(Both bound by their sheer insignificance, Edward and John are two tramps who have grown dependant on each others presence ever more by each passing day. They do not like each other; they do not hate each other. In a post lapsarian life where redemption is out of the question; they both scurry around the edges of society, trying to find the right balance. Both sleep insulated from the ground by a thin layer of cardboard.)
Edward: John?
(The sound of a lone taxi horn interrupts the silence)
Edward: John, John, John are you there John? Hello?
(John provides a feint rustle but this ceases to quieten Edward)
John: I’m here.
Edward: Oh. Good. Just checking.
(Silence acts as a catalyst for the atmosphere now brewing)
John: Sleep.
Edward: I can’t.
John: Try.
Edward: I have.
John: Well let me then.
Edward: I want to try something new.
(John wakes after denying his alertness)
John: Why? We’re safe. Maybe not warm, by no means comfortable (long pause) we’re safe.
Edward: Don’t you have family down this neck of the woods?
(Lengthy silence)
John: Dead.
Edward: Oh.
John: You really do seem incapable of recognising our situation.
(Pause)
Denial? No. You’re too docile.
(John intensifies)
Maybe you just need attention.
Or maybe you’re just scared.
Scared to realise the fact that you’ll never change.
Scared to realise without me you’ll slip even further down into the gutter of society.
Of course I long for change, but I’m far from capable of instigating it.
(Long pause)
Look at me.
Look at you.
Look at us Edward.
What do you really see?
Edward: I see two men. One mind. I see You, me and not much else.
(Moves on swiftly)
Maybe someday we’ll both be rich and get beautiful wives and we won’t have to worry about what time we need to eat and we won’t need to worry about what time we have to find a place to sleep maybe we won’t even need to stress about what time it is because we’d be rich and nobody would be able to stop us. Not even ourselves.
John: I couldn’t live like that. You couldn’t live like that. We’re only where we are because we have each other.
(Deep Breath)
You have your traits and I have mine. I may hate to love you and you may hate to love me, yet without each other we’d be no more significant.
It’s all about try to find the right balance between friendship and our narcissistic tendencies. Living as one may be somewhat restrictive; yet the other side of the coin seems somewhat hidden for our own good.
My first thought: two tramps? Have you read ‘Waiting For Godot’? I, unfortunately, haven’t (another one of those things I really should have read by now…), so I’m unable to draw any even vaguely useful parallels between your play and Beckett’s. So, moving on…
ReplyDeleteI’ll start, as ever, with the nit-picking stuff: be careful with punctuation. If you ever want to submit to publications or competitions, punctuation will have to be spot on, so it is important. A semi-colon is used to separate two independent clauses (for example: ‘I like chips; they taste best lathered in gravy’). This means that one of the semi-colons used in your introductory bracketed paragraph is correct, while the other is not. Also, proofread carefully for tricky spellings (‘feint’ should be ‘faint’) and appropriate use of less familiar words (‘ceases’ is incorrect). Finally, layout: the paragraph breaks used in John’s first long speech are confusing and unnecessary.
The dialogue for the first half is rapid, playful, and highly naturalistic. For the second half, it’s the exact opposite (although possibly ‘playful’ mutates into ‘satirical’). Although both styles could work wonderfully by themselves, such a reversal is too much for such a short piece to take, as the viewer’s grasp on the pace (light, skipping), setting (a “real” world; not symbolic), AND character (“ordinary joes”) has to be so rapidly and massively revised.
As usual, your piece is incredibly dense. I’m still debating what John’s closing statements say: that some people are “made” to live in poverty, that the poor are where they are because that’s where they’re meant to be? Should this be taken seriously, or satirically? Is the preoccupation with individualism vs. community a comment on capitalism vs. socialism/communism? Can you shed any light? In terms of ideas, there’s certainly a lot to go at here!
However, these ideas are delivered through explicit statements, not through characters or situations which ENACT these ideas as conflicts. There really isn’t an objective correlative in this work: the concepts you’re dealing with exceed the established facts of the play-world. Your socio-political statements, to me, aren’t rooted in the characters and their conflicts. It’s as if your message came first, and these characters of Edward and John have been arbitrarily chosen as vehicles for it – and that any other vehicle could do almost as well.
