photo by Joe Mazza and Brave Lux

Friday, September 30, 2011

What Am I After? or, Evaluating 1, 2, 3 and Killing the Father

As this blog begins to take shape, I realize I want it to serve three purposes. They are:


1) To post the short plays I’m writing every week.

2) To discuss my relationship between theatre in the U.S. and Eastern Europe.

3) To evaluate my ability to reconcile my U.S. and East Europe theatre influences in the posted short plays.


The first two I’ve already begun; the third will begin with this post. Of course, I’m hoping comments from readers will allow this blog to be more dialogue than monologue, and this is particularly true for my evaluation of the short plays. In an ideal world, I will post a new short play every Monday, an evaluation of that play on Wednesday, and a continuation of my relationship to U.S. and East European theatre on Fridays. That said, I want to use the rest of this post to discuss how I see 1, 2, 3 and Killing the Father working within my varied influences.


Simply, 1, 2, 3 is the story of a woman at the time of her father’s death feeling as though she cannot pay him back. The prompt for this play was “loss,” and, while the loss of a parent is perhaps a clichéd subject for art, I felt that the story of the quarter could embody a feeling many people have about small gestures of generosity from parents that will forever remain unrepaid. I started from that, the realist story of a young girl wanting a quarter from her dad and feeling bad when she “wastes” it thinking she’s controlling the ghosts in Pac Man. This would be my U.S. narrative side.


From there, I tried to think of two stage images that could be created simply, and perhaps simultaneously, in the vein of Kantor. This got me thinking about white sheets from his ending of Wielopole, Wielopole, and led me to the idea of a man lying in a sauna under a white sheet and a body lying in a morgue (or in state?) under a white sheet. So this was a more visual creation, but still essentially realist story-telling. Or so it seems to me.


Connecting the two was more problematic in this process, and, I think, ultimately the part that seemed the most influenced by the East European theatre I’ve seen. I knew there were two periods represented onstage, and the thought of having two actors play the woman at different ages quickly occurred to me. Having them join hands and count their steps forward in unison between “scenes” between the younger self and the father took longer to come to, and, for me, was the real structural risk.


When it was performed, the storytelling seemed perfectly clear. People understood the separate times, that the two actors were playing the same woman, etc. But there was some confusion about the moments of holding hands and counting.


For me it referred on a literal plane to the three lives in Pac Man that a quarter buys. Symbolically I hoped it would take on the meaning of all the wasted time we spend thinking we’re paying attention to the important aspects of life (the “ghosts” in the game) when, in fact, we should have entirely different focuses (on the “pac man” in the game). These meanings were important to me and didn’t entirely come across.


But when Kantor writes about his work, he never so obviously defines any of its symbolism. He instead writes about attempting to literally combine realities, for instance subtitling Dead Class a “séance.” He writes about attempting to project his memories into a “room of memory,” which, as I understand it, is as much a mystical as artistic process. So what was I doing with the locking of hands and counting? I was collapsing worlds and trying to project a memory of mine into a fictional world. The clasping of hands of a child/adult self and counting was meant to open up a real theatrical space to explore time, death, and regret. If it didn’t do it, it came close given the reception from the audience.


I found Killing the Father far less successful. Though not realism, the piece, to me, is a relatively simple narrative. The telling encompasses three moments in time: the present from which the Young Man is narrating; the recent past when the Man marries the Young Woman; and the more distant past when the Man married the Young Woman’s mother. I enjoy how all these periods criss-cross throughout the piece, and I enjoy the direct address, and the kiss at the end created gasps of disgust from the audience. So, as a piece of storytelling, I suppose it was successful. It was also a break from the straight U.S. realism my work often falls into. But there was never a moment of collapsing images into meaning without words, or at least not in the way there was in 1, 2, 3.


Noticeably, though, both these analyses lack an ability to clearly define my goal. I’m unclear what I mean when I say “collapsing images into meaning without words” or “open up a real theatrical space to explore time, death, and regret.” I’m not after straight realism; I’m not after recreating the visual theatre of East Europe as embodied for me by Kantor. What, then, am I after exactly? It’s no wonder I can’t hit the target if I don’t understand what it is. Perhaps as I continue the part of the blog exploring my understanding of U.S. and East Europe theatre I will gain a clearer awareness of the type of hybrid I’m after.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Killing the Father

Killing the Father
by Jacob Juntunen

(A YOUNG MAN in a suit stands and walks from the circle; as he speaks, a YOUNG WOMAN in a white dress with a white shawl dances the waltz alone. All characters address the audience as if it’s a jury.)

YOUNG MAN
Ladies and gentlemen, witness the new world order! My father is getting married to a woman with an adolescent child of her own; Dad’s so infatuated with his new family, I was surprised I even got an invitation to the wedding.

