Just Wrought

Damned Fugue

This is one of my earliest ten minute plays.  It’s still one of my favorites.  Oddly, the The Heideman Award never showed an interest.  Weird.

Stark Choices from New Knowledge

Ms. Jolie’s piece in The New York Times echoed for me with a play I wrote a few years ago about the race to decode the human genome, thus gaining access to all sorts of new information which we now have to face with sober eyes.

 

KELLIE:  . . .   You discovered the Breast Cancer Gene. 

FRANCIS:  The BRCA 1 sequence.  Helped to discover.  Yes.

KELLIE:  My mom died of breast cancer.

FRANCIS:  I’m sorry to hear that.

KELLIE:  Ashkenazi Jew.

FRANCIS:  Then you must know Ashkenazi Jew’s are several times more likely to develop the mutation

KELLIE:  Yup.  And if they have it they face an 80% to 90% chance of getting breast cancer in their lifetimes, particularly at a young age.  And you must know that some women who test positive—and I can’t say as I blame ‘em—elect to under go prophylactic mastectomy.

FRANCIS:  Yes I do know that.  May I ask: have you tested for the sequence?

KELLIE:  No.

FRANCIS:  You should.

KELLIE:  I know.

FRANCIS:  You shouldn’t wait too long.

KELLIE:  I’m not in a rush to chop my tits off.

Related articles

Why Curt Dempster Commissioned Me to Write THE SEQUENCE

BRCA testing: what does it all mean?

What is the BRCA1 breast cancer gene fault?

Angelina Jolie's Double Mastectomy Choice Increasingly Common, Still Medically Murky

Why Curt Dempster Commissioned Me to Write THE SEQUENCE

My Dec. 29, 2007 journal speculation on why Curt Dempster, now deceased Founding Artistic Director of Ensemble Studio Theatre, commissioned me to write The Sequence, which dramatizes the race to decode the human genome: a race accelerated and sharpened by bio-tech entrepreneur J. Craig Venter.

“Curt wanted me to tell this story ‘cuz he recognized in Craig a kindred spirit: a kinless prickly genius who gets things done.”

The Bardo of American Poets, Patriot and Expatriate

Yesterday I posted smart-alecky status on Facebook  about April being misunderstood as the cruelest month. In no time, my good friend Michael Doyle chimed in defending the bumbershoot-toting Hollow Man who posited the fourth month’s excessive cruelty. (If you’re not reading Doyle’s blog regularly, here’s why you should be.) The string was quickly unraveling into adjacent subjects, adjacent poets, when Doyle made one of the funnier and more insightful analogies I have ever come across. “Pound is to Eliot what Cheney was to Bush.”

It made me think of this section from an early draft of An American Book of the Dead* The Game Show†. Why was it cut? Official history blames structural redundancy: it echoed the first act’s “The Bardo of American Heroes of Violence” without advancing the second act’ action significantly. But an alternative legend purports that the bardo was actually blown away because the costume/design concept for the original L. A. production was so painful to watch unfold that the author, egged on by the actor who played Walt Whitman, simply wiped the whole shebang rather than risk having to watch something like it again.

Still, I’m proud of the “Poet’s Bardo”, and believe it sort of stands on its own as a bizarre bit of poetry geek fan fiction.  (Plus, any time we can see Ezra Pound returned to his rightful gorilla cage, earned with the nastiest bits of bigoted treason, well, that’s a good time by me.)

Do You Believe in Sound?

Calling all Meat Fans of Markheim! 

Here’s the link to the latest episode podcast. And in keeping with tradition, I am posting the script below the fold, ‘cuz I know how you just love to follow along, right?

 

 

 

The Bardo of American Heroes of Violence

(. . . . The Bardo Wheel lights up and the Spokesmodels roll out a cannon, then blindfold Barry, place a tri-corner hat on his head, and hand him a cannoneer’s linstock with a burning match on its end.)

ANNOUNCER: Barry, you hold in your hand a cannoneer’s linstock. To your immediate right sits a six-pounder field piece from the Revolutionary War.

HOST: This oughta be old hat for you, Barry, what with all that dress-up soldier you used to play oh so many lives ago.

BARRY: Well um, actually, Blink: by the time of the Civil War, cannons were fired by tugging a length of cord called a lanyard.

HOST: Barry?

BARRY: Yeah, Blink.

HOST: Shut it and shoot it.

BARRY: Okay.

HOST: Sweethearts, spin that wheel!

(The wheel is spun. Barry fires the cannon blowing a hole through the panel reading: “The Bardo of American Heroes of Violence.” These letters glow while everything else fades to black. Lights up on the Bardo Guide standing in the audience, dressed like a park ranger.)

BARDO GUIDE: Please step forward and watch your step as you enter the Bardo.

(She clears her throat.)

BARDO GUIDE: Oh brave and freely born, having failed once again to grasp the clear light of reality, you are now entering the Bardo of American Heroes of Violence. Be warned, the apparitions you see here are merely illusory projections of your own in-between consciousness. Please pay attention, but not too much attention, lest your fears and desires cause your rebirth in a world of violence.

(Lights up on Stonewall Jackson.)

BARDO GUIDE: Behold the great General, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. His right hand wields the scabbardless sword of righteous reckoning. His left palm is upturned in prayer. In this aspect he gives battle to the infidel invaders of the South. In his other left hand, General Jackson holds the half-sucked lemon of legend.

STONEWALL: I have always suffered an acute dyspepsia. Lemons help ease this discommodity and soothe a parched mouth.

BARDO GUIDE: Clutched in Stonewall’s other right hand is the Westminster Shorter Catechism of Presbyterianism.

STONEWALL: And I quote: the duty which God requireth of man, is obedience to his revealed will.

In this Holy War between Union and Confederacy, the Lord Almighty alone will decide who is right. Duty is ours; the consequences are God’s.

BARDO GUIDE: His third right hand brandishes the Confederate battle flag. His third left, the plain black flag.

STONEWALL: Flying the black flag informs the enemy that surrender will never be begged nor quarter given. A fight to the last man alive. We must not merely defend ourselves, we must attack! Give me three swift columns stabbing North and I will hold you hostage the richest cities of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

BARDO GUIDE: One of his officers once let a particularly brave squad of Union cavalry escape.

STONEWALL: No, sir. You must kill them all. I do not want the enemy brave; I want him dead.

BARDO GUIDE: Behold the bardo demon/saint “Stonewall” Jackson.

STONEWALL: The punishment of national sins must be confined to this world, as there are no nationalities beyond the grave.

BARDO GUIDE: Do you admire him? Despise him? He is nothing but your own true self disguised. Realize this, or be reborn in a world of violence.

Now, adjust your eyes now to the shadows and concentrate. If you focus hard enough, you may envision Stonewall’s bardo wife.

(Harriet appears half in shadows.)

HARRIET: Harriet Tubman.

BARDO GUIDE: Friend of the Hopeless, Ally of the Night, runaway slave turned Underground Railroad Conductor. Her right arm upraises the living symbol of her people’s salvation -- the North Star.

HARRIET: On a clear night running, just keep it in front of y’all to find yo way to freedom. Cloudy nights ye gots to feel the tree trunks for the mossy side.

BARDO GUIDE: In her left hand she holds a pistol: insurance against passengers who might lose nerve and try to turn back.

HARRIET: I’ll give you the same choice the Good Lawd gives every body: git free or die. I done my share of digging. Won’t take me long to plant what’s left of you in this soft Dixie dirt.

BARDO GUIDE: Be not afraid, oh free and brave. Conductor Tubman will free over 300 slaves, and never lose a passenger.

In her middle right hand she holds forty thousand dollars.

HARRIET: That’s nearly a million to you these days.

STONEWALL: The Confederate reward for her capture, dead or alive.

HARRIET: I guess I’s one pricey little slave girl now.

BARDO GUIDE: In her middle left hand she holds an open book.

HARRIET: Any book’ll do.

BARDO GUIDE: Harriet can’t read.

HARRIET: Says so on my wanted poster, or so dey tell me. But as long as I hold dis book right side up dem slave dawgs take me for a free nigger girl who done know’d how to read.

BARDO GUIDE: In her lower right hand she wields a Sharps carbine.

HARRIET: For a little more long-range firepower.

JACKSON: Her weapon of choice for rising against her native land.

HARRIET: Shoot. My native land is freedom.

Up until your first Gulf War, I am the first and only woman to lead an American combat expedition. I takes me a battalion of 600 black freedmen, and I raid up and down Carolina River plantations. One day we free 750 slaves. Cain’t nearly fit ‘em all on the boats. Lawd, it’s a good day.

BARDO GUIDE: Her lower left hand is empty.

HARRIET: Folks give me money ‘cuz they thinks I’s po. But ders plenty folk more po dan me. What folks give I jist pass on down. Lawd knows I don’t need much to live.

BARDO GUIDE: Both husband and wife maintain a constant state of prayer in this bardo, as they did in life.

STONEWALL: “Heavenly Father, make this rag-tag Shenandoah army an army rather of God.”

