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Final Thoughts..

Final Thoughts As We Depart From The Raft (Temporarily)

by Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer & project facilitator

Crunch time. We spent the week leading up to the reading examining and discussing written scenes and asking ourselves what essential scenes were missing. We then selected the strongest and most representative scenes to present, with some narrative description to help the audience follow the story. I was so nervous at the reading and immediately afterwards that I had some trouble putting my thoughts about it together. We chose to spend more time in development and less time rehearsing than I had originally planned, and as a result, we hadn’t done a complete run-through of the entire piece with the narration. Although, perhaps this was a blessing as I was terribly impressed by the work our readers did, committing impressively (in some cases to dialogue we had already decided was deeply flawed) and bringing real depth and dimensionality to the text. In fact, there were several scenes that worked much better in the reading than we had imagined. And the audience response seemed very positive – their criticisms were specific, which is usually a good sign that you haven’t battered or baffled them.

The one regret I have is that in our scene selection process, we failed to consider the shape of the piece we were presenting.

We all have an idea of what the show inevitably will be (even if those ideas are a little different from person to person), and therefore understood how these scenes would fit into a larger whole. What we failed to consider is that the scenes we picked were mostly about one of our 11 central characters. And so, from the audience’s perspective, even with the narrative passages that describe the other characters’ journeys, our play about the wreck of the Medusa became a play about Alexander Correard, with a lot of extraneous stuff thrown in.

However, we did discover we were on the right track about a lot of stuff. We didn’t end up using any of the Gericault/painting scenes in the reading (they weren’t ready), even though his story is integral to our play, and the audience was sad not to have more discussion of him and his painting. Knowing this is an element the audience is hungry for and expecting more of that party of the story is helpful.

The other positive lesson I drew from the evening had to do with our inclusion of a scene Moncrieff’s melodramatic musical, The Wreck of the Medusa, or The Fatal Raft! We had debated internally quite a bit whether including scenes from this play actually served our play, but the audience response to the scene was a huge argument in favor of including it. Several people pointed out that the first half has a lot of comedy in it, as we laugh at the arrogance and ineptitude of those in charge and the ironic commentary of some of the survivors, but that the second half turns deadly serious, even disturbing, and scenes from the Moncrieff play help break the tension without breaking the mood, as they are used as an ironic counterpoint to the true horror those on the raft experienced. Of course, there’s nothing like being a playwright and being told over and over that people’s favorite part of the play was the part you didn’t write, but we’ve no-one to blame but ourselves…

In the end, I am incredibly happy with how things went. To have the chance to sit with a group of peers and theorize and talk shop and create together is a blessing. My only regret is that we had to stop. And for the reading - there is no feeling like hearing words you’ve crafted delivered with care by talented actors to an attentive audience. We always knew that what we presented would be a work in progress, but I also feel that we’re much further along than we have any right to be as a result of this opportunity.