Dodo, Example Of Failure

The Flight of the Dodo used to be one of my favorite works. It’s ironic that I would write a play about, among other stuff, failure and then end up being one. Yet, ever since I was young I was fascinated with the Dodo bird and that eventually lead to this story. To this day I’m not quite sure why but this extinct bird holds a special place in my heart. This has something to do with failure and the fact that the Dodo is considered by many to be the first animal on record that is extinct because of man. Here’s another silly post about Dodo.

So f’n what.

I started writing my play The Flight of the Dodo in/around ‘91. Worked on it till ‘92 and then produced and directed it in that (sarcasm!) fabulous town where creativity rules. Here’s the playbill and poster we used.

As usual, it bombed. At least I had a good time writing this play. While I was writing it I was doing some bimbo and let me tell you (male) writers out there: there’s nothing better than having a good f*+#& to clear your mind and then sit down at a typewriter. Write for about three hours, have a glass of wine, make love to your bimbo for another hour and then back to the hacking. But that’s neither here nor there – except if you marry – which will ruin everything!

The really sad part about this play is that I actually lost the German translation to it. Seriously. I cannot find it. This occurred when I switched from Mac to PC in 2000. My best guess is that the German version got lost somewhere between hard-drives. (Had to switch to PC because I couldn’t afford Apple’s idiotic price/product politics anymore.) Sad, eh. Oh well, it’s not as though it matters – I write mostly on a typewriter and then OCR to PC.

Dodo is obviously poooooorly written. I guess. Tried to re-do-write this play in 2000 but that didn’t work out. By that time I was knee-deep in an awful marriage to an awful woman who, like most women, think that love is an end when it is (should be) a means, well, that’s why relationships go bad. Anyway.

Gave the script about two years ago to a theater decider-of-fate and like most of my work, when I asked what he thought of it – the subtext of my question being: well, would you like to do it? – all I got was…

You have very diverse characters; you should probably write accents into the text.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why have I failed so much even though I can come up with this kind of stuff? This is really good stuff. Of course this or that should be written into the text. Of course grammar should be spotless. My name should be David Mamet, too. But It and I am unknown and powerless so the only thing that should mean anything is the story and the fact that creativity is working. The rest, i.e. grammar, dialog, accents?, are no brainers and can be done toot-sweet. We (artists; those who only want to create, as opposed to follow and regurgitate via the whims of producers and profiteers) are stuck now in a world of pop-culture – or the world of throw-up as entertainment. I mean, come on, imagine a play where two young Americans try and kill themselves and because they fail at that meet up with a bunch of other failures from recent human history – in this case: two WW2 soldiers, one from Germany, the other Japan, a Soviet Union fighter pilot shot down over Afghanistan and a Dodo bird. And all of these people are looking for salvation – in life, not in death.

Isn’t that interesting? Worth a production in the basement of a theater?

Of course not. It’s depressing. It questions life and how we live and… I know… Shut the F’ up you ditz.

Oh. The theater world no longer has any use for “writers”. There are so many f*+#& writers out there and we all are struggling for the same empty pot of gold at the end of the tunnel controlled by someone else. This sucks.

Krapp.

Rant on.

-tgs-

Technorati Tags: writer, playwright, theater

powered by performancing firefox