About the “100 Days To Opening Night” Project

I never finish anything.

This has been a problem my entire life.  I’m one of those people who starts a load of laundry and doesn’t remember it’s still in the washing machine until weeks later.  I write grants for a living, and no matter how far in advance of the deadline  I start it, I will inevitably be forced to overnight it the day before it’s due.  I have stacks and stacks of To Be Filed Later items on every flat surface of my house.  I am such a chronic not-finisher-of-stuff-I-start that the fact that I’m even kind of a writer is sort of an astonishment.  And that’s how I think of myself – “kind of a writer.”  I’ve written four plays that I was not embarrassed to allow other people to read or see.  The first three have all been produced, mostly in staged readings.  I am so very much not a professional grownup writer yet.  But since I’m almost 30 and have decided that I better actually do something if I want to be a professional grownup writer, I am stepping it up with play #4.

So.  Here’s the deal.

Play #4 is going to be in a staged reading festival called “Fertile Ground” in Portland next January.  (More info here: http://fertilegroundpdx.org) There are 100 days between Sunday, October 18th, when this blog goes live, and January 25th, 2010 when the reading will open.  Unless my math is wrong.  Which I don’t think it is.  I also don’t care that much.   Anyway, I am deeply committed to not half-assing this, so I want something to keep me accountable.  Also, I like blogging.  And attention.

The play is called How the Light Gets In.  Over the next 100 days I will document the whole process of mounting a reading from rough draft to opening night -rewrites,  edits, working with the script consultant, rewrites, casting, rehearsals, rewrites, choosing music, production, and rewrites.   I have no idea whether or not it will be interesting, but I promise it will be honest.

Thanks for reading!