Hometown hit

I was both honored and thrilled to learn that my newest 10-minute play The Real Meaning of Things was selected for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center's Rough Writers New Play Festival. As such, it'll get two staged readings along with the other seven winners.

This hit is especially meaningful to me, not just because the play is one of my few dramas, not just because the play is my first one based on real people. No, the hit is especially meaningful because the FAC has played such a big part in the life of myself and my family.

Over the years, I've been to dozens of performances there. It was the place where I first introduced my daughters to the joys of theatre (Annie and Brigadoon were big hits with them). Even more importantly, it was where my younger daughter often appeared on stage, twice as part of the theatre company's excellent Youth Rep summer camp, and twice in their mainstage productions (The Music Man and Gypsy). So being selected for this reading feels a lot like coming home.

In tandem with the FAC's upcoming Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit, the theme of this year's Rough Writers festival was the life and works of that quintessentially American artist. For my play, I decided to focus on O'Keeffe's time in New Mexico. As I explain in my blurb for the festival:

Through my research, I was fascinated to discover that Georgia O'Keeffe had learned to drive at the age of 41, mostly she could explore the New Mexico desert by herself. According to reports she was a fearless driver, though not a great one. That instantly sparked an image in my mind and I wondered what would have happened if her car had broken down.

If you'd like to attend the reading, it'll be held at 7:30 PM on the first two Saturdays of June in the FAC's upstairs music room. I'm excited to be sharing the stage with three other local writers--Sue Bachmann, Jess Weaver and Grant Swenson--all of whom happen to be members of my playwriting group.

Seriously, if you're a playwright and you haven't joined a playwriting group yet, you need to.