Date: February 13th, 2010
There are certain things that should not be attempted in a single day. Among them, I'd have to say learning karate to a black belt proficiency, making stock for French Onion Soup, and mastering the art of dance are probably at the top of the list for me. If I'd been asked, (which, for the record, I wasn't) I'd have placed writing a play on my "do not attempt in one day" list. There is, however, an event that throws caution to the wind and plays by its own rules. Except there's no drinking, smoking or nudity... so I guess partly by its own rules and partly by society's rules. But not the rule about not writing a whole play in one day - that rule it throws out.
My point is... I wrote a play. In one day.
At Michigan there is a theater group called the RC Players. They, in conjunction with the Residential College (get it? RC?), put on plays over the course of the year in the Keene Theater in East Quad. There are some serious works of art and full length features and then there are one-act scenes (like the one I did last weekend). Generally speaking, the scenes are a lot shorter, written by students and intended to be funny. But if even a two week, roughly 15 hour total time commitment is too much for you, they also have something called Kamikaze.
You may recognize "Kamikaze" as the name of the first single off of Gato Negro Dragón Rojo by the Spanish folk rock band Amaral. I'm sure that's why they chose the name and not because of its other common usage, describing the suicide attacks by Japanese pilots launched against American targets during WWII. Oh wait, no, no they meant the suicide attacks.
You see, Kamikaze is an amazing experience, but its so stressful that by the time you take the stage you'll want to kill someone or something or maybe just punch a kitten. It starts at 8PM on a Friday night with a round of introductions and get-to-know you games. 24 people gather in a theater. 6 of them are writers, (Yo.) 2 are directors, 2 are tech people, 2 are producers, and the remaining 12 are actors. Over the course of the next 24 hours, a brand new play that has never been written before will be created. The actors will memorize and perform something written during the night as the directors frantically come up with a vision for the work they have been handed at 5AM. At 8PM the next night, ready or not, the actors will take the stage and perform the play.
Now, I've done Kamikaze before, but I did it as an actor. It was a really fantastic way to spend a day being goofy and creative without having to commit more time than that to it. The way the creative process works at Kamikaze is that the actors and writers all get together in a room for about an hour. The actors have a little one-minute audition where they show off their acting chops and let the writers know what kind of part they'd like to play. Usually I spend that time twirling my hair and trying to think of something funny to do when my turn comes. There were two problems with that this time. First, and most devastatingly, my hair isn't long enough to twirl anymore. More relevant to this exercise was the fact that I had to pay attention.
See, unlike before, where I was competing for attention and therefore hilarious stage time - now I wanted to know what the actors could do. That's why I asked them to do horribly embarrassing and difficult stunts during their one minute fun-troduction. Oh, you like playing a villain? Name three creative ways you'd have me killed. You did gymnastics? Show me how flexible you are. And, the old standby - ok, now sing something for me.
It may have seemed like gloriously needless torture, but there was a real purpose for it. See, the tough thing about Kamikaze is that inspiration may strike in the form of an all German chorus line. That doesn't sound too terrible until you remember that you're writing for people who will only have 24 hours to prepare. Can they all do a German accent? Do they have time to learn? Can they sing? Can they dance? Can they choreograph a number in less than a day that will actually look passable? Yeah, unless they knew how already, probably not.
Kamikaze is an exercise in rough edges. If an actor stands up and says "I can sing and do a German accent" then good for you - you get a singing German guy. If not, and you want the play to look good, then you just don't get to have the singing German guy. So, from a writing standpoint, I wanted to know what the actors could do - what their natural range was so I could write something within it.
Once the actors have auditioned, the whole group brainstorms some ideas about what they'd like the play to have in it. And by brainstorms I mean shouts. A couple brave souls with chalk will write down everything they hear people yelling on a blackboard and that huge list is meant to get the writers started coming up with the play. Its completely random - it could have what a specific actor wants to do or a series of colors or the names of famous people that everyone likes to make fun of (I'm looking at you, Tom Cruise). There is also a brief moment for people to indicate what things they would not be comfortable with. This year the list of unapproved topics was as follows: no racism, no OCD jokes and no throw up gags.
