My Theatre Debut

My first playlet was performed as part of the debut 10 Minuters evenings on March 22-24 at the Counting House, Edinburgh. The playlet was originally a short story written in the second person for an anthology, but I never heard back from the anthologisers so I converted the dialogue-heavy piece into a play, milking the final line for necessary laughs. I think the cast, organisers and writers were largely Edinburgh Uni students, the humour being collegiate and largely student-centric, but I was delighted when my play, ‘The Third Person,’ produced audible chuckles and the preceding nine minutes had a pay off.

The only snag was that my name was omitted from the program, leaving me an anonymous contributor to the audience. Oops. Still, I was worried the playlet would meet blinks of incomprehension. The actors performed my spoof Sherlockian sheep-theft mystery sketch brilliantly, especially Jack Robbins who had basically all the lines and aced his dippy Norfolk farmer accent. Criticisms? I had no communication with the director, so I was at the mercy of his (or her?) editing skills, but the script was unchanged except switching sexes of the second person. The organiser Alex Clark might have been more responsive to some of my emails, perhaps. But I’m quibbling now.

The experience has left me hungry to write more playlets—not necessarily comedic sketches, but playlets with comedic elements. Equally good was this enthusiastic review, where my play was applauded. Contrasted with this lukewarm review where I got a slight spanking. As for the other plays, they tended towards the comedic, and my own seemed to act as a chuckle-starter for the last few numbers, which played like extended comedy sketches. Good ones. ‘Crunch! And the world went down’ had the strangest title of the night but created an intriguing internet-paved inverted world. ‘Occupied’ was a tender transgender piece, nicely realised. The best of the comedic plays, for me, was closer ‘Modern Art,’ which could have come straight from Peep Show.