Unanswerable: “Did You Write That Play?”

Typical review of Eat Poo Love

GOOD EVANING

Did you write the play Eat, Poo, Love, which received nothing but four-star reviews at the Toronto Fringe Festival last week?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Asking me, [of Eat, Poo, Love] “Did you write that play?” is like asking a woman who has miscarried, “Did you have your baby?”

It was based on Paul’s blog, and conceptualized as theatre by my brother Dan. I wrote an incomplete first draft which I suggested we work on together to make a fully functioning first draft. But that fragmentary first draft was taken out of my hands and I didn’t see a script again until a few weeks before opening night. My input was no longer wanted. The moment I became aware that I was out of the writing loop, I knew I did not want to be involved in the show.

GOOD EVANING

Why didn’t you quit then?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

I knew it would be hard on me to remain in the show, but I thought it would be harder on Dan for me to make the hurtful move of “abandoning” him. He needed support from everywhere he could get it. Especially one of his brothers. The three of us are close. Just about anything any one of us does could be seen as a collective achievement.

But it was risky for me to stay in it. From the time I was excommunicated until about the fourth show, I was doing the Smeagol/Gollum routine: “Support the show”—“Sabotage it!” The acting challenge for me was showing up at rehearsals without speaking my mind. One performance, I screwed up my lines twice because as I waited for my cue I had been imaging addressing the audience with “This isn’t the way the script was supposed to go.”

GOOD EVANING

How was it hard for you to be in the show?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Just about every rehearsal, I was reminded to know my place—an actor. Physical and social pains that Paul and I suffered were clowned and directed, and I was made to watch without comment. Lines I had written remained senselessly in scenes that someone else had reshaped, and I was given no opportunity to amend things.

GOOD EVANING

Why were you “dumped” from the writing team?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

My enthusiasm can be unsettling. I’m a loose canon. Imagine writing a play with Robin Williams back in his cocaine days.

GOOD EVANING

Did you like the final script?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

In my view, it was not ready for the stage. It was not ready to be shown to a director, for that matter. It has significant flaws structurally and thematically. (There is one line near the end that, as a patient, makes me shudder.) But it was put on stage for seven enthusiastic audiences. Can’t complain about that. Daniel accomplished what he wanted to do; that is a success. And I want my brother to have success in whatever way he seeks it.

GOOD EVANING

Has this done permanent harm to your relationship with your brother?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

No.

GOOD EVANING

Would you work with him again artistically?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Probably.

GOOD EVANING

Aren’t you causing trouble by saying these things in this somewhat public way?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

If I can’t talk about my writing, I can’t be a writer. I have to be free to answer questions like, “What have you written lately?” Could I have left my brother out of this discussion? Not if he was my writing partner. (This blog post is probably a good example of why he hesitates to work with me.)

I have to say these words in this place at this moment so that I can stop repeating them in my head and to strangers at bus stops. After two months of not writing anything, this is what I need to do to I feel I have my writing back.

I’d say, “The last thing I want to do is hurt my brother.” But that shit ain’t the truth. The last thing I want to do is have a false peace with my brother.

A line from the beginning of the play—a line Dan wrote—says you can’t have perfection; the best you can hope for is harmony.

GOOD EVANING

So, do you love your brother?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Oh, fuck off.

Evan as Dino Carcinoma; Dan as Patient Q

Finishing a First Draft for Fringe Festival

Brrr! Is there a draft in here? Damn right there is! First draft of my Fringe Festival eFfort. Cool!

The title of this work is yet to be confirmed (but stay tuned!). It is a comedic drama (as in, “if you don’t laugh, you cry”), which must not exceed 60 minutes in length, to be premiered at the 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival from July 4^th to 15^th. It will be my* third play to be staged, (and my first not to be workshopped by Theatre New Brunswick with actors from Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal). *Unlike my previous plays, which were entirely my own ideas and developed with no outside contribution prior to rehearsal, this Fringe show is based on the writings of Paul Clement and conceived of as a stage show by Daniel Mackay. It is an adaptation and it is very much a collaborative effort. The three of us have met several times to experiment with different approaches to the material, and we will continue to do so now that this draft is finished.

