Just Wrought

Messing with Form for Maximum Effect

‘Tis true: I have messed about a bit with narrative over my career as a playwright.  My best known play follows the sonata allegro form.  I have written fugues, concertos and duets as well.  Beyond musical inspirations, I have made plays in the shape of a clock, a single day passing, and a palindrome.  And even when I’m wrighting the “well made” play— putting all my plot peaks and valleys at the proper places on the x-axis of time, like with my farce Gossamer Grudges— I still lean heavily on the lessons I’ve learned playing faster and looser with the Aristotelian rules of story-telling. That’s why I so enjoy the rare opportunities I get to teach my Hugo House class, Exploring Alternative Narrative Structure. 

From Hugo House’s class description:

Aristotle said a story should have a beginning, middle and end, in that order; but how often does life really feel like that? Sometimes to reflect reality we have to challenge old assumptions about how we experience and process narrative. We will explore alternative structures to Aristotle’s cherished mountain of rising action, looking at classical music forms, technology, architecture, political systems and biology for potential models.  Indeed, no source of inspiration will be excluded. Famous examples of effective use of alternative narrative form will be examined, including Pinter’s Betrayal, Thorton Wilder’s “The Pullman Car Hiawatha,” Italo Calvino’s novels and Paul Mullin’s Louis Slotin Sonata. Finally, we’ll examine our current writing projects and determine how they might benefit from some structural shake-ups.

Whether you craft short stories, novels, graphic novels, plays or screenplays, if your writing involves narrative, in can help to push the envelope of alternatives. 

Come join the fun!  I have spaces left in the class, so click on this link for more info on the class and how to register: https://hugohouse.org/class/exploring-alternative-narrative-structure . 

Custom Made Love for the Loveliest Lady

I make a lot of outrageous claims about Seattle as a theatre town, and a lot of outrageous demands, too. I stand by all of them. But the claim I am most eager to defend at the moment is that Seattle is the best city in the world for locally grown plays: that is, new work written for Seattleites, by Seattleites, with Seattle audiences  in mind.  We do it quarter after quarter over at Sandbox Radio, Annex Theatre has been doing it for decades, and Printer’s Devil for only slightly less than that. Recently, local actor Rebecca Olson founded the Custom Made Plays Project dedicated solely to matching Pacific Northwest playwrights with local actors to develop and produce new plays of regional significance. (More on that exciting new wrinkle in a later blog.) Even the big lumbering mastodons are starting to get into the act, with A Contemporary Theatre recently world premiering Yussef El Guindi’s  Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World to great success, and the Seattle Rep fostering a ongoing workshop of local playwrights, though, in fairness to companies fully fighting the good fight, the Rep has yet to really put its producing money where its workshopping mouth is.

In this spirit of making theatre which is a custom fit to performers and audiences alike, allow me to introduce to you The Betty Plays, world premiering this Sunday at Theater Schmeater. These are four new short plays written for actor Betty Campbell by Scot Augustson, Pamela Hobart Carter, Paul Klein, Jim Lapan and myself, plus a short film, “Lethal Cotillion”, which was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. Says the Schmee in their press release:

The playwrights embarked on this project because of their love for the acting talents of the brilliant Betty Campbell and their desire to see her on the stage again.  Stylistically distinct, the four plays demonstrate the prowess of Seattle’s reigning thespian septuagenarian.

 

 

And here’s what contributing playwright, Scot Augustson said recently on Facebook:

I've got a show coming up that won't get a review, is playing just 3 Sunday afternoons. I'm guessing less than 150 people will see it. It will never be nominated for anything. The taste makers won't declare it The Hot Ticket In Town! And yet, it gets to the core of why I stay in Seattle and make theater. . . . Betty Campbell is an incredibly talented woman who has given immeasurably to this town and this community. But, she's been facing some physical limitations lately that make doing a whole show difficult. Pamela Hobart Carter realized that to not have Betty up in front of an audience was ridiculous. So she got a hold of a few of Betty's fans who were also writers to create an evening of shows . . . .  It's gonna be great, check it out. (Hmm, if we can't get Hot Ticket, maybe we can be Best Kept Secret. )

As for me, I first saw Betty Campbell  six years ago when were both making our “virgin” appearances in the 14/48 instant theatre festival: her as an actor, me as a writer. I watched wide-eyed as Betty stalked around the arena stage, opposite another actress, as they both shouted competing boasts to the audience about the depraved pornographic acts they were about to perform. Now, you don’t need to know Betty well to know she’s a consummate lady with a deeply sweet and genteel heart. She was playing fiercely against type.  But more importantly, she was playing fiercely. She was not cowed by material. She rose to it. And then she rose above it. She is the kind of performer that makes a playwright’s fingers itch for his keyboard.

