"Miss" Act One

So, here on April 23, I've reached the intermission of MISS, a new full length play.  During the 30 Day Challenge, I didn't actually write for about two weeks as I wrapped up the school year - which included finals and the Belhaven Theatre Festival (during which I had readings of two different works).

Miss has been an interesting process, taking much more time than I'd wanted to.  I had hopes of repeating my feat of writing a first draft very quickly - Anathema's first draft was done in just over a week (with many rewrites to come afterward).  This one has been much slower in developing, and still, though I've reached half-way, there's a lot I don't know about what's going to happen later in the play.

But so far, I think there's something interesting in this play that I can continue to mine.  Sometimes, I can get 15-20 pages out and then I'm no longer interested in these people.

Now that work has lightened up, the hope is that I can get back to writing every day, and perhaps reach the end of this story soon (at least before the end of April...).  With so many other projects on the burners for this summer, it would be ideal to at least get this off my plate ASAP.  Then it can sit in a drawer for a while.

Updates and Upcoming...

Who'd of thought that my first post for 2013 would be Easter Sunday...

Since my last posts were regarding Granite, an update would be worthwhile: the internet staged reading  and subsequent publication are still forthcoming, after a couple of setbacks in that process on the administrative end.  I do hope that good news is on the way on that front.

I have a couple of projects that I've agreed to and are in various stages of progress, and I will be updating information about those as time wears on - some of them are yet to be announced officially, some are more exploratory, so we'll leave those for now.

Here's what's coming up in the next few weeks.

Two staged readings during the Belhaven Theatre Festival next week:
Granite will be read on Tuesday, April 9 at 7:15pm along with a script by John Maxwell called Mary and Martha.  John and I will be a part of discussion afterward about writing plays that deal with faith.
The Long Surrender will be read on Thursday, April 11 at 7:30pm.

In the meantime, the next major project that I'm taking on is the 30-Day Writing Challenge for the month of April.  This is an inaugural event in honor of the late Jack Gilbert, who previously ran ScriptFrenzy, a one month screenwriting challenge.  This is a group of Frenzy-ists doing this in honor of Jack.

So, the plan is to write every day during April.  Which means this starts tomorrow.

I have decided that I didn't want to do too much pre-work, so I haven't been mapping the plot out, or anything like that.  But I do think that I'm going to write based on an idea I had last summer during the Glen East playwriting workshop with Arlene Hutton.  I have long since lost all of my notes on that idea, so I'm largely starting over, but the base of the story is a rocky return home for a small-town Mississippi girl who'd ran away to Chicago.

So, you're likely to see some updates on here - maybe not daily, but I'm going to try to journal through the process, post when I reach markers (act break, finished draft).  Who knows - if I finish a draft of one play, I may start another one...

Granite is selected!

My submission from the 31 plays in 31 days contest, Granite, has been selected for publication in an anthology and an Internet staged reading! Very pleased and honored that my play was chosen, and looking forward to hearing more details about the reading.

www.31plays31days.com

scenes for Christmas

So, I'm working on a couple of short scenes for a Christmas program for a church here in Jackson.  (More details on the performance as it comes together and gets closer...)

I yet again find myself in the situation of writing scenes that have already been cast.  Not sure why it takes the pressure of impending rehearsals to force me to write, but it works every time.

I've got one sentimental scene, one a bit heart-wrenching, and one shaping up to be very comedic.  It will be in a evening full of music and poetry, so should be a fun time for the holidays.  Hopefully, we'll be able to do it more than once...

A Birthday Present

Today is my birthday.  And for my birthday, I get to watch my play The Mayfair Affair performed at The Wesleyan School's Wolf Players!  I did get to see the show last night, so I know that it will be a great performance, and I will laugh at all of my own stupid jokes that make me laugh no matter how often I hear them.  And I'm spending part of the day on campus here, so I get to be a sort-of celebrity for a day (which always feels good).  Then I'll get to go to dinner with my family, and some friends.  There are worse ways to spend a birthday.

Worse ways to spend a birthday that I can think of right now:

• Russian gulag
• trapped in a mine
• space jump
• public flogging (either real or metaphoric)
• Chuck E Cheese

I actually went to a Chuck E Cheese birthday for a non-child and it was a lot of fun - on a Tuesday; today is a Friday, which would be insane.

I'll stick with watching my play be performed.

Granite - a rewrite

Granite

Here is the rewritten version of Granite - play #31 of my submissions to the 31 Plays in 31 Days project.  I just submitted this rewrite for consideration for the project's Internet Staged Reading and for publication in the ensuing Anthology.

