Post Mortem

Maybe should have done this sooner, but it has been a pretty crazed week and I sort of wanted to take a bit of a breath after the run up to and the performances of Like a Sack of Potatoes.

It was a pleasure to do. A ton of work, but that's what it takes if you expect to be operating on any kind of professional level. All three performances were amazing from my perspective. As often happens they had their distinctly different aspects, including audience response. The first night there was more laughter the second more listening . . . the third was the smallest of the bunch (Sunday evening after all), so it was hard to track the tenor but they all really really liked the experience.

The challenge from an actors point of view, is to avoid the trap of trying to please an audience based upon what they are or aren't giving you. Just because they are quiet doesn't mean they aren't engaged, and pushing the performance to compensate is deadly. You dance with them that brung you; you trust the work that you've done and carry on . . . and spin your web.

So. Onward.

Spent the week working on Happy Days with Bette and my new play . . . with a title now: Writers Block. We're presenting a reading of it in May so I have work to do . . . but it's a pleasure to be thinking like a writer again, not just an actor.

I had to take Tuesday evening off as far as shlepping in for the Fringe Playwrights Unit. Three trips into the city is enough for the week and I needed to kick back a bit.

As to Writers Block: total reconstruction mode. The first draft got it down on paper/screen; figured out the story and how it ended . . . but as often is the case, since I tend to write in bursts, there were things that were redundant or that completely contradicted something earlier in the play . . . what I start off with evolves in the process and by the time I get to the end of draft one I look back at the beginning and have to figure out how to make it work to get to what I came up with for an ending.

So that's where I am now . . . going through it line by line, deleting, rewriting. And when I get to the end I'll have another look and see how it holds up . . . take some pages into the workshop and hear it read. By late May I will be ready.