On Sunday we had our first official development meeting for one of our original works, “Wardrobe of the Living Dead”, referred to hereafter as the “zombie piece”. For reasons of theatrical espionage and intellectual property theft, I will be vague about themes and concepts of the original stuff. With that in mind, I will try to include as much of the development process as I can without letting the cat out of the bag.
So, our first development meeting started with our playwright, Max, being told on the street that the hat he was wearing should only be worn by someone selling really good weed. The hat in this story being one of those fairly popular hunter type hats with the flaps on the side. Not realizing his faux pas, Max then began to question his chosen career path, which was the perfect state of mind for us all to be in as we started this somewhat absurd project.
Next our group found a small coffee shop with some available seating for the three of us and Joe, Max and I got down to business deciding what we wanted to drink. At this point you’re asking what any of this has to do with developing a script. That’s easy, everything. Honestly, theatre needs to be collaborative and I’ve found the best collaborators are those who have insight into what and how the others think. Communication is made easier through familiarity.
It also helps to infotain your audience and readers. One other thing before we go on, I have a beard…I feel like that will matter to someone.
Anyway, I had first wanted to have this project be written organically and collectively in rehearsal, but seeing that we had brought on a talented young playwright who is working with us at no charge, might as well use him for all he’s worth. I explained this and all agreed. It’s at this point that we received our various beverages and breakfast pastries and began a fantastic discussion about the piece and where we want to go with it. Our plan from this point is for Max to start writing based on what we had discussed, we’ll meet weekly and Joe, Geoff and I will make suggestions of additions and deletions until we have a solid work. still collaborative, but with a clear structure and foundation.
I had a very good chai latte and a tasty low fat berry blast muffin, yogurt muffin I think.
A very promising start, I CAN NOT WAIT FOR REHEARSALS:)