Since this was yet another play where I started writing not having much idea of exactly where I was going, the chance to consider rewrites and really dig back through the script was really helpful.  Since the main image of the script turned out to be the block of granite, I made some adjustments to the placement of Litha's speeches, so that she starts the play now.  I was able to expand and complete more of the stories of the other three, and put some more touches into the scene descriptions to clarify what it is we see on stage.  I definitely like this more after the rewrite.  Might almost be worth staging...

Rewrites. And Writes.

So, I'm working on a rewrite of one of the 31 Plays- due by Oct 15, but I can only turn in one, so I need to pick which one to send. This resubmission will be considered for an "Internet staged reading" and possible publication.

I'm also trying to pull together a couple scenes for a short play for December. I have a start, and think it could come together soon enough to have a workable draft in time to move forward with that project.

1 tweet play

Here's a link to this week's One tweet Plays via the New York neoFuturists...

(I am Atticscripts, if you didn't know...)

http://nyneofuturists.tumblr.com/post/31404427532/twitter-plays-part-clxxx

Talking about a play

On Thursday, I was blessed to go and visit with the cast of the new production of The Mayfair Affair - a dedicated group of high school students at The Wesleyan School in Norcross, GA, under the direction of my good friend Steve Broyles.  I got to see the set under construction and the first scene being rehearsed.

But most of our time was spent having the actors ask me questions about the play, what something meant, what I had in mind regarding a particular action or character.  What I found was that some of those questions I had answers to, others less so.  Good questions, all, but some of them I really had to dig into the recesses of "what DID i mean by that..." to come up with an answer.  I think eventually I did come up with answers, and reasonable ones at that.  I was happy that a number of questions I was able to divert to the director - it's about what he thinks will play best opposite what other people are also playing.

But I'm continuing to understand the idea of farce as a comedy machine - the difficulty in playing it is turning off the improv impulse after rehearsals are over in favor of supporting the big laughs as you've rehearsed them.  You can get an extra laugh at just about any time in a production - but it will hurt the overall work unless the laughs help an audience carry through.  They have to get the information they need (exposition and development) and the rhythm of the play must be maintained in order to connect the info to the big surprises and revelations later in the script.  And in the climactic moment of the play, realistic character response and processing of new information (revelation) only slows down the rhythm of the machine.

I can't wait to go back and see the production in October.

The drawing board

I've been churning over ideas for a new play for a couple of months as I often do - usually hoping that they go away, and if they don't then I move forward.  

Well, they didn't go away...

I'm not going to get into specifics until I have a little more, but it is a play that will be highly structured - so I'm working out the plot and characters, and then I'll start the sharpening process.  I feel as though I may have settled on a title, which always sets me in the right direction.

But coming off of this past month, I'm feeling very positive that I can get some solid work done on this and fairly quickly.  I'll share more if it develops...

Reflecting on 31 plays

113 people finished by the deadline.  31 plays, one for each day of the month of August.  Total: 4,599 plays were submitted.  I finished all 31.  232 pages.

I'm just glad that I made it through.

I learned a couple of things during this month.

1) Yes, I do have time to write.  I am as good as anyone about lying to myself (and believing it) that I don't have time to write.  Yes, there were some days where I was deliriously typing away at my computer at all hours of the night - but even on those days it was because I had chosen to not write at times that I could have.  And this is without neglecting other important parts of my life (family, job).  The time is there, I just have to decide to use it.

2) Somewhere in the middle of this month, because of the pressure of needing to crank scripts out, I started to get past the idea of 'being inspired'.  Some of the scripts suffer from that.  More of them do not.  (Most suffer from lack of rewrites...)  I came to the point of realizing that I could, in fact, find an inspiration in just about anything - a piece of dialogue, a picture, a song, an old lady on the street, a piece of historical fact.  And maybe my second most-used excuse of "waiting for inspiration" is just as invalid as the time excuse.

3) And I mentioned this before in posts about the individual scripts.  When I moved 8 years ago, I set up a writing space in a small shed behind our house.  I put in an AC unit, did some insulation, put in a table a wrote.  For a while.  Then I didn't write out there anymore, I switched to coffee shops.  But I'm now accepting that I CAN write at home, even during the daytime, with my two year old eating his lunch right next to me.  I've done it.  It can happen.  But I have to get more comfortable dining room chairs.

