Dec 10, 2011

Striped shirt like Pud...


So the good news, first off, is that EndTime Productions' NAKED HOLIDAYS (which includes my short play RUDNICK: THE CANDLE-HEADED BOY) has totally sold out the first three performances! So, hazzah for those guys! Wish I could make up to NYC to see the show - I missed it the first time they did RUDNICK in 2009 - but no can do. I'm treading water grading papers this December since I've been a working man this past "semester."

In my tiny moments of creative productivity, I've been closing in on the next piece of my master opus... a new one-act I'm currently calling RASPBERRY FIZZ. And it is so fun.

I had a few images in my head: a kid dressed like a the little boy in old Dubble Bubble gum comics (his name was Pud) who never stands still. A sort of street corner con man dressed in a flamboyant vest. A girl who refuses to give up a newspaper. A mysterious cardboard box.

I spun all those together and placed the piece in 1949, right at the cusp of summer and autumn when the afternoons stretch on so magically long and imperceptibly turn into evening. A street in a small Maryland town. Two characters right on the edge of adolescence, with all the expectations of growing up right there at their feet, stretching out before them.

I wrote the never-still kid role for my friend Jeff Swearingen and he took it to Andy Baldwin, a good local director. We submitted it to a local theatre festival and will find out if it gets in in another week or two. If so, I'll show next March. If not, I'll find a way to mount it myself through Audacity in the future... maybe this summer or next fall. It is not quite done, but close and, wonderfully, it continues to be a really fun project to work on.

And that is always something to shoot for... fun.

UPDATE: [Dec. 19, 2011] Just got word a few days back that RASPBERRY FIZZ is officially accepted into the 2012 Out of the Loop Fringe Festival presented by the Water Tower Theatre of Addison, Texas. It will play in early March. I'll post more info as it comes in.

No comments:

Post a Comment