Three Women, how it began...

While pre-production for On Time barrels along, I'm also working on a show with the working title of Three Women. This will certainly not be the finished title, but it works right now because it's about three women.

I've written a lot of short plays - mostly inspired by the opportunities offered by the Short & Sweet Festivals, and the fact I've been produced a couple of times there. And, like short films, ten-minute plays can really get to the heart of a character or situation and tell strong, short stories.

Having written On Time for Richard - the first time I've written a one-person show, I wanted to write a couple of one-woman pieces. This led to me writing two short plays, "Poems a Dead Boy Wrote" and "Like a House on Fire". The first was read at Melbourne Theatre Collective and the second at the Cold Reading Series - and both got really strong reactions. Admittedly, "Poems" got a more sombre reaction - because it's a heavy dramatic piece. "Fire" got lots of laughs and huge applause at the end.

After the reading of "Fire", I had three female actors approach me wanting to perform the play; one actor in particular wanted to film it for her show reel and later ended up using it as an audition piece for another Fringe Festival show.

Of course, if I was going to do "Fire", they couldn't all perform it, so I offered "Poems" to Christine and "Fire" to Renee and then we went away to discuss how we'd turn those two small pieces into a night of theatre. The answer? Write a third piece for another actor - and then workshop a play where all three characters meet.

I like the challenge of finding three vastly different characters in a room together just to see how they will react to each other. These were all written as separate pieces - the third is recently finished and titled, "Lady M" - with no thought to the second half of the Three Women show.

Now, with three pieces and three actors to perform them, we are actively looking for a space to perform the show and I'm starting to mull over how these women might meet and what happens next.

Stay tuned.

Comments

Agrippina Legit said…
Ooh, congrats for finishing "Lady M" and good luck for the next step.
Keith Gow said…
Thanks. I'm pretty excited how quickly it's all coming together.