Here are the details for the Theater Schmeater run of The Betty Plays, should you choose to avail yourself of Scot’s delightful “secret”:

“An Unexpected Twist” Exceeds as Expected

Sandbox Radio Live!: Episode 5, “An Unexpected Twist”

recorded at West of Lenin on July 23, 2012

Download here. 

@2:35      “Markehim: Episode 5" by Paul Mullin
@16:58     “A Work of Art” adapted from the story by Anton Chekhov
@ 26:00    PSA - Little Bit Theraputic Riding Center by Elizabeth Heffron
@ 28:25    “Sound Thieves” by Emily Conbere
@ 42:09    “Au Fond Du Temple Saint” by Georges Bizet
@ 47:08     PSA - World Arts Access by Scot Augustson
@ 50:56     “Rally” a poem by Reginald André Jackson
@ 58:21     “Lactar” by Elizabeth Heffron
@ 1:12:12  “A Sousa Salsa” arranged by John Engerman
@ 1:15:38  “The Bleak End of the Woods” by Scot Augustson
@ 1:30:36   Finale/Credits

 

 

Every time the podcast of a Sandbox Radio Live! episode drops, I write a little blog about it.  And every time I do, I say something like, “This episode is the best one yet.”  And every time I say it, I believe it.  But I fear that you’ll stop believing me if I keep saying so.  So...  what’s the solution?

Unsure, I press ahead.

Well, here’s one pretty objective way we get better.  Each episode we try to fold a new writer or two into the mix.  This time, with our episode “An Unexpected Twist” we presented a new play by relative newcomer-to-Seattle, Emily Conbere, and a poem by long-time local actor Reginald André Jackson. Speaking as someone who has written for Sandbox Radio since its inception, it’s a little unnerving when a newbie like Emily so masterfully makes her debut.  Her “Sound Thieves” leverages all the peculiarities, good and bad, of crafting stories for the fecund darkness of the mind.  (I know, because our July show was completely sold-out.  So without a single spare seat for a freeloading playwright, I sat under the risers, my view of the stage totally blocked by audience legs.  I swear this is the very best way to experience radio theatre: live but blind.)  My favorite moment: Annette Toutonghi as Gloria, a mom trying to convince a shopkeeper who illicitly fences stolen sounds, to sell her some zoo noise to cheer up her son.

SHOPKEEPER:  Individual zoo animals are twenty-five.  A cacophony is fifty.

GLORIA:  I only got twenty dollars.

SHOPKEEPER:  Prices are prices.

GLORIA:  And I’ve… I’ve got my dignity.

SHOPKEEPER:  I don’t know what that means.

GLORIA:  I’ll give you my … (much huskier voice) dignity.

SHOPKEEPER:  Ah!  You don’t say!

Other favorite moments include Leslie Law and Heather Curtis Mullin singing “Au Fond Du Temple Saint” by Georges Bizet, Jim Gall as the title role in Elizabeth Heffron’s “Lactar”, and of course, Scot Auguston, gift-wrapping the evening with the final offering, “The Bleak End of the Woods”, a stark noir detective story for forest animals.  (See if you can spot my wife’s radio acting debut cameo as Charday the Squirrel’s mom.)  As always, I listened with unbridled envy as Scot tossed off comic brilliance as easily as peeling bananas.

CHARDAY THE SQUIRREL:  So, who’s missing?

JOE THE POSSOM:  Clementine.

CHARDAY:  Clementine?  Let that old windbag stay missing.

JOE:  Charday!

CHARDAY:  She’ll turn up like the bad penny she is.

JOE:  I went to look for her and she wasn’t home.

CHARDAY:  Wasn’t home?

JOE:  Was not home.

CHARDAY: That doesn’t make sense.  She’s a turtle.  She’s always home.

So how do I convince you that while each episode is great in its own right, each one is better than the ones that precede it?

Aha!  I know the solution! Go listen to the podcasts and decide for yourself.

 

PS: Advance reservations for our next episode, “Something Wicked this Way” become available tomorrow, September 14, at Brown Paper Tickets.  Click here.

PPS: Per my tradition, I’m posting the transcript of Markheim: Episode 5 below the fold.

