Thesis Update

No play I have ever written has been nearly as frustrating as my thesis has been so far. There's a number of reasons for this, but the most important is this: this is only major play I've written where the emotional arc of the play doesn't necessarily dictate the physical arc of the play. I Feel Fantastic was about two men struggling with decisions regarding antidepressants. Condition Blue was about a disgraced detective who can't live down his disorder. Both of these contained readily available plots. My thesis, at least how I originally conceived of it, is about a young man struggling to overcome grief and depression in a world that has little tolerance of the former and zero tolerance of the latter. As an emotional arc it works well, and I've pretty much had that arc plotted out from the beginning. And while that would work fine it and of itself as a novel, but as a play it's lacking of the one thing any solid play needs to get an audience following along: action. I can't stage internal monologues, and if the play is just the emotional arc as I've envisioned it, the play would be so rife with monologues that it almost might have well been a one-man show, which is not what I want. So I've had to come up with some kind of physical action- a backdrop in which to display and accentuate the emotional arc I've established.

Just a warning, for those who might care, but there's going to be future spoilers ahead.

This has been the hardest part, because usually plays are designed with a physical arc in mind, and the emotional arc develops as the story fleshes out. I've been tripped up because I haven't been able to conceive of a physical arc, certainly not one worth using, because for me the physical arc isn't all that important in this piece- in my mind it is clearly about Thomas (the protagonist's) emotional development. But that physical arc is the skeleton of the play- without it I can't even start writing. Sure, I've got an important plot element: Jocelyn (his best friend's) suicide- but this is what kicks off the emotional arc, and is the event that throws Thomas' physical arc out of whack. This means that I have to give Thomas an ultimate objective, some real-world goal that transcends his internal well-being. Knowing what I know about the emotional arc, this needs to be an objective that is multi-staged, something that he has a specific series of tasks to accomplish to reach his goal.

An important aspect of the play's concept is the idea that his struggles with grief depression are simply not tolerated (let alone accepted) in the world that he lives in and hopes to succeed in. Based on my own personal experiences as well as the stories I have gratefully been told, I determined that Thomas' ultimate objective ought to be career-oriented. While I originally conceived of Thomas and Jocelyn as high school students, this development caused me to shift the story ahead to make them college students. Thomas' ultimate goal is a post-graduate program, something that will set him on the fast-track of his desired career. This, I determined, was too large a goal for the scope of the play. So I took it one step back in Thomas' plan. He wants to get into a fairly prestigious internship; this internship, in Thomas' mind, is what will guarantee his placement in the post-grad program of his dreams. It is whether or not Thomas succeeds in getting into this internship that will provide the central question of the play's physical arc. Thomas is currently in a summer job that he is heavily focused in performing above and beyond expectations in; he hopes this will give him a killer recommendation for the internship, which will in turn determine whether he gets into the post-grad program he wants to get in to, which will in turn determine whether he gets the jobs that he wants to, which will in turn determine whether or not he will be successful and happy in life. For those of you who are fans of Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story (a book that provided a great deal of inspiration for me,) this precarious house of cards Thomas has based his future and potential for happiness on is a classic example of a tentacle: a present source of stress that bears with it the added pressures springing from a series of future events. It is this summer job that is thrown out of whack by Thomas' grief and subsequent depression.

Once I had worked all of this out, the next step was easy: what kind of job, internship, career is Thomas trying to pursue? And the answer: education. For the most part, I prefer to stick with what I know when I write, at least as far as subject matter goes. But it goes much deeper than that too. One of the traits I have that I am most proud, and I know developed in large part due to my experiences overcoming my own depression, is empathy. Empathy, and along with that a desire to help others, had to an integral aspect of this career field. Furthermore, it has to be a field where depression can, to the unaware, appear to be a major liability. All of these factors contributed to what I felt was an easy decision.

The beauty of this structure is that it allows two arcs, the physical and the emotional, to exist simultaneously while at the same time taking different directions. It wasn't hard to determine his relative success along the two arcs. It also allows me to have Thomas fail to achieve his physical goal (after a tumultuous end to his summer job, he is flatly turned down for the fall internship) while at the same time coming to a positive conclusion to his emotional arc (ie, coming to terms with his grief and depression.) After all, this story is, ultimately, my own story. And my story, at this point, is about having hope for the future, pride in my experiences, and the advocacy against oppression towards those with depression. So this story should end on a similar note.

