Happy Birthday Delia (Lemon Tree)

In the time I am not blogging, playing with clay, photos, paint or paper or being a wife and mom,  I am writing.  Since it’s part of my creative self, I’ve decided to talk more about my writing projects here on my blog.  I haven’t done that much in the past because I tend to like to be a bit free-wheelin’ with the bloggy chatter.  I don’t like having to check and double-check my grammar and syntax.  It feels like the minute I start to say I am a writer in the blog, I then have to start blogging perfect and eloquent blogs each and every time.  This has prevented me from talking about my writing much, however, I am at the “Oh, well fuck it…” point now where I am thinking life is short, so just do it.

I wrote a play about seven years ago titled Happy Birthday Delia (Lemon Tree). Last year Leon Levinson of Calliope Arts & Theatre called me to go over my play again.  He’d read it the first year I’d drafted it and asked if I could arrange a reading for him to view.  I was able to appeal to some actor friends to give it a proper reading – which, by the way, is nerve-wracking.  That initial reading was done some seven years ago by Jim Kleyle, Karen Kleyle, Suzanne Donohue (at the time she was Fehl) and Brian Donohue.  The play was in it’s second or third draft at the time.  I was really happy when Jim talked to me at Casey’s after the reading and told me some of the things he understood about the play.  It felt great to feel as though somebody “got it.”  I don’t think everybody understood what I was going for, but he really did.  Some of my other friends came out to watch the reading and give me critical feedback, too, which I greatly appreciated.

I tinkered with it again a little and then put it to bed for a while.  It was on the back-burner for many years while I drafted shorter plays for contests and continued honing my photography, clay and painting skills.  Then, one day last year Leon re-read it and wanted to talk about it some more.  We met and I got more perspective and answered some questions for him.  He then arranged a staged reading in November 2008 with some wonderfully talented actors from the DC area.  There was a read-through/rehearsal, then there was the staged reading performance.  For any non-theatre folks who might be reading this, you can find some definitions here.

The November 2008 reading cast was as follows:

Karen Toth as Delia Dash
John Morogiello as Weston Dash
Tom Witherspoon as Ashton Dash
Linda Gabriel Deutsch as Lissa Dash

It was directed by Catherine Aselford, a pragmatic and straight-forward woman who communicated clear ideas about what she felt the play was saying.  She consulted me for plenty of feedback and respected my voice as well.  I enjoyed her energy and advice.

Will came along and recorded the staged reading which was held at the Bethesda Writer’s Center.  Since I have yet to get a real digital video camera and had to use my regular camera, the video is in smallish chunks.  Some of it even got missed a little.  Overall though, it’s pretty great and valuable as a tool in order to refine my work.

Also valuable was the discussion after the reading.  I don’t know if Will managed to get any of that onto the video.  I haven’t looked at all of them yet.  There was one woman there who told me she was in the counseling or psychology field who understood so many layers of what I was writing I wanted to hug her.

I am going to upload each video into its own blog since they take up some memory, I don’t want it to slow load-times or anything.

Happy Birthday Delia (Lemon Tree)
Reading – Bethesda Writer’s Center
Video #1

Ok – I went to upload it and it won’t do it – I will have to check with Robert tomorrow night and see what he can do for me!

*****UPDATE******
I uploaded it to Facebook, but I don’t want to upload all of them to Facebook. First of all, there is some adult content in the rest of the play. They already took down one of my works of art because she didn’t have top on. So, I’m sure they will take it down. For now, this is part one.

OY VEY – as you can see below – unless it changes AGAIN – FB will not allow it to show. It’s showing on FB, so they didn’t remove it. I will find a way to post it here at some point. And all of the others too! Sheesh!

Thursday, March 26th, 2009, by Heather and is filed under "Stage Play ". You can leave a response here, or send a Trackback from your own site.