Seeing the Strings

Hello, friends and lovers!

Sorry for the long hiatus from this blog. I'm currently in graduate school and several projects have taken precedence over my comic book musings this quarter. Plus, I'm in the process of courting a guest writer to join Metropolis Is Actually Chicago for at least one post -- and courting takes time ... not to mention flowers, copious text messaging and pleading over beers. In short, I've been otherwise disposed these past few weeks and I apologize. I'm going to make it up to my two followers (and potential visitors) by doing a long post now, one concerned with comics' relationship to theatrical performance. Hope it proves fun for you guys!

I am in school for playwriting, but my obsessive relationship with comic book heroes started about the same time my love of theatre popped up. I attribute this to my glorious joint discovery of MGM musicals and "Batman: The Animated Series." (Age eight was a great year for Sarah Bowden.) In both outlets, I saw miraculous things happening. On "Batman," guys made out of clay and men with literally frozen hearts were constantly trying to take over Gotham City with giant robots, somehow fueled onward by the walking drug addiction metaphors and morality tales their masters represented. And only Batman had smarts enough to stop their schemes! In "Singin' In the Rain," we got to see a speech therapy lesson turn into a show-stopping musical number. Heck, I got to see a guy ask a girl out through a ten-minute romp in a make-believe meadow, complete with fog! I could not believe how much fun dancing and beating people up looked like. And I wanted to be a part of both.

My parents quickly took me to see all the great musicals available in the local theatre scene: Guys and Dolls, South Pacific, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, etc. Meanwhile, every afternoon I would park it in front of the TV to see what adventures lay in store for Batman; my parents even shucked out the cash to let me buy "Batman: The Animated Series" comic books. This gateway drug led to the purchase of regular Batman books, along with Spider-man, the X-Men and New Kids On the Block comics (which mostly involved Danny, Joey, Jordan and ... uh, the other one being chased by girls). I think my mom supported my interest in theatre more than my fascination with the Caped Crusader and his print pals. But at heart, I think both things were fulfilling the same need in me, so she needn't have worried.

Let me explain by way of giving an example:

This past weekend, I saw a theatrical adaptation of the graphic novel Skyscrapers of the Midwest in Columbus, Ohio. Now I've never read the novel, but a colleague thought I might be interested in seeing its stage counterpart because I'm my program's resident comic nerd. It's not something I'm particularly proud of for a lot of reasons (primarily because I love Shakespeare and Maria Fornes, too, and nobody ever seems to talk with that side of my personality these days), but I can't hide my love for comic artwork and stories, or what I view as the important cultural contribution comics affect under the guise of "trash reading."

Anyway, I went to the play and found it to be maybe too close an adaptation of the graphic novel, i.e., there wasn't much in it that was inherently dramatic. By dramatic, I mean, there was little in the way of onstage conflict between characters (conflict being set up in the following example: A wants a grapefruit, but B's blocking the kitchen door; A needs to get B out of the way to get what A wants, and so uses a series of tactics to get around the obstacle B is presenting). There was not much of a plot or consequences for what was going on in Skyscrapers. And not many of the scenes were tied together in a narrative way. The play was more like a series of graphic short stories or vignettes. Which is fine, but it means very little happened that I could understand or describe in a tangible way to someone who hadn't seen it. Everything just felt important with a capital I, as opposed to engrossing or enlightening. (Basically, I felt stupid for just not getting how the images onstage stacked up.) And in my book, that's the hallmark of deadly theatre; theatre that doesn't let me know what it means by telling a good story is excluding me as an audience member. That condescension and withholding is a large part of the reason the general public doesn't like theatre or only goes to musicals, which entertain them and give them an obvious story to follow. I say all this not to slam Skyscrapers, which is an original work (rare to see these days), and should be applauded its excellent production elements and solid ensemble cast. I say all the above to prepare readers for what was actually special about the play: its brief translations of comic booky-ness into something that lived onstage.

Comic books are inherently theatrical. Like in good dramatic writing, comics use your mind to complete pictures. They take you places you've never been before; they show you one thing and then turn that thing into something else entirely -- right before your very eyes. And they do all this through a unique combination of style and substance we playwrights term the "artist's voice." This is more or less my program's definition of theatricality, and comic books play with perspective, conflict, dialogue and philosophy in a similar manner. Comic books are inherently theatrical.

I've been saying this for years, but had yet to find a good drama proving this, until halfway through watching this play. "Watchmen" made an okay movie, but it didn't transport me as easily as it did Dr. Manhattan. Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark is a mess of stage show, from what I hear. It assumes that rigging people to fly and then flashing them in front of audiences' faces will make up for lackluster storytelling and match the visual delight of impossible web-slinging acrobatics on the page. (Newsflash: it won't. Look at Peter Parker fly through the Manhattan skyline in his books. His anatomy and movements make no sense half the time; if you think artists are depicting his movements realistically, then you need to get your eyes checked. Or get a refund from Julie Taymor, who really sold you some shit. Because I cannot see the value in taking the cartoony zip of Spider-man and planting it dead onstage; seems to suck all the life out of the character to me if he can't do the impossible and bend like a graceful pretzel. Frankly, it takes some of the strange wonder out of his spider powers for me. If you can't find a way to translate that wonder to the stage, count me out of ever seeing your musical.)

