So, I mentioned before that I was going to submit revised versions of Weeks One and Seven to this year's Boston Theater Marathon.
Then, unbeknownst to you, I submitted those same plays to the Hovey Summer Shorts Festival and to one other festival I haven't heard from yet.
Well, Week Seven's play made it into Hovey aaaaand...
That same play, The Interview, will also be appearing in the fifteenth annual Boston Theater Marathon!
I really cannot overstate what an accomplishment this is for me. Since I first learned about the BTM in an intro to playwrighting class at Emerson College (...eleven years ago...), it has been a major goal of mine to get something I had written included in the lineup. And to that end, I wrote a decently okay play and slavishly tweaked, submitted, retweaked, and resubmitted that same play several times, each time receiving the flattering rejection note. (I assume there is a version of that letter that is less effusive. Maybe they're all flattering...)
The truth is, I don't really know what that play was about. It was called Dating Athena—smarmy business guy has several bad dates with the Greek goddess. It had an ambiguous ending I thought to be "theatrical" but did not mean anything to me. I just wanted to see my work on stage. Any work.
The Interview does mean something to me... and in fact, I was worried that it was in some ways too literal, too earnest. But that's my style, and if the work feels disingenuous to me it'll show to others. Thanks in large part to this blog, I'm trying to be less precious and more direct with my writing these days, and I think that's why this particular play is responding with people: I've stopped trying to be clever and started trying to be me.
I can't wait to see what the director and actors bring to it.