A quick note

Wow, okay. I just finished watching season three of Veronica Mars. They include on the last dvd the pitch they put together to try and attain a further season from the networks, and the easiest way to describe the change is from a hip young contemporary farce where the protagonist has to deal with her real life and her detective life to what certainly seemed like just another crime procedural... It was such a disappointment. Okay, BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING OF MEDIOCRITY.

Where did Noir go?

It is amazing how good Veronica Mars is. I almost can't handle the fact that the season and series is over. I found it a refreshing island of something new in the world of story telling. Noir, in my mind, is one of the most fascinating arenas of storytelling, and I love it.

There's just something so..... Deep about it. So painful. The noir hero is so conflicted and broken. They/he/she make mistakes and feel the terrible consequences of the choices they make. Sex and violence are bosom buddies. Everyone betrays everyone, and the secrets are deep and deadly.

And contemporary noir! How much potential can there be! There's so much perceived danger, paranoia, it's incredible, and unexploited.

It would seem to me, Noir has had a cultish following in recent years, but hasn't really seen a deep cultural popularity since its birth in the post-war years. So why? Every once in a while, some noir tale pops up and is lavished with praise and delight. I mean, I'm a little biased. I love noir.

My question for this evening is: how can we, and I use the pejorative we lightly to imply those of us playing in the theatrical sandbox, harness Noir for plays?

Tomorrow, I will take a bit of time to write out some of the characteristics that define noir to me, and in the following posts, I will see if I can explore how stage plays might romp in this gleefully dark genre.

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...

Breaking News

I am writing another book to a musical, and I am a bit afraid. I don't want to fall into the trap of crating a worthless piece of trash that exists only to make money and provide a modicum of entertainment. I'd like to follow the tenets I have espoused, the ideas I try and believe in.

I was reading an interview with a number of playwrights in the last issue of American Theatre, and I found a rather insightful thought: theatre, by virtue of its place in contemporary society, needs to be bigger and more important. We ask our audience to make increasingly larger sacrifices in order to attend our productions. We need to offer a product that is worth the forty, eighty, hundred dollars, we are asking for tickets. We can't put on something that can be shown on television, just another procedural or a crass commercial event. When we write a play, and ultimately I realize the we must be sublimated to an I, must take a look at the topic, the story, the characters, the show itself and ask the question, "Is what I'm offering enough to justify the sacrifice I am asking so many others to make?"

Is it?

Think about what we are asking. Not just the audience members, but also al the people required to put the show together. Director, designers, riggers, carps, electricians, costumers, assistants, interns, actors, understudies, box office staff, marketers, and so on and so forth. It is a huge undertaking. Does a play so incredibly about your personal experience which no one can relate to, does that rate the sacrifice? Does a broad comedy about sexual shenanigans within a golf office?

I just feel there needs to be more, and I will probably still write plays that are a bit to small, bit too personal... But I'm going to try to keep that in mind, that for my plays to be fully realized, I have to ask a lot of other people...