Fictional Tour: The Little Dionysus Playhouse
This year I will begin the publishing process for my first novel, Flowers of Dionysus. Whichever version of that undertaking I choose to pursue, I must talk about my novel more often than I have been. I will be doing so on this blog and Twitter throughout the year, starting with a brief tour of the novel’s main setting: The Little Dionysus Playhouse.
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Known to just about everyone in the area merely as the L.D.P., the Little Dionysus Playhouse has been in operation in its current location as a community theatre for over 70 years. (Going dark only for a few years during World War II.) One enters the front of the building via a set of sturdy glass doors.
Inside, flanking the doors, are two large oil paintings. One is of the original donor of the building. The other is of Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of theatre. Both paintings dominate the otherwise small lobby, which also contains the public bathrooms, a small gallery area, and an old-fashioned ticket counter. Off to the right a small staircase that leads upstairs to the tiny office of the LDP’s president. Swinging doors nearby lead into the house of the theatre.
The house is not so little, by theater standards, seating about 250 people in seats divided into three sections by way of two aisles. To the right, as one enters is a small door most people miss. Behind this door, a spiraling metal staircase that leads up to the light and sound rooms as well as the catwalk above the house.
If one walks down the right-hand aisle to the front of the house, one will find another door, just off to the side of the stage steps. Through this door is one of the LDP’s most unique features. (To some, it’s more of a design flaw.) This is The Funnel.
The Funnel is a long hallway, lined with a few shelves for storing tools and other paraphernalia. Its named is derived from the words painted in blue near the top of one of its brick walls. “The Funnel”, it says. The origins and meaning of the graffiti are unknown, but it has been there as long as anyone remembers, and is left undisturbed.
An opening about halfway down the funnel leads to the backstage area. Further down, a door to the boiler room and other such facilities. At the end of the Funnel opposite where we entered on this virtual tour is more modern door. This is the door to the green room.
It’s the envy of many community theaters in the area because of its size; it takes up the most of the building’s entire width. (Having been added to the original building in the early 1970’s to replace the much smaller area damaged by fire.)
In this green room, as in so many green rooms all over the theatre world are old chairs, couches, shelves, a tiny kitchenette with sink and coffee pot. Grey and white tiled floor.
Off to the side is the backdoor of the LDP. It leads outside to an adjacent public parking lot. The vast majority of time, actors and crew enter and exit the premises through this door, as oppose to the front door.
Two tiny doors near the front of the green room lead to the claustrophobic costume “shop”, and the one-room “workshop” such as it is, though much actual set-building is done on stage where there is room.
In the back of the green room is another door, behind which is the extreme back of the entire building. A corridor containing the dressing rooms: the ladies just as you enter, and the men’s at the far end. Both dressing rooms are nondescript.
Like all community theatres, the LDP at times has struggled with funding and a declining interest in theatre as a whole. Still, it remains one of the area’s most popular and beloved sources of theatre and other inexpensive artistic endeavors.
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You’ll be able to follow some of the adventures that happen at the Little Dionysus Playhouse in a series of short stories about it I will publish in the intermediate future, and of course in my upcoming novel, Flowers of Dionysus.
The Open Letter Continuum
Today I’m announcing a project on this blog for 2014. I’m calling it the Open Letter Continuum.
It’s been said that writing a letter to certain people, even if they cannot or will not read it, provides psychological benefits to the writer. This is especially true when the recipient hurt the writer in some way, though sometimes writing to someone one has hurt in the past is equally cathartic, I’d imagine.
I will be doing both. Every third Thursday, (and possibly more often, depending on how I feel), I’ll be posting an open letter to someone from whom I desire some kind of closure, reconciliation, or acknowledgement. Which means in most, (but not all) cases I either no longer have a relationship with the recipient, or never truly did. In some cases, I’ll be writing the letter to a more nebulous concept of people, as opposed to a specific person. There will be questions, thank yous, apologies, explanations, and here and there perhaps a one-way, “hello. I miss you.”
The recipients will remain officially anonymous of course. But I won’t promise that their identities will never be deduced, should certain people happen to read them. This means of course that some of these letters may cause a few shock-waves in my personal life. While I write none of these with the intention of offending anyone, the time has come in my life to deal with certain things in my own way, and allow the chips to fall. The truth is, that is how many of these recipients of these letters have handled me, so in some ways it is to be expected. Not revenge, but possibly karma. Call it what you will, it will be true to my needs first this time.
