no_sin_but | (no subject)

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Marlowe is not, and has never been, a continuous writer. He's too full of energy for that, too quick and hurried with that impossible perfectionistic streak. Instead, he writes in episodes of fevered inspiration countered by episodes of staring and thinking.

Tonight, he is in the latter.

He is sitting in his chair, leaning it back with his leg braced against the table to keep from toppling. Hands linked behind his head, eye bright and sharp and far away.

On the table, there are papers. His play, scattered here there and everywhere, and Darren's letters.

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That he did.

"Anything particular you have in mind?"

"There's a good company in Montreal putting on Ten Lost Years. I don't think you'll ever have seen anything quite like it."

Which is always just exciting.

"Not hard," he points out, but he's smiling as he says it.

"Don't I feel cultured. Ten Lost Years is... well, it's by Barry Broadfoot. Historical context- in the year 1929 there was a drought, crop failure, economic recession, general starvation, etcetera. It lasted ten years. We call them the dirty thirties, and the Great Depression. This is a collection of first hand stories about the time, stitched into a play. It's sort of like looking at a patchwork quilt, whereas your plays are frescoes. Does that make sense?"

Carefully,

"Very."

A quilt, instead of....

Hmm.

"Little scenes that aren't really the same thing but bleed into each other. A woman here complaining about being unable to wash the dust out of her clothes and then a father talking about going to get welfare and then a scene in a welfare office of a screaming argument, and then a man and woman getting married, to find out they both were widowers with nine children who'd accidentally swindled each other and then another monologue about a woman whose husband died in a coal mine."

He was in Ten Lost Years once.

"Sounds utterly fascinating."

"I think you'll like it."

Maybe it's a little dark, maybe not.

"It's a very interesting theatre movement. I have a book on Collective somewhere. I'll dig it out for you."

Marlowe likes dark. He really does.

"It was a whole movement? The subject or the style?"

"Well, both. Ten Lost Years isn't a true example of it, since it was compiled by the author, but the Collective movement really started in North America around the same time. The Farm Show, Paper Wheat, and generally anything to do with Theatre Passe Muraille... it was a company in a small town that started letting the actors build the plays as they went along. Their own characters, experiences and voices threaded into the piece."

He nods.

"No kings or nobles, just... true folk."

"You could theoretically have one about kings and nobles, if you got a whole bunch of kings and nobles together and chucked them into a room and told them to make a play. And you can have kings and nobles appearing, but usually in the context of being overheard or interacted with by one of the 'true folks.' That's just rarer. Most of them center around farmers and similar such."

Which can be problematic, but is interesting to watch once in a while.

"You don't see new ones very often, and you never see good new ones, but a few of the best old scripts have survived."

"And that would be the main different between your theatre and mine. We only had new plays."

"New plays are quite rare, and usually underfunded. I think the problem is that the world isn't undergoing any serious strife at the moment, so all our modern drama is badly told rememberances of what did happen, or over dramatic explanations of fairly tedious modern problems. Oh, you know what you have to see? Stones in his Pockets. I think I have a script for that somewhere."

Train of thought derailed.

Marlowe is...bemused by this. The differences, not the train of thought derailing. He is used to that.

"Oh?"

"Two hander, thirty characters, of all different ages and genders, usually handed to two young men."

Hilarious.

"Up to six characters a scene, all represented impeccably. I'll see if the production I saw is still running."

Marlowe laughs.

"Oh, please do. That would be..."

Hilarious.

"The seductions are absolutely hysterical. There's nothing like a middle aged balding man playing a dazzling young woman. And there are honestly heart wrenching moments too- there's a young man who walks into a river with Stones in his Pockets, hence the title. The audience honestly cries sometimes. It's wonderful- artfully sustained borderline hysteria throughout, and when the tension finally snaps it's not in the direction you expect it to go and you're just thrown."

"I'd like to see that."

"I'll see what I can do."

There's so much theatre out there. Kit clearly needs to see all of it.

"Thank you."

"My pleasure."

And it is.

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