HARRIET: “Lawdy, unharden Pharaoh’s heart, and let him let my people go out this Egypt, or better yet, put his hard heart in front of my bullet and I’ll soften it myself.

BARDO GUIDE: On the Eve of the American Revolution, their first child is born.

(Lights up on Crispus Attucks.)

CRISPUS: Crispus Attucks.

BARDO GUIDE: Half–black, half Nantucket Indian, like his bardo mother he ran away from slavery at an early age.

CRISPUS: Became a sailor. One of the few things they’ll let a dark man do for a decent wage.

BARDO GUIDE: In his left hand he holds a length of rope.

CRISPUS: I’m a rope-maker. Learned it at sea. What else you gonna do when you’re stuck on a whaler three years?

Lately the Redcoats been moonlighting in town, taking our jobs. We tussle with the lobster-backed bastards sometimes, if they come in our pubs. One winter night, me and the boys had a few and then had some fun with a lone British guard out on patrol.

BARDO GUIDE: In his right hand Crispus holds a snowball.

CRISPUS: We pelted him good. Next thing we know, a crowd’s gathered round.

BARDO GUIDE: In the subsequent murder trial, future Founding Father John Adams stands as defending counsel for the British soldiers. He calls the crowd---

STONEWALL: “A motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.”

CRISPUS: That’s us all right, all pelting this lobster good. Then don’t ya know a whole squad of lobsters shows up. High, mighty Sergeant tell us to disperse. Shoves his bayonet at me.

“Man, get that knitting needle out my face.”

(A single gunshot. Crispus staggers backwards.)

CRISPUS: They shot--

(A musket volley. Crispus crumples.)

CRISPUS: They shot us dead... for chunking... snowballs.

(Emma Goldman enters.)

EMMA: They shot my brother dead for throwing snowballs. There’s your precious government for you; and your glorious Boston Massacre-- a snow ball fight.

CRISPUS: That’s my sister.

EMMA: Emma Goldman.

Maybe your illustrious John Adams is right. Maybe my brother Crispus was nothing more than a saucy jack-tarr thug looking for trouble. But aren’t all revolutions ultimately sparked by such men? Where would you be without my brother, Crispus?

CRISPUS: Man, get that knittin’ needle out my face.

EMMA: Such men are supersensitive beings driven to violent expression, even at the sacrifice of their own lives, because they cannot supinely witness the suffering of their fellows.

CRISPUS: Well, we was just chunkin’ snowballs.

EMMA: Why am I an Anarchist? Because all forms of government rest on violence.

HARRIET: Dat’s my daughter Emma. In one hand she hold a flower.

EMMA: It’s for you. It’s freedom. It’s sex. It’s creativity. It’s a promise of change for the better. Everybody-- not just the rich, but everybody-- has the right to beautiful, radiant things.

STONEWALL: In her other hand, she holds a bomb.

EMMA: The killing of a tyrant, an enemy of the people, is in no way to be considered the taking of a life.

HARRIET: She hold a flower.

EMMA: Love is an art, I am the artist. I love children and springtime and most of all I love my freedom.

STONEWALL: She holds a bomb.

EMMA: Violence is inevitable, never mind what Jesus said. Human nature does and must resist repression. Government is violence. Fire fights fire.

STONEWALL: The flower is a bomb.

HARRIET: The bomb is a flower.

BARDO GUIDE: The weight in one hand tugs her forwards. The weight of the other yanks her back. And so she dances... and so she always will.

HARRIET: That chil’ sho do like to dance.

EMMA: If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.

BARDO GUIDE: Does Emma intrigue you? Repulse you? Either way takes you back to your world of violence.

Instead, oh bravely born, look again and behold the second son of the Bardo.

(Lights up on Audie.)

MURPHY: Audie Murphy.

BARDO GUIDE: The most decorated soldier of America’s most beloved war,

MURPHY: WW II.

BARDO GUIDE: Audie sits atop a burning tank destroyer. His left hand holds a field phone wired back to rear artillery. His right hand grips the trigger of the mounted machine gun.

AUDIE: The Krauts are advancing across an open field of snow. Most of my whole platoon’s already scattered, but I’ll be damned if I’m runnin’. They already pinned me with every medal they’ve got. ‘Bout all that’s left now is for some medic to split my dog tags, and today seems as good as any... so long as I can take some Jerrys with me.

BARDO GUIDE: Careful. Audie is the most dangerous vision here. For most Americans, he’s damned near irresistible.

