Writing is re-writing and more re-writing and everyone has an opinion and you, the writer, must remain open to others while staying true to your art. It can be stressful when you’re trying to figure out the direction of your story.  I have just finished (yet again!) another re-write of my play ANIMAL.  And as you can see from the poster above, coming this fall, ANIMAL will have its premiere as part of the Fireworks Festival at the Alumnae Theatre  in Toronto (auditions will be held the 1st and 2nd week of September).

Over the years I’ve had many people read for ANIMAL while I try to refine the play further.  I have lost count how many readings  I’ve held, both private and public.  I’m very grateful to any person who has lent their time and talent to sit and read my dialogue, as I try to make sense of what I’ve created. Come next week, I will hold yet another reading with another set of actors as I present yet another version of this twisty play about mental illness, a fractured family and the fight to find hope and healing in the midst of devastating pain.   My plays, like my screenplays, are stories about reckoning the hard truths of life.  There is no easy answers in my creative worlds.   I don’t write comedies, but there is humor in some of the painful situations characters find themselves in.

Here is a list of all the readers that have read for ANIMAL over the years (and some of them more than once).  I hope I don’t forget anyone:

Dave Crawford,
Michele Dodick
Debra Hale
Mima Hoyes
David Johnson
Corrie Logan
Jane Miller  (dramaturge, she has read in most of the readings)
Alexandra Milne
Adam Pellerine
Richard Peters
Stephen Purdy
Jillian Rees-Brown
Stephen Reich
Michael Scott
Ryk Simpson
Anton Wasowicz.

The following names will be added to this above list next week when my latest draft is read aloud:  Liz Best, Breanna Dillon, Chris Irving, Kieran Kennedy and Robert Ouellette.

I’ve come to the conclusion (and I certainly didn’t arrive at it yesterday), that re-writing never really ends.  At some point, yes, you the creator have to decide “Enough”.  But there is always a needling feeling that more can be done.   I have a lot of screenplays I’ve written in the last few years (Twig, The Living Water, Who is Molly Steele? Break Away), which are “done”, but they’re not (at least according to some people)…and so they sit.  Will I have another go at them?   All this talk about re-writing reminds me of what Leonardo Da Vinci once said:

I think there is a lot of truth in that.  A creator has to ask themselves, realistically, how often can one go back to the same project over and over.  With ANIMAL, I feel like (like I’ve felt all the other times), that this is the best draft yet.   Is there another draft to come?  I’m sure after my upcoming reading, I’ll be picking at the script again.  It is hard to let go…like a child leaving home.

Just last week, I found out my screenplay Let It Shine did NOT advance to the Quarter-finals in the Page International Screenwriting Awards (about 10% of screenplays out of 6500 scripts advance).  I was totally bummed, but after receiving back script coverage, Let It Shine likely needs more work.   Coverage is done by readers for screenplays.  At production houses, these readers decide what moves forward to producers.   I always get  coverage notes on my screenplays.   The readers are people who don’t know me and I get an unbiased opinion on the script.   The reader for Let It Shine was brutally honest.  It hurt, but I guess it was necessary once I got over my bruised and fragile ego.  Leave your ego at the door.   And so, guess what I’ll be doing in the days…weeks….months….years ahead?   More.  Re  Writing.   Oh joy.