Our Plays are Our Children

Those are really insightful observations, Amy.  I think I have re-drafted a bit from the one that's on my website.  I can't wait for you to read "Jennifers".  I hope to have a draft done this week.  I didn't know all the etymology of the names.  But, (and I am a bit ashamed to say this) they are all based on real people.  I altered their names a bit (just in case anyone who knows the three of them pieces it together).  Most of my (I think) better characters are all based on real people I know or have known.  It's something I've struggled with at times--Love.  What is it?  It's so hard to define.  I am sure that most of us remember the first person we really fell for--I mean that person who just seemed to fill you so deeply, but it turned out not to be.  I asked myself if "Love" is nothing more than a shared fantasy that two people create?  It's a theme in "Jennifers" but I swear I don't think about theme when I write.  Theme is something that I think we assemble analytically--maybe it's our intellect's way of trying to sort out what comes from the subconscious.

But, and I think it's ambigious in the play, Anya and Raquel share the same bed--but their relationship is not physical or sexual.  Raquel loves her and perhaps she'd like to physically consumate that love and that is perhaps why she sleeps with Ace.  Maybe it's her way of communing with someone she feels she can't "make love" to.  She's Anya's best friend, and I think that is a different manifestation of love.  Interesting that Raquel is derived from the Hebrew for "ewe" in that Raquel is kind of like a lost sheep looking for a shepherd.  I didn't know about the etymology of "Anya" either.  It does fit.  She's like a sexy siren that lures those around her to their demise. 

The problem, and I think I've solved it with the other draft, was that the untruths that Ace tells her didn't seem significant enough for her to have such a dramatic reaction.  But I changed it.  That came out of the first reading I did.  I think it's a little flabby in spots, but I always think it's easier to overwrite and then edit.  I was going for lyrical.  I have a particular aversion to "monologue" especially direct address.  I think Ace laments just not sticking to the truth.  He wonders how it would've been different had he not lied.  

This just made me think of that Depeche Mode song "Policy of Truth."  If there is a theme to my body of work--and I don't know that there is, it might be something about truth and illusion illusion or fantasy.  That sometimes it's much more enjoyable to delude yourself--that the fantasy is just more fun.  But you have to know that it's just a fantasy.  When we start believing it--and it's much more fun that way--we inevitably end up getting hurt. 

I guess, aethetically and theatrically I love fantasies and dreams because in the theatre, it really releases limits on how you can stage it.    

Thanks again, Amy. 

Much love,

Dean

PS Did you listen to it with the music?  I can't hear Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" without becoming a blubbering fool.  Also, Duran Duran's "Come Undone" is really a forward in the play.  It's subtle, but it's there.  I find myself doing that a lot these days--using music as a symbol or a foreshadow of what's to come.  It's a HUGE part of "Jennifers". 

I just got done reading A Whole in One.

I think it's amazing how our fantasies are part of us. Whether Anya and Raquel were real at any point or whether the whole thing was a fantasy, I felt Anya's unbelievable, exotic, unquenchable longing.

"She makes everyone fall in love with her."   Anya means grace but also inexhaustible. She's delicate and graceful and irresistible but has this unquenchable longing and awakens it in her lovers. Her inexhaustible state is that once she makes someone fall in love with her, it's no longer attractive. Their human flaws, their muddy insides, their reality shatters the bubble of first love when you're crazy about each other and go out on twelve dates in five days, when you can't keep your clothes on long enough to get inside the door.

Raquel is not as obvious. It's the Latinate version of Rachel. Rachel means "ewe" in Hebrew. So we're not going on name here but on her role. Anya "made" Raquel fall in love with her. She always does this. And her unquenchable quality means Raquel will never be enough for her. Not that Raquel doesn't like to dally with a man, also, but I'm sure while they look at Raquel first, the classic beauty, they always go for Anya, the exotic one. Raquel almost doesn't have an identity if it's not as "the other one" with Anya.

And I do notice that they don't team up so they can be equal as lovers with a man in a threesome. Huh.

So what about Ace. I think Anya and Raquel are figments of his imagination and maybe the hole in one was, too, but then who is Ace?

Ace is just a man with desires. Anya and Raquel are women with desires, too.

They all realize that none of them can fill each other so they each get married, longing for what they had. Perhaps Anya and Raquel's husbands at least tacitly let them be together, too, so there is not so much female need for them to fill.

And Mrs. Ace? Maybe after he didn't see Anya and Raquel, Ace denied his need. After all he lived without it for thirty odd years before Anya and Raquel. Maybe it became okay to fill just part of it. Or maybe he thought Mrs. Ace could be Anya and Raquel to him and never disappear.

Yet the moment he is with them again the three become one.

Holy canoli there's lots of stuff here.

I wish you great things with it at the reading.

Dean,

Thank you so much for sharing. I love these moments at the keyboard when something dawns on me and I start writing with tears streaming down my face. It happens rarely but when it does, I know something good will come of it.

This is lovely. Thank you.

I think this is why it hurts so bad when we get a bad review. In essence, the play is you. it's your heart, so how could it not hurt?