Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Surviving by The Skin of Our Teeth
Breaking Character: When I re-read Thornton Wilder’s amazing play while preparing for one of Remy Bumppo’s adult-education classes about three years ago, I couldn’t believe how the ideas sprang off the page, both as playfully meta-theatrical and as urgently relevant and contemporary. Reading the play amidst a group of American political plays from the 1930s and 40s, Wilder’s tragicomedy felt so groundbreaking and engaged, much younger and sprightlier than its 75 years.
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So many people, even people I know, say 'I want to write a play! I want to write a musical!', but when faced with the task shrink away from the challenge. this article did a good job at highlighting the reason behind that. Just wanting to write a musical isn't enough. You have to desire it, passionately strive forwards when the going gets thought. You need to have a goal in mind, something to strive for. Even if that goal is to be famous or make a killer set, you need that goal in mind or else you'll turn and skulk away the first wall you hit. It's similar to writing a novel, too, in the sense that once it's done being written you need the passion and drive to sell it at every turn to people who want to know why you deserve it. You have to own the project full heartedly, advocate for it, and in the end that passion will show through as clearly as having no drive does, and will give your show a shine that others may not have.
Sorry, I posted that on the wrong article...
It is very interesting reading this article about The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder and to know the scale of the different types of theatre he has written. To hear about Wilder’s extremely politically relevant show is interesting after seeing the Matchmaker this fall, which seemed a little light-hearted and less politically driven than how The Skin of Our Teeth. It is interesting to see how a playwright can have a very successful fluffy show, Matchmaker, and a show that does best when performed “under conditions of crisis”, The Skin of Our Teeth. I was struck when the article said that “ Krissy Vanderwarker, the production’s director, had decided to move the play historically forward in each act.” This seems like a little bit of an economic feat as the different time periods would seemingly have different style costumes, props and possibly set pieces that couldn’t necessarily be doubled up act to act. I wonder how much continuity was held through the acts with the changing decades/how much did the actor’s look change and I wonder how much of a struggle this was or wasn’t for the designers.
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