A new frontier

I suppose every playwright dreams of having a full-length produced. Sure, 10-minute plays are fun to write and can pack quite a wallop. And one-acts have their own unique draw, offering much more depth while maintaining a convenient bite-size package.
But the glory is in the full-length. I mean, let's face it. How many great American short plays can you name? (Well, there's Edward Albee's The Zoo Story and, um...)

Plus, there's that whole heady experience of knowing that the entire evening is devoted to your work.

Which is why I'm so thrilled that my first full-length play, The Butler Did It!, just won the Cheyenne Little Theatre's New Play Project. It'll get two staged readings this November in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As an aficionado of historic theaters, I'm especially pleased that they're mounting it in at the Atlas Theatre, a 125-year-old former vaudeville house in downtown Cheyenne.

The Butler Did It! is a comedy about a butler who gets falsely accused of murder and must find the real culprit while tied to a chair. It's the first mystery I've written, and it got a great reception at my regular writing group. But breaking up a play over five months of readings isn't the best way to judge its structure.

Mysteries are all about structure, of course. In fact, when I was writing The Butler Did It!, it felt like I was building one of those Jenga towers, each carefully placed plot element requiring yet another set-up or explanation or foreshadowing to make it fit. So I'm hoping that my reading up north will uncover any gaping plot holes I've been too blind to see.

I just hope no one gets hurt when it collapses.

Clothes make the play

Now I know my play is real. I just received the first cast shirt from my publisher.

What's in a name?

I got a call from my publisher today. They're busy trying to wrap up the edits on Long Tall Lester so they can get it into print in April.

They just had one problem. They didn't like the subtitle: The Orneriest Encyclopedia Salesman in the West.

I've got to admit, I never gave that part of it much thought.

I wanted some kind of subtitle, because I thought it added a nice period flavor, as in those old melodramas. And I thought the title I picked was funny and gave a pretty good picture of what the story was about.

But my editor said they didn't find Lester to be particularly ornery. And after a moment's thought, I had to agree with him. The whole point of the story is that Lester defeats the outlaw Billy Black through brains, not brawn. I guess I had always intended the subtitle to be ironic.

He gave me three alternatives, and also suggested I offer my own.

The three alternatives were: slickest, shrewdest, cleverest.

Think, Todd. Think. And fast. They're giving me first dibs, and if I don't respond quickly, like in an hour or so, I'll miss my chance. And rightfully so.

My mind went into hyperdrive. Lester is clever, but that doesn't really give any sense of conflict. It also doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue (of course, in that respect, orneriest was worse).

Slickest provides some nice alliteration. Slickest... enCyclopedia... Salesman. But, like orneriest, it doesn't really describe what he's like.

And shrewdest just make him sound like an evil banker.

So I decided to offer my own suggestion. Wiliest? No. Wisest? Yuck.

Quickest? Hmm, not bad. Wait. Not quickest. Fastest. As in Fastest Gun in the West. After all, Lester doesn't wield a gun. He wields an encyclopedia. And he unloads the five sets he brought with him pretty quickly.

So I sent them my suggestion: Long Tall Lester, or The Fastest Encyclopedia Salesman in the West.

They liked it. And that's the title you'll see it come out under in April.

I should be happy. It is a decent title.

So why does the same worrisome thought keep circling my mind?

Fastest? That's the best you could come up with?

Travails of a playwright

So last week I was all excited for my New York City debut as Thespian Production was getting ready to perform my 10-minute drama The Wanderer.  No longer would I be a mere playwright. I would be an off-off-Broadway playwright.

The debut would be completely vicarious. The Big Apple is a long (and expensive) way to go for a 10-minute play. And besides, the good folks in the theater company promised they would send me programs as well as any reviews or other feedback they received.

And so it was with bated breath that I clicked over to their website, hoping to see my the title of my play in the lineup, maybe even get a glimpse of the cast.

Well, the cast photos were all there. There was just one problem. None of those bright shining faces were from my play.

My breath bating even more, I checked the lineup. Nope, my play wasn't listed.

I clicked around the website. No mention of The Wanderer anywhere.

The truth was clear. Paul and his cantankerous father Edmund were never going to have that talk in the police station.

With calmer breath, I sent the organizer an email, asking what happened and whether they had plans to do my play at a later time.

I mean, I get it. This is show biz, folks. Budgets are cut. Seasons are rearranged. Directors bail.

But it would be nice if they told me. Here it is a week later and I still haven't heard a peep out of them.

And so on Sunday, I submitted that play to five more contests.

Maybe it won't ever get done in NYC. But it will get done, one way or another.

Magic time

Before I got my first play published last year, I'd struggled for 13 years to reach print in the world of books. But if I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered.

Why? Because seeing one of your plays performed provides more satisfaction, more pleasure, more joy then any book could ever give you. And it's all because of that little thing called an audience.

I'm having these thoughts because last night I got to see the first local production of one of my plays.

All right. Strictly speaking, it wasn't my first. That happened last month, when "Anger Mismanagement" premiered as part of the 24SEVEN theatre project. But as I've described previously, that was a rush job. And besides, I was guaranteed production whether I came up with a masterpiece or pure drivel (I'll let the audience for that one decide which it was).

But last night was the first time a play that I'd written for general production was done locally.

The play is "Fear of Clowns." And I couldn't have asked for a better production.

"Fear of Clowns" is a 10-minute comedy about a clown who visits a psychiatrist about an unusual fear (I don't want to give that away as it's a big part of the fun) and it was done as part of the Millibo Art Theatre's annual "Ten Minutes Max" show.

