Lost in a Labyrinth: Writing MINOTAURS.TOREROS.

A Guest Post by 

Kato McNickle

They say the torero goes to the ring to earn money, prestige, glory, applause … but this is not true. He goes to the ring to be alone with the bull, an animal he both fears and adores, and to whom he has much to say. The torero enjoys applause, but he is so absorbed in the ritual that he hears and sees the public as though it were in another world. And in fact it is. The public is lost in a world of creation and constant abstraction. It is the only public composed not of spectators but of actors. Each person in the audience fights the bull along with the torero, not by following the flight of the cape, but by using another imaginary one that moves differently from the one in the ring.  And thus the torero bears the yearning of thousands of people, and the bull plays the leading role in a collective drama.

- Federico Garcia Lorca, from Poem of the Bull, In Search of Duende

Minotaurs. Toreros. began as a “bake-off’ play. I was part of a seven-person group of playwrights working with Paula Vogel for an intensive 3-week residency at The Atlantic Center for the Arts. Each week, in addition to reading and writing exercises, we would produce a first draft of a play in 48-hours that we then would read for each other. The first week we all suggested topics for consideration, and I suggested the myth of the Minotaur, the man with the head of a bull cursed to inhabit the labyrinth designed by Daedalus. The group selected this idea as the first plot we would explore.

The concept of a bake-off is simple: we all choose a topic and will write the same play. Of course, these plays are always very different. After the initial topic was selected, other rules were introduced to govern the worlds we were imagining were introduced: choose a plot structure, preferably one you have not written before (I chose to write a pattern play); and the plot must include a moment of flight, a premonition, a small, tiny, enclosed space, a day of rain, a day of sun.

The rules of the bake-off are simple: at the moment you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard the clock starts and 48-hours later you will stop writing, and no rewriting or editing.  Bring a copy for everyone on the day we will be reading. We read all of the plays out loud with each other, and in between we prepare and share food.

With my head swimming with these ingredients and procedures I began to look for my play. There were four days before we would read the plays together, and somewhere in that span the 48-hour clock would start ticking. What would I write?  This was Friday afternoon, and on Tuesday at 11:00 AM we would be reading these yet unimagined plays. We broke from our afternoon session to attend a gathering of all of the artist fellows at the ACA – which, in addition to the playwright fellows, included a group of visual artists and a group of musician/composers – to share each other’s works. That afternoon one of the composers played one of his pieces for piano, and while he played I saw on the stage in my mind’s eye a boy reading poetry, seated crossed legged in amber light. His mother approached carrying a sword, and mistook the boy for the monster she determined to kill, and did slay the boy, not recognizing him until it was too late. That evening I began researching bullfighting and knew I had the final image for an as yet unimagined play.

The next day I investigated the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth as well as women and bullfighting. That afternoon I sat in the sun-soaked library at the ACA, and by chance had brought along a copy of IN SEARCH OF DUENDE by Federico Garcia Lorca.  It was a slender volume, and served as my introduction to Lorca’s work. I had brought it with me because it was easy to pack and could serve as something to occupy me on an airplane. I read the book from cover to cover that afternoon absorbing statements like. “The Duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought.”  It was the perfect companion for my assignment.  The concept of the dark, earthly power of Duende, and the deep connection of bullfighting and the work of Lorca would inform the direction of the playworld I was spinning. But how would it all become a play?

I went to sleep that Saturday night full to the brim with new knowledge of bullfighting, the myth of the Minotaur, the poetry of Lorca, and the concept of Duende, but no idea how to make this a play. As I opened my eyes the next morning, with the parting of my lids, came the solution to start me writing. “The play is the labyrinth,” announced the words in my head as daylight came into my eyes. I got up, turned on my computer, made note of the time (8:08 AM) and began to write. To keep all of the details straight in this pattern play I was composing, I created a map intertwining images, quotes, poetry, and character traits. This hung in the window in front of my work-station and helped to keep me on track. The tangle was its own labyrinth.  A little less than 48 hours later the first draft of Minotaurs. Toreros. was complete.

The great strength of the bake-off concept developed by Vogel is that it maximizes the effects of confluence on the raw work. There is the coming together of theme, of plot structure, and the various rules, but there is also the immediacy of what is available right here and now at the time of initial creation. The discussion at yesterday’s lunch about zodiac signs becomes instruction for dialogue, the finding of a yellow bead in the cushions of the writing room becomes an action dipped into the play world, typing the wrong character entering into a scene and a rule forbidding rewrites creates a “what now?” moment that changes the course of the play (yeah, that happened with this play).

Since that initial draft there have been rewrites and expansions on the ideas spun in that from-the-guts couple of days.  Now we will work on making the play breathe.

For more on Duende read Theory and Play of the Duende:

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/LorcaDuende.htm

A sampling of Lorca’s poetry in translation, including Five in the Afternoon, a lament for bullfighter Ignacio Sanchez Mejias:

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/FiveintheafternoonLorca.htm

For more on Paula Vogel and her Bake-offs and Playwright Boot Camps:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/theater/paula-vogel-leads-a-playwright-boot-camp-at-second-stage.html

http://pgoc.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/an-encounter-with-paula-vogel/

http://www.dramatists.com/pdf/atplayspringsummer05.pdf

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Kato McNickle is currently workshopping her full-length play Minotaurs.Toreros. at Turn to Flesh Productions. Come see.

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Join us for the POETRY OF LORCA with the MYTH OF THE MINOTAUR

Reservations may be made by emailing turntoflesh@gmail.com
 ~ Walk-ins welcome ~ Seating Limited ~ No formal talk-back, Written surveys provided ~

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MINOTAURS.TOREROS. Lorca and the Labyrinth

by Kato McNickle

directed by Alex Randrup

When: Thursday, September 25, 2014 @ 7 PM
Where: 150 West 30th Street, 14th Floor, New York, NY 10001

Duration: Approximately 100 minutes, with intermission

Featuring:

David Rosenblatt* (Manolete)
Marisol Rosa-Shapiro (Miura)
Katie Medved (Eleanora)
Filipe Valle Costa (Romero)

* Member of Actors' Equity Association

FREE and open to the Public!

Suggested Donation: $10 gets you a complimentary glass of wine!