Fans, it seems like my fate may lay solely in the hands of my play Green, about a soldier just returned from Iraq whose gun and cigarette happen to talk to him. This play is three years old, and is just starting to use its words and ride bikes.
Blurb:
When Clint returns from Iraq to his strangely liberal bible belt college community, Alex, his Bush-trash talking best friend, and Rhea, Alex’s confused and beautiful girlfriend await him with baited breath. Clint wants to settle back down into normal life, but his memories of his experiences at war make this adjustment harder for him than he ever anticipated. Green is a fresh look at the high price of service, using magical realism and an amorous anthropomorphized fire-arm.
Something like that.
Lil’ Green has had quite the life: produced (as our first production ever) by WMC in 2004 – read in NYU’s HotINK festival of New Plays 2007 – finalist for the Tennesee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival 2007 – semi – finalist for ONeill Playwright’s conference 2007 – National Finalist, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival 2007 – and now the Kendeda thing, through Atlanta’s Alliance theater – with a reading presented in conjuction with SPF and Fox Theatricals.
What I need to remember about this play is that I wasn’t thinking when I wrote it. That shows, yes, for sure – lots of things in it sort of lack poor planning, but: I had no agenda. I was just having fun and wrestling with something that confused/intrigued me. I think this is the correct way to enter a first draft, with no calculation. Maybe?
The agency I have been a-courtin for sometime is trying to find the ‘money project’ that might come from these stubby fingers – something I muster up in down time, some dramaplay fed by cheap white wine, white girl angst and a delightful, whimsical perspective on humanity.
It might be Green. It wasn’t You may Go Now, it wasn’t Walls – maybe – I hope – please – it will be this. The guy who’s directing a reading of it through the Alliance Theater Kendeda reading series – Rajendra Maharaj – an amazing director who’s working at the Goodman – is represented by this Agency, and is going to get them in the door to see it. Le Yay! I feel like pants need to be wowed until they are off.
People, I feel pressure. The good kind that makes impromptu birthday cakes happen in the span of two hours; the kind that makes your heart race and your product good.
I feel this is my chance to blow it, or not blow it. Over the next week, I will be squeezing writey time between work and babysitting to re-enter this story, find the humanity, make it fresh. Perhaps the gun and the cigarette will make out. Perhaps someone will monologue about oil prices, perhaps I will channel three years ago, and the things I then felt. I think it’s actually a story about comfort, and feeling comfortable in ignorance – I think it’s about home? We shall see.
In conclusion, I have decided that everything is important – nothing is no big deal.