The play's the thing

I have a first draft. It's not complete - I still need to write most of the song lyrics - but I have all the dialogue, barring the odd tweaks.

The organiser e-mailed me on Tuesday, I think it was, and asked if I'd like a script meeting in a couple of weeks for further input. My initial reaction to that, which was sheer panic, told its own story. I pulled myself back together and replied saying, thank you, but I don't think I need any more input. And then I revised that, because if there's one thing I've learnt about this group, it's that everyone's very well-intentioned but your communication has to be absolutely crystal clear, or they will all get over-excited and go running with all kinds of ideas. While it's a lot of fun to work with people who have so many ideas, there is a limit to the number I can actually use in one play, especially when the length is limited to an hour or less.

So I said, OK. When I say I don't think I need any more input, what I actually mean is that if I get any more input I'm going to be overwhelmed. I am already right on the cusp of too much input. I explained that putting a play together out of all these ideas isn't like stringing beads in a line, where all you have to do is make sure every bead looks good with its two immediate neighbours. It's much more like making one of my pairs of earrings, where you need to make sure every colour relates to every other colour. In fact, in this case it's rather as if every member of the group had given me a random handful of beads, and I then had the task of finding some more colours out of my own stash in order to pull together as many of those beads as possible into a harmonious whole. So... no more script meetings, please and thank you.

And some of those beads were, to use the "pirate swear word", pretty dumboozlin' random. I mean, they wanted a Minion. You know, those little yellow people out of the Despicable Me films. While I like Minions as much as anyone else, I have to admit I gawped a bit when someone said, "We should have a Minion just randomly running across the deck. It'd be really funny!" And, all right, yes, that would be really funny, but I don't do completely random; there has to be some kind of reason, even if it's a very off-the-wall one, for why there's a Minion running across the deck. I couldn't think how to do it until I realised that I'd already planned for the ship to be hit by a very severe storm... and that gave me my off-the-wall reason. Captain Spinnaker stops the Minion in its tracks and asks it, not unreasonably, what it's doing on her ship. It replies, "Oh. Sorry. Lost." (I think we can probably get one of the kids to do a convincing enough Minion voice for three words.) And her reaction is: "This storm's so bad it's bendin' the very fabric o' reality!" There you go. That particular bead is now integrated into the design.

I have had fun incorporating a few references that not many people will get, but the ones who do will thoroughly enjoy; I do need to revise a little to get in some of the more popular ones (it occurs to me I haven't yet managed to reference Peter Pan, which they wanted, but I'm sure Wikipedia will help me with that one - it's fifty years or more since I read it), but I did manage to get in the Very Famous Film Line that I'd never heard of. It happened to dovetail perfectly with the main plot. In particular, I have had some quiet geeky fun with Mr Higgs. Mr Higgs is the bosun, because of course he is, and during the storm scene the wind is so bad that everyone else on the deck is staggering about... and spinning. But not Mr Higgs. Mr Higgs is still having a very bad time with the gale, but the one thing he's emphatically not doing is spinning.

Higgs bosons have zero spin. They're kind of famous for it.

I have written one set of song lyrics, but that's because they go to the tune of the Major-General song from The Pirates of Penzance (appropriately enough); the ship's cook gets this one. The ship's cook is going to be played by the lady who played the Mad Hatter, who is very tall, very bright, and has a fine singing voice, so of course she had to get a song. For the rest, I have been sent YouTube links to three tunes I don't know, including That Song from Titanic, which our organiser (playing the Captain) wants to do as a duet with the Princess, and I'm thinking... you'll be lucky. I have no idea how I'm going to get those two characters doing a duet for any reason at all. But I shall see how the tune goes and what sort of lyrics suggest themselves, and maybe, just maybe, some kind of suitable inspiration will strike. It is both humbling and terrifying to see what blithe confidence they all have in my ability to take a barrowload of random input and turn it into a coherent comic play.

In the meantime, have a sneak peek at a snippet from the cook's song:

"But down there in the galley my accomplishment's incredible;
Whatever lives at sea, I'll find a way to make it edible,
And even if it's new to me, I'll simply do a quick assay,
Then serve it up for dinner as the basis of a fricassée."

I suspect the rhymes for the other songs might just be a little easier... 😄