It's Anne again, intrepid readers, and I'm delighted to introduce another perspective from our recent adventure into navigating the universe.
Mary Watters was the dramaturg for our latest Inkreading of the play Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen. Mary is a keen observer and as you will see a beautiful writer. In fact, she herself is a playwright.
She's been working with Rebecca and The Inkwell team on Blue Straggler for more than two years. She was a fervent champion of the play when she first reviewed it (she was one of our intrepid readers for the 2010 open call for submissions), and she's been watching the play expand ever since.
Here are her thoughts on how the complex universe of Blue Straggler has evolved... and continues to grow.
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I just happened across the notes from an April meeting of playwright Rebecca Bossen, The Inkwell's dramaturg supreme Anne McCaw, and me, a playwright learning this new territory of dramaturgy from the other side of the table. The three of us had convened to talk over the next step for this fascinating play, which would be a full reading. Rebecca's first feedback to us: Preparing for and rehearsing the 20-minute segment of Blue Straggler for The Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage refocused her thinking the play. Although she remained true to the initial inspiration and the mad, mad world of black holes, she realized the play was a more universal story about love, loss, and complicated relationships. Since September she'd gotten clearer about her characters. She saw that she must let science serve the story, but not take center stage.
This April draft did what Rebecca said - and more. She'd taken many of the questions and comments from September to heart, or at least to head. She gave us an expanded peek into Lisa and Clarissa's relationship. Rather than hearing the two women reminisce about their first meeting, we got to see a frazzled, dissertation-dazed Lisa enter Clarissa's chocolate shop, then see Clarissa turn into a chemist/pharmacist/artist to prescribe the right chocolate, one that she'd mixed and made into appetizing art. We heard more about Ragged's universe and the rules that must be obeyed. We got a crash course in astrophysics to hear about the real rules that Lisa is bumping against in her quest to reach her dead lover. I was delighted to see that she'd left in a Lisa's monologue where she desperately works on a mathematical formula to connect them. This monologue was written the day before the play was read in September, and it sparkled.
So was the play ready for production? Uh, no. While Rebecca had addressed many issues, this is a deeply complicated play: a relationship that bounced from aphrodisiac heaven to final ultimatums in arguments, a brain-stretching venture into math and the inner workings of space and time, and mother-daughter mismatches that have never permitted these two individuals to understand each other. Throw in a little mythology and the afterlife ... well, it's no surprise this play is probably straining a whole army of muses.
But the rehearsal project worked its magic again. Lots of questions from perceptive director Amber Jackson and the astute cast she assembled... The ambitious desire to truly realize the movement of bodies in space - and how that helped inform the play (or even led to more questions)... And the already-praised meeting of Rebecca and Amber w/the set designer.
Rebecca had planned to call me Thursday night after her meeting with Amber and the designer. She did call, but in a wonderfully charged state. We'd been talking about the past and present, the many layers of relationships to see when time-shifting to the past, and, perhaps most important, the grave effect on the laws of physics that are experienced when Lisa gets closer to the mathematical equation. This threat, plus Clarissa's work on the "other side" to convince Ragged to give them a little room, could actually bring about a collapse of universal rules and the universe itself. So when the designer decided to make the trunks that "spring open" a real action on stage rather than the sound indicated in the stage directions, something clicked with Rebecca. We began talking about these trunks and what they could represent. She thought of them like that trunk in the attic full of secrets or family artifacts not seen for decades (the past). Or a magic trunk of the unexpected or one that is a passage-way. In fact, we talked about the desperate straits that Clarissa and Lisa are in, as they are together, knowing that the universe may be unlocking, hoping that they could find a trunk - a portal to a new universe or new world - where they could dwell together. Oh yes, and we talked about the nothingness before creation of matter. Then she was off to make some revisions.
Friday night revisions for a Saturday night reading? These were not small revisions, either. But Rebecca pulled it off. She came in with new pages and cuts to certain sections. Somehow, Amber skillfully guided the actors through the script changes, and they did a script-in-hand reading that placed the characters in the center of the room and at one of two ends using the back of the room to orbit in and out of scenes, with the audience sitting on either side of the playing area. Unusual staging is a norm at The Inkwell. Dealing with love, loss, and astrophysics demands the unconventional.
So I can't wait to see what Rebecca comes up with for the next draft.
In the first photograph above, you see Jason McIntosh reviewing the latest version of Blue Straggler. He played Ragged, a interdimensional being with a lot on his plate. In the second photograph, you see Anna Quiggins (left), Ester Williamson, and Shiela Henessy (right) rehearse a scene from the latest draft of Blue Straggler. Melissa Blackall is our fabulous, talented photographer (and a playwright herself!)
Mary Watters was the dramaturg for our latest Inkreading of the play Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen. Mary is a keen observer and as you will see a beautiful writer. In fact, she herself is a playwright.
She's been working with Rebecca and The Inkwell team on Blue Straggler for more than two years. She was a fervent champion of the play when she first reviewed it (she was one of our intrepid readers for the 2010 open call for submissions), and she's been watching the play expand ever since.
Here are her thoughts on how the complex universe of Blue Straggler has evolved... and continues to grow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I just happened across the notes from an April meeting of playwright Rebecca Bossen, The Inkwell's dramaturg supreme Anne McCaw, and me, a playwright learning this new territory of dramaturgy from the other side of the table. The three of us had convened to talk over the next step for this fascinating play, which would be a full reading. Rebecca's first feedback to us: Preparing for and rehearsing the 20-minute segment of Blue Straggler for The Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage refocused her thinking the play. Although she remained true to the initial inspiration and the mad, mad world of black holes, she realized the play was a more universal story about love, loss, and complicated relationships. Since September she'd gotten clearer about her characters. She saw that she must let science serve the story, but not take center stage.
This April draft did what Rebecca said - and more. She'd taken many of the questions and comments from September to heart, or at least to head. She gave us an expanded peek into Lisa and Clarissa's relationship. Rather than hearing the two women reminisce about their first meeting, we got to see a frazzled, dissertation-dazed Lisa enter Clarissa's chocolate shop, then see Clarissa turn into a chemist/pharmacist/artist to prescribe the right chocolate, one that she'd mixed and made into appetizing art. We heard more about Ragged's universe and the rules that must be obeyed. We got a crash course in astrophysics to hear about the real rules that Lisa is bumping against in her quest to reach her dead lover. I was delighted to see that she'd left in a Lisa's monologue where she desperately works on a mathematical formula to connect them. This monologue was written the day before the play was read in September, and it sparkled.
So was the play ready for production? Uh, no. While Rebecca had addressed many issues, this is a deeply complicated play: a relationship that bounced from aphrodisiac heaven to final ultimatums in arguments, a brain-stretching venture into math and the inner workings of space and time, and mother-daughter mismatches that have never permitted these two individuals to understand each other. Throw in a little mythology and the afterlife ... well, it's no surprise this play is probably straining a whole army of muses.But the rehearsal project worked its magic again. Lots of questions from perceptive director Amber Jackson and the astute cast she assembled... The ambitious desire to truly realize the movement of bodies in space - and how that helped inform the play (or even led to more questions)... And the already-praised meeting of Rebecca and Amber w/the set designer.
Rebecca had planned to call me Thursday night after her meeting with Amber and the designer. She did call, but in a wonderfully charged state. We'd been talking about the past and present, the many layers of relationships to see when time-shifting to the past, and, perhaps most important, the grave effect on the laws of physics that are experienced when Lisa gets closer to the mathematical equation. This threat, plus Clarissa's work on the "other side" to convince Ragged to give them a little room, could actually bring about a collapse of universal rules and the universe itself. So when the designer decided to make the trunks that "spring open" a real action on stage rather than the sound indicated in the stage directions, something clicked with Rebecca. We began talking about these trunks and what they could represent. She thought of them like that trunk in the attic full of secrets or family artifacts not seen for decades (the past). Or a magic trunk of the unexpected or one that is a passage-way. In fact, we talked about the desperate straits that Clarissa and Lisa are in, as they are together, knowing that the universe may be unlocking, hoping that they could find a trunk - a portal to a new universe or new world - where they could dwell together. Oh yes, and we talked about the nothingness before creation of matter. Then she was off to make some revisions.
Friday night revisions for a Saturday night reading? These were not small revisions, either. But Rebecca pulled it off. She came in with new pages and cuts to certain sections. Somehow, Amber skillfully guided the actors through the script changes, and they did a script-in-hand reading that placed the characters in the center of the room and at one of two ends using the back of the room to orbit in and out of scenes, with the audience sitting on either side of the playing area. Unusual staging is a norm at The Inkwell. Dealing with love, loss, and astrophysics demands the unconventional.So I can't wait to see what Rebecca comes up with for the next draft.
In the first photograph above, you see Jason McIntosh reviewing the latest version of Blue Straggler. He played Ragged, a interdimensional being with a lot on his plate. In the second photograph, you see Anna Quiggins (left), Ester Williamson, and Shiela Henessy (right) rehearse a scene from the latest draft of Blue Straggler. Melissa Blackall is our fabulous, talented photographer (and a playwright herself!)

