24/10: The Opportunity

As far as why I thought I was a playwright—maybe the willingness to write all night was enough of a qualification. But I had written for the “stage” since the second grade. I had my own rep company in the fourth grade—my Cub Scouts den. We put on a play for every monthly “pack” meeting contest, and usually beat the crap out of the other dens who showed us all the knots they’d tied.

Several of my plays were done at college, and the one I wrote and directed (called—and this was pre-J.S. Superstar—“What’s Happening, Baby Jesus?”) was apparently the stuff of legend for a few years afterwards. I got back into the game in the 90s in Pittsburgh, where I wrote for more traditional ten minute play festivals, had some full length play readings, won a local award for a one act script, and had the wonderful experience of seeing one of my short plays performed by two terrific actors from the famous Carnegie Mellon Drama program (one of whom was seen shortly afterwards on the silver screen), and directed by a new acquaintance named Margaret Thomas Kelso, who eventually I followed to the North Coast when she became director of the dramatic writing program at HSU. I’ve written some scripts here but this was going to be the first time my playwriting—that is, what I was yet to write-- would be brought alive on a North Coast stage.

I was there partly for what I suspect was a common reason, though the specifics were different for each person: we were there to take the opportunity. Actors (I came to learn over the years) take almost any opportunity to act, and in my experience, the better the actors the more willing they are to take these chances, especially on new scripts. An additional motivation was expressed by one of the actors who said that he simply can’t spare the time to attend weeks of rehearsals to do a play, and something like this was his only opportunity. I suspect some of the directors felt the same way. Or, like the actors, they simply want the opportunity to direct, and the challenge of making something of a script very quickly.

There were several young writers (as well as a self-contained high school unit, with their own writer, director and actors who worked together—otherwise I believe they followed the rules the rest of us did.) The experience, the production and the feedback were valuable to them. One of the more experienced writers who gets his plays produced—Ken Gray Scolari, who came up from southern California, and who I knew from his year at HSU—was there partly to help out, and as a gesture of support. I got the sense from another non-younger writer that he hadn’t written for awhile, and wanted to try something different in his writing.

So for awhile Friday evening we talked and munched and drank a little, marveling at the turnout, lamenting that new work wasn’t done much here anymore. Then the games began.