I've been cast in a staged reading and have been working on that script so it took a little longer to finish a play this time. I thought about doing the script I'm cast in but as that was an unpublished work in progress I had best let it be. So this time we've got Playing for Time, A Full-Length Stage Play adapted from the television film by Authur Miller, based on the book by Fania Fenelon. That is what is on the cover of the book. I picked this one up at a library sale.
This play brings up some thorny issues in the nature of reading, writing, and performing plays. It also brings into perspective the differences between a screenplay or teleplay vs. a stage play. The play is about the "girl's orchestra" that was formed at Auschwitz. It is based on a memoir by a woman who was actually in that orchestra. The television film caused some controversy because it starred Vanessa Redgrave as the main character despite being pro-Palestinian and in the author's eye wrong for the role.
The play is harrowing as one would expect from a play about life in a concentration camp. Humanity's ability to be positively vile in its relations to other is laid bare. The cruelty, degradation, and humiliation the characters endure is hard to imagine and even harder to stomach. The main character, Fania, is a mildly famous night club singer and pianist, at least in Parisian circles. She has been rounded up by the Nazi's toward the end of the war and sent to Auschwitz because she is half Jewish and also because of her involvement with the French Resistance. She befriends a naive and needy young woman, Marianne, on the train.
Because of her singing and playing skills she joins the "girls orchestra". This orchestra is a hot bed of status and power plays. Fania and the conductor Alma, the two most accomplished musicians there, have a wary relationship, each wanting to be in control but begrudgingly realizing that need each other to make the Orchestra work. This play is interesting in that there are no clear good characters. Psychological realism rules the day. No character is truly evil, or at least presented as such. Mengele is a character, someone who may be the embodiment of evil, but here he is fairly benign, wanting only to hear good music.
Miller's dialogue is terse and clear and the play is gripping and intense. Now we come to the thorns. I once worked with a director who said that one must throw out all the stage directions. I have worked with ones who too slavishly followed the stage directions. Ah, stage directions. What does one does with them? Should a writer put a lot in to maintain the clarity of his vision? Late 19th and early 20th century play are packed with stage directions. Shakespeare, Moliere, and their contemporaries used almost none. Most modern plays are have few of them. Beckett and Pinter are famous for having one frequent one: (Pause).
Then there is the issue of who is writing these things. Is it the playwright? Or the stage manager? In editions of plays published by Dramatist Services, Baker's Plays, Samuel French, and their ilk the text often comes from the stage manager's book and has been annotated with actual blocking notes: (crosses DR in front of the divan).These are published with an eye to producing a show that closely resembles earlier productions. They often include a set diagram and prop lists. Plays published by book publishers usually only include the stage directions written by the playwright so as to make his concept of the play clear to the actors and directors.
This play brings up some thorny issues in the nature of reading, writing, and performing plays. It also brings into perspective the differences between a screenplay or teleplay vs. a stage play. The play is about the "girl's orchestra" that was formed at Auschwitz. It is based on a memoir by a woman who was actually in that orchestra. The television film caused some controversy because it starred Vanessa Redgrave as the main character despite being pro-Palestinian and in the author's eye wrong for the role.
The play is harrowing as one would expect from a play about life in a concentration camp. Humanity's ability to be positively vile in its relations to other is laid bare. The cruelty, degradation, and humiliation the characters endure is hard to imagine and even harder to stomach. The main character, Fania, is a mildly famous night club singer and pianist, at least in Parisian circles. She has been rounded up by the Nazi's toward the end of the war and sent to Auschwitz because she is half Jewish and also because of her involvement with the French Resistance. She befriends a naive and needy young woman, Marianne, on the train.
Because of her singing and playing skills she joins the "girls orchestra". This orchestra is a hot bed of status and power plays. Fania and the conductor Alma, the two most accomplished musicians there, have a wary relationship, each wanting to be in control but begrudgingly realizing that need each other to make the Orchestra work. This play is interesting in that there are no clear good characters. Psychological realism rules the day. No character is truly evil, or at least presented as such. Mengele is a character, someone who may be the embodiment of evil, but here he is fairly benign, wanting only to hear good music.
