I spend so much time at Rockin’ Crepes writing now that I have a nickname: “The Professor”. There’s a waitress there who puts it on my check when she brings it by. The other night they didn’t even bring a menu, they just asked: “what kind of latte you want?”
I have a ritual that dates back to the first one-act play I finished – on any substantial script, I always make sure to note a) the date on which I wrote the first real, non-outline-y pages, b) every city or between-city conveyance (plane, train, etc.) in which I added pages, and c) the completion date of every draft.
It would be too overwhelming to subdivide such a list into all the different cafes that have become writing haunts for me. But since a couple of months back when I made it a mission to finally finish this damned play, many of its pages have appeared over a latte at Rockin’ Crepes.
Because of this ritual, I know that I wrote the first pages of this play (the title, by the way: Public Speaking) were written here in Huntington Beach on September 27th, 2007. I had been carrying fragments of the idea around with me for longer than that – in fact, I think some of the inspirations involved date all the way back to college.
And I can now announce that last night, February 6th, 2012, after so many other projects and distractions and life events, I have finished the first draft. That waitress offered me a high-five on her way by the table as I packed up the laptop. She didn’t even know why. Must have been in the air.
It’s not a long script – 61 pages. That probably translates to about a 70-minute production. Even if I add to it, it’s never likely to run more than 75, which is fine; I don’t think this play is supposed to be longer. It makes it a strange fit for the stage, and I think pairing it with a one-act or even a 10-minute “appetizer” might be the way to justify asking people to get in their cars, drive out, and buy a ticket for the theater.
These are some of the most difficult pages I have ever had to dredge out of my brain. There’s something undeniably important about this story to me, and yet I worry that it could actually be morbidly dull. There are no deaths, no falling kingdoms, no one falls in love, there are no wacky situations or high histrionics, no magical or fantastical breaches of reality, and the very premise of the play hinges on something that is generally a no-no in the theater. I like to think there are a couple of epiphanies that mean a great deal, and a bit of theatricality, but for the most part this is a quiet piece about lonely people trying to connect and deal with their private sadnesses, and it’s not easy because it isn’t really, is it?
But as Adam wisely said to me the other night, you need a little faith. I have written enough scripts at this point to have good technique. As to whether this idea will resonate, well, if it mattered this much to me, that must mean there’s a very good chance it will matter to someone else, right? That’s why we do this thing at all, isn’t it?
It’s most interesting because the play is about teachers. You know how they say some owners and pets start to look like one another, and you don’t know who made the first move? I don’t think it’s so one-sided as writers putting themselves into a story. The story puts something back into the writer. Where did it come from? That’s the mystery.