This Is My Peroration
Where do these plays come from?
Where did a play by a white, twentieth/twenty-first century male about an ancient Greek queen come from?
Who cares?
The script almost wrote itself as I walked in the shoes of that woman. I had a sentence here and a sentence there from historical accounts (esp. Diodorus Seculus; see the references) and turned that over to my mind.
My difficulty lay achieving the fully melodramatic character with the story of Olympias, My stylistic conception tended to a more “sympathetic” rendering of her historical situation. She was a queen, who’ll never end up on someone’s pedestal. (Coinage is another matter.)
I approached it as a grand opera, as I did with Chauvin. For a number of reasons, the production of an opera is always possible but not probable. From conception to production, an opera develops with the speed of a glacier I thought a stage play might be a more direct and immediate possibility.
My composer friend reduced the Olympias opera to the more “practical” (for these times) alternative of chamber opera, trimming all the musical forces so that there might be a greater liklihood of its production. We will endure the usual long wait:
“You are old, father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head — Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
I do not know the field of opera, but I know that opera companies have the capacity to mount prodigious productions, of the tried and true works. For new works, the Canadians want Canadian works. The Americans want American works on American themes. Our work is a cross-cultural collaboration. Our works are French and Greek themed. It is said that opera is “the ultimate art”, involving the collaboration of so many more producing entities, but the stories of the tried and true are, well,–uh,–melodrama. The music is the most important part of opera. Opera-goers tolerate the antique stories for the glories of melody and voice.
As I am inspired by the reminder in the stars so far away, it’s nice to have the moon so near. Are you Sirius? Noom. I am likewise pleased we have the classics of opera in our lives. The composer and I have these two works of ours which took an enormous amount of time to create; can you imagine having creations like that and not being able to see or hear them in a place they were intended for? Time in the production of new opera is glacial, as cold and as slow.
The penultimate incentive and satisfaction is in the writing, keeping the brain alive, teeming with the excitement of accomplishment. That theatre critic in the head says these dramas are very good, on paper, but impractically FAT in these times impecunious for the arts.
Olympias exhibits the tragedy of arrogance. of her ignoring consequences, although the alternatives are presented to her. Passion overrides the intelligence of all things considered.
In her story, Olympias holds to a belief, contrary to fact, that her son was murdered. She plans and executes her murderous revenge on the imagined perpetrators. The theme is the arrogance of power based on the falsehoods of ideology.
In the story contrived from historical accounts, Nicolas Chauvin undergoes a transformation, in an instant, from war hero to ideologue for the glory of the Grande Armée, Imperial France and his exalted, now abdicated, emperor. He abandons his loved ones to pursue his big idea. The theme is the tragedy of those who aggressively force their grand ideas with destructive force on those innocents around them.
“Chauvinism” was the eponym that came in with the women’s lib and nationalistic movements around the globe. It contributed to the development of French nationalism. There was something hollow about the work that the word was supposed to do. It developed a functional autonomy in general useage. See the references.
Where are these plays going?
Again, who cares?
Nowhere. The times are not right. The author is old and has no connections. There are no probabilities among the possibilities.
I would be pleased if you would go to the COMMENTS, at the end, just to say you looked at this web site.
Recently, I read an article by theatre critic, Lisa Bornstein (“It’s not easy being read: Playwrights battle obstacles created by theater economics,” Rocky Mountain News, Saturday, August 7, 2004, page 1D). Hard news to anyone with the ambition to become a produced playwright.
The next day, I read an article by theatre critic, John Moore (“Writing showcase: Play’s the thing out West — finally,” The Denver Post, Sunday, August 8, 2004, page 1F). More hard news.
I shall remain, it seems, all of those “un-” things a late-in-life beginner doesn’t want to experience,
-read,
-evaluated,
-connected,
-known,
-represented,
-produced,
-acknowledged,
-etc,
but not un-happy.
By posting the scripts to this web site, I may be read and can at least erase that one deficit.
It’s been many years since I sent the librettos and scores that I was asked to submit. They were un-acknowledged in any way. It’s been more than three years for the plays that were requested and no note taken of them in any way by the recipients, and I did everything I could to make it easy for them. But they must be swamped. I understand.
One thing about posting, the work might possibly be saved in some cyber-library larger than the Library of Congress on some non-biodegradeable material and become artifacts of our civilization when and if it becomes extinct. A shard. An undecipherable fragment. The most infinitesimal clue. Ah, the melodrama of megalomania.
Perhaps the stories could be discovered by film-makers. The cinema? Perhaps. Ah, the fantasies of hope. Competence→Confidence→Concern→Worry→Anxiety→Despair→∞
Two concepts I use often in my thinking.
Egression, in the evolution of consciousness.
Emergent, where the present is unprecedented.
