Glorious Amateurs

If you read this post, you may have noted that I hoped to make it to the Sunday morning concert that wrapped up the Toronto Summer Music Festival at UT.  I did make it, biking furiously, though only with 5 minutes to spare.  I don't know that I would have made such an effort had I realized that the concert was to show off adult amateurs (in the MC's words) who had take a week off to study with the professionals at the UT Music School.  (Sort of like fantasy baseball camp, but for musicians.)  Is it really that different from paying to see music students perform?  Aside from the fact that the students are (mostly) growing into professionals, and the adult amateurs know that this is not a viable career path for them?  The main reason I probably would have skipped it, is that in order to fit everyone onto the stage, most of the time they put on a single movement from each piece, and I really don't care much for that approach.  Nonetheless, I was there and decided to stick it out through a Shostakovich piece about 2/3rds down the program.

The choral piece was surprisingly good.  This was followed by an amusing piece for tuba and bass clarinet.  Things were starting to look up until it came to a Mozart piece for strings where the lead violin was quite out of tune and the piece kind of dragged on.  On the whole, I thought the performers did quite well, and probably half of the time, I would have been very willing to hear the entire piece.  In the case of one amateur quintet, I might even be willing to pay a small fee to see them elsewhere.

Every now and then I get the crazy idea of advertising on Craigslist (or the bulletin board at the music school) to put together a quartet to play Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.  It is such a silly idea, not least because I don't know of any small theatres that have pianos, even upright ones.  Well, I probably won't completely give up on the dream, but it is a much lower priority than getting my various theatre writings up on the stage.  I guess it doesn't change my opinion of the piece, but it seems that Messiaen was a real pill when it came to anything involving the Quartet.  If this book is to be believed, Messiaen, just back from the internment camp where he wrote the Quartet, refused to intervene on behalf of the father of one of his fellow inmates (who played the clarinet part incidentally). This man ultimately died in Auschwitz.  I guess I can sort of understand Messiaen's paranoia that speaking out would lead him right back to the camps, but it is a shame he did not act more nobly.  Certainly my mental picture of Messiaen is stained now.

Sadly, someone either pulled out or got unbelievable stage fright and they did not perform the Shostakovich Concertino for 2 pianos.  Somewhat surprisingly I do not appear to have this on any of my CDs, so I'll have to track it down through Naxos or something.  I stuck it out for one more movement of a Poulenc chamber piece and then went back home.

I'd kind of thought that I would be going to the Taste of the Danforth, but ultimately changed my plans.  I actually don't like crowds all that much, and the last time I was there, the menu was heavily slanted towards beef and chicken...

I got a haircut at the mall and then went back out to Theatre Passe Muraille to see The Hum, which was part of Summer Works.  I have to say that this is a show that is almost review-proof.  Who wants to write a negative review and directly or indirectly attack a 10 year old girl?  The concept is basically that they have a number of artworks produced by the girl, and then they (the mother and father) wrote a show around it with some discussion of the glory of camping and canoeing, and some dancing and so on.  I guess the parents are local artists, though this reminded me very much of the movement to democratize the arts so that anyone can call themselves an artist.  But they had plenty of supporters and friends of the family in the audience, so I guess that is fine.  I knew more or less what this was going into it, but I still thought it would be a bit more polished.  I would recommend it if you want to be inspired by children's creativity and have children of your own, but would probably pass otherwise.  I do think my kids would have liked it, though I am sure my son would be asking why don't I write a play for him to perform...

I suppose the answer is it is a fine idea if one has the right connections or can understand how the lottery system works for the Fringe.  

Anyway, I stayed downtown and did a bit of work, then came back for the 7:30 show The Tall Building, which I will comment on elsewhere, as it was not amateurish at all.

One summer festival ends, another begins

There really is no end to the things one can be doing in Toronto.  I am finding I have to dole out my time carefully.

