Love's Labors Lost: Draft - Prologue (of sorts)

May 20, 2008

Draft - Prologue (of sorts)

This is me working out some stuff. For some odd reason, I write better when I post than when I simply type it or write it. Feel free to comment, but this is not ready for a critique just yet (namely because it isn't done). The scene isn't finished mainly because the rest of the play isn't. I may follow up with some notes or something.

I do, however, have an issue with format. Although I could technically put this as a very long scene description, is there an alternative method I can use to convey the flow of what happens on stage?

PROLOGUE
As we settle in and get quiet, we become sentient trees inhabiting a magical forest.

Other TREES appear. They seem uncannily humanoid, even to the point of having facial expressions. They “walk” by uprooting then re-rooting themselves. Their slow, lumbering gait, a sort of shambling, has a rhythm to it, each step like a drumbeat. One by one, they root themselves to a spot.

GIRL rides a bike through the forest. Wearing all white and a blank white mask covering her face, she looks like a ghost (which, perhaps, she is). She floats through the tress (who are watching) as if in her own little world.

CRONE arrives draped in a shadowy cloak that hides her face. Prowling the outskirts of the forest, she waits and watches, intrigued by the bike, this incarnation of human ingenuity. Girl notices Crone. She dismounts and invites Crone to examine the bike. Crone emerges from the shadows and does so. She mounts the bike and rides a little, swiftly and easily flying through the trees like an owl. Girl marvels.

Crone flips the bike upside-down. It is now a spinning wheel. She spins. Girl marvels at it. Crone beckons Girl to the wheel. Girl keeps her distance. Crone ushers Girl to the spinning wheel, a gesture both nurturing and seductive. She positions Girl at the wheel. Girl tries her hand at spinning but slips up and pricks her finger. Crone watches as Girl stumbles away from wheel. Consciousness slipping away, Girl falls.

Crone transforms into a powerful ENCHANTRESS. Girl drifts into a torpor. Enchantress laughs and vanishes. Girl, now SLEEPING BEAUTY, dreams of . . .

A DWARF trying out the spinning wheel then turning it back into a bike and riding away . . .

A blood RED CLOAK worn by a mysterious figure wandering through the forest . . .

A bloody GROOM dumping body parts into a sack . . .

A MIRROR beckoning all to look . . .

[more TBD]

2 comments:

anonymous5/20/2008 3:44 PM
Reminds me a bit of some of the Suzan-Lori Parks pieces I directed last year for 365 days/365 plays. With maybe a hint of a little David Lynch to come. Intriguing!

This may be a weird question, but I'm curious about weird things. Since you posted your brief production notes in your other post... what are your thoughts on whether the "dwarf" needs to be played by an actual little person actor?
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RVCBard5/20/2008 5:43 PM
Regarding the Dwarf, if there's a little person who wants to do it, fine by me, but it isn't an absolute requirement.
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Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932