Thoughts on order for something

sosa sofia interrogation

sosa talking with carlos

sofia looking worse, more interrogation / talking

scene - maybe carlos monologue?

sofia blindfolded, sweaty, not pregnant anymore. hood over her head, led offstage

carlos and garana scene

Words and Terms

Words and terms to remember/consider using (to be updated):

• "Porteño/a" - Person from Buenos Aires. As in "Soy Porteña"
  
• "Peronistos" - Followers/Supporters of Peron's ideas
• "proletariat"
• "bourgeoisie"
• "Montoneros" - People belonging to the Argentine left-wing Peronist guerilla group called Montonero Peronist Movement
• "tercermundistas"
  
• "entrismo" - infiltration
• Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo - People's Revolutionary Army
• "pistolero" - literally translates to a gunman.
  
• "fidelista" - Followers/Supporters of Castro's ideas
• "estancieros" - essentially Spanish ranch owners
  
• "people's prison"
• Not really a term but an idea: mock executions, where someone is sentenced to death by the guerrillas or being tortured and a pistol is put to their forehead and fired, but with no bullet. It's incredibly emotionally and even physically taxing.
• "coup de grace" - "final destruction to an already sinking ship" a death blow to an already wounded person
  
• Rawson Military Prison
• Vicente López Partido
• patria socialista
• Villa Devoto Prison - 1973
  
• 
  

Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez

Reading Response

Zoot Suit

Page 49, Alice: We are all in jail, henry. Some of us just don’t know it.

I think this play was definitely a helpful one for me to read, seeing as it dealt with being a historical fiction, but it also dealt with how to mix English and Spanish in the dialogue. The idea of El Pachuco, a storyteller in a sense, worked really well for me. I love that when Henry was alone, especially when he was in solitary, he was able to talk to El Pachuco and see what El Pachuco showed to him. I thought the idea that El Pachuco was in control of the story, or could at least decide what the audience should see or not, was a really interesting choice.

It’s clear that Valdez had a really clear idea of what he wanted because he could even dictate specific sets with how the lighting should work. There were times when it was written that the lights would dictate the bars of the cells, and other times when newspapers would mark the edges. As a writer it’s sometimes difficult to write the dialogue as well as picture how it would look on stage, but I think Valdez does a really good job with this and works with the theme of the press’ influence over the lives of those involved.

There was really a lot of Spanish throughout the lines, and while I’m not sure if there was too much or too little, it really showed me how smoothly the two languages can be combined. There were times that I felt like, as an audience member, I might get frustrated by the amount of Spanish in the lines. But as I sat back and thought about it, I figured that what would happen on stage is that the lines would be conveyed through expressions and actions done by the actors. So, while I think there is a point where there is too much Spanish or too little Spanish, I don’t think the line is as specific as I thought. I think I can really learn to play with it, throw more Spanish in and if I figure there’s too much, then I can always pull some out.

I thought the ending of the play, however powerful, was a little too mushy for me. It felt a little too much like Valdez was trying to specify a point to the play or a moral. The dialogue in the ending felt a lot more cheesy than the dialogue throughout the rest of the play. I think as authors we can sometimes have a difficult time ending a play because we want to make sure that the audience understands what it is we are trying to say. The ending of my play is probably going to be one of the more complicated parts for me to write because there is so much I want to say and so much I want the audience to understand, that I’m going to have to work really hard to make my ending convey everything without being too over the top.

I also really like the idea of how much of a role the press can have in influencing people’s opinions. If what someone reads in the paper everyday is that the country is at war, eventually people are going to believe that the country is at war. So I think that I want to play some with this in my play and throw headlines in and news reports in because I think it might help my play. It might turn out that the press idea doesn’t work as well with my play, or can’t play a very big role, but I think I’d like to experiment with it and see where it takes me.

Eurydice

Reading Response:

Eurydice

Before I started reading I knew the name Eurydice sounded familiar and it kept bugging me that I couldn’t place the name. Finally when I sat down to read the play, I read the two page introduction and found myself feeling a little silly. How could I forget? After remembering the story (or being reminded the story) of Eurydice and Orpheus I was eager to read the play because Greek mythology and things to do with Greek mythology fascinate me.

It was a short play that I never quite found myself entirely drawn into. I wanted answers, I wanted the play to be subtle but not too vague, which is something I myself struggle with as a writer. I don’t want to hit the audience in the face with the plot and every single thing they need to know, I don’t want them to be wishing they knew less. But at the same time, we as writers need to gauge where the line is. We don’t want to be so vague that the audience has close to no idea what is actually happening on stage. This play took a different spin on an old story, but it never explained (or at least I never caught on) to why the characters lost their memories once they were in the underworld. Why was it placed in the 1930’s in the underworld and in the 1950’s in the real world? Or did I just make those things up? I wanted answers, I wanted to feel myself compelled to find out what happens even though I already know the classical answer.

