To my readers who have asked how the Femfest
“Bake-Off” playwriting competition went, thank you for your interest and thank
God for second chances!
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| Me and the other four playwrights. This is supposed to be our panic look. At this point, I'm hoping height is worth points. |
As promised, they gave the five of us the “recipe”
(no more than five characters, no longer than ten minutes) and the three
“ingredients” we must incorporate into our scripts. Having participated in this
kind of contest before, I expected three random items like zombies, zambonis, and
zebras or something equally unrelated. But we lucked out. Because this year’s
Bake-Off is in honour of Janet Taylor who served on Sarasvàti’s Board of
Directors until her passing earlier this year, they chose three items relevant
to Janet’s life. The triplet they arrived at seemed a little too easy: dressing
up, ballroom dancing, and teaching someone something.
Following the meeting, hubby
chauffeured me back to Portage so I could get started on my laptop in the car. I
hammered out a couple of pages of monologue, then quickly scrapped it all when
I arrived home and buckled down for real. The organizers encouraged us to send
in progress reports and photos throughout the day. You can find those posted on
their blog, here.
The account of Frances’ journey (the girl in the hat)
sure made me laugh, especially the description of her imaginary boyfriend,
Albert, a lawyer and football enthusiast who doesn’t mind watching romantic
comedies on Netflix on Friday nights.
My own log went something like
this:
10:57 a.m. Trying to write on the
way out of the city in the rain.
12:10 p.m. At home at my desk. Now
to really get to work.
2:07 p.m. Paused for a bowl of beet
borscht, hummus on rice crackers, a pear, and tea with honey. Now back to it.
Thinking of hanging a sign on my door: “Playwright at Work. Anyone who
interrupts will be subjected to a grisly and unnatural stage death and then
reincarnated as a stage manager.”
5:00 p.m. I have a script. I don’t
much like it. I’m going for a nap. Hopefully I’ll dream something splendid with
which to fix it.
6:06 p.m. I’m up. I didn’t dream up
any brilliant solutions for the script, but I did finally recall the last name
of the young lady I saw on my way out of the theatre this morning who went to
high school with my son.
Tick Tock.
6:45 p.m. Hit “send.” Not thrilled
with it.
The beauty of this competition was
the second-chance feature. After receiving all five scripts by the 7:00 p.m. Friday
deadline, the dramaturge, Cairn, read them over and provided feedback on Saturday
evening. The final version was then due by 8:00 p.m. Sunday.
In my case, Cairn challenged me to
raise the stakes with questions so basic I felt like an idiot. Every writer
should know their characters must want something—what did mine want? What
obstacles stand in the way? I hated to admit even to myself that I didn’t know.
Duh. But I slept on it, and by morning the answers began seeping through my
thick skull. I improved my little story and, if not exactly enamoured with it,
I at least feel better about its potential.
Now five actors are rehearsing all
five plays under Cairn’s direction. At 7:00 p.m. on Monday, September 15 at Winnipeg’s
Asper Centre for Theatre and Film, actors will present the mini plays before a
live audience who will vote for the script they most want to see developed into
a one-act play. The winning writer will then have a few months to turn her
piece into a full-length script to be presented at FemFest 2015.
If you’d love to see what all five
of us came up with, consider this your invitation. Tickets sell for an
unbeatable “name your price” deal, but must be purchased in advance, online,
and they apparently sell out fast. Go here to buy yours.
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