give me my bread with Worcestershire sauce
Nov. 7th, 2011 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraSo I wrote a play.
After I finished eating dinner on Saturday evening, I ran back to my dorm, grabbed my Bag Of Stuff, and headed across the lakes to the North Delle common room. The playwrights and directors got to know each other a bit; we'd already been put into pairs, and I knew my director a bit (enough to know that she'd be awesome to work with), but it was good to finally all sit in the same room.
They gave us schedules and guidelines--ten minutes, hand it in at 3:45, three actors no more and no less--and then we drew random props from a hat. (A really excellent hat. A top hat.)
Mine was a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
We couldn't start writing until 7. I contemplated my bottle of Worcestershire sauce. It contemplated me.
I said to my director, "How do you feel about middle-aged lesbians?"
"I love 'em!" she said. "Bring on the middle-aged lesbians!" (She confided in me later that she had had a moment of "...sure, okay, but... how?" She also said that she'd suspected she'd turn up at 4 a.m. and find that I had swapped out my bottle of Worcestershire sauce for one of the left-over, emergency props.)
Between seven p.m. and midnight, my memories are kind of hazy. I brainstormed in a notebook, and then started writing on my computer. Kate brought me Starbursts at one point; at another, The Mob walked in, handed me a stack of freshly-baked snickerdoodles wrapped in plastic, and walked out. When my laptop ran low on battery, I dragged my claimed armchair and an end table over to where I could plug in my power cord. Later still, another playwright and I moved a bigger table so we could sit under it with our laptops and write.
At a certain point, I was brainstorming Stereotypical Lesbian Meeting-Places. "A softball fundraiser for the humane society!" Okay, excellent--but it has to be realistic, so we lose the softball... I already have three actors, so I can't have a cat... let's make them allergic to cats.
I ate a lot of Starbursts and a lot of cookies. I also drank a lot of tea. I'd brought my own little teapot, a teacup, a box of tea (earl grey and black-with-cinnamon), and a little tupperware with sugar.
During one tea break, about midnight I think, I was in the stage where I had a page of the script left to go and every line of dialogue took me fifteen minutes to write. Waiting for the water to boil, draped in my stripy fleece blanket, I clutched a fake chicken and paced the room, trying to find the next line.
By one a.m. I'd finished the play. "I'll let it sit for a while," I told myself. Meanwhile, I had to do something to keep from falling asleep. Hm--solstice stories! They had prompts, I didn't have to think too hard about them... it'd be like my offer to write solstice-stories on a train, only instead of a train, it was sleep deprivation.
(Have I mentioned that this was the first time I've ever stayed up all night?)
I wrote two solstice stories. It became 2 a.m. Then it became 1 a.m. again, because of Daylight Savings. (I watched the clock on my computer go backward.) I wrote another solstice story. I talked to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aliseadae on the Internet. She offered to read my script, so I sent it to her.
Eventually (around 3?) I gave up and printed out seven copies of my script. Then I curled up in my armchair, put on quiet music, pulled my stripy blanket over my head, and closed my eyes for half an hour.
And then the actors and the directors showed up.
I said to my director, "By the way, there's a song. But it doesn't have a tune, so you'll have to come up with one." She read my script, and kept having to stifle laughter.
The actors were assigned semi-randomly to plays for cold reads, which was the first time anyone had heard all the other plays. Then they retreated to a different room while directors and playwrights fought over which actors they needed. My director got intense about this. I, wrapped in my stripy blanket, tried not to fall asleep. We had to bring a couple of actors back out to read bits of different scripts to settle some of the disputes, but in the end, everyone was satisfied if not actually happy.
We all split up, and my group of actors read my script aloud for the first time. After that, my role in the proceedings was pretty minimal. I hung around for the morning, giving tips on what I'd actually meant (normally not allowed, but given the time-constraints...) and vague directorial stuff. My director gave a little speech about gender identity crises, and another about lesbian culture, I think. We ate candy.
