Sunday, December 18, 2005
dreams
In 1999, I directed Pre-Paradise Sorry Now by Fassbinder, my first play in New York, at the now defunct Present Company Theatorium on Stanton. I loved that show, the process, the cast. One of my cast members asked me if I would direct her in Brilliant Traces, a two-hander from the 80s involving a rugged mountain man whose hermitude gets interrupted by the appearance of a neurotic city-girl in her wedding dress. I said no--the play seemed like clever but facile living room soap opera, and I wasn't interested.
Two weeks after the show closed, I had the following dream:
Pre-Paradise had been extended. I went to see it--and it had been hijacked by these horrible arty schoolmates of mine who had jacked up the "experimental" quotient, having two actors shout to each other in German:
"Mother?!"
"No!"
"Mother?!"
"No!"
I was horrified--left the theater--but now the Present Company was a multi-space complex. The second theater was showing Brilliant Traces. I walked in and watched. The show was being performed true to its nature--as a silly but committed soap opera veering between the ridiculous and supernaturalistic. At one point, when the sexual tension got really hot between the two characters, all these scantily-clad performers began sliding down ropes from the flies, doing a sexy dance-type thing. Backstage, they created a bathroom backstage, part of the set the audience would see but no one else could--for an added touch had three different patterns of white toilet paper--such a precise and careful touch.
I was so impressed--envious, really. "Why didn't I think of that?" I thought, as I watched this play being successful. The play (in my dream, of course) was successful simply by BEING WHAT IT IS--being itself fully, meaning occasionally against or beyond its own conventions.
I woke up thinking--that's what directing is! You figure out exactly what a play is--not what you want it to be, what it is--then just do that. Not interpret over what the text allows, but realize the text--both on its own terms and in a larger context.
I need to keep that in mind as I work through Miss Saigon, which, surprisingly to me, is pretty water-tight. I have to figure out exactly what it is--with both its flaws and successes, and just do that.
Two weeks after the show closed, I had the following dream:
Pre-Paradise had been extended. I went to see it--and it had been hijacked by these horrible arty schoolmates of mine who had jacked up the "experimental" quotient, having two actors shout to each other in German:
"Mother?!"
"No!"
"Mother?!"
"No!"
I was horrified--left the theater--but now the Present Company was a multi-space complex. The second theater was showing Brilliant Traces. I walked in and watched. The show was being performed true to its nature--as a silly but committed soap opera veering between the ridiculous and supernaturalistic. At one point, when the sexual tension got really hot between the two characters, all these scantily-clad performers began sliding down ropes from the flies, doing a sexy dance-type thing. Backstage, they created a bathroom backstage, part of the set the audience would see but no one else could--for an added touch had three different patterns of white toilet paper--such a precise and careful touch.
I was so impressed--envious, really. "Why didn't I think of that?" I thought, as I watched this play being successful. The play (in my dream, of course) was successful simply by BEING WHAT IT IS--being itself fully, meaning occasionally against or beyond its own conventions.
I woke up thinking--that's what directing is! You figure out exactly what a play is--not what you want it to be, what it is--then just do that. Not interpret over what the text allows, but realize the text--both on its own terms and in a larger context.
I need to keep that in mind as I work through Miss Saigon, which, surprisingly to me, is pretty water-tight. I have to figure out exactly what it is--with both its flaws and successes, and just do that.
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