The Accidental Joys of a
Bad Title
By Steve Moulds I hope what I’m about to say doesn’t come as
a shock to anyone, but here’s the completely obvious
thought I want to lead with: There’s Good Development
and there’s Bad Development. (I warned you it was
obvious.) Let’s all assume that we can recognize
Good Development, and for the moment talk about one particular
subspecies of Bad Development—a phenomenon I’ll
call Looking for Problems.
Looking for Problems happens when people just run out
of things to say. In any rehearsal process or discussion,
you reach that moment when all the really pressing things
have been said—the passionate insights have already
been imparted, the deep frustrations expressed. And yet
the mind keeps turning the play over and over: Looking
for Problems. This is usually an impulse born of the desire
to be helpful, and it can happen with the best of collaborators.
But it’s important to pay attention to that particular
moment when everyone in the room is staring at the floor,
searching desperately for what else they can say to help
you fix this broken thing of yours.
“ I feel like [x] is unclear.”
“
I didn’t like [y]. I can’t say what it is,
but I just didn’t like it.”
“
I found my mind wandering right around when [z] happens.
I just wasn’t following it anymore.”
And
maybe these comments aren’t off base. Maybe these
inarticulate rumblings actually point to an area of
concern. But it makes you wonder when they arrive after
this prolonged
silence. Do we really think the play has these flaws,
or are we assuming that something doesn’t work
just because we’re in a developmental context?
Which
brings me to a lovely counterexample. I recently had
the extreme pleasure of workshopping my play, The
Entirely Unexpected Yet Somewhat Inevitable Rise to
Power of Count
Theodore Thomas Timothy Von Rollo the Third (In Two
Parts), at the Illusion Theater. This was Good Development
all
the way. A committed cast and creative team. Supportive
theater staff. A luxurious four weeks of rehearsal.
Best of all, I improved the play. I did a major overhaul
of
the…
Wait a minute. I’m sensing that I
lost you. You’re
still thinking about that title, aren’t you?
That way-too-long, so-awful, why-doesn’t-he-write-a-real-title
title. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Unwieldy.
Ungainly. One of my actors recently put the entire
thing in his bio,
sacrificing roughly one third of his other theatre
experience to the monster that is this title. Audiences
are confused
by it. Graphic designers are offended by it. When the
postcards came out for the workshop production, even
I was a little
embarrassed at seeing the whole thing in print:
The Entirely Unexpected Yet Somewhat Inevitable Rise
to Power of Count Theodore Thomas Timothy Von Rollo
the Third
(In Two Parts)
And yet the thing is, I stand by it. For one, it reflects
the worldview of my main character, a vainglorious,
self-deluded dupe. It actually tells you the story
of the play, if
you pay attention to all the modifiers packed in there.
And
it lends a sense of the academic to a play that obsesses
over how history will remember us. I articulated all
these reasons, on many occasions. But still, the persistent
question:
“ Are you really committed to that title?”
Lest
it sound like I’m complaining, I actually think
this was the best thing that could have happened. Completely
by accident, I had distracted everyone from trying
too hard to fix my play. Whenever stares started drifting towards
the floor, what people kept returning to was that damn
title, my wonderful lightning rod for all unfocused
criticism. Because nobody was Looking for Problems, the non-title-related
feedback I got was useful, thoughtful, and generally
on the money. It worked so beautifully that I wish I had planned
it.
This, of course, is an experiment not to be duplicated.
You can’t create problems just to distract your collaborators.
But you can watch for those desperate stares—and
maybe, just maybe, cut them off at the pass. Or at least
take what’s said with a grain of salt. |