I actually did find out about the Toronto Summer Music festival in time to consider going to a few performances.  Unfortunately, I was booked solid for two interesting ones (including something this Saturday, for those interested).  My best option was to go last night to the complete Bartok String Quartet cycle, and I did make it home in time to go.  But I was a bit exhausted from giving a practice run of a presentation I am doing in September (plus all the running around to other events I have been doing).  And to be honest, the prices for students and those under 35 are fine, but this concert was a bit rich for my blood, considering I had never even heard of this quartet before.  Had the price been $10 less, I would have gone.  I am sorry that I won't make the concert tomorrow, but the Kushner play at the Shaw Festival runs 4 hours long!  I actually had to adjust my car reservation so I won't be late returning it.  There is a free concert Sunday morning at 11 (programme unannounced so far), and I'll probably drop in on that.

I honestly don't know how I heard about the SummerWorks festival.  It might even just have been a random pop-up on the internet.*  However, this looks very much up my alley.  Almost like Fringe Pt. 2.  The creativity and the ability to make work on a shoestring is quite impressive here in Toronto.  I'd say in this respect it does rival Chicago.  Anyway, this one is just kicking off, so there are opportunities to see just about everything (aside from The Stranger, which may well be sold out for the entire run).  For what it is worth, I am going to try to get a 3-show pass and reserve places for Hum, The Tall Building and Upon the Fragile Shore.  The last one is written by Caridad Svich (she may well be the most celebrated playwright at this particular festival).  I have to admit, I wasn't crazy about Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart -- and this play looks in the same vein.  However, I think I should still take a chance, given that the tickets are very reasonable.  Actually, this is being billed as the Canadian premiere of the piece, but it looks like the previous stagings have all been readings.  This might in fact be the first full production of the piece world-wide, for people who care about such things...

Maybe I will see you at one of these shows, and there are plenty of other interesting events and happenings at SummerWorks.

* Actually, I now recall that I had been searching on Now and Mooney's to see what was going on and found out about it that way.  And SummerWorks is the cover story of Now, so I would have heard of it fairly soon one way or the other.  I stopped by the Factory Theatre, and went ahead and booked my 3 tickets.  Hopefully, the shows turn out to be interesting.  (I wasn't too familiar with Factory Theatre, but their next season looks reasonably interesting (moreso than Tarragon at any rate), and I may go to a few shows.)

Dancing in Withrow Park

Well, the adventures are piling up faster than I can post about them, but I should mention Dusk Dances in Withrow Park, which has 4 more nights to go (the show starts at 7:30, but with a class to teach you to dance salsa beforehand) and there are matinee performance tonight and Sunday at 2:30. More details are here.

I need to start off by saying that while I am a big believer in live performance, I've never been a big fan of interpretive dance, modern dance or even ballet.  That said, I do enjoy dance more than opera...

Anyway, Withrow Park is practically in my backyard, and the suggested fee was only $10, so I thought I would check it out.

The main part of the show is 4 shortish dances (maybe 10-15 minutes each) followed by a 30 minute piece called Disconcertante.

I thought overall it was a lot of fun, but I did not think it was a good idea to haul the audience across the park for each performance.  Even if they needed set up time between pieces, they could have charted a better route that didn't force the seniors and small children to walk so far.  This was particularly true of the last piece which was held at the complete other end of the park, down a fairly treacherous incline, just as it was getting fairly dark.  I was particularly resentful as I had parked my bike on the opposite side of the park.  (While Withrow Park has a lot of nice features, it is unbelievably lacking in bike racks.)

The night started off with a Spanish dancer doing some modified Flamenco dance.  It was good, though not particularly innovative.

Then there was Mumure de femme, which was an African dance piece for five women.  This was very energetic.  I think my daughter would have liked it.

Then came Bella, which was a duet beside, on top of and under a large wooden horse.  It had it's moments, but didn't sustain my interest that much.  It could have been shorter for sure.

