     | september 8, 2010
|
 | |
| | |
| september 8, 2010
|
| |
  |
Moses on Moses Itamar Moses -- 11/09/2005  [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ]Can I say no? No. The Portland Mercury called your play OUTRAGE, “the theatrical equivalent of someone jerking off on stage for three hours.” Right. I never understood that one. I don’t understand what he means by “equivalent.” Isn’t someone jerking off on stage for three hours, itself, theatrical? Anyway, that guy needs to google himself more often. Obviously. OnMilwaukee.Com said that your play BACH AT LEIPZIG has, “a dreadful script,” and went on to assert that, “Moses could hardly have done a worse job.” Yeah, I wasn’t aware that Moses wrote plays. But maybe he did, and they were bad. I’m not sure. No, by “Moses” he means you. Oh! Oh. I see. Wow. That’s much more mean-spirited, small-minded, and vitriolic than I realized. Who wrote that again? His byline says that he’s a ‘slam poet’ based out of Milwaukee. I see. Well, there’s not a whole lot I can add to that, is there. In fact, both OUTRAGE and BACH AT LEIPZIG deal with fictionalized accounts of historical figures, as does your play CELEBRITY ROW. Is that a question? Um. What’s with that? Can I response by pontificating pretentiously and at great length? Why stop now? Touché. My sense is, and my experience has been, that, broadly speaking, plays begin in one of two ways: either with some sort of conceit or abstract idea, be it a historical anecdote or scientific concept or whatever, one that suggests a potent metaphor for something human and universal, and that you then find a way to dramatize, or with something personal, maybe that happened to you, that happens to dramatize an idea that you then coax out of it. In other words, plays are either written from the inside out, or from the outside in. And individual playwrights seem to be most comfortable, at first at least, working either one way or the other. Either starting with form and structure and idea, and then filling it with something human, or starting with that human, truthful spark and fumbling your way to some formal decisions. Either approach has its pitfalls. Plays that start more structurally can end up feeling schematic, cold, or remote. Plays that start more viscerally, or organically, can end up being a big fat mess. The paradox of writing is that these two elements, truth and craft, are, in fact, mutually exclusive. They’re polar opposites. Artifice, by definition, doesn’t include authenticity, and vice-versa. But you somehow have to reconcile them, to have both, in order to write anything that really works. Or, plays that really work emerge out of the wrestling match between those two things. And I think I started out, very much so, as the first kind of playwright, and the ideas that grabbed me were things that were maybe seemingly distant from my personal experience, but that suggested a potent metaphor for something universal and human. And then I’d have to work out a plot to carry the idea. I’m less and less interested in that, and am training myself to begin more viscerally. Both because I actually have some real life experiences to draw on now, and because I trust my craft more. I don’t worry anymore if I’m going to find a structure or conceit, because that has now become so ingrained that it seems to happen almost on its own. So the new things I’m writing are starting more from the gut. It feels like that’s the next necessary step as a writer. For me specifically, I mean. But I’m also interested in pushing the envelope even more, formally. In inventing new theatrical vocabularies, and playing with the tools of dramatic storytelling itself, turning them against the play, to see what happens. As a way of taking the illusions I’m using away from myself, to see what’s underneath. It’s a lucky thing, I think, that playwriting is a dialectical form anyway, inherently, so that struggle between craft and truth can actually be worked out in the meat of the play itself, which is something that I find useful. Anyway, I guess I’m both trying to go deeper into myself and deeper into my craft. Trying being the operative word. Just trying Um, bullshit, though Excuse me? No, just, that all sounds pretty disingenuous, I have to say. What does? All that writer talk. I mean, it’s a put-on, obviously. It’s a persona. Who actually cares that much about that kind of thing? The impressing girls motivation I buy, but this noble journey into yourself and your craft just strikes me as bullshit. Not least because you must be relatively ambitious and calculating to have any kind of success in a business so risky and capricious. You want to be adored, you said it yourself, basically, you just want to be known and adored, but you’re savvy enough to pretend that that’s just a byproduct of something you’re doing for all the right reasons. But you’re not. Did you just call me ambitious and calculating? I mean, the people reading this interview can’t see the expression on your face, but you furrowed your brow in what struck me as faux-introspection, and then looked off into the distance, trying to seem wise beyond your years. It’s kind of amazing, actually, the level of duplicitousness. The gall, really, required to satisfy your immense need for shallow forms of approval by feigning an absence of that need. Uhh — And giving yourself an opportunity to respond to bad reviews from like three years ago, in this flip way that pretends that you don’t care, but you obviously DO, you prick, because you’re got them MEMORIZED, I mean, what is THAT? Hey, Hey — What kind of a person, honestly, what kind of person would agree to do an interview with himself? Can you imagine ANYTHING more totally solipsistic? end of page 6 [ 6 ] read more ... [ 7 ] |
