Rumpelstiltskin hits the small screen

After the reading of The Real Meaning of Things earlier this month, I've had more than one person suggest I should write more adult plays. I tell them that I already do. In fact, I now have two adult full-lengths making the rounds of professional theatre companies.

It's just that it's hard to get adult plays produced. Schools and children's drama camps are much more open to producing a play by an unknown playwright than adult theatre companies are.

But that's not the reason I write children's plays.

This is.

You're Driving Me Crazy to be published

I just received a contract from Pioneer Drama Service for my driver's ed comedy You're Driving Me Crazy, my sixth play with them.

You're Driving Me Crazy is a collection of four 10-minute plays which can be performed together or individually. They're simple to produce, requiring only a few simple props and no set other than a few chairs (one play does call for several easy-to-find sound cues). Here's the blurb:

Learning to drive is an important rite of passage for any student. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun with it! These four plays take a hilarious look at the world of driver's ed. In them, we meet: 1) a nervous teacher who doesn't seem to know the first thing about driving, 2) a teenage girl who brings some unexpected guests to her first driving class, 3) a teenage boy who's forced to share a car with his temperamental ex-girlfriend, and 4) a teenage girl who can't break away from her smartphone long enough to learn how to drive.

I've been submitting the individual plays to contests over the last two years and I'm thrilled with the response. They've snagged 19 productions around the world--and not just with school-age groups. One of the plays was produced by a community theatre at the Minnesota State Fair. Another one was produced by a university in Pennsylvania. That same play received a staged reading by an off-off-Broadway theatre company and was later produced at the Short + Sweet Festival (the world's largest short play festival) in Canberra, Australia, where it won the Director's Choice Award.

Look for the plays to be published this December. In the meantime, you can read a sample by clicking here.

The real meaning of theatre

Just came back from the final reading The Real Meaning of Things at the Rough Writers New Play Festival. We had about 40 people at the first reading a week ago and nearly a full house of around 100 tonight, and the response to the festival as a whole and my play in pa

The after-reading talkbacks provided an interesting contrast. Last week, they were mostly question for me and the other playwrights: what inspired you to your this play? How much research did you do?

Tonight the tables were reversed as the audience members told us what they thought. And there was one comment in particular that grabbed my attention.

My play takes place during Georgia O'Keeffe's first trip to New Mexico. She has been frustrated in New York, and as she explores this wild new land, she discovers something that she has long been searching for:

EARL

I mean it. Most of the women I know, they'd have been screaming for help, afraid the coyote would get them. 

GEORGIA

I'm not afraid. I'm like that coyote. I belong here too. 

EARL

In the desert? 

GEORGIA

In the desert. In the mountains. The whole of New Mexico, I guess. It's such a quiet, lonely place. It makes me feel—oh, I don't know. 

EARL

Peaceful? 

GEORGIA

Oh, God. Not that. 

EARL

Then what? 

GEORGIA

Hungry.

There's no stage direction before that final word to tell the actress to pause, but she did--exactly as I had hoped.

The comment I wanted to mention was in reference to that line. The commenter said that he had expected the next word to be "Alive", but when Georgia said "Hungry"instead, it somehow seemed better. It somehow seemed right. Also, exactly as I had hoped.

As a playwright, you're at the mercy of your actors. This is both good and bad. Actors can often misinterpret your intent. But when they get it right, it's a powerful thing.

And sometimes, they uncover things you didn't even know were there.

Of course, the best part of any reading is sharing the experience with your friends. I had a lot of friends at tonight's reading--including a good-sized contingent from my playwriting group--and I'm grateful for their support. I especially enjoyed the chats we had afterwards, about theatre, about life, about everything and nothing.

I want to send out a big thank you to Nathan Halvorson, director of the festival, and the entire crew at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. It was a great festival, and I can't wait to submit next time around.

Rough writing

It's always nice to get mentioned in the press, even if that mention is a brief one. Which is why I'm happy to report that my short play, The Real Meaning of Things, got a shout-out in this month's issue of American Theatre magazine, the Bible of the American theatre community.

