“Aimee” to me is a statement that the real is sometimes better communicated through the absurd. As we have frequently reminded each other and ourselves in class, everything has been done before, everything is an adaptation of something, and nothing is really original. When we come to this realization, we have a few options: 1) accept that our story will not be original and go with it anyway, 2) try to forget that we just realized we cannot truly be original and live in denial while writing something we keep telling ourselves is original, 3) take a story/plot/idea that has been done before and do something really absurd with it, thus improving our chances of it appearing more original, etc. Erin Blackwell chose option 3 and made the subject of love, a well-used subject, new and interesting by setting up such an absurd situation. This taught me to think outside the box, a problem I have been having with every assignment. “Aimee” is helpful to me for taking an idea and then coming at it from an unusual and unexpected angle.
As I said, nothing is truly original. Yet there are always new ways of saying things because everyone has at least a slightly different take, a slightly different tone or voice than someone else. And beyond that, even the stories that are overdone can always be done more. Love, love, love; such is life. But is it everyone’s life? “Anything For You” got me thinking about how love means something different, well, to everyone, but also something different within varying socioeconomic statuses. It means something very different to someone who has grown up in a tiny, economically tragic coal mining town in Tennessee than it does to someone in San Francisco going to a college prep school, and so on and so forth. I’m not entirely sure what love means to these two women, but I was reminded after reading this that love can seem to be an exhausted subject, but never in fact will be exhausted as a result of its infinity.
“Aimee” and “Anything For You” demonstrate that you don’t need ‘drama’ to get a point across. I like how real and believable these are—they make use of comedy to still communicate an important point, idea, or story.
“Duet For Bear and Dog” was not particularly helpful to me. I can see that it may be funny in production, but it is hard for me to pick out an actual point here.“The Philadelphia” was more successful to me than “Duet For Bear and Dog” at being strange and overtly funny and still having a point.
Interactions between friends or any people who have an established relationship are most effective to me. With enough attention, these interactions easily present back-story and character development without handing either of these to the audience on a platter. Dialogue between friends is more dynamic than that between strangers and so by virtue of having the characters know one another, you automatically get more interesting, complex characters and a more interesting and complex story.
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