AUDIE: As soon as the Kraut infantry marches within range I start mowing ‘em down like carnival ducks. Oil smoke covers me like a nightmare. They got no clue where the lead’s comin’ from, and I got no qualms; no pride; no remorse. Rules of war are simple. Got a gun in your hand? You’re a soldier-- fair game. You only become human again once I put a bullet in you.

BARDO GUIDE: Careful now. Breathe him in and breathe him out.

AUDIE: I take a breather both to let the barrel cool and call in some big stuff. This 50 caliber ain’t even gonna dent those tanks.

(A telephone rings.)

BARDO GUIDE: Battalion.

AUDIE: This is Murphy. We’re under attack. I need artillery: a round of smoke at coordinates thirty-ought-five dash sixty, and tell those joes to shake the lead out.

BARDO GUIDE: How many krauts?

AUDIE: Six tanks I can see, maybe a couple hundred infantry.

BARDO GUIDE: Good god! How close?

AUDIE: Close enough. Gimme that damned fire!

STONEWALL: Ah, artillery. Lord, how I love a good cannon fight. Nothing like it to raise the blood.

BARDO GUIDE: It isn’t just Stonewall’s blood that’s rising, is it? You’ve wanted to be Audie ever since you first played war as a kid. Fully automatic death in one hand. A direct line to the wrath of God in the other.

Wait!

Let’s take a break. Relax. You can be Audie practically any time you want, but it could just be an eternity before you get a chance to see the big picture this clearly again.

Look back into the darkness, and see his sister...

(Lights up on Molly and her cannon.)

MOLLY: Molly Pitcher.

STONEWALL: Just as there is no Stonewall--

HARRIET: --Without Harriet.

EMMA: No death.

CRISPUS: Without sex.

AUDIE: There just can’t be an Audie—

MOLLY: --Without Molly.

BARDO GUIDE: Behold, Molly Pitcher stands before you. Water jug in one hand, cannon ramrod in the other.

All History knows for sure about Molly Pitcher is that she was almost certainly not named “Molly”... or “Pitcher”. According to legend, her husband mans a field piece in the Continental Army.

MOLLY: All the boys in the battery get frightfully parched in the heat of battle and good ol’ Molly does her best to keep ‘em cool.

CRISPUS: She’s getting pretty sweaty herself.

MOLLY: You just mind your gun, soldier.

BARDO GUIDE: Suddenly, her husband is hit by a musket ball.

STONEWALL: Damnation! The field piece is undermanned and will have to retreat.

EMMA: But wait! Molly picks up the ramrod and takes her man’s position. The revolution will continue, regardless of sex.

(A phone rings.)

MOLLY: Battalion.

AUDIE: This is Murphy. We’re under attack. I need artillery.

MOLLY: I’m here for you.

AUDIE: Give me smoke at nine-one-one, nine-eleven, nineteen ninety nine nine NINE NEIN!--

MOLLY: --Roger that!

AUDIE: --And tell those girls to shake the lead out.

CRISPUS: How many Ivans?

AUDIE: A thousand planes I can see, a couple million infantry.

MOLLY: Dear God! How close?

AUDIE: Close enough. Gimme that damned fire!

MOLLY: Molly rams the round home!

STONEWALL: And fire!

(The cannon fires. A shell whistles in.)

AUDIE: A squad of black pajamas disappears in a cloud of snow.

MOLLY: How’s that?

AUDIE: Good! But they’re closin’! Move 50 over and keep firing for effect.

STONEWALL: Fire!

(The cannon fires.)

BARDO GUIDE (shouting over the fray): You’ve waited too long, bravely born. Now you’ve come to the place where all hell forever breaks loose.

MOLLY: How close are they?

AUDIE: 50 over, and keep blasting.

STONEWALL: Fire!

BARDO GUIDE: I tried to warn you. But you couldn’t resist.

STONEWALL: Duty is ours, the consequences are God’s.

MOLLY: How close are they now?

AUDIE: 50 over. Keep it coming.

HARRIET: Lawd, unharden Pharaoh’s heart, or put it in front of my bullet and I’ll soften it myself.

STONEWALL: Fire!

MOLLY: How close are they?

AUDIE: 50 over and keep firing for effect.

STONEWALL: Fire!

BARDO GUIDE: At the battle of Second Manassas, Jackson loses the tip of his left finger to a cannon ball.

(Stonewall’s finger disappears.)

MOLLY: How close are they to your position?

AUDIE: Hold the phone; I’ll let ya chat with one of the bastards.

CRISPUS: Man, get that knittin’ needle out my face.

AUDIE: I check my machine gun for damage, then squeeze the trigger. The chatter of the gun is like sweet music. Three hadjis stagger and crumple in the snow.

