I
spent months brainstorming plots for my one-act. Months. As in, last August, when I decided I really, really, really wanted to be accepted into the 2015 OSU
Spring One-Act Festival, I began a journal based solely upon potential one-act
ideas. I must have brainstormed hundreds of different topics ranging from
stupid comedies about couples fighting over how to cut bell peppers properly to
dramas in which mental illness was personified. But, when it finally came time
to actually write my one-act, I came-up blank. Try as I did, nothing really
seemed to stick. I spent hours on scripts only to discard them in their
entireties. It was ridiculously frustrating. I began to come down to the wire
and continued to come-up empty-handed when one fateful shower changed
everything.
I
don’t know what it was about that shower in particular. Perhaps the water was
just the right temperature, or the pressure perfectly appeasing. Maybe it was
the new body wash I had just cracked open. Regardless of reason, somewhere
between shampooing and conditioning, Kirby appeared. Well… Sort of. I mean, he
wasn’t actually named Kirby yet and I didn’t really know much about his
history, but for some reason I began to think, “Huh. You know what’d be funny?
A little speechless character who was obsessed with toast.” Wait—what?
Approximately .67 seconds after the thought originally popped into my head my
rational side caught-up and decided the idea was completely and utterly
asinine. However, the little inkling of a character was relentless and I
couldn’t stop thinking about him. Later, I approached my boyfriend and
mentioned my experience. He began asking me more specific details about the
character and, before I knew it, Kirby was named, had a defined personality and
was a bona fide cult member! Go figure. The next thing I knew, I had a fairly
solid plot and enough inspiration to again work-up the nerve to try to write
another one-act.
Obviously,
this last attempt went better than those previous. I was amazed by how quickly
I was able to develop all four of my characters and how each one really told me
what direction to take the plot. The whole story developed pretty effortlessly
and writing it turned out to be a very enjoyable process. I still had one major
hurdle, however: I thought the one-act was sort of funny, but would my peers agree?
Thanks
to the lovely talents of my fellow playwrights, Amanda, Taylor, and Burke, my
script was brought to life in class the following Monday. All three of my
classmates cold read like pros and the entire class lent their awesome insights and suggestions as to how to improve on my work. After multiple drafts and a
huge amount of assistance and encouragement from friends and family, I finally felt
I had a manuscript I was ready to submit. I was overjoyed when the directors
laughed when we first read the submissions aloud, and ecstatic when I learned
Anna Mahaffey had accepted my work!
So,
what comes next? I’m really looking forward to the coming leg of my one-act
journey. Anna’s extremely creative and a joy to work with, so I’m completely
stoked to learn what fantastic new ideas she’ll have for the script. I’m also
super excited to cast this sucker! I can’t wait to see what sort of unique perspectives
the actors will have on each individual role. It’s exciting that The Mark is no longer solely my work,
but, rather, beginning to take the shape of a collective effort. I look forward
to discovering what sort of twists and turns our upcoming one-act journey will
take and experiencing the trials and tribulations we will encounter along the
way. Stay tuned!
Elise
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