Last night was the first of two rehearsals for my dinky little play. I expected it to be fun, and I expected to face a heap of rewriting, but I didn’t expect it to be so freaking interesting. One of the most intelligent things anyone ever said to me about writing is that fiction is telling the truth absent the burden of the facts. The play is based on a silly thing that happened years ago with an ex, and I know full well that the moment those characters hit the page they have lives of their own and they are no longer who they were in “real” life.
And yet, they are. As the director was leading the actors through figuring out the characters, they made some surprisingly astute observations. Stuff that was not explicit in the play (or even intentionally implicit), stuff that ultimately lead to the dissolution of the real relationship on which it was based. I joked that had I written the play ten years ago I could have saved myself a lot of money. It wasn’t until I saw it through the process of a director and actors that it actually felt like me. I guess I told some truth I didn’t even know I told.
The play still needs a lot of work. But it is on its way. And that is the other spectacular thing about this whole process: with some insightful, intelligent people around it doesn’t actually have to start out as a good play. That’s amazing. Writing has always been such a solitary thing for me. I enjoy workshops, but workshops with other writers draw out only so much – sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t. Seeing it through the lens of a director and actors -a totally different and necessary perspective- is… I’m not sure what it is, but it is much more interesting and it makes more sense. It just blows my mind that potentially I could write a crappy play, have it workshopped and read, get lots of opinions, turn it into a decent play, and still get credit for it being my play.
I spent a lot of time in my grumpy youth trying to cram the details of my life into intentionally cathartic fiction. It never worked. Maybe the real catharsis is unintentional. I’m pretty sure that based on what the workshop participants have seen of me and my writing, it must appear that I am stuck in that part of my past and still trying to work through it, when the opposite is true. It’s so far behind me now that I can play around with the silliness of it, without undue loyalty to the facts.
After the rehearsal I went to a bar with the director and one of the actors. The director is working on a theatrical adaptation of the epic of Gilgamesh. Part of the way into his recitation of the story, a dixieland jazz band started playing. I’m still laughing thinking about the story of Gilgamesh told over dixieland jazz. Totally absurd.
