UPDATE 12/11 - Celebration of Swedenborg's Birthday:
A proposal that "Nunc Licet" be prepared to use in conjunction with the celebration of Swedenborg's birthday has been made to the Bryn Athyn Church and such an idea seems nice as a diner & a show kind of thing.
That celebration takes place in January and his death took place in March, so something presented anywhere in between will serve the two purposes overall.
This presentation thus far has been not well received by the church event planners, either because of the length of the show, or the way in which Swedenborg is presented in the play. Yet such a presentation remains a very interesting concept, with or without the church's involvement.
If anyone is interested in developing this concept, anywhere around the world, then I invite dialogue on the subject.
The readers edition is still something that will be further developed, when the time can be allotted to do so, and it is likely that such an edition will be the first stage of the diner & a show project.
We have video of the Assembly presentation and after editing I do expect to post it here and on the IMS YouTube Channel.
"Nunc Licet" was presented with some success at
The 2011 World Assembly of The New Church
For the advancement of the play, I offer the most recent edition of
entire script of Nunc Licet for your review.
During the Assembly, we drastically edited the script, reducing the size and eliminating much of the subplot elements, in order to fit it into a two hour time frame. Of course this two hour time frame was for the overall program and not strictly the on-stage material. On-stage material amounted to just under one and a half hours, not quite enough to squeeze in the essential material. or develop the wide range of characters before jumping into the core material. Which leads me to begin thinking in terms of film.
It became clear to me that making the presentation, as envisioned, will require much more in-depth working with, not only the actors (on an individual basis) but also, production elements that do need to be included (but were disallowed for various reasons, under the circumstances available to us.) Certain aspects of the period nature of the play need to be more carefully constructed as an integral part of the final product, because they really do provide an external shape to the piece that is quite necessary due to the concentrated material within the core of the play.
We felt that since we were addressing a New Church audience, that certain points in the play did not need to be dealt with, since most of our audience already had a foundational knowledge of who Swedenborg was. So some material was skipped over which gave a somewhat choppy effect (in my mind).
In addition, we were limited in our rehearsal time and production values, so a significant number of subplot elements were removed. I was not too please about needing to do this, but it had to be done. Being faced with certain realities of production resources, time and the (much respected and valued) input of persons involved, I relented to cut out large sections that were initially designed to craft an atmosphere around the players and shape the persona of the characters.
For the Assembly presentation I should have cut more out, which I ended up doing during the reading, jumping forward over (rather necessary) parts. All of this was amplified by the fact that the presentation took place at diner time, at the end of a long day of workshops, in a space that was very hot and without air-conditioning. People were very tired and their attention spans were considerably shorter than they might have been if the work was to have been presented at a more opportune time and under better circumstances.
I remain under the opinion that the script can and ought to be presented in full as written, although I do believe that the design elements that have been conceived, but not written, should be included. I recognize that the length of the play as it reads (presented here for you to read) is an issue, but the edits of the Reader's Edition will rectify most of that.
My future approach will be to start with the Reader's Edition and then slowly and carefully include selected elements that were removed, to embellish the areas in need of such action.
You will note that the script provided here for your review has all of the staging instructions included. When I removed the assorted descriptions, instructions and the directions to the actors, leaving only the lines to be spoken, the script is reduced to 126 pages (with some of that material removed simply by crossing it out bringing it down close to 100 pages double spaced).
So here is the unedited script for your review.
Please use the search function above to locate other posting on the subject.
12/11 A revised Assessment of the presentation at the Assembly, with other thoughts;
During the Assembly, we drastically edited the script, reducing the size and eliminating much of the subplot elements, in order to fit it into a two hour time frame. Of course this two hour time frame was for the overall program and not strictly the on-stage material. On-stage material amounted to just under one and a half hours, not quite enough to squeeze in the essential material. or develop the wide range of characters before jumping into the core material. Which leads me to begin thinking in terms of film.
It became clear to me that making the presentation, as envisioned, will require much more in-depth working with, not only the actors (on an individual basis) but also, production elements that do need to be included (but were disallowed for various reasons, under the circumstances available to us.) Certain aspects of the period nature of the play need to be more carefully constructed as an integral part of the final product, because they really do provide an external shape to the piece that is quite necessary due to the concentrated material within the core of the play.
We felt that since we were addressing a New Church audience, that certain points in the play did not need to be dealt with, since most of our audience already had a foundational knowledge of who Swedenborg was. So some material was skipped over which gave a somewhat choppy effect (in my mind).
In addition, we were limited in our rehearsal time and production values, so a significant number of subplot elements were removed. I was not too please about needing to do this, but it had to be done. Being faced with certain realities of production resources, time and the (much respected and valued) input of persons involved, I relented to cut out large sections that were initially designed to craft an atmosphere around the players and shape the persona of the characters.
For the Assembly presentation I should have cut more out, which I ended up doing during the reading, jumping forward over (rather necessary) parts. All of this was amplified by the fact that the presentation took place at diner time, at the end of a long day of workshops, in a space that was very hot and without air-conditioning. People were very tired and their attention spans were considerably shorter than they might have been if the work was to have been presented at a more opportune time and under better circumstances.
I remain under the opinion that the script can and ought to be presented in full as written, although I do believe that the design elements that have been conceived, but not written, should be included. I recognize that the length of the play as it reads (presented here for you to read) is an issue, but the edits of the Reader's Edition will rectify most of that.
My future approach will be to start with the Reader's Edition and then slowly and carefully include selected elements that were removed, to embellish the areas in need of such action.
You will note that the script provided here for your review has all of the staging instructions included. When I removed the assorted descriptions, instructions and the directions to the actors, leaving only the lines to be spoken, the script is reduced to 126 pages (with some of that material removed simply by crossing it out bringing it down close to 100 pages double spaced).
So here is the unedited script for your review.
Please use the search function above to locate other posting on the subject.
I do hope that we can that we will present another reading sometime in 2012.
If you are a producing organization and would like to consider mounting this production as a reading or a full production, please do feel free to contact me in that regard.
I am removing the postings which refer to the production efforts for the readings that have taken place. If you need that information let me know. I expect to move it to the "Nunc Licet" Archive.
If you are a producing organization and would like to consider mounting this production as a reading or a full production, please do feel free to contact me in that regard.
I am removing the postings which refer to the production efforts for the readings that have taken place. If you need that information let me know. I expect to move it to the "Nunc Licet" Archive.
Download a READ ONLY copy of the full script
On-line Synopsis of Nunc Licet
Slightly different than that provided in the script
This is a limited production custom order item.
