Countdown to April 23

Some updates: One of my classmates got a ten-minute play and a one-act into the finals of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in DC. A student in last year’s class also got one of her ten-minute plays in, and another student in last year’s class won an award for his full-length play. It’s a big competition, so it’s really great that they were all recognized. And another classmate of mine got a ten-minute play into the DC Source Festival, which is also awesome. In less-than-awesome news, however, I found out that I didn’t get that global fellowship I applied for back in January. There were only two allocated to the playwriting genre, but they went to two very great people in my class, who will be headed to India and Italy. They each have a play already in the works set in their respective countries, so it’s especially good for them to get some hands-on experience there. I’m really excited for them. And don’t worry about me—I’m already plotting how I’m going to get myself to Ireland sometime soon.

I also just yesterday found out that the staged reading of my full-length play will be on April 23rd. That means that I am going first out of my class, kicking off eight days of staged readings of the work we’ve been putting together all year. The plays we present will serve as our MFA thesis projects—depending on when each of us is scheduled to graduate (once we complete the four electives), we’ll have to hand in a printed copy and have two of the faculty members sign it. What’s good is that the final copy of the thesis isn’t due until closer to the graduation deadline (I’ll hopefully finish in September), so we can use the feedback from the reading to do another round of revisions. I’m nervous about my play going first in the reading series. I won’t know what to expect because I won’t be able to see anyone else’s before mine. But in a sense, going first is nice because I can then spend the rest of my week just watching everyone else’s readings and not having the stress of my own still hanging over me. Having the date set for my reading made it all a bit more real for me. April 23rd is just over a month away. Thirty-six days actually. I need to revise like crazy to get it to where I want it to be.

You’d think that the rush of nerves I experienced last night would have led to my spending hours on revisions, but no. Instead I decided to watch the episode of Full House where DJ has a nightmare about failing her SATs and Vanna White shows up and tells her she’s going to Clown University. But I think sometimes I need a good mindless dose of Kimmy Gibbler in order to de-stress just a little. I’ll need to get some revisions done this weekend. On Saturday my brother is having a late St. Patrick’s Day celebration that will hopefully involve a cookout because it’s supposed to be sunny and warm, so I want to be able to enjoy some of that as well. He’s taking the GMAT Saturday morning, so he’s been busy studying for awhile now and missed the real St. Patrick’s Day on Wednesday. It should hopefully be fun. April’s going to be really tough (I have my reading, plus my presentation on Beckett and a book review due for my other class, and as my final for that class I need to put together an entire “evening of theater”—meaning 60+ minutes of performance, made up of one-acts or ten-minutes or any combination of the two). All of that still needs to get done somehow. And then there’s, you know, my whole “job” thing that I do 40 hours per week. But Saturday can be a fun day in advance of all of this work, or at least a part fun/part work day. And I have Seasons 1 and 3 of Full House on dvd (why am I missing Season 2? I have no idea), so when I get really stressed out over the course of this next month I’ll have to pull those out.

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