The Ordinary Epic is out (and people seem to like it)!

Remember how I had been threatening, for years now, to create an audio drama about gamers, and the games they play, that feels like your favorite D&D game? That it would be fun/funny, but with moments of poignant, and it would have sweeping sound design and beautiful, rousing music and in all ways be exactly like the D&D TV series you always wished existed, except that it was audio, lacking moving pictures of any kind…? No??

Okay, wow, we have some catching up to do

I (and a great many talented, hardworking folks) did precisely that! It’s called The Ordinary Epic, and you can listen to its entire first season today. Right now, even. It won’t cost you anything except roughly two and a half hours of your time. Or you could listen to the first five minutes and decide it’s not for you, in which case it will have cost you only five minutes of your time. Do you see how this works? Personally, I think this is an awfully good deal for you—a true low risk/high reward scenario, the likes of which we all wish for.

But Brandon, you say, I’m a busy person, and I need lots of social proof before I try something new

I am very happy to help you out with that!

Elena Fernández Collins, writing for an up-and-coming indie rag called the AV Club, had this to say:

This scripted audio fiction is one of the cheeriest debuts of spring, with humor that strikes when you least expect it and a keen hand at immediately creating lovable and hateable characters alike.

Read the rest here!

Ella Watts, writing for International Podcast Month, dazzled us with these kind words about The Ordinary Epic’s first season:

The Ordinary Epic is the show I’ve been waiting for. It’s a sitcom about playing Dungeons and Dragons that’s as much about the real people involved as it is about the stories they tell themselves…. The Ordinary Epic is a richly sound designed, beautifully orchestrated, compellingly performed piece of drama.

Oh, just read the whole thing. It’s a very sincere and touching review.

We were also, ahem, beyond honored, ahem, that The Ordinary Epic was a finalist in the category of “Best Podcast or Online Audio Drama” at a little-known outfit known as the BBC Audio Drama Awards.

Whaaaaat? Yes, this really happened. (Photography: Rachel Belleman)

Compelling, right…?!

Okay, yes, fine—but how do I listen to a “pod cast”?

It’s actually just “podcast,” but you are asking the right questions!

Do you have an Apple device? Listen here!

Do you have an Android device? Listen here!

Do you prefer instead to sit at a computer and gaze at the lush artwork of our website, perhaps even follow along via transcript so you don’t miss a single word, while you listen to the entire first season in one sitting or several? Sure, here you go!

I’ve listened to the whole thing and now I need more, Brandon—and fast

We have big plans for a second season, but we need your help to make it happen!

Tell a friend about The Ordinary Epic. That D&D fanatic who listens to “actual play” podcasts like The Adventure Zone or Critical Role or Dungeons & Daddies but couldn’t have imagined—nay, never dared to hope—that the rich fictional tapestry of a show such as this could also include the people playing the game, too! Or maybe a friend who has never listened to a podcast before but loves great stories of high adventure and fun banter. Or just a friend. Any friend. All of your friends.

Join our Patreon and get all sorts of insidery behind-the-scenes content. Even $1/month gets us much closer to a second season!

Sponsor an episode, or an entire season. Do you represent a company that makes games or gaming products that you think our audience would love? We would love to talk to you!

Okay, I went and did all of that

Wow—thank you! Did you ever know that you’re my hero? And everything I would like to be?

Yes, I did

I so enjoy these little chats of ours. More soon!

31 Plays in 31 Days! (And other stuff.)

So, uh, it's been awhile!

Last we spoke, I had some audacious plans concerning an audio drama project, etc., something about releasing it by the end of 2016, etc.

Well look: good news and bad news. The bad news is that the ambitious story I wanted to tell (and how I wanted to tell it) was never going to be finished by the end of 2016. Present-me knows more than past-me did, and that’s not past-me’s fault, is it?

The good news is that The Ordinary Epic does exist, is in fact in post-production (my amazing sound designer and composer are working their meticulous magic), and we're aiming for a fall 2017 release. It lives! It's going to be really good (he said, without any bias whatsoever)! Follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter!

