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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Drying out

After the torrential rains and horrific flooding of the last two weeks, it was nice to get together last night and remind ourselves why we're put on this earth: to make great theatre.

We had a healthy turnout. At least everyone looked pretty fit. There were 21 attendees, including one new writer, two actors who officially joined (a mother and teenage daughter--our youngest member yet!) and two more actors who were just trying us out.

We opened the evening with the beginning of Jess Weaver's new memory play Georgie's on my Mind. The play is about a troubled young woman who befriends an elderly stroke victim. Everyone loved how the transitions back to the past were handled, with the nursing home staff ripping off their scrubs to reveal the spangly costumes of their long-ago soul-singing counterparts underneath.

We followed that with the beginning of our newest writer Grant Swenson's full-length comedy And Your Little Dog Too. It's an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz from Toto's viewpoint, only in this version, Toto is a laid-back beatnik-type. It had a lot of humor, and the bickering between the two munchkins was particularly humorous.

Next up was the 2nd half of Tim Phillips' one-act teenage relationship drama Never Said. The characters were again well-drawn, but the consensus was that the resolution was too ambiguous. It wasn't clear why Seth never pursued the girl he loved or whether he loved her at all.

We wrapped up with a rewrite from the middle section of my cocktail party farce Butterfly Effect. I dump some good stuff to make the story work. Unfortunately, the result was overly talky and unfunny. Ashley Crockett was particularly adamant that she wants to see more frantic behavior and physical comedy throughout.

The renovations at the MAT won't be done in time for our next meeting, so we'll be getting together one last time at Black Box Theatre. We'll be back on our regular schedule, with the meeting falling on Monday, October 14. See you then!