Given the downtime following my stint teaching with Open Air Circus, and the need to spend a lot of my time waiting around the apartment as I interview potential roommates, I have been sitting on the living room sofa revising the script of my play. In order to avoid the phenomenon of having a story whose beginning is well crafted but makes little sense by the end, I decided that this stage of revision will involve working page-by-page starting with the last page, working my way to the front, as I work on tightening the dialogue. Given the fact that English runs left to right, and Hebrew runs right to left, I have been referring to this as the "Jewish revision."
The next phase of the revision process will be an "English phase", working from first page to last, and will involve improving on the structure of the narrative, mostly expanding on the role of some of the supporting characters.
Working on a play on the topic of Holocaust denial, further underlines to me that my break with Bread and Puppet Theater was inevitable after Peter Schumann's "Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories" trod dangerously close to Holocaust denial, and noticeably inflamed anti-Semitic sentiment. Despite that, there is one scene in the play that displays the storytelling techniques I learned during my time with Bread and Puppet. I celebrate complexity-- this is perhaps why I try to weave so many themes into a single blog: the aim is to integrate and synthesize, not compartmentalize.
On the issue of complexity: I have discovered that even as I aim to craft such a darkly themed piece, the influence of commedia dell'arte is present as well.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Revising Backwards
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3 comments:
Almost wish you'd publish excerpts (almost because it's probably a bad idea, but still).
Interesting process of reading it from right to left, I would have called this current phase of editing "The Manga Revision," but at least your term can be named in the company of bagelbards without raised eyebrows.
The photograph is the only excerpt I'm publishing on the web right now.
I suppose I discovered scripture before I discovered manga (Japanese comic books, for those unfamiliar with the term)-- and the manga I had read had all been reformatted for Anglophone audiences to read from left to right, so that analogy hadn't occured to me.
The Bagelbards a poetry group in which Chad and I both participate, don't know bagels-- if they did, they would be meeting on the other side of the Charles River, in Brookline, where one can buy real bagels.
To Be Fair, I think the meeting place was chosen for convenience (as far as the core group goes) rather than bagel bragging rights. Too bad. It would make the commute to get there on Saturdays easier.
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