Stageplays = Sad: My history with the form.

I finished the assignment (late), and I am both relieved and kind-of inspired. Also, I'm pretty sad and sort of mopey.

I always wanted to be a stageplay writer, or perhaps I wanted to be a director whom also wrote the play. Whatever title's, I always liked the idea of having my stories performed (Not filmed!) and, when I was much younger, I would always try and bamboozle my brother into putting on a play for my mum for X holiday or Y birthday. I can only remember one time that we did (A four-act play that lasted 1 minute, maybe less), but I did write it and, for a long time afterwards, I always wanted to write stage-plays.

I didn't write anymore stageplays after that, or maybe I did but I just didn't understand that there was a specific form to write them in and, thus, I am now confused by what was my earliest fiction and perhaps screenplays. Assuming I didn't write them, though, and that I continued to write fiction, the idea of putting on a play never did leave my mind. Up until 14, where I was slowly shrugging off my little tints of writing to pursue skateboarding, I had concocted an experimental "poem" which, in my head, I viewed as a play, called "The Machine Wars." It was an epic poem, one page a segment, each segment varying from the last though all in one massive, slowly-rolling story-telling structure.
It wasn't good, but I know damn well that that notebook was not just a series of connected poems. I had intended, always, for that to be performed.
(I'm reading over it now; I don't understand how I intended this to be performed, but I know I thought that it could be.)

So from 14 into 16&1/2, I didn't write at all. Then, when skateboarding lost it's edge and the ideals of corporate sponsorship dwindled, I re-took the art and started writing.
At this point in life, and even now, I chose to neglect stageplays in that I understand nothing of their marketing, how much opportunity awaits a stageplay writer, and, of course, how much money a stageplay may earn. So I focused on fiction.
At 19, I started to write a stageplay again. I don't understand what it was that made me do so, but I suddenly thought that perhaps I could say "F it" and write this epic and become this successful person. For one, I can't write at all, and two, I had never written a stage play in form.
Needless to say, I abandoned it as I do all of my projects, and ever since then I have wholly pushed stageplays off of my mind.

But of course writing one would be a substantially large grade assignment...

The one I just wrote is eight pages long and, though it is also trash like my other writings, I now am absolutely distraught at the idea that never, ever will I see my play performed. There are a couple of reasons I could list, but I'll focus on one here.

When I write fiction, I am generally growing more and more drunk as I write. As I push towards beautiful innebriation, I find myself much less concerned on my actions and find myself standing up and talking out loud and attempting, wholly, to immerse myself into the character. It's an odd habit, and an embarrasing one if ever one were to see, but nessecary.
With this play, I also wrote this with drunken-clarity, except the methodology for understanding the character was seperate in the means by which I entered their head. They say that with fiction the author is God, though I've never agreed to that and find that I am simply a weaver whom dictates, not God. With stageplays, though, the God-complex is unique in that it is not aquired, but required. I chose the format by which all action would be displayed, I chose how blood would sit upon the wall, how my character would fall and cry and exactly how his memory would be revealed, how the sombre atmosphere would not simply be but would intensify as that of a growing wind.
Everything that happens, every character action, every entrance, every exit, I chose and adjusted to my vision. Unlike fiction, where there is an understanding of plot and connecting the dots to climax's and downtimes and the eventual ending, I wholly wrote the life (Well, death really) and reasoning for everything.
And with this God Complex, I am now absolutely horrified that my play will never be seen. Though I know, again, that it's quality is entirely lacking, I do not believe that I put any less effort into it then any other "great" artist of the past. And, of course, it being a stageplay, it is is designed to be performed. Despite how many times i placed a toy-gun to my head to understand how my character would shoot himself, or how many times I skipped back and forth in the living room attempting to see a segment of dialouge, it will never amount to what could actually be revealed should my play ever be adequately performed.

Because of that, and I think perhaps that that may have been the reason all along, I'll stick with fiction.