RIIIIBIT! (short story 16)

Over a year ago, as an exercise, I started writing one short story a week. This was something Harlan Ellison (I think) suggested to one of his fans, his reasoning being "You can't write 52 bad short stories in a row." I'm not sure about that, but here's one of those stories.

The story below was inspired by the one act play by Ferenc Molnár "A Matter of Husbands" written in 1922 and published in English in 1923 (hence in the public domain). His play is about two women and a man, where one woman is lying to the other. It's so convincing that the the reveal at the end is that she was lying. I wondered, what if both were witches, one real and one not, and bother were lying.

*
Fred Quibble is a lawyer with a schoolboy’s crush on beautiful BeBe. BeBe Majors, a young actress who’s full of life and loves to flash her glittery dressing gown with an exotic design. They enter BeBe’s dressing room and Fred shuts the door.

BeBe’s dressing room has a dressing screen, a dressing table with various make-up trays and bowls spilling over with jewelry. A flower bouquet sits on a small table between a sofa and a chair. Behind the chair is a small closet. The closet door is open.

“She’s a witch, BeBe.” Fred says.

BeBe admires herself in the big mirror on her dressing table and barely looks at Fred. “All husbands say that about their wives, Freddie dear.”

“You don’t understand,” Fred says. Fred seems worried.

There’s a soft knock on BeBe’s dressing room door. BeBe looks at Fred and points to the closet. He tip-toes into the closet and quietly shuts the door behind
him.

Backstage, in the hallway outside a dressing room, Jane Quibble paints a portrait of a typical plain, worried, young woman with a nervous disposition. She’s dressed in a modest coat, a simple dress and well-worn shoes. She clutches her purse to her like it was a teddy bear. Jane knocks again timidly at BeBe’s door.

BeBe opens the door. “Come in, I’m just putting on my make-up. Do I know you?” BeBe asks.

“I’m Jane Quibble. You don’t know me but I know you,” Jane says.

BeBe waves Jane in. “I should hope so, my poster's in the lobby upstairs,” BeBe says with a bell-like laugh. “What can I do for you?”

“I know how easy it is for you. One night you dress like an exotic witch, and the next night you prance around practically nude like a Greek goddess. You’re beautiful and I’m not. What chance have I against you? I admit that when it comes to looks I’m no match for you.”

“You really think my costume is attractive? I’m playing the witch in Cinderella. You know, ‘abra-cadabra, alakazam!’ and the prince turns into a frog.”

“Yes, and and I don’t want my husband to turn into a frog.”

“I’m completely confused. What are you talking about?”

“Give me back my husband, or else!” Jane shouts.

“Give you back your husband? What's this about? What husband?”

“Give me back my husband, or else!”

“You’re wondering which one. Brown hair, mustache, glasses. He is your agent’s lawyer, Fred.”

“Oh, Freddie the lawyer! I met him once ... yes, of course.”

“You’ve met him more than once. Just give him back to me. It’s a simple request.”

“Again, I’m at a loss. Why do you say I have Freddie?”

“You just admitted that you knew him.”

“Of course I know him. He drew up my last contract. A nice man with a beard –”

“– mustache –”

“– mustache, glasses, and blond hair.”

“– brown hair.”

“I meant to say brown. ... Listen, if you weren’t such a foolish young woman I’d be angry. Where in the world did you get the idea that I’ve taken your husband from you?”

Jane pulls out an envelope from her purse. “Then what about this letter?”

“Letter? To me? Let me see,” BeBe says.

“No. I’ll read it to you.” Jane opens it and reads tearfully. “Ahem. ‘My darling, I won’t be able to see you at the theater tonight. Urgent business. A thousand apologies. Ten thousand kisses. Freddie.’ What do you say to that?”

“Oh!”

“I found it on his desk yesterday. He forgot it to pack it into his briefcase. And I opened it.” Jane sheds a tear.

BeBe offers Jane a tissue. “Are you saying your lawyer husband Freddie writes a letter and leaves it behind him on the desk accidentally? A good lawyer would never do that. Their livelihood depends on keeping track of papers - contracts, depositions, and so on.”

“I see.”

“Tell me, has your husband been ignoring you recently, but he used to be attentive and affectionate?” BeBe asks.

