"Love Love Love the start - only 5 pages in... crazy week... will have time to read this weekend and let's chat by phone then too?"

Nothing like waiting on feedback, and when you receive it, having it lead off with three "loves." That was Tuesday. By Friday I had tweaked the first 40 pages of The Physics of Joy quite a bit and had another 5 to 10 pages added. By this morning I had a great set of feedback from Chris (with apologies in case he was barraging me and assurances that he loves the show).

Here's the summary:

Love bringing Joy in, and her time travelling. Need to introduce her asides as a theatrical convention earlier so that the audience understands the omniscience sooner.
Like how the gender argument is woven between Rachel/April and Jacob/Mary. Concern that Jake and Rachel are coming off as unsympathetic - meaning they are no longer likable after this scene and that's a problem dramatically. In the original production of Odes, Jacob and Rachel had the convention of direct address to the audience through aside, and had the chance to charm the audience and remain in their good graces. Now Jake is coming of as a jerk, and Rachel as a whiner.
Like the development of Conor/Margaret form where they were, but liked their story being shrouded in mystery for longer in Odes.
Fascinated with "gravity" and the physics references; will it all tie back together in the end?
The set. Yikes! Worried about how much building would have to be done, and without any real budget; definitely can't have a real second-story apartment in the high school production.

Of course, Chris is completely on point.

Joy's asides hit you out of left field in this early draft, and Rachel and Jake have crossed the line to being unsympathetic; I'll get these both fixed in the next rounds. I've asked Chris to trust me on the new Conor/Margaret work; the new stuff is still really early, and I think it's going to be good… if I can craft it right.

And then there's the set.

Chris is right about this, as well. In trying to write such a huge story, I've created new playing spaces; what used to be a bar and the hallway to the bathroom, have become: 1) the bar, 2) the bathroom hallway, 3) the interior of the bathroom, 4) the space out front of the bar, and 5) the second-story upstairs apartment that Margaret and Conor live in. "Yikes," indeed. We'd need a revolve to make it all work, and even with that, it all stills seems excessive.

I'm confident that I can get this down to three playing spaces: the bar, bathroom hallway, and the apartment. I think that if I can work it down to this scale, the apartment could be played in a downstage corner of most proscenium stages, and the bathroom hallway in the other.

Alright, time to go get the second act done.