If you have some time and you’re in the Toronto area, come out to a dramatic reading of my new play Animal on Monday June 2 @ 7:30pm at The Stone Church.  This will be the very first time I will be presenting this play to the public in hopes of staging it in the near future.  I began writing Animal back in (gulp) 2008.  Over the years, I have put the play aside and would go back to it when time allowed.  Most of the hard work has been done this past year where I have written 3 drafts.   I have also done several readings with actors and after each subsequent reading, felt more inspired to improve the play.   

Animal deals with the theme of mental illness.  To read a short synopsis of the play and see who is involved in the reading, visit the Animal Link.

When I recently read over the very first draft of Animal (previously called Circus), I realized that the play is nearly unrecognizable to what it has become today.   I am still fine-tuning this current draft and looking forward to finally sharing my work to the public for a one time dramatic reading.

Quick Writing Note:  So much of writing is re-writing and a lot of re-writing is simply just cutting.   Cutting is hard, especially when you feel everything you write is gold.  It’s not.  Trust me.  Listen to trusted others, go with your gut and be fearless when cutting elements out of your script.  Whatever you lose, you gain so much more by giving yourself more time and space to flesh out and make richer with what’s left behind.   This is something I’m re-learning as I work on this current draft of Animal.  In all my scripts, I tend to want to throw in so many twisty elements that often convolute the plot.  Sometimes less is more.

Competition Alert:  My screenplay Twig  just placed in the top 10% out of a 1000 entries at a recent screenplay competition.  Read the results at  Write Movies.  Twig’s been through 4 drafts.   The older drafts did not advance in any of the competitions I’ve entered.  I’m hoping for more good news to come on this newest draft.  The next round for Write Movies will be the top 5%.

And now a word from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel:

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. ”