Some happy news to pass on today.  My play ANIMAL will premiere on a Toronto stage come this November 2018.  After the reading of ANIMAL on March 24 at Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival, I was contacted by this same theatre company to include ANIMAL in their Fireworks Festival.  Fireworks is a festival of 3 full length plays each given a one week run in November.   ANIMAL will have its run November 21-25.

One of my goals for 2018 was to get a full staging of ANIMAL because I felt it was time.  When I received the call from Alumnae, it filled me with much joy, gratification and an over- whelming feeling of relief.   I’ve worked on ANIMAL for a long stretch.  It’s been through many drafts, lots of readings, there has been much praise as well as constructive criticism lobbied at the play.  My feelings about the play have ebbed and flowed with extreme excitement, crippling doubt, enormous pride and deep reflection.

Writing is not just a thing I do because I like it (and believe me there are days I don’t).  For better or worse, it’s part of my life that often lends itself to cathartic experiences.  That feeling is one every writer lives for when they know they have something they not only want to share with an audience but absolutely NEED to share.   Was I born to write?…It’s starting to look that way…but if you ask the young Romeo who failed grade 3 because of writing, he might say otherwise.  For whatever reason, I found myself writing maybe to prove to myself and the world that it is possible to “succeed” at something when you put your mind to it.  And I have so much more to learn.  I can’t say I ever feel I’ve “mastered” writing.  There is a constant feeling of unease within (tampered with a gentle confidence) that I can be better.

So I’ll keep trying with ANIMAL because although I feel strongly about this current draft, part of the mission of the Fireworks Festival is to continue to work on editing/re-writing the play as you prepare it for the stage.  After the reading in March, I continue to process where to take this next draft.  Come May, I will be interviewing directors who will give me their pitches of the play.  After that process, a director will be chosen, re-writes will continue throughout the spring and summer and come fall, auditions will be held.

In the meantime, I am still in the midst of re-writes for my screenplay Let It Shine.  I wrote this screenplay in the fall of last year, got some great coverage notes on it.  I am now trying to wrap it up before going back to ANIMAL re-writes.  The story is around a  precocious 10 year old girl (the narrator) who has a wild imagination and it tells the sprawling tale of her family and friends through her eyes.  Between the ANIMAL reading and the avalanche of rejections I received on my screenplays at the end of 2017, its been hard some days to find the inspiration to write.  But if you’re looking for inspiration and live for only encouragement , you’ll never write.  Author Neil Gaiman puts it best: