90 Day Play - Day 1

"People have asked me, 'Why don’t we have more good plays?' I said, 'Why don’t you ask why we don’t have more bad plays, because if you have more bad plays you’ll have more good plays, because that feeds the ground.' That’s the manure that makes things grow. It’s very valuable manure, as manure is valuable to growth. We need activity, we need action, we need trial, we need error. —Harold Clurman"


Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I am adamant about promoting attendance of performances for theatre students and practitioners. I think it is vital to the development of the craft that we who produce art train our senses to receive it. I would like to say that I enjoy going to the theatre. I would like to say that every performance advertisement and every playbill I see excites me. I would like to say that I am still in love with the industry.

But the truth is I can't. More often than not, the theatre frustrates and bores me. The risk of wasting my time on yet another version of a play I've seen several times before has begun to outweigh the chance of that rare stirring performance. It's been a long time since I have been reminded of my love of the theatre.

I have to ask myself: what do I want to see onstage? Clearly, many of the shows that I have seen lately have not lit a fire within me. The subject matter, styles, or productions often don't reach me - so what will? After seeing Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman" in New York a few years back, I desperately looked for plays that would speak to my aesthetic in the same way. I've found a few, but I always wondered where the other plays were? Now I've come to an inevitable conclusion:

If there is art I want to see onstage, I have to put it there.

I have to write those plays that are missing...or at least soil the ground for others, as per Clurman's advice. And thus begins my 90 day mission to write a play.

In the next 90 days, I will write a full length play that I would like to see onstage. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be profound, it doesn't have to be performance ready...it just has to be. This is a personal challenge to jump start what I see as complacency in my life. Of course I will continue to take the risk on theatre, and I hope soon I'm proven wrong. In the meantime, I'd like to encourage any of you out there reading this to join me in this endeavor. Write. write. write. For 90 days, just write. We need more plays!