Workshopping 50 plays in two months has brought out some interesting trends and themes already. One of the trends came up when I was in discussion with another author who said to me, "Where are the women?" Of the 22 scripts I've done so far (Session 6 and Session 17 actually are being re-scheduled because they didn't have enough workshoppers), three have been by female authors. I'm not a sociologist, nor is this a gender-studies course, but, Dang! Not to fear, however, because the script in Session 24 is not only a fun, tight and deep script, it's #3 in the femme-category!
Rachel Bublitz's script, "Ghost Story," is just that, but with a twist. It is definitely worth a good read, and we had a blast workshopping it.
Paul Moulton (see Session 20) and Rachel Arbeit (check out her upcoming performances) joined in for the reading and the workshop. What was so interesting to me about the workshop was that, now that we are getting to know each other a bit from workshopping his piece, Paul and I were able to banter a bit and have diametrically-opposed opinions. I loved it! Paul did a great job countering my points, and the discussion grew deeper from our differences of opinions. "Rachel A" (as we began calling her, to differentiate from "Rachel B," the author... isn't online workshopping fun?) was right there with us, juxtaposing ideas and reactions to Rachel B's script, and this proved to be the workshop most laden with discussion and differing opinions about the characters and plot progression to-date!
If Fox ever contacts me about starting a reality-TV show with the workshopping, I'm going to call these three writers for the first episode!
My thanks to "Rachel B" for her script and to Paul and "Rachel A" for workshopping it so boisterously with me!
You can listen to the audio recording of the session.