“Why, yes,” Jane admits.

“It’s perfectly clear that your husband has been playing a little joke on you to make you jealous.”

“You really think so?” Jane relaxes.

“There, dear, you mustn’t feel bad. You think your husband’s in a world of perpetual temptation, in a backstage world full of beautiful sirens without a moral in sight. You both hate us and fear us. No one knows that better than your husband. And so he writes a letter and leaves it behind for you to discover.”

“It’s forgotten already, dear.”

“What was it, ‘abra ...’?” Jane asks.

“abra-cadabra, alakazam!” BeBe reminds her.

“Abra-cadabra, Ala-kazam!” Jane says with a flourish!

RIBIT! A frog croaks in BeBe’s closet.

“That’s it!” BeBe turns around fishes through her bowl of jewels. She’s already forgotten about Jane.

“Oh, okay. Well, thank you again.” Jane fades out.

When BeBe looks around Jane is gone. “Freddie, she’s gone.”

BeBe gets up, goes to the closet. RIIIIBIT! Freddie the Frog croaks again on the floor of the closet. BeBe doesn’t even notice and drops her dressing gown on top of him, as she draped her witch costume over her body, admiring herself in the mirror.

Notes on Randy Baker's Playwriting II class

Randy Baker taught a playwriting class recently at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD. He's a great teacher, the class was excellent, and here are some very rough notes (along with my own embellishments and possible mistakes) that I took during the class.

A playwright is a craftsman or builder of plays. The learning is in the doing. Many well-known playwrights actually dropped out of school. Playwrights learn by the doing.

We will structure the class by approaching it from the direction of Aristotle. He wrote in 300 BC the Poetics, and he discussed tragedies and what makes the story great.

What do we, our animal self, want from a story? We want it to move us emotionally.

Aristotle split what makes the play work into six categories:

1. plot or mythos (not quite the same as narrative plot),
   
2. character or ethos (not quite the same as a dramatic character),
   
3. thought or theme or dianoia (not quite the same as narrative theme),
   
4. music or melos,
   
5. diction or lexis (see also dialogue),
   
6. spectacle or opsis,
   

in order of importance.

In modern playwriting we often swap 1) and 2) in importance.

What does drama do? Drama is not an imitation of a thing but rather of an action.

For Aristotle, plot means something different than what we think of it. For him, plot means mythos. Mythos - myth or believe, or world-view perspective. For him, character means something else as well. For him, character was ethos, their a morality, their ethics, and how that affects their world view.

In modern playwriting, music could be referred to as tonality or poetry of the play.

Diction - the words we use, the type of dialogue.

Spectacle - the visuals, the set design, the location, the physical space used to convey the story. Where are the characters? What are they wearing?

Theater is defined by its limitations. It is analogous to the older history of poetry - when it was limited to meter. Aristotle's three unities:

• time - used to be required for the play to take place in 24 hours,
  
• place - used to required it to take place in one location,
  
• action - used to require it to have only one plot line (no B-story or C story).
  

For a recent example of this, consider the film Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight, starring Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke who, years earlier, had an affair with a co-worker Bethan. Quoting from the plot section of the wikipedia page for Locke:

Over the course of the two-hour drive from Birmingham to London, Locke holds a total of 36 phone calls with his boss and a colleague, Donal, to ensure the pour is successful, with his wife Katrina to confess his infidelity, his son, and with Bethan to reassure her during her labour. During these calls, he is fired from his job, kicked out of his house by his wife, and asked by his older son to return home. He coaches his assistant Donal through preparing the pour despite several major setbacks, and has imaginary conversations with his father, whom he envisions as a passenger in the back seat of his car. When he is close to the hospital, Locke learns of the successful birth of his new baby.

We see then that Aristotle's time, place and action requirements are satisfied with Locke.

"The monsters under a writer's bed" - notes of a talk by Randy Baker

These are notes I took (therefore it is I who is responsible for all the inaccuracies) of an hour-long talk Randy Baker gave to a group of writers in Annapolis Maryland on 2014-02-19 at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. The talk was sponsored by the Maryland Writers' Association. Randy is a playwright and teacher I wrote about in a previous post on the 10 minute play project.

Randy is a walking list of titles: he is co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre, faculty member at American University (where is Director in residence), playwright in residence at the Arena Stage, faculty member at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and the list goes on.



