Okay. The show was cast! After the dreaded “shit” calls to all the actors who didn’t get a role we completed, we were ready to move! (I always have a hard time with the shit calls.  This time it wasn’t so difficult because Casey shared the task with me, and she was HAPPY to call a few of the actors who were arrogant to me during auditions! And I, of course, let her do it!)

But, I now realize that I put the cart in front of the horse by writing about auditions first.  The true beginning of this story starts after the show was written, and I began schmoozing The Windham Theatre Guild to take a chance on it and produce it on their stage!

I have been working with The Windham Theatre Guild (The WTG) for about twenty-five years now, ever since I moved back to Connecticut from Maine. They had already produced one show that I wrote, The Cultivation of Succulents, about six years ago. And that show made money for them only because they were able to get a federal grant for the thing since they were promoting a local, undiscovered playwright.

I spent a lot of time talking to Victor Funderburk, the president of the WTG, and Martha Funderburk, Victor’s wife and prime mover of Victor. I submitted the script to the board of directors of the WTG, and invited them all to come to an informal dramatic reading of the show in a back room of The Main Street Café, the place where everybody knows my name.

In my years of being involved with theatre, I have gathered many talented friends who were delighted to help me out by reading the roles. (A dramatic reading of a play is simply a bunch of actors sitting down with the script and reading the show without any blocking, sets, lights, sound effects or costumes.) We had one rehearsal for the dramatic reading in my living room about two weeks before the dramatic reading at The Main Street.

Then, at the dramatic reading, there were about four members of the WTG’s board of directors who showed up.  After the reading, one of the board members completely panned the show, calling it boring and unrealistic.  (I politely listened to her comments. When she didn’t have ONE good thing to say about the play, I realized what was going on: I was listening to the venom of a mean-spirited, unhappy, middle-aged woman, and I thanked her very much for her input. Then I walked away hoping that she would die a horrible and painful death very soon.) The other three board members loved the show, and decided to present it to the WTG for production.  I asked these three sentient members of the WTG board to hold off on the presentation until I had a chance to re-write the show because, after hearing it read aloud, I realized that the thing was much too long.

Casey McDougal, my good friend and all-around wonderful human being, was at the reading. I told her that I needed to re-write the thing, and she told me to do it carefully so as not to lose the show’s balance. She suggested that I go through the play line by line, and trim it down.

 And that’s what I did. (And I also completely threw out one scene in its entirety when I realized that it really didn’t fit in with the rest of the show.) It took me a month, but I went through the thing line by line and honed it down from 92 pages to 78 pages.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I edit a piece of my own work, every sentence or line that I cut is like severing a limb from my body.

But I did it, and, when I had  it down to what I considered fighting weight, I sent it to my three friends on the script reading committee, including Martha Funderburk, and asked that they consider the show for production.

(I found out much later that Martha read the script and championed it to the play reading committee, along with my good friend Josh Eves.)

Martha personally presented the show to the WTG board of directors, and she handed out copies of the script to each board member.  At the next meeting, they all voted on it. 

Being the cautious group of people that they need to be, the board decided to present the show first as a formal dramatic reading on their stage, and then gauge the audience’s reaction to the thing.

Everybody was in favor of giving Blessed Event this chance except for one board member. (Guess who the negative vote was from? The witch who still has yet to die.)

So, it was up to me reassemble the cast who worked on the first dramatic reading, and proceed from there.

(More to come…)