We are surprisingly good at writing one liners. I’ve always refused to laugh at the ones my parents tell, but apparently the penchant for them is genetic because our script is chock full of them. Our story is told from the point-of-view of the four gods. They rule life down on Earth, but in My Love, My Love we only get glimpses of their true motivations. we do know that they get angry. We know that Agwe is hot-headed and Erzulie is kind. We know that Papa Ge is a master at giving uncomfortable smiles and that Asaka has been a little absent, but everything else is left ambiguous. Desiree firmly believes that the gods are at the center of everything, so that is where we have placed them. They run G.O.D.S., or the Global Overseers of Decisions Service, which if you ask me, is an awfully clever name. There characters are comically human and are often afflicted by the emotions that they believe they are so far above. We wanted to view the story through their eyes and put together a complete story from what little is revealed to us in the snippets from the book.
I’m a little in love with our script. We’ve been tweaking it here and there, but the base of it has remained the same. I hadn’t expected it to be so comical, but, especially in the beginning, we pull out a lot of funny lines. (Pnemonia’s a killer kills me everytime.) We’ve only partially blocked the first scene and even some of those decisions have to be adjusted. We all- with the exception of Taylor- are definitely speaking too fast especially when we get into it. We cut each other off, our lines tripping over our tongues and running into someone else’s words. We ran through the script on our own and it was only twelve minutes. My mental anguish at that second was probably palpable. Our script is eight pages long. Eight pages! We worked for hours on that and in the morning no less! I figure with pacing and scene changes, we can add maybe another five minutes, and we’ve decided to add some opening and closing narration to add time and to ensure we all have an equal amount of lines.
Divvying up stage time has been something we’ve all tried to be hyper aware of. We went into this knowing that Asaka and Agwe were going to take up a lot of time toward the end of the play, so we’ve tried to add more parts for Erzulie and Papa Ge, who in my opinion, as a result, have some of the best lines in the play. I think we are doing well with characterization. From what little we’ve acted out, I think we all know who we are playing and how they would feel when something happens. Taylor’s deadpan and timing is spot on, and although Charlie is too fast with her delivery, her tone and enthusiasm, and when needed, her sass work really well with the Erzulie we’ve painted in the play. Michael nails Agwe with his childishness and quickness to anger and I’ve been really working on channeling my inner Mother Earth. Asaka is genuine, but sometimes annoyingly so, but I think I’ve almost got the sweet spot in between.
I’m happy with the progress we’ve made. We haven’t seen many other groups, but I feel confident in the work we’ve put in. What we really need to work on is just slowing our pacing, but also knowing when to stand up or when to cross as to not block one of our project partners or even our faces from the audience. We’ve done well with memorizing even if we are guilty of ad-libbing, so it's mostly being conscious of each other and the audience that we have to work on. I love our script, but we have to act it up in some places to ensure we are doing enough for a theatre production and not veering toward a TV special. This script is funny in the traditional sense, meaning that it has the obligatory cheesy jokes and the classic water spill, but also because of how flippantly our characters act when they are in charge of such major decisions. This became a play centered around an office romance even though it was inspired by a book about a hopeless love and a desperate girl who can't be saved in the end. So either we totally degraded a moving story and made a joke out of a dying girl or we just made a shamingly cheesy office romance cliche somehow manage to humanize these other-worldly characters and tell the audience that not even gods can really control destiny. Hopefully it's the second one. 
*I couldn't think of an appropriate picture, so I just attached some hilarious Michael Scott memes just because. Enjoy*
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