have you ever written a play?

as an adult. one-act, 12 hours long, whatever.

as an undergrad, aged roughly 23. I only managed to write the first several scenes, not a completed play. it's hard. every moment counts. if it doesn't contribute you need to cut it or change it.

i’m working on one now. it’s to be performed in a basement later this year. it’s “experimental” and diy, which means i don’t have any money and it’s ok if i fuck up. so the context is a little different than probably most plays. but also, i don’t know much about that world, the playwriting world, the people who focus on that and know every play and have drama facts memorized in the same way that i have 1987 mlb stats memorized. in the same way that no one cares about my 1987 baseball facts (except clemenza and mookie and morbz, rip), i don’t really care about the history of stage plays that much. like, i’ve never watched the tony’s and i never will, and i don’t like musicals. i loved einstein on the beach at bam. the “knee plays” interims. they made no sense to me at the time, the name or the action. they make so much more sense to me now.

so yep, plays. have you written one? what was it like?

as an undergrad, aged roughly 23. I only managed to write the first several scenes, not a completed play.

i almost stipulated _not in college!_

i wrote a couple one-acts as a youngster myself. they were comedies and i ruined myself in class by laughing way too hard at my own jokes in the readthrough

Have written and sometimes directed a few (and directed a ton by others).

one of my friends had a talent show-themed birthday and i wrote a play for all my friends to act in about a battle of the bands where the bands involved were rivals who were secretly in love with each other

that’s the only one so far, not really my chosen medium

i really want to hear more from both of you! and aimless you too. but first you have to write a play real quick, let’s do it!

i think, one funny thing about writing plays is just imagining what it’ll sound like out of someone else’s mouth. questions come up quickly like does it make sense to write something with a tone in mind and then work it out later with the actor…..i think, no, that sounds bad, but the alternative is writing something that can make sense out of anyone’s mouth, interpreted in different ways over time and by different people. that’s way more awesome and so much more difficult. i’m an extremely talkative person but my plays so far have had zero dialogue (wordless plays, music/movement stuff), and i think part of the reason is that it’s terrifying to think of someone else speaking your words, getting them “wrong”, when in fact they’re just interpreting them and “misunderstanding” them as normal people do. it’s sometimes shocking to see how someone else doesn’t see the thing that you wrote/said at ALL the same way you meant it! it’s a real dilemma, as a way of life, to try to let go of that. i still hold onto those misunderstandings, they’re so hard to let go of.

but yeah every line is like that! lol

the alternative is writing something that can make sense out of anyone’s mouth, interpreted in different ways over time and by different people

Not a bad idea to write for a specific actor and a specific space (if that's how your imagination works). This hits on something I love about playwriting versus screenwriting: instead of writing something that is only going to be done once (if you're lucky), and written so that even a hungover actor can get how the line should be said, you're writing something that will never be performed the same way twice, even by the same actor over multiple performances. (Same goes for songwriting versus making a single recording without intending it to be covered someday.) Dozens of people, at least, around the world have performed Hamlet in the past few days, and each has done it their own way; and none of them are perfectly correct or incorrect. I love that.