@#!$$%&!?! Play FINISHED!!!

Did you hear me, Jasper? FINITO. Yep, you heard me. INTO CLEAR DARKNESS, my light, frothy epic about dead Russian poets and a cynical Toronto writer with AIDS, is finally, fait accompli. And after only ten years and a minimal amount of bloodshed besides. It still has some technical tweaking and cutting to go, but structurally (who lives, who dies, who gets laid) it's at last in place.

After several months (nay, some would say YEARS) of finally taking this beast and rewriting it a) into another font format, b) excising, slashing and burning and REWRITING, it appears to be just about DONE. The hard part, of getting it into its current format is finished. Now that I have a COMPLETE hard copy, I will sit up for the next week or so, with red pen in hand, and heavily brandied tea in the other, and go through it all over again. What’s that you say? You’re doing MORE? How can this be? You said it was finished! Oh, you sweet naïve young chickadees. As my sage mentor George Rideout used to say, “A new play is never finished being written until opening night.” Which is, unfortunately, true, as you have to get through rehearsals, and discover what the director likes and doesn’t like, what the actors can actually say without passing out from lack of oxygen, and just what sounds horrible when its said aloud. THAT has yet to begin. George also noted (albeit very tactfully) that I HATED rewriting, which is also true, but like dental exams, I have learned to grin and bear it. Its actually become easier the more I do it. Its when I look at a scene that doesn’t work, and am stuck as to what to do with it, that I start pulling my hair out of my head and yowling like one of the Scottish play’s witches.

(I actually do that at work the first week of every month, but they’re used to it now. “What’s that dreadful howling?” “Oh nothing. Its just Trev, sorting through the timesheets. Hand me that coffee cup, will you?”)

Nevertheless, its been an ordeal. The original first draft I had done in 2000. Ever since then, through myriad readings and the whatnot, I have fought with it, struggled with it, thrown it away, hauled it back again, killed people off, brought them back to life, and generally just stewed over it like a chancre, or an ulcerated wound that wouldn’t go away. I don't know how God does it, I really don't.

I wrote other plays, but always came back to this one. It was structurally flawed I knew, but how I didn’t know. Then I figured it out. Or at least I think I have. I'm not gonna tell you, you're just gonna have to come and see the play. So now, I’m going back through this clean copy, and I’m going to cut away all the dead wood, and see how sleek I can make it. I don’t want any fat on the bones. Its like Faukner said, “you have to go back and kill all your darlings” when writing. I don’t think I have that many left, but there may be a few….at any rate, tonight I shall sit down and have at it! And when THAT'S done, I shall make another clean copy, with the new set of revisions, and then, that's it. But from here on in, its just excess removal. No more rewriting. Just tweaking and cleaning.

FINISHED.