! Their copiously-titled current production stages the stage-directions, and only the stage directions, of some of O’Neill’s classic plays. A reader sat dressed in black in the corner and read the stage directions out loud while six performers, dressed in matching gray henleys and black suspenders acted them out. Every cue for motion came directly and unquestioned from the reader, who didn’t hesitate to repeat herself if the performers didn’t perform.

TC&CSDOEOV1FPLP is a full length performance of one of the Neos’ Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (TMLMTBGB) sketches, and, as you might imagine, hilarity ensued. The concept lends itself to wordless physical comedy, and the Neos delivered. While extending any of the TMLMTBGB sketches into a production risks becoming gimmicky, TC&CSDOEOV1FPLP narrowly avoided that trap. To be sure, there’s only so many things you can do to keep acting out one playwright’s stage directions fresh, but the Neos have the stage savvy and the balls to do it. Just when I felt they’d run out of new jokes, they came out of left field with something I hadn’t expected.

On a theoretical note, TC&CSDOEOV1FPLP demonstrates something that I’ve read about as a hallmark of the old avant-garde, and have noticing as an underlying trend in some of the off-off-Broadway plays I’ve seen here in NYC. There’s an interest in deconstructing a classic work of art into its constituent parts, and then staging the part that the primary artist(s) find most intriguing. The practice itself is intriguing to me, and now I’m as curious to stage somebody’s stage directions as I am to stage a film spatially.

Poor Lessing's Almanack

http://poorlessingsalmanack.wordpress.com/

Last night I went to see a play with my friend Amy Jensen, who got us in for free since she was reviewing it for this new blog. If only I'd known earlier that being a blogger gave me press status! I'm going to have to try to take full financial advantage of this thing in the future.

Anyway, this blog is still in the developmental stage. That means, it's still trying to grow a following, and perhaps decide what it's going to be. My blog is also in this stage, in that I check the Stats bar pretty regularly to see what people are responding to. "Poor Lessing's Almanack" has a key difference from "Kachakâach": while my blog is the musings of just me, "PLA" is a collaborative effort of several professional dramaturgs, many of whom seem to adhere to the traditional American definition of the job: they do research for plays and stuff. It also seems to be tending heavily towards reviews of plays that the contributors see. In that respect, it seems that "PLA" and "Kachakâach" are heading in similar directions. I look forward to seeing what comes of this new blog.

The Continuing Saga of "Coyote Hunts the Sun"

My friend Becky Goldberg has started a playwrighting workshop at SBU where folks who have written stuff get together and hear their work out loud. We've had two sessions, and I've gotten to hear "CHTS" read both times, and the feedback has been tremendously helpful. After our first session, I knew that the several episodes weren't congealing for the listeners. In response, I added back the Storyteller character from earlier drafts, but gave her a definite character. The key scenes for my proto-audiences seem to be the ones with dueling storytelling, and the key theme that of Native people reasserting an autonomous voice. As such, the Storyteller became a clear antagonist in the role of an academic, well-intentioned but speaking out of turn. This second reading made it clear that, as of now, she's troublingly one-sided. What I plan on doing is rewriting her speeches, or "lessons", as lecture notes or lesson plans, as opposed to scripted dialogue. It is also becoming increasingly clear that my play is heavy on visuals, especially towards the top. To really be sure if it works or not, I'm going to have to see it.

The Passion Project

Last Friday night I got to see Reid Farrington’s Passion Project at 3LD in the Financial District, an explosion of Carl Dreyer’s classic film Passion of Joan of Arc into a spatial performance.

There are three different prints and partial prints of the film. Farrington began this project by juxtaposing them: watching them simultaneously side by side. When we first entered the space, he had them playing on the wall. When the performance itself started, we moved into the second half of the room in which he’d constructed a ten-by-ten room of ropes and wood-and-canvas panels. He’d covered the walls around the space with coffee sacks. The performer, Laura K. Nicoll, entered the space dressed as Joan of Arc and manipulated the panels while the film played all around her. Her manipulation of the projection surfaces allowed Farrington to recreate the movie spatially in such a way that each of the characters appeared where the actor would have stood in the set, all in relationship to the two Joans: the projected Maria Falconetti and her breathing doppelganger Nicoll.

After the show, the friend who I went with asked Farrington about what using all three prints in the spatial part of the experience added to the performance? He answered that it allowed him to show all three in sequence without looping. I didn’t find that answer particularly satisfying. I’m not a film guy, but it seemed to me that he could have done the same thing with just one print. My impression of the Project was that it was really two different ways of exploring the same film, and both of them were interesting but not dependent on each other. The first was the juxtaposition of the three prints side-by-side, and the second was to play it as a spatial performance. I found the first interesting, and the second inspiring. I’m curious now to try to do the same thing with a different film. Preferably one that’s short and that I can get the rights to.