Concept:

"Script" explores the concept of a script.  This scene should portray the desperation of two people who are caught in a script they do not understand.  This is the script not of a play on a stage but of their own lives.  They call for "line" to a god who never answers.  They ask for help from themselves, each other, and the audience in the face of the "inhumanlessness" of the world and never get it.

 

There are three layers of reality vs. script"

Character (felice and clare2) vs. Person (felice and Clare 1) shown by accent and physicalization.

Read text vs. spoken word shown by the use of their scripts in their hands.

Real life vs. the world of the play shown by the areas on stage.

Stage L is Clare's side of the stage.  Stage R is Felice's.  Center stage is the real world, while USR, SR, DSR, USL, SL, and DSL are the world of the play.  If I had the option of a lighting design, I would have a glaring spot-esque white light on centerstage and ambers and blues on the surrounding area (hung so that half the face catches amber and the other half catches blues).

 

My actors only respect the integrity of the the spaces delineated for the sofa, door, window, and stairs when they are in character as felice and clare 2.  Felice and Clare 1 know that they are only chalk on the floor.  (most of the time!)

 

When they are reading directly from the script whether in real life/people or the world of the play/characters, they hold their scripts above them, looking up at them.  This provides unhindered sightlines to their faces for the audience while at the same time making a clear and stylized choice that they are indeed READING.

 

 

Composition:

Genre:  Drama

Plot: Brother and sister acting duo are abandoned by their troupe in the middle of nowhere with no money an hour before they have a performance scheduled.  Clare and Felice (the sister and brother) must perform "The Two Character Play" - a play about themselves and their own past they are in the middle of writing (they have never performed the entire thing and it is different everytime they have attempted it).

Situation: This scene starts in the middle of the performance of The Two Character Play, they are already starting to fall in and out of the play.

Message:  The boundaries between the realities we inhabit, realities we create, realities we portray, and the realities percieved by others are indistinct. 

 

Character Analysis:

 

Clare 1:

Who:  an actress in her late twenties who is commonly accused of having lost her grip on reality or "gone crazy"                                               

What:  she is performing a play she and her brother have written about their past

Where: a desolate theatre in the middle of nowhere.  there is an audience, but by the end of the performance they have left and locked the actors inside.

                When: evening on a day in the twentieth or twentyfirst century.

                Why: She doesn't know.  She has long since lost track of why she does things.

Clare 2:

Who: a female version of Felice approximately 15 years earlier

What: she is terrifiedto go out of the house and encounter people and their views of her and her past. 

where: A large house behind a forest of sunflowers in Anytown in the Southern United states.

when: midafternoon in the summer

why: she and her brother are trapped by the death and murder of the their parents which they witnessed almost a year ago.

 

Felice:

 Who: an actor in his late twenties who is commonly accused of having lost his grip on reality or "gone crazy"

What:  he is performing a play he and his sister have written about their past

 Where:   a desolate theatre in the middle of nowhere.  there is an audience, but by the end of the performance they have left and locked the actors inside.

 When: evening on a day in the twentieth or twentyfirst century.

Why: He doesn't know.  He has long since lost track of why she does things.

 

Felice 2:

Who: a male version of Clare approximately 15 years earlier.

what: he is terrifiedto go out of the house and encounter people and their views of him and his past. 

where: A large house behind a forest of sunflowers in Anytown in the Southern United states.

when: midafternoon in the summer

why: he and his sister are trapped by the death and murder of the their parents which they witnessed almost a year ago.

 

Felice 1 and Clare 1 as well as Felice 2 and Clare 2 are alternately antagonistic and supportive of eachother.  ultimately they are all the other has.

 

Props:The props and set are postmodernistically simple.  The Sofa, Door, Window, and Stairs  are drawn and labelled in chalk on the set.  The two props,are also portrayed in a similar manner.  A note card with the word REVOLVER printed on it stands next to the SOFA, while a piece of folded paper withthe word TELEGRAM printed on it lays on top of the SOFA.    The choice to keep a layer of artfice in the telegram which exits in the world outside of "The Two Character Play" serves to highlight the statements being made about the nature of the stage. 

 

 

 

 

 

For my final scene I have chosen to work with a portion of Tennessee William's "Outcry."  It is a show that I have been rolling around in the back of my head as a possible artistic project for a few years now.  It is far to long to be presented in a "Shorts" format, so I don't know when/if I will get the chance to actually produce it.  So I will work on it here in Directing class.  

