I want to be a... director?

Back in 2012, I wrote a blog titled "I want to be a producer". It was my way of announcing that I'd decided to produce the world premiere of my play Kill the Critic! At the time, I questioned my sanity due to the sheer amount of work required to produce a full-length play. And the simple fact that I had never produced one before.

Well, if I was borderline crazy at the time, I must be completely certifiable now because I've just signed up to not only produce but direct my new play, The Last Radio Show.

Why am I doing it? Well, I guess it's because I haven't produced a play since that time and I really want to get back into it. Not only was producing a blast, but sitting in on rehearsals and hearing the audience response taught me more about playwriting than anything I've ever done.

And if producing taught me that much, then directing should teach me a whole lot more.

Plus, I really, really want to do this one. It's a classic farce, my favorite type of play, and yet it should be easy to produce. There's no set. Light and sound cues are minimal. And much of the play will be read from scripts.

Of course, that's not to say that the play doesn't pose its own challenges. There will be plenty of sound effects, after all. It's just that they'll be generated onstage, just like they were in the Golden Age of Radio. There's also a ton of physical comedy, and making sure that part works is always the toughest part of developing a new play.

The process is already well underway. I've booked the theater. I've reserved a rehearsal space. I've set up the ticketing site. A couple of friends have even signed as stage manager and light/sound tech. Now I need to get the actors.

What's the play about, you say? Well, here's the blurb:

It's 1946, and KUKU Radio is in trouble. Their broadcast tower keeps falling over. The electric company is about to cut off their power. And now the station owner is threatening to fire the whole crew. Can this ragtag group of radio actors out together one perfect show? Or will they be shut down for good?

The show runs Jan 14-16 at Black Box Theatre, 1367 Pecan St., Colorado Springs. Tickets are just $15, To get yours (you know this won't be the last you hear about it!), go to thelastradioshow.brownpapertickets.com.

Million Dollar Meatballs is here!

My fifth play has just been published by Pioneer Drama Service. Million Dollar Meatballs is a full-length farce that I first developed at a local high school last year. It has 12 roles (4M/4F/4 either) and runs about 70 minutes.

Here's the blurb:

Get ready for a comedy of epicurean proportions! Two bumbling jewel thieves are on the run from the cops when they duck into Chez Monyeu, a restaurant so bad the mice are their only repeat customers. And that's just the start of their problems. Not only has Chez Monyeu's chef just quit, but the city's most powerful restaurant critic is about to arrive. In desperation, the restaurant's owner, mistaking the thieves for famous French chefs, insist that they make their renowned Million Dollar Meatballs for the tough-minded critic. Insanity ensues as the pair try to keep up the ruse while hunting for the seven priceless diamonds they lost. Will the thieves get away with their crime? Where could the diamonds have gone? And why are the meatballs so crunchy? Find out in this deliciously funny farce!

I love all my plays equally, but this one holds a special place in my heart as it's my first classic farce. I just adore comedies that feature mistaken identity, outrageous accents and some poor sap getting water dumped in his lap. This play has all that and more.

To learn more, check out the play's web page here.

Kill the Critic! returns

After two years and over a hundred submissions to contests and theatre companies, both large and small, Kill the Critic! is finally getting its second production. Stage Presence Players in Austin, TX has just announced that they'll be performing the play in September.

I couldn't be more excited. My published plays have been getting a ton of productions, and I'm thrilled for every one of them. But this production is especially meaningful to me because this is probably my favorite play I've written. And its the first full-length production I've arranged myself.

Why did I take this route instead of submitting it directly to my publisher? Well, Kill the Critic! is my first "mature" play, a bawdy farce in the spirit of Noises Off or Boeing Boeing. I produced it that way for its world premiere, and audiences responded enthusiastically. I thought that professional theatres would gobble it up.

Well, they didn't. I got a few nibbles, with theatres in both NYC and LA asking to read the whole script. But no bites.

I thought the play was dead.

And then a funny thing happened. I heard from two different groups who had performed The Butler Did It!, wondering whether I had anything similar. I sent them Kill the Critic!, warning them that it was considerably more risque than my murder mystery.

They both loved it. And a great new theatre company in Austin, Texas, the Stage Presence Players, decided to produce it. (The other group, a church in Canada, would have done it but worried that some members of their congregation might complain.)

That's when I realized something. I'd been targeting the wrong markets. Despite the "maturity" of Kill the Critic!, no professional theatre company is ever going to produce it. They simply don't do farces, at least not new ones. No, they'd rather do yet another grim social drama. (Seriously, have you seen the schedules of most professional theatres?)

But community theatres love farces. And if I clean this one up a bit, I may be able to get high schools and churches interested.

So that's what I'm working on now. It's not easy, turning a naughty comedy into something that your grandma will enjoy. But, as I'm discovering, it can be a lot of fun.

If you're in the Austin area, I urge to see Stage Presence Players' production of Kill the Critic! It runs September 24-26.

For more info, visit the theatre company's Facebook page.

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.