Miller's dialogue is terse and clear and the play is gripping and intense. Now we come to the thorns. I once worked with a director who said that one must throw out all the stage directions. I have worked with ones who too slavishly followed the stage directions. Ah, stage directions. What does one does with them? Should a writer put a lot in to maintain the clarity of his vision? Late 19th and early 20th century play are packed with stage directions. Shakespeare, Moliere, and their contemporaries used almost none. Most modern plays are have few of them. Beckett and Pinter are famous for having one frequent one: (Pause).
Then there is the issue of who is writing these things. Is it the playwright? Or the stage manager? In editions of plays published by Dramatist Services, Baker's Plays, Samuel French, and their ilk the text often comes from the stage manager's book and has been annotated with actual blocking notes: (crosses DR in front of the divan).These are published with an eye to producing a show that closely resembles earlier productions. They often include a set diagram and prop lists. Plays published by book publishers usually only include the stage directions written by the playwright so as to make his concept of the play clear to the actors and directors.
As a general rule when acting I throw out the specific blocking notes, and try to follow the ones the playwright gives you.
What has all this to do with Playing for Time? I can't tell who did this adaptation or who is publishing this adaptation, but the stage directions are the most intrusive ones I have yet read. That includes Judevine. I feel like they came from the screenplay as they are very precise about certain images. In a screenplay you try to tell the story shot by shot, including things like closeups and certain visuals you want the director and editors to strive to present. In a play you have to let go of that because people are going to be look at one big stage picture and not look at one shot of, for example, someones hand.
This play is trying to have it both ways. It has a very large cast. There are lots of notes suggesting how certain effects might be achieved. Then there are very detailed descriptions of how certain moments should be played, that, as an actor terrify me. The playwright is asking for effects that are too specific, such as, Fania forces herself to turn to (the audience)... plays and sings ..."One Fine Day". In her inner agony, she is extraordinarily moving. Also this play must be incredibly long. Some stage directions describe long, silent or possibly ad-libbed scenes which,if well executed, would double or triple the plays length.
Playwrights should avoid flowery, excessively descriptive stage diretions, but stick to simple playable actions. (She cries) is much better than (She cries and in her sobs one hears the echoes of all her ancestors atoning for sins long since forgotten)
What has all this to do with Playing for Time? I can't tell who did this adaptation or who is publishing this adaptation, but the stage directions are the most intrusive ones I have yet read. That includes Judevine. I feel like they came from the screenplay as they are very precise about certain images. In a screenplay you try to tell the story shot by shot, including things like closeups and certain visuals you want the director and editors to strive to present. In a play you have to let go of that because people are going to be look at one big stage picture and not look at one shot of, for example, someones hand.
This play is trying to have it both ways. It has a very large cast. There are lots of notes suggesting how certain effects might be achieved. Then there are very detailed descriptions of how certain moments should be played, that, as an actor terrify me. The playwright is asking for effects that are too specific, such as, Fania forces herself to turn to (the audience)... plays and sings ..."One Fine Day". In her inner agony, she is extraordinarily moving. Also this play must be incredibly long. Some stage directions describe long, silent or possibly ad-libbed scenes which,if well executed, would double or triple the plays length.
The last thing that bothered me about the play was the last thing about the play or rather its last scene. The penultimate scene ends with Fania, very sick with typhus, being beaten by Marianne, who has assumed a position of power and is using it. It is followed by a brief monologue by Fania in which she quickly describes recovering and being liberated by the British. This is followed by a short scene in which she meets two fellow orchestra members who also survived for lunch. The suddenness of the shift and the incredible banality of the scene made me wonder if it was a post death fantasy or a real scene. Either interpretation left me with a distinct lack of catharsis or closure.
Okay, next play soon
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