Even with this structure in place, this play isn't going to write itself. I've still got a number of other plot elements to develop, the most important at this point is the development of Jocelyn as a physical character in the play as a ghost/vision/dream/hallucination. I definitely want this happen at some point, if not at multiple points through the play. This will allow what would otherwise be Thomas' internal monologues into an actual dialogue with dramatic action.

I'll post more as I develop, but I think I'm close to being able to sit down and pound out a first draft. I'd love feedback; how do you guys feel about this idea so far?

An Advocate's Creed

Dear world, I live with depression. It is something that impacts me every day, though not in the way that you think. It has made me a stronger, more passionate, more empathetic human being, and I would not be nearly the person I am today had I not had to struggle with and overcome the depression that plagues me.

I will no longer accept any of the shame or guilt you have attempted to pile upon me. I am proud to be who I am today and nobody can take that way from me. I will no longer remain silent and I will no longer allow you to shame those who suffer through what I've suffered through into silence. I will shout my story to the world, and I will encourage others who share my experiences, though I may not know them and though they may not know me, into shouting their stories to the world as well. And we will continue to shout, and continue to grow, until there is no one left who feels that they have to remain silent. We will allow you to shame us or anybody else no more, and we will no longer tolerate or abide you punishing us for daring to share our experiences.

And once we have obliterated your culture of shame and disgrace we will finally be able to come together as a community, as a culture of our own, a culture of pride and strength and caring, and we will reject and overcome the intolerance you bear down on us just as you bear down on any who make you uncomfortable. And we will be free of your oppression, free of both the internal prisons you have crafted and forced us into as well as the very real institutions you have directed us to and from that you, in your ignorance and in your arrogance, have decided are or are not appropriate for someone in our condition. While we will never fully be free of that which afflicts us, we will be free of the conditions that you have invented to limit, embarrass and degrade us. We will finally tear down the walls you have built for us, against us, between us, and we will be free.

But we will never stop shouting our stories.

Musings On the Nature of Happiness

I'm trying to allow myself to give advice more often.

I try to avoid dispensing advice, even to my closest friends, partially because I'm worried I'll give the wrong advice, and partially because I don't feel qualified to give advice in specific situations. But again, I think my unwillingness to give advice is in large part a reason why I'm not closer to my close friends than I am now. That, and how worried I get about opening myself up to others. Since the latter is something I want to work on as both a person and an advocate, I figure I should be working on the former as well. I didn't really know the situation, and to be honest I don't really know the friend that well yet, but as I've said, I'm trying to be more a outgoing person.

So if you're struggling between doing what you think is right, and doing what you know you want, I'm probably going to give the same advice at all times: follow your heart. I followed my head to near exclusivity for a good 20-21 years and it brought me nothing but anguish and depression. Granted, I wasn't being super serious when I offered my advice- I mean, "follow your heart" has become kind of a catch phrase among my friends, but I still think it's fair advice.

Then someone else chimed in, and their response was so dripping with cynicism that I had to stop myself. I don't believe in hell, but if it does exist I think there's probably a place there for cynics. I try as best as I can to not to place value judgments on people, but there are few things in life more worthless than cynicism. So naturally the response got me riled up, and when I get riled up my mind races, and it brought me to some fairly interesting conclusions.

Usually when we're thinking following our head we're thinking about doing what's right. Now this is usually a matter of morality, but morality has become so socialized and normalized that to have one's own moral code (and morality is supposed to be individual) is to be seen as a hedonist. So really, most often the choice becomes doing what you want and doing want other people think is right. Now, for some people following this societal moral code may be important, and in some situations I would certainly argue for following your head. I often rail against extreme ideological points of view and this is no different; arguing you should always follow your head is as worthwhile as arguing you should always follow your heart, which is to say not at all.

But I have a theory that people are fundamentally unhappy when they choose to try to follow their head as much as possible. Now, this is subjective and based entirely on my own experiences, but I think pretending to be able to give objective advice is a fairly dishonest practice. Objectivity, certainly on an interpersonal level, is an absolute myth. But try to follow along. The head will tell you a lot of things; it will tell you what should do, what you shouldn't do, what other people will think of you, what you feel you're required to do, and so on and forth. The heart, on the other hand, will tell you one thing and one thing only: what will make you happy. When people talk about whether they should listen to their heart, it is practically always about something that would make them happy. Now, this isn't always a lasting happiness, and the momentary happiness may not actually be worth whatever it is you lose to achieve it. And it's important to live that life of balance. But it's just as important to do what makes you happy.

