If you're in New York City (or anywhere close to NYC) stop reading this post right now and go get a ticket to Tom Misuraca's Geeks! The Musical, opening tonight at the Shepard Theater in New York!
Tom's ten-minute play, "Table for One," was workshopped on TMPW today, and if it is a sampling of his command of characters and dialogue, then Geeks! The Musical should be a win!
The workshop session was comprised of Tom, Paul Lewis and myself. We cast the four characters between us, and then enjoyed a fun reading of a tight script. I enjoyed this workshop session because the workshopping was done by all of us, together. Both Paul and Tom are professional writers, and their level of acumen at detailing what could make the script even better and more successful at conveying the theme of connection was a joy to be a part of.
Paul's lead off after reading the script highlighted that the connection that is made by the end of the script needs just one more sentence, or bit of dialogue, or foible that is shared by the characters. This observation led us down a path of discussion that pin-pointed a few elements of the script that were not yet wholly ready in terms of believe-ability.
It was a pleasure to workshop this piece, and the workshop took on an "open format," with all of us chiming in along the way. Again, it brought a sense of maturity to the workshop that the closed format seems to deny. I skipped the "last two questions" I have been using (Production ready? Production worthy?) because they seemed redundant after the workshop was over.
My thanks to Tom and Paul for this session, I loved it! You can listen to the audio recording of the session.