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BrianRobertNeal
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Posted: Sat Sep 23rd, 2006 08:34 am |
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Have one completed script to my name. However I have an obsession with the following:
The needs of the typical small AmDram Company
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Getting a "WheelChair" not just into the Theatre but onto the stage in a role that is satisfying, non-patronising and which has no bearing on their handicap.
Regarding the latter when I started writing I had in mind an actress who because of a stroke could not remember her lines, but in run-throughs was absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately she died over two years ago.
The only thing to hold me back as was the case as an actor is lack of ability.
Brian
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scenedreamer
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Posted: Sat Sep 23rd, 2006 02:12 pm |
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Welcome Brian,
Your goal of creating work for wheelchair bound actors is certainly an admirable one. There must be many excellent actors confined to wheelchairs and there are certainly limited opportunities. I believe federal funds may be available through the "Special Arts" program for theaters who use handicapped actors. I don't know the names of any specific theaters, but perhaps someone else will. It might be a great opportunity for your work.
Last year I wrote "Phone Sex," a one-act comedy about a hearing impaired woman, a blind girl, an addict, a mentally ill man, an alcoholic, and a double amputee. I have never submitted it anywhere and it is not really about the handicaps. I hadn't thought about the opportunities it might offer handicapped actors until I read your post.
There's so many bright people here. I'm sure you will enjoy the site.
sd
Last edited on Sat Sep 23rd, 2006 02:13 pm by scenedreamer
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Edd
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| Joined: | Sat Jun 10th, 2006 |
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Posted: Sat Sep 23rd, 2006 03:47 pm |
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Hello, Brian.
Welcome!
Many years ago I played Pseudolus in a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. A brilliant actress had gotten polio when she was a young girl. The director wanted her for Domina. She could not walk without very awkward braces and then not very well. Since this play takes place in early Rome, the director had a liter built and cast a couple slaves to carry her on and off. It was perfect since it added even more to her domineering character. Her character's brow-beaten husband was played by a gentleman with one-leg. This was one of the most fabulous and well-produced shows I was ever in--certainly the most memorable. If only more director's were willing to use their imagination and see the possibilities of the actors as well as the play. I've also written a role for a character in a wheel chair. It was soon to be produced and the perfect actor was found who had a war injury that kept him wheelchair bound. I rewrote the part and the play was better for it. We played at the old Actor's Studio in midtown and a couple of us had to take a leg each to help him into the theatre through the stage door because there was no handicapped access, it being a very old NY building. Which causes me to remember that the theatre we did Forum in was shamed into building a ramp for easy entrance.
Again, welcome to our forum.
What did you write today?
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Paddy
Moderator
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Posted: Sat Sep 23rd, 2006 09:47 pm |
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Hello, Brian.
Welcome. I'm sure this will be a safe place for you to write. Check out the challenges I've posted in the Gym.
Paddy
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BrianRobertNeal
Member
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Posted: Sun Sep 24th, 2006 06:35 am |
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Hi all,
Thanks for your "replies". The device I've used is to write a part for a Narrator. They wil be sat down and will read their part from a Script. In addition to the obvious objective secondary benefits are,
1) Settings can be limited to furniture and props.
2) Scene changes can be "told"-thus problems associated with Apron or Theatre in the round staging can be overcome.
3) On stage prompter who can cover up slips/corpsing/drieing up.
4) Play could translate to radio or recorded format and be accessible to the blind.
I am unfamiliar with this site, does a single reply cover all replies received or do you reply to each individually?
Finally if I wished to post work is it best to post it in one lump or in "Bite" size portions.
The play is posted on an English Writers' Web Site-( I'm English and live in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England.)
http://www.greatwriting.co.uk
On the Drama Scripts Forum under the tittle "A Matter of Relations"-It's posted in 6 parts.
It's 7.30 am here no Idea what it would be in north America,
So good-whatever,
Brian
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Nigel
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Posted: Tue Feb 26th, 2008 09:59 am |
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Hi Brian,
Just noticed your posting from 2006 re amdram and the wheelchair. I wrote a play called Prima Donna, one of a series about a small amdram group called the Off-the-wall Theatre Company, which had the heroine hurt in a car accident, but eventually making her entrance in a wheelchair - no permanent disability, but great minds (or is it fools differ?)
We recorded it as a podcast in six episodes - you can find it at:
http://www.off-the-wall-plays.co.uk/15.html
Hope you enjoy it!
Nigel
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in media res
Member
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Posted: Tue Feb 26th, 2008 02:52 pm |
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Brian,
Welcome.
Of course the most famous wheelchair play is "The Man Who Came to Dinner" with the character Sheridan Whiteside;
And the movie "Rear Window" with Jimmy Stewart. Both are available on rental.
"The Miracle Worker" is about Helen Keller!