So why do people consistently choose against their own happiness? There's so many reasons, and this is something I wouldn't understand if I didn't live a vast majority of my life living it. Speaking from my own experience, I often chose against my own happiness because I thought I was choosing the happiness of other people. Here's something I've learned: the heart certainly is concerned with your own happiness, but the head is not, it is not concerned with other people's happiness. It is concerned with other people's expectations, and this is a huge difference. And I really feel that no one should putting other people's expectations above their own happiness. Now, there may in fact be people for whom other people's expectations are of most importance to them, and if that fulfills them, gives them a sense of pride, then I would say that they're happy and leave the point at that.

Of course, the head has something the heart doesn't have, which is a brain. The heart may know what makes you happy but it can also be supremely stupid, and it's important to recognize when your heart's being stupid so you can ignore it, or better yet find some other way to find happiness. If step one of the advice is to follow your heart, then step two is to have no regrets. If you are following your heart, it has to be something you know you won't have to regret. And we regret a lot of things we don't have to. So do indeed follow your heart, because if you do you will find, even if only for a moment, happiness. Don't regret it, don't wallow in it, and certainly don't carry it as such a huge burden that you feel the need to advise a younger generation to steer clear of personal happiness in lieu of society's expectations for them.

It's not perfect advice, but it's a start.

Monologue Feedback

So, I presented my monologue to the advanced playwriting course, and the feedback, while generally positive, pointed to a lot of issues with the piece. I'll recap:

1. Most people were either not with the story about Grandpa, or were lost when the monologue transitioned into the story of the character's friend. This is perhaps the easiest to remedy as a matter of practice, but the hardest for me to actually commit to. Obviously, the monologue has to be about the character's friend, and obviously the bulk of his storytelling is about his grandfather, so obviously I need to trim the story about the grandfather. I may have to work this story in later in the play, or maybe just cut it completely, and leave it as a little piece of information I know (and you guys know) that informs in some small way the protagonist's character. It's still painful to cut any of it, though.

2. People want to learn more about the protagonist's friend. This will easily be solved by, well, the entire rest of the play, but I think I can give the audience a little more about her here in the monologue as well.

3. There needs to be dramatic action. This is something the professor insists on that most students tend to roll their eyes about but for the most part I agree. As I wrote the monologue I wrote as if it were an internal monologue at the beginning of a novel, and that kind of narration works wonderfully in a novel. But I believe that audiences want to see something happening. They want to watch rather than be told. And there is dramatic action in the piece, it just comes at the tail end after several minutes of talking about his grandfather. So the action of the monologue needs to come earlier, but that shouldn't be too difficult if I refocus the story to be about his friend rather than Grandpa.

4. Maintain the disjointedness. This was actually positive feedback for the section about his friend, but was also reverse engineered into constructive criticism for the section about his grandfather. The feedback, and I'll paraphrase because it was probably the most poignant and helpful feedback I got from the class, was that when the character's thinking became more disjointed when talking about his friend: "that was when it felt like he was talking to me, rather than at me." I was worried that I'd lose people when his thinking would bounce back and forth between death, jokes and the three wishes game, but the class pretty much universally agreed that was when they felt most connected to him.

5. Maintain the contrasts. The contrasts between death, grief and humor resonated well with the class, and is something I plan on making a major theme throughout the play. The second contrast in this piece, and something that didn't work as well as I had hoped, was in his reactions between his grandpa's death and his friend's death. We need to know how he reacted to his grandpa's death and we need to know it in this scene, that much I am sure of. We also need to see some more hints about why this death is affecting him so much harder, and it has to be more than just age. That's some work I need to put into it.

My plan is to revise this monologue sometime before the end of the week, and then move on the rest of the act. What do you guys think about this feedback?

Thesis: Opening Monologue

I hate funerals.

Not in the way that other people hate funerals. No, these people don't really hate funerals. They just hate death. I think because they fear it so much. So they cry and weep and mourn, but really what they're thinking about is their own mortality. I can't imagine anyone wanting to cause someone else that much grief.

Grandpa's funeral was the worst. Gran's was pretty bad too but at least Grandpa was there to liven the mood. Told me he couldn't stand to see the way people felt sorry for themselves, when all Gran wanted was to make the people she loved happy. So Grandpa told jokes. Knock-knock jokes, he said those were always Gran's favorite. I think that was the only time I saw Grandpa cry. I knew he was happy though, because she wanted him to be. People said he lost it that day, but I knew better.

