It seemed like a good idea...
I'm writing a new play. It isn't my first. It isn't even my first time to workshop a play. But it is my first time to workshop a play like this. "Like this" means that, even though the first rehearsal is tomorrow, I don't have anything written. Not a single scene, not an outline, not even a character description. All I have is a basic idea, the tiniest glimmer of a story. And yet, tomorrow, fifteen people (fifteen!), actors, directors and designers, will show up to help me build this play. Through discussion and exploration and theatre games, I will build a play from the ground up, constructing around and through the players, rather than in the isolation of my own grey matter. Hey, Mary Zimmerman won a Genius Grant for this sort of thing, so it seems like a good idea. Or at least it did months ago when I pitched the idea. Now, frankly, I'm terrified.
I'm writing a new play. It isn't my first. It isn't even my first time to workshop a play. But it is my first time to workshop a play like this. "Like this" means that, even though the first rehearsal is tomorrow, I don't have anything written. Not a single scene, not an outline, not even a character description. All I have is a basic idea, the tiniest glimmer of a story. And yet, tomorrow, fifteen people (fifteen!), actors, directors and designers, will show up to help me build this play. Through discussion and exploration and theatre games, I will build a play from the ground up, constructing around and through the players, rather than in the isolation of my own grey matter. Hey, Mary Zimmerman won a Genius Grant for this sort of thing, so it seems like a good idea. Or at least it did months ago when I pitched the idea. Now, frankly, I'm terrified.
About the play
The play is about a group of devout science fiction fans, Trekkies (or Trekkers, and that debate is a whole different issue) who create fan films, their very own Star Trek spin-off. The fan film forms a story within the story, which eventually breaks loose of the main narrative and takes over. The play is also about string theory, quantum resurrection, and a dead cat.
About the title
The working title of the play is Musica Mundana. SJ, the director, doesn't like the title, but the idea is sticky and I just can't shake it, so I'm going with it, at least for now. The ancient Greeks believed that each planet sang its own song, the entire cosmos spinning in perfect eternal harmony. And now that we can record radio waves from space, we've learned that, in fact, each planet does produce its own sound. The entire Milky Way vibrates like an immense drum head. Saturn sounds like a B-movie sci fi soundtrack. Jupiter sounds like waves crashing on a beach. A black hole makes the deepest sound ever recorded, one too deep for human ears to detect. Even our own Earth constantly hums, a sound some animals can hear but we cannot. Musica Mundana. Music of the worlds, every living creature, all the planets, spinning together in endless song, all of us part of the symphony, each of us adding our note to the song, no matter how big or small.
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