As we launch into the final phase of production, she looks back at the beginning.

GENESIS OF THE SCRIPT:

I feel like, when I first began writing Mouse in a Jar, I’d left little breadcrumbs for myself, imbedded them secretly throughout the text because I wasn’t willing to admit what they were and this was what the play was about. I remember the first draft had a lot of supernatural elements to it. They’ve been mostly axxed. What was filtered out of that was a dark magical realism,where a family’s experience is translated in their world, specifically their basement apartment.

The first thoughts and images for MOUSE revolved around basements, Slavic food and the subterranean, nocturnal, urban animals that enter your home, uninvited. All these things, twisted in a different way than we’re used to seeing them. The basement apartment was especially vivid, with its pictures on the wall breathing in and out like bellies. And a certain…other thing. That shows up when the house gets nervous.

For a long time, I thought Mouse in a Jar was about the frustration of trying to ‘fix’ someone who wanted none of it. Then I realized the story was about the fixer and her dangerous determination to ‘fix’ the ‘broken.’ I think MOUSE looks a lot at excuses for taking the ‘easier’ way out and what’s behind our ferocity to defend that choice. Mouse in a Jar follows the relationship of two women for whom each other’s ‘easy way out’ is directly opposed and directly endangering the other.

With Mouse, I was personally less interested in finding the cause of Daga and Ma’s abnormalities than in pairing these two very different, oddly-behaving people with warring definitions of safety in a place such that each of their own goals was reliant upon the other changing her definition. And agency is a choice; when one character backs down to let the other pass, it’s like sending her off to the gallows. And when she stops her, it’s intrusion.

More recent, drastic changes to the script occurred with the character of Fip. He began as an awkward, impotent man-child. For the longest time, his name was Boy. His awkwardness has since morphed to inner disturbance and his impotence is no more. He’s more of a challenge to the other characters in the space. I think adding actors in the workshops – we’ve had two different sets – did great things for the characters. I just wasn’t comfortable having an actor play someone named Boy. He deserved a name and all the other aspects of a person. And the actors’ questions made me honest. I saw in myself my reasons for shirking him and I worked to fix it. I gave him more story, more meat, more of a chance to do damage and greatness.

It’s hard to say, at this point, what’s my own and what’s MOUSE. Memory is fickle.And so much has developed in the play. And there’s always a third and a fourth to every second side to a story. I’ll admit to a lot of psychology in the characters of Mouse in a Jar coming from my life and the lives of those in it. And, of course, the heritage. But I hope to one day write plays featuring Slavic people and immigrants with the breadth and honesty that August Wilson wrote African Americans and Adam Rapp Midwesterns, Jose Rivera Hispanics, where I can create people that shared my experiences and my America without them being seen as members of my life.

BECOMING A PLAYWRIGHT:

I wrote plays because I wrote too much. My first was for the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival. This was in 7^th grade. I had been bringing into my English class in Kearny, NJ something like 25 pages of heft on 2-page assignments. (My teacher didn’t know why I was writing so much – sufficed to say it wasn’t entirely because I loved writing but because it was a quiet, consuming activity away from other things.) So I wrote a 20-page play and got to perform it, a one-kid show, in the most casual of workshops after class (what the crap was a ‘workshop’ then?, I don’t know if either of us knew), reading all the parts aloud from my special kid binder. I got to be a special kid, with a binder. One of my favorite memories – thank you for conjuring it for me with your question. Later, in high school, I would write and tape mini-screenplays for class assignments, some in Spanish for an after-school adult literacy program, and others just for myself. I didn’t write as much in college until closer to its end. There were other things going on then. I eventually found playwriting again when those other things reached their worst peaks and I needed some anchor to the ground. My first play, “wander/standing,” began as an unintentionally-darkest-of-dark attempts to articulate something I didn’t understand and hoped to. I was horrified. I imagine it was like seeing your lungs after decades of smoking – when “wander/standing” was performed at the University of Chicago, I couldn’t believe how black and corroded the inside of my head was. But, unpleasant as it was, it was something real for me – a big change from the years before it when I’d been heavily destroying and lying to myself. I knew this was it – and it wasn’t because I’d been praised for it (‘mixed reviews’ – I won some awards but I thought the audience hated it). I was struck that it was able to dig deeper than anything or anyone since I started losing myself. Theatre became the realest thing I knew then. I knew I wouldn’t get into grad school with the play or get it produced anywhere. All I knew was I needed time. So I applied for The Merage Foundation’s Fellowship for the American Dream, a 2-year, $20,000 stipend awarded annually to 13 US immigrant students in pursuit of their American Dream and, to my shock and elation, I won. So I bought time. I hadn’t really received any formal instruction in the craft of writing plays – only ‘write and read aloud once’ workshops of short scenes at The University of Chicago. I don’t blame them – they did feed me heap-tons of theory! – and things like character arc and dramatic tension were mine to learn, I gathered. So, after graduating, I wrote extensively and participated in workshops at theatres in the city – namely, Chicago Dramatists and Victory Gardens Theater – in hopes of gaining more practice in the craft to supplement cerebral sects of drama I’d collected as an undergraduate. I maintained a bibliotarian diet, consuming a play a day usually on the CTA to and from part-time jobs. I did the migrant work of one’s 20s as an artist – it’s quite a list — in addition to a brief stint (and now, a friendship) assisting Aaron Carter, the Literary Manager of Victory Gardens evaluate new plays. I worked. And I wrote some real crap and appreciated everyone who read it. I baked many cookies at first. I could tell things were going well for me in the self-edification area, when people started to forget about the cookies. Sign of success to young playwrights: abatement of the cookie conditional. I’d enjoyed a few workshops and festival inclusions of my shorter work and, in December 2009, began my grad apps. In January, I was gifted with a month-long development at Red Tape Theatre of “Mouse in a Jar,” where I met you, Daria Davis, who taught me more about psychology and drama than anyone. I think you’ve sharpened my eye. Things are coming into greater focus in general. And, after a production with you and three years in New Haven…I just can’t wait.

