We Are Versatile Bloggers!
One of our most avid readers and commenters, MikeReverb, has nominated us for the Versatile Blogger Award! Look how pretty it is!
Thanks, Mike, for both the nomination and your constant support of this blog! Here are the rules of receiving the nomination:
1. Thank the award-givers and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass this award along 15 or 20 fellow bloggers.
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.
NUMBER ONE: Check
NUMBER TWO: SEVEN THINGS ABOUT US!
1) We met when we were thirteen years old through mutual friends. A few months into our friendship, Stuart invited Rachel to audition for a film he was writing with his film company. These days, Rachel is also a member and the company goes by the name Enscribe Studios.
2) Stuart studies black holes.
3) Rachel eats her food strangely (this one was suggested by Stuart, who has witnessed this.) For example, when we were compiling this list, she was eating the layer of skin inside a clementine’s rind. Rachel’s mother often begs her not to eat in public, for fear of family shame.
4) Stuart knows Middle English and read The Canterbury Tales in the original language.
5) Rachel lived in London for five months in the beginning of 2011, had two of her short plays produced while she was there, and appeared in an off-West End show.
6) Stuart has studied Jidokwan.
7) While she is very good with words, Rachel’s dyscalculia gives her the mathematical prowess of a third grader.
NUMBER THREE: SPREADING THE LOVE
Hm… I don’t think we know that many bloggers, and Mike has already been nominated. But we shall nominate all that we know! In no particular order of awesomeness:
Tired of London, Tired of Life
NUMBER FOUR: Check.
Thanks again, Mike!
Review of Pretty Theft
I picked up Adam Szymkowicz’s Pretty Theft at one of my favorite places in New York City, the Drama Bookshop. It was on display and it had a blurry picture of a ballet dancer on the cover. I’ve already explained my fascination with ballet, so of course I picked it up. It sounded intriguing, so I bought it.
The play is about an eighteen year-old girl named Allegra, who, with the help of high school acquaintance Suzy, gets a job at a mental hospital before she starts at Dartmouth. She wants to be a therapist, and after the first day, she’s already being commended on her skill with the patients, particularly one named Joe. Joe is a high-functioning autistic, placed into the home in his early twenties because his mother didn’t know how to deal with him after his father’s death. Allegra is the only one who can get Joe to do anything, and he soon develops an innocent crush on her. Suzy grows jealous that Allegra has proved to have such skills, and casually ruins a few things in Allegra’s life. Upset by her father’s death and Suzy’s destruction, Allegra agrees to run away from her problems with Suzy. After a few nights on the road, the girls stop into a diner, where a man named Marco has been charming the solitary waitress for the entirety of the play. However, he immediately shifts his attention to the two high school girls and, when they tell him that they don’t have any place to stay, offers them a night in his motel room. Things go as you might expect: Marco turns out to be a creep who drugs both of the girls and takes Polaroids of them while they’re unconscious. Once Allegra returns home, she tries to pick up the pieces of the life she left behind.
The word I would attribute to this play is weird. It’s very weird, in good and bad ways. The show opens with two ballet dancers pirouetting around the stage, Allegra clumsily trying to imitate them. These dancers appear throughout the play, speaking only occasionally and sometimes taking on other roles. They stem from Joe’s love of ballerinas and watching ballet on TV, but I didn’t quite understand their function in the play. I’m sure it’s something deep about showing how beautiful life could be against the messes that are these characters’ lives, but it didn’t entirely work for me. The scene in which Allegra visits her dying father in the hospital and delivers a monologue to him is touching and real- she ranges from dutifully sharing her daily activities to rage that he never paid attention to her to sadness over his impending death- but I wish she had had at least another scene with him and taken those emotions more slowly so she (and we) could feel them even more.
I very much enjoyed the scene where Suzy goes to the movies with Allegra’s boyfriend, Bobby. Suzy makes every attempt to get Bobby to kiss her, but he says no every time. When asked why, he tells her, “If I kissed you, you’d never be the same. My kiss is devastating.” Suzy scoffs at this, so finally, Bobby kisses her, only to be laughed at by Suzy. “Did someone tell you you were a good kisser?… You’re kind of bad. You can’t just stick your tongue in and not move it.” “You have to let the experience wash over you,” Bobby deadpans.
