Working...

Today, I had a really great pitch session with Brandon Whitlock - lots of fantastic ideas for the development of a new project I'm working on; a farce called The Mayfair Affair. I've never written a farce, and it's been a long time since I've done comedy. But this idea jumped into my head almost fully formed a few months back, and I can see working on this as a great opportunity to write something that might have legs (would be something that a lot of other places might be interested in producing).

I have one other play currently on the front burner, Several, which I am working on a second draft of within this next week so that I can start rehearsing it with the floodlight theatre company, then I can look at starting a draft of Mayfair.

The Hermit's Sacrifice

A man a hermit lived alone in the middle of a wood on the side of a remote mountain far from any other person. He lived for many years in solitude never speaking a word, his lips parting only as necessary for eating and drinking.

On a cold snowy morning, he rose from the pile of thrush he considered his bed and began the process of his day, gathering wood for fire, checking his traps, and climbing to his favorite spot on a ledge high above on the mountain.

This day this cold and snowy morning as he sat on his ledge with his gathered food and fuel, he looked out at the grandeur of the land before him. And he was stirred. In this chest sat, recognized for the first time, a regret. In seeing the purity of the snowy landscape before him, aware that within himself lay a multitude of the sin the transgression against what he was unsure, the land the sky himself nature and the world and that which lay behind it all. That unnamed which rejects name

And today, he opened his mouth. In awe, in regret, in fear in hope. Then he took his two possessions – his fuel and his food. He arranged the wood into a pile and ignited the fire – into which he placed all of his fuel. Then he stripped bare the food and set it on the fire – stoking it until the food was only ash. He waited there on the ledge, considering the dark grey smoke as it rose to meet the clouds above, parting them until the snow lifted and the sun melted the ice on the ground smiling down its approval on the hermit. Who, after being so confused by his own guilt, seemed equally bemused to have such relief at the process of sacrifice – even when he did not fully understand to whom or why the sacrifice was being made.

Thankful, he returned to his hermitage. And began to collect the necessary items for his next sacrifice – thankful to find them.

This was written fall of 09, during the rehearsal process of a short devised piece on sacrifice. While this story didn't make it into the final version of the piece, it was instrumental in its development.