ideas 4/8/07

(NOTE: These ideas are from long ago...ideas changing all the time...most likely now obsolete..)


MOTH: "The white identity . . . is a burden born of successive false effigies. A row of object zeroes." (p. 57)


IDEA FOR OPENING OF DESCRIPTION BEGGARED


Title track of Wynton Marsalis' From the Plantation to the Penitentiary (11 minutes!)

Also: Use end of Crouch's liner notes quoting Lincoln, etc?



PLAYBILL

Should be like jazz.... pieces of text by Wellman, Crouch, etc.; names/credits scattered; printed on heavy paper; piece of art


WEBSITE FOR NEWPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY: http://www.newporthistorical.org/

CENTRAL QUESTION (asked by the Disputant on p. 44): "Made up for? How can what is fixed in the past be so easily "made up" for?"

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SCENE ONE: [Steam] pp 3-31
FIRST ENTR'ACTE [Sleet ] p 32
SCENE TWO [Snowy ]: pp 33-48 "The vast interior of an abandoned factory"
SECOND ENTR'ACTE [Hoarfrost ]: p. 49-50
SCENE THREE [Icicle ]: p. 51-60
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TIME (from "Speculations13"):
For time is wriggly.
For time possesseth a definitive attitude.
For time likes to hide because sometimes time likes to work in secret.

CHARACTERS:

FRASER:
Fraser's name (from http://www.behindthename.com/name/fraser)
Usage: Scottish, English
Pronounced: FRAY-zhur
From a Scottish surname which possibly means either "a Frisian" or else "strawberry" in Norman French. A famous bearer of the surname was Simon Fraser, a Canadian explorer. It is eventually revealed that he is directly responsible for what has happened to the other family members (47-8)

JULIA: called "The Eraser" because of her penchant for erasing people and events (history?); calls herself "The Grand Parade"; Fraser notes that her desire to erase is combined with a contradictory family desire to know how things began (p 43); Julia "accidently erased the last two letters of her mother's good name, and so transformed her from A Mother into a Moth"--and accidently sneezed the last two letters into Louisa, resulting in "a single odd vocalization": Er. (43) Given her first "seemingly innocent Kodak Instamatic, knowing full well what might, given her proclivity for scratching or rubbing out, what might be the outcome" (48).

LOUISA: The younger generation ("Oh, Uncle Fraser, cool it, will you?", p. 20); refers to Julia as "Cousin Julia" (p. 23), called in the character list "something of a ninny (not really)"; also said to double as the Disputant (has the "er" that turned her into the Ninny (not really) obliterated history for her--and so she knows nothing? In the last moments of the play, she says, "A white witch, I hope." We see her teeth are quite pointed. (60)

Maybe a clue to Louisa's condition from Wellman's essay "Speculations13": "We, being human, want to know why we are doing a thing while we are in the throes of doing it. This want is our digrace adn also our nobility, since without it, we would only be fit for throwing away like trash . . . Our disgrace because stupid, doomed to frustration, as pointless as gilding the lily.

MOTH: The old generation (Fraser & Julia's mother); described as "an elegant older person" (character list)

AUNT BIANCA: called in the character list "a sort of human Blank, perhaps a parrot"; likes to look at Great Aunt Dahlia ("not quite among the living; not quite amoung the dead" 26) in her final resting place, the antique cupboard or chiffonnier (25); Julia calls her a "feeble-minded white-handed tree-mouse" (24) and a "hideous white crappie" (p 26); Fraser calls her "my country cousin, the young ninny's aunt" (40) and says she "used to be called Aunt Blank. You might say she was totally erased by Julia and became a radical . . . and [eventually[ became a Parrot." (41).

The White Dwarf's card is signed by "White Whiskey John, Assistant to the Disputant" (p. 22); Moth says White Whiskey John is "a kind of shrike"

NOTE: White Dwarf returns and narrates the stage directions in Scene Three (p 51)

When does the Photographer disappear (Biana: "...since the photographer seems to have disappeared" p 23)

In an ideal production, would the Musicians be African-American? But on p 29 they sing of having "lost their whiteness" due to not being paid and being "in an economic hell"


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NOTES ON SET

end of Scene One: "We see Moth high up in a dormer window"
1st Entr'acte (p 32) Julia, Bianca, Louisa, and Moth are seen looking down on Fraser "on the metaphysical plane and surrounded by fluffy white clouds"

Scene 2: "a very, very long table with a chair at each end" at the far end of which sits The Disputant flanked by 2 assistants:

P. 33: "Can you speak closer to the machine...?" Fraser speaking into microphone? Like testifying before a Congressional committee?

P. 49 (2nd Entr'Acte): "...the heavy snowfall is covering everything." Fraser "waddles through the thick snow".

P. 51 A "...we see, through the windows, a marvelous sunset" (then musicians' faces appear in the window)

THOUGHTS ON PHOTOGRAPHY:

Idea of the photograph is central. Instead of video, maybe project still photographs. Julia says near the end of the play, "And there was another very ancient game of dancing and winding and turning, by which you can take a person out of himself and hide him away as long as you like, and his body went walking about quite empty without any sense on it. That was before we Outermost Rings discovered, quite accidently, you could do the same thing by photography." (58)

Other ways to use the idea of a photograph scenically?


SNOW

Stage directions say "late summer" but it starts snowing early in action and appears to be blizzard
On page 28, Moth puts on snowshoes and "trudges out" (first exit of major character)
Fraser: "The storm's approaching whiteout" (30); thought this may be an excuse

Could storm be represented by video "noise"?

P 30: Fraser "vanishes into the storm like the white-tailed deer" and on the next page the s.d. reads "We catch sight of The Marplot trudging along in the direction of the highway" (presumably through the storm)