A New Play

Right now, I'm casting and going into rehearsal for a festival/workshop production of The Dragon Play, with a friend's new theater company.  My screenplay has reached the "let's do readings with real, bankable actors and see what feedback we get" stage (pushing the boulder up the hill!  inch by inch!).  I've built/am building a website, am making a concerted effort to get to know more directors and to create opportunities to work with them, and I'm actively rewriting the play I've been working on all year, in hopes of sending it out to different development opportunities this summer and fall.

I'm also writing a new play.

In a year characterized by my carving out lots of quiet time to write, and working on one project at a time (more or less), this play is...well...being born in the midst of a storm.

But because it's a play I've been thinking about for a reeeeaaaalllly long time, and because the characters are based on people I know really well, or have known forever, or both, and because the play is set in a place I inhabited for years, the weirdest thing is happening.

I keep rushing back to my computer, not thinking "I gotta work" but thinking "I wanna go see what Amanda and Ben and Max are up to?" and "what's Jesse gonna do now?"

I've never had so strong an (admittedly ridiculous) sense that the characters themselves are simply hanging out in the room I've made, doing their thing, not even waiting for me to show up and watch them.  It's like they're the bunch of kids who live in the basement, and I occasionally pop down with snacks to check on them and see whether they've lit the den on fire.  It's really weird.  But also kind of nice.

I like these kids.  I look forward to spending more time with them.