Sources
SCRIPT
Process: Collaborative Writing
For me, this was first and foremost a process of collaboration than a process of adaptation. I was interested in exploring the spectrum of adaptation practices from a director’s adaptation to a playwright’s adaptation and anything in between from a collaborative perspective, seeking to challenge the dominant auteur view of adaptations. I set out to explore different adaptation methods and approaches through research and practice, prioritizing collaborative processes in order to expand my practice as a whole.
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Co-writing posed its own unique challenges – making sure we are on the same page every step of the way, providing constructive feedback, and holding each other accountable. Unlike working in a larger collective (like in the case of our work with Punkt) it was easier to agree on a shared vision while also keeping an open mind and being flexible about the ways in which the vision might change over time. And it did indeed change quite drastically from the first few sketches we wrote to the form it takes at the moment.
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One of the greatest benefits to my own practice was having to work towards a shared goal, accommodating another creative vision into my own. The collaboration was particularly fruitful as we brought different approaches and lenses that were our way into the project initially. In the first few months of our collaboration, we explored various ideas separately for the most part. Over the course of the year, we saw shows together and shared interesting findings with each other which allowed us to be on a similar wavelength creatively, developing a solid vision for the look and feel of the production we eventually wanted to make.
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Wearing both a writer and a director’s hat going into the project did at times get in the way of the writing when we considered the practicalities of the production we were eventually hoping to make. With the changes brought on by Covid-19, however, it was no longer possible to pursue a production as part of the MFA. Therefore, the focus of the project shifted slightly and allowed us to go through a more rigorous dramaturgical process (discussed below), which overall has benefited the project immensely. It also meant that we could leave the production practicalities aside when writing and envision the script on a bigger scale.
Preliminary Writing Experiments
& Dramaturgy Session #1
The beginning of this process, like any other, began with just getting some ideas out on the page and having multiple discussions until we refined the focus and key ideas of the piece. The overlap in my academic focus and Abi’s allowed us to quickly find creative common ground and decide on something that we were both interested in writing.
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For the first couple of months, we wrote some preliminary sketches and experiments, exploring some of the key concepts and ideas that we were grappling with and trying to find our anchor for writing the piece. In the meantime, we were also discussing the premise of our adaptation. More than just writing an adaptation of Hamlet, we knew that we needed to ground ourselves in a concept or main argument (i.e. what we wanted to say with this adaptation). That was a question that we kept revisiting throughout the writing process and didn’t quite solidify until later on, so I think it was essential for us to have this exploratory phase in the beginning.
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Some of the main things that emerged during this phase though had to do with form. Those ideas have existed from the beginning of the writing process and ended up being the basis of the play both in terms of form and content:
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meta-theatricality & direct address to the audience
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a highly visual piece featuring music & projections
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a piece that directly or overtly uses ideas of gender and performativity to convey its ideas
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During our first major dramaturgical session, we wrote out all moments and scenes from what we had written up to that point to see the loose structure that was already in place. We had a good amount of material and two different potential arcs (centered around Hamlet and Ophelia respectively) that our content could be moulded to fit. We started by considering the five stages of grief as the organizing dramaturgical principle whether with Hamlet or with Ophelia at the centre. It was at this point that we started considering shifting the focus of the play entirely towards Ophelia, which we found was a more compelling and intriguing project for us and our potential audiences.
Hamlet story arc (left 3 columns) & Ophelia story arc (right). After making these we discovered that the way we had even arranged the index cards formed an H and an O respectively.
Draft #1 & Feedback
Building on the previous writing and some preliminary feedback on our ideas, we completed the first full draft of the script, which was focusing on Ophelia’s perspective. In the process of consolidating our material, the parallel between the Ophelia/Hamlet and Echo/Narcissus relationship became a central pivot for the adaptation and it’s one that has proved particularly fruitful for building the relationships between the characters.
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It was around this time that the Covid-19 crisis began, which meant that the focus of our project shifted largely towards the process of writing and dramaturging the script. My mentor Polina has supported the project dramaturgically from before the first full draft was completed. Working with her has helped us clarify the main focus of the piece and get rid of the extraneous bits that diluted its goals. This external feedback we received on the different iterations of the script has been instrumental. My conversations with her have always been a productive back and forth, where she would begin with a guiding question about the script or our intentions and we would talk through what the script is currently doing in that regard vs. what we would want to achieve. Going through multiple drafts and a rigorous dramaturgical process has allowed us to find the ideas at the heart of the project that we wanted to communicate with this adaptation in the first place.
