July 14, 2004
Today marks one of the most important days of my life. The City’s New Young Playwrights contest is inviting the 50 that got through the Preliminaries to the Dedications, A playhouse in the Theatre District, to write, rehearse and perform a short play for 4 judges and a small audience. Apparently, we’re teaming up with the young Actor’s contest so that we’ll have performers. There’s 150 of them, 50 of us, meaning we all get 3 actors. I Called Natalie, I didn’t have to go for an hour, so I thought we’d go out for some coffee before hand, get some Ideas. She was great for Inspiration.
“God, I’m so nervous!” I said before taking a sip of my Chai Latte. I started tapping my pencil on my notebook, violently.
“Calm down, hun!” Natalie grabbed my hand, stopping the tapping. “You’re going to do fine, I know it.” I looked down at my note book, I Suddenly had inspiration.
I started writing things down wildly, Natalie started laughing. I was probably writing ideas down for at lease a half-hour. Which wasn’t good.
“Babe, we gotta go.” Natalie pointed out as she got up. She started walking towards the door, I Finished a quick sentence, grabbed my bag and ran after her.
“Alright, so, you guys understand?” Our ‘Mentor’ John asked us. We had three hours to complete a ten-twenty minute play, with a complete story, action, romance, and heartbreak, whatever we wanted. I laid down on the stage, and took out my laptop, and got started.
The story was about a pair of girls, who had been best friends since they were toddlers being torn apart by a young man, Damian, who promises one of them, Julia an amazing career as a model, but instead he takes her away and tortures her. The other girl, Who I Decided to name Danielle, searches for her, but never finds her. A small series of unfortunate events happen to Danielle and she ends up alone on the streets. She then finds out the man who stole her precious away from her was put in jail and that Julia was looking for her.
John looked over the script. “Excellent! Tragic, with a happy ending. That’s pretty rare in plays.” He Smiled.
“Thanks! When do we meet our actors?” I asked. I was informed that we would get a line up of ten actors, unless we were last. Lucky for me, I Wasn’t.
“Tonight at about six. You’re free for about two hours.” John winked at me. Pervert.
I called home, luckily my mom answered. “Hi Mom! Guess what!!” I said excitedly.
“What?” She said, for the first time in months she sounded happy.
“You remember that contest I entered? Well, I Just finished writing my entry for the second round! And the mentor liked it!!” I started smiling uncontrollably, “And I choose my actors tonight!”
“Oh? Will this play be shown to the public?” She asked.
“Yeah, we get a day and a half of supervised rehearsal time then the first 10 go on Friday.”
“Well, that’s great! Are me and the rest of the family allowed to see?” She asked. “Probably not Jamie, though, right?”
