Something simmering.

Ever since I wrote my play and it had its first reading, people have been asking me what else I have, telling me I should be working on something new, and wondering if I am a one-trick pony.

I have wondered that myself.

The thing is, there was a lot of work to do to get the play to a production.  Every playwright is his or her own first producer, and if you’ve got a play in which you have faith, you owe it to the play to try to be a good one.

In my case, that meant a steep learning curve since I had never approached the theatre from that angle.  In addition, I had some early luck with casting that seemed to make it imperative that I do the very best I could to insure the play got every opportunity possible.

It took longer than anyone could have possibly imagined.  Anyone, that is, except another playwright.

And I don’t know that I did everything, or even anything, right.

But the play is going to have a production—(Yay!)—and I am saved from being the Emily Dickinson of playwrights.  Whatever happens now, I will not end up with a drawer full of unproduced plays.  I might end up with a drawer full of unproduced plays and one that made it onto a stage, but it seems like whatever was paralyzing my impulse to write may have lifted.

In the last couple of days, I have been wondering what’s next.

And, at the moment, I am wondering if I could write a farce.

There’s a part of me that highly doubts it.

Farce is the form most violently dependent upon plot.  Plot is not something at which I excel.  It always seems to me that I am interested in character.  Dialogue flows somewhat rapidly from my pen (or keyboard), but, often, I am casting about for a believable situation imbued with enough conflict to get these characters I have conjured through a play or a story or, heaven forfend, a novel!

I went to see a production of Moon Over Buffalo recently, however.  And I remember, with great fondness, seeing Noises Off on Broadway in the weeks following 9/11.  At a time when we thought we could never laugh again, more than a thousand people a night were rolling in the aisles.

That production was profoundly important—a gift of incalculable value to a grieving city—and cured me forever from any tendency I might have had to look down on farce.

So, what I’m wondering now is—could I write a farce?

Maybe we’ll see.