Certainly a life of being told to not talk about things or just forget them shaped my desire to write. Without going into too much detail, I was instructed that certain secrets had to remain that way – at least in the eyes of those making the rules and acquiring the bacon – so any cuts or scrapes, figurative and literal, were to be mended by forgetting. A part of me still understands that – I wholly understood that growing up – but another part lashes out and rebels.  And I don’t think I’m the only one that deals with this. I imagine you could ask any customer servant, refugee, teacher, student and there’s been some time when someone had loomed above them, doling directions or criticisms unfairly, maybe maliciously. Why does the diner spear the waiter? Why does the man kick the puppy? Odd behaviors, socially unaccepted acts, general meanness – they fascinate me.

So why not be a psychologist? A social worker? Probably because people scare me. At least right now, at this age coupled with this awkwardness. And because the people in my head will always be there, as long as I want them. And I’m not trying to cure them. Just watch them, think about them. So I set their worlds, twisting them at will (I’m big on ‘environment’ in plays – place inspires me most, I think.  In “Mouse in a Jar,” the house breathes. It heaves sometimes, in fact.). And I open parts of myself that are usually kept self-consciously closed to people in my day-to-day. I should mention I’ve no exemption either.  I look at my own odd behavior in the same way. I look back to (and right at) the dangerous or mean, the ‘abnormal’ things I’ve done and do.

Now it is important to note that this is not a play about domestic violence. If it was the story would follow a more conventional path dumping us off at the moral: hitting people is bad. Instead this story happens to be grounded in a darker family dynamic, but the narrative investigates how these people chose to negotiate their lives against the backdrop of dysfunction, not the dysfunction itself.

That being said, it’s probably worth mentioning that I often come home form rehearsal with my stomach in knots because some of the work we do unearths shards of memory for me. A different time in my life where one false move only seemed to lead to another to another to another, until I found myself painted pretty desperately in to the corner not even sure what a way out would look like.

It’s a gut reaction as the viewer to boil these women’s problem’s down to victimization, but we are doing the story a huge disservice if we allow that. The truth here is that people are frustratingly complicated and they want things that often seem to nullify or eclipse other desires.

What is love in this basement? There’s nothing cheap or shallow about it. It’s got the same complexity as any other love, perhaps the stakes are just higher, perhaps there’s just so much more to lose here. But I would guess that’s not the truth, we all want the same things when we love someone, consistency, reciprocation, perfection. Often we will turn a blind eye to the imperfections of our partners or the complaints of others just to hold onto the dream of our love. I think it’s hard to admit how little perspective we can have in those situations, how much we will sweep under the carpet for a shot at connection. That’s what’s going on in this basement and sometimes those knots in my stomach as I bike home are in recognition of my own story and sometimes there about all of us.

So how do you survive day to day in a dark world?

