Michael's Final Blog on SAVING MOM!

Congratulations! It's been a good semester for y'all and for this play.

I'm going to start with Carrie's Before/After question: At the first of the semester I saw a bunch of interesting, disjointed scenes. Some I loved. Some I wasn't so crazy about. I craved more linearity. I craved cutting to the actions that really mattered. I craved answers to many questions. But that's not where you took me. Y'all made it messier and it worked!

The session and the pages that came from McDonalds are really cool to me. I have this visual of the world of this play. McDonalds is like a spool and the story is a very loosely wrapped piece of thread onto it. Meaning. It has loops and paths that diverge from the spool but return to the spool and the rest of the thread. The McDonalds holds this world together. I no longer need linearity. I, like Daniel, like it when things are happening simultaneously or seemingly haphazardly. And since y'all know me, it's kind of odd for me to say that. I say that when I genuinely believe the world of a play. I believe this one.

The exercise where the Rev and Mom were behind curtains was very interesting for me. I guess it just reinforces the proxemity of this relationship to hers with Dad and her lack of concern that they collide too much. I wonder if something like that can be in the play?

Q:
What is the purpose of introducing the Rev Wife?
Ditto, Denny?
Are they further threads that spin on this spool? Or are they a part of the plot?
(I like them there. Just asking. I always wondered about her. Why she was so not there? although there's sometimes power in a strong off-stage presence)

Opinion:

As the only class member who saw the reading over Easter, I caution against feeling like you have to add too much structure to it. I loved the way it read AT McDonald's and the way it read in class this week. But that day at your apt, I think you were trying to justify too much. To add a structure, explain a lot. (ironically to add that linearity I used to crave) It probably was a useful part of the process, but I think it shows well that you heard that too and the freshness was back into the pages we did in class! Congrats!

I love that I care about Mom now. I love the McDonald's. I love the work y'all've done this semester.