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Over the next few months, TheHWord.com will feature blog posts related to a theatre production being presented by the Hastings Junior Community Theatre (HJCT). This group will be performing “Higher”, an original play written by Superior, Nebraska, native AP Andrews. A number of authors will document their experience on TheHWord.com, including Christine Cottam, HJCT director; and several students involved in the production.
But the initial post is from the playwright himself. This promises to be an intriguing series of articles, proving once again that Hastings is a unique community filled with talent. Enjoy.
“The Scrap of Paper on My Wall”
February 16, 2010 • Somewhere in East Harlem, New York City
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“Write a play about what it is to be a teenager in Nebraska today.”
I stared at this sentence for a good three months before meeting with Chris Cottam in January to discuss the possibility of writing a play for the HJCT. I had written the note in a hurried scrawl in a notebook back in August, and later torn it out and hung it on the wall next to the desk in my apartment. For the entirety of the Fall 2009 Semester, I would see the note every time I gazed out the window while doing homework or while writing, and my mind would instantly begin to wander. I watched the rain of late Summer fall on my fire escape, gazed at leaves falling onto a quiet 103rd St. in Autumn, and finally, snow drifting into the alleyway outside my window as Winter came on, all while thinking the same thing: “How in the hell am I going to do that?”
For me, that’s the most exciting question to be facing when writing a new play. I try to challenge myself consistently- in my life as well as in my art- with goals that aren’t just difficult, but are also somewhat impossible. So this was a good one. How do I capture the spirit of an entire region, of an entire generation growing up in my hometown, without it coming off as a cheap MTV Reality Show or a folksy new addition to the Disney Channel? I knew these are the two traps it would be easiest to fall in to. But how to avoid them?
Over the course of the fall, I came to realize three things that have informed my writing of this play.
One, I am not interested in writing generalizations. Ever. That’s why I’m a playwright and not a screenwriter- the use of “the jock” or “the geek” do not make sense to me in my imagining of a high school in Nebraska. These broad caricatures may exist in most movies, but they don’t exist in what I saw growing up. Every young adult in my school was a complete human being- not a 2-dimensional cartoon but a prism of complex issues and personality traits that made a complete person. The key to truly capturing what I see, as far as I can tell, will be to write characters that are not more broad- as one might first think- but to write characters who are more specific. What are their interests and what are the backgrounds, sure, but what really gets me going are questions beyond that: What are their quirks? What are things that they believe or think about that they’ve never told anyone? That’s what excites me. That’s what I’ll be digging in to with this play.
Two, a classic Aristotelian plot structure (beginning, middle, end; exposition, build, climax, resolution) doesn’t feel right to me when telling this story- I think mainly because there is not just one story I want to tell. Knowing the students I am writing for as well as I do, I know that they all have the chops to handle lead roles. So I’ve done what seems obvious- I make every character a lead role. Life, to me, doesn’t fall into a classic structure- I don’t wake up and make my breakfast thinking “this is some good backstory”, and when something horrible happens to me in the day, I don’t think “oh- is that catharsis I feel coming on?” It doesn’t happen that way. We don’t look at our lives every day able to point out how is the tragic hero of the week. It happens naturally, and we often don’t notice it until it’s over, if we do ever take time to notice it at all. Someone really smart said something like that once, and with this play, I think it’s true. So I’ve employed a dramatic structure that I think allows for this idea, this feeling, to take place in an organic way.
Third, I believe that the tragedies of a high school student in Nebraska are for the most part silent ones, suffered alone and often behind closed doors- at least that’s the society I grew up in. Young adults are forced to make decisions when they are young that many adults can’t even make when they are full-grown- whether or not to have sex, whether or not to smoke, whether or not to betray their friends for reason x, y, or z, whether or not to tell someone that they love them. Most of the time these decisions are made alone, and too, the repercussions of such decisions are handled alone. Good parenting and therapy (in more extreme cases) help, for sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that kids have to make decisions for themselves, and have always had to- decisions that will shape the rest of their young lives and sometimes, beyond. I’m interested in those decisions. I do not have an answer to this problem, nor do I pretend to. I’m not interested in giving audiences an answer. Any conclusions that anyone comes to from watching this play will be his or her own. I believe that plays should be the questions that foster good and lively conversation, not the answers that end all debate.
These are things I knew for certain.
So I wasn’t surprised when I found myself in a quiet coffee shop in Hastings, Nebraska, completely tongue-tied as I tried to explain to Chris the giant abstract thoughts and feelings that had been brewing inside of me while I thought about this play, about this world, as her children played happily with a toy near the front windows of the shop. She sat across from me and nodded and smiled as I rambled on about the problems young people face, and the political landscape of America, and classic plot structures, as she has always done when working with me, since the very beginning. And when I had finished, some time later, flustered and out of breath, she simply smiled and said “Great. That sounds wonderful.”
This is a reaction that I am used to getting from Chris, and is what I think makes her and the work she is doing in the community so very special. She has the ability to see through the rambling diatribes and see the passion that students have for their work. She acknowledges the problems, and works through them, sure, but always keeps an eye focused on the potential her students possess. With the knowledge she gets from truly taking the time to know the young person, she then nurtures their impulses and their talents to help them grow into something beautiful.
Every time I hit a bump with this play, a section of writer’s block or a passage that just isn’t working, I’m reminded of that incredible skill that Chris has, and of the immense potential that all of the young adults at HJCT possess, and that’s what keeps me going. I make myself a cup of hot chocolate, look at the incredible mess that I have just made on the page, and try to find the spark- the potential. Sometimes it takes a very, very long time. And while I’m waiting for divine inspiration to strike down through my window from above, I look at the scrap of the paper taped to my wall and glance out at the giant flakes of snow falling on my fire escape.
And then, after I’ve had a moment to regroup, I pick up my pen and get back to work on this play- this play about “what it is to be a teenager in Nebraska today”.
Tags: hastings junior community theatre, hjct, theater
About the author: Anthony P. Andrews
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