Week 20: It's Academic and Week 21: The New Guy

Yes readers, this evening you get two posts and two plays for the price of one.  My apologies for not posting last week.  An old friend was in town and I had to say goodbye to a former roommate before her move across the country.  Shakespeare's "Parting is such sweet sorrow" seems apt here, but partings feel permanent to me and I know that I will see both of these people again. :)

You may remember from an earlier post that I spoke about abandoning writing ten-minute plays for a time in favor of writing my full-length play about Shakespeare's clowns.  Well, as it turns out, I am doing both.  Week 20's play is It's Academic and concerns scholars at a Shakespeare conference.  Week 21's play is The New Guy and introduces Will Kempe and some of his co-workers (a guy by the name of Shakespeare figures into the plot as well).  Together, the two plays might not seem to go together.  But as Cousin Larry would say on Perfect Strangers "I have...an idea!"  And they are going to go together.  Right now I'm sort of envisioning it as something similar to one of my favorite plays, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, as the play goes back and forth in time.  Not that it will be as good as anything Stoppard could write, but that's where some of my inspiration is coming from.

Week 19 - New Rules

Apologies for the lateness of this post.  Yesterday was Mothers' Day, as you know, and my sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law came into town.  By the time everyone left, I needed a nap.  So I took it.  And it was glorious.  Of course, it delayed my posting of my new play this week and for that I humbly apologize.

This week's play is titled New Rules.  It's sort of a take-off on Bill Maher's New Rules.  Instead of making new rules for politicians, these new rules involve relationships.  Judging from the confusion and worry a lot of my friends are experiencing as they navigate the world of dating, I'm thinking it might be time for some new rules to keep everyone from hurting other people's feelings.

Week 18 - Run

I'm posting a little later than usual this week.  I got sucked into watching a Law and Order: SVU marathon today.  They always suck me in and then I emerge, five hours later, hungry, having not gotten dressed, with none of the weekend projects completed.  Ah life.

Week 18's play was inspired by my cop show binge, as well as the visit I took to the dog park today with my parents' dog Holly.  I know most people go to the dog park to watch adorable dogs running about.  I went to observe people and let my imagination drift.  In this week's play, two strangers meet in a dog park.  But all is not as it seems.  Week 18's play is Run.

Week 17 - Lizzie and Liz and Liza

Hola from week 17!  I will be working on a ten minute play about Margaret of Anjou in the coming weeks so be on the lookout for that.  Tomorrow I film a commercial.  Behold the life of the freelance writer/actor.

I do have a question for the internets.  Way back in 2010, I wrote my Master of Letters thesis on Will Kempe and Robert Armin, the principal clowns in Shakespeare's acting company.  I became slightly obsessed with these two gentlemen and envisioned them as a sort of early modern Felix Unger (Armin) / Oscar Madison (Kempe.) My final ten minute play for my Playwriting class in 2011 was called Wiseguys and it looked at their (completely imagined) relationship.  I have been mulling, scheming, and formulating a way to turn the story of these men (and the larger story of what it was like to be a part of the late Elizabethan theatre revolution) into a full length play.  So, here's my question.  Should I spend some of my time that I've allotted to this project to work on Wiseguys?  Or should I continue this project as a separate entity from working on a full-length play at this time?  Should I even BE working on full-length works right now?  What do you guys think?

Week 17's play is Lizzie and Liz and Liza.  The play looks at the dreams of youth and how they turn into the realities of the present.  That's about as much as I can say without giving everything away. :)

Week 16 - Two Sisters

Ladies and gentlemen.  Today, I reached a milestone.  This is the sixteenth week of the project.  I have kept it going for four months.