By laughing your head off.

When someone is so deeply entrenched in a certain way of life – a dark life, let’s say, in a sinisterly magical basement apartment — she finds whatever treats lay in the trash and transforms them into tricks. They become armor, an arsenal. They become the stuff of dark humor – ways of diffusing the soul-shrapnelizing sadness of life without numbing yourself to its truth in the process. At one point in Mouse in a Jar, one of the sisters considers the most efficient vehicle for the rat poison she hopes her unresponsive mother will finally feed her husband:

Hey, Ma, dumplings?, I know those

you just like stuff, seal, ‘n sew

but sausage?    Spikin sausage?

That’s  like, expertly-hard-to-pull-off though

He eats that first  so

‘Could shave a couple minutes off. I think. Ya know?

…

Hey, maybe you could bread it? Like, into it? Like mix some bread crumbs ‘n some rat-kill ‘n like roll the thing like, into it?

There’s nothing funny about the man who fathered you asphyxiating on your kitchen floor. And what laughter could possibly come from witnessing the bruised body of your mother at his hands? But Mouse in a Jar is not a murder plot. Nor is it “about” domestic abuse. With respect to diverse people with diverse histories in diverse situations, the play doesn’t make light of the world’s terrors. But you certainly didn’t need me to tell you that abuse is wrong. Compassionate, humane person that you are, you know that. Why would anyone over age five attend a play featuring the alphabet? Well-orthographically-versed person that you are, you know B follows A and C follows B so why in the world see a play set in a kindergarten classroom?

Because there may be a kid in there with a story to tell you.

Mouse in a Jar has a story to tell you.

And it’s not that abuse is bad.

I hope to see you in the audience. Unless I explode in the plane to Chicago. Or go blind mid-show. Kidding.

I tend to work very collaboratively, and I get the most joy out of crafting a play with an ensemble of creative thinkers. I’ve found that the most collaborative place is a room full of people trying to crack open a new work. If you are lucky (and I am in this instance) you have a solid, trusting, creative relationship with a playwright, and for me there is nothing for satisfying than being allowed to act as a sounding board for that artist as they chart a path for a new piece.

Martyna and I met last winter through Red Tape’s Fresh Eyes Project which I now produce. It’s an incubator series designed to give a playwright a month of focused development time for their work. I had the extreme fortune of falling into a directing slot with the festival last year and work-shopped this new play called MOUSE IN A JAR. I say fortune because as I’ve often said, Martyna’s style and approach to playwrighting completely gels with my own aesthetic. From that first adolescent draft I’ve felt that I know what to do with this play in an intrinsic way that I sometimes have to work for in other scripts.

I’ve learned a lot about artistic process through our many script revision meetings, and workshops. What I can say for sure is that the number one goal for a revision or a set design or casting or blocking or whatever, is to help the playwright write the play they are writing, or to help the playwright realize the vision they are envisioning. I never consider a play to be my work. I consider it to be a carefully crafted expression of the writer’s words, that I have the extreme fortune to safeguard.

MOUSE, being a new play, requires that we approach the structure of all our investigations with some flexibility. The dramaturgy for this show is no different, and Caitlin’s dramaturgical mode allows for our actor packet to function much more as a living document. I thought I’d include her notes from week one of Storyturgy below. Feel free to peruse the links and imagine yourself huddled with us around a table watching Portishead videos  and listening to Caitlin weave creepy fairy tales in her exceptional storytelling voice!

Caitlin Says:

Each week we’ll be examining a different story telling tradition and how that particular kind of story works with MiJ. This first week was fairy tales.

Because:
1. They are traditionally the first stories we hear as children.
2. They began as oral storytelling, as does MiJ with Zosia’s and Daga’s monologues.
3. Fairy tales are perhaps the most symbol-laden stories, and the best way to kick start imagination.
4. Storyturgy should be stimulating, but also fun, and what’s more fun than fairy tales?
5. A big question in the past two weeks has been the space: the sentient qualities, the audience, the pulse of wood, the breath of stone, and the notion that we are being watched even when we’re alone. In fairy tales, be the surrounding terrain castle walls or the deep, dark woods, there are always eyes in the shadows.

Jumping off point:

“Come now, my child
if we were planning to harm you,
do you think we’d be lurking here
beside the path
in the very darkest part of the forest?”

- Kenneth Patchen

Thought no. 1:
It is always the past. In a fairy tale there is no prevention of horror or strife, it is coming. It has already happened. It is a memory.

