considering rewrites

I’ve never had much fear about putting my stuff before the public. I’ve met a lot of people who write, but are quite adamant about not showing it to anyone. That’s always baffled me. Art, to me, seems a thing that is to be shared. It’s part of its very nature. I only really understood it in the sense that one’s art is so close to who they are as a person that they feared it being judged. As the art is judged, so is the person. Now, in truth, most of the people doing the judging aren’t thinking in those terms. But as an artist, it feels like someone looking into your soul and, possibly, giving it an “eh”, or even worse, unleashing their disdain upon it.

Still, I never really had that fear of judgment. Again and again, I’ve just put my stuff in front of audiences and seen what response I got. Of course, when people have issues with it, and you’re right in front of them, they tend to be rather polite and they think through their critiques before unleashing them. If they don’t like certain things, or have opinions that are less than flattering, they couch their thoughts in a way that invites dialogue and discussion.

So, the anonymous reviews on the Fringe website have been a bit of a stunner to me. I was afraid of getting blasted by the papers, and indeed the Guardian and the Weekly may still prove unkind. But the Chronicle was honest, but supportive in a way I was pretty happy with. The reviewer felt the script needed some work, but generally enjoyed the show and seemed to get what I was doing. But some of the reviews I’ve gotten from audience members, either completely anonymous or leaving only a rather generic first name, have been… well, wrathful. Absolute and utter hate and anger towards the show.

I’ve always been fine with people having issues with my stories, and I knew that I was taking some big risks with this particular piece. Hell, I wrote it with the express intent of taking chances. But I wasn’t expecting people to hate it so much.

What seems to be the point of contention, though, is that I refuse to define the “it” that “Get it?” is about. That was rather the point of the piece: the indefinable thing that we’re all striving for, but that is always eluding us. Happiness, faith, hope, joy, contentment, serenity, peace… no matter what you try to define it as, once you start looking at your definition it seems lacking. And yet, we’re all trying to fill that void, that emptiness, with something. Very few of us, if any of us, are able to articulate what exactly it is that drives our actions. It is this inability articulate, this enigmatic aspect to “what are we striving for anyway?” that the piece is about… and that seems to be the big complaint.

From a writer’s standpoint, my failure seems to have been to think that the audience would “get” that. I don’t like to come right out and say the point of a story, because I feel like it should be imparted inference and allusion whenever possible. I don’t like being hit over the head with “the moral of the story”. My third act of “411” almost had the same problem as “Get it?”, but various readers told me outright that I needed to be clearer so that the audience could follow along. I didn’t get that kind of feedback from anyone on this piece until we were in the rehearsal process, and that was from some of my actors who were having difficulty making specific internal choices. I wasn’t in a place where I could hear it, because it would have meant re-writing the piece.

People who have talked to me face to face about the script seem to think that it just needs another draft. Reducing characters perhaps, and clarifying what is going on a bit. I get feedback about the number of characters being overwhelming, as the audience is having a hard enough time sorting it all out, when someone totally new comes on stage. It’s hard though, to think of cutting any of these characters out. Doing so would mean a complete rewrite. But perhaps that would indeed be in order.

From an author’s standpoint, it creates very hard choices. Who would go? Stim and Franco? My comic relief? My Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Hamburg, my distraught perfectionist seeker? Without him, there is no journey. If Stim and Franco make the journey, then what does that do to the play? Take out Jasmine, Bosko and Gino, and there is no journey to take. Take out Felix and Kippi, and there is no reason for the journey in the first place.

The answer, if there is one, may lay not in reducing but expanding. Take this half hour piece that moves like a freight train through the existential dilemma, and give the relationships more time to develop. Slow the pace down, and lay more clues for the audience. Above all, define the indefinable just enough so that there is a hook for the mind to hang on.

People liked “Got it” and seem to like the beginning of “Good!” although they seem split on the last half of it. It may just be that “Got it.” Is its own piece. It is laden with references to “Get it”, but that could be remedied. Simply writing a series of comedy sketches with these characters and placing “Got it.” In the midst of those would allow it to thrive in more fertile soil.

“Good!” may transform into one of those sketches. It may even split into two different bits.

In this way, I could keep what I love about all the pieces, without sacrificing anything but their initial unity. I might even be able to pare “Got it” and “good” into a smaller cast and make the show something that could travel to other festivals. (which, with an 8 person cast, the current show could never do.)

This will be a good project for me to tackle, before diving back into the novel and the rewrites on "Vagina Dentata". I’m still sorry that those two people hated the show as much as they did, but they have helped move me to something that has more potential. And after all, my own characters argue that “politeness is pointless.”