Other writerly updates? Well... okay! You are so thoughtful to ask.

• I had a sleep-deprived blast at my second Hovey Players "Play in a Day" event, and the ten-minute play I wrote during that, called Swimming in Captivity...

• ...will be performed this November in South Korea as part of the Seoul Players Ten-Minute Play Festival!

• My little play about procrastination, The Successful Author's Morning Ritual, appears in both One Minute Plays: A Practical Guide to Tiny Theatre and 222 More Comedy Monologues 2 Minutes & Under.

• And! I am participating in this year's 31 Plays in 31 Days challenge. (The title and graphic of this post were very misleading, I know.)

As is my exhibitionist tradition, I'll be posting the plays here on my website as I finish them. You will be able to read all of them here. If you dare. (Some will eventually get staged and/or published. Some will make me laugh, and no one else. Some will be... unspeakably bad. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.)

Alright. Okay. I think that's everything. I'll see you on the other side. And let me know if you, too, are writing 31 of your own plays in these 31 days!

Second Shift, ten years later... and what's next

Ten years ago today, an audio drama podcast I co-wrote released its first episode

It was called "Everything to Everyone, Part 1," and the title was as much a reflection of the external pressures that the main character, Shauna, struggled with as it was about the script itself, which went through something like twenty-five substantial revisions. 

From the start, Second Shift was much more than just a podcast (or "podplay" as we were calling it mid-2006, at the early dawn of podcasting)—it was a unit of measurement that defined a certain period of my life. It grew to occupy every spare moment of my time for more than three years, and encroached too upon time I hadn't given it. I just could not say "no." Second Shift moved into my home, recording its episodes in my basement for the majority of its first season. It was my other girlfriend, my second and third job, my passion, the albatross around my neck... I don't know about "everyone," but for a long long time, it was everything to me.

I wasn't a "writer" before Second Shift

Not really. I mean, I had a degree in creative writing. (I had two, actually, and a resulting pile of student loan debt as tall or taller than my ambitions.) I read a lot of books about writing: Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Stephen King's On Writing, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life... if I couldn't bring myself to actually write, then surely reading these fine instruction manuals was almost as good?

...Even if I'd read them several times before?

Once Second Shift really got going, I discovered an inspiration that remains, to this day, my greatest strength and greater vice—an overreliance on impossible deadlines. Sometimes we'd release an episode and I hadn't even started writing the next one yet. Let me tell you—the best possible cure for writer's block is a cast, crew, and growing audience waiting, sometimes impatiently, for your next script. 

I stopped thinking, finally, about whether or not I was a Writer. I just wrote.

Thirty episodes later, I learned some things

I learned how to work with a writing partner. I learned to stop being precious about my words. I learned that a bit of comedy helps the drama go down. I learned how weird and wonderful (weirdly wonderful?) it is for people to quote things that I wrote. I learned that my very favorite thing to write is characters over time—how they change, how they don't. I learned that I have surprisingly strong opinions about what makes a good episode title. I learned that having your characters bicker for an entire episode is fun for everyone except the audience. 

I learned to listen to the characters (sometimes, for kicks, I also listened to the actors). I learned how to work with directors who were not me. I learned how to fight when something was important. I learned to choose just a few important things, lest I always be fighting. I learned how to write a series finale that, deep down, I wanted to be just a season finale.

It's been ten years, and I still haven't learned how to let go of Second Shift.

These days, the secret is definitely out about podcasts

You've almost certainly heard of them, and you may even have some favorites: Serial, Radiolab, This American Life, TED Radio Hour... 

This wasn't the case in 2006–09, when we were actively releasing episodes of this "podcast" thing. Do you listen to it on a computer? (You could, but...) Do you need an iPod? (Nope.) Does it cost money? (No, but you could donate?) Why don't you charge for it? (Should we?) I didn't get it. (That's cool...)