As cliché and predictable as the assault scene with Marco might seem, I actually didn’t expect it, which either means that Szymkowicz did a good job of constructing the character in a non-creepy way, or that I should not be around men in a diner by myself because the same thing will happen to me. It was shocking and scary, and the fact that it’s not lingered upon makes it even more so.
Another way the word “weird” figures into the story is that Allegra sees herself as such. The play opens with her speaking, but no one listening. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” she asks the non-listener worriedly. “I’m sorry about that. It’s just that I feel invisible. Even in my nightmares lately, I’m conspicuously absent. What does it mean when you no longer play a prominent role in your own dreams? I guess I’m just not good enough.” We see Allegra assert herself more and maybe, possibly grow as a person in the scene with her dying father, when she confronts him (as much as she can confront an unconscious man) about ignoring her as a child. It’s unclear if this assertion is personal growth or just a fleeting moment, as she backs down and apologizes moments later and is timid again for much of the play. After the debacle in Marco’s motel room, she scares him away by shouting at him, but is again reticent and selfish in the final scene with Joe.
Joe’s story is possibly the saddest of the play: while his mother was horrified at his being born autistic, his father was determined to treat him as any other little boy. When the father discovers that baby Joe can repair an engine without anyone teaching him, Joe’s father proudly incorporates his son into the family business. But when Joe’s father dies suddenly, his mother is overwhelmed with the task of caring for an autistic son, even one who is an adult, and sends him to a mental institution. The scene in which he thinks about his past is very sad and touching, and all of his monologues throughout are much the same. It’s obvious that Joe is extremely intelligent, but both his autism and people’s inability to see him as a person despite it keep him from reaching his full potential.
I’m still on the fence about how I feel about Pretty Theft. I know that I think it’s not done yet- I think it could use another revision. But then again, perhaps that’s because that’s where I am in my life…
Review of In Zanesville
I am supposed to be on a recreational reading hiatus, since I still have an act of Children’s Hour lines to memorize, but as I exited my school library this week, a book caught my eye: In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard. Upon reading the synopsis, I immediately checked it out, hoping it would help me with my thesis. While I was the age of my main character- and the main character of this novel- not too long ago, certain authors have a way of expressing the same adolescent thoughts I had in ways I’ve never dreamed of. I was not disappointed by Jo Ann Beard’s insight.
The book is about a fourteen year old living in the 1970s Midwest. I would tell you her name, but Beard never mentions it. More savvy readers might figure it out , but surprisingly, it’s not troubling to be so in the dark about an identifier. Of course, maybe that’s the point: the protagonist is still trying to figure out who she is, so while everyone else, even the most minor of characters, have some form of moniker, the main character has no label for herself.
In Zanesville covers everything about being fourteen, from the mundane things that seem too boring to include in a book (marching band practice, doing laundry) to the typical excitements and dreads that occur in teenage-dom (the first party with boys, arguments with family), and all of it is done with an incredible style. Beard has a unique approach to writing that is so completely thought-driven and easy to read that sometimes the book in your hand is the only reminder that these notions are not going through your own head in real time. For example, in the early pages of the book, the protagonist and her best friend Felicia are preparing to march with the school’s band in a town parade. It is just as they’re getting into position that the protagonist realizes the gravity and potentially permanent geekiness of being in marching band. She thinks,
“I am what I do at this point, and if I do this, I’m done for. Once I march in their parade, I will be in it forever, uniform or not.
Felicia, unaware, has gone back to her spot. She’s been stationed in the very middle, like a tent pole, and I’m on an end, where everyone in Zanesville can get a good look.
Help.
Drum roll.
Help.
With that, Wilson sweeps his arms upward and then downward, sending the band shuffling forward[…] where the rest of the parade is forming.
Right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right left, right left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left.”
But don’t mistake the main character for being a girl only concerned with being popular, or, at the very least, not being labeled a nerd. She has other problems, including a perpetually drunken father, who she worries will kill himself any day now; a mother who can’t work enough to support her large family; and the gross panic that comes along with possibly, maybe feeling something for a boy.