 

A Bountiful Fall Harvest for Seattle’s Locally Grown

Seattle’s scene for locally grown plays has always been stronger than your average mid-sized city's, but anything good is worth fighting to make better. That’s why I mouthed off over two and a half years ago with an essay titled “Theatre takes Place: Why Locally Grown Plays Matter”.  I listed some bullet points explaining why the development of new plays is so crucial to the health of any great theatre scene:

• “Local actors evolve a better understanding of how their contribution … can be generative as well as interpretive.
• “Local audiences evolve a better understanding of how plays get made and how they can participate in the process….
• “Local funders evolve a better understanding of their roles as patrons of the arts…
• “Local funders, artists, and administrators …[can see] the development of plays as actual investments, with the potential to pump profits back to Seattle in several ways.”
• I even complained that the then recently introduced TPS  Gregory Awards had a category for “outstanding director” but none for playwright, a blunder since rectified.

Mouthing off is fun, but theatre is a collaborative art form.  Unless others join the fray it isn't much more than meaningless monologue.  Happily, the last few years have shown just how much a modest city can grow as a theatre town when a group of motivated professionals put their collective mind to it.  For instance, last year A Contemporary Theatre finally took another chance on a local playwright by producing Yussef El Guindi’s  Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World.  The gamble paid off big-time: El Guindi won The Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award (plus the $25,000 that comes with it), and American Theatre Magazine just published the script in its current September 2012 issue.

Keri Healey’s new play Torso, produced by Printer’s Devil Theater, mesmerized everyone I know who saw it.  I suspect it is no coincidence that Keri has been short-listed for a Stranger Genius Award this year.  Torso recently doubled down on local impact with its currently running second production on Orcas Island.

These are just two stand-out success stories from many.  And this fall promises another bountiful harvest of locally grown new theatre.  Again, just to name and explain a few (with a promise to blog separately on some as they come closer):

 

14/48 outdoors for the first time ever

A few weeks ago I raved about the glorious gamble the 14/48 steering committee was then making by staging their first “Kamikaze” festival, but this weekend they are amping up their Summer of Risk by staging the instant theatre festival outdoors for the first time in their 15 year history.  Tickets are free (also a new twist) so it’s hard to see how you could afford to miss it. (More info here.)

 

The Betty Plays

Beloved local actor Betty Campbell doesn’t get around as easily as she used to, so five local playwrights, myself included, wrote four short plays tailored to her unique and extraordinary talents.  This special Theater Schmeater offering is the sort of one-of-a-kind live experience that only happens in Seattle.  (Click here for more information  and here for reservations.)

 

NCTC’s Foreclosure by Vince Delaney

One of Seattle’s hottest acting ensembles workshops one of Seattle’s hottest playwrights, as he tackles an issue facing Americans nationwide  There aren’t many performances scheduled for this pre-world premiere, so you better reserve early.

 

Sandbox Radio Live!

1. The podcast from Episode 5: “An Unexpected Twist” recently dropped.  (A blog on that to come.)
2. A “Best Of” show kicked ass at Bumbershoot!  (Check out this review.)
3. And Episode 6: "Something Wicked This Way" is coming very soon: October 1 at West of Lenin.

Why is Sandbox Radio Live! so important to Seattle’s locally grown theatre movement?  Because it happens every quarter and every quarter it gets better.  Because nearly every play, poem or commercial is written by top local playwrights and performed by top local actors.  Because it is fresh local “produce” at its best and most consistent.

 

Custom Made Plays

In my opinion this may just be the most exciting new wrinkle in Seattle’s locally grown scene, and not just because I have the good fortune of being the inaugural playwright.  Brainchild of local actress Rebecca Olson, the Custom Made Play Project  is dedicated to matching Pacific Northwest playwrights with local actors to develop and produce new plays of regional significance.  In my case, after interviewing my collaborating actors, Ms. Olson and Hana Lass, I tailor-made the soon-to-world- premiere Ballard House Duet to their unique talents and qualities.  Because of that, I am painting with colors I have never used before, and I’m loving it.  The resulting script simply would not exist were it not for these unique one-on-one collaborations. That fact excites me.

 

Here’s another fact: Seattle is the best city in the country—maybe even the world— for locally grown theatre.  And we are only getting better and better at growing it.  As you can see from the small sampling above, it’s going to be an awesome autumn harvest.  It makes you wonder what next winter, spring and summer will bring.