Original Sin

Adapting The Greatest Poem Ever Written In English For The Stage

Although one of the things I thought I would be writing about regularly on this blog was ORIGINAL SIN, my adaptation of PARADISE LOST with an amazing company of actors

Michelle Beck

Paul Bernardo

Kersti Bryan

Lauren Coppola

Stephen Bel Davies

Curzon Dobell

Mark Curtis Ferrando

Lindsey Gates

Erick Gonzalez

Jake Green

Morgan Green

Carol Halstead

Broughton Hansen

Kelly Hutchinson

Maggie Lacey
Linda Larson

Phil Mills

Rahaleh Nassri

David Scotchford

Roya Shanks

Eric Sutton

Alexandra Trow

Madeline Wise

But every time I’ve actually sat down to write about it, nothing came out.  Writing about process is so tedious, and god knows I didn’t want to commit that crime.  But today, I found out the O’Neill Theater Center in New London (where Rafael and I are getting married, as well), agreed to host us for a few days in mid Jan so we can have a retreat and work on the material more intensely.  (Major props to Lindsey Gates, the artistic director of the Lake George Theater Lab, who had the idea for this retreat in the first place.)  So I’m going to let that victory inspire me and see where it goes. 

I love actors.  I’ve always loved actors.  In college, when I directed a play a semester (or two, and in the second semester of my junior year, three) I picked projects for +Amy Holtcamp (then Amy Boyce) and +Emily Donahoe O'Keefe (then just plain ol' Emily Donahoe), who were the actors who inspired me. 

When I think about the things that I love about New York, the proliferation of mad talented actors who are willing to roll around and get dirty and make mistakes and surprise me in rehearsal is always high on the list.  I’ve worked in other cities.  I love other cities (sorta).  But their actors don’t hold a torch (definitely).

Jim Nicola invited me to go see ROMAN TRAGEDIES at BAM (click on the link if you don't know what this is) and I was inspired by how big theater could be, and how rarely we make theater of that size in this country.  I wanted to make something that big.  Something that wouldn’t fit into a four-week rehearsal process or a two-hour night of theater. 

When I was an undergrad at Vassar, the English Majors Committee would do twelve-hour reading of PARADISE LOST in the chapel.  I believe they started at noon and went until midnight, and people would wander in and out as they pleased.  One of my mentors who has passed away, the inimitable Ann Imbrie, loved this event, and I remember attending with her my senior year and being struck by how theatrical the poem was.  Milton, I later found out, originally imagined it as a closet drama and only later reconceived it as an epic poem.

I went through my actor files, and intuitively made a list of actors who I thought might be interested in working on this with me.  I sent out an email to all forty of them.

Sending the email out to the actors terrified me.  I composed it.  I edited it.  I recomposed it.  I stared at the mouse nervously, trying to will it to send itself so I wouldn't have to take responsibilitiy for it.  Apparently, I'm not telekinetic.  Unlike Jean Grey, who is.

Mostly, I was scared no one would want to do it (I have a profound fear of rejection – that and my total lack of acting talent really crippled the acting career I never had).  But I was also scared that we’d spend all this time working on the text and nothing would come of it, and then people would be mad at me for wasting their time.  And to be frank, that’s still possible.  But the place of not knowing is a powerful place, and that’s where I was when I sent out that email, and that’s where we live with this project.

Thirty of those forty actors replied expressing interest.  Twenty were available.  We started meeting and have just finished our third session.  Kathy Hood and James Gregg at The Juilliard School have been kind enough to dedicate space to me as an alum, at least for our first few sessions, and I hope they continue to do so because when you ask good actors to work for free, it’s nice when the space isn’t shitty.

Before each session, I cut the text and then create the character distribution.  Here's an example to illustrate my point.

A passage from Book 2, line 650’ish:

Is this hilarious?  He looks so angsty

about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd than these
Vex'd Scylla bathing in the Sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd
In secret, riding through the Air she comes
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon
Eclipses at thir charms. The other shape,

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The Monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides,

gets cut and distributed into

milton

about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen.

death

The other shape,

milton

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either;

death

                            black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.

sataN

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

The Monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides,

Each session starts with a brief meditation (at my insistence – rehearsing in New York is hard for me, with all its hustle and bustle, and this lets me focus) and then we read the book very slowly, for sense and scansion and meaning but mostly for sense.   That takes a few hours.  I will often re-distribute and cut based on how the material sounds and the actors’ input.  Then we break, come back, and read the whole thing straight through.

Working on this kind of material is always an honor, and working with actors of this caliber even more so.  Our goal is to trim the whole poem down to, let’s say, eight hours, and then do a concert read of the whole thing in early May, with two meals breaks, for which I will prepare the food.

Believe it or not, this was supposed to be my short post, so I’m going to sign off now.  My next post about this will cover the guest artists we've had come visit us, how the retreat goes (and of course, the menus I'm putting together to feed the artists participating on it) and some (hopefully) illuminating insights into this epic piece.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading and especially thanks to all of you who have told me, in email or text or person or on the soccer field, that you’re enjoying these entries.  I’m having a hell of a time writing them.