Kristin is not only interested in turning the world upside down in this play, but also finding those parallel worlds we only hope exist and jumping into the next universe. Hope, a physicist, is building a particle accelerator in search of a parallel universe. Jonas, her boyfriend and EMT, wants her to live in the present. Chris, a hitchhiker with amnesia, and Schrodinger, Hope's cat (who lives in the quantum universe) guide Hope on her search. At the heart of the play is a story about a young couple - Hope and Jonas - at their breaking point as they deal with a horrible decision.
So you'll see in this next rendering all these trunks popped open by Aspen Trees. This was the idea from Collin that fundamentally changed the trajectory of Blue Straggler. Collin helped Rebecca imagine another element in the universe of the play, that there are trunks leading to different moments in time and space. She's taken this idea and run with it in the second act.

This is Amber Jackson working with actors on the latest draft of Rebecca Bossen's Blue Straggler.
That's Anna Quiggins on the left as Clarissa and Esther Williams on the right as Lisa in the Inkreading of Blue Straggler by Rebecca Bossen. Thanks again to 




And so rewrites happen. I'm still rewriting. Because a
reading has a different effect than time spent rehearsing with a talented and
dedicated cast in the hands of a gifted director. Things that seem to work in
the microcosm don't necessarily work when presented as a whole with the
playwright listening to the audience breathing. I'm still pursuing my stated
goals, most notably the one about getting out of language and into action. The
good news for Monkey Adored is that
it will go into production here in Los Angeles next Fall.
Usually, because I work in theatre education, my sentence ends with some form of "...to teach, no matter the subject." But right now, because of my work with Tether, I would absolutely say that:
I believe in the power of the arts to facilitate conversation and strengthen community.





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