My poor website is so sad and neglected. I’ve been busy and crazy. But what else is new?
I haven’t mentioned it in my blog yet, but I’m doing a writing program at New Rep this year! I am a New Voices playwriting fellow, along with former BU classmates Emily Kaye Lazzaro and Anna Renee Hansen, and James McLindon, who I had never met before but who is also awesome. It’s going to be a really great group to work with, and I’m excited about it.
The first workshop of my work is going to be November 7th. I’m working on starting a new full-length that I’d had in my head for over a year now but had sort of put on the backburner because I didn’t know how to approach it. It’s going to be based on the true story of a Catholic nun in Phoenix, Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at a Catholic hospital and approved an abortion on a woman who was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child because the woman’s life was in danger. Doctors said her risk of mortality was “near 100 percent” if they continued with the pregnancy. The abortion was performed and the woman lived. Once Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted heard that the abortion took place, he automatically excommunicated Sister Margaret. There’s a lot of actual press on the story, but check out the wikipedia article for a quick overview.
I’m still doing research (i.e., scared to start the actual writing, see previous blog entry), but there’s obviously a lot going on here. The Catholicism stuff won’t be too much of a problem because I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic schools my entire life, so I have a decent handle on their way of thinking and the church’s policies and mindset and all of that. My main concern right now is figuring out how to tell this story without being overtly political or coming across as preachy. I don’t want an “issue play.” I need to find a way in, through exploring a relationship or faith/salvation/something like that, and use that as my means of exploring the topic and let the politics and controversy and all of that sort of arise out of it naturally. argh. I’m worried about it. I’ve also never written anything based on a true story before, so I still feel kind of weird inventing characters based on these people who are still alive and going about their everyday business. But not much about them as people is really out there. I’m hoping to get a decent start on it and get help with all of these questions from the group.
I’m also going to attempt to get out a draft of it during NaPlWriMo, or National Playwriting Month, the playwrights’ counterpart to the much larger NaNoWriMo. You basically join this group of awesome writers at all different stages of their careers around the country and the world in writing a new full-length play during the month the month of November. I first heard about it in 2007 but didn’t take part that year, then I got a comment on my old blog in 2008 from one of the moderators suggesting that I sign up. I figured “why not?” and I’ve been there every year since. The past two years was full of cheating on my part because I was in grad school and had to work on several projects during the month instead of one full play, but I was still on the forums because the community is just so great. I’m going to be a bit of a cheater this year too and start before November 1, but that’s because the New Voices group will need copies of my work in progress by 10/31 in order to prepare for the workshop on 11/7. But if I write a draft longer than the minimum 75 pages in November then maybe I can still count it as a “win.” Either way, it’s fun. There’s still ten days to sign up! You know you want to do it!
Colleen M. Hughes 