A remarkable thing has happened. Back in 1997 I was The Beatles newest biggest fan. I knew everything, or at least, as soon as I saw The Anthology videos my uncle taped because we didn't get ABC at my house I was. For some reason, my middle school's library had a bizarre collection of books, including a biography by Cynthia Lennon and the Hunter Davies biography (the second revision). I was the only person to have checked out either of the books in something like twenty years. Sometimes I want to go back and see if anyone's checked either out since.
Anyway, this continued pretty rampantly on up until sometime after George Harrison passed away. Still my favourite band, but I wasn't rabidly perking up my ears at any mention of anything Beatle-y. Then the next year, I met The Boy. While he says he likes all music, that really means that he likes country and will listen to just about anything. But, really, my crazy hippie music isn't his thing. So, most of my music (being the more peculiar) became just for me.
This year, in our desperation for anything to watch, not having cable and only getting in one television station (ABC, ironically), I brought back a box full of VHS tapes from home. Among them was Yellow Submarine, and The Boy put it in of his own volition.
Suddenly, he's full of questions about The Beatles. How many albums did they do, who wrote this song, who plays bass in that one? So, I pull out the Anthology DVD's that I got for Christmas two years ago but have never been able to watch. We've just yesterday finished watching the whole thing, and I'm back in 7th grade again.
The Beatles are on the brain, and it's quite nice to have them back.
There are two of us in my playwrighting class. This is nice in some ways because we have half hour class periods a lot of the time. We show up, we read, we go back home. It also means that when we get into doing re-writes, we get a lot of time to work on them, but with only the responses from two other people.
It's about time to start thinking about the next show for the K-5 kids (plus a couple 6th graders). I've had a week off. The house has even partly recovered from the whirlwind of chaos that reigned. My desk is still attrocious, and there are a couple of piles that need to be taken care of, but all in all, not bad.
Tomorrow and Saturday I'm going to see the new shows. There are, I believe, six of them written by the four playwrights in the department and two other guys- a lighting designer and an I'm not exactly sure what, actor, dramaturg, he does a lot of different things. Anyway, they're all one acts and they're being repped over two nights. Not a big deal, since they all use the exact same cache of furniture and are only allowed one special lighting effect each.
There's only one that's really not expected to be good, and my playwrighting cohort CJ and I have been charged to pay attention to it so that in discussion we can talk about how to fix it.
If it's anything like the ten minute this guy wrote, it won't be too hard. His ten minute was the sort of thing that wouldn't be without merit for a middle schooler. It was a hospital play that seemed to involve this girl dying, and her sister and pseudo-boyfriend feeling that she was too good for them (there were half a dozen references to her being an angel), then it was strongly hinted that Sister and P-BF hooked up. Dying Girl explains to them that this is OK (because she somehow knows without being told, or something) and dies. I think.
Afterwards, I couldn't decide whether a better director could've done anything with it, and made it about something in spite of the lines. In a lot of cases, I think it's true that a good director can take something and improve upon it a lot. I saw it with my ten minute play- Director Jenny was able to do a whole lot of fun things with it that made it much better than the words on the page.
A playwright can only write it, it's up to the director to take what they see in it, and show it to someone else. Which, from your point of view, can either make the thing seem very incomplete, "You mean it isn't anything until somebody else does something with it?" or very open, "So, we can take this, and show an audience what we see in it?"
OK, I'm getting into theatre theory and it's time to go get The Boy from class. Good timing.