Day 3

Two different stories for two different audiences

No, I didn't work on my REALITY project over the weekend. Why not? Well, 5 of the 6 boys from my BFA class were in town for a wedding. So we had a mini-reunion, some good food, and way too much to drink.

Plus, my wife and I had to finish our taxes. (We did - YAY!)

Plus, I went to go see the Subway Series, presented by Ghost Jail Theatre and The Sketchersons. And it was fucking awesome.

I realized this weekend, however, that I'm not going to be finished the next draft of my script by the time the first week of my creation process is done. There's just too much that needs to be done. However, I believe that the work that I'm doing now is accomplishing three very important things:

1) I'm creating a detailed enough scaffold to be able to finish a really strong draft in the next couple of weeks.
2) I'm writing with production in mind, so that I can bring my collaborators some really solid material to work with.
3) I'm building momentum which will push me to continue the work when I go back to my 9-5 gig.

The third thing is the most important because, to tell you the honest truth, I've been creatively dry for months now. As tough as the process is, I'm relieved.

Er, yes, "scaffold". It's a term my former AD used to use, for our ETC creative process. Here is a quote:

"Sometimes the work begins from nothing more than an idea, sometimes a rough script (or as we call it, a scaffold) is brought into rehearsals, or existing material is sometimes adapted. From there, exploration, de-construction and general mayhem ensues."
Barbra French – ETC Artistic Director

I guess, in my personal process, it's more of an outline. This is what I'm using for each scene:

Location: I describe the setting here
Date: The year the scene takes place
Media: My ideas for camera feed, projection and online streaming
Description: Plot description
Background: What happens before and after

At this point, I've cut about 1/3 of my existing material, have re-ordered my scenes and am using the above format to help me figure out how much I want to keep and how much needs to be re-written in the next draft.

I'm also considering having two versions of the play for an online audience and an in-person audience. The idea is currently this: the online audience sees what the camera sees via a live-feed stream. The in-person audience can also see the camera feed via projections. However, there are three scenes that take place off-camera. I was thinking before of just videoing the action offstage and nixing the projections. Now I'm wondering if I should shoot some pre-recorded content, and stream alternate scenes for the online audience while the in-person audience watches entirely different material.

Ignoring the technical headaches that this entails, the play is all about perception vs. identity, so I like the idea of having different versions of the story that exist. Especially if the "real" version is more difficult to access - you have go in-person to see the show to access it. Although "real" is not the right word: both versions are "real". Just one reality would be more packaged than the other. (Which imitates the subject matter quite nicely.)

But maybe people would be turned off if they felt like they were missing out on something. I don't know, what do you think?