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.