Well, my play, The Gift, directed by Nicole Maxali and starring, Aaron Niles, Jocelyne Ampon, and Sarita Orcon closed last night. THANK YOU for breathing life into the characters that came to me at 3am on the morning of June 16, 2008! Special thanks to Ed Mabasa for the coolest tech effect to bring a blast to the ending!
Here’s some notes from my observations about Stories High 10 from this playwright’s POV:
– Of course, I learned this after the fact but don’t use one-liners for effect. I tried to come up with a couple of one-hit one liners that seemed so disjointed from the flow of the script. boo. i have to do better than that.
– Create the “Awwweee” character. From John Raposas’s character in his play, One Year, he’s crafted a character that made the audience pull for him. Make the audience say “Aweee” by playing the sympathy card. A lesson John taught me from a critique session we had. From the time of the first Awe, that’s when you HOOK the audience.
– Create the lyrical play. My personal FAVORITE play is Last Verse written by Ed Mabasa. Honestly, it took me a couple of times to watch it to really understand it and to realize just how beautiful it is. I know a lot of people still wonder what it’s about, as did I, but what I took from it was a love story that had the protagonist, played by the awesome Dennis Rodis, ask how do people fall so in love? what causes this? True this is written from an 18th century vampire dark standpoint, but that’s what made it appealing to me. I also said lyrical because some of the lines are truly poetic.
– Comedy. My next couple of scripts are going to be comedies. Comedy and laughter is what sells the audience! Honestly, that’s what roped me initially into being a playwright – hearing the laughter of the audience. Holy shit?! I wrote something that made strangers laugh? In my growth, my focus has been taken away from that, but after getting that infectious feeling of happiness from Ava Tong’s Non Quite Unrequited, One Year, and Non-Sequiturs by Cathlin Goulding, I can’t wait to create that joy again.
– The Love Story. One Year and Josef Anolin’s Choices explored the relationship genre. I’ve kinda taken that out of my repertoire after writing Garden of Dreams, but I totally plan to go back to it to explore Love and the complications thereof soon. Unfortunately, I really haven’t been in that mood to do so. Kind of when trying to write a Christmas play in June. Not the same feeling. Gets? But it was nice to see.
– The political play. Out of all the plays, Nomi’s Brothers and Sisters took me the most to get used to. Honestly, it took me a while to warm up to it mostly because I felt that the message beat me over the head with what it wanted to say. But that’s talking from the (ick) analytical pov of the structure of playwriting. HOWEVER, it’s a very very worthwhile play to create and is needed! There are bad things happening in the Philippines regarding US/Philippine relations, political and economic, that needs to be addressed and it’s great to see it done so. Much props to Nomi for writing this.