First Reading ... the Wakefield Players get out the scissors

The road to performance passed another milestone last night with the first "reading" of the play by colleagues from Theatre Wakefield. Their feedback was politely frank. ...

"I don't get it."

"How many stories are there here?"

"Who are Marnie and Brandy and Lucy and Orlanda and Yvette and ...?"

"I think you have Alzheimer's"

And we didn't stop there. To enable a second runthrough we cut and pasted to create a shorter narrative that hit the highlites.

Three hours later I left on a high - feeling I have good direction for a big re-write, and five enthusiastic and talented actors.

The Wakefield Players rock!

Tell it in so few words

Second meeting with john found us on the porch of a closed – due to water problems – le Hibou restaurant in the newly renovated riverside mall in Wakefield. le Foret health food store was however open so we grabbed some major vitamin smoothies and sat in the sun ... this meeting was less substantial and more feellywheely – most of the easy poop has been cleaned up ... now we are down to figuring out what the conundrum in Mary’s life is that inspires – or not – the solution to Alice’s short story. I went home and did nothing for a week ... while bubbling on a birthday film soon to be youtubed ... one good Hardie suggestion was write a hundred word precise of the story so that the ending is clear

Balancing the characters

The meeting with John Hardie was compelling ... more Alice less Mary .... in fact anticipating audience curiosity about Alice perhaps she needs a second scene ... well this proved difficult because the first meeting was a random one ... so we I decided to expand the second scene ... draw out the process of the two women getting more intimate ... and divide the scene into two parts by having Alice leave in the middle (to take a phone call) providing Mary with an opportunity to opine directly to the audience.

Meeting your mentor

Last summer this whole process got a big boost when friend and theatre colleague John Hardie agreed to support the project with compelling advice like “just get down and write ... whatever comes out ... see where the story goes....” So we have our first meeting since then coming up. I have four Acts .... and still not clear how they should be ordered.

So I wrote a coupla key words on four identical squares of paper ....

In chronological order they were ...

“Alice and Mary meet”
“Mary reveals a secret to her kids”
“Mary’s Alzheimer’s cloud is down low”
“fundraiser raffles Alice story solution”

pacing among the tables at the Ideal Coffee shop on Dalhousie street I encountered a variety of people who were keen to be my random order generator – including one woman who introduces herself as a play re-writer for among other GCTC.

The solution which creates the problem

Starting to be able to articulate what makes this whole process so fascinating ... it’s partly the continual problem solving ... one solved means another created ... an ex-engineer’s dream! been struggling with how to tie the lives of alike and Mary together after the fortuitous meeting ... well it turns out that Alice – like her model Alice Munro – decides to get public input for one of her stories and raise money for charity in the process. voila the XYZ charity fundraiser at which Alice unfortunately cannot be present – something about a meeting with her publisher in New York – but for which she has made a little tape announcement hinting at her literary conundrum and thanking the audience profusely for their generous participation.

The loss ... the search ... and maybe the find.

Happy anniversary! Last weekend we celebrated mom’s passing. Not joyous of course ... but reflective. And inspiring. A wee reflection in the hills ... re-reading of letters from friends ... and some new insights into the characters in the last lost sister.

The script is now 26 pages long .... Slow but steady. Loss does seem to be the most present image. But as the scene which recounts the fictitious meeting between Alice and Mom unfolds it is becoming clear that the courage to search ... and be prepared for the find ... is also emerging.

And this provides a nice corollary to the theme Alice elucidated in the Virginia Quarterly review interview in July 2006 ...

Everyone thinks about how they can get out from under (life’s burdens), get away. I like to point the action in one way and then take it into a direction that is not expected. Maybe people find out that they have to get away, or people think they’ll get away, and they don’t get away in the way they think they will.

There is a tricky paradox here that may hold the key to this drama and it’s unfolding. Loss provokes both running away – pain, fear, rejection – and searching – curiosity, resolution.

Where do they lead?

Some Dialogue ... and a logic.

Some resistance weakened yesterday and in the last 24 hours I have written ...

for real.

Just started writing as the mentor said. "Start the conversation and see where it leads."

So as of 1800 Tuesday 26Jan I have eight pages of dialogue.

And a two act play concept. The first act consists so far of five short (one to two minutes) scenes of alternating dialogue monologue illustrating brief scenarios in Mom’s Alzheimer’s haze and what might have been her personal reflections on these. This scene is intended to immerse the characters - and the audience - in the haze immediately. There may a sense of chronology in our understanding of some issues – but not necessarily in time progressing.

Act two (maybe act two and three) is four scenes two of which take place early on and two near the end of mom’s life. This Act is meant to be chronological.

Alice Munro is conspicuously absent from this first draft.