Once all that delightfulness happens, its time for the actors to go one way and the writers to go the other. In the past I've always gone off with the actors and done get-to-know-you games. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there's nothing to do until the script is written. The second is that you never know who the writers are going to stick you in a love scene with and you want to be able to look comfortable with people on stage. Also, they just don't want you to leave. Its totally a control-freak thing, I think.
The writers got broken up into two groups of three people and were then assigned sets of actors to work with. Then writing happens. That's about how much more instruction you get. Pretty much - here's your writing group, here's your cast, start coming up with stuff by X time. I thought that was fantastic, to be honest, because it gave us complete control over how to approach the process. For me, it was important to accomplish a couple things. When I acted in Kamikaze's there were a couple things that happened that I wanted to avoid. The first was writing an impression of a famous person for an actor. Not unlike accents, unless the person can already do it, they probably will not be able to manage it in less than a day. It always looks bad. The second was sticking to the ideas from the brainstorming session. I came to understand, very quickly, how easy it would be to just ignore the suggestions the actors made during brainstorming if a good idea strikes early in the writing process... but then I remembered how totes annoyed I was when every idea from last time got ignored by the writers... Totes annoyed.
So, I'll admit, I had a little bit of an agenda... but I'd like to think it was for a noble purpose. I wanted to make sure the actors got to perform something they'd enjoy. I mean, if I write something they love or something they hate, I'm writing a play either way... so might as well make everybody happy. We spent quite some time putting together a plot and trying to use as many of the ideas the actors came up with as possible as well as putting together a funny plot.
The thing I learned from the experience, mostly, was that mapping out a plot and outlining well is supremely important for writing a good play. Unlike satire or even the monologue I wrote to audition, the full play really does need to make sense to be good. So making sure all the plot details were in the right places and the interactions between the characters were funny was really important before we even put down a single line of dialogue. Writing dialogue was a ton of fun - I got to help create the personalities of the characters.
The rest of the day was spent hanging out and watching the director (who did an incredible job) and the actors (who knocked the show out of the park) turn something two-dimensional into a living, breathing show with their own marks all over it. Of the six characters, only two were played the way I expected them to be while writing out the parts (and those two had parts that were hand-picked and personally written for them). Everybody else took their character in an unexpected and wonderfully rich direction. I cannot say enough about how amazingly well the actors and director did with the script. It was light-years better on stage than it looked on paper and I was decently proud of it on paper.
Below is a plot synopis of the play and a map that was created for our villain. The show is meant to be silly. The way we accomplished that was, in part, by throwing in as many of the aspects of the brainstorming session as possible. So... it'll look a little random to the untrained eye, but rest assured... those ideas all came from somewhere. Also, I would highly recommend enlarging the map. There are a lot of goodies in the scribbles on it.
The scene opens on Viscount D'Evious (our amazing, brilliant, British villain) sitting in her lair, practicing her evil laugh. She muses on how hard it is to find good help, just as a young man named Kevin knocks on her door. He has come seeking an internship as a flunky for her, hoping to one day pursue a career in villainry of his own. After some discussion of his qualifications, the Viscount sees in the newspaper that a cruise ship is transporting "goldfish" to the Nobel Prize ceremony. She mistakenly believes the ship to be carrying fish made of gold, rather than live goldfish and, as such, hatches a plot to steal them. Kevin tries to talk her out of it initially, but does not want to lose his job.
On the ship, we meet Marsha. She is obsessed with fish. Having grown up in Kansas, she is just giddy to be working on a ship out on the ocean, though she does want to save money to study marine biology. She is very excited that the Nobel Prize winning scientists and their fish are on board her cruise. Those scientists are Geoff and Doris, a dynamic duo who, together, created a new breed of genetically altered goldfish, big enough to end world hunger. Doris is obviously in love with Geoff who alternates between being oblivious and uninterested in her advances.
