1001

If I were you, I would read Jason's post on the Times review, and then I'd go buy yourself a ticket and see 1001.  I saw an early preview of the show, and I think that Jason is absolutely the kind of writer we should be supporting and his play is well worth the cost of admission to see. People are going to write all kinds of things about the play, positive and negative (I liked it, it was still definitely an early preivew, but I could see where it would get to and that that place would be good) but I wanted to touch on one thing about it: It's dramaturgy.

Jason (who is a friend, just to be fully disclosed) has been very open about his mash-up technique of playwriting.  He likes to take disperate elements and toss them against each other, to see what comes to the fore through both contrast and harmony between the various strains. In this way, he is the heir apparent to a collagist like Chuck Mee. But there's something a bit different in Jason's work, particularly the way he seems to collage the spirit of the sources he is drawing on, while Mee uses more of their actual texts. 

This is put to particularly good use in 1001, where he deploys his mashup dramaturgy in the midst of a structure rarely attempted on the stage: digressive long narrative form.  The play is a series of nested dolls, with each story opening up into a new one before it can conclude, like in A Thousand Nights and A Night or Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler.  Few writers really try this format. It's hard to get right (my vote for one obscure writer who gets it would be Patrick O'Leary in his fantasy novel The Gift). The self-referentiality can be a bit bewildering, and rather conventional mores about how to properly satisfy a reader I'm sure are hard to fight against.

I've never seen it attempted on the stage, and while at first the effect is a bit jarring, it's both impressive and effective. There were times when I wish the characters didn't discuss what stories were and what their value was as openly as they did, but then again, as I told Dan after we saw The Pillowman at The Studio Theatre in D.C., I have such a major pet peev about plays that discuss storytelling and its meanings that I don't even like to hear the word "story" spoken out loud on stage.  I don't know why this is.  So maybe I'm not the best judge of that particular aspect.

Still, 1001 whether you end up liking it or not, is a play unlike most plays, both structurally and in its concern for matching structural innovation with audience enjoyment.  If you don't know Jason's work, it's a good place to start.

Comments

[Jason Grote]

Thanks, buddy. You're very generous. And your criticisms are definitely valid.

[cgeye]

Mr. Grote did well in Denver, and he will do well in NYC, as long the people come to wrestle and chew.