Let me tell you about my first time... Ah, I see that got your attention. Well, every now and again, it's just great to do something that is absolutely new to you, and is not at all like something you've done before. No matter how old you are, it can be quite a magical experience.
One of the things that contributed to my insanely busy existence toward the end of last year was an unusual project that I was involved in. I was writing a play. It arose out of my often-expressed (on this blog) view that we need more (and better, and more varied) portrayals of science and scientists in the media and the arts, as part of the all-important effort to reduce the public's fear of (discomfort with) science and scientists, and to thereby aid in the process of achieving a better baseline of science education and critical thinking about science issues, in the general public. I won't go into it again here. You can read ever so many posts I've written about it by looking in the archives (links e.g., here and here.) I was not working on my own, but collaborating with my friend (and my USC colleague from the school of theatre) the Los Angeles-based playwright Oliver Mayer, who I've mentioned in earlier posts (here for example). Well, it was an excellent experience. We had only a few weeks to exchange several drafts back and forth (with the odd meeting in a cafe or two... and remember we have busy day jobs), as we were working to a deadline of the 8th December (I was going to go on Walkabout after that, and also, we were going to enter it into a competition with a deadline around that time....the latter was maybe a long shot, given the notice we had to put something together.... I've no idea what happened with that, but that's not the point). It was fun and instructive. To me the most important aspect of this was the collaboration itself. I got to learn a lot about how writers and actors work, and how they - and others from the Industry- see science and scientists. This is useful in the quest I mentioned. Oliver, and others (see below) got to learn a bit about science and scientists: the process, the hopes, fears, loves, passions, hates, etc. Things they know about in their usual line of work of course, but not things that are usually well-portrayed in the context of science and scientists (well, not in always representative proportion, anyway). This is also useful for the quest. Not neccessarily for this project, but just in general. The project itself will inform everyone involved in a useful way, in any future projects they undertake. How can it not be a good thing to do? But when I talk about "my first time", that's not what I'm talking about. The writing, as I have said, was an enjoyable and instructive process. But I've written a lot of things for the public before, I spent an awful lot of my childhood and also later years playing with scenarios of various sorts involving imaginary characters (haven't we all?), and I've collaborated in this mode (a little) before (e.g., on a screenplay for a TV pilot).... so no, as wonderful as it was to work with a real professional in that process, for my "first time" I'm actually talking about something else. I'm talking about bringing real actors in to read the play aloud! It completely tranforms everything! I can't tell you how wonderful it is to sit there and listen to the scenes you've imagined come to life thanks to the skills of people who do this for a living every day. They bring things to it that you did not imagine, and breathe such life into even the most clumsily written phrases (I'm sure those were all mine!). We did one reading about half way through the writing (less, actually, just the first act of three), with two of the characters read by actors (Gary Perez and Marlene Forte (see also here for a profile)) and the third read by yours truly, while Oliver read the stage directions. From then on, it was hard to separate the two characters from the actors who brought them to life. This was in fact very useful in my own writing processes later. Then we did a final reading two nights before I jumped on the plane to nobody-knew-where. For that we got a third actor, Geraint Wyn Davies, to play the last part, and it all came together, with all scenes in place. Wow!- it was such an amazing evening. At some point while Marlene was reading a piece of dialogue I wrote, I just remember it hitting me all of a sudden "Hey, she's speaking my words....those are my words...I remember thinking those words... and she's saying them just like I imagined in my head.....wow." So there you have it: December 7th 2005, there they are in the main photo near the top. Clockwise starting upper left: Actors: Geraint Wyn Davies,Gary Perez and Marlene Forte, Oliver Mayer. Some breakout photos: Gary and Marlene (as Pedro and Lucha), with Oliver listening and interjecting with stage directions:
Geraint in full flow (as Aaron):
Here's the amusing extra twist to the tale. I was thinking about doing this post earlier, and was not sure of the full name of Geraint. Thought I would email Oliver to find out. Then I thought I'd have a look at the first couple of episodes of the new season of the TV show "24", which have been sitting on my DVR for a while. I giggled to myself that it would be really funny if he showed up in that show, since in the last season of "24" a year ago, one of the excellent actors that Oliver had for a public reading of a play of his a month or two before showed up -to my surprise- as the first sinister shadowy bad guy in the first few episodes. Well, I started watching the show -which is again really excellent; I don't know how they keep it up- and there was Geraint! He's the sinister shadowy bad guy in the current season of 24. As almost everyone in the USA seems to be watching the show, you'll have recognised him from the pictures already. (Wikipedia article on him here.) -cvj
