Trimming the Madhouse

Speaking of slimming things down, my friend Gemma from New Zealand emailed me a couple weeks ago. She'd seen the announcement of my newest play It's a Madhouse! and wanted to read it but the script but wasn't yet available from Pioneer. Could I email her an electronic copy of my script?

Silly question. Of course I could!

Gemma ended up loving it, but she was concerned about the length. Standouts, her Wellington-based theater school, has very short rehearsal periods (often as short as a week!) and while that's worked for previous plays of mine that she's done, she felt that a 90-minute play would be a stretch. 

No problem, I told her. I structured the play in a very modular way, stringing together an array of independent, small-cast vignettes. I did this to make rehearsals easier, but it also makes it easy to remove one or more vignettes. She thought she'd cut out the vignetter involving some desperate-thespians and a hokey family searching for their lost pet.

Ironically, eight days later, my editor at Pioneer, Brian, had an interesting offer. As it turns out, It's a Madhouse! has been getting a ton of interest from their customers and he was wondering whether I'd be willing to adapt it for a smaller cast. He felt a lot of schools would love the physical action and humor but be unable to field so many actors (the play calls for 40--count 'em, 40!) or stage so long a show.

Silly question. Of course I would!

So I dove in. And that's when I realized that cutting the thespians wouldn't work because one of them, a verbose, self-absorbed actor playing Romeo, played a vital role in the climax. But there was another vignette I could cut without any loss of flow: one involving a demanding tour group and some hyperactive cheerleaders. 

And then I found two more characters that could be cut, and a major scene, and lots and lots of lines from, well, pretty much everyone.

By the time I was done, I'd gotten the play down to 28 actors (25 with doubling) and 60 minutes. And that's the version I just emailed to Brian for publication.

I don't know when it'll be released, but it shouldn't take long. After all, the play has already gone through editing once. But you can bet you'll hear about it here first.

Stay tuned...

A slimmer Bookshop

I got an interesting email the other day. Kevin, an assistant theater professor at a small midwestern college, wants his students to perform The Enchanted Bookshop for area youngsters.

Wait. That's not the interesting part. No, the interesting part is that he was only able to recruit 12 actors and he wonders whether this play (with its cast of 23) can still be done.

Schools and community theaters usually have the opposite problem. They get so many actors trying out that they have to add characters.

But cutting the cast size? Well, I had to think about that one a bit.

Of course, there is some obvious doubling. In fact, the script itself suggests that the actor playing Fagin can double as Dr. Dolittle and either Frankenstein or Hopalong Cassidy while the actress playing Lady in Red can double as Queen of Hearts and Wicked Witch. Take on all that doubling and it brings the cast down to 19.

You can also have the actress playing Dorothy operate Toto as a hand puppet. The dog only appears in the first and last scenes anyway. Now you' down to 18 actors.

Next, have Mom and Timmy double as Eddie and Fingers (this could be kind of funny, actually). It's not suggested by the script, but it doesn't pose any particular challenge other than a quick-ish change in the last scene. Also, have one of the six main literary characters (Sherlock Holmes would work best) exit the last scene early and have that actor double with Officer Ketchum. Now you're at 15 parts.

This is where it gets tricky, as you'll have to adjust the script. So forget what I said earlier about doubling Wicked Witch, Frankenstein and Hopalong. Instead, cut them out entirely. They're only in the last scene anyway.

Then delete the scene between Long John Silver, Queen of Hearts and Book Fairy in Act Two, Scene Three. This allows you to eliminate the Queen of Hearts. Of course, you'd have to rewrite the last scene to have one of the other characters tie up or otherwise immobilize the smugglers (Tom Sawyer?).

What this buts you is that you can now have the actor playing Fagin and Dolittle double as Long John and the actor playing Lady in Red double as Book Fairy. Bingo, 12 parts.

For a while, Kevin was considering changing Tom Sawyer to a female character for the statement it would make. But who could it be? Well, it's not a one-to-one match, but independently (believe it or not) we both came up with Jo March from Little Women, as she shows many of the same spunky, rebellious and rule-breaking traits as Tom.

As I've said before, I'm open to letting directors modify this popular play, especially since it has proven so successful in encouraging young audiences to put down their Gameboys and cell phones and pick up a book.

If you need any quggestions as to making this play fit the special needs of your production, be sure to contact me. I'd love to hear from you!

The Last Radio Show is now available!

After five and a half years of rejections and almost a full year in the editing queue at Heuer Publishing, my 1940's radio comedy The Last Radio Show is finally available!

It's my twenty-first play to be published, but only my first with this particular publisher, so I'm excited to see what they do with it.

The play runs 90 minutes, requires only a single set and features a cast of 10 (5M/5F). Here's the blurb:

It's 1948, and KUKU Radio is in trouble. Their broadcast tower keeps falling over. The electric company is about to shut off their power. And they're losing actors, one by one. Can this ragtag crew keep the show going? Or will they be shut down for good?

This hilarious farce brings back the Golden Age of Radio, with crazy commercials such as Kindling Krunch ("the cereal that's like having your own national park--in a bowl!), and even crazier shows, like The Thing with Two Spleens and Tex King, The Humming Cowboy. 

Of course, the best part of those old-time radio shows was the sound effects, and this play features over two dozen of them, most of which can be produced from simple household items.

Don't touch that dial. This is radio like you've never seen it before!

I truly believe this is one of my funniest plays, if not the funniest. The radio sketches feature a seemingly endless array of rapid-fire gags, the behind-the-scene action is crazily frenetic, and each of the characters are over-the-top in their own quirky way.

So why didn't the play get picked up right away? Well, it can be a bit of a challenge to produce. Just as in those long-past days of radio, the actors have to hold the scripts they read from, and that requires some juggling when those same actors have to make the various sound effects in the sketch.

The nice thing is that the use of those scripts means that the actors have much less to memorize than they would in a regular 90-minute play. 

Also, the climax of the play features a single character--the geeky office boy Jimmy--performing the final sketch, including nine different voices and over a dozen sound effects, all by himself.

But it's well worth it. At the end of his bravura performance, Jimmy collapses to the floor in triumph, and this is the one moment in all of my plays that always earn a show-stopping ovation from the audience. 

Up for the challenge? If so, be sure and visit the play's web page, where you can read a sample of the script and view photos from the original production.