MC: When I’m writing this, I’m not there yet, it’s still not December. I don’t know what happens in December. I might be dead for all I know. Or there might be a gigantic atomic blast, and everyone is dead. Fuck knows. But I wrote this play. About the one I loved, maybe the only one I ever loved. And I have no idea if that feeling came through, if you felt even a tiny bit of emotion I felt. Sometimes I fear she never felt it either.
This quote from the last chapter of Neptune announces the end of the author’s journey and the achieved goal of writing a play. Since Neptune is essentially a play about writing a play, descriptive and very self-reflective in its nature, I see fitting to continue my thesis by examining the writing process itself, including theoretical and conceptual influences that shaped it, as well as artistic inspirations and pop-cultural references that were generously used in the process. I called this chapter ‘Memory’ because it mainly reflects on the collage of memories and influences – theoretical and dramaturgical – that I used while writing, as well as remembering the actual story of my love that I tried to painstakingly reconstruct in Neptune.
By looking at theoretical concepts of queer theatre and dramaturgy, political representation, and notions of authorship and autobiography, as well as examining influences of such plays as Sparks, What Girls Are Made Of, Fleabag, Cabaret, and Darkroom, I will discuss the following questions:
How to convey political message through autobiographical narrative?
What is the role of the author in an autobiographical piece?
What does ‘being political’ mean specifically for a queer artist\creator?
I might not come up with definitive answers, but as the whole process of writing this play and this thesis project taught me – sometimes searching for answers is answer enough.
2.1 Theoretical concepts: autobiographical, queer, political.