THE RED HOUSE MONSTER was this past Saturday, and it KILLED. I was so honored to be one of the artists involved with the night of theater presented by the San Francisco Olympians Festival this past Saturday (11/15).
THE RED HOUSE MONSTER was the first play up for the evening, and I was super nervous. I tend to write more comedic plays, and so I didn't no how to gauge the audience's reaction without laughter. Mind you, there was a few laughs, but it wasn't constant, and it's probably best that it wasn't. I did get a few gasps though, and people were leaning in quite a bit. And after I had a lot of folks come up to me, most of them strangers, and tell me how creepy and good it was. So yay! I can't take all the credit though, I had a FANTASTIC director, Ariel Craft. Ariel makes such strong choices and it shows in all the plays I've seen her direct. It was exciting to see her work up closer, and because of the short time frame we had to work with, I got to see her on super-fast-get-stuff-done mode, which was impressive beyond words. Needless to say, I hope very much that I get a chance to work with Ariel again!
Also, my cast. My cast rocked it out the house. I had Megan Briggs, Jan Gilbert, Maria Leigh, Eden Neuendorf, and Ron Talbot, and like Ariel, I can't work to work with ALL of these folks again. They did so much work for me in such a short period of time, and the really did a beautiful job bringing these characters to life.
So huge thank you'd to Ariel, and all the lovely folks in my cast.
And then, we got to share the evening with a brand new play by Veronica Tjioe based on the Minotaur, THE STRING'S THE THING. It was wonderful to share the night with such a thoughtful, funny, smart play. I loved Veronica's approach to her monster, and her cast, Kelvyn Mitchell, Sunee Kiernan, and Gabrielle Poccia, was charming and hilarious.
I found it interesting that as different as our plays were, they really went well together. They seem to speak to one another through metaphor, or perhaps through their opposing styles, and this conversation created one of the finest nights of theater that I've ever been a part of.
In the end, Geryon had met his match, and Veronia won my pie, but it was a fantastic night of theater, and we entertained the hell out of a whole room full of people, so what more can I really ask?
HUGE thank you to artistic director Stuart Bousel for letting me come back to the festival and write again, and the tremendous amount of work he puts in to make the festival possible. Also thank you Jeremy Cole, Cody Rishell, Victoria Larkowich, and Linda Huang. You guys make an incredible team, and you've put on one hell of a festival!
And the festival is still going! There are four more readings this week. For info about the yet-to-be-seen plays visit http://www.sfolympians.com/!
Hooray for theater!