Mayfair - more pages...

So, with deadlines past and urgency at an all time high, I am cranking out new pages for The Mayfair Affair.  I went off to a local coffee shop to write this afternoon - one that, thankfully, password protects its wireless (they change it daily, I think, but will tell you the new password if  you ask the barista).  So I didn't ask for the pw, which means I actually hunkered down and WROTE.  I hit a nice stop point around page 42, which might be the end of act one.

Some of what I have right now is really funny - which is the point, I suppose - but I already know it will need to get tighter as I move forward with the next pass.  Hopefully, I will have a whole draft before the end of this weekend.

Our expectation is to cast this play in the beginning of December (which is next week), and have a reading with the cast before we all go away for Christmas - which will mean finding a time during final exams.  No pressure.  That will then give me the material with which to rewrite over the holidays and have a new draft by the time rehearsals begin in January.

This is a crazy schedule, I am well aware...

Another one tweet play

OK, so this time, they wanted the one tweet play to take place in a slaughterhouse.  I'm really liking the challenge of doing the one tweet plays - it's a fun exercise, especially if I only give myself a few minutes to do it.  I'll probably keep doing them, so I may stop posting them for a while.

#tp141 A finishes slicing a side of beef. B enters. A climbs onto the table. A: make it quick? B: why? C: one day you'll ask the same favor.

One Tweet Play

So, I participated in a One Tweet Play hashtag set up by the NY Neo-Futurists - a theatre group that puts on a new sketch show every week.  While I think they put everyone's play up on their website, I still felt good that mine was up there.  It had to have the hashtag, and be set in the woods.  Mine's toward the bottom of the page.

I'm hoping to do more of them - it was kind of fun to crank one out in about 10 minutes, most of the work was trying to fit an actual story or moment into 140 characters.

By the way, my play was:

#tp140 1: u brought me here 2: I'm lost 1: which means u lost me 2: can we survive these woods 1: so far from home 2: my home is with u

New Short Play - RETURN

For reasons not particularly clear to me, my brain has decided to put itself to work on a new short play, currently drafted under the title Return.  It's about a 20 page script, developed from material I had written out this summer - about 5 pages of stream of consciousness writing.  Almost everything in the 5 pages got used somewhere in the script, changed the order of some things and added some others.  A vaguely realistic piece, ripe with subtext, and a couple of strongly symbolic elements (I can't seem to shake the influence Harold Pinter's work).

I cranked out a 15 page version in time for the deadline of a one-act contest last week and got it submitted - but I've now smoothed out some rough spots and filled some cracks.  I can't tell yet if there is another draft of this one before I'm done, but there are a couple of elements of the play that I can't tell whether or not they click.  Particularly the presence and discussion of a Bible, which somehow worked its way into this play.

I'm fairly happy with this draft of the script and story itself, but yet again, I find myself with another short one-act that may or may not actually be produceable.  But after a post-production funk (finished directing Galileo last week), it feels good to actually get back into the writer's chair and complete something - which is the only reason I let myself indulge in this script, when I really need to get to work on the latest draft of the full-length play scheduled for production in February.

Onward.

Complicating the Process

After an inspiring weekend spent with the great folks at the fall SETC Board Meetings (who'd have thought board meetings could be inspiring...), I have returned to Jackson with several things on my proverbial plate which will likely be cross-complicating my creative projects for the next few weeks. While I hope to continue progress on the latest draft of Mayfair so that we van begin the casting/reading process, tonight I begin rehearsals on the Galileo production I am directing with the Highland Players Guild (Belhaven theatre alumni). This will make for an interesting couple of weeks...

Workshop Production scheduled

The premiere workshop of my new farce, The Mayfair Affair, will be produced at Belhaven University in February of 2012.  My good friend, John Maxwell, has agreed to serve as the director for the show, even though up until now, the play has only been a series of outlines, and one really terrible draft that has to be almost completely set aside for the next pass.

Yesterday, I started the new draft, a 12 page rewrite of the opening scene - a much better version (if I do say so myself).  The hope is that I can get enough pages of this draft done in the next few weeks that we can cast the show and have an initial read with them in place, so I will have time to do at least one more draft, if not two or three, before rehearsals begin at the start of the spring semester.

I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to be in rehearsal as the playwright again, where I can put all my focus on the script, and leave the directing to someone else.  I found that process to work well for me during the staged reading of Anathema at Square Top Repertory in Colorado - made a lot of progress in just one week.

Pope's address to artists

Artists seekers of the truth and witnesses to love - Inaugurated by Benedict XVI an exhibition for his 60th anniversary of priesthood

The Singer/Songwriter

Another free-write. I like to go back and find these things in old notebooks. I was actually listening to someone sing a tribute song like this - but this is not their story (or my opinion of them...).

She sang a song for him, piano and voice, to remember him. He had always hated her songs, her voice. He didn't have the courage to tell her - he didn't trust that she liked him enough to survive telling the truth. But now she sings what she calls 'his song,' thinking it is a tribute to him, to their relationship. But really it is a tribute to her own perception of their relationship, which has little to nothing to do with him, or reality. If it had been up to him, the best tribute might have been moments of silence, pure silence, expectant silence which is more full than empty absence of sound. That is how he would have remembered them, who they were together.

But she. She remembers them by covering over that silence with her words, her voice, her playing the piano, her thoughts, her attempts at poetry. And she remembers him with her own creativity, which has little to nothing to do with him, with reality. It is only her, covering over their perfect silence with herself, afraid that in the silence he will disappear. And that she will as well.

She sounds the siren...

This is a short free-write I did a few months back in my notebook, writing to the song "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" by U2. Not sure what it is, really, except that I've come back to it time and time again as I flip through the notebook. Something about the character, I like. If you want, listen to the song while you read...

She sounds the siren. The cry for help. Supersonic, and only the dogs come running. She's been beaten before and expects each embrace to end that way. It's all temporary, she's learned, but it doesn't mean she lives that way. Each meeting is a desperate goodbye, each loss the dawn of a new morning. When he passed, she half expected him to walk in the door the next morning. She opens the door every day expecting the same.

She's a walking invitation to a party in an empty room. Her hair flows down in front of her shoulders. She's long since given up pretending to be attractive, which has only made her more alluring. Do the men that approach her want to be her savior or her damnation? She gives none of them the power to be her either. What can make a girl lose this much of her soul? Where has she given it away - where is it hidden now?

She's the girl who when she wants something, puts her hand in her pocket and, no matter what when or how much, the money is there - in crumpled bills and change - and she's learned to keep her wants to that scale. To want more is only disappointment. To want more is a luxury she can't afford. It costs more than her pocket can provide.