I am currently in a writing workshop with Just Theatre, and we wil be having a play reading of the plays the writers have worked on in a few weeks. I've spent the last few months producing the first draft of my new play, which is currently (unoriginally) titled A Dream of a Courtyard. (The other two plays are Tim Bauer's What We Know Now and Liz Lisle's Matterless Fact).

I was excited to write this play because it's been something on my mind since I had the original idea - no, the original dream - several years ago. It is a very fantastical story in the style of the Jeunet brothers, and I was coming off my work with Balé Techlorico, so I had an idea of making a non-plot-driven piece that would work well with an ensemble. Part of the reason I wanted to do this is beause a) my writing always gets caught up in plot points and loses focus on the emotional impact of the stroy, b) creating a non-linear play based on weaving themes together was so successfull for Balé Tech's Cry Don't Cry.

But it's not turned out that way - I'm writing a plot-driven play. And it's because my original idea had a story and characters - and it's been so difficult to tear away from that premise. Had I begun with a series of themes (like "trains", a theme that shows up in my current piece, but only after my story was in place), I could have written a completely different piece... Or maybe not. Even though I had a very threadbare storyline in place, my writing habits took over in the direction of storytelling as opposed to theme exploration.
It's only now that I'm realizing how the process we (Balé Tech) went through as an ensemble created a rich, layered performance that did not need to rely on a clear storyline (see my old blog posts circa 2005). If you start with a story, and not themes, you end up with a story. If you start with themes, you end up with themes. And even though these two elements of a play are not mutually exclusive, it's very difficult to cross over from one to the other.

(Work by Charles Mee is, in my mind, what I would liken to theatre that's more driven by themes. Similarly, and perhaps more to the point, work by mugwumpin, whose director is working with me on this piece, and which is why I have this kind of "themes vs. story" lens on in the first place. I can't think of many films that really explore themes over storyline - it's tough to sit through something like that if there aren't performers on the stage to keep you connected - except films like Kurosawa's Dreams that explore themes through a series of short stories, much like writer Italo Calvino's work too.)