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fictionwriting · 3 years

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Casting Call?

Not quite yet, as I’ve only posted three very brief chapters on what is, at the moment, an extremely obscure fiction site, but networking is very difficult when one is obscure, so let’s put it out there: someday, I’d like to turn some of the stories I’m writing into low budget movies or videos, plays, or maybe both. This raises a few questions.

Q: Will there be pay?

A: No, probably not. This is just for fun. I can’t picture making any money off of these projects, myself, and will be delighted if I manage to break even. There is no revenue to share. Professional actors probably will have much better places to be, both creatively and financially, than on my backlot.

Q: How do we get in touch with you?

A: Online, you don’t. Any casting or other recruitment I do will be done in the real world, offline. There are a number of reasons for this.

1. Many, many people, down through the years, have come to grief by doing their networking online. Yes, one can fill a party very quickly doing that, but one can also get one’s home trashed by a group of psychopaths who will then vanish anonymously into the night, leaving one with a very large bill for repairs.

2. If you really don’t like getting out, theater is not the hobby for you. There is no hiding from the audience. A little mousiness is not an insurmountable problem, but if one is not willing to go out and wander, just how far outside of Emily Dickinson territory is one, at that point? Far enough that one won’t freeze on stage as the reality of there being no second take sinks in, and one’s eyes adjust to the point at which one sees the audience, again?

Even amateur theater calls for a little bit of a background, even more so with us, because there will be Improv work. Those experiences you have as you wander exploring the parts of the city, the ones that you don’t know in advance of your arrival, are what kick you out of creative ruts that you didn’t know you were in and give you something to play with when you’re up there. There is no virtual substitute for that gift of real world experience. I’m counting on you to go out and get that experience. The way you make contact helps to ensure that you’ve done that. When the time is right, I’ll be advertising in the real world. How? Maybe in PerformInk, if I can persuade the staff to not post the notice online. Maybe in hardcopy zines I’ve distributed. Maybe through the posting of flyers, though probably not, given how quickly those get torn down. One way or another, in you’ve wandered into the right place, you’ll see some sort of notice that points you in the direction of a short lived, throwaway website that will give more information, and maybe the time and place of a meeting.

Q: I hear that Supplicants has a scene in which a character appears in a state of undress. Is that something that you expect of those working with you?

A: You’re hearing from somebody who skimmed the story much too quickly. There is a scene in which “Meg” is unpleasantly surprised to discover that she has been so seen, in the past, by somebody who was spying on here, but there is no scene in which, present tense, she is going out there “thusly”, as Meg puts it. If that story should be dramatized, and you’re playing Meg, all that you’re going to be putting on display is your embarrassment and anger. You will be fully clothed throughout. Assuming that Supplicants even gets dramatized, which it probably won’t, given how much of the story is taking place inside the character’s thoughts. As for what I expect of the performers, in general … Note that I’m using Youtube to host our videos. The TOS there would not allow for the uploading of amateur R rated videos, even if I wanted to upload them. Which I don’t. Such a video would probably go viral, with a great potential for uncomfortable consequences for the performers later in life, even those who remained clothed. For this reason, not only would I not ask this of you, I wouldn’t let you do so on video. As for stage … I can’t picture a reason for there to be such a scene, and I will guarantee that I’ll never surprise you with one. As an actor, you’re creating a role, and like an other artist, you might get a little territorial about your creation. I understand and respect that. Having appeared as a given character on stage or video, you might not be too thrilled with having somebody else fill in for you in the same cycle of performances you’re in, any more that a sculptor would feel pleased with the thought of somebody else knocking a few chips of marble out of his statue. While I will write what I will write, and can’t make any promises about what your characters will be up to in print while you’re away, I can say that not everything that happens in print has to happen in front of an audience or a camera. If the understanding has not existed from the time you started playing a character that this might be asked of you, then I’m not going to ask you to choose between having somebody else intrude on your work, or you physically stepping outside of your comfort zone. We can just work around that scene. “So you’ll be telling everybody to expect this from the beginning, right you dog, you?” No. If I were to be putting on a play about the experiences of an artist’s model, then yes, there would probably be nudity. But why would I do that? In real life, all the model does is stand motionless. Where’s the story in that? Running a mental checklist of other possibilities, I just can’t come up with a scenario in which such a scene would be anything but gratuitous, advancing neither the plot nor the development of the characters. That being the case, such a scene should not appear on stage at all, I believe.