So we had an uphill battle to fight: not only were people not used to listening to stories told in an audio-only format, but the new technology presented some obstacles for the technology adverse. I've found myself wondering these days if Second Shift wouldn't find a much bigger audience if it were being released today. Megahit audio drama podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale and We're Alive give me hope that maybe we were really on to something, but we were just a little too early.

Season three of Second Shift will almost certainly never happen, so I won't get to find out. But what if I worked with old friends and new to develop an entirely new series?

What if we released the first episode by the end of this year, 2016? 

Well, let's find out.

I am developing a new audio drama series called The Ordinary Epic

Fans of Second Shift will find a lot to love in The Ordinary Epic. I wanted to tell earnest yet funny stories about characters over time—how they change, how they don't—that use fantastic, epic elements to explore how we deal with the "ordinary" stuff of life: work, love, growing up, growing old, keeping friends, finding meaning.  

It's the sort of thing I've always wanted to write but didn't quite know how. And had I never been a part of Second Shift, I don't think it ever would have occurred to me that this story needed to be a podcast (and it absolutely does).

Moreover, had I not learned what I did through Second Shift, I'm not sure I'd be writing anything at all.

Cha grendillo fai

Thank you Shauna, Katherine, Mike. Jareth, Arkahn, Fesmer. Zana. Thank you to the cast and crew, especially Nathan Davis for creating the show and Brad Smith for not letting it die. Thank you to my cowriters, John Tanzer and Myssi Cerebi. Thank you to everyone who listened, who discussed the show in our forums, who created magnificent fan art, who penned moving tributes that made me cry fat, manly tears. 

Second Shift is still available on iTunes (4.5 stars!). We also have a new website that will, soon, feature new cast and crew commentary that we've been putting together this past year.

I've also made the recording scripts for every single episode available here, on my website.

As for my new show, stay tuned for updates about The Ordinary Epic's development process. If I can capture some of the magic that made Second Shift a time and place I never wanted to leave, then it'll be something pretty special.

Here's to the next ten years.

Alt Reading reviews HOW WE LIVE NOW (an evening of comedy on a nebulous theme)

Camilla Churchill of Alt Reading had this (and more!) to say about the world premiere of my evening of shorts:

The line-up includes ‘Going Viral’, a scarily realistic glimpse into what will happen when this generation’s avidly documented babies grow up. It was awarded “best play” at the 2014 Long Island City One Act Festival, and it’s easy to see why. The performer’s use of over the top comedy is the perfect vehicle for delivering the sinister undertones in this play.

Read the rest here!

Should you find yourself in Reading tonight or tomorrow, there are still tickets left for the final two shows. Get 'em or wish you had!

An entire evening of theatre with my name on it! And other braggy things.

This upcoming Monday, November 16th, a mere four days from now, will bear witness to several momentous events:

1. Rockin' Fitness, previously Planet Fitness, will yet again bill me for $15 because to cancel one's membership involves a notarized letter and the blood of a middleborn child and I just haven't done it yet, okay?;
2. Roman Emperor Tiberius will be celebrating his two-thousand and fifty-sixth birthday (Felix natalis, Imperator!); and
3. Colour of Fruit Productions will debut the world premiere of my full-length evening of shorts: HOW WE LIVE NOW.

I don't want to give Rockin' Fitness or T-bone short shrift, but it's really the third item I want to tell you about. (I hope that's okay.)

So! HOW WE LIVE NOW (an evening of comedy on a nebulous theme) contains several of my more popular short plays, including The Interview, The Formative Years, and Going Viral, as well as a number of short works (some of them very short) heretofore unknown to theatre-going audiences! In all, the evening comprises eleven plays that sometimes bravely and always strangely tackle the struggle of being alive today: life, love, and Facebook "likes."

