There is onstage and there is backstage, performers keep one foot on each side of the curtain. Performing in public exercises the extrovert muscle, writing a screenplay while seated alone at a desk is an exercise of our introversion muscle.
I’ve been offstage since Covid struck, last show February 2020, but that’s just the extrovert griping, the introvert has been thriving all the while, like coming up on four years now.
Prepping to go in front of an audience in the realm of the variety show entertainer means you have committed being practiced and polished, you want to be sure you are in tiptop condition.
Forced to step away from the stage was an invitation to take a break from the very serious business of being prepared. No longer a prisoner of my business, no longer finding it necessary to write new jokes, rehearse new material, practice stunts, learn new tricks, keep the old tricks sharp; I could turn my attention away from the stage.
That change in focus works until it doesn’t, all the time away from the gym where I do most of my juggling and circus stunt workouts finally caught up with me.
Working on a new script, to accompany the first finished screenplay, I’ve a whole new cast of characters and plot points to sort.
One way to describe a variety show entertainer, is to describe the show as that of a physical comic. A good few words are nice, a sharp eye catching visual is priceless.
Configuring the physical to accompany the verbal tempts the showman to lean on the stronger muscle. If you are best suited to do stunt work, then you’ll build your show with your body. If you are a gifted joker, you may lean more on your mouth. A strong visual show has an advantage, if the acoustics suck the visuals save you.
I have been standing on my hands since 1970. Hand-balancing was for many decades my biggest trick.
I am back on my hands in the gym. I have had this ongoing conversation with the handstand trained muscles in my body. I can jump up on my hands come back down and write my weight on an index card that is likely more accurate than what a scale will reveal. I can feel every extra ounce.
You get up on your hands and everything rests atop those seven small bones in your wrist, if they hurt you are through for the day, the week or if severe enough a lifetime. I’m a lucky one, I still like the pain free feeling while I am up on my hands.
Ancient voices are buried in my neurons. Because so many years of practice aimed at my getting the act ready for the show there is a kind of latent voice that begins offering their muscular opinion about how ready I am to do the next show. You see, the simple fact of the matter is that I’m not preparing to do a show even if because I’m up on my hands tricking my body into thinking that’s exactly what I am preparing to do. Still, muscle memory is one of those ungated communication channels, they’ll tell you the truth, all you do is ask.
Circling back to writing a screenplay, in fact a climate change comedy, to the screenwriter the cinematic aspect of a script, all those images, camera angles and edits are guided by physical instincts. Much of the best of cinema is kinetic. The ear can quickly be worn weary.
When I am at my keyboard hashing out a scene the neurons in my mind help me keep my balance when I am up on my hands also help when configuring a workable scene in the script. Training the mind to scroll through an imagined visual sequence is quite the specific mind muscle.
Experience only counts if you can channel the physical emotional wisdom of your past performing experience into the circumstances you are writing about in your film.
Ultimately, I am only standing on my hands. I’m not writing lines, not channeling one of the characters voices, not doing any of those specific kinds of activity. But, somehow and for some reason the better shape I am in, the more polished the handstand, the sharper the script that gets created.
When you are preparing for a game, most all athletes practice. You stretch, you run, you repeat the same moves again and again until what you are doing becomes virtually automatic, you don’t even really need to think about it anymore, you can just do it— it’s muscle memory at work here.
Since there is nothing new under the sun, I’m sure there are other writers that stand on their hands too, and that their handstand practice is making their script that much better as well.
The main thing is that you are trying with all your muscle might to make something happen, and like Baryshnikov the most sublime moments are born by the expressiveness bound up in the wisdom stored in your body. It is like this, you know? We have a brain, and it is where most of our thinking takes place, but we also have this body and there’s dispersed throughout all this stored experience, some of what is found inside is part of what ends up on coming to life on the outside written down on the pages in our screenplays.
Life is often a mystery, finding a path to remaining alive is where a climate change comedy helps all of us cope. We really do need to laugh— and we really can meet the challenge of our life. That I can stand on my hands is outrageous, that I have this ability is the result of my trying, and our beating the climate emergency is the same. You try hard enough and you can do anything—
