Producing a Play! Chapter 18

So where am I? Yes so we had a theater, my girlfriend and I but no play. My friend ,who was going to direct us and whose other original play I had done, said he had an idea of another play he was looking to was based on his relationship with his ex- girlfriend.

The idea for the play was about a working class guy going with a Harvard graduate. Well, my relationship with my present girlfriend and actress, that was doing the play with me ,was similar to his. Now remember, we were scheduled to open in 4 weeks. So the 3 of us sat around for a couple of days and plotted it out. When I say a couple of days , I don't mean average working days , I mean about 36 of the 48 were working on the structure of the play.

It was just 2 characters so that was an advantage at this point. Then we would improve each one of the scenes over and over with a tape recorder until it not only made sense but was dramatic and humorous. After 10 days of doing this, we had what we thought was a fairly good play as long as the acting held up. But if you thought that was the hard part , you would be wrong.

Now we had to get some kind of a set together. We were able to get a little help but every day after rehearsal we would hammer and saw building the set. My partner worked on getting the flyers together and the publicity. My director from Zoo Story came in to stage manage. I had never worked so hard in my life. That includes my time in the Navy when I would goof off every chance I had but now I was in command so to speak and success and failure depended on me.