Just a reminder to all you awesome people checking out 64P64D:
I am an actual playwright who writes full-length plays for actual nights of actual theatre. If you dig the type of stuff you see here and might be interested in reading something longer (or know someone or some theatre company who would), definitely let me know, I’ll send something your way.
Now onward to Day 30!
As part of a long-booked trip, I will be in Oregon until Tuesday. I knew of this going into this project, though really didn’t take it into consideration (which is pretty much true of this entire damn thing).
This is not to say I’m giving up or taking a week-long hiatus. There will still be writing and video updates, but probably without any serious production involved. I’m talking single-take readings in airports, on the side of the road, in my rental car, etc. I’ve been trying to make the videos as interesting as I could while making them on the fly with limited resources. For the next five days, you really can’t expect that kind of effort, but you can expect something.
I’m also announcing this as a reminder of the exact terms of what I can be held to. The goal is one video per day, but the promise is an AVERAGE of one video per day. By Day 64, there will be 64 plays online, and if I do not accomplish that, then I have failed. But if along the way I miss a day for any reason, I’m held accountable for that day and must make it up by the end. Ten days into this, I remain committed to the project and am determined to see it through.
YouTube has been acting up all day, because if there’s one thing that takes a day off for the birthday of an individual nation, it’s the internet. So here, on Vimeo, is Day Eight’s play, “I Will Promise to Let Life Guide Me”.
For anyone unfamiliar with the type of plays I write, you’ll find that I tend toward stuff that press kits would call “edgy.” There will be swearing, sexual imagery, and just general bizarrities. It’s not that I’m incapable of writing a standard play with appropriate content, and I don’t write it to be gratuitous, but an edgier foundation lifts up my plays and keeps them interesting. Someone against such content might call it a crutch, but even if it is, I’m busting out a lot of plays in rapid succession, so if I want to use a crutch to make it easier, I’m going to.
So here’s the DISCLAIMER: These videos are intended for mature audiences only. There will be swearing, sexual imagery, and general bizarrities.
So don’t say you weren’t warned when, for instance, the naked lady wears the horse carcass as a coat (which is an idea I’ll never use here, because it’s from a play I already wrote).
On a mysterious whim, I sent the following message to my Facebook and Twitter followers at 7:46 pm, Tuesday, June 26, 2012,
“Dear everyone: GIVE ME TITLES, PLEASE. I will write a short play for each title given and film me reading each script.”
By the end of the night, I had received 64 titles. I do not know why I thought it would be any less than that. Perhaps I had been drinking (I had been drinking).
On this site, I’ll post each video as I finish them, but I also wanted to make sure everything is understood, so a couple of ground rules. These are more for me than for anyone reading, but just so we’re all on the same page:
1) I will do as I said. I will write a short play for each title I received and I will film myself reading it.
2) The videos will be online and on this site here.
3) I reserve the right to make each play as short or as long as I so choose. This might be a cop-out, but I don’t care. Look at it this way: if I wrote an average of five pages for each play, that’s 320 pages. The rule of thumb for theater is one page per minute, so that’s five hours and twenty minutes of plays. If I were to spend the next 64 days writing a five-and-a-half hour long play, I’d be hailed not as lazy, but as insane. Plus, anything over 5 minutes on YouTube gets tiresome.
4) On the videos, the quality of them will also be on the fly. There might be days where I’m feeling especially creative and have ample time to set up shots and put together some sort of performance. There also might be days where I’m reading into my computer’s camera in an airport bathroom (which could arguably be better).
We begin tomorrow. A thanks to everyone who gave me a title. I’m incredibly apprehensive about this entire project, I have no idea what good will come out of it, and I think all of that’s a good thing.
64 Plays in 64 Days 