As plane tickets to Reading, England, are unfortunately not in the budget (I have this gym membership I no longer use but still pay for, remember), I'm sending my best wishes and ardent hopes for broken appendages (legs are traditional, but please follow your instincts) to the cast and crew of HOW WE LIVE NOW: director Lauren Donoghue and her zany team of talented actor types Alexander Britt, Flora Thomson, David Gurney, and Arianna Beadie. You're going to be great, despite the questionable material. :-)

Other news, which I will keep brief because you've read quite enough already, haven't you?

• I have a monologue in the recently released Best Contemporary Monologues for Kids Ages 7-15 and
• a short scene in the forthcoming The Best Scenes for Kids Ages 7-15, both by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books.
• The Formative Years will appear in Short+Sweet Sydney early next year!

Lastly... the new Star Wars is out soon, and I think I'm optimistic? I am. Obi-Wan help me, I am.

Brandon M. Crose, Esq.

I published an article on Esquire.com!

It's called "How to Honor Your Absent Father," and I wrote it three years ago as a Father's Day piece for those who have a difficult, strained, or sometimes nonexistent relationship with their father. Esquire published it this past Father's Day, and with the exception of one very vocal (yet unfocused in his complaint) Internet troll, people seemed to respond well to it.

That's a real mark of success, right? The point at which Internet trolls take the time to troll you? I've really made it, you guys!

In podcast land, where I used to plant my flag (and may still, someday...!), Everything Theatre Podcast's latest "Scripts Spotlight" episode features my ten-minute play Going Viral. 

This is the original cast and director of Going Viral's international premiere, as part of London's Bare Essentials, which is produced by Encompass Productions. I wasn't able to get to the U.K. to see it in person, so being able to listen to their performance on my iPod while walking to work was a real treat! They brought the funny, and I applaud everyone involved. 

And lastly: Gay marriage! That's not something I did, but now other people can, and that's pretty cool.

Missives from a sun-drenched state

...It's summer! Summer in May! Confusing but sunny! 

We got extra winter, like two days that could be legally considered "spring," and today it was hot, man. Still early May, and summer-hot. 

I predict fall in July, and then back to winter again by August. 

So, yes, fine, people from New England talk about the weather endlessly. But if you live here, I know that you too see it as a source of constant wonder. What will it do today? Huh, I guess it rained rabbits. That's weird, right? Why on earth did it do that?! Oh, tomorrow it's going to be chrysalis shells. Not baby butterflies—they're already gone. No one knows where, but yeah. Just the shells.

The weather, man. The weather.

In other news! I finished all six of my books for Hallmark: they range from Now You're 30! to Now You're 80!, and they'll hopefully be at your local Gold Crown store sometime this fall-ish. Don't hold me to this. That's a completely baseless estimate based on things I think, not things I know. But I'm looking forward to seeing how they came out! My editor and I put a lot of work and love and also work into these.

On the playwrighterly front, my one-minute plays are going like hotcakes! (Terrible metaphor. There is not a finite number of times they can be performed. And what the willy is a hotcake, even? An olden-time pancake?) I just learned that five of them (two of them world premieres!) will appear as part of Youth Education On Stage's One-Minute Play Festival this July (7th, 8th, and 9th). That's in Williston, North Dakota, and if you live nearby you should go and support kids doing theater. (And afterwards spoil me with praise, false or no.) (And also the kids, I guess.)

This Sunday I'll be seeing the Boston Theater Marathon, and the day before ("Saturday," in the vernacular) I'll be seeing at least part of the Warm-Up Laps, which will also feature another one-minute play world premiere of mine! I'm particularly excited to see this one performed. It's a musical. A one-minute musical. Oh yes.

Lastly, I'm a little late in bragging about this, but because I waited there's now a video, the world premiere of yet another of my one-minute plays: The Successful Author's Morning Ritual.

I had imagined it performed by just one person, but they got all creative and used a bunch of people! I selfishly started the embedded video right where mine starts, but if you're a one-minute play aficionado you should definitely watch the whole show. 

Lastly, in light of all the very-short-play heat I'm experiencing right now, I've updated the "One-Minute Plays" section of my website with new production information and (and!) the plays themselves. You need merely click their titles, and hilarity awaits you in one-minute chunks.

