As if Nanowrimo every November weren’t enough, the good folks at The Office of Letters and Light also run an event called Script Frenzy every April. I’ve chickened out of it in the past, thinking that I wasn’t interested in writing a play or movie or TV script – but this year I’m doing it. And I’m smack in the middle of it right now!
The best thing about it is that I never imagined writing a script before – in my head I’ve always been a future novelist. So I had no hangups about what I should be writing about or how I should do it. Having no baggage is great!
The second-best thing is how much I prepared beforehand. I read about 25 plays (luckily my husband teaches a course in 20th century American Drama at Goldsmiths, so I had a whole library of plays at home!), mostly from the 20th century, mostly from North America and Britain, purely because this is my favourite time period (oh, I miss the 20th century!) and location. It was absolutely fascinating to read them; although I go to the theatre several times a year I hadn’t read a play since university. I had some greats on my list, but my clear favourites were Angels in America by Tony Kushner, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, M Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, The Mentalists by Richard Bean (I know, I know, it’s 21st century), Aunt Dan and Lemon by Wallace Shawn, and the howlingly funny Hysteria by Terry Johnson.
And now I’m writing my own play. We’ll see how it goes. I fully intend to finish the requisite 100 pages by the end of April so I can have the nice ‘I won Script Frenzy’ badge to put on my blog!
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