Sixteen Shambles

Sixteen Shambles (aka The Birthday Spaz, aka Spaz!) is my latest release from Eldridge Plays and Musicals.

Okay, that's only part of the story. Six years ago I was so excited when my very first play was accepted for publication. It's a very funny play that still ranks among my personal favorites. The story revolves around a teenage girl named Janet who is having the worst day of her life. This awful day also happens to coincide with her sweet sixteen birthday.

Its premiere production in Peachtree City, Georgia was a big success. McIntosh High School did a tremendous job bringing it to life and it was subsequently produced to acclaim by Gordon F. Kells high school in Carlyle, Saskatchewan. Back then the play was known as Spaz! and I always really liked that title. Whenever I can work punctuation into a title, I do.

However, while Eldridge loved the play, they were less enthusiastic about the title. They wanted to play up the birthday aspect, so we compromised and came up with The Birthday Spaz. It has since been produced a number of times, but not as often as I had hoped.

Now that I have more experience writing plays, I know how important gender flexible roles are in making a play a success. So the folks at Eldridge were gracious enough to let me revisit the script make it more accessible. With very few changes to the text, I have now made 7 of the roles gender neutral. I'm confident these changes did not hurt the play at all; in fact, I think they only made it stronger! I love how differently my plays are interpreted when the genders of certain characters are swapped, so I can't wait to see productions with these new changes.

I also thought it was time to revisit the title. I have to concede that Eldridge was right all along, which explains its new moniker, Sixteen Shambles. I actually like this title better than all of the others...it just took me 6 years to come up with it.

I'm very excited to see this play get a shiny new coat of paint and I hope that will result in even more productions. Check it out!