Adaptation

Made myself a personal course of study: to watch movies where I'd read the book and said to myself: "How the HELL could they adapt THAT BOOK into a movie?!"

SO watched The Fountainhead last night. Movie's not bad. The adaptation (also by Ayn Rand) is rather impressive, contracting that long-ass book into 2 hours. A lot of stuff gets relegated to backstory, and Katie disappears entirely. Story focuses on the love drama between Dominique and Roark (and Dominique doesn't marry Peter in the book, she goes right to Gail). Since Dominique is the only character who really changes in the book, very smart to keep the emphasis on her (much like Dolly in Hello, Dolly; the original original text was called The Merchant of Yonkers, referring to the Vandergelder character*); though it's interesting that although the four sections of the book of The Fountainhead are named after the 4 main male characters, Dominique is in all of them.
Storytelling brisk and interesting till it drops dead for Roark's big speech.
Gary Cooper a bit boring as Roark, Patricia Neal is fantastic as Dominique.

Then decided to get out of the way my other personal assignment: The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Though the book is quite cerebral and philosophical, the actual plot events are interesting enough to warrant dropping the fascinating philosophy. Makes the movie a bit more sentimental than the book, in some ways. Acting is great; Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin are fantastic. Baby Daniel-Day Lewis is weirdly un-sexy (to me), though his Informed Sexiness is of course a given in the world of the movie.
Didn't really miss the philosophical stuff (which includes the meaning of the title), because enough of it was dramatized to still be interesting; and some of the philosophy is actually enclosed within the plot, though in the movie it's more "these things happened, draw your own conclusions".
Prague is gorgeous. Cinematography perfect. Mirrors everywhere in the film, commented on and interacted with, or sometimes just there, though of course nothing can be "just there" in a film, working with a mirror you have to be very careful not to get the camera reflected in the shot.
One whole section is dramatically shot with extra grain and switching from color to black and white to integrate new scenes with actual footage of the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia; fascinating.
Didn't realize till I was about an hour in (because I was riveted) that the movie is nearly 3 hours long. After about an hour stopped being riveted, but was still entertained.
As good as the book, but in a different way.

* I was just reading that in previews Vandergelder ended Act I of Hello Dolly! with a song called "Penny in My Pocket", but audiences were loving Dolly so much that the focus shifted, so "Before the Parade Passes By" was written for Dolly (apparently in a couple of hours).

Writing for the Screen

I was recently commissioned to write my first screenplay. I was given a synopsis and certain characters and asked to write around it. Just finished the first draft and sent it in. Quite pleased with it. I was worried for a bit, but once I got past the halfway mark, the story began to take over and really flow. It's funny how the words just come when you know where you're going.

I've written for the theatre all my life, and it's quite freeing in some ways to be able to essentially follow someone when they leave the stage. I've always said the versatility of theatre is great, because you can have someone stand in a blackbox and say "I'm on the moon", and so they are. But actually writing that someone goes to the moon is another thing entirely when it comes to film, because then someone will have to build a moon set and probably a space suit; probably I'm quite lucky that my first assignment was for an animated feature, it takes some of the onus off me to make things affordable.

It's plain to see some kind of harmony is on the rise.

Downloaded and have been listening to the soundtrack to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. I recently, in conversation, cited Chicago as a great movie musical because they used the movie effect of placing all the songs as Roxy's fantasy version of events.

DHSaLB, on the other hand, and which is a pretty perfect movie musical, doesn't do that- aside from the Bad Horse epistles, all the songs are rooted in the "reality" of the story; BUT, I never noticed till listening to the songs divorced from the story, almost none of the songs actually END. All except "My Eyes" (or, as I thought it was titled, "On the Rise") are interrupted by a plot event, and ALL the songs move the story forward in some way. Which makes sense, since DHSaLB was actually written FOR film, there is no live audience to applaud, there's no need for a button at the end of songs, and so we can just proceed with the plot.

Ties in to something I noticed about In The Heights (a pretty fantastic stage musical)- despite the "radio edits", there is very little from the show that's actually excerptable, because so much of it is plot-based. Even Vanessa's I Want Song gets interrupted by Usnavi and Sonny and I need some packing tape coño!

Things to bear in mind while writing the musical I'm working on now.

Tradition

Such [insistence on traditional interpretation of Gilbert and Sullivan] would have mattered little had not the D'Oyly Carte enjoyed exclusivity within Britain. After all, "historical" productions of Shakespeare contribute to our appreciation of his plays, as "original instruments" performances of Bach do for his works - but in large part because other performance traditions exist side by side.

This is something people have often questioned me on, as a playwright. I consider it ideal for original plays to be performed as the writer intended, without a radically different interpretation by a director. I always think of that episode of Dream On, where Martin's play, a romantic two-hander about his ex-wife, gets made into an experimental musical without his knowledge (with a greek chorus wearing boxing gloves: ♫ This Marriage is Doomed! It's Dead in the Water! This Marriage is Doooomed! Stick around for the Slaughter! ♫).