(MAN enters, dressed in a black tuxedo. MAN and YOUNG MAN hug)

MAN
At the wedding, I told my son, “You cannot cast out family. Ever.”

YOUNG MAN
Dad wasn’t drunk, but his college-professor diction is stronger when he’s had a couple glasses of wine, like a long-lost accent.

MAN
You must always be drunk, Son, on wine, women, or love.

YOUNG MAN
“Wine, poetry, or virtue,” Dad.

MAN
What’s wrong with love.

YOUNG MAN
It’s virtue, Dad. The quote is be drunk on “wine, poetry, or virtue.”

MAN
Ladies and Gentlemen, my son is drunk on virtue! That is his upbringing! He may come from a broken home, but our values are intact. When he left for college, I made him promise:

YOUNG MAN
“I will not associate with anyone corrupt.”

MAN
If you do, it will surely corrupt your soul.

YOUNG WOMAN
It was a dream from my childhood! Beautiful white dress, laughing guests, and the words: love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

MAN
Why is your new sister dancing alone?

YOUNG MAN
Step-sister.

MAN
I’m going to dance with her.

YOUNG MAN
That’s weird, Dad.

MAN
If my mother were still alive, I would dance with her at my wedding. Instead, I dance with my new daughter.

YOUNG MAN
Step-daughter. There’s no blood between you.

MAN
He believed then that blood mattered more than family by marriage. But he was in college, young, and his mind changed.

YOUNG MAN
Over the years, seeing her at Christmas with my Dad and new Mom, I came to understand she was family.

YOUNG WOMAN
He always bought me books of poetry, as if to educate me, but I already loved words. He was older, though, and introduced me to worlds.

MAN
I treated them equally, proofreading her high school English papers, paying his college tuition.

YOUNG MAN
Whenever I came home on breaks, he’d make sure to take me out to breakfast by myself. He called me his favorite son; her, his favorite daughter.

MAN
I ask you, Ladies and Gentlemen, what could make your new step-daughter feel more loved than a waltz?

YOUNG MAN
She’s losing one parent and gaiting another. She’s just a kid. What if she’s scared?

(MAN hugs YOUNG MAN, hard)

MAN
I’ll be as charming as a poem; my children will never be scared.

YOUNG WOMAN
The words from the priest! Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs.

YOUNG MAN
And so my father kept my step-sister, his new daughter, from being scared.

(MAN goes to YOUNG WOMAN and bows, asking her to dance in gesture)

MAN
Ladies and Gentlemen, I will admit she blushed at first, and what I said is forgotten. But I saw her and though, “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.”

YOUNG WOMAN
I will always remember the priest saying, “Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” His son should remember that. Love always perseveres. Always.

(YOUNG WOMAN curtseys and YOUNG WOMAN and MAN begin to waltz)

YOUNG MAN
Ladies and Gentlemen, observe! A waltz consists of a step forward, a step to the side, and then a step together. If it wasn’t for that last step together, I would not stand before you this evening.

MAN
My son cannot understand that people grow apart. That even a second marriage may fail. I finally admitted I loved someone more than his stepmother.

YOUNG MAN
My father divorced my step-mother, and my step-sister turned eighteen. Judge for yourselves the events that occurred after I graduated college. But remember: You must not cast out family, nor can you abide corruption for it will corrupt your soul.

(YOUNG WOMAN and MAN stop dancing and turn towards each other, holding hands. MAN pulls the white shawl from the shoulders of the YOUNG WOMAN and wraps their hands with it.)

MAN
With this ring, I thee wed.

(MAN and YOUNG WOMAN kiss, all smiles. MAN strides over to YOUNG MAN, arms out for a hug. YOUNG MAN pushes MAN away, violently, and exits leaving MAN and YOUNG WOMAN standing alone; blackout)

Read full lengths by Jacob Juntunen here!


Friday, September 23, 2011

Searching for the East Europe/U.S. Bridge

Since 1998 when I was first exposed to Tadeusz Kantor, I’ve searched for words to bridge the gap between East European and U.S. theatre. I’ve hobbled towards that bridge creating scripts; I’ve staggered at it in scholarly writing seeking to explicate how these forms work; I’ve stumbled in its direction teaching on both sides of the Atlantic, learning from my students and colleagues; and I’ve limped in the direction of this elusive understanding in Kantor’s archive, the Cricoteka, in Kraków. To grasp the function of theatre in these disparate locations one needs to understand the extremely different twentieth-centuries experienced by the two countries, the paths and traditions their theatres took, and the different business models embraced or, perhaps, forced upon them. One blog post won’t be sufficient to explore the factors I see twisting and turning through history, and, frankly, my thoughts are insufficient to clearly articulate how these theatrical modes successfully function in such different ways. Therefore, this blog will be a place to post my latest short plays and a site where I explore these formal questions alongside practical issues of creating theatre, from artistry to economics.


