Playwright’s Notes
Why I Re-Wrote BANG BANG YOU’RE DEAD After 10 Years
or
I love my horse but I prefer my car.
by William Mastrosimone
I have heard it said, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If that were true, we would still be riding horses. Don’t get me wrong. Nothing’s wrong with a horse. But it doesn’t have air conditioning, heat, a radio. That’s how I felt about the first draft of “Bang Bang You’re Dead.” It was a horse. Obviously the play worked. Obviously the play had a certain power evinced by the fact that it had thousands of productions.
In 1998—99, I lived a 6 hour train ride from rehearsals. I didn’t get there very often. My creative juices flow most freely when I see a play up and running. That’s when I do my most intensive sculpting. But by the time I saw the flaws, the missed opportunities, the lack of clarity, I also saw that any new changes would disrupt the rhythm and flow of Mike’s troupe. The world was pounding on the door for the script, and so I gave in to the urgency.
From time to time over the next ten years, I said to Mike that I wanted to do a rewrite, but it seemed like I was trying to close the barn door after the horse escaped. Why bother? The play was all over the world. Keep the horse.
But while I attended productions here and there, I began to develop a cringe factor. I felt like I was riding my horse while cars whizzed by me on I-5. There were places in the script that just made me cringe. When that happens, I need to know why. I took a hard look and saw the power of the play was actor/director dependent. The power of the play was not always on the page but reliant upon enthusiasm. The power of a play needs to be on the page. The power must be in the characters, in the language, in the action. The cringe factor grew. The play cried out for–or rather–whinnied for a rewrite.
With unbridled joy, I threw myself into the work. The director of the first new version, John Morris of the Las Vegas Academy, who had done the old version years ago, proved that the car indeed had advantages over the horse.
And so, the director who launched the first version of the play, Mike Fisher, put the horse to pasture to live in the archive of our hearts, but now returns for a long overdue event.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my horse, but I prefer my car.