Ben Crowder

This weekend I participated in the 2nd annual Student Slam with the Theatre Arts Conservatory up in Salt Lake (a high school for theatre students), and it was awesome. There were five of us playwrights (three from BYU and two from Salt Lake), five directors, and five actors per play.

So, Friday night we playwrights went up to the theater and received a packet containing the assigned title of our play along with headshots of our assigned actors. Mine was “Perfect Circle,” with five girls aged 14–17. I ended up writing about a string quartet of friends rehearsing to play at their recently deceased friend’s funeral. The writing went well enough at first, but then around 1:30 a.m. I panicked and lost all confidence in my concept. Luckily I got hold of myself and got back on track, and by 3:30 I had finished.

I then slept for a few hours, woke up, showered, revised the play one last time, and headed back up to Salt Lake to turn in the script at 9 a.m. We also met our director and actors there, which was exciting (and nerve-wracking, because I had no idea if my play was any good). For the rest of the day they rehearsed, and we playwrights went home and crashed. :)

Finally, at 8 p.m. we returned to Salt Lake and they performed all five plays to a sold-out house. We were nervous as heck to see how it would turn out, but it was so good. I was seriously impressed with my director and actors. They did an absolutely marvelous job with my script (especially considering they only had a few hours to rehearse and memorize), far surpassing my expectations, and it was worth all the middle-of-the-night panic and anxiety, one hundred percent. :)