Less than a month away and Listen to Grace opens. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on acting. Most of the actors have their lines memorized and we’ve been refining and re-defining who these characters are. I’m seeing a lot of growth come from my performers and I know as we draw closer to opening night, all their hard work will pay off.

One of things as a director I like to put emphasis on is “raising the stakes”. Actors have to make choices that should be bold and strong, not passive. This can be in regards to emotion or action of a given character.  I’m constantly challenging actors to make bolder choices. Drama comes from that place where one is discovery new things. The more things a character discovers about him/herself or others, the bigger the stakes become.

I recently re-read my screenplay Twig and my two-act play Circus. Both these projects have been on the back-burner for this past year. I like both scripts and feel there is a lot of potential in each project. I began re-working/thinking Twig and hope to have a re-write complete by April. My plan for Circus is to have a re-write done by May. Writing in this blog makes me accountable, so I better get to work.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein”.
– Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

“You fail only if you stop writing”.
– Ray Bradbury