The Script

So what do you do when you finish five months of script writing?

Well first you go out and get sloshed with a few friends but if you’re as crazy and impulsive as I am you apply to every fringe festival across Canada and see if you can get in. Really gutsy move and I got into four one in my home town Ottawa. The next step was to find actors and start wrangling a crew as crazy as I was.

But first a little about the script before I get all geeky with the process and my daring stories of convincing people to join my daring and dastardly project. So basically my script Love and hate in the Postmodern Age is a nonlinear look a depression, mental illness, suicide, date rape, and technological isolation. Basically, its a mixed bag. But the thing that makes it interesting is the first person style the characters take on. How these character speak for themselves and tell their own stories. It has a lot of fun linguistic devices written into the script. Course getting 50 people to give me feedback on this thing really should be noted here too. So thanks to all who helped with it.

The hook really is its nonlinear so the audience is playing catch up and having fun with the mystery of what’s going on right there before them. And it has a really gripping story line but no spoilers here I’ll let others do that with Fringe fest reviews come June. But there’s just this pervasive feeling of coldness that keeps creeping into the world as the character talks. The one thing that I was really passionate about in my writing was creating an environmental feeling having this pervasive feeling of both seasonal coldness found in winter and this emotional coldness coming from the characters. It’s a play about the protagonist suffering from depression and an emotional conditions go that feeling doesn’t generate a great deal of warmth.

One of the characters that sprang right out of my drafts early on was Eden. She's this super smart young woman who's jsut trying to figure out who she is. But she's gone though hell basically. And her journey as a person is really sad. And she's just kept going. She's a survivor and a fighter. And right now I think thats what people want to see. Someone who just keeps fighting no matter how bad things get.

So I got in for four cities across Canada Ottawa, Regina, Windsor, and Victoria. And I’m really happy. Really amazing festivals and I’m still really optimistic with the show.

Next post will describe auditions.