Post-fringe thoughts

"How to Cheat" turned out far better than I could have hoped. I can't remember when I've seen a show where every actor on stage hit the right notes all the time. I wish we had maybe two more hours of rehearsal and the extra ten minutes the script orginally had, but I think these two actors were so completely these two characters that every experience I had of watching the show was thrilling.

Also, audiences seemed to enjoy it very much. The Fringe Festival is glorious for a variety of reasons but, at the moment, I'm thinking about the gloriousness of being so near your audience so often that over eleven days people I've never met before approach me or the actors or the directors with unsolicited comments. Three or four or seven days after they saw the show people are telling me how it effected them, how it stayed under their skin, how they're still thinking about it, how they related to it, how they questioned it, how they think it was truthful -- How fucking fantastic is that!??!

I love the Fringe Festival. Stop me from counting the ways.

Also, I learned that all the difficult stuff we put in scripts, all the hard stuff I had vowed to avoid as a writer, need not be scary. Turns out that sex on stage, when done abstractly and well, can be everyone's favorite part. Dream sequences can work. There are no limits to what the theater can attempt - nor should there be. . . I knew that - I just didn't know that I had the ability to explore all the possibilities.

I said stop me from counting the ways I love the Fringe.

I wish these actors could perform this show in a regular run with a large theater's marketing department and mailing list behind them but they can't. Here's another Fringe thought that amuses me: People kept calling my script more mainstream than other Fringe fare. The simulated sex as a game of cards on stage? Or the Tango? Or the dream sequence? Or the vague suggestion of danger outside the walls? Or the fact that the male romantic lead was Asian? Regardless, I think they meant more professional than many Fringe shows (not all mind you), but the amusing thing is that no theater would do this show. First of all, it wasn't written until June. Money had been paid. Actors committed. Even the title had been decided on and I didn't even have a play until late-June. I'd like to see the Guthrie deal with that shit. More importantly, even if I had the script and showed it to every "mainstream" theater in town, none of them would do it. Please. Put your hand down. You wouldn't do it. I don't know why. My scripts don't read well on the page, for one. But also, it's too out there in style but not out there enough in theme -- or at least not clear in theme - for a mainstream theater to get into it. They want a play that clearly says something thematically about some important issue in the world. So it makes me laugh that people think this show was a bunch of "pros" taking a slot away from the heartfelt amateurs who really need a slot at the Fringe. This show would absolutely never have seen the light of day without the Fringe as a forum.

I told you to stop me from counting goddamnit.

Speaking of theme. Here's another thing I've been thinking about - I'm writing this morning, and this is my warmup. I don't really believe that anyone reads this stuff, or at least they don't really read it, and I want to get my post-fringe thoughts out so that I can move on to the other work I have to do this morning. Why am I deciding to publish it publicly? I don't know. Variety I suppose. It feels Fringey. I threw some ideas out there for the Fringe and got a cool response. I thought I might throw some more Fringe-related ideas out there now to see if anyone is reading and has anything to add. Does anyone edit their blogs though? I'm just kind of freewriting here. Anyway -

Some people say that my plays have "too much stuff" in them. They don't know what I'm trying to say. First of all, I like "too much stuff" for a variety of reasons but the most important one is that it is entertaining and it is fulfilling. Would you rather have a good big meal or a thin meal? I suppose it depends but usually, on stage, I want stuff. I don't want to be bored. Anything not to be bored. (Yes, I realize that too much stuff can get boring but I haven't hit that mark yet I think. Not for most people anyway.) Second, why have we gotten in the habit of looking for the message of a play? What is Oedipus Rex about? It isn't actually about how hubris will be your downfall. Hubris wasn't Oedipus's downfall. His downfall was that he killed his father and slept with his mother, and he didn't know he was doing that when he did it so I don't know that you can blame him for it. You might say that Oedipus is saying that you can't avoid fate but since I doubt anyone in the world was arguing that proposition, it ain't much of a message. I think Oedipus is about Oedipus and the city that he rules and what happens to both the city and the king. I think Oedipus is about the world and how we live in it (now the point about fate becomes worthwhile). I think all good plays are about people living in the world. Period. End of story. Are there different ideas in different plays? Of course. But is the author "saying" something? No. If I had something to say, I'd say it. If my opinion about the nature of war or morality or whatever was at all informed and important and worthwhile then I would work for the United Nations or I'd be a moralist or a sociologist or something other than a playwright. A playwright is a storyteller. I tell stories. About people. i care about people. What I'm saying is always about people. People. People. People. The specific people in this situation. How do we live? Who do we love? Why? What? Where? I think asking and exploring these questions are as important a part of being alive as any of the other more pragmatic professions I might have. If I'm saying anything at all about people it is that compassion and truth are our only hope. The world is a ridiculously complex and difficult place. Choices are tough and often contradictory. The only guiding principles that comes even close to being helpful are compassion and truth. And even then we screw up. -- However, I just feel that as an animating principle. The totality of the experience of a play of mine is animated by that belief but I have no intention of putting that in a character's mouth for thematic purposes. Not yet anyway. I'd rather tell you an entertaining story full of real interesting people and lots of other stuff that conveys a heightened sense of truth about the way we live our lives in their world. And also entertains, delights and surprises the fuck out of you. I think this is so worthwhile even if I can't articulate why. . . That's what I try to do anyway. That's all I have to say. Everything else is experience. Everything is experience (I don't know exactly what that sentence means, but it's short and it sounds nice and I think there is something to it).