My favourite piece was Photuris Versicolor, which featured two female performers wrapped up in silver blankets.  They emerged as two buzzing fireflies.  This freaked out a few small children, who had to be taken home...  They danced around and finally seduced a man from the audience and then after dancing with him, ate him.

I heard from some people walking around that last year there had been a very funny piece, and I guess we could have made the show, though I suppose we were still quite busy unpacking from the move.  I wouldn't say this was laugh-out-loud funny, or at least not most of the time, but it was droll.

 

 

The night ended with Disconcertante.  I was already disposed to not like it very much, since I thought it was ridiculous to move it to the other end of the park.  I also had a sense that this was from a choreographer that took himself too seriously.  The moves were sort of intentionally anti-dance, rough, choppy movements that sort of drew attention to the whole artifice of dance.  Then to make matters worse, a solid five minute chunk in the middle was danced without music.  I've written a bit about artists who push the envelope, since they are essentially bored with all that has been done before, but they usually end up with very sterile art.  That's what I felt about this piece, and I had no qualms about leaving only a few minutes into it.

A few quibbles aside, this was an entertaining evening, and I'll definitely look into going next year, probably taking the kids as well.

La Dolce Vita

I don't know if it's more surprising or sad that I had never seen more than a short clip or two from La Dolce Vita.  I mean I've owned the DVD for ages and even recently picked up the Blu-Ray (though this is missing in the house somewhere).

Now despite this being a 55 year old film (and among the most famous films ever made), it is apparently possible to have gone through life (even as an admirer of foreign films) and not know much about the film.  It may well be that the 3-hour length is enough to scare many people off.  Certainly I never felt I had a 3-hour block of time, aching to be filled by a jaded look at the life of rich and idle Romans.

Actually, in my case, it is particularly sad as I have accumulated a small pile of Fellini films, but have not watched any of them.  But that is the case with so many of these masterpieces.  There are just too many of them (and generally quite cheap too, especially if you wait for bargains from Amazon.co.uk), and I tend to spend my leisure time reading.  In terms of foreign-language film makers, I've done a reasonable job watching Jacques Tati and Ingmar Bergman and Kurosawa, though there are still important films left to watch (at least for the last two). I've seen a small handful of films by Godard, Melville, Antonioni, Fritz Lang, Roy Andersson, Satyajit Ray, Tsai Ming-Liang  and Bela Tarr. I've seen almost none by Renois, Truffaut, Rohmer, Ozu, Naruse, Fassbinder or Fellini as I said.  This is depressing, and yet I also know I have many amazing movies yet to see, and many of them I could show the kids, at least my son, as they get a bit older.

I found out somewhat late that TIFF was doing a summer in Italy film series this summer, and I actually decided somewhat at the last minute to go try and see Amarcord (inspired by stills of the movie in an Italian restaurant in Stratford).  But I must have gotten the timing wrong and the movie was shown only once (while I was in Stratford!).

That left only La Dolce Vita as a movie I really wanted to try to see, since I knew I would be a lot more likely to make it through in one sitting in a movie theatre.  However, as I mentioned in the 1000 Monkeys post, that overlapped with the ending of the playwriting marathon, and going from one marathon to another putative one seemed awfully punishing.  Nonetheless, I kept it in mind as a goal, and when it became clear that I would finish early, I went home and got ready to go to the movies...

In the end, I fussed around here a bit (recovering) and made it to the box office with only about 15 minutes to spare, yet there were a few tickets left.  Just like the showing of Kubrick's 2001, it was completely sold out by the time the curtain opened, and they ultimately opened up the balcony, though I suspect some people were turned away by that point.  I realize if they showed these movies on a more frequent basis the crowds would thin out, but it seems there is a fairly healthy demand out there for putting the revered classics up on the big screen.  Maybe we'll see the revival of 2nd run theatres here in Toronto, or the ones that are still hanging on will start programming the foreign classics again.  One can dream anyway...

From this point on, there will be SPOILERS, so turn away if you are a Dolce Vita virgin.

