Categotry Archives: vivat regina

Pertaining specifically to the second story in the series.

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Cast announced for Bare Bones reading of Vivat Regina!

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I am pleased to announce that we have a cast for the staged reading of Vivat Regina at Bare Bones with Theatre@First!

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As I mentioned, the three talented people playing Mrs. Hawking, Mary, and Nathaniel in last year’s Bare Bones reading of the original play were kind enough to agree to return. I am delighted to have Elizabeth Hunter, Gabrielle Geller, and Ryan Kacani reading again. But that meant I still had three other people to choose!

This audition process was even tougher than it was last year; I was very fortunate to have a nice selection of talented people, but sadly that meant there were more people I enjoyed than I could possibly use. It’s always sad when you don’t have enough space for someone who gives a good reading and whom you’d be happy to work. I feel very grateful so many people were willing to share their talent with me to put on this piece. Thank you so much to everyone who auditioned; I really wished I had more roles.

The cast I finally settled on is a follows:

Mrs. Victoria Hawking – Elizabeth Hunter
Miss Mary Stone – Gabrielle Geller
Mr. Nathaniel Hawking – Ryan Kacani
Mrs. Johanna Braun / Frau Kirsten Gerhard / Narrator #3 – Joye Thaller
Mrs. Clara Hawking / Narrator #2 – Samantha LeVangie
Mr. Arthur Swann / Narrator #1 – Matthew Kamm

I am very excited to work with every one of them.

I hope you’ll all come out to see this very talented cast read Vivat Regina on Thursday, October 2nd at 8PM at Unity Somerville at 6 William Street, Somerville, MA.

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“Vivat Regina” to have staged reading with Theatre@First’s Bare Bones!

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Vivat Regina, the second installment in the Mrs. Hawking series, is going to be having a staged reading with Bare Bones, the reading series hosted by Somerville, MA theater troupe Theatre@First!

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Bare Bones previously hosted a reading of the original Mrs. Hawking in April of 2013, which was performed to great success. I’m very fortunate that the excellent actors who portrayed the three leads, Elizabeth Hunter as Mrs. Hawking, Gabrielle Geller as Mary, and Ryan Kacani as Nathaniel, have all agreed to return to play their characters again in the reading of the sequel. I’m so excited to work with them again!

Auditions for the remaining roles will be held on Tuesday, September 2nd at Unity Somerville at 6 William Street, Somerville, MA. I will be looking for one man to read for Arthur Swann and two women, one for Clara Hawking and one to be double-cast as Mrs. Braun and Frau Gerhard. The ability to do a German accent would be welcome for the latter actress but is not required. Any interested parties are welcome and encouraged to try out!

If you’re interested in coming out, please go to the Bare Bones website for relevant information and how to sign up for an appointment!

The reading will be held one night only, on Thursday, October 2nd at 8PM at Unity Somerville. Admission is free but there is a $5 suggested donation to support Theatre@FIrst.

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The two Victorias

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Categories: character, influences, vivat regina, Tags: , ,

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In choosing to name my hero Victoria in this setting, I cannot help but invite comparison to the most famous Victoria in history, the queen who gave her name to the period. Indeed, I briefly considered titling the second story “Victoria Regina” instead of the more generic “Vivat Regina,” to hammer the parallel home. The first explicit reference I make to this comparison is the conversation in act 1 scene 5 of Vivat Regina. Mary makes the assumption I imagine that many people would make, that Mrs. Hawking would approve of a willful, prominent female leader who wielded so much personal authority. But the queen, despite her own place, was not a supporter of women in public positions, and in fact found the growing feminist movement to be godless and unseemly. She promulgated a social order and a standard of morality that reinforced many of the structures Mrs. Hawking is struggling to tear down, which gives our hero a particular resentment for having been her namesake.

My thinking on her is very influenced by an excellent documentary called Queen Victoria’s Children, which also gave me the idea for who might bring the problem in Vivat Regina. The documentary characterizes the queen as a strong, imperious personality, but also thrown by whims and rages and compelled to regard everything around her as a prop to her own existence. I plan to use this image of her if I ever actually depict her onstage in the story. At the moment I have no plans, but I have established that she and Mrs. Hawking have encountered one another in the past. I’m sure they owe each other favors, in fact, or at least have each other in some sort of Mexican standoff. I’ve not exactly decided what their history is, but I am certain it resulted in an uneasy coexistence where they do not work together, but occasionally find they must work around each other. I’ll have to figure out exactly how that works if I ever write them actually sharing a scene together.

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Notes on Vivat Regina: plot

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Warning: spoilers contained herein for Vivat Regina.