What I did like was the ending because it took a different view on Eurydice and Orpheus being forever apart from each other. Instead of them physically being in two different planes, they were both in the underworld except that neither of them had their memory. It is a tragic ending of sorts, though the characters don’t know it to be tragic because they have no memory. I love how writing can convey so many different things in the simplest of ways. Which is definitely something I took from reading this play. It’s a short play and yet a lot happens in it, the characters don’t have too many lines, and there is no huge physical explosion of energy on stage. In other words, there were no huge fights, no big ‘the sky is falling’ moments. And despite this, as a reader/audience member I found myself at times compelled to talk to the characters.

All in all I have sort of mixed feelings about this play. I feel like more could have been done with it, and yet more might have ruined the play. I wanted answers where I wasn’t getting them, I wanted to know the significance of the grandmother, etc. But I’m not sure, these things may have been perfectly clear to me had I seen this enacted on stage. For me it was definitely a good read to help me see where the line of being too vague lies, because that will probably always be my challenge. Just the right amount of information and just the right amount of ambiguity makes a really solid play.

Amadeus - Peter Shaffer

Reading Response

I knew that in reading the play I would need to read the preface by the author last, so as not to have any preconceived thoughts about what could or would happen within the play. After finishing the play, the first thing I did was read the preface and it was amazing how helpful reading the preface was. One of my favorite things that Shaffer said was: “The playwright’s absolute obligations are clear: to obey the formal insistences of theater, employing Possibility and Credibility as his counselors, and proudly to produce the specific electricity which he may thereby be able to conjure” (xvi). I think that is, at least for me, one of the hardest things about playwriting. I want to convey this really big idea, but I need to keep it within the limits of the stage while at the same time pushing the boundaries with a credible and interesting story. That’s my goal as a playwright, though it is much harder to accomplish than simply writing the goal out.

Overall I enjoyed the play, I thought that it started a little slow for me, which is interesting considering that the play begins with whispers and an interesting idea. I think though, that this scene would be really captivating on stage, and because of that I went with it and eventually my brain submerged into the world of the play. I think I would have enjoyed more of the play and/or understood more of it if I was less musically challenged. As the play continued I became more interested in the story but sometimes found the language of the play pulling me out. It did not feel like the language of the 18th century which took me a pretty long time to become accustomed to, and even when accustomed there were still lines that completely surprised me at how different they felt.

The writing of this play must have been extremely difficult, both trying to stay within the lines of possibility (as compared to history) but also trying to convey this particularly interesting. The introduction of Mozart was wholly surprising, catching me completely off guard with his childish attitude and words. But I think that is one of the ways in which the playwright succeeded, because I was just as surprised as Salieri was. I could sympathize with Salieri and from then follow his transformation more believably. For me, sympathizing with the main character is important, both as an actor and as a playwright, because only when there can be that level of understanding can the play be moving.

I love how Shaffer used Mozart’s music throughout the play, both because it shows a tremendous amount of knowledge on the playwright’s part but also because I think the play becomes far more powerful with it. I found myself looking up Mozart music online because it just felt like I needed to hear it.

I think that one of my favorite lines from the entire script was when Salieri said, “We were both ordinary men, he and I. Yet he from the ordinary created legends -- and I from legends created only the ordinary” (83). I feel like at this point the writer has me sucked in, I want to know what happens and I love that Salieri has recognized the fact that Mozart created legends. The final scene which Shaffer talks about in the preface was a fantastic read for me, showing that there are ways to show characters going mad without just flat out saying it. By the time that Salieri has eaten the paper, he has lost his control on reality just as Mozart has lost his grip as well. It makes for an extraordinarily powerful scene and one that I feel I could look at for a long time while trying to understand. What’s great is that for that scene to be this powerful it meant that the rest of the play had to be solid and building up to this moment, which it does. And the ending scenes where Salieri fails to commit suicide, where his name is forgotten, all these are ironic and a perfect way to end the play. I also found it a bit interesting that when we see his desire to live forever, to have people know his name, fail at the end of the play - I suddenly realized I had never heard his name before. For me, it was a fantastic thought to end the play with.

Servant of Two Masters

Play Response

I went up to Seattle last weekend and saw Servant of Two Masters. I was not overly astonished at the performance but at the same time, it was also not a bad performance. It was entertaining and because I knew someone in the show I got to hear about some of the directorial decisions that I was curious about. This is a show I would love to look at the script for, because apparently there is quite a lot of improv throughout the show and I would love to see how the writer took the original script and changed it slightly. At one point, one of the lovers gets in a fight with another man, the lover being played by Deb Fialkow. After the show I asked her how the fight was actually written, because in the show her character was supposed to look extremely unfamiliar with a blade and in a fight. But Deb said that the script called for her character to be very good at a fight and easily handle a blade. Apparently it was a directorial choice to make her character look uneasy, and personally I think it would have been a lot funnier if she had just easily taken down the other man. So for me it was both an interesting insight into both the acting world, but also the writing world. It taught me that a director might not think that my stage directions are the direction (for lack of a better word) he/she wants to take the play in. While lines are usually kept, stage directions are sort of taken with a grain of salt. If they go along with a director’s vision then the stage directions will stay in, but if they don’t, a director can change them to fit his/her vision.