Here is his wonderful talk, in a nutshell. I'll be posting the video later (added 2014-08-21: part 1, part 2, part 3).

Writers, playwrights and poets all have a common problem - the monsters lying under our bed, those things that keep us from writing.

Monster # 1: A kind monster - the monster of inspiration. What inspires you to write? We all want to make people believe in something fantastic - think of the ending in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" (the husband is asked to believe and then the statue of his dead wife comes alive and they are reunited).

A tangent (one of many): How did I become a playwright? The path to being a writer is never a clear one. I always wrote but never called myself a writer. I directed and produced plays and even have being commissioned to write plays. Yet, for years I didn't call myself a playwright. Why? This leads to the next ...

Monster # 2: This is the biggest and most terrible monster: the monster of self-doubt. Some things writers say to themselves:

• "I'm writing the wrong way."
  
• "My writing will never be good enough."
  

Never talk yourself out of writing. I still have self-doubt - we all do. It is a part of being human. The trick is not to listen to it. Don't let it diminish your writing.

Another tangent: Stop talking about your writing. Instead, write it and show it to your writer friends.

Getting back to the inspiration monster - watch out for it and don't let it get in the way. Don't wait for it. It is a romantic cliche that you need to have inspiration strike you. Forget that. What you should remember is that writing is work.

A person with a good idea, with great inspiration does not a writer make. A writer writes as if it were work - which it is! A writer is a person devoted to the work and craft of writing (indeed, this meaning is at the origin of the spelling of playwright).

Create characters that want things and the rest will come.

Here is an analogy to keep in mind. Suppose you are a director of a play or film and you are preparing frantically in anticipation of the first day of meeting your actors. You prepare pages and pages of notes of how this scene should go and that scene should be blocked. Then you meet you actors and you find your prepared ideas will not work. They are not useless or wasted (you should always prepare) but they must be changed.

Writing is no different. You still have to prepare - perhaps one character has a hobby and affects the story line, so you do research on that hobby. Does that mean all your research has to make its way into the story somehow? No. Putting all your prepared research into your story may not work but that doesn't mean it's wasted.

When in doubt, I mainly rely on two things:

1. Look at the structure - at this stage of the story, what does structure say should happen?
   
2. Look at reality - what in the world around you relates to the problems being faced at this point in the story and how does the real world react to that situation?
   

Edward Albee said: "Playwriting is poetry meets architecture."

Would you expect an architect to say "I'm not working on designing that building until inspiration strikes me"? No, of course not. Writers can't say that either.

Back to Monster #2: The self-doubt monster also says "no one will ever read what I write". This is a biggie. On the other hand, no one asked you to be a writer. You must make that choice.

Monster #3: Loneliness. The stereotypical writer can't socialize well, thinks abstract esoteric thoughts, etc. Wrong. Writers must build a community, creating collaborations, and not be lonely. You must find your own community.

Remember: these monsters on not real. Stop listening to them, and write.

Notes on Randy Baker's "10-minute play" playwriting workshop

Last weekend I took part in a 10 minute playwriting project at the Writer's Center taught by Randy Baker, who was so absolutely great I have to write a post about it. The class started on a Saturday morning and ended on a Sunday night.

We each wrote a 10 minute play in 24 hours. That is 10 pages in standard format (12 pt font, in screenwriting format), or about 15000 words. This post is a summary of notes I took from what Randy Baker said.

Playwriters must know how to write a 10 minute play, and how to do so in 24 hours. Nationwide, there are about 100 10-minute play festivals each year, such as the Source Festival.

A 10 minute play is not a scene, it is not a comedy sketch, it is not an excerpt of a play. It must be a fully realized play, with a beginning, middle and end. It must be about interesting characters in conflict, with a beginning, middle and end.

Aristotle's Poetics:

• Beginning - backstory, central conflict, exposition of characters'
  goals, with inciting incident
  
• Middle - increasing complications leading to climax (at which
  point protagonist has a change of goals)
  
• End - Why the protagonist went on the journey in the first place
  

Always base an action in character. Wants and needs lead to action. Characters must want interesting things.

Q: How much motivation do you put on the page?
A: Tell the audience as little as possible to carry them along on the story.