CRISPUS: Shot us... dead... for chunkin’ snowballs.

EMMA: Never mind what Jesus said, fire fights—

EMMA & STONEWALL (simultaneously): FIRE!

(Loud crashing explosion.)

AUDIE: My tank destroyer shudders under another direct hit.

MOLLY: Are you still alive, my love?

AUDIE: I think so. Correct fire: 50 over.

I feed another belt into the machine gun and grab the trigger again, boring into anything that moves, slowly travers-ing the barrel.

STONEWALL: You must kill them all. I do not want the enemy brave; I want him dead.

AUDIE: Twelve bodies slump in a stack position. Methodically I give ‘em another thorough burst, and pick up the phone.

Battalion, correct fire. 50 over.

MOLLY: Are you all right, lover?

AUDIE: I’m all right, Sergeant. What are your postwar plans? Just give me that fire.

STONEWALL: Fire!

BARDO GUIDE: At Chancellorsville, after being mistakenly shot by his own troops, Stonewall Jackson loses his arm to the surgeon’s saw.

(Stonewall’s entire arm disappears.)

He dies days later of pneumonia.

STONEWALL: Two short months shy of the Battle of Gettysburg.

(Stonewall disappears.)

BARDO GUIDE: Do you mourn the loss of American gallantry? Well, snap out of it! There’s no time!

AUDIE: The barrage lands within fifty yards of me. The shouting, screaming, cheese-eating, freedom-hating, evil-doers caught in it are silent now.

Sergeant, this is my last change. Correct fire: 50 over; and keep firing for effect.

MOLLY: 50 over? That’s your own position.

AUDIE: I don’t give a damn. 50 over.

(A shell whistles in for an eternity, then, instead of an explosion, utter silence. The bardo heroes freeze and the Bardo Guide steps into a special.)

BARDO GUIDE: Oh free and bravely born, you have passed through the Bardo of American Heroes of Violence. At any time you could have detached yourself from these visions, achieving perfect peace and enlightenment. But... you blew it. Hey, don’t feel so bad. Happens to the best of us, and the worst of us. Fact is, it pretty much happens to all of us. But it is surely now your fate to be reborn yet again in a world of violence.

On behalf of the United States of Transcendence, I thank you for visiting. Please step carefully when exiting the bardo.

(Blackout.)

 

A Few Things Wonderful about “Something Wicked…”

You’re not crazy. You’re just overdue. There hasn’t been a new episode of Sandbox Radio Live! in over three months! 

Relax. 

Episode Seven: Eye of the Beholder  is on its way, packed with the sort of goodies you’ve grown accustomed to: plays by Elizabeth Heffron and Vincent Delaney, music by Jose Gonzales and the astounding Sandbox Radio Orchestra, my own noir-angel detective series, Markheim (word has it Sam’s due for a drop in), all tied together by Leslie Law’s expert, effervescent direction. Plus you can expect some brand new stuff like a poem by Elizabeth Austen read live by the author, or a brand new comic serial by Scot Augustson set in Seattle. (You’ll want to order your tix quick, since we always sell out.)

But before we get to all that, I need to make up for a deleterious omission. With all the crazyness of the holiday season, plus world premiering my first full-length play in four years, Ballard House Duet, I neglected my self-appointed duty of telling you the things I love about the previous episode of Sandbox Radio Live! -  Something Wicked This Way (available for download here.)

 

“Backscatter” by Vincent Delaney

Vince never disappoints with his sharp suspenseful writing, but this turn at modern horror would make Rod Sterling go goggle-eyed.  All props to the Sandbox Radio sound fx team.  Give a listen and tell me they don’t make it sound exactly like an airport. (This brings up a larger fascination for me when listening to these podcasts: how the live audience participates in and fuels the recording. There’s this extraordinary recursively looping sensation as you listen to them listening to you listen to the show in the future.) My favorite character in this one had to be Big Stu.  Somehow Eric Ray Anderson manages to add 300 pounds through the sheer suggestive power of his voice.

 

"The Back of the 358 -  #7" by Paul Mullin

Not much I want to say about these since I wrote them, except maybe that Kathryn Van Meter utterly nails the drunk chick.  Oh, and also, the likelihood that there will be any new pieces in this vein is slim,  given how King County Metro’s elimination of the Free Ride Zone has completely flattened the floridly diverse ecosystem that was once the back of the #358.

"Muscle Memory" by Omar Willey

This chillingly smooth and nasty pastoral will captivate you into a skin-crawling reverie.

