A tough nut to crack

Last summer, I had the pleasure of workshopping a one-act with a delightful little theater company here in LA. They have a pretty great system -- every week, you bring in ten pages of a play in progress, and a talented group of actors and directors stage these scenes and offer notes. It was, in the end, a creatively exhilarating experience, and I'm very excited about being able to work with them again this spring.

But the first set of pages are due in two weeks, and I'm not quite sure what exactly I'll be writing. For the past few months, I've assumed that I'll retackle an idea from last year -- one that was meant to be a full-length play, but stalled out around page 60 or so and might benefit from much tighter structure and a page-one rewrite. It's not a brilliant concept, but it's a fun one with a lot of potential for both comedy and drama. I'm a fan of it.

Then, last night, I woke up abruptly. I kept very still, frozen in my usual sleeping position (lights on, arms curled protectively around a book), very much caught in an extremely clicheed Moment of Inspiration... And hoping like hell that it would go away.

See, the idea I woke up with is good. It's really good. Not only is it rich material with tons of opportunity for great characters and conflict, but the constraints of the concept are perfectly suited to a black box one-act. I even had a great idea for how it should end, an ending that didn't pull any punches but still left the audience with a modicum of hope. And it's topical and fresh and I know that if I hear about another playwright getting to it before me, I'll end up punching holes in the wall. So, part of me really wants to do it.

But this idea is also unflinchingly focused on a subject matter that I find incredibly difficult to read about, think about, watch, or discuss. And the same elements that make this a really good idea are the same elements that make me certain I couldn't phone it in -- I'd have to fully commit, do the research, dig into character development, or it'd just be the worst piece of crap. I know it's good to face your fears, but am I really ready to commit to six weeks, minimum, of this topic? Is this something I'm prepared to confront fully?

The last time this happened to me, I ended up writing a pretty decent play about the apocalypse. And that alone should be reason enough to at least take a stab at the opening, see if this is something I'm actually up for.

So, this entry is just me talking myself into that first step. But I'd like to hear if you guys have any insight. How did it go for you, the last time you did something that scared you?

Labels: projects:theatre

posted by Liz  # 9:13 PM

Comments:
Not sure if it scared me, but the last time I turned a dream into a book I ended up with All Night Inn, which won the EPPIE and became the basis of my Hollywood After Dark series. This was when I didn't believe I had a vampire story in me.

Sometimes you have to listen to those voices in the dark.
# posted by  Momster : January 25, 2008 10:54:00 AM PST 

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