I'm getting geared up for the return of The Bone House to Edmonton. Cast is due in Edmonton in two weeks to rehearse and already audiences are buzzing about the show. I'm curious to see what this production is going to be like. I can't wait.
Recently in Bone House Category
Wow! I just learned that Threeweeks, one of the major Edinburgh publications, handed out awards to what the editors thought were the top ten plays of the Edinburgh Fringe. The Bone House picked up one for being the most innovative. Considering there are over 2,000 plays at the month-long festival, I'm pretty proud of the gang for rising to the top. I'm so thrilled that the show still works after ten years, and I'm so looking forward to it getting to Edmonton in October. Yay!
Edinburgh's Fringe Festival is closing this week and along with it, the month-long run of The Bone House. I've had scattered reports from the producers. Great reviews and word of mouth early in the run. In the middle, a couple of bad reviews and smaller houses. Now, we're waiting for the Scotsman review to come out for the final week. It's the review that makes or breaks shows. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a good review. The tough thing about the Edinburgh Fringe is that there are so many shows competing for audiences that it is hard to drum up a crowd, especially for a group that has no previous Fringe reputation to build on. Complicating matters is the show's time slot which 11:30 pm every night. I've heard from the producer that he's had to deal with his fair share of drunken Scots at the show. Yeesh. Still, I wish I could have been at the festival. Living through reports and reviews just isn't the same as seeing the audience's real-time reactions.
I'm supposed to be cycling through my manuscript for the kids' book this week, but theatre has been distracting me. I have to get ready for a pitch meeting, which means I have to flesh out three to five decent ideas. It's fun work to brainstorm, but hard to figure out which idea to sell hard. I'll figure it out by the end of the week.
I'm also having trouble focussing, because I'm distracted by what is going on at the Edinburgh Fringe. The producer of The Bone House has sent periodic updates, but I want a blow-by-blow account of what is happening every day. To that end, I've been searching the web for any reviews of the show. Sure enough, I found a great one. Here's the review from a cool website. I've also heard that the publication, Three Weeks, has given the show 5 out of 5 stars, but I haven't found that review online. I'm living the Fringe vicariously and wishing that I had actually found the cash to go to Edinburgh.
Oh, and the final bit of distracting and good news is that one of my kids' plays, Fi Jee and the Two Moons, is going to be part of a published anthology of Sprouts plays. Sprouts is a festival of cultural plays for kids that has been running in Edmonton for several years. Concrete Theatre is the producer of the festival and the driving force behind the anthology. They had many plays to choose from and I'm thrilled they included mine. Yay!
Anyway, I'm headed off to work on my pitches.
I've been receiving reports from the producers of The Bone House. The show is up and running. There's a lot of competition for audience members, so the cast and crew have been on the streets flogging the show. The first two houses were small, but the audiences stuck around to ask questions about the production. I always think it is a good sign if audience members stick around after. If they hated the show, they'd make a beeline for the exit. Sticking around means there's something that has intrigue the audience members. I'm hoping the houses get bigger as word of mouth spreads. Everyone has put in so much work that I'd hate to see them doing shows for 5 audience members at a time. Fingers crossed. Today is their press day.
I had to flip from cyber bully to serial killer in mid sentence. I got a message from my Vancouver producers that the new scene I wrote for The Bone House wasn't working. It was not giving the audience a break from the storytelling and it was creating more questions than it needed to. Plus, there's a concern that the play has to be under 60 minutes for the Edinburgh Festival. Our solution was to go back to the previous version of the script, which has the video clips of the killer's victims. I went through and cut out the extraneous material to come up with a lean mean scene. My only worry is that in cutting to the bone, I might have taken away the air that allows the audience to relax a bit from the barrage of Eugene's storytelling. I won't know if the scene will work for sure until the cast and crew rehearse the scene. This is a good reminder that what works on page may not always work on stage. I wish I could be at rehearsals to see it for myself, but I'm glad to go back to the video stuff. My original instinct to have video was to break up the monotony of the direct address to the audience.
I have to admit that this certainly gave me a much needed shot of creative adrenaline. I knocked off the revisions in a couple of hours, and now I feel recharged. I was feeling pretty sluggish on the book. So sluggish in fact that I think I'm going back to outline so that I can map out each chapter. Right now, I'm cranking out pages and more worried about meeting my quota than thinking about where the story needs to go. When that happens, best to put on the brakes and check the map (or in this case, draw the map).
Back to the book.
Looking over the revisions, I think I'm on to something. I like that Jacob has a more personal connection to Midnight Cowboy. Originally, Jacob was just an assistant to Eugene Crowley. Now, he's got something at stake; his family members were victims. It means I have to re-examine the relationship Eugene has with Jacob throughout the play, but I think this is an interesting dynamic. Eugene is using Jacob like bait, believing that Midnight Cowboy's "trophies" are the survivors of his murders. And Jacob now has a reason to be engaged in the hunt, rather than just a bystander. As long as I make the reason credible, I think the revision will work. Let's see how it looks after a couple of days thought. I might change my mind.
