| A Full Evening at the Thea-tah! |
| Thursday, 26 February 2009 |
|
I am fascinated with the small canvas, but I’m often not-so-gently encouraged to write full-length plays. Evidently, people won’t come to the theatre (pronounced ‘thea-tah’ in this context) unless they can come for “a full evening.” Shouldn’t we tell someone? Let’s get a hold of Pinter’s people, and Albee too. And someone send Marsha Norman a text. I can pack into a one-hour play the intensity of a mother leaving her children, a young girl surviving her suburban version of the Vietnam War, and a son begging for his mother’s forgiveness. I can even write a funny little diddy to tide you over. That seems like an honest day’s work. The challenge of the short form is to develop characters and a through-line without wasting a single word, breath or action. Or silence. Negative space. Uncomfortable silences and awkward pauses that seem to radiate inside the small form. Consider the gravity of a 5-second pause in a 10-Minute play. When Margaret says to her now pregnant 14 year-old daughter, "I, um... I... I have to get the lasagna out of the oven... I'm sorry... I'll be... " The 14 years of hopes and dreams imagined for this daughter go up in burned-lasagna-smoke in the LONG 5-seconds after the oven timer rings and before Margaret speaks. Even my friend and mentor, Hal Corely, has accused me: “It feels like part of a longer work.” I used to get very defensive about this. Now my answer is simply, “Yes it is; it’s part of the character’s entire life.” Which brings me to my love of plays running in real-time. That’s the way we live our lives – in increments of time. Very little is resolved before someone has to pick up the kids, catch a plane, or meet a deadline. Christopher only has a few minutes to explain the situation to his sister before she has to leave for work: can he make her understand? After a year of proding, and kicking and screaming on my part, Hal understands me better. Maybe I've just worn him down... or, more likely, worn him out. In the short form, there is only so much time. Inside the two or three act play, characters can wander all over emotional terrain, plot points and beautiful scenery with an extra hour, or more, to kill. Short is a dead run with only a few benches to sit and catch your breath. Ironically, this is my longest blog entry to date. |
