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chugglepuff β Untitled Play
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Published: 2009-06-22 22:52:41 +0000 UTC; Views: 417; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 14
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EDIT: Ok, the PDF wasn't working for a lot of people, so how about this selection of screenshots sewn together in Paint...? (Ingenious idea suggested by =bekkia .
) Because it's not a text file, I've had to stick this in visual poetry, so please note it should really be in theatre & scripts or possibly spoken word poetry. Sorry it's ugly, it's the best I could do...---
Sooo... I've been working on this for a while, heading towards 5 months. It's the first time I've worked all the way through something that's taken me that long, and the first time I've managed to continue after a block.
It's also the first time I've written anything like this, which means I would really appreciate advice but (sorry to be annoying) would also really appreciate it if you could maybe be a little bit gentle...
I've grown quite attached to it...And I'm not sure if it's a play so much as spoken word poetry with multiple parts.
There are a lot of stage directions because I'm pretty certain how I want it performed (I kept reading it through, aloud and in my head, as I wrote it), but I hope it doesn't draw your attention away from what's actually being said. The indentations are meant to help with pauses and things, and make it flow when it's read for the first time; the stage directions aren't so important when you're reading it, and hopefully most of the stage directions would come through just from the speech... I kind of wrote it as poetry, knowing that it was going to have to be converted into something for performance later, but I wonder if it would work just as well without all the script-related bits, and just with the bold to indicate another person's speaking...On the title (or lack thereof): it was saved as 'Ragdoll' but I really don't like that name, and I've been struggling to think of anything unpretentious. I think titles are my new nemesis (hopefully semi-colons have been pretty much beaten into submission).
Oh, and the prayer I used is an amalgamation of some Church of England prayers from a couple of sources (a service I went to and a website the address of which I cunningly didn't write down
) - anyone know how that plays out with copyright laws...? And please don't think I mean to insult Christianity; I consider myself to be a Christian and was trying to write here about the difficulties of having and maintaining faith (and not just faith in religion).Oh, and one more thing - Emmerdale's a British soap opera.
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Comments: 36
If you go to zamzar.com, you can convert your pdf version to word (free, no spam, I promise!). It will then be much easier to see, and you can put it in the right category!
I have been working on a script, so I shall read this with a non-superficial interest
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It was written in Word originally; the problem is that dA doesn't do the spacing properly - or have they changed it so it's compatible? I can't find a way to do it...
What kind of script have you been working on?
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ahh yeah, the spacing issue... No, they will never solve that as they don't care about us
No offence, but I've been working on a satirical version of Acts. From the bible.
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Nasty dA! *pouts*
None taken. 
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Ha ha, you have a darn good memory. Typical biologist. Er... not very much further at all. But it's high up on my to do list.
By the way, I won't be reading your journals in future. I am now addicted to MouseHunt
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I'm sure your life is much improved by this additional time-sponge.
...I'm sorry. *looks guilty*
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Don't be! It's great!
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It has a very Mystic appeal to it--no complaints from me!
Of course, you back it with superior structure and verbiage..I stand astonished.
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Thank you very much!
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I loved this when I first read it, and I still love it now. It's beautiful.
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Thank you, gibblet!!!
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Taha, yourr welcome
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Alas, it's an angstical. Where most pieces would have snappy tunes, it has extra mopey teenagers.
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This play is very thought provoking on paper. I would love to see it in action.
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That's taken care of the formatting wonkiness!
Now for the criticism; I think there's too much direct inter-action between Maria & the Chorus. They should be aware of her, but she not so much so of them. They should be free to remark and react, but she should only be aware of them as a sort of 'voice in her head'.
That's not very clear, because I can't quite express what I'm trying to get at. I'll think about it.
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Thanks very much for the criticism, I appreciate it a lot.
It seems pretty clear to me, I'm just pondering on it... I quite like the fact that they're interacting, albeit with something of a communication barrier... Maria is trying to find some explanation in each group of people and they try to help her, in their two-faced sort of way, but ultimately she is still trapped in this state until she accepts the lack of explanation herself... If that makes any sense. They weren't really intended as voices in her head, but weren't characterised further to make them kind of generic and also to show that there is some separation between the world they inhabit and Maria's world of... unbearable truths. Or something. But I don't know if I'm entirely satisfied with that attempted explanation of what I'm actually trying to do here... I'll have a think on it. Thanks again!
