Working on a one act play

I’ve been working on a one act play, something that is both far simpler and far more complex than I imagined.  It’s far simpler because the format is very simple. As long as you establish what is going on, who is talking, what they are doing, then the rest is left up to the imagination of the actors and the directors and so on. It’s different because in writing a prose piece,you are creating the reality. Everything, every detail and every coherent and relevant thought and so on, has to be included and potentially expanded on, otherwise there reader is going to get an incomplete picture. i personally find that so overwhelming. It’s hard to encompass all that detailv without getting ovewhelmed. in this aspect writing a play is more like a blueprint, ini a way, although to be fair, a script is more fully fleshed out than a blueprint for, say, a construction project. But like a construction project, it still needs to be put into being.

 

On the other hand, writing a play is hard because there is so much that has to be put into consideration. You can’t just write dialogue, you have to have a clear idea of what it is you are talking about. I suppose this is ttrue in fiction writing, but unlike a novel, and very much like a well crafted short story,  there is a lot that has to be put into a small space. You only have so much dialogue to  explore an idea as opposed to reams and reams of verbage, potentially.  So you have to think very carefully and know everything you are doing, to a greater extent than a novelist, in some ways.

So now that I’ve got that abstract exposition out of the way, what is my play about? It’s a satirical work looking at parenthood and the perspective of different cultures, in this case Indians as that is one half of my ethnic background(the other is a specific kind of German American, stemming from a group of Germans that were living in Russia, specifically the Volga area, I believe, along with a little bit of Scottish). Because of my Autism, I was motivated to initially write about my Autism and champion the cause of self acceptance from the Indian perspective. Sort of my take on the Hindi movie “My Name Is Khan” or MNIK for short. That movie was sort of about a man with Autism and also about Islam, but I have issues with it regarding the portrayal of the disability and the performance of the actor, Shah Rukh Khan, or SRK for short. So I wanted to crack a whip at that, probably for the wrong reasons. In fact they were the wrong reasons. But now it’s become this deeply satirical and dramatic take on parenthood and how Indian families work and operate. There have been movies about Indian families, but nobody to my knowledge has been so blatantly satirical, making this a very unique story. Which it should be since it’s taken from real life sources. It does center around a young man with Autism but that is supposed to be a part of who he is, not the main focus. It’s meant as a backdrop for the conflict to grow out of, rather than the conflict itself. The conflict is that Salman, the father in the story, doesn’t want Imran, the son, to waste his life, a goal which conflicts with his autism, because (and this is from my life), someone with disabilities might not be able to go the traditional route of getting a job, going to school, getting married, living on their own, and so on and so forth. IF they do, it will be different most likely than what someone without these issues would experience. So that was what sparked the impetus for the play in it’s current form. However there’s also a white girlfriend, a server at a pakistani restaurant who is from South India, and gets harassed by the father for not speaking Hindi, and many other things besides. (all of those except the white girlfriend are from real life experiences, either things I have heard about or things I have experienced.) So that’s something I have to work on as well: How to work on solidifying the focus. But that’s somethign that will come with time and effort. If you want to see what’s going on with it, come to our shows if you can! We’ll be showing that along with two or three other one acts of this length, which is 15 mins, and then an actual full length one act play. The two other one acts are also worth seeing as well. We have another company member who is working on a piece about exploring her sexuality as a black lesbian, and a  piece about a group of friends who go to spread the ashes of their dead friend on a camping trip…and lose the ashes! And that’s only the beginning… Our full length one act is kind of like the movie A Beautiful Mind, only more subtle and with a twist at the end. I will also post the script for my one act on this site as well when it is finished.

Free your mind and your ass will follow

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog. And a lot has changed. We started off this year strong off the thrill of having just completed a play, “It Could Be Worse, or Love at Frostbite”, That was an extravagant adventure, but now that the play is long over, i find myself pining for the experience of being alive as I worked hard on that play. Back then, it seemed, things were moving along at a rapid, exciting pace. I fully expected this year to be the same, but it feels like things have stagnated, a fact that we at Anodyne Artist’s company are striving to change. As an example, we have a company member who was out for a while. Upon coming back, her reaction was one of shock and exasperation. There’s a lot of unfocused energy and cliqueyness. Sarah Tan, our former instructing artist, has since left, and presumably has moved on to study or work in another part of the country, or perhaps has returned to her native country of Singapore. In her place, we hired Kevin, who coincidentally is a Bethel alum, Bethel being the local university where my father works. Under him,  we have been learning or perhaps relearning a lot of vital things, such as learning about the body and it’s relation to acting ability, and the nitty gritty of character development amongst other things. His style is a lot different than what we were previously used to. It’s much more hands on and explorative as opposed to technique based although that exists within it. Under Kevin’s guidance, we are basically reassembling ourselves as a theatre company. At least that’s how I se it.  AS log as we can keep things going and still have shows and hopefuily get paid, then i’m all for staying in Anodyne.