Fairytales, Dragons and “Clockwork Child”: Playwright Garret Schneider’s Blog #2
7There is a quote which I read while researching a play about futuristic high school students living in northern Maine (which is a story for another time). While the play has joined my burn-pile, the quote has stayed with me:
“Fairytales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.” -G.K. Chesterton
So many times we have an idea: a play idea, a character idea, a lesson plan, a way in which the world should look, and we either try to create that idea, or justify it. Once we either justify it or create it, we think we’ve done our job pretty well.
But think of all of the skits that you have to sit through when you’re watching Saturday Night Live (do people still watch that?), or the plays where a director puts the idea of the play onstage, or a ten-minute play where the writer though it would be deep to put five historical figures onstage and have them talk about themselves.
I don’t care if you can put historical figures onstage, I don’t care that your concept of a twist ending is to make the old lady the devil, I don’t care if this episode of celebrity jeopardy has two Sean Connery’s. It doesn’t matter that dragons exist. What matters is what you do with them when they come to you.
So many times I think that the idea is good enough, that having a cool concept makes a good play. And then I start writing it, and remember that the characters carry that concept. That the more time I spend explaining the concept into the world, the longer it takes for my play to start.
In writing Clockwork Child, I spent pages and pages trying to explain a world where a 19th Century mathematician on her deathbed could be rocketed back in time. I laid the traps and organized it so that the audience could get a nice little jolt when it happened.
Then I realized that it didn’t matter. That no one wanted to see a play which so laboriously tried to setup time travel. If I was in the audience, I wouldn’t care about the mental games Ada Lovelace plays with herself to prove that she hasn’t gone back in time. That’s ridiculous. I don’t want to see a time-travel play. I don’t want to see a Victorean England play. I want to see a work which has the audacity to use both of those in a way which speaks to me right now.
Time travel exists. Great. So what. What are you going to show me about it right now?? Well, I am going to show you a woman going back in time and mentally abusing her younger self so that she is too scarred to ever become a scientist. And she won’t do it by yelling. She’ll do it by finding what her younger self loves most, and encouraging her to take it apart.
Time travel is the vehicle for something highly-theatrical, for the exposure of the battle with both of your selves. I saw a preview for this movie which perfectly illustrates this: Another Earth. A movie where a 2nd earth is found right next to our own. A girl wants to go to the second earth and encourage her other self to be honest about an accident.
I’d pay money to watch that. This is something which I always need to remind myself: don’t write for the dragon, write for the battle.
-Garret Schneider, Collider Playwright
Collider New Play Project is a part of the St. Charles Summer Theater Festival (July 14-31, 2011).
Please be sure to read Garret’s first blog at http://foxvalleyrep.org/blog/?p=873. Enjoy!
-Fox Valley Rep
Garret,
I thought your realization about spending too much time setting up the rules of the time travel world was really insightful. Rules of the world are always tricky for me as a playwright. You have to juggle this really fine line of keeping them consistent so that the audience knows what is and isn’t possible in the world or you run the risk of having anything possible which kind of falls into the Henry James area of “write a dream, lose a reader.” At the same time there’s an old playwriting adage that I’m sure you’ve run across that warns, “The more you explain, the more you have to explain.” I wonder how you feel the looming deadline is helping you toward that realization. In early drafts of my plays with more complicated rules, I often find myself using a lot of call and response – having characters ask direct questions about the world so I have to answer them. That’s tedious to watch on stage. And if I spend too long testing the world and redefining its rules I totally lose the story and any semblance of the initial reasons I thought my story would be serviced by a world like I was imaging. So…. to my question. Do you think this deadline helped you realize that more quickly than usual? And as a playwright do you think it’s better to realize that you’re over complicating the world earlier than later? I’m sure there’s a perfect time to realize that you’re over complicating the rules of the world but which in your experience is the lesser of two evils?
?€?write a dream, lose a reader.?€?
That is so deep I’m still thinking about it.
Whenever you create ANYTHING, that’s the fear, the TRAP that most creators fall into. You know a museum artist fell into the trap when there is a page-long explanation of the painting they made next to it. That means that they’re not done, because they don’t feel comfortable letting the audience experience it.
And you’re exactly right. If you make it ABOUT the rules, then you fail, so it has to be about somethign so much more. Your play isn’t ABOUT star trek, or Gene Rodenberry, but they are SO INSTRUMENTAL to how the play has to function, that those people become manifestations of the larger artistry/action.
