I was late to work. My son’s school had invited parents to observe the first half hour of class, and there was no way I was missing that. I hoped to catch a train that would make me tough-time-getting-out-of-bed late rather than missed-a-whole-chunk-of-the-day late. I failed. When I got into the office, I saw that I had missed a big meeting. There was an email from my boss asking me to come to his office.
I darted in there, all apologies, but he shook them off. He told me that I had a meeting in 15 minutes with the head of HR. That stopped me cold. I’d never had a meeting with the head of HR.
“What’s the subject of this meeting?” I asked.
A pained expression crossed his gentle face. I knew the answer before he said it.
“It’s not good,” he said. The company were laying off more than a dozen people. I was one of them.
A few weeks before that day I’d seen a post on Facebook from the wife of a friend. She had been laid off. She stated the fact simply and clearly, saying that though it was a scary time she knew things would work out.
My first thought after reading it was, “Why on earth did she post that?” My second thought was, “Wow, that’s really brave.” There’s nothing shameful about being laid off, but hiding it makes it seem like there is. By publically declaring her job loss, she robbed it of some of its potentially destructive power.
So I did the same thing. I declared on Facebook that I’d been laid off. I hesitated, but a vivid, recent memory of the cost of hiding made me want to get things out in the open before I could change my mind.
Predictably, wonderfully, I got tons of support. And at the very end of that support came an email from a friend of mine, the artistic director of a prominent theater for young audiences. He asked me an odd question – “Do you like Antigone?”
The story was this - the new play he had planned to produce in October 2015 wasn’t ready yet. He had an open slot. He had always wanted to do an adaptation of Antigone for high school audiences, but he didn’t think he could commission that and have it ready in time.
Then he saw my post on Facebook.
As it turns out, I do like Antigone. A lot. And, all of a sudden, I had lot of free time. It took a few weeks for him to get official approval, but soon it was all systems go. I knew I was going to have to write quickly, but particular dates hadn’t been discussed. He said, “I’m going to be in New York on February 2nd. How does that sound for a first draft?”
It was December 18th. I was about to go on a two-week vacation with my family, returning on January 3rd.
I said, “That sounds great.”
I knew it was possible to write a play in a month. What I didn’t know was how to write this play, because I had no idea what this play would be. I had some work to do. So each morning in California I walked out to my mom’s small (cold!) office to read and take notes. I read several lousy versions of Antigone and one really great one (by Jean Anouilh). I began to get a sense of what I wanted to do.
The friend who commissioned me thought Antigone could be done with four characters and, most radically, that all the characters should be young. That part really threw me. For those who don’t know, the crux of Antigone is an argument between Antigone and her uncle, Creon. How could we have an Antigone without Creon? But he convinced me that if the argument of the play is what’s most important (and to me it is), then this adaptation must be an argument between two young people. Kids would dismiss Creon out of hand because of his age. The breathtaking back-and-forth of their argument would be dead before it started. So Creon's arguments got f=shifted to his son, Haemon.
I began writing on the morning of January 5th. Beginning a play is always an adventure, but this was an adventure on a whole other level. I was writing a four-character play and I didn’t even know who the fourth character was. I knew that he/she would feature prominently in the second scene, so when I got to that scene I just charged in. Turns out it was a man. At some point Antigone’s sister asked, “What is your name?” I googled “Greek male names.” I looked over a few, then saw “Cyrus.” I remembered the gang leader in the 70’s classic The Warriors was named Cyrus. Ok, then. Cyrus it was.
Looking back on it, there were two distinct periods of writing. I spent two weeks writing the first four scenes, which determined who the characters were and what their relationship was to each other. Then I sat down and planned out the last six scenes (which turned out to be seven). I wrote the last 7 scenes in 11 days.
Those first four scenes were the most difficult to write. They were also the most exhilarating. I was flying blind, with nothing more to guide me than a few ideas, a few stories, a few images. The characters started to form themselves out of my subconscious, with the occasional nudging help of craft and my sense of story.
Then I burned out. I knew I was exhausted, but given the schedule I didn’t think I could take a break. One night, after half an hour of trying to watch TV with my wife, I went and lay down on the sofa in the other room. My worry about the script metamorphosed into a Giant Worry About Everything. It felt like a panic attack, except I was so tired I couldn’t move. It was like my brain was pouring out of my ear and onto the sofa. My wife came in and gently suggested that maybe I should take a break. I agreed. The next morning I felt much better.
I took one other break, spending the following Saturday with my family. And I got the flu at some point, which knocked me out for two days. But from January 5th to January 29th, I wrote 20 out of 24 days.
Don’t cry for me, Argentina. It was awesome.
It was also really hard. I kind of had to re-jigger my brain to write this fast. As a man with a day job and a child, I’ve developed a certain way of writing. This basically consists of slamming out new material quickly, then spending a few days sorting through what I wrote in my mind. So my first instinct after finishing a scene is to step back and think.
But there was no time for that. What I had to do was go down to the basement and write another scene.
The funny thing? It worked. I kept plowing forward, following my instincts. Things kept coming together. New metaphors and themes popped up. I seized on them, integrating them on the fly. It was like riding a horse really fast across an unfinished bridge. New pieces of the bridge miraculously kept appearing in front of me. Eventually, I reached the other side three days early (he says, straining his arm from patting himself on the back).
In a way, writing this way was like returning to my roots. When I started writing, I had no idea what I was doing (does anyone?). I did, however, have strong instincts, so I followed those instincts wherever they led. This method led to some of my best work, but also some of my weakest. If you write long enough, you learn that following your instincts is a coin with two sides. It can lead you to glorious surprises, but it can also lead you down a blind alley. Not every impulse fits in every play. If you don’t have craft and experience to guide you, your play can get stuck down that alley forever.
After the first flush of excitement from finishing, I began to worry. Had I walked down such an alley with my Antigone? I didn’t think so, but maybe I was too close to it? Maybe it was a complete disaster and I just couldn’t see it? With more than the usual trepidation, I gave it to my wife to read.
She loved it. When it was read at the Lark a few days later, it sounded pretty great. There were a ton of problems to fix – characters and relationships were formed as I wrote, so there were loose threads hanging all over the place. But all the problems are fixable, and the core was very strong. My friend was very pleased.
I was too. Because I had written a play in 24 days.