"Chunks." Mmmm...

Enough about me. What's going on with you? What's news? How about that weather, huh?!

Missives from a snow-buried state

Winter came.

I've fallen off the blog-shaped wagon lately, and it's not because I have nothing to report—there's a lot of stuff going on, and I've been too busy with it all to write about it.

(That may have been what the kids these days call a "humblebrag." SO BE IT.)

Firstly, the "Books" section of my website lists the nonfiction titles I wrote for Hallmark Gift Books several years ago. Well, they've asked me to revise all five of them and to write a sixth, so I have found myself very, very busy with that. This project has an aggressive deadline, so I have not been allowing myself much in the way of sleep or haircuts. You will find me tired and my hair long. If you find me at all.

Secondly, I placed a couple short pieces from a longer play I had all but abandoned into two different forthcoming titles from Applause Theatre & Cinema Books: Duo! The Best Scenes for Kids Ages 7–15 and One on One: Contemporary Monologues for Kids Ages 7–15. So that's pretty exciting! New life for an old play.

Thirdly, my ten-minute social media comedy Going Viral was featured in the "Top 80" lineup at Short+Sweet Sydney last month. Here is a picture that I stole from the festival's Facebook page:

Big congrats to (left–right) Katherine Babatzanis, Max Mulvenney, and Tom Rose, as well as to director Christine Wykes. Wish I could have seen it! Also wish I could have seen Australia. It's probably warm there right now. And, you know, always.

Fourthly, and in other "wish I could have seen it" news, the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, MA featured my ten-minute parental anxiety comedy The Formative Years in its 13th annual New Works Festival. Unfortunately, on account of obscene amounts of snow, they had to postpone the show until the following day, and so I couldn't see it. Snow. SNOW! I have been told, however, by not-at-all-biased parties who were able to attend that it went very well. "Funny," some even ventured to call it.

Fiftly, and lastly, the world premiere of my ten-minute existential comedy (oh yes) Character Development, Conflict, Scene Study, and Denouement happens tomorrow and Saturday, February 6th and 7th, at the Cohasset Dramatic Club in Cohasset, MA. This is a play cobbled together from various short things I wrote during my first 31 Plays in 31 Days attempt, and I'm very curious to see how it coheres as a whole.

That's it! That's everything. Stay warm, drink hot things, don't let the snow madness claim you utterly, etc.

The monthly braggadocio roundup: November 2014

These titles are misleading, as November has only just started, and so how could I possibly be giving a roundup of it...? But now I'm stuck calling things this way. I am trapped in my own lie. 

First up, Theatre KAPOW's 24-Hour Play Festival was awesome. I had so much fun. It was that rare writerly experience of knowing what you have to do, having a bunch of people actively cheering you on as you do it, and then feeling very proud of the result. 

I should have taken more pictures, but I think everyone was too busy doing the thing to document the thing. I did take one: that harrowing moment when the director and actors are reading the play for the first time. As you, the playwright, sit there and watch them read it.

They're a few pages in and no one's laughing oh god oh god. (Left to right: Jamileh Jemison, Jackie Marcoux, and Ben Bagley. Kelly Litt is sitting to Ben's left. He is not in this picture.)

Before this (actually only five hours before this), I had finished the play and written a blog post for Theatre KAPOW's website documenting (sort of) the writing process of the thing. You can read it here! An excerpt:

I started writing around 9:30pm and finished the first draft around 1:18 am. It clocked in at eleven pages. As I wrote to a friend on Facebook (because there was much Facebooking throughout this process): The only muse I've ever known is a gun pointed at my head. (Or a ticking clock. Whichever.)

True story. For the next couple hours I picked at the words, trying to artfully arrange them in a way that would make sense to people who are not me. I submitted the play at 3:13am, and was, evidently, the first of the five playwrights to turn in their play. Victory! (I think the second was like ten minutes later, but whatever, man. Primacy is mine.)

