okay, since i haven't heard a peep from anyone i'm thinking maybe no one has noticed that i still haven't posted the play... maybe i'm off the hook on this one...???
i'm sure you're all enjoying those last few days of summer and packing up to go back to school so hopefully you don't mind that i'm running behind schedule again.
here's the deal: i've been working on this play everyday and it's still not finished. i have a draft, but it's far from what i know it's going to be so unless you holler at me, i'm going to keep working on it until i feel good about posting it.
my new deadline (i gave up on the july deadline and submitted stars instead) is October (when i hope to have a reading of the play here in Seattle), but i'll probably have something up here before then. in the meantime, don't be strangers. bug me! it helps me write faster!
lots o love.
janis
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a new play by janis craft developed with the teens on this blog. this is the third play in the rain, stars, sunlight cycle (aka: the synesthesia cycle)
about this blog
the address for this blog is "virtual improv" because that's how this play began. the description for this blog used to read,
"a virtual space for us to make a real play about the virtual and real lives of the fictitious characters from rain and stars. yeah."
if you go to the very begging of the blog (the posts at the very bottom), you will see how this manifested itself in instant messenger chats, in second life, on facebook, and here on the blog.
now that there is a real play, this is a place for us to continue discussion about Sunlight -- the characters, the themes, and the people who bring it to life as it rises and sets with each reading and production. i hope you'll share your experiences here!
"a virtual space for us to make a real play about the virtual and real lives of the fictitious characters from rain and stars. yeah."
if you go to the very begging of the blog (the posts at the very bottom), you will see how this manifested itself in instant messenger chats, in second life, on facebook, and here on the blog.
now that there is a real play, this is a place for us to continue discussion about Sunlight -- the characters, the themes, and the people who bring it to life as it rises and sets with each reading and production. i hope you'll share your experiences here!
Posts
8 comments:
hey have you written anything yet? what are you thinking about now? can you post anything that we can read?
hey there! nice to have a comment on this blog... lets me know it's still active. yes, i know i'm taking forever. i have a draft of the play complete up until the last scene, but it doesn't feel right so i haven't wanted to post it. i've been working out some things with it though and should have something for you very soon.
in the meantime... i have a request. Miles has agreed to make me a teaser for the play to go on a website and I want to include some screen shots of fake facebook profiles of the characters to include in the teaser.
would you each create a profile page and photo for your character (this might require creating a fake email account) and invite me to be your friend? this could be really cool. aside from making the teaser, i think this will be really great to give the play a virtual presence... the one thing it's missing.
right now, i'm considering making the last scene of the play exist only online as an animation to which i'd give the audience a link to... so these profiles could serve as an online character breakdown.
yeah? tell me you'll do it! it will be so much cooler if each of you create one instead of me doing them.
and danie -- here's a bit of reul for you bc you asked... right now it's replacing the brady/reul phonecall (i cut brady), but i'm not sure how i'll much of it i'll keep. i'm curious to hear what you think of it.
-----
from Act 2, scene 1 (where Brady call used to be)
A moment.
BOLO
I wasn’t, by chance, in the stars, was I?
REUL
He remembers!
ALOE
Yes! And then we became stars and shot across the sky!
SAM
The meteor shower…
ALOE
Do you remember that?
BOLO
Sort of…
REUL
I wasn’t dreaming!
ALOE
This is so incredible that you experienced it too! I knew it was real… I tried to explain it to my friends but they thought it was the anesthesia and then I was afraid it was slipping away from me, but now I know it won’t disappear because you remember it too! Isn’t this amazing?
SAM
Amazing doesn’t even come close…
BOLO
Yeah.
A moment.
REUL
Come on, Bolo, TALK! I want to know everything!
ALOE
Tell me what it was like for you. Start from the very beginning and don’t leave out any details.
SAM
Houston, we have a problem. Bolo? Elliot? (BOLO doesn’t move) I guess I have to tell to her, don’t I?
BOLO
I can’t, Aloe.
REUL
I suppose it was a big request.
ALOE
That’s okay. Just start wherever you remember. We can piece the details together later.
BOLO
There’s something I need to tell you…
REUL’s phone rings.
REUL
Ah! What do I do?
