CANDLELIGHT STORIES
An Evening in the Bardo
Plays by
Suzanne Bailie, Kelleen Conway Blanchard,
Ryan Conlin, Kathryn Jean Keller,
Morgan Ludlow, Leonie Mikele,
Scott Stolnack & Carolynne Wilcox
Suzanne Bailie, Kelleen Conway Blanchard,
Ryan Conlin, Kathryn Jean Keller,
Morgan Ludlow, Leonie Mikele,
Scott Stolnack & Carolynne Wilcox
Cast Members Clockwise from top: Tadd Morgan, Jana Blumberg, Andrea Hansen, Jeremy Steckler
PLAYS WRITTEN JUST FOR YOU
There are a lot of theatre companies that present new plays but Pacific Play Company specializes in generating new plays from scratch! These plays are written during a writing process that is specific to our company. Every year we challenge writers to work together to write to a specific topic or theme for three to six weeks. We then break down the main theme into subtopics each week. The writing is shared among the writers, during the writing process, and the writers are allowed to STEAL from each other and take characters from other writer's work - continuing the story and giving the show some synergy. CANDLELIGHT STORIES: An Evening in the Bardo went through this process in three weeks. Below, we thought it would be fun to share the prompts the writers received each week for this process. Playwrights from all over the Seattle community were invited to participate. We ended up with more than 60 brand-new pieces of writing and the show has been curated down to 16 short pieces running approximately 1 hour and twenty minutes.
We started the process November 1, 2022 and ended November 22, 2022. These were the subtopics for the writers.
We started the process November 1, 2022 and ended November 22, 2022. These were the subtopics for the writers.
Cody Smith
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WEEK ONE:
Approaching the door: Facing death. The messenger of death. The dying. Those are the three keys to the door of the Bardo we will focus on this week. It also provides you three different points to cover so you can turn in your minimum number of submissions. Whether it is looking off the edge of a cliff, pretending that nothing is wrong while sipping champagne in a blonde wig, jumping out of an airplane (with or without parachute), sliding the razor up your arm in a warm bath, seeing the truck head straight for you or being told, "you have terminal cancer" we all have different means of facing death. It is a door we will all need to pass through whether we go to the Bardo or Heaven or Hell or the next life or nothing. Each character has her own process. It doesn't have to be heroic. And we can find something profound in it or we can find humor. Some questions: How is it we face death? When do we feel the brush of the angel's wings on our back? Do we taste death? When would we choose death? What is worse than death? How do you tell someone they are dying? Who tells us we are dead? ″Nobody says, ‘You’re dying.’ You have to fool them. They have to fool themselves. ” --Tennessee Williams “None of us are going to leave this island. That’s the plan. You know it, of course, perfectly. What, perhaps, you can’t understand is the relief!” --Agatha Christie "My dad held me up to look at her. ‘It’s like being asleep,’ he whispered, but she looked no more asleep than a piece of lumbar. She looked dead as a doornail.” --Garrison Keillor |
Izzy Schonfeld
Jeremy Steckler
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WEEK TWO:
Exploring the Bardo: The Landscape of the Afterlife This week we pass through the door and become travelers to the shadow world. We have left our everyday world and we find ourselves here. You must tell us where we are. Not just the Bardo but its tributaries and branches and pathways: Hades, Heaven, Hell, Gehenna, Nirvana. This week you will take us to some of these places. And because there are so many interpretations, so many possibilities that depend on the individual soul, we will need your imagination to describe what is happening in this special world. What is the geography of each? What does one do when they find themselves there? What are the rituals, traditions, rules & policies, seasons and dances of the afterlife? What happens when you have tea with Persephone? How about making scrambled eggs with Jesus? What about having a whiskey with yourself from a past life? What would your past life self say to you? What about your dead cat, Ladybelle? Can she speak to you in the Bardo? Since we are focusing on the Bardo: the Bardo is a place where you have an opportunity to be enlightened or misled depending on what happens as you pass through, and how ready you are for the next life. There are six Bardos: the Bardo of meditation; the Bardo of dreams; the Bardo of dying (the moments before death where truths or fears are revealed); the Bardo of inventory - where you review your life in lists of things you have done (good deeds/bad deeds) or acquired or seen; the Bardo of transition where your