Reflections
I was looking into the mirror in our living room. I saw something quite unusual. Our living room. For years, I had seen the bookshelf,
the couch, the window, the drapes but still something strange happened. I saw it for the first time. It was a new place. I had not seen this place. Through the mirror it was not the same room.
It brought back a dream I had 20 years ago. All vague in my memory but this memory stuck with me, nagging to be a play.
I began to write.
My previous writings had been plot driven and lacked character. I was determined to make this both plot and character driven. I drew on
characters from my Lebanese family and from stage characters in another one of my plays (characters in “Serial Killer Parents”)
I can’t remember much of the writing process. Odd since it was only a few weeks ago that I wrote the play. Perhaps because when
the show went into production - casting , set design, hiring creative staff, - everything escalated. The writing got swallowed up by the
making of a play.
I remember enjoying the writing, and finding ways to make a puzzle fit. I remember discovering as I was writing a reason for it all.
How it ended up in Yugoslavia - I don’t know.
“Vladimir Vladimir” opens in two weeks (Oct 2nd). I don’t know if there a mathmatical relationship to art. But I do know that within the last
last week of play’s development an explosion takes place. Good, bad or ugly, what happens in those last 7 to 10 days is the
equivalent of what takes place in the previous 8 months of a plays life.
Plays are organic. Unlike film, or any recorded medium, they are alive, like plants. They come to reach a peak. When the timing is
right, the peak is when the audience is invited. Unfortanately in the United States…(oh no, Jerry is going to go off on the
horrible funding for the arts in our country) …as I was saying before I almost interupted myself, in America, we don’t put plays in
front of audience when they’re ready, we put plays in front of audiences because we have no choice, when the money runs out.
Ready or not. Is that why my play is longing to be in a non-existant Yugoslavia?
More later.