What is conflict?
The best dialog with conflict is an argument exposing a hidden issue.

Make your conflict with ideas, or with additions, or with people. It must pervade the play. Everyone must want something a lot. Even a minor character must want something. No "furniture movers."

Have your character change, ask a question and answer a question, start a conflict and resolve a conflict. Think about your characters! Get ideas. Brainstorm. If you have good characters, the story will come.

Nietzsche: Tragedy is when two equally compelling characters, who have equally opposing wants, conflict, but one fails.

Rules for plays:

1. Create compelling characters in conflict
   
2. Get in late, get out early (use a little bit of time implying what occurs before that scene)
   
3. Create interesting dialog, said in interesting ways, not agreeing with each other, and sound different, be provocative.
   "Is that my hat?" vs "That is my hat!"
   
4. Make it visual. Make it specific and integral to your plot.Make it unique.
   
5. Worry about "What is too much?" How can plot ideas be simplified, yet have your characters complicated and interesting?
   
6. What is fun to stage and costume designers to design? If you know that ten you know what is viually interesting in a play.
   

Writers have so many excuses not to write. Never allow any writing "rule" be used as an excuse not to write!

Dialog in a train station, or bus terminal, or airport, take on an extra sense of urgency. Chekhov has lots of scenes at the train station.

The "Passover Question": What makes today different than any other day? (As opposed to: "What makes this Passover different than any other Passover?")
"Clerks" is a movie which illustrates a day which is different than any other day in the life of the clerk.

Plays are visual. They are not poems being read.

Think of the characters in a situation that is interesting and supported by the story and the plot. The location is a character and supported by story and plots. Location is a character in a play.

10 minute play structure

• pages 1-2: Introduce main characters (protagonist, antagonist) Show us the world of the characters. What the premise is, what the stakes are, what the play wil deliver
  
• pages 2-3: Something happens - inciting incident. Introduce conflict. (This can also happen on page 1, and can occur before the inciting incident.)
  
• pages 3-9: Complicate the story.
  
• pages 9-10: Restore the problem if the play.
  

Don't use the rule "don't write whats been done" not to write! Still, be bold in what you do.

Perception shift: "Planet of the Apes" is a good example. At the end, the movie means something else. Try to make perception shift a part of your play, but make it inevitable.

Good book: Gary Garrison's The Perfect 10.

For the project: Take your inspiration from a fairy tale. (Mine was "Jack and the beanstalk".) Do not retell. Why is it important to you? Make your character better than the fairy tale. Think about what this means to you.

I wrote a script titled "You Don't Know Jack", which was performed (as a staged reading) by 5 local actors on Sunday night. The first draft was due 9am on Sunday morning. We did a reading of each script and got suggestions from Randy. The second version was due at 5pm Sunday. The actors got a few hours to read the scripts before the performance.

Anton Chekhov - Stories from 1889-1893

This post gives a summary of the stories, novellas (if any) and plays of Anton Chekhov from 1889 to 1893. If you know of things which should be added, please let me know.

Short stores

1889

• "The Bet"
  
  Note:
  The bass of an episode of "The Twilight Zone" TV series written by Rod Serling.
  
  Summary:
  A banker and a young lawyer who make a bet with each other about whether the death penalty is better or worse than life in prison.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bet_(short_story)
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  
  
• "A Dreary Story"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1883
  
  

1890

• "Gusev"
  
  Note:
  Also "Goussiev"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=183
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27411
  
  
  
  This is one of my favorites!
  
• "The Horse Stealers"
  
  Note:
  A quotation:
  "If one reasons from science, of course, there are no devils, for it's a superstition; but if one looks at it simply, as you and I do, there are devils ... "
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=11988
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409
  
  

1891

• "The Duel"
  
  Note:
  See the entry in the Novella section *.
  
  
• "Peasant Wives"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=11917
  
  

1892

• "A Boring Story"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=814
  
  
• "After the Theater"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  
  
• "The Grasshopper"
  
  Summary:
  http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/chekhov/section6.rhtml
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=11983
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1883
  
  
• "In Exile"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=11866
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27411
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  
  
• "Neighbors"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1011
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13505
  
  
• "Terror"
  
  Note:
  This story is about the strangeness and uncertainty in ordinary life. How can we know what is right? How can we tell the good from the evil?
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1541
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13413
  
  
• "Ward No. 6"
  
  Note:
  Some sources put this as written in 1890.
  
