Fear and Loathing and Figaro.

 

I think a lot about Victor Frankenstein. I really relate to the guy. He’s got a clear idea; dying sucks and let’s not do it. He goes around trying to sell people on this idea but no one is into it. They say it’s outside the bounds of natural law and the will of God. But if people had been sold on the it, and Frankenstein had gotten a residency, or a fellowship, or substantial endowment, and then the cooperation of institutional bodies and their subsidiaries, then we would all be living forever these days. At least in that fictional universe. 

I think about how if he would have gotten first pick of the dead and dying he could have gotten some really amazing parts. Uniform ones. Correctly sized. You get the right corpse and you probably don’t have to do much. Swap the heads, staple it together, and use unholy lightning to charge the Lifeback Drive. Patent pending. But no, you have to go digging around in graves, because no one but Igor will help, and you get just whatever parts are left. It’s this uphill climb in shoes worn slick to the soles. Sisyphus in cowboy boots. This is all to provide an entry point to my artistic process, which should always be centred in a vision.

“A Vision” ? You hippy? What the F do you mean, you pretentious arts hag? Well, nothing more than a picture in your mind about what a work of art should be. Whether that’s a song, or painting, or sculpture, or performance, your first step is to envision what that will look and sound like. Also, you don’t have to be mean about your questions. Sorry. Just a little back and forth with the inner monologues. They don’t always agree on things, but the majority of the voices agree on the vision model of art. Also, this is very hard. Envisioning art is not an easy task. It is the use of the mind in a way for which it was not designed. We were meant to be hunter gathering nomads, not these saxophone playing apes. 

Be that as it may, I wish I could tell you how to find a vision. It’s different for everyone. For me it is often a mixture of fantasy, fear, and farce. I have been sent by the Gods to destroy the 4th wall, for instance. That is a component of any vision of mine. How do we wreck the wall between suspended disbeliefs? How can we transcend the separations of creator and witness? How can we return to our universal storytelling multiculture and unite people of every creed, nation, and generation through art? But just because you find a vision doesn’t mean you are going to get it. 

We live in a world of finite resources, institutional antagonism, and compromises. We may diminish our vision if it means getting the bulk of it to the finish line. It is better to compromise and survive than to die on a hill of opinion. You might want to write a play with 20 characters set in progressively more ostentatious locations that would take a billion dollars in capital to produce, but don’t. Don’t do it, kid. Put the laptop down. Just walk away from writing that nonsense, because late stage capitalism doesn’t abide by billion dollar art farts. They need those billions to make bombs. The last thing we need is a rock opera that ends on a life sized replica of the moon landing. 

That rock opera is not a real thing, but it could be. Here is the thing, tho, I don’t make resource intensive works, because I already know I won’t have any resources. My one and only most important resources are my performers, who I try to pay, feed, and love to plutonic and responsible degrees. 

To find people insane (if not talented) enough to participate in that work is its own unique challenge.

"Yes, rub his face into my spit from the opening monologue." 

"It is at this point that your puppet space janitor snorts the space meth. Space." 

"Yes, you will be connected by the waist by a sturdy bungee cord during this board meeting knife fight."

"It is at this point you desperately want to kiss Major Depression, but know it could never be, and instead cock your sidearm and exit to your certain doom."

These are all real things that have happened in the desperate pursuit of making a piece that shakes the Pulitzer Prize for Drama Board out of their drug crazed stupor and makes them stop ignoring my scripts for the better part of a decade. Lynn Nottage does not need another one. She is probably doing OK for herself. I am so tired of being afraid of Lynn Nottage writing another genius play, this year. At least Lin Manuel Miranda had the good sense to take his PPfD and flee to Disney. Living off the mouse teet for the big bucks.

Which is a long rambling way to arrive at the fact that within any collaborative framework, no one gets their total vision. That central vision that belongs to the creator and/or director must be explained and distributed to a cast and crew. But they, each of them, interpret this vision in their own unique way, bringing to bear their own perspectives, opinions, and information. Then we all work together to build that vision as a group, headed towards some night where people will come, and the circle will be complete. Where all that we work towards is shared with an audience who has paid to enjoy the performance or presentation. And we dance, and sing, and recite, and play, and if we are good then people laugh, and cry, and clap, and stand at the end, because they are driven by the need to share their joy. Everyone hugs, and laughs, and tells stories, and gives thanks. Then it is all torn down and put away. For another time and place. 

It was a truly beautiful night. Truly amazing. Transcendent. Now it has slipped into the past, like a dropped sandwich into a dark and endless river.

Instead of the finest cadavers handpicked from the top shelf, poor Victor had to root around in graveyards, cobbling together whatever pieces he could scavenge. No wonder his monster came out uneven. Sisyphus in a lab coat, or worse, me with a headset and a lightboard, dragging this creation uphill, praying the pieces hold together long enough to spark life. Because I’ve got a vision—a twisted, glorious, dangerous thing. But that vision? It’s never the pristine, perfect thing I see in my head. It’s always a patchwork of compromises and duct tape. The dream is grand, but the reality? It’s whatever I can claw out of the grave and wire together. But there is beauty in this struggle.There’s something real, something alive, in the effort to stitch it all together, knowing it will never be perfect but believing it can still be beautiful. Truly beautiful. They call it hubris, in Greek.