Free On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway by Randy Anderson Page B

too much money keeping up their expensive lifestyle and needed a cheaper alternative to New York. Still recovering from World War I, Paris—an inexpensive cosmopolitan city filled with expatriate artists living cheaply and living large—was far more accommodating to the Fitzgeralds’ level of consumption.
    Everyone who was anyone lived in Paris in those days. The Fitzgeralds passed their time with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Sara and Gerald Murphy. We could see why Lolly and The Girls were so excited about this fascinating collection of artistic giants.
    Their play would capture the energy of the period while looking at the under-examined talent of Zelda. As they saw it, history had relegated her artistic contributions to a mere footnote. I wasn’t convinced we should construct an entire play focusing on a woman few people had heard of, but the idea of making a play about the 1920s felt like a good direction.
    The year 1999 may as well have been 1928. The ’90s were already being heralded as the second Gilded Age. The freewheeling, easy-living attitude was a carbon copy of the late ’20s, when money and jobs were also plentiful. It felt timely. By exploring the past, we could illuminate the present. We could even be prophetic! After all, the Roaring ’20s were followed by the Great Depression. And while nobody was talking about a Depression in 1999, I was convinced the thought was lurking somewhere deep inside our society’s collective subconscious.
    “ So, was Zelda crazy?” asked Bobby, looking up from a book he was scanning.
    “ What do you mean by crazy?” Andrea asked.
    “ Well, it says here, she died in a fire at an insane asylum where she was a patient,” he said, pointing at the page he was reading. This immediately peaked my interest.
    “ You mean to say, not only was she crazy, like wild-party crazy, but she was also insane-crazy?” I asked with excitement.
    “ No, she wasn’t insane,” said Deborah sternly. “She had some mental problems, but she wasn’t insane.”
    I was struck by how defensive The Girls got about Zelda. Even Lolly objected to my accusation. I wasn’t sure if it was because I called Zelda insane or the obvious delight I took in the idea, but either way, they were not going to tolerate my insulting her.
    “ Come on,” I said. “Nothing makes for better drama than someone going insane.”
    “ Well, we don’t want to make a play about Zelda going insane,” said Andrea, attempting to put the conversation back on track.
    “ But why not?” I continued. “I mean, if she went insane, we should capitalize on that! Even if she didn’t go insane, I think we should make her go insane.”
    Bobby nodded in agreement. Of all people, he understood the whole “insane person as entertainment” thing. He made a point of being insane for that very reason.
    “ We can’t just make stuff up,” Deborah said. “We have to be true to the research.”
    That moved us past deliberating on the degree of Zelda’s mental illness into a very profound discussion on the type of play this would be. The Girls had clearly done much research. They wanted to explore every nook and cranny of this woman’s life. I had no problem with that, but I insisted we avoid creating a “bio-play.” Historical facts could serve as a launching pad, but I wanted allegory, symbolism, and universal themes. I wanted to present these people’s lives in a fantastical world filled with high drama and stunning visuals.
    In order to achieve this, we were going to have to make things up. Historical reality would read too flat. The Girls didn’t agree. They believed Zelda’s reality was fantastical enough. And I suppose, for them, it was.
    I couldn’t know it then, but Zelda’s reality would eventually make a mess out of mine. That argument clearly wasn’t going to get solved over peach pastries, so I suggested we table that conversation and look at possible titles for the piece.
    “ I