MFMDing (Meeting, Fucking, Marrying Divorcing)
This was the most ambitious, raucous show EAT! ever mounted. Raucous as in there was a cast of over thirty actors, 90+ characters, live music, several dance numbers and puppetry. Elements included: scenes with Mary and Jesus, a cock fight, a man with a vulva hand, scenes from Ben Jonson, a puppet show based upon the works of the Marquis de Sade. Looking back, I still don't know how we did it. Perhaps we were too deranged to know what we were doing.
Below are pages from the script. The script itself is in a publisher document. The formatting demanded flexibility in arranging the text.
Below are pages from the script. The script itself is in a publisher document. The formatting demanded flexibility in arranging the text.
Author's Note
This note appeared in the script (available to download at the bottom of the page), but was not performed. I include it because it explains much of what the performance was like. And, it has elements in it which appear in my other plays.
In this play, I’m using several techniques that I’m in the process of developing. Approaching this script from a perspective of Realism, many of my characters will probably seem mad. They’re not: I’m experimenting. Realistic writing is predicated on the idea that the play may be presented to a reader with little from the author in order to explain what is going on. After all, everyone is conversant with the rules of Realism—its own aesthetic philosophy believes that life in a raw form is self explanatory and recognizable. Non-traditional writing probably isn’t in a safe enough position for an author to remain so distant. So, to assure that we’re all on the same page, I’m explaining a few things. To emphasize: none of these characters are insane unless specifically described as such.
Collapse of time: Rather than allowing a character 40 pages to develop in a realistic time sequence, I’ve accordianed time. It’s as if I’ve taken one or two lines from each of those realistic scenes and strung them together into one. Why? To center focus on the character, to speed up the action and not dwell on moments or other characters who are unimportant. To create a memory-like structure and skip across events. In Realism, scenes have an unspoken temporal integrity, as if all naturally expect for what transpires on stage would be in real time. Yet, Realism will compress time between scenes; we have moved beyond the Neoclassical belief in the need for Unity of Time over the course of a play (however one wants to define it), but demand that there be a Unity of Time within a scene. Fuck it.
Collapsed Characters: The man in the Serial Killer cruising scene at the end of Act I is a particular example of this—as is the Bee in Act II. One actor or multiple actors can play these roles and I leave it entirely up to the director to decide how best to handle this. If one actor is used, not only will this result in the Collapse of Time explained above, but the Collapse of Character. Rather than giving the SK multiple scenes to cruise men, or simple leaping to the last one Man that becomes the climatic moment the SK strikes, I have decided to use my time in different ways. I have created a kind of Everyman in order to emphasize the repetition of sameness and simultaneous uniqueness. Traditionally a change of actors warrants name, scene, and/or time changing. Fuck it. We live in an era of Robot Chicken and audiences can (and I believe want to) think faster than that.
Real Time Actor Switch: Repeated lines denote a suggested switch in actors. Scenes in which these switches occur happen within “real time,” unlike Collapsed Characters which happen simultaneously with Collapsed Time. Why am I doing this? To alter the flavor of a scene. To add a different dimension. To illustrate the complex, contradictory, inexplicable phenomena of human psychology. To challenge the concept that a characters are impenetrable, absolute, pure entities that are protected or trapped within one physical body. Traditionally actors have portrayed characters that have no names or personalities, that are purely functional; these characters also have an absolute body. Again, fuck it. Perhaps a personality and identity and body can be more fragmented/collaged/ensembled. That some people require a company of actors to portray them.
Kaleidoscope/Cubism: Both these names describe this technique. Kaleidoscopes see variations and changes in color patterns that come and go and, presumably or ideally, never repeat. Cubism, like cubist art, is an attempt to show all angles at once in a painting or sculpture. What this translates as in a scene is one in which characters shift between all possible permutations of emotions, feelings, situations, etc. The Pieta scene uses this. I could say that the entire structure of the play is this.
Verse: The dialogue is in free verse; every return is a shift in thought, position, or mindset.