BOLO
When you asked me where I’d been for the last few months, did you notice how I never answered?
Phone rings again.
REUL
Who would call this late? I guess they’ll have to leave a message.
The phone rings again.
REUL
But what if they don’t? What if it’s important?
SAM
What’s taking her so long?
REUL picks up the phone and BETH appears.
BETH
Hello?
BOLO
Question mark?
BETH
Reul? I didn’t wake you up, did I?
REUL
No but is everything okay? It’s late.
BETH
I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about you and I felt so bad.
BOLO
Question mark, question mark?
ALOE
One sec…
REUL
What for?
BETH
I left you today. I didn’t even say goodbye.
SAM
Five seconds and counting…
REUL
I fell asleep, what were you supposed to do? Don’t feel bad.
BETH
You’re just saying that. I’m sure you were disappointed when you woke up all alone.
REUL
I’m not just saying that… but Beth…?
SAM
Ten seconds…
BETH
I feel like I’m just not a very good friend right now. Kaiya’s mad at me too. She won’t return my messages.
REUL
She probably just didn’t check her phone. You know her.
BETH
Yeah, that’s why I left her more than one. I sent her an email, a Virtually Me message, a text and, like three voicemails. Pretty sure she couldn’t miss all of those. Although it is Kaiya, so I guess anything is possible. But still, I think she’s just ignoring me.
(BETH waits)
BETH
Reul?
REUL (overlapping)
(aside) Oh gees.
ALOE (overlapping BETH)
Will you be on later? My friend’s on the phone and she’s upset.
SAM
You’re not serious.
BOLO
When?
(BETH waits)
BETH
Are you still there?
ALOE
Twenty minutes?
BOLO
Okay. I’ll be here.
REUL closes her computer and SAM, ALOE, and BOLO disappear.
REUL
I’m here, sorry.
BETH
You’re not falling asleep are you?
REUL
Nope. I’m all yours. So why do you think she’s mad at you?
BETH
I don’t know. Well I do, but I don’t really want to talk about it right now.
REUL
It’s about me, isn’t it?
BETH
No. Yes. She just looks at things from such a quirky perspective, you know? And she doesn’t understand that I can’t, that my brain is programmed to be logical. It’s like she speaks a totally different language and doesn’t comprehend mine at all. We’re completely opposites.
REUL
That’s why you need each other.
BETH
It’s why we need you in the middle.
REUL
Hey, don’t give me that role. I’ll listen but I’m not going to referee.
BETH
Okay. Sorry to bug you with that. I know you’ve got a lot of stuff on your mind.
REUL
A lot less now than before.
BETH
I’ve been doing a little online research…
REUL
About what?
BETH
Well, you know how you said you thought you had an out of body experience?
REUL
I don’t think that I did—
BETH (interrupting)
-- Well, it turns out that’s actually a scientifically proven thing. It’s called an O.B.E. and it can happen when information gets crossed in the temporal-parietal juncture in the brain – that’s the part that processes and comprehends our relation of bodies in space.
REUL
That’s really interesting but—
BETH (overlapping REUL)
-- There were lots of people who described experiences similar to yours where they left their bodies and felt like they were able to go all over the world, some even described going outside of the world. Isn’t that cool? It’s actually a real thing.
REUL
It is cool but it’s not what happened to me.
BETH
How do you know? I could read you some of what—
REUL (interrupting)
-- Beth, my brain was asleep during the surgery.
BETH
So?
REUL
So, there’s not really a way for information to be processed let alone comprehended or crossed. I’m brain-dead while they’re working on it.
BETH
None at all? Are you sure?
REUL
It’s sweet of you to try to make sense of this for me, but some things just aren’t explainable. It doesn’t make them more or less real -- it makes them mysterious.
BETH
Does it make me a bad friend if I don’t believe in mysteries?
REUL
No. You can believe or not believe in whatever you want. I’ll still love you.
BETH
Promise?
REUL
As long as you don’t try to tell sway me away from what I believe.
BETH
Okay. (beat) Hey, want to hear something cool?
REUL
Sure…
BETH
I found this in my research too. It’s a song composed with actual recordings of stars. Did you know they make sounds?
REUL
I did…
BETH holds her phone up to her speaker and plays the song.