Long paragraph that.

One final thought. Critics. Huh. Writers write. A lot. Sometimes we write badly and sometimes we write well. I think critics qualify as writers, and sometimes they're really wrong. Sometimes they write badly. I can live with that. It's a shame that they have some degree of power in a medium like theater since theater has a limited arsenal for publicity. The reviews carry more weight than they might with movies where large advertising budgets - and more reviews -- can discount their impact. Still, sometimes critics screw up, and that's OK. I screw up as a writer a lot, and - well, well, well, I suppose a critic won't cut me any slack when I screw up, but since I'm not a critic I can cut them some slack.

Anyway, again, thank god for the Fringe where audiences have a forum to drown out mainstream reviews. And, boy, did I love reading the reviews. Even the ones who had problems with the show. Audience reviewers haven't become harden in their aesthetic choices, and surprisingly, for the most part, they articulate their criteria in a worthwhile fashion. "I can't really like a show about infidelity." "I don't think the small talk at the beginning was interesting." These are so clearly subjective judgements that they feel so much more than a review. They feel like conversation. The Fringe provides so much the opportunity for audiences and artists to be in conversation -- on the website, at the parties, in line for other shows -- o my god do I love that! . . . I do wish critics would enter into the conversation more, but I don't know what their editors are telling them to do so I should stop thinking about it.

Interjection: That bit about audience reviews being stacked is bullshit. First of all, if you look at the reviews over time, the statistical sample balances out the ridiculously positive reviews with more negative reviews, but also, why shouldn't my friends be allowed to tell people how much they liked the show? In my case at least, many of my friends are theater people. They have informed opinions and none of them are going to post bullshit. They liked they show and they think others should see it. Why is that a problem? Hell, even if my mother wanted to to post, why should that be a problem? From what I could tell, it was pretty easy to identify when someone's mom was talking -- Hell, I read one review that stated it and it kind of was so cute it made me want to see the show.

I tell you what I really do hate about some critics though -- the way they sometimes give a positive review that isn't positive or a negative review that isn't negative. It feels when they do that like they refuse to trust even their own feelings. Like they're afraid to say what they feel because then they think the artist will have fooled them. And they can't allow themselves to be fooled. I hate the way that some critics seem to insist on showing that they're smarter than the artist and the audience. (See Star Tribune's silly hit piece on stacked audience reviews for example.)

OK. I'm going to, against my better judgement, use an example. We got a generally positive review from the Star Tribune. I think the critic clearly enjoyed the show. Yet his review was loaded with vague asides and conditional words and phrases. For example, the first line read something like "As infidelity plays go, this one is at least heartfelt, well-written, and well-acted." (Of course I have it memorized. It was a review of my show!) What does that word "at least" mean? At least "heartfelt, well-written, and well-acted"? What would "at most" be? And "as infidelity plays go"? Infidelity plays is a genre? How do most infidelity plays go? The only one I can think of is "Betrayal" by Harold Pinter. That is definitely in the genre of infidelity plays, right? Is the reviewer suggesting that "Betrayal" isn't heartfelt, well-written and well-acted but "How to Cheat" is? Thank you but I'd give a few more props to Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter. Or is he suggesting that "Betrayal" is something more than the least? What would that be? Heartfelt, well-written, well-acted and also what? What what? What the hell is that phrase "at least" doing there? O, I'm liking this rant so I'm going on.

Then the critic writes that I "got lucky"or - "lucked out' I can't remember - when I got Randy and Emily into the show. O, yes, they are wonderful. The show wouldn't work without them. I can't praise them enough. But why the word "lucky"? As though we weren't in this together? As though it wasn't the skillful combination of writer, actors, producer, director's hard work and ability together? No, I'm just lucky that Randy and Emily happened to wander into the rehearsal room one day and trip into this script. Yup. Luck.

Finally, at the end, he ticks off all the interesting themes that thread in and out of the play -- sex, regret, choice, responsibility, etc. -- and says that the laugh lines keep it from becoming too much. In other, more clear words, it is a play with a lot of laughs but also a lot of serious themes. Hell, ain't that the shit we want to be writing and seeing and experiencing? But the way that its phrased puts in the audience's head that it could be too much -- You're not going to like all the stuff that's going on in this play -- except that you will. It's not too much, he says, it's not too much. It's not what I just described it as -- so why the fuck did you describe it that way?!?

I do think that some critics, many critics, feel the need to describe for their readers how clever they are. This critic, for example, is saying between the lines repeatedly that - even though it was a good play -- he wasn't fooled. He's seen infidelity plays before. And he knows all about the themes the author was trying to sneak in there. Sure, the author and the actors did it well but really its all a precarious case of luck. (Hey, I'm a big believer in luck when it comes to art, but I don't exactly understand how or why a critic slides it into a review.)

OK. I'm done. Shit. Should I post this? Don't tell the critics. If you see them, thank them from me for whatever the hell they wrote. Thank them for covering the Fringe. There are seventy more ways I could count how I love the Fringe. I'd be happy to give them story ideas for next year. . . Blogs can be dangerous I think.

Much love. Thank you for coming to see "How to Cheat." Bye-bye.