 

“Quinceñera of the Damned" by Scot Augustson

What do you get when Mexican kitsch culture collides with Austrian Alpine snobbery in a fairytale context?  Something you can be pretty sure Scot Augustson conceived. Favorite line (impeccably delivered by the peerless Annette Toutonghi): “Gunter will think I’m a crazy clown gypsy whore.”

 

“The Back of the 358 - #8" by Paul Mullin

It’s never not unnerving to have to relive my #358 adventures as staged by some of Seattle’s finest actors.

 

 "Here it Comes" by Charles Leggett with the Sandbox Radio Orchestra

Chuck and friends rock another original blues number, this time folding some astro-physics in, cuz… ya know... Chuck rolls like that.

 "The Back of the 358 #9" by Paul Mullin

Please tell me this trip is almost over. If this woman punches or pukes on me, I’m gonna be highly irked.  (Favorite line {which I can say in modesty because I overheard it}: “At least in jail I get three meals a day and someone to love me.”)

 

"The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe

No one intones the American classics like Richard Ziman.  And his sweet spot is Poe. 

 

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Paul Dukas, arranged by Bruce Monroe

A mind-crackingly original arrangement: the kind of blastingly cool cut you can only get at Sandbox Radio.

 

"Markheim - Episode 6" by Paul Mullin

Per custom, I’m including the script for this below the fold.

 

"The Back of the 358 #10" by Paul Mullin

So long shirtless drunk chick!  May you find the peace that eludes your every semi-lucid thought.

 

"Shadow of Agnes" by Emily Conbere 

I raved about Emily’s first Sandbox Radio outing, “Sound Thieves” here, but who knows?  She could’ve fluked her debut success. She didn’t. This piece seals the deal and is quite possibly one of the creepiest short pieces I’ve ever heard.

Again, don’t take my word for it.  Go to the podcast and listen.  And then get your tickets to our brand new show, available here through Brown Paper Tickets.

 

Experimental Results

I made a promise to myself a while back that if I was going to use the word “experiment” in association with my work as a theatre artist, I had to do so more like a scientist and less like some avant garde poser.  As I said in my earlier post “Putting the Fail back in “Experimental”: 

Any actual scientist understands that true experiments have rules and consequences. Experiments are tests of hypotheses hoping to become theories; and theories, in order to prove useful, must be falsifiable.  In other words, true experiments by definition contain the possibility of failure.

I would add that good scientists publish their results whether or not they find them gratifying.  And that’s exactly what I intend to do here and now regarding the experiment of publishing my play Ballard House Duet simultaneously with its recent world premiere.  (I enthusiastically explained my reasons for initiating this experiment here.)

So as of this posting, here is how my sales break down by channel:

Not a data/chart nerd like me?  Okay, here are my plain English conclusions:

1. I have too much unsold inventory.  If I had listened to my publisher and ordered the number of books he recommended I’d be sitting on a mere 3% overhang now, which would have been right in the estimator’s sweet spot.
2. “Show sales” was my strongest channel, which is gratifying, since offering the script simultaneously with performances was the main point of this effort.  If I did this again I would lean even more heavily into this channel: maybe invest in a more visually pleasing display than the cardboard box with the words “Scripts for Sale - $10” scrawled on the front of it in ballpoint pen.

The bottom line is I turned a profit about three eBay sales ago.  I am now $19.59 richer for this experience; but based solely on the data, I would have to give myself a C +, since I moved only 78 % of my product. 

Of course, it is much harder to quantify all the things I have learned from the experience, not to mention all the nerdy fun I have had.  Here’s a quick list:

• People will buy scripts at a show, but they have to be reminded, in the pre-show speech and then again at intermission and after the show.  The display of scripts has to be prominent.  You have to make buying them easy and fun.
• eBay is not the best means of selling a script on line.  It wound up costing me $2.31 out of every $10 script I sold on-line.  Given the cost of printing, that left me with very little margin to take any profit.  If it hadn’t been for show sales, with their much wider margin, I would still be bleeding red ink at this point.

The best outcome of this experiment was, of course, the chance to talk about the experiment itself: to revisit the question of whether it makes sense to publish play scripts simultaneously with world premiere productions, and more specifically, whether it makes sense for a playwright to put up his own capital to do so. I would say the short answers to these questions are, “Yes, with some improvements in the process.” And “No, a playwright already banks enough when he or she antes up their play for staging.”

