How Much of This is Based on Real Life?

Keeping Clocks
Microburst Theatre Festival
BYU
January 13-16, 2016

I was in the car, driving, when my daughter said, "Mom, are you doing that conversation again?" That's when I realized I had been muttering under my breath, taking a second look at all of my responses, trying to make sure I hadn't sounded like an idiot.  I do it all the time.

It's basically mental/verbal proofreading, except I can't hold off on hitting "submit' until after I give the conversation a once over so it's more like proofreading your IMs, which I also do. My coworkers have learned to humor me when I resubmit a message to correct typos. I'm a writer. Revising is what I do.

That's why a talkback session after a show of mine is both exciting and daunting.  I want to hear your impressions and field your questions, but I also want to ponder everything for a while and get back to you with my third draft response. So here it is. In the hopes of mitigating how much this reveals about my personality, I will only address one of the talkback questions (the one I blundered through the worst).

Thoughtful Audience Member: How much of this is based on real life?

Playwright: This show is actually unusual in that it is very closely tied to actual events in my life. Generally speaking, the truth of my plays is in the emotion and not so much in the literal details.  But, as it happens, I am a mother and I have rocked my baby and wished I could hold that moment forever.  And I am personal friends with Father Time.  Oops.  Ok, that part wasn't literal.  But I remember very distinctly when my youngest daughter was tiny and my world was pure chaos.  At three weeks old her father announced he was leaving, which came as a total shock to me.  My days were spent trying to process this and deal with a very rapidly changing universe. When it came time to rock my baby to sleep, I was exhausted. Rocking her to sleep was a sanctuary for me. The room was quiet and dark. I was holding a small, warm bundle of unconditional love. I had no desire to leave that moment and return to the craziness of the rest of my life.

It stuck with me as something to write about over all of these years. (Actually, many years ago I asked my friend Sam Day to capture the moment in a painting and he reminded me that I could write about it!  I blame Mommy Brain for that oversight.) I first wrote about it in the poem Rocking Baby to Sleep (see below). Then I let it percolate. I revised the poem. Percolate. Revised. Percolate. Turned it into a play.

My thought was that I was writing about the universal cry of "Don't grow up!" that is found on nearly every baby photo ever posted on social media. I wanted to pay homage to the loveliness of the moment when you rock your baby to sleep, knowing I was viewing this moment from the better rested position of a mom with older kids (7 and 12) and knowing the sentiments were tainted by chronic baby hunger.

Then I went to the first day of tablework for the play and saw it from a different perspective entirely. All around the table came observations and questions about things that absolutely were present in the text but that I had not yet stepped back and viewed.  I honestly thought I was telling a straightforward based-on-real-life type story (with that caveat about the fictitious character) but I was really writing about something that was not directly translated onto the stage. That play was considerably more interesting and rich than the sweet, direct homage I had started with.

This is not to say that I rewrote the play entirely based on the tablework, but observations like "there isn't a father in this play" pricked my unconscious thought to the forefront and I realized that I was also writing about the other big loss in that scenario: the loss of my husband. Looking at the choices I had made in the draft I could see myself grappling with the differences in the way we experience our children and my ongoing process of mourning the man I fell in love with. The play doesn't literally talk about any of that, but it's all about all of that and the process of writing and producing this play had an important impact on my actual life. So it's based on real life and it impacts real life and when my daughter, who I haven't rocked to sleep in years, cried herself to sleep about the father she doesn't know, I rocked her and kissed her sweet head and rather than wish for times past I relished a quiet moment where time didn't stand still but I could feel the tandem ticking of our heartbeats.

So this, dear audience member, is why the most truthful answer to your question is....

Everything.  And nothing.

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Rocking Baby to Sleep

I sit in the glider next to the crib, your tiny body heavier at the end of the day than at the beginning.

You settle your head between my chin and collar bone and we glide back and forth, back and forth.

One little arm wraps around me, one little arm rests on my chest.

Two big arms wrap around you with a hand on your pink pajama’d back.

Two little legs stick out to the left, two big legs point to the right.

Occasionally you kick your feet or raise your head, smile and thunk it down again heavily.

On wiggly days I stand up to prevent your escape from my lap.

Your legs splay around my waist and my arms slip under your bum.

When you are still too wiggly I ask, “Do you want to lay down in your crib and listen to your music?”

Some days you nod and I kiss you good night.

Some days you thunk your head down and snuggle up.

When your eyes are halfway closed I sit down again.

I rock you longer than is absolutely necessary.

Sometimes I take a little nap before charging into the rest of the night.

