“We won’t get there today, but maybe tomorrow”
And with that, the first draft of Under a Better Sky is complete! After oversleeping and overworking on Thursday (breaking my writing streak), I churned out 15 pages yesterday, and finished the play moments ago.
The play is a lot of fun – fights, dances, love scenes, songs, fools – and features 15 pretty evenly balanced roles. It lives in the classic teen-stories-refracted-through-the metaphor-of-fantasy genre, and is as white knuckle a plot as I’ve written in awhile.
I worry it’s too long (well, it is too long), and that the world of the play is not easily digestible enough. There’s a lot to know, but I try not to over-explain, hating the inevitable download of knowledge scenes one finds in other-worlds plays. I tried to make all of the exposition emerge naturally from the action.
I’ll hear some scenes of this tomorrow at Flux Sunday, but won’t really know if it works until I hear the students of William H Hall high school give it a read. I’m not sure when that will happen, but I am really looking forward to it.
This means I’ve finished two new full length plays in 2011 – way below my goal, but there’s time left in the clock, and if I can keep up this productivity, there’s an outside chance I might at least match last years total of 7 full lengths. Before that happens, I have to write a short play for a special event, and do the ten thousand other things life washes up on the shore of each day.
Corinna Schulenburg 