HIGH SCHOOL IS KAFKAESQUE: How and Why I Wrote "Confession: Kafka in High School"

From a production of "Confession: Kafka In High School" by Aitkin High School

I love every play I have written.  They are all flawed, of couse, but each one is special to me.  However, if I was forced, absolutely life-dependent on an honest answer, I would have to say that, in my heart, I believe "Confession: Kafka in High School" to be my best published play so far. 

So, I was living in Dover-Foxcroft, and had finished directing and starring in a production of "Little Shop of Horros" at the Center Theatre (a production I'm very fond of).  I met a great deal of people who were interested in reading my plays and who began to encourage me to submit my work.  In truth, I hadn't finished a new play for quite some time, but, after fixing up my play RUMPLESTILSKIN THE R-DAWG, HIP-HOP MINSTREL and submitting it, I decided it was time for me to start working on another play.  After all, it had been at least two or three years since I had written a play.  But I had friends now, people who were genuinely interested, people I wanted to impress (which can be a great motivating factor), and a desire to really see if I could, after wasting so much time, actually pursue what I had studied at Bennington. 

So, one night in late December, after I had already submitted Rumplestilskin to a few places, I found myself with a bout of insomnia.  I had been hired to direct the one-act plays for Foxcroft Academy, where I had been a student once upon a time.  I started to think of my own life in high school and how, so often, I felt pretty much powerless, like just another cog in a machine I had no real control over.

I have insomnia intermittently, and often it is a terrible experience not being able to sleep.  But I am truly thankful for this particular bout of insomnia.  I opened up my laptop, opened up a new document, and made a title page:  CONFESSION, a one-act absurdist play by Bobby Keniston.  And then I wrote the play in about two and a half hours.  And then I slept pretty well afterwards.

"Confession" (the original title) poured out of me as a fully-formed idea, so I have to believe that aspects of the play had been forming in my subconscious for some time.  I know I wanted to write a play that could be used for high school one-act competitions.  But the story itself?  I had no idea it was waiting around in my brain, looking forward to being typed out.

Confession: Kafka in High School is about a young man named Connor K (huh... get it?) who wakes up in the conference room of his high school, still in his pajamas, sleeping on a table.  He is greeted by his Principal, the formidable Ms. Delisle (rhymes with Bell Isle), who offers him some breakfast before accusing him of a crime.  The problem is, Ms. Delisle will not tell poor Connor what crime he supposedly committed.  But it seems pretty serious.  Ms. Delisle makes it clear that Connor will be in very big trouble until he confesses.  Along the way, Connor is confronted by his parents (his mother a weeping mess, and his father only able to say the words "You.... you!"), a peer mediator, the gorilla-like assistant principal, and, finally, three representatives of the "Free Connor K" campaign. 

Connor, who had always kept his head down at school and avoided any kind of cofrontation, now appears to be the center of the high school universe, all because of some incredible act of rebellion he performed.  Only, he can't get anyone to tell him what he did, and is pretty sure he didn't do anything. 

I had a great deal of fun writing the play.  I am fond of the characters, and the absurd touches in the script.  I absolutely love Connor's father who only speaks in variations of "You...you!", and Mr. Demetri, Ms. Delilse's yes-man assistant (she literally makes him perform a gorilla dance and make sounds like an ape).  I giggled a great deal while writing it, but I also felt a genuine connection with Connor's predicament, and enjoyed watching him go from confused and scared and pass through a variety of emotions toward anger, and ending with a monologue that strengthens his resolve to confess nothing. 

Certainly I was inspired by Kafka while writing the play, but there were so many more of my favorites who kept creeping into my mind--- Edward Albee, Ionesco, Pinter--- just to name a few.  As I read it now, I am proud of creating a work that I think helps take the absurdity of those writers, often with their existential themes, and makes them relatable to high school students. 

A production of "Confession: Kafka in High School" performed by Wellington Heights Secondary School

Why is it my favorite?  Well, there's the gorilla dance of course.  But aside from that, I think I'm so fond of "Confession: Kafka in High School" because it says a lot of what I feel about education (both from the student and administrator's perspective).  I think the character of Ms. Delilse is one of the finest parts I have ever written for an actress.  She truly has some lines that still surprise me when I read them over, such as, "No, Connor, my favorite thing about your generation is how easy it is to separate your from your ideals.  My generation didn't give up our ideals until the world crushed us down, or we grew tired of sharing apartments with twelve other people who couldn't pay rent because there was no market for their free verse protests.  Your generation loses its ideals with the next commercial break."

