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Misplaced Baggage.

January 23, 2011    |    0 COMMENT(S)

It's the working title of my play for CW130.

A short summary: Charlie wants to move out of her parents' house as soon as possible because at twenty-six, she feels suffocated and stuck in a rut. In the middle of the night, she rushes up to the attic to look for her missing suitcase, only to stumble upon her childhood crush, a rockstar in all his cardboard-cutout glory. They start to talk about things in the past as they become nostalgic over the things she finds in the attic.

I took the unrealistic, a-bit-absurd approach because I was hoping its highly improbable plot would underline the contrast, bringing about something honest and truthful about the human condition: we let a lot of the baggage in our past still weigh us down. By bringing in a character who is not exactly the lead's doppelganger or mirror but as someone she likes enough to trust while being, to some extent, still a stranger willing to easily point out her faults, I wanted her to try making sense of the things going on in her mind and in her life in an external manner. Which in this case took the form of a former rockstar idol.

Trust me, this is light years away from my original story concept pitch. The road to shaping this one up was bumpy and slow, but I'm actually quite happy with it now. It's my first time to write with an unrealistic twist; I'm surprised it came out less difficult than what I expected.

Dr. Juan is probably one of the best professors I've had so far in UP and despite the constant anxiety attacks brought upon by our meetings, I want to deserve being in his class. I honestly enjoy CW130 even if it stresses me out. Sure there is always that fear of one's pride being crushed down to pieces as he tears down a play, but nothing compares to a silent little nod of affirmation from him.

Submission of the revised draft tomorrow. I bite my nails with unease.

Lights out. Exit stage left.

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Believe it or not, I just finished writing my first play.

January 6, 2011    |    0 COMMENT(S)

Ever!

It's the first draft for our CW130 (Playwriting) class, which may I just say, is one of my most challenging subjects this semester. Probably my biggest mistake, which I'm getting to realize only now, is to underestimate playwriting. I took this as one of my genres to escape from Poetry, which is a genre I definitely felt uncomfortable with. I enjoy reading poetry, yes, but somehow it just doesn't really go well with me -- any attempts at being poetic sound contrived and/or cheesy. So I took playwriting as my escape route. Wrong move.

It's not enough to have a picture inside your head. There is no such thing as a short short play. Or a flash play. You cannot just have this image on your head and work on just that one frame, that one scene. (Which is what usually happens to me when I write fiction.) In playwriting, you have to see everything in the now, from where the boxes lie to how the curtains move, and not just that but also everything about the past: how the character was born, whether she puts her bra or panties on first, how she likes her eggs, scrambled or sunny side-up. It's that specific. You have to be conscious of every movement, every word. Because unlike fiction, poetry and nonfiction even, where there are space for footnotes, playwriting leaves the audience nothing but just that play. That's the whole story, that's the whole explanation. That's all there is to it.

Which is why for the last few nights I've been pouring myself over this one-act play I'm writing. A twenty-minute play with two actors and mostly dialogue is no joke -- I tried to come up with the simplest concepts possible, but really, there is no easy way out of it. On some days, the story made complete sense to me, on most days, I'm just like, "What the hell am I doing?" But thankfully, I got the whole thing down to twelve pages (which is not a bad thing at all!) and hopefully it's tight, concise but surprising enough to be considered "okay."

Just a nod from our professor would already make me want to treat all my friends at Drew's until they hurl their livers out (but that is not a promise, just an analogy!) I really want to do well in this class. But right now, I'm not even thinking about my grades. I just want to get this thing going and hopefully, it turns out to be something worth watching.

The first reading of my play will be on Wednesday. I'm nervous! The topic proposals, meanwhile, for my other playwriting class (MP174) will be next week, I think. That's another play for me to worry about. But until then, I'm crossing my fingers on this one.

I still don't feel like a playwright, though. More like a playwrong.


(I apologize for the rambling. Sorry, my brain's all mush right now.)

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