I'd only known about a couple of scenes, and even the raucous party at the end played out a bit differently than I thought it would go (it was more sordid and yet more of a tease than anything really debauched, as I imagined it would be).

However, the Trevi fountain scene did play out more or less like I thought (though again a bit anti-climactic (intentionally so!)), simply because that that clip is shown in all kinds of contexts.  Still, I wasn't aware that Ekberg had the kitten all over her head walking to the fountain.  The way she had Marcello Mastroianni going around begging for milk was quite hysterical.

(Of course, I made it a point to see the fountain when I was in Rome, though it is hard to image it nowadays being deserted at any time, day or night.)

For some reason I thought that Paparazzo was going to get knocked off his Vespa and killed, though that did not happen at all.

However, I was thrown for a loop, and was truly surprised and shocked by one scene of the film: Steiner's suicide and the fact that he killed his two children first.  I can imagine him feeling empty and contemptuous of Roman society, though his own soirees did seem a bit more high-minded than the other parties that always seemed about ready to degenerate into orgies.  But what drove him to drag his children down with him?  I clearly don't think about movies nearly as much as the people who really love them, like these critics.  I will say that they present a few compelling arguments, namely that Steiner so feared what the world was coming to (decades before the environmental crisis became truly existential as it is started to feel today...) that he wanted to "save" his children from it, or, alternatively, that he was such a narcissist that he wanted to withhold his perfect children from the world.  I lean slightly more towards the first option.  However, it is interesting how one can think and over-think the film.  I suspect that their revulsion to his deeds color their subsequent viewings of the film, when they say things like Steiner's playing Bach in the church is a pretentious, obvious choice or even that Steiner is clearly putting Marcello on when he says that he enjoys his writing.  Furthermore, they claim that the children's bedroom is a modernist nightmare, and that Marcello is being dishonest when he says that he finds this a refuge and that he would like to come over more often.  I didn't get this feeling.

I do agree with them (and this helps put the movie in better perspective) that the loss of Steiner removes Marcello's polestar and without this belief that there can be dignity in erudition, even in a very degraded Rome, he quickly surrenders to the lure of easy money.  I didn't quite realize that he had become a publicity agent for the film industry (that may have been more apparent in the screenplay), but he is definitely more shallow (and yet even more disgusted with himself) at the end.

I thought the creepy eye of the ray or skate that the fisherman bring up from the depths was referenced by Bela Tarr in Werckmeister Harmonies.  I'm quite sure that the party breaking up and the revelers wandered off into the dawn has been used dozens of times since, though I am struggling to think of the last time I've seen it used.  References below are welcome.

In terms of scenes I liked quite a bit - when he is left hanging in the whispering chamber and the scenes with his father, including the very melancholy scene where his father senses if he keeps overdoing it in Rome he will drive himself to an early grave and he catches an early train home.  Marcello trying to make a connection with his father, convincing him to stay another day, may be the closest he comes to real emotion (even the scenes where he yells at his finance seem like play-acting).  He is just the most extreme case of all these characters drifting through life.  Ebert's Great Movies review touches on this here and there.

A powerful scene, though not one I liked very much, is when Steiner's wife is wondering why everyone is trying to take her picture as if she is someone famous (this is before the horror is unveiled to her, though she suspects something is wrong).  Nothing at seems sacred to these newspaper reporters (generally the previous takes on them was that they acted all cynical but most had a sentimental streak like in The Front Page).

I thought the scene out in the countryside worked well, but those scampish children leading the credulous villagers on a merry chase after the Virgin Mary definitely deserved a good scolding.  Instead, everyone in the family was getting ready to cash in, and why not if the media was going to make money too?  Only the foolish took it seriously, and yet even those who only took it half-seriously couldn't resist trying to touch the miraculous and killed the tree by tearing away its leaves and then branches.  The tragedy of the commons in action... I do think Fellini masterfully closed out the scene with one of the supplicant children dying and the mother crying in the rain.  (This was almost as good a use of rain as Kurosawa.)