Around 8:30 we went for breakfast. I had to pick up some props from the apartment; while there, I took a quick shower, brushed my teeth (SO MUCH SUGAR IN ONE NIGHT), and changed my clothes. Then, feeling basically like I had slept for seven or eight hours the night before, I headed back to the rehearsals.
At 11 my group broke for lunch. They didn't need me anymore (they probably didn't need me for most of the morning either, but it was fascinating watching my story take shape on the stage). I went back to the apartment and took serial naps in The Mob's papazan (piled with pillows and blankets) for three hours, got up, made some rice, had a happy moment about eating hot food, drank some peppermint tea, and took a final piece of my serial nap before getting up and getting dressed again.
Peculiarly, in the early afternoon I felt like I wasn't really going to sleep at all, just drifting half in and half out, but The Mob tells me that she came in at some point and I was deeply asleep. Since I have no memory of her entering the room, she's probably right.
We ate dinner, we headed back to the campus center for final rehearsals/last touches on costumes/last-minute memorizations of lines. We told each other how awesome we were. We folded tables and unstacked chairs. We opened the house... and had to unstack more chairs, because people were flooding in. I flailed at my friends and Kate as they entered.
And then... then we did a show. People laughed at mine! In lots of places! They didn't announce who the playwrights/directors were for the various plays, so I'm not expecting anyone to come up to me and say "yours was amazing!", but still.
It was kind of amazing to sit there, just offstage, with my director as our play went on. We were both getting so much vicarious enjoyment from the actors' energy, their excellent delivery of this or that line, the audience's entertainment... we were making little "YES" gestures at each other, making faces in the dark.
After the actors came offstage and we struck the set, we all crowded back into the green room. We knew we should go watch the next play, but instead we just stood around, coming down off the adrenaline high, flailing at each other.
Basically, it was a great experience. I'd love to have something else produced, either this again or a different script; I'm having to talk myself out of starting lots of plays now. (Alena, you still have a novel to revise, remember?) It was fantastic. It was [lots of adjectives].
Writing a story in two days at Viable Paradise was something, but this... was something else.
After I finished eating dinner on Saturday evening, I ran back to my dorm, grabbed my Bag Of Stuff, and headed across the lakes to the North Delle common room. The playwrights and directors got to know each other a bit; we'd already been put into pairs, and I knew my director a bit (enough to know that she'd be awesome to work with), but it was good to finally all sit in the same room.
They gave us schedules and guidelines--ten minutes, hand it in at 3:45, three actors no more and no less--and then we drew random props from a hat. (A really excellent hat. A top hat.)
Mine was a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
We couldn't start writing until 7. I contemplated my bottle of Worcestershire sauce. It contemplated me.
I said to my director, "How do you feel about middle-aged lesbians?"
"I love 'em!" she said. "Bring on the middle-aged lesbians!" (She confided in me later that she had had a moment of "...sure, okay, but... how?" She also said that she'd suspected she'd turn up at 4 a.m. and find that I had swapped out my bottle of Worcestershire sauce for one of the left-over, emergency props.)
Between seven p.m. and midnight, my memories are kind of hazy. I brainstormed in a notebook, and then started writing on my computer. Kate brought me Starbursts at one point; at another, The Mob walked in, handed me a stack of freshly-baked snickerdoodles wrapped in plastic, and walked out. When my laptop ran low on battery, I dragged my claimed armchair and an end table over to where I could plug in my power cord. Later still, another playwright and I moved a bigger table so we could sit under it with our laptops and write.
At a certain point, I was brainstorming Stereotypical Lesbian Meeting-Places. "A softball fundraiser for the humane society!" Okay, excellent--but it has to be realistic, so we lose the softball... I already have three actors, so I can't have a cat... let's make them allergic to cats.
I ate a lot of Starbursts and a lot of cookies. I also drank a lot of tea. I'd brought my own little teapot, a teacup, a box of tea (earl grey and black-with-cinnamon), and a little tupperware with sugar.