Punctuation: Never arbitrary and always very purposeful. I think of punctuation marks like driving: colons speed up as one does when approaching a yellow light, semicolons make a right turn (or shift in thought) and periods are full fucking stops regardless of their position in a sentence. Commas are a breath. An absence of punctuation is not a mistake; language will “trail off” like smoke dissipating.
Also, this text is cuttable: do the whole thing or pick your favorite bits. I’m very flexible with this and encourage uniqueness in staging.
In this play, I’m using several techniques that I’m in the process of developing. Approaching this script from a perspective of Realism, many of my characters will probably seem mad. They’re not: I’m experimenting. Realistic writing is predicated on the idea that the play may be presented to a reader with little from the author in order to explain what is going on. After all, everyone is conversant with the rules of Realism—its own aesthetic philosophy believes that life in a raw form is self explanatory and recognizable. Non-traditional writing probably isn’t in a safe enough position for an author to remain so distant. So, to assure that we’re all on the same page, I’m explaining a few things. To emphasize: none of these characters are insane unless specifically described as such.
Collapse of time: Rather than allowing a character 40 pages to develop in a realistic time sequence, I’ve accordianed time. It’s as if I’ve taken one or two lines from each of those realistic scenes and strung them together into one. Why? To center focus on the character, to speed up the action and not dwell on moments or other characters who are unimportant. To create a memory-like structure and skip across events. In Realism, scenes have an unspoken temporal integrity, as if all naturally expect for what transpires on stage would be in real time. Yet, Realism will compress time between scenes; we have moved beyond the Neoclassical belief in the need for Unity of Time over the course of a play (however one wants to define it), but demand that there be a Unity of Time within a scene. Fuck it.
Collapsed Characters: The man in the Serial Killer cruising scene at the end of Act I is a particular example of this—as is the Bee in Act II. One actor or multiple actors can play these roles and I leave it entirely up to the director to decide how best to handle this. If one actor is used, not only will this result in the Collapse of Time explained above, but the Collapse of Character. Rather than giving the SK multiple scenes to cruise men, or simple leaping to the last one Man that becomes the climatic moment the SK strikes, I have decided to use my time in different ways. I have created a kind of Everyman in order to emphasize the repetition of sameness and simultaneous uniqueness. Traditionally a change of actors warrants name, scene, and/or time changing. Fuck it. We live in an era of Robot Chicken and audiences can (and I believe want to) think faster than that.
Real Time Actor Switch: Repeated lines denote a suggested switch in actors. Scenes in which these switches occur happen within “real time,” unlike Collapsed Characters which happen simultaneously with Collapsed Time. Why am I doing this? To alter the flavor of a scene. To add a different dimension. To illustrate the complex, contradictory, inexplicable phenomena of human psychology. To challenge the concept that a characters are impenetrable, absolute, pure entities that are protected or trapped within one physical body. Traditionally actors have portrayed characters that have no names or personalities, that are purely functional; these characters also have an absolute body. Again, fuck it. Perhaps a personality and identity and body can be more fragmented/collaged/ensembled. That some people require a company of actors to portray them.
Kaleidoscope/Cubism: Both these names describe this technique. Kaleidoscopes see variations and changes in color patterns that come and go and, presumably or ideally, never repeat. Cubism, like cubist art, is an attempt to show all angles at once in a painting or sculpture. What this translates as in a scene is one in which characters shift between all possible permutations of emotions, feelings, situations, etc. The Pieta scene uses this. I could say that the entire structure of the play is this.
Verse: The dialogue is in free verse; every return is a shift in thought, position, or mindset.
Punctuation: Never arbitrary and always very purposeful. I think of punctuation marks like driving: colons speed up as one does when approaching a yellow light, semicolons make a right turn (or shift in thought) and periods are full fucking stops regardless of their position in a sentence. Commas are a breath. An absence of punctuation is not a mistake; language will “trail off” like smoke dissipating.
Also, this text is cuttable: do the whole thing or pick your favorite bits. I’m very flexible with this and encourage uniqueness in staging.
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