Mike Mariano

George Hunka wants to talk about modern approaches to poetry and prose in playwriting. ZZZZZ! Let’s talk about what really matters: rock and roll!

Not quite poetry and nearly never prose, rock lyrics have been a part of my playwriting for a long time. And they’ve been a disaster. I personally think it’s hilarious to have characters speak with earnest dialogue that they’d otherwise sing in the shower. Observe the previously-linked Jack Black summarizing his teaching philosophy with Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All”.

But the joke gets lost in production. The lyrics are cut—or worse, they’re sung. The absurd sincerity of spoken word rock is smothered to death.

Yet I can’t resist. My recent Jack, Wanda, and Ben addition compounds my bad habits with two rock and roll references.

Wanda But Ben, you act as if you just don’t care.

This one’s easy. It’s “So Lonely” by The Police. I love the staccato rhythm of this phrase, and hope the clipped speech will prevent future Wandas from whining too much. Yet it’s likely that these actresses will instead pull out their Gordon Sumner impressions.

Wanda You think that abandoning me is OK just as long as you give a thought to me every now and then.

OK, this isn’t exactly a lyric; it’s from David Bowie’s speech in the extended “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid. Give a thought? This is Band Aid’s call to action? These three words stuck in my head as something so tasteless, so absurd, that they could never be spoken with any genuine kindness. Apparently Wanda feels the same way.

Please note I insert these lyrics with the best of intentions. In performance, though, I’ve only seen them cause more harm than good. Perhaps it’s time to stop rocking for a while, and see what playwriting alone can do.

Real Life Writing Assignment

1. Google the phrase “all up in this” (in quotes).
2. Create a character sketch based on the sentence or paragraph that contains this phrase.

Restriction: Find someone who uses this phrase who isn’t white.

Gwyneth Paltrow on Proof, to Roger Ebert:

“I don’t know a thing about math but in this movie you don’t need to.”

Paltrow goes on to provide an example of her pathological Anglophilia.

Anthony Lane on the film version of Proof:

As with so much popular science, Proof wants to tickle us by glamorizing the intensity of mathematical thought, with its notoriously short burn and other risks, but doesn’t dare to frighten or offend the customers by actually showing them, however briefly, what such thinking might look like.

Lane goes on to advocate for Disney musical numbers in this film.

Me, on a stage production of Proof:

That’s author David Auburn’s worst offense: nothing ever goes over your head. His characters are dazzled by their own work, but we as the audience barely get a glimpse of it—we are in no danger of actually learning something. That should be a crime.

I go on to listen to “New York City Boy” by the Pet Shop Boys fourteen times in a row.