I woke up this morning, and I had the urge to write.  Not because I had to for a deadline.  Or because I had a fear that I would lose an inspiration.  I just wanted to do it.  Because I like to do it.

Someone asked me if I was going to keep going and do a 365 project a-la Suzan Lori Parks.  I think I'd like to, at some point, but I'd want it to be more purposeful - either do a calendar year (like 2013) or from birthday to birthday.  But all other writing kind of stops while this is going on, so I think I'll hold off on it for a bit.  I have a couple ideas I want to start working.

About... Granite - Play 31

Granite - script

Play #31.  Completed.  I will do a recap of the whole month in a later post, but for now...

I do actually kind of like where this one is going.  I was a little sad, though - I came up with a title off of the song I was listening to for this one ("Hold On" by Tom Waits), and I even started out by doing the title page with it; it was Bullet Needs a Gun - which I had no intention of that being literal.  But as I wrote and tried to tie these four people together, it became clear that Granite was a much more appropriate title.  Ah, well.

I had two images I found online - one of a European cobblestone street on a hill with storefronts and a large steeple-ish object at the top of the hill, the other an enormous carved stone block with a very tiny person looking at it; the roots of two of the stories.

About... Baling - play 30

Baling - script

This is the 30th play I've written this month.  There is one more and then it is over.
This is the hard part: being satisfied with having written this much, but not being satisfied with the writing.

This play felt awful to write.  It is not what I had in mind when I started - and I may need to take a good long look (psychologically) as to why I keep writing mobsters and Irish people.  At least it wasn't yet another love triangle.

I think this one came out Irish because I spent some of the day looking up information on a theatre festival in Ireland, then ended up looking at maps and images of the area.  (Visiting Ireland is on the bucket list)

And I won't lie.  I came up with a title because none of the other plays from this month started with B.

About... Leaving Circus Town - Day 29

Leaving Circus Town - script

29.

I did some web searching for images (I highly recommend Flickr's Most Interesting pics of the Last 7 Days).  I came upon a picture of a train, called The Circus Leaves Town - I twisted that around for a title.  I found a picture of two girls in a window, it was called Ines & Lisa.  I found a cool image of a wall of windows with colored panels, making the lobby area of this space brightly colored, and an image of paper lanterns on the ground.
I don't know exactly what Ines and Lisa are talking about (this happens to me a lot).  But somehow, Ines invents more drama than Lisa can tolerate any more, and if the circus is in town here, she'd rather be someplace else.

About... One to Ten - Play 28

One to Ten - script

28.  There's only 3 more scripts left to write.  I think I might actually miss doing this when it's over...

About... Loss of Faith - Play 27

Loss of Faith - script

Play 27, a day late.  Hoping to catch up tomorrow - but a lot of question marks about the next couple of days with Hurricane Isaac headed this way.  If we lose power, I may be switching to doing some writing long-hand.

Sitting in a class discussion, this idea came to me.  It turned out quite different from what I had in mind.

About... Wild Card - Day 26

Wild Card - script

Play 26.  Quick write.  listening to Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed".

Just two dudes talking.  Really should have developed this more, but too tired.  Just having finished something is the accomplishment for the day.

There are now only 5 more plays to write.

About... Wake - Play 25

Wake - script

Play 25.  Sitting in the lounge chair, watching preseason football and listening to Radiohead's "15 Steps".  Gonna keep writing tonight -hopefully will catch up to pace.

About... Meant A Lot To Me - Play 24

Meant A Lot To Me - script

Play 24.

I had a really great idea.  I thought of it yesterday, I spent some time working it out in my head in the evening, went to bed thinking about it.  I even work up this morning, and I promise you that in my dreams I worked it out.  Then, as has been made necessary by my job, I read 5 short scripts.  and I took my son out this saturday morning for about 2 hours.  When i got back - you guessed it - gone.  So, the irony of the title is that this really didn't mean that much to me.  It took me a while to write this merely because I was fighting it the whole way - including stopping at least 3 times with the intention of dumping it entirely.  Despite all of that, this is not the worst script I've written this month.

I'll be trying to catch up to the schedule by writing again tonight.  Trying to clear my mind before then.

About... Forgiveness - Play 23

Forgiveness - script

Play 23.  Another mob thug.  This time, a different mark.  I like the scenario on this one; could be interesting with some more development - I don't like the title.
I started to write this one last night, but finished it today, writing during a little bit of down time in my office.

It is proving as hard as I thought it would be to keep up the pace now that school has started back up, but it is possible, so I'll keep moving forward.  Only one more week to go - 8 scripts by next friday.