Okay so like I do not have the time to learn to use Pages, and my WP Blog has served me well, so well and for so long that, this is just easiest.
Fed Ex can handle the print out.
So I am adapting a short story that I wrote in 2013 for ERWA called Vanilla Suede that they put in the Treasure Chest. It’s a real little shorty and totally dialogue but as I was writing it, and now that I think about it, that might have been the year that Walter Dallenbach had passed away and so the PLAY “Vanilla Suede” is FOR Walter, just as Heart of Clouds was writ for Walter Davis based on the title of his “Do You Remember Love” which won a Humanitas. In 2006 when I saw that prize on his mantel at a party I almost keeled over. Well I was a therapist you know? That is HUGE. So anyway, Vanilla Suede is just dialogue, that my editor Bob Buckley taught me to write and I was able to do as he did, with all his dialogue pieces as Flash Fiction. He is so very dear to me. Always. So anyway I am breaking my words into three scenes and all morning I grasped a new understanding of “spectacle” and what that means for set design. So this is really simple in some ways.
— I am breaking up the story into three distinct scenes. The first scene starts at a funeral where two old friends who have known each other for years meet up at the death of a mutual friend. These are my MC’s Trent and Marina – they are older – mid 50s or? But the essence of these two characters is that they have lived in long marriages and are now divorced, but, hesitant to get involved with anyone else. So I know that I wrote the shorty with Aristotle’s Poetics. Even as thinly as the dialogue is! — we used to write to 1200 words sometimes in my genre at ERWA so this is one of those shortys. And I want to use a very minimalist style to present this. Painting the props myself and I only need like three. It’s set to Glenn Miller “Moonlight Serenade, and that will be the second part of the scene.and I am just going to do this here because can access right at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference.
So where I am going to break the text and how that will look.
The PLAY VANILLA SUEDE = three scenes.
SCENE #1
THE MOURNERS
There is a dark stage and as the lights come on dimly lit, “DARK” we see maybe seven people standing in a circle the mourners are EXTRAS in a sense because this is the only line ONE OF THEM will say.
EVERYONE IS HOLDING A FLOWER to symbolize putting a flower on a GRAVE. ONE BY ONE silently and with great care, EACH MOURNER places A FLOWER at the base of the tombstone until we hear “GONE TOO SOON” by the last mourner, who shakes his head, sadly and slowly back and forth. The mourner’s FACES all hold the sadness one sees at the loss of someone dear.
The mourners recede into darkness, BY ONE BY ONE WALKING BACKWARDS AND UPSTAGE until THEY EXIT STAGE LEFT ONE BY ONE, and the LIGHTS now move to a spotlight on the faces of my two MC’s. TRENT AND MARINA.
SO, NEW LINE = “TAKEN TOO SOON” as said by one of the mourners.
Now we hear TRENT say to MARINA the next part. This is a play for TWO PEOPLE.
We see TRENT and MARINA as the last of the mourners, when he says: “Sometimes you just need to be held,” ——– This line is where my shorty started.
SCENE #2
TRENT and MARINA are now the last mourners left at the site of the grave but we DO NOT NEED TO SEE TOMBSTONE, so lights are just ON THEM.
In this part the conversation between them is about the 1920’s, as in the shorty. However I am going to make another break in the action here so – I have to move them from Marina talking about the Halloween Party and her grandparents to the TWO OF THEM deciding they are going to go to the party together. Also work in the EE and I have thought how to do that. TRENT can have a book of EE’s poems on the set on a table. In this part, MARINA can say, “Oh, you have read ee, and Trent will say, “YES.” Then she will say, “Oh I have a fave poem of his.” So what has happened here is that there is going to be a LOVE SCENE with the BALCONY involved. They have decided to go to the Halloween Party together. But we never see the Halloween party.
SCENE TWO is at TRENT’S APT and in this scene is where we will see the DANCE SCENE so this goes in where he says, “HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THIS” —- enter the Miller SOUNTRACK on Moonlight S.
This is also the part where MARINA will read EE poem.
SCENE THREE IS BALCONY LOVE SCENE I AM EDITING.
I think this is a one act play in two scenes? Not sure what to call it but Walter and Carmen will know.
SETS #1 TOMBSTONE AND MOURNERS
SET #2 TRENT APT DANCE SCENE
SET #3 LOVE SCENE ON BALCONY BEHIND BALUSTRADE (hidden from aud) just hear the voices and the lines.
FINALE- the lights turn into the stars! ❤ How is that for a spectacle!!! ha!
Here is a link from my old blog Valentine Bonnaire (my nom de plume) for when I wrote Vanilla Suede for ERWA, it may have run in September that year? So. 2013. ERWA changed hands at some point, so here I talked about writing it and there is a picture of the shoe and music link. I was writing Suede Shoe Stories, at that time. Pink Suede, Green Suede, Red Suede and Vanilla Suede. You will see Red Suede in the archives at ERWA if you feel like it.
*author note, sadly Walter passed in 2014, so I wrote this before that but, the play Vanilla Suede that is SBWC 2019 is dedicated to my screenwriting teacher, the magnificent Walter Dallenbach. The match scene in the film Lawrence of Arabia.
Adrienne Wilson 
