Tag: Nakai Theatre

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Another playwriting competition

Another year has come and gone and another playwriting competition is over.  There’s nothing quite like the joys of writing, caffeine, adrenalin, and insomnia that accrue in such a short period of time.

I thought about spending it working on two plays I’ve been trying to finish over the last while. However, I thought I would write something new for a number of reasons.

A friend passed away recently. We had worked together for 22 years and, as it turned out after half of that time, our grandparents had both emigrated from the same town outside Belfast in the 1920s. I figured it was time to write a play that takes place in Ulster, namely Derry in January and February of 1972.

If you think you can write a play from scratch in 24 hours, you will be disappointed. I`m content with the first draft I managed in that time. It`s a bit ragged at the edges, but that`s how first drafts are supposed to be.

So, there`s another one on my plate. One of these days, I going to have to retire, if for no other reason than to finish a few plays…

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Another Nakai Playwriting Challenge comes to a happy end

I entered the Nakai 24 Hour Playwriting Challenge (it used to be Festival but that seems to have changed) again this year. I wanted to work on a play I had started in January, planning to enter the category for play already in development.

That part is called the Nakai Next 24 Hour Challenge. I thought, with a prize for best new play, shouldn’t there be one called Best Used Play? This suggestion has been frowned upon by the hosting organization, by the way.

After the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, I wanted to look at the question of school shootings and why someone would actually do it? What would make a person take one or more firearms to school and use them?

After a little preliminary research, I found that this a far more frequent occurrence than most of us believe, and in most cases, does not reflect the ones we see displayed on the national news organizations as a whole. In fact, my underlying question has changed now to, “Why doesn’t this happen more often.”

The short version is I won (second time in three years, he gloated). Now, it’s time to shift gears and look at putting the play in the upcoming Homegrown Theatre Festival in May. Right now, I looking at doing a reading of the full play. This, however, means I will be looking for 10 readers (it has a rather large cast). A call for readers will go out later…