so my new project is to adapt a short story or poem written by a filipin@-american author into a 20-minute play. i’ve selected the short story “A Portrait of an Aristocrat” from the novel WHEN THE ELEPHANTS DANCE by Tess Uriza Holthe. i’ve been drawn to this story ever since reading this 3 years ago. for some reason, it’s really taken a hold of me. i think it’s just seeing a scene where the protagonist, Fredrico Jacinto-Basa is mixing it up with the contagonist, Divina Zamora. The scene is where Divina first confronts Fredrico in his painting studio after he runs over her mothers vegetables in the market place with his Kalesa. she splashes wine all over his painting and i see him totally enraptured by her passion… something that none of his other portraits have.
at any rate, my task is to take this story of about 21 scenes and compress it into 15-20 minutes. it’s gonna be hard, but it eases my mind to know that i’ve taken the steps to get to that point:
– re-write the story in my words point-by-point
– break this point-by-point re-write into scenes
– identify all of the characters
– identify the main theme
– create a “This story is about…” sentence. Learned this from Philip Kan Gotanda.
– this actually changed from my initial thought of what i thought the story was and this was only accomplished by having the point-by-point re-write.
This story is about how an aristocratic painter changes his beliefs on social equality after meeting his muse and her family during the late 1800’s of a Spanish-colonized Philippines.
what i still need to accomplish:
– edit out the scenes which will help me tell the story into 20 minutes
– figure out what’s the best method to do this
– cut out as many characters as i can and maybe combine characters
i’m on my way and the more times i go over what i’ve already done, the story will come more clearly into focus 🙂