David's Redhaired Death

2004 OSU production of David's Redhaired Death

Where to start with this script?  So beautiful and unexpected and strong.  Really a masterpiece of sorts (if I am at all qualified to classify anything as a masterpiece).  And this play is choc-full of fantastic monologues, though problematically they're all about being a red-head so it makes it difficult for a brunette to master any of these.  I found one good monologue that doesn't refer to being a redhead but if you know any redheads this is the play for them!  One day I really want to direct this piece.  Terrifying in its off-beat staging, by which I mean it moves all over the place really quickly.  Staging is written to be very simple but it's hard to imagine this piece in my head.  I'd really need to play around with actors to make this work right.

Anyway, enough about opinions, here's the details.

Cast:
2 females, both in their 20's-30's though I guess they could even be early 40's if you want to push it.

Synopsis:
Jean recounts her relationship with Marilyn, another redhead who at times is practically an extension of Jean's own self and at times is her lover and at times is her brother's ex-girlfriend.  They go back and forth in time in their relationship as Marilyn tries to get Jean to cope with her brother's death. Eventually we learn that he committed suicide (or possibly committed suicide, the clarity of the situation is never certain) and Jean somehow feels responsible.  At the end Jean is able to somewhat accept her brother's death but also recognizes her regret at her inability to move on in her relationship with Marilyn.

Evaluation:
I really need to go back and re-read this script, I will say honestly it's been a little longer since I've read this in its entirety.  Overall though, just looking at a few scenes here and there when I skim through it I relive its power.  It is a beautiful script about death that also looks at regret and love and a feeling of being different and an outsider.  Really everything I love in a script.  And it talks about all of this in monologues and scenes that are just the perfect amount of subtle and recognizable.  Really I can't say enough about this play.

Would I direct this?
Absolutely.  I would love to, but of course like all good scripts, it's been produced at Woolly Mammoth so I'll just have to wait until I live in another city.  It was produced there 20 years ago, but still, maybe it's worth bringing to another city when I finally direct it.  Definitely a challenge, but a really good one that would stretch me artistically in all the right ways.

Let's Talk about Awesome Women

Really, one woman in particular.  Sherry Kramer.  Pretty awesome lady. 

Actually, I haven't met her myself.  She could be a bitch, but I highly doubt it based off the anecdotes I've heard from people who have worked with her.  Also she writes beautifully so I'm biased to believe she must therefore be an awesome person.

Anyway, she writes plays.  Really great ones with awesome female characters that don't whine and cry about how they want someone to love them, blah blah blah.  Which you know, I do a lot.  So when I read a play I'd rather read something that doesn't sound like me at my worst.  Sherry writes about the women I want to be.  She also writes about the women I am (sure, I can be lots of women depending on the day, my mood, and whether or not I've had breakfast).  She writes about grief and loss in a heart wrenching way that just makes you want to cry and scream, 'YES! That's exactly what it feels like!'

To be totally honest, and there's no reason not be since I doubt anyone but me is actually going to read these posts, I read one of her plays in an anthology of plays for women.  I started using a monologue from the play "David's Redhaired Death" and at an audition the director told me afterward he had directed the world premiere of that script.  He told me he loved her writing style and had been lucky enough to direct several premieres of her plays.  I nearly melted on the floor I was so star struck.

Long story short, I went home and bought a copy of three of her plays.  A lot of her work is hard to find online or has only been published in big anthologies with 30 other plays I don't want to buy, so I settled on "Plays by Sherry Kramer" by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. which includes "The Wall of Water", "David's Redhaired Death", and "Things that Break".

I'm going to talk about The Wall of Water today and the others in a later post.

2012 University of Bennington Student Production of The Wall of Water

Cast Breakdown:
4 women (all young-ish, between 27-45)
4 men (same as women, maybe older)

Evaluation:
It's hard to evaluate a play like this because it's just so different from anything else I've read or scene.  It addresses a lot of interesting themes, primarily focusing on our obsession with perfection and the unattainable and our tendency to judge others and hesitancy to give them a second chance.  There are crazy people in it, but their craziness is justified and in the case of Meg, you get to actually see the transition from sanity to insanity.  Imagining it being staged, especially the ending, is difficult, but it's been done and with the right creative minds I think it could be really moving and at the same time really amusing.

