“So the previous scene takes place at night. But then Marie-Helene comes over to the house, which would seem to indicate that it’s not night.”
This is Lucie Tiberghien, my director, speaking to me. I am perplexed.
“Well,” I say a trifle defensively. “What makes you think the previous scene was at night?”
Lucie leafs back through the script. “The last line of that scene is, ‘Good night, Aidan.’”
Ouch.
The amazing thing about a conference like PlayPenn is that all these talented people are devoting their time and talent to perfecting your script. The difficult thing about PlayPenn is that all these talented people are devoting their time and talent to perfecting your script…but you’re the one that actually has to do it.
Exchanges like the one quoted above are common when really working on a script. Plays are written over a long period of time. Scenes tend to be buffed to (the closest approximation we can achieve of) perfection individually, then strung together. Inconsistencies abound. While my play Another Girl was in a fairly infant state when it arrived at PlayPenn, it had had two private readings and one public one. Yet no one had yet noticed that it turned miraculously turned from night to day near the end of the first act.
And that was just the beginning.
Rehearsals at PlayPenn were a great joy, but they were also arduous. I was constantly peppered with questions from director, dramaturg, actors. Sometimes I knew the answers and was quite sure of myself. Other times I knew the answer but didn’t feel like sharing it.
For example, there was one scene where a character in my play all of a sudden speaks with a kind of freedom she has never before allowed herself, saying outrageous things. Lucie, my director, asked me about it - why could she say those things now but not before? The real reason was that, in an earlier draft, she’d been drunk. I’d had to remove the drunkenness because it didn’t fit her character, but I’d loved some of the things she’d said, so I’d kept them. Unfortunately, “She talks like that because she used to be drunk” is not a very good answer to my director’s question.
The real answer is, of course, that I had to justify these lines anew if I was to keep them. That’s where all the hard work came in.
All pages had to be e-mailed by noon if they were to be used in afternoon rehearsals. That was the rule. So noon was my lode star, the organizing principle of my day.
I would arise each morning around 6:30 and immediately start doing math (“five and a half hours till noon, two scenes to rewrite…”). I would make coffee and wander over to my computer. I would trick myself into starting to work, by checking my e-mail, Facebook, then casually opening the script. I’d futz with a few things, and before you know it I was at it.
I can only work in one place for a few hours at a time, so ‘round about 9:30 I would go to a café down the street called Café Twelve. It was quiet, friendly, gay-owned and run (that somehow added to the community feel of the place). Having already had A LOT of coffee, I would usually order food and orange juice. I would open my lap top, read a bit from my book, then slowly and casually get back to work.
Sometime around 11/11:30 my brain would start to short out. Hopefully I had done what I needed to at that point. If not, too bad. I’ve been doing this long enough to try to get blood from a stone when my brain is fried. I would haul my stuff back to my apartment and lay on the floor in a near-catatonic state of fatigue. Afternoons were rehearsal, evenings were dinner, and maybe a meeting with the director. Then I’d do the whole thing over again in the morning.
I was telling my father about the schedule, about how it was so much more work than I had imagined. An academic and a writer himself, he replied, “That sounds fantastic.”
It was.
The staged reading at the end of the conference went spectacularly well. My wonderful actors - Krista Apple, Mary Beth Scallen, Brian Osborne, Rachel Camp, and Nancy Boykin – only got one chance to do the play in front of people, but they made the most of it. I was aglow for days afterward.
The glow wears off, as all glows do (though I clung FIERCELY to this one). However much I miss it, what remains is far more valuable. What remains is my script – tighter, deeper, and more lyrical than ever. The development process has made it so much more than it ever could have been without it.
Now it heads out into the world.
I hope it does PlayPenn proud.
Exchanges like the one quoted above are common when really working on a script. Plays are written over a long period of time. Scenes tend to be buffed to (the closest approximation we can achieve of) perfection individually, then strung together. Inconsistencies abound. While my play Another Girl was in a fairly infant state when it arrived at PlayPenn, it had had two private readings and one public one. Yet no one had yet noticed that it turned miraculously turned from night to day near the end of the first act.
And that was just the beginning.
Rehearsals at PlayPenn were a great joy, but they were also arduous. I was constantly peppered with questions from director, dramaturg, actors. Sometimes I knew the answers and was quite sure of myself. Other times I knew the answer but didn’t feel like sharing it.
For example, there was one scene where a character in my play all of a sudden speaks with a kind of freedom she has never before allowed herself, saying outrageous things. Lucie, my director, asked me about it - why could she say those things now but not before? The real reason was that, in an earlier draft, she’d been drunk. I’d had to remove the drunkenness because it didn’t fit her character, but I’d loved some of the things she’d said, so I’d kept them. Unfortunately, “She talks like that because she used to be drunk” is not a very good answer to my director’s question.
The real answer is, of course, that I had to justify these lines anew if I was to keep them. That’s where all the hard work came in.
All pages had to be e-mailed by noon if they were to be used in afternoon rehearsals. That was the rule. So noon was my lode star, the organizing principle of my day.
I would arise each morning around 6:30 and immediately start doing math (“five and a half hours till noon, two scenes to rewrite…”). I would make coffee and wander over to my computer. I would trick myself into starting to work, by checking my e-mail, Facebook, then casually opening the script. I’d futz with a few things, and before you know it I was at it.
I can only work in one place for a few hours at a time, so ‘round about 9:30 I would go to a café down the street called Café Twelve. It was quiet, friendly, gay-owned and run (that somehow added to the community feel of the place). Having already had A LOT of coffee, I would usually order food and orange juice. I would open my lap top, read a bit from my book, then slowly and casually get back to work.
Sometime around 11/11:30 my brain would start to short out. Hopefully I had done what I needed to at that point. If not, too bad. I’ve been doing this long enough to try to get blood from a stone when my brain is fried. I would haul my stuff back to my apartment and lay on the floor in a near-catatonic state of fatigue. Afternoons were rehearsal, evenings were dinner, and maybe a meeting with the director. Then I’d do the whole thing over again in the morning.
I was telling my father about the schedule, about how it was so much more work than I had imagined. An academic and a writer himself, he replied, “That sounds fantastic.”
It was.
The staged reading at the end of the conference went spectacularly well. My wonderful actors - Krista Apple, Mary Beth Scallen, Brian Osborne, Rachel Camp, and Nancy Boykin – only got one chance to do the play in front of people, but they made the most of it. I was aglow for days afterward.
The glow wears off, as all glows do (though I clung FIERCELY to this one). However much I miss it, what remains is far more valuable. What remains is my script – tighter, deeper, and more lyrical than ever. The development process has made it so much more than it ever could have been without it.
Now it heads out into the world.
I hope it does PlayPenn proud.