Then I slept for four hours, woke up very confused and desirous of strong coffee, and remained awake the rest of the day, working with the director, Jamileh Jemison, and the actors to make the funny funnier and the poignant poignanter. I had intended to slink off and nap at some point during the day, but I was having way too much fun sitting in on the rehearsal process and laughing at all of their jokes. 

Tech rehearsal! Left to right: Kelly Litt, Jackie Marcoux, and Ben Bagley. 

This Dating Thing was the last play of the night, and I was so proud of it and everyone involved. The actors (Ben Bagley, Jackie Marcoux, and Kelly Litt) absolutely nailed it. And then it was all over. I helped with cleanup and then a bunch of us went out for dinner and drinks. And then I drove half an hour to my girlfriend's parents' house and slept the sleep of the wide awake yet sleep deprived.

Wax Idiotical Films put together a time-lapse video of the entire 24 hours. Behold!

It seems that I scratch my neck a lot.

The one thing it omits is the writing process, for which I have thoughtfully put together my own time-lapse video:

So! That was that. I'd happily do it again every weekend. Every. Single. Weekend.

In other news, I learned right before heading up to Derry that my ten-minute play The Formative Years will appear as part of the Firehouse Center for the Arts New Works Festival in Newburyport, MA, this January. And! Some days after that, I also learned that Going Viral will appear as part of Short+Sweet Sydney 2015 in January/February, which will be Going Viral's third Australian production. The other two made it to the Finals in each of their festivals, so here's hoping...!

Aaaaaaand lastly, if you're not sick of reading about me yet, I've just put the finishing touches on a themed evening of short comedy that includes many of my previously produced plays as well as some that are new to the stage. The title is tentative so I won't share it with you yet, but I've sent it out to interested parties both near and far, and we shall see what becomes of it!

Now for your random funny: Here is irrevocable proof that cats are deceitful and very likely planning the demise of all life on Earth. 

The monthly braggadocio roundup: September/October 2014

As I steel myself for the late-night lunacy of writing an original 10–15-minute piece for Theatre KAPOW's 24-Hour Play Festival (tonight! here's a writeup from the The Hippo! and another from NewHampshire.com!), I wanted to recap some of the stuff I've been up to the past couple months:

Summer ended, exactly as I predicted. You people never listen to me.

I completed this year's 31 Plays in 31 Days challenge at the very last minute, as is my custom. I think I hammered out seven short plays that Sunday. Maybe one or two of them turned out okay? That's not the point. THE POINT IS I WROTE THEM.

The Short+Sweet Queensland production of GOING VIRAL made it to the Finals and netted Shanay De Marco the "Best Actor in a Play" award. Congrats, Shanay! We have never met but I'm still excited for you.

Likewise, the Short+Sweet Hobart production of GOING VIRAL also made it to the Finals! The actors (grandparents Helen and Mike Edwards and their granddaughter Zoe Melville) even scored a very nice writeup in the Tasmanian Times:

The festival continues on Saturday with Program 2 which also has new Tasmanian plays and one memorable moment for a young, short and sweet Tasmanian actress.  Fourteen year old Zoe Melville has been going to one act play festivals with her Thespian Grand Parents, Mike and Helen Edwards since she could walk. Readers have no doubt seen Mike and/or Helen treading the boards in plays as recently as “The Phantom” at the Theatre Royal and “Waiting in the Wings” in 2013 at the Playhouse and as far back as 1950’s Uni Revues.

Coming from a family involved in the performing arts in Tasmania for almost 60 years theatre was bound to be in Zoe’s blood.  This weekend will be an experience she’ll never forget, sharing her first mainstream on stage appearance with her grandparents, two of Hobart theatres stalwarts.

Festival Director Ros Peck says “This is absolutely one of the highlights of this festival for me, Zoe has been an audience member for so long and to see her finally on stage and with her Grandparents gives me goosebumps, I’m so happy for her.”

They'll be taking the show on the road to the Deloraine One Act Festival tonight and tomorrow. Best of luck, guys! Break a leg? I always found that expression kind of violent. Please don't actually break your legs or any other appendage.

