Every week, we pitch more plays than we need to put into the show.
After pitching, we choose which of the plays on the table will go into the show. Usually this has less to do with the quality of plays than with the need for a balanced menu: we have to make sure we have a good range of pieces that are funny, serious, topical, absurd, etc. We avoid overlaps in style and content and we work to make sure each performer is represented. Sometimes this process involves extended discussion and debate, and often we can’t accommodate all the best work brought to rehearsal. This is both the bummer and the beauty of a creative process based on constraint.
The plays that don’t get picked sometimes return as re-proposals or rewrites, but some of them we never see again. Some we worked on painstakingly and we’re disappointed when they’re passed over; some were crazy ideas that we pitched on a whim; some would have involved elaborate choreography or tech or hours of late-night prop-building and we leave Tuesday night relieved that we’re not on the hook for that shit. There’s usually as much variety and richness in the weekly “reject” pile as there is in the pile of premieres.
One of this week’s new plays will celebrate and share the former pile with a limited number of people. Tif Harrison’s Bottom of the Stack: Issue 1 compiles all our un-premiered plays into a small batch of dirt-cheap zines that we’ll sell each weekend as long as the play remains in the show, offering a limited-edition glimpse into this other, mostly unseen body of work.
If this isn’t incentive enough, this week we also and as usual giddily bring you:
NEO-FUTURISTS CHLOE, BILAL, KIRSTEN, DAN, TIF, MALIC (LEAVING THIS WEEK!) AND LILY (ALSO LEAVING THIS WEEK!)
THE MASTERFUL TECHNICAL STYLINGS OF TAYLOR Q. FENDERBOSCH
&
1 GIANT WAITING IN THE STATE PARK – WAITING THERE FOR YOU – YES, YOU – NOT THE VAGUE, GENERAL YOU BUT A PARTICULAR YOU, SPECIFICALLY, PERPETUALLY AND ONLY YOU – WAITING FOR YOU RIGHT NOW AND ALWAYS, WAITING SOMETIMES PATIENTLY AND SOMETIMES IMPATIENTLY AND SOMETIMES AMBIVALENTLY WITH SEVERE INDIGESTION BUT EITHER WAY WAITING, AND WANTING TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING.
