A good experience

I am currently on my annual week-away timeshare writer's retreat to the Outer Banks, where it has been cooler than most years, and breezy, but mostly sunny. I guess it's good that the weather has kept me indoors and more concentrated than some of these trips in the past!

The writing portion so far has included the adaptation of an old short story to a very short play, which was fun and might become a submission to the Playwrights' Forum's Horror Anthology, which occurs in October (going to be a busy month). Maybe I'll get it accepted!

But speaking of the Playwrights' Forum, I volunteered for, and then ran the lighting board for two tech rehearsals and three of the four performances of the Evening of Short Plays. It happens that the studio theater lighting board there is identical to KLT's larger board, so I wasn't too technologically challenged to be able to figure out the running and the cues. Unfortunately, the cues were programmed for a certain order of shows, then the order was changed, so there was some jumping around involved. But I don't feel I screwed it up too badly; it was fun to see the various shows and how the process works; and I certainly got to be comfortable with the board again. Maybe next time I can learn more about the actual programming, etc. Certainly a fun learning experience, anyway!

Many more shows to come over the next few weeks, starting on Sunday -- going to stop on the way back to K'vegas to catch "Margaret Mitchell" at Theatre in the Park in Raleigh (Kathy will hopefully get to see it on Friday evening) -- just for the fun of it, to see how they handle the show.

And then a fair # of Triad shows after that. And hoping to get some serious work done on the next full-length play script, "Patent" -- starting ... right now!

Weather or not

Lately, central North Carolina has been pushed around by somewhat uncommon wintry weather -- a 6" snowfall over last weekend; uncommon cold; freezing rain/rain today; more wintry stuff threatened for the coming weekend.

It has wreaked havoc with all kinds of events schedules, including the play we had scheduled to see this past Saturday. We've been lucky enough to reschedule it for Thursday night -- hopefully before the next snow attack -- so will report on that soon.

However, that means we've only been in the theater a couple of times lately, as well as a special event, so looking forward to clearing roads and more shows before long.

We got over to UNCSA for a special performance of "The Compleat Works of Wm. Shakespeare, Abridged" that helped raise funds for senior drama students to get to L.A. for auditions (and part of the proceeds went to the Haitian relief effort). It was a lot of fun, if a little sloppy here and there. We sat with Macon Shirley and Paul and Myla O'Brien, so a good theater night!

More recently, we caught "Oscar & Felix" over at Open Space, with Ken Ashford and Scott Stevens in the title roles, and Michael Carter and Chuck Powers among the poker players. Pretty good too, I thought. A few line drops here and there, but good energy and it held my attention.

We also ran over to Greensboro for the season-announcement event at Triad Stage. A good collection of shows, but a particular favorite included -- they'll be doing "Educating Rita" as their second show, in the fall. Can't wait!

Since last writing, I have managed to discover that a lot of the in-depth research I had been doing on individual songs, writers and publishers may not have been necessary. I have yet to confirm with ASCAP, but BMI definitely offers a "promoter" license that, for a fee (of course) allows basically unlimited use of all BMI songs for music backdrops -- at least for the limited run of our "Conversations" production. This is VERY good news!