The improv completely caught me off guard with the show. When we walked in, another friend of mine who is currently working with the Seattle Shakespeare Company introduced us (Ella and myself) to two of the actors who were outside doing an improv. The improv was welcoming people to their production of the Merchant of Venice. But I sort of thought something was amiss when she introduced both of us and said her reasoning was so that we could just meet two of the actors. It turned out that those two actors spent the ten minutes or so before the show and the first few minutes of the show walking around the audience and asking people their names and where they were from. Each time they found out a name, one of the actors would announce the person’s name and where he/she was from and the rest of the cast would clap and nod and go back to talking amongst themselves. I thought this was a pretty interesting idea, though again it left me wondering what the script actually said. Eventually they asked both myself and Ella for our names (even though they knew them) and chose our hometowns as places in the play. So one character was from Boulder, Colorado and another was from the Big Island, Hawaii. Every time they said the hometowns of the characters, the actors would stumble and the two men we were introduced to at the beginning, would feed them the location.

The two men sat on the side of the stage for the majority of the production often times feeding the actors lines. The idea behind this production was that they were a group of actors prepared to perform the Merchant of Venice and when they find that the audience came for Servant of Two Masters they try to perform that instead.

The rest of the play was enjoyable, sometimes the acting was purposefully a little over the top and sometimes it wasn’t. A lot of the physical comedy was what made the play enjoyable for me, and I’m not sure exactly how that was written into the script. I know that sometimes a writer will write some specific comedy bits into the play, such as Bill Royce did for One Mad Day! although those were often discarded (at one point a lot of people were doing flips all over the stage). Other playwrights just write “physical comedy bit” or some such thing into the script and allow the director and actors to figure it out. On one hand it seems almost like a cop out, but on the other hand I can totally see doing that.

In any case, the show was enjoyable and parts of it really were funny. There were times that I thought it wasn’t overly great and sometimes a little too “meh” but I’m glad I went and saw it. Overall, if people have time they would probably enjoy the show.

The New Orleans Monologues

It was great to read this show after having seen it twice last year. Reading Elaine’s lines it was hard to get Grace Livingston out of my head and eventually I realized I did not want to. I love hearing a specific voice in my head and usually it’s up to my imagination, but the idea of seeing the show was difficult to get out of my head. I love this play for a lot of the same reasons that I love The Laramie Project. The way the dialogue is written is very easy to say, it makes the actors’ jobs much easier. It’s written like someone would speak, with pauses and ellipses that really help identify a character. I think that as a writer, we need to be able to say our own words out loud without a problem before we ask an actor to attempt to act out our story. With Elaine, it’s fascinating how you can tell so much about her character by her way of speaking. Right off the bat on the first page she says “if me and my neighbors was all white” instead of using ‘proper grammar.’ It’s the little things like this that I think can really make a script but are also the hardest things about writing a script. When you’re deciding on a character, you don’t only have to decide on their personalities, but also how they speak, how they look, etc.

One thing that I like about this script is how well Rosalind pulls off having a character monologue. Many of the times it feels as if Elaine is talking to someone, to the audience, to an interviewer, anyone. But I think it just adds such a personal feel to the show that I think I end up caring more for her character because we’re given all this insight into her mind. That being said, another facet of the play that branches off of this that I found really interesting were the characters who came on stage for a monologue and would then leave. To be able to do this requires a great knowledge of the story that you’re trying to tell as well as a knowledge of the characters that you’re trying to portray.

I think plays that are mostly based on monologues, such as The Vagina Monologues or The Laramie Project, are especially difficult to pull off. I love that the transition between the monologues and the snippets of scenes are simple and smooth and not overdramatic. This makes the scenes just as powerful as the monologues and I’m not left feeling, either as an audience member or as a reader, that the scenes are a weaker part of the play. I think that they both lead in to each other and that is something I’d really like to master.

I also like the way that with Rosalind’s writing, we go along with Elaine’s character in believing that her neighbors are just drug addicts who are up to no good. So that the scene that they come to help her and assist her in escaping is just as powerful and shocking for the audience as it is for Elaine. This is difficult in writing but I think she pulled it off really well and I think that the way she does so is so seamless, which is something I would love to learn how to do.

I think that a play that tries to deal with a tragedy, especially a recent one, is very difficult to do well. This play is very well written and I think that I could learn a lot about how to write a play similar to this. I want to write a play about the Dirty War in Argentina, and while I’m not sure this specific style would work, I’d love to incorporate monologues and I think that studying this play can help me with my monologue writing.