Mostly I breathe in your baby sweetness, kiss whatever is nearest my lips

and tell myself “Remember this! Remember this! Remember this!”

Keeping Clocks (final lines)

FATHER TIME

To you she is a living, growing, real person. All I have is a fraction of her in my pocket. You don’t want my view of the world.

MOTHER

My view is a window seat on a bullet train until I sit in this quiet room and you stop time so I can feel the ticking of her clock.

(FATHER TIME pulls out a very small clock from his pocket.)

FATHER TIME

Hold it for a minute and you’ll see that it’s better to have time than to just hold it.

(FATHER TIME reaches out to hand the clock to her. She takes it and their hands are still somehow tangled together.)

FATHER TIME

Is that yours?

MOTHER

It’s the same as hers.

FATHER TIME

But yours is still in my pocket.

MOTHER

I can feel it. Every second is there, present tense and past tense. In the rushing of my blood, the tandem ticking of our heartbeats.

Two Minds: The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo, A New Musical
BYU
January 22-14; 27-31, 2015
Music by Frank Wildhorn
Book and lyrics by Jack Murphy
Directed by Tim Threlfall
Musical direction by Gayle Lockwood
Choreography by Nathan Balser
Creative producer: Jeffrey Martin

Long before my brief stint as a resident of Las Vegas, I was a fan of big spectacle.  Raised on opera, I learned as a child to put my inner playwright on the back shelf and just enjoy the overblown drama, the unearned emotion, and, most of all, the music.  This is also the reason I love large cast musicals.  No judgment about how they got from Point A to Point B; let's just listen to them sing.  Especially when the heroine's songs all fall within my range!  Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you.

It was in that vein that I enjoyed this new musical adaptation of the classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo.  Folks, they had a body double for two of the main characters so they could fly them across an ocean themed screen and have the characters actually swim across the stage to the hidden cavern.  This was Spectacle (note the capital S!).  I love stuff like that!  I also loved the graphic design of the opening slides, even though I'm not a huge fan of slides-as-exposition.  The drawings of waves moved like waves.  It was supercool.

It was about a third of the way through that my inner playwright started bugging me.  We had just had a beautiful duet between the True Love in a church praying for Our Hero's safe return and Our Hero in the prison, sustained by the mere thought of his True Love.  Great song.  Then Our Hero leaves and the Weaselly Bad Guy attempts to woo True Love.  In time Our Hero returns to the prison part of the scene, but with substantial beard growth.  True Love and the Weasel continue as before.  So are we to suppose that the Weasel persisted over the course of many years before turning True Love's heart to his?  A major plot point refutes that explanation and I once again must say, "Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you!"

When condensing a lengthy novel for the stage, significant emotional journeys are sometimes (ok, often) reduced to the barest brushstrokes so that we can more easily move from one song to the next.  Sometimes I have to tell myself that surely this is more fleshed out in the novel.  I had to do that at several points in the musical and now I can't decide if I want to ever read the novel.  What if it doesn't give us reason not to hate True Love? I'm holding on to that last thread (remember, all of her songs are in my range so I am inclined at the gut level to like her), because based only on what we see in the musical this is a girl I want to smack.  Hard.

First, she spends a high percentage of her stage time half-raised from the floor, in emotional turmoil.  I can forgive that because I love emotional turmoil songs, but the complexity that I am really hoping is in the novel does not come across in this script.  I am hoping that she married the Weasel because she knew that as a woman in this time period her options were limited and she wanted her unborn child to have the advantages of a male protector.  On stage, she is too dumb to see how bald the Weasel's romantic machinations are, takes his lies at face value, and only requires a couple of awkward, forced hugs to break her will.  Looks like the Weasel really did know best when it comes to True Love.

There are two types of women in this play: those who exist within the patriarchy and those who do not.  Both are somewhat off-putting.  There's True Love (whose whole life is controlled by the actions and decisions of men), Apprentice True Love (who is in love with True Love's son), and the Pirate Queens (who keep a surly, all male pirate crew in line with the power of their cleavage and their propensity for random violence).  I know I'm supposed to like the Pirate Queens because they are so sassy but the whole scenario seemed terribly unlikely.  Honestly, when they first came on stage I wondered if I was still watching the same musical I had been watching.  So the only female character who can say things and be heard and make decisions for herself is pretty much a joke.  And she, too, is helpless when it comes to Our Hero.  He runs the place, folks (with the help of his body double).  Within 5 minutes of meeting Our Hero, the Pirate Queen changes her policy on how a fight to the death ends, changes her destination (by hundreds of leagues), and changes her pirate instincts (did she get even one coin of the treasure?  Did she even try?). The worst was when Our Hero and Mini Me sing about those silly women they love (True Love and Apprentice True Love, respectively).  The women end up looking like porcelain dolls instead of living, breathing human beings and their portrayal throughout the show does pretty much the same thing.

