Taking Your Play for a Test Spin: The Un/Staged Reading

Stories High 12 Reading Cast of Thicker Than Wine (l:r-Patrick Silvestre, Rob Trinidad, Alan Quismorio, Aaron Niles, Gemma Calderon, and Aura San Miguel)

Ooooos Ahssss And Hahahas are what hooked me into the Theater game in the first place, but those audience reactions were always a by-product of seeing a story brought to life on stage. One of my favorite audience moments was during the reversal scene from my play, BORDERS. In it, a woman discovers that a flirtatious guy sitting at the next table in a cafè isn't whom she (or the audience) thinks he is. "Oh my God," was caught from an audible whisper of the person next to me as I watch the scene unfold from my back row seat at the old (current Boxcar) Bindlestiff Studio Blackbox Theater.

Sometimes I get so caught up in being solo in writing a story that I tend to over intellectualize it. From dissecting the level of conflict, flow of dialogue, to character names, especially in during the incubation of a play can be a very personal and sometimes lonely journey. But the light at the end of the tunnel appears when I finally get that story in front of a real AUDIENCE during an un/staged reading. I'll define audience as consisting of a sample size of more than 10 strangers "off the street" type.

What I love about writing for the stage is, duh, the ALIVE audience! If they're asleep, you fail. Bored, looking around, reading the program, talking on a mobile - all the same. Fail. That's why the value of these pre-produced readings is Gold!

I recently had one of these readings produced by Bindlestiff Studios for my newest play, THICKER THAN WINE. I've already heard my play hundreds of times in my head, so I know it's good, but that judgment isn't worth spit if the people I'm writing for aren't engaged in the story I created.

There is a caveat to this though: don't let the audience change the core of the story. Their reaction can cause you to re-write the entire play, but the core/theme/message chose you to write. I've been down that road with THE GIFT. After a reading, I re-wrote the whole script with new characters and setting! Lesson learned: Don't do that again. But I did learn from that audience reaction from this staged reading.

Look for these opportunities to get your play seen in these types of readings cuz you'll def learn so much from them. I did!

Standing... Blind writing

What I mean about blind writing is that I began writing this script, Standing Above Pajaro, about two years ago and while I have my notes a out the play on my home computer, which I'm currently away from, I'm rewriting what I have of the script from memory. It's going pretty well but now I'm near the climax of the story and it feels like it's kinda falling apart because I don't have my notes on what's going to happen next.

But overall, I'm happy with the pacing of the dialogue, which is more my style. Which is to say that, I'm incorporating the LaBute quickfire overlapping (using his same script shorthand / at the point of overlappage) while paying close attention to how much to reveal and Jeanie's rules of what every line needs to do: 1) push the story along, 2) describe the charter and 3) show/infer action. If the line does neither of these three, kill it!

So hopefully, I can present this at a Wordy Word to hear this skeleton script: how it fits together before adding flesh/soul/meat to the play.

My goal on this vacation is to finish this one as well as a re-write of Boys Don't Bake Cake.

Ciao for now!

Trickier Than Wine

I finished the latest draft of Thicker Than Wine in October and I'm going to revisit it since there's finally another deadline of Dec. 14. I'm a little apprehensive about revising it again for fear of overediting. then again all playwrights have the right to edit their plays when they wish. just don't want to over think it. you know what it is? it just might be that I think that I had a pretty good last reading of it and I don't want to do anything else to wreck it! but it doesn't hurt to look at it from a fresh perspective.

onto the topic of adaptations. the lesson was GREAT! but at the same time very constricting in the fact that I'm afraid to share this in fear of getting a cease and desist order. I love what I've come up in spite of the play time duration. maybe I should just contact the author to get her blessing. I mean, I should have in the first place, but then again I didn't even know that it would work out so well, cuz I was hecka strugglin'! should ask Allan first.

I need to write.

Character Dosier

Sister Mary Clarence:...If when you wake up in morning and you couldn't think about anything, but writing, then you're a writer.

After my 9-to-6, I head on over to borders to do some writing. I'm feeling good about this story idea I've had for quite some time. Before I get started, I even do a little writing exercise: A wants something from B, but B wants something from A first. A little tip: when starting this exercise on a laptop, write down the two character names, which is better than A and B, one line on top of the other, copy those two lines, and copy and paste, etc., down the page. And bada bing, before you even have any lines written, you're committed to this little drama because you have outlined two characters that go back and forth WAITING for you to insert the story. I'm a visual person, and when I saw this, I got inspired.

So, I'm writing this little scene and half way through, I realize that in a short play like this, I still don't know what this is about. Not good. And I started to think that in my last couple of short plays, it takes me a while for me to get into not only what is this story about, but what are these characters like?

I stopped in my tracks and, with this question in mind, I started to write my play... but in a very different way that I've written everything else. There are two different philosophies of writing. 1) sit down and start writing. The characters will eventually start talking to each other and to your own wonderment, a story happens and in a very schizophrenic kind of way, these characters start to write their own story while you're just there as a stenographer. 2) start out with writing down what each of these characters are like. write down everything they went through; what their history is; what is their needs; what makes them... them. In doing so, in theory, the characters will start to write your play, but with motivation and forethought.

I believe in both philosophies, especially the first one, because of that artistic sensation of really creating something from nothing. Very organic since you're just letting it happen. But last night, I started writing out the Character Dosier for each of my characters, but in the organic kind of way, I've discovered more themes to the play itself. I was as excited to write this as I was when I just free wrote.

Needless to say, I came out of this writing session with more that I thought I was going into it: stronger individual characters. I'll still be working on this for other characters, but the goal is still the same in the anticipation of seeing what each of them has to say to each other.