in september of 2004 i was hired on at Writers' Theatre to run the sound board during their 2005-2006 season. the first show i ran was Chekhov's "The Seagull". the show had 3 or 4 cues. during most shows I would read a play and sometimes got through a play and a half in a given night. on Sundays when there were 2 shows I could read 2 to 2 and a half plays depending on the script I brought. while in graduate school, I would spend my vacations in Maryland or Chicago or wherever at used bookstores stock piling plays that I thought I would never read. While working at Writers' Theatre I read them all...well, not them all, but most of them and the few that I have left are constantly added to with new and used books I pick up around...just not as frequently. I'm not on the government's dime no more.
anyway, I also became an associate member of the Dramatists Guild of America during this time. associate status is really a paying member. i hope to improve my status while a production of repute here in the next couple years. the greatest perk of DGA status is the monthly Dramatists magazine.
in an article published within the magazine devoted to recently departed playwright Arthur Miller, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the surrounding events of Bryony Lavery's play "Frozen". Lavery was being accused of plagarism. not only was she accused of plagarizing a woman's life (represented by the doctor in "Frozen") but she was also being accused of plagarizing some of Gladwell's own work based on interviews with said doctor. Gladwell drew no conclusions as to whether or not Lavery should be deemed a plagarist as there were many factors involved. what is plagarism anyway? what constitutes theft? these were the questions at the heart of Gladwell's article and he went through painstaking means to try and find these answers. his only conclusion was that Lavery should have acknowledge his work (and the doctors). it was the same conclusion that Lavery had come to and knew there was nothing to do but apologize to Gladwell and the doctor. she had merely overlooked her sampling of their words and was brought to tears in a meeting between herself and Gladwell.
the article gripped me and I openend my journal, something I brought with me everyday to my sound board operator position and on a two show sunday penned a play, then titled "Everything Goes Out". The play begins with the narrator confessing "I stole a play. the play's the thing." i had just finished Neil Labute's "This is How it Goes" and loved the way he incorporated narration with interaction and wanted to exercise the same in this play. a writer who stole a play as the play plays out behind him.
since that sunday, the play has evolved. it is now titled "A/other Lover" and is being presented by LiveWire Chicago Theatre in February of 2007. Three months from now for those counting. the play the writer steals in now a screenplay and the play that plays out behind him is a film and it does not play behind him by surrounds him. he is engulfed in the picture. the script reads somewhat like a documentary of the creation of a script and is themed by the search for truth. who wrote this script and whose truth is the real one.
i believe America is living a moment of this type of search. truth is not readily available and there are few avenues one can seek real truth. bias and propaganda are abound. "A/other Lover" is a true reflection of this society. a polemic of society mired in this moment. defining truth is not easy.
"there was a time we lived in truth. let's go back."