What made this production so meaningful to me is that there was one point when I was sure the play would never see the light of day.

Late last year, I was deep in the middle of a rewrite on it when my playwriting software locked up. Feeling a sickening lurch in my gut, I rebooted the program.

When it came back to life, my worst fears were realized. The current version was gone, and all I could find on my hard drive were dusty old versions that bore little resemblance to the version I'd clawed from the shalelike strata of my mind.

Panic!

You can probably predict the next step. I tried to recreate it from memory, but as anyone whose ever been there knows, that's a fool's errand. I hit a wall, unable to find those words again.

That's when I thought back to a quote from humorist Garrison Keillor. I don't remember his exact words, but they were along the lines that if you lose a manuscript, forget what you wrote before. Write it fresh. It'll be better.

I tried. And he was right.

Freed from the shackles of my old words, I conjured up new words, new thoughts, new directions. I invented a whole new section of dialogue in which the clown describes his love for an aerialist ("She can fly.") and the difficulty he has expressing that love.

The dialogue was painful. It was heartbreaking. And it was exactly the thing I'd been looking for to add depth to my piece.

The performance went great, due in no small part to the MAT's Jim Jackson, a real-life clown who played my lead character with a bittersweet gentleness.

I was grateful for every laugh he got (never as many as you hope for, but always more than you deserve). But what really surprised me were the number of "awww's" from the crowd. I knew my play was sad, but it wasn't until I saw a world-class performer bring it to life that I realized how much the audience would welcome that gentle clown into their hearts.

Thank you, Jim--and the rest of the team at the MAT who gave it their all.

For this playwright, it was truly a magical night.

Two crazy nights

I just finished the most exhilarating, liberating experience of my life. And it didn't involve hang gliding, alcohol or drugs of any kind. Unless of course you consider caffeine a drug.

I'm talking about 24SEVEN, a wild, wacky and wonderfully exhausting 24-hour theatrical event.

Yeah, I know. No big deal. Lots of cities do those.

But not here. Not in Colorado Springs. Out cultural community is notoriously conservative, so it came as something of a relief (miracle?) when the highly regarded Springs Ensemble Theatre announced they were going to give it a shot.

Here's how it went down for myself and the six other writers who committed to this project (and should be committed, period).

The event began at 7 p.m. on Friday at a non-descript office that's used by one of the writers in his day job. The rules were explained and we picked the seven prompts out of a hat (actually, a shoebox).

Location: New York City subway

Character name: Lola

Prop: Rat

Sound cue: Ringing phone

Line of dialogue: ""The more coffee I drink, the more it throbs."

We were given until 4 a.m. to complete a play that included all of these prompts. The only requirement was that the play be at least 10 minutes long. Coherency was merely an option.

Faced with this task, I felt nothing but bone-gnawing fear. Why? Because I'm the world's slowest writer. It takes me weeks to write a 10-minute play, six months for a full-length. But here I had just 7 1/2 hours.

I knew I couldn't overthink it. I had to just open my mind and turn on the faucet.

So that's what I did. Starting with that line of dialogue and working forwards and backwards from it to figure out who said that it and who were they with and what, oh what, were they fighting about.

It was glorious, the words coming so fast I felt like I was flying. Much different than the nitpicky slog my writing sessions usually consist of.

I sent off my "masterpiece" at 3 a.m.--a full hour before the deadline. At 5 a.m., the producers read, reformatted and printed out the scripts. At 6 a.m., the directors got to read the scripts and they were given only an hour to cast their plays from an array of head shots taped to the wall.

At 8:30 a.m., the actors "finally" rolled in and rehearsals began--grinding, mind-numbing rehearsals that lasted the entire day, not ending until the first showtime at 7:30 p.m. The plays were well-written, well-performed and well-received, surprisingly so, considering the headlong rush to production involved.

In fact, the whole event was so successful that the producers intend to repeat the madness in six months.

There's just one problem. Yesterday, when I returned to my regular writing--the full-length play I've been working for the last three months--I hit the wall. My writing returned to that painful slog.

I don't know what it'll take to recapture that sense of urgency again. Establishing lots of mini-deadlines? Chugging gallons of coffee? Strangling my internal editor? I don't know.

All I know is that I need to do something. I miss flying.

The best Christmas present of all

As many have been doing in this troubled economy, my wife and I kept our Christmas gift buying to a minimum this year. But I still got what I most wanted. Yesterday, Pioneer Drama Service informed me that they will be publishing my second play with them in the spring.

The play is Long Tall Lester, the one-act western comedy that I've written about before.

How does that make me feel? Ecstatic.

In a way, this feels like an even bigger breakthrough than getting my first play published. One play can be a fluke. But two... well, maybe one small part of my brain is starting to figure out this playwriting stuff.

The only problem? I've run out of plays to submit.

It's not that I haven't been writing. I've been writing like crazy.

It's that I haven't finished anything. Call it the Siren Song of the New Work. As any writer knows, a new play, a new novel, a new anything, seems brilliant when first conceived. The characters are vibrant. The storyline mesmerizing. The dialogue sparkling.

And then you start setting it down on paper.

Soon the characters lose some of their luster. The plot points start stumbling over each other. The dialogue isn't quite so clever.

Then a New Work calls. This one promises to be different. This one promises to be perfect in every way.

So you drop the first work.

But the truth is that good stories don't spring fully-formed from the mind. They're born kicking and screaming, and they only reach maturity through a lot of sweat, tears and mind-numbing drudgery.

And so for 2012, I'll be making just one New Year's resolution.

Resist the Siren Call and finish something.