Through the Looking Glass

 

Journal Musings

A commonplace book is a type of journal/scrapbook meant to contain ideas, notes, sayings – whatever struck the writer to remember. Less coherent than morning pages or Dear Diary, a compendium of wisdom as one makes their way through the day.

 But what if your commonplace book was a photo journal.

 

I started a little photo journal – made it myself – using a business card printer – and found I was collecting odd stuff that struck my fancy with no rhyme or reason.

The line at the vaccination clinic. The time the neighbors rode by on mules. Rocky and his sweater. Drones at the lake. It became a photographic random access memory file and is quite fun to browse.

 

The business card printers only work with smart phones, but when I use a regular camera, I email or message it to myself to get it in the phone.

 

I started with a polaroid printer which was nothing but fun. However, they kept updating the app until it was virtually impossible to use and absolutely no fun at all. I finally threw the stupid thing away. 

 

Then I tried Fuji Instax – which works well – never a problem with its bluetooth, but it uses actual photo paper and sometimes I like to cut the pictures up and that is a messy no go with that paper. Also a glue stick is required to post with this system.

 

Finally settled on Canon Ivy which uses Zink paper with a sticky backing. No glue stick. Trim however. This one also connects with no problem. The battery life is not spectacular however.

 

A journal with no words (mostly.) 

Music by https://www.bensound.com

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 About this time every year, the wild turkeys waddle off the mountain and cruise the neighborhood.

 You might think this is the time of the year they would run and hide since most of the humans have their eyes on one big dinner.

I wonder if that's how turkey got to be Thanksgiving dinner? Pilgrims said, "Oh look there! I bet that would be good with cornbread stuffing and mashed potatoes."

Well no, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.

But venison and oysters don't sound all that yummy.

I wonder if that's how oyster dressing got started?

Morning Mountain Goat

 Pardon the dirty windshield. Who knows what one might see first trip down the mountain in the morning.

 

Actors, Directors and Writers. Oh My.

Photo by Paolo Chiabrando on Unsplash

A local theater recently staged my three scene, one act play for an eight night run. 

This play previously had a staged reading of the first scene, a performance of the first scene, been a selected project at two playwright conferences and won 2nd place in the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, Play Division. This full production was its first full bore go.

Over a year ago, we were cast and in first rehearsal when everything closed down because of the pandemic. For a while, we thought, we’d be back on in a month, or by summer or … whenever.

Then came relief. Businesses reopened. We unmasked (for a bit anyway.) Recast and were in rehearsal.

And here’s where it gets weird.

I’ve watched staged readings of this play and a couple of my screenplays. I’ve won prizes and awards. Been published in newspapers and the Congressional Record. But one afternoon I had the strangest reaction as I watched the actors run lines. They repeated words I wrote, words that lived in my brain for years, words that evolved on paper.

My secret, silent writer’s heart yelled, “Mine!” 

I actually caught myself reaching one hand toward the closest actor as if to bring my words back home.

Luckily, I sat back and listened. Watched. Saw that these words meant something else to those people.

Then there were lessons the theater had to teach me.

Some might say, once feet hit the stage, the playwright's job is over. 

Some directors and actors would like no less than to see the back of writer if they must see her at all. Not considering that their first impression of the work, no matter how talented they are, will not be as rich as that of the person who created the work and lived with it for however long it took to bring it to the stage. 

We’re told to respect the director’s vision and the actor’s choices, but how about some respect for the text. Not using the playwright as a resource is a mistake. A short-sighted, egocentric mistake.

Now I know there are writers who do not know how to behave. Who disavow the fact that the characters they created now belong to the creative person who will walk them into real life. Those writers disrupt and make everyone’s job more difficult. They should be stowed in the broom closet or out on the street. Not every writer is like that.

I knew if my work moved an actor to create, that made the work richer. I was okay with that which is how I kept my secret, silent writer’s heart quiet while she yelled, “Mine mine mine.”

So, I gave one note to the director out of sight and hearing of the actors, as requested. When she told the actors, “We usually cross out all the stage directions,” and my brain exploded like a mushroom cloud over Nevada and my secret, silent writer’s heart yelled, “It ain’t radio, bitch,” I just sat there.

Oh my.

What did we do before Google?

I looked up playwright/director relationships and found out, it wasn’t just me. HALLELUJAH. But gee. Not everybody, but enough that Google had no trouble spewing multiple hits.

I’ll say this about that.

It is a misguided, mediocre director who advises actors to ignore the playwright’s stage directions. Here are three reasons.

1. It ain’t radio.

2. Stage directions are where the subtext hides.

3. If we’re speaking of playwrights like Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, stage directions are where the literature lives. They are how we know Stanley is going to rape Blanche and Willy Loman’s a dick. That literature is the art that inspires the art the actor creates. Why go without it?

So, I skipped the rest of the rehearsals and concentrated on my premiere night outfit aiming for writer cool not old lady-going-to-town.

I remember how nervous I was waiting out the first night of the first time Driver’s Ed was performed in the old home town. I wrote about it here.

This time was different. There were contracts. Everybody got paid. People had to buy tickets and commit to a night at the theater. Ads and posters appeared around town.

Would they laugh? Would they walk out? Would we be a Covid super spreader event?

They laughed. They enthusiastically applauded between each scene. It was cool. It was weird. It was not what I’m used to. The script that played a million times in my mind was out in the world.

During the second night’s performance I sat in a hallway, out of sight of the stage in the dark and listened to where the laughs were. 

Listened to the audience. 

First line gets the biggest laugh. Midway through the play a line gets a sustained laugh that bubbled on past the next three lines. Listened to when the language quieted the audience. Heard when they came back. It was one of my best writer experiences.

That night sitting on the floor in the dark, hearing an audience brim with laughter and applause, my secret, silent writer’s heart whispered, “Mine.”

 

 

 

 

Autumn