Saturday, April 01, 2006
I want to write plays... everybody around me seems to be writing plays all of a sudden..
I wrote a play or two once... probably didn't blow anybody's mind... but wasn't showered with eggs either....
I could try again...
I actually joined the theatre club in the university... it was first year... I didn't know anbody... thought it might be a good chance to meet some like minded people...
Boy was I wrong.
Went to a couple of meetings... for some reason I always got the milk crate to sit on... and everybody they asked what my major was they'd go... "ohhh.. really? Biotech... fancy that."
Heard them reading their scripts and stuff.... frankly it was moronic.... it oscillated between Monty Python and Angels talking about war...nothing in between... nothing normal...
Soon enough I realised I wasn't welcome... this club was a forum that the creative writing/media studies/ stage craft and other artsy major students used to trial run their work... they used the club's resources basically (which included free access to the spanking fancy auditorium) to stage their often average productions and get people to see it and get noticed so that they can further their careers.... they didn't want to waste their precious resources and time with amateurs like me... science students... who had their sense of art and beauty surgically removed with umbilical cord..
So I quit... A little unintentionally actually.... It was the third meeting I think... my upper thighs had gone to sleep sitting on the 1.5 foot high crate (while others lounged on the battered, rather shakesperean sofa)...so I stood up to get the circulation running.. when the president Lisa (a strikingly pretty 3 rd year who spent most of the meetings talking about how her latest piercing had completely revolutionised cycling for her) says.. "oh.. are you leaving?"
And that's when it hit me... I guess I was... so I said "I guess I am"... and I guess I left...
Organised intellectualism has never quite been my forte...
But I want to write a play again... I can't write stories... I can think of stories.. but I can't express them in running prose... just not my thing.... you read other people's blogs and they have this gorgeous style of writing... for some it's flowery, for others it's lively, or modern... but it's so stylish... but I can't do that... infact I don't think that way... I don't "think" in prose.. I think in dialogue... I think in scenes... If I were to tell a story... it would always be about people talking... never descriptions, never paragraphs on how beautiful the setting sun looks... but some person saying how beautiful the sun looks...
It's a fantastic feeling writing a play... a script... it becomes a part of you... you see the world through the characters.. the situations... and once you write "drop curtain" it's the greatest feeling ever... and to actually sit ... watching it being performed... it must be the closest thing to watching your wife give birth (without the grossness of the exploding vagina and the ugly head and the blood ofcourse)
So I want to write plays again... good stuff.. traditional stuff... not ultra-modern, absurdist, circular, self gratifying, private joke punctuated, minimalistic, solo acting, ionesco inspired rigamarole that seems to be everywhere... but the good stuff... genre... good old fashioned genre... social drama, morality plays, farce, mystery, thrillers, court drama, romantic comedy, biographical pieces, black comedies ... somebody throws a party of shady of guests and the host gets murdered, and then the detective tries to conceal the fact and solve the crime before the guests go home... A mad-man takes his shrink hostage starting a deadly game of psychological cat and mouse ful of twists and turns... A frustrated, faceless IT professional takes over the identity of eqwually faceless, but soon departed boss and sets all sorts of strange and hillarious things in motion... the new prince of a tiny European country gets bored and decides to wage wars for profit... something funny about sexuality and our reaction to it.... something like a play which is made up of these completely unrelated mini plays which seem to have no connection, but suddenly they all connect together in the last scene...
I could go on... somebody told me a couple of days ago that he couldn't come up with any ideas.. the best he could do was somethign that sounded rather improbable... but I get ideas all the time... they go off like popcorn in my head...
I got so inspired I even bought myself an exercise book... it's nice.. even has this little hole in front where I can put in a pen... and the coreners of the pages can be torn off to make boomarks...
It's fantastic I'll write my name on it... and something funny on the front... "lightbulb explosions"...or "the book of.. something"
And I will probably use it for taking Microbiology notes by next Wednesday...
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8:16 AM