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In addition to character arcs, it needed an over-plot to give it structure, a mission for them to go on as part of Mrs. Hawking’s work. The idea for this one sprung out of the notion I had of a recognizable figure from this part of Victorian history coming incognito to the ladies to ask for their help. This figure is embodied in Mrs. Braun, who it is clear is not using her real name. I will not say her real identity right now, because I would rather not spoil it yet, but what I wanted was for the audience to have a suspicion who this person was even if they weren’t sure. She ties in nicely to the point Mrs. Hawking makes about of the problems of the establishment, even if you don’t fully grasp what her connection to the establishment is. After the first reading, Ben Federlin confirmed for me that it was interesting to leave some ambiguity as to who she was. But Lenny Somervell said that it needed to be clear enough that even somebody without any knowledge of Victorian history would still be able to have a decent guess. Certain other aspects of the story are more compelling if you can make that connection, so I wanted it to be accessible without necessarily being too obvious.

You may have noticed that her entrance into the story bears a strong resemblance to a similar scene in the Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A German-accented person with a noble bearing that they are to some degree trying to conceal who at first introduces themselves by a false comes in as a client to ask a delicate task of our hero. This was a very intentional echoing, down to her line of “You may address me as Mrs. Johanna Braun,” in reference to “You may address me as Count Von Kramm.” I’ve always loved that story– indeed, I once played Irene Adler onstage –and it was fun to pay it that tribute.

I’ve talked at length about why I felt the need to include the subplot with Clara, which you can read about here. I wanted to introduce her for later inclusion, and I wanted the presence of a character who was not overawed by Mrs. Hawking the way Mary and Nathaniel are, but I struggled to figure out what service she could provide to the plot to justify her presence. What I decided to go with, suggested chiefly by my friends Aaron Fischer and Lenny Somervell who were kind enough to give their always-discerning opinions, was that she could basically provide some outside perspective. Their little world of society avenging is so secretive (they can’t tell people about it for security reasons, after all) that they tend to have tunnel vision about it. When Mary is unable to see that she’s been good for Mrs. Hawking, Clara is a fairly objective observer who can let Mary know what a huge positive influence she’s been. They also suggested that her personal reason for doing it can be that, in the service of protecting her husband from Mrs. Hawking’s wrath, she means to cultivate Mary as an ally and a source of information. It will and won’t work, considering the unusual circumstances, but I think it’s a believable motivation for Clara, and the situation will also lead into the possibility of her becoming a genuine friend to Mary.

Vivat Regina and Base Instruments by Phoebe Roberts will be performed at 2PM and 6PM respectively at 274 Moody Street in Waltham, MA as part of the Watch City Steampunk Festival 2017.

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Sparking a romance

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Categories: character, development, themes, vivat regina, Tags: , , , , , , ,

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As you may have gleaned from reading Vivat Regina, I want to explore the idea of a relationship between Mary and Arthur Swann, the police officer she meets (and makes use of) in that play. All I wanted to do in that story was start a connection, but that meant I had to take care to get it off on the right foot.

I like the idea that romances begin because of something special that two people see in each other. Mary of course demonstrates she is brave and tough and quick-witted in a way Arthur didn’t expect, but Arthur shows he finds the fact that Mary saved him intriguing. He is not threatened by Mary’s capability, but impressed by and delighted with it. That immediate respect he shows makes an impression on her. Moreover, he’s not without wit and charm himself. These things altogether spark something that ultimately turns to romance.

I had Mary save Arthur to deliberately turn that damsel in distress trope on its head. Also I wanted to contrast it with the first meeting of Victoria and Reginald as the Colonel describes it in “Like a Loss.” Both men are impressed by the women’s display of courage and independence. But while Arthur wants to encourage and enable her to take her own action, Reginald’s impulse is to cocoon her protectively so that she doesn’t ever have to be brave or fierce or stand up for herself again. Arthur wants to nurture Mary’s strength, while Reginald wanted to neutralize it in Victoria. This makes for an interesting way to explore the effects of feminism, or the lack thereof, in our characters’ lives.

I haven’t figured out the whole trajectory of Mary and Arthur’s relationship, but I think it’s off to an interesting start. Especially in contrast to Mrs. Hawking and the Colonel.

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Notes on Vivat Regina: character arcs

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Warning: spoilers contained herein for the new script “Vivat Regina.”

I’ve talked a fair bit in this space about my intentions for the character arcs in this piece– chiefly, that I wanted Mrs. Hawking to decide that she will make Mary her protege, and that Nathaniel is going to come into his own way of being of help to our heroes.

