| | Getting Ahead of Myself
I usually don't start thinking about the next play until I have the current one well into it's later stages. Meaning, it's in fourth, fifth draft. But I know my muse well enough, when it starts speaking, I take notes.
Case in point: yesterday I was describing a vivid dream I had the night before to my coworker. I was in a house with a glass door, surrounded my wolves. One of the wolves broke through the glass door and I spent a good amount of time hiding and on the phone with the local wolf-removing agency. At one point, I was even clutching the door knob to keep a door closed while the wolf was biting his way through to my hand.
Creepy, right?
While describing the dream my coworker stopped me suddenly and said: that would make a great title for a play.
I wrote the phrase down on a post it note and finished the story.
Last night I got to thinking about the wolf dream and wondering if the Aztecs, Mayans, or Incas had any myths about wolves.
I came across something. A Mesoamerican belief that dogs carried the spirits of the dead across the river to the afterlife.
Then I could feel the idea turning over in my head. I'm very interested in using myths (usually Greek myths), but what about constructing my own. What about telling a story set very far in the past, in Spanish America with a shape-shifting spirit: a wolf and then a woman.
But who else would be in the story? So far the characters are:
Rocio, a woman whose child is stillborn at the top of the play
Septimo, her cruel and abusive husband (he's the reason she lost the child)
Iztel, a pregnant woman who appears out of nowhere, naked sleeping amongst the dogs
Doña Maria, Rocio's nurse, a midwife, and curandera
I know, I know. I need to finish the play I'm currently writing, but that doesn't mean I can take notes. So that's all I'm doing. Taking notes when ideas come to me.
I do have to say, it's nice to know what the next project might be. Let's hope the momentum will keep after 6 months.
-M
|
| | Posted 6/9/2009 9:55 AM - 36 Views - 0 eProps - 1 Comment
Give eProps or Post a Comment |
