Will you come and see me?
Sep. 26th, 2008 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeI had my first production meeting for A Christmas Carol Tuesday night. Almost all of the technical staff from last year are back, including Matt, Carl, Michael and the costumer and makeup designer. I have a different SM, Shawna, and producer--Bob Reed, the guy who started the Theater Company. I'm gonna miss Gina a lot--she and I clicked on a number of levels, and she was terrifically proactive. Shawna is nice enough (she was the SM for "Patrick and Lisa's Wedding") but she's VERY quiet.
I finished my new script in late August and sent it to Dave, who forwarded it to the technical staff. Bob (the...founder (?) of DeBaun, who's the producer this year of XC) really likes it and I've heard good feedback from everyone. I don't want to give away the changes I've made from last year's script--most of them are cosmetic (tweaking the language and dialogue, adding a few lines back from the novel, etc.), but I've made a few structural changes. I want to honor the rich original language as much as possible, and yet it still needs to be dramatic (and I want a cleaner picture on stage), so the declaiming of that crazy rich language (what my cast last year called "food porn"--lines like "there were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars") will be handled differently. And I've added a couple of scenes--one scene was in the original novel, that I've wanted to add for awhile now. It's when Scrooge says "If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death, show that person to me!" And the Ghost of the Future shows him a couple (Caroline and an unnamed husband whom I've named William--partly to honor my adorable nephew) who are in debt to the unknown dead man--who are relieved because now they will have time to get money to pay it off. That's it--those are the only people who feel a genuine emotional response to the man's death. Isn't that awesome? I added a scene in the office when we see the couple asking for more time and Scrooge refusing. I also added a pantomime in the Christmas Day sequence, when we see Scrooge running into them and forgiving their debt.
I added a couple of exchanges here and there--expanded the schoolhouse sequence a little bit, and added verbal sniping to the Quarrelsome Shopper exchange in the first Ghost of Christmas Present scene (when Scrooge and the Ghost first appear in the marketplace--"white snow on the rooftops!"--a man and woman shopper collide and then the Ghost sprinkles them from his torch and they become cheerful again, based on this:
And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
With some of these additions, I actually wrote some dialogue myself, I didn't lift it from Dickens--cheeky, aren't I? :) The Future exchange between William and Caroline is mostly from the book but I did have to write a couple of lines because Dickens has this annoyingly undramatic habit of paraphrasing dialogue.
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.
However, the first scene with William and Caroline I wrote all by myself :) And I have no problem laying on the Victorian melodrama ;) --I wrote it that they haven't been able to get the money because their child died a month ago. Scrooge doesn't hear them say this because he cuts them off but Bob Cratchit hears it. I'm underscoring the theme of child mortality (which I'd added last year anyway with the Cold Mother & Child), plus I'm trying to introduce the reality of what's at stake for the major characters. Also, another theme I'm teasing out is "There are none so blind as those who will not see." When William and Caroline are in his office, he doesn't look up once to see them. This theme actually suggested itself to me when I was looking over the line from the book toward the end--Scrooge says to the two Portly Gentlemen: "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?" I started thinking about that--to see, and how powerful an act that can be, just to see someone. I'm going to explore this more with the blocking.
Anyway, back to the meeting--we talked about the new script and I went through it with them, pointing out areas I'd highlighted in the script where I thought we could do something interesting technically. The tech staff had some GREAT ideas that I won't give away but if it comes off the way we were talking, it will look amazing. I *am* keeping my thpoooky Ghost of the Future though. I talked about where I was taking the new script and Carl was extremely supportive, saying that last year's CC was "famously the best" (or something like that--I know he loved it, and told me that everyone on the staff agreed it was the best of all the CC productions at DeBaun). I was recounting this to Griffin and said "it's not necessarily because I'm so amazing, it's because I love the story so much and threw myself into it--I didn't just serve up the same ol' Christmas Carol."
Auditions are next week--Tuesday and Wednesday, with callbacks on Thursday. I can't wait!
I finished my new script in late August and sent it to Dave, who forwarded it to the technical staff. Bob (the...founder (?) of DeBaun, who's the producer this year of XC) really likes it and I've heard good feedback from everyone. I don't want to give away the changes I've made from last year's script--most of them are cosmetic (tweaking the language and dialogue, adding a few lines back from the novel, etc.), but I've made a few structural changes. I want to honor the rich original language as much as possible, and yet it still needs to be dramatic (and I want a cleaner picture on stage), so the declaiming of that crazy rich language (what my cast last year called "food porn"--lines like "there were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars") will be handled differently. And I've added a couple of scenes--one scene was in the original novel, that I've wanted to add for awhile now. It's when Scrooge says "If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death, show that person to me!" And the Ghost of the Future shows him a couple (Caroline and an unnamed husband whom I've named William--partly to honor my adorable nephew) who are in debt to the unknown dead man--who are relieved because now they will have time to get money to pay it off. That's it--those are the only people who feel a genuine emotional response to the man's death. Isn't that awesome? I added a scene in the office when we see the couple asking for more time and Scrooge refusing. I also added a pantomime in the Christmas Day sequence, when we see Scrooge running into them and forgiving their debt.
I added a couple of exchanges here and there--expanded the schoolhouse sequence a little bit, and added verbal sniping to the Quarrelsome Shopper exchange in the first Ghost of Christmas Present scene (when Scrooge and the Ghost first appear in the marketplace--"white snow on the rooftops!"--a man and woman shopper collide and then the Ghost sprinkles them from his torch and they become cheerful again, based on this:
And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
With some of these additions, I actually wrote some dialogue myself, I didn't lift it from Dickens--cheeky, aren't I? :) The Future exchange between William and Caroline is mostly from the book but I did have to write a couple of lines because Dickens has this annoyingly undramatic habit of paraphrasing dialogue.
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.
However, the first scene with William and Caroline I wrote all by myself :) And I have no problem laying on the Victorian melodrama ;) --I wrote it that they haven't been able to get the money because their child died a month ago. Scrooge doesn't hear them say this because he cuts them off but Bob Cratchit hears it. I'm underscoring the theme of child mortality (which I'd added last year anyway with the Cold Mother & Child), plus I'm trying to introduce the reality of what's at stake for the major characters. Also, another theme I'm teasing out is "There are none so blind as those who will not see." When William and Caroline are in his office, he doesn't look up once to see them. This theme actually suggested itself to me when I was looking over the line from the book toward the end--Scrooge says to the two Portly Gentlemen: "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?" I started thinking about that--to see, and how powerful an act that can be, just to see someone. I'm going to explore this more with the blocking.
Anyway, back to the meeting--we talked about the new script and I went through it with them, pointing out areas I'd highlighted in the script where I thought we could do something interesting technically. The tech staff had some GREAT ideas that I won't give away but if it comes off the way we were talking, it will look amazing. I *am* keeping my thpoooky Ghost of the Future though. I talked about where I was taking the new script and Carl was extremely supportive, saying that last year's CC was "famously the best" (or something like that--I know he loved it, and told me that everyone on the staff agreed it was the best of all the CC productions at DeBaun). I was recounting this to Griffin and said "it's not necessarily because I'm so amazing, it's because I love the story so much and threw myself into it--I didn't just serve up the same ol' Christmas Carol."
Auditions are next week--Tuesday and Wednesday, with callbacks on Thursday. I can't wait!
