Great Theatre

Sometimes we can find ourselves on the site of a phenomenal dramatic event. The quirky fates which seem to control the flows of the universe manage to put on some glorious bits of life.

Karoake is a great example of free fate based theatre. Live-ish music, awkward and usually desperate social interactions, and then, those little bits of weirdness. Tonight, for example, we have this young Hispanic woman, looking rather out of place amongst the wealthy pale elite of Westport. What's interesting with her is some tertiary facts, i.e., she is pregnant. In a bar. With a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And is clearly being ignored (and is upset at this) by the guy with the overpriced jeans, slick hair, and clever orange hair...

(on a side note, the gentleman currently singing is atrocious)

These sorts of characters exist in life, and one of my favorite pastimes is making up their stories. Inviting them into my little universe, the one I control in my slice of mind. I credit this with helping out my playwrighting. Next time you find yourself out people watching, look around and allow the characters you see to permeate your brain, and set them free on the page.

Let's take the people I see here. The Hispanic lady, I think her name is Gloria. The guy she's here with is Thomas. Thom, as he goes by, is playing beer pong with his high school buddies, who are closer to him now than family Lives with his parents, works in the City. Gloria is a supposedly surrogate mother, secretly pregnant with Thom's baby and in a twisted, and ultimately passive aggressive, move, she smokes and drinks in order to damage the poor kid.

I sometimes wonder if I am the only one who does this sort of thing. I do it a lot. Perpetually really. And it can be a bit of a problem when the stories I've concocted don't mesh with the greater reality, and I get a bit confused about what is what. What I came up with, and what they came up with.. But isn't that the game of the playwright?

I guess there's a grand question looming there... Why do we write? And, more specifically, why do we write for theatre? What is it about this particular medium that draws us in, and why do we sacrifice so much to do this?

I am going to try and facilitate an answer to this question somewhere in the coming days...