Play a Day: Glass

Azure Osborne-Lee

Fourteen plays in fourteen days! Two weeks of new work.

For Friday I read Glass by Azure Osborne-Lee and available from New Play Exchange, which put me in mind of Yoruba folk tales and the works of Sam Shepard, filled with animal characters in human form slouching in an existential, American tableau.

Ancient magic abounds as Life and Death engage in a barroom brawl with Anansi playing bartender.

So what have we accomplished, reading new, unpublished plays for two weeks? Has this been motivational, you might ask. I have written bits and pieces here and there, and thought that emerging myself into the works of others might be an inspiration, and I am glad to say that it has.

It also takes up a great deal of time, that time I normally reserve for the writing itself. But as long as I am not writing, why not engage in something different?

Having said that, last night I was sitting in XYZ, waiting to see The Tongue That Tells Me So next door, and I started sketching a game plan for a story I'd like to tell, and how I might like to tell it. Not much, a few notes, but there were more ideas there than before. Reading diverse work from others reminds me of how much freedom I have, to do anything, but also to be myself.

I am discovering, though, that what is in myself is more expansive and interesting than I previously allowed myself to imagine.