Medusalogue 2

by Ian Miller, Plaigiarist company member

We’ve had a lot of fun playing with the form and structure of this play and have decided there’s no need to conform to ridged type but rather create a menagerie of ideas and style. The difficultly will be making the voice of the play singular and consistent and we’re lucky to have an first hand material and two centuries to help guide our process.

I’ve very much enjoyed this process and think work shopping a script at various stages of development is critical to make ideas clear and simultaneously expansive. I recall learning about the great masters Michelangelo, Veroocchio, Bruegel, and what thriving, living things their studios were. No one artist worked on a single painting or sculpture but many hands and many voices shaped the masterpieces.  The myth of the lonely, solitary artist is a modern illusion. We live in an age that prizes the image of the auteur, the entrupenure, the outlaw over cultural identity and responsibility . The misfits and mavericks have their place but have been fetishized for too long.  Tolstoy claims that the higher up someone is, the more helpless he or she is –that all decisive momentum and inertia are in mass. A sentiment that I’m confidant he shared spiritually with the ancient art of Drama. The Wreck of the Medusa Jr.

Medusalogue

By Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer & project facilitator

A sample draft of what we’re reading on Monday…

CORRÉARD: It started with the boy. Others will say it started sooner, sitting at anchor for a week, or with the storm as soon as we left port, or with the ridiculous maneuvers around Medeira, but that was all just plain silliness and bad luck. No journey is short on small mishaps, just that we forget them when we arrive safely. We look back on failed enterprises with more care, every tiny thing becomes engraved on our memory and where we find a gap, we fill it in with our imaginations. The storm didn’t matter, everyone acquitted themselves competently. Many thought Madeira would be the end of Richefort’s influence on the Captain and so saw it as a necessary evil. But when we lost the boy, that’s when the air began to grow thin and poisonous, when the crew’s muttering became audible to the passengers. We were all watching porpoises at play and he fell out of one of the portholes. A sailor caught him but couldn’t hold on. He then caught a rope, but we were moving so fast. He could not hold on. He slipped away. He was just fifteen. A signal was made to acquaint the Echo with this accident, but that vessel was at a considerable distance. The we were going to fire a gun to second the signal, but there was not one loaded. However, we threw out the life buoy and then turned the ship and lowered a boat – six-oared barge that they only put three men in. They didn’t even find the buoy. He seemed a strong swimmer, but of course that only means that it probably took him much longer to drown. I found out later that the ship is to be turned the moment one cries, “Man Overboard” but it took us some time. This, and the poorly organized rescue, and our distance from the rest of our convoy, this is what killed the boy. Henry says he was lucky not to be part of the tragedy that followed. I believe that he was the beginning of the story that ended with us out there, abandoned just as he was, and always think on him as the first of us to die.

Slowly but surely

Slowly But Surely, A Pattern Emerges…

by Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer & project facilitator

Our theory turns out to work. By articulating what scenes, moments, outside elements, and information we want to see in the play, and then expanding on what those might look like, a shape for the play emerges. We discussed a number of styles, approaches, and works it might resemble, everything from Tectonic Theatre’s Laramie Project & Gross Indecency to The Wire to Sunday In The Park With George, but nothing seemed to fit all the elements we were looking to include. Finally we decided that our structure should follow ideas and characters rather than chronology and not hold to a single style of performance. Sort of collage meets Arabian Nights meets Charles Mee. Looking back now it seems inevitable – in fact we did discuss it briefly – but we needed to see how the demands of the story made it necessary. I am continually amazed at how this group comes to consensus with so little effort on the part of the facilitators. For today, everyone’s going to bring in an exploded scene. I can’t wait….

In the meantime, Gaper’s Block did a story on us, written by the amazing Laura Pearson. Check it out here.

A sample, if you like

by Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer and project facilitator

What have we been doing this week? I’m calling it “exploding scenes.” We get into small groups, define the scene a little, and then try to think of everything that might go into the scene - where the characters are at in their journey, what their motivations, relationships and opinions might be, what the historical context is, why the scene seems important to the play as a whole, what information & themes might be covered, and all the iterations of structure we can think of. Then we present to the group as a whole and get even more ideas, critiques, and questions. The result is a clear guide, everything you might need to write a scene. Here’s an example:

Survivors Awarded Legion of Honor

Scene: In 1831, the survivors of the raft were awarded the Legion of Honor. After the ceremony some of the survivors gather and talk at a public house.

Characters:

-Correard: Freshly returned from England, has gotten into trains but is still politically active. Is he unhinged & obsessed still? Or has he calmed down? Has he returned because Charles X is dead and the Bourbons are out of power, because of the medal, or both? Or neither?
-De Savigny: embittered, ill, no longer mayor of Soubise.
-Du Bellay: A mystery. Quits Schmaltz and Senegal and then vanishes from our records. Is he still apologizing? Does he feel worthy? Guilty? Has he become a revolutionary? Does he have a Judas/Simon peter problem? What is his relationship to the government & society as a whole?

Scene Details:

Do they enter one at a time or in a group or in groups? Is someone already there? Did they all anticipate meeting there or does one of them crash the conversation? Are they intoxicated? Is Du Bellay’s level of drunkenness/obnoxiousness at odds with the others? 

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Week One, Done

Week One, Done - 11 Characters and 57 scenes

By Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer & project facilitator

So the first week was dedicated to discovering what this play is about. We came up with a lot of answers, here are some of them:

Main Characters

• J.B. HENRY DE SEVIGNY, ship’s surgeon and raft survivor
• CHARLOTTE PICARD, Medusa passenger and memoirist
• THÉODORE GÉRICAULT, painter
• ALEXANDER CORRÉARD, engineer and raft survivor
• COLONEL JULIEN-DÉSIRÉ SCHMALTZ, merchant and French Governor of Senegal
• GRIFFON DU BELLAY, Schmaltz’s clerk and raft survivor
• François Joseph de Gratet, vicomte Dubouchage, Navy Minister,
• Viscount HUGUES DUROY DE CHAUMAREYS, Frigate-Captain, Captain of the Medusa
• ÉLIE DECAZES, Minister of Police, later Prime Minister
• LIEUTENANT JOSEPH PIERRE ANDRÉ REYNAUD, second in command of The Medusa, Commander of the Governor’s barge
• Richefort, Medusa passenger

Important Events & Scene Ideas

• Appointment of De Chaumereys as Captain of The Medusa
• The Medusa departs
• Schmaltz lowered into the lifeboat while sitting in his armchair
• Raft abandoned by the other boats
• Unveiling of the painting
• Correard/De Sevigney look at the painting for the first time
• Someone ignorant of the event observes the painting
• Richefort presents the Captain with the raft idea
• Richefort gains Captain’s ear/control of him
• De Sevigny decides to cut rations to the ones he judges too weak aboard the raft
• Nightfall of the first day on the raft
• Storm on the raft

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