According to The Urban Dictionary, the phrase OFF THE HOOK “is actually a modernization of a series of slang words. Closely related to off the chain, there refering to something being so “fresh” and “new” that its literally right off the store shelf. (started in reference to clothes, the hangar being the hook).”
But I like the “Old School” definition of “get away with something,” or “not be responsible for something”, i.e., the fish that got away was ‘off the hook.’
I felt a little of both last night as I started to re-read Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally, someone I often miss from my NYC yoga days.
- As the narrative unfolds, Mr. McNally’s characters not only talk directly to the audience, but they also comment on what the other characters are saying to the audience. They feed us facts they couldn’t possibly know at the time they reveal them. They see into the future to illuminate the past and to give the frequently rocky present added poignancy.
I stopped reading after a laugh-out-loud moment (and mostly because I had to get up pre-dawn to teach), but what really hit home for me is that Terrence clearly wasn’t trying to stage the play while writing it. I felt such enormous relief in that one thing truly holding me back in the new play is feeling that I have to stage and direct the entire thing from the page.
Terrence in his introduction says, “Loy Arcenas took an impossible design situation and made it seem as easy as it was inevitable.”
And I remember reading a long Times article before I saw the play in 1995 about the set –– all this was about 6 or 7 years before I started working with Terrence –– and it was brilliantly staged (and directed). [As a side note, I ended up casting John Glover who won a Tony for the play in my first feature film, and two of the other cast members became friends and colleagues.)
But there’s nothing in the text which reveals how the whole thing is going to possibly take place onstage. That’s left for other (talented) people to solve.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is the whole experience of re-reading the play let me take myself off the hook a bit in that I don’t have to figure out every piece of stagecraft from the page –– nor should I; after all, the director and set-designer should contribute a little something.
And … speaking of male nudity (which Love! Valour! famously reveled in) –– today I finally made it to the San Francisco anatomical drawing group that I’ve been trying to get to since right before my surgery…although I felt I had to leave early to get back home and continue writing (which is a good thing.)