By the way, I had a lovely fourth grade teacher named Miss Belisle, and my Ms. Delilse is in no way based on the kind teacher I was fortunate to be instructed by in her reading class. 

I think the reason it truly shines through as my favorite of my own is because, of all my published plays so far, I think it has the most palpable dramatic arc (something I'll be talking about in my playwriting tutorial), and is just the right length.  Nothing seems gratuitous to me.  I think the structure works, absurdity or not. 

After that night of insomnia, a very dear friend read the script out loud with me.  She loved it, too.  I changed exactly one line, and then submitted it. 

Incidentally, the day after Rumplestilskin was accepted for publication by Brooklyn Publishers, Confession was accepted for publication by the good folks at Playscripts, Inc.  Talk about a great couple of days!  To have the first two scripts I submitted in quite some time picked up by two different publishers was pretty amazing.  Playscripts is a great company, and were very kind about my script.  They did ask me to change the title to something like Kafka in High School or something along those lines.  I compromised by making that the subtitle, but now, looking back, I wonder if perhaps they hadn't been right.  Maybe I should have thought of something like High School is Kafkaesque or Kafka for the High School Experience, but at the time, "confession" just seemed so vital to me.  Of course, I'll never know if it would have sold better otherwise, so I guess it's not important. 

Along thse lines, while I am grateful for every production the show has received, I do feel perhaps it is a bit of an underutilized gem (though I have absolutely no complaints at the many ways Playscripts has helped to promote it, and, it has received more than one production every year it's been in print, something I can't say for all of my plays).  I don't know--- in a way, I thought it had some of the same interesting humor that a play like "This is a Test" used to great success. 

I'm a little worried that this post is coming off as a bit self-congratulating, but I'm really not trying to.  In a way, because of the manner in which the play is written, I sort of still feel surprised that I wrote the thing whenever I take a look at it.  I can almost read it like I would read a friend's play and say, 'Wow.  Great job."  Considering how critical I am of most of the stuff I write, I can't feel too guilty about really liking this one a great deal.

If you have any other questions about Confession:  Kafka in High School, feel free to comment below or contact me at theater.is.a.sport@gmail.com  If you would like to read a script preview or order a copy, please visit this link:  http://www.playscripts.com/play.php3?playid=2076

Also, I was quite proud to learn that Playscripts chose to include Connor's monologue from the play in their collection Actor's Choice:  Monologues for Teens, Vol. II.  I don't feel bad plugging this book, becaue it contains wonderful monologues by so many talented writers.  I was truly surprised and honored to be included in the volume with them.  You can take a look at that book here:  http://www.playscripts.com/play.php3?playid=2495

Okay, thanks for reading this edition of Theater is a Sport!  If you would like to learn more about who I am, you can visit my facebook playwright page--- https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bobby-Keniston-Playwright-Page/148232788536601  And if you want to become a fan of Theater is a Sport on facebook, click here:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/TheaterIsASport

Thanks again for reading.  See you tomorrow with a blog post about whatever I desire...

Until then, remember:  theater is a sport.

MY HERO WORSHIP OF CHRISTOPHER DURANG



ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLAYWRIGHTS, CHRISTOPHER DURANG

To me, Christopher Durang is a perfect example of why theater is a sport.  From his early parodies to his one-act absurd pieces, Mr. Durang's plays are bold, daring, funny (often in a darkly painful way), and full of energy.  Anyone who knows me well is aware of how energy is one of my favorite words and concepts, so perhaps it is only natural that I was drawn to Durang as soon as I was introduced to his work, and how he inspired me to want to write wild plays of my own.
I was a freshman in high school when I was cast in the lead role of The Actor's Nightmare, one of Durang's more mainstream, but still wildly funny, plays.  Once I recovered from the shock of being cast in the LEAD of the COMPETITION PLAY (completely rare and unexpected for a freshman), I hunkered down and read the script over and over again.

I never got tired of it.

The acting edition of The Actor's Nightmare is published by Dramatists with perhaps Durang's most successful (and controversial) one-act, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You (these two plays ran together on a doule bill Off-Broadway at the Westside Arts Theater, where it ran for a couple of years, marking the first time Durang could make a living as a playwright).  I devoured that play as well, darker and edgier than the play I was in, and it was all over--- my adoration was cemented.  I attacked my drama coach's file cabinet of perusal scripts, and read every Durang I could find.

