Has't come to this?

I suppose if you have a blog called My Capacity for Self-destruction and you don't write in it very often things are going OK.
Things are going OK, pretty great in fact, but I have just been slammed with end of the school year business as of late and haven't had a chance to sit down and write my little missives.
So, what am I going to do about it? What would somebody with such a highly developed capacity for self destruction do? I am going to cheat. Yep, I am going to cop right out and recycle old material. (Now you know I am a middle school teacher, right?).
What follows are a few very short scenes from the eighth grade play that I wrote with my students.
My capacity is evident in the process of this piece so I guess it isn't entirely specious.
The way I write the eighth grade play with kids is a four step process that takes about 6 months.
Here is how it starts. In October (October for Christ's sake) I have the students create a character out of nothing. I ask them to approach the opportunity in a you get to play whatever you want...so make it good.
It will come as no surprise to those of you who either work with 13-14 year olds or remember being one that the majority of these characters are tragic. The body count in the back stories for the characters most of the young women chose is staggering. The boys all have secret addictions. The third group of kids are the ones who create characters exactly like another person in class in order to punish them.
Anyway they create these characters.
I then put them in groups and they have to make scenes as their characters without much guidance at all. This takes about three weeks.
Next we have to find some reason for all these characters to be in the same place at the same time or find some way to put them all together.
This years group was so disparate and wide reaching that we did the only thing possible. Stuck them all on a cruise ship so nobody could get away. I also had to use the hackneyed 'play within a play' device.
sad, I know.
I should have just stuck in a pair of cross-dressing twins, a suicide or two and we'd have Shakespeare.
Anyway, I then take the character sketches and the scenelets they wrote home and make it into a play with a beginning, middle and end.
This year the play topped in at 115 pages, it ran 90 minutes long and I was really proud of the performance.
That's the other thing about kids, they make the schlock and drudgery I come up with on long December nights and make it worthwhile. Damn them.
Anyway I will be sharing a few sections that make me giggle from time to time. Here is one.
This little scene takes place before the auditions for the play within the play. Susie is a character who is enthusiastic but not too bright.
Sydney is a character who is edgy and a little needy.
Shannon is a character who everybody likes and who thinks she is very, very funny.
Sally is an ambitious gossip queen.

(preparing for an audition)
SHANNON (to herself)
What a to do to die today at a minute or two to two. A thing distinctly hard to say but harder still to do...

SYDNEY(to herself)
You talking to me? You talking to me? You look like you're talking to me?

SUSIE (to SYDNEY)
That's really good.

SYDNEY (to SUSIE)
What's really good?

SUSIE
Your little Pacino thing you’re doing.

SYDNEY
De Niro.

SUembarrassedrased)
Oh, sorry. Gracias.

SALLY (to SUSIE and SYDNEY)
Will you guys quiet down, I got to go in there next.

SYDNEY (ignoring SALLY)
Gracias?

SUSIE
De nada

SALLY
What are you guys doing?

SUSIE
Speaking Spanish.

SHANNON
I speak Spanish.

SYDNEY: we weren't speaking Spanish. I was doing my De Niro monologue.

SUSIE (correcting)
No, no. De Nada.

SHANNON (To SUSIE)
What?

SALLY (to SHANNON)
What?

SUSIE (To nobody)
What?

SYDNEY (To SUSIE)
What?

SUSIE
Sorry, got carried away.

SYDNEY
OK, could we all shut up please?

SALLY
I am going in next and by heaven if I don’t come out of that room as sleeping freaking beauty there will be hell to pay.

SYDNEY
Well, you are half way there.

SALLY
I am not above violence.

SUSIE
It's pronounced de nada.


So that is what I do. That is in fact my day job. A little window into my capacity.
well. I am on my way to teach, and I am sure we will all be better for the experience.