Building Blocks

The jumping off point for Straw, Stick, Brick, was a one-man show by Charles L. Mee called The House of Cards.

The House of Cards is part of the (re)making project.  The description of the project begins as such:

There is no such thing as an original play.

Mee then encourages playwrights viewing the plays on the project website to use the plays as resources for new work.  He advises to pillage his plays in order to create an entirely new piece that truly belongs to the playwright.

Craig was drawn to The House of Cards because hee enjoyed the tactile nature built into the structure of the play – throughout the running monologue the actor builds a house of cards.  The stage directions read:

A man builds a house of cards throughout the entire piece
 so that the house of cards becomes a vast, elaborate structure.

He was thrilled by the intrinsic metaphor and the action during the play.

I, to no one’s surprise, was terrified by the concept.

Building a house of cards for twenty minutes (Mee’s running time) was scary enough.  We wanted to lengthen our production to around 45 minutes.  That is a long time to stack cards and not have any fall down.  A cough from an audience member in the front row might be enough to bring down the house.  Literally.

I’m a bit of a worrywart and the idea made me itchy.

Luckily, Craig didn’t want to poach the tangible idea of the play if we were thinking of using some of Mee’s text.  So we tabled any discussion of what would be built until we had a better understanding of what our play would ultimately be about.

We know Eric will be building something during the show; we discussed building multiple somethings for a bit.  Eric at a table with different types of supplies – think versions of straw, sticks and bricks.  (I personally loved this idea because he only had to make something exist for about 15 minutes before it was dismantled and a new supply was used.)

Currently we are considering the show in the round with Eric building in the center.  No table so the structure might be tall.  Still some dismantling and rebuilding.  But the movements will be bigger.  No longer tethered to a table Eric can move around the space, fetch supplies from behind the audience, etc.

I have my personal ideas for what Eric will build.  Craig hasn’t seen them yet.  Fingers crossed my ideas and his ideas are similar enough to compromise on a single vision.