spirit disconnects from your earthly body; the Bardo of transformation - where you are transformed for good or bad and make the transition to another life or back to earth. Some questions: Is dreaming a form of death? Are those who committed suicide lost in the Bardo? Is time the same in the Bardo? Is someone in charge of the Bardo? What can we leave in the Bardo? What do we bring back from the Bardo? What from earth spiritually floats up to the Bardo? Can we interact with the pure worry of a mother for her child? Is it possible to find yourself when you are lost in the Bardo? ADDITIONAL CHALLENGE THIS WEEK: Please have one submission this week be something you took from another writer from last week. the idea here is not to re-write what the writer has done in the first scene or monologue but to ADD to the story or take it to a new place. Like taking a baton from a marathon runner you are taking a character/story with you to the Bardo. Let me know which piece/character you are taking from when you submit. "I am dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it." --Isaac Marion "Death is no more than passing from one room to the other. But there is a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see." --Helen Keller "I'm prepared to meet my maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." --Winston Chruchill |
Tom Stewart
Charlie Stebbins
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WEEK THREE:
The Round Trip: Enlightenment. Resurrection. Haunting. This week our characters must make an essential choice: do they go into the Light, to the next existence, or do they have unfinished business? You must decide if they come back from the shadow world with a special wisdom or if they return carrying fear and doubt? Some characters can pop out of the Bardo easily because they are only dreaming of it, or they have opened a portal. Others, like Orpheus, must fight hard to get back to the regular world. Who are these people who are resurrected? What dreams do they have? And then there are those who actively refuse the Light, refuse to shed what is holding them back. Those are the ghosts, which seem to confound every religion, and break all the rules. Some just want to stay where they are and others, they want revenge. What does your ghost want? How are they going to get it? You must explore how the Bardo has changed your character from what or who they were before to what they are now. Some characters believe they are passing into the Light only to find themselves simply in another world, living another life. Also, keep in mind nature and the universe is full of mistakes, aberrations, mutations, and coincidence. Sometimes things are not how they should be. Janet drowns. Jake revives her. She's alive!! But is Janet the same? Why does she quit her job and join a religious cult in Oregon? Or is another soul inhabiting Janet's body? Janet dies. "She's in heaven!" Janet's friends declare. But is she? Or is she standing next to you? Maybe her soul is in your hands as you find yourself compelled to knit like Janet did. Maybe Janet suddenly finds herself washing clothes by the river. What happened? Where is her husband, Jake? Black Fire on White Fire This is a statement in the Torah that is discussed at length in the Talmud. Yerushalmi describes the Torah as being black fire written on white fire. Over the centuries this phrase has been explained in a variety of ways. They all begin with an image you can see (the black fire) and the fire you can't see (the white fire). One interpretation is that the letters of the Torah are the written Torah and white is the oral Torah. For Jewish mystics, the white fire is the hidden meanings of the Torah that lies beneath the written text. The breath between the sentences. What is unsaid but your mind knows is true. In music it would be the rests between phrases. In the theatre, perhaps, the pause, could be the white fire. What is the white fire of your characters? Some questions: Do we remember the Bardo if we return? What if someone remembers a past life? What if they feel they still belong in that past life? Are ghosts a projection of the soul? If we see a ghost, are we seeing their soul? Do ghosts know what they are? Can someone wake up from being dead but have another soul in their bodies? Where exactly is our soul in our body? What if your soul is in your heart and your heart goes into someone else? Can more than one soul exist in a body? Can people come back from the Bardo with mysterious talents? "If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts." --Adam Duritz "It is often when night looks darkest, it is often before the fever breaks that one senses the gathering momentum for change, when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair and apathy." --Hillary Clinton "If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can." --Chuck Palahniuk "Disco is the remedy for ghosts." --Zoya Akhtar |