The Plays

Pinch

In 2002, Matt Quinn asked me to write a play for the upcoming "Fear Project". I had already adapted several short stories for the stage for him (Neil Gaiman's "Troll Bridge" and "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale"; Martha Soukup's "Arbitrary Placement of Walls" and "A Defense of the Social Contracts"; Ursula K. LeGuin's "Darkness Box"), but this was to be an original piece. We just couldn't find a short story that appealed to both of us.

My instructions were clear. Write a play that was about fear, not based on Neil's works, not science fiction or fantasy, and that would push the boundaries of what we had been doing with multi-media theatre. Also, we were casting the show in two weeks. My first thought was that he was nuts in his requirements. Five minutes later, I had the answer. Nightmares.

Despite my instructions, I took a page from Neil's book, "Sandman". The idea of the waking nightmare, the nightmare that you think you've woken up from but you haven't, was the hook for the piece. The Dreamer would wake from one nightmare to another, each one worse than the one before. Originally, I planned on one dream for each of the nine primary nightmare types, but that quickly became burdensome. I condensed it down, packing them together: Speaking in public combined with trying to find something you've lost combined with losing your teeth; naked in public with being back in school; etc.

initial reactions to the script were disbelieving. "You've written a film, not a play." But the goal was to push is, and this definitely did that. We had access to simultaneous front and rear screen projection, and also an excellent animator and videographer (Ethan Hoerneman), which made these effects possible. Ethan created the animated bugs, the shifting backgrounds, the bluescreen effects for the Hive, and the speed-up/slow-down off the cliff sequences. His most startling contribution would have to be the gunshot effects. He used the rear screen projection to blast the brains of the family onto the "walls" of the house when the King takes his vengeance. It was far more real than I thought we'd ever be able to achieve. Steve Kahn brought in music and maggot noises for the "meat baby."

Sadly, we had to substitute a paste baby for the meat one, for health reasons. If I ever do a film version of Pinch, we'll use hamburger, though.

The show never went off without a hitch. We never got all the cues to play just right, and the difficulty in synching up the light flood and blackout with the whooshing sound cue proved to be too much for our operators. When it hit, it was incredible. But I had pushed us just beyond what we could do. Still, people who didn't know the way it was supposed to work left the theatre surprised, amazed and deeply disturbed. I had several people come to be afterwards saying how perfectly I had captured the experience of being caught in a dream.

I doubt anyone has figured out what each of the dream symbols mean, but I'm hoping that someone eventually cracks my code. Everything does mean something. I invite you to take a crack at it.

Download "Pinch" here and check out the photo gallery on Dan Wilson Show for pictures of the original production

posted by Dan Wilson @ 10:09 AM