Love's Labors Lost: Playwriting and Voodoo dolls

May 9, 2008

Playwriting and Voodoo dolls

I wish I had enchanted little dolls that would move around like I tell them to. I have Elrond and his twin brother, Aragorn, a Nazgul and his very big brother, and Sesshoumaru. All they want to do is stage combat. If they don't get to play with swords, they're completely useless.

I wish I could afford "scenery" for them too. This would make it a lot easier to get pen to paper. I don't know why, but I have to experience something in at least three dimensions to really understand it. Otherwise, it's all kind of a fog. For instance, most painting leaves me cold. I literally don't get it, but sculpture immediately engages me. Same thing with most poetry. I just don't get it. But music without lyrics often moves me very deeply.

It's hard to describe how often I simply struggle with words, how often the verbiage just gets in the way. Maybe I'm just not a writer.

4 comments:

Devilvet5/09/2008 2:55 PM
My thoughts...

Have you read any of Susan Lori Parks manifestos about the sorts of things she does when writing?

She says sometimes she has to stand or dance while writing. Virginia Woolf also apparently had to stand while writing.

So, there is nothing wrong with have ritual or methods or voodoo dolls in enable yourself.

So, if you need action figures (I call them action figures) to write then get them. Or make them. If that works then that's your way!

If sculpture engages you then why not get some clay and fabric and make your own action figures...that might get those creative juices flowing.

You have addressed in previous posts some of the obstacles the world has placed for you due to your identity.

When you say "Maybe I'm just not a writer"...It makes me hope that you don't turn yourself into your own obstacle. You know?
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Devilvet5/09/2008 2:56 PM
sorry again for the grammar issues. I never see them until after I send. I think I have a condition...I've called it lobster claws in the past, but I'm starting to think it might be a lobster brain instead,
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RVCBard5/09/2008 7:03 PM
Devilvet,

I know I'm my own writer's block. I have a lot of things going on in my life right now, not the least of which is unemployment, but in the meantime I'm doing what I can to learn more.

Speaking of playwriting, I've come across a copy of Artaud's "Theater and Its Double." Fascinating stuff, much of which I identify with. I'll probably post something about it soon.
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anonymous5/12/2008 11:46 AM
I knew a director who blocked all of her shows with the ground plan and a bag of m&m's. She used a different color for each actor and moved them around the plot to plan her blocking before rehearsal. And then when they exited, she could eat the m&m's. I say, bust out those action figures. And maybe watch a few episodes of "Robot Chicken" for inspiration!
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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