COMMING UP DONNA

COMING UP DONNA

The writing style of Quentin Tarantino is extremely entertaining for me. He presents radical thought and action through elaborate scenes often coupled with brutality, gore, sex, and foul language. Something about the way he sites, however, presents these characters in a very familiar and surprisingly mundane way. I am sure that many people would disagree with me, arguing that a samurai sword to the throat, or a Big Kahuna burger hit man job, are each, far from mundane. I would simply retort with the honest fact that I often forget how horrific these scenes are, as I am completely ensnared in the clever writing, colourful environments, and impressive cinematography. 

STOP

Cinematography: a young playwright's Kryptonite,at least, my Kryptonite anyway. The biggest challenge I have with writing for the stage is simply that I cannot get my creative thought process to make the switch from film to stage. When I imagine a scene, I have camera movement, scene jumping, complex settings, and so on and so forth. It's tough stuff. I really didn't even solve that problem. I just kind of kept writing, knowing that it was going to come back and bite me in the rear end at a later date, and indeed it did. It tore my behind with the ferocity of an angry puma on a mountain elk. I had dialogue, oh yes, heaps of it. But as for lighting and sound cues? Hopeless. Nothing. I wasted hours trying to figure out this problem, and in the end decided to wing it. I planned tech rehearsals with my lighting and sound technicians, not really having any clue whatsoever of what I was going to do, and showed up with combed hair and a clipboard and pretended to look like I wasn't completely clueless. Fearless leader or whatever, they needed to trust me a little bit. I made it clear that I had ideas, but that I wanted it to be a group process, a collaboration, with plenty of room for my tech to provide input. That is if they were up for it. And they were, in fact they were actually pretty excited. I have to give them credit, as they were patient with me. Honestly though, I think I handled it pretty well. I suppose I will be in a position to provide a more thorough analysis of the technical aspect after the show is over. 

BACK

Sorry for the break there. Back to the sitcom, "Coming Up Donna"

This is Donna, well, Leslie Hall. She is an American Comedian and she is hilarious. Although her comedic style is not directly represented within the script, I did use her physical appearance as inspiration for the character of Donna Todd. Donna is a Lesbian as well as a film critic, not to say that film is the only thing she ever criticizes. She lives, quite parasitically, with her partner, Mel, in Mel's apartment flat. She dominates the sitcom in every instance, repeatedly aggravating Mel, and insulting her around every corner. I'm not entirely sure why Mel puts up with Donna too be honest, and I am sure that I may be able to come up with some sort of clever psychoanalysis involving some sort of timid sadism towards verbal abuse, but it really doesn't matter too much. Coming up Donna is a television show, and it's ridiculous. Especially taking into account that it is a family television show. I would hope that any decent parent would never let their child watch this show that I have created. There is really no definite storyline, other than that Mel is an aspiring actress, and that Donna thinks that her talent is non-existent. After that, it's mostly inappropriate rubbish. Sure there are some hints and motions towards the shows much larger themes, which is important, as well as the fact that there is a show in the first place, the progression of Mel and Donna's relationship is unimportant to the common viewer: of the play, or the theoretical T.V. series. The characters' depths are known by me, and the actors who play them, for practical purposes as I am sure you can imagine. 

Donna's character is two-tiered. She exists within the television series, as well as outside of it. Outside of the show, I think, she has a very interesting story. She is a television star, and everyone loves her. At some point in her career, maybe near the beginning, Donna viewed her work as art. But, unfortunately for her, the powers of publicity, money, and perhaps an introduction to hard drugs, lead her spiralling into a métier of unvarying formulaic comedy. She quickly turned away from her once young and artistic self. The next step in the transformation, inevitably being cynicism and depression, ceteris paribus. 

At this point in time, during the play, ratings are beginning to drop for "Coming Up Donna". Like most things, the vulgar, lesbian, dynamic duo was going out of fashion. The audience is craving for something entirely new and fresh. Taking this drop in ratings as an opportunity, Mel, the aspiring young access inside and outside of the show, decides to play the board. With a foolproof plan to rise to the top of the food chain, Mel begins her sinister puppet show. Manipulating both the gallows management (Roeper), as well as Mr.Jezebel (owner of the company that runs both the sitcom and the gallows), Mel manages to get Donna a spot to star at the gallows, and of course a noose around the neck.

Mel convinces Roeper that Donna needs to go quite easily. She criticizes him first, for his phoney ignorance, questioning the legitimacy of conscious absurdity. 

" Well did it occur to you, perhaps, that this show is

     just one show inside of another inside of another? Who
     knows how many tiers there are in this phenomenal
     layer-cake of deuces?"

 Roeper addresses the idea that he is aware of this absurdity arguing that his role at the gallows actually serves a purpose. This, essentially, supports Mel's argument that you simply cannot be aware of your own absurdity. 

 
  
  
 
 
  
     "Now that you know, now that you know that I know that
     you know you know, there will be nothing absurd about
     any of this. It won’t be funny, firstly, because we
     know you’re trying. But where once substance was
     synthesized by the very absence of it--like a fart in a
     sea of primordial borscht--now nothing will come of the
     absurdity. It will fall flatter than a steam-rolled
     holocaust joke. It will fall, and keep falling, until
     it falls into a bucket of discounted PEZ dispensers,
     and that musty, moth-eaten absurdity you used to think
     was fresh will be nothing more than kitsch."



Showing Roeper that his show is no longer useful, Mel plants a new idea in his head: The show needs something new, a star, a supernova. Donna's death would be perfect, an "entirely different show". The audience is hungry for change, they are growing sick of hanging convicts, and drug addicts, and homeless people. They want faces that they recognize, faces like Donna.