That being said, if I can’t write a specific letter without it being obvious to the world exactly who it is intended for, I will probably refrain from publishing.
The recipients of these letters come from all walks of my life, and from all time periods. I am deliberately publishing them outside of chronological order. I feel each will stand on its own better if readers aren’t trying to construct a narrative through the letters.
Why make them public? Why not just write these letters privately and destroy them when complete, as most people do when pursuing this exercise?
One reason is, over the years I’ve had to swallow enough of my injuries and worries, and put on a happy face. Or at least a non-expressive face. There is something to be said for shouldering one’s own burdens, and I’ve become, by force, an expert at it. But if sharing on this blog at least a fraction of what it felt like in certain circumstances makes that load any lighter, I’m willing to do so at this point in my life. After all, it should encumber nobody else; one is always free to not read these anonymous letters.
There is a certain accountability in doing this in public, as well. If I kept all of this private, I could easily keep it inside and tell myself, “you know what you’d say, no use in saying it on paper.” Then I receive no benefits at all. Having to compose my feelings here, even though they are directed to specific people means each letter, and hence each attempt at connecting with that part of my past, is tangible. I have to face it full out, or not bother.
Also, though some of these letters will be light-hearted and many of them will be someone dark and/or painful, all of them in some way have shaped who I am to this day. Reading them will provide my readers with a more in depth understanding of some aspects of myself.
None of this is to say that I’ve not dealt with any of the issues I will bring up in the letters. I have, in most cases. So please don’t think as you read these throughout the year that I haven’t let go of anything in my life. I have. But I’ve decided that in the end the potential for good results outweighs the potential for bad in this exercise. Who knows? I may not have let go of some things as much as I think I have.
So join me this year, starting a week from today, in my journey to address the “unaddressable”, to go back and mend at least my part of the past, to look inside myself at what has hurt me, and to see what comes of my perspective on the other side.
This is the Open Letter Continuum, and I’m about to enter it.
“Let Me Tell You About My Novel…”
My plan to to begin the publishing process for my first official novel, this year. Whether that will be by way of agents or self-publishing I have yet to officially determine, though I plan to have that decision made by the end of winter. I will announce that here when it happens.
Regardless of which way I go, I know I need to build excitement, or at least awareness of my novel. That’s not to say of course that I’ve never talked about it here on the blog. But those have been more mechanical considerations. (When I’m editing, or what draft am I on?) I know this year I will continue to do that, but I have to also be both more open and more specific.
Based on what I’ve seen other writers do, and on some of my research, this enhanced talking-up of my novel has three main avenues:
1) Offering peeks.
This could get tricky at times, as I want to find the important balance between sharing quotations, and possibly excerpts with readers and follows and just given away the store. After all if my readers and followers know too much about the book before hand, what’s the incentive to read it?
Plus, I’m quite protective of its content before publication. Not just from a stealing perspective, (though a tiny bit of my mind still fears that), but from the perspective of giving the wrong impression. What are the good quotations to take out of context to share with the world? What scenes stand on their own, and offer hints, but don’t mislabel the whole story? How long should an excerpt be? These are considerations I have to make.
2) Theme and/or Purpose
Both of those terms mean about a million different things to a million different writers, I understand. To me, it means that in addition to sharing more content, I need to share more of my feelings about what I want the novel to be or to do. I should be talking about the aspects of life I hope the novel touches on, but again without giving away its entire nature. I don’t think there has to be a profound reason for writing a novel other than wanting to tell a good story, but why did I want to tell this one? And to whom? Which leads into the next consideration…
3) Audience
It will behoove me this year to not only officially declare a genre, (though I think the novel straddles two of them), but to consider what type of reader and what type of person would likely get the most out of my particular story. I of course want many kinds of people to read it eventually, and I believe it can appeal to a wide range of folks. But for the sake of getting the ball rolling, I probably have to think of a demographic, (if not a niche), and talk to them when I talk about the book. “They will understand” should be my mantra in this. I don’t want to shut out other demographics, or course, and I will be careful of that. But finding the type of person more likely to enjoy my novel and speaking to them is no doubt a plus to begin with.
I just have to make sure I pick the correct demographic or type.
So, these are things I’ve thought about for a while, and mentioned in passing here in the blog and on Twitter. But if I’m to build interest in this book as I get closer to it being public, I have to consider these three things (and more) as I share about it.
So much balancing to do. Let’s see how I fare.
MMXIV
Happy New Year.