Originally I thought I would tackle much more of the protege storyline in this second piece. I thought we’d cover how Mrs. Hawking would make Mary her protege, her trying to mold Mary into another version of herself, and finally Mary’s pushback against the idea when she realized she wanted to follow Mrs. Hawking under her own terms. This storyline is to be the meat of the first arc-cycle in the story. In the very earliest experimental drafting done back during 31 Plays in 31 Days of August ’13, the declaration of her being designated protege was to happen in the very second scene. But Bernie rightly pointed out that would be moving far too quickly through a story that would be more properly explored over a longer period. So it was scaled back to watch Mary feel like she was struggling and an inadequate assistant to Mrs. Hawking because of her mistress’s harsh standards and constant criticism, but to have the turning point be when Mrs. Hawking reveals that not only is she doing well, but that she’s decided Mary is worthy to be successor of all her work.

Nathaniel’s arc I figured out almost immediately. I knew I wanted him, after he learned of Mrs. Hawking’s activities and got over the initial shock, to be incredibly fascinated by her work and want to help her with it. She of course would be resistant, since she despises how much he’s like the Colonel and how she’s come to see him as an impediment to what she wants to do rather than a support. But as I’ve mentioned, Nathaniel’s challenge is to grow past the ways he’s too much like the Colonel, and this story is the beginning of his realizing it.

You’ll also note the nature of the role Nathaniel takes on once he discovers what talent he has to contribute. With his ability to go places only men can access, his enormous personal charm, and his real capacity for thinking on his feet, he basically takes on the job of faceman. I like how this not only because it really suits his character, but also how it places him in what is often a feminine role. Contrast this to the traditionally male-filled positions of the mastermind and the bruiser, who in this case are Mrs. Hawking and Mary respectively. I plan to have him take on “traditionally female” story roles in a number of ways, as I very much enjoy casting traditionally masculine men that way in my writing.

Mrs. Hawking’s arc is the most subtle of three of them. That is for the most part intentional, as one of the issues I want to set up for her in the long term is that because of her long-held anger and baggage, personal growth is difficult and very slow. So hers occurs mostly in relation to the growth of the other leads. She relaxes her harsh criticism of Mary, she lets Nathaniel be judged on his own merits. The most important character note for her in this piece is I wanted to be certain that I firmly established her as a kind of revolutionary. We knew she was immensely critical of the social order, but I don’t know how much hard evidence we saw of it in the first story. I think her indictment of the English imperial system casts it in the right light. It is always tempting when writing in a steampunk setting to let one’s fascination with the picturesque time period to gloss over the horrific implications of the imperial system. I want Mrs. Hawking to acknowledge and stand in opposition to those things in a real way. She will not work on behalf of “queen and country” because that means supporting oppression and devastation, but she will stand up for one real woman who is suffering under it. She is of course prejudiced and limited in her own ways, but she will always be opposed to the Establishment, and I wanted her to demonstrate an awareness of what that really meant.

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New Mrs. Hawking story posted: Vivat Regina

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The second installment of the Mrs. Hawking story, Vivat Regina, is now available here on the site for viewing! Click here to read it in the Scripts section.

The official synopsis:

Mary Stone is doing her best learn the trade of her mistress’s work as a covert agent for women victimized by Victorian society. Mrs. Hawking’s nephew Nathaniel, too, struggles to find what contribution he can make to his aunt’s work, and neither one seems to be serving to their mentor’s satisfaction. But when a mysterious lady under a false name comes to them with a next-to-impossible mission, Mrs. Hawking and her assistants must bring together all their varied strengths in order to see that justice is done.

A few notes on it before you read:

The original draft of Vivat Regina was written over the course of 2013, with the bulk completed in December. The revisions and most of the Clara subplot were worked in over the course of January and February 2014.

Significant input on the plot was provided by Bernie Gabin to my gratitude. I also owe a great deal to Gabrielle Geller, Ben Federlin, Aaron Fischer, Ryan Kacani, Stephanie Karol, Frances Kimpel, Samantha LeVangie, Charlotte Oswald, Eboracum Richter-Dahl, and Lenny Somervell for their reading and feedback on this script. Their input was crucial to the editing process.

It is written for seven speaking roles, four women and three men, plus a small nonspeaking ensemble. As written, it is possible to double-cast Clara and Mrs. Braun. It is possible to swap the gender of Herr Gerhard, in which case it could be doubled with Mrs. Braun but not Clara.

It takes place about nine months or so after the events of Mrs. Hawking, in the summer of 1881.

All related posts on the topic of Vivat Regina can be found in this category.

I hope you enjoy it. All comments, questions, and responses to the piece are very welcome.

Read the new script Vivat Regina here.

