Hyde-ing your Jekyll

    I may be a nice guy.  Do nice guys feel guilty about not posting for four months?  Do nice guys keep track of their felony total? (Zero, by the way) How many nice guys turn in lost items rather than sell them on eBay?  I may be a nice guy.

However, writers (and performers) can’t afford to be “nice.”
It fosters blandness, avoids conflict, and leaves your fans wanting more…of something else.

I’m in the midst of a writing project to train corporate folk in spotting (and avoiding) harassment of every sort—basically, presenting the worst behaviors onstage.  This means I’ve got to portray 'natural’ behavior embodied in bigots, sexists, and bullies.

Evil is not foreign ground to me.  In past scripts, I’ve created: a man who feared being jailed more than being accountable; the Zodiac killer’s ‘down time’; and a man who did unspeakable things to his daughter.  Evil is in all of us and when the want or need is strong enough, it will come out.

How to keep Evil on the paper is my issue.  When a normal nice person expresses the darkside, it’s usually a singular act of vengeance or violence.  As a writer, though, you have to inhabit each character—their past, their motives, their physicality—for truth to be told in the work.  Sometimes a lengthy process.

It’s not difficult to ‘duel’ good and bad characters on paper…there’s balance and natural responses from both parties.  It IS difficult to turn on your internal censor at those times.  Letting the djinn out of the bottle, opening Pandora’s Box, and similar metaphors are apt.  You made a choice and now you have to live with it or the art, the work, doesn’t sound sincere enough to create interest, tension, shock & awe, etc.

Don’t get me wrong.  This project has my “Dr. Jekyll” working overtime against “Mister Hyde” tendencies in order to keep the script acceptable and palatable to the potential audiences.  Lessons are still inherent but that doesn’t mean the comfort level has to be at a ‘My Pretty Pony’ low.

*SIDE NOTE: I am curious if people like Dr. Seuss just went off occasionally.  Deep in their closet, you’d find their weekly output of bile-on-paper with puppy-kicking virgin-sacrificing chainsaw-wielding ‘John Doe’s having things their way.    If YOU don’t go to the darkside, ever, is it repressed to be expressed by painting ‘Dogs Playing Poker’?

Actors always say it’s more interesting playing the bad guy (or gal).  You know why? Because the writer did what every performer, reader, audience member, and human being would LOVE to do: Get away with something big…just once.

I may be a nice guy.  I may be a bad guy. 

I may have to think on this some more…