  Summary:
  This is a long story (45 pages) in which we encounter the conflict of story versus philosophy, individuality versus abstraction. A lazy mental hospital administrator befreinds a patient and eventually becomes a patient himself.
  
  http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/chekhov/section11.rhtml
  
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=813
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409
  
  

1893

• "An Anonymous Story"
  
  See "novella" section for this.
  
  
• "The Two Volodyas"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=958
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13416
  
  

Novella

1891

The Duel

Note:
Wikipedia called this a "short story" as opposed to a "novella."

Summary:
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=304

Text:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13505

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Duel_(Chekhov-Garnett)

1893

An Anonymous Story

Note:
Alternate translations: The Story of an Unknown Man/The Story of a Nobody

Summary:
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12091

Text:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13415

Plays

1889

• A Tragedian in Spite of Himself
  
  Note:
  Also, "A Reluctant Tragic Hero"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7986
  
  
• The Wedding
  
  Note:
  One act.
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7986
  
  
• The Wood Demon
  
  Note:
  A four-act comedy
  
  

1891

• The Festivities
  
  

References

[C] A. Chekhov

• biography on Wikipedia
  
• bibliography on Wikipedia
  
• Short story list on Wikipedia
  
• text of stories of Anton Chekhov on gutenberg.org
  

[Y] Avrahm Yarmolinsky (translator and editor), The Unknown Chekhov, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
[Y'] Avrahm Yarmolinsky (Introduction), The Portable Chekhov, Penguin, 1977.

Anton Chekhov - Stories from 1888

This post gives a summary of the stories, novellas (if any) and plays of Anton Chekhov from 1888. If you know of things which should be added, please let me know.

Short stories

• "The Beauties"
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  
  
  
• "At a Country House"
  
  
  Note:
  The date for this story is unknown. Wikipedia gives 1888-1895.
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13418
  
  
  
• "Attack of Nerves"
  
  
  Summary:
  This story concerns the dilemma posed by the recognition that there is large scale human suffering in the world which the individual is powerless to alter.
  
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=29
  
  
• "An Awkward Business"
  
  
  Summary:
  This story illustrates both a conflict of conscience and a conflict between social classes.
  
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=959
  
  
  
• "Lights"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13414
  
  
  
• "A Nervous Breakdown"
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  
  
  
• "No Comment"
  
  Text in "Early Stories".
  
  
• "The Party"
  
  
  Note:
  Also "The Name-Day Party"
  
  
  Summary:
  A story about the wife of a lawyer who have a party one night at their estate by a lake. While she was busy as a hostess, he flirted with the female guests, hurting her feelings. Towards the end of the story it is revealed that she is very pregnant. She delivers a still-born baby the next day.
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13413
  
  
  
• "The Shoemaker and the Devil"
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  
  
  
• "Sleepy"
  
  Note:
  Also, "Let me Sleep".
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417
  
  
  
• "A Story WIthout a Title"
  
  
  Summary:
  Story of visitor to an isolated monastery. He criticizes the hospitable monks, telling them they should try to save the people in the local town who were sinning from ignorance. This stirred the Father Superior to go out into the town for 3 months. Shocked, he returned to the monastery to tell the monks of his experiences. He described drunken debauchry and widespead sinning. When he finished, he went to his cell to sleep. The next morning, he discovered that all the other monks had left the monastery to live in the town.
  
  
  Audio:
  Read by Kenneth Branagh on
  youtube.
  
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409
  
  
  
• "An Unpleasantness"
  
  
  Note:
  Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].
  
  
  Summary:
  A relatively long (23p) story of a hospital physician who strikes his assistant with his fist. He must deal with his own anger issues in the process. In the end, no one is fired and life goes on as before.
  