I like it a lot. I think there is more urgency when beth calls than when braidy does.
hmm. im thinking im making a connection in my head but i dont have words. ill write later.
good scene. thanks for sharing.
Oh here. this is what it reminds me of:
I read this article once about mental illness and mysticism. It can be really hard for people who have mystical experiences to get help talking about them because people usually think they're crazy and doctors diagnose them as "mentally ill." However, the article was about a mental hospital (for lack of a better noun) that dealt specifically with people who are going through mystical experiences/ belive they are prophets and stuff.
Instead of giving them drugs to suppress their beliefs they talk about them with patients and patients talk to eachother. they talk about what they believe and how they can follow through with those beliefs in "normal" society.
they are specific about feeding patients a diet high in protein and low in sugar and helping them reduce possible mentle illness in other ways too but they never label them as ill. they just have had experiences that are hard to understand and need help working through them. I imagine a place like this would be more helpful than some scientist telling you that your problems are just made up. If you look at people who are thought of as prophets today like Jeremiah or Muhummed or Jesus, they all had to really fight for other people to listen and believe them. They all also had bouts depression because of it.
the article was pretty cool but got kinda boring at the end. I'll send it to you if you want. you may be interested in reading it when you're less busy.
I think the key phrase you used here is "suppress your beliefs." That seems to be the major conflict between Reul and Beth. It's hard to allow someone to believe in something that goes outside of your boundary of comprehending.
yeah, that's something that gets me about reul's response to beth actuallly: "No. You can believe or not believe in whatever you want. I’ll still love you."
I've had a good amount of conversations about beliefs that are important to me with people who don't agree with them--some conversations have been good and some not so much. it frustrates me when people just, you know, "agree to disagree." When you really believe in something that's so important to you you want other people to understand it--not necissarily believe it but understand it and see how it is beautiful. find some level of truth to what i'm saying even if it is a vague or analogous connection.
I think becasue of where our country is right now with such a wide mix of ethnicities, religions, heritage etc, tolerance has become almost Over stressed. tolerance is when you don't like something but you deal with it anyway. example: I Tolerate the fact that my hermit crab pees on me when I take him out to play becasue I Like visiting with him. generally people tolerate other people's beliefs even when they think they're wrong because they don't want to be judged or be judgemental. our personal beliefs have become so sensitive that we can't really talk about them with each other because we're afraid of compromising our own beliefs.
When Reul says "I'll still love you" it's almost like she's imlying that she's not gonna entertain Beth's idea because she's afraid it will make her experience less real. So what if Beth is right? Maybe it was an OBE. Maybe it was just a crazy drug-induced dream. Does that make the experience less real? It did make reul feel something. It made her want to reach out to Bolo. It effected, not only her life, but also sam's and her brother's (like in that part when she was explaining to him what's real and what's not--from a little sibling standpoint that will probabally be a really important moment in his life).
i heard that even during sleep the same parts of are brain are stimulated during dream activities than during waking activities sometimes to the point where we wake up to ourselves talking or moving or even laughing.
I guess what I'm saying is instead of ending the conversation with just disagreement, i think Reul would still be wanting more understanding from Beth that what she's giving her. It's hard to just shrug it off when somebody doesn't get you, especially when its so important, and especially when she's your best friend.
I just read it again and it seems like you're sort of trying to get at the same thing but it's just that one line that seems not right to me. what do you think?
i hope you're not annoyed that my you-should-think-about-this-post is longer than my thats-great-post. I like the scene. I like the ugency of Bolo and Aloe vs Reul and Beth. That's interesting and kinda frantic. I also like that beth is reflecting and trying to connect with Reul.
you're right. sometimes certain lines feel off to me too but i keep plowing through to get to the deeper currents of the play. sometimes that's exactly what i shouldn't do because the single lines are what is directing the deeper current. don't ever apologize. this is why it's collaboration. i could do it on my own, but it wouldn't be nearly as good and i want to make a play that is so good it's alive. that's tough. i need all the help i can get. we have to do more than agree to disagree; we have to state what we believe and call others out when we feel their beliefs need challenging.
always challenge. me, the play, your hermit crab.... Don't get peed on for nothing!
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