Filling Up The Empty Space

After the table read last night, I was struck by a line in the Landylady's speech at the start of Act Two: "A woman of my means couldn't leave an empty space; a space - if filled - that would turn a profit."

Every character in "G.S." is trying to fill up an empty space, literally and emotionally.

As writers, George, Gertrude and Alfred all fill the empty space of paper with words.
Alice fills up the empty space of the stage with the set-pieces and transforms it into a home.
The Landlady fills up the empty rooms in her apartment house with the individuals who "belong there."

These are all physical, metaphorical acts. It's filling the emotional empty spaces that are more problematic and challenging.

We all know the inevitable: people we love will leave us, either through an act of willful departure or because - no matter how hard they fight to survive - their lives end.

I feel strongly that the new ending of "G.S." works because it focuses on both these inevitabilities in the lives of the two couples.

As Doug said last night he loves a "fuck you" ending. The original end definitely falls into that catagory.

Now the focus is on both of the "two endings" discussed in the piece: the ending no one could have changed and the ending that could have been different through one's own actions. It softens George, gives her a transformational moment, and allows the audience to see that she has learned and changed. I think it will be just as powerful and will give the audience a sense of emotional satisfaction.

The actors were all uniformly strong and brought out - much to Jenna's surprise - the humor of the play. I knew the laughs were there - and they need to be there. Liz and Doug brought relish to the caustic repartee between George and Alfred. Cruel can be amusing - as long as it's not happening to you.

Everyone seemed to be rushing in reading Act One, so Jenna asked everyone to slow the pace during the second act. The piece seems short to me: the writer who always extrapolates and then has to pare and pare again. Now I want to keep adding things.

But I don't know if that's truly necessary. One thing a table read cannot tell us is the timing of all the physical business: Alice hauling all the furniture onstage, George and Alfred's know-down, drag-out fight, the transitions between scenes, etc. There is a great deal of physicality in the show (to balance all the overabundance of words, perhaps?) which will add to its playing length.

One thing that surprised me was the relative equality of all the parts. The character who seems to get the short shift is the one who demands the most attention: Gertrude. After the first long scene of Act One, she only appears twice (briefly) until Act Two. Although she's onstage for all but one scene of Act Two, there seems to be a lopsidedness. This may all be resolved in the playing of the piece: by Anne's physical presence and interaction with the other characters.

Everyone was most kind and complimentary about the piece, which somehow I never find reassuring. I always want to hone and make things crisper, clearer and sharper.

All in all, though, I believe, we have a very auspicious beginning.

First Read-Thru For Workshop

We have decided to have a workshop/staged reading of G.S. in November. An invited audience will come and hear the play performed and give feedback. This will give me some time to do rewrites and hopefully bring out the themes and shape the play into its best form before the production in Feburary.

The cast for the read-thru will be:

Alice...............Pam Mattthews
Gerturde.......Anne McEvoy
Alfred.............Douglas Collier
Landlandy.....Lynna Snyder
George...........Liz Conway

The first read-thru of the script (ever) will take place tonight. I'm looking forward to how the play sounds out loud with the actors interpreting the lines. Actors always bring out nuances that help me to discover things I didn't know about the play.

(I realize that sounds anti-thetical, because I wrote the play, but there it is.)

I have modified two small portions of the script prior to tonight's reading. One is the George/Gertrude argument about Jews and the other is the ending. That problematic ending!

We'll see what everyone thinks about that tonight, since the cast have been given scripts with the original ending.

I'll have an update after the read-thru.

Pandemonium!

I've had nearly a week to absorb the madness of Pandemonium!, Cleveland Public Theatre's phenomenal annual fundraiser which was held last Saturday night.

A leather boy playing the string bass, a twirling fire baton in a darkened corner, a mysterious Mary Kayish cosmetic party being held in an alley, Prometheus setting the Cuyahoga River on fire, masked revelers, belly dancers - performers and musicians appearing on balconies, in garages, churches, on stilts - and literally hanging from the ceiling. Oh, yes..and the idiots more interested in watching the football game being projected on a giant geodome than absorbing the amazement swirling around them.

These were just a few of the many eclectic sights and sounds of the evening. Plus gourmet snack food, too much wine and a fabulous companion who looked sizzling hot.

Then there was my own 10-minute play "Mary Worth Is A Whore" being performed. Who could ask for more?

I was playwright and assistant prop master for the evening, spending Saturday afternoon making a Class Reunion sign and purchasing a corsage for the character of Miss Applewood. I felt a bit harried and nervous by the evening's start. (I should have taken Alfred E. Newman's advice, there was no need to worry.)

