So, I’m a bit late, but I figured I’d write my Slapdash update. This year was phenominal. When we arrived at the theater at 10pm, everything just felt right. Ian, Erin, Le, and Bill had set everything up. We had a long table in the main entrance hall to arts on real. We came in, and setup our computers. Brandon’s computer had a parallel port so we were able to hookup the laser. My mind was put at ease, and we sat down to write our lines, pick our genders and start writing. Picking genders was a bit more interesting this year. There was a lot of swapping (although Skipper got left out, we went a bit too fast). I traded my two men to Paul for two womem. Set with my three woman scene I got to work.
When I started, I was planning on writing about lawn care and life in suburbia. It’s a two person scene, each in their own lawn, with various characters running in and out. After about an hour I realized that the scene wouldn’t really work in the Slapdash setting, so I started thinking again. I came up with the idea of working under you desk, installing something (perhaps a new hard drive), reaching up to get a screw driver from the top of the desk, and feeling a hand close around yours.
So I started writing a scene about it. And it turned into a story about two women who could travel into the book they were reading for their book club. The problem is that there really wasn’t that much conflict in the original version. I got some fantastic feedback (I believe from Brandon), to have the two characters competing to change the book into what they thought it should be. That snapped the entire script into place for me, and at about 4:50am, I started scrambling to add a few scenes and entirely retune my piece.

When the directors got there, we did our drawing, and I drew E.D.’s piece again. I have no clue how this keeps happening to me. My action figures were some bald chick from farscape, edgar allen poe, and hank hill. This translated into Beth Matuszek, Jeff Kievlan, and Larry Oliver. I was a little scared, since Jeff had not acted before, but by about 10am, he was already starting to work partially off book, which was a huge relief.

We did our opening the day speach once the actors showed up. Julie, Travis, and Bill did an excellent intro scene (that Julie wrote), and we got to work. Our stage managers this year were excellent. They kept everything moving. We went into tech rehearsals at 3pm, and everything just kept moving without a hitch. Our sound and lighting was inspired, and at the end of tech rehearsals, I don’t think anyone was expecting to have any problems with the show. (Ok, I was a little freaked out by my actor’s line flubs after my experience at the last Slapdash, but I just had faith that my actors would pull it off.)

At around 4pm we realized that we had not done the programs. So we had to scramble to collect names. I had to email the names to julie, she built a program, and emailed it back to me (since we had the printer at Arts on Real). Then, when E.D. and Tara showed up with the keg, we sent them off to make copies.

We got our copies back, everyone was looking good, and then we printed the reservation sheet. We had 56 reservations. Arts on Real has 64 chairs. We still had directors and writers who wanted to see the show. We got some folding chairs and decided to sell as much as we could. Thankfully most of the walk-ins came early, and we were able to get by without a waiting list. All told, we sold a crazy number of seats. Paul’s sister-in-law Sharon filmed the proceedings for us, and the audience loved it. Julie’s scene explaining the process went over like gangbusters, they had to stop after almost every line for laughter, and that pretty much fortold the audiences appreciation of the scenes.
And the scenes were solid. They were funny and polished. Everything worked this year. It was amazing. Julie is thinking we should move to yearly. I think after this year that might be feasible.
Also, Brandon has challenged Julie and E.D. to write with him, and Julie has taken the challenge. This is awesome. Brandon has pointed out what we both know. Julie and E.D. are two of the most brilliant writers in Austin, and the town deserves to see a full length play from each of them. So here’s to next year. The future is looking bright indeed.