  
  
• "The Wife"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1883
  
  
  
• "A Woman's Kingdom"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13413
  
  
  

Plays

• The Bear
  
  Note:
  A one act comedy
  
  Also "The Boor"
  
  Summary:
  http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1080
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7986
  
  
• 
  A Marriage Proposal
  
  Note:
  A one act play. Written 1888-1889.
  Also "The Proposal"
  
  Text:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7986
  
  

Novellas

• The Steppe
  
  Text:
  http://www.online-literature.com/donne/1249/
  
  Summary:
  http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/chekhov/section12.rhtml
  
  

References

[C] A. Chekhov

• biography on Wikipedia
  
• bibliography on Wikipedia
  
• Short story list on Wikipedia
  
• text of stories of Anton Chekhov on gutenberg.org
  

[Y] Avrahm Yarmolinsky (translator and editor), The Unknown Chekhov, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
[Y'] Avrahm Yarmolinsky (Introduction), The Portable Chekhov, Penguin, 1977.

A tech perspective on "The Tempest"

These are just some random thoughts on my experiences of helping out with the production of "The Tempest", directed by Josh McKerrow at the Laurel Mill Playhouse.


The walls of the stage were painted by Josh using actual text from the time of the play (to symbolize Prospero's books):

First, here is my take on the play.

Act I: 2 scenes.
scene 1: Ariel, unseen but commanded by the magician Prospero, creates an imaginary storm which brings King Alonso’s ship, and all its passengers, to Prospero’s island.
In this scene several characters are introduced: Antonio, Sebastian, Alonso, Gonzalo, the Boatswain and ship Captain (“Master”).
scene 2: Prospero and his daughter Miranda talk about storm and background event (his history, her history, the events leaving to their living on the island for 12 years, and facts about the ship’s passengers). Ariel and Prospero talk and Ariel’s history is given. Caliban is introduced and has a discussion with Prospero, where his background is given; Ferdinand, separated from his father King Alonso by the storm, wanders the island alone and thanks to Prospero’s magic, meets Miranda and they begin to fall in love.

After Act I ends, all the characters but Stephano and Trinculo are introduced and their motivations are (mostly) hinted at.

Act II: 2 scenes.
scene 1: The characters Gonzalo, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio talk and Gonzalo tried to cheer up Alonso. Their personalities are introduced, with more background; Ariel causes Gonzalo and Alonso to sleep, which Sebastian and Antonio use to plot against their life;, but Ariel saves Alonso's life by waking them at the right instant; Alonso grows very suspicious of them.
scene 2: Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano and introduced; Caliban drunkenly worships Stephano; Trinculo, and Stephano plan to inherit the island.

After Act II ends, all the subplots are sketched out, all the characters are known, their personalities are introduced, and their motivations are explained.

Act III: 3 scenes.
scene 1: Ferdinand, still separated from his father King Alonso by the storm, talks with Miranda and they discuss their love.
scene 2: Ecouraged by Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano plot against Prospero’s life; Ariel causes them to fight.
scene 3: Gonzalo, Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, etc take a rest and envision a magnificent banquet; it vanished suddenly and Ariel gives a long frightening speech warning of their death unless they show sorrow for their past wrongs and promise to lead innocent lives in the future.

After Act III, we see the subplots more fully explored and be better understand Prospero’s scheme of things.

Act IV, 1 scene:
scene 1: Ariel, Prospero, Miranda, and Ferdinand have the “Masque scene”, where spirits sing and their festivities symbolize/bless the upcoming wedding between Ferdinand and Miranda. Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano further plot against Prospero, but are frightened off by strange noises of dogs and hunters.

Act V, 1 scene:
scene 1: Prospero commands Ariel to get the ship’s passengers together and bring them to her; Prospero casts a spell on them all, Alonso apologies, Prospero forgives all the ships passengers and re-unites Alonso with Ferdinand (now in love with Miranda); the Boatswain reports and the ship is safe and harbored nearby; Prospero gives up his magic and invites all to spend the night and hear the tale of his life on the island, before they depart for Naples the next day.

Epilogue: Prospero asks for the audience’s blessing and freedom with their applause.

Themes of play: power and jealosy, family relationships, forgiveness.

The atmosphere on the set was great. The people are very friendly but professional. I always found the work pleasant, even if it had been a long exhausting day at work. Here are a few shots I took during a break at a tech rehearsal.


