To Catch a Play

I have often referred to my plays as unicorns. Rumor has it they exist, yet catching a performance is about as rare as seeing a mystical beast with a horn coming out of its forehead. The year 2010 was a great year for my plays with more productions than any other year. I am so grateful that there are teachers, students and publishers out there who find my plays appealing enough to spend hours working on them. The royalties trickle in, as do emails from students around the globe thanking me for putting words in their mouths. I have many folders of photos from these productions and videos of new plays in their formative stages. Yet of all these productions, I was only in the audience for one of them. So while I'm thrilled to have a loyal and appreciative audience, it gives my heart a slight pang to have missed out on the sheer exhilaration that comes with sitting amongst a group of strangers and hearing my words come alive. So you can imagine my thrill when I made my way through the cold and rain to Bayview Glen Prep School this evening and caught myself a unicorn!

"Apostrophe's" is one of my most popular plays, thanks partly to its vignette structure, gender flexible cast and minimal set requirements. I owe most of its success, however, to the incredible promotion it has received from its publisher, Theatrefolk. They have helped put my name on the high school theater map and I will forever be thankful for their support. I was so happy when, just the other day, I received a notice from Theatrefolk that Bayview Glen Prep School would be performing the play. I quickly Googled their location and am not ashamed to admit that I skipped joyously around my apartment when it turned out the school was only one bus ride away.

Were I to win the lottery, I would not plan extravagant trips to exotic locations, but rather theatrical vacations to any and every school producing one of my plays. On several occasions I have driven hours to see one of my plays and I have even hopped on an airplane. While I am excited to see how my words are interpreted (each play is entirely different every time), I am mostly inspired by the amount of camaraderie that fills each performance space. Over the years thousands of students have come together because of things I have written and there is nothing quite so overwhelming as being in the presence of all that support. Parents gather for cookies in the lobby, siblings scatter with programs in hand and the actors huddle together for last minute line readings. I have always said that in high school theater the process is far more important than the product, so it's the cookies, scatters and huddles that give what I do so much meaning. But when the production is also good... well, there's nothing quite as exciting!

The entire cast and crew of Bayview Glen's "Apostrophe's" blew me away. There was so much talent and enthusiasm up on that stage that it was mind boggling. And this was no high school performance either; it was fifth and sixth graders performing at a level far beyond their years. The amount of concentration that was required of them by their director showed that he has great trust in their abilities. And for good reason! There were so many great moments that it's nearly impossible to pick out any favorites, but some were so terrific that they deserve special mention.

Early in the play a group of students fall asleep in their desks and collapse to the floor. Every time I've seen the show the actors have fallen to the floor and then exited the stage when the scene was over and the lights had blacked out. For the first time (at least that I have seen) the director had the good sense to never go a blackout and, thus, keep the play moving at a brisk pace. This meant, however, that these actors were stuck on stage. On the floor. Asleep. For forty minutes. They are eventually revived toward the end, but it must have been a long wait there on the stage without being able to move. Yet they did it beautifully. And I am not being sarcastic in the least. If anyone says it's difficult to speak on stage, I tell them to go up there and say nothing. They learn pretty quickly that concentrating when there is "nothing to do" is much harder than it looks. I was so impressed that the director asked this of his cast and even more so that they were up to the challenge. This was one hell of an acting exercise and they passed with flying colors.

One of the characters is an English teacher who is exasperated by his students and their lack of respect for punctuation. I based the character on my eleventh grade English teacher, Mr. Sully, who would occasionally get into a lather whenever a semi-colon was used out of turn. I thought this was hilarious at the time, so it was just a matter of time before he ended up in one of my plays. I had some of the funniest (and craziest) high school teachers you can imagine and have often mined them for comedy. But this play came before I started disguising their identities, so to Mr. Sully: It's all out of love. Anyways, the young man playing Mr. Sully was so funny that I had to stop myself from bursting into a distracting guffaw several times. I was truly disappointed when his scene was over because he had the audience in the palm of his hand. Later in the play (and this shows you how often I have looked at it), I was pleased to find out that Mr. Sully returns and is integral to the play's resolution. I can't believe I forgot how the play ended, but it was written many moons ago and I have a difficult enough time keeping track of the one I'm working on right now. At this rate I am concerned that I will one day write an entire play and not realize that I had written it already.

One of my personal favorite scenes I have ever written is an exchange between a troubled young teenager and a sock puppet. Usually the scene is played to the hilt for maximum laughs, but I was pleasantly pleased to have seen it played with such restraint. Both the teenager and the principal playing opposite him found a deeper meaning to the scene than its wacky words suggest. They did it exactly as I had imagined when I put the words to paper and that never happens!

I could go on and on - about the terrific Emcee, the hysterical gym teacher, the adorable German exchange student, the wonderfully bizarre poetry reading, the awesome light and sound effects, the super cool ending montage - and on and on. These students should be so proud of their hard work and, thanks to their teacher, I think that is exactly the case. I received some very generous compliments after it was all said and done, but my conversations afterward were overwhelmingly about what an inspiration Mr. Moore has been to his students. I only had the opportunity to speak with him for a few minutes, but based on the positive comments I heard (from both students and parents) I assume that these kids are mighty lucky to have him.

Let it be said that I would be nowhere without the drama teachers of the world. I have made it my mission to provide plays for teenagers that encourage them to have their voices heard, both on and off the stage. Yet without drama teachers, they would be nothing but words on a page. And plays are not meant to be read; they are meant to be performed. Perhaps some teachers see students come and go for so many years that they forget what an impact they have on their lives. But when I attend a performance of this quality and encounter students with this much enthusiasm, the power of a good teacher becomes crystal clear.

After the play I was mobbed by a group of students who wanted my autograph and I briefly felt like a rock star. I happily obliged, but what I really wanted to tell them is that they are the rock stars. They are the reason I do what I do. As I write this, it occurs to me that my excitement may seem a tad excessive. However, unlike most working people, I rarely get a chance to see the fruits of my labor, so an entire years worth of pride comes bursting out all at once. I sure hope another year doesn't pass before I catch another unicorn, but in the meantime I will keep putting them out there for others to discover.

Thanks again to everyone at Bayview Glen for a great show!