WEEK 45 - Ostinato
This New York Times article was the flashpoint:
It’s a long, incredibly poignant story about a guy who slipped between the cracks, beneath heaps & heaps & pounds & pounds of his life.
It’s also about the men who walked into his apartment after his death to piece it all together.
It’s both uplifting & depressing at the same time. Well worth a read.
Splice that together with a book I’ve been reading lately:
Given, you REALLY have to like Zappa to appreciate it.
See, I’ve been taking a SHIT-TON of annotations from this thing:
And that’s how I came to this point. Somewhere in the middle of this book was a word I just couldn’t shake:
Okay, zoom in a little bit:
But when it’s all said & done, this really only cemented the title of the thing. And sometimes that’s enough to pull it all together.
Here’s the thing though.
There are a LOT of details in the George Bell article that are absolutely infinite in their intricacies. But I wasn’t set on writing a procedural, so I made up my own set of rules & day-in/day-out trappings.
Besides, I wasn’t writing a staged adaptation of the New York Times article. I had to put my own spin on it.
This wasn’t about George Bell.
It was about Mr. Flowergate. And like a lot of these one-acts, I had no idea who he was or where this was going until it ended.
Apart from a few familiar names (like Grillz Foreman from WEEK 31), it was all new territory.
And that’s how we arrived here. Oh, and if you’re wondering how it’s all supposed to come together, here’s an initial set design I sketched out.
Also, to any director brave enough to figure out how to stage that last scene, I owe you a Coke.
I just write ‘em, folks. Staging ‘em’s YOUR problem.
Enjoy “Ostinato.”
Cheers!