A Dark And Quiet Room

Last night we playtested A Flower for Mara, my new game/play/improv thing. After reading about avant garde theater, I’m seriously considering giving it a subtitle “A Play in Four Acts” to help get people in the right frame of mind for it. Also, I’m hoping to approach some dramatically-minded folk in my church to see if they are willing to give it a whirl. That sort of feedback would be helpful.

Is it a game? Well, you know, I’m not really planning on getting into those sort of semantic arguments. I think that it’s a worthwhile activity, regardless of its formal status as a “game”. It has a dramatic structure with rules to guide the players. That’s good enough for me.

So, onto the actual report.

Raquel, Gabrielle, Crystal and I gathered to play. We set up shop in my front room by moving the coffee table out of the room and then setting up a card table (with tablecloth) to be the dinner table for the various group scenes. Also, the game is intended to be thought of as a play. In other words, there’s a “front” of the stage area and an “audience” area where the Director and any off-stage players sit to observe.

We also designated a “grave site” area, which is where all monologues are given. For those of you who know our house, it was in the archway between the front room and the dining room. We put a low piano bench there to be the actual grave, which worked out pretty well.

Earlier I had purchased the necessary flowers, which symbolize the griefs that the characters and players are carrying. As part of setup, each participant writes down one grief that he is carrying. Not the character, mind you; the player. Then he attaches that paper to the flower that he carries. In order for the character to lay down his grief, the player must give a brief monologue about the grief that he wrote down. Then he lays the flower at the grave site. It’s very powerful in play.

The actual story came out well, I thought. In particular, it seemed like the players were able to use the experience of playing the characters to interact with some of their own memories and burdens, which was a good thing. There was one scene where Crystal started off just playing her character, but in the end, she was saying things that I know she has wanted to say for a while.

I think that the game procedures work so far, although we definitely need to try it with more people. Currently, for characters, I have Caleb (Mara’s husband), Zoe (Mara’s daughter), and then Mara’s parents. I’d like to have one or two more characters available for play. I was going to have Caleb’s parents, but I don’t think that’s right. Each character needs to be defined by their relationship to Mara, and “daughter-in-law” doesn’t usually have the same connection as “daughter”. I’m open to hearing otherwise, though.

Crystal is already plotting out book sizes and layout. I think that this one will be on the fast track to publication.

Uh, questions? I think that I’ll do better answering queries than trying to describe what actually happened last night.

We playtested tonight.

It worked.

I’ll have more details later.

P.S. It was also quite emotional. Why do we do this to ourselves?