In comic book art, you never see the strings. Onstage or in spectacle-obsessed amusement park rides, you ALWAYS see the strings, and they will NEVER BE ANYTHING BUT STRINGS. That's what makes such fare less enjoyable than the comic-reading experience -- you're never fully in it, there's no magical transformation of the spectacle. Unlike in the wonderful world of superheroes, where people are resurrected from the dead every five minutes, everything is what it appears to be. Unless theatre artists use those strings I mentioned to their advantage. If they allow those strings to ignite your imagination, engage you in filling in the blanks and learn something while you do it, they've achieved good theatricality.

Skyscrapers showed me two good theatricality moments, and proved itself worthy of my time:

1. The first time we the protagonist's little brother (Randy, I think?), he was carrying a stuffed animal Tyrannosaurus Rex. He held it out and asked his older brother, "Do you think Rex could beat He-Man in a fight?" The protagonist wouldn't answer, and so Randy went on to spin a tale of what the fight looked like and how Rex triumphed. End scene. The next time we saw Randy, he was taking a bath before services on Sunday morning. And with him was Rex, whom he again complimented for his imagined feats of derring-do. Only this time Rex was a man in a man in a T-Rex mascot head and claws, gussied up in a pair of sweatpants, tail sticking out the back, and a Team Adidas jacket from the 1980s. And he was washing Randy's hair. And as Randy plotted to blow up church by carpet-bombing the building, Rex climbed into the bathtub, turned it into an airplane, by extending his arms out like wings, and threw invisible dino bombs out the side window. A nearby Foley artists provided the whistling sounds for the bombs and ridiculous action movie explosions projected onto a screen provided context for what Randy imagined the destruction of the church, the elementary school and the house of "that kid Kirby I hate" to be.The audience LOVED every single second of this sequence. Not just because it was ridiculous, but because it showed us how Randy viewed the world, after exposing us to what the world actually looked like, in his conversation with his brother. In the boy's mind, Rex is a kung-fu king who beats up wolves and Satan and blowws up buildings. To the rest of the world, Rex is a doll, and Randy's running around the house, screaming about his fighting prowess. In the span of two scenes, we see one reality replaced by another, magical one. The carpet-bombing scene wouldn't be nearly as sweet if we didn't see Randy's aspiration to it in the He-Man scene. Without that first scene, we wouldn't understand what the second scene means to Randy. And that context is what makes good theatre. Images are built on top of one another to help an audience draw a conclusion about a person's perspective or goal (here, proving Rex can fight).

Good comics do this, too. I could toss off a million examples (Batwoman: Elegy and Blankets are the first two that spring to mind), but I'd prefer to stay in the realm of theatre and demonstrate how, unequivocally, Skyscrapers moved from creating one nice bit of theatricality, to PROVING why comic books on the page have all the theatricality a person could ask for ...

2. During the first act of the play, a storyline was told in comic panels on the projection screen. An abusive deadbeat (who looked like a cat) bedded and abandoned a casual hook-up, who then followed him to his house, where he was working on his truck. As a series of panels appeared parallel to one another onscreen, actors offstage provided the voices of the boy and girl (theatrical in itself because we had to match their voices with what was happening onscreen without explanation). The girl begged him to forgive her for being needy in the wee hours of the morning and the boy shrugged her off. She touched his arm, and then the screen went completely white-blank. The male actor offstage screamed in pain. The panels returned. The boy was holding his hand. The actor yelled that the girl had broken his fingers. The actress apologized. The screen flashed blank again. The actress screamed in pain. Then the panels returned, showing the girl holding her head and running to her car so she could escape the maniac who just socked her in the head with a wrench.

It was in watching this sequence that I was able to define EXACTLY WHAT it is that makes comics theatrical. The play demonstrated it in those white flashes. What makes comics theatrical on the page, and therefore useful on the stage as drama, is that little strip of white space between each panel. That little strip allows your mind to create the images that move you from one panel to the next. We didn't need to see the boy hitting the girl; we created that image in our heads, we found the meaning of the white space ourselves and didn't need it spoon-fed to us. We understood what was going on between the panels because the artists gave us just enough clues to participate in the work. I can't think of another reading medium that asks for that level of engagement and participation from its audience. And that involvement is why I'm mad about comics.

But how does that realization relate to my love of theatre and the old-timey musicals which ignited that love, you may ask. I think it has everything to do with the white space translation I just talked about. Every song in a musical stands in for dialogue. In "Singin' In the Rain," Gene Kelly doesn't just announce he's in love after dropping Debbie Reynolds at her front door in a rainstorm. No, dammit, he sings about it! He dances about it! And he never, ever flat-out announces he's in love. He allows us to draw that conclusion. He talks about being ready for love and having the sun in his heart. He commands the rain to keep pouring because he's in the middle of a happy refrain, all relating to love. And we learn something about him because we're smart enough to see the guy's besotted in more ways than one.

Even as a kid, I never thought what made musicals special was all the flashy tap numbers and eye-popping costumes. What made musicals special was the fact that I could imagine what the characters were supposed to be doing while they were singing and dancing. The songs were the white space between the panels, the getting from point A to B; they moved the story and expressed the unspoken, but they weren't what was literally happening to the characters in the moment. I liked that in-between space. And I liked translating the emotions depicted in song on my own, then running to my parents to discuss my observations. Soon that led us to seeing straight plays together, and led to my long love affair with subtext and staging techniques.

Because theatre's always been a vehicle for getting me to think about what's in front of me, and expressing myself. It's my chosen field because theatre empowers me to think, respond and act in relation to the world around me. So does the white space.

See? Mom didn't need to worry about my brain rotting from comic book violence and ridiculousness. Like those MGM classics, comics books helped me get to where I am today, questioning the value of art and the world surrounding me.