That leads me to a question.  The whole business of the film (and television?) crew setting up to film this little tree (almost as forlorn as Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, even before its branches were torn off) reminded me of another film where while the action is going on, a big construction set is being built.  I believe ultimately the actors are asked to move along, since they are not going to be in the shot, though I don't remember that for certain.  I think, but may well be wrong, that this was in color.  It certainly was a foreign-language film, but I don't know if it was Fellini's 8 1/2 (probably not) or some homage to Fellini by Antonioni or a French or even Japanese film maker.  If that sounds at all familiar, drop me a note in the comments.  Thanks.

No flouncing

I've generally felt that flouncing (i.e. making a big deal about quitting a thread or an entire bulletin board) only makes you look silly, particularly since at root you really are only doing it to attract more attention to yourself.  (It then looks especially foolish when you come back, which virtually always happens.)  I suppose narcissists are largely the folks driving the internet, particularly these days, but you still don't have to make such a big production of it.

It does seem like stirring up internet beefs is an art these days, with probably the majority being arranged beforehand.  While it is tempting to say that we are shallower these days, there really was a lot of trite celebrity news in the 1960s and 70s (esp. anything related to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton), and La Dolce Vita indicates the seeds of this worship of pop culture icons started in the 1950s (if not even before).  The difference (to me) seems that the balance is off.  We always had the human interest news and celebrity news, but this always was given third or even fourth billing after the serious state of the world business.  Now celebrity news (and feuds) drive the media cycle.

Anyway, as tempting as it is to launch a feud with some parties that have slighted me, I think it is better to refrain.  Perhaps some day I will end up working with them, though for moment, I am going to work on getting into another circle.  I think that really is all I can say, since if I say anything more about why I am disappointed, it will become apparent whom I am speaking of and that would defeat my larger purpose of trying to be the nobler party who suffers silently (mostly).

Updates on the household tasks

Well, I have been tracking my progress, and things are generally coming together.  I've gotten the desk fixed and the bathroom door sanded down to the point where it doesn't seem to be sticking.

I did empty out two more boxes downstairs (though in one case just by adding greatly to some piles of books next to the bookcase in the basement).  I did find the last major box of TBRD books, and I even tracked down a paperback copy of Margaret Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers (just when I was about to go look for a newer copy with what appears to be a cover by Alex Colville -- well, maybe I won't resist if I happen to see if for really cheap in a shop...).  In terms of the things -- that I am aware of -- that I can't track down at the moment, it is down to La Dolce Vita on Blu-ray and Giulini in America (Chicago Symphony Orchestra).  That's not too shabby.  They'll probably turn up when I am looking for something else.*

I also managed to get the outdoor table up just before a huge rain storm.  (Fortunately, it passed by the time I had to cycle down to Red Sandcastle for the reading, though it did rain a second time during the readings.)

I think the deck will be quite nice this fall.

I had hoped to get a bit further with the painting of the downstairs bathroom.  I may be able to get through all the taping in the morning.  I am not sure I can finish the painting before 1:15, which is when I am probably heading out for 1000 Monkeys.  It really would be rude not to turn back up, particularly if I want to try to stage some of my plays there from time to time.  I don't know what the rental fees are, but I'll ask Rosemary tomorrow.  I also forgot my business cards, and I should definitely have handed out some of those yesterday (to say nothing of Sing-for-Your-Supper, if I feel up to going to that).

The main setback -- and it may be a significant one -- is that the ceiling fan box does not appear to be properly wired.  It took a few hours to pull down the old fan, and I thought I could handle the job myself, when I found this problem.  It does not have the appropriate ground wire, which means that it could shock someone (not now but in the future if the wires short out), particularly as you do have to pull the switch to turn on the light.  I've got a friend who probably does know enough to help out, but he may decide that this is indeed a job for a professional.  What I really dread is having to open up the ceiling and/or the wall, but I'm in a really terrible position now, having a couple of wires dangling from the ceiling and no fan (when it has been such a hot, hot summer with few signs this is changing any time soon).
 

