Statement

AUTHOR'S NOTES ON CHEPACHET: Stage to Screen
 
CHEPACHET was the second play I had written in a series of four plays while recovering from throat cancer.  I refer to these plays as my RECOVERY CYCLE.  (I came within a centimeter of losing my voice). 
 The first play, FUNERAL SONG LAMENT, that I subtitled “a dirge in the form of a play” won the Jean Dalrymple Award in 2004.   It was an angry rant full of rage toward my illness that I had intended to be the be all and end all, but found, instead, that I had opened up a kind of Pandora’s Box. I then went on to write three more plays with a similar themes.
 
Not only that but I also recognized that I had found a form and structure of the plays that was new and fresh for me.  I wanted to write something full-length yet short for the modern attention span that was used to television.

 For several years of late, I have taken an interest in anything I could find on the history of colonial America and the original natives.  Having grown up in Rhode Island, I was used to seeing Indian names all over the place, including my home town of Pawtucket (which means “the place by the little falls”).  When I stumbled upon the definition of CHEPACHET (“the place at the crossroads”),  it triggered an avalanche of ideas.
 
An actress who appeared in FUNERAL SONG LAMENT (Mary Borrello) became the model for the character of “Karen” in CHEPACHET.  Originally, I intended Karen to be a morbidly shy girl, since Mary was about the shyest actress I had ever met!  And I intended Karen to be living with two artists--one a gleeful upbeat optimist and the other full of existential angst and rage.  Over a period of time, I morphed Karen into a mentally challenged girl with a speech impediment and chose her to be involved with only one artist -- Cole, the photographer.  The second artist became a truck driver, Lud.
 
I never intended any of the plays to be about cancer per se.  I did want them to be serious investigations of the mystery of human suffering, redemption, recovery and forgiveness.
 
Never in my adult life have I felt such a need to create as I did while writing CHEPACHET.
 
When the FUNERAL SONG LAMENT project ended at the American Theatre of Actors, I found myself sinking into a terrible post-partum depression.  These kinds of feelings are not uncommon to many actors/artists but in this case it was especially profound.  I had to write CHEPACHET!  I had to be creative again as soon as possible in order to prevent myself from being engulfed with morbidity.
 
Twice during the process of actually writing CHEPACHET, I had the rare experience of   inspiration.  The first inspiration came while writing the “rape scene".  It occurred to me, on the spot, to make that scene happen simultaneously to the scene in which the other characters were trying to find out where the missing Karen was.  It required the use of tableaux and a suspension of disbelief that can only happen in the theatre and afterwards the audiences seem to react most strongly to that scene and that device. The second "muse" occurred when I decided to make the end the beginning -- showing Mrs. Ware and Karen meeting Lud and Cole for the first time. I wanted this device to create a kind of reverse climax and create a dramatic tension by showing what had already occured.
 
The play version ends in a mystery.  Karen is missing and we assume through a series of clues
that Lud has killed her but we never know for sure.
 
I wanted the audience to continue the experience of wondering after they left the theatre
and I also wanted them to contemplate the meaning of forgiveness.  In the script, Cole forgives Lud for causing an horrendous accident by his drunkenness and the play ends with that sentiment.  But Cole is unaware that Lud has committed an unforgivable act.
 
The director of our movie version, Ken Kushner,  and I discussed several ways of ending the movie. Kush was convinced that the movie ought to take a definite stand as to what happened to the missing Karen.    
 
After hashing out several possibilities, we chose one with a double twist that includes both Lud's satanic
desires and Cole's brutally facetious fantasy -- leaving everyone at the crossroads of CHEPACHET.
 
--James Crafford