Wood Bones

William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.’s Wood Bones, as heard in a staged reading by the Eagle Project on March 7^th, is intriguingly problematic. It’s about the spirit of a dying house who is bound to her burnt-out husk by the memory of a little girl who was molested inside. While a clearly fascinating concept and one with a lot of potential, Yellow Robe’s attempt to fuse Western dramaturgy and Native storytelling structure makes the play seem unfocused and unfinished. I would go one step further and submit that it is, in fact, unfocused and unfinished.

The central conflict is between the house, 121, and her awful memory of the little girl’s trauma. Yet Yellow Robe adds two other memories in dramatic action, and several “I remember” monologues on the part of 121. The monologues bear little discussion – either because of an underwhelming reading on the part of Madeline Sayet, or because “I remember” monologues are inherently undramatic, they took the wind right out of the play’s sails. The two enacted memories – one of a couple who moved in only to be evicted for being Indian, and another of the construction workers who caused a gas explosion – contribute nothing to the central conflict. As Yellow Robe said at the talk-back, “I could have written a play about each of these things – and I have.” Normally, I would immediately recommend cutting these extraneous episodes, but Yellow Robe’s intentions give me pause. He’s trying to fuse Western and Native dramaturgies, an endeavor I have a lot of professional sympathy with. However, Wood Bones makes me question the viability of such a project.

The Native dramaturgy appears in this play as the non-chronological structure and juxtaposition of thematically linked stories. It is superimposed on a Euro-American structured play, complete with its fourth wall and script. This two elements mix just like oil and water. Classic Native storytellers like Lame Billy of Weitspus and Skaay of Haida Gwaii who employed Native elements like those in Wood Bones with aplomb told their stories to an audience already familiar with them face to face and without a script. The audience’s intense association with the stories allowed the storytellers to combine them in unique ways without loosing the audience’s attention. The lack of a fourth wall or scripts also helped to keep the audience engaged. Bringing the fourth wall and scripts into Native dramaturgy lessens that engagement, and bringing the Native dramaturgy into a Western play muddles the storyline, which in turn lessens audience engagement.

Wood Bones is a play with a lot of potential, but will never be able to reach that potential until Yellow Robe really treats it for what it is: a structurally Western drama about healing from trauma. He has everything he needs to tell this story already: a great feel for Western dramaturgy, a compelling story about a young girl’s horror, and the seeds for great chemistry between 121 and Leroy. But as long as he superimposes elements foreign to this story on Wood Bones, it will never reach that potential.

How to Be An Effective Dramaturg

My friend Casey Faubion has been trying to establish a quasi-dramaturgical department at Camelot Theatre in Talent, OR – or at least to develop the role of the dramaturg at Camelot – and as part of that he invited Martine Green to give a talk on “How to Be an Effective Dramaturg” at Camelot. Martine is a mid-career ‘turg currently working at OSF. Her three-hour talk was nicely organized into two-parts (leave it to a dramaturg to instinctively give an informal lecture a pleasing structure).

In her first half, she went over David Copelin’s “Ten Dramaturgical Myths.” I’ve listed them below with my own thoughts on what Martine said.

1.         “Literary managers and dramaturgs tell playwrights how to rewrite their plays.”

While some bad ones might, I already knew from my work at SBU and Native Voices that the good ones don’t.

2.         “Since dramaturgs have raised staged readings to an art form, playwrights have been encouraged to develop their plays to death.”

I’ve heard this before. Martine made an interesting point about following the organic growth of a play. You can tell when a script can’t benefit from any more workshops. Then it’s time to start looking for a place to get it a production, at least so the playwright can see what it’s like on its feet.

3.         “Literary managers and dramaturgs function as ‘objective voices’ in rehearsal.”

Can any human being really be objective? Don’t we all see the world through the lenses we’ve developed by living? Martine says we’re supposed to be a “creative informed objective voice.” I like that.

4.         “As intellectuals, literary managers and dramaturgs want to replace warm human emotions in the theatre with cold abstract ideas.”

I know I like to be an emotional vampire in rehearsal. Just kidding, I like to be focused on making a fun experience for the audience. Martine says that part of the blame goes to the academic institutions that train dramaturgs to focus more on theory than on production. Not all of them do, but none of them should. I think priority should go towards putting plays up, and only theorize about them later.

5.         “Literary managers and dramaturgs are no more than powerless, stage-struck ‘Ph.D. gofers’ with no real artistic talents of their own, reduced to working as underpaid readers and clerks.”

No, because a good ‘turg has to have an artistic instinct and a feel for the theater.

6.         “Dramaturgs interfere with the ‘natural’ relationship between the director and the playwright (of a new play), and between the director and the text (of an older work).”

Our jobs are to help facilitate that interaction, all the time looking out for the story that the primary artist (be they director or playwright) wants to tell. As Lue Douthit says, we’re the “keepers of the story.”

7.         “Literary managers and dramaturgs don’t like most American theatre the way it is. They want our scripts and productions to be more theatrical, more resonant, less naturalistic, less trivial, more aware of the world, better. Can’t they appreciate how wonderful things are?”

No. There’s always room for improvement, and if things stay the way they are, that means American theater has gone stagnant.

8.         “Literary managers and dramaturgs are just critics in very thin disguise. They’re not ream players, they have little sense of performance, and they’re always demanding instant results.”

Maybe the bad ones. A good dramaturg should be a team player and they should have a great sense of performance.

9.         “Dramaturg is such an ugly word.”

Yep. I want to be called “Guardian of the Dionysian Mysteries.”

10.       “There will always be literary managers, because someone has to read all those plays, but dramaturgy is a nasty fad that will go away.”

Not exactly, because somebody always has to keep the story. But it’s true that theaters are cutting literary departments like it’s going out of style. Martine gives it maybe two years before only a few special companies like OSF have a staff of actual dramaturgs.

So that was the first half! During the second half, Martine talked about her process of doing production dramaturgy. She talked about note-giving etiquette, which I’m already figuring out pretty quickly on my own. She also talked about the forms she gives her protocols. They’re definitely different from Steve Marsh’s five-part binders. She puts a clean copy of the script, her marked up copy, and other editions of it in her binders. She also creates a glossary based on the questions she has on her second read. I liked hearing about her tricks and am already using them. She showed us OSF’s copy of Love’s Labors Lost which has the Quarto, Folio, and production copies of the scripts juxtaposed line-by-line next to each other. I just did that this morning with the different versions of “Coyote/Cottontail Hunts the Sun,” the dramatization of this Karuk/Yurok/Northern Paiute myth I’m working on!