In December 2009 I also began a new play, WATER CLOSET. It is about two women of Dutch-German descent, who are dealing with the effects of two wars nearly sixty years apart; a revised draft was completed in May, and submitted to several theaters and contests around the country.
In the summer of 2009 my cowboy play in one-act, JOLLY AND BEAN, was stage-read at the Newport Theatre Arts Center for the Orange County Playwrights Alliance of which I am an active member. In the fall of 2009 my play about a young Asian-American woman whose life is flashing in front of her eyes, FREED, received a staged-reading at the 2nd Annual Laguna Beach New Play Festival, and at the LA Women’s Theatre 20% New Works Festival.
The last three theatre experiences are particularly remarkable in that they all began similarly to PHISHING. One, I chose the directors; the last three were all led by the same professional female director, PHISHING was led by a different professional female actor/director. In all four cases I worked with and assisted the directors as Producer, and revised the scripts. In all four cases, we made casting decisions together, as collaborators. In all four cases, we also determined together that I would only go to the rehearsals to which they invited me.
However, the last three theatre experiences sharply differ from PHISHING in that they were all allowed to develop and grow naturally over time without the gross interference by a non-professional without any apparent formal theater training or education.
For after my faith in her direction of my words and story was securely understood by all, those three theatre experiences actually grew to the point where I was invited by the director to give notes to her actors. She clearly understood that I was working only to support her vision of my material, because I had collaborated enough in its development to trust that she was working toward achieving mine. Bingo: faith, trust, collaboration; that’s what I had been seeking all along.
While it’s also pretty clear that I haven’t been sitting around for two years wallowing and worrying about my 2008 OC storefront theater failures, it was only after those three last awesome theatrical experiences that my PHISHING wounds finally began to heal.
More later…
Erica Bennett
