Crossings at Carnegie, Zumbrota, MN
A collection of one-act plays written by young authors (all authors under the age of twenty-one), and a short film.
Plays are:
Head in the Skies by Colum Driscoll
Journee de Triste by Molly Miller
Private Defective by Nick Rudlong
Sawdust Restaurants by Colum Driscoll
and the film,
A Ringing of Doorbells by Thornton Wilder.
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I like supporting young artists, which was my reason for attending. The opportunity to find some fresh talent is always exciting. Too bad that I was probably the only non-relative in attendance.
Or maybe it wasn't too bad.
There is definitely some talent here, but it most certainly needs to be worked. Get these writers into some classes! Learn about dramatic structure! Then, let somebody direct who has no other involvement. All of these plays could have benefitted from an un-biased eye at the helm.
What I found were very typical young author fare... lots of philosophical and existential questions, posing as dramatic theatre. This isn't unusual. These authors are at the right age to be asking these questions, and their interest in theatre is their outlet. This is wonderful. It really is. And it's great that there is this opportunity for them.
But theatre is a dialogue. It's a dialogue between characters on the stage, and a dialogue between the playwright and the audience. What we had here, really was less dialogue than it was a series of monologues and dissertations. Rather than involving the audience by drawing us in, we were kept back ... shown a series of characters with flaws and eternal questions.
I've written these plays myself, or at least plays very much like these, so I understand where they are coming from. Good early efforts, but it's time to move on.
Specifically....
It's hard to comment on
Head in the Skies because I couldn't hear much of it. The live piano underscoring was too loud for the little space, and the young actors had trouble understanding that there was something to project over. I liked the idea, based on the author's notes in the program, but I never really got a sense that any of these people wanted something better than what they had. None of them seemed to have their head in the skies, but rather seemed firmly and comfortably planted right where they were.
Journee de Triste is so like some of my early works, that I completely understood it. It definitely needed a stronger hand controlling it, but like so many existential ideas, it's hard to convey what's really happening. The author's biggest mistake is to write nearly as much ABOUT the play as the play itself. If the play doesn't make itself understood, then there's a problem. I shouldn't need a page and a half to tell me what's going to happen.
Private Defective had many moments of humor, and the information before the performance, that it came from an improv routine, was dreadfully obvious. A little more tightening on the script would have been helpful. Throw out some of those funny lines if they don't work in the context of the play. That's a hard lesson to learn. We want to keep in everything that's funny. But save it for another play.
Maybe the strongest piece of the night,
Sawdust Restaurants had the most semblance of a play, with some actual conversation, but still not enough. Driscoll's main character, played by himself, still tended to speak in monologues rather than dialogues, and rather than showing us who he is (it's a play! -- be visual!) he had to constantly tell us. So the character's an enigma. He lies all the time. Show us he lies by lying, and lying again. He doesn't need to say, "I'm a liar." The audience is smart and can figure it out if you do the work ahead of time.
In a rare moment of plot, the sister reveals to the audience that her fiancee is there in the restaurant with us, but she's been hiding this fact. So intriguing! I wanted to see the plot through. Instead, they all went off stage.
Driscoll should not be allowed to act in his own plays. His work is very personal to him and he internalizes all the emotions, bringing everything down. He would benefit by sitting and watching his words take shape -- watching someone else say what he's thinking and feeling.
The short film was okay. Thornton Wilder's words made the plot interesting. Hopefully these youngsters learned a little something about how cameras work with the variety of lighting in the room!
