It's, like, totally hard to treat a play seriously that includes as much absolute drama in it as the little 15-minute play I'm directing for the little festival this year. Imagine the scenario: girlfriend and boyfriend end a little conversation with love, boyfriend gets on bus and buys non-gateway drug, boyfriend OD's at band practice, funeral is attended by girlfriend and drugdealer, girlfriend hooks up with drug dealer, drug dealer reveals his secret, girlfriend hugs a stuffed drug reference.
The script includes the stage direction "blood pours from his eyes." (Flamingbanjo provided word from John Galt that such bleeding is a no go.)
The script we used last night surprised me by including a scene in which the girlfriend is talking to her psychiatrist. Why a surprise? Well, because I totally assumed that the hard copy I had and the e-copy the playwright sent me were the same. Met non!
Please, everyone, do not encourage the inclusion of nor include for yourself a scene in which a patient is talking to their therapist. It makes blood pour from my eyes.
Let's hear it for my cast--they've injected some sweet little moments into the play already. Let's double hear it for my cast as I accidentally started blocking the play when my original intent was more general music stands. (Said cast includes flamingbanjo, Mothra, The Baron, and Meow).
And now I'm off to rejoin my much shorter students to attend a play which features gun closets, medicine cabinets, and near death by car exhaust.
Posted by Ida at February 24, 2005 11:07 AMThe blood pouring from the mouth or eyes thing is very Black Belt Theatre-ish. I think because the level of survivable violence in your average chop-socky movie is so superhuman that they needed a really good button to indicate "Nope. He's really dead."
Posted by: flamingbanjo at February 25, 2005 08:09 AMI'm given to understand that the level of survivability for actual humans in general is quite a bit higher than one would believe; as in, "oh look, he was cut in half at the waist by a grain thresher and there's his legless torso dragging itself through the field like a bisected wasp," type thing.
The act of dying, it often seems, is mostly psychosomatic.
Posted by: Joshua at February 25, 2005 01:17 PMStill, Mr. Galt was quite adamant on the "no bleeding from the eyes" point. ODs pretty much look like they just fell asleep, I guess. And in fact, keeping them from dying is often just a matter of keeping them from drifting off till they get to a hospital.
Posted by: flamingbanjo at February 25, 2005 04:28 PMThat was true for Laura Ingalls Wilder, too..except maybe that was just making sure not to fall asleep riding in a horse-drawn sleigh.
Posted by: ida at February 25, 2005 05:47 PMLaura Ingalls Wilder OD'd? I must've missed that episode ("this week, on a very special Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Reagan guest stars...")
Posted by: flamingbanjo at February 25, 2005 06:01 PM