(Whenever I get in the opening foul mood of Sonnet 29:
"When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate, etc..."
I think of Helen Keller's accomplishments and move on.)
'Butterflies are Free" is another about a blind person.
Johnny Belinda is about a deaf person.
"Children of a Lesser God" is about a deaf person.
And then there is "Whose Life is It Anyway" where the character lies in bed the entire time and can only move his head.
"Wait Until Dark" is another play, also available on DVD.
The latter two have characters with permanent disabilities.
And of course, Richard III, who has a bigger problem than a physical issue and causes a whole lot of ruckus.
If anyone has more examples, please post them!!
I saw a brilliant production of a one person play written in Los Angeles, and performed by a blind man. I can not remember the title. Stunning theatre. Homeric. The actor tours with it.
And a couple of years ago I went to a production of a Wilde play and a week before the show opened one of the actors was hit by a car and had his leg shattered. The director - quite brilliantly - located an 1890-'s wheelchair and the character played it in a wheelchair. For the way the character was played, I can never imagine it being played any other way.
I saw a brilliant reading of a screenplay - a love story - in LA, with both characters physically impaired/challenged/whatever. And this is where the rub comes in: At one point in the screenplay the character did something that was not coherent to the script. Everyone in the room in the critique mentioned it. And the writer, who was in a wheelchair - kept saying "But that really happened." And the moderator, a wonderful instructor at USC film school commented something like, "Real life can never be used as a defense of Art." I have posted this somewhere before a long time ago on the site, and this is not exactly what he said - I am having a brain fart moment right now- but you get the drift.
You state the same concept yourself so beautifully, "Getting a "WheelChair" not just into the Theatre but onto the stage in a role that is satisfying, non-patronising and which has no bearing on their handicap."
As well as your comment: "The only thing to hold me back as was the case as an actor is lack of ability."
In a story, if the story becomes about the physical or mental issue, rather than a part of the story, it will not be a powerful story.
So, keep writing those plays. You have enough examples from all who have posted to validate the wonderful work you are trying to do.
Again, if anyone has more examples, please post as we have previously for so many other types of plays.
I can tell you I know a lot of actors who have physical issues who act professionally. I myself have had one my entire career. It is not overtly noticeable - only on occasion on a very bad day has it been - and I have never sought out roles I know I am physically incapable of doing. But that leaves a lot of parts!!!
Actors are actors until they die. If someone found a terrific part in a terrific play where they could sit down for two hours, that would be a dream part -for an older actor especially. As one of my mentor friends said jokingly years ago about acting, as his long and wonderful career was always built around third and fourth and fifth characters in plays, movies, television: "You know , there is a lot of money to be made in this business sitting behind a desk."
I worked with a lovely actress once in The Royal Family who had had a minor stroke and had some trouble with lines. The director made again a brilliiant choice. As this play is about the famous theatrical Barrymore family it would make sense that Fanny Cavendish, the matriarch, would always have a book in her hand. He had the play script cut apart and taped into the pages of an old hard cover book just in case! Brilliant!
But that is the rub for all of us playwrights - a terrific part in a terrific play!!! Whether in an AmDram or in professional group.
Welcome to the Site.
best,
in media res
P. S. You can reply any way you want to on the site. Makes no difference.Last edited on Tue Feb 26th, 2008 02:56 pm by in media res
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katoagogo
Member
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Posted: Wed Feb 27th, 2008 11:00 pm |
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I wanted to draw your attention to the life and work of playwright John Belluso. I had the good fortune to share a few meals with him during his residency at the O'Neill Theater Center in 2000.
Here's a bit from his bio posted on
http://www.peopleonwheels.com/big_wheels/
John Belluso was born in Warwick, RI and died at the age of 36 in 2006 in Los Angeles. A wheelchair-user since the age of 13, Belluso’s work as a playwright focused on the experience of disability. He sought to understand this experience through humor and by placing disability within its proper historical context.Recipient of too many major awards to list here, Belluse said that being disabled aided his understanding of what it took to be a playwright. “Finding the balance between participating and observing is really the key to being a good writer and a happy person,” he told the San Francisco Observer in 2005. “My disability has done nothing but help me understand that process.” In his play, "Henry Flamethrowa", a teenager reveals his plans to disconnect his comatose younger sister Lilja from her breathing ventilator and allow her to die. Another play concerned an unlikely love affair between a young man in a wheelchair and a middle-aged single mom.
for more about Mr. Belluso's plays:
http://www.newdramatists.org/john_belluso.htm#HENRY_FLAMETHROWALast edited on Wed Feb 27th, 2008 11:01 pm by katoagogo
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Will Kemp
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Posted: Tue Mar 4th, 2008 09:16 pm |
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Hi Brian, if you're still around. I thought of Laura, the girl who limps, in Glass Menagerie.
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