Monday, October 19, 2009

good women done good

I finally had a reading of my play THE GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE at NYCPlaywrights - I was afraid that since I wrote it out of a personal experience it wouldn't work well as a play itself - but it did - it went very well. Of course I lucked into getting a couple of really good actors who are very good at cold readings to play the mean girls so I don't take all the credit, but I'm really quite pleased. I was going to do it as part of the Playlab, but that didn't work out. But I think I'll do it for the NYCP fundraiser. The actors playing the mean girls also seemed to have quite a bit of fun being mean.

Like Courtney in my play, I really don't get mean girls. Why would somebody try to hurt someone they don't even know? My assumption is that there is something deeply nasty and resentful in the core of their being that comes out when they think they can hurt somebody and get away with it. It's also a kind of a bonding ritual. And then there's the issue of hierarchy. This essay on mean girls I think gets at something here:
Alliances, many of them temporary and fleeting, are a critical element of the Alphas’ strategy. When it suits them, Alphas will befriend a girl with whom they would not ordinarily be associated with the sole intent -- not always apparent to the newly befriended girl -- of inflicting revenge and retribution on their latest victim. Although Alphas can be mean and cruel, they aren’t physical; catfights aren’t their thing. Rather than engaging in physical altercations, they rely on words, insults, rumor, gossip, innuendo, and manipulation. And the Alphas use others who are not members of the clique, including girls aspiring to this lofty status, and boys, naturally the most popular boys whenever possible, in their campaigns to ruin the reputations of others they find threatening or morally, intellectually, socially, or physically superior.
The Debbie-Lisa and Lisa-Jean characters in my play are based on women who fall into that category - of girls used by the Alpha girls to accomplish their ends. I didn't bother to put the Alpha Girl at the heart of the gang into this play - I already gave her a play of her own, a year before this GOOD WOMEN play. I knew the Alpha girl was seriously screwed up, but I didn't realize she had organized a whole gang of strangers to attack me until recently - which is why it took me this long to write a play about them.

The moral of the story - if you fuck with me, I will write a play about you. Cause I'm all badass like that.