In the Labyrinth

Bittersweet: An Afternoon Under the Tent Watching the A Ice Lhamo Perform

I have been working through my mother Jeanette Snyder's papers -- including a cash of drawings, and strips of contact sheet photographs (many that were never developed and for which the negatives disappeared many years ago) on her research of the Tibetan Lhamo in 1964.  She rote a wonderful article "The World Beneath the Tents" which included an account of this long summer's day in Darjeeling, India, beneath the Mahabharat Range, watching the Lhamo actors perform their folk operas. It is a wonderful article and so many of the well known actors she saw on that day (and who are in the accompanying photographs) have long since died.

But in all those photographs, I couldn't find one of her -- until now. I took another look at the thin strips of photographs with their tiny black frames with a frenzy of activity occurring within them. I had to squint and then finally scan them in order to see them more clearly in photoshop. And then -- there she was at number 18 -- not her full face, for of course her eyes were fixed forward on the drama unfolding before her, but I know her braid, her bangs, the curve of her cheek resting against her fist. Here is the strip of photos -- so you can see her watching the play. As I did, you will need to click the image to see a larger version. I think this was one of the happiest days of her life. 

And I found these too -- field drawings of what she saw -- perhaps just in case the photos didn't turn out.

A Middle of the Night Meeting With the Commedia

I realized in the middle of the night that everything I had imagined about the plot structure of Three Sisters was insufficient unto the task. I had assumed I could move from one sister's narrative to another, forming discreet and somewhat separate interludes. But, I realized as I turned over on the pillow that If I stuck to that plan, the novel wouldn't have a wholeness about it -- it would lack an integration of ideas, themes, and characters. It would just be like transplanting three short stories into an artificial frame. I wouldn't be taking the extra step as a writer to make it mean something more than a reproduction of the fairy tale plots of the sisters. So who then to help me make the stories work together? I needed characters naturally endowed with the gift of storytelling and a nomadic way of life. Characters whose profession is to transform the local tale into art, and art into an evocative display of the universal human condition (along with some decent naughty jokes to spice it up).

And all at once, there were there. The Libertini, a Commedia dell' Arte troop (who livened up the pages of The Innamorati), appear sporadically in the early chapters of Three Sisters. And what woke me in the night, beside that nagging plot problem, was the realization that my intuitive brain had written them into the background, knowing before me that I would need them -- need their expertise at improvising, need their brilliant observations of human nature, need their mythic masks that speak through the actors with unvarnished voices. And...a wagon and a portable stage so as to be nimble enough to move across the different plots and localities of the sisters' tales. The Libertini might well be the ones to bring all the stories together. And there it was...enough of an answer to allow me to return to sleep, assured that my problems once realized, were also half solved.

But, now, in the light of day, I am a staggering around, trying to re-think the entire plot structure to give my performers a little more stage time so they can do their job of explaining it all to me. The next few days are going to be pretty interesting. But like Pulcinella below, this is how I do my best work at problem solving when it all proves too much.

  Art: French School, Scene of Commedia Actors, (ca 1580), Jan Miel, Commedia dell'Arte Actors on a Wagon in a Town Square (ca. 1650), Giambattista Tiepolo, Pulcinella asleep after a night of drinking (ca. 1755).