The performances of "Mary Worth" went great. If one more actor apologized to me for a slightly miffed line or a half-second late entrance, I might have screamed. You're all professionals folks. No one knew but me and you and Jenna. It was our own "Forbidden Knowledge". (The theme of this year's Pandemonium!)

The audience responded with laughter at the beginning (the audience always laughs at some action or line that surprises me...always) and intent focus at the end. My fabulous companion was a little misty eyed when it was over. That was a high compliment, indeed. What is a playwright trying to do, if not evoke an emotional response?

The show was even mentioned (not by name or author, but by its plot points) on Cleveland Magazine's blog.

Two audience members after the final performance requested to speak to the author. They wanted to know more about the specificities of Miss Applewood's secret. Although I have my own scenario firmly in place, I feel revealing my version of events would be cheating somehow. Why is my version more valid than what they would determine for themselves? Having a little ambiguity is a good thing, I believe.

Most of the time, in a play or story, the audience needs to feel a sense of completion, an understanding of the events they've just witnessed. They've been sticking with the piece (even if it's just for 10 minutes) and they deserve a sense of satisfaction. But if I can accomplish that without answering all the questions, that's ultimately even more satisfying.

The audience member should build his/her own specificity, elaborate in their own imagination about the play. This keeps the play living and breathing in people's minds long after the last lines have been spoken by the actors.

The Character's Inner Life

I witnessed something that took me aback at Wednesday night's rehearsal of "Mary Worth Is A Whore".

The actress Anne McEvoy revealed to me the inner life a character I'd written without saying a word.

The play was an exercise to see if I could write something that sets a comedic tone and then shifts: a secret is revealed, the secret is not what you think it's going to be and the audience is (hopefully) left with a sense of the bittersweet.

The scene is a twenty year high school reunion. We think the play is about three old high school buddies: Phil, Helene and Tibby. The fourth character in the mix is Miss Applewood, their former guidance counselor and teacher. Miss Applewood and Tibby share a secret which they've never discussed. At the end of the play, they are given a moment alone together and - in a roundabout way, since it is a rare thing for people to be completely direct with each other - share what that secret meant to each of them.

Here's what it says in my script:

TIBBY

(Now HE looks at her and says intently:) I'd always hoped...that the two of you...would have gotten together somehow. Been happy.

SHE is surprised by his hope and looks at him. SHE almost says something else, but decides against it, and instead says:

MISS APPLEWOOD

(Sweetly, but not dismissive) No use talking about what wasn't to be.

Here's what happened at rehearsal:

Tibby (John Busser) said his line and Miss Applewood (Anne) looked away and smiled. From her facial expression it was clear to me that she was thinking about what her life would have been like if things had turned out differently: an imagined memory. Then, her face crumpled and fell in on itself. The great disappointment and pain of her life returned. But since she must keep up a front, she pastes a different smile on her face and returns to the social order of obscuring her feelings. She turns back to Tibby and says her next line.

The exactness and depth of the character's inner life brought into focus in just a few seconds.

Can't wait to see the show tonight, hear the audience reaction and be a fly on the wall listening to what people say afterwards.

Kudos to the cast and Jenna the Magnificent.

Mary Worth Is A Whore

My 10-minute play "Mary Worth Is A Whore" will be performed as part of Pandemonium!, Cleveland Public Theatre's Annual Fundraiser this Saturday, September 12th.

It's part of a longer play I'm working on called "The Trials of Tiberius", about a Everyday Joe with the unfortunate name Tiberius (although he's called Tibby). Tibby has a propensity for finding out other people's secrets...and he never tells them to anyone.

It will be an interesting experience to see a crack cast (Liz Conway, Anne McEvoy, John Busser and Josh Brown) pull together this piece in a "by-the-seat-of-their-pants" way.

We have two rehearsals and then...we're on! Jenna Messina is also doing the directing duties for "Mary Worth".

Why is Mary Worth a whore? I'm not telling.

Inception of G.S. - Part Two (Enter Gertrude)

My awareness of when and how I learned about the genius Gertrude Stein is not as clear to me as my discovery of George Sand on PBS.

I do know that when I was still in my teens, I wrote several poems inspired by Stein's life.

One, I recall, was entitled "Eat the Matisse."

Gertrude was an avid collector of art. She befriended a group of young artists in Paris before they were famous, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. She both bought and was given their work. When Gertrude and her companion Alice B. Toklas needed cash to travel into the countryside to escape the Nazi invasion during WWII, Gertrude said, "We shall simply eat the Matisse." (Meaning they could sell their most famous and valuable painting at the time on the black market for cash.) In actuality, they wrapped their most prized paintings in brown paper and string, threw them into the back of a roadster and drove out of Paris together!

