I am going to summarize what we came up with for this session now, and later below I'm going to write what the future direction will be. The purpose of this session was to finalize structure and character relations for the play so that writing can occur over the holiday break, and the play will be finished in the editing session on January 8th.
CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS
We further defined the relationships between the characters
Dean - Dustin
FWO - Adam
Tyrant - Caroline
The Promised One - Joanne
Buddy - Caitlin
Amnesiac - Chris
Seeker - Shawn
Anonymous - Grace and Kelsey
The above are the assigned characters to work on as of now - I will change them if responsibilites change. Click on the character's names to go to their individual pages where you can read and write posts about them.
The character groups that are well defined are
Buddy, Amnesiac - married
FWO, Seeker, TPO, Tyrant - past and future different versions of eachother. Also, the Tyrant is his own father.
Dean - not related yet to the rest of everyone else. This is actually my responsibility, so I'll figure this out.
We didn't define it too much, but these characters may be related to eachother in the actual world, or may only represent the characters they are similiar to in each character's individual psychodramas. This is somewhat visualized by this picture below, except all circles would wrap around and intersect eachother wherever there was a matching similiar character.
Each circle represents the characters own life, as shown in the psychodramas, where they intersect with characteristics of the other characters.
STRUCTURE (aka how the play works):
The play will begin as people in a space (after the initial office scene), who then are elevated to another level, and start realizing there are other consciousnesses there. Portions of the polylogue will be inserted as appropriate, and progressive psychodramas will occur one after another. A character will transition into the psychodrama as appropriate for their character and the polylogue going on around them. Characters will be taken from the play for the psychodrama purposes and fulfill roles for the central character for that moment, based on their archetypes. Each psychodrama should, in some way, build on the state of mind of the previous one until we come to a final moment. The final moment should not be the choice of creating the new normal or not, it should be realizing that the choice exists.
PROGRESSION
The above picture shows the progression of the play. I'm going to clarify everything below so that nothing is missed.
The plays takes place on the set of an office, specifically with cubicle walls that are shorter than normal so people can see eachother.
The play begins with office talk. [I came up with the office talk occuring while the house is filling, either improvised or repetitive or something else, and once everyone is seated then the play begins shortly.]
Then the portion of the polylogue begins with
FWO: Can you hear me?
.
.
.
The main body of the play then proceeds, with polylogue fragments interspersed between psychodramas, as below.
-TYRANT
- first to maintain his presence, stuck.
- assertion of power
- What if the FWO imposes himself within this psychodrama?
POLYLOGUE FRAGMENT -unfamiliarity, fear of tyranny.
- AMNESIAC
- car accident
POLYLOGUE FRAGMENT -why? confusing and questioning.
- SEEKER - questions the situation.
NOTE: the theme of the three psychodramas up to this point have been confusion. The next ones will be more informative.
POLYLOGUE FRAGMENT - question escape.
- DEAN - there is no escape. Specific.
POLYLOGUE FRAGMENT - desolation, desperation.
- BUDDY - lonely story (husband left?)
- victimization
- POLYLOGUE FRAGMENT - troubled
- THE PROMISED ONE - potential, always put in a position of responsibility.
This part of the play is where excitement will build
- TPO/Tyrant/FWO parallel lives "fight". Seeker may also be involved as well.
- Buddy/Amnesiac confrontation.
- FLAWED WISE ONE - always helping, finally leaves someone behind?
The Choice?
- Fin -
Note: We talked about the aspect of the psychodramas being involuntary versus voluntary. Maybe they can become more voluntary as the play progresses.
BEFORE THE EDITING MEETING (aka OVER THE BREAK):
What needs to be done?
- Psychodramas need to be written and constructed
- Interspersed polylogue fragments need to be arranged
What will be done at editing meeting?
- Final look-over.
- Office Talk.
- TPO/Tyrant/FWO and Buddy/Amnesiac moments will be finalized (not sure how much work will be done over the break on them).
- The Ending will be written.
So roles are responsibilities for the characters you are assigned to are:
1) Get a better feel of your character (a "sketch" if you will)
2) Construct a psychodrama to act out with your character as the centre
3) Find fragments of the polylogue from any character or time that fit in before or after your psychodrama. These will be put together in the final editing session.
- Make sure you post rough drafts of your psychodramas and polylogue fragments so we can see and comment on them. Email me to let me know you have too.
Go forth and write!
RANDOM:
Shawn found this essay on
Foucalt's Heterotopia. It sounds very similiar to the space we are talking about, check it out.
Someone (Shawn also) brough up a playwright named John Mighton. He is a mathematician and philosopher, and also a playwright. Apparently he's done some interesting stuff.
Read more!