The article covers the Rough Writers New Play Festival at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and focuses on Jade O'Keeffe, a Toronto-based playwright whose full-length play Two Nine One Letters is one of the centerpieces of the festival. O'Keeffe based her play on the extensive series of letters between Georgia O'Keeffe and her lover-turned-husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. And yes, in case you're wondering, Jade is a relative of the artist, though a distant one.

My play was not nearly as well-researched, inspired as it was by a single sentence in Georgia O'Keeffe's Wikipedia entry. But it was a really good sentence.

I attended the first reading of my play last weekend, and the FAC did a fantastic job with it. They cast two of my favorite local actors: Mike Miller as a hard-bitten rancher and Amy Brooks as a humorously prickly Georgia O'Keeffe, and their performances precisely captured the awkwardness I was going for.

If you're in the area, I encourage you to stop in this Saturday at 8pm for the final reading of this and three other plays by local playwrights.

Crazy in Manila

Photo by Candid Ventura (candidventura.wordpress.com)

Just got word that my driver's ed comedy You're Driving Me Crazy #1 has been accepted into the Short + Sweet Theatre Festival in Manila this September. The Philippines is my 6th country, joining the US, Canada, Australia, South Korea and the UK as places where my plays have been performed.

The weird thing is that I didn't even know this play was still in the running for Short + Sweet, since I first submitted it to this annual series of play festivals over a year ago. But hey, I'll take it. The festival itself will take place at the huge, ultra-modern Samsung Hall.

If you have a play you'd like to enter in Short + Sweet, visit their website by clicking here. Although I don't usually enter contests that charge fees, I had no qualms about entering this one. After all, you can't beat this deal,w ith just AUS$20 (about US$15) getting you into 24 contests in some of the coolest, most exciting cities around the world.

Break legs, all!

I give birth to a dinosaur

I didn't always want to be a playwright. When I first started writing seriously 18 years ago, it was with dreams of becoming the next Bruce Coville or Jon Scieszka--authors who wrote funny, exciting novels for the burgeoning middle-grade market.

I came up with a character--Edison Young--gave him a group of smart alecky friends and set him off on an adventure involving a science fair, a tyrannical teacher and a giant robot dinosaur.

The book didn't go anywhere. I submitted it to dozens of publishers, both big and small, and while it got a few nibbles, no one bit.  With defeat, I concluded it was unpublishable and put it away.

Until a few weeks ago, when I decided to dust it off and read it again. And I realized it wasn't half-bad. I'll admit it's no Harry Potter. But it is entertaining, exciting and a heck of a lot of fun.

Am I going to run the gauntlet of the big publishing houses again? No. And for one very good reason.

Over the last decade, the publishing industry has seen a seismic shift in way it does business. Authors no longer need publishers to see their books in print. There's this little thing called a Kindle, and with a few simple steps, any author can make their works available to the public.

That's why I'm excited to announce that Edison Young and the Ravenous Robosaur is now available on Amazon. Here's the blurb:

Nothing hurts your grades like blowing up the school gym. That's what 12-year-old inventor Edison Young learned at last year's science fair. Now it's science fair time again and Edison has come up with his greatest idea yet. What could possibly go wrong with a life-size Tyrannosaurus rex robot.

The book sells for $2.99 and features the same zany humor as my plays (you didn't think I'd get serious, did you?). Young readers might just learn a few things about science as well. To order yours, click here.

Right now, the book is only available for the Kindle and any device which has the Kindle app. But if it does well, I'll release a print version.

Enjoy!

First Rumpelstiltskin photos

Horizon Middle School in Bismarck, ND didn't get the world premiere of Rumpelstiltskin, Private Eye. That honor belongs to School Around Us in Kennebunk, ME, who beat them by one day. But Horizon was the first to publish photos. And what great photos they are!

I love the colorful costumes as well as the funny billboard they created for the Three Little Pigs. Nice job, everyone!

"I don't think you're taking this crime very seriously." 

"That's real cute, Baby Bear. Now why don't
you go back to bed? For about 18 years?"

"You know, when you shorten my name, don't shorten
it from the end. Shorten it from the beginning." 

"Your house was made of straw. A mildly 
hungry cow would have destroyed it." 

"So did that trio of future footballs accuse
me of destroying their houses again?"

"What big feet you have!" 

"She's supposed to look pale. Her name is Snow White, remember?" 

"Ewww! We have to kiss her?"