Sixty percent

The calls for audition on Casting Call Pro have been coming in at the rate of three or four a day. I have been applying for one or two of these. (The days when I would apply for any student film, just to get the experience, have gone.) Needless to say, I haven't been getting many offers lately.

That doesn't matter too much, since I have four monodramas to get to performance status. This will not be the first time I have written and produced a play - way back in 1995 my partner and I shared the production, writing, direction and starring in a quirky piece called The Benefactor - but it's the first time I've written one since becoming an Ahctor and since I've learnt a considerable amount about pacing and content and style and so on. So today has been spent completing the first draft of Angel, a monologue by a tormented priest (is there any other kind? - and no, it isn't about paedophilia).

In its current state, I reckon it's about 60% performance quality. The framework is there - the emergence and development of ideas - but two major faults remain. The first is wordiness. What reads well in short fiction - long, sonorous sentences with unusual grammar or words - seldom works well on the stage. That means I am looking for language which suggests thought and argument without it sounding like a philosophical tract. The second problem is emotional rhythm - maintaining the audience's interest by raising or lowering the emotional temperature. This obviously depends on a combination of the writer's (me) skill with that of the performer (also me). I think I can do it, but it will take several more drafts, combined with the skills of the director to get me to that goal.

Well, that's a problem for another day. I'm setting Angel aside to look at an easier task - the conversion of another story, Los Feliz, to stage performance. Ten more weeks to go, four plays to write, actors and director(s) to confirm, publicity to generate. 'Twill be an interesting spring....