Day 248: I have a birthdate!!

It is official: my little play, All in the Shuffle, is going to be introduced to the world on Tuesday, November 2nd at 7pm.  The reading will be held in a most auspicious location: the Frederick Lowe Room at the Dramatists' Guild on Broadway and 43rd.  So, in the very literal sense, my play will be born on Broadway. (If you'd like to come, send me an email!)

I realize November 2nd makes my play 25 days overdue.  But the delay is not because my play won't be ready by my initial due date of October 8th -- it is merely when I could get everything to come together the best possible way, which is what my play deserves after all this work.  The right space, the right director, the right actors.  November 2nd is the date all those things came together, so that is the date my play is going to be born.

I can scarcely comprehend that this is happening.  9 months ago I didn't have any idea if I could write a full-length play.  A year and a half ago, I had no idea what it meant to write a 10-minute play.  2 years ago, I had never even written a single line of dialogue.  Now, I have written a full-length play, and it's going to be performed.  Not in a full-out Broadway production, just as a staged reading, but still.  A really good director loves my script.  Really great actors love my script.  People who have heard or read it so far love my script.  I wrote a play, and it's good.

Like any expectant mother rapidly approaching giving birth (I imagine), I am filled with a combination of excitement, fear, and hope.  I am excited for a larger audience to hear my play, a little nervous as to what their reactions will be, and hopeful for the play's future.  I don't know what will come of this reading -- I almost don't even know what to dare hope for.  I am going to invite some producers I know -- will any of them come?  Will any of them want to sign on to help make it happen?  Will this reading take me straight on into another opportunity, or will I begin pursuing another path of submitting it to festivals?  How does one get a play produced?  I really don't know.  I have been so focused on the pregnancy part of this journey, that I haven't really begun investigating where I'm going to send the little tyke to school. 

Fortunately, there is time to figure that out.  This is not a play with a shelf life -- while I'd like it to become a smash hit in the next couple of years, it'll still be meaningful if it takes 10.  So for now, I'm going to enjoy the process, of hearing actors bring my characters to life, of watching a director shape my vision into something more concrete. I'll worry about the rest later.