Looking ahead, GOING VIRAL has been shortlisted for Short+Sweet's Sydney show, which is, evidently, the largest 10-minute play festival in the world. Well! I don't know yet if a director has selected my play, but being shortlisted for this is still pretty cool.

And in news that is not GOING VIRAL, THE FORMATIVE YEARS will be making its international premiere at Playground: Fears in London. This will be my second Playground show, the first being (you guessed it!) GOING VIRAL in Playground: Deception. If you live in the UK you should go and laugh a lot at my play.

Is that enough bragging? I think so. I prepare now to reach into my sleepless brain and pull out (by force, if necessary) THEATRE.

Finally, unrelated to any of the above: Ultrafacts is my new favorite Tumblr. The grammar is not always great but the content is fascinating/shocking/funny/etc. I use it to harangue my girlfriend and coworkers with trivia they never wanted to know... but need.

Theatre KAPOW's 24-Hour Play Festival

I'm delighted (and a little frightened) to announce that I will be one of five playwrights creating new works in a very short span of time for Theatre KAPOW's 24-Hour Play Festival this October in Derry, New Hampshire. 

Behold! My mug! And the brave mugs of talented others.

I've always wanted to try something like this. And let's face it: I am no stranger to impossible deadlines. Should be fun and not at all fatal!

Going Viral in the Short+Sweet Queensland Finals

Huh! Looks like Going Viral will be competing in the finals at Short+Sweet Queensland this September. Big congrats to the cast and crew—wish I could be there!

Post by Short+Sweet Queensland.

The monthly braggadocio roundup: August 2014 (now with pictures!)

I mean, August's only just begun, but I'm posting this in August, so...? Whatever. It's the August roundup!

So many things: My girlfriend and I flew down to Carrboro, North Carolina (there's supposed to be a comma here but I've always hated that rule so screw it) last month to attend The ArtsCenter's 10 by 10 in the Triangle, where we got to meet some of the show's cast and crew as well as four of the other playwrights. The whole writing thing is a pretty solitary art, so it was great to compare notes with others who are up to similar shenanigans.

Left to right: ME!, Corey Rieger, Bridget Erin, Elaine Smith, and Jordan Rawlins.

While there, I saw my third production of Going Viral. I love all the different nuances each production brings. This one featured the first male "child" character (Jorge Donoso) and had a remix of David After the Dentist as the intro song. Great. And the parents (David Berberian and Page Purgar) were a riot.

Two weeks later, I got to see a production of The Formative Years for the first time. It was part of the Artists' Exchange's 9th Annual One Act Play Festival, and they nailed it. The director, Jessica Bradley, added some great musical and physical business that really sold the fastidious, finicky world of these crazy people I created. Their total commitment to the insane wold of these "parents" made the piece even funnier than I could have hoped.

Michael Shallcross and Meg Taylor-Roth. Please note the hand sanitizer on the bedstand. Heh.

Coming up, the Suffield Players will feature two of my plays (The Interview and The Formative Years) as part of their New Faces 2014 show this month. Behold! Promotional material:

Then, this fall, Going Viral goes overseas to London for Playground: A New Writing Showcase, to Australia for Short+Sweet Queensland, and to Tasmania for Short+Sweet Hobart and the Deloraine One Act Festival. That last one will actually be the first festival I didn't have to submit to—the actors from Short+Sweet Hobart's production contacted me to ask if they could also do the show in Deloraine. It'll be two grandparents and their granddaughter, which certainly marks the first time that an actual family has performed Going Viral! Wish I could see it.

And I think that's enough bragging for now. Here's my favorite thing on the internet or anywhere.

Round two!

Only two hours until August 1st, and you know what that means...!

Summer is basically over.

BUT ALSO! It means that tomorrow is day one of my second 31 Plays in 31 Days attempt. As I did last year, I'll be posting the plays as I finish them (hopefully one each day, but let's be honest here). If you're in to that sort of thing, you can follow along at home by navigating to "31 Plays in 31 Days" through the "Writing! For you to read!" tab on the left of this website.

