Anyway, the show runs a little over two hours with a ten-minute intermission. Here are the performances, all at Provo Theatre Company at 105 E. 100 N. in Provo:

• Thursday, April 10th @ 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, April 11th @ 6:00 p.m.
• Friday, April 11th @ 9:00 p.m.
• Saturday, April 12th @ 2:30 p.m.
• Saturday, April 12th @ 7:30 p.m.
• Monday, April 14th @ 7:30 p.m.

Several of the nights sold out at our last show, so I’d recommend buying or reserving your tickets in advance via the website. On Monday, by the way, you can get an FHE discount at $4 per person if you have a group of five or more. Lastly, make sure you show up ten to fifteen minutes before the performance starts to guarantee your seat.

For the curious, my play Safe and Sound is the second of the set, and Prodigal Son is last. (And even though I didn’t write it, Prodigal Son has its main character serve a mission to Thailand, so it totally gets extra bonus points.)

If you’re in the area, you should come! Every play in the set has never been performed before, which makes this a great chance to see new Mormon theatre — plays that don’t compromise our values and that are actually good, too.

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What I’m trying to say is that maybe it’s time for us to help change the world again. Look, I know it sounds arrogant to say that. I’m 24 years old, and the only times I can focus on theatre full-time are when I’ve saved up enough money to quit my day job for a few months. I mean, I don’t even have insurance — who am I to change the world? Who’s Katherine Gee or Ben Crowder? Who are any of the actors you’re going to see tonight? You know, most of them aren’t even trained actors. They’re just nice people who wanted to help us put on these plays. Who are we? Well, we’re Latter-day Saints. We’re people who have wrestled with some of life’s big and little issues and have been lucky enough to have help. We’re people who think and act a little differently than most of the country does. We’re people who know a little about God and a little about life. And we’re people who believe that’s enough to say something big. Are we going to make a difference? I hope so. And I take hope in history.

Beautiful. And let me just say again that I love New Play Project. It has the right feel to it (“right” being my own very subjective perspective, of course), and it’s just a really wonderful, beautiful, awesome thing. And it is changing the world. It’s not often that I find causes I really feel I can commit to and throw my lot in with full heart and soul, but New Play Project is one. I’m in it for the long haul. (Hopefully I’ll keep getting better as a playwright so that my plays keep getting accepted. ;)) I’ve already got ideas for a couple more plays I’ll be submitting to the remaining festivals this year, actually, and tonight I started outlining one of them.)

I’ll wait a few more days before I give another update on rehearsals for Safe and Sound and Prodigal Son, by the way. (And purely for the historical record, with respect to that quote from James’ essay, Katherine Gee acted in my first play, and she and I are now directing Prodigal Son. Which James wrote. There’s connections all over the place, folks.)

Anyway, New Play Project has definitely found a warm spot in my heart, and I really feel that it’s a movement that is going to make a difference and change the world. And it’s unmistakably part of the Mormon renaissance.

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Anyway, Prodigal Son is going to run about 45 minutes long — by far the longest play in the set — and so we’re rehearsing Monday through Friday for the next few weeks. It’s intense (not to mention that the actors need to be off-book by next Wednesday), and I still really have no idea what I’m doing as far as the directing goes, but I’m diving in headfirst and we’ll see how it turns out.

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Anyway, it’s been interesting to see how the play’s evolved so far. Originally it was about two guys, Dave and Martin. Dave’s dad had died. In the second draft, it was Martin’s dad who’d died. Then we had auditions, and not enough guys showed up, so we ended up casting a girl as Martin. That of course meant rewriting the script so it would work with a girl in that role. On Thursday we had a full company meeting and read through all the scripts, which was the first time I’d heard the new rewrite read aloud. I’d written the new draft pretty hastily, and the ending was fairly pathetic, so earlier today I rewrote the script once again, completely redoing the beginning and ending, and touching up the middle section as well. And now I’ve learned something new about Dave’s dad (I needed a reason Dave was close to Abbie’s dad — Abbie is Martin’s name now, though it was Gwendolyn in the last draft and it could very easily change in the next draft).

Writing really is a discovery process for me. I feel like I’m unearthing pre-existing characters and situations, not inventing them. It sounds weird, but that’s really how it is. And it’s awesome.

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Here’s one bit I loved:

If you are an artist, regardless of your religion, everything you do is your witness. You cannot hide what you are. Emerson said, “What you are speaks so loudly over your head that I cannot hear what you say.”

And another:

The writer cannot write just when he feels like it or he won’t have anything to write with. Like the violin, he has to be constantly tuned and practiced on. This can sometimes be very hard on husband or family, but it’s absolutely essential. My family has with the utmost forbearance and patience put up with innumerable saucepans, the bottoms of which are permanently speckled from burned vegetables. Last year it was peas, and this year I seem to have switched to string beans. I not only burn dinner when I dash to the typewriter to set down just one more sentence, I’m also given to excitement and enthusiasm far beyond the dignity of my position of somebody who’s past the half-century mark.

Yesterday I wrote more of “The Widow and the Wizard” story (and learned to my surprise who the witch really was — not at all what I’d been thinking all along), and right now I’m revising my play Safe and Sound (auditions are today and tomorrow).

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• Tuesday, March 11: 5:00–7:00 p.m. in D-341 HFAC
• Wednesday, March 12: 7:00–9:00 p.m. in F-430 HFAC

Everyone’s free to try out — you don’t have to have any previous acting experience — so if you’re interested even just a little bit, here’s your chance. (And it really is a lot of fun.)

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The funny thing is, I almost sort of knew it would (and that Alchemy wouldn’t) in advance. I’m not sure how, but I wasn’t surprised at all. I suppose part of it is that I’m a lot better at writing humor than I am at writing straight drama, and Safe and Sound has a lot of humor — it’s a comedic drama — whereas Alchemy has almost none. And it makes a difference.

I’m actually glad that Alchemy didn’t get accepted, now that I think about it. I do want to write “serious” stuff, sure, but for me it seems to work out best when I sprinkle on the humor. And I don’t really mind being a humorist; if I’m known for writing funny plays, that’s fine by me.

I’m interested to see, though, if any of this leaks over into my other writing. It’s looking like I tend towards humor and fantasy. Which is also fine by me. (But I do plan to sharpen my skills in other areas, because I don’t want to pigeonhole myself. And being better at serious drama and realistic fiction and whatnot will make my comedies and my fantasy work better.)

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Speaking of right before the deadline, I wrote most of the second play, Safe and Sound, in the hour before midnight. (Backstory: I went to the library Saturday afternoon and checked out some Jorge Luis Borges. On my walk home, I decided I wanted to write about something verging on supernatural. While Safe and Sound doesn’t actually have any supernatural happenings, it’s about that.) Granted, I spent a couple hours over the past few days freewriting and thinking about the play, and then earlier this evening I spent an hour writing a quick draft of what was originally the first scene, so it wasn’t completely done in this last hour. But most of it was. It’s been a madcap dash to the finish line, and again, I wish I’d had some time to revise. Oh well. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

And I’m getting excited for Script Frenzy next month.

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