The Power and Guile of the First Line

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

That's the first line of a play.  Easy enough to guess Shakespeare, but which one?  Taming of the Shrew?  Richard III?  Midsummer?  If you guessed Twelfth Night, you'd be correct.

From a dramatic standpoint, the first moments of a play have to hold the heart of the conflict.  It's disguised, layered, waiting to be unveiled, but it has to be there.  The first moments have to sustain an energy that will propel the characters through the next two hours.  

"What I find most astonishing... is the belief that I might very easily-- as they say-- lose my mind one day, not that I suspect I am about to, or am even... nearby...."

The author throws in a few extra clauses into that long sentence that I omitted, sentence fragments meant to disguise the central theme of the play, but you can still feel the energy.  And if you know what play it's from, you feel it even stronger.  Guesses?  It's the first line of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. Yeah, makes sense now. 

It's rare, though, that I writer invests the central conflict or theme in the very first line.  Typically, it's spread throughout the first scene.  It takes enormous control of your narrative to successfully embed it the way Albee does here.  So it's with a bit of awe that I write Jez Butterworth's first line for Jerusalem.  

"Time."

A question delivered as a statement.  Though spoken to Parsons, Mrs. Fawcett is calling "time's up" on Johnny Rooster Byron; Butterworth is dramatizing the changes of time in England, from the glory of old-- with its myths and power-- to the mundanity of new.  Nearly every character in Jerusalem refers to time, and for Johnny Rooster the question is whether he can call the ancient power of the past into the present in time to save his skin.

Powerful stuff, first lines.

Opening Night in 57

Busy, busy, busy. Not much time to write even after a splendid Opening Night on Saturday. Watching the show come together over the past couple of weeks, I wasn't sure what I'd think of it. It's a puzzlingly difficult script to illuminate; it's very easy to blur over moments that are pivotal, making the story flat and difficult to relate to. Then the hecticness of tech wreaked havoc on my ability to watch the play. I was too busy watching the lights, or the set, or sound. The costumes were pretty marvelous right from the start so that wasn't an issue. But sure enough, coming first Preview the tech elements fell (mostly) into place, and the actors arose from the ashes of chaos.

Opening night of a World Premiere is truly a thing to behold. Usually, a play takes a big step forward on Opening, becoming richer and more fleshed out. Typically, you have a sense of what to expect/hope for. With a world premiere, you only have the "ideal" of it in your head; you have no idea of whether or not the play can reach that ideal. If it fails to reach the pinnacle of your imagination, it's impossible to know whether it's the fault of the production or the play. I'm very happy with this incarnation of The Tender King. I see my play. On Opening Night the performances were rich and lush, the story clear, and the emotion palpable. I've still no time to really focus on this blog, but here are some images from Opening Night, in 57 seconds. Pardon its hasty construction....

What's to Come

This is just a place holder for what's to come. This is a video blog for Second Wind's production of MEADOWLAND, by Ian Walker, hosted by Ian Walker. My hope-goal-desire is to post an insider's account of the production process, with new video's every other day (starting with the first day of rehearsal, November 16, 2008). I'm going to add a few pre-production posts to give some background, starting next week, and ramping up as we go along.

Until then, welcome.