Well, last night was AWESOME!
Last night was the reading of RIPPED at The Road Theatre Company‘s Summer Playwrights Festival 10, and fun was had by all, especially the playwright typing up this blog post.
The reading was incredible, my director, Lauren Murphy Yeoman, made such smart choices with the staging aspect, which gave the audience a taste at the physicality of the play without sacrificing the language, because after all, the actors were still all on book. And my actors! Oh, the actors were nuanced and complex, and I just want to put them all in my pocket for future projects. Monique Gelineau played Lucy, quite a challenging role, especially with only 2 or 3 rehearsals, Chase Cargill played Jared, Ben Theobald played Bradley, and we had Christine Joelle read my stage directions.
After a great performance we opened up to the audience for a talk-back, lead by The Road Theatre's Ann Hearn Tobolowsky. It's so gratifying to sit in a talk back and hear how much an audience was grabbed by your work, and that's just what happened last night. We had a really thoughtful conversation about the subjects in the play, one that felt like it could have gone on all night.
Oh! Huge bonus was getting to meet several Twitter playwright buds who made the journey out for the reading to meet me and see my work performed:
Huge thank you to Sharai Bohannon, who has a play on Saturday in the festival at 2pm (and came all the way from Chicago!). Find out about her reading of CRAIGSLISTED here! I SO wish I was still in town to catch it, so if you are in town, do me a favor and go and see it in my stead.
Also thank you Stephanie Alison Walker, a brilliant playwright that I've gotten to know through New Play Exchange and Twitter. Her play FRIENDS WITH GUNS was in The Road Theatre's 2018/19 season, and is SO FREAKING GOOD! You should go read it immediately. As well as all of her work.
And a huge thank you to Jennie Webb, a powerhouse dramaturg and playwright. Jennie is a resident at Theatre Botanicum, and co-founded the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative. She also has a play in the festival, INTO THE GOBPILE (Saturday at 8pm!), which I would also love for everyone to go and see for me.
Meeting all three of them face to face, and getting to chat with them in a non-electronic manner totally made my night.
Thank you to everyone at The Road Theatre Company for selecting my work for this festival, it has been an amazing experience! Crossing my fingers I get to work with them again, because they are the whole package for sure.
And now to fly home!
Thanks California, see you soon soon soon!