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May I commend you on a fantastic emotional work. This is certainly an absurdist work, immediately reminiscent of a number of authors for me, specifically Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett.
A little niggle: did you mean βLeaders of the easily ledβ ? Typo?
What I find interesting is your use of the chorus as a device for mapping Mariaβs exploration of her own complex. The chorus is not strictly necessary, and read without it the play still makes sense. It does however serve an important function as representing βsocietyβ and a whole plethora of class, social and religious stereotypes which are put in direct opposition to Mariaβs soliloquy, or in her firing line if you will.
With the repitition of the clay imagery, are you referencing the Popol Vuh? Or is that in the bible too? Sorry, I forget. What I like is your return to the clay image at the end when Mariaβs voice shifts dramatically and her self-evaluation as a god figure, responsible for her childβs life and death becomes apparent.
Iβm afraid I canβt offer much critique, as itβs neither my area of expertise nor does it have any outstanding problems. Conceptually, it opens and closes powerfully, and there is little superlative imagery. Anything that seems at first flowery or conversational just reveals Mariaβs dilemma as tragically human: βShould I have trusted more? Would he have listened had I truste more?β Etc. And the chorusβ conversation snippets (these remind me a lot of simultaneous poetry, and are very well done btw).
Spectacular job. Every line oozes compassion and a mastery of suggestion. The piece is rich with themes β constructed worlds, religion, sole survivor, death, parenthood etc. And Iβve only read it a few times through.
Mine is the most infuriating kind of comment, because all I can find in this are things to like.
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Such powerful emotions run through this work. Bravo. 
Some lines that really stand out for me:
"I miss the things I had always been certain of,
the things I had always been able to blame;"
"Answer me, you learned men
you heavenly host,
you leaders of the easily lead!"
Graceful and full of beauty from start to finish, an amazingly wonderful read.
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Sorry this is so late! Thank you so very much for this comment, it made me feel more confident about a piece that was a pretty big deal for me on several levels. Thank you.
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That's quite alright I know you're busy and not going to be around on dA replying as much.
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I'm on Vista using Firefox, and it turned up nicely for me.
Personally, I thought this was amazing. I was very impressed at how well it flowed while incorporating the different personalities in the chorus. I also thought the formatting was well-chosen, in that it conveyed its information without interrupting the movement of the verse. Other than that, I also liked how you bring in different themes and execute them flawlessly.
*2 thumbs up*
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Jesus, this is all formatted nicely & everything.
(No viewing problems for me - I'm using Preview for Mac.)
I rather like it! All your rhymes are well-done. Great ideas you're working with.
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There's some sort of alignment problem between the directions and the dialog, but that could be an incompatibility problem with Adobe readers (yrs. vs. mn.)
I shall try not to psycho-analyze it (the first thing that happened when I started reading it).
Good you're back at real work instead of that silly college stuff. You're what the French call a Lassie Fair. Or is it the Scots?
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Hmmm, it's showing up all right on mine. I'll have to have a fiddle with this, it's clearly not working as planned. Drat.
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Since your directions are clearly delineated, I'd stack 'em, vis;
Alice:
(Carefully sits of the toadstool)
What will happen next?
Just a thought.
Not a particularly good one, but nicer than stomping on bunnies.
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That's the sensible way to do things... The problem with that is that it would mean losing the indentations and flow of it in the written form, which is kind of important to me... Maybe I just need to decide whether it wants to be a poem or a play.
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I agree.
It's definitely avant-garde.
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Dohhh. Confound you, PDFs!
Gagh, I might just try and work out a way to make it display the spacing on normal mode... Thanks for letting me know!
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I don't know why my computer is hating on PDFs. Though, I think more people would read it if you did screencaps and edited them together.
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That's rather cunning! Good thinking - that can be tomorrow's attempt at making it uploadable. Thanks again!
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