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The good folks at Infusion Theatre Company were kind enough to choose my play CLOCKWORK ADORATION for inclusion in their 5th Annual New Play Development Workshop.
To tell the tale of how I assembled CLOCKWORK ADORATION, we have to go back to autumn of 2009. There was a Steampunk convention taking place in Cleveland, Georgia and they were looking for 10-minute Steampunk plays. I knew next to nothing about Stemapunk (a sub-genre of science fiction), but my goal as a playwright is to have a play produced in each of the 50 states (I’m up to 23). I’d never had a play produced in Georgia, so I figured out what some of the elements of Steampunk were and wrote a play about dirigibles, romance and mechanical men.
They didn’t accept it.
Time travel to 2011. Hobo Junction Productions in Chicago was looking for 10-minute plays with a science fiction theme. I dug out my Steampunk script and sent it in thinking it was a long shot (they seemed to be looking for outer space stuff, my play took place in Victorian England).
It was a long shot. They didn’t accept it either.
Time travel to two weeks later. I received an e-mail that said Hobo Junction actually did want to do my play. Yay!
“Toadstools and the Mechanical Man” went up in their HOBO ROBO COMEDY FESTIVAL 3: HOBOS IN SPACE. It was one of the best productions of one of my plays I’d ever seen! It was so well done that I got Raven Theatre to hire the director (Breahan Eve Pautsch) to direct my evening of plays (TALES OF THE TWINKLING TWILIGHT) that goes up at Raven in November (10/31 – 11/25 – Go see it.).
It also inspired me to build on “Toadstools…”. I had to find more Steampunky things to write about. I wrote a scene about women and dynamite. I wrote a scene that took place on an airship. I gave the Mechanical Man more to do. I mentioned sea monsters, the hollow earth’s core, submersibles and lots and lots of love. (Truth be told, I still knew next to nothing about Stemapunk, but these were the things I felt like writing about). I tied it all together with music and phrases and (hopefully) a specific world. Five scenes and one long monologue later I had something that felt right. I called it CLOCKWORK ADORATION.
I put it all in a drawer and forgot about it.
Time travel to summer 2012. The talented folks at Infusion put out a notice looking for plays for their NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP 5. I took CLOCKWORK ADORATION out, blew off the dust and sent it in.
And, well, here we are.
Come see a scene from CLOCKWORK ADORATION on October 29 at the Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago, IL.
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