To begin with I want to talk a little bit about my concept for the show. In reading The Picture of Dorian Gray I found there were many similarities between the character of Dorian Gray and many people I know personally, including myself. Dorian Gray lives in constant awareness of himself. He is incredibly vain and lives a life based on pleasure instead of morality. Now, I have never been one to judge. I don't pretend I live a "moral" life (whatever that means), and in my mind Dorian Gray is an honest being. He is simply corrupted by the ideals that surround him. He was not born a Narcissus but is instead made into one.
I've found that in our current day, Narcissism has been encouraged. How many of us were told at a very young age "you are special"? Or, "you can be whatever you want to be"? Indeed, I think were are all special and I believe we can be whatever we want to be. And while I took this advice more as an awakening to Individualism, I believe many others began to place themselves as more important than those around us. With the age of social networking websites upon us (I prefer to call them self advertising websites) i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger (the one I'm fully partaking in now), it is socially acceptable to indulge in yourself; to indulge in how many friends you have; or stalk a person from the privacy of your couch without them ever knowing. We post videos on Youtube and watch how many people are watching us. This is The Age of Narcissism.
The thought that's been burning in my head lately comes from the idea of a painting. Dorian's painting ages while he does not. Dorian's sins are accounted for in his painting but not on his physical face. I then began to think, what if that is not true? What if it is only in Dorian's head that he is not aging while his painting is. Then that led me to the ever popular Facebook. Facebook is an online scrapbook of memories. An account of break-ups, photos, statuses, invites to parties, pictures of parties (some you'd like to forget). Our Facebook's are records of our every move. When something has been posted the whole world can see it. That is of course, unless we delete the post. Then it's gone forever, right?
Well that's what I thought. I deleted my Facebook yesterday and then got a notification telling me that if I ever want to come back everything will be the way I left it. I simply have to log back in with my email and password and it will be re-activated. All my photos, my statuses, and my friends will still be there. Awesome, I have an online self portrait, an account of the past four years forever online waiting for me the next time I decide to look at it. So to my fellow Dorian Gray's, it looks like we might live forever.
This connection stood out to me the first time I read Oscar Wilde's amazing book. I new that I wanted to adapt it one day but I didn't expect it would happen so soon. At first I thought about keeping it completely period but then I realized this story may be more relevant today then it ever was. The first song I wrote was "The Age of Narcissism". It's rock, hard rock. I knew then I wanted the characters to be living in 1896, but to be referencing things we use today. Telephones, movies, our distorted media, facebook, etc. I also wanted to explore the strong homosexual undercurrents within the book. You can expect all of this in my adaptation, that I promise.
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