Short Plays

I finished up another short play. These things go much further than I originally think they would. This week's ingredients (I'm now working with my friend, Kate) were: anticipation and "orange." My first image was a woman in an orange dress suit in a store's fitting room. I tend to go back to my original idea after its been simmering in the back of my mind as I actively search for something better. What happens when I start writing is that the original idea remains in some weird form, yet is completely changed.

I started this play with the image of mirrors. Fitting room. Yet, that changed. A stage of angled mirrors. Interesting enough. I might keep that image for a play down the line. I thought of this play as an exercise in the adaptation I want to do of Moliere's "The Learned Ladies."

The two women in this short play, which doesn't have a title, have some fun monologues that I didn't plan on. One has a monologue about why it's fine for her boyfriend to have other lovers, three, including her, but when he picks up a fourth, it sets everything into a tailspin.

The other monologue starts off as a discussion of chocolate-covered strawberries, and then moves into a discussion of German chocolate and then of Germans in general. I didn't censor the character from saying things that might sound "dumb" or "politically incorrect." This person was writing in her journal and was following a string of logic that led her to her warped thinking.

These short plays are very liberating... Though someone seems to die at the end of each of them. Odd similarity. Two strangulations, one mauling by lions, one chopped body... I guess there's one that didn't end in a murder, but that one didn't have an end period. Part of me loves these little plays. I see them as some of my most interesting ideas... Yet, part of me sees them as the work of a younger writer who doesn't take things seriously and only plays around with the words and doesn't really say anything at all. I shouldn't judge these short plays. They're only written to flex my writing muscles and push myself out of my comfort zone. Yet, the more I venture out into these strange plays, the more I find that I am becoming more and more IN my comfort zone.