Thursday, February 28, 2008

On fires and asses, and one being under the other.

So the Serious Moonlighting theatre group in Prince George is staging a reading of "Dinner and Drinks" tomorrow night.

As I understand, a "reading" involves a bunch of theatre types gathering together in room, sitting around with a copy of the script, and, you know, reading it. Except reading it out loud. And sort of acting while they're reading it.

Given the structure of the play itself (a bunch of people sitting around in a restaurant talking to each other) , a reading of the play is pretty the show, easily 95% of the show. There will probably be less food involved. And the waitress character probably won't move around so much. So that'll be different, but other than that, people sitting around talking, yeah, that's the play, in a nutshell.

I would have loved to have day-tripped up to PG to watch the reading, just to have the opportunity to see a bunch of other actors reading these lines. I know how they sounded when read by the group of 7 actors that *I* had on stage for the show last year, but different actors have different instincts, and the initial reading instincts are often different from the way a performance is gradually shaped over the months of rehearsal. So watching a dry a reading of a bunch of different actors would have been cool. Unfortunately, my car isn't really in road-tripping shape. So I'll have to sit this one out.

Having this reading, though (and seeing myself referred to in an email as "Williams Lake Playwright, Todd Sullivan") has sort of reminded me that I should get off my ass and do some sort of something as a follow-up. I mean, I do have a variety of writing projects on the go at the moment, and I have sort of bounced from one to the other lately, depending on what particular project appealed to me, but this moment does make me think I should maybe focusing on a new play. If only because it's really only been a play that has allowed me to feel any sort of success as a writer, and because it would be kind of cool to follow up with another sort of success as a writer.

And it's a lot easier for me to actually get a play from having-been-written stage to actually-doing-something-with-it stage, thanks to my involvement in the local theatre here. In can bring a script to the executive, say, "Hey, I want to do do this script," and very likely get a thumbs-up approval on it, unless they really hate the script. Or really hate me. Which has happened before.

Novels, on the other hand, mean shopping the product around from publisher to publisher, editor to editor, until someone says, "Yeah, okay, we'll do that." And then they sit on the book for two years before it goes out, and when it finally gets into bookstores, maybe 10 copies get sold, and those are just from friends and family. Which is sort of a sad prospect.

The novel writing still calls, though, even if the odds of success are slim-to-none. And I *have* been picking, little bit by little bit, at "Epiphanies". Which makes me feel pretty good. Even if it's only been little bits of work done on it.

But still, there's plays to write. And even though my intention after "Epiphanies" was to go back to editing work on "Waiting for a Miracle" I should probably distract myself with a little work on a play. Something. I mean, I've got three or four to choose from at this point. I could even work on them all, bit by bit. That wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

In retrospect, I've got very little to say here. All this "I should be writing more" crap has found its way out quite a lot in the last few months. I guess the reading was just yet another reminder, and it seemed like a fine excuse to blog, when I'd sort of neglected this space this past week.

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