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In Polina's feedback on this first complete draft, the main questions were about the relationship between Ophelia and Gertrude. This sparked an important conversation in actually outlining what the arc of that relationship and led to perhaps the largest shifts in the structure of the play (see Dramaturgy #2). Another issue in the earliest drafts was that a lot of the events take place in memory and therefore we are telling rather than showing, so the scenes are not very active in the present moment. Finally, there was a big question at this stage of the use of Elizabethan English vs. modern English in different moments in the play, which we had to make some decisions about going forward.
Dramaturgy Session #2
With lockdown in place, we found a way to conduct a dramaturgical session using online software (see below) that allowed us to easily visualize the structure of our play at that point and identify where the potential issues are based on the feedback previously received. We managed to build upon and refine our collaborative approach with the tools available even in these more restricted circumstances.
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In this dramaturgical discussion, we realized that the main issue was with the climax of the piece or lack thereof. We had been playing around with the idea of a clash between generations but were essentially lacking the rejection or rebellion from the younger generation. Therefore, our main focus for the revisions towards the second draft was clarifying the relationship between Ophelia and Gertrude in a way that frames Ophelia at first as young, naive, and impressionable, following Gertrude’s example because she has no other. Later, however, she realizes that the life she is destined to lead is not one she wants and she rejects Gertrude’s mentorship and this society in a clearer act of rebellion. Looking at the play just through the lens of that relationship was particularly helpful in identifying the moments where we could make the events more active.
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The process up to this point was an exercise in adaptation as much as it was an exercise in playwriting. There were elements in the script that didn’t work so well because we were following a conceptual idea for how the adaptation should work. In the spirit of exploration, I believe that was a necessary part of our collaborative process. As we got further along in the process we continued to refine those initial ideas about the political project in our adaptation, while improving the quality of the writing. This alongside the feedback received on the first draft culminated in our second draft version, which was a lot more focused and active.
Dramaturgical structure of Draft #1 (left) & the intended dramaturgical changes for Draft #2.
Draft #2 & Reading
On June 2nd, we shared a section from the second draft of the script with our tutors and classmates. The process of rehearsing for this was particularly fruitful as it allowed us to hear the text out loud in its entirety and note moments that stalled or did not lend themselves to the flow of the piece. Based on the length of the read-through, we decided to share the first couple of scenes, where we felt the rules of the world were established, and the second half of the play, where the plot of our adaptation really departs from that of the original. We hoped to receive feedback that would allow us to reflect on the framing of the piece and improve on any sections that don’t land with the audience.
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Based on the feedback received from our peers during the session as well as the feedback from Polina on this draft, we decided to concentrate our next revisions around three main elements:
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removing/reframing the character of Hamlet;
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reframing the transition into the world of Hamlet (i.e. the letter scene)
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tracking the way music works in the script
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Removing Hamlet as a character was perhaps the biggest provocation we received in this round of feedback and it was voiced by both our peers and our mentors. It required somewhat substantial rewriting going forward from the second draft but was ultimately an exciting suggestion that we primarily focused our efforts on. The rest of our redrafting was around some small fixes we had noted during our preparations for the reading to improve the flow of the piece.
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At this stage, there was also feedback that didn't necessarily make its way into the current version but is something that we are keeping in mind for the future. For example, some of the feedback was concerned with the position of the audience in this world as well as what they are meant to believe is real. This was a particularly provocative piece of feedback as the state of blurred reality and memory is somewhat fundamental to the piece. Linking to this Polina has also encouraged us to think about our audience and what prior knowledge we are expecting of them. As it is our aim for ECHO to be able to stand on its own and not rely on previous knowledge of Hamlet, thus challenging the elitist and exclusionary assumptions around Shakespeare in performance, this is something that we would take on in the production development process.
password: 1r+&%29b
Current Version
The draft in its current iteration is a two-hander focusing only on the two female characters from Hamlet - Ophelia and Gertrude - which is much more closely aligned with the project of our adaptation. In this way, we are allowing them to exist in their own space, not as derivatives of other plots and machinations but in their own right as characters with depth, interiority, and agency existing and rebelling against an oppressive male-dominated world. At the moment, as Polina commented, the dramaturgical form is messy (in a good way), disrupting the hyper-masculine traditional storytelling techniques where the action climaxes and then resolves. Instead, we have a less tidy climax that leads to a nice flow and a slightly disorientating structure, which is the point.
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There is perhaps room for strengthening the present action and clarifying some points in the writing even more, which is largely one of the shortcomings of the form of a memory play. With more time for practical exploration and R&D we hope to develop the visual elements of the piece even more. The hope is that once it becomes possible we will produce a fully realized production of ECHO building on the script, dramaturgical and preliminary design work done during the MFA. For the purposes of this Sustained Independent Project, however, we have been successful in establishing a collaborative working practice that we will take forward into the future development of the show.
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Read the current version of the script below (for best reading experience, view in full screen mode) or download as a PDF.