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The talent for finding talent

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Categories: character, development, looking ahead, vivat regina, Tags: , , , ,

 

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One of the most central parts of the relationship between Mary and Mrs. Hawking is that they are better with each other. They can be and do things as a team that they never could before. While Mary’s major contribution is that she humanizes and challenges Mrs. Hawking, I always wanted her to add something of practical value to her mentor’s operations. So Mary’s unique skill set had to bring Mrs. Hawking’s work onto another level, as her protege, and the one who will carry on her work in the future.

She is never going to be as omni-competent as her mentor is, but she has things Mrs. Hawking never will. It’s Mary’s gift that if she cannot accomplish something herself, she can find the right person who can. She is an excellent judge of character, and she has a commanding, magnetic personality. She draws decent, competent people to her, and not only can she identify their strengths, she can convince them to make use of those strengths to good effect. We begin to see this clearly in Vivat Regina. She begins by encouraging Nathaniel to find his niche, and will make use of him once his specific talents become clear. She continues with Arthur Swann, a policeman whose bacon she saves before it occurs to her what value she might have of his acquaintance as well.

It’s actually a quality, or a variation thereof, I enjoy conferring on my young, up-and-coming heroes. When they are faced with opposition from other characters, it is a sign of their intrinsic personal value and powers that they convert those characters to their side and cause. Their way is not to destroy her enemies, but to turn them into allies and friends, which ultimately makes them stronger. People respond to them with, “I don’t know what else I might believe in… but I believe in you.” This is a trait I’ve also given to Tom Barrows, the protagonist of my screenplay The Tailor at Loring’s End, and to Josie Jenkins, the lead of the musical Puzzle House Blues.

You see, I want Mary’s destiny will ultimately be to form what I’m calling behind the scenes “the Hawk Family,” a team of society avengers that can take on even more and greater challenges than just the few of them could. This ability of hers, to seek out capable individuals and band them into an organization that makes the best use of their talents, will be what transforms Mrs. Hawking’s work into an even great force for good. That’s something Mrs. Hawking could never have done on without Mary.

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A female power fantasy

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Categories: character, development, influences, vivat regina, Tags: , , , , ,

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In the interest of artistic honesty, I feel I have to cop to the fact that in some ways, the character of Mrs. Hawking is a power fantasy. Specifically, she is a personal one for me, embodying many of the qualities that I happen to find particularly empowering.

She is a physically small person, but rather than be limited by it, it so fit and strong that she is a force to be reckoned with, and in fact uses her size to her advantage by being fast, graceful, sneaky, stealthy, and able to fit into unexpected places while avoiding notice. I am a small person often frustrated by its limitations. She has a lot of anger, but she gets to use to fuel her in her crusade. I am an angry person whose anger gets her into trouble. She’s asexual, free from influence by sexual interest or from the need to be sexually desirable to anyone. I’m not asexual, but sometimes I wish I were free from those things. She’s a loner, an introvert in the extreme, who feels no compunction about withdrawing whenever she needs to. I’m an introvert too, but I often feel like I’m not able to take the time to myself that I need. It even shows up in smaller ways. She bears a physical resemblance to my friend and frequent collaborator Frances Kimpel, who I often wish I looked more like. She has a background in ballet, something I find incredibly cool. All these things are a chance to make the kind of person I think would be powerful enough to be this kind of hero.

I’m not troubled by this. I think there should be characters that serve as power fantasies for women of the sort that men have in abundance. Batman comes to mind as an example, as he is rich, exalted, hyper-competent hero that is often considered to be above all comparisons, and incidentally happens to be a major inspiration for Mrs. Hawking. The trouble, however, is in not allowing such a character to fall into the category of Mary Sue. The problem with power fantasy characters is that if you make them TOO powerful, TOO aspirational and awesome and amazing in every way, then they stop being believable or real. So I need to make sure that when I write Mrs. Hawking, she has real flaws to her to make her a truly complex main character.

I wanted those flaws to grow organically out of her personality, so I used the flip side of the things that were powerful about her. “Your strengths are your weaknesses,” after all. Her anger issues mean she can be really nasty when she wants to be. Her loner nature makes her reluctant to accept help, to get close to people, and she has little ability when it comes to normal social interaction. Her pride makes it hard for change and grow when she’s been wrong. She is not a flawless crime-solving machine when she screws herself up this way. Despite her forward-thinking attitudes, she’s racist in the manner of her time, and sexist in a manner all her own. And she’s a damn pain in the ass to deal with a big chunk of the time.