But I DO enjoy and entertain new interpretations of Shakespeare or Chekhov because everyone knows (or should know) the original text/story that's being riffed on. Some other writers have achieved such notoriety that I think their work could safely be re-interpreted without damaging the reputation of the artists, though their estates won't allow it- notably Samuel Beckett and Tennessee Williams. The Beckett estate is notorious for only allowing strict interpretations, and the Williams estate recently challenged a production called Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer named Desire, claiming that the one-man show which used Blanche DuBois as a character devalued their property.
Stephen Sondheim in the 80s vetoed a production of Company in which one of the couples was made into a male/male couple without permission, but then in the late 90s granted permission to a college that wanted to cast Marta as a male (so Bobby would have two girlfriends and one boyfriend).

It's a controversial topic; I have frequently directed the original productions of my own plays, just so that I'd be sure of getting my own undiluted vision across to audiences. I can only hope one day I'll be famous enough that people will want to give new interpretations of my plays.

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.

- Václav Havel - Address to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London quoted in The Independent, London (24 March 1990)

Perspective

Every twenty years or so, America remembers it has a theater. There's a surge of interest and youthful talent to the form, like a rush of blood to the head. Then there's a battle royal: The new talents struggle to overthrow the old conventions, and old figureheads, that have made the theater boring; the old ways fight back. (...) What this cyclical pattern means, essentially, is that the American theater, as an institution, never grows up, never evolves a native tradition, never accrues the sense of perspective that comes with maturity.

- Michael Feingold, from the introduction to Grove New American Theater

An interesting idea. It seems to be true that a lot of my contemporaries don't have much perspective on theatrical history. I've been working lately on synthesizing modern writing with more old-fashioned techniques (writing 5-act plays in verse, or 4-act plays), and I'm met with amazed bewilderment. There's a reason old plays work, they have the mechanism to do so, it's just a matter of blowing the dust off, and discarding what is no longer relevant.

Thyme and Thyme again

We're almost through with the production of The Thyme of the Season. It has been a long hard road getting to what has turned out to be a really fantastic production. I cast it months before we opened, only to lose three actors to slipped discs, poverty, and being hit by cars. We battled with very few people coming to our benefit (which meant a lot less money to work with), bouts of sickness and pink eye, mis-scheduling, electricity issues, and still my awesome cast is kicking ass. Thank goodness this show is as low-tech as it is, and the cast is as great as they are.
One final show on Wednesday, and I'm pretty sure we're going to sell out. I'm glad we have 8 performances in this festival; my cast is only now fully settling into their roles.

Gender Parity in theatre

Got this invite on Facebook.

Gender parity in the theatre has recently gained public momentum as an extremely important issue of theatre in the 21st century; some might argue that it is the single, largest issue to present itself in the last fifty years. Through Emily Sand’s well publicized study, Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender: An Integrated Economic Analysis of Discrimination in the American Theatre, and Julia Jordan’s public presentations of that study, we know through indepth research and statistics that there is an alarming, troublesome disparity between the total number of plays written by men produced in our theatres and the number of plays written by women.

Simply put, but not so simply understood, female playwrights can’t seem to get traction of any kind in our community. With all the major theatre awards having now been announced in New York (The Tony Awards, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortell, Theatre World, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, etc.), one outrageous fact emerged: in all the awards combined, only one woman writer was nominated (Sarah Ruhl) in a season that showcased 51 new plays written by women.

To acknowledge the extraordinary work by women in this year’s season (and by doing so, educate the community on many levels), a group of passionate artists and producers (myself, Marsha Norman, Theresa Rebeck, Julia Jordan, Tina Howe, Julie Crosby, John Eisner, G Tim
Sanford and Susan Rose) quickly assembled to create an evening of celebration. Equal parts party and awards ceremony, the event will be held at Playwrights Horizons and the West Bank Café, emceed by Christopher Durang, with an invocation by Gloria Stein, entertainment by Kristin Chenoweth and a host of awards to women in the theatre.
Each year, this event will grow and become inclusive to writers all over the country. Because the event will – by its nature – highlight the issues of gender parity in the theatre, as well educate playwrights and the theater community at large, we’re hoping to generate support and buzz anywhere we can. Voice your support at the FB page:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120719377959577
Be strong, write well.
Gary (Garrison)
Executive Director, Dramatists Guild

I'm amused how no one's mentioning the possibility that these unprecedented numbers of shows by women were maybe not good enough to have been nominated; that it's assumed they were not nominated entirely because they were penned by women.

And the main conclusion of Emily Sand's study was that it is women themselves as playreaders and decision makers who are essentially holding back other women's work.

And among those nominated this season were Sherie Rene Scott, who co-wrote Everyday Rapture (For the Tony, and Lucille Lortel).
Anna Devere Smith and Lynn Redgrave were both nominated for Lucille Lortel Awards for solo shows they wrote and performed, and Smith was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle, as was Carrie Fisher for Wishful Drinking.
Enron, by Lucy Prebble, was nominated for the Drama League Award (Lucy's also nominated for the Tony for lyrics for Enron, which she also wrote).
Aftermath, co-written by by Jessica Blank, also nominated for the Drama League Award.
Annie Baker's The Aliens and Circle Mirror Transformation shared the Obie award for best new American play. Actually fucking won, for TWO plays. CMT also got a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Play and Baker got a Drama Critics Circle Emerging Artist Special Citation.
Theatre World Awards are only presented to performers, not writers.

So, fuck them, then?