The director, taking pictures of the cast duing a dress rehearsal:

I'm a complete novice to theater work. I might go to a play once or twice a year. As a fifth-grader I starred as the Pauper in "The Prince and the Pauper". I was unable to remember my lines and they had to close the curtain on me. I was not popular with those who had to share the stage with me! Jump ahead 40 years - a year or two ago, I asked someone who was teaching drama if I could hang around for part of a semester while I absorbed all that went on in a student production. I got in the way more than anything. That is my knowledge and experience with plays. With this production I was really surprised the enormous skill and experience that some of the actors had in this production, as well as how much work they put into the play.

Prospero (Kat McKerrow), Miranda (Shelby Hylton) and Caliban (Jeffrey Gangwisch):

Miranda hamming for the camera, the director, and Sebastian (Caity Brown):

Gonzalo (Tom Tomlinson):

Alonso (Penny Martin), Stephano (Marc Rehr) and Maya Wilcox (stage manager/set construction):

The director, Ariel (Diana Taggart), and the Boatswain (David Hill):

The director, Miranda, Prospero and Ariel share a laugh:

It's blown-out but it's also my favorite shot.

I learned a lot. I learned about what a really good director can do to a great play. Josh was excellent, both with the cast and with his knowledge of the material. I also met some terrifically talented actors.
I learned how lighting design works and how to work that particular lighting board. It actually is very easy and very hard at the same time, in a weird way. (Easy to make mistakes as well.) Learning which sliders do which is easy. But the hard part is the "muscle memory" of knowing them well enough that you can work them without mistakes even when you are very tired, the lighting is very low (essentially you are working in the dark most of the time) and how to quickly change from one lighting set-up to the next in time to make the music cues or acting cues on stage.
I also learned Shakespeare's play very well. For me, that was the main thing. To be a better writer, I feel as though I need to learned really great writer's works really well. It was a great experience.

I'll end with an amusing quote. It's not exact, because I don't remember the details or who said it or when, but something like this: An expert on Shakespeare, perhaps a professor of literature, was being interviewed about Shakespeare and said (something like) "You know, in spite of all hype, Shakespeare actually is a very good playwright." I agree:-)

Lighting design notes for "The Tempest"

These are notes for the stage lighting of The Tempest, performed at the Laurel Mill Playhouse, 2012-09-14 thru 2012-09-23, directed by Joshua McKerrow.

The theater is fairly small - with 60 seats for the audience. A diagram of the theater (U is Upstage, D is Downstage, SR is Stage Right, SL is Stage Left) is below:

A picture of the ceiling, taken from upstage center and facing the audience, is here:

Some of the spotlights (or "key" lights) are on, but the floodlights (over the stage) are mostly off.

Here is a picture of the lighting board. The sliders on the lower level controlled the lights:

You can see, for example, that under slider 8, there is a piece of tape with "DSC" written on it. That writing was totally unreadable during a show since the lights were basically turned off (except for a small red bulb) then.


Here is a table describing the lighting board controlling the lights.

slider number	function
1	3 reds and 1 yellow (floods)
2	none
3	DSL (= DownStage Left), spotlight
4	r4 whites (floods)
5	none
6	USL, spotlight
7	USR, spotlight
8	DSC, spotlight
9	USC, spotlight
10	DSR, spotlight
11	none
12	4 blues (floods)

Different scenes got different lighting designs. Sometimes these were to punctuate the actors' lines. For example, Ariel's description of the tempest to Prospero (line 317 in Act I scene 2) was accented with some red flashes at the point Ariel said "...I flamed amazement." Other cases were to implement parts of the script (eg, lighting during a storm), or to distinuish the mood of a scene.

To begin, being a complete novice, I read some tutorials. The director, Josh McKerrow, told me he needed a detailed lighting plan written out. I typed up something like this:

Indicated are the lines where a specific lighting plan is to be executed, with a few words of the "cue line" indicated. After getting a reasonably detailed version of this (that the director could use if I could not make a show for some reason) I gave up on this process. I had to create too much shorthand notation and I was constantly correcting my own notes. What I settled on was to buy a book of the screenplay with lots of white space on the page then write in pencil the lighting instructions. Here is an example:

This seemed to work out well. Most of the lighting was really designed by Josh McKerrow, who knew the play much better and had ideas on how he wanted certain scenes light. There were five lighting schemes I named with a special term: "normal" (all keys were on, but the colored lights were not as bright), "storm" (for Act I, scene 1), "Caliban" (which had more blues and reds, and lower key lights), "love scenes" (for Ferdinand and Miranda), the "harpy scene" (Ariel's speech in Act III, scene 3), and "oscillating" (for Prospero's "magic spell" scene in Act V, scene 1). There were other lighting effects, but they were simpler (eg, "set master to level 2", or "USC and DSC only"), so didn't get a name. This naming of lighting schemes made it easier to label the pages of the script, and easier for me to track what lighting changes occurred as the play progressed.