I loved Grandpa's jokes, almost as much as Gran did. Some were simple, like the knock-knock jokes; those were the ones Gran loved. Sometimes he'd have me pull his finger; Gran didn't like that one so much. But some were long and elaborate, and Grandpa always knew how to drag it out until it was the perfect moment to deliver the punchline. These were always my favorite. They were like the bedtime stories my parents told me when I was very young. They took me to another world, and I was always excited to be there. When I got older he would tell me dirty jokes, and tell me not to repeat any of them to my parents or Gran, or they'd scold him. After Gran died, Grandpa started going to the amatuer hour at the comedy club. Everyone else told Grandpa he was crazy, but I always went, and I always laughed at his jokes. The other people didn't like it very much, but he wasn't telling the jokes for them. It was always for Gran.

When Grandpa died, everyone said it was because of a broken heart, but I knew that his heart was just fine. He was old, and he was tired of telling jokes to us. He was happy, because he knew he was going to be with Gran again, and I was happy for him when he passed. Oh, of course I cried. I cried a lot. But I never forgot that Grandpa was happiest when he was making me laugh. So I sat in the back of the service, and I brought a pen and some paper, and I started writing down all of Grandpa's jokes that I could remember. Even when Aunt Claire smacked me upside the head for laughing, I didn't mind. There was no way she could understand. She was always calling him crazy when he wasn't around. I felt sorry for Grandpa, but he always said he was too old to give a crap about what everyone else thought. I miss my Grandpa a lot, and every time I come up with a new joke I dedicate it to him and Gran.

But this funeral is so different. When Gran and Granpda died, it was their time. They were old. She was my age. She was my best friend. She always told the best jokes too; some were even better than Grandpa's. But try as I might, I can't remember any of them. It's awful. I can't stop crying. I can't stop trying to make sense of it. Why would she do that to herself? Why would she do that to me?

Death. She did always have a morbid sense of humor. I always thought she was joking. She was fascinated with the unknown. She loved learning; I never saw her without a book of some kind. But what fascinated her the most was death. She wondered what it would be like... always asked who got it right. If anyone got it right. She liked to play this game, Three Wishes. She'd ask me what I'd wish for if I had three wishes, and then make me ask her.

I want to remember the jokes she'd used to tell; the smart ones that I had to think about the get, the silly ones that always had us rolling on the floor laughing, even the lame puns that were always the funniest no matter how awful they got. But nothing. All I can think about is that stupid game. Is she happy now? Is she still sad?

I cant get her voice out of my head; that ridiculous voice she'd always use when she'd play the game. "And for your first wish?"

And for my first wish?

I wish to know what death is like.

Condition Blue and Other Plays

Condition Blue, as some of you know, is a play I wrote for the 2008 Ten Minute Play Festival, and is the first script I'd written that was performed and produced as part of a live theatrical event. On the surface the script is mock film noir about a detective cursed with a "condition," and the way that the "condition" causes others to act towards him. What's not apparent is that this script is, on a very basic level, autobiographical. While the play is raucous and over-the-top, it is ultimately about depression (the "condition") and the very real way people with depression are sometimes treated.

I've posted the script in its entirety on another blog I created for a class project and never bothered deleting; you can read it here:
http://tenminuteplays.blogspot.com/

If Condition Blue is the first act in my saga, than its spiritual sequel is full-length play I wrote from which this blog gets its name: I Feel Fantastic! This is a play I wrote about the dangers of extreme points of view in regards to antidepressant use. Set in the near future, I Feel Fantastic! shows an America where antidepressants are mandated to all citizens and strictly enforced, and how the lives of two individuals cross; one who seeks to quit antidepressants and one grappling with whether he should start taking them or not. This 80-page script is far from complete, and its current incarnation is a second draft that I'm not completely happy with. Once I am able to upload this script, I can post a link to it if you are interested in reading it.

The play I am very close to starting to write for my thesis project will then be a synthesis of these two acts with a third act added to the end, representing the genesis of my advocacy work. My intention is to create a work that is more straightforward than Condition Blue and at the same time more allegorical than I Feel Fantastic! I will post regular updates as I begin to work on this script, posting samples for your perusal and comments as I create them.

One last note, it may be interesting to you that my greatest source of inspiration as I write is music. I Feel Fantastic! is named after a song of the same name by independent singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton. As I've been formulating the idea for my thesis work I've been listening primarily to Muse and composer Bear McCreary's soundtrack for the excellent re-envisioning of Battlestar Galactica. Both of these musical sources have led me to the same obvious conclusion- that above all this new play should be about taking action, not just reacting to society's harsh stigmas and stereotypes.

Deconstructing Dichotomies: Good vs Evil

There's something incredibly fascinating to me about our culture's desire to line all things up into two, diametrically opposed camps. Maybe it's for ease in describing a notion or problem, maybe it's to make decision making a snap. Clearly, things are boiled down into neat little dichotomies to make something easier for people. There's a danger here, however, and what we lose and what we risk losing when we create false dichotomies is often overlooked.

