Open Wardrobes

For the last month or so I have been playing around with ideas for a one-man show I want to write and perform. Yesterday I spent several hours taking the various bits and pieces I had written and tried to put them into something resembling a coherent draft. I made a good start on that yesterday while Kelly and I sat at Nina's Coffee Shop in Saint Paul (that's the one that sits above Garrison Keillor's bookstore). Kelly has been working on her NaNoWriMo book (she's at over 18,000 words so far, not bad for just 8 days) while I worked on the show.


Writing a one-man show is very different from anything else I've done. It certainly imposes a great limitation on the piece, one which I've never had to deal with before. Normally while I have a sense of roughly how many characters will be in a play I still have to freedom to change it as the story requires. But here, how ever many characters the story needs, they all have to be portrayed by the same person. And in this case that is myself, since I intend to be the one to perform it. Claudia asked me the other day how the show was going, and my response was that it is rather daunting to put something together that you are 100% responsible for. As both the author and sole actor, I can't blame anyone else if it doesn't go well!


So yesterday I pieced some things together, made some notes about bits that need to be worked in later. I know the central conflict at least and am working through the overall shape. Once that's done I will try and get some feedback from others to see if I am going in a good direction or not. I am at the stage of trying not to worry about how good the piece is, but just to write. Maybe I will have to scrap it all and start fresh, maybe it will all work. Most likely it will be somewhere in-between: there will be pieces I can use, other parts will need to be tossed, and I will start to rebuild the piece into something better.

Last night was my third rehearsal for Hanging of the Greens which will be entirely blocked come Monday. So I've now had a couple of nights working with all the kids onstage and I have to say, they are a great bunch. When you play a family with others onstage and don't yet know everyone that well, it takes a little while to build that family chemistry, but we're already well on our way. These kids are incredibly expressive, they know how to react, and already I can start to see them interacting together as a family. I only knew one of the kids prior to this show (Ali, who plays my oldest daughter Keera), and so I feel that I'm still getting to know them, but I am enjoying every minute of the process. I have seven kids in this show (which is exactly 7 more than I have in real life) and each of them just seem to fit the part given to them. The youngest two (in terms of characters, I haven't quite figured out everyone's real life ages) who play twins Regan and Morgan, make a great team. Watching them I feel that they must be actual sisters (they aren't), so tangible is the twin connction between them. I love how these two characters were written, the one twin quiet and the other rowdy, but still the sense that they are an inseperable duo. There is a moment when I as the father have to pull Regan, the rowdy twin, aside to reprimand her for some mischief... and the penitent, puppy-dog eyes I receive are enough to melt anyone's heart. And so, in character, it is hard to be angry. When it comes to his children Briant is definitely something of a pushover and most of the discipline is left to his wife Aleena. There is a moment too when 12 children at once give the puppy-dog eyes to all the adults - surely this must qualify as some kind of psychological warfare? I think if you put enough children together, all making those sad eyes, even the most stone-hearted person can be made to do anything! (Clearly if I ever have children I too will be a pushover!)


So it is going very well, and to have these sweet moments already, after just a week and a half, portends great things for the performances. As for myself, I am still searching for exactly who Briant is, his relationship with each of his children, with Aleena, and so on. For me, when I can figure out the physicality of the character, that usually is when things really start to click. (One of the reasons I like to be able to put down the script as soon as possible.) My next rehearsal is Monday, so if I am wise I shall spend much of the time between now and then thinking about these very things.

Now that I've sent this off to a couple of contests, I've put the final draft of The Last Anniversary on my website here. Now I have no excuse but to buckle down on that one-man show...