BEATNIK BLUES--Spring Play 2018--Behind the Scenes

 

Here’s how Beatnik Blues happened.

At the end of 2017, our school went to see a production of Mary Poppins. Lydia SunderRaj was in it and while I was watching the production, the background of the set looked steampunk to me. I started toying with the idea of a steampunk play for Hyland (that might still happen someday).

Since it was Lydia’s last year and since she played guitar, I knew it would be smart to incorporate her guitar-playing into the Hyland play. So on that day, my first thought was a girl acquiring a guitar in some sort of steampunk plot.

Later, I felt like the steampunk angle wasn’t necessary. But I guess the aura of that genre made me consider the guitar from a more mystical angle. What if a girl inherited a guitar with special powers? What if the guitar could make songs literally come to life?

That sounded like it could be pretty fun, but since I wasn’t going with steampunk anymore, I needed a strong setting. I ended up pondering the Beatnik world. The more I thought about it, the more I liked putting this particular plot in that particular setting.

I started asking the students if any of them could play instruments. I was very happy to find out that Caitlyn Taylor, the other senior, could play the saxophone. I knew Tiffany Bennett played bass and I soon found out Cambrey Reitmair could play piano.

The first full-length play Dad and I wrote for Hyland was a murder mystery called Dead Lawyers. A murder mystery seemed to want a scene in which there was the reading of a will. Since this felt somewhat cliché, we avoided it. But Beatnik Blues needed the scene. So, after all this time, I gave in.

A lot of the plot came from my dad’s influence. He was deeply involved in music and stage in the 1950s and even wrote poetry that would have fit right in with the coffee shops of the time. He even taught himself how to hypnotize people. All of this had a huge influence on the plot. It wasn’t until I had been working on the play for a while that I realized my dad was probably a Beatnik at heart. I even used one of his poems in the play. It’s the one called “You Big Fat Crows” as read by Roach.

To get more ideas, I read a book about Beatniks and skimmed another. Although, like a lot of history, there were shady aspects of the time period, I took the stuff I wanted and incorporated those things into the play. I got almost all of the character names from actual Beatniks.

Early in the outlining process, I decided the climactic scene would take place in the protagonist’s subconscious. Every year it’s hard to come up with something different for the “big” scene. This time, I think I was remembering a concert I went to with a good friend of mine, Brent Wilcox We went to see a musician named Newton Faulkner and at one point he did an audience participation thing that worked really well. I found something on YouTube where Bobby McFerran did something similar.

If you have a play about Beatniks, you have to have a coffee shop. I think the movie So I Married an Ax Murderer put that in my head a long time ago. That led to the Brew-Ha-Ha. I just found out that most of the cast didn’t know this was actually a word (brouhaha) meaning “a sensational event.” They just thought it was a funny-sounding word with “brew” in it to imply a coffee house.

For more research, I watched Funny Face which has some Beatnik elements. The protagonist (played by Audrey Hepburn) works at a book store. That led to Ballycumber Books.

Once I have a general outline, I always sit down and brainstorm possibilities of characters for each actor. Then I let them shape the story as well. The actors themselves also help shape the story along the way, which is a huge help.

The main character of any story needs to change throughout the plot, so Marni had to be exceptionally shy at the beginning and become confident by the end. In an early draft the guitar made her into a kind of Dr. Jekel / Mr. Hyde mess, but that didn’t work.

Jack Keroac had to be in the play. John Corso was based on him. Keroac actually did become cynical about his own fame, so I gave that to Corso. At one point in the play, Corso even says “I’ve seen a lot of strange things on the road.” Corso’s famous book is Through the Storm.

When I started writing the scenes in Marni’s subconscious, I just kind of let characters wander in and out. When Magnus showed up, I knew I had my antagonist. It made sense to me that this snobby family lawyer would represent the greatest threat to Marni’s confidence.