This may not seem like an accomplishment to some of you.  But....I have spent most of my life wanting to start doing BIG THINGS and then stopping them in week eight.  Or week two.  Things like an exercise regime.  Things like practicing the piano every day (God, I really need to start playing the piano again.)  Things like bold creative projects.  This project is not just a creative outlet for me (although it is.)  It is a way for me to reverse this psychological pattern and continue with something until the bitter or not so bitter end.  I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far.  I will be even more proud at the end of this year when I have 52 plays stacked up in front of me.  So, thank you for going on this journey with me so far and thank you for your words of encouragement.  They mean a whole hell of a lot.

Week 16's play is called Two Sisters.  It is admittedly not the best title but I really found that I couldn't come up with a better one.  The play was partly inspired by an article on parenting I read today in the New York Times.  Parents of my generation are much more into the whole "attachment" parenting phenomenon, and it's thought to have been caused by the fact that so many of my generation were latchkey kids, whose parents either both worked or who only had one parent that they lived with.  Two Sisters looks at two latchkey kids in 1985 and their relationships with each other and their mother.

Week 15 - Here's To The Ladies

This week's play was inspired by two real life events.  One was a conversation about online dating with a woman I know, who is in her late 50s and single.  The other I can only describe as a drive-by emotional shooting.


As a single lady, well-meaning people often want to give you advice and (they think) hope.  "You'll find someone!"  "Have you tried online dating?"  "My cousin met someone at work/an NRA convention/bass fishing in Colorado and now they're getting married!"  About a year or so ago, I was complaining about my love life (or lack thereof) at my local coffee shop to several other sympathetic people (who were all single.)  My conversation was interrupted by one of those radiant twenty five year olds we all hate, with impossibly shiny hair, impossibly clear skin, and an impossibly bright outlook on life.  Her advice to me appears in this week's play.  It ran something like this:


"Hi, I couldn’t help overhearing you.  I just want to say that I was just like you.  I thought I’d never meet the right man.  One day, I told myself to stop looking, that it was never going to happen.  And as soon as I stopped looking, I met my wonderful boyfriend (indicates MAN) and he is perfect.  We’re getting married in the fall.  So, maybe you should just stop looking.  He will come to you.  I know because it happened to me!"


I'm sure her intentions were good and well-meant.  I still fantasize about smacking her repeatedly in the face.  Week 15's play is Here's To The Ladies.

Week 14 - The Trophy Wives of Venice

This week's play was partly inspired by a film I saw this week, The Help.  Although I think the film was definitely a sanitized, Hollywood version of the civil rights struggles in the 1960s, it was entertaining and well-acted.  The scenes revolving around the characters played by Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard were particularly well-realized.  If you've spent any time in the South, even in the 21st century South, you can definitely recognize the passive aggression, the surface politeness, and casual cruelty of the "mean girls" in the movie.  I've definitely been on the receiving end of that sort of behavior so it was lovely to see the "mean girls" get their comeuppance in the end.

This week I was also the observer of a Facebook discussion on the merits (or lack thereof) of The Merchant of Venice.  The play is definitely not one of my favorites by Mr. Shakespeare (in my opinion, it should join Two Gentlemen of Verona and King John on the "let's never do these plays again" list.  Much of my problems with Merchant stem from my hatred of the "heroine," Portia.  It occurred to me this week that Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers of the English language, wrote some of the most insufferable female characters in existence.  For every sparkling Beatrice, there seems to be a whiny Julia.  So, I decided to write about three of my least favorite Shakespearean women - Portia from Merchant, Julia from Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Helena from All's Well That Ends Well; as well as one of my favorite Shakespearean heroines, Viola from Twelfth Night.  This week's play, inspired by mean girls and Shakespeare, is The Trophy Wives of Venice.

NOTE:  I'm sure my listing of my favorites and least favorites will elicit comments like "But I love King John!" And "I've played Helena and she's awesome!"  And "Pericles is the worst play Shakespeare wrote. Why isn't it on your list?"  So, I'll just say that these are my opinions.  You may agree with me.  You may not.  But, as in politics, I'm not gonna change your mind and you're not gonna change my mind either. :)