| She's Always Got Something Hidden Inside
by Justin D.M. Palmer on 10/09/2007 05:34:00 PM
Next presents week 48 of 365 Days / 365 Plays Festival
on 10/11
Let me just take one moment to admit something freely and unabashedly: I've done a few 365s by now, and I think I'm just starting to get the hang of them. This is my third time, and doing a couple of them helps! Let me explain...
I first took part in 365 Plays/365 Days Festival by acting in The Mill Theatre's contribution to the festival, Week 12. It was a wild and dizzying experience, doing that play -- written January 29th and called "The King Slept Here," I played a military Sergeant who yells orders at a couple of lazy Privates, who both happen to have the nasty problem of hearing ghosts on the battlefield. Back then I didn't get it. All I knew was that Suzan-Lori Parks, the inimitable master playwright that she is (you know, the kind who even makes up her own words and stuff! Kinda like that dude Shakespeare used to do) had written a short play every day for a year. "Every friggin' day?!," I thought the first time I heard about it. "Yup, wrote 365 of 'em," turned out was the answer. What I didn't know -- or, it turns out, yet understood -- was what writing 365 Plays in as many days means. I think I first glimpsed some insight when the company for which I am Artistic Director, Sandbox Theatre Project, took on Week 34 of the festival. It turns out when you write that many short plays in that period of time, you don't just write what you know, but you write what's there. Week 34 taught me that each one of these plays has a little secret meaning buried just beneath its surface.
Ms. Parks wrote all of these 365 Plays between November 2002 - November 2003. And, if I may be so bold as to point it out: you might remember that America did something sort of important on March 20, 2003.
Week 34 of the 365 Festival (July 2 - 8) contained seven really exciting and eclectic plays. By this point I began to see these plays as reflecting a writer struggling through the kinds of questions and opinions and thoughts and feelings she had on a daily basis. Week 34 had the rare fortune of containing a play that had been written on a national holiday. The play on July 4th, called "The King's Head," was a bunch of numbers sitting around waiting to hear when they were to get their heads chopped off. And it clicked! In a way that makes perfect sense. What is freedom, really, other than the ability to do stuff without worrying about getting your head chopped off? And there was that King again (remember, from January 29th, "The King Slept Here"). And then for the play dated July 6th, "Treasure," out came that same military leader again. An amazing array of reoccurring characters litter Ms. Parks' 365 Plays: a King, a military leader, an Electrocutioner (and his daughter), A Man Coming Home From The War, and more.
Then I discovered it: She's Always Got Something Hidden Inside.
So, how to start Next Theatre's contribution to the 365 Festival, Week 48? I began by looking for what was hidden. The first thing I noticed was that all of the character's names were purposively un-characteristic: "Package Woman", "1st Other", "Man", "Non-American Woman", etc... I can't help but think there's some meaning in this. For such an inventive playwright, this seems odd. Except for when you realize that she's coming to the end of her run. Week 48 (out of 52) marks a descent toward the finish line. Four more weeks and she's done. A month. I wonder if maybe Ms. Parks might have found benefit in generic names, possibly a comfort in non-specificity? There's a lot of space between us and them, especially when we keep them known as "Them". October 12th's play, "Analysis," finds two characters standing over "another deep hole" in the ground, staring down into it -- interestingly, in this play the characters are merely differentiated on the page by separate dashes and line-breaks, not even names! -- wondering what the hole might be made of:
"-I brought a sample.
-Of the hole?
-Yep.
-Wassit made of?
-The hole?
-Yeah.
-Space.
-Deep." Maybe it's the space in between the letters and the words she writes that provides all the depth? I happen to think there's something in that.
If there's one thing I've learned about these 365 Plays... She's always got something hidden inside them.
We sure do hope you can join us on October 11th, so you can tell us what you find hidden inside them. Trust us when we say they all have a lot of space. And it's deep.Labels: 365 Days/365 Plays
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I can't wait to see these plays at Noyes... when I first read them, they were so short I thought it wouldn't be possible to make "a story" out of them... but I've been proven wrong over and over! And it's great to have Justin - a playwright himself - directing them.
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