What to submit for the Boston Theater Marathon

The Boston Theater Marathon submission deadline is soon approaching. One of the people running it is Kate Snodgrass, one of my mentors and my thesis adviser from school, so it's a really good idea for me to make sure I have submissions in it. We're allowed to put forward two ten-minute plays for consideration. I didn't get chosen last year, but Kate wrote a very nice note on my response letter complimenting the plays I sent in. I can't remember the second one-- I want to guess that it was No Clean Break --but the first was definitely Triumph of Law, which is certainly one of my stronger plays.

But, since two of my strongest pieces were already passed over, I need to have something new to try with. I've been looking over my pieces that I made for this year's 31P31D and trying to figure out what would fit the bill. I mentioned in my wrap up post for 31 Plays in 31 Days 2013 that this time around I wrote very few things that could actually be used as stand-alone ten-minute plays. Unfortunately I didn't write this time with the intention of generating them, I wanted to do pieces intended for use in larger works, so my options are a bit thin.

The best piece for this purpose is Not My Brother, a Stand-inspired bit about what happens when a young rejects the life he used to lead with his older brother. It's very human and has a great emotional issue in there, so I think it could be really powerful with a bit of polishing and expansion. So I think that will be the first one I fix up. The second, however, was not as obvious, but I think I've settled on Like a Loss, the one where Colonel Hawking's valet tries to get him to talk about how much is he is suffering over the miscarriage recently had by his wife.

It's definitely part of the larger Mrs. Hawking story, but not of any one in particular. And you don't need a whole lot of context or backstory to get the point of it. So it definitely has a strong enough dramatic moment and is sufficiently self-contained to make a ten-minute play. Also, since it's about repressed, stiff-upper-lip Victorian men, it's a good opportunity for me to practice conveying feelings without the character necessarily talking about them explicitly. It will definitely need work to get it into shape-- it's nowhere near long enough, to start with --but I think it could really be powerful.