Some of you loyal Tympaniacs may have noticed a recent change in the plot synopsis for our upcoming production of Randall Colburn's VERSE CHORUS VERSE. The script has undergone some major literary surgery over this past week, and here's why, in a special blog entry straight from the playwright himself. Read on!
When did it begin?
That used to be the first line of VERSE CHORUS VERSE.
It's also a good question.
For my 13th birthday, my mother took me to K-Mart and told me I could have two CD's. My first choice was Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise." I listened to it once. My second choice was Nirvana's seminal album, "Nevermind." It was January of 1995 and Kurt Cobain had died the year previous. I missed the boat, as it were, but that didn't diminish my fervor. So as soon as my brother hung up his out-of-style flannels, I pulled them down and swam in their sleeves.
The rest of their catalogue came soon after: I bought secondhand copies of Bleach, Incesticide, In Utero, and Unplugged from a myriad assortment of local stoners and read every Nirvana book I could get my hands on. One of those books was Who Killed Kurt Cobain, a well-researched, thoroughly engrossing screed I gobbled up with ecclesiastical abandon. I gave 'persuasive speeches' in high school and college about the subject, and often fantasized about the great work of art I'd create that would persuade them all.
(I won't get into the details of the conspiracy, but if you're interested, http://www.justiceforkurt.com/ should have all the twists and turns.)
The bottom line is that I believed it. I really, really believed it. Even as my music tastes veered from grunge into pop-punk into nu-metal (I KNOW) into emo into folk into indie and indie-folk, I believed it and I fought for it and I always knew that Kurt was the Alpha and Omega and would be my favorite musician until the end of time.
Then: Early 20′s, sitting by a fountain in Kansas City, I'm drunk, texting girls, feeling melancholy, writing play ideas into a tiny, black notebook. Aztec sacrifice topped the list. So did addiction. So did Buddhist ideas of rebirth. So did Chaos as a Greek creation myth. Then, without pause, I wrote, "Kurt Cobain was murdered."
And so it began.
This play was to be my thesis. I called it WHO KILLED KURT COBAIN? I wanted it to be about everything: Aztec sacrifice, addiction, Buddhist ideas of rebirth, Chaos, they all had a place. The play was to follow Polly, the subject of one of my favorite Nirvana songs. I was incorporating history, conspiracy theory, the supernatural, mythology from Nirvana's own catalogue. Kurt was going to be murdered in an act of human sacrifice. It was a metaphor.
I plunged back into the documents of my youth, books and books: Azzerad, Cross, True, Burroughs; internet printouts, piles of CDs. This was research. It was wonderful. I was listening to Nirvana again. I loved Nirvana again. And, most importantly, I was going to be part of the movement, I was going to raise awareness of an injustice, I was going to make people care.
But…that didn't work.
It was dull. It was convoluted. I had to rewrite. I was devastated, as we so often are after the first reading of our first drafts.
On the way to Minneapolis for a theater conference, a car in our caravan spun into a snowbank. The cops told us the roads were no good, all ice. We were sheparded to an AmericInn in Clear Lake, IA where we were snowed in for THREE DAYS.
We missed the conference.
We were also drunk. Constantly.
So next to a bright, white window, in a long-suffering pair of pajama pants I rewrote. The play went from three acts to two. It was renamed VERSE CHORUS VERSE. The play became less about the conspiracy and more about the cycles we see in the universe, in pop culture, and in our own lives.
It was heavy stuff. Supernatural. Everyone dead by the end of the first act. The second taking place entirely in the spiritual planes surrounding Chaos. The play ended as all the characters were reincarnated into "riffs" of their old selves. The question became: could they escape these endless cycles? Could they find Nirvana?
Ha.
I rewrote more. It went into rehearsals. I rewrote more. I sat in rehearsals and rewrote. I rewrote every scene. I watched the play drift, further and further and further. It wasn't what I'd envisioned. But what I'd envisioned I didn't want. It had to be something new. But it wasn't something new. To quote that draft, it was "different, not new." I sighed.