Q: “So you’re a bluenosed Puritan?”

A: I don’t think so. Others have disagreed. I would say that in any sort of art, there is a point at which less becomes more. While there might be something to be said for having a little extraneous material to make the piece feel more real, give it a little of the untidiness of real life, if one doesn’t keep the amount of that material under control, is one really crafting anything at all? Can one see the art under all of that undergrowth? If we’re introducing entire scenes that have nothing to do with why the piece exists, then I think that’s maybe a bit too much clutter. In Supplicants, it’s a fair bet that Jack had dinner before he headed off to Church. Notice how I don’t tell you what he had for dinner? This is not because I morally object to eating. It just doesn’t have anything to do with the story, at least not yet. The same principle applies here. Meg probably isn’t a virgin at this point in her life, but what would be the relevance of her love making technique in the story you’ve seen to this point? I think that to show Meg in the heat of action would be like having you sit down and watch Jack cook up his pot of white bean goulash. There. So now you know. Jack is a horrible cook. Who cares? Yes, we could probably get more people into the seats - assuming that there are seats and we’re not doing this out in a Park somewhere - by having people watch Meg do her thing. No, I’m not so clueless that I don’t understand this, but if we sink to that, is the audience watching the play or is it just biding its time, waiting for a striptease? To say “let us know why we are here” isn’t Puritanism. It’s focus. It’s also particularly fitting, given what I’m trying to do.

Q: How’s that?

A: In describing this site, what I’ve said is that if a baby is tottering down the center line on a highway on page one, by page two a truck will have struck the little one. “So, this is about sadism?”, somebody asks. No, this is about merciless realism, what would happen instead or what we’ve chosen to pretend would happen. Having a hero sweep in at the last moment and carry the child to safety would be a feel good ending, and certainly something that would make us cheer in real life, but it wouldn’t happen in real life. So, that male fantasy driven business of having women throwing their clothes off because the hero says “good morning” with a winning enough smile, aside from being in bad taste as far as I’m concerned, just doesn’t fit. In terms of performance, what I’m aiming for (and hoping to hit), again, is realism, taking the tone down a notch until the characters look like real people. Less screaming and breaking of furniture, even if that is what people have come to expect out of Chicago theater. We’ll leave the mugging to the professionals, as we move toward a more conversational tone, and try to have the drama grown out of the situation rather than out of the volume with which the situation is discussed.

Q: So you’re a professional director?

A: Hardly. Just an amateur who knows what he likes, and has noticed, of late, that he hasn’t been getting it. Contrived, “high concept” plots, acting that seems more like clowning than anything else - and high priced acting instruction that seems to offer the student very little. If all we are getting for our money is a few exercises that we could find out of a book, and some grumbling out of the instructor at the end of a scene as the only feedback we’re getting, then can’t we do that for ourselves? Just take the books and play, with maybe a small audience around from time to time so that what we get isn’t just an echo chamber.

Q: So why should we care about whether or not you like what you’ve been finding? Why should we go to so much trouble to seek you out?

A: You shouldn’t. If you run into one of my offline promotions, like the writing and ideas you see, and want to play, drop by and maybe we’ll have fun. If you don’t, no big deal, either. There are a lot of other people you can hook up with, and some of them can probably put on a much better show than I can. So, just let it happen. Or not.

I’ll be back, later. Coffee awaits.

Note: This was reposted to my Posterous, Livejournal (and Elsewhere) comment journal, having been moved from its original location in response to concerns raised by a number of incidents of censorship, at a company that had kept offering assurances to its users that it had mended its ways in this. Over the years, at each point it insisted that henceforth, it would sin no more, but the return to old, comfortable vices would always come so swiftly that clearly, no effort to resist then had been made, at all.

I had to move the post again, today, because my previous host, the victim of an acquihire, will be closing down in a few days. What a nuisance! One spends more time repairing the damage done by the unprofessionalism of supposed professionals, than one gets to spend writing.

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