Moving Right Along

I've been reading about Fernand Leger all morning, tryng to find those seeds of his life and his art that would push "All Grace" along. Little dates of marriages and affairs, of joining the Communist party, of being friends with Lipchitz. The greatest friendship of his life was with the poet, Blaise Cendrars. Part of me wants to look at Cendrars' poetry to see if it can be incorporated into the play somehow.

This whole process has been figuring out what can fit into this play. What goes in, what stays out? Leger's "Four Colourless Years" in the army seems very important to me, but how does that mix with everything else? With Lipchitz' experiences as a child, especially the episode in which he is carried out into a field during a storm as his grandmother calls out to nature to "Heal him."

Both Leger and Lipchitz share a love of the circus and acrobats, which I don't know how to explore. There are great tiny anecdotes about Lipchitz' life, particularly of seeing an old beggar called "Yenta the Crazy" praying before a Catholic Church. Lipchitz was livid, but Yenta told him, "I'm old. Who knows who's there on the other side." (Patai 61) Lipchitz also had a run in with an old hermit who called himself St. Michael. These are amazing moments, but do we SEE them happening before us, or are these stories Lipchitz TELLS during the course of the play? Do we SEE the fire that destroys Lipchitz' studio? Do we SEE the moment in WWI that Leger is gassed? Do we SEE the creation of the art? I want to see them creating the art. I don't want this to be one of those plays where you have a great painter, but you never see them paint. I want paint onstage and clay onstage. I want actors climbing and interacting with art.

I've seen pictures of Leger's sets for theatre and ballet and they are enlightening. Cartoony in a sense. "Leger Clouds" descend from the sky with heavy, weighty black outlines. The world is distorted, yet feels primal, native. His costume and set designs make me consider the style of "All Grace." I don't want a "realistic" telling of the story or the events. I want something that feels like a dream, that exists in the present as much as the past, an event that is alive with visuals that speak as much as the words of the play.

The first monologue I have written, Couturier speaking to the audience, turned out much differently than I had planned. I didn't plan on music or projections or those exact words to be said. I started with a skeleton of direct quotes from "Sacred Art" by Couturier himself. Then, I adapted these quotes into a single speech to the audience sitting in the theatre. This speech was meant to be like the Homebody in Kushner's "Homebody/Kabul." A character that gives a rich history that informs what is to follow. I feel it still does that, but wonder if there needs to be more in-depth talking about the history. I feel like I've merely scratched the surface of possibility, but wonder where the play will be if I extend that opening. I know that each part of the play can exist in a different world and there doesn't need to be direct connections between scenes and moments (something I re-learned as I wrote "Solamente Una Vez"). But I wonder about the arc of the play itself. Where is it going to end up? What is the final argument? I have chosen three distinct stories to tell, but I'm still not quite sure of the gel that holds them together. Part of me wonders if I should approach this as three distinct plays. Even to the point of using different files altogether. One for Lipchitz, one for Leger, one for Couturier. I remember, my friend, and probably my favorite writer in the workshop, Anton Jones, told me that he keeps certain scenes in separate files until the end when he pieces the play together. Maybe I need this sort of disconnection to understand what binds them.

I hear different voices, different tools calling out for each story. Part of my hesitation in writing the scenes I see is not having a sense of "tradition?" Is that what I mean? I feel like I have to find a play, or a scene that speaks to me and a structure that I can write these scenes with. Earlier, I investigated Tarantino and Caryl Churchill as possible structural/stylistic muses, but I don't feel that connection as strongly now that I've put words to the page. My mind has been flipping through images and scenes and words that I've experienced, desperately trying to find that muse, that connection.

With "Solamente Una Vez," I combined the movies "Spanglish" and "Closer" in my mind and created a play that was my own view of those movies, their concerns, their styles, their arguments. I don't know where to look for the "tradition," which is the only word I can think of to describe what I'm looking for. Which writers, which plays? I have so many plays on my shelves and wonder which has the key to unlock the images that are pounding on the door of my mind, demanding to be let loose onto the page...