Hello wonderful readers. It's Lee again.
As we jump back into another Showcase Reading (which goes up June 4th... I hope you can join us), I thought it would be good to look back at the last one we just went through a couple months ago, this time from the dramaturg's perspective.
Often times we all are confused about the job of the dramaturg, and The Inkwell has taken a lot of time and effort to figure out how the dramaturg plays a role in the creation of new works with us.
As we jump back into another Showcase Reading (which goes up June 4th... I hope you can join us), I thought it would be good to look back at the last one we just went through a couple months ago, this time from the dramaturg's perspective.
Often times we all are confused about the job of the dramaturg, and The Inkwell has taken a lot of time and effort to figure out how the dramaturg plays a role in the creation of new works with us.
The dramaturg's role in American Theatre has changed over the years and can be really different depending on the theater you work for. We could probably spend a whole blog talking about this, and but I digress. For The Inkwell, the dramaturg is a key voice in championing the playwright.
For The Inkwell, the dramaturg serves chiefly as a champion for the playwright. While the director is thinking about the structure of the play, the actors are thinking about their characters, and the stage manager is just trying to keep the rehearsal running smoothly, the dramaturg keeps everyone focused on what the playwright needs and wants to learn from this experience. They keep the conversations on track and they help the playwright sieve through the mountain of information and feedback they are receiving.
For The Inkwell, the dramaturg serves chiefly as a champion for the playwright. While the director is thinking about the structure of the play, the actors are thinking about their characters, and the stage manager is just trying to keep the rehearsal running smoothly, the dramaturg keeps everyone focused on what the playwright needs and wants to learn from this experience. They keep the conversations on track and they help the playwright sieve through the mountain of information and feedback they are receiving.
Laura Esti Miller is one of our amazing dramaturgs. She has her masters degree in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from CUNY Brooklyn, she has worked with the Public Theatre in NYC, and currently is the Literary Manager at Forum Theatre in DC.
Below you will find her thoughts -- as well as those of the equally amazing dramaturg Jenn Book Haselswerdt -- not only on the process, but how they view the plays we worked on in March.
Below you will find her thoughts -- as well as those of the equally amazing dramaturg Jenn Book Haselswerdt -- not only on the process, but how they view the plays we worked on in March.
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Included here are reflections on our work during the process:
Jenn: I was happy to be an Inkwell reader last year; I love new plays, and I love the coffee-shop debates that follow the individual play-reading from my couch. Which plays fit The Inkwell's aesthetic? Which have beautiful and challenging language and evocative visuals? During the reading process, I absolutely fell in love with the three plays that ultimately wound up being explored during the Blood and Guts Showcase -- The Body, Twigs and Bone, and Cassandra. None of them were like anything I've read before, and when I was asked to dramaturg excerpts for two of them, I leapt at the chance.
Having an opportunity to look at a 20-minute excerpt is advantageous both to the playwright and to The Inkwell. The playwright gets a chance to work on a small snippet that they think needs the most work, whether it's in the middle of the play or at the end. It gives us a chance to take a concentrated look at the relationships and circumstances in the play, along with the structure. It gives The Inkwell a chance to get to know a new playwright, his/her work, and what s/he is like to interact with. And it gives an audience a small taste of a new play, which will hopefully intrigue them enough to want to see a full production later on down the line.
It's an exciting part of the process, and one that I relish. Of course, I like these three plays a great deal, and can't wait to work with them further (a fact proved during the talk-back session when I started talking at great length about what we didn't get a chance to see in The Body -- though I will point out that I didn't spoil the ending).
Laura: Since I came to the Inkwell during the open call for submissions this past year, I've had the chance to be part of the development process from an early stage, which has been an incredible joy. Watching and interacting with other artists as we make progress on our own artistic journeys will never cease to inspire me and I am thrilled that, as an Inkwell dramaturg, I get to be a part of so many fascinating adventures.
One part of the process I find especially illuminating and helpful is a phone call between the playwrights, director, dramaturgs, and an Inkwell staff member -- in this case, the remarkable Anne McCaw. Not only is it a way to introduce ourselves before spending a few hours together in a rehearsal room; it is a way to make sure the team members are working towards the same goals during the rehearsal and reading.
Anne encourages the playwrights to discuss what they are currently working on within the plays, what they might be stuck on, what areas they might want to focus on for the reading. This call gives each playwright the chance to speak candidly about their work, and it gives the team the opportunity to focus on a manageable chunk of the play for the 20-minute excerpt. Dramaturgs also get an unusual opportunity when working on these showcase readings for The Inkwell. We get to introduce each play to the audience and gush about what we love about them.
