What: Childlight When: Wednesday, Oct 21, 5:00pm Where: Pardoe Theater (in the HFAC) How much: Free

The play is a fantasy, set partly in our world but mostly in another. There’s magic and humor and that’s about all I’m going to say. :)

A short history of the play: it began a couple semesters ago as a one-act play for one of the BYU playwriting classes. I revised it a couple times in that class, then extended it into a full-length for the next semester. It got accepted into the WDA program at the beginning of this semester and I’ve been rewriting it ever since. (I think we’re on draft 11 or 12 by now, all told.) The play has had six or seven names at this point, including Return, Checkmate, Gridlock, and Man of Cloth. (I’m still planning to use “Man of Cloth” for something someday.) (And no, I don’t mind if you steal it. :))

Anyway, I’m mostly just glad to be done with it, since for the last three weeks I’ve gotten up every Monday at an unholy hour (either midnight or 2:00) and written all night/morning. I miss my sleep. ;)

Now I just need to try to remember how to write good plays…

Anyway, all that isn’t the point of this post. I just called their London office (via Skype, which was way cheaper than AT&T’s rates) and listened to a recording of a lovely sounding English girl, then talked with a guy with an equally delightful accent. And oh my word, I am head over heels in love with British accents of all varieties. I don’t know why they tug on my heartstrings so hard, but listening to British people talk is like listening to Itzhak Perlman. When the Seatwave guy told me he wasn’t sure they could move my Wicked ticket, it didn’t matter what he was saying — I just wanted him to keep talking. (He was a pretty nice chap, though. He’s sending an email to the ticket provider to see what they can do.) And I think I fell in love with the girl on the recording.

All of which is a very long way to say that I’m über-excited for my trip (less than two weeks!) and will be very, very tempted to just shred my return ticket, find a flat and a job, and stay there. :) (You think I’m kidding.)

See, I had an epiphany earlier this week. In Creative Writing, Brandon Sanderson said we need to take three or four ideas and slam them together. And in that moment I realized my problem: I’ve been trying to sustain a whole novel or full-length play on a single idea.

One idea is great for a short play or short story, but for something longer, you need more meat. All sorts of possibilities are opening up to me now, not to mention confidence that I can actually write this full-length play (80–120 pages) for my playwriting class and this new novel (4000 words/week, or 260 pages by semester’s end, which’ll be about half of the book) for Brandon’s class. I’m giddy. :)

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. :)

That said, I wrote the script in an hour with hardly any planning beforehand (I got the idea in the shower, got out, dried off, and promptly sat down and wrote it all out right then) and never actually revised it (contrast that with my last play, “Tree of Blood,” which I rewrote 15 or 16 times). And I only went to one rehearsal. (Rehearsals are usually where I see what needs to be rewritten, thus their importance.) As a result, there were some things I didn’t get to change about the play that I now wish I could have (tightening it up a bit, giving the characters a named homeland and culture instead of the ambiguous one they had, reword a few lines here and there), but that’s just life. :)

Oh, and I’m happy to announce that this is the first time I didn’t place in the top three! (My last three plays all got third place.) This sounds kind of weird, I realize, and you might think I’m asking for sympathy or pity or something, but I’m not. I’ve been hoping that my winning streak would end because I was starting to take it for granted, and that assumption is a quick recipe for laziness in writing and complacency. I needed to know that a third-place finish was not guaranteed, so that I keep striving for excellence in my craft and all that.

Speaking of which, I’ll keep writing plays, but I plan to switch gears here and focus much more heavily on fiction (short stories and novels).

• Friday, Dec 5 @ 7:30pm
• Saturday, Dec 6 @ 2:30pm
• Saturday, Dec 6 @ 7:30pm
• Monday, Dec 8 @ 7:30pm
• Friday, Dec 12 @ 7:30pm
• Saturday, Dec 13 @ 2:30pm
• Saturday, Dec 13 @ 7:30pm
• Monday, Dec 15 @ 7:30pm

The show runs a little over two hours long, with a ten-minute intermission dissecting the first three plays from the last four. (Mine’s second to last, though it could possibly change, seeing as we’ve still got tech/dress rehearsal for it tonight.)

Anyway, tickets are $6 ($5 for students/seniors/educators, and $4 on Mondays with groups of 5 or more). If you’re in the area, you should come see it. :)

The performances were amazing — Ben King did a magnificent job playing a handful of different roles (and the masks added immensely to the creepiness), and Rachel Baird (who was in my ward last year, incidentally) was thoroughly convincing as the governess. And I loved the ambiguity littered throughout the play, the way so much was left unsaid so we could fill in the rest in our imaginations. (As previously mentioned, my imagination is just the tiniest bit hyperactive. ;))

Anyway, I want to read the original novella now…but I’m thinking I might need to give myself a break from ghost stories and the ilk, at least for the time being. :)

Tuesday, October 28, 7:00–9:00pm @ F430 HFAC (BYU campus) Wednesday, October 29, 7:00–9:00pm @ F430 HFAC (BYU campus) Thursday, October 30, 7:00–9:00pm @ UVU campus (room TBA)

If you’d like to get involved in the production in another capacity, by the way, feel free to email me. There’s plenty of room for volunteering. :)