I worked on my thesis. I realized that just because I could talk intelligently about it didn't mean that I knew what it was.
It went into rehearsals.
And it wasn't bad. It really wasn't. But I wasn't excited.
But I believed in what I had. I had to.
I also realized something: I wasn't listening to Nirvana anymore.
It was performed. Great cast. Great director. Great look. I was happy. Everyone cared. Everyone was invested.
But something was wrong.
Something was missing. Things didn't add up. There were questions I didn't want to ask. There were questions that I knew I had to ask. But I didn't ask the questions. I wrote my thesis. I passed. I told my mentor that the experience had left me oddly deflated. I told him that maybe I'd figure the play out when I was 40.
He patted me on the back. He told me about the plays that let him down, the plays he may never finish.
I set it aside. I moved to Chicago. I wrote other plays.
Then: I was invited to Seattle. The excellent people at the Northwest Playwright's Alliance (who had previously taken a short play of mine on tour) wanted to do a staged reading of VERSE CHORUS VERSE in conjunction with the Seattle Repertory Theatre. And the Kennedy Center was ponying up the cash to fly me out there. How cool!
I made some rewrites. I added monologues, poetic riffs that tightened the first act up a bit. The first line asked, "When did it begin?"
The play was asking the questions I couldn't answer.
I flew out to Seattle on my birthday. Everyone was wonderful. The woman playing Polly was an old friend of Kurt Cobain's. We walked and talked. She told about how she helped him look for his keys in the locker room of a gym Nirvana had played a gig in ages ago. She said he was "quiet and so nice." She put a hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes, said, "I love your play…but we all think he killed himself."
I nodded, and for the first time ever I said, "Well, I don't know what I believe."
She nodded. And though she meant nothing by it, I couldn't help but feel like "that kid from Chicago who'd read a few books."
I felt like I didn't know Kurt Cobain at all. And I still had no desire to listen to Nirvana.
The reading went fine. I flew back the next day.
When Tympanic told me they wanted to produce the show I was stoked to have the opportunity to work with such an exciting young company. I also told them that I wanted to do some serious work to the script. We piled into the DCA with our awesome cast and almost immediately they began asking the questions.
The questions I had been afraid to ask.
And then last Wednesday, my dramaturg Jamie Bragg, and our director, Kyra Lewandowski, confronted them head-on.
Sitting in a basement in Lincoln Square we started riffing. And I said it: I had created a half-assed mythology, and it had swallowed the humanity of the play. So we started cutting. We got crazy. By the time we were done there was no more second act. No more Chaos. No more sacrifice.
And I felt liberated.
VERSE CHORUS VERSE was no longer about Kurt Cobain, or conspiracy theory, or Chaos, or grand philosophical ideas about mankind or pop culture.
It's about people. People and their delusions.
Which is fitting since this play was born out of my delusion, my delusion that I understood Kurt Cobain, my delusion that I could persuade people of something I didn't know or would never know.
Every play I've written that I've been able to watch without biting my knuckles has taken this journey.
So what we're doing at the DCA is a new thing, a new beast. And I love it. I love it so much. And it may not be finished by the 31st, but that's okay. It's what I want people to see.
I've written a play. And the play is the play is the play. It had to go very far from me so it could come close again. And now that it's back, do I still listen to Nirvana? Not really. I've lost it, my love for him, for them. Do I still believe Kurt Cobain was murdered? I don't know. I don't need to know.
So where did it begin?
In a place very different from where it will end.
And that's okay.
I have the play now.
-Randall Colburn
The DCA Incubator showcase of VERSE CHORUS VERSE is at 7:30pm on Monday, January 31st at the DCA Studio Theater (77 E. Randolph). Tickets are a suggested $5 donation. Hope to see you there!
