IN WHICH "THE PLAY'S THE THING"...

A new wrinkle for The Play. (Yes, I’m obsessing about The Play. I tend to do that. This is the third play I’ve written for the “Pig Wars” sock-puppet cast, and they are a lot of fun to write for. I keep suggesting stitching numbers on them and retiring them like football jerseys, but I keep running into new opportunities for them. We may do the whole Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen lexicographies before we’re done.)

The “Sleeping Piggy” script is getting peer review; it’ll get tweaked a little before it’s in final form, but probably not much. It’s the legend of Sleeping Beauty, performed by the sock-puppet cast of “Pig Wars” (all Star Wars characters—and all pigs). With some twists, of course: Yoda is the Evil Fairy, Darth Vader gets the girl, and Princess Leah joins the Dark Side (but not really, because this is officially a Morality Play and intended for children). One new character, Chewy (the wookie), who is kind of a cross between Cookie Monster and a rug.

We ought to be able to do the play with one rehearsal, just like last time. That adds a nice amateurish feel to it which I think audiences find charming, particularly with kids doing some of the parts.

This time around, though, we should end up with a very professional video: the performance is scheduled to be filmed by students from Wil Duncan’s video class, so we’ll have multiple cameras (and camera angles). Might even make cable TV. Accordingly, I want professional-looking credits (I assume the credits will be my job, just like last time), and I want a professional-sounding soundtrack to play behind them. I have written a song for it—a simple thing, just one verse and one chorus—and it came pretty easy. One thing that made it easy was Polly Hager volunteered to sing it, and I like writing for her voice.

The wrinkle: As the closing credits roll (or whatever I can make them do with the software I’ve got), instead of them rolling against a blank screen, why not have the song performed by a band—consisting of the cast of the play? We could outfit the sock puppets with little musical instruments, and have them rock out in time to the music. Chewy (the wookie) can be the drummer (and Darth Vader can be the drum, since he has a bucket on his head), Luke can do bass, and Hansolo lead guitar; Princess Leah is the singer,of course (with Polly’s voice), and Yoda might be able to play sax (I know a sax player)—it is rock ‘n’ roll, after all.

The song would have to be performed live, too, along with the play (with the credits added later), in order to choreograph the “band” right. One reason for making the song short is I want the credits to be rapid-fire—with “Pig Wars,” the credits kinda dragged (a limitation of the particular software I was using, which I do not want to use again), and took almost as much time as the play itself. As Shakespeare said, “The play’s the thing”; the credits shouldn’t dominate—and forcing the credits to fit the length of a short soundtrack ensures they can’t.

One more thing we can do: The credits as currently written say the song is “performed by Southern Pigfish.” No one has ever seen Southern Pigfish perform—not surprising, since the band doesn’t exist. There’s no reason why our sock-puppet band can’t actually be Southern Pigfish, and this be their first-ever live performance. (There’s a possibility of more music videos in the socks’ future, too.)

Music Sunday night up in Wheeler; band practice tentatively Friday night, and we’ll “do” the studio the following weekend (except for Doc, who’ll be out of town—but Mike wants to record his blues harp part separately anyway). One of the fans at the Failed Economy show told me later, “Joe, you really need a better singer” (not surprising, since the singer is me). That’s one reason I keep hanging with other groups of musicians. I keep hoping somebody will be interested.

Joe