Another poem, which I can still recite, was called "The Need for Alice B. Rap", part of which went thusly (although one really can't get the full syncopatin' rhythm of it without hearing it spoken aloud) :

"I was walkin' down the street
without
gainful employment
when I thought of Gertie S.
in her
Pair-S apartment
Didn't worry both the cash flow
Or the dust in her salon
She posed for Pablo P.
While Ernie H. sipped tea
Which was served by Alice B.
in their
Pair-S apartment
and a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

Now there's nothin' Gertie S. done did
I couldn't do myself,
If she'd only send old Alice B. by
For a week to help..."

Once again, the theme of the daily, necessary routine vs. the creative urge rears its ugly head. Gertrude was able to focus on her work because Alice B. took care of everything else (the "obligatory nuisance" as the poem goes on to say). Every creative person longs for an Alice B. at one time or another.

Stein's most enduring work is entitled "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas", which is - in fact - her own autobiography written in Alice's voice. By framing her own memories and recollections as if viewed through the eyes of her companion, Stein grants herself an objectivity. She also made her companion as culturally well-known (if not more so today, thanks to that hashish brownie recipe!) as herself. I can't help but think that "The Autobiography..." was an acknowledgement of Alice's contribution to her work.

Most of Stein's work is difficult to wade through. You don't read a Stein novel because she holds your interest with a fast-paced plot. Her over-riding subject is language itself: she creates a dizzying collision of words whose meanings are hard, if not impossible to discern. Someone - I think perhaps it was Sherwood Anderson - said that Stein was necessary for the evolution of modern writing, but that she's virtually impossible to read.

That didn't stop me from reading her - with my voracious appetite for words.

However the book about Stein that affected me most was a collection of letters written by Alice after Gertrude died. It was entitled: "Staying on Alone" and was infused with a hearfelt, bittersweet poignancy. Alice - the person on the sidelines - coming into focus.

Alice's overwhelming grief was something I could feel rising off the page...but something I wouldn't understand until I was much older.

Still: more information filed away for future use.

The Inception of G.S. - Part One

It's all the fault of "Masterpiece Theatre" and the Oberlin College Co-op Book Store.

In 1976, when I was 15 years old, "Masterpiece Theatre" presented a seven-part mini-series entitled "Notorious Woman" starring Rosemary Harris as George Sand. (Harris won an Emmy award for her performance.) A very young Jeremy Irons portrayed Alfred de Musset.

"Masterpiece Theatre" was broadcast locally on Sunday nights. I remember distinctly being addicted to the show and being forced to watch episodes on the black and white television in the kitchen because the rest of my family was glued to "The Six Million Dollar Man" in the living room.

But I was far more fascinated in the life of this French authoress who lived a scandalous life in the 1800's than I was in a half-cyborg former astronaut who had super-human powers. (Besides the quality of the costumes and the acting being far superior.)

I have never seen "Notorious Woman" since that time, it's not available on DVD and I don't think it was ever re-broadcast, but it remained indelibly imprinted on my psyche.

Perhaps it was because George Sand was a writer, something I wanted be. People were always saying to me, "Write what you know." That's all George Sand did: she wrote what she knew, her life and her art inseparably intertwined.

"Write what you know" is great advice for someone like George, whose life was one great big soap opera. For me, it was a terrible misdirective. Who would want to read about the miserable life of a sexually-confused, acne-faced, skinny, long-haired teenager who was obssessed with odd things like "Masterpiece Theatre" and Broadway shows?

Perhaps the show affected me so deeply because George Sand played against sexual stereotypes. She dressed in men's clothing and smoked cigars. There was even the suggestion in the mini-series that she had a fleeting affair with a woman (the actress Marie Dorval)! She didn't behave the way society expected her to behave. She didn't follow the rules. And though society castigated her....in turn, it was fascinated by her. Her books were read voraciously and, in her later years, she was venerated as one of France's great authors.

And what about those books? While watching the mini-series, I wanted to read Sand's books that were discussed in the show. They didn't seem to be available on the local library shelves.
That's where the Oberlin Co-op Book Store enters the picture. There was a small publisher called "Shameless Hussy Press" that was re-issuing public domain translations of Sand's work (who knows when these translations were done, but they were clunky and stilted - even a 15 year old could tell that.) I found several of these at the Oberlin Co-op and scooped them right up with money I'd earned from my paper route.

The first book of Sand's I read was "The Devil's Pool", a pastoral novel she wrote in her later years. All about peasant life in rural France. Infinitely boring and blessedly short. I couldn't make the connection between the liberated, adventurous character on television who laughed in the face of convention and these plodding, gentle-hearted farming folk. Although I have read many other translations of Sand's work, this was what I came away with at the time: a sense of disconnection.

