Write or Flight?

[shanmonster]

Late Friday night, as part of the UnHinged Theatre Festival sponsored by Flush Ink Productions, I and seven other playwrights were taken to previously undisclosed locations around the city where we would be given 24 hours to write a play. Each of these places was calculated to be unsettling in some way or another. I was nervous, but not because I'm afraid of haunted houses or anything like that. It's just that it's been a long time since I last wrote for stage: about fifteen years. It's also been a long time since I've written under a hard deadline--maybe fifteen years since I last did that, too. What if I got writers' block? It's happened before. What if my play just sucked? That was a possibility. After all, I'm awfully rusty.

So off I went to the Rum Runner to meet up with all the other writers and the other people involved for the first time. It was confusing. I was trying to go over various story possibilities in my mind while dealing with questions about tech issues. They wanted to do a Blair Witch Project sort of idea, with streaming video of us during the writing process, but the video stream website was confusing. I felt like I was being bombarded with irrelevant material while all I wanted to do was start writing before I got too tired. It was already too late, though. I was tired--verging on exhausted. Although I'm typically a night owl, for the past few months, I've been sliding more and more into a diurnal state, and now I had to mix it around.

We finally received our locations. One writer, who had a fear of ghosts, was being sequestered in a theoretically haunted hotel room. I was a little envious. It sounded cushy. He'd have a warm place and a bed, when he was too tired. One was writing in a creepy, cold basement in an old building. I was being placed in a ramshackle warehouse with a theatre space. Another was in the emergency room of a hospital. I didn't envy her. In my opinion, that is the most stressful of all locations. I don't recall the other locales. My mind was too busy.


This big, black room became my home for the next fifteen hours.



I liked it, actually. I heard it was supposed to be haunted, but you name any theatre that isn't supposed to be. Theatre folk are a notoriously superstitious bunch. I wasn't at all worried. It takes a lot to give me the willies, and being alone in a big, dark building isn't one of those things.

That being said, there were some pretty creepy places in that building. Places like this:



Though I'd been given a flashlight, I didn't do much exploring. I wanted to get this play written. I was scared 24 hours just wouldn't be enough.

And so I sat myself down in a corner where I found a desk and a lamp and I began to write. It was cold in the room, and getting chillier as the night went on. I didn't know what to write. But it was cold. Cold, cold, cold... I'd been colder, of course. And the cold doesn't bother me as much as heat, probably a bit because of my Inuit heritage.

Aha. Inuit heritage. Why not write about Inuit folklore? The stories are bizarre, by outsiders' perspectives, and fascinating. The tales are filled with sex, and rather kinky sex, at that. Food shortage and the cold are other important elements. Combine these things, and I think you can end up with an interesting story. And so I began to write a coming of age story, fuelled by my memories of folklore, and with inspiration from Denise Duhamel's poetry collection, The Woman With Two Vaginas, I began to write.

I was flagging fast, though. Two hours in, I'd only written about 500 words. My mind was bleary. My eyes hurt. I was distracted by everything. By the time 3 am rolled around, I knew I was done. I hadn't written anything decent in an hour. I figured I'd just have to sleep for a bit, and write once I'd had some rest.

Around 4 am, I woke up suddenly. I heard voices. Somehow, someone was in the building with me. They were close by. How the hell did anyone get inside without me knowing? I'm a light sleeper. Everything out of the ordinary wakes me immediately. Confused, I listened, trying to figure out what was going on. And then I realized it was my computer. One of the other playwrights was streaming video, and I'd forgotten to turn the volume down. So it was my own damned fault I'd gotten freaked out.

That was the only time I was startled. I went back to sleep. I woke at 7 am and wrote for a while, then decided I needed more sleep. I slept until almost 10, and then the writing continued in earnest. I was finished by 3. I had no idea if it was good or not. The words swam in front of me. I read them out loud a few times, correcting for flow, getting rid of unnecessary repetition, deleting useless bits, elaborating on others. Is it corny? Is it silly? Is it stupid? Is it boring? At least it shouldn't be boring. The source material is interesting. I'd have to be a terrible writer to make such fascinating tales boring, and I don't think I'm a terrible writer.

It was as done as I could make it, so I emailed it off to the organizer and walked home.

The play is called A Time For Dolls, and it has two characters: a mother and a daughter.

Late last night, I went back to the Rum Runner to watch the plays being handed off to directors. I got to hear some of them being read by actors auditioning for parts. I love the variety of stories and themes. There's humour, horror, philosophical conundrums, and of course there's also sex and violence.

My worries of my play being silly, stupid, and corny were assuaged when I heard it brought to life by the readers. There were even more jokes in it than I knew, while writing it. My subconscious comes up with some pretty funny shit, I guess!

I can't wait to see these plays performed. Won't you come, too? Here are the details:

A Time for Dolls by Shantell Powell
Night Watch by Bryan Boodhoo
ASC II by James Purcell
Unicorn Apocalypse, Cabbage Soul / Cabbage Heart, and Probing Questions, all by Nicholas Cumming (2 will be performed)
The End of Casual by Terre Chartrand
Three Strikes by Rosemary Doyle
a physical piece yet to be named by Miroki Tong.

At 8:pm on Saturday, November 26, all 8 plays will be performed, with a talkback session to follow.
8:00 pm WRITE OR FLIGHT RESPONSE
173 King St. W. Kitchener - across from the City Hall.
Tickets are $15.
Reserve tickets by sending name, email address, what you want to see and what night, and how many tickets you want to reserve, to tickets@flushink.net

Comments

[sasha-khan.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting!