Hazel Ocskó and Benedict Kazlauskas in All War is Deception (2013)
After reading the reading by Robert McKee, I was inspired to bring my focus back to my first theatre production. I had received much positive feedback about the story that I was telling however, there were criticisms that, most of which, were centered around the story’s development.
Forced to adhere to an encroaching deadline, I had to fast track the preproduction process and move things to the stage as soon as I could. Despite each character being thoroughly developed and explored, there were still gaps for the audience; I ascertained this from surveying those in the know, some audience members and the performers themselves.
I guess the reason I keep banging on about my play is that, I want to rewrite it and apply all that I’ve learned from Robert McKee, Lajos N. Egri, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Gilles Deleuze and bring these characters back to life. Because the majority of the play’s development was centred on character, I, and some of the performers, feel that we have become friends with our creations. I have empathy and sympathy for each character as they represent a part of us.
I believe that McKee’s idea of the switching protagonists could be applied, also, Bordwell and Thompson’s notion of establishing a primary narrator.
So, just to offer a synopsis in a nutshell; it is a tragedy where a box of toys come to life within in the mind a young boy, there is a box ballerina and 3 toy soldiers, each of which have their own character traits. The toys world is set in the time of the Second World War and the ballerina ends up being gunned down before the third soldier can profess his love, this is paralleled by the boys story whose dysfunctional family is falling apart. The protagonist model as it stands goes, A) ballerina B) young boy C) Soldier3. Long story short, it’s confusing… there is no one to root for. Should this production be revisited, the protagonist model with need to be strengthened by simplification, perhaps it begins with the ballerina until it is superseded by the boy.