seven/24 VI

For the second time in a month, a play I've written has been performed without me seeing it. In both cases, the play apparently went very well thanks to the help of great direction and acting. Perhaps this is the formula for success. Write the play. Submit the play. Stay the fuck away from the play. Hear that it rocked. I guess I'll never see my own work again.

I digress...or I don't. Anyway, this weekend was my second year participating in the Tin Ceiling Theater Company's seven/24 festival. Friday night, I reported to a large house near a dark park armed with two bottles of bourbon (having learned last year that one bottle is never enough) and a laptop. Upon arriving, I was guided to a large sitting room where I sat waiting with thirteen other writers to be paired off and sent into the world to create something.

Luckily, my partner was a super cool woman who appreciated the fact that cyclops babies needed to be made fun of. Once we were assigned to each other, we immediately got to work. We ordered a pizza. We talked about tv. I drank a few glasses of whiskey. She ate a bag of skittles. It was really hard work.

The idea showed up around midnight. It was a cagey bastard, cloaked in a trenchcoat and holding a stungun, but we wrestled it into a ten minute play about a dysfunctional mother and son relationship, and time travel. The writing, once it began, was fast and furious. We passed the laptop between us like a bottle of expensive champagne, with both of us wanting to drink as much as possible before relinquishing control - yet never fighting when the other person wanted his or her taste. We kicked drama's ass.

We weren't the first, second, or third pair done that night, but we weren't the last either. Around 3:30 a.m. we saved our little piece of history to the thumbdrive of destiny and I was home in bed by four. The directors would be handed our play at 8 a.m. and they'd have to cast it and stage it by 8 p.m.

Those poor bastards.

Unlike last year, I was spared the nervous tension of sitting in the audience waiting to see if the viewers liked what we'd produced. Instead, I sat at a wedding reception full of nervous tension while I waited for a text message to let me now if the audience liked what we'd produced. The open bar featuring Schlafly's Pale Ale and margarita's made with the always atrocious Montezuma tequila helped dull the anxiety. But eventually I got the call. The play was a success. The director was apparently brilliant and the actors were incredible. All was well.

So, thanks to my partner for putting up with all of my goofy ideas and for working with me to do something pretty cool. Thanks to the people who make the words on the paper entertaining. Thanks to the god Lorzod for accepting my sacrifice of 20 baby birds.

Now, if I can get the DVD of the evening, I can see for myself if it did indeed rock.