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| Ronan Noone |
Thoughts on the Boston Theater Marathon
I have two ten minute plays ready for both 2013 and 2014.
I can't say they will be accepted, but I anticipate the opportunity.
As it stands,
I read and reread my submission throughout the year before I submit it.
I organize a cold reading of that play.
I excise words and I replace lines until it sounds like music.
It's all a little neurotic for a ten-minute play, isn't it?
Rakish playwrights sounding out character traits in their head,
looking into open space while imagining the blocking,
the mise en blah blah,
the audience reaction,
and gathering friends for mock performances
before being fully satisfied that the piece,
the play, is worthy of submission.
I have two ten minute plays ready for both 2013 and 2014.
I can't say they will be accepted, but I anticipate the opportunity.
As it stands,
I read and reread my submission throughout the year before I submit it.
I organize a cold reading of that play.
I excise words and I replace lines until it sounds like music.
It's all a little neurotic for a ten-minute play, isn't it?
Rakish playwrights sounding out character traits in their head,
looking into open space while imagining the blocking,
the mise en blah blah,
the audience reaction,
and gathering friends for mock performances
before being fully satisfied that the piece,
the play, is worthy of submission.
And then you go to rehearsal,
two weeks before opening
if you're lucky.
And the actors
and the director
have a couple of questions for you,
and you're just hoping they haven't exposed a plot hole you missed.
This is the exact same process
for a full-length play.
And I sweat it out with the same vigor.
And then the play is up.
And then it's gone.
And the actors and the director -
Who are they?
Where did they come from?
I may never see them again,
or I might bump into them in a different place.
Certainly a different time,
but
I will never forget them.
Because the plays I have written for BTM have had Ciaran Crawford bleating, on all fours, pretending to be a sheep,
Richard McElwain, as a Russian emigre, sweating out his anger after his car is damaged.
His wife, Georgia Lyman maintaining World Peace by picking up her neighbor’s dog shit and using it to fertilize her flowers.
Jessica Webb's delightful poise handling a neurotic writer. The Emerson students, like a bunch of roustabouts, singing in harmony.
And Bob Murphy channeling Lloyd Blankfein in Goldman Sucks.
The Boston Theater Marathon created these and many other indelible memories in my mind.
And I know there are an infinite amount of everlasting memories that have been created for thousands, tens of thousands by now.
And that
is something spectacular and something immortal.
It is an honour to have a play in the icon that is - The Boston Theater Marathon.
-- Ronan Noone
We hope you’ll join us on Sunday, May 20 for Boston Theater Marathon XIV (and for the Warm-Up Laps on May 19!). Click here for tickets and complete event details. See you there!
Ronan's plays have indeed been memorable. If only everyone went to the same trouble of rehearsing and editing their plays for a year before submitting them, the overall quality of the plays at the marathon would be much improved (and the reading process much less painful).
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