ADAPTATION

Of our assignments, I think I am most apprehensive about writing an adaptation, primarily for fear of being unoriginal. As with any form of art, being original is a challenge because it often seems that everything has been done before.

Reading Eurydice calmed some of my apprehensions, though, because of the beauty, craft, and originality with which Ruhl makes the story of Eurydice her own. An idea may not be original, but the execution of an idea and the added personal style/vision/artifice of the author have the power to make the finished piece original.

All I could think as I read through Eurydice was what a phenomenal job Ruhl did in taking a Greek myth and making it timeless, making it comprehensible to any time and any place. I think she did this best through both the use of somewhat fanatical, fantastical setting and the nonsense words/speech exchanges between characters that somehow made the uttermost sense.

I didn’t get into the play/characters/story at first and wasn’t sure what to think of the interactions between Eurydice and Orpheus—I didn’t know whether they were believable enough. But the farther I read along, I came to love the slightly off-kilter feel of the characters and what they said. In fact, it is this very nature of the play, the strange words, that made the play make so much sense to me.

It all became more powerful to me once Eurydice was in the underworld, which perhaps Ruhl did on purpose. Ruhl constructed her story in such a way that it seems like everything before the underworld is the dream-world, the unreal, while the underworld and all the interactions therein are actually reality.

What I learned about adaptations is that art is about collaboration. The individual artist does her part by putting stories into words, paint, lead, song, etc. but without all of the people around her, the environment she is surrounded by, she wouldn’t have anything to write about, nothing for which to use her words.

What I learned about Dialogues

Dialogues, like monologues, and full plays, and short stories, and long stories, and any creative work, for that matter, come in many shapes and styles. They are between coworkers, lovers, cheaters, family members, friends—they are between any two people that could feasibly by talking to one another. Now, these parameters, having two people talking to each other, sound simple enough; however, they are not enough. Dialogues need to advance character development, help the storyline progress, and also be interesting enough to keep an audience engaged. These are no small tasks.

The dialogues we read for today varied from being very raw and clipped, to clever, to heartbreaking, to ironic. Orphans and Death of a Salesman also presented the reader with speech, values, and beliefs from another time, an additional challenge in making the interactions sound authentic and convincing. Though I have no idea what these two plays are about and no context to set the given dialogues in, I think it speaks to the success of the authors that they characters are clearly speaking in a time other than the present.

Contrarily, the dialogue in Henry IV, which I know was written centuries ago, depicts rivalry and competition, aspects of human nature that are timeless. This is a good example of yet another challenge: creating something that can withstand the test of time. This challenge goes back to my comments about truth and honesty from the monologue readings; there are some aspects of human nature that have been and continue to be universally understandable. Such universals seem to be very useful fodder for storytelling, since the ideas are more likely to reach a broader audience. Ideas like the need to sustain oneself, as in Death of a Salesman, or the challenges of relationship, as in Closer and Angels in America.

Something that I noticed when reading the dialogue in Closer is that dialogue in plays comes off differently than in films. When I saw the movie Closer, there was something about the dialogue that was almost strange to me, almost a little off. When reading it in play form, something about it just works a little better. Maybe that is not always the case with plays verses movies, but it intrigued me in regards to my experience of Closer.

Also in Closer, I really like the parallel scenes that overlap; it adds in immense poignancy to the events as they occur simultaneously, as the lovers leave their current lovers.

Overall, reading these dialogues brought to mind the need for the people to sound believable and the discourse between them to sound natural.

What I learned about writing plays from Kaufman, Ensler, and Rivera

The first thing that sticks out to me about all three readings is truth and honesty. I learned that, in order to fully drawn in an audience, gain its respect, and encourage interest in your play/production/story, it is most important to tell the truth. It is obvious when something isn’t true, like Aaron McKinney saying Matthew came on to him. Of course everything we write is not going to have happened in factual reality, but that does not mean it cannot be true. Truths about the world like the ones in ‘Anne O’Sullivan’ and ‘Javi Mulero’ are just these sorts of truths; truths that mildly indicate an individual’s worldview, but that simultaneously ring true for so many others. Being a good writer means having the ability to create an imaginative story, character, etc. yet create this image so successfully as to have it become real in the minds of whoever reads it. This is what I learned about honesty.
Thinking about the characters I encountered in these readings, I realize that a character can become very complex and interesting with only a few lines of description or monologue. A character does not need pages of intimate history of his or her life in order for the reader to get a picture of who he or she is—sometimes people’s words speak louder than their looks or their actions.
At least for me, eloquency is far more convincing and pleasant than sharp, short bursts of muddled language that emphasize ignorance—not to sound pretentious. I guess language will differ a great deal from character to character, as evidenced in The Laramie Project, and it does help in establishing a persona. However, in a monologue, if I am to be convinced of and receptive to what a person is saying, I find it easier to follow a story, idea, thought, etc. when the speaker is able to talk to me clearly and at least somewhat intelligently.
I learned that humor is essential in many productions, no matter how short, because that small moment of relief from whatever is happening allows the audience time to recommit themselves to the story, the characters, the situation and motivates new interest in what comes next. However, humor should not be overused—it is the rarity of humorous moments that make them so special and so essential to the production; too much makes it lose its power.
Evoking any emotion, for that matter, is important to all writing. Emotions, more than events, are what an audience will relate to and be able to experience. This is key to successful writing. Like truth and honesty about the world, truth and honesty about emotions equally give an audience the chance to understand what a writer is attempting to communicate. Falsified and fabricated emotions are easy to spot, so again, the trick here is honesty.
Overall, something I find interesting about good writing is that it is about people. People like reading about and learning about other people because it helps them learn about themselves. There are all kinds of people with all kinds of stories and lives, both in the fictional and factual world. Any and all of these people have something to teach someone and good writing is the medium through which these lessons can be taught and learned.