Spring Forward? Ummm….No Thanks.
It’s that time of the year again. We lose the hour we gained in the fall. I must confess, I believe Arizona does it right – let’s just leave time alone and quick shuffling it around. My thoughts are with all you bartenders and cocktail waitresses and doormen out there tonight. Especially in the Chicago 4 o’clock bars. You would think the city would pass some kind of ordinance or law regarding this particular evening in the Windy City. Alas, they don’t. So, as is the case on Saturday nights normally, bars are open an extra hour. So the 4 o’clock licenses are open until 5 a.m., and you would guess that because we spring forward, they get an hour back and a thrilled with the short night. Lord knows, in the fall, when you “fall” back, the Bar Owners force you to adhere to the time switch and add the extra hour to the night, milking it for all they can. But, they don’t give you that hour back. Instead, they claim it doesn’t kick in until after you close. Which, means you still grind it out for the full slot. Never, never, never a fun night in the late night bars. Especially this close to St. Patrick’s Day.
The Friday Night Random were a little short. I was a bit sleepy, so I had to pull the plug. Besides, seems like things are at a cruising altitude lately and not much newness is afoot. Besides, taking a peek beyond at post Spring Quarter a.k.a. the rest of my life, and seeing what might come next for a little bit, as I let several options play out. Not quite sure what that all looks like quite yet. You could say I’m taking a pretty thorough inventory of all that I have going in my life – as in what financially do I have to maintain in my day to day between the doctors and my rent and the loans and general bills, etc… There are a lot more moving parts to my life in L.A., than there ever was in Chicago. Lots of personal things that I started which I would strongly prefer to keep going, so it will take a bit more thinking and planing and, ultimately, good old fashioned faith. As long as I take action where and when I can, the rest will follow when it’s needed. Maybe not when I want, but it always does when it’s needed. This much I know is true. This much I’ve learned first hand over the past ten years.
So another wonderful play tonight out in Pasadena. It was MEN OF TORTUGA by the Furious Theater Company. The production was tightly directed and the actors were spot on. The play itself featured some hilariously wicked lines and the whole performance zipped along at a lightning fast pace. Overall the run time was just under two hours, but felt like forty-five minutes. Again, their was no intermission, but scenes were fairly contained and their were blackouts in between each; which is how I’m structuring my play, KEPT. Overall, I would say MEN OF TORTUGA was the play that is most similar, that I’ve seen or read, to the actual rhythm/construction of mine. The scenes are not super short like some of Craig Lucas’ in RECKLESS, which we read for class. Neither are they epic long like Edward Albee’s THE GOAT or THREE TALL WOMEN.
In all honesty, I’ve really fallen in love with the theater all over again. It’s been a long time. Part of me wonders about the feasibility of getting a second MFA in Playwriting at some point, mostly to open up any teaching career down the road to more opportunities. One thing that’s been unique, and mesmerizing to me in a writer-geek way, during this excursion into this form is that I’ve slowly developed a completely different process to tackling the telling of a story in it. This is a process that is thoroughly the anti-thesis of my process for writing television pilots or screenplays. In film writing, I am a planner. I am a developer. I utilize a “platform” method and writing a script can take on the rhythm of building a house. There are steps, progressions, that must be met to ensure a strong story that will stand up to the elements. Things aren’t always as rigid as this sounds, but for the most part their is a methodology at play. Very specific tools are used to tackle problems and questions, to draw out the best solutions. In writing a play, I have settled into an early approach of complete investigation. I write a scene, step back and see what is going on, what emotions and thoughts are at play and proceed from their to the next scene that I feel I should write. Scenes are written out of order. Sometimes, in writing a scene for KEPT, I don’t even know where it will go or if it will stay in. Therefore, in the shaping of the play I slowly tease out what I would endeavor to plan out in a film script (The narrative throughline and the emotional arc.) I’ll have a sense, unformed even, of what I want it to be, but not the foggiest notion of what that will ultimately entail. It’s so freeform and I think if you polled most of my peers they would say I was definitely not a free form writer. So, in accomplishing this beautiful defeat of all my normal tendencies, I’ve really broaden my horizons and settled deeper into the process of writing, over the results. That is a stellar lesson to learn.
Tags: Bartending, Imagination, Inspiration, Movies, Playwriting, Projects, Television, Theater, Truth, Unexpected Gift, Writing