{"id":90,"date":"2019-08-09T02:22:47","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T02:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2019-08-10T00:57:47","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T00:57:47","slug":"it-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/09\/it-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"It Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Think of subtext as to the left of the language and not underneath it. –Sarah Ruhl<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Riffing off Ruhl, my posts on dramaturgy are not necessarily faithful descriptions of my process but rather views of certain aspects of it from just to the left of the experience. <\/em>

After <\/em>The Three Keys of Captain Hellfire opened my director, David Lee-Painter (DLP) asked if I would dramaturg his next project, <\/em>This Random World by Steven Dietz in the fall. The idea of researching someone else\u2019s play was vaguely terrifying. I knew nothing about how to do it. In the past, I would\u2019ve fled. This time I said, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was that I began learning\ndramaturgy and researching This Random World<\/em>\u2014I mean The Clean House<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks after we\u2019d spoke,\nDLP messaged me. In about sixty days he would be directing The Clean House<\/em>.\nOn a whim, I sent him some articles on Sarah Ruhl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From DLP: Can you also dramaturg Clean House?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was so new to dramaturgy that I didn\u2019t know what I was making or what it was called. And now he wanted two<\/em> whatchamacallits. I did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research is an\nimmersive process for me. Consequently, I\u2019m\nvoracious in collecting information, possessed with a desire for thoroughness\nand continually frustrated by the nagging thought that I have not seen\neverything on the subject at hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I compiled history notes on 18th<\/sup> century pirates for the cohort producing my play, I quickly came to the heartbreaking realization that not everyone is interested in the pictureless, scholarly articles that I savor. Crazy, I know<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was my first lesson in dramaturgy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compiling my research on the\ntwo upcoming productions would involve rendering what I found down to its\nessentials. I wanted to create something informative and readable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Clean House<\/em> & This Random World<\/em> are\nshows well-suited for dual research. I found them to be different parts of a\nwhole. They would make for a crazy double-bill but that was not the goal this\ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both plays engage in making the familiar seem strange, bumping the audience into a different level of awareness, if only for a moment. Typically when attending the theatre, I anticipate becoming immersed in the story presented on the stage. These scripts deal with topics that are so much a part of our lives that it is necessary to bump us to prevent complete immersion. With a subtle shift, we as viewers watch something well-known \u201cas if for the first time (Jestrovic).\u201d From that prospective we are able to look at it, think about it, and respond to it consciously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johann described Ruhl\u2019s style\nas \u201cvisionary and fantastical. As though the playwright has a shamanic role of\nreaching into the void and bringing back visions that explain us to ourselves\n(Johann).\u201d The Clean House<\/em>\u2019s world has characters eating apples on a\nbalcony and being able to chuck the remains into Lane\u2019s home at a distant\nlocation. The two places exist in the play\u2019s physical world and yet overlap in\nsome fashion that allows apples to span distance and time. And they become more\nthan apples. These symbols of original sin clutter Lane\u2019s clean house with the\nmessiness of a lived existence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In This Random World<\/em>, estrangement is the underlying architecture of Dietz\u2019s story. He derailed the viewers\u2019 expectation by having scenes happen offstage or not at all. \u201c[Dietz says] \u2018What if I subverted this? What if that was a list of scenes that cannot be in the play?\u2019(Pender)\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A break-up is not shown to the audience but described by Claire after it has happened. Gary attempts to correct her narrative, but her story shapes what we understand happened. We are forced to rely on her interpretation of the event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dietz\u2019s various characters are expected to meet and finally<\/em> have a much anticipated encounter. They never do. Denying the audience this jars it into another view of the story and engenders a different response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Dietz\u2019s & Ruhl\u2019s writing styles are different. I find Dietz\u2019s to be more relaxed, easing me into the story and the ideas therein. His interviews read like casual conversations over coffee. His vision and process are apparent and relatable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruhl crushes me with her philosophical background. The course I took in college made me feel like I was drowning as I struggled to understand the concepts presented and here I was once more. Drowning. It was a challenge to analyze her interviews and then apply them to her work, to understand the architecture she built. The Clean House<\/em> was written crisply and sparingly. Sitting in the audience, I\u2019m not aware of the architecture’s presence but studying the script, I see the overwhelming strength that structure gives to the entire work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After studying and reflecting of the anatomy of their scripts, I reassembled them, stepped back, and looked at them holistically once more. Then I wrote up my findings. The Clean House<\/em> packet was finalized and sent to DLP shortly before he left for rehearsals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From DLP: GOLD \u2013 pure Gold. Is it possible to have this done\nfor Dietz sooner rather than later so the team can ruminate on this GOLD\nearlier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a good thing I love digging for buried treasure.

#DLPAnotherFineMess #theatre #dramaturgy
Photo by Daniel Haley<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jestrovic, Silvija. Making the Familiar Strange in Theatre and Drama: From Russian Formalist Avant-Garde to Brecht, <\/em>dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johann, Susan. \u201cSarah Ruhl,\u201d Focus\non Playwrights, Portraits and Interviews,<\/em> University of South Carolina\nPress, 2016. https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctv6wgmrn.17<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pender, Rick. \u201cEnsemble\nTheatre Is Growing, Thriving in OTR,\u201d Cincinnati CityBeat, Oct. 9, 2017. https:\/\/www.citybeat.com\/arts-culture\/theater\/media-gallery\/20978565\/ensemble-theatre-is-growing-thriving-in-otr<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruhl, Sarah. 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater<\/em>, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think of subtext as to the left of the language and not underneath it. –Sarah Ruhl Riffing off Ruhl, my posts on dramaturgy are not necessarily faithful descriptions of my process but rather views of certain aspects of it from just to the left of the experience. After The Three Keys of Captain Hellfire opened … Continue reading “It Begins”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[10,9,15,24,13,25],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramaturg","category-theatre","tag-dlpanotherfinemess","tag-dramaturgy","tag-livingthedream","tag-the-clean-house","tag-theatre","tag-this-random-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nwhellcats.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}