It’s a tricky time for bloggers. A goal-setting, welcome to the new year, looking back on last year, compare and contrast post seem almost compulsory. “How will he launch his 2014 blogging with a bang? What wisdom will he impart? How will he set the standard?”
Bit of quasi-pressure there, folks.
Then there is my own propensity to mark occasions with some sort of ritual of observation. I’m a ritualistic guy after all. (And perhaps with certain things a somewhat obsessive one.) So there’s a little self quasi-pressure. Or quasi- self-pressure. So many options when one makes up a term.
Yet I’ve already parted from these tendencies a bit. Normally I think of something witty or at least memorable and amusing to say as the ball drops, to make it the last thing I say in a year. I follow it up a few moments later with something witty or at least memorable and amusing to begin the new year.
This go around, it went something like this, as I sat once again alone and sober on my couch with zero guests, having been invited nowhere:
Ty: (5 seconds until New Year) “I’m not going to say anything profound this time.”
Ty: (5 seconds into the New Year) “I’m not going to say anything profound this time, either.”
No particular grand gesture there. However shall the tone of my 2014 be set now? Truth be told, though I wasn’t intending to at the time, (I was just tired of trying to be witty at New Year’s), I think perhaps I did in a sense set a tone. If I had to some it up somehow, I suppose I’d say it just being instead of being profound.
That may or may not work as a motto, I have no idea, truly. But the point is, I have many goals this year, as I always do. I will achieve some and totally whiff on others, no doubt. But it’s about just being there-showing up in an authentic way to do and pursue the things that are most me. Yes even many of the eccentricities. Many of the things I can’t justify to the world. Many of the things that I have in one way or another neglected. A less worldly approach that ironically is also less profound and memorable. An approach that embraces the tortoise over the hare. An approach that allows the notion of being to combine with the notion of doing to create the magic, faith, passion we all require so to get what we want.
An approach to a year that is similar to my approach to writing a novel; have a plan, use deadlines, be flexible, seek and take advice with discernment, but in the end tell my own story my own way, a little bit every day.
So you see, it’s not profound. It’s not unique. It’s not amazing. I’m an actor and writer, so I look for and embrace the dramatic and memorable. Believe me I’m sure positive examples of such things will be a part of the equation. A transcendent property, perhaps. But for the first time in a while, I think in the end, my answer to “What are you doing?” is going to be, “what I’m doing.”
Think about it.
I’ll see you on Monday with some more solid, tangible announcements and plans. I just had to get the damn, “welcome to 2014” stuff out of the way. How’d I do?
Reverb13 Day Twenty-One: The End Of It
The previous two times I did the Reverb project, it continued through to the end of the month. And since there are usually multiple sources for the Reverb prompts, some of the other Reverbs are in fact continuing through to the end of the year. I thought about doing so along with them.
Unlike last year, however, I’ve stayed with the same source of prompts for the entire month. In deference to that, I believe I will bow out on the 21st as well, with thanks to Kat McNally for organizing and sending the prompts I followed, plus her comments on my various posts throughout the project.
So the final prompt is a look back, obviously:
2014 is going to be MY YEAR because… I’m going to insist upon it.
In 2014, I am going to do… do more, and wonder less.
In 2014, I am going to feel… Tired, frankly. And worried. Confused and more than a bit annoyed and frustrated. But such is the case with me when I try to do new stuff in a world that doesn’t give me much help.
In 2014, I am not going to… Over-analyze. Consider, ponder, and get on with things. If I screw it up, I guess I will deal with that.
In December 2014, I am going to look back and say… it was worth it. Let’s do it again.
I followed several sources for last year’s Reverb, so looking back on it isn’t exactly the same. But in general, I think I let a few things get ahead of me in 2013 that I didn’t intend to last year this time. I laid a solid foundation for thinking more creatively, more proactively, but I didn’t execute as often or as often as I would have thought I would had you asked me in December of 2012.
On the more positive side, however, I’ve created more art than I perhaps thought I would a year ago. The work that I’ve done in certain areas had been of better quality than I might have suspected back then. And I’m more willing to embrace intentional change, not just simply accepting that life itself is gradual change. I think I’m more willing to believe I can sometimes a control the change…to be deliberate in it. For the better.
Am I right? I guess one will have to tune in during December of 2014 to know for sure.
Thanks to any fellow Reverbers who may have read my posts this year. They were a challenge, as always.
I may write a few more blog posts here and there before New Year’s but if not, enjoy your holiday season, everyone.
—Ty
Ty Unglebower 