I want those flaws to matter. Actions have consequences, and when you act like as much of a dick as she often does, it’s going to come back and bite you. I always hate in when main characters in her extremely intelligent, lone-wolf mold such as the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Gregory House are enormous assholes, but everyone around them seems to excuse their awfulness and the story lets them get away with everything because they’re so damn special. I’m specifically fighting that in my portrayal of Mrs. Hawking. She’s very special, but she’s also very awful, and I want both to have an equal impact on how people treat her.

It’s actually one of the reasons I wanted to introduce Clara Hawking. I wanted her so badly to be in Vivat Regina so she could function as someone who hasn’t “drunk the Mrs. Hawking Kool-Aid,” so to speak, to stand in contrast to the many characters who are in awe of her. Despite their occasion defiance and criticism of her, Mary and Nathaniel basically adore her. I’m always having to be careful to not write too much about people talking about how remarkable she is, because that would be unbearable and stupid. But Clara is someone who genuinely doesn’t think her virtues makes up for her flaws and holds them seriously against her. I hope to keep that element in the story from every quarter as would be realistic. Consequence-free behavior is anathema to dramatic, emotionally honest storytelling in my opinion.

I do believe it is possible to have a figure who counts as a power fantasy who is also believably human and imperfect. But it requires careful balancing. I hope I’m up to the challenge, and I plan on making every effort to succeed in that with this character.

I like her a lot, after all, and I want you to be able to as well. ;-)

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“Protege” — first draft of scene 1.2 of Vivat Regina

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This is the first draft of scene 1.2 of Vivat Regina, originally written on August 12th of 2013. I’ve mentioned that I was originally planning on having the central struggle for Mary being her deciding that she could only take on the future of Mrs. Hawking’s work under her own terms. Because of this, having it declared early that Mrs. Hawking meant to groom her in this way made sense.

But my boyfriend Bernie pointed out that this story required a slower exploration in order to do it justice, and I ended up scrapping this to deal instead with Mary’s fear that she was not up to the challenge. This meant that Mrs. Hawking’s reveal of her intention to pass the torch had to be a revelation to come later.

Some of these scene still exists in the final version of 1.2. Other pieces were included in 2.3, the scene to which the protege reveal occurs. This is a great example of scene work where it doesn’t work in its original conception, but can be repurposed later to better serve the story.

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Day #12 – “Protege”

(MRS. HAWKING is in the parlor in his stealth suit, removing it piece by piece. MARY rushes back in through the front with her wrap and hat over her dress, exhilarated.)

MARY: Oh, that was extraordinary!

MRS. HAWKING: A task adequately managed, indeed.

MARY: I did it, I worked it all out, you saw it yourself!

MRS. HAWKING: Eventually. With some guidance.

MARY: Still, I did manage!

MRS. HAWKING: You did at that.

MARY: And yes, with your guidance. Everything you’ve wanted to teach me, I’ve worked very hard to learn.

MRS. HAWKING: Yes. Yes, you have.

MARY: You have seen it, madam, haven’t you?

MRS. HAWKING: You’ve been a diligent student. In fact… you’ve been an excellent one. Better than I dared hope.

(MARY beams at her. Then she begins taking off her wrap, her hat, and her gloves. MRS. HAWKING becomes contemplative, and after a moment MARY notices.)

MARY: Are you all right?

MRS. HAWKING: It’s only… it makes me think. I’ve been at this work for half my life now, and before you, I’d always done it alone. I thought that when it came time that I could not keep on with it any longer… that would be the end of it. All my efforts would die with me. But since you’ve come along, you’ve learned. You’ve risen to every challenge that’s come your way. I would never have guessed what help you would be to me.

MARY: Oh, madam. Do you mean that?

MRS. HAWKING: I do.

MARY: I’m sure I’m not the assistant you would have imagined.

MRS. HAWKING: Perhaps not. And yet I see now that I have in you a protégé, on your way to becoming a true partner. And one day, you’ll carry it all on in my stead.

MARY: Mrs. Hawking… I don’t know what to say.

MRS. HAWKING: Is that a path that you could see for yourself?

MARY: After everything you’ve shown me… it’s the only path I can see. Thank you.

MRS. HAWKING: No need. I can rest easy in the future of my life’s work.

(She turns away, pleased, and begins to gather up her things. MARY watches her, charmed.)

MARY: Why, Mrs. Hawking?

MRS. HAWKING: Yes?

MARY: I do believe you’re smiling.

(MRS. HAWKING frowns hard.)

MRS. HAWKING: I beg your pardon?

MARY: You never smile.

MRS. HAWKING: Certainly not. I don’t know what you’re on about, Miss Stone.

(She gathers her things in an armful and strides from the room. MARY watches her, and glows.)

8/12/13

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