"Outcry" deals with the intersection between life and art, memory and truth, the subconcious and the stage.  Through distortion, it explores the concept of the performer and performance, delving into the question of "what is theatre?"  One of his last plays, it has never had a commercially sucessfull staging, but I would argue that it is one of the better things Williams ever wrote.  

"Outcry" is basically a version of Actor's Nightmare.  Clare and Felice, a brother -sister acting team, are abandoned by the rest of their troupe in the middle of nowhere.  The show must go on, so they start a performance of the two character play.  Its a play they have written about their past and never been able to perform through to the end.  Since the characters they play are themselves, the lines between actor and character within the script are blurred.  I would like to take this one step further and blurr the lines between the actor (craig brookes and anna gagne-hawes)  and role (Clare and Felice) and character (Clare and Felice).  

My actors will have scripts in their hands through the performance, as though it is really a rehearsal - but it is a performance.  Lines that are obviously the fictional Clare or Felice talking about the performance they are in will be read from the script while other lines that are obviously the theatrical character Clare or Felice in the context of the two character play will be delivered as though they are not scripted at all.  

The set for the two character play is not complete.  I have yet to decide if my set will be just a bare black box style with every thing mimed, or will have minimal dressings: sofa or pillows and door.

 

There are two basic versions of each character:  Real Clare and Real Felice and Scripted Clare and Scripted Felice.  The first pair are brother and sister who are actors.  the second pair are the characters they play in the Two Character Play.  Scripted Clare is a version of Felice played by his sister.  Scripted Felice is a version of Clare played by her brother.

There are 4 main modes of performance 1. Real Clare/Felice reading from script  2. Real Clare/Felice speaking 3. Scripted Clare/Felice reading from script  4. Scripted Clare/Felice speaking

There should be an obvious stylistic difference betwen those portions that are READ (shown in bold) and those that are SPOKEN (shown in Italics)

Also obvious stylistic difference between REAL(shown in red) and SCRIPTED (shown in black) CHARACTER -shown in accents and physicalization

 

There are then, three layers of reality and performance being meshed together.  The interior box of the nine squares is the 'real' area where the outer edges of the stage are the world of the play.  Action/words can be within the real space given by the character but not in the script being performed, or be given by the actor standing in the world of the play but a part of the script.

All stage directions and nine-squares are on the paper copy of the script I will be giving Anatoly this evening.  It's not worthwhile timewise to transcribe them onto this document and I don't have access to a scanner.

C: Didn’t you say that you went out today?

F: Yes, You saw me come in.

C: I didn’t see you go out.

F: When you see somebody come in you know he’s been out.

C: How far outside did you go?  Past the sunflowers, or – ?

F: I went out to the gate and you know what I noticed?     

C; Some thing that scared you back in?

F: No, what I saw didn’t scare me, but it – it startled me, though.  It was-

C: What?

F: Clare.

C: What?

F: (stage whisper) You know the Two Character Play.

C; (stage whisper) The telegram is still on the set.

F: Clare, there wasn’t, there isn’t a telegram in the Two Character Play.

C: Then take it off the sofa where I can see it.  When you see a thing, you can’t think it doesn’t exist.

[felice picks up, crumples, throws out window]
F: There now, it never existed, it was just a moment of panic.

C: What a convenient way to dispose of a panicky moment!

F: Dismissed completely, like that!  And now I’ll tell you what I saw in the yard when I went out.  

C: Yes, do that! Do, please?

F: I saw a sunflower out there that’s grown as tall as the house.  

C: Felice you know that’s not so!

F: Go out and see for yourself.  Or just look outside the window, its in the front yard on this side.

C: The front yard?  Now I know you’re fooling.

F: Oh, no, you don’t or you’d go look out the window.  Its shot up quick as Jack’s beanstalk, and its so gold, so brilliant that it  - seems to be shouting sensational things about us.  This two headed sunflower taller than a two story house which is still inhabited by a – recluse brother and sister who never go out anymore...

C: Its such a long afternoon...

F:Its summer, which is our season, but after the after noon, we have to remember there are unexpected collions in an unlighted house, and not always only with – furniture and – walls...

C: Call it the poem of two and dark as –

F: Our blood?

C: Yes, why don’t you say it? Abnormality! – Say it! //  Now – lets close the child’s eye and light candles...

F: There’s no such line in the script.

C: (smiles) Tant pire che pecatto.  Meaning too bad.  

F: (breaks into desperate laughter)

C: What has struck you as so funny?

F: Madness has a funny side to it, Clare. – And we can’t turn back into children in public view.
 