Beard uses her talent with words to bring us completely and uniquely into the world of the novel. Her main character describes her father as “tall and tanned, with the haunted brown eyes of someone who does something terrible for a living.” Her younger brother looks like him, with “the same warm, shattered eyes.” Once, when the protagonist and Felicia are caught hanging out on someone else’s terrace, they attempt to hide by sitting stock still in the night, their “white tennis shoes throbbing in the darkness.”
The narrator also deals with the usual teen girl problem of facing boys, romantically, for the first time, and it is one of my favorite aspects of the book. While she certainly has the vain thoughts of a typical teen- she laments at her flat chest and, after getting up the courage to speak to her crush, she stands there waiting for his reciprocation while “the wind blows across the barren landscape of [her] chest.”- she also thinks more deeply about her confusion at the changes she’s going through. “I’m tired of figuring things out for myself!” she thinks mid-way through the book. “Just tell me why I look like this, feel like this, behave like this […] Why am I awake when everyone else is asleep, and what if that boy doesn’t know any better and likes me?”
But while the protagonist knows change and growth is inevitable, she’s not rushing into it. When she attends her first party at which alcohol is being served, she’s taken to a secluded spot by a popular, fairly nice boy whom she knows from her history class. She muses at how close they’re getting, physically, and that it’s not altogether unpleasant, but when he tries to kiss her, she thinks how awkward it will be when they have to see each other in class on Monday and pulls away. “Better to be the plain girl from his history class who didn’t kiss him,” she figures, “Than the plain girl from history class who did.”
This last point is exactly what I wanted from this book: the thoughts on growing up, how sometimes one has to be wrenched away from childhood, and the overwhelming realization of both the internal and external changes one goes through in those early teen years. Some of the protagonists musing on this subject took my breath away. A few choice quotes, since paraphrasing won’t do them justice:
“I’m sick of being a teenager. Being a teenager so far hasn’t gotten me anything beyond period cramps and a nameless yearning, which I had as a kid, too, but this is a new kind of nameless yearning that has boys attached to it.”
“In the dresser mirror, my face looks the same, but I feel something happening around me, some change as palpable as the weather. Stuck in the mirror are mementos from my childhood […] which is now over. I wandered through it and came out the other side.
It’s a stark feeling. Like getting to the last page of a book and seeing ‘The End.’ Even if you didn’t like the story that much, or your childhood, you read it, you lived it. And now it’s over, book closed.”
“The girl cousins I played with at those long-ago family gatherings all turned out boy crazy, and I see now why, leaning against this kid while he slowly bunches my shirt up, and eighth of an inch at a time. There’s something delirious and drowsy about this whole endeavor.”
“Nothing happened, and yet it feels like something did, because things aren’t the way they were before.”
“My troubles are accumulating. The dying kitten, waiting in the cobwebby dark for me to do nothing, and now the canary, put to bed while it’s still light outside, trapped behind a dishtowel, encased in the terrible fate of a bird who has never flown, but watches[…] while other birds land and take off from the clothesline. Sometimes he sings so elaborately and desperately that I have to put my hands over my ears.”
In Zanesville is a book that will take you by surprise with its wit and its insight. I hesitate to label it as YA, because the pace seems slower than most YA, but it’s certainly smart enough to be placed in that category. But I don’t care who you are; this book is too beautiful to be left on the shelf. Seek it out. Devour it.
Thesis: Revealing the Mystery
Or, I suppose, the answer to the mystery discussed in this entry.
In the middle of last month, I put out some feelers for a director for my thesis. I sent out an e-mail containing a synopsis and general project idea to two alumni from my school that had been suggested, one that I knew and one that I did not. While I was sure they are both competant directors, I thought I knew what to expect: one of them would respond (maybe, if they had free time) and would take pity on my schoolgirl project.
So imagine my surprise when both of them said yes, leaving me with the wonderful conundrum of having to choose. I eventually chose the alumnus who had contacted me first, partly because he had done so, and partly because he had been suggested to me on two different occasions. Also, he was fantastically enthusiastic. I sent him the script on a Sunday at 11 p.m. By 9 a.m. on Monday, he wrote me back saying that he loved the project and would be delighted to direct it. This was amazing and shocking to me, as I had met this alumnus very briefly a few times. Also… he loved my writing?! In the e-mail to me, he called it “a beautiful, moving piece of work.” I was speechless.