Once upon a time
Not that long ago, really*
Before she knew she was my mother*

(text from MOUSE*)

Thought no. 2:
The forest, the basement, the theater–they have eyes, they have hands, their breath is on our necks.

How is this horror? How is this comfort?

Thought no. 3:

Once upon a time…
Not that long ago, really…*
Before she knew she was my mother…*

…there was a girl. She was the most loved of multiple children. And she made the ultimate sacrifice for noble reasons. We are told she came to a good end.

How many fairy tales have that story? Is that the story of our own particular fairy tale?

The supplementary materials were clips from:

Jean Cocteau’s “La belle et la bete” (1946), full film available on YouTube, Part One here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaG3zns3fqA

Chris Cunningham’s music video for “Only You,” song by Portishead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wk2DqAfPUk

Also, two fairy tales were read aloud.

“The Story of a Mother” by Hans Christian Andersen
http://hca.gilead.org.il/sandhill.html (This link is a version of the story, although not the one I used in rehearsal).

“How Children Played Butcher with Each Other” (2 versions) The Brothers Grimm
http://alderwounds.livejournal.com/3075.html
Suggested Reading for the week: “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” by Robert C. O’Brien

It’s amazing what a couple of feet let alone inches can do to open up a space and create the right dynamic. It’s also amazing what this play continues to do to me as we dig into each scene and try to lay the physical groundwork of who moves where and why. I come in to rehearsal with a sense of the skeletal movement of the piece, aware that as the actors give my direction a shot we may discover that another set of moves feels better, or that the moment plays better a couple of feet or even inches in a different direction.

When a beat in the scene lands we can all feel it resonating, almost buzzing in the air. It’s a giddy energizing feeling, and after three hours of hard work last night we finished with one of those moments.

Which is why Cynthia and I had plenty of energy to move the table around the space for 1/2 an hour after the actors had gone, and why at 11:00 I started walking through the blocking I anticipate for our Sunday rehearsal with Ma and HIM ( a man the size of fear with no face).  As I was walking and talking about how we will try to execute his almost catastrophic entrances and exits, I realized I was going to cry a little. One of the things that has drawn me to this play is my overwhelming visceral reaction to the images Martyna has so artfully woven through the text. HIM is one of the scariest things I’ve imagined since I was a child terrified to leave my bed in the middle of the night.

I was showing Cynthia some of the movement I want to try with our actor Don, and as I was talking through it using Cynthia as a stand in for Ma we both got chills, and agreed the combination of a man with no face, and the pooling darkness in the Red Tape space was a little too much for the end of a long day.

To try and capture a little of Martyna’s extremely effective aesthetic I’ve uploaded some images she put together for me back in March when we first started thinking about how the show should look. I shared these images with our production team and they’ve used some of it as a jumping off point for our design that certainly gives me the chills.

We are also dealing with a new play and though we’ve all been through several workshop drafts (some of us going on 10 plus drafts of scene seven) information that seems familiar can sometimes feel foreign once we are on our feet. I am enjoying this process of new discovery and I have the gift of expert actor brains collaborating with me to help unpack what can suddenly feel like a newly inscrutable moment.

Today we start the second half of the scene which includes a mother bound and gagged, a painful moment of intimacy, and the retaliation of the space itself.

Scene three is an intricate little thing. We talked about the quality of attacks these women wage against each other and how the underlying yearning to be allowed in and have a shared intimacy, leads to some truly cruel acts.

One image I came away with last night is of Daga and Ma, Daughter and Mother. In the act of pressing their advantage, one steps just half a foot over the line and the other, seeing a vulnerability, beats the first back into a retreat. It’s the quality of that vulnerability I find so compelling. As soon as one woman can get the other to engage, answer a direct question or take a definitive stand, they’ve slipped up. Allowing themselves to be vulnerable in the act of caring.

At about midnight I dropped Martyna off at the Red Line for the last time. I am sad to see her go, we’ve worked very closely together on this script and I’ve come to expect her voice in the rehearsal room handing me edits and cookies at the same time.

But it’s also an exciting new chapter in the story of this piece.  I’ve  certainly gotten my hands dirty dramaturging this show for the last 10 months and rummaging through the text with Martyna, refining narrative and meaning. Now that the actors  are putting all those words and images on their feet, we’ve crossed over into new territory, away from the safety of edits and into the beating heart of this piece.

Pictures from last night to come later today!