I learned some interesting facts about lighting, but mostly I learned the play really well, thanks to the fact that I could read it over and over, Josh knew it really well, and was happy to talk about it.

On "The Origin of Stories"

Here is my mini-review of The Origin of Stories, by Brian Boyd (Harvard Univ. Press, 2009).

This book changed my way of thinking about stories. It addresses the following natural questions.

• 
  How do we represent meaning in our experiences?
  
• 
  How does our understanding of stories contibute?
  
• 
  How did stories, or more generally art, or more generally play, evolve (in the sense of evolutionary adaptation) as an aspect of human mind and/or behavior?
  
• 
  How is one to understand the creative work of the author/artist (or reader/audience) from this perspective?
  

Here are a few quotes which might serve to approximate Boyd's explanation:

From page 14:

We have an appetite for information, and especially for pattern, information that falls into meaningful arrays from which we can make rich inferences. Information can be costly to obtain and analyze, but because it offers an invaluable basis for action, nature evolves senses and minds to gather and process information appropriate to particular modes of life. Like other species, humans can assimilate information
through the rapid processing that specialized pattern recognition allows, but unlike other species we also seek, shape, and share information in an open-ended way. Since pattern makes data swiftly intelligible, we actively peursue patterns, especially those that yield the richest inferences to our minds, in our most valuable information systems, the senses of sight and sound, and in our most crutial domain, social information.

From pages 80-81:

An evolutionary adaptation is a feature of body, mind, or behavior that exists throughout a species and shows evidence of good design for a specific function or functions that will ultimately make a difference to the species' survival and reproductive success.

From page 92-94:

The more often and the more exuberantly animals play, the more they hone skills, widen repertoires, and sharpen sensitivities. Play therefore has evolved to be highly self-rewarding. As for play, so for the cognitive play of art we can specify the
design conditions in advance. If there are cognitive capacities in which flexible fine-tuning and widening the range of options deployed at short and context-sensitive notice can make decisive differences - and out aural, visual, vocal, manual, and social skills all qualify - then individuals with stronger motivations to practice
such behavior in situations of low danger and adequate resources will fare better.

From page 156:

We think, remember, and imagine by mentally stimulating or reactivating elements of what we have previously perceived, understood, enacted, and experienced. Simulations appear central to the representation of meaning.

From pages 381-383:

Art is a human adaptation, its chief functions being

1. 
   to refine and retune our minds in modes central to human cognition - sight, sound, and sociality - which it can do piecemeal through its capacity to motivate us to participate again and again in these high-intensity workouts;
   
2. 
   to raise the status of gifted artists;
   
3. 
   to improve the coordination and cooperation of communities, in our very social species; and
   
4. 
   to foster creativity on an individual and social level.
   

The problem-solution model allows us to analyze closely the choices we infer behind a work of art. Storytellers' first problem is to capture attention. Each attempted solution to the problem of holding audience interest will involve different costs and benefits for both storytellers and their audiences. Storytellers will attempt to reduce the costs and raise the benefits of their own compositional efforts and their audiences' responses.

page 322:

The evolutionary approach follows three main lines:

1. 
   a problem-solution model that links the long term of evolution to the short term of n author making choices about this detail or that detail;
   
2. 
   earning attention as prior to generating meaning in the problems an author faces; and
   
3. 
   a multileveled system of explanation.
   

There are four interconnected levels of explanation appropriate to any work of literature: a universal level, which considers aspects of human nature in general; a local level, which focuses on particular cultural, historical, social, economic, technological, intellectual, or artistic contexts; an individual level, which assesses the dispositions and experiences of an author (or, alternatively, of a reader or critic); and a particular level, which examines the specific problem situation of the author composing this story, or of a reader readng it in a certain situation (for the first time or the n-th time) or for a given purpose.

Highly recommended.