We e-mailed back and forth for all of February. I practically did a happy dance when I got a message from him asking what sources I used while I was writing the play, because he was doing some research and wanted to look into them. He was doing research. On something I wrote. A little over a year ago, I had two short plays produced in London, and it was surreal to realize that a huge number of people were auditioning and vying for roles that I had created. This was just as crazy.
He and I met up last night to discuss the reading, and after doing so, I’m so excited. He’s absolutely perfect for the project, and he also really cares about what I think about it. This seems like a given, and maybe it is for staged readings, but in general, the playwright doesn’t get much, if any, input into a project. I can already feel that this is a gem of an experience.
Wednesdays are always stupidly busy days for me- five class sessions, as well as a four-hour Children’s Hour rehearsal- but the rare free time I have will be spent frantically starting and finishing my revisions that I’ll be going over with my advisor on Friday morning. Guess who’s pulling an all-nighter tomorrow night?
THE BEST WRITING ADVICE YOU WILL EVER GET, EVER!
Actually, it’s more than writing advice; it’s life advice.
When I was a sophomore and in the same Children’s Theatre class that gave birth to my thesis idea, my professor gave me the best advice I’ve ever heard regarding presenting material. At that time, it was directed toward our writing, but I’ve used it in pretty much every area of my life since:
Are you ready? Here it is:
Don’t ever, in any way, shape, or form, apologize for what you’re presenting.
Sounds simple, right? But how often do you want to turn in a piece of writing (or open a speech or share an art project or present an idea) with a prefacing comment that runs along the lines of, “I know it’s kind of a dumb idea…” or “I probably didn’t do the assignment right, but…” or “Compared to everyone else’s, mine is kind of weird…” or any other statement that ends with implied ellipses and the shamed lowering of eyes.
I know it seems like qualifying your piece like that, before anyone even reads it, will keep them from thinking those things themselves or tearing their eyes out later when they deign to read your craptastic writing, but the fact is that you, as the writer, are not a reliable judge of your own skill. If you think that this piece isn’t as great as something else you’ve written, you may be right. But chances are, you finished whatever assignment you’re making excuses about not too long beforehand, which means that you’re still way too close to the project to see it clearly. And introducing a piece with “I don’t think this is very good” is like opening a conversation with “Don’t get mad.” The recipient of your words will automatically have an idea of what they’re about to hear (or read), and it’s not a good one.
I think about this advice a lot, because I am wont to make excuses for what I believe are substandard pieces. Usually, I restrain myself, even if I am bursting inside with the need to qualify. But today was the perfect example of why this advice is great to follow:
I had a short story due. I do not like writing short stories, or short plays, or short anything. I am a full-length writer. But the assignment was the write a short story. The assignment also came with a topic, one that was broad but, for me, very difficult. I didn’t have an idea for it until two days before the story was due and it was a flimsy idea. My way of carrying out the inspiration (dare I call it that) was even flimsier. I was working on the story until I had to hastily pound out a convoluted conclusion, print it out, and go to class. I hated it. I thought it was the second-worst thing I’d ever written in this class and also possibly ever. I considered skipping the session or turning in a section of a completed novel that fit the prompt. When I checked the critique schedule for today and saw that I was being reviewed, I felt sick.
But I went to class. I read my story aloud, as we must, and waited, cringing, for my feedback.
It was all good. Like, really good. Save for some small critiques here and there… my classmates and my professor and the visiting high school girl loved it. Even the guy who hates everything everyone else writes said he thought it was “funny and well-constructed.” (You don’t know this guy, but he might as well have just awarded me the Pulitzer.) When, after the feedback was over, I revealed my struggle with the assignment, my professor said, “Then maybe you should write under the gun all the time, because I think you should definitely send this around. I think people would be interested.”
While the feedback itself might not have changed if I had introduced my piece with some sort of excuse, it would have weakened the reception of the story. My classmates would have gone into the reading aware that the piece was substandard, and even if it wasn’t, that I thought it was. Their perception would have been altered before they even began to read.
