Scn Std: wk1

I just had my first rehearsal? meet and greet? chat? run-through? stumble upon? of a short piece I’ll be doing with Sara Katzoff and three undergrad actors/actresses.

For the past semester and a half I’ve been working on my thesis play which is this dark tragedy. It’s been so long since I’ve started a new draft of anything – it was super refreshing to begin a new piece.

A little road bump: Sara and I have been talking about doing a devised play for a hot second. It would revolve around The Bachelorette and vine compilations and other social media ripe videos. Three days before our  first rehearsal I got a phone call from my mentor advising us/telling us not to do it. We wouldn’t have time and the director study wasn’t a place for the devised work we’ve been cultivating. Major balloon pop. This was something I was looking forward to for quite a while. Sometimes people look at devised theatre as something else… that is something else that we won’t do.  It’s a scary monster to a few people and that is fine. You just have to show them why devised theatre is just as important as any other work.  So what could we do?

I took everything that we talked about and threw it into a loose comedic script with the idea that we’d branch from this play with devised moments. If there is a script, there is a play, right?

Throwing together this play in one night with the ideas we’ve had been building on for a month and a half was- hard, and it was stressful. I felt very unprepared. I felt like I was going to embarrass myself in front of these actors (is my biggest fear because I am such a awkward introvert).

We got together, chatted for a second – which was great – I always enjoy starting a production with a check-in on life. Then we read it, and they laughed. The best noise for a playwright- a laugh, or a gasp, or any indication that we’ve done something right!

For the rest of the time we brain-stormed about possible characters, ideas, scenes. I think this play might work out after all.

 

— Beirut—