Playwright Tavern, photo Tim Carter

It’s funny to use the word “finished”, though. Any first draft is more like a foundation to build on than a house to start filling with furniture. But this is even more the case with theatre than with other types of writing. A playwright is more of an architect than a painter. Write a piece of prose and you can get feedback, but no matter how many suggestions you heed, the changes are made by the writer. A script, on the other hand, gets filtered through actors and a director. (The exception would be a monodrama scripted and performed by a single creator. And even then, if such a solo artist engages a director or dramaturge, the work becomes a collaboration.)

So, “finished” is misleading. What is finished is the preparation. This stage is not quite the laying of the foundation but the sketching out of the blueprints. Now our creative triumvirate has something to compare notes on. Up to this point, what we had was a wild stallion of a concept which we corralled into a chicken coop of ideas. Now we have a crude block from which we can hew away the chunks that impair a clear view of a vision we hope to share. (Hmm, could I cram another metaphor into this paragraph?)

The significance of having a completed first draft is that we have something tangible to work on. This would be equally true if I were developing this script all on my own, but it is all the more urgent when there is a creative team waiting to get their hands dirty.

For writers who haven’t yet learned the hard way, take it from one who did: It is counterproductive to discuss a partially written draft. (I spent 12 years getting feedback on a partially written novel which I consequently kept re-inventing. Once I stopped discussing it, I finished the draft in six months.) If your baby is not yet able to stand on her own, you can’t ask her to dance for an audience of even one. If she still needs you to hold her up, the onlooker won’t see her dance but will just see her dangling there. You can discuss an idea, and you can discuss a first draft—which has a thread you can pull on and twist and tie in knots and still follow how one end connects to the other—but you can’t discuss a partial draft because it is as vulnerable as a half-born fetus.

Showing a half-written draft would be like showing a half-finished haircut, so hold off the unveiling until there are no more “and then a miracle happens” gaps that need filling in. Especially in a play, you need to be able to explain why this happens at this point and that happens at that point because, if not, even the most well-intentioned listener can crush your fetal idea by asking what your point is.

The draft has been presented. Will it be tackled by builders or the wrecking ball?

Fringe Festival 2012 and the Mayan Calendar

Next year is the last year …of life so far.

This past year, 2011 (in case you need clarification), is the year I leapt from having a dream of writing to having a life of writing. Next year, just as the world is ending (2012, don’t ya know), I will upgrade to having my dream life of writing.

Choosing, after 25 years of dreaming about it, to begin living as a writer, meant I had to adjust from living just below the poverty line to living well below the poverty line. In converting my writing life into my dream life, I aim to earn enough from writing that I can claw my way back up to the poverty line.

Focus and believing – that’s the combination that got me where I am today. And compromise. Writing pseudo journalism, for next to nothing or less, is not what this erstwhile playwright had in mind at the outset, but that’s what has been paying (a third of) my rent.

Back when writing was just a dream, it was about writing plays. And these days the dream is coming back to life. In recent weeks, just as I was planning out which script idea to revive first, my brother the actor came to me with a comprehensive concept for a play – and he had applied for the Toronto Fringe Festival 2012, for which there are so many applicants that acceptance is based on a lottery system. My brother was with me at the lottery several years ago when my application didn’t get drawn. I was with him last night when his application got drawn.

That’s right, we’re in! Preparedness, allow me to introduce Opportunity.

Being in the Toronto Fringe Festival means that, whatever we do, at least some people will see it (more than saw my plays when they were performed in New Brunswick in the 90s). What makes this good news better is that it has come just in time – before the end of the world. What is even better than that, the Mayan calendar – which predates, outperforms and otherwise bamboozles all other calendars (and, being made of chocolate, it even tastes better) – does not “predict the end of the world”. It simply indicates that we are reaching the end of one “Great Cycle” (many thousands of years long*) and beginning another.

The end is nigh – here comes the beginning!

(*Mind you, that is in Mayan years, which are shorter and spicier than the conventional year.)