An MFA Thesis Production Directed by Marya Spring Cordes
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
WEEK THREE: A Note from Christian Fleming, AD
This week was exciting. Beginning the exploration of Act Two, added some new layers to the show's "message" for me. I, personally, would like to live in the world of Act Two much more than the first act. The difference between the two act's worlds is refreshing. This week felt more playful and more spontaneous.
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Some little historical comments about the Act One/Act Two disjunct. (Broken into multiple comments because, of course, my comment is too long.) In the original incarnation of the show (pre-Liv), the piece was really "all Act Two." The very first production was 85 minutes, no intermission -- just the three women on a desert island together. We found some difficulties with this: how to introduce conflict when you have three protagonists, and not have the conflict be just the three of them bitching at one another. Once the three were together, it was difficult to keep them separate -- to delay the progress of their bonding. The other difficulty was how to avoid "and then, I did this" ... where they just spun out stories of what they had done.
ReplyDeleteWhen Liv came on board, we went to an Act One/Act Two structure where Act One put each of the three in her own story as protagonist. Then we didn't need to do any "and then I did X, Y, Z" stories in the second act, because we'd literally seen the stories played out.
Act One is all about building incredible tension: the stories start to merge and overlap, and the character switching gets faster and faster. Act One is always more of a challenge to stage and to play. By its very nature, it induces stress and frustration.
Act Two has always had a different tone -- they've come to a place of refuge. Interestingly, there were many people along the way in the development process who felt that the disparity in tone between Acts One and Two was a "dramatic problem" -- frankly, it was one of those issues that I call a "dramaturgy 101 problem" where there is some "invisible rule" that says you can't shift tone in this way. "You can't do that" ... why not? I always asked -- is it unclear? Why can't we go to a different tone in the second act? And the answer was usually "well, it's so different..." And of course, that's what we intended. So we stuck with it.
The writing of Act One had to do with finding the right scenes along the course of each woman's arc, and "switching channels" in the right way so there was a logical progression from story to story, while avoiding predictability (not always switching among the stories in the same order, and avoiding always doing the same scene-to-song structure.) It was much more technical.
Act Two has always felt "of a piece" -- but it has taken many forms. We've had the women on a literal desert island, wondering how they got there; on a road trip (Agatha is hijacked by Aimee on the road, with Amelia mysteriously turning up in the back seat -- they drive off into the sunset.) There was a version where we had "The Vanishing Point" as a bar/curio shop where Aimee tended bar ... and I think a number of others. The challenge with all of them was to keep action moving forward. The bar idea was funny for a moment, but very quickly fell into "three people sitting around agreeing with each other." There was no action to move it forward. The road trip had an over-arching action, but was problematic in other ways -- for one, they'd be trapped in a car on stage the whole time.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere along the line we hit on the current concept of revealing that Act One had been a literal re-playing of their stories (rather than a depiction of reality using the theatrical conceit of three actresses playing multiple roles.) The theatricality of Act One always had a certain magic to it -- when the women were no longer playing multiple roles, Act Two felt less "magical" -- when it should really have felt more so. By building the "Point A" flight to a magical place, we found the solution -- make it a different kind of magic -- the satisfying effect of the trio finally coming together and having a transcendent experience together.
Act Two had many permutations of "circular healing" -- Amelia healed Agatha who healed Aimee who healed Amelia. Usually this had to do with Amelia changing Agatha's view on marriage; Agatha talking about the nature of mystery with Aimee (Aimee feeling that God had abandoned her, and Agatha talking about the need for mystery in the world -- the unanswerable question), and Aimee literally laying hands on Amelia at some point -- sometimes healing a broken arm or leg (when it was on a desert island) and sometimes just healing her restless soul (which is what remains now.) Although we tried our best with these scenes -- which were interesting -- the same problem always remained, which was that they felt like discussions of ideas, versus something actually happening. Too on-the-nose. There was a song in the show almost since the beginning called "Falling Stars" which was Amelia and Aimee sharing their feelings about the difficulty of celebrity. Although it is beautiful -- and gives us a duet, which we don't have in the rest of the show -- ultimately it was too idea-based and didn't fit in the second act. It usually sprang from the "I might as well be the Pope" series of lines.
One attempt to make the second act more like the first tonally involved us adding scenes where the women traveled to their own pasts and their futures. Agatha found herself on the tube in London, talking to a woman reading one of her books (played by Amelia.) "I've read all her books" "Really?" "Oh yes, all seventy." "SEVENTY??!!" and Agatha freaks out, returning to the Vanishing Point because she can't face the idea of having to write seventy books. Aimee traveled to a moment when she was lying in bed, depressed, ready to die, before she got up and followed her true calling. In that scene, she plays her own mother-in-law, Mrs. McPherson, who tells her she has to make the choice to live. It became too confusing, with too many layers.
ReplyDeleteFor a long time there was also a song called "Play Your Part" in which Agatha decided she'd rather go back to the world and live Aimee's life. Aimee takes Agatha's "part" and then they both tease Amelia about her public image. It was an interesting idea, and I liked the music -- but it again made us descend into bitchy-ville and ultimately got in the way of streamlining the act.
The scene that ultimately became Amelia's lecture used to be Amelia appearing on "What's My Line" in 1958 -- the panel is trying to guess who she is, and they can't. She's faded out of celebrity. Although it was chilling in a certain way, it seemed to say that the loss of celebrity would have been the biggest blow to Amelia. The director of a production in Annapolis, MD, in 2008 really pushed us to reconsider this scene. That was when I had my revelation (while doing the dishes) that what we needed was to have Agatha rewrite the ending of Amelia's story. That ending of the show seems so obvious now, but we spent many many years in search of that ending. Usually Amelia just made an about-face somewhere after "Red Herrings" and decided not to return to the world. Having Agatha write that story for her tied everything up for us in the way that we always intended.
ReplyDeleteOther Act Two things: the building of the plane/the Point A flight has taken many forms. Sometimes it was literally trying to escape from the island, having built a plane out of the wreckage of their lives (lashing together a tambourine, a teapot, etc.); sometimes it was a shared fantasy which Amelia would break; but we found it was most satisfying in its final form -- a shared transcendent moment when they really do fly together -- where Amelia is able to do what she is meant to do -- fly, without any of the world's barriers intruding. We used to have dialogue which (over)explained "Point A." But we ended up leaving it implied -- they are returning to the beginning -- to the passion that first inspired each of them -- adventure, spectacle, mystery. The flight has each of those things: it's an adventure -- it's spectacular -- and flying brings you in communion with mystery.