Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Origins of Tainted Love

The play Tainted Love is an adaptation of a short story of the same name published in the Zombie anthology New Dawn Fades by Post Mortem Press. A friend of mine, Jeff Suess, sent me the call for submissions and the topic really intrigued me. Post Mortem Press was asking for stories which explored the effects of dealing with the loss of a loved one who dies at the hands of a Zombie or becomes a Zombie. I liked the idea of exploring the human dimension to something that seems so inherently inhuman, so I decided to try my hand at writing a story for this project.

Because of my ties to theater, I initially conceived the piece as an extended monologue that could theoretically be spoken by a lone actor. (I am certain that Chris Dooley, the actor who plays the lead Steve, is glad I did not take that route. It would have made his job a lot more difficult). I decided to turn sections of the story into actual scenes after hearing John Patrick Shanley explain his process for turning his play Doubt into an opera. Shanley said that he wanted to explore what the medium of opera can so to add to the story. I decided to follow his lead and began exploring what the realm of the stage could do to bring to life different elements of the story.

In turning this short story into a play, I got a chance to explore the character of Steve more thoroughly. I did not specify his job within the original story, so I gave him one that is in keeping with a Cincinnati Fringe show (You'll have to see the show to find out what that job might be). I also had a chance to explore the character of Tyler, the researcher looking for a cure for Virus-86 which causes Zombiodal state. In the short story, he was an exposition driver who explained to Steve everything about how Zombie's operate. I was able to flesh him out considerably and made him into a character in his own right. Tyler gets off easy in this play and I have been thinking of writing a sequel to the short story Tainted Love in which his flight to meet his wife Marie in Kansas City crashes and he has to hack his way (literally) through a sea of the living dead in order to get to his beloved Marie. As Tyler himself tells Steve, when you are life becomes a Zombie movie, “no one comes out alive—or at least not without some serious scars."

In closing, I found it an interesting experience adapting a short story into a play. It allowed me the freedom to dig deeper into characters because I knew what was going to happen to them.

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