One of the most common and probably one of the most damning side-effects of the creation of these false dichotomies is the formation of the belief that there is no middle ground. When ideas, concepts, sides are segregated to separate camps, the idea persists that one cannot be a part of both groups, or the even more dangerous idea that one can't not be a part of one of the two groups. This idea of "you're either with us or against us" often shuts down conversation, particularly those without strong views on the particular subjects. These individuals are often shunned as being "against us," which leads to us going on the offensive, which leads to them going on the defensive, and when this takes place there's absolutely no way any real exchange or communication is actually happening.

It's worth mentioning that there are certainly times, particularly within the social justice movement, where passive neutrality actually is supporting one of two sides. But that's another article entirely.

Let's take a look at False Dichotomy #1, really the genesis from which all other false dichotomies spring: Good vs Evil. Now, when applied as abstract, hypothetical ideas, one can clearly see that Good and Evil are two diametrically opposed ideas. But when you actually apply these concepts to the human spectrum, like all hypothetically clear dichotomies, things begin to murky very fast.

Good and Evil beget Right and Wrong (Dichotomy #2), and very quickly we can see that this will lead to problems. After all, I am always "Right", and, if you disagree with me, you are "Wrong", and if this is an issue that involves any sort of morality or ethics, this breakdown leads us straight back to Good and Evil. Since we all always disagree with somebody else on something, including those issues that relate to morality and ethics, you can easily see how every single person on this planet is at both times Right and Wrong, Good and Evil.

I'll give you an example. There is a student in one of my classes who feels very strongly about choosing not to use pharmaceutical drugs. The argument here is that these drugs are not natural, and then for our personal well being we should avoid such things. Now, this seems pretty solid... it might even wonder into Right and even Good territory. But then there's my argument- the argument that one should be working against the stigmas surrounding antidepressants (a pharmaceutical drug) because of how these medications can allow people to function normally when they would otherwise be unable to, and that they even save lives. Saving lives is Right... and its certainly Good too. Yet aren't these two arguments are diametrically opposed? Doesn't one have to be Right and one Wrong? And since people's health and lives hang in the balance, doesn't one have to be Good and one Evil? The answer to all of these questions is simple: no. I cannot speak for my fellow student, but I have absolutely nothing against people with the desire to live a healthy and natural life, so long as they don't infringe on the need I had, and the need many others have, for pharmaceutical aid.

Even those things you might think we agree on as a people we don't. I mean, we might expect that we can all agree that murder is Wrong and Evil, but we still have armies and wars, our country's leaders still support revolutionary groups and dictatorships worldwide, and we still execute our prisoners, so really haven't reached that agreement. Is stealing Evil? What would Robin Hood say to that? How about greed? That seems like an easy one, but really, greed is one of the most basic human emotions, and we can't physically survive without succumbing to that greed on at least a very basic level. I mean, to have greed is to want and to take, and unless you're living on some organic, self-sufficient commune completely cut off from society (in which case you wouldn't be reading this article) we all do that. Now you might argue that there're levels of greed, hate, stealing, murder, etc... that there's some kind of a cut-off.

A-ha! Now we're getting somewhere. When we start talking about levels, and about "cut-offs", we've already moved beyond dichotomy. Remember, that there is no spectrum of Good and Evil. You are either Good or you are Evil, at least according to prevailing school of thought. There certainly isn't a spectrum of Right vs Wrong. But reality operates in shades of gray, because nothing is truly Black or White (False Dichotomy #3, for those of you playing the home game.) And where there is a spectrum, there is a middle ground, and where there is middle ground, there is communication. Communication doesn't exist without middle ground. If you want proof of that you need look no further than the current California budget crisis.

But the middle ground isn't that easy a place to get to. The reason for this is simple: because so many times we get wrapped up in the idea that we are Right, and that they should meet us where we're at. The important thing to keep in mind is that everyone has a reason for believing what they believe in, and that even if that is a place of ignorance and misinformation, you still have to meet them in the middle ground before you can communicate with them. It is in this common ground that minds are swayed, and ideas are transmitted. It is in the common ground that syncretism- the blending of ideas- takes place.

You may even find that both beliefs are Right, and can easily coexist without bringing harm to anyone. And that is a truly wonderful moment to experience.

I should point on that "without bringing harm to anyone" clause of the above phrase makes this a tricky mindset when tackling such things as social justice. I'll talk about that at a later date.