So Slapdash 3 is over and it was a HUGE success!  We nearly sold out Arts on Real and the audience gave us much love.  When I walked out to deliver the curtain speech, a roar of excitement went up from the crowd that brought tears to my eyes.  It felt wonderful to finally have Slapdash get the attention it deserved.  This was due in no small part to Tim’s tireless efforts to get out the word through publicity, especially since they left us out of the Chronicle AND ACOT, and our actors making sure their friends showed up and supported them.

On to my experience of Slapdash.  The sacred circle rocked this year.  We had Brandon, Paul, Tim, Erin, me, plus Skipper, who was an absolutely awesome addition to the circle.  I think we all really enjoyed the process, and having Brandon back was just icing on the cake.  The only thing missing was Travis, but hopefully he’ll come back next year!  Sacred Circle rocks!  As usual, my assigned opening line really started the wheels turning.  My first line was from Paul and was, “Those legs have been together longer than the Smothers Brothers!”, which instantly made me start thinking of an old-time vaudevillian.  My ending line (which I wrote, of course), was “Watch out for that heavy-”, which, within the vaudevillian idea, made me think of something falling from the rafters.  To create drama, I decided the something falling from the rafters had to be purposely dropped to kill someone.  I had a cast of 2 women and one men, which led me to think that the 2 women had an act and were managed by the man.  Making the women twin sisters I thought would create a bit of humor because I was almost guaranteed that my two actresses would look nothing alike.  Hey folks, you gotta’ look for the funnies where you can find them!  My first thought was that the sister who tried to kill the other sister wound up getting killed herself, but where does the guy come in?  Oh, I should mention at this point that I never plot any of this stuff out before I begin writing.  I just start typing and the plot details develop and change as I go along.  I was helped out by the fact that I had to pump at about 11:45, which gave me 15 minutes to really think about my script.  I came out with 4 ounces of milk and my entire plot.  Two sisters love the same man, their manager.  They both separately tell their man about the plot they each concocted to kill their sister.  They wind up accidentally killing their man.  Along the way they banter in that sharp-witted way that I’ve loved in classic movies since I was a child.  I mean, hopefully it was sharp-witted:)  It was an idea that really could only sustain 10 pages. I kept going back over the script after it was finished to fine tune and punch stuff up, but I certainly couldn’t add anymore.  I was a bit jealous of the folks who came out with 15 pages and had to chip away.  But I started out fighting the scene because it wasn’t what I “wanted” to write.  Luckily, Erin reminded me there’s no time to fight it when you have to finish a script in just a few hours, and I kept going.  I was really happy with my finished product, then I got even luckier and had Brandon direct it and Travis, Mariana and Emily in the scene.  They really picked up that scene and ran with it.  They were incredible!  I watched them completely getting it, and taking the characters in directions I hadn’t even thought of, and thinking “This is the same thing I wrote last night?  No way!”

I only wrote this year and did box because of Stella, but I loved it, what fun!  All the scenes were fantastic, it was just a huge high, I can’t wait for next year!

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Comments

Kate

2006-07-11T17:47:36.000Z

So proud of you!  That sounds like it was really funny!