Soap Opera v. Truth: Circumstances and You

Here's a problem that stops me cold in my tracks every time.

Right now I am doing battle with circumstances in the play that I am writing. This happens to me to a certain degree with just about any project I take on and it seems to get worse the more personal the project.

In the midst of writing my new play it dawns on me why the patriach makes such a stink about his grown, single daughter's choice to have a child alone. Will, the patriarch, is so monsterously self centered that it makes a certain amount of sense for him to tell her, "You may not have liked your father, but at least you had one. He's going to hate you for what you've done to him!" However, it just stuck with me that there has to be something more about Will that neither his children (nor his writer) knows.

In the circumstances, Will has been a shoddy husband and father. He has been depressed, abusive and unfaithful throughout his marriage. As he begins to decline (due to Alzheimers) he seeks a spot of redemption from his family before it is too late. His family does not like him too much, with the exception of his ever faithful wife, Rita, who cares for him above and beyond the call of duty. What has been bothering me is that, throughout the text, the adult children treat their father as the man he once was, not the man he has become. They have sainted their mother, and due to the given circumstances they seem correct in their assumptions. However, there needs to be something more. Something more challenging in his past to explain his filandering and abuse of a good woman as well as her desperate attempts to be the good woman she is expected to be. Then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Will isn't Rhonda's (the eldest child and aforementioned single mother) biological father. It would make sense, wouldn't it? Think about it. It would explain his venom in accusing Rhonda of not providing for her newborn son what he had bent over backward to provide for her - a father. It would absolve him (in his own mind, anyway) of 40 years of wrong doing because he did a "good" thing. It would explain some (not all) of Rita's patience with Will's past behavior and give a strong motivation to continue to care for him. He has made her pay for her indescretion during their 40 years of marriage. Over and over and over again. Clearly, Will has other issues, other circumstances that play in to his destructive choices, but I can't help but think this might be the path to take. there is even a good scene to reveal this information so that it doesn't feel like a formal reveal. Rather, it would be layered on top of another event which would make that information a bit more earth shattering than if it had been discovered through some more straight forward narrative device.

So, what's my problem then?

There is a bit of a "joke" that some theater people share about how close Chekhov's work is to a soap opera. I love Chekhov. He's a big influence on my writing. I understand the comparison and it even makes sense. It's true. However, what makes Chekhov better that a soap is his incredible wit, his use of language, his masterful juggling of circumstances, and his rather gentle hand with exposition. By "gentle hand with exposition" I mean that he does not beat you over the head with information. He says it once and then expands upon it. Or even better, he IMPLIES it once and then expands upon it! My weakness as a writer is that I don't expand as much as I would like and I almost never imply. I don't have the kind of faith in my audience that Chekhov has. I'm struggling to bury some of the things that I know about my characters and make it a part of their language instead of what they say. It's not what they say, it's HOW they say it. This takes tons of practice.

I'm concerned that this tweaking of circumstances will take me to soap opera land. However, I recognize that it isn't the circumstances that make soap opera, it's the use of dialogue and narrative structure that turn circumstances from good drama to schmaltz. This takes practice and faith in your own ability as a dramatist. Therein lies the struggle.

Speaking of "the givens", as I like to call the given circumstances, I recently saw "Little Miss Sunshine". Actually, I saw it twice which is rare for me with a theatrical release. At any rate, I was really taken with the building of circumstances in that film. It could have easily turned into soap opera or farce, but it didn't. (Okay, there's nothing wrong with farce. Farce is actually pretty cool, but here I mean farce in a negative way.) Part of the reason I went to see it twice was to see just where that tightrope walk really was. Allow, for a moment, my brief, inexpert dissection.

The exposition in the film was fun and well laid out, albeit fairly conventional. This is not a bad thing. The narrative was simple and logical, giving the audience everything we needed to know about these characters to make this impending road trip have weight and and urgency. Each character (with the notable exception of Mom and to a lesser extent Grandpa) has a dream or emotional goal at the beginning of the film. It is clear that these characters are in precarious places in their individual lives. Some of the characters have already been chipped away at. Frank, the uncle, has just attempted suicide after losing his career and experiencing an unrequited love affair. Grandpa was kicked out of his nursing home because he was snorting heroin. The kids, Dwayne and Olive, are both hopeful (to a certain extent) that they will reach their goals in life- if they can just make it to adulthood. Dad is clearly a loser who thinks he's a winner. Mom just really, really wants to keep her family from falling apart. As events unfold each of them loses something dear to them. Each of their dreams are completely shattered and then they find each other.

The way the circumstances were constructed allowed the audience to take a completely looney ride without question. After all the dreams, save young Olive's dream of competing in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, had been stripped away it begins to make perfect sense why the family decides to steal a body and stick it in the trunk of their car. It makes perfect sense why a normal, red blooded, American family would support their seven year old stripping. It's outlandish, but is constructed in a way that makes it TRUE. Their choices are somewhat addled, but the givens are strong enough to make it seem that these crazy choices are the best and only choices to make at that particular point in time.

For instance, there is a point in the film where the entire family dances. After they get into it, they dance with abandon. It is an great release, but it brings me to tears even to think about it. This seemingly joyous and rebellious dancing was filled with terrible pain and sadness. I think I was the only one who cried instead of laughing, but for me it profoundly expressed where this family was in the arc of the story. It expressed their coming together under bizarre and painful circumstances, and it did it without saying a word. I love that shit.

I've been watching circumstances unfold in films, plays, politics, and my daily life ever since I became acutely aware of how circumstances affected people. I have built and knocked down and rebuilt the circumstances in my own life several times to try and better understand myself. The funny thing is, once you have a circumstance enter your life you have that piece of the puzzle with you forever. It may not always be in the forefront of your mind, but it still affects you in some way. The puzzle that is a human being just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. In order to find truth as a writer or as an actor, regardless of genre, we must discover those circumstances and put them in their proper place, give them appropriate weight. In my first play, "Pull", Dan steals a doorknob from the faculty lounge at her school. Why a doorknob? Why not a seat back or a pencil sharpener? It turns out that, at a pivotal moment in her sexual devlopment she found herself locked in a basement with a boy who coerced her into a sexual act. Stealing a doorknob was like stealing her self possession, her power back. Of course, later in the play this very doorknob is used against her and I expect she will need years and years of therapy to come to terms with that, but that's a whole other story.

Maybe what I am trying to convince myself is that circumstances are not the problem. Layering and building circumstances would be the appropriate and interesting thing to do. As with a painting it isn't the existence of blue or red or purple that make a painting vital but how blue, red and purple are used in relation to one another.

All right. Now I think I've got it.