Oh well.  The joys of owning an older house...

Edit to add: I did manage to get the bathroom painted, so all in all, it was a very, very busy but productive weekend (I am glad for the holiday though) with only one significant snag due to old wiring.  Now if it doesn't dry evenly, I'll probably have to hit it with one more coat, but that should go faster since the tape is still up.  Maybe it will only take two hours or so, which isn't too bad.

 
Aside from the ceiling fan where it looks like I will have to call in professionals, I think the only significant remaining task is to cut down a board to add one more shelf to my son's bookcase.  That can definitely be done one evening this week or next, so everything will be done by the end of summer.  Not bad...

* So yes to the Giulini and no to Dolce Vita so far.  (I do, however, know where the DVD version is, which is the more critical at this point.)  I can't put my hands on the hair clippers at the moment, and I also am wondering about two books (out of the many, many books that are stashed away).  I am fairly sure that I hung onto my copy of Nin's Cities of the Interior and will keep my eye out for it.  I am equally confident that I parted with Jean Rhys's Complete Novels, and I am contemplating buying a trade paperback copy as a replacement.  Reading those back to back, while tempting, would probably be a mistake.

1000 Monkeys @ Red Sandcastle

I didn't write much about this, or perhaps at all, not wanting to jinx the process, but I am lately returned from the 1000 Monkeys 24-hour playwriting festival held at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, which is in my old stomping grounds (practically) of Leslieville. Forget about play in a month or novel in a month, this is a deeply immersive experience where a number of playwrights or wannabe playwrights in my case come together and don't leave until they have each hammered out a play on the assigned theme.  It's basically a writing marathon.  (I think there is indeed something sort of similar for novels, though it is over the entire weekend.  And as far as I know there are not clubs that gather the budding writers together to make sure they adhere to the rules of the 3-Day Novel competition, though that might in itself be kind of interesting.  Aside from the fact that watching writers write is not very cinematic, filming a room full of writers over a weekend and watching a few of them crack up might make for an interesting reality show.)

Despite what I said about there not being that much general interest in watching writers write, from a professional or semi-professional perspective I was interested in how people went about the task of writing.  When we showed up we picked three words out of the dictionary.  Mine were: muster, epilepsy and dentine.  Then at 6 sharp, the organizer was texted the theme for the festival.  As best as I can remember it was: everything changes in a single moment, or does it.  And the secondary set of key works was: maturity, openness and something I am blanking on.  It wasn't transformation, but maybe along those lines.  (Edit: it was recovery.)

Words, words, words

The theme for the festival

Now in addition to simply seeing if I could write a play in one day, I did have an ulterior motive and that is that one or more of the plays written during the festival will be staged at Red Sandcastle.  I really wanted to see if either of the plays I had started (The Study Group or Straying South) might fit with the theme, and I could use them as a good starting point for the writing and maybe have a shot at getting one of them staged.  But frankly, I didn't think either of them fit particularly well.  The play based loosely on King Lear does have more of this transformative aspect to it, but it is a darker play, and this seemed to be calling for something more upbeat and positive.  I'm sure they wouldn't reject a play with an unhappy ending -- this is mostly about kick-starting the creative juices -- but I decided I would start completely from scratch.