The disconnection between life and art. Sand's life was her art...and yet, in some ways, her life superceded her art. She is a cultural figure known today (if at all) - not for her work - but for what she represented. A proto-feminist. Frederick Chopin's lover. A man-eater. A cross-dresser. She was all of these things, but not only these things. Was she famous for being a writer...or famous for the life she lived?

I started (in 1976!) to write a play about George. It was called "The George Sand Play", not very inventive, I'll grant you that, but it's far more interesting subtitle was "A Comedy of Negotiations". In this piece of juvenalia, George just wants to write, but is constantly being interrupted by visitors: her publisher, her creditors, her children, her lovers! The poor thing just can't get any work done! Looking back on it now, it seems to me to be about how one tries to shoehorn one's artistic compulsion into the minutae of one's daily existence. (I'm sure I wasn't thinking about it in those complex terms at the time. I was also fascinated by the French playwright Feydeau - a local community theatre had just performed "A Flea in Her Ear" - and I think I was attempting to place the form of a farce onto Sand's life.)

Needless to say, that play was never completed. But my fascination with Sand continued and the seeds for "G.S." had been sown.

First Meeting With Jenna Messina

Jenna Messina, my illustrious director, also known as the portal through which all friendships pass, met with me last night for the first time to discuss "G.S."

Although the script describes the set as a neutral space with black curtains as a backdrop and a wooden floor, Jenna has the idea that everything is white: the backdrop and the floor. A truly empty space, a blank sheet of paper. What a great image, since "G.S." is concerned, in part, with two writers' creative process. Starting with a blank sheet of paper seems appropriate.

We've also decided to hold auditions, rather than simply asking people to participate. Jenna feels that the physicality of the actors will hold great weight in this play. If a big, strapping brute of an actor is cast as Alfred and a more diminuitive actress is cast as George - and yet, George is able to completely dominate Alfred within the context of the play, that would be interesting. Jenna would like to see how different physical types play off against each other.

This means we will have to wait until after Pandemonium! at CPT (on September 12th) to hold auditions. We will have to find a space to hold auditions. We will have to let the acting community know we are holding auditions.

Some of the actors Jenna wanted have already committed to Big [BOX] projects and won't be available.

Jenna and I also discussed my role as writer/producer and her role as director. We want those roles to be clearly definied so we're not stepping on each other's feet and - more importantly - that we're still friends at the end of the project. Jenna will be the conduit between myself and the actors. I will not give actors' notes, but will express whatever concerns I have to Jenna who in turn will decide whether or not those concerns warrant speaking to the actors. My goal is to be objectively removed by one step of the process so I can focus on the shape of the play itself. Jenna is not opposed to making script changes as the rehearsal process begins. We'll have to decide on a point where the show will be frozen so the actors don't lose their minds.

Prior to our meeting, I made a list of costume, prop and set pieces required for the show. Because the actors will be dressed in period style and are portraying historical figures, costumes will be more problematic than if I had written a comedy set in present day. And then there's the issue of people taking off and putting on those clothes.

(Yes, folks, this is a "mature content" show and no one under 18 will be admitted.)

That led to a discussion about what actors would be willing to disrobe. Specifically, whoever plays Alfred has to be completely naked for a good portion of the show. This also brings up another point: if an actor has a physical imperfection, will the audience focus on that during these scenes and miss the point of what's going on. OR if an actor is physically perfect, will the audience focus on that during these scenes and miss the point of what's going on....

How do you get an actor to disrobe for you if you're holding auditions in a public library? My guess would be, you don't.

We also had a lengthy discussion about music. We are both in agreement that we want to use modern music between scenes. Gertrude and George were, in a sense, the bohemian rebels of their time. What musicians of today represent that cutting edge, pushing-the-envelope trend? What do they have to say about love and commerce and art that would comment on what's happening on stage?

Ah, music...I'm sure I'll have more to say about that later.

So, there you have it. Our first baby steps toward production in February.

We were the last people left in Anatolya's at 11 pm. I looked around and was surprised to find all the other diners had gone. That's how immersed in conversation we were.

G.S. What's it all about?

G.S. is Gertrude Stein.
G.S. is George Sand.

Two women who defied the conventions of their time, who wrote for different reasons, who resided in Paris during times of social upheavel.

They didn't live in the same time period, but why should that prevent a playwright from imagining the two sharing the same apartment along with their respective lovers, Alice B. Toklas and Alfred de Musset?

G.S. has been selected to be presented at Big [BOX] at Cleveland Public Theatre in February 2010.

This blog will be about the creation of this production.