Living in the Past

Note: For the last six months, I've written six blog entries per month, and am now breaking that streak. This must be important, or something.

Just for a little while, just for tonight, I am pulling out a few past regrets that have sat in the back of a drawer, collecting dust and singing mournful songs of things that never came to be.

I found an old computer document entitled "hungry," a simple and evocative term for me. I need not think twice to know that this is a ten-page play I wrote for a Young Playwrights Festival. It was the last one-act I completed.

The theme for the contest was from Dracula: "I am starving here." People can be hungry for many things in life, such as hope, recognition, love. Write about someone who is hungry for something. Avoid the obvious. We don't want four hundred plays about pizza.

But, I thought what if it was one really good play about literally being hungry? So I created what I still believe to be an absolutely brilliant script about a girl trapped in class waiting for the lunch bell to ring.

My pride in such a work does worry me because it always seems that real writers aren't supposed to like their finished work very much. Okay, it has room for improvement. Now that I think about it, there is zero character development, but there were some very excellent acting/blocking techniques in it. It's hilarious. It makes sense, and it doesn't sound like some stupid tenth-grader wrote it.

The judges thought so, too, I guess. After the second drafts were submitted, I was invited for an interview to discuss the script, possible changes, and my schedule for the spring (especially spring break, which is the ideal time for rehearsals). Did I mention first prize in this festival? If you're in middle school, it's a staged reading of the top three scripts.

If you're in high school, it's a full production of your play.

Rehearsals are important. So when they asked what my plans are for spring break, the correct answer would be this: "I've no plans, and my mother would be willing to drive me two hours every day to do this." The incorrect answer is this: "Actually, we've been considering going to Canada for vacation to visit some relatives, but my mother is willing to drive me here every day besides that."

Which answer do you think I chose?

It's true, we had been discussing the possibility of going to Toronto, but please- like that was really going to happen. It wasn't. It didn't. They told me the availability of the playwright is one of the most important factors in deciding the contest. And I still gave them a twitty answer.

They gave the prize to someone else.
Maybe I should just be happy. I got a(nother) Semi-finalist award, and stood on stage for ten seconds while people clapped. Maybe I'm just reveling in an old vein of vanity for a mediocre piece of writing that was not better than the dramatic my-grandfather-is-dying skit or the interpretive dance skit (I kid you not. I have no idea what the point of that entire scene was. Except that I guess someone was hungry for something.). Mine wasn't better than the third skit. That was hilarious.

Or maybe they really did reject me because I might not have been at rehearsal.

The fact remains, though, that I like to believe most things happen for a reason. This cheers me up when I am rejected. Had the play been produced, I might not have had time for OM that year, and we had a darn good performance (though we blew it all to hell at World Finals... more regrets for a lonely night). The hallway of life has multiple doors. They won't all be closed.

My self-indulgence has been satisfied. Good night.