C: That’s my line, not yours.

F: (continues laughing, suddenly sober) I haven’t told you something you’ll have to know.

C: You’re jumping a page.

F (stares at her blankly)

C: (solicitous) Have you dried up, Felice? (leads him to couch, sits him down)  Lean back, breathe quietly.  I’ll take it.  From where?
(pause)

F: When father gave up his –

C: - when father gave up his equipment, his psychic readings and astrological predictions, a few days before the un- inexplicable – accident!  - in the house – well, he didn’t give them up exactly.  

F: No, not exactly by choice.

C: Mother had locked up his equipment.  He became very quiet.  Except when she ordered him to cut down the sacred flowers in front of the house and said if he didn’t do it, she would.

F: Yes,  Mother, Regina made several threats of emasculation to –

C: “You cut them down or I will” (then diff. voice) “Do that if you dare”

F: And she didn’t. and he –

C: Was restlessly quiet.  Sat almost continually where you’re sitting and stared at that threadbare rose in the carpet center and it seemed to smoulder, yes, that rose seemed to smoulder like his eyes and yours, and when a carpet catches fire in a wooden house, the house will catch fire too.  Felice, I swear that this is a house made of wood and that rose is smouldering, now!  And cloth and wood are two inflammable things, your eyes make three!

F: No, four!  I’m not a one eyed Cyclops!  And adding your eyes makes six!  Line!

C: Didn’t you tell me you’d thought of something we had to do today?

F: - yes, its something we can’t put off any longer.  

C: The letter of protest to the –

F: No, no, letters of protest are barely even opened, no, what we must do
today is go out of the house.  

C: To some particular place, or –

F: To Grossman;s market.

C: There!?

F: Yes,  there.

C: We tried that before and turned back.

F: We didn’t have a strong enough reason, and it wasn’t such a favorable afternoon.  

C: This afternoon is - ?  

F: Much more favorable.  And I simply know that its necessary for us to go to Grossman’s Market today since – I have kept this from you, but sometimes the postman still comes through the barricade of sunflowers, and that he did some days ago with a notification that no more –

C: - deliveries?

F: will be delivered to the steps of –

C: I knew.  Payment of costlies has been long – overdue.

F: We’re going to enter Grossman’s Market today like a pair of –

C: Prospersous paying customers?

F: Yes, with excellent credit!

C: (at fast pace)  But we’ve been informed by the –

F: (at fast pace) ACME insurance company

C: (at fast pace) Yes,  they notified us, that courtesy they did offer, and I’m sure that Grossman knows it , that the insurance money – is – what’s the word?  confiscated?

F: (at fast pace)  Forfeited.

C: (at fast pace)  Yes, the payment of the insurance payment is forfeited in the – what is the word?

F: (at fast pace)  Event.

C: (at fast pace) Yes, in the event of a man – (she stops, presses fist to mouth)

F: (at fast pace) In the event of a man killing his wife, then himself, and–

C: forgetting his children.

F: That what’s called a legal technicality...

C: What do you know about anything legal, Felice>?  I’m not impressed by your pose of-

F: I know there are situations in which legal technicalities have to be,  to be disregarded in the interest of human, human  -

C: I’m afraid you underesteem the, the huge inhumanlessness of a company called the ACME.  Why, they wrote only three sentences to us in reply to the 12 page appeal that we wrote and re wrote for a week.

F: It was a mistake to appeal, we should have demanded.

C: And you should have taken the letter to the post office instead of putting it on the mailbox for the ancient postman or for the wind to collect it.

F: I put a rock on the note to postman on the letter to the – Will you stop driving me mad?  The ACME wouldn’t have answered with even 3 sentences if they hadn’t received the 12 page appeal – and – when terrible accidents happen, details get confused.  Now, will you listen to me?

C: Your voice is coming out of your voice box clearly.

F: We must say that what we saw, there was only us to see, and what we saw was Mother with the revolver, first killing father and then herself, and

C: A simple lie is one thing, but the absolute opposite of the truth is another.  

F: (wildly) What’s the truth in pieces of metal exploding from the hand of a man driven mad by – !

C: Sometimes our fear is...

F: Our private badge of ...

C: courage....

F: Right!  The door is open.  Are we going out?

C: See if there are people on the street.

F: Of course there are, there are always people on the streets.  That’s what streets are made for,  for people walking on them.

C: I mean those boys.  You know those vicious boys that – You heard them too. You were right beside me.

F: I was right beside you and  I heard nothing but ordinary boy’s talk.  