Or just click here. Enjoy!

31 more plays in another 31 days

To date, 9 of my 31 plays from last year's 31 Plays in 31 Days effort have been produced and/or published (some of them multiple times!). As I'd be a fool not to attempt this challenge every August for the rest of my life, I will of course be doing it again this year.

But also! I agreed to help them out with collecting the daily prompts they send out every morning to get those brain juices sloshing:

We’re now soliciting suggestions for prompt ideas. If you have prompts that you would like to share with the playwrights participating in this year’s 31 Plays in 31 Days Challenge, please email them to Brandon Crose, one of our prolific playwrights from last year who is creating this year’s prompts. He can be reached at brandon.crose @ gmail.com (remove the spaces). Please include your name and, if selected, we’ll acknowledge your contribution on our website in August.

Surrender your prompts to me! All of them. Yes. Yesss...

I think this is a great project—I can't overstate how instrumental it's been in my development as a playwright. So who's joining me this year?

Live stream of Gi60 Live US Edition!

My one-minute plays Bad Day, Eh? and The Last Facebook Freedom Fighter will be appearing with 78 others as part of Gi60 Live US Edition, which will be streaming tonight through Sunday (12–15 June): the live stream's link (as well as information about tickets, if you are of an NYC persuasion) can be found here!

Everything Theatre reviews Going Viral!

A recent review of Encompass Productions' Bare Essentials included this glowing praise for a certain social media-themed short play of mine:

One of my favourites was Going Viral, a play set in the near future. It’s a child’s 15th birthday and the parents have a surprise for her: a Facebook account. As the play unravels, we find out that the child is actually an internet sensation because of her lisp. The writing was fluid with great comedy and it was very relevant. It was beautifully carried by all actors but notably Laurie Harrington, who was a fantastic character actress as the mother and had me laughing out loud throughout.

I owe a great many thanks to the director, Michaela Neal, and the actors, Glenn Mortimer, Marcella Carelli, and Laurie Harrington. It's rumored that they recorded at least one of these performances so I'm looking forward to sharing that with you!

Long-overdue website update

For those of you who are RSS only, you may (or may not; that's also cool) be interested to learn that I've updated the website:

• I've added a list of my upcoming productions beneath the main site's navigation, and
• The "Plays" section now includes subsections for my one-minute, ten-minute, full-length, and plays in print. And they are all current as of today.*

* No promises about tomorrow.

Zach Attack!

I'm really excited about this for reasons of abject silliness.

Gone in 60 Seconds (Gi60), an international one-minute play festival, will be featuring three of my very short plays: REGULARLY SCHEDULED (previously seen during the Boston Theater Marathon's Warm-Up Laps and also appearing at Playsmiths' Flash Fest in New York this June), BAD DAY, EH? (world premiere!), and THE LAST FACEBOOK FREEDOM FIGHTER (also a world premiere!).

All three were written during last August's 31 Plays in 31 Days effort (and you can read all three of them here), but the last two—BAD DAY, EH? and THE LAST FACEBOOK FREEDOM FIGHTER—were silly things I wrote specifically to make my brother Zach laugh... or possibly so other people would laugh at him. A little of both, maybe? It's a brother thing.

I'm excited that other people find them funny too. In fact, so far 9 of those 31 plays have been (or soon will be!) produced or published. Will I be participating in 31 Plays in 31 Days again this August? Uh, yes. Yes I will.

And this time all 31 of them will be about Zach.

Ten by Ten in the Triangle

I'm pleased to announce that GOING VIRAL will also be appearing this July in The ArtsCenter's Ten by Ten in the Triangle!

In addition, Saturday evening, July 19th, is their Playwrights' Gala event, which I will be attending as one of the featured playwrights. So if you find yourself in or near Carrboro, North Carolina, please say hello! (You will undoubtedly find me near the food.)