So don’t apologize for your work. Stand by it proudly. It might not be the most amazing thing you’ve ever composed, but it’s probably not as bad as you think… and sometimes, it may just be awesome.
“Can She Hack It?”: J.K. Rowling to Publish Adult Fiction
Just this morning, I read a great article in The Guardian by one of my favorite authors, Maureen Johnson. In the article (read it here), she discusses J.K. Rowling’s upcoming adult novel. Some of the public seems to think that the novel may flop simply because Rowling has previously written only children’s novels, and adult novels are infinitely harder.
This statement never fails to turn me into a giant squid of anger. As a reader and writer of primarily young adult literature myself, I find this view offensive. As Johnson says in the article, “It seems to be the received wisdom that books angled at the younger set are simply not quite the same thing as books aimed at adults: not quite as challenging to write, not quite as challenging to read. And it is my boring yet constant duty to explain that books for younger readers are some of the most challenging and well-written material out there. Children and young adults (or adolescents, whichever you like) are among the most athletic of readers. Unlike adults, they do not normally restrict themselves to one genre. They read broadly, experimentally, and with considerable passion.”
Since I was a young reader, I have read a mix of children’s and adult literature, and to be honest, almost always preferred the YA to anything else. This probably had something to do with the fact that the protagonists were closer to my age, but also, the stories in general were more active, more skillfully written, and all around better. This is not to say that adult fiction is substandard, but it is a fact that young audiences won’t tolerate a boring read, and let’s be honest: some adult fiction is boring. And even though an adult book might not be snooze-inducing, young adults refuse to sit through a fifteen-page description of the main character’s morning routine when it could easily be summed up in fifteen sentences. They don’t want filler, they want action. Adults are willing to tolerate unnecessary narration, but children demand only quality material.
Of course, just as with any genre or category, there is bad YA fiction. However, there is a certain pressure and duty that falls on children’s authors that adult fiction writers don’t necessarily have to deal with: that their readers are experiencing certain things for the first time and are looking to books to see that they’re not alone. This is one reason why I don’t believe that any YA book should be censored or banned- because finding out that you are not the only one who has gone through something can save your life. YA readers are picking up books not just to go on the spectacular journey between its pages, but to find out that they’re not the only one who hasn’t been kissed/is struggling with their sexuality/had a terrible fight with their best friend/has had thoughts of ending their life. On the other side of that coin, YA characters are also going through the triumphs they are; certainly, a YA reader can understand the happiness an adult character experiences on their wedding day, but right now, that reader can relate much more to the joy of being accepted into their top college.
I’m digressing a bit, but my main point is that YA and children’s literature is not substandard to adult fiction, in either the reading or the writing of it. They are on the same level and should be accepted as such. Rowling’s new adult book may not do as well as the Harry Potter series, but almost nothing as done as well as the Harry Potter series. As Johnson continues, “Let the book stand on its own. The bridge can be crossed in either direction. Many adult authors are now streaming over to the younger side, seeing the rich potential audience there. Rowling, who helped to build the bridge, is walking in the opposite direction. And why shouldn’t she? She’s following her ideas where they take her. Cross-pollination in reading and writing is a good thing: writers moving into new storytelling areas, kids reading “adult” books, adults reading “kid” books. They’re all stories.”
All stories indeed. Why don’t we strip the books of their age-dictating labels? Books are books, stories are stories. If you enjoy it, read it.
“Suit the Word to the Action, the Action to the Word”: Keith Strunk Talks Acting and Writing
Recently, my university introduced a new MFA Creative Writing Program, and since its advent, we’ve been privileged to have some really awesome writers come and visit. This past Friday, though, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, the castle was host to someone a little different: Keith Strunk, an actor, writer, and producer who had come to Arcadia to discuss using the tools of acting in the field of writing.
The posters thumbtacks around campus bore the Hamlet quote, “Suit the word to action, the action to the word,” an excerpt taken from Hamlet’s speech to the players he’s hired to perform the “fictional” play about a malicious man who kills his brother, the king. Strunk, however, used this phrase to begin a discussion about something else: How can a writer use an actor’s approach to words to influence their work, or make it better?
