Thoughts from Playwriting Candidate Workshop 2 of 6

I enjoyed the use of tangible visual media as a source of inspiration today. The piece I wound up writing had actually been a rough idea in my head for quite some time, one which I had been struggling to put enough context behind to make palpable, so I found it cathartic to purge that idea from the buffer so that I could move on to new things. For some reason, I found this candidate a little hard to give focus to when she talked, possibly due to the volume of her voice, or internal distractions, or maybe something else entirely. I don't know how receptive I was to the idea of giving that much thought to the dramaturgical shape of the play at such an early stage. I think this may be a byproduct of my desire to create as much as I can first, and then hew it into shape. For the second time, I was a bit dismayed that I didn't get to see how the candidate deals with work that is in need of critique.

I was only able to get through the stage direction and description before the play (partially because my last effort was almost entirely dialog, and this one was more of a visual concept anyway):



Lights up on Thomas, 24, alone in his studio apartment. He has on a button-down shirt, unbuttoned, exposing a tired brown T-shirt beneath. He is wearing jeans, smudged from artists' charcoal and paint. He hasn't slept in two days, showered in three, or shaved in six. In front of him is an easel, surrounded by cans of paint, spraycans of paint, brushes full of paint, brushes half-full of paint, brushes without paint, water cups colored with paint, and paper splattered with paint. In one corner is a trashcan, the repository of failed ideas and that-will-never-work, overflowing to the point of being a miniature mountain. The walls around him are covered many times over with sketches, poems, sentences, quotes, pictures, paintings, and ideas, stapled in whatever way haste allowed. On the desk is a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, a two-thirds-empty pot of coffee, a three-quarters-empty bottle of pills, and bountiful quantities of paper, the resting places of ideas new and old. Thomas moves about the space with the fervor of torrential mind, seeking out a place on which to set an idea and an idea to set in a place. This proceeds for five minutes, interrupted only by the stapling of an idea to a wall, the crumpling and disposal of an idea punctuated by profanity, and visitations to the containers on the desk.