Bug - Living on the other side

I really liked the originality of Bug. I would never have thought of writing about either aspect of what made Bug so dually creative.

1) Bug was largely about the lifestyle of the fairly happy white lower classed. I may be wrong, but I think every play I have seen about the lower class has featured unhappy individuals struggling against an oppressor for freedom. Bug seemed to show that people like this could still be happy, and that the were taking somewhat good care of themselves (aside from the drugs). The whole concept of living an entire life in a hotel is somewhat foreign, and I thought it worked very well. It allowed the audience to vaguely think someone from management might come in or the maid service might knock to come in and clean. The character dynamic between members of this class was also very original and compelling. We’ve seen plenty of scenes about abusive husbands, but never quite in the way Bug was able to show it. They went to parties, smoked crack and some kind of meth, and were generally enjoying the life they had carved out for themselves.

2) The mental illness aspect of Bug was taken on in a whole new way, and that allowed the play to burst out from underneath hundreds of other plays about similar mental illnesses. This is a good side note – meaning that even a subject that has been done to death can find new life in an examination of it from a different angle. Bug found this angle by allowing the insane people tell the story. Instead of seeing the two for what they genuinely were – mentally ill people – I started to actually see how they could be right. What not? They seemed so convinced of their conspiracy theory that everything started to make complete sense to me. This is the take home message that a play can take characters that appear completely crazy to everyone else, and flip the whole world on its head simply through point of view.

Perhaps Bug is a good reminder of the importance of characters and perspective. No one in the audience liked the abusive character, but even when he tried to save his ex-wife, the audience was completely against him. I know I was happy for the two when they engulfed themselves in flame at the end of the play. The girl’s last monologue was a nice crowning moment for the character because with her understanding of the situation came the audience’s wondering if that situation was actually real. Of course it wasn’t real, but everyone questioned it just for a moment. Powerful writing.

Big Ideas in little places

Watching Terra Nova, really changed the way I will write in the future. I began thinking about what people write plays about and it made my head hurt. There are plays on almost every topic from the seemingly inane to the incredibly gut-wrenching. Terra Nova showed me that there aren’t plays about inane things because the play proves why a thing isn’t insignificant. Everything, no matter how small, has a story and affects people. The magic of playwriting is to find that significance in the subject and make it compelling. I would never have dreamed that someone could write an entire full-length play about the south pole, but as I sat I became more and more aware of the drama that the expedition experienced.

In Terra Nova there were lots of moments that harbored hugely emotional pieces. The one that I can remember most clearly was Matt reading in his journal about the three surviving men. It must have been one of the only times in history that a group of three people have known that they were going to die, but couldn’t admit it to each other. It resonated with everyone in the audience because they have all been in situations where everyone involved knew it was hopeless but no one would be the first to give up. With a few lines of dialogue, Terra Nova was somehow able to marry such a specific and rare feeling with a fairly common one and bring the audience further into a play that they couldn’t be more geographically or chronologically removed from.

This play was harbored an interesting lesson in characters. I really loved the expedition portion of the play, but some of my female friends did not. I realized that even though I may really connect to a group of characters, many other people would not. It was additionally one of the first times that I have felt such a strong connection with a group of people instead of just one character. They banded together for the whole play, and allowed nature to act at the antagonist. It is nice for an audience member to not have someone to hate because it frees him or her from the burden of judgment. Joey’s character was probably one of the most interesting characters that I have even seen in a play. I think he was perfect for the role, but also he had wonderfully dynamic and spectacular writing. He was neither an antagonist nor a friend to Matt, but his presence was always eerie and interesting.

I guess I touched on this before, but a play like Terra Nova is easy for an audience to connect to because they are inherently bound to the actors. In a play whose conflict and villain are rolled up into the harsh environment, everyone watching the play is able to side with the actors completely. There isn’t really anyone to hate in this play, so subsequently the characters become very loved. Each may have a flaw, but the audience is able to blame the harsh weather for their faults and root for the underdog humans until the villainous Antarctic kills them. I want to try writing a play with no antagonist.

Fences? FENCES? Fences.

If seeing a play is like watching a movie, then reading the script is like listening to the director commentary. I very much enjoy reading plays, but I think the fact remains that there is a huge chunk of a play that you don’t get from the script alone. The one big thing I will take away from seeing Fences is the simple fact that so much is inserted and changed between the page and the stage. So many little nuances are either added or removed from the page that the production that we saw in the theater might be considered a different show entirely.

My initial thought is to get mad about the interpretation on a stage. I had all these ideas for characters in my head (i.e. the father, the strong mother, Gabriel, ect.) and the people on the stage simply didn’t do what I wanted them to. As a person who wants to write plays, I am immediately thinking about how I can write everything so clearly as to ensure my vision is carried out. My next thought, and by far an easier and more open one, is the idea that a play is supposed to be changed from the page. A production isn’t merely the writer’s vision, but a huge amalgamation of a hundred creative minds together. Perhaps instead of pigeonholing a play that I write into my own mind, I might leave a character open ended and allow the director and actor to fill in the blanks.

I wonder what kind of touch is best for a writer to have. Too many stage directions, too-wordy character descriptions, and too much writer presence may spell death for the creative malleability and growth of a play. If a play is written in a way that it can only be produced in one fashion, what is the point of a company putting it on again? On the other hand, a play with no writing touch at all lacks everything that makes the play unique. I wonder what percent a production is the writer, what percent it is the actors, what percent it is the director, and what percent it is everything else? Is there a number range that most successful and engaging plays fall into?

Like many discussions of plays, this one will revert to Shakespeare. His plays can be set in almost any time period with any actors and any director and still work. Do they drip with their writer because of the flowery language, or was Shakespeare simply able to write in such a way that by simply saying the words, his vision was achieved? I suppose he is so stylized now compared to modern English that he will never be forgotten, and his voice will only grow stronger as our days increase. This is not so with contemporary playwrights, and subsequently they must find different ways and percentages with which to affect the final production.

I think now I leave too much to the rest of the crew. Even when I write sketches and see them performed, I find that the writing isn’t clear enough to get my point across even in a staged reading. I will endeavor to write in a way that is clear and personal, and perhaps once I have done this I won’t mind so much when the rest of the play diverges from the way I saw it in my head.