My Playwrighting Lab

Tonight I started my Playwrighting Lab (with Marty Chan from the APN). It was primarily a "getting to know you" type of thing. There are 10 of us and Marty, but one woman didn't show up. It is really great to meet other playwrights and talk about playwrighting and I hope we will talk about producing plays once they are written. We also got our assignments. I have bought a bit of time because my project is primarily conceptual right now. I have about 2 months to get a first draft put together. The cool thing is I had to tell the group what I was writing about so I had to articulate it, aloud, so they could hear me, and this made me think about the script much more concretely than I have been. I have been having trouble writing what I want to write, but when i spoke about it, it pushed me somehow. So I came home and wrote about 5 pages. That was good. And I worked on the outline. I am using the "get the crap out" method and I will take out stuff later. I just need to write it all down first. If it gets too convoluted or unfocused I can focus it later. I can't sit around and wait until the perfect words come to me. I know that I will definitely need multiple drafts of this baby so I should just start with the raw material and then I can start moulding it and taking away the waste. It was an inspiring night.

The other thing that pushes me is that I could tell from the round table sharing that mine was the least complete play. Most people have their first draft and are working on the second. Some are further along than that. I think it suggested to me that I needed to kick my own butt and start writing! Good thing I am so competitive.

I also LOVED, LOVED, LOVED that all 9 of the plays were so different. It will be refreshing to read them and give feedback. I think that everyone will offer different perspectives on the writing and hopefully it will add dimension to the script that I write. I know it is far more ambitious than anything I have done so far.