Fellow playwright Joshua Conkel chimed in on Facebook to point out, “…In the U.K. it's common to get the script at the show. It costs a few pounds and it also serves as the program…. Oberon Books does it. And then of course the script goes out to bookstores and all that. It's great!”  Perhaps as Seattle grows as one of the nation’s hothouses for locally grown new theatre, it might behoove us as to explore a script sales model like the UK’s, though it should also be noted that the simultaneous publishing experiment has been run quite extensively here in decades past. Bret Fetzer explained in comments posted on my earlier blog:

The experience of Rain City Projects -- which published plays in conjunction with productions for over ten years… was that when the theater promoted selling the script, it succeeded, and when they didn't, it didn't. The single most significant factor, by an order of magnitude, was having someone hold up the script in a preshow speech and say "This is for sale in the lobby; if you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to buy the script." Other approaches -- such as plugging the script for sale in a program ad -- had a fraction of the impact of a live preshow plug.

Over time, theaters became less invested in promoting scripts. There was a trend away from preshow speeches, and even the theaters that still did them just wanted the speaker to say the essentials and get off the stage. Most of the theaters producing new plays were small, volunteer-run organizations, so there was no one to consistently make a plug for the script, and trying to educate a rotating crew of house managers about this was too much to accomplish on top of all the other stuff that had to get done. Everyone supported the idea of selling the scripts in the abstract, but in practice it fell by the wayside.

But the main reason Rain City Projects stopped publishing individual scripts was that, as these were brand new plays getting their first production, a majority of playwrights learned a lot of new things and did significant rewrites after the production. Immediately the scripts were obsolete and the playwrights didn't want them sold or distributed....

My experience working with Original Works Publishing, eBay and Amazon Direct Publishing leads me to believe that new technologies and processes might allow theatres and playwrights to keep their inventory small and flexible enough to offer scripts, either in hard copy or electronically, such that some of the challenges Rain City Projects faced might now be mitigated. 

One conclusion seems certain: folks who bought my script seem very pleased indeed to be able to own a permanent document  of an otherwise inherently ephemeral experience.  Theatre is fleeting, but perhaps we theatre artists could work a bit harder to bottle some of our volatile moonshine for future times.

 

Simultaneous Publication: Legit Experiment or Hat on a Hat?

Sometimes when you risk a lot with a piece of art, it pays to find ways to risk even more. Or at least that’s the counter-intuition behind the newest wrinkle in the Custom Made Play Project. A couple days ago a box arrived at my house containing exactly fifty copies of my soon-to-world-premiere play Ballard House Duet. Given the unique circumstances of its development (which I blog about in some detail here), the idea light-bulbed to offer a published version of the play simultaneously with its world premiere production.  After all, we custom made this play for two local actors, Hana Lass and Rebecca Olson: a Seattle story for Seattle audiences in the purest vein of locally and organically grown new theatre.  What better way to underscore how we are trying to change the way plays are made than to offer tangible printed proof of the pudding for sale.

So I emailed my friend and colleague Jason Aaron Goldberg, president of Original Works Publishing in Los Angeles.  OWP publishes acting edition scripts and licenses productions of plays by “bold, original, and adventurous playwrights from around the globe.” I currently have three plays in their catalogue:  An American Book of the Dead* – The Game Show†, The Sequence, and The Good Ship Manhattan.  Other Seattle playwrights have plays with OWP as well. For example, Elizabeth Heffron’s Mitzi’s Abortion received some strong productions around the country after OWP’s decision to publish it. 

I think it is fair to say that Jason was less than enthused by my idea. He told me OWP had looked at simultaneous publishing before, but never pulled the trigger. They prefer for a play to have a production history in advance of publishing it. This only makes sense. Productions work the kinks and flaws out of a play, not to mention garner reviews from which you can pull quotes for the script's back cover. I, however, pressed my proposal. I agreed to absorb the financial risk of printing the scripts if OWP was willing to risk a bit of its institutional reputation on the experiment. Jason graciously agreed.

So now you get to vote on whether this experiment succeeds or fails. I have 45 scripts to sell, each individually numbered and personally signed by me. I have priced them nearly a buck cheaper than what OWP sells my scripts for on their website.  If we do another publishing run of Ballard House Duet, they won’t be sold by me, won’t be signed by me, and won’t be part of a limited numbered edition: so why not buy one now while it’s cheap and special?

Here are the ways you can buy, in descending order from best to next next best:

• Go buy your tix to the show now (click here), then buy a script at the door.  (While supplies last.)
• Ping me with a way to send you my snail mail address.  Once I do, send me a check for $10, and I’ll send you back a script.  (I’ll eat  the postage on this option.)
• Buy a script on Ebay by clicking here, for $10 plus postage.  (This option allows PayPal.)

Vote now: the simultaneous publication experiment: success or failure?