This deadline HAS helped me realize this more quickly than usual. But at the same time, it has taken LONGER than usual. Normally, I get a draft pumped-out in about 1-2 weeks. Most often than not, it’s crap, and I have to spend the next year re-writing to fix ALL of the mistakes I made in the first draft. But now, I’m not in graduate school and have a full-time job. I write for four hours at a time on the weekends. In this way, the draft has taken longer than any of the other ones.
But this deadline has helped a lot, but more importantly (I believe) is the deadline to the reading. I’m thinking about how these words ‘sound’ and whether or not the audience will accept it. That impending deadline is the one that’s always in my mind and it has definitely helped me streamline my ideas.
I think that the sooner you realize the world is complex the more you can do to fix it. There is the LIE that writers tell themselves that the first thing you write has some inherent truth because it’s instinctual. That’s crap and we all know it. Everything demands scrutiny, and I think the only reason to wait on a fix that you know you need is because you want to trick yourself into thinking it’s not a problem anymore.
That’s how I feel, at least. But I think there’s a big part of me as a writer who LOVES to tear down his own world to build a “beter one”.
Does that make sense?
-garret
I thought your realization about spending too much time setting up the rules of the time travel world was really insightful. Rules of the world are always tricky for me as a playwright. You have to juggle this really fine line of keeping them consistent so that the audience knows what is and isn?€™t possible in the world or you run the risk of having anything possible which kind of falls into the Henry James area of ?€?write a dream, lose a reader.?€? At the same time there?€™s an old playwriting adage that I?€™m sure you?€™ve run across that warns, ?€?The more you explain, the more you have to explain.?€? I wonder how you feel the looming deadline is helping you toward that realization. In early drafts of my plays with more complicated rules, I often find myself using a lot of call and response ?€“ having characters ask direct questions about the world so I have to answer them. That?€™s tedious to watch on stage. And if I spend too long testing the world and redefining its rules I totally lose the story and any semblance of the initial reasons I thought my story would be serviced by a world like I was imaging. So?€¦. to my question. Do you think this deadline helped you realize that more quickly than usual? And as a playwright do you think it?€™s better to realize that you?€™re over complicating the world earlier than later? I?€™m sure there?€™s a perfect time to realize that you?€™re over complicating the rules of the world but which in your experience is the lesser of two evils?
Awesome. Awesome, man. Makes total sense and I couldn’t agree more. Especially, the commentary on intuition. I always treat that like an adaptation question. What am I supposed to be faithful to….? The letter or the spirit? I think what I look for in those early, painful drafts is the soul of the story I’m writing. I think even when it’s not on the page it’s hovering between every line. It’s tricking yourself to believe in the value of intuition for early exchanges and actions of the characters and plot that may not be allowing that spirit to emerge. That’s the cop-out. And if I find myself down that rode, I just hope at some point I realize, or someone helps me realize, I’m beating a dead horse and it’s time to re-imagine.
One of my traps that I always fall into is what you described as one of your observations: the creaton of the soul of the play.
As a creator, I want to control everything about my world from the beginning, and think/plan out everything in my play AND stay faithful to it. The problem is that you can spend six months on a first draft of a first act and you haven’t written the end of it yet!
I was able to push through the drafts of all my plays because I would FINALLY get myself to write to the ending and only by doing that did I finally stop writing around the soul of my play and get to the heart of it. Only then can I REALLY do rewrites, and only then can I feel comfortable doing them.
I just read this piece on the sculptor Rodin, and how he hated intuition with a passion. I’m not that extreme, but I’m wary of it- I know it comes from me and that I can create it by working. But the paradox is that I still rely on it. I’m just trying to ween myself off of its reliance, because I am strong enough to create it myself.
You know what I mean?
This might be a stupid question to playwrights, but do you ever write the ending first, then work your way to the beginning? I’m sure you know where you want the story to end, but I mean, have you truly written the end of a script in great detail before working your way to the beginning?
Hey dramamama!
That is not a stupid question at all!
I don?´t know about Kris, but for me the answer is ?´depends?´.
What I normally do, is have some sort of an outline for the play before I begin it. So I usually know what I want to get at. But one thing that I found is that the journey to get from the beginning of the play to the end can be a very different experience from what you may have originally planned.
So, I don?´t think that I have ever ?´explicitely?´ written the ending first, I have always had it in mind.
For my current play, ?´?´clockwork child?´?´ I have always known how I wanted it to end (what the scene was, what would happen in it), but what I didn?´t know when I was writing it was that the last two scene would be combined (I thought they would be seperate).
Does that answer your question at all?
-garret