The other time my inner playwright wept was when True Love reveals that Mini Me is actually Our Hero's son (gasp!).  I did not believe their joyous reactions.  Ok, I can believe that Our Hero is joyous about having a son despite being in prison during his prime family-making years.  But Mini Me, who not only just lost the only father he has ever known but was the person who did the killing, is surely not going to have a first reaction of unadulterated joy.  "You mean the alcoholic, abusive man I just killed isn't my father?  It's actually the lying, angry man who ruined my family's good name and who, earlier today, I tried to kill?  Sweet!  And my mom had a secret life she never told me about?  Could this day get any better?"  Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you!

Based on the standing ovation all around me, though, and the raucous cheering of the four busloads of appreciative high schoolers, nobody else had a pesky inner playwright casting a pall on what was, really, a very fun afternoon of Spectacle and Song.

The moon expanded as they sang louder as a graphic representation of all of their dreams coming true.  If you can't have fun with a magical expanding moon then you, my friend, won't ever have fun.

Restless and Happy

Paint My Eyes
by Jamie Erekson
directed by George D. Nelson
BYU
November 22, 2014

I count it an excellent day at the theater when I leave feeling restless.  In this case, my brain was so restless that I didn't even mind getting caught in the post-football-game traffic because it gave me time to think rather than drive.  I was excited about the piece but also excited about what I'm currently writing and excited to be even a very small part of the process of developing a new piece.  How I miss giving feedback on plays!  How I have missed the collaborative environment of the theater!

The piece was a new musical by Jamie Erekson called Paint My Eyes.  By the time you read this it will have closed but hopefully you will get to see the next incarnation.  One thing I loved about this piece was that it fit into an aesthetic that I try to cultivate in my own work.  It came from a distinctly faithful viewpoint and could be considered faith promoting but it also comes from a place of complexity and depth.  The feel-good moments are hard won and do not diminish the harsh realities.  The beautiful moments were earned by both the characters and the audience and so they were more dear.  This was brought home forcefully by the highly emotional response of one audience member during the talkback session afterwards.  We had trusted the playwright/composer to take us on a journey and, though the journey was difficult, our trust was not misplaced.

The piece explores the experiences of two missionaries against a backdrop of dreams (especially Lehi's dream) and memories.  As we put together the puzzle pieces of Elder Garn's last few months in the mission field our eyes are opened to his struggles and the struggles of those around him.  The deep wounds of the German people are sympathetically wrought and contrasted to the deep wounds in the central storyline.  A depth of emotion is established so that when the revelation of the central wound is finally realized, our hearts are ready.  We see it in context and it lands. Hard.

The humor in the story also serves to further this goal.  Elder Garn's companion is a comic foil for much of the story, constantly calling himself out for his faults (such as perpetual lying) and spectacularly ruining missionary opportunities with hilarious missteps.  This makes the audience listen all the more when he steps into the role of truth teller and facilitates the feeling of redemption at the end of the piece.

The music, too, brought home the themes of the piece.  Difficult and haunting, the music embodied the emotional undercurrent of the play.  My memory of the music is not of specific tunes but of how it seized my heart.  In fact, the music was so fused to the scene that the two can't be separated in my head, which is where the piece will be for a long while--swirling around my brain, making me smile, because being in a theater and wearing the hat of "collaborator" feeds my start and makes my heart happy.

Lessons Learned From the Chinese Acrobats

Golden Dragon Chinese Acrobats
BYU
February 8, 2014

1.  Any outfit can be enhanced by glow-in-the-dark neon.

2.  Never let them see you prep.

3.  When teaching modesty lessons always include a lesson on tolerance and/or common courtesy so you don't hear your 5 year old's voice ring out in the silence with "Is that ALL they're going to wear???"

4.  When you don't pack your bag with things to quietly entertain children one will, without precedent, fail to be engaged by the glittering, neon-clad group of people doing amazing things right before their very eyes.

5.  Windsprints during intermission can help with #4.

6.  Sometimes having the big guys standing there ready to catch you makes the trick look extra dangerous but mostly it just takes away from the coolness of the thing you are doing.