The dual problem of enactment and objective correlative mean there’s an absolute lack of conflict or tension in the piece – at least, that is, after the initial yes-no dialogue of the first half. I didn’t really care about what John and Edward were saying, as I didn’t believe that these ideas came from the characters, and so the probing, satirical intelligence of your ideas was lost. I felt there was too much uncertainty on how to view the work (symbolic? satirical? naturalistic? a manifesto?) because your mid-point reversal was too massive.
The extreme intellect that shines through in all your work is… Intimidating. But to effectively showcase it, you need to think more about the artistic choices you’re making.
This is a neat, intriguing piece. I can see the influence of the “Million Tiny Plays” in this, and some Pinter-esque use of the pause, which seems to work particularly well in two-hander pieces: the silences between two people who know each other well, but don’t necessarily like each other, can really allow the tension to build. As Judi Dench says, acting is “about what you don’t say”.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I feel that the reader (or audience) is somehow sold short at the end of the piece. You’ve started out so sparely, and allowed the characters expansion, as is right, but the unfortunate creep of cliché detracts from the cleverness of the rest of the writing. We can tell it’s cliché because the two characters begin to sound like each other, using similar rhetoric (Edward’s repeated “we won’t need to worry”; John’s inversion with “I may hate to love you and you may hate to love me”). I like the sense of what you’re writing, but I think the actual mechanics of the writing leave the tone a little portentous.
Just a couple of bits of trimming: remove the “all” from “it’s all about trying to find the right balance”, and in the same paragraph, remove “somewhat” from “somewhat hidden for our own good”. These are slightly archaic words or turns of phrase. This may be what you’re going for, but if that’s the case the elaborateness of the language needs to be stepped up throughout; otherwise it seems like a non sequitur.
Also, just watch the semicolons in the first paragraph. I like to see a good range of punctuation, but you’re using them in the place of commas, and they’re not interchangeable. Commas separate a dependent clause from an independent; semicolons separate independent clauses that are nonetheless linked.
As ever, this is ambitious, and you so nearly pull it off. I think it needs expansion to work in its present form.
Hi Carlsberger
ReplyDeleteAlot of the best writing in this is in the first stage direction. I don't know if I've encountered "postlapsarian" before but I'm glad to read it here. Thanks.
"Both bound by their sheer insignificance" is deep and poetic and the pun appreciated, whether intended or not.
Yes you will find some consolation in Beckett, a kindred spirit who will both justify and inspire your experimental nature. "Waiting for Godot" would be a good place to start if you haven't read it.
The direction "the sound of a lone taxi interrupts the silence" is effective both practically and artistically.
You do seem to be in transition between last year's prosaic naturalistic play and your urge to express your unique style through more than one character.
Do not mistake believable dialogue for ordinary dialogue. If your characters are extra-ordinary then they will express themselves accordingly and it will be believable.
The more prosaic lines in the first half of the piece do sit a bit uneasily with the more idiosyncratic dialogue that follows. Personally I'd like to see you err on the side of idiosyncratic, but as your play discusses, it is about balance and I'd hate to lose the lighter side, e.g. John's comment "well, let me then".
There are though some lines that feel flabby ("scared to realise the fact that you'll never change") and verge on cliché ("the gutter of society").
Overall I think the theme of symbiotic friendship/existence is consistent and effective but I do think there is still a germ of difference, enough of a gap, between the two characters.
Edward's long speech "moves on swiftly" without the stage direction, the long run on sentence indicating that pace to the actor. I'd like to see it be leven onger and more imaginative.
For me John's final speech becomes a bit too explicit. I think the final image "the other side of the coin seems somewhat hidden for our own good" is sufficiently effective. The slightly disorienting "somewhat hidden....." I think invests the coin cliché with enough originality but maybe stretched to find a more thoroughly original image.
Yeah I think you're making progress in this form.