Adaptitude

So, I totally didn't realize that reading Eurydice was for our section on adaptation. I just thought it was a continuation of our work on dialogue, and I think my misguided belief was sustained such a long time because of how much dialogue there was in that show. Most of the play was between two people at a time, with an occasional chime-in from the chorus. Now that I realize the assignment was for our unit on adaptation, I'm thinking about it in a new light.

I'm still trying to decide if I liked the play. There's nothing in it that made me say, "Oh my gosh, that was incredible." At the same time, it flowed well and I never found myself saying, "Why the hayballs am I reading this?" But whether I liked it or not doesn't seem as important as questions such as, was this actually a good play? Answer: no idea. But it made me see adaptation in a new light. The playwright uses the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice quite loosely, and really takes her own track of the story. There's nothing that says you can't do this; I guess I was just a little surprised. I was definitely expecting a dry, crusty translation from ancient Greek, with a whiny chorus that moans on about how much the world sucks. So I was pleasantly surprised to find this wasn't the case.

But I guess my point is that adaptations don't have to stick too closely to the original text - depending on what kind of adaptation you're doing. I mean, if you're adapting from stage to film, you're probably going to want to keep it fairly close, so that the original fanbase isn't too pissed off. But in many cases, especially working with old Greek myths, the playwright can take as many liberties as s/he wants, because it's not copyrighted. I read "By the Bog of Cats", by Marina Carr, which is an adaptation of Medea, set in the Irish Midlands. It's very loosely based around the myth, and it's modernized and Irishized and much easier to read than an old crusty version of the myth. I guess it's interesting to me that this version of Eurycide is an adaptation, because it's taking another character's perspective on it. It would be like calling "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" an adaptation of Hamlet. I never would have thought of it that way.

I tend to like adaptations, I think, because it takes a familiar tale and tells it in a way that one wouldn't expect or sets it in a time/place that brings it home to an audience that would have a harder time relating to the original myth. For instance - I saw "Oedipus" when I was in London, and though it had some AMAZING acting (Ralph Fiennes (the dude who plays Voldemort) was Oedipus), I found myself sitting in the audience, marveling at the acting and thinking how much life sucks for that dude rather than thinking about how the story had any pertinance to my life. People say that myth is so relevant to everyone and that every person can relate to a guy who want so have sex with his mom. What? A bunch of crazy Freudian psychos if you ask me. I've never understood that myth or why it has any significance in my life, and I would like to see an awesome adaptation that shows me just how much this myth can make an impact in my life.

Going back to Eurycide, I really liked what the playwright had to say in the interview about having a chorus in her plays. When she was working with undergrads, they thought so linearly and couldn't break outside the mold of a realist play. I thought it was so cool that she made them write with a chorus. I think that's a trap I fall into a lot - needing to sound "realistic" and stuff. So I think that's something I want to try. maybe not a chorus, but possibly a narrator (wait, what's the difference?) or something of that sort. I think it will help me focus on the story I'm trying to get across rather than the way I'm trying to tell said story.

Woot. That's all from me.

KG

My Deal with Dialogue

Dialogue . . . Hmm. I don't know if it's just me, but dialogue seems harder to write than monologues. You need two contrasting voices (which you can have in monologue form as well), and in order to keep the flow of the scene going, you need to write them concurrently (at least, in my opinion). It's much harder for me to write two voices at the same time; it's easier to write a monolgue, where only one character is in your head at a time. I guess dialogue is much more schizophrenic. In my past experiences (which, honestly, isn't a whole lot), whenever I've tried to write dialogue, it's turned out as the same voice arguing two seperate points.

One thing I found in reading these scenes is that many of them are very stage-direction heavy. I think this is helpful to the actor as well as the playwright, because it helps both parties visualize the character. Even the simple stage direction of Roy (in Plaza Suite) saying his line calmly and softly helps us visualize the humor. And when he isn't freaking out when he says "Call the doctor", it's even funnier.

Also, the use of pauses is helpful for a dialogue scene. I tend to think of "Good Dialogue" as being snappy, witty, fast-paced, and plowing through a scene. In comedy this is great. Sometimes. This is great in drama, too. Sometimes. But comedic pauses can add so much humor to a dialogue, and even in reading it it's funny. Dramatic pauses are good too, and I am a firm believer that just as much is said through silence as it is through words. But the danger with any of these pauses is that is can slow down the scene, and that can be dangerous.

One scene I really liked was the one from Closer. It was naturalistic dialogue about heavy stuff, and each of the characters seemed to be handling the tough situation in their own way. Something that was slightly reassuring to me was that the characters didn't seem inherently distinct. That is, there was nothing about them on the page that made them stand out to me in my mind. I mean, they didn't all have the same mannerism or anything, but they didn't seem completely different, either. This was refreshing to me, because I realized that when actors who have distinct voices act this out, it's going to sound like they're very different people, even if you can't quite tell on the stage. Martin McDonagh is really good at giving the actor a distinct voice to work with, and each of his characters has his/her own way of speaking, and that's great. But I'm no Martin McDonagh. So it's nice for me to realize that I can make two similar-sounding characters and have them end up distinct by the time it's actually performed.

One last thought: dialogue, in its most simplified form, is two people talking. DIalogue. But the scene gets altered quite a bit when a third person enters the mix. It's even more voices in the schizophrenic world of playwriting. I have yet to try it, but I think it would be so difficult to keep the flow of a scene going when you're constantly changing characters while you're writing. As an actor, one of my favorite roles was TV Man in Captive Audience by David Ives, because I was constantly shifting characters all the time. I was able to rehearse that, though. When you're writing, it seems like it should flow organically, and that seems tough to achieve when you're constantly stopping yourself to get into a different character. I guess it would be like trying to read through Captive Audience, doing all the voices on the first run through. It's doable, but very tough. (And I'm saying all of this as though you can't go back and re-write. There's nothing wrong with re-writing, but it seems like it's hard to be creative in the first place when there are so many road blocks slowing you down.)

So yeah. That's my deal with dialogue.

KG