| | AlterLab: This is Not the End
“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
-- Frank Herbert
Last night was AlterLab's official final meeting. I and the three other playwrights participating met with AlterTheater's Jeanette Harrison who's been running AlterLab to discuss our experience, what we feel we accomplished and what we hoped to do next with our respective plays.
Sitting around Ann Brebner's table eating strawberries, cherries and this delicious upside down blueberry polenta cake (I'm going to get Ann's recipe) we each expressed how the lab had been a gift to our writing lives, providing us with support, encouragement and the challenge to finish a production-ready script in a short amount of time (for me at least it was a much shorter time than I'm used to finishing a play and I'm very glad I managed to do it).
We also spent time talking through challenges that some of the playwrights were still encountering, helping to unearth possible solutions or just rather a different way to approach the problem a writer was facing.
And it was during this last session that I realized the magic of our little group. Four playwrights deeply invested in one another. In each other's work.
I've loved laughing out loud during readings of Ignacio's The Fellowship (yes, it's a riff on the Tolkien classic) and marveled at his knack for structuring comedy (he makes it look easy); I've enjoyed the excitement of coming across an article or a movie that made me think of Ann's play and I'd immediately send her a link via our group's Facebook page; and I've identified with Rebecca as she intuitively writes her first play (something I did) that takes on structure and a larger-than-life story--and I'll say the result is very exciting to me.
AlterLab was exactly what I needed as a playwright. It grounded me as I entered my 6th year as a playwright. And even though the residency is finishing this isn't the end. Each of us will continue to develop our plays.
Thank you, AlterTheater. Thank you for bringing us together and for believing in our work. I can't wait to see what we all do next.
-M
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| | Posted 6/8/2012 10:02 AM - 72 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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