The Words Are Becoming More Famous

We had the “world premiere” of the staged reading of my play Famous Last Words last night. I deliberately skipped the dress rehearsal Thursday because I kind of wanted to see it “fresh” with an audience. And the cast really delivered. (There were a couple of blown lines, but I suspect I was the only one who would have noticed. And why is “incorporeal” so hard to pronounce? Also, too: Warren ZEE-von. But these are minor nitpicks.) The voiceovers at the beginnings of some of the scenes worked well, and even the Jeff Buckley song toward the end—which I thought would be hopelessly cliched—seemed to have been very effective. Rich Pekins as Death stole the show and while I had my doubts about his interpretation (I was going for something a bit more Aaron Sorkin-y), he did get the laughs, so who am I to complain? Genevieve and Jarred Aldi really threw themselves into the parts of the “wacky” next door neighbors (I cop to throwing in some old 1970s sitcom tropes). And Chad Andrews was perfectly suited for the lead.

There were about 20–25 people in the audience, not bad for Johnstown, and everyone seemed to love it. During the Q&A afterward, several vocal audience members demanded it be given a full production, and the Colonial Little Theatre Board concurred, so that may happen some time next year.

I attempted to videorecord it, but maxxed out the SD card before the end of Act I (2GB doesn’t go as far as you’d think with video...) so I bought a 16GB card and will try again at tonight’s performance.

It was really quite gratifying, and I have made notes of some things that did not work and things I need to fix. Still, tremendous fun.