The Commonplace Blog of Jeffrey M. Jones: September 2013

My friend Barbara Cassidy invited me to a production of her play, The Anthropology of a Book Club. Afterward, we had an e-mail exchange about its structure.

From: Barbara Cassidy

To: Jeffrey M. Jones

Hi Jeff-

Thank you so much for coming last night!

Let me know if you have any thoughts about the play.

From: Jones, Jeffrey

To: Barbara Cassidy

As I said—liked it a lot but its very weird play (which is not a sin in my eyes).

You've always handled space and time differently than most people—this seems to push that even further.

I think I understand the method and the “content.” This may not be quite right, but it all makes sense to me to imagine a central “node”—a women's book club in Bay Ridge that brings together Muslim and non-Muslim women—around which extends a “field” of all possible associations that arise from the node. So You have very obvious associations, like the encounters that might be imagined between the women, and secondary associations, like events (9/11) that connect them, then tertiary associations (women's roles/identities > “hibab”/feminism > sewn genitals). And then another plane, if you will, arising out of associations with the books, where Dave and Zora and Simone are. And then some formal devices, like the choruses & songs, that point to sub-nodes or create a kind of punctuation.

Mostly, I'm curious about the design—the pattern, the map, the rules that connected the parts. How you wove things together.

From: Barbara Cassidy

To: Jeffrey M. Jones

Yeah so I think for me its like the authors create the book club, but the book club also creates the authors. where it seems like the authors are Controlling the bc, the bclub has control over whether the authors stay by merely talking of them. I think of the first part of the play as struggling to be in the real world with all our social problems and so on & the second part breaking down more in a kind of understanding that this world has components that we just don't get.

The gods fück with us and really does anybody know anything about this existence for sure? Does anybody know what the deal is with time?

I am also interested in the breakdown of time space social order gender notions of who and what we are and group think. The crowd is coming to get them they are alive they are dead they are characters they are people they are believers they are not it is the past it is now

They are women they are puppets of their structures in a kind of spiral. Looping in on itself

Going fwd looping back past and present happening now interior exterior hap now

From: Jones, Jeffrey

To: Barbara Cassidy

I recognize these ideas, now that you state them, and I like them.

Is there a formal break point between the first part and the second part?

Is there a visual way to represent the looping/spiraling inward, and if so, is there a way to abstract that out into a dramatic pattern? (To me, the idea of looping involves cyclic motion relative to some static marker).

As staged last night, and seemingly as written (though the script has changed a lot), the action on stage seems continuous, even when it seems to move between parts or sections or threads. Actually that isnt quite correct. The action within the book club is presented as a continuous flow between very different states/conditions. Sometimes, as when the authors touch the women and they fall down (die?) the transition is marked by an action (a causality) but not always. I wonder what interruption in the flow would do to the design. Thought experiment—having the authors come up behind the women in the midst of one scene, touching them and making them die (transition to another place in the same scene) is very different from a scene that starts with the authors touching the women, making them die, and then ends.

The crowd is coming to get them they are alive they are dead they are characters they are people they are believers they are not it is the past it is now

The crowd is coming to get them // they are alive // they are dead // they are characters // they are people // they are believers // they are not // it is the past // it is now

The crowd is coming to get them // they are alive they are dead // they are characters they are people // they are believers they are not //it is the past it is now

The crowd is coming to get them they are alive // they are dead they are characters //they are people they are believers // they are not it is the past //it is now

From: Barbara Cassidy

To: Jeffrey M. Jones

I love ur visuals. The formal break is right after the first boom right b4 authors come in. There is a blackout

From: Jones, Jeffrey

To: Barbara Cassidy

Hmmmm. You're right—now I remember, there were those booms—but I didn't recognize them as markers. I thought they were just real-time events. Also, the crowd wasn't really established clearly enough—but that's a production issue. Rereading the earlier draft, I realize there is at least a third “plane” which consists of outside characters trying to break into the other plane(s?) and disrupt things. The “reality” of these characters is called into question in different ways—I like the drunken woman now being an offstage voice, though she felt pretty unreal even in the earlier draft. The crowd is another character on this plane but of course its totally invisible. Never arrives—at least onstage. Interesting problem—and structurally very different from the standard “offstage crowd” situation, where everyone knows the crowd is only threatening.

Are there any plays in which an actual crowd suddenly runs on stage and takes over the action? That would be a lot of fun! Morgan Gould did a piece for LT where about 15 people suddenly ran onstage for the last scene, and I saw a piece at Ice Factory where 10-12 uncredited actors suddenly walked into a motel room in costume (it was supposed to be a Halloween party) and trashed the place. That was good.

From: Barbara Cassidy

To: Jeffrey M. Jones

I will think about ur ideas more later tonight not Sure I totally understand them yet. But I think I do

The mental exercise would make the looping more obvious to the viewer correct ?

From: Jones, Jeffrey

To: Barbara Cassidy

Exactly. The physics behind all this is that viewers need to be able to orient themselves throughout the experience of a piece of art, and this is particularly challenging in time-based art because the reference points have to be loaded into memory in real time. There is no way you can go back and “discover something you hadn't noticed.” So the formal problem is, how do you describe a loop dramaturgically? Its not a hard problem, but it can seem like a weird problem because of the deep expectation that time is always moving forward in a play. You want to find a way for the viewer to recognize “Oh, I've been here before!” Thereafter, you just repeat the signal/marker/construct (with variations, if you want to get fancy) and the viewer will know they're going in loops and circles. This would make a really great exercise for a naturalistic playwriting class, but you'd have to spend too much time getting rid of the objection “but that cant really happen.”

From: Barbara Cassidy

To: Jeffrey M. Jones

Yeah maybe. its interesting and weird for me to think about the play in this way. i usually don't think about my plays so theoretically, but i like that you do!

From: Jones, Jeffrey

To: Barbara Cassidy

I don't think one has to approach this entirely from a theoretical basis--that's just my bent. But I do think that pieces like yours (and mine) need a structure that functions as the equivalent of narrative, and maybe the simplest thing is to think of them as shapes. If you think your play has a shape, then you can make that shape.

From: Barbara Cassidy

To: Jeffrey M. Jones

yeah i think i get it ( & i do like it.) it makes sense.....

also just thought tonight that i found it difficult to make a play with characters talking directly about some specific ideas w/o sounding either didactic or all over the place and some of the weaving of weirdness may be there to work against that for that reason (as well as more theme oriented reasons.)

From: Jones, Jeffrey

To: Barbara Cassidy

Upon further reflection…