Thursday, October 23, 2014

Muthalode

Back when I used to run NYCPlaywrights as a weekly meeting (I did it for eleven years - what was I thinking?) there were many flaky people who came through, attempting to write plays. Among the flakiest was a woman who claimed to have been a dominatrix back when (she was about 60-something when I knew her) and who had written a play that was based on her experiences.

It wasn't a play really, though, it was an epic, a saga, and the main character was called "Mother Love." The play actually had some interesting characters and scenarios (which it would kinda have to, being based on a dominatrix gig) but the woman just did not have the kind of mind that could turn all the elements into a coherent narrative. Which was not unique to her, unfortunately - coherent narratives are shockingly rare, even among plays that are produced. She brought in scene after scene and in spite of the weird and sometimes gross events, it never seemed to go anywhere.

Oh, and I almost forgot - in spite of all the kinky weirdness and offensive violence, the author refused to use naughty words like "fuck" - her characters would say freaking instead of fucking.

I found this all hugely frustrating so I wrote a 10-minute play called MOTHERLODE which we did in a fundraiser for NYCPlaywrights back in 2009, which borrowed some of the concepts from Mother Love. Then I decided that I had borrowed too much, so I changed almost everything except the core concept of a dominatrix, which I turned into my play MISTRESS ILSA, which I've done two productions of, one in 2011 and then a revised version in 2012.

The actor who played Ilsa, Alice Anne English, could have a career in Germany as a dominatrix - my web sites get hits all the time of people checking out her pix in costume.

I must develop it into a full-length play. I think it has quite a lot of potential. And could be very funny. As I think the clip below proves.