Lord Delton: Reading Festival

After a week off, we're back. We've begun the final phase of Second City's core writing program: Writing 6. Eight weeks of rehearsals and minor tweaks to our sketches before they come to life in four shows at the beginning of the summer.

Today we had a read through of the sixteen sketches that Joe has selected as candidates for the show: two of each writer. We convened at Donny's Skybox theater on the top floor of the training center along with our six actors: Brigid, Andy, Janna, Sam, Michelle, and David. Sam and Michelle are also the Sam and Michelle from our Gorilla Tango show in March, David is a friend of mine from improv classes at Second City. So, this group of talent is not entirely unknown to us.

Joe introduced everybody at the beginning, and told the actors what each writer's production role is for the show. He also set a very pragmatic ground rule: all acting notes from the writers are filtered through him; all script suggestions from the actors are filtered through him. I suspect this rule came about by learning the hard way. I bet the production that taught that valuable lesson had intriguing backstage drama.

It was a great experience having others read our material, even though this first day was just a cold reading. The different voices, the mannerisms, the dramatic pauses, and the first attempts at action based on the script (but not necessarily stage directions). All casting decisions for the first read through were assigned by Joe. (Including casting a woman as a penis. Hey, it worked; she killed.) It went really well. When the sketches were being read by the actors who were cast, the other actors often laughed. Yeah! Hell, we writers were also laughing because of the great readings from our cast -- which is nothing to sneeze at considering that we have lived with these pieces for several months and have heard them read several times. Personally, I was most impressed when the cast was able to make me laugh at my own material -- my self-loathing had never allowed that to happen until yesterday.

After the first read through, the actors got a lengthy break, and Joe talked casting with the writers. Each writer got to have input whether a different actor should read a role in the sketches the writer wrote. We only made two or three changes. The initial casting was that good.

We brought the actors back and read through a few sketches a second time -- including the few with casting changes. The actors then were sent on their merry way, and a few shared some very kind words about the sketches.

Our final item of business was to decide on two pieces to get cut from the production. GULP! This was presented to us as an even more difficult decision because we supposedly have 16 solid pieces. (Joe's words, not mine or any other writer's.) True, but I imagine that when a production has one writer who really hasn't written great stuff, it would still be a delicate situation to suggest that that that person should have his or her stuff hacked from the show.

Anyhow, Mark quickly defused the situation by submitting that everybody try to edit their sketches to remove 1/2 to 1 page of material if that would allow us to keep all sixteen for the time being. Done and done. I have to get my red pencil and do some snipping this week.

Some snaps from yesterday:

THE MEN: (l to r -- David, Sam, and Andy)