Volume! Hold for Laughs!

After the fiasco of my last full-length show, I said here that I thought it was time for me to direct. Well, friends, now I've taken action.

First, I will be directing a piece in this fall's North Park Playwriting Festival. The submission process for directing in this itty bitty venue was easy: you say you'd like to direct one of the 200 plays submitted from across the country, they say come on in and pick a few. So yesterday, that's what I did.

The play selection process is a little more complicated. All volunteer directors skim through the piles of scripts for the content they'd most like to see done. Each director picks two local plays and four non-local plays for inclusion; those which receive the most of these votes are produced. With so many more plays than there are directors, it is conceivable that there may be no overlap at all. On the other hand, given the limits of the small stage and the varied quality of the writing, it's also conceivable that we all recognized the plum in the pudding.

After weeding out the scripts which required elaborate sets or dangerous props; those whose characters were significantly younger, older, or more ethnic than the actors who would audition to play them; and those requiring more actors than the wee stage could support, I was not overwhelmed by the quality of most of the remaining scripts I flipped through, but I did find a couple worth the try and delivered my preferences.

It was not surprising that I recognized a few names on the local scripts, but I found myself gaping when I recognized the name on one distant submission. Only one script had come in from Tennessee, but I knew the author. Gaylord Brewer had been my English teacher in college. Across the years and thousands of miles, the unlikely role-reversal of having his work beg for my approval tempted me to choose his piece, but ultimately I did not.

The first directors' meeting will take place this Saturday.

The second director submission was considerably more elaborate and whether I will earn the job remains to be seen. After two days of prepping my proposal (including set diagram and budget) and making five reading copies of the script I'd be championing, I interviewed last night at the Coronado Playhouse in hopes seeing my full-length directorial debut during their 2008 season.

The interview went exceptionally well. Though one of my four interviewers sat stonily unreadable, the other three were visibly impressed with my ready answers to their questions and concerns. Save one. That I would be a first-time director with no producer attached to the project may be a sticking point. We shall see.

Coronado or no Coronado, thanks to North Park I am now, officially, a director.

Thank you.