Strunk started out as an English major at Ursinus College, and only after he graduated did he find his way to the world of performing. These days, the award-winning scriptwriter runs River Union Stage, is a member of the Philadelphia Liar’s Club, and is currently ghostwriting a non-fiction book. Most of his fictional work, he shared, begins with a line or two of dialogue, from which springs a bigger idea.
Due to my chronic earliness, I got to talk to Strunk for a bit before the event began. In person, Strunk is energetic and inquisitive, and his open, friendly manner make you instantly comfortable around him. After calling accidentally attention to myself as a “theatre person,” Strunk asked me if I was there for just the acting aspect of the talk, or the writing part as well. I told him both, and he even asked me about my thesis and how it was coming about. When he found out that I had been trained in the Meisner technique, he asked me to help him with an exercise during the event.
To begin his talk, Strunk defined Method acting. “How many of you roll your eyes when you hear the phrase, ‘Method actor’?” Most people, including myself, raised their hands. Strunk went on to explain that the approach to performance first only included the teachings of Lee Strasberg, but now a Method actor is anyone who has any affiliation with Stanislavski’s teaching.
“But what does that have to do with writing?” he asked the group at large. “Who cares?”
He went on to quote famous acting teacher Sanford Meisner, who defined acting as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” In the later stages of Meisner training, an actor learns that in order to make a scene live, they need to know who they’re talking to, how they feel about that person, what their own point of view is, and what action they’re playing- even if they’re onstage alone. One part of Meisner’s exercise is to have one actor in the room and another actor knock on the door. When Actor #1 opens to door to Actor #2, the latter must have a reason for being at that door. “Think about it,” Strunk pronounced. “No one goes to any door without an intention. Even if they claim they don’t have an intention, there’s an intention behind that statement.”
This is the same for writing. Strunk pointed out that all intentions stem from being specific- what does my character want? Why does he want it? What will happen if she doesn’t get it?- and looking at the specificity of an action makes a scene work, on the stage or on the page. Every scene must have a conflict, something to raise the stakes, and each character must have a point of view about that conflict. If none of these exist, the scene probably does not help the story move forward. “Characters,” Strunk told the group. “Need to need something.”
About halfway through the talk, Strunk called me up to demonstrate the Meisner technique of repetition. He explained to the crowd that the point of the exercise was to remain neutral in your delivery until you had the impulse to change something. This was a speeded-up version of the exercise; in my experience, it can takes weeks to be allowed to go beyond being neutral. He and I stood facing one another in front of the crowd and Strunk’s eyes landed on my polka-dotted rain boots. “Those are funny boots,” he commented. “Those are funny boots,” I repeated. “Those are funny boots.” “Those are funny boots.” Back and forth, we parroted the phrase, eventually allowing inflections from anger to joy to disbelief to understanding, to enter our phrases.
“But,” observed an audience member, “It seems as though you’re manipulating the meaning.”
“Exactly!” Strunk exclaimed. “And it seemed false, didn’t it?” The observer nodded. “The point of a Meisner exercise is not to manipulate the words when you feel they need a change, but to allow the words to be spoken differently because you feel an impulse to change them. It’s not premeditated.”
Strunk later used a similar example when a student in the audience asked how actors manage to keep their lines fresh every performance. Strunk explained that while improvisation of lines is frowned upon in performance, one must think of the recitation of lines as an improv with predetermined words. “You use techniques to build a framework, like walls of a log flume. You’re the car, and you set yourself on the top of the hill and let yourself go. Those walls, that framework, keeps you on track, but you still have room to play.”
The great thing about actors, Strunk pointed out, it their ability to be open and the fact that they never lose touch with their inner child. Writers could benefit from the same lesson, being open to play with their scenes and dialogue. “It’s that old writing adage: you can’t have a favorite character, scene, or line. You have to be willing to play around with it and throw things out if necessary.”
Strunk also remarked that even writing non-fiction can be fun. “It’s still about connecting with the audience, to the idea of things.” He mentioned an instance when he met with the subject of his ghostwritten book. The client works in what one might consider a dry field, one full of charts, graphs, and numbers, “but what I wanted his honesty and ability not to judge people to come through [in the writing.] I wanted to connect through the humanity.” Strunk pointed out that non-fiction is just as viable a form of writing as novelization, and just as difficult, if not more, because the writing has to be clear and connected for someone who is trying to learn about the book’s subject.