I'll get to my own process in a minute, but I was interested to see how these various writers started on the task.  (There were 13 of us, including me.)  Several had the specialized writing software that puts the dialogue and stage directions in the proper format.  That looks pretty handy, though maybe a bit more software than I really need.  I think most people were just writing in word.  The guy next to me had an upgraded writing software that actually allowed him to put notes in various places and rearrange chunks of text to fit into an outline.  I can see if one was a professional writer tackling books and so forth, this could be really handy.  Nonetheless, I am a bit more old-school, preferring to write straight through and not make too many revisions on the first pass, just trusting the characters to start interactions and see how the story develops.  That doesn't mean in some cases I don't have clear plot points I want to hit, but I have some flexibility in how I get there.  Corporate Codes of Conduct was completely open when I started it, and I thought it might even be about aliens when I first started out, though it morphed into a relatively conventional office romance story, though with some slightly strange elements (the cryptography).*

There was one younger woman who wrote out notes to herself and tore them out of her notebook and kept rearranging the pieces.  Finally, there was another woman who pondered the theme and then reached for her Tarot cards to help decide what the plot meant.  I thought I heard her rolling dice or throwing runes as well, but I didn't actually see that.  I know that the festival organizer tore up (metaphorically) everything she had written in the first 2 hours and then went off in a totally different direction.

For myself, I basically start with a core idea and then try to gin up some dialogue around it, and then see where things are going.  I try to just barrel through, relying on dialogue and not worrying overly much if the characters sound like distinct characters or just variants of my own voice.  There doesn't seem to be too much point in being precious about the writing in the early stages.  I have to admit that of the three or so major issues I wanted to work through in my writing, I have basically done so.  After some thought, I decided that maybe I should address in an oblique way the household tensions that came up when I moved the family to Vancouver.  I added a bit to what might have been the biggest trauma had the family actually split up (maybe even surprising myself).

As far as the form, I have had PKD (Philip K. Dick) on my mind recently, and I originally thought that the theme might call for a Sliding Doors kind of approach where things go one way in Act I and a different way in Act II.  I moved away from that, though it is still alluded to a bit.  Then I decided nested stories might be kind of interesting, drawing a bit on David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas or perhaps John Barth's The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor.  The final story is told while two characters are in bed, a la Scheherazade/Shahrazad from 1001 Nights.**  Then I thought I would need something to make it a bit more interesting, so occasionally you have the scene freeze and voices from the higher level story intrude, then the story picks up again.  (Actors and directors tend to love this sort of thing; audiences perhaps less so.)  This may have been somewhat influenced by the Chris Nolan's Inception.

So I got to the core story and found myself writing a somewhat stereotypical tear-jerker about a poor girl (probably in Greece though this is not completely spelled out) who more or less becomes the chattel of the wealthier and much older neighbour.  But it has some physical action (most of my plays are just talk, talk, talk) and it doesn't last that long.  Then I slowly close down the story layers.

I thought the thing might go in a completely different direction, sort of a third act, to bring it to 45 pages, but I was getting kind of sick of the whole thing.  I had written the first 20 pages from 6 to midnight, which I thought was not a bad pace at all, but deciding exactly how to wrap it up -- and not be too sentimental or too cynical -- was tougher.  I squeezed out the last 10 pages (or really 9.5) from midnight to 3:30 am, which is actually not too bad.  One person finished much sooner, 12:30 or 1, and I will be quite interested to see how long a piece she wrote.  At 3:30 everyone else was either working away, or far more common were sleeping in the basement.  Given that I knew this wasn't going to be a 2 Act epic, I figured it was just better to wrap it up and go home.

One factor in this decision was that the food provided was less than ideal.  The pasta had ham in it, and basically the only other thing to eat were these loaves of bread, though someone went out and brought back some cheese.  Apparently, the original idea behind the festival was to keep everyone completely locked in, but this never happened.  That was good for me, as I wandered over to the Shoppers and got some diet Coke and a yogurt parfait, along with some other snacks to see me through until morning.  A few of the writers went off for smoke breaks periodically.  I took a short walk to clear my head a bit at 10 (and almost bought ice cream next door at the parlor that was just closing) and then a bit after midnight, as I was struggling with closure.  As it became apparent that I was not going to need anything like 24 hours (or even 12 hours), I grabbed some cash from the local ATM.

