Challenge #30 - Magical Realism

Hi folks

We have arrived at the final challenge for November 2021.

For those of you who wrote every single day this month, well done!

For those of you who wrote some but maybe not every day, also well done!

You all have more writing in hand than you did at the end of October, and that was the whole point.

Hopefully all of you have at least one or two ideas you want to continue pursuing in the year ahead.

This all went much better than we were expecting here on our end.  Honestly, I was expecting maybe half a dozen folks, all local and we ended up with dozens and dozens of you, so thanks for finding us, and thanks for prioritizing your writing a little bit every day.  It’s dicey making pronouncements about anything a year out, but the plan is to definitely do this again next November.  So if you found it useful, mark your calendars.

Once everyone’s turned in what they’re going to write for this last challenge day, I’ll tally everything up and follow up with an email of everyone that looks like they did all 30 days, just to confirm with everyone and make sure I didn’t accidentally miss anybody.

Then we’ll confirm your addresses where to send the check (we’re new, so we don’t have a credit card or Venmo/CashApp account or anything like that yet - so it’s old school handwritten checks).  You can all say you were paid by a theater company for your writing and it will be true, you can even show them evidence :)

Thanks again for participating, everybody!

It was a bit of a marathon for me on this end, too, but it was worth it to see you all cranking out those pages of dialogue and sketches of ideas.  Even your little escape hatch plays some days were quite inventive and entertaining.

Again, well done, one and all!




And now, let’s get you that final writing prompt for November 2021…


Challenge #30 - Magical Realism

Due: Wednesday, December 1st, 8am
(whenever 8am arrives in your time zone; we’ll do the math here in the Central Time zone, no worries :)

One of the best accidental by-products of a stage management assignment in grad school is that, for a director’s thesis project, she wanted to adapt a short story by the author Gabriel García Márquez for the stage.  Because of this, she urged all of us to read his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (not a small ask, but one of the things I miss most about school is being “required” to read things).  The last few pages of that book still blow my mind - and made me a fan of magical realism - so when I saw it turn up later in the plays of people like Sarah Ruhl and Tony Kushner, it was like running into an old friend again.

The Chicago Theater company Something Marvelous encourages writers to embrace magical realism for the stage.  They even have a handy interactive flow chart that can let you know whether you play is more magical realism or actually something like horror or sci fi instead.

They also have a great overview article about the genre from Sean Douglas, which I’ll copy here:

“What is Magical Realism?
by Sean Douglass

Magical realism (also known as magic realism or marvelous realism) is a genre in which fantastical or impossible events seamlessly occur within an otherwise realistic environment. These moments of the “marvelous” are accepted as part of the story’s reality, and can invite deeper consideration into life’s capacity for grand, unpredictable, or even irrational situations.

Magical realism as a distinct literary genre has its roots in mid-20th century Latin America. The region’s background in ancient folklore and the miracles of Catholic tradition, combined with ongoing political instability, cultivated a society uniquely rich in imagination and the sense that anything could be possible.

Alejo Carpentier, in the prologue to his 1949 novel The Kingdom of this World, writes of “lo real maravilloso,” which undergirds a general philosophy of life and openness to a deeper, poetic approach to reality. Put off by the formulas European art was using to depart from realism—the juxtaposition of disparate objects and qualities (such as Dalí’s melting watches) or overused medieval tales like the legends of King Arthur—he calls for a more authentic storytelling that is only possible among those who truly believe in a marvelous component to life.

This is not, of course, to say the events of such a story must be taken as scientifically accurate; but rather, it purports that magic can reveal genuine truth about the human experience that could not be fully captured in literal, rational descriptions.

The Nobel Prize-winning career of Gabriel García Márquez (1927­­–2014), whose 100 Years of Solitude remains a seminal work in the genre, has also been a major (if not the major) force in ushering magical realism into the popular lexicon. Born in Columbia and raised by his grandparents, Márquez’ upbringing offers an important look at the cultural forces that helped shape him and the genre as a whole.

"There was a real dichotomy in me,” he told NPR in 1984, “because, on one hand ... there was the world of my grandfather; a world of stark reality, of civil wars he told me about, since he had been a colonel in the last civil war. And then, on the other hand, there was the world of my grandmother, which was full of fantasy, completely outside of reality."

In a region of the world unbound by typical political and existential stasis, he learned to let nothing surprise him, and understood this ideology as a core part of his identity as a writer. While contemporaries like Faulkner were writing about marvelous events from an angle of surprise, Márquez wrote of them as much more natural occurrences.

“In Mexico,” he said to The Atlantic in 1973, “surrealism runs through the streets. Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America.” Indeed, Márquez even preferred to think of himself as a “social realist” rather than a magical realist, so closely was his magic tied to everyday life.