The most important thing I took away from Keith Strunk’s talk was that a solid foundation and willingness to play within that foundation can be the key to a successful career, both in acting and writing, as well as beyond. If you’re willing to trust your words to do some of the work for you, then you’re well on your way.
At Last, A Collaborative Post!
At last, Rachel and Stuart have collaborated on a post! Here’s their review of the script of the film Easy A.
Will Gluck’s Easy A, written by Bert V. Royal, follows a high school girl named Olive Penderghast. At the start of the film, she is socially unknown, or, as she puts it, “I used to be anonymous, invisible to the opposite sex. If Google Earth was a guy, he couldn’t find me if I was dressed up as a ten story building.” And true to her personality and appreciation of literature, she notes that this is cliché. Then, a small lie to her best friend about losing her “V card” to a college guy explodes into a school-wide rumor that she is sleeping around. After she agrees to pretend to have sex with a gay friend to help him fit in at school, her reputation as a floozy grows exponentially. Olive gets caught up in this façade, and it grows to consume her. Once she realizes this, she attempts to find redemption through the video blog (vlog) which serves as the narration for the entirety of the film.
The beginning of the film follows the trend of the typical teen movie, but quickly diverges from this genre as it becomes an analog to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. This novel in and of itself was a sort of redemptive effort on the part of Hawthorne as he wrote this in order to absolve his ancestor’s involvement in the Salem witch debacle, which Olive mimics in her attempt to find salvation through her vlog. Throughout the film, The Scarlet Letter plays a significant role in Olive’s understanding of her own experiences. As she starts to grasp the nature of social excommunication as a result of her fictitious philandering, she symbolically sews a scarlet “A” onto a new “whore couture” wardrobe to embrace her new position in the high school hierarchy as a “skank”.
The Scarlet Letter is not the only work of literature that Olive references throughout the film. She mentions early on in her vlog that Huckleberry Finn is perhaps the only work in the canon that is not universal to human experience because “I don’t know any teenage boys who have ever run away with a big hulking black guy.” Later, she mocks the genre of teen fiction while talking to her best friend:
Rhiannon: You’re being pretty cavalier about this. Aren’t you supposed to be eternally in love with him and shit?
Olive: Yes, yes, I believe so, if I was a gossip girl in the sweet valley of the traveling pants.
When she discusses the fictitious loss of her virginity on her vlog, Olive laments that Judy Blume had not prepared her for this experience, suggesting that children’s literature should serve to develop an accurate picture of growing up.
Olive does not limited her comparisons to the written word. For instance, she tells her friend Brandon (the same friend she pretended to sleep with) that he is “Kinsey 6 gay”, referring to Alfred Kinsey’s continuum ranking of sexual orientation where 6 is exclusively gay and 1 is exclusively straight. She also bemoans the fact that John Hughes, a famous director of movies in the 1980s, had no part in the development of her life story.
Olive and her English teacher also poke fun at teens’ overuse of Facebook to share the mundane events of everyday life. Her teacher incredulously quotes, “ ‘Roman is having an okay day. Got a Coke Zero at the gas station. Raise the roof’? Who gives a rat’s ass?” More subtly, after Rhiannon leaves her, Olive says that she is alone and that this is what she is used to. This is reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock”, which itself is a play off John Donne’s “No Man is an Island”, giving a multicultural perspective to her solitude.
One of the more comedic aspects of the film is Olive’s family. One of the many odd qualities of the group is that they are all named after food or spices: Olive, Dill, Rosemary, Kale, and Chip. Their dynamic involves clever word play that ranges from bad puns to nearly imperceptible wit. Examples:
“Is there an Olive here?”
“There’s a whole jar of them in the fridge.”
“You get family member of the week every week.”
“And there’s a reason for that.”
“Yeah, because you always choose family member of the week”
“Are you accusing me of nepotism?”
“I have no STDs I promise.”
“That’s great. Daughter of the year.”
“Let’s just say it was an inappropriate word.”
“Well, what did it start with?”
“A snide comment from a snobby girl in my class.”
“No, what did the word start with?”