During one tea break, about midnight I think, I was in the stage where I had a page of the script left to go and every line of dialogue took me fifteen minutes to write. Waiting for the water to boil, draped in my stripy fleece blanket, I clutched a fake chicken and paced the room, trying to find the next line.
By one a.m. I'd finished the play. "I'll let it sit for a while," I told myself. Meanwhile, I had to do something to keep from falling asleep. Hm--solstice stories! They had prompts, I didn't have to think too hard about them... it'd be like my offer to write solstice-stories on a train, only instead of a train, it was sleep deprivation.
(Have I mentioned that this was the first time I've ever stayed up all night?)
I wrote two solstice stories. It became 2 a.m. Then it became 1 a.m. again, because of Daylight Savings. (I watched the clock on my computer go backward.) I wrote another solstice story. I talked to
aliseadae on the Internet. She offered to read my script, so I sent it to her.Eventually (around 3?) I gave up and printed out seven copies of my script. Then I curled up in my armchair, put on quiet music, pulled my stripy blanket over my head, and closed my eyes for half an hour.
And then the actors and the directors showed up.
I said to my director, "By the way, there's a song. But it doesn't have a tune, so you'll have to come up with one." She read my script, and kept having to stifle laughter.
The actors were assigned semi-randomly to plays for cold reads, which was the first time anyone had heard all the other plays. Then they retreated to a different room while directors and playwrights fought over which actors they needed. My director got intense about this. I, wrapped in my stripy blanket, tried not to fall asleep. We had to bring a couple of actors back out to read bits of different scripts to settle some of the disputes, but in the end, everyone was satisfied if not actually happy.
We all split up, and my group of actors read my script aloud for the first time. After that, my role in the proceedings was pretty minimal. I hung around for the morning, giving tips on what I'd actually meant (normally not allowed, but given the time-constraints...) and vague directorial stuff. My director gave a little speech about gender identity crises, and another about lesbian culture, I think. We ate candy.
Around 8:30 we went for breakfast. I had to pick up some props from the apartment; while there, I took a quick shower, brushed my teeth (SO MUCH SUGAR IN ONE NIGHT), and changed my clothes. Then, feeling basically like I had slept for seven or eight hours the night before, I headed back to the rehearsals.
At 11 my group broke for lunch. They didn't need me anymore (they probably didn't need me for most of the morning either, but it was fascinating watching my story take shape on the stage). I went back to the apartment and took serial naps in The Mob's papazan (piled with pillows and blankets) for three hours, got up, made some rice, had a happy moment about eating hot food, drank some peppermint tea, and took a final piece of my serial nap before getting up and getting dressed again.
Peculiarly, in the early afternoon I felt like I wasn't really going to sleep at all, just drifting half in and half out, but The Mob tells me that she came in at some point and I was deeply asleep. Since I have no memory of her entering the room, she's probably right.
We ate dinner, we headed back to the campus center for final rehearsals/last touches on costumes/last-minute memorizations of lines. We told each other how awesome we were. We folded tables and unstacked chairs. We opened the house... and had to unstack more chairs, because people were flooding in. I flailed at my friends and Kate as they entered.
And then... then we did a show. People laughed at mine! In lots of places! They didn't announce who the playwrights/directors were for the various plays, so I'm not expecting anyone to come up to me and say "yours was amazing!", but still.
It was kind of amazing to sit there, just offstage, with my director as our play went on. We were both getting so much vicarious enjoyment from the actors' energy, their excellent delivery of this or that line, the audience's entertainment... we were making little "YES" gestures at each other, making faces in the dark.
After the actors came offstage and we struck the set, we all crowded back into the green room. We knew we should go watch the next play, but instead we just stood around, coming down off the adrenaline high, flailing at each other.
Basically, it was a great experience. I'd love to have something else produced, either this again or a different script; I'm having to talk myself out of starting lots of plays now. (Alena, you still have a novel to revise, remember?) It was fantastic. It was [lots of adjectives].
Writing a story in two days at Viable Paradise was something, but this... was something else.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-08 01:07 am (UTC)(...after I catch up on sleep.)