I had to do this because, even though most streetcars run 24 hours, the subway does not, and more critically buses that feed the subway (like the 72) don't run either at 3 in the morning.  I faced this at the end of Nuit Blanche last year when the subway was indeed running, but not the buses, and I had to cab it home.  This year, assuming I go again, I probably can just walk home from the subway assuming it is not raining.  So I cabbed it home.  I kind of stumbled into the house and picked up the paper, then crashed pretty hard.  In the morning, I called the newspaper asking where my Sunday paper was!  I suspect they thought I was dealing with a hang-over.

One of my goals all along had been to finish up in time to get back to TIFF at 5:30 today to see La Dolce Vita.  Then it became apparent that I had several more hours than that (a kind of bonus time I guess), though I've tried to take it pretty easy.  I sat outside for a while and read part of the paper and finished up Bruno Schulz's Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, which is quite good, even though I like Street of Crocodiles a bit more. I'll be writing about Schulz shortly.  This deck should be quite the refuge this fall (I didn't even realize that there was a flowering bush there), and tomorrow I will probably have the time to put up the patio table, which we bought last year and never used once!

I was hoping to get started on putting up the new ceiling fan today, but actually I am still still just a bit woozy, so I think I'll put that off for another day.  I think I'll head out fairly soon (after taking a nice long shower!), stop off at the library and then work just before I settle in for this long, long movie.  

Tomorrow, I have to be back at Red Sandcastle for the reading of the scripts.  If anyone is interested, they are welcome to drop by.  This will be at 8 pm, so I have almost the entire day.  In the morning I should get some groceries, since the stores will be shut on Monday.  Most likely I will tape up and paint the bathroom in the late morning.  It's pretty small, so I should be done by early afternoon, and then I may tackle the ceiling fan or leave that until Monday.  Now there may be a few scripts left to go through Monday afternoon, though I may bail.  It partly depends on whether Sing-for-Your-Supper takes place or not and whether my Shakespeare spoof was accepted.  But anyway, I should have a bit of time left over to take care of some house things, straightening up and maybe catching up a bit more on work.  I kind of want to put that out of my mind for a day or two, since I have been pushing very, very hard at work, and I do need a break.  (Edit: Mine was the last read on Sunday night, and I thought it went over pretty well.  But I'll try to still make it Monday from 2-5 or so (assuming I can paint at least a little bit tomorrow and perhaps run a couple of model runs) and then maybe run up to Sing-for-your-Supper with Burke.  I still haven't heard if the Hamlet in Wittenberg piece was accepted.)

The scripts!

I have to admit, I don't have enough distance on this new piece to even tell if I want to see it staged in the future, in part because it is too short to stand alone.  But if the consensus is positive, I might suggest pairing it with this piece I wrote many years ago and then polished up for a stage reading just before we left Chicago.  It also has twinned moments where everything changes and similarly it ends on a somewhat ambiguous note.  Anyway, no point in getting ahead of myself, though I will go ahead and link to the older piece here.  I thought this was a useful exercise, though more than anything it just points out that I need to carve out space from work and working on the house and even from blogging, and then I should be able to crank out these final plays.  Then I can have a marathon editing session and decide if it is worth getting them staged.  So watch this space over the next year or so.


* As a total side note, I am starting to agree with Adam that original dynamic worked well in the first act and it was a bit of a shame to break it up in the second act, which is almost entirely conventional.  I've started changing it around (I did some serious editing a couple of months ago).  I probably need to leave them entirely in the office setting, and if Li's mother shows up at all (rather than being one more voice-over) she has to show up in the office, catching Li in the corridor right outside the offices.  Now if I can squeeze in one more bit of cryptography into the second act that would also improve the structure.

** Actually, leaving the Burton translation of 1001 Nights boxed up downstairs is a significant shortcoming of the current arrangement.  I will give myself roughly 9 months to figure out which books I need to discard or demote to make room for 1001 Nights, but it has to be out where I can get my hands on it from time to time.  The most likely space is where the Canadian paperbacks are stashed, since I have read or will read most of them over the next year.