Monologues: 
This play is full of monologues, most of them passionate rants but a few that are really trying to convince someone to do something, which is generally what you want for an audition. Here's a list of a few I like:

Meg- pg. 10-11, ranting about how she is going to stop smoking because her roommate has 'quit' but keeps stealing Meg's cigarettes and leaving just one behind

Meg- pg. 14-15, deciding that she is going to 'step on' Wendi her roommate who has been driving her crazy.  Pretty funny.

Meg- pg.27-28, deciding she needs to leave the apartment but also needs to be there when her ex arrives.  She talks about how she's imagined seeing him and it's been incredible in her mind and how excited she is to finally be leaving her apartment and escaping Wendi.  Also pretty oddly funny.

Meg- pg. 41-42, she has started to think she's gone crazy because Wendi's at-home nurse has mistaken Meg for Wendi and convinced Meg she's insane.  She's trying to decide what in her surroundings is real and what is her imagination.

Clearly, Meg is the protagonist and thus has pretty much all the female monologues but there are also some great scenes in here.

Synopsis:

Meg moved into an amazing apartment in New York but wasn't told about the crazy roommate Wendi.  One night the other two roommates, Denice and Judy, go out as Wendi is having a fit and trying to kill Meg.  They call in a nurse to calm Wendi down but Wendi has inadvertently drugged Meg who passes out in her bedroom. The nurse shows up and things Meg is Wendi, reinforced when Meg 'crazily' and angrily tries to prove she isn't Wendi.  Meanwhile Meg's ex-boyfriend shows up and spends the night talking to Wendi.  Wendi slowly becomes less and less crazy as the night goes on as Meg gets more and more insane due to her treatment by the nurse (a man who the ex-boyfriend assumes is Meg's new boyfriend when they meet outside the bathroom).  The roommates return from their night out on different dates and madness ensues.  At the end they discover that the drugged concoction Wendi had created that originally drugged Meg is actually a special chemical combination that perfects the human body when eaten in the right quantity.  Denice's date has eaten it all and literally turns into a god before their eyes.  As he rises up to heaven he grants them a wish to have the day start over again (though obviously without him there) and he will make one slight adjustment that may or may not effect the final outcome of the situation.

The first act of the play is slightly more realistic, the second half verges on magical realism and Absurdism (that might be a stretch, but almost).  It's funny and has really interesting characters.  It would definitely be a challenge to both stage and direct but I could see myself wanting to direct this later in my career.  Just not any time soon.

Getting Started

Waiting for a callback is the hardest part of being an actor.  Well, it's not really.  But it feels like it when you have nothing else to do.  You can practice a lot of things in your own.  Playing guitar.  Singing a song.  Baking a cake.  You can't really practice acting alone though.  Sure, you can do a monologue a million times in your room, but without a scene partner, without an audience, it's not going to get you very far. 

Every acting teacher and class I've had has taught me that sitting around and doing nothing while you wait for a part in a play is death for your growth as a performer.  Which is easy to say when you're a working actor/teacher and fucking hard to do when you're someone who wants to perform and isn't getting cast.  How, may I ask, can I grow as an actor when there is no one to act with?  Sure, I can ask a friend.  But acting requires space (or more than I have in my small apartment at the least), a certain amount of privacy, and ideally someone to watch and give you feedback of some sort.  It's hard to hear your mistakes when you're performing a monologue for yourself and your cat.  Or in my case, yourself and your cockroach neighbors.  I'm not kidding.  They come out to watch me practice.  It's creepy.

So I've decided to try another route.  It's not novel or surprising, but it's a challenge.  I am going to spend the next few months reading plays and books on directing and blogging about them.  Maybe a short synopsis, character breakdowns, any good monologues or scenes in them, opinions.  Thoughts about whether or not I would want to perform in them or direct them .  Occasionally I hope to read really terrible plays because those are always more fun to judge than the good ones, but mostly I want to create a library of good scripts for youngish female parts.  Surprisingly there aren't a lot of them.  If you're a young man, really any age, there will always be parts for you.  Good parts.  Interesting characters who want more than a lover or freedom from a bad lover.  Less so when it comes to women parts.  And even when there are interesting female parts, they're small or there's only one female role in the whole script.  So at least this will be a place that tells you what those roles and scripts are.  Or a play with all men that would be fun for a woman (mostly me, but sure, any woman if you want to think of it that way) to direct.  Hell, why can't a woman play Willy Loman?  It would be weird, but if it's done for a reason, I'm sure a woman could kick the ass of that part.

So here goes the beginning of a trial.  We'll see how far it lasts, wish me luck!