Counting Rita was produced on Sunday, as part of the Boston Theatre Marathon. Normally, the Marathon is one of my big events of the year--I try to sit through as many plays as my butt can survive (the Marathon runs from noon to 10pm and features fifty plays, by fifty writers, produced by different fifty theatres). However, this year Tracy was out of town, and I didn't want Kira to have to babysit Noah for an entire day, so I only watched two hours of the Marathon.
Counting Rita came across very well. We had two talented and experienced actresses--Elaine Theodore and Julie Jarousek. Their sense of comic timing went well with the script, and they got a lot of laughs. For our hour, the Wimberly Theatre, which seats 360, was full, and the crowd was really with us. It's not often that I get to see my work in a sparkling new 360-seat theatre (with very comfy seats), so I savored it. I normally get a good tinge of nervousness right before one of my plays begins, but this time I was confident in our cast and hardly even had a flicker of nerves.
I was definitely left thinking that this is a piece that I should send out a lot more. We made a few changes in rehearsal that helped, too.
In my hour, John Shanahan's piece, First Time for Everything, also got a lot of laughs. (John is a fellow Binge member.)
Leslie Dillen's (fellow Rhombus member) play, Benji 53, was one of my favorites. It used sound and the entire stage in a powerful, highly theatrical way. So much of the Marathon tends to be similar in staging--desk, cafe table, bed, couch, in fairly realistic settings. Leslie's play used minimal staging to show a catastrophic fighter jet explosion in a way that was very powerful. We'd read the script at Rhombus before, but this was one that was tough to fully comprehend until it was fully staged.
At the moment, I don't have any productions lined up, which always produces a bit of nervous vertigo. I know something will come up soon.
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