Writing Anarchists: Diary #1

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I've never done this before. I've written plays in all sorts of manners, with all sorts of restrictions and complications, but this is really a first for me. See, I don't have a single page of dialogue or even a full outline or character description written and I'm supposed to have a first rehearsal/meet & greet this week. Oh, yes, I have a director and a full cast. An awesome cast, I must say. All of whom have signed on to something that doesn't technically exist. With performance dates in just about two months. Aw, yeah.

This is all a bit experimental for me. I'm trying out something I think of as open-source playwriting. I've been doing a lot of reading about the open-source movement lately, books like Remix by Lawrence Lessig and Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, and thinking about how that can apply to the field of playwriting. It's a tricky thing. Theatre is already deeply collaborative, in many ways, but it's also very territorial. We have a pretty rigid system for the creation of work. It can be quite stifling. My revolutionary spirit wants to overthrow that. Hence, trying to open the source.

So I'm heading into a room with an idea, an outline of a play, knowing that there are parts I can't work out in my head alone, characters I can't fill in, plot points that will need better explanations. I'm trusting that my collaborators can help me figure it out. And in the end, we'll have a play that we've all contributed to and can feel proud of. It should be fun. Plus it's about anarchists and suburbia and revolution. Which is all awesome. There's going to be a bomb in the play. More plays should have bombs. Because they are awesome.

But this part is just a bit terrifying. Right at the top of the rollercoaster. But it's that way when I have a script in hand, too. So it's all good.