As you may have gathered from the last late-night post reflecting my predictions of the inevitable discovery of my colleague’s talent by Hollywood or what have you, and the subsequent benefits of that association/friendship I shall reap, her play went rather well.  As did all performances Wednesday and Thursday nights.  Thus, our second year “Ten Minute Play Festival” and most of ours’ first attempt at play-writing comes to successful completion.

There were some neat ones, some serious ones, some non-verbal ones and it was always fun throughout to ask “which one of my colleagues wrote this one?” and to be pleasantly surprised at the answer.

Anyone who knows of my history as a tour guide at Vimy Ridge would not be surprised to discover I was the playwright of “the one about the WW1 brothel.”  It turned out well!  It was serious against a backdrop of ridiculousness; drunken and horny soldiers, Brandon in drag as the “Madame” of the establishment, Ron successfully pulling off a full “under the slip” boob grope to an unsurprised and perfectly-deadpan French whore, Ashley.  And my two leads, Kyle & Paige, keeping the romance and escape plan serious and honest while all this other nonsense is going around them.

It’s so rewarding to see the words you’d written and rewritten and rewritten performed on stage with the help of a seasoned director who can make your vision appear, and extracting emotional responses you hadn’t even considered in the writing process. There’s also some interesting feeling about seeing the actors work hard at memorizing their lines and becoming these characters; putting in the effort so that they too, can make your vision a reality.

I hope I was able to do that for the two roles for which I was cast – one as a middle-aged strict Russian dance teacher, propositioned by two jocks who just really need to pass their ballet exam to make the football team, at whatever cost. 😉 – and Gracie, the teen dog who’s getting too old to play pretend with her dog-brother and her human mother who wants nothing more but to create the most beautiful Dog Wedding in history.

Whether it was that or Romeo learning to appreciate his wing-man, or an English teacher getting his funk back. Getting past  St. Peter into Heaven or curing his son from his own online game persona.  Buttoning down and finally applying for that first job at No Frills, or  watching the Tooth Fairy struggle to get the job done…it sure was nifty to see the talent and creativity of my colleagues’ brainboxes come to life.

Bravo, all!