
And so, I set about creating an extended and improvisatory monologue. In order to do this, I needed to know who my character was. I generally like to start with the specific details and expand out. So I took a mental look at the situation Micheline had put me in: A guy sitting in a storefront window. And he’s typing. And because of the glass, he can’t hear anybody outside but they can “hear” him in a sense by reading everything he types.
I forgot to mention. Part of the Write Out Front experiment includes a huge flat screen TV which is hooked up to my laptop so that everything I type can be read on the sidewalk. The most surprising thing to me was that the among the many passersby – some acquaintances, most strangers, some friends and colleagues—two of my closest friends turned out to be my worst audience. Why? They couldn’t go with the conceit that I was not Roland. As I said I had a whole character worked out with an extended backstory. My closest friends wouldn’t stop until they got me to acknowledge our relationship, either by eye contact, a smile or in one instance by actually typing his name on screen.
With people who had no idea who I was it was somewhat easier to rope them in to the journey of my character. I would toss them a provocative line like: “It’s funny that they call me ‘Yellowshirt’ since as you can see, my shirt is blue. Well almost, blue…” or: “They assure me I can leave whenever I like. And I believe them. Really. I do.” And then when one woman’s face clouded over after reading that last part, I spontaneously typed: “Why? Do you know something I don’t?” Some people gathered in clumps and enjoyed the fun of interacting with the guy behind the glass. We were actually in dialogue. And, see, that’s something that I believe fervently about monologue too. The best monologue is always really dialogue. In many instances they responded to me with facial expressions, gestures, laughter or in a few instances with something approaching tears. It was odd being in constant dialogue with a tiny audience like that for nearly two hours. One of my friends—himself, a playwright—kept scolding me as though I was breaking the rules. “Write a play,” he exclaimed a few times. To my mind, that’s exactly what I was doing.
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