Process LVII

Tonight: Last chance to see.

My playwriting advisor encourages us to write so much we stop caring so hard about what we’re writing, and I have found this helpful. The last several plays I have written, those that have been created in my playwriting workshop classes, to start with an idea, and some characters and I just bounce them off each other to see where we end up. 

This wasn’t always the case, as I’ve spent most of my life desiring to write the Great American Play but actually not writing anything at all.

The least self-censored I have been (for better or for worse) was during the Guerrilla years.

I produced a one-act in the 1980s. 

One full-length in the 1990s. 

Two solo performances in the 2000s. 

Then I had ten plays produced in the 2010s (though many were adaptations.)

The original work has been few and far-between, but at least I have picked up speed.

I made a list of plays maybe ten years ago that I thought I might want to write, and I’ve exhausted that list. I need another list.

Last week I said I had a breakthrough and I have moved forward on that. It’s about fear. I have always avoided writing my fears. But I think I have found a way in, one that I can work through. Since then I've written thirty pages. 

I think it's a play I couldn't write while my parents were alive.