The polish is to make it suitable for a high school production, and could I clean up the language and some thematic material. The original script, which tells three different love stories, all happening real time at a local bar on a Friday night, has a central theme of "possession," played out through a sexually-charged anchor story - the role that Chris originated back in 1999 - and with admittedly blue language. It is a bar, after all.
Given Chris' invite, I dove into the old script, armed with my trusty Paper Mate Flair red felt-tipped pen and over a decade of new experiences. What I found was a lot of potential, and too much of my youth and immaturity in life.
"...a riveting, well-written ensemble drama."
I often quote John Levesque and his Seattle Post-Intelligencer review of the 1999 production, in which he called the show, "...a riveting, well-written ensemble drama."
However, the full quote - including the part preceding the ellipses - was, "A bit precocious and self-conscious, it could stand to evolve some more. But in its current form, Odes is still a riveting, well-written ensemble drama." As I reread my script, I found I couldn't have agreed more with Mr. Levesque.
I pinged Chris back, saying that I was happy to give it a go. I had been wanting to try a cut like this anyway.
Oh, one more thing, Chris has a senior who he want to cast around, and she plays nine-years-old. Like really nine. Like Annie nine. Could I get a small child into the night at the bar?
"Yes I can. Absolutely."
Why the confidence on my part? Back in 2005 my play Gabriel/Joy received a stage reading at the now-defunct Capital Hill Arts Center in Seattle, Washington. The reading was fine, but the show never saw a production, being - frankly - a mostly unpleasant, navel-gazing plot with few opportunities for the audience to invest in any of the characters. It did, however, have a great establishing collection of family dynamics at it's opening, with a single-father, his at-times-brother/at-times-sister (depending on which version of the script you read) and - importantly - his very young daughter. Having long ago abandoned the script, I still felt like the family dynamics and some of the plot conventions had merit, and the ask from Chris felt like an opportunity to try to leverage the good from that script once more.