The Beatniks would be wearing a lot of black so giving the subconscious a black background wouldn’t work. That led to us hanging long sheets of fabric. The idea was a kind of a jellyfish setting with levels. It did not turn out like I imagined it. It actually turned out better than I was picturing it.

In the rough draft, Andre was more of an annoying super-Beatnik. In the final draft, I tried to make him a more likeable love-interest. That way when it was revealed he was merely a song and had to leave, the audience would feel some of the pain Marni felt.

When I write a play, I usually pick a certain album or style of music to write to. I listened to a lot of jazz—mainly Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, and Thelonius Monk.

For the songs Marni would be writing, I used a lot of different ideas. Most of the time, I came up with the chords and then the lyrics. The lyrics for “Bonkers” was fun. They were a combination of the be-bop from Jungle Book, Shakespeare, and 1950s commercial slogans.

Mark Phillips as always was an incredible help. He took the sloppy fragments of my chords and made them into actual music.

I remember two songs that were specifically influential when I was writing Marni’s songs. The first chord of “Dazzle” was influenced by a song called “14 Days” by Science for Girls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJKirm73xMU
The style of “Ain’t No Doubt” was influenced by a song called “That’s Right” by Swingrowers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jy8pK7tTzg

Additional bits that were inside “jokes”:

The name of Magnus’s firm is called Pipp, Pipp, and Mundershug. Mundershug was the name of a character in the senior play Honor Among Thieves. It was also the name of the mannequin in The Pinocchio Project.

I wanted to include a scene in an art gallery called The Artery (where everything comes from the heart), but that didn’t work out.

Maxx tearing pages out of his book is based on an actual thing. In the 1950s a Beatnik author published a book to be read on the subway and then thrown away so that critics couldn’t get to it.

Initially, at the Brew-Ha-Ha, names for the open mic were going to be just drawn out of a hat. I thought Beatniks would do something a lot more weird and original. I randomly made it a boot and then made it Marlon Brando’s boot since he played a Beatnik-type character in the movie The Wild One.  

Ennui Malaise was a tribute to the French influence on the Beatniks. The striped black shirts among Beatniks were influenced by French fishermen. The word “ennui” means extreme boredom and discontent. The word “malaise” means a general feeling of discomfort.

For the record, I thought the cast did fantastic.

Here are some of my favorite parts:

Marni singing the last song—"The First Song.”

Elanor interacting with the Beatniks.

Francesca first at the mic in the Brew-Ha-Ha.

Cleo dodging Corso’s questions about whether or not she’s read his book.

Magnus saying, “You never were” and then getting eaten by Doubt.

Andre being revealed as a song.

Corso reading the ketchup bottle.

Cassady in despair saying, “Elise, you lost the songs!” (which was not in the script)

Avery saying “cellar door” (inside joke among English majors—these 2 words are considered by

linguists to be the 2 most beautiful words in the English language)

Bronson saying, “I always wanted to be a Third.”

Roach performing his knock-knock poem.

Elise telling Maxx her name has 7 L’s.

Trixie being excited when she gets Corso’s pen. (which was not in the script)

Victoria with the golf ball in her hat.

Ennui Malaise freaking out the bookstore customers.

Jazz saying, “Oh, for a dead guy.”

Cecelia walking onstage with a new outfit and instantly walking off.

Dazzle being chased by Marni around the bookstore.

Clementine chewing sugar cubes.

Gertrude laughing into the mic.

Clifford being detained by Francesca. 

Maxx saying “No, no, Baby. Best book I ever read.”

Peggy getting frustrated with Parker during knock-knock jokes.

Bonkers interacting with Corso.

Parker saying “Parker Johnson!”

Edith saying “I’d be happy to help you sue your parents.”

Vroom being upset when Corso puts him in the lava.

When it was all done, I felt like the play was really about creativity and the doubt that often takes it away. Ironically enough, this was one idea I had doubts about, but I decided that in the spirit of the Beatniks (and my dad’s influence) to just go for it—to do something I would enjoy. I’m glad I did. I think the cast made it work. And the audience seemed to have a good time.