Three Ten Pictures

———–ONE———–

So I’m waiting backstage, and I’m terrified.  We’ve rehearsed, rewritten, revised, blocked.  The set looks gorgeous.  The lighting’s okay, but there’s nothing we can do about it.  I’m sick, and I’ve decided to offset my illness with half a gallon of black coffee.

Twenty feet in front of me, the choir’s finishing their number.

That’s my cue.

Right. Go.

———–TWO———–

So it’s two minutes later, and I’m sitting on stage, reciting my lines to my friend Burnie.  Thankfully, he can act–which isn’t common in the circles I run with, and it’s a shame.  I’m trying to focus on him as I perform, making sure I don’t glance at the audience by mistake.  I’m EXTREMELY self-conscious about it.  Later, when people tell me I look confortable on stage, I’m flabbergasted.

I hope they like this play.  I wrote most of it, which makes me exponentially more self-conscious.  NO ONE other than Burnie and me has read this thing, so I’ve got no idea what I’m getting into.  I mean, it’s just a Christmas play for church, a simple guy-meets-guy-one-of-them-gets-Jesus-That’s-It thing.  But during the writing process, it became very personal to me.  More on that later.

I gauge the audience by how often I hear them laugh.  I wrote a number of gags into the script, and it feels like most of them are working.  Some of them fall flat, but you have to expect that in a comedy.

Burnie’s doing well.  He’s got about sixty percent of the dialogue in this play–including a page long, unbroken monologue.  He had trouble with it in rehearsal (probably because I overwrote it).  During the performance, he trips over it once, but that’s fine.  However, it feels like the audience is on the verge of laughing again–and not for the right reasons.  This isn’t Burnie’s fault, mind you–the writing, the writing, the writing…  I don’t like it.  Thankfully, nobody laughs.  Maybe they’re just being nice, maybe not.  I don’t have time to think about it.

The choir sings again, allowing Burnie and me a short break.

My hands are trembling.

Nerves and caffeine.

Sweet.

———–THREE———–

So it’s about four weeks before the play–yeah, I’m time-shifting on you again–and I’m sitting at a pizza place across from Burnie, and we’re talking about the script.  He’s reading a half-finished first draft.

It’s unperformable.  We need a VAST rewrite–a page-one, as my film colleagues would say.  When I look ahead, all I see is a giant eight ball…  There’s nothing to memorize, nothing to rehearse…

My close friend’s mother had died that afternoon.  I found out about it over lunch.  She’d just broken down in front of me, nearly sobbing over her twenty-dollar plate of Hash House meat loaf.  I’m overtly empathetic, so I was hit pretty hard…

…and it inspired me.

You’ve gotta understand that inspiration–that elusive thing, that white out, that Hiroshima Of The Consciousness–like, NEVER HAPPENS to me.  I write because I HAVE TO, not because some bolt of spirit-lightning shocks my creative nerves into life.  Today, however, I was sad for my friend.  So I wrote a play about it.

Incidentally, she never saw it.  Dang.

———–FOUR———–

It took about a week to get a draft together.  Twelve pages, correct margins, courier twelve-point.  The story’s come a long way since I first scrawled notes onto napkins at that pizza place… and for that reason, I’m less in love with it.

You can’t trust inspiration.  Inspiration only leads to work, and it’s the work that determines if your script is any good or not.

I review the script with Burnie.  We meet about twice a week. revising, revising, revising… so many bad lines to correct.  So many cuts.  Burnie’s character changes drastically, and for the better.  What a great critic Burnie is: objective, critical, temperate.  Writers NEED good criticism–in fact, a good writer thrives on it.

We do cold readings–most of them over late-night meals at Denny’s–for three weeks.  Then, the day before the performance, we do our dress rehearsal.  We can afford it–it’s just a church play, right?

Oh, Lord, I hope so…

———–FIVE———–

So we’re back to the play now, and it’s the end, and my character’s repenting and renouncing his old life and getting saved and giving himself to Jesus and it’s all good.

There’s a gag at the end–I want to pray to God, and I don’t know how, and my character leans over to Burnie’s character and asks, “So how do I do this?  We don’t have to hold hands or anything, do we?”  We’d improvised the line yesterday during dress rehearsal, and it stuck.  Big laugh.  Maybe big enough to overcome all these cliches I’m tossing at my audience?  Who knows.

My character–or me, or whatever–bows his head.  The choir sings.  Burnie and I mouth an improvised prayer.  I lift my head, and we improv a conversation as the song continues…

…The End.  The choir shuffles back to their seats.  Burnie and I walk off-stage.

That’s it.  At least until tonight, anyway… one more performance.  Just one.

Ten hours later, as I lie down to go to sleep, my hands are still trembling.

They loved it.  I really think they loved it–I don’t think they were lying to make me feel better.

Thank God.

———–SIX———–

So all that above stuff, it happened around December of last year.  I’ve been meaning to tell you all about it, but it slipped through the cracks somehow.  I’d like to post the script to that play in the future–I’m actually quite proud of it.  I’d also like to pontificate about Christian drama, and the do’s and don’ts (I’m no expert, but I ain’t afraid to act like one), and what I hope to see in the future of Christian drama.  Maybe it’ll be a help to you.

’nuff said.  I’m tired.  Bye.

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