Plant and Her: New York Debut!
It’s been a few weeks now but I wanted to write a quick recap about my New York City Playwriting Debut!
Here’s the lovely timeline of events:
In May 2015, one week after graduating, I went to Sasquatch music festival. I turned off my phone for 4 WHOLE DAYS and enjoyed a long weekend of music and dancing and not showering. It was a fun weekend for obvious reasons but it was also a very contemplative weekend. I kept being reminded of how time moves so fast and how I had so recently been spat into adulthood. Perhaps my favorite concert of the weekend was Robert Plant, famously known as being the lead singer of Led Zeppelin. He came out in this green flowing shirt, his long, curly, gray locks blowing in the wind and with as much power and vocal stamina as he had in his youth he began the concert with a roaring rendition of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You”. I remember standing up and thinking “I have to remember every second of this.”
I’m glad I did because that memory served as the starting point for my 10-minute play “Plant and Her”, which went on to be produced at Nylon Fusion Theatre Company’s 70-90’s time travel themed festival in New York City, my NYC playwriting debut!
In the play, recent college grad CeeCee is camping at a music festival with long-time friend Kev. (Sound familiar?) After CeeCee’s intense frustration that young and beautiful popstar “Her” played the set after legendary, rock god Robert Plant, Kev convinces CeeCee to time travel with him back to the 70’s and visit a music festival in it’s heyday.
While inspired by my time being a recent college graduate at a music festival and seeing Robert Plant, the characters took on a life of their own and the story is very different than one I lived at Sasquatch 2015. It’s a totally fictional play. But I do think that in many ways CeeCee and Kev are representations of newly adulted me: One, absolutely terrified of the big, bad future and the other excited as hell to dive in head first!
Photos by Al Foote III
A few weeks before the debut I had a long phone conversation with the director who, thankfully, really understood all of the many things I was trying to say through my play. I could tell he was going to do everything in his power to make my play come to life in an authentic way. I did not fly to New York to see my play but coincidentally on the same night as the debut the Seattle Symphony performed the music of Led Zeppelin and I attended the concert and rocked out to the music my play was influenced by! Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways.
I received the most amazing text from the director of the play after the debut. Not only did he let me know my play was very well-received, but a playwright I studied in college was in the front row. I burst into tears upon reading it, overwhelmed with both the words of encouragement and the celebrity appearance at the event.
I also exchanged some e-mails with both actors who were nothing but kind about my words and told me some incredible details about how my play was received.
Photo by Al Foote III
Finally, a few notifications on facebook sent me the warm and fuzzies.
Since graduation I’ve had two ten-minute plays produced. One at the 8 in 48 festival in Idaho and the other at at Nylon Fusion. Both experiences have been absolutely invigorating and incredible. I feel fortunate for these experiences….and I always have no idea when the next one will arrive. Playwriting feels like the slowest task in the world so every time anything like this happens I try to absorb all the feelings into me because I don’t know when I’ll feel them again. People found WORTH IN MY WORDS.Worth enough to dress up like the characters I created, to shape the story that started in my mind, to sit in seats and watch some stuff I wrote. That’s SO COOL. I hope I can continue this whole crazy playwriting thing but I also hope I can have patience in the in betweens.
Photo by Al Foote III
