Stronger pitching arm

I pitched this play of mine to 20 producers on Sunday, as part of the TRU writer-producer speed-date I mentioned in my last post. It went extraordinarily well.  Last year when I did this I was incredibly nervous.  And I will admit that I was having some little anxiety attacks the couple of days before this one, too.  But I fully prepared myself, and by the time I arrived at the event, I felt ready and was calm.  And I stayed calm.  My goal for this time was to have an opening and major points I wanted to be sure to hit, but to NOT have a memorized script.  To have it feel like a conversation, to let what I know about my play and what I feel about my play come through more organically.  I feel confident that I achieved this, as evidenced by the fact that I rarely got through my allotted 2 minutes to speak before the producer would start asking me questions.  (The format was for me to speak to a producer for 2 minutes, then for the producer to respond for 2 minutes).  Clearly they were intrigued enough to start asking me questions before I finished my "spiel".   This is a great sign.  And sure enough, I already have a meeting with one producer tomorrow, and two others expressed interest.  It's impossible to know if anything will come of any of it, but to have garnered that amount of interest is definitely a feat in and of itself.

As I mentioned in my last post on synposes (yes, spell-check, I still mean that), I think the main reason these pitches went so much more smoothly this year is that I know my play so much better.  I'm so much more in touch with it, at home with it, I know what I'm trying to do with it.  And I know who I am better too, and where my play is in its development process.  It's not just my play that is growing and changing since its birth last year, I am growing and learning and adapting too.  It's fun to have an occasion like this by which I can actually measure that progress.  Regardless of where this all takes me, I'm happy to be moving forward.