25th anniversary!

Right about now is the 25th anniversary of the production of Trip to Bountiful that I did with Ellen Burstyn in the lead.

That occurred to me the other day as I ready a monologue for the B'way production of To Kill a Mockingbird.  The EPA is tomorrow and I reserved a slot and will be there.  The monologue is the one I wrote for the audition for Bountiful . . . and writing that monologue changed three people's lives in a major way.

I believe I've written about this before, but I wrote the monologue about my grandfather, who was a farmer,  because I didn't have a regional piece to use for the audition.

So I sat down at a typewriter and wrote it (actually not sure if I wrote long hand first).  That monologue got me cast, which led to us finding Nyack (where Ellen lived) and got me into Equity.  It also woke me to the possibilities of writing, or, as Bette put it:  'See what happens when you write'.

So . . . for the past 25 years I've been applying myself to the writing craft.  I had written this or that, all along . . . short stories, poems, songs and such . . . but I didn't have the focus to keep it rolling.

For tomorrow's audition it seemed like a no brainer to use that monologue again. I kept it and knew exactly where it was . . . except it wasn't!  I was very upset, this was a keeper the one page typewritten (before we even had a pc) marked up sheet that I thought should be kept for 'posterity'.

To make long story short:  I eventually found it.  So onward.  We'll see if lightening can strike twice!