Easy A is a smart film that manages to be both funny and touching. Royal’s script is only enhanced by the performance of the actors and the direction of Gluck, and it’s definitely a movie to check out!
Thesis: A Mysterious Entry
Guess what’s happening, blog readers?
THINGS, that’s what! Very, very exciting things that are so awesomely awesome that I am afraid to share them with you. (I am very superstitious in this way. I very strongly believe that a good thing spoken of is a good thing that will be taken away.)
I will tell you about them as soon as they are more set in stone, but the basic thing is that someone more influential than I read my play and called it “a beautiful, moving piece of work,” “a fully developed play with a very assured and mature voice,” and “Seriously, the best play I’ve read in a long time.”
…I may or may not have cried, I was so happy and excited.
(Also, side note: I have taken a brief hiatus from recreational reading as I memorize my lines for a production of The Children’s Hour that I am in, but Stuart will be here soon with reviews!)
Thesis Take Two: And Now For Something Completely Different
I don’t know why I went into my thesis project thinking it would be easy. Perhaps because I already had a draft of the play completed, and the story arc was, in general, good. Maybe just because I knew what I was doing for my project long before anyone else in my class. But no matter the reasons, I was wrong. Working on my thesis is one of the hardest things I’ve done this school year.
Originally, the plan for doing this project, as I mentioned, was to revise twenty pages a week. I did this for two weeks, completing the first act. My advisor and I then agreed that if I went on to the next act without considering the changes that had been made to the first, I would be getting ahead of myself and the play would be a hot mess by April. So the next week, we took a closer look at Act One as a whole. It was at this point that my advisor gave me such awesome feedback and suggestions that I requested a second week away from revisions to implement the changes and write an outline.
This past week, I still did a few revisions, including cutting three scenes, writing two more, and making little tweaks here and there to existing scenes. I also composed an outline, which is something I only ever do for plays; I find outlines for novels too binding. For plays, however, and for this one in particular, with of its flashbacks and different locations, I needed some sort of bible to reference. In writing the outline, I decided to cut at least one more scene and try to combine it with another. If not… I must sadly bid one of my favorite scenes good- bye.
I mentioned how sad I would be to get rid of this particular scene to my advisor. Funnily enough, the scene only exists because he suggested it, but after I wrote it, I really loved when happened and the conversation between Mary and Peter; Mary makes a life-changing decision and Peter feels deep emotion for someone for the first time. But even with those gems, everyone involved agrees that it’s just unnecessary and slows down the play. My advisor told me, “Even if you eventually cut a scene, writing it is what got you where you are, so it was still a valuable experience.” This is very true, and it was nice to be reminded of that.
The most valuable thing he told me is that this play will not be finished by April. He said I have a few more drafts before I reach its full potential. I was at first disappointed to hear this; I had hoped that I would be able to market this script by May. However, considering that it’s a completely different play now, I’ve accepted that I’m starting from a few paces back than anticipated. He also told me that if this play is a hot mess by April, that’s fine; I’ve been doing the work and developing the play, which is the point. I am so happy that I chose to work on this as my thesis, even though I’m scared that I won’t know how to revise it on my own.
The biggest shock over these past two weeks is finding out that this play is no longer a children’s play in any way. I thought this was a recent development; I always considered the show to be fine for ages twelve and up. But in addition to the asylum scenes and the constant possibility of insanity throughout the play, I’ve now added some romance that I’d never even thought of until my advisor told me that I’d set up a road; why don’t I take it? I was nervous about writing that scene, as I don’t have much experience in writing things like that. The scene is tamer than my advisor was probably suggesting, but I really like it and the direction in which it’s set everything. It’s opened up doors for me to explore another part of growing up: realizing that you’re experiencing romantic attraction for the first time. Because of the time period in which the play is set, it lets Mary break a lot more rules, which is really exciting.
On March 23rd, I’ll be having a private reading of most (possibly all) of the play with current theatre students in the department and getting some feedback from the actors and some people who will be listening. I then have bout three weeks to revise some more and give it to a director and cast of alumni to rehearse a few times before the public reading on April 23rd. No pressure… :p
Now I must go to my writing class and have a deeply personal piece of mine critiqued.
