The Ten-Timers Club is born

Seven years ago, I instituted something called the Five-Timers Club. Inspired by the similarly named group on NBC's Saturday Night Live, it's limited to those schools and community theaters that have produced my plays at least five times.

To date, there are eight members, from Johnston Heights Church in Surrey, British Columbia, to Firehouse Community Theatre in LaBelle, Florida. To be honest, I thought that would be the extent of the clubs. I mean, who would be crazy enough to produce my stuff a whopping ten times?

Standouts in Wellington, New Zealand, that's who! This private arts studio just booked my Old West comedy The Stinky Feet Gang for a production in July. That makes ten shows since 2019 when they performed their first play of mine, which also happened to be The Stinky Feet Gang. In between, they also happened to produce the world premiere of two of my plays, Doggone Detectives and The Real Reason Dinosaurs Went Extinct.

I've kept in casual contact with founder Gemma Shapleski over the years and I never cease to be amazed by all that she does. Not only is she a gifted theater director and voice teacher, but she's a pretty decent writer in her own right as well as a tireless advocate for the arts in her culturally vibrant city.

So thank you, Gemma! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your support!

Crazy in the Great White North

One of the things I like best about being a playwright for the amateur market--mostly schools and community theaters--is the amazing places where you get to be produced.

If I wrote for professional markets, I'd get produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, maybe a few of the regional theater hubs like Minneapolis and Seattle. And that would be it.

Well, I've been produced in all of those cities. But I've also been produced in quaint little hamlets with fantastic names.

Like Farmers Branch, TX.

Soap Lake, WA.

Knysna, South Africa.

Angels Camp, CA.

Punxsatawney, PA (of groundhog fame).

Locust Grove, OK.

Soddy-Daisy, TN.

Marceline, MO (boyhood home of my childhood hero Walt Disney).

Sadly, I've never had a production in my own fantastically named hometown of Beaver Dam, WI. But if I ever do, you can bet you'll hear about it here.

Anyway, now I can add one more amazing place to the list. The school district in faraway Inuvik, Northwest Territories will be performing You're Driving Me Crazy! at the end of this month.

I find this fascinating for several reasons.

It's my first production in the Northwest Territories, leaving the Yukon as the only Canadian province-slash-territory where I haven't been produced.

It's my first production in the Arctic Circle.

It's also my furthest north production. Four years ago, I had posted about a production of The Enchanted Bookshop Musical at an elementary school in Iqaluit, Nunavut. That was pretty far north, but not nearly as north as this one.

Inuvik is so far north, it enjoys 56 days of 24-hour sunlight in the summer and 30 days of 24-hour darkness in the winter. The coldest temperature ever recorded there is -70 degrees F, although the average daily high is -9 degrees F in January and a balmy 67 degrees F in July.

The town has a population of 3137, predominantly Inuit. And it offers plenty of watery recreation as it's located on the enormous delta where the Mackenzie River empties in the Arctic Sea.

Unfortunately, I can't find any information about my particular production. That often happens when a school district rather than a particular school licenses the play. But I feel honored that they've selected You're Driving Me Crazy! and I wish the cast and crew broken legs all around.

Oh, and just for fun, I did a quick check to see where my other compass extremes have been. Here are those:

Southernmost Production: Eight--count 'em, eight!--different shows at my friend Gemma's wonderful performing arts school Standouts in Wellington, New Zealand.

Easternmost Production: How I Met Your Mummy at Te Puke High School in Te Puke, New Zealand--just 314 miles north and east of Wellington.

Westernmost Production: You're Virtually Driving Me Crazy! by Hana Arts in Hana, Hawaii (on the island of Maui).

Can you tell I'm a geography nerd?

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...

The end of the world as they knew it

I've got exciting news! I've just released a new large-cast comedy that's perfect for elementary and middle-school students and your school or theatre group can be one of the first in the world to perform it!

The play is titled The Real Reason Dinosaurs Went Extinct and it's about two dinosaur scientists who try to save the world from an asteroid hurtling toward earth (yes, that asteroid).

Old Far Side fans may assume that the title was inspired by one of the comic strip's most famous panels. And they'd be completely right. (I changed the "became" to "went" to improve the flow when pronouncing the title).

Other people might assume that the play itself was inspired by a recent Adam McKay film. And they'd be completely wrong.

Great minds do what now?

As a matter of fact, I started writing the play in September of last year. I didn't even know about Don't Look Up until November and I didn't see the movie until a week after I completed my final polish on the play.

Still, I'm surprised by the parallels between them. I guess if you're going to write a story about the imminent destruction of the earth by a speeding space rock, you're going to use a lot of the same elements:

A pair of scientists--one highly emotional, one more serious--who first detect the danger and try to warn the world about the risks.

A populace that refuses to heed the risks because they're too wrapped up in the trivial concerns of their daily lives.

A desperate, all-too-late attempt to save the earth.

And a final, important lesson that we can't solve the global problems we face as a species until we start working together.

But they are also some key differences.

Just the facts, ma'am

First, my play is about dinosaurs. I mean, come on. Kids love dinosaurs. And in my research for writing the play, I was unable to find a single other play in which kids get to portray dinosaurs. It's a natural.

For this reason, I crammed as many scientific facts into the play so that teachers could use it as a launching pad for discussing the world of the dinosaurs and how it differed from own.

For example, did you know that grass didn't appear until the Late Cretaceous Period, shortly before that fateful asteroid struck? Or that at the time, Antarctica (where the play takes place) was covered in rain forest? Well, those facts get mentions (humorous, of course) in the course of the play.

Also, there's a lot of talk about the asteroid itself: its size, its speed, even its impact location. All great stuff for post-play discussion.

Smile!

Second, my play has a happy ending.

I know, it's hard to imagine how an asteroid striking the earth could result in anything but misery for the creatures that survived (I wasn't about to change history to make the asteroid miss the earth!).

But there are ways you can slant the ending to provide hope for the characters--and the audience. What I did was show how the Plant Eaters and the Meat Eaters--who spent the whole play fighting each other--finally decided to work together to migrate to a warmer location.

I also think the way I had the Mammals take over the stage--in the ash-induced, half-light that followed the asteroid's impact--makes for the most powerful ending to a play I've ever written. 

After all, we're mammals. And if that asteroid hadn't struck, we wouldn't be here today.

Climate change, schlimate change

Finally, the play isn't really about climate change. It's about mankind's inability to work together. If the parallel to climate change is inescapable, that says more about mankind than the play.

Of course, if you want to address the issue of climate change in your classroom, this play makes the perfect launching pad.

Operators are standing by

The play is easy to produce, with few props and set pieces. I even keep the costumes simple (color-coded T-shirts and ball caps) so you don't have to stay up late sewing twenty-plus brontosaurus and T. rex suits.

Even better, all of the twenty roles are unisex and there's plenty of room for extras so you can be completely flexible in terms of casting.

The play will receive its world premiere in April at Standouts in Wellington, New Zealand, a proud member of my Five-Timers Club which also premiered my play Doggone Detectives in 2019.

If you're interested in doing the play, or would just like to check out the script, email me here and I'll send you a PDF of the script for free. The licensing fee is $50 per performance and you can make as many copies of the script as you want, also for free.

The Real Reason Dinosaurs Went Extinct is an important play--perhaps the most important play I've ever written--and a natural follow-on to The Enchanted Bookshop in terms of its humor, its message, and the way it ties into school curricula.

I thank you. And your dinosaur-loving kids will thank you.