I read and saw a lot of plays growing up.  My parents were very active in different community theaters, and I loved the very idea of plays.  I would check out collections of "America's Best Plays" by the decade from my hometown library.  But Durang's style was an eye-opener, and unlike anything I had ever read:  the absurdity, the dark comedy, the almost wildness of it all--- and, yet, all of these qualities seemed rooted in pain.  As I grew older, I would discover others (like Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad), but, for me, Durang was the first. 

My friends and I were all about dark humor and absurdity (being such a small circle on the outside looking in, this was most likely out of self-preservation).  We pushed our jokes to the most satirical ends possible, trying to one-up each other.  Reading Durang in high school made me feel like he could easily be my friend, obviously the smartest of a pretty smart group. 

When I started writing plays in college, I found myself pushing absurd, dark comedies, just like my hero.  I look back on these plays and admire the energy and glee I put into them.  Obviously, I was not trying to write "just like" Durang, but was trying to capture this kind of freedom he has in his work, this catharsis of lunacy and hurt, and find my own voice with it.  A kind of poking back at the world I felt had pushed me around pretty hard in my first nineteen or twenty years. 

During this period, these are the plays I loved by Mr. Durang (please note that these play contain naughty language and adult themes):

The Nature and Purpose of the Universe, a one-act variation on the story of Job, where two of God's agents torment a poor housewife with a truly miserable life;

and

The Vietnamization of New Jersey, a full-length parody of the plays of David Rabe, where a "normal" American family's life is blown apart when the oldest son returns from Vietnam blind and with a "Vietnamese" wife.  This play is giddily outside the realm of political correctness, it makes me want to cheer.

Of course, I like all of Durang's plays:  Beyond Therapy (his most mainstream, but still hilarious), Baby With the Bathwater (an absurd play about parents who have no business raising a child), and all of his many one-acts, which are anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour long.  And reading the two fine collections of his plays (volume I features 27 one-act plays, Volume 2, his complete full-length plays up until 1995) is a true treat for a fan like me, as Mr. Durang opens each play with some biographical notes about the writing of each of his plays.  These notes are so charming and generous, it feels like you have made a new friend who happens to be a bit of a twisted playwright.

As it so happens, reading these plays now, I would have to say my two favorites are The Marriage of Bette and Boo, a semi-autobiographical piece about his parent's unhappy marriage (which deserves far more productions, in my humble opinion), and the aforementioned Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You.  Oh, and on a side-note, The Actor's Nightmare is a very popular play with high schools, and is produced all over the country every year.  Aside from its humor, it is also educational in its send-ups of Hamlet, Noel Coward's Private Lives, Samuel Beckett, and A Man for All Seasons.

About a month ago, I was feeling very dry in my own writing, and a little glum about my creative source.  So I went back and re-read my Durang collections, and almost immediately felt a sense of renewal.  Durang himself has stepped away from writing for some "fallow" periods, and always seems to emerge reinvigorated.  In fact, as I was reading him all over again, I searched the web and found that his latest play, Vanya, Sonya, Masha and Spike has received rave reviews, and has a stellar cast, including Sigourney Weaver (Durang's old friend from Yale Drama School and frequent collaborator) and David Hyde Pierce (who appeared in Beyond Therapy as one of his first professional theater gigs).  I read that this new play will be moving to Broadway for a 17-week engagment.  I was so happy for Mr. Durang--- he's never been exactly a "fit" for Broadway.  His two plays to make it to a Broadway production in the 80s had a combined run total of  a month or so.  If he were my friend (and, yes, I wish he were), I would be so proud and happy that he is finally getting some decent Broadway recognition.  From what I understand, this limited engagement begins some time in March, so if anyone wants to get mea belated birthday gift....

In any case, it makes me happy to share my geeky fan boy feelings about Christopher Durang.  If you had never heard of him before reading my post, I am happy to have introduced you to him.  If you were already a fan, please feel free to comment below about your favorite Durang works. 

To learn much more about Christopher Durang, follow this link to his website:  www.christopherdurang.com

To learn more about Vanya, Sonya, Masha and Spike, follow this link to a video about it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THhCO3dN8Hs

Thank you for reading this post of Theater is a Sport.  Come back tomorrow for my very first online playwriting lesson!

If you would like to learn more about me, follow this link to my playwright's page:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bobby-Keniston-Playwright-Page/148232788536601

If you would like to become a fan of Theater is a Sport on facebook, please follow this link:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/TheaterIsASport

Thanks again, and if you like reading my posts, please follow me and tell your friends about me.  See you tomorrow!

Oh, yes--- please remember:  Theater is a sport.