[at lightning pace over lapping through the following]
C: They were staring and grinning at me and spelling out a –
F: You said they were spelling out an obscene word at you
C: Yes. An obscene word, the same obscene word that somebody scrawled on our back fence.
F: Yes, you told me that too.  I looked at the back fence and nothing was scrawled on it, Clare.
C: If you heard nothing that last time we went out, why wouldn’t you go on alone to the grocery store?  Why did you run back with me to the house.
F: You were panicky.  I was scared what you might do.
C: What did you think I might do?
F: What father and mother did when –
C: Stop here we can’t go on –
F: Go on!
C: Line!
F: A few days ago you –

C: No you, you, not I!  I can’t sleep at night in a house where a revolver is hidden.  Tell me where you hid it.  We’ll smash it, destroy it together – Line!

F: I took the cartridges out when I put it away.

C: What good’s that do when you know where the cartridges are?

F: I removed them from the revolver, and put them away, where I’ve deliberately forgotten and won’t remember.

C: “Deliberately forgotten!”  Worthless!  In a dream you’ll remember.  Felice, there’s death in the house and you know where its waiting!

F: You have the face of an angel. – I could no more ever, no matter how much you begged me, fire a revolver at you than any possible, unimaginable thing.  Not even lead you outside a door that can’t be closed completely without its locking itself till the end of-  (she turns to face him.) -I haven’t completely closed it., it isn’t finally closed...  Clare, don’t you know that you haven’t an enemy in the world except yourself?

C: To be your own enemy is to have against you the worst, the most relentless enemy of all.

F: That I don’t need to be told.  Clare, the door’s still open.  

C: Yes, a little, enough to admit the talk of –

F: Are we going out, now, or giving up all but one possible thing?

C:  - We’re – going out now.  There never really was any question about it, you know.

F:  Good.  At last you admit it.

C: I’m just – just going upstairs to fetch your fair weather jacket and a tie to go with it. (turns upstage) Oh, but no stairs going off!

F: The set’s not complete.

C: I know, I knew, you told me.   I have gone upstairs and you are alone in the parlor.

F: Yes, I am alone in the parlor with the front door open.  – I hear voices from the street, the class and laughter of demons.  “Loonies, loony, loonies, loooo-nies!”  - I shut the door, remembering what I’d said.

C: You said that it might never be opened again.  (turns around) Oh, there you are!

F: Yes, of course, waiting for you.

C: I wasn’t long, was I?

F: - No, but I wondered if you would actually come back down.  

C: Here I am, and here is your jacket and here is your tie.  (holds out empty hands)

F: The articles are invisible.

C: Put on your invisible jacket and your invisible tie.

F: I go through the motions of –

C: The door is shut – why did you shut the door?

F:  - The wind was blowing dust in.

C: There is no wind at all.

F: There was, so I –

C: Shut the door.  Will you be able to open it again?

 

 

 

Reflection on Actors, final product and process:

 

I chose Anna and Craig for my actors because I know they are both experienced and experimental enough to understand the concept of this highly experimental and stylized scene in a way that actors from Int. Acting are not likely to be.  It was lovely to work with 2 such versatile actors, though were I to do it again I would try to find poeple who were less overwhelmed by the end of the semeseter and other productions who could make the commitment to memorizing the script.  Had they been able to fully memorize it, the differences between what was read and what was spoken could have been much clearer.  This was really the only part of the final performance that really upset me.  It could have been clearer, and I envisioned it clearer, between the modes of performance.  Had I been able to work with them from a point of full memorization I think I could have been able to coax them into a more distinct difference in physicalization.  I would love, were I to do this scene again, to add conflicting styles of physicalization that operated independently from the accents, to add a fourth layer of real vs. script to the scene.  Doing it again, I would also like to find a clearer way to delineate and label the set outlines.  It worked alright for this small space, but certainly would have to be clearer in a larger/different space and even here the actors had to read the labels.  Maybe a raked platform and strong white paint rather than chalk???

I also wish that we could have had more rehearsal time - when is that EVER not the case!?!  But again, due to the end of the semester and our busy conflicting schedules we were only able to meet a half a dozen times or so.  The first few times (bfore the inclass showing) was mostly table work, getting them to understand the different layers of performance involved, and I didn't nail down blocking until after that first showing.  But I personally find this to be a more effective method than straight out assigning them blocking the first time that I see them.  It allows me to see what their instincts are for the piece which quite frequently illuminates things I would not have otherwise seen.