The Inception (of the Celeb Rehab show):

From the desk of Jeff Love, Artistic Director:

This will be the first part of a series. I'm not entirely sure how many parts there will be in this series because I've never mapped this sort of thing out before. Essentially, what I plan on doing here is showing the steps that I, and occasionally other members of Point of You Productions, take when deciding to write a show for the company to perform.

THE INSPIRATION

At some point, while watching the news, it dawned on me that our society is completely entranced in hearing about various celebrities going to rehab, whether they are famous for acting, singing, or pretending to do those things, we are, as a collective consciousness, spending time thinking about them. This is usually a good indication that POY has a subject to write about.

What also seems to be a fixation is just how much these rehab centers are actual rehab centers versus how much they're glorified country clubs that cater to the wealthy and mentally irresponsible. This dichotomy, along with the need for a subject, seems to immediately indicate a genre best suited for the subject. For me, this genre is clearly comedy.

So there we have it. A comedy, about celebrity rehab.

THE OUTLINE

After already bouncing the ideas off the other company members and some select friends and family, everyone seems very positive (as opposed to my idea of a tragedy musical about dolphins dying in fishing nets) and so all that remains is...well...absolutely everything else.

First an outline (which I've been taught goes in 3 stages: the play's story written in a paragraph, than a page, then several pages describing what happens, with each draft obviously becoming more and more in-depth regarding the events). After that, you make sure all the characters you
need are fully thought out in your head. Are there any who are too similar and should be combined, or one who should be eliminated? This gets particularly tricky when you are trying to write parts for your friends and company members because along with wanting to put on a good show, POY makes it a point to encourage each company member to be challenged and have fun (so, for example, writing a part for Johnny to be a crazy old man in a wheelchair as I did for Five Years Later, while never getting any older or less funny in my mind, wouldn't necessarily be the best for him as a stepping stone to becoming a fully rounded actor).

THE DIALOGUE

Once the characters are fully fleshed out, and I have people in mind (or a couple of people) for the parts, I begin writing bits of dialogue about any general conflict ("who ate my roll!?" or what have you) to get a feel for how the characters talk and interact with one another. This is usually such a fun part of the process, that it completely supersedes everything else, and I've got piles of "bits of dialogue" that may very well never see the light of day...but it was still fun coming up with the lines.

THE CHARACTER AND CONFLICT

Then I begin to see if any bits of dialogue can be directly inputted into the play. I've already mapped out the scenes and the conflicts, so hopefully something as simple as "who ate my roll?" in a celebrity rehab comedy could become, "who vomited on my stash?" (because I hear that can happen in those places). If not, then the process of truly "working" comes in as you try to capture the characters, tone, and conflicts that your play needs. This is often where writers can misstep, because we tend to either love dialogue we've written but it doesn't fit the conflict, or it fits the conflict but seems to be completely out of left field for the characters to say. When either happens, it's important not to be too married to either characters or conflict. And I usually
rely on company members and other writers to tell me if this happens since they'll be the initial audience who decides if everything makes sense (until opening night that is).

You have to back up and see what it is you're trying to accomplish with a scene, character, or play as a whole, and then change whatever needs to be changed in order to communicate the Moral of the story. I had a pair of "judges" for Five Years Later that took me until a month
before rehearsals started to finally admit they should not be kept.

But once you've done that, you've got a working draft, and then the fun part of rewriting after readings happens... I’ll write about that next!