By Jen Huszcza
In no particular order:
No: I prefer yes.
Should: There should be no should.
Can’t: I especially hate you can’t do that in a play.
The Esque Family: Beckett-esque, Pinter-esque, and their American cousins: Sondheim-esque, Mamet-esque and Shepard-esque. Dude, you are so not smart when you name drop that way.
Edgy: Recently, someone tried to compliment me by calling me edgy. I’m gonna turn this one over to actor, Colin Farrell, who said in an interview in 2006 in the Sunday Mirror: I come to Los Angeles and have two pints at lunch and all of a sudden I’m ‘edgy’. However, please note, I like Edge. That riff on Where the Streets Have No Name is awesome.
Off His Look: I recently saw this in a stage direction of a new play. I guess the playwright wanted to be clear that the character was reacting to look, not a line, not a gesture, not some subtext, a look. This led me to wonder if the look would be there anyway if the line was acted correctly?
Wordy: I was recently at a screening of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (70mm, gotta love it) and overheard an audience member complain that Shakespeare was too wordy. I chuckled at the time, but in hindsight, my response could also be: his wordiness is more than worthy, perhaps it is thine ear that is not.
Real: It’s theatre. It’s stories. It’s pretend. It’s not supposed to be real. It can be truthful. It can attempt to mirror real life even though it’s not real really. It can be used to enlighten people about events in the real world, but the audience is watching a performance. However, I like describing someone as the real deal. The rhyming just delights me.
Revival: It sounds like someone gave a dead play mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It also means that neither myself nor any of my poor playwright friends are being produced.
Upset: I don’t get upset. I get mad.
West Coast Premiere: I guess we can’t do World Premieres out here on the West Coast. They have to start somewhere else in the United States. I like seeing US Premieres.
Blackout: Lazy, lazy, lazy. I had blackouts in my play that had a staged reading recently, and I got to watch the energy get sucked off the stage one blackout at a time. I learned the hard way: just because there are lights, doesn’t mean we should turn them off.
Emerging: As in emerging playwright. Where is the emerging playwright emerging from?
