"Sideways" Stage Update (Oct., 2011)
The Ruskin Group Theater Co. just held the second "cold read" of the Sideways play. After the first read I went back inside, as I reported in an earlier blog, and did a major rewrite. The rewrite dealt more with time and staging issues than it did with narrative ones. We had a slightly larger audience of about 15, and we had a video crew there to document it.
We got underway a little late, but the actors were terrific reading, without the benefit of props and staging, etc., and, for some of them, the first time out loud. So difficult to get everything right, especially given that some of the dialogue is lengthy and peppered with polysyllabics, as is my wont — as is the wont of Miles, I should say.
I and the Ruskin Group — Jason Matthews (the driving force behind this); Michael Myers, their Managing Director; Mike Reilly, their Production Director; and John Ruskin, the Creative Director — felt that this second draft had made leaps and bounds toward beginning pre-production. The first act still timed out a tad long, but the second act was really tight. There was a lot of laughter! A lot! One of their overriding concerns was: what was I going to cut? It wasn't that it was too long narrative-wise, it was that it was just a little too long in terms of getting an audience in and out and home in a reaonable amount of time without compromising the play. I told them not to worry. Only the writer knows what got cut; the audience is oblivious to that.
We're now going to move into the next phase and secure a director. While we undertake that process I'll go back inside and make some judicious cuts, try to streamline Act I a little, but mindful of several facts: a lot of streamlining will be done in the rehearsal process vis-a-vis how, and what, problems, manifest in the staging; I don't want to lose perspective, and that's a legitimate danger coming off of material that I originally wrote back in '98!
What's going to be so exciting is to see this play come to life. Jason approached me some 8 months ago about the prospect of doing a play of Sideways, and I was initially reluctant. But as I've gotten to know him and the "two Mikes" (as we call them) and John Ruskin, it's just such a joy to work with people who are into theater for the love of the work, for the love of this particular material. Then, too, it's also going to be gratifying to be working in a medium where the writer is ostensibly king. Unlike screenwriting where, once you sell your script, you have zero control — in fact, so little control they can elect to throw you off the set if they way — in the theater the director and writer work closely together to shape the play with the cast. They can't change a word of my dialogue without my permission — I don't even think Aaron Sorkin has that kind of control!
Anyway, I've been posing the following question: what piece of material has gone from novel to screen, and then on to stage. No one has been able to come up with an answer until yesterday when Mike Reilly said that Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men went exactly that route. I'm not, in a million years, going to compare myself to Steinbeck, but that's pretty august company.
The play is happening. We're going to set a date some time next week. We're all looking for a January premiere. We hope to have week sponsored by a different winery. My refrain: "No Yellowtail Merlot in plastic cups!" at the Sideways play.
Stay tuned.