Below are the notes Jenn and I shared with the audience on March 5th about The Body by Steve Moulds, Twigs and Bone by Tiffany Antone, and Cassandra by Katharine Sherman.
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The Body
by Steve Moulds
What would you do if you were stuck at home alone with your anxiety-ridden stepdaughter? What if she wouldn't stop reminding you that you weren't her "real dad," and that you don't follow her mom's rules? What if you have trouble sleeping, a trait that slowly begins to creep into your day?
In this play, Joe faces a tenuous relationship with his stepdaughter, Abby. His wife, Lauren, is out of town, and he is unemployed, left to care for Abby during her summer vacation. One day, a life-sized rag doll with no face and an enigmatic instruction manual arrives on their doorstep. Joe and Abby set to work trying to decipher the instruction manual, but soon find more differences than similarities as the doll begins to wreak psychic havoc on their waking and dream lives.
We love the growing sense of dread in this play, and the constantly blurring line between dreaming and reality. Steve's exploration of the tenuous stepfather-stepchild relationship is one that doesn't appear often in dramatic literature, and one that immediately presents actors with a sense of tension. His use of language and pacing lends a sense of near-gothic dread to a very real-life situation. One of our readers gave the compliment, "It's like a horror film on stage!"
Tonight's excerpt explores Joe and Abby's shifting reality after the doll has been in their home for several days. Dreams have started to invade reality, and the world around them is changing. We find ourselves asking the question, what happens if we enter the dream and don't wake up again?
Twigs and Bone
By Tiffany Antone
They say you can't go home again...But what happens when you do? In Twigs and Bone, Moira returns to the home she hasn't visited in eight years, to find her parents are different from the people she left behind. Moira is a big-city lawyer, and her parents live in a small country house, surrounded by trees, dirt, and the smells of nature. And then nature starts encroaching on the house...
Our excerpt takes place during act 2 of the play. By this point, nature has invaded the house to the point where the entire ground floor is filled with dirt. It has literally buried Moira's father, William. Moira is left alone in the storm with her mother, Bonnie, whose only goal is to protect a bundle of twigs she is raising as a new daughter, Maeb. The bundle of twigs has replaced another daughter--also named Maeb--who was weak for most of her life, and died in a hospital years ago, leaving Moira a bereaved only child.
The Inkwell's readers were fascinated by Tiffany's use of language and the organic, natural qualities of the play. The script has brought gothic melodrama into a modern milieu, and has given us characters and relationships we can understand as actual people. Tiffany's scope, vision, and grasp of things dark and scary were incredibly intriguing to us. The feeling of dread as nature makes its presence increasingly known in the house is very creepy, and the structure of the play gives the audience just enough information as they need it, leaving a delicious sense of mystery around who William, Bonnie, and Maeb are.
Twigs and Bone raises many interesting questions surrounding family and the larger world around us, as we explore mother versus daughter, science versus spirituality, modernism versus the traditions of the old world--specifically, fairies and paganism. And ultimately, we find ourselves wondering: even amidst family, is anything we do ever not selfish?
Cassandra
By Katharine Sherman
Katharine Sherman's Cassandra is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth from Cassandra's perspective. As a young, beautiful princess of Troy, Cassandra caught the eye of the god Apollo. They make an arrangement -- Apollo grants Cassandra the blessing of foresight in exchange for sex. When Cassandra breaks her promise, Apollo retaliates by poisoning the gift he has already bestowed upon her. She will be able to see the future, but no one will believe her prophecies.
Inkwell readers loved this fresh take on the story through Katharine's eyes. We were fascinated by the way that others in the play relate to Cassandra and her perceived madness and mesmerized by just how far into the future Cassandra can see. Cassandra has the unique ability to see her own current events and future tragic events in one moment, and though she knows the inevitable outcome, she still fights for even the tiniest difference -- she holds out for hope.
In this excerpt, we focus on key moments when things "get twisted," as our playwright says. First, Apollo and Cassandra attempt a gift exchange that goes sour. Cassandra then reveals, through perhaps the-not-so-familiar tale of Cinderella just how overwhelming and devastating seeing the future can be. Cassandra has another psychological test of wills with her would-be lover Apollo, and finally, on the brink of tragedy, she is able to enjoy a few moments of unlikely friendship with her sister-in-law, Helen, the only person she knows who has been treated as badly by the gods as herself.
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