Things went pretty well with the ten minute P-in-a-D. I wrote from about eight thirty to one thirty and went to bed at two. The play ended up being about the mytical history of thumb wrestling, its rise and fall from the spiritual to the everyday.
Three actors, one director. We went first because, well, I don't know quite why, partly because the director likes to go first and partly because it was the most bizarre yet funny of the results. There were a couple of language based things that were for the most part incomprehensible. There was a funny defunct super hero play, a wonderful creepy/funny play about a wolfboy (I think it would be a fantastic project to cross a play with a haunted house- like watching/participating in the Blair Witch project live... only good.), and a halfway decent one about making it rain in hell. The guy couldn't decide whether he wanted to go for the jokes or for the moral, so it kind of lost the impact in the end, but it's memorable if only for the line "who the here are you?"
There was only one really awful one, but I couldn't tell if it was awful because the script wasn't any good, or because the director wasn't. I think it's a combination of both, but there was a lot of sitting down and sighing about things. When you can hardly see the actors because they're so involved in sitting with their heads down and their hands in their pockets (in theatre, the face and the hands are two of the more important body parts. You have to see them, or it's even harder to convey anything), there's a director problem, but I think it sprung from the fact that it was a really hopeless script.
My director said in the three years she's done this, mine's the best script she's gotten. I think mostly it's because I gave her all kinds of room to do stuff. It was only a seven minute script, which gave her three minutes worth of extra. There were sacred rituals and a fight scene choreographed to "Eye of the Tiger" (think thumb war meets Rocky or Karate Kid), so she had a lot of things she could just play with, which is what directors love to do.
Thinking back on it, it was one of the most purposely physical plays of the night. You know how you see actors do things and you go, "the director had them do that", because otherwise they'd just be standing there talking to one another. Movement for movement's sake. I think it comes from watching television, which aside from the car chases, is really only so many talking heads. This is why you can turn the television off, walk out of the room, and still know (mostly) what's going on. Unless you're watching Mr. Bean, there's very little need to watch television. But, it translates to movement for the sake of it on stage because there aren't any camera angles to break it up.
Professor Gandalf was so helpful (insert eyeroll here). Ten minutes before the doors open he asks how things went (he doesn't see any of the stuff until they go up, doesn't read the scripts, doesn't watch the rehearsals). I said good, and he said, "Because you know your entire future depends on the next ten minutes."
He was joking, and I know it, but man, the fact that he doesn't have to be wasn't helpful at that moment. He can decide whenever he wants to that there's no way he'll let me in the department next year, before I've even sent in the application. You'd think it'd give me the advantage over any stranger, but if he didn't think I'd do well already, it's not.
Not that I'm really worried about that particularly. The audience loved it, my actors loved it, I already mentioned my director, and The Boy finally admitted that I am not as strange as some people. Me, strange? I'm just vanilla compared to some of the cranberry jerky ripple or honey cheese delight type people I know.