I Write Plays.

So, I've been writing this play for the past couple weeks and it's going pretty well. In doing so though I curiously peeked through some of my old plays, it's fun to see what themes reappear over and over no matter what phase of your life you are in. And since I've been googling so much, I decided to google the two that were produced and see if they had any internet life. Little did I know I had been reviewed!! Twice!!
Although I take issue with comments like "some of the problems are with the script" I am very swept off my feet type way to be compared to Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie and also to have my plotlines compared to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Because those are two of my favorite plays.
I'm posting these reviews only because I never knew they existed and my mom will be proud. Please resist the urge to make fun of me for hauling out my college achievements, dusting them off and putting them on display. I'm also posting them since I have been accused of being secretive about my writing and some of you have asked me what exactly it is I write about. This is pretty much it. I do agree with the review, I tend to "Speechify" but, SO? I like speeches.
Oh come on, I've read all your reviews, just indulge me.

Directions to the Moon is an open-wound drama by Webster undergraduate, Brooke Allen. An ambitious piece, it features a grown brother and sister who reunite for their father's funeral. **** is Alison, the raw nerve-exposed sister, exasperated by the mild manner of her brother Jack. ***** plays Frank Darby, the next-door neighbor unwittingly drawn into a Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf-type scene with Alison.
The family has a secret we are curious to discover, but we get sidetracked by too much exposition. The playwright has a good handle on group dynamics and writes well-paced dialogue. She uses three prominent wooden swings to good theatrical effect. The swings, in fact, function as mute characters. When Allen allows the audience to put two and two together, the play works, but she needs to resist the impulse to have characters speechify.
Alison's unremitting intensity can be overwhelming. Her antagonism starts at a high pitch and this leaves her nowhere to go. Part of the problem is in the script, but the actor and director might have mitigated the effect. Alison's rage tends to grind down Darby, but the actor manages to hold his own. ***** handles the role of Jack skillfully, but there is not enough depth to a character whose facade suggests that still waters run deep. I'd like to see more of Jack's vices.
Directions to the Moon, directed by *****, contains poignant moments reminiscent of Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie. Little vignettes tap us on the shoulder and release the lock on some of our own childhood memories. We need more silent spaces to contemplate. This college senior's play shows great promise and with more fine-tuning, can deliver even greater impact.

So, yes, parts of that play were a little over the top. I wrote the first draft of that play in one night and turned it in face down and beat red with embarrassment because I thought it was crap. But everyone really seemed to like it. The actors were really good and the set was awesome. It was pretty dark and twisted. Whenever I am far into the process of one script I like to begin another one that deals with similar subject matter but at an entirely different approach. So while this "open wound drama" was being performed I surrounded myself with old fifties movies and smiles and rainbows and wrote the next play...

Beneath These Umbrellas, by Brooke Allen, takes us back to a more literal universe, where two strangers meet on a city street in the rain; one is a fugitive bridesmaid and the other is escaping a funeral. They begin with small talk that develops into conversation and flirtation and connection and possibly relationship. This piece shares with *****(other play in festival) a preoccupation with the mysteries of human connectedness, but it explores the matter in a largely prosaic and linear fashion, and the characters and their interplay are very likeable. It's a sunny piece, really, with the rainy atmospherics providing a nice contrast.

Yeah, the guy in that picture went on to be in some soap opera for a while. That play was sweet. In the end they overhear a couple fighting in an apartment building above them and then suddenly all these mens clothes and possessions come falling out of the sky on top of them as the man gets kicked out. That's the last time I ever write an elaborate prop/set idea...I heard that one night nothing fell, and one night it was like, just a shoe...and one night it all fell too early. Oh well, live theatre I guess. Either way, everyone kept telling me that these characters had to end uptogether and I was like, "Forget it." Cause I'll never be THAT sunshiny.

Anyway, this is the thing I love to do. While you are all acting, and directing and performing in bands, and writing awesome plays and designing costumes and making things and doing things...this is my thing. I love it a lot so I thought I would start talking about it more and sharing it more and, frankly, doing it more. Sometimes I'm so deeply rooted into whatever it is that I'm writing about that I don't really like to talk about it until I have less of an immediate connection to it. However, I'm going to try and be better about sharing it in the future since I am actually proud of it. I feel very vulnerable and skinless when other people read my stuff, unlike my friends David and Philip who are always really confident and eager to present their work. I suppose my biggest fear is that I will have built myself up and then someone will say, "Oh, that's it? That wasn't very good." But I suppose none of my friends would say that...since that would be pretty mean.

Anyway, I don't want to speechify. So from now on I'll just let you guys decide.