But magical realism is not limited to Latin America, nor did it completely originate there. The earliest usage of the term, before it became more closely aligned with literature, comes from the art world of the 1920’s. In German art critic Franz Roh’s 1925 book After Expressionism: Magical Realism: Problems of the Newest European Painting, he identifies Magischer Realismus (“magic realism”) as a new Post-Expressionist form, defined by realistic, sharply rendered detail and an underlying sense of mystery or ambiguity.

And more recently, decades after it emerged as a literary genre, we see it represented in the work of authors such as Salman Rushdie, Sherman Alexie, Anne Carson, and Toni Morrison and playwrights such as Tarell Alvin McCraney, José Rivera, Sarah Ruhl, and Tony Kushner.

Perhaps it is fitting that magical realism, just as it shirks hard constraints on reality, cannot be pinned down to a strict set of formal rules, and may be as unpredictable as the world it represents. While a few important principles distinguish it from related genres like fantasy or science fiction—such as its political background and its commitment to real life over an alternate, escapist one—it may be expressed in any number of ways as artists explore their own personal understandings of the marvelous in their lives.

Here at Something Marvelous, the world’s only theatrical magical realism festival, it is not our goal to be the gatekeepers for magical realism, but ambassadors for it—celebrating established voices, nurturing new ones, and encouraging audiences to explore a unique genre that is not yet as common onstage as it is in literature.”

In a call for scripts from a few years back they asked for the following:

Selected new plays must

1. Take place in our expected human reality, and 


2. Introduce an extra-real or magical element that the characters accept as part of their world.

If you're unsure if your piece is a good fit, check out our info on magical realism, or try our interactive flowchart.

We give preference to plays that use magical realism to communicate a specific cultural experience; we seek diversity in points-of-view to represent a variety of perspectives based on gender, race, age, sexual orientation, subject matter, etc.

We encourage playwrights to let their imaginations soar and present creative challenges to our team of artists.

(Hauntings are a common convention, so we are seeking fresh ideas.)



So take a swing a that for our final outing.

Or, like always, write whatever you want.

Just write.  Something.  For one last day in November (this year).

Again, folks, well done.

Happy writing to you all!




How to submit your work for Challenge #30

You have options.  They are:

Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and send as an attachment to an email sent to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Copy and past your script in the body of an email and send it to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Post your script online (as a Google doc, or in a blog post, on your own personal website, etc.) - email a link to this script to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
(If you’re going to Google doc route, just make sure to have the document public, or give permissions to our email address to open it)

When emailing us, make the subject line of your email - Challenge #30
(That just helps us sort through the email more quickly)
(Or, you know, just reply to this email if you want :)

OR

Post the link for the online document option above in the comments section on this very blog post for this challenge on our writing challenge blog.


Again, this is: Due: Wednesday, December 1st, 8am
(whenever 8am arrives in your time zone; we’ll do the math here in the Central Time zone, no worries :)

 

And, just to reassure you, no, we are not going to be sticklers about you following these directions down to the minutest detail - the important thing is that you write, and then that you share it with us, so we can keep track of who’s writing every day.

We will be VERY understanding about technical difficulties and how they can screw up making the deadline.  No need to fret about anything except the writing (and hopefully that’s not something causing you to fret too much either :)

Also, no, there is no penalty for finishing and submitting early - but it also isn’t a race, so give yourself all the time up til 8am on Wednesday to write if you need it.  When you’re done, you’re done.

A friendly reminder - you don’t have to write to the prompts if they don’t inspire you.  You can ignore them and just write whatever you want, just as long as you’re writing (that’s the main thing, not what you write)

Someone had a good question about the overall goal of the month, are we supposed to write a full-length play, or two one-act plays, etc.?  The short answer is no (unless you want to).  The longer answer is here if you’re curious.

For those concerned about format, we’re pretty liberal about that, too - just as long as it’s legible and in English.  More on that here.

Again, remember, it doesn’t need to be great, it doesn’t even need to be responding to this prompt (the prompt is just there so you’re not staring at a blank screen to start with no idea what to write about :)

Doesn't even need to be complete - you could have the beginning or the middle or the end of an idea, maybe two out of three but not all, that's still fine. This is all about getting things started, you can write more later. You have another 11 months (until the next November writing challenge) to build on whatever you come up with today, if you want. Just get anything on the page, even if won't make sense to anyone else, as long as it make sense to you.

It just needs to be something.

And that something can be:

Lights up.

“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

Lights down.

The End

That’s always your escape hatch, every day.

That’s your base line.

Build on it.

Have fun.

Don’t stress.

Make an impulsive decision and run with it.

Breathe.

You’ve got the day (and a half).

Just write.