 

Related articles

Putting the Fail back in "Experimental"

Ballard House Duet: Just the Facts

Bespoken Word

Ballard House Duet's Poster is Here!

Happy Columbus Day from THE GOOD SHIP MANHATTAN

In honor of this dubious-at-best holiday, I offer a relevant excerpt from my play The Good Ship Manhattan.  (Fair warning: for the most part this is a near exact transcription of a conversation that actually happened.  Politically correct, it was not.)

. . . . GREG:  You gotta live in the real world.

RICHARD:  Yeah.  And apparently you gotta shit in it too.

GREG:  Please.  Cry me a river.

RICHARD:  I’m just saying.

(Pause, as Greg takes a healthy gulp from his single malt.)

GREG:  So are all ex-social studies teachers big whiney liberals like you?

RICHARD:  Actually, my 11th grade American History teacher was a flag-waving, ignoramus Nazi wacko such as yourself: Mr. Capezio.

GREG:  Oh, he was a wop, too, hunh.

RICHARD:  I don’t hold it against the wops.  Some of this country’s greatest Leftists were ginnys: Sacco and Vanzetti, LaGuardia, Columbo.

GREG:  Columbus.

RICHARD:  No, I said “Columbo”.  As in Peter Falk, as in a joke?

GREG:  Yeah, and I’m saying “Columbus”.  As in Christopher.

RICHARD:  Please.

GREG:  Please what?

RICHARD:  Do not talk to me about Columbus.

GREG:  We’re talking about great Americans.  How do you do greater than actually finding the place?

RICHARD:  Oh boy.

GREG:  What?

RICHARD:  Where do I start?

GREG:  Oh don’t tell me.  You got a beef with Columbus.  You’re one of these idiots out here protesting the fucking parade.

RICHARD:  Do you know anything about Columbus?

GREG:  Uh... yeah, I know a little something about Columbus.

RICHARD:  Like?

GREG:  Like Fourteen Hundred and Ninety two.  Sailed the ocean blue.  To tell the liberal schoolteachers, “fuck you”.

RICHARD:  Landed on Haiti.  Immediately enslaved the entire population.  Effectively wiped them out with disease, torture and execution.  Encouraged his men to hunt them for sport.

GREG:  You wanna compare him to a Nazi now?  That’s you people’s favorite thing to do, isn’t it?

RICHARD:  Well, let’s see... he rounds up an entire race of people, puts ‘em in camps and proceeds to annihilate ‘em in a holocaustic blood-fest, all in the name of Queen and Cross.  I wouldn’t say it’s an unfair comparison.

GREG:  And who was it exactly that stopped the Nazis?  Hunh?... 

GREG:  The Americans.    RICHARD (simultaneously):  The Russians.

GREG:  Bullshit!

RICHARD:  Ever heard of Stalingrad?  Got any idea what the casualty rate was for a Soviet infantryman?

GREG:  All I know is, if it wasn’t for us, the Brit’s would be speaking German right now.

RICHARD:  That’s the standard Hollywood fantasy.  Unfortunately utter bullshit.

(The bartender, Ursula, steps closer to listen.)

GREG:  Yeah, I know: nothing I learned in history class is true.

RICHARD:  Well--

GREG:  There’s no such thing as George Washington.  He never crossed the Delaware.  We never kicked ass on the Redcoats and won our independence.

RICHARD:  I’m not saying that.  I’m saying there’s always more to the story.  Like if it hadn’t been for the French, we’d all be--

URSULA:  What?  Speaking English right now?

RICHARD:  What?  That makes no sense.

GREG:  Makes sense to me.

URSULA:  That fact is, the French only brought their full support to bear once they were convinced the Continental Army would ultimately beat the British.

RICHARD:  Which they could only do because Britain was over-extended with her empire stretched across the globe.

URSULA:  Agreed.  But you can’t deny that the symbolic victories Washington won at Trenton and Princeton after crossing the Delaware-- as this gentleman mentioned-- and the subsequent winter of drilling and reinforcement at Valley Forge, effectively transforming a motley crew of rag-tag citizens into an inspired fighting force, had nothing to do with the ultimate victory of the Continentals and the formation of the United States that you call home.

(Ursula steps away to another part of the bar.)

GREG:  Holy fuck!

RICHARD:  Whatever.

GREG:  You think she’s ever modeled?

RICHARD:  Reductionist claptrap.

(He drains his glass.)

GREG:  How much would you pay to fuck her right now?

RICHARD:  I wouldn’t pay your money to fuck her with your dick.

GREG:  Yeah.  Okay, teach. . . .