This project was originally commissioned by Nashville Public Theatre as part of its agenda to develop new works by local artists. 

Some of the questions explored were:

“Does gender affect the production and appreciation of art?” 

“Is there a difference in the way women write about women?”

“Can we show older women as something beyond stereotypical, non-sexual beings?”

     Inspired by the poem *TRANSCENDENTAL ETUDE by Adrienne Rich (see excerpt below) the writers decided to draw on some of their own life experiences as a basis for the story. The process itself became transforming because they found areas that still felt raw and unresolved. Though it is a fictional work, ALTERNATE ROUTES grew out of this concept of making “a study of our lives.”

     First written as a stage play with the title TEA AND SALSA and then QUEEN ANNE’S LACE, it was later adapted into a screenplay with the name LIVING IN SIN. During the edit, the title was changed again into ALTERNATE ROUTES. It is anticipated that a multi-media stage presentation will also be produced in the future using some of the movie footage as background scenery.

 

  
  TRANSCENDENTAL ETUDE

This August evening I’ve been driving
over back roads fringed with Queen Anne’s lace
my car startling young deer in meadows – one
gave a hoarse intake of her breath and all
four fawns sprang after her
into the dark maples.
Three months from today they’ll be fair game
for the hit-and-run hunters, glorying
in a weekend’s destructive power,
triggers fingered by drunken gunman, sometimes
so inept as to leave the shattered animal
stunned in her blood. But this evening deep in summer
the deer are still alive and free,
nibbling apples from early-laden boughs
so weighted, so englobed
with already yellowing fruit
they seem eternal, Hesperidean
in the clear-tuned, cricket-throbbing air.

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down in the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

…a whole new poetry beginning here.

 

- Adrienne Rich  (Excerpts from TRANSCENDENTAL ETUDE)