Oly Writer

More good news. The owner of the houseboat just called. The current tennant is moving out earlier than expected. Perhaps next week. Wouldn’t that be something!! Out of here before the end of the month.

I had a bad dream last night.

I’m backstage. It’s dark. Dozens of people are moving around getting ready. There’s an unfamiliar overture. The show is about to start. All I know is I go on stage in a few minutes. I have an important role in the opening act. But I can’t remember my lines.

I look for a script to review my lines, something I always made a practice of doing since The King & I, back in 1980, my first show with lines. An actor I played opposite to missed his cue. To my horror, I found myself alone on stage in front of 700 people, the orchestra vamping. Totally unprepared, I had to ad lib his lines and mine into a monologue. From then on, over many years and dozens of productions, no matter how many times I’d done a scene already, I always had my script at hand, read-over the entire scene, everyone’s lines, just before going out on stage. I saved many scenes.

In my dream,  I ask passing people for a script, but no one helps me. Time is running out. I don’t have my costume or make-up on yet. My costume, a tuxedo, is hanging from the rafters above my head. It’s mixed in with dozens of other tuxedos that all look alike. I ask for help. No one helps me. I finally just grab one. In the light I realize it’s the wrong costume, some kind of policeman’s uniform.

But the singer on stage is holding a high, shrill note. Everyone backstage is looking at me saying, “It’s your cue! Go! Go!”

I run out on stage as the poor, breathless woman sputters out. Still not knowing what my lines are, I rush to the apron of the stage and start to make a joke when I’m cut-off by audience applause in sympathy for the singer. I’m humiliated.

With no idea what my lines are, I start dancing around like a fool hoping I’ll remember. The audience (a big one), cast, and crew are grumbling angrily at me. Someone shoves bunches of roses in my hands. I remember I’m suppose to give them to the children on stage and sing a song. I can’t remember the song.

Finally, totally humiliated, I go to the front of the stage an address the dark theater audience. Spotlights are on me. I can see nothing but their glare. I confess to not knowing my lines, making excuses for some kind of strange old-age memory loss. Then I change and confess that the real reason is my arrogance. I arrived late backstage, only minutes before curtain. I didn’t prepare my costume ahead of time. I didn’t review my lines.

The house is silent. Backstage is silent. I feel their unsympathic hostility. I start begging that they give me ten minutes to prepare, then we start the show over again. I begin to wakeup. Realizing it’s a bad dream, I try forcing myself to dream on and make it end happy. But I can’t, because I still don’t know what show it is.    

Last spring I moved everything I’d had in storage for twelve years into a new space. Unpacking decades of old papers, I found a hypnotists report from 1980. I went to three session to help me stop biting my nails, a habit since childhood. It didn’t help. I finally stopped this year.

I remember the hypnotist’s final report caught me by surprise in 1980. It didn’t make sense and I didn’t believe it, so I dismissed it and forgot it. But then 28 years of life happened. Looking at it today, the hypnotist’s report is shockingly true. She’d found that when I was eight, an incident started a seed of guilt growing in me that became a psychological tree that fell on me a few years ago and nearly killed me. Doesn’t it feel like there’s a Story Worth Problem in that?

I’m going to write two parallel stories, one about the SWP above (dramatized!) set in the past, and the other a darkly humorous story carrying the Story Problem set in the present about a man coming home to face down the dragons of his past, hoping for a second chance.

Something like this: Approaching his senior years, Price has moved back to Olympia for one final grasp at the kind of happiness he had 30 years ago, before things spun out of control. Hiding a shameful secret, Price must go around to all his old community theater friends to collect the things of his past life, one filled with a lot of stuff he no longer wants but must deal with. I envision a humorous escalation of the ridiculousness of dealing with the stuff.

The story unfolds from the dramatization of their layered, interwoven relationships and conflicts. Price’s primary opposition character, Alice, hates Price (or so she says) and is furious about his return to Olympia. Her goal is to rally all the old friends against Price and drive him out of town. Her efforts—though serious—are as wacky as her motivations. (And hopefully the primary source of the dark humor.) Relationships with all Price’s friends will be represented by the stuff Price comes to collect from each friend. Guilt will be a theme bridging the stories. Hmm. Can’t wait to first-draft that out.

Also thinking that Price’s childhood story will be presented in scenes as the hypnotist takes him backward in time to the incident at the heart of his story worth problem. The inciting incident of story will be Price finding the hypnotist’s report. All through the story he has flashbacks of being hypnotized. Hmm. Flashbacks within flashbacks? Hmm. I don’t like flashbacks as a rule.

Within the story of Price coming to terms with his past is a portrait of his family members fresh from World War II and the Great Depression in conflict with social revolution of the sixties. The subtext will be the impact of the Christian fundamentalist counter-revolution and how it has nearly wrecked America.

For now I’m calling it The Year I Began Biting My Nails. I just hope I can develop a darkly funny writing style by the second draft .

Follow the White Rabbit…