This coming Thursday, May 30, at 7:30 p.m., my 10-minute play, Going Up, will be read by actors and presented to the public as part of the South Simcoe Theatre’s (SST) Four Play: A Showcase of Play Readings.
This is a wonderful thing for a playwright. It is also somewhat nerve racking. Both can exist at the same time.
It is with nervous excitement I look forward to my characters, Philip and Jean, having their 10 minutes of fame. Writing plays and stories can be a solitary thing. It is also an opportunity to create imaginary friends in imaginary circumstances.
It is exciting to move these imaginings into the real world, in the hope they will be welcomed by an audience.
Play writing relies primarily on dialogue to tell a story, where description of landscapes and settings give the fiction writer an opportunity to narrate the story. Characters in a play tell the story as it is presented in real time, with an immediate audience reaction. Sets and other design elements fill out the play and add to it in a full production. These are not part of a play reading.
Someone reading a book can react immediately, putting it down and walking away or spending hours reading it from cover to cover. The author doesn’t experience that.
When a playwright is sitting in an audience to hear a play read or performed, they experience the reaction or, worse, no reaction.
As I say that, I confess I have also been a little terrified by positive reactions. In 2014, New Theatre of Ottawa, under the artistic direction of John Koensgen, chose my play, Buying Time, for the 2014 Extremely Short New Play Festival Nov. 19 to 30. This was thrilling and somewhat surreal for someone who lives a somewhat solitary life.
This professional production took place at the Arts Court Theatre in Ottawa. Buying Time is one of 10 plays presented each of the 15 performance times.
What was particular about this also was that the festival was reviewed by three publications, and Buying Time received positive comments from the Ottawa Citizen, On Stage Ottawa, and Capital Critics Circle. I was rather dismayed by the positivity.
I credit Christina Luck and the SST Four Play readings for prompting me to write my first play. It had been floating in my mind for some time and I happened to meet Luck while I was making costumes for the Blackhorse Village Players Theatre in Tottenham. She knew I wrote other things and asked if I’d ever written a play. I took the question and answered it by writing a play, Of Mice and Men (apologies to John Steinbeck), that made it into the 2013 showcase.
It is affirming to know a play is chosen by people with as much extensive experience and knowledge of plays as the folks at SST.
Going Up was originally conceived and workshopped at the Newmarket National 10 Minute Play Festival in 2020. Unfortunately, the festival was unable to continue operation due to fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
That festival and others like it help to legitimize and popularize the 10-minute play. It is more difficult than it might first appear to write a play with a beginning, a middle and an end in that time frame. That, to me, is the beauty of it. I know it’s been suggested they could be extended, and that may be the case in some circumstances, but many life experiences that impact us take place in a short period of time. Just as a photo can tell a story in a snapshot of time. So, too, can a short play.
The lineup for this year’s Four Play includes plays of varying lengths. Each of the four presentation times involves a specific play or plays. For instance, Going Up is paired with A Few Minutes to Eternity by Ray Holmes.
I answered the call for submissions to SST’s play-reading showcase this year by submitting four short plays at the end of November 2023. The plays submitted did not have the names of the playwrights, to allow for an unbiased choice by the reading committee.
It was with great pleasure Going Up was chosen. It is my fourth play over about a 10-year span that has made it to the SST readings.
Once the reading committee selected the plays, a call for directors was put out and auditions were held. The plays are ‘lightly rehearsed’ to develop the voice of the characters and the director’s sense of the play’s story.
As a playwright, it is again both wonderful and a little nerve racking to give up a play to the interpretation of the actors and a director. It is the magic of theatre to produce something that is co-created. The script provides the bones, and others bring it to life. ‘Others’ include the audience.
An audience member and the audience collectively add to the story through experiencing it. Hearing the words of the playwright’s characters as thoughtfully presented can give people a sense of story that is intimate. The audience also has the opportunity to contribute to the development of a piece of theatre as the playwright may revise the play based on what seems to work and what doesn’t.
To become part of the story, I invite you to SST’s Four Play: A Showcase of Play Readings, May 30 to June 2. It is a pay-what-you-wish event, and tickets will be available at the door, 1 Hamilton St., Cookstown.
I am a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and four of my plays are available to purchase through the Canadian Play Outlet.
Rosaleen Egan is a freelance journalist, storyteller, and playwright. She blogs on her website, rosiewrites.com.
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