Dustin, Beth, Liz, Hazel:
The point of
our play needs to be more than "slavery is bad," because
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the last play that needed to make that point. It is also true that
the intent of our Civil War Project is not to present a bunch of plays
about an interesting historical period, but to try to explore, or
examine, or illustrate, or something, the legacy of the war. The Civil
War is still with us, most obviously in our political divisions: among
those states which were in the Union back then, the most reliable
(though not perfect) indicator of whether it's a red state or blue state
today is whether, 150 years ago, it was a slave state or free state.
The conservative idea that the federal government over-regulates things
and should instead not interfere with the workings of free enterprise is
the descendant of the idea that the federal government should have no
right to interfere with the spread of slavery.
Kristine has
pointed out to me that the play's (historically accurate) scene in which
Francis McIntosh is grabbed off a St. Louis street by police officers
and ends up being killed by a mob is not that different in theme from the riots that happened last year in a St. Louis suburb because a police officer shot a black man on the street.
All
of Kristine's plays are at bottom about the value of an individual
human life. Throughout this play, we see character after character
confront the stakes of his own life as those stakes relate to the world
around him. Repeatedly, they choose to lose themselves in the pursuit
of something larger than themselves, which paradoxically is what saves
them and makes them who they are. I think that's the point of our play.
It's worth reminding ourselves that the play--like most of our Civil War plays, by the way--does not take place during the Civil War. This play spans
from 1834 to 1850, which is to say a half- to full generation before
the war. That matters, because the war changed everything about the
country, including how it looked. It made the country more industrial
and less pastoral, more urban and less rural, more mass-manufactured and
less homespun, more dirty and less clean. So our play takes place in a
world we can't even find in old photographs.
Here's a
happy coincidence: one of the characters is Missouri Senator Thomas
Hart Benton; his great-great-nephew, also named Thomas Hart Benton, was
the 20th-Century American artist whose paintings evoke a mythic
America. Bright and colorful symbolic landscapes, vibrant clothes, wide
blue skies, muscular people. It's tempting to imagine that the old
lost America actually looked like this. Here are five of his paintings,
below which I ramble on some more.
I
would like us to use Benton's paintings as a starting point for design
discussions. I think the irony of slavery existing in a land founded on
individual liberty is put on stage if the awful events of the play are
happening in an American version of paradise.
Most of his
settings are rural, whereas our play takes place for the most part in
towns and cities, so maybe I'm talking more about his style than his
specific content. However, my favorite thing about his paintings in
general are his beautiful and clean skies, which is one reason I have
already mentioned I would like our set to have a cyc. I think it will
open up the space and suggest an infinite horizon. The other reason is
practical: the play is a bunch of short scenes, and we can go from one
to the other without the dialogue stopping if we use a cyc to throw
everyone into silhouette as soon as the old scene ends and keep it that
way as actors exit and enter until the actors for the new scene are in
place a line or two into the scene, which we then join in process by
bringing up area lights. This may be an easier device to make clear in
person than by email, but it works great and will keep the play moving. I believe City Lit has a cyc, and I will dig it out before our first face-to-face meeting.
One thing I like in particular about the bottom one of the five pictures
is how he's used the stage space. There's a country road, and a town
square, and a business district, and whatever locale it is supposed to
be where the two guys are sawing a log, and it's all together and it's all distinct at the same time. Not saying we need to do that--we may need something more fluid--but I do like how he's made it work.
Kristine
has suggested, and I like the idea, that perhaps the actors never or
almost never leave the stage. Perhaps there are places for them to sit
on the fringes of the action until they enter a scene. I'm not married
to this idea, but one advantage it might have relates to the costumes.
Every actor plays multiple characters, and the play is written against
the idea of full costume changes every time an actor becomes someone
else. The idea that changing a single piece changes the character might
be an easier sell if we see the change happen onstage. As long as we
look like a production and not like a workshop. If we go this way, it
seems like it will call for some place onstage for costume pieces to
live when not being worn Hooks on the wall, maybe, though I'm not crazy
about the view of the wall being dominated by costume pieces hanging up
in full sight the whole time. So maybe something else.
As
we have a fair number of political speeches, a raised speaking platform
(one largish one? a couple or a few small ones? I dunno) somewhere
onstage is probably a good idea. Maybe with bunting as in the bottom
painting?
Certainly the main floor of the stage is an open, fluid area (or areas) that becomes whatever the actors say it is. The furniture can be as simple as a table and a few chairs that are used transformationally to suggest whatever we need.
I expect this means the lighting will be called upon to help define a
given scene--a window gobo when Wright and Mooney are looking out at the
mob, and so on. At one point the script requires us to burn a man
alive onstage, and suggests that be accomplished by shining a red light
or two on him. If there is any way we could achieve a flickering
effect, that would be fab.
That's all for now from me. Email me any questions you have, if you like. See you soon.
thanks,
Terry
