Love, Candy or C[andy] or [C]andy ([c]arrie)

A BRIEF MUSING ON WRITING THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG
Actually its sort of interesting what a difference there is in [C]Andy and C[andy]--we could do a close reading there a la the days of undergraduate poetry workshops and talk about the "c" as partioned off and outside as opposed to the "andy" as internalized within--either way it points me back to your original reluctance to include Andy Warhol in the script and to wonder if you are happy with the amount of presence he has in your current manifestation (I'm thinking about Michael's comment as to how Andy and his assistant begin the play but we never come back to them--maybe a good title would be Candy/[C]andy so there is a balance or a tension between the Candy who is her own creation and a Candy who is a product/creation of her time and the influneces around her--i have more to say about this in relation to the exercises.

AFFIRMATIONS/COMMENTS: (I'm trying to stay in the structure!)
Another fun and informative session, I loved hearing Jenny say at the end of class (or maybe it was out at the bar...clearly too much post-reading celebration for me) that the structure of the workshops came very naturally out of her collaboration with Erica--I've really enjoyed the fun-ness of all of your sessions.

I also think it was very generous of you (Erica) to allow us to stick our fingers and pens into your play (more cutting than adding as it were) and to play with it. I was really surprised to hear Naomi Wallace talk about letting other people "push in" or write parts of her play, at first I was a little shocked, but I hope it was useful to see what other people made with your work.

What I liked particularly about the text activity was the impulse to understand/fully integrate what you called the chorus--but what seems like more of an ensemble. I wrote in a previous blog how taken I am with the idea in all the plays we've been working on of making everyone "earn" their place in the ensemble and on the stage. I think using these characters fully helps bring to the forefront some of the ways that particulalry gender but also all cultural constructs are learned first and then internalized/normalized. This was particularly true in the Easy Bake Oven Scene we were working on, but also in the Hope cigarette scene. I really love the philosophizer nurse!

I also had a real sense of a sort of personal geneology of Candy as these scenes openned up to include more characters--I had a good sense of what the making of Candy Darling was through the manipulation of language (important for a character who uses language to re-name herself several times.
QUESTIONS:

I'm really glad you called attention to the dreams--I had forgotten about them and they are so interesting. I wonder if you imagine them happening together (there is such a strong sense of flow from one to the next: symbols/inversions/how fairytale is working in each one/violence/family etc) or if you imagine them spread throughout the text? Regarding the screen/live playing--I wonder what it would be like if Candy were watching the ensemble members play out the dreams(that is one of those pesky proscriptive questions that are actually suggestions yes, lets move down to suggestions/comments)
SUGGESTIONS/COMMENTS
Anyway, I could see either one dream flowing into the next or scattered--I wonder if they also might coincide with the administration of morphine or other drugs?

I think it would have been great to see the scene that we all worked onif we had had time--but I suppose you guys have that information--and to talk through/process the why of some of those choices--I know in our version (George Michael TM) we felt that those lines needed to stay with Candy and I do wonder about maintaining that balance of showing Candy as a product of her influences/time and Candy as a pretty remarkable, pioneering autonomous person who has a core and a strong sense of who she is.

I think its also really important to see Candy struggle (I'm thinking about the lines in the communal scene that were split up between Andy and Candy) about death and the afterlife--and i so love the line about death being a rite of passage that is completely universal) with the lighter and darker sides of her personality)

We had started to write the easy bake oven as a scene where Candy is playing out the action of the scene while the chorus narrates--might be interesting.

Great work all semester!