"That's not bad, but it isn't good either."
-In Control
As I prepare for the reading on Saturday, when In Control 2.0 (the revision, not the sequel, don't worry) will mark the official beginning of its development, I couldn't help but look back at the first drafts of the play. As I mentioned in a post yesterday, the show could not have been more different. A hundred and thirty pages in its uncut form, the style and sensibility could not have been more different. Taking refuge in a surrealistic, free-form often vulgar stream of consciousness, the "Untitled Cancer Musical Comedy," as it was known then, contained a tap-dancing archangel, a girl whose hair was on fire, misadventures with Icy-Hot, a two-headed ghetto-talking mallrat, and a rival garage band made up of obscure celebrity impersonators. Rest assured that NONE of these are still in the show.
Why such a random assortment of items and such a huge length? I'm not going to say "because we didn't know better," because, frankly, we did. We knew those things were absurd and laughable, and we loved them for it. Rather, it was because of two key points: genre and location. We hadn't written the "Untitled Cancer Musical Comedy" to see it played out on stage as we had described. We had written it for a pseudo-radio-theatre setting, gatherings on patios, in basements and living rooms, when four people and a guitar would provide the dozens of characters and locations using nothing but our voices, our instruments and the imaginations of the audience. Radio theatre and other "theatre of the imagination" genres (audio drama, podcasts, even some television shows with tiny production teams and performing rosters like "South Park") have a long history of surrealist absurdity, and I saw myself as the head writer of such a team, following in the footsteps of "The Goon Show" or "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." But naturally, as I mentioned yesterday, that sort of stylistic approach almost never works onstage, hence the massive changes between "Untitled Cancer Musical Comedy" and "In Control."
Why such a random assortment of items and such a huge length? I'm not going to say "because we didn't know better," because, frankly, we did. We knew those things were absurd and laughable, and we loved them for it. Rather, it was because of two key points: genre and location. We hadn't written the "Untitled Cancer Musical Comedy" to see it played out on stage as we had described. We had written it for a pseudo-radio-theatre setting, gatherings on patios, in basements and living rooms, when four people and a guitar would provide the dozens of characters and locations using nothing but our voices, our instruments and the imaginations of the audience. Radio theatre and other "theatre of the imagination" genres (audio drama, podcasts, even some television shows with tiny production teams and performing rosters like "South Park") have a long history of surrealist absurdity, and I saw myself as the head writer of such a team, following in the footsteps of "The Goon Show" or "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." But naturally, as I mentioned yesterday, that sort of stylistic approach almost never works onstage, hence the massive changes between "Untitled Cancer Musical Comedy" and "In Control."