I spent February 2011 – July 2011 in Poland teaching theatre at Adam Mickiewicz University, and am now at Ohio University beginning an MFA program in playwriting that is structure-intensive. For the past three weeks I’ve tried to wrap my brain around my newly taught thoughts about U.S. narrative ideas alongside my recent viewings of abstract Polish theatre. Imagine my excitement, then, when Robert Kaplowitz wrote in HowlRound about his recent experiences in Prague; his disquisition examining different expectations, particularly for/from audience members in Prague versus those he habitually understood in the U.S., was fascinating. He writes, “I learned about works in Poland, where theater groups are creating environmental installations that are encountered by the audience on the streets of their neighborhoods, outside of any theatrical bounds or even scheduled performance times.” Walk around Kraków for any length of time and you are bound to run into these, festival or no, though I would argue they are within strict theatrical bounds; we Americans simply need to recognize them as such. And some of the random performances I’ve stumbled across in Poland are burned into my mind—particularly their imagery—in ways I find rare from U.S. theatre. That’s not to say I prefer Polish theatre, but when I think of it memories of images leap before me. Without doubt when I think of U.S. theatre I think of performances, stage pictures, and amazing lighting/sets/costumes/sound, but it’s much more likely I think of a great narrative script well served by those elements. However, if I were asked the “narrative” of Kantor’s Dead Class (check out this clip), I would be hard-pressed to answer, despite my familiarity with it, my teaching of it, my writing about it, and my love of it. How to reconcile its worldwide success, and, more importantly, its prominent place in my devotion to theatre with Aristotelian drama? To start with, we need to go back to the nineteenth century. So that’s where this blog will travel next.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

1, 2, 3 ( a new play)

1, 2, 3
by Jacob Juntunen

(A MAN lies under a white sheet on a long, narrow platform, his pants on the floor beside him. WOMAN stands behind him, watching. She holds hands with GIRL. WOMAN and GIRL take one step towards the MAN.)

WOMAN and GIRL
One.

(GIRL runs to the MAN)

GIRL
Daddy, daddy, can I have a quarter?

MAN
You’re not supposed to come in the sauna.

GIRL
Tracy said I could come in here and ask you. I’ll pay you back. Please?

MAN
You can’t just wander around the gym. Where’s your mom?

GIRL
She’s in aerobics; they got this new video game in the lobby, it’s called Pac Man and you control these ghosts that are trying to kill this yellow thing eating all the food—

MAN
Who’s watching you?

GIRL
Mom told me to go to the daycare room but I went to the lobby, and Tracy said I could come ask you—

MAN
You need to go to daycare.

GIRL
I want a quarter so I can kill that Pac Man, I can give it back to you—

MAN
Either go to the daycare or go find your mom.

GIRL
Pleaaaaaase?

MAN
Don’t make me get up.

(GIRL goes back to the WOMAN. Together, they take another step closer to the MAN)

WOMAN and GIRL
Two.

(GIRL runs on)

GIRL
Tracy’s at the front desk and she says—

MAN
Why aren’t you in daycare?

GIRL
I went back to the lobby and Tracy says she’ll watch me while I play the game. And then she’ll take me to daycare. Pleeeeeease?

MAN
A quarter’s almost enough to get a tiger’s milk bar when we leave. You sure you want to spend it killing Pac Man instead?

GIRL
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

MAN
And you’re going to pay it back?

GIRL
Duh.

MAN
I think there’s one in my pocket.

(GIRL goes through pants on the floor and finds a quarter)

MAN
You promise Tracy’s at the front desk? And that she’ll take you to daycare right after?

GIRL
Yes.

MAN
Eskimo promise.

(MAN and GIRL rub noses. GIRL runs back to the WOMAN. In unison, they take a step closer to the MAN)

WOMAN and GIRL
Three.

(GIRL slowly and dejectedly comes on)

GIRL
Daddy.

MAN
Why aren’t you in daycare?

GIRL
Tracy’s taking me. She’s right outside. She said I could come in first.

MAN
What’s wrong?

GIRL
Daddy… You’re not the ghosts in Pac Man. (near tears) You’re the Pac Man. And I wasted all three lives thinking I was the ghosts. I thought I was controlling them, but I wasn’t, and I wasted your money, and I’m so sorry—

MAN
Honey—

GIRL
I’ll still pay you back, though, I promise.

MAN
Kiddo. It’s okay. Just have Tracy take you to daycare.

GIRL
I don’t know where I’m going to get a whole quarter, but I will.

(GIRL exits. The MAN is still. The WOMAN takes a final step, alone, saying nothing, at last reaching the MAN. She takes a quarter out of her pocket and puts it on the MAN’s body, then rubs noses with him. MAN doesn’t move and WOMAN pulls the sheet up over his head.)

WOMAN
I couldn’t ever pay you back.

END OF PLAY

Read full lengths by Jacob Juntunen here!