7.  Don't point right if the people are coming in from the left.

8.  Don't ask the audience if they want one more if you didn't mean one more chair on the giant chair stack.*

9.  Always rock the exit.  Keep your head and arms held high!**

10. No matter how amazing you are, people will always find something to gripe about.

*We had just spent an inordinate amount of time watching him add just one more chair when it seemed impossible to add another chair so when he asked, "Do you want one more?" I thought it was a natural assumption that he meant one more chair.  He coaxed more and more applause out of the audience in support of "one more" and then....no chair!  Later I realized he must have meant one more balancing pose.  I'm going to blame this on the language barrier.

**Am I the only one who stops watching where they are directing your attention and sees if the ones we aren't focusing on have dropped their focus?  I loved how these guys never dropped their arms in view of the audience.  Way to commit to the exit!

The Monkey's New Life Plan

The Nightingale
BYU
October 8, 2013

The monologue from the theater to the car went something like this: "When I'm a grown-up I am going to come back and be in that place.  Are you clear?  I am clear on this.  I am going to be one of those people in that show when I am bigger.  I am going to do that!  I am going to be the nightingale!  Or maybe another show.  Or maybe this show with more characters.  And a kid is going to come and say that when she is a grown up she will be in a show too.  I am clear on this.  Are you clear?  I am clear."  So, if I'm clear on what she's saying, my little 4 year old Monkey would like to grow up to be an actress.  Preferably an actress like the one who portrayed the title character in the show we just saw.  And she has already determined that she will, in her adult life, inspire children to follow in her as yet untrodden footsteps.  I love this kid so much!

Actually, this is the second time we have seen the show (she would like us to go a third time but my pocketbook will only stretch so far).  The first time we saw the show, she leaned over to me and whispered as the Nightingale (Nicole Dugdale) came on stage, "Mom!  That's the prettiest girl I have ever seen!"  Here she is, by the way, with the Monkey and her older sister:

The show is a retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen tale and the performances were influenced by the Peking Opera.  Apparently the cast went to China to study with the Peking Opera and research for this show.  Oh, BYU students, I hope you know how lucky you are!  Back in the day, we didn't have such exotic field trips.

It's hard to say what delighted us most about this show.  We were all engaged but in different ways.  My older daughter could not stop laughing.  She loved the goofiness of the Emperor (Jordan Nicholes) and found each character's symbolic physical gesture hilarious every time he or she did it (especially Clayton Cranford's Young Man's vocalization).  The Monkey loved that too but was especially entranced with the visual element.  The costume designer (Donette Perkins) deserves kudos for designing costumes that were simple and looked easy to move in but that also had eye catching details that created visual interest.  The Monkey especially loved the fake mustaches and beards.  I wish I had taken a picture because the glorious thing about them is the fact that they were fake in a way that was very conscious of its fake-ness.  They were not fake facial hair; they were a theatrical indication of facial hair.  I loved it!  I want my own for our next family picture (though I do still love our own crochet beards)!  Also, the Nightingale was plain in her clothing but had a demure and yet beautiful headdress--a perfect representation of the Nightingale herself.  I really liked the Narrator's (Cossette Hatch's) Chinese style makeup with the striking red eyes too.  She was the character whose makeup most approached what we think of when we think of Chinese theatrical makeup, which made her stand out and visually highlighted her role as the Narrator.

The entire cast was strong but the three that stood out to me were the Narrator (Cossette Hatch), I-Ming (Jennifer Bozeman) and Death/Emperor of Japan (Noah Kershisnik).  The Narrator caught the children's attention quietly and managed to keep them as she slipped in and out of the scene easily.  Her performance never seemed forced and she really felt like the audience's advocate and confidante.  The actress playing I-Ming had a similar ease to her performance that was very engaging.  Her very face seemed to transform as she moved from character to character.  My favorite performer, though, was Noah Kershisnik, who had such focus and precision that it seemed as if nothing (short of a police raid of the theater) would draw his attention from the core of his character.  He was 100% present every time he stepped on stage and so each of the characters he portrayed was vibrant and compelling.

The whole experience was delightful.  50 minutes is the perfect length for a children's show (no intermission to navigate!) and the inclusion of Chinese dialogue was interesting without being overly foreign (plus we all got a kick out of saying the few Mandarin words we know to the Chinese Narrator (Esmeralda Veda) after the show).  The Monkey absolutely loved meeting the cast after the show.  We were the very last people to leave the first time we saw the show and just about the last people to leave the second time.  She didn't quite know what to say to them but was over the moon that they paid attention to her (special thanks to Jennifer Bozeman for being so funny about the cute shirt she was wearing.  She retold that story over and over again.  "She thought I was a giraffe!").  Thank you, BYU, for a wonderful evening!