The first night aboard, everybody goes to see a show in the ship's lounge, put on by the very sexy and very selfish singer, Krystaal. Krystaal and Marsha have been having a bit of a secret romance, but that ends after Geoff begins hitting on Krystaal and she does nothing to stop his advances. For Geoff it was love at first sight. He thinks she sings like an angel... despite all objective observers having to cover their ears. (The actress who played Krystaal did an amazing job singing poorly on purpose - it was hilarious). Krystaal leaves a jealous Marsha in favor of Geoff worshiping the ground she walks on.
Once the show is over, the Viscount and Kevin sneak up and down the ship looking all over for the golden fish, but without luck. When Marsha, who is on a walk after her fight with Krystaal, comes up to them, the Viscount orders Kevin to distract her. His attempt to distract Marsha is an incredibly awkward conversation that results in him falling head-over-heels in love with her and her obsession with fish. He begins to feel very conflicted about what he wants to do with his life and when the Viscount comes back, all he wants to talk about is Marsha. He tries to tell her, unsuccessfully, that there are no golden fish on the boat.
While the Viscount and Kevin are arguing, Geoff and Doris are walking back to their cabin from the lounge. Geoff, still completely taken with Krystaal, waxes poetic about her beauty and loving her the entire way back to the cabin. Doris expresses her... distaste... for Krystaal in creative ways, but is rebuffed by Geoff. He leaves her feeling sad and rejected before going off to sleep.
Later, once the Viscount has gone to bed, Kevin goes to the ship's bar to think about his life. He begins complaining about his situation to Krystaal... who doesn't really care... because she's Krystaal and he isn't talking about her. She eventually gets fed up with him complaining about his boss and being in love with someone who isn't her. Rather than ignoring him or giving him good advice, she offers that if he hates his boss so much, perhaps he should just kill her.
Kevin immediately begins contemplating the various ways he could kill the Viscount, eventually deciding to do it the next night on the boat.* Before the show, Marsha is incredibly upset and Kevin takes the time to comfort her over her break-up, though he doesn't know that's what he's comforting her for. Things are made even worse when Geoff and Krystaal walk by and agitate Marsha more. As they're leaving the restaurant on the ship, Geoff asks Krystaal to run away with him. Doris, overhearing this, snaps. She flips out. (The actress who played Doris had a hilarious rant that she wrote herself and she delivered it perfectly).
Tired of being second fiddle to Geoff while he ignores her, Doris swears to get what is rightfully hers, one way or the other. Meanwhile, Kevin has found the Viscount and tried to kill her. He thinks she's dead. Hearing the noise, Marsha, Krystaal and Geoff all come running and begin asking him questions about what happened. Before he can make something up, the Viscount reappears. She had only been knocked out. Kevin flips out and finishes the job in front of everyone. Krystaal is immediately upset that he ruined her show by, you know, killing someone, right before she went on stage.
Kevin explains that she's an evil villain and he was working for her, but he fell in love with Marsha and wanted to do good, amazing things for fishes with her. She is smitten and the passengers decide they could use a vacation. Then they remember that the boat is headed for Sweden, in February. Once they return to their cabins to complain about it being cold, Doris stumbles onto the body. She decides to take over the Viscount's plan where it was left off and resumes hijacking the boat. The end.
As I said above - its a very silly play. It was a lot of fun to write and the plot didn't have any (major) holes, which was important. I absolutely adored seeing it performed on stage as well. About two hours before showtime, with everybody getting goofy, me and a couple of the actors began creating an evil super-villain map for the show. It was a fun way to let off some steam and still keep focused on the play. Enjoy!
You know you want to click it.
*PS: The person playing the Viscount has been British and has died in almost all of the plays she's done with the RC players. The Viscount was, of course, a British villain, and this scene allowed her to have 3-4 stages deaths in addition to her real one. She came on while he was talking